Peter Davies - The Welsh Girl

“Sorry. Wrong man.”

“Too bad. I don’t mean to… It’s just that it’s a little lonely, you know. There must be a thousand men here, and you’d think you were the only one surrendered.” Karsten studied him then, the long pale face under a dark widow’s peak, the eyes searching the crowded cell.

“Like I say,” he replied softly, “we’re in it together now, all the same.”

“Appreciate that,” the other said. “If I had a smoke, I’d give it you.”

Karsten smiled. “How’d it happen, anyway?”

“Don’t ask.”

“No, really. I’d like to know… Can’t be that bad.”

“How’d it happen? How do you think? How does anything happen in the army?” He spat. “Fucking officers! My leutnant shat himself, or he’d have used his drawers for a white flag. Ordered us to put our hands up.”

Karsten shook his head.

“ Fucking officers! Should be shot, the lot of them. You know, I could swear I saw him here someplace, among the enlisted men.”

“Who?”

“My fucking leutnant! Wouldn’t put it past him to strip the uniform off one of our dead boys.”

“But why?”

“Wants to pass as a regular soldier, avoid interrogation. Coward twice over. What chance did we have with that kind leading us, I ask you?”

“Not much,” Karsten whispered.

“See any of yours — officers, I mean — mixed in with us?”

Karsten shook his head.

“Pity. There’s a bunch of lads wouldn’t mind giving some of them a few licks. They could hardly pull rank! Really, you haven’t seen any?”

“No,” Karsten said. “I told you.”

The other man had been scanning the crowd, as if for officers, but now he looked at Karsten.

“No need to cut up so. Unless you’re one yourself. Are you?”

“No!”

“All right, I believe you. Just let me know if you see any, would you?” He got to his feet. “Fucking officers. Course”—he smiled gapingly—“I’d be dead right now if mine hadn’t given up.”

Crazy, Karsten thought. Mad with shame. He watched the fellow move off among the rest, asking the same questions, looking for someone to blame, to hate, to fight.

There’d been a scuffle at last — someone objecting to his accusations, or to his admission? Karsten wondered — and the guards had leapt in and dragged the fellow out.

“Anyone know that man?” a barrel-chested corporal had called afterwards. “Anyone vouch for him? You? You?”

“Said his name was Steiner,” someone offered.

“Never met him before,” Karsten said when the man pointed at him. “What’d he do?”

“Anyone know you? ” the other demanded. “No? Well, don’t go asking any more questions!”

They’d sat in silence then, the group of them, staring at one another warily until the guards had ordered them out and thrust them back into the flow of men shuffling out of the barn.

Next, they’d been made to strip in the dank concrete corridors below the grandstand. Even in June it was cold down there, chilling the soles of their feet. They were hosed down, then dusted with clouds of bright yellow disinfectant until it clung to their body hair and they coughed it up, their tongues bright and bitter with it.

“’Ere, are these Jerries or Japs?” the guards hooted to each other.

Still naked, they were run across the grass to stand in long lines in the paddock, shuffling forward towards a brief doctor’s inspection. Yellow dust rose off them like fog.

“Tongues, dicks, and arseholes,” the men who’d gone before whispered. “Stick it out, hold it up, spread ’em.” When it was Heino’s turn to bend over, he’d let out a long, spluttering fart and the doctor stepped back quickly. A guard brought up the stock of his rifle between Heino’s legs with a fleshy crunch, and those in line, to a man, cupped their own balls, as if suddenly modest.

The others stepped around Heino where he lay, writhing and gasping like a caught fish, but Karsten knelt beside him, shaking his head. “What you gonna do, kiss it better?” one of the guards mocked, but Karsten ignored him. “Here.” He helped the boy to his feet, but when Heino wiped the tears from his eyes and saw who it was, he shook him off. Karsten let him go, Heino hobbling ahead, bent almost double, one hand pressed to his groin. Going to get himself killed to spite me, Karsten thought, watching him fall into one of the lines working it’s way towards the British intelligence officers, sitting at card tables on the grass.

The rumor, passed through the ranks, was that the interrogators, with their accentless German, were Jews, refugees from Germany. The first Karsten heard of it was someone ahead of him muttering, “Traitors.” He’d been so preoccupied, glaring at the back of Heino’s head, he’d cried out angrily, “What do you mean?” Too late he’d realized his mistake. Men around him were looking at him strangely.

“I mean, they can’t be traitors, can they, the Jews. They weren’t proper Germans to begin with.” He glanced around. “Besides, I’m not afraid of them.”

And the fellow ahead snapped back, “Fuck off! I never said I was afraid.”

“You should be,” a voice called. “I heard they’re putting them in with us to spy.”

“Whoever said that probably was one,” someone else yelled. Karsten thought of Steiner, found himself twisting his neck to look about him. But wouldn’t Karsten have known him for a Jew? The ones in the newsreels, their appearances greeted with boos and laughter from the stalls, were always unmistakable, he thought — craven faces, shrinking forms, the stars on their chests gaudy redundancies. But Steiner didn’t look the part, nor did the interrogators awaiting him. He didn’t believe it.

Besides, when he’d gotten closer to the head of the line and could overhear the questions being asked, there were just the usual three — name, rank, and serial number — repeated over and over like a litany. Karsten, braced for an interrogation, had felt faintly disappointed. The British seemed mostly interested in finding officers passing themselves off as enlisted men, though they hardly needed spies to do so. They pulled one out of the lines while Karsten waited; the fellow’s mustache had given him away among the clean-shaven noncoms and privates. The men watched him go in silence, sorry to see him caught, yet glad to be rid of him too. Only a few saluted, the officer returning the gesture red-faced, looking more naked than the rest in that moment. Karsten caught sight of Heino, looking back as the man passed, but the boy looked right through him.

IT WAS THE LAST TIME Karsten had seen the boy — the camp’s big enough to avoid each other — but it hardly matters. The damage is done. He’s sure Heino has already told others the story of their capture, proclaiming himself innocent of surrender, as if it were a crime.

Karsten’s not quite a criminal, but he notices the others keeping their distance. The only one who doesn’t shun him entirely is Schiller. Karsten tolerates his company — it’s decent of Schiller, he supposes — but in truth he doesn’t want the other to feel he owes him anything. Karsten can’t help thinking that he saved their lives at the cost of his own honor, and if he had it to do again, he isn’t sure he’d bother.

But then he thinks of his mother, of her running the pension alone, and tries to tell himself he did it for her. He’s all she has left, after all. Karsten’s father’s loss has always had about it an air of desertion. “I told him he shouldn’t have gone out that night with the weather worsening,” his mother has often maintained, in a tone as much critical as sorrowful. His parents had fought all the time, mostly over money, it seemed to Karsten. But once his mother had sneered, “You might have had the decency to go down with your ship too!” There’d been a long silence — Karsten, supposed to be asleep, had held his breath — and then his father said coldly, “I would have. Your father ordered me not to.” Which is why it seemed, after his loss, as if Karsten’s father might have finally gotten his wish.