Irwin Shaw - The Young Lions

"Don't worry about me," Christian said.

"There is only one hope for us," Behr said, staring down at the boots in the sand. "One hope for Germany. We have to show the world that there are still human beings in Germany, not only animals. We have to show that it is possible for the human beings to act for themselves." Behr looked up from the boots and stared in his steady, healthy way at Christian and Christian knew the measuring process was still going on. He did not say anything. He was confused and he resented the necessity of listening to Behr, yet he was fascinated and knew that he had to listen.

"Nobody," said Behr, "not the English, not the Russians, not the Americans, will sign a peace with Germany while Hitler and his people are still in power, because human beings do not sign armistices with tigers. And if anything is to be saved in Germany, we must sign an armistice now, immediately. What does that mean?" Behr asked like a lecturer. "That means that the Germans themselves must get the tigers out, Germans themselves must take the risk, must shed their blood to do it. We cannot wait for our enemies to defeat us and then give us a government as a gift, because then there will be nothing left to govern, and nobody who has the strength or the will to do it. It means that you and I must be ready to kill Germans to prove to the rest of the world that there is some hope for Germany." Again he stared at Christian. He is spiking me down, Christian thought resentfully, with one nail of confidence after another. Still, he could not stop Behr.

"Do not think," Behr continued, "that I am making this up myself, that I am alone. All through the Army, all through Germany, the plan is slowly being formed, people are slowly being recruited. I do not say we will succeed. I merely say that on one side there is certain death, certain ruin. On the other side… A little hope. Also," he went on, "there is only one kind of government that can save us, and if we do it ourselves, we can set up that government. If we wait for the enemy to do it for us, we'll have half a dozen little governments, all of them meaningless, all of them useless, all of them, finally, no governments at all.1920 will seem, then, like Utopia compared to 1950. If we do it ourselves, we can set up a Communist government, and overnight we will be the centre of a Communist Europe, with every other nation on the Continent committed to feeding us, keeping us strong. There is no other form of government for us, no matter what the British and the Americans say, because keeping Germans from killing each other under what the Americans call democracy, for example, would be like trying to keep wolves from the sheepfold by the honour system. You don't keep a crumbling building standing by putting a new coat of bright paint on the outside; you have to go into walls and foundations and put in iron girders to do it. The Americans are naive and they have a lot of fat on their bones, and they can afford the luxury and the waste of democracy, and it has never occurred to an American that their system depends upon the warm layers of fat under their skin and not upon the pretty words they put in their books of law…"

What echo is this? thought Christian vaguely. When was this said before? Then he remembered the morning on the ski slope with Margaret Freemantle long ago, and his own voice saying the same words for another reason. How confusing and tiring it was, he thought, that we always reshuffle the same arguments so that we get the different answer we require from them.

"… we can help right here," Behr was saying. "We have connections with many people in France. Frenchmen who are trying to kill us now. But, overnight, they would become our most dependable allies. And the same thing in Poland, in Russia, in Norway, in Holland – everywhere. Overnight, we would present the Americans with a single, united Europe, with Germany at the centre, and they would have to accept it, whether they liked it or not. Otherwise… otherwise, merely pray that you get killed early in the game. Now," Behr said, "there are certain specific things that will have to be done. Can I tell my people that you will be willing to do them?"

Behr sat down suddenly in the sand and began putting on his socks. He moved with meticulous care, smoothing the wrinkles out of the socks and brushing the sand off them with detailed, unhurried movements of his hands.

Christian stared out to sea. He felt weary and baffled, weighed down by a thick, nagging anger at his friend. What choices you get to make these days! Christian thought resentfully. Between one death and another, between the rope and the rifle, the poison and the knife. If only I were fresh, he thought, if I had had a long, quiet, healthful vacation, if I had never been wounded, never been sick. Then it might be possible to look at this calmly and reasonably, say the correct word, put your hand out for the correct weapon…

"You'd better put your boots on," Behr said. "We have to get back. You don't have to give me an answer now. Think it over."

Think it over, Christian thought, the patient thinking over the cancer in his belly, the condemned man thinking over his sentence, the target thinking over the bullet that is about to smash it.

"Listen," Behr looked up thoughtfully from the sand, a boot in his hand, "if you say anything about this to anyone, you will be found with a knife in your back one morning. No matter what happens to me. I like you very much, I honestly do, but I had to protect myself, and I told my people I was going to talk to you…"

Christian stared down at the calm, healthy, guileless face, like the face of the man who would have come to repair your radio before the war or the face of a traffic policeman helping two small children across a road on their way to school.

"I told you you don't have to worry," Christian said thickly.

"I don't have to think anything over. I can tell you now, I'll…"

Then there was the sound, and Christian automatically hurled himself to the sand. The bullets went in with short, whacking thuds, into the sand around his head, and he felt the strange, painless shock of the iron tearing his arm. He looked up. Fifty feet above him, with the engine suddenly roaring again after the long glide down out of the sky, the Spitfire was shivering through the air, the colours of the roundel gleaming on the wings and the tail assembly bright silver in the long rays of the sun. The plane climbed loudly out over the sea, and in a moment was a small, graceful shape, no larger than a gull, climbing over the sun, climbing into the green and purple of the clear, surprising spring afternoon, climbing to join another plane that was making a wide, sparkling arc over the ocean.

Then Christian looked at Behr. He was sitting erect, looking down thoughtfully at his hands, which were crossed on his belly. There was blood oozing slowly out between the fingers. Behr took his hands away for a second. The blood spurted in uneven, jagged streams. Behr put his hands back, as though he were satisfied with the experiment.

He looked at Christian, and later, remembering the moment, Christian believed that Behr had been smiling gently then.

"This is going to hurt a great deal," Behr said in his calm, healthy way. "Can you get me back to a doctor?"

"They glided down," Christian said, stupidly, gazing at the two twinkling, disappearing specks in the sky. "The bastards had a few rounds of ammunition left before going home, and they couldn't bear the thought of wasting them…"

Behr tried to stand up. He got on to one knee, then slipped back again, to sit there in the sand once more, with the same thoughtful, remote expression on his face. "I can't move," he said. "Can you carry me?"

Christian went over to him and tried to lift him. Then he discovered that his right arm did not work. He looked at it, surprised, remembering all over again that he, too, had been hit. His sleeve was sodden with blood, and the arm was still numb, but already the wound seemed to be clotting in the cloth web of his sleeve. But he could not lift Behr with his one good arm. He got the man half-way up, and then stopped, gasping, holding Behr under the armpit. Behr was making a curious, mechanical noise by this time, clicking and bubbling at the same time.