Court Martial

  With a satisfied expression he smooths down his black tailor-made suit. Black is stylish, the tailor has told him, not having anything else in stock. His shirt is white. His tie scarlet. The national colours, red, black and white. He enjoys looking at his smart 200 mark, patent-leather shoes. Not everybody could give himself a pair of shoes like that.

  The third cup of coffee goes down and another cognac. He dreams rosy dreams of the whole of 5 Company being mowed down by a firing squad.

  ‘I’ll get those criminals,’ he says, half-aloud.

  By now there are only two guests left beside himself. Two Finnish ski soldiers look in but leave immediately. One of them, a sergeant with partisan badges, takes a suspiciously long look at him. Had that murderous pack joined up with the Finnish allies? He shudders and gets up to leave.

  A Nagan pokes his spine brutally.

  ‘You’re dead, you crooked son of a bitch,’ says Tiny, sharply. ‘Take a deep breath and that dog’s ’eart of yours’ll get blown through the wall! And, as you know, it’s difficult gettin’ along with no ’eart left!’

  Porta bursts noisily through the revolving-doors, with Gregor at his heels. The last two guests disappear quickly, and the dozy barmaid wakes up suddenly. It’s not the first time she has seen an armed business meeting.

  ‘So there you are, you rheumaticky old bug,’ says Porta, in a friendly tone, patting his cheek. ‘If there’d been a bit more up there you’d have kept your fingers off us, and then you wouldn’t have died so young!’

  Fear has made Sieg dumb.

  ‘Let me kick ’im a bit, before we knock’im off,’ pleads Tiny, drawing back his enormous boot.

  ‘Start the player-piano,’ answers Porta. We need a theme song for this little drama.’

  ‘You’ve got to put money in it,’ says Tiny, fumbling around over by the piano. ‘A mark a time!’

  ‘Then put some in,’ orders Porta.

  ‘Ain’t got a sou,’ answers Tiny, looking in all his pockets.

  ‘Give us some marks,’ Porta turns to Sieg and reaches into his pocket. He comes up with a handful of coins,

  The player-piano begins noisily:

  Eine Frau wird erst schön durch die Liebe . . .

  ‘You wouldn’t believe where we’ve been, looking for you,’ says Porta, reproachfully, pulling a thin rope from his pocket. With a practised movement he slips it round Sieg’s throat.

  ‘Now you’re off on your travels,’ he says, pleasantly, tightening the cord.

  ‘I don’t like that song,’ protests Gregor. ‘When people are going on a trip it ought to be something with: Boom-da-da-boom!’ He studies the selection and pushes button number eight: ‘Prussian Glory’ roars through the room.

  ‘Strangling is said to be the quickest way of saying good-bye to life,’ Porta comforts him, opening his mouth as if he himself were being strangled.

  ‘You can’t kill me like this,’ chokes Sieg, terrified. ‘It’s murder!’

  ‘Piss and galoshes!’ Tiny cuts him off, impatiently. ‘Be a man! We all ’ave to go some time!’

  ‘Prussian Glory’ ends, and exactly at that moment Sieg screams shrilly for the first time.

  ‘Music, dammit!’ roars Porta, looking round nervously.

  Tiny clumps over to the piano and pushes button five: ‘Finnish Cavalry March.’

  Sieg screams again. A long, strangled scream, like that of a man being dragged to the scaffold.

  ‘More music,’ demands Porta. ‘Lots of music! And give it more gas!’

  Out in the kitchen the barmaid knocks back her third schnapps and sucks violently at an Army cigarette.

  Sieg babbles and screams like a sick cat.

  ‘Now the’re beating him up,’ shudders the barmaid. ‘As soon as they’ve gone,’ she thinks, ‘I’ll get the janitor’s wife to help me drag the poor sod out into the gutter. Then the police can take over! That’s what they’re for!’

  ‘The coin’s stuck,’ shouts Tiny, kicking the piano impatiently. ‘That monkey had dud money on him!’ He hammers at the piano with his fists. ‘Play, sod you, that’s what we’ve paid for,’ he roars furiously.

  ‘Now we’re going to strangle you slowly, the way they do it in the American deep south, when they’ve got a black monkey on the end of the rope,’ sniggers Porta. ‘That’ll teach you not to pass false money another time.’

  Sieg opens his mouth and screams. There is death in it. It penetrates to the very marrow of the bones.

  Passers-by stop and try to peer in through the dirty windows. A Lapp woman thinks there is a revivalist meeting being held and wants to come in.

  ‘Beat it,’ shouts Gregor waving his hands, as if he were shooing off a flock of pigeons. ‘It’s nothing to do with you what’s going on here. On your way!’

  ‘You certainly are a noisy chap,’ says Porta, reproachfully, to Sieg. ‘It’s time we stopped your breath altogether!’

  Tiny is almost going amok. He calls the piano every name he can think of. Then he lifts it up on end and lets it fall back to the floor with a terrific bang.

  ‘The Finnish Cavalry March’ starts up again with a roar. It sounds as if a whole mounted division was galloping through the bar.

  Tiny opens the window and roars at the crowd in the street.

  ‘Move along there! Geheime Staatspolizei! Back in your igloos and get to bed, you Polar bastards!’ The last of them gets a snowball in the back of the neck and breaks into a run.

  Sieg throws himself on the floor, and screams like a slaughter-house pig being butchered. He kicks out with both feet. His arms jerk spasmodically.

  ‘You sound like an Indian bint who’s losin” er maiden’ead,’ says Tiny, kicking him. ‘Be a German! Show us you can take leave of life as a member of the Herrenvolk ought to do! He taps Sieg’s gold Party badge. ‘Don’t forget you’re one of the old warriors!’

  ‘Limp prick’s what he is,’ says Porta, contemptuously, looking up for a hook in the ceiling. There is none. It is obviously not so easy to hang a man as you’d think from the American films.

  ‘Why not shoot ’im an’ ’ave done with it?’ suggests Tiny, emptying a tankard of beer in one go. He tugs a large army pistol from his pocket and aims it at Sieg. ‘When one of these 9-mm chaps ’as made its way from the back of the neck, through the brain at a angle of forty degrees an’ out again, the whoreson who’s been in the way don’t usually ’ave much more to say about anythin’!’

  ‘Makes too much dust,’ says Porta. ‘And can’t you see what a lot of nonsense could come out of one shot? His fuckin’ mates’d soon be chasing about, and who d’you think’d be the first to be suspected when they find his punctured corpse? Obergefreiter Joseph Porta! The Army’s done its best to ruin my reputation. The swastika cops and me have never been able to hit it off properly.’ He snaps his fingers and his face lights up in a pleasant smile.

  While he has been talking he has hit on an amazing idea. For several minutes he wonders why it has taken him so long to find the answer, which is so simple an innocent nun could have thought of it.

  He gives Sieg, who is lying groaning on the floor with the rope around his throat, a friendly kick.

  ‘Stop that whining! You ought to be happy when you find out what we’ve thought up for you! You’ll die laughing when we start! Stand up man! You’re the star performer!’

  Porta places Sieg in the middle of the room and tightens the rope round his neck.

  ‘You stand here,’ he orders Tiny, ‘and hold tight to this end of the rope, and when I say run you take off for all you’re worth! Out through the kitchen until you’re stopped by the rope!’

  ‘Sounds easy as fallin’ off a log,’ says Tiny, brightly, scraping his foot like a racehorse ready to start. ‘What about shit’ead ’ere? Does ’e go out in the kitchen with me?’

  ‘Don’t bother with him! According to my plan he stays here.’

  To the final tones of ‘The Finnish Cavalry March’, Porta moves over to Gregor with the othe
r end of the rope.

  ‘When I shout “Run”, you beat it towards the revolving doors fast as you can! You, Emil, you stay where you are and don’t move. You two take the command from me: “Ready-set-go!” on the word “go!” you start running in the direction I’ve told you!’

  ‘Does that bastard’s body stay in the rope?’ asks Gregor, with a worried expression on his face.

  ‘Of course,’ Porta assures him.’ The trick is that Emil stays inside the rope!’

  Sieg moans and begs for his life.

  ‘Oh shut up! My method is so quick you won’t even know you’re dead. By the way, before you go, do you know anybody who might be interested in a shipment of Polish eggs or some ugly Russian typewriters?’

  Sieg shakes his head sadly. He does not know anybody who wants to make omelets or to tap away on Russian typewriters.

  ‘Well then, good-bye,’ says Porta, shaking his hand heartily. ‘Ready!’ he shouts, moving over to the revolving door to be ready for a quick getaway when the business has been concluded satisfactorily.

  ‘Holy Mother of Kazan,’ whispers Gregor, admiringly. ‘His nut’ll be nipped off like the top of a radish. You could sell this idea to any dictatorship!’

  ‘Well, some are born clever!’ says Porta, modestly.

  The only person present who is not amused is Sieg. His brain is working so hard you can almost hear the rope vibrate.

  Both the rope-pullers take up position with their backs to one another and cannot see what is happening behind them. Porta, standing in the bright light by the revolving door, can only see Sieg as a shadowy form in the dimly-lit restaurant.

  In some way Sieg gets one foot up over the rope, so that he is hanging like an ape from a liana, and with the strength of desperation he also manages to free one hand.

  ‘Go!’ shouts Porta, and Tiny and Gregor dash away from the prisoner as fast as they can go.

  Sieg brings his free hand down on the rope with all his force, with the excellent result that it flies from Tiny’s hands. With the speed of a runaway artillery section he crashes through the closed door of the kitchen and straight over the barmaid, who thinks for a moment she has been killed. Tiny goes on through the wall, out on to the staircase, and down head-over-heels into the cellar, the noise sounding as if one of the greatest battles of the war was being fought inside the house.

  Gregor, who is holding tightly to his end of the rope, flies at full speed through the revolving door. Goes round in it four times, together with Porta, until they are ejected with the force of a bomb from a mortar, roll straight across the roadway and end up in a baker’s shop. Bloody and confused they come to their feet again.

  Tiny digs himself, groaning and dizzy, from a heap of coal in the cellar, crawls up the stairs and out through the bar without bothering about Sieg who has been thrown over behind the piano. His hand-sewn, 200 mark shoes can be seen sticking out.

  Porta wobbles back into the bar and bows politely to the barmaid, who is still sitting on the floor laughing like an imbecile.

  ‘Fantastic,’ shouts Tiny, proudly, as they race out of the town in the amphibian. ‘I’ve never seen anythin’ like it before in all my war!’

  ‘His whole head flew off!’ laughs Gregor, enthusiastically. ‘His face smashed into the ceiling and stayed hangin’ on the lamp!’

  ‘Lovely, lovely grub,’ groans Tiny, between two spasms of laughter. ‘That’s the way to treat bleedin’, blackmailin’ sods!’

  ‘You must admit, my ideas aren’t bad,’ boasts Porta, puffing on one of Sieg’s cigars. ‘I know exactly how to fix little matters like these!’

  It is Hofmann again who discovers that Porta’s method of execution has not been effective enough. The criminal is still alive and in hospital. He cannot speak but he can, unfortunately, still write. For some strange reason he has not told anybody that he has been the victim of a murderous attack, but has told the doctors that he felt a sudden pain in his throat and lost his voice. The red marks on his neck he tells them, are birthmarks.

  ‘That lame police-dog can’t be given time to get over this and start barking,’ says Hofmann, bitterly, staring straight in front of him. ‘If he does we’ve not only got a serious race-falsifying charge hanging over us but also two attempted murders and one that nearly succeeded! That’s more than enough to lose you your nut three times over, with a twenty-year sentence on top of it. Besides the other things that go along with being court-martialled.’

  ‘There’s no way out,’ shouts Wolf, with decision. ‘That Nazi louse has got to be got out of the way, if we’re going to be able to enjoy the short life the God of Germany has endowed us with!’

  ‘The wildcat!’ says Porta, thoughtfully, looking up at the beams which cross the ceiling. ‘Let’s make a signal to Pader-born!’

  Hofmann soon has Wachtmeister Sally on the telephone. He hands it over to Porta.

  ‘Remember I know nothing. Never heard of wildcats,’ he whispers, warningly.

  Porta gets straight to the point.

  ‘I’d like to have a closer look at this wildcat of yours. I’d suggest you send him up here to the cold regions as a sample.’

  Wachtmeister Sally laughs long and loud.

  ‘Tell me, Porta, do you think I was born in a gasworks and dried out on a canal barge? Send the wildcat as a sample?’ He bursts out laughing again. ‘No, soon as I receive one thousand marks in cash, he’ll be on the way to you by the mail plane!’

  ‘I can’t go to Paderborn just to pay for a bloody wildcat,’ protests Porta, indignantly. ‘Don’t you know I’m one of the more important participants in this world war?’

  ‘Don’t go on so! I know all about your connections with Panzer-Ersatz-Bataillon. It’ll be easy for you to transfer a thousand bananas to me here at HQ.’

  Porta takes a swig of coffee to help him think.

  ‘Did you say a thousand jimmies for a lousy roof acrobat? D’you think the Lapp women have sucked my brains out?’

  ‘Roof acrobat?’ says Sally, scandalized. ‘Wait till you see him! When he goes amok he’s like a million ordinary cats all rolled up into one!’

  ‘Five hundred,’ says Porta, shortly.

  ‘Eight,’ Sally demands.

  They agree on seven hundred, freight paid.

  ‘Don’t you try to take me,’ Porta warns. ‘I’m a deep-frozen Obergefreiter up here for the present, and it is possible there won’t be many of the German Wehrmacht left in the end, but one of us’ll live through it and that, by the grace of God, will be Obergefreiter Porta. If I don’t get that bloody cat tomorrow morning by first-class mail you can go to mass and prepare yourself for a very quick death!’

  ‘I’ve never done anybody down on a deal,’ lies Wachtmeister Sally, shamelessly. ‘You’ll have that wicked monster tomorrow evening with the last mail plane, and it’ll be sent first class. Ask for the chief pilot, but be careful not to open the cage, because he’ll go straight for your face and for anybody else near you. He doesn’t care if it’s coolies or generals. I’m sending a little apparatus with him. It sends out sounds which drive him quite crazy. If you want him to tear some bastard to bits just put the little apparatus close to the victim and that devil of a cat will look after the rest. I’ve used him that way before with a bloke and in twenty-one seconds he’d gone into shock.’

  ‘Jesus,’ cries Porta in surprise. ‘That’s just what we need. What does he eat?’

  ‘I usually give him the same as we eat, and he sucks it up like a vacuum cleaner.’

  ‘Does he drink coffee?’ asks Porta, wonderingly.

  ‘Yes, and beer,’ answers Sally.

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Dynamite!’

  ‘Sounds promising,’ chuckles Porta, deep down in his stomach. ‘Tell him we’ve got some interesting work for him!’ Tiny and Porta go out to the airstrip to pick up Dynamite, who arrives, angry and vicious, on board a JU 52 mail plane.

  ‘I’d be careful with that wicked bastard, if I were you
,’ says the pilot, looking nervously at the wildcat’s cage.

  ‘Hello, puss,’ says Porta, bending over the cage.

  The wildcat replies with a mad burst of spitting and snarling, and bites furiously at the bars of the cage.

  ‘Jesus, Jesus, ’e’s a mad ’un ain’t ’e?’ says Tiny, admiringly. ‘Let’s get ’im ’ome an’ lay our plans!’

  Everybody keeps well away as they haul the cage containing the snarling wildcat across the air-strip. An elderly Leutnant, who is fond of cats, comes across to them.

  Before Porta has time to warn him he puts his hand between the bars to scratch the cats neck. He pulls it back with a scream. It is streaming with blood.

  ‘Dynamite, you devil! You mustn’t do that,’ Porta admonishes him. ‘Ask the Herr Leutnant’s pardon, now!’

  There is a terrific row when they get back to the company lines. One of Wolf’s wolfhounds gets its nose slashed to pieces when it tries to sniff a welcome to the new arrival at 5 Company.

  ‘Visiting time at the hospital it between 11.00 and 13.00 hrs,’ Hofmann informs them. ‘No more than two visitors to each patient.’

  ‘That’ll be enough,’ answers Porta. ‘Tiny and Dynamite!’ He takes the sonic apparatus from his pocket to test it. The result is beyond all expectations. The wildcat spins madly in its cage, biting and scratching like a mad thing. There is no doubt at all that it wants to get at Porta who is holding the apparatus. ‘This is it!’, says Porta, happily, throwing a piece of meat into the cage. ‘Tiny and Dynamite enter the hospital tomorrow, shortly after they’ve opened up for visitors. Tiny pushes the apparatus quietly under Emil’s arse and lets Dynamite loose. Then I’ll be very much mistaken if things don’t get very lively, and we’ll get rid of that leprous son of a bitch once and for all!’

  ‘I ain’t too keen on this,’ protests Tiny, weakly. ‘Dogs an’ cats don’t like me much!’

  ‘Piss!’ says Porta, decisively. ‘You do as I say!’

  ‘An order’s an order, Creutzfeldt, and don’t you forget it,’ shouts Hofmann, harshly.

  Dyamite is put in the Kübel’s trunk. We can hear him, spitting and snarling with accumulated rage, even through the noise of the engine.