Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

But Lebehde wanted to ask Pahl for advice, and as always Pahl was happy to give it. Pahl had a lot on his mind too… Lebehde said that the Böhne working party had started a new track that day, which was to lead to the ruins of Chambrettes-Ferme. (Pahl and a couple of other men had for weeks been in Corporal Näglein’s auxiliary squad in another, less exposed area among the many ravines of Fosses wood.) The idea was to hide two 15cm howitzers among the ruins and then build the crucial narrow-gauge railway. And guess who had appeared while they were working? Little Sergeant Süßmann. Today of all days, he’d come sauntering out from the emplacement behind Pepper ridge with his little monkey’s face and restless eyes. How many times had Bertin asked the sappers from Ville about him and his lieutenant, and got no information? Well, there he was, and now the game had taken a new turn; now he was asking questions and sending greetings, and telling everyone how they had survived the Douaumont debacle relatively unscathed, but had been pretty much stuck on the far right wing of Pepper ridge not far from the Meuse since then. They were cheek by jowl with the French and were pelting them with heavy mines, and all their communications to the rear had been shifted westwards and they couldn’t even get their post from Montmédy as they’d done before. Lieutenant Kroysing therefore had a favour to ask of Bertin: to forward a letter to the court martial in Montmédy and a parcel to a post office within the Reich.

‘Do you understand what that means, my son?’ said Lebehde. ‘Apparently, Herr Kroysing doesn’t want to hand over any items with the name Kroysing on them to our field post and censors. People get suspicious when they have time on their hands.’

Süßmann said that Lieutenant Kroysing would express his gratitude to Bertin in due course. ‘He may be an old devil but my lieutenant is the most decent man in the world. He wouldn’t even take a pipeful of tobacco from you without giving you something in return,’ he said, adding that he, Süßmann, would be getting his staff sergeant’s sword knot on the Kaiser’s birthday and probably some ribbons in his buttonhole too – all thanks to Kroysing. And at that he pulled two largish packages out of his haversack, a flat one and a soft, round one, and said they contained Christoph Kroysing’s last effects.

‘I don’t mind saying that made me feel a bit funny,’ said Karl Lebehde. ‘A bit horrible. Wee Sergeant Kroysing spent every day and every night of his last months at Chambrettes-Ferme. It was down on the valley floor, if you remember, over to the right where those two long goose-neck guns were dragged away – French guns or something like that – that Bertin promised to forward his letter. And now up pops Süßmann, waving Kroysing’s old gear around and wanting to bother Bertin again, although it’s perfectly clear that it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. But I’m a polite man and so of course I didn’t say no and I took the things…’

‘Where are they?’ asked Pahl.

‘Don’t get carried away and break a leg, Wilhelm. No sooner had the boy left than I started to ask myself what you would have done.’

‘Kept my hands off it.’

‘Why?’

Wilhelm Pahl pressed his chin to his chest and looked his friend in the eye. ‘Because Bertin shouldn’t be messing around with lieutenants the whole time. Because he takes every chance he gets to do something stupid.’

‘Well, here’s what I finally realised: every sausage must come to an end, and this sausage has gone on long enough. What good would the stuff in those packages do anyone? It won’t help the parents. It’ll only set their waterworks off. I can still hear the howls of an old woman I witnessed in a similar situation back in 1914. And the good people of Nuremberg won’t be any the poorer either if the stuff disappears. Army postal package gone astray – that’s that. Is it right to bolster people’s prejudices by letting them think that all they have to do is ask someone to do something, and they’ll suspend their judgement and become their postman? So I crawled down into the dugout in the old cellar at Chambrettes-Ferme. The rain had seeped in and soaked all the muck in there. It stank, Wilhelm – I take my hat off to the gunners who had to crawl about under there. And as I picked my way through the muck, I saw two eyes. Of course, I thought of young Kroysing, but only in a joking way, because I was at the back of the queue when superstitious natures were being given out. As surely as I’ve ever propped up a bar, there was a cat sitting on the upper bunk glaring at me. I checked with my torch and I was right. A great grey-striped she-cat was living there and she was either fat on rats or pregnant. Listen, kid, I said to her, just don’t make a fuss and look after this little lot for me, okay, and I shoved the soft package between the palliasse and the wall. When I was above ground again, I gulped the air down. So, now tell me: did I do the right thing?’

‘You did,’ said Wilhelm Pahl.

‘But what about the papers? Shouldn’t our post orderly perhaps…?’

Wilhelm Pahl bit his lower lip. ‘No, we’ll sort it out another way, Karl. The day after tomorrow 10 family men are going on Christmas leave.’

‘Goodness me. Is it that time already? Maybe peace will break out while they’re at home, and they won’t be able to get back and they’ll die from missing you and me.’

Wilhelm Pahl ignored this joke. ‘Among them is Comrade Naumann Bruno. He’s conscientious and he’ll stick the letter in the postbox at Montmédy train station. Then he’ll go on his way, and no one will know where it came from.’

Karl Lebehde reached his freckled hand out to his friend in solemn silence. ‘Done,’ he said. ‘But let’s do it straight away.’

In Naumann Bruno’s barbershop (everyone put the barber’s first name after his last to distinguish him from Naumann Ignaz, the company idiot), it was quiet, warm and light, and smelt of almond soap. On a chair sat Sergeant Karde, who’d just had his hair cut. This Leipzig bookseller, whose small publishing house currently lay idle, and who was no doubt worried about his wife and children just as the workers did, enjoyed considerable respect among discerning members of the rank and file because of his sincere, humane attitude, although politically he was closer to their opponents, the ‘German Nationals’ as they were called. As the two men walked in, Karl Lebehde cracked a couple of jokes, and Karde laughed while admiring his haircut in two mirrors. Lebehde sat down for a shave, and Karde put his belt back on, counted out 20 Pfennigs, saluted and left.

‘Close the door, Bruno,’ said Lebehde as if that were a normal thing to do. ‘I’d like to give you some concrete proof of my faith in you, and I want you to put it in the postbox at Montmédy station the day after tomorrow. I’m going to put it here in your drawer. And now show Comrade Pahl the letter from your old lady and the bit of newspaper she wrapped the badger hair brush in that she sent you. Because, in case you hadn’t noticed, Wilhelm,’ he said to the astonished Pahl, ‘surprises, like trams, always come in twos, and I’ve been holding on to this one for a day or two.’

The barber’s round, ruddy face twitched though he didn’t for one moment doubt Pahl’s reliability. He wasn’t nicknamed Liebknecht for nothing. ‘The old girl takes too many chances. I go to burn this scrap of paper every evening, and every morning I tell myself it would be a shame.’ He opened a decrepit cardboard box and took out a carefully folded letter and read from the middle of it in an undertone: ‘There’s a lot going on but not with me…’

Pahl had sat there listening carefully and wondering why this harmless letter was being read out to him. He took it from Naumann’s hand. The barber silently bent over him and drew arcs with his shaving knife connecting two pairs of words to create the words that now formed on Pahl’s lips: ‘Zimmerwald’ and ‘Kiental’. Pahl looked up with a start. ‘Bloody hell!’ he said.