Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

But Porisch carried on. ‘The judge advocate was dealing with the Kroysing affair up until the end. So, this concerns you,’ he said, and his expression clouded. ‘You didn’t give a sender’s name, but your name was mentioned in an enclosure among some papers written in the hand of the elder Kroysing – that enigmatic lieutenant who remained so vivid in Mertens’ memory and in my own. He said that you, as his dead brother’s friend, would help out with your testimony if needs be. Then we heard nothing more from him. Our enquiries returned a message of ‘missing’. Then, four or five days after Mertens’ body had been transported to St Matthews churchyard in Berlin in a freight car, Kroysing got in touch from the field hospital in Dannevoux, where he was being treated for a broken shin bone, and said he wanted to pursue the matter once he’d recovered.’

‘He’s alive!’ shouted Bertin, sitting bolt upright.

‘Amazingly, yes. And now I have one question for you: are you the man whom young Kroysing got to know the day before he died?’ Bertin nodded silently, wondering what was coming next. ‘So you’re not part of his company and you didn’t actually see anything?’

‘No.’

‘Thank you,’ said Porisch wearily. ‘Then that won’t help him, for my professor’s successor is just your average circuit judge and he consigns any unnecessary bits and pieces ad acta , that’s to say to the devil. No lieutenant can fight that – not even that one. He seems to be made of iron, Kroysing, doesn’t he?’ he added, shaking his head. Bertin nodded to himself; that was definitely true, he was made of iron – and mad and obsessed to boot.

Pelican, who was in fact a lawyer called Alexander Fürth with an office on Bülowstraße and an apartment in the Wilmersdorf area of Berlin, demanded an explanation, saying he couldn’t be doing with Pogge speaking in this insider’s code. Porisch and Bertin told him what they knew and what they thought about the case. Pelican shook his head at them. ‘Just be glad this matter has been buried. What good would it do anyone if some dog came along and dug up this particular bone?’

But Porisch blew out his cheeks. This case was the last legacy of a just man, a man with completely clean hands, and he didn’t want simply to let it disappear into the great murky heap of injustice that was growing each day.

‘Well,’ said Fürth, ‘that does change things. But we should really warn our guest,’ and he turned fleetingly to Bertin, ‘to keep his fingers out of this dodgy butter sauce in case he gets a blister. I’ve often seen you heading off in the morning and wondered why you don’t apply for a better job, but that’s another matter. For you, dear Pogge, all I can do is pass on a piece of news that may or may not help.’

‘Stop,’ interrupted Bertin, seduced by the rum and the cosy atmosphere, and transported back to a time when he felt sorry for students who belonged to fraternities, seeing them as throwbacks in human development, tattooed savages with artificial scars and garish dancing clothes. ‘The most important thing is to find out exactly where the Dannevoux field hospital is.’ Pelican glared at him, but Porisch said he was right. Fürth silently fetched a map from the cupboard and spread it out. They found Romagne, Flabas, even Crépion and Moirey, but nowhere called Dannevoux. They looked at the coloured sheet in bafflement, at the town of Verdun, Douaumont, the winding course of the Meuse, then Pelican laid the sharp tip of his pinkie nail on Dannevoux. ‘How could anyone get there?’ cried Bertin. ‘It’s on the left bank.’

It was true that the world continued on the other side of the snaking black river. But as another command started there that was of little use. Pelican leant back solemnly and folded his arms. ‘I don’t know if this is lucky or unlucky for you, Pogge, old boy. Either way, I’d best tell you that Mopsus is judge advocate over there with the Lychow Army Group. Do you know Mopsus?’

Porisch stared at him in astonishment. Of course he knew Mopsus, actually a lawyer called Posnanski, not just from the old boys’ list, but personally from the bigger club parties and from fleeting encounters in the corridors of the Berlin courts. ‘How did you find out he was over there?’ he asked, to which Pelican retorted that he perhaps didn’t read the A.J.B. newsletter as carefully as he should. Porisch said he barely glanced at it, and Pelican gloated that it was then no surprise he didn’t have a clue what was going on. ‘On the left bank,’ said Porisch pensively.

‘In Esnes or Montfaucon, I expect,’ said Pelican.

‘I don’t have much time,’ explained Porisch, ‘but I’m going to go and see this lieutenant and advise him to speak to Mopsus. If anyone can advise him, it’s Mopsus.’

‘Yes,’ Fürth confirmed. ‘He’ll advise him.’

Bertin yawned. He was getting tired. And at the end of the day, these men with their ridiculous names weren’t his concern. The next day, he’d be hauling rails about again. ‘I don’t give much for your lieutenant’s chances,’ said Pelican in the meantime. ‘I won’t hide that from you. His opponent has a head start.’

‘I would very much like to see,’ said Bertin, yawning again, ‘how the Prussian Army would resolve a case like this if the points balanced each other out.’

There was no reply; they were waiting for him to go. To fill the pause, Porisch said that there was a black notebook of his brother’s among Lieutenant Kroysing’s things, which no one could read because Mertens’ pupils were famously never allowed to learn shorthand. And they laughed together, remembering how the old bearded man at the lectern used to lose his temper with new students at the beginning of term when they tried to take notes during his lectures. He’d thunder that he hated that kind of Mephistophelian wisdom, which Goethe had put in the Devil’s mouth purely in irony. What they took home written in black and white was irrelevant; it was what stayed in their hearts that mattered and his courses were for law students not for clerks.

Bertin started, wondering what time it was. Sergeant Fürth confirmed that it was nearly curfew and he’d better hurry. He spoke gently and didn’t sound at all like the big mouth Bertin had taken him to be, telling Bertin he was welcome to warm himself up in his billet whenever he wanted, pressing a couple of cigars on him and lighting his way down stairs, after Porisch had shaken his hand sympathetically several times and said he hoped he’d make it through the winter in good shape. Pelican returned, shook some railway coal into the little stove and filled his pipe. ‘God knows he needs our good wishes. We always know what’s going to happen to those ASC men a bit before they do themselves.’

‘What is your actual job here?’ Porisch asked.

‘Theoretically, I’m a railway NCO,’ Pelican replied. ‘In practice, I’m Railway Transport Commander for Romagne and I run the show. My lieutenant drinks, lets me do the work and signs everything. It suits us both down to the ground, and I know everything and get a princely amount of leave,’ and he laughed loudly. ‘That lad and his squad are going to be relieved next week by the Fourth Company from the same battalion, then he’ll disappear from my view. They’re joining a really horrible detachment under a sergeant from Hamburg named Barkopp. How do I know that? I heard it from Barkopp himself. He was knocking back schnapps in the mess last night precisely on that account. They’re going to be trained to look for duds and may count themselves lucky.’

‘What will they be used for?’ asked Porisch, as if he had never worn a soldier’s tunic.

‘And to think that you’re going to be working in the War Materials Department, my dear Pogge!’ retorted Pelican, ‘They’re going to be used for shooting, of course, for the final victory against America and the rest of the world!’