The Commissar

  Well into the afternoon he came to himself again, The air was shimmering with heat, the sun burning down on him. He attempted to turn his head away from it. His greatcoat was torn open. Buttons gone. His right side was one bloody mash; minced flesh, crushed bones and tatters of uniform.

  ‘Water,’ he groaned. ‘Water,’ he repeated, but nobody heard him.

  The battlefield was silent.

  A short distance from him lay two Russians. One of them had died several hours ago. His face was a mask of blood. The other soldier still moved slightly now and then, and a rattling sound came from his ruined mouth. His stomach had been slashed open.

  A swarm of flies crawled busily about on the protruding entrails.

  Water!’ he mumbled again. ‘Thirsty!’

  The whole of the long valley was a jumble of empty cartridge cases. Down by the bank of the stream stood a burnt-out T-34. A little further off lay the shot-away turret of a German P-IV. The lush, green grass had been flattened by the tread of countless heavy boots; tank tracks had slashed open the soft earth.

  A swarm of flies buzzed up, suddenly. Some of them lighted on his face, crawling between his parted lips, and up into his nose. He tried to raise his hand, and then to shake his head, but the orders from the brain resulted in no more than a slight tremor of his body.

  ‘Water!’ he thought. He kept on thinking about water until the moment he died.

  Two weeks later his mother, a war widow of World War I, received the obligatory postcard:

  In the name of the Führer, Adolf Hitler, we regret to inform you that your son:

  Lieutenant Georg Friedrich,

  Platoon Commander of Infantry,

  has fallen fighting bravely and in line of duty for Führer, Volk and Fatherland.

  The Führer thanks you. Heil Hitler!

  *degtrareva: Russian machine-gun

  *Grofaz: Greatest Leader of All Time (nickname for Hitler)

  †NSFO: Nazi political officer

  *Tovaritsch: Russian for comrade

  *PAK: German abbreviation for anti-tank gun

  *Cojones - Spanish for balls (testicles)

  * Kraft durch Freude: Strength Through Joy (Nazi holiday organization)

  * A cup of black coffee with a dash of schnapps (or vodka).

  THE FAT LEUTNANT

  The town which has been chosen for us to recuperate in looks neat and clean. The war has moved through it quickly, leaving only a few wrecked houses to mark its passage. The gasworks had been blown up, of course. Gasworks are always blown up during a retreat. But we don’t care. Who wants gas, anyway? Not us!

  The Hotel Ssvaeoda* hums with activity. The owner, Tanya, stands behind the bar, dressed in an ancient mauve party dress, and flanked by three attractive, short-skirted waitresses, ready to welcome the German liberators. She has an interesting, and very ripe, vocabulary which she has picked up from the Mongol troops who were stationed here before we arrived.

  Porta and Tiny start immediately to teach her the equivalent expressions in German. Two days later she is welcoming everyone who enters the bar with a pleasant:

  ‘Lick my arse?’

  Tiny has his hand up under the mauve party dress. He is trying to persuade her to tell him where the commissars hid their vodka and caviare when they left.

  ‘Fuck?’ he tempts her, lasciviously, in a whisper which makes the rafters ring, and the stuffed bear by the fireplace blink its blood-red eyes.

  With the proud gait of a Czarina, Vera Konstantinovna comes through the door. She keeps her expensive fox fur on indoors, despite the heat of the room. She is said to be a woman of rank, married to a high-up commissar, who has gone off with the Red Army. The others address her, jeeringly, as ‘Your Grace’, but cannot hide the fact that they are really not a little afraid of her.

  ‘Shag, then?’ suggests Porta, making the international sign for copulation with his thumb. ‘A trip on the old pork dagger? Panjemajo?’

  On their way upstairs Porta already has both hands searching about under Vera’s skirt.

  ‘I will just wash ma petite soeur,’ she murmurs, pouting her lips for a kiss. ‘My husband installed a bidet here, before he had to leave. You know what bidet is?’

  ‘A trough to wash out ol’ Porky Pig’s kennel in,’ laughs Porta. ‘They’re all over the place in France, but they fuck more there too.’

  While she is in the bathroom Porta takes off his clothes. He throws his heavy Russian pistol clattering on to the dressing-table, but, as usual with him, retains his yellow topper and his boots.

  From down in the bar Barcelona’s heavy bass voice can be heard:

  Wir, im fernen Vaterland geboren,

  nahmen nichts als Hass im Herzen mit,

  Doch wir haben die Heimat nicht verloren,

  unsere Heimat ist heute vor Madrid . . .*

  She has nothing on but her shoes and stockings when she returns to the room. Her reddish-golden hair swings loosely around her shoulders.

  ‘What a peach,’ shouts Porta, admiringly, smacking his tongue. ‘Come with me to Berlin. You could make a fortune in the Zigeunerkeller. They pay 200 for a single, and 500 for a round trip there!’

  She comes slowly toward him, her lips parted in a sensual smile.

  ‘Oh Jesus, Jesus,’ he mumbles in a hoarse voice, his small eyes rolling round in his head. ‘You’re enough to make a dead man get it up again!’

  ‘You are a sweet man,’ she whispers, seductively. ‘But why you wear the boots?’

  ‘Helps in a quick getaway,’ he grins. ‘Think now if your husband, who has gone on his travels, was to put his commissar’s head in here with a Kalashnikov in his hands. I’d be quicker over the cobblestones with me boots on!’

  She kisses him. Small, feather-light kisses, which tickle his face. She falls back on to the bed taking him down with her.

  ‘Like my old stick o’rock, do you?’ he asks, after a while. ‘It’s all the way from Berlin, an’ can do most anything!’

  ‘You are nice, man,’ she whispers, enticingly, and runs her fingers over the bristly hairs at the back of his neck.

  When Porta comes back down to the bar, several hours later, he is met with cries of admiration.

  ‘What’d it cost you?’ asks a Wachtmeister of artillery, interestedly. He is wondering if the 25 marks he has saved up is enough.

  ‘She did it for love!’ Porta brags. ‘But you, you can count on slipping a grand at least for the pleasure.’

  ‘Fuck her then. She ain’t my type,’ snarls the Wachtmeister disappointedly. He goes over to chat up one of the short-skirted waitresses.

  ‘Take cover!’ shouts Tiny, swaying drunkenly to his feet. ‘I’ll shoot the bleeding cocks off the lot of you, else!’

  The machine-pistol seems to go on chattering forever. A huge mirror carrying the old Czarist eagle shatters to pieces. Bottles fall from behind the bar. Ricochets leave splintered tracks in the floor. When the magazine is finally empty he stands for a moment swaying uncertainly on widespread legs.

  ‘Are you dead?’ he asks the empty bar-room, changing magazines. ‘Maybe you know now ’oo it is as ’as invaded this bleedin’ country?’ With another long burst he blows all the windows out, shoots a cow in a landscape painting hanging on the wall, and makes a colander of the plank wall screening the bar from the kitchen. Then he falls to the floor, clutching the machine-pistol lovingly in his arms.

  A quartermaster with only one boot on exits rapidly through the door. He thinks the Russians have come back.

  Tanya helps Tiny to his feet, embraces him and tells him with false friendliness that she has always loved Germans.

  ‘A world war’s not all wickedness,’ says Porta to Vera, straightening her garter. ‘Does that commissar feller of yours know you dish out his private crumpet to the German liberators while he’s away? He might send you to Kolyma for unRussian behaviour if he found out. But p’raps you’d like the work, down in the state mines?’

  ‘We’ve got visitors,
’ yells Gregor, happily, as a Kübel comes skidding sideways through the slush of the square with tyres whining.

  Five military policemen spring eagerly from the Kübel. Carefully as ballet dancers they pick their way through the melting snow, to avoid marring their mirror-bright jackboots. Their helmets sparkle, throwing flashes of light to all sides. As they cross the square they draw Walther pistols from their new, yellow holsters. They tramp heavily and with assurance across the planks of the floor, chests well out to display their brightly-polished headhunter insignia for all to see. They are big, well-nourished men, who enjoy the fear they are accustomed to engendering.

  The guard commander, a brutal-looking, beery Saxon with the Blood Order* over his right breast pocket, marches round in a circle and sends field court-martial looks at us.

  ‘You don’t know me, you sons of pigs,’ he roars, with a self-satisfied air, spitting on the floor. ‘But God help you when you do!’ He draws a long police truncheon from its special pocket in his trouser-leg, flexes it like a rapier with both hands, and swishes it menacingly through the air. ‘Let’s see the bastard who was shootin’ in here without orders!’

  ‘I’m the bloke you’re lookin’ for, Herr Wachtmeister, sir,’ grins Tiny, round a fat cigar. As he answers he presses the muzzle of a heavy Tokarew pistol hard up under the MP’s fat jowl. ‘Look, you stinkin’ excuse for a ’uman bein’, you sod off, an’ take your bleedin’ shower of coppers with you!’Cos in just one minute I’m goin’ to start shootin’ again.’

  ‘You’re bloody mad!’ stammers the Wachtmeister, nervously, falling slowly back toward the door.

  ‘No I ain’t,’ grins Tiny, sending a bullet into the floor between the man’s feet. ‘I’m Frankenstein’s bastard, bleedin’ son, I am, an’ I drink blood every mornin’ for breakfast!’

  ‘Arrest that man!’ gabbles the Wachtmeister, chalk-white in the face. There is no reaction to his order. His four MPs have fled out of the door. He gives out a shrill scream, as Tiny closes in on him with a deep snarl, and hammers his helmet down over his nose with a closed fist. He gets out of the door so quickly that he falls over his own feet and slides a long way on his face in the slush.

  ‘There’ll be trouble now,’ predicts Barcelona, darkly. ‘They’ll kill us, when they come back with reinforcements.’

  ‘Pick up your gear, and let’s get out of here,’ orders the Old Man, squaring his cap on his head.

  ‘We are closing now,’ says Tanya, decisively. ‘Get off with you. We see you again tomorrow. This is a nice place, I must tell you arse-licking Germans!’

  She rattles the iron Venetian blinds shut, and turns off the stuffed bear’s wicked red eyes.

  On the way out Tiny smashes his fist through one of the remaining window-panes. He shakes his hand, which is covered with blood, and licks at it like a cat lapping up cream.

  ‘What the hell did you do that for?’ the Old Man scolds him, angrily.

  ‘It was a Commie bleedin’ window, that’s why,’ yells Tiny. He kicks out at an empty bucket, which rolls noisily over into the opposite gutter. ‘You’re always grumblin’, Old Un’. You don’t want us poor, lonely soldiers to ’ave any fun. I love smashin’ windows. ’Ave done since I was a nipper. If I’ad to pay for all the windows I’ve busted, I’d need a big, bleedin’ loan in the National bleedin’ Bank to do it. You ought to ’ave been there the night me an’ the Jew furrier’s son David from ’Eyn’ Oyerstrasse busted all the windows in the David Station, an’ showered the bleedin’ coppers all over with busted glass. It was their own fault, really. They was ’avin’ a gaspipe repaired, an’ the silly bleeders ’ad piled up all the cobblestones just ready to ’and for us when we come out o’ the “’Appy Pig”!

  ‘“’Ere we go, then!” shouted the Yid’s kid, an’ ’e threw the first stone. It landed smack bang on Superintendent Willy Nass’s bleedin’ desk, knockin’ over ’is personal coffeepot an’ smashin’ ’is inkwell, so a’ole lot of documents important to the soddin’ state gets covered with coffee an’ ink. Nass went bleedin’ barmy, an’ went off’Amburg-style so all the Schupo coppers started puttin’ on their armour an’ artillery. On their way out o’ the door leadin’ to the Reeperbahn they got stuck, there was that many of ’em. David an’ me borrowed a couple o’ bikes, as was leanin’ waitin’ for us, up against the wall of the variety theatre, an’ spurted off down the road with a posse o’ blue-lights chasin’ our arses. Jesus, but they was narked when they copped us. Me that is, ’cos I was the only one they copped. The Yid’s David ’e’d gone off to Buxtehude. Said ’e ’ad to ’elp ’is auntie with’er tomatoes. Nass, ’e threatened me with ’eavy punishments for pinchin’ bikes an’ wanton destruction of property while escapin’. There was somethin’ too about old women an’ a paperstand. I tried to explain to ’im, best I could, as it couldn’t ’ave been me ’cos I couldn’t ride a bike.

  ‘“It’s a lie”’e screamed, an’ smashed the top of ’is desk in two with ’is truncheon. But we’ll soon find out what’s what, ’e promised me, an’ pushed me out the door an’ down the bleedin’ stairs. Out in the street they give me a national police force bike, which Nass ’ad to give a receipt for. We started off from Davidstrasse, as goes down on the slope into the Elbe.

  ‘“Get on!” said an Oberwachtmeister with a moustache the spittin’ image of Adolf’s.

  ‘I pretended to fall off a couple o’ times, an’ they beat me up a bit to make me understand as ’ow this bike trip was important to ’em. They set me up on the saddle then an’ give this national bleedin’ bike an ’ell of a push.

  ‘“Ride, you stinkin’ cycle thief,” Nass ordered me, out from under ’is ’at-brim.

  ‘“Very good, sir,” I yelled and ’eld me feet out to the sides. The bleedin’ bike did the rest. It went like a bat out o’ bleedin’ ’ell down Davidstrasse, an’, ’angin’ over on one side, round the corner o’ Bernhard Nocht Strasse, as is pretty steep. I nearly kissed a number 2 tram on the way, as it come pissin’ up the ’ill there where all them 5 mark ’ores from Fischermarkt does their business.

  ‘Down by Landingsbrücke, I’ad to leave the police bike, which carried on on its own down into the bleedin’ Elbe. You should’ve ’eard im, Nass, go on when ’e found out ’is bike was drowned. I ’eard later as ’e ’ad to pay for it. It was ’im as ’ad ’is name on the receipt.’

  ‘Stop all that shit about Davidswacht and Nass,’ sniffles Porta, who has caught a cold. ‘We’ll be shot before we know where we are. That commissar bint I had social relations with, told me there was a mob of NKVD who’d gone underground here when the Red Army lighted out.’

  ‘Latrine rumours,’ says Gregor Martin, off-handedly. ‘Our friends have lost their courage. We have won the war. All we’ve got to do is make our way straight across Russia, and meet up with the rice-eaters on the other side o’ the earth.’

  ‘I want to see the MO first,’ sneezes Porta. ‘My feet are killing me now, an’ what a walk that’ll be! Have you any idea just how big Mother Russia is?’

  ‘Know what I think,’ trumpets Tiny, banging himself on the chest. ‘We ought to burn the arses out from under them NKVD bastards, so’s we could get a bit of bleedin’ peace for once in a while!’

  ‘Up you,’ groans Porta hoarsely, clearing his nose between his fingers, noisily. ‘I’m about tired of fucking about on the crust of this sodding earth at everybody’s beck an’ call. Think of all the things that’re going on in Berlin while I’m wastin’ my time out here playing soldiers!’

  He blows his nose again, and takes a big swig of vodka. ‘Our German God ain’t all that smart. If He’d been clever He’d of took out a Bohemian Gefreiter named Adolf Hitler in the First World War!’

  ‘Watch your mouth, Obergefreiter Porta,’ Heide warns him, sharply. ‘It is my duty to report you to the NSFO. I have no doubt of what the result of that will be.’

  ‘See into the future, can you?’ asks Porta, ironically, wiping his nose with the back of his han
d.

  A revealing click sounds in the quiet night, and we go to cover alongside the wall.

  ‘An mpi, a bleedin’ mpi,’ whispers Tiny, as he goes down.

  Like a wise old tomcat Porta moves straight across the street and forces his way down some wrecked cellar stairs, where half a door hangs swinging.

  As he moves, explosions erupt from another cellar opening.

  ‘A Balalaika! God rot me, a Balalaika!’ howls Gregor excitedly, and fires reflexively at the flash.

  Just as reflexively I tear the ring from an egg-grenade, and sling it towards the cellar. There is a hollow thump, and a yellow-red flame blooms in the darkness. Its reflection comes back at us from wet steel helmets.

  Tiny rushes straight through a glass door, with a deafening crash. Glass splinters fly around his ears. His Schmeisser explodes, chatteringly. It takes only a few minutes. He comes back out through the door-frame, kicking glass out of his way. He sneezes twice, violently.

  ‘’Ere’s the bleedin Balalaika,’ he shouts, holding a Kalashnikov up above his head. ‘’Im as played it’s dead!’

  ‘The bloody neighbours are that fucked up by this war, they ain’t able to do much more’n get in the way,’ coughs Barcelona. He has a cold, like the rest of us. He coughs up phlegm, and spits on a dead horse, which is lying in a pool of frozen blood.

  ‘Don’t you be too sure of that,’ sniffles Porta, taking another swig from his vodka bottle. He regards vodka as an alternative to vitamin C, and thinks it will help his cold. ‘Never trust the neighbours. Before we know where we are those rotten lice’ll have started up all over again, and we’ll be back where we kicked off!’

  ‘Know what I think?’ shouts Tiny, from inside the remains of a delicatessen. ‘This war is a new Thirty Years War, like the time Jesus landed ’Is army in the Red bleedin’ Sea to give the Turks a beatin’ up.’ His biblical knowledge is, as usual, slightly off-centre.