Арнольд Цвейг - Outside Verdun

‘It’s always the wrong ones who get it,’ growled Kroysing, lying back, his nose casting a sharp shadow on the barracks wall. ‘Why couldn’t that bloody aerial bomb have blown the heroic Niggl through the roof? No, it had be a decent man and one of the most indispensable.’

Bertin nodded and said nothing. Something made him want to tell Kroysing the wild hunter the truth about that indispensable man’s death, but he let it go out of respect for the deceased. He’d heard nothing further, he lied.

‘Well, I have,’ said Kroysing. ‘His sergeant came to see me, Herr Porisch from Berlin. A queer fish, but well-meaning, no doubt about that. First of all, he made it clear that Herr Merten’s successor would not want to open the dead file. Then he gave me a piece of advice.’

Bertin had instinctively put his pipe in his mouth and was sucking on it. He saw Porisch’s pale, puffy face, brash Sergeant Fürth – Pelican – the billet at Romagne with the crossed sabres. Poor Christoph Kroysing’s affairs were in disarray, and that couldn’t be allowed to go on.

‘Porisch is clever,’ he said.

‘So he is,’ growled Kroysing. ‘He suggested I make a complaint against Niggl to the judge advocate of the Western Group Command, whose jurisdiction we fall under here, Lychow Division, German Field Post and so on – I’ve got it written down. He said I should address it to Judge Advocate Dr Posnanski, confidentially in the first instance, outline the case briefly, cite you as a witness and ask for a meeting between the three of us to discuss the matter, so that I don’t get a reputation as a troublemaker with my unit if the evidence doesn’t conform to the rather exacting standards of the military judiciary.’

Bertin said that seemed like a very sensible suggestion to him. ‘I think so too,’ continued Kroysing, ‘but before I pursue it, my young friend, I must warn you that it could create unpleasantness for you. An ordinary ASC private who picks a fight with a battalion commander is letting himself in for it. I didn’t have your postal address and besides I had to deal with my leg and I learnt patience in the Prussian army. But now that you’re here, I must ask you: are you in?’

‘Certainly,’ replied Bertin without hesitation. ‘I’ll never go back on the promise I made to your brother. And now I must go if you don’t mind. My comrade Pahl is over there in ward 3.’

Kroysing reached out his hand. ‘You’re making off before I can say thank you. Fair enough – I know how it is. I’ll send the letter tomorrow. Where can I find you?’

Bertin, who’d already stood up, described his barracks under the hill near the goods siding at Vilosnes-East – very close on the map, but a good 20-minute climb on the ground. He told him his duties were always finished by dark. ‘And what happens,’ he asked, buttoning up his tunic, ‘if it’s not possible to pursue Herr Niggl in law?’

‘Then I’ll take up the chase alone and hunt him until he drops. As long as we both live, there will be no let-up and no mercy, even if I have to drag him from his orderly room or his bed or some latrine he’s crawled into. A man who kills one Kroysing has to face the other’s pistol or pitchfork, and that’s the end of him. And now go and see your comrade. What’s he called?’

‘Pahl,’ Bertin replied. ‘Wilhelm Pahl. It would be nice if you could look out for him. Goodnight.’

When Bertin had left the room, Lieutenant Mettner turned on to his back. ‘You’ll destroy that young man, my dear Kroysing, if he acts as a witness against a captain.’

‘May I turn out the light?’ asked Kroysing politely in reply.

Mettner smiled, not at all offended. ‘Please do, my dear Kroysing. That lucky fellow Flachsbauer has been asleep for a while.’

‘HOW NICE THAT he’s got a visitor,’ said Sister Mariechen, who was on duty in ward 3 – minor cases. And her small blue eyes twinkled amiably as she greeted Bertin. ‘He simply doesn’t want to get better. He seems preoccupied. Tell him it was really nothing. Now hold the fort for me a moment,’ she said, ‘and I’ll get you some nibbles.’ And with a maternal shake of the head, she bustled out of the dismal ward to have a chat with Sister Annchen and Sister Louise in the kitchen.

Fourteen of the 18 beds were occupied, and Pahl’s bed was next to the window. Three electric light bulbs hung over the central passageway. The one furthest away was turned on and shaded by a blue bag. ‘Come and sit next me, my friend,’ said Pahl weakly. ‘They’re all asleep and the old bird’s gone out. We might not get another chance to speak privately.’

Bertin felt moved as he looked at Pahl the typesetter’s strangely alien face as though he’d never seen it before. He looked like one of the executed men in those big depictions of the Deposition from the Cross from the Middle Ages – pallid and extinct. There was a frizz of grey-brown stubble on his cheeks that emphasised his stubborn brow, squashed nose and remarkably bright eyes. The thin moustache above his lips repeated his eyebrows and underlined the set of his mouth. He’d pulled his blanket up round his chin, such that his short neck was hidden from view and all that remained of his familiar form was a face etched with pain.

‘Everything’s fine here,’ said Pahl. ‘The people have been quite decent so far, and the food is edible. But I absolutely cannot get over what they did to me, nor will I until the day I die.’

Bertin shook his head sympathetically. Wilhelm Pahl really wasn’t the man he’d been. What had happened? Exactly what had happened to nearly all the ‘minor cases’ over the past year: slish-slash, the doctor had chopped off his big toe – it was high time, he’d said. The blood poisoning had already spread to the middle of his foot. They’d laid Pahl on a scrubbed table, tied him and held him down, and then operated. ‘I was fully awake, my friend, completely conscious. They showed no mercy or compassion.’ To the contrary. The medical officer had yelled at Pahl the typesetter for kicking up a fuss over such a trifle and had told him he’d be lucky to get off that lightly, since his leg was swollen and discoloured below the knee and if they had to take more off there wouldn’t be any chloroform for that either. Happily, the first intervention was enough. But – and the medical officer could not get over this – Pahl was not getting better. He took an iron hold of himself when the bandages were being changed, ground his teeth and didn’t say a word, but his whole body trembled and he nearly passed out. Some kind of inner turmoil was how Dr Münnich, the medical captain, explained his unusual condition to his assistants and the more intelligent orderlies and nurses when the word ‘malingering’ was mentioned. A psychic trauma, he called it, for which the ground had obviously been laid by childhood experiences connected with his deformity. But for his recovery to make better progress he would have to regain his lust for life and direct his will, which clearly had not dissociated itself from the experience of pain, forwards.

‘Boy,’ said Pahl, ‘it’s unbelievable that there are such things in the world, that people can inflict so much pain on you, that the pain can go right through you to your heart and brain and back again… It doesn’t really fit with the world of blue skies and bogus sunshine and birds singing to order that we’ve all been sold. But it fits with a society that’s harder than hard. It fits with the situation of the oppressed classes. With how a man can be condemned from birth to toil and go without, even if he has great gifts that could benefit humanity…’ He stopped talking and closed his eyes. ‘The slaughterhouse,’ he said shaking his head, ‘is always there, it’s just that now in war time we see it everywhere. We’re conceived for the slaughterhouse, brought up to it and trained for it, and we work for it, and then eventually we die in it. And that’s what’s called life.’ His breathing grew heavy, and he put his waxen hands on the bed cover. Bertin instinctively looked for the red lacerations from the nails. A couple of tears seeped out from under Pahl’s right eyelid. My God , thought Bertin, and I had tears in my eyes earlier over a bowl of soup . ‘We must stop supplying the slaughterhouse,’ Pahl continued in a low voice, while around him the others snored, ‘starting with the one we can see all around us.’