Уильям Макгиверн - Soldiers of ’44

There was such bewilderment, despair, in his expression that she suddenly realized she had the power to hurt him .

“We knew you were coming back, we knew the child wasn’t safe. The American soldiers have taken her to a place she’ll be cared for.”

His reaction was not what she’d expected; she had been braced for blows or an angry, defensive outburst but instead he dropped the drawings to the floor and turned slowly from her, almost as if he had forgot her presence, and walked to the fireplace and picked up the splintered angel’s head.

The ornament was painted a glossy blue and white, the ringlets of hair blond, the innocent mouth a rosy pink. A crack showed in one of the blank eyes; in the shifting light the small figurehead seemed to be winking at him... “You must understand, fräulein, that what was done to many children, to many of the innocent—” He stopped because he couldn’t find the words. And then to his relief he realized that the crippling duality no longer seemed to be cracking his mind; he could isolate his thoughts now, examine them clearly.

“What was done,” he said, speaking carefully and precisely, “was not done by soldiers. So you see, fräulein” — Jaeger smiled at the blank but strangely intimate eyes of the angel — “your alarm for the Jewish child wasn’t necessary. No one would have harmed her. I wouldn’t have permitted it. It would have been a simple matter to arrange papers, to provide her with an escort...” Yes, he thought, a simple matter indeed to save the child as he tried to save the Americans. Still, he remembered again, with an empty feeling, someone else he had forsaken. And again he found it difficult to speak... “I came here to tell you the child would be safe. I’ve assured Father Juneau of that. And I will not violate the cease-fire and terms of surrender I gave the Americans. I am a soldier, I have daughters of my own, I’ll show you their pictures if you like...”

He turned from the fireplace, saw the slim Belgian woman was pointing a gun at him, holding it inexpertly in both hands, but his reflexes took over and he hurled the angel’s head at her face an instant before she pulled the trigger. As the blast filled the room, the bullet ricocheting from the stone chimney like a furious metallic wasp — in that finger-snap of time Jaeger struck the gun from her hand and knocked her sprawling with a backhanded slap that sounded like a second pistol shot on the cold air.

The blood on her cheek was as red as the lips of the angel head lying on the floor beside her. He picked it up and was relieved to see that it had suffered no further damage. Putting it under his arm, he knelt and collected the drawings of birds and went back down into the cellar. Someone had drawn more pictures on the white walls there — a child to judge from the wavering strokes of the crayon — birds in flight soaring over sketches of woods and lakes.

Jaeger tore up the papers with the birds on them and dropped them on the floor. He took the letter and the photographs of Rudi Geldman from inside his greatcoat and, after studying them for a moment or so, ripped them into dozens of pieces which he allowed to fall slowly and deliberately from his hands, watching them with frowning attention as they fluttered in circles and drifted at last to the floor to mingle there with the tattered scraps of childish drawings.

The stir and drift of paper kindled a memory neither welcome or unwelcome, of the death of Cornet Rilke: “Eine lachende Wasserkunst”... “a laughing fountain.” It had been Rudi’s own fantasy of death. To die saving one’s country’s flag... “The sixteen curved sabres that leap upon him, flash on flash, are a festival.”

“A laughing fountain.”

Jaeger went upstairs and knelt beside the schoolteacher. He felt for her pulse; it was slow but firm. Lifting her slight body, he carried her into a bedroom and placed her on a bed covered by the same sort of hand-knitted coverlet he remembered from his grandmother’s home in Bavaria.

Next he took two small photographs from his wallet, pictures of Hannah and Rosa taken on the merry-go-round in the park at Dresden, and put them on the pillow beside the schoolteacher’s mass of tangled black hair. She would believe and understand what he said about children and soldiers when she saw the pictures of his daughters.

As he ran to his command car, he was thinking that it wasn’t so important what your country asked you to live for, but what it asked you to die for, and Colonel Karl Jaeger was determined to show the Americans on the hill, soldiers who had denied him the exercise of compassion, that he clearly understood this important distinction.

When he bent to pull open the door of his car, he realized with surprise that he still held the brilliant little angel’s head in the crook of his arm. Why hadn’t he left it in the cellar with the pictures and drawings? It didn’t matter, the angel’s head didn’t matter now. He dropped the ornament on the snowy cobblestones and swung himself behind the wheel of his command car.

December 23, 1944. Mont Reynard-sur-Salm. Saturday, 0630 Hours.

The big dog began growling and barking. Docker swept the road and trails to Lepont with his glasses, checking the open stretches and trees wrapped like cotton candy with the swirling fogs, but nothing moved down there and the silence was broken only by the cries of birds and whining winds forcing a passage through the ice-laden trees.

Trankic joined him. “What’s spooking Radar?”

“Nothing that I can see.”

“Look, Bull, Kohler wants to see you.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know, he says it’s important.”

“Christ,” Docker said, and gave Trankic the glasses.

The dog bounded from the revetment and joined Docker as he walked through the snow toward the right flank of their line, where Linari, Kohler and Sonny Laurel manned the machine guns. Docker had posted Schmitzer, Tex Farrel and Dormund to the left flank, leaving Solvis and Jackson Baird at the cannon.

Kohler’s battered face was tense with exasperation. He nodded at Guido Linari. “Sarge, you better make this rupture-head tell you what’s bothering him.”

“Shit, I don’t need no kind of trouble like that,” Linari said.

“What trouble?” Kohler shouted. “That tank comes up here, blows a round up your ass while you’re worrying about some piece back home, that’s trouble.”

“She ain’t no piece. Shorty.”

Sonny Laurel said, “Could I explain it, Guido?” He was trying not to laugh. Docker realized. “That way you didn’t tell anybody, I did.”

A dim understanding glinted in Linari’s eyes. He shrugged. “You wanna tell Docker about it, that’s your business. It don’t matter to me.”

“Sarge, Guido got engaged on his last leave in New York. Now he’s worried because he never told Captain Grant or Lieutenant Whitter about it.”

“Why should he? It’s none of their business.”

Kohler punched Linari on the arm. “That’s what we been trying to tell this ginney bastard.”

Linari said, “Well, I thought... I mean, everything we do is supposed to be written down. Like fuckin’ short-arm inspection. Like you got to put your initial and serial number on your clothes, even a jockstrap if they gave you one. Insurance, your pay, your ma and pa’s names and where they live. It’s all written down, Korbick’s got it all somewhere — so I got worrying about it ’cause I never told anybody. With that tank down there, I figure somebody should know about it.”

“You have a picture of her?” Docker said.

The dog was circling them, whining and yelping, then standing still to bugle across the valley, the echoes coming back mournfully from distant fog-banked peaks. Docker looked over to the revetment where Trankic stood with the binoculars to his eyes.