Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

You clown, thought Eberhard Kroysing. Who’s your father and what’s it got to do with me? Be better if you looked after your files . Aloud he said, ‘We were all something else before, Judge Advocate. I, for example, was a mechanical engineer at the Technical University in Berlin Charlottenburg, or “Schlorndorf” as we students called it. But now we have new skins and want to do the best we can.’

Herr Mertens didn’t answer. He rang a bell and said, ‘Please tell Herr Porisch to join this meeting’ to the orderly standing to attention in the door.

Well, well, thought Eberhard Kroysing, as Porisch entered the room, round eyes protruding from his round face, a cigar in his left hand, his right playing an imaginary piano. It’s a good thing I didn’t flatten him . ‘We’ve already met,’ he said, as they were introduced.

‘Fate did indeed provide a preview,’ Porisch agreed.

‘Sometimes a preview doesn’t lead anywhere,’ said Kroysing, ‘but I’d now like some information about my brother’s case.’

Franz Porisch showed what a good memory he had. The dossier against Christoph Kroysing, sergeant in the military Reserve, had been referred to his unit, a Bavarian labour battalion stationed near Mangiennes, several months previously, at the end of April. However, as the investigation of the accused and the accusations made couldn’t possibly have taken so long, the battalion had twice been asked to return the files. Both times the battalion had replied that it couldn’t comment on the whereabouts of the files as the Third Company had in due course passed them on to Kroysing’s replacement unit at Ingolstadt.

‘To his replacement unit in Ingolstadt?’ repeated Eberhard Kroysing stiffly. He sat squarely on his chair with his hands on his thighs. He looks like Ramses with his hooked nose, thin lips and those eyes that are about to scorch my little Porisch, thought Professor Mertens, who was starting to find his tall guest rather captivating.

‘ Relato refero ,’ replied Porisch. ‘I’m just repeating what we were told. About 10 days ago, the file came back to us through official channels along with other reports. It was marked “Accused killed in action” with the date and the company’s official seal. Shortly thereafter the battalion called us to confirm the news and ask whether we intended to close the file. Naturally, we said yes, as a closed file is the sort of file everyone likes.’ It then occurred to him that the man sat there was the brother of the accused, who had been killed in action and was therefore dead. Dropping his cigar in the ashtray in shock, he jumped up, bowed and stammered: ‘My condolences, by the way. My sincere condolences.’

The judge advocate rose and reached his hand across the desk to express his condolences too. Eberhard Kroysing looked from one man to the other. He’d have liked to smash both their faces in, as he put it to himself. These men had effectively aided and abetted a murder with their sloppiness. Then he pulled himself together, half rose from his chair, accepted Mertens’ limp, scholarly hand and asked without further explanation if he could see the file. Sergeant Porisch jumped out of the door, ready to be of service. And as Mertens watched Kroysing in silence so as not to upset his feelings, Kroysing froze and thought: Christel wasn’t imagining things, and the ASC man at the funeral wasn’t lying. They murdered Christel; they let the Frogs sort it out for them. To Ingolstadt! That beautiful town full of bridges. While Christel was sitting in Chambrettes-Ferme waiting to be relieved, for a hearing. Cut off from God and the world. And I, bastard that I am, left him to deal with it all alone. A dozen villains conspiring against little Christel .

Then he had in his hand the thinnest file that could ever have made it to a court martial: a couple of pages, beginning with a report from Field Censor’s Office V and Christel’s letter to Uncle Franz, written in his brother’s fine, familiar hand, a couple of pages from a company report (exonerating the NCO corps), a statement from the replacement unit in Ingolstadt to the effect that Chr. Kroysing (currently in the field) had last been brought there in February and been assigned to Niggl’s ASC battalion at the beginning of March. There was a long pause and then a note from mid-July from the field hospital at Billy: ‘Brought in seriously injured’. And the next day: ‘Buried Billy with two other NCOs, cross no. D 3321’.

It was very quiet in the room. Its pale grey sterility was enlivened only by a bookcase, an old engraving on one wall of Napoleon III, glazed and in a gilt frame, and a picture on the desk of the famous Professor Mertens, whom Eberhard Kroysing didn’t know. From outside came the sound of fifes and drums, a company from the Montmédy recruitment depot marching on the practice ground. His heart thumping, Kroysing read his brother’s letter, the clear, angry sentences, full of complaints about the injustice of the world; he couldn’t sleep because of the wrongs visited on his men. I mustn’t get upset , thought Kroysing. Good that these strangers are watching, that I have to control myself. Would’ve made a good company commander, Christel, and a useful citizen later . And, closing the folder, he asked the gentlemen if anything in it had struck them as odd.

Mertens leafed through the folder, then passed it to Porisch. Neither found anything unusual. It often took a long time to ascertain the whereabouts of a man who had been shifted about ‘up front’. That was exactly why the courts were so slow. ‘Exactly,’ said the sapper lieutenant, his face very alert and his voice excessively polite. ‘And you couldn’t know about the slight catch in this whole thing: that my brother was killed at Chambrettes-Ferme less than one mile away from his company, and that it was the company itself that stuck him there at the beginning of May with no relief until the day he was so fortunately killed.’

The two lawyers looked at him in surprise. Then it would be hard to understand, noted the judge advocate softly, why the file was sent to Ingolstadt. Porisch was a quicker thinker. ‘Time is always of the essence,’ he said in his hearty voice. ‘Stick in with the orderly room chaps.’

Lieutenant Kroysing waved his long hand. ‘Bravo. And then along came death – as Wilhelm Busch says.’ The three men all knew the spare poetry and drawings of the eccentric humorist Wilhelm Busch, which depicted life’s cruelties with equanimity.

Judge Advocate Mertens would have preferred to concentrate on the French painter Corot, whose poetically transfigured landscapes greatly appealed to him. But something untoward had happened here in his sector with his help – an irregularity with apparently fatal consequences. His pale face flushed and he requested both gentlemen’s attention: had he understood everything correctly? He repeated the facts just established. ‘If that is the case,’ he added quietly, ‘we cannot consider the matter to be closed. We shall have to pursue our enquiries.’

‘Forgive me,’ said Porisch, ‘but if that is so, then a new offence has been committed, which requires a new file. We must bring charges for the deliberate killing of Sergeant Kroysing by— yes, by whom?’

All three were silent, suddenly realising how murky the incident was. Who would be charged? Was there evidence against anyone? What had actually happened? At what point had a criminal intention come into play? The exigences of service meant Sergeant Kroysing had to stick it out at Chambrettes-Ferme, just as Lieutenant Kroysing was sticking it out at Douaumont and tens of thousands of German soldiers were sticking it out in the trenches at the front. The war was a tireless consumer of men, each of whom was bound to his place by orders. Who could prove that the order that fettered young Kroysing had the murderous ulterior motive of extinguishing his ‘case’? A misdemeanour on the part of the Third Company could be proved. But they could probably talk themselves out of it by saying that an inexperienced clerk had sent the files to Ingolstadt in good faith, where they had been expecting Sergeant Kroysing to turn up at any moment on a transport, as he was clearly absent from his company. The three men went over it all, talking back and forth. Sergeant Porisch’s head was cleared of Brahms’ sonatas, and Professor Carl Mertens forgot about Corot. Their attention was taken by the emerging fuzzy outlines of a wrong, possibly a crime. The guilty parties were well protected, covered by the demands of duty. How could they get to them? Well, they had to and they would. In any case, Lieutenant Kroysing now saw that he could count on these two men and the legal machinery behind them. He suddenly felt very strong.