The general and the woman captain seem to have been made to stand on a wine butt which has then been kicked away from under their feet. A good part of the wine has run out, but there is still enough left in the butt for us to be able to fill our water-bottles.
‘Where the devil’s Porta got to?’ asks the Old Man, throwing a six.
‘Hunting,’ says Gregor, flourishing the dice-box above his head flamboyantly.
‘Never thinks of anything else,’ grumbles the Old Man. ‘Gold teeth’s all he thinks about!’
‘’Old on, old ’un, ’old on,’ says Tiny protestingly. ‘’Ow’s a poor bleeder to get capital enough to keep up with that bleedin Chief Mechanic Wolf without ’is gettin’ ’old of a bit o’ bleedin’ loot now an’ again?’
‘Sod that,’ snarls the Old Man, lighting his silver-lidded pipe. ‘I’m not standing for it much longer, I tell you. Looting the dead’s what that is, and it costs you your nut in any man’s army, sonnies.’
Porta turns the corner, whistling merrily. He has three white furs over his shoulder.
‘Poverty-stricken hole,’ he shouts to us. ‘Nothing but these three skins.’
The Old Man buys one immediately. Porta keeps the other two for himself. The nights are cold and we envy him.
Tiny asks Porta to lend him one for half the night so that he too can try how it feels to lie in soft and warm for once.
‘When I’ve enjoyed them myself for a few nights, I’ve decided to rent them out,’ says Porta, from the heights of ownership. ‘You’ll be first man on the list, my son.’
We sleep in one of the peasant huts. The Old Man sighs happily from the depths of his fur.
In the middle of the night all hell breaks loose. The Old Man is running roaring round the hut scratching himself like a madman. His whole body is covered with flea bites. His face is thickly sown with red spots which soon turn to blisters.:
Shortly after this the rest of us are up, dancing around scratching. Thousands of fleas have attacked our defenceless bodies. The furs are alive with them.
We rush out of the hut, away from the tiny vampires.
Only Porta sleeps on untroubled. He is still lying there rolled up in his two skins.
We cannot understand it. We have been bitten halfway to the bone. Tiny thinks it might be because Porta is redheaded.
‘We ’ad a ’ore on the Reeperbahn as was red-’eaded an’ ’ad a ’igh-class beat round the Café Keese,’ he explains. ‘’Ot-arse we used to call ’er. An’ she never got crabs. Even when we all ’ad ’em in Set. Pauli she never did. All the bleedin’ Scandinavians as come down to get a cheap drunk on, went back with a load o’ German crabs.’
‘You come any closer with those blasted flea incubators, and I’ll have those furs burnt,’ rages the Old Man, scratching away madly.:
‘Oh, oh!’ shouts Porta, insulted. ‘There’s no fleas in these furs. You must’ve brought ’em with you.’
The day after we get back to Corinth, Porta is walking along with the three furs over his shoulder. He hasn’t got far before the CO’s Kübel catches up with him.
‘What are those furs you’ve got there, Porta?’ asks Oberst Hinka, leaning out of the Kübel inquisitively.
‘Herr Oberst, sir, present from my Swedish uncle, sir. Should of arrived for my birthday but there’s postal delay from Sweden just now, sir. Swedish post goes by reindeer, sir.’
‘Have you really an uncle in Sweden?’ asks Oberst Hinka, in amazement. ‘I wasn’t aware of it.’
‘Herr Oberst, sir, the Porta family is all over the world. Feldwebel Blom has met some of us in Spain, and when we were stationed in Italy we saw the name on many a facade, sir. We’re a roving lot, sir, never stay long in the same place, sir.’
‘Where are you going with those furs? Do you intend to sell them?’
‘Herr Oberst, sir, my Swedish uncle wants me to be warm at night but the good German ersatz blanket our Führer provides us with is warm enough for me. Yes sir, I never am cold at night so I’m off to Corinth now to sell these fürs.’
‘What is the price?’ asks Oberst Hinka, passing his hand over the furs.
‘Herr Oberst, sir, to you sir I’ll sell them cheap. Two pounds of coffee, a bottle of schnapps and a carton of cigarettes is the price.’
‘All right,’ smiles Oberst Hinka. ‘You can pick up the goods at the officers’mess.’
Porta throws the smallest of the furs into the back of the Kübel and swings the two others over his shoulder again.
‘What’s this?’ asks Oberst Hinka in surprise, holding up the small fur. ‘I thought I was buying all three?’
‘No sir, Herr Oberst. The Herr Oberst was buying only one fur.’
‘You’re not being a little too smart, do you think, Porta?’
‘Herr Oberst, sir, that’s a very cheap price to pay even for one fur.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ mumbles Oberst Hinka. ‘Very well. Let me take all three. Even though they are expensive.’
‘Herr Oberst, sir. The Swedish furs and everything to do with them are now the Herr Oberst’s sole property,’ cries Porta, putting the other two furs on the back seat behind the adjutant.
‘Oberst Hinka’ll have you in jail till you rot,’ prophesies the Old Man when Porta tells him where the flea-skins are now.
‘I didn’t make him buy ’em,’ grins Porta, carelessly. ‘He was mad to get hold of them. I even told him it was more than furs he was buying so he’s got nothing to complain about.’
‘Selling a flea circus like that to your own CO’s pure suicide,’ cries Gregor, with a dry laugh.
Very early the next morning Porta receives orders to report to the CO’s quarters.
Oberst Hinka meets him, naked to the waist and covered with the marks of a flea-bitten night.
He addresses Porta for twenty minutes without stopping.’
‘I am aware,’ he screams finally, ‘that you have a promising career of usury before you. But don’t try anything like this again with me, or – and this I promise you – your career will be cut short most abrupdy. You have been to Germersheim, What do you think of it?’
‘Herr Oberst, sir,’ answers Porta, clicking his heels together with all his might, ‘from the opposite bank of the Rhine Germersheim makes a pretty picture which reminds one strongly of our great Imperial past. I have not heard of anyone in his senses who finds it attractive when seen from the inside.’
‘Get out of my sight!’ roars Hinka, jabbing his finger madly at the door.
Outside Porta meets the Adjutant, to whom Oberst Hinka has been generous enough to lend one of the furs for the night.
‘You seem to be of the opinion,’ snarls the tortured officer, ’that my blood is good food for fleas?’
‘Herr Adjutant, sir, I know nothing about fleas. Perhaps some lousy officer, sir, on the staff, sir, has come near the Swedish furs?’
A few minutes later Porta is out on the village street with his furs and his fleas.
On his way up the sleepy street he meets the padre, who stares enviously at the white furs slung nonchalantly over Porta’s shoulder.
‘Are those furs yours?’ he asks carefully.
‘Yes, Herr Uberfeltkappellan,’ answers Porta, saluting stiffly.
The padre passes his long, thin fingers gently over the furs and thinks what a beautiful saddle cloth they would make.
His horse stares at Porta, who stares back at it with the calculating mien of a born horse-dealer.
‘You’d cut up into some lovely steaks,’ he thinks, and works out in his head how much the horse would bring in, properly butchered, at Corinth meat-market.
‘Those are very beautiful furs,’ the padre praises them devoutly. ‘I have never seen their like!’
‘Yes, they’re Swedish,’ says Porta with emphasis.
‘Swedish goods are quality goods,’ smiles the military spiritual adviser, bending forward over his horse’s neck. ‘Where did our good obergefreiter obtain these lovely f
urs.’
‘My Herr Oberst gave them to me. He got them from a fur farm in Finland,’ explains Porta, with wide, innocent eyes.
‘So your oberst has a fur farm in Finland?’ The Padre’s native suspicions seem to have been awakened. For a moment he looks inquisitively at the tall, thin obergefreiter in front of him. ‘I thought you said the furs were Swedish?’
‘Beg pardon, sir, these furs are from the Swedish-speaking part of Finland, which they call Nyeland up there.’
‘But how has your oberst come to own a fur farm in Finland?’
‘Begging your pardon, sir, my oberst’s mother is one of the great daughters of Finland,’ Porta looks up at the padre with an expression of such foolish good-will on his face that it would be enough to make even the most hardboiled NKVD prison guard break into tears.
‘She is 6 feet 2 inches tall,’ he adds, after a short pause, sighing audibly.
‘My oberst’s mother inherited a farm with all sorts of animals that have fur, like polar bears and sable and all the kinds that they have in the Swedish-speaking part of Finland, Please sir, do you know Finland, sir?’
The military parson had to admit that he did not.
‘Our regiment was up there in the war one time,’ Porta confides, scratching the priestly horse behind the ear. ‘We were volunteer partisans under a Captain Guri1 who was also a partisan. Believe it or not, sir, nearly all the neighbours we met died of heart attacks, sir. It was almost like an epidemic we carried round with us. ‘Course, sir, this Captain Guri we had wasn’t a German but a kind of Laplander, and a very religious officer, sir. Never see him kill a neighbour without first saying a prayer for his soul.’
‘Yes, yes indeed,’ answers the padre, thoughtfully, passing his fingers once more over the skins. ‘For sale, obergefreiter?’
‘What sir, me sir?’ asks Porta stupidly. Experience has taught him that stupidity gets one furthest with military parsons. Holy people are most often stupid people.
‘No, man, the furs, of course,’ hisses the padre, irritated. It is a long time since he has met such an idiot as this red-haired obergefreiter. ‘What are you asking for them?’
‘Well sir, Herr iiberfeldkappelan, sir, I was thinking of: five bottles of schnapps and six pounds of coffee. Also I was thinking of five cartons of cigarettes, but if the furs are going to serve the good cause I’ll only be asking for three.’
‘One should not drink alcohol,’ the padre warns him severely.
‘No, sir, no! Never a drop passes my lips. I rub my knees with it, sir. It’s such a help against the Greek rheumatism.’
‘I regret I have no schnapps. Cigarettes and coffee are also out of the question. I will, however, give you 500 marks for them.’
‘No sir, sorry sir! But I couldn’t think of taking less than 2,000,’ sighs Porta, sadly. ‘A poor German soldier, sir, I am with nothing but my life and my Swedish furs in this world to give for my country. And my life, sir, isn’t really to be called my own now is it? The Fiihrer and the Army decide about that, sir. The last of my poor old mother’s sixteen sons, I am, sir. All fifteen of the others have been given to the Fatherland, sir.’
‘That is very hard on your mother,’ says the padre gently, thinking of the horrors of war.
‘She takes it, sir, like a real German mother,’ says Porta, proudly. ‘She feels fifteen sons is the least she can give for Führer and Fatherland, when it means a thousand years of peace and freedom in the future. My mother says it’s not every country whose Führer has come to it from God via Austria!’
The padre leaves Porta in confusion, with the furs hanging over his saddle-bow and his purse 1000 marks lighter.
Porta has suddenly discovered there is a goldmine in these furs if he only handles them properly. It can go on forever.
‘What did Oberst Hinka have to say?’ asks the Old Man with interest, as Porta enters the hut.
‘Nothing much. He’d had an uneasy night with the fleas. He gave me the furs back and now they’ve entered the service of the priesthood. It’s not every flea-bag that gets a chance like that.’
Tiny grins so much he chokes on his coffee.
‘Bet you ten to one the parson’ll be cursing you all night and the skins come back to you without a blessing tomorrow,’ prophesies Gregor, rubbing his hands in anticipation.
The following morning the padre comes galloping up on a foam-flecked horse.
‘You’ll suffer for this,’ he snarls, throwing the furs in Porta’s face.
Porta lifts his arm as if to salute, but bends it instead and slaps the inside of his elbow with his left hand. The classic international sign for ‘up my arse!’
‘You’ll hear from me, obergefreiter!’ screams the padre, livid with rage. ‘Don’t think I’m done with you, yet!’
‘Back to daddy, me little beauties,’ laughs Porta to the fleas as he brushes the dust of the road from the furs.
The very sight of the furs makes us itch, but between Porta and the fleas there seems to be an armistice. They are friends and do not attack one another.
A BMW motorcycle and sidecar comes noisily down the hill. In the sidecar sits Chief Mechanic Wolf with the air of a general. On the motorcycle sit his two Chinese bodyguards, both armed with kalashnikovs2.
Wolf stops in a cloud of dust when his eye falls on the furs.
‘Whatcha got there?’ he asks arrogantly, slashing at the furs with his nagajka,3 an heirloom from the NKVD.
‘What’s up? Those dogs of yours shit in your eyes? Can’t you tell furs when you see ’em?’ asks Porta, superciliously.
Where’d you nick ’em?’ asks Wolf, insultingly.
Think we’re all like you?’ Porta turns the insult away, loftily.
They’re confiscated,’ declares Wolf, categorically. ‘Ac-cordin’ to HDV4 anything found in the field is to be turned in to the nearest Army Stores. That’s me, my lad! Understood, dogsbody?’
‘Get stuffed! Crawl smartly up your own central orifice,’ says Porta, contemptuously. The German armed forces and me’ve got different ideas on the subject of what’s private property and what belongs to the arse-lickin’ German people.’
‘Your tongue’ll get your neck stretched some day,’ shouts Heide warningly from inside the hut, where he sits deep in Mein Kampf.
‘What d’you want for ’em?’ Wolf breaks in sharply. He jumps from the BMW sidecar, unbuttoning his holster flap as he comes. Experience has taught him to take no chances when bargaining with Porta. Anything can happen.
‘Not for sale!’ Porta turns the question away coldly and lights a big cigar. He hates cigars really, but thinks it a help to be able to veil himself in a cloud of cigar smoke at a critical moment, and to be able to blow smoke into an opponent’s face. Al Capone, from Chicago, always had a cigar in his mouth when he was out on business. He is the only one out of sixty-two million Italian Porta looks up to and wishes to imitate.
‘Not for sale? Wolf cannot believe his own ears. Even his two wolfhounds look bewildered. Porta to own something which was not for sale? Impossible. He’d be ready to sell himself to Arabian slave-traders if the price was high enough.
Wolf plays idly with the LMG5 mounted on the sidecar and, as if accidentally, the muzzle lines up on Porta.
‘Cut that shit, you ginger bloody Yid!’ hisses Wolf, irritably, swinging the machine-gun round as if ready to mow down the whole of No. 2 Section in one long roaring burst.
‘I’m ready to buy them furs and when I’m ready to buy, I buy! Understand me? What I say goes! If you won’t sell I’ll take ’em without payin’ see? Am I gettin’ through to the shit between your ears? Throw ’em into the sidecar and you can pick up a pound of apples for ’em next payday. Make yourself an apple pie. Think yourself lucky I don’t report you to GEFEPO 6 for stealin’ ’em.’
‘You ought to join a travellin’ circus, Wolfie boy!’ Porta laughs, jeeringly. ‘You’d do all right falling on your arse between the turns.’
‘I want those fur
s,’ snarls Wolf, making his nagajka hiss through the air.
‘Wish in one hand and shit in the other,’ grins Porta, cocking his nose in the air. Swinging the furs over his shoulder, as a sign that he regards the subject as closed, he begins to go off up the road
‘Here now, me old joker’, shouts Wolf, running after him, ’don’t piss against the wind, you’ll only get wet. We’re a couple that can fix a deal good as any parson’s daughters.’
Porta ignores him and increases his pace. He has noticed his friend the Greek village priest up by the bell-tower and waves pleasantly to him.
The priest waves smilingly back and begins to pull on the rope. The air fills with the tolling of the church bell. The villagers leave their houses on their way to Mass.
Wolf slaps his forehead in an attempt to start his brain working. He is almost choking with rage over Porta’s stubbornness.
Porta turns into the packed bar, run illicitly by the road-mender, at the moment a dead-drunk infantryman gets thrown out with threats of a quick death if he tries to come back.
‘Tonsil acid,’ orders Porta knocking on the bar with his Mpi. A large tankard of poor man’s champagne sails down the bar to him and with a well-co-ordinated movement of arm and neck he knocks it back in one go.
Tango pushes his way over to him with Buffalo close at his heels.
‘We know where there’s a load o’ wine,’ whispers Buffalo, secretively. The Greco’s can deliver it tonight, and it can go back to Germany in empty ammo-baskets.’
‘We’ve got something else, too,’ grins Tango, cunningly, executing a few dance steps. ‘And we can send it to Bielefeld marked GEKADOS in sealed zinc cases. Even the SS-Heini’s wouldn’t dare touch them!’
‘Meet me at the parson’s at eleven o’clock tonight!’ says Porta, swallowing another glass, ’and beat it, my sons, and leave me in peace. I’ve got some thinking to do.’
‘There’s more’n you’ll buy it,’ snarls Tango, looking meaningly at Chief Mechanic Wolf who at this very moment bangs in through the door.