William Boyd - The New Confessions

He spoke English, with a marked but pleasant German accent. This must be my singer. He leaned against the palisade top, rifle slung across his back, hands and forearms dangling over. He was young, much younger than the other guards, my age possibly. His round forage cap was pushed back on his head, revealing the short black fringe favored by German Army barbers. His face was long and thin, pale, with a thin wide mouth. It was strongly characterized by his eyebrows, almost circumflex, dark and bushy, and that met above his nose. It gave him a sharp Mephistophelian look. A mischief-maker, but not necessarily malicious. Amoral, perhaps, but not necessarily malign.

“I like your hair,” he said. “Mine, it used to be so long. But now …” He doffed his cap. I half-expected his ears to be elvish, pointed, green-tipped. He rubbed his hand over his stubbly head.

“Little prickles, all over,” he said. “I hate it.” He smiled. “I shouldn’t talk with you,” he said, lowering his voice, “but I can’t speak bloody Russian, I can’t speak bloody French, and these old fellows”—he gestured at the gymnasium—“all they do is play cards, and talk about food and their disgusting illnesses.”

“You speak excellent English.”

“Listen, I live in London, 1912. For one year I’m painting, an artist. Camden Town. The Islington Angel. You know it?”

“No. I come from Scotland. Edinburgh.”

“Ah. Bonny Scotland.” He looked round. “ Scheisse , here comes fat offo. Seeing you anon.” He reslung his rifle and began ostentatiously to pace round the boardwalk.

I did not see him again for a couple of days. Then, one evening, he brought me my eight o’clock dinner. Having only seen his head and shoulders I was surprised at how tall and thin he was — at least six foot two or three. His uniform fitted him badly and he looked very out of place in it. It was something to do with his posture. Everything about his attitude was the opposite of erect or stiff. He seemed permanently at ease, always in an attitude of total repose.

He put the tray down.

“Macaroni soup and — yes! — I see a bit of fish. A lucky day.” He smiled, showing sharp-looking, uneven teeth. “I hear you’re a dangerous spy. Very exciting.”

I told him my story. At first I was a little suspicious of his affability, but I soon saw it was entirely disinterested. Over the next week or so we had several short conversations. They never lasted more than five minutes as, for all his insouciance, he seemed constantly alert to the possibility of being discovered fraternizing. He told me his name was Karl-Heinz Kornfeld (“Charlie Cornfield,” he translated badly). He was twenty-two years old and he was serving as a prison camp guard because he was unfit for the front. He pointed at his stomach. “I have Magengeschwür. ” He mimed stomach cramps and swigging from a bottle. “Too much drinking,” he said, and smiled his thin rude grin.

Steadily, over the next fortnight, a curious acquaintanceship grew up between us. He told me he had abandoned painting and had become an actor before being conscripted. He said he had a cousin in Vienna, an eminent playwright who was going to write him a play. I let him know something of my background, but oddly it was he who seemed to have the need to talk more than I. From him I learned more about the camp and its inhabitants — the generals in mufti, the lugubrious Russian officers, now doubly pessimistic since the revolution, who made delicate, beautiful wooden toys that they sold to the Weilburg villagers to buy alcohol. They would drink anything, Karl-Heinz said. From time to time he sold them turpentine when they were desperate.

This last piece of information was casually dropped, to let me know, I surmised, that he was corruptible. I had no money (my panting florid captor had relieved me of my wallet) and had received no Red Cross parcels. I let him know this.

“You have your sugar,” he said. “You can exchange.”

And so the bartering began. For half my sugar ration I received three cigarettes and a dozen matches. I cut them into inch-long sections and smoked them at night, opening the window a crack and exhaling through it into the night air. Suddenly, my life appeared immeasurably rich. I had Karl-Heinz’s irregular companionship and I had my tobacco. I made the tiny cigarettes last three nights, rationing my avid puffs, constructing from the dry straw in my mattress a simple holder that allowed me to smoke down to the last shreds of tobacco. Now I had something to plan for and look forward to, nightly, and it was illicit. At last my life acquired some texture.

The next thing I asked for was meat. I said I had nothing to barter for it. Karl-Heinz thought for a moment. “That’s all right,” he said. “You can pay me later.” I was not sure what he meant, but I had no complaints three days later when he brought me my breakfast and withdrew a thin sausage from his jacket pocket. It was dry and shriveled and full of gristle. I ate it with unreal pleasure.

Then I asked him to find out about my predicament. He screwed up his eyes. “Difficult,” he said. “I see what I can do.”

And so it continued for two weeks — three weeks? I do not know. Time was passing with slightly more variation, but as much sloth as always. It was to counteract this that I asked him for one more favor.

“Karl-Heinz?” I said one day as he escorted me to the washroom. “Do you think you could get me something to read?”

“My good God!” he said, feigning surprise. “An English book? Where do you think I get that?”

“I don’t know. But you seem to be able to get most things.”

“Difficult,” he said. He expounded further on the difficulties as I shaved. I wrapped the safety razor and bar of soap in the flannel and handed it back to him.

“There’s a schoolteacher in Weilburg,” he said. “Maybe I could borrow from him. No. Better to buy.” He made a sad face. “But you got no money.” He looked at me. “You give me something and I get an English book for you.”

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

“A kiss.”

Kissing Karl-Heinz was not as unpleasant as I imagined. It was much more pleasant, for example than eating my dormmates’ wax-bogey balls at Minto Academy. Unlike Huguette, he did not open his mouth and use his tongue. We simply pressed our lips together and held them there for quite a long time, sometimes — I always counted — as long as a minute. We kissed four or five times, usually in the washroom, before the book arrived. I assume he expected things to go further. After our second kiss he asked me very politely if I would hold his penis, but I declined. “Fine,” he said, a little disappointed. “Only kissing, then.”

The book was delivered to me in loose-leaf sections in the exercise yard. Karl-Heinz would tear some pages out — twenty or thirty — fold them up and stuff them in a crack in the palisade wall. It was easy for me to retrieve them, hide them on my person and take them back to my cell undiscovered. I will never forget my excitement that first day as I prized the folded wad of pages from between the planks. Later, locked back in my cell, I stuffed all but the first page into my mattress. If anyone came in I would have time to crumple up the page I was reading and pocket it.

I was ready to start. I sat down on my chair and spread the page flat before me on the table. The page was small, so was the type, as if it came from an octavo pocket edition. The paper was thin, like Bible paper. My hands were visibly trembling as I smoothed out the folds. I shut my eyes and paused before reading the first sentence. I felt humbled with gratitude. Karl-Heinz had only given me the text — I did not know the title, I did not know the author. I was ignorant of the book’s subject and genre. Yet to me, sitting there in that cell, it felt as though I were on the brink of a fabulous adventure and that I held something immensely precious in my shaking hands. It was a divine moment. It was going to change my life.