Sasa Stanisic - Before the Feast

Leipzig, ’82. In the sauna after the officers’ training course. Pear schnapps in the outlet of the sauna. A dozen officers relaxing on the steps of the sauna like pears in a display window. None of them saying a word. They could have made harmless small talk. Someone could have said, “How long do we have to sit around here before we get good and sozzled?”

Herr Schramm fishes his small change out of his jacket pocket. He pushes the coins back and forth on the palm of his hand with his forefinger. Doing that makes him sad. He tries a different one-euro piece. It comes back out.

Herr Schramm leans his forehead against the cigarette machine.

The top man in the sauna was General Trunov. The only one sitting upright, showing everything, his Uzbek prick wreathed with strong hair. He was naked except for a sword belt with a cavalry saber stuck in it. The blade lay against his thigh. Maybe cool, maybe hot. His adjutant, a pale Jew, kept pouring iced water and schnapps on the hot stones, and whipping the hot air through the room with a towel.

Herr Schramm kicks the cigarette machine.

“Hell,” says Herr Schramm.

General Trunov wanted war. Because war called for battles. Because battles called for soldiers, because soldiers called for men like him to lead them into battle. Trunov was a devout man and made no bones about it. And like every devout man he knew what was his and what wasn’t his but ought to be. He intended to defend the former and get his hands on the latter.

General Trunov wanted war, but judged by the modes and methods of those days he was a pacifist. He loathed nuclear weapons and chemical warfare, he didn’t even really like artillery, nor diplomacy either. Man against man in the open field, that’s what Trunov wanted. He wanted to sink submarines with his own hands. Lieutenant-Colonel Schramm was sure he could do it, too.

Herr Schramm puts the coin in the slot at the top of the machine, the coin comes out again at the bottom.

He had been sitting next to Trunov in the sauna. If he turned his head he could smell Trunov’s shoulder. General Trunov’s shoulder smelled of the successful defense of a bridgehead against an enemy three times superior in strength. Schramm smelled the grass of the steppe and horses’ flanks, smelled Afghanistan, smelled dances with Uzbek village beauties.

Herr Schramm puts the coin in the slot at the top of the machine, the coin comes out again at the bottom. Herr Schramm gets his pistol out of the car.

After ten minutes Captain Karrenbauer stood up and groped his way, dripping sweat, toward the exit. Karrenbauer, the fattest man in the sauna. Dark curls, though. Skin and fingernails infuriatingly well groomed. Karrenbauer always wheezed as he breathed. Trunov jumped up, had already positioned himself between the exit and the Captain, hand on the pommel of his saber. The Jew dunked the towel in the drain outlet and began working the General over with it vigorously.

“Where you go, soldier?” called Trunov. He wasn’t looking at Karrenbauer. He was looking over Karrenbauer’s massive head, through the sauna wall, out to the interrogation cell, the Albertina library and on, far beyond Leipzig, through mountains, over plains, and as he didn’t spot an enemy to look daggers at anywhere he finally saw himself in his bitter native land, riding along the cotton fields, through the valley of the River Surxondaryo, on his stallion whose name was All My Prayers.

He wanted to go out, Karrenbauer nervously replied.

“So tell me, soldier, why I let you out?”

Karrenbauer stammered, “I–I c-can’t take it any more. M-my heart. I’m n-not supposed to. .”

“You joking? I not ask about your anatomy. And I not ask why you no stay. I ask why you worth I let you out. Convince me you important, soldier!”

Herr Schramm is an upright man with poor posture. Herr Schramm puts his pistol to the temples of the cigarette machine.

In the new Federal German states people are more inclined, on average, to repair defective items themselves, whereas the people of the old Federal German states think first of buying a new item, then of finding an expert to repair the old one, and very few of doing the job themselves.

It did everyone in the sauna good to sense the heat of Karrenbauer’s fear. Because it was the fear of a man who was as bad and as good as themselves, and because it was his fear and not their own.

Karrenbauer fell to his knees.

Trunov drew his saber.

Herr Schramm dries the coin on his trousers. Stands still like that, one hand on his pistol, the other, holding the coin, close to the slot. He looks along the main road. From here he could reach the outer perimeter in fifteen minutes. Anti-aircraft rocket station Number 123 Wegnitz. Stationed there for seventeen years. In the “jam factory.” In the “textile mill.” In the “milking shed.”

Once mushroom-gatherers came. Schramm had just finished doing his round, and there they were by the fence: mother, father, child, another child, dog, mushroom baskets, weatherproof clothing. They’d ignored the warning notices, had wandered through the woods in the no-go zone for hours without being stopped by the guards and patrols, and now they were gawping straight at the installation. You could see half the firing position from there. The anti-aircraft battery. The starting ramp. The technology. They were confused, who wouldn’t be? You go looking for chestnut bolete mushrooms, you find anti-aircraft rockets.

Schramm goes over. Afternoon. Mmph. The fence between them. So what have you got to say for yourself?

Says the father, “Looks like we’ve got a teeny little bit lost.”

Schramm picks fluff off his uniform.

Says the mother, “I suppose we can’t go any farther.”

Schramm raises his eyebrows.

Says the little girl, “Are you a soldier?”

“No, I’m a forester,” says Schramm, giving the girl a fairly friendly tap on the finger she’s putting through the fence.

Says sonny boy, pointing to the starting ramp, “Is that a rocket, Comrade Forester?”

What do you say now?

Says you, “I’ll ask you to vacate the grounds of the Wegnitz jam factory.”

Schramm never again met such a vital man as Trunov, a man so much at peace with himself and the world. The smell of his shoulder. Trunov didn’t let the Captain go out. Tapped the wooden partition between the sauna and the interrogation cell with his saber in time with Karrenbauer’s heartbeat. “Tell me what you worth, soldier!” He put the sword blade behind the captain’s ear.

“I’m — I can’t — please, Comrade General. .” Karrenbauer was sweating well, sweating phenomenally, his best visit ever to a sauna, the Jew swiped him one with the towel. Over the last few days they had all been drinking schnapps before and during and after lectures, had drunk from the outlet before the sauna, but when Trunov put back the arm holding his saber no one was drunk any more. Schramm jumped up and looked into the General’s left eye with its little broken veins.

“Leave the man alone,” he said. “You can’t learn anything from a man sliding about on his knees.”

Herr Schramm puts the coin in the slot at the top of the machine. The machine gives a satisfied click. It digests the coin, the display shows the amount of credit and the information, “Tobacco sold only to age 18 and over.”

Herr Schramm says, “That’s right.”

The display says, “Proof of age required. Insert EC card with chip.”

“No,” says Herr Schramm. “No.”

Lieutenant-Colonel Schramm escorted the mushroom-gatherers to the outer perimeter. There were plenty of mushrooms beside the path, but now they didn’t know whether it was all right to pick them. So Schramm made a start and put a porcini mushroom in the little girl’s basket. Then it turned out not to be a porcini after all. The mother took it out of the basket again without a word.