To Die in Spring Read online

  He searched through several cemeteries that day, getting closer and closer to the front. The last one he encountered before sunset was on the western side of a hill, behind which the fire-flashes of the main battle line were visible – the black smoke. The cemetery’s fence had caved in, its ground churned by tank tracks, and bombs and shells had turned the graves inside out: ribs, matted hair, bared teeth in the earth. Rust-coloured water stood in the craters, and Walter held his cap over his nose and mouth as he walked along the rows to read those markings that were still legible. The evening sun filled the helmets on the ground with shade, the wind grew cooler and agitated the translucent bark peeling from the birch crosses, and here again Walter could not find his father’s name.

  Back on the road of churned gravel, he rode for a while along the ridge of hills that ran parallel to the front. Because of the many wrecked tanks – quite a few of their mudguards bore the white key, the emblem of the Leibstandarte – Walter kept having to dodge into the weed-covered fields. The BMW wobbled on the loose soil, and in the end it got too dark for him to continue. He could hardly see anything in the narrow strip of light from his blacked-out headlight, so he rolled the bike into the ditch.

  As the night bombers roared, he collected two handfuls of twigs and lit a fire under the bed of a bullet-riddled Hanomag van to warm up some potted meat. He spooned it out of its tin with a corner of bread and, chewing, looked across to the battle line, where scraps of fog were blowing across the meadows and scattered vehicles burned. There was no sound now of grenade launchers or heavy guns. Sometimes a salvo of machine-gun fire echoed up to him, or a flare rose into the sky and sank smoking into the valley: red, green or white light, beneath which the course of a river glittered and the shadows of individual trees turned. Not a soldier to be seen.

  It was getting even colder; Walter smelled rain, and after he had eaten another apple he plucked dry grass from the field, piled it up under the engine block and spread his tarpaulin over it. Using his rucksack as a cushion, he was able to sleep; protected from the low-flying planes, coat buttoned up and all wrapped in his blankets. Smoke drifted up the hill, but the front was calm now apart from the music with which the Russians on the other side of the river were trying to entice turncoats to cross over: ‘Homeland, Your Stars’ or ‘Lili Marlene’.

  The music blew away, and Walter must have been asleep for some time before he heard footsteps on the road. Holding his breath, he couldn’t tell if the rustling in his ears was steppe grass or the sound of his own blood. He pulled his carbine over carefully and released its safety catch with his thumb, holding his little finger on the wood so that the click wouldn’t give him away. He turned his head, but even though moonlight was shining through the clouds he couldn’t make out a thing or a person among the wrecks; by now he assumed he’d only dreamed the footsteps.

  But then they got louder, the steps: feet cautiously treading or creeping over gravel, and Walter’s heart thumped so hard it moved the dog tag lying on his neck. ‘Come, comrat! Come! Choclat! Schnapps!’ rasped from the loudspeakers in the valley; another flare was lit, and at last Walter could see legs right next to him – the black, gleaming, cloven hoofs, spreading slightly with each step, of a roe deer, whose shadow, with its short antlers, fell at an angle across the road and who seemed to have sensed Walter’s presence at just the same moment. The deer snorted roughly, a sound like a death rattle, and, sending soil and small pebbles swirling into the air, it leaped to the side and disappeared in the bushes.

  Walter breathed out with relief. He listened to the night for a while longer before securing his carbine, taking a sip from his canteen and going back to sleep.

  Towards morning, raindrops drummed on the riddled chassis, water trickled from the engine block, and he pulled the tarpaulin over his head. The cool wind, which brought the sound of twigs grating one against the other, smelled of sulphur and petrol. Someone in a half-sleep said ‘sin and Berlin’, and at last Walter was awoken by a vague shivering that he thought at first was his own – until he felt the earth itself trembling. It was still dark, a depthless, inky sky, but against the strip of red dawn he could make out the silhouettes of troop transporters and tanks, long columns moving quickly in his direction.

  Quaking with cold, he crept from his hiding place, rolled up his blankets and pushed the BMW out of the ditch. He washed his eyes with a handful of water and cleaned his teeth with a handkerchief as the first vehicles made their way around the nearby wood. There were soldiers clinging to every possible surface on the vehicles, some still in winter camouflage, sitting or standing and holding on tightly wherever they could – not only on top of the heavy trucks, on top of the scout cars and the howitzers being towed behind them, but also in the turrets and atop the skirts of the tanks. There were traces of sweat and tears on their dirty faces, and many were wounded; the fresher bandages stood out clearly in the dawn light, and while some of the men drew greedily on their cigarettes, scouring the sky for fighter-bombers, others concentrated on holding pieces of bread and potato, on skewers, to the red-hot exhaust pipes.

  Walter started the BMW. He didn’t have much room to manoeuvre on the narrow path, and only advanced at a walking pace; sometimes the wheel of his sidecar hovered over the ditch. Some squaddies frowned or tapped their foreheads when Walter looked up at them, and he had to stop at the next crossing, which was blocked by a tractor. The driver was turning the ignition in vain – he was out of petrol – and everyone who still had the strength jumped from the bed of the stalled truck and ran down the road to climb onto the next, equally overloaded vehicle, though only a few of them were able to find room. Their comrades struck out at them with sticks and crutches and the ones left behind cursed and shouted, bloody hands clutching the air.

  Walter, to escape the crush, wanted to turn onto a road across the field, but a roofless Horch broke away from the column and blocked his path. It too held wounded soldiers, and at the wheel was a Wehrmacht captain who said something that Walter couldn’t make out over the noise of the engines, the rattle and clink of the tank tracks. But assuming that the captain had been asking where Walter was headed, he pointed east, and the officer, his goggles over the brim of his cap, grimaced and shouted, ‘What on earth are you going there for?’

  Walter handed him his marching orders. ‘I’m looking for my father’s grave,’ he replied, and the man read the papers and shook his head. The column paused and for a moment it was quieter. Everyone was engulfed in exhaust.

  ‘Ivan’s in Stuhlweissenburg, son. The only grave you’ll find there is your own!’

  *

  Dear Mother, I hope you are all well. I’m in good health, even if the damp cold is often a problem. But now spring is on the way, and there are many blossoms. I’m sitting here in Rózsa – Rosenort in German – in a little post office, and there’s no one else around. Perhaps the people have fled, perhaps it’s their lunch break, I don’t know. The heroes’ cemeteries, where I’m looking for Dad’s last resting place, are getting bigger and bigger. The Russians are putting on the pressure, and the ground-attack pilots are shooting at anything that moves, even refugees. If you turn this card over, you’ll see what it looks like here in the summer, in peacetime. (But you’ll have to imagine it without the tower of the spa, since it took a direct hit.) Thank you for the birthday wishes and the package, I was delighted. I hope we’ll meet again soon! Your son

  *

  Doves circled above shattered dovecotes. Some roofs were burning, doors and windows were open, household goods and shredded feather beds lay outside doorways. In every street there were teams of horses and oxen, piled high with mattresses and furniture with children sitting among them, but most people were on foot, pulling barrows or pushing bicycles laden with luggage. They made a point of not noticing Walter. Only their dogs barked at him.

  The herds were being brought to safety. Dust floated over the corkscrew horns of the Wallachian sheep and the cracking whips of the peasants rang out below t
he gatehouse. With old rifles on their backs, they wore knee breeches, white shirts and red waistcoats – the costume of the Hungarian Germans in this region – and had already removed their square moustaches. The shaved patches were paler than the rest of their stubbly faces.

  Wehrmacht HQ was in the Hotel Rebmann, a half-timbered house in the marketplace of Kiszémel, the town the Germans called Klauben. Military vehicles kept sheltered, close to the houses, and the evening gave a red tint to their windows. Walter drove the BMW into a dilapidated shed and took the spark plug out of its socket. Then he filled his canteen at a well and trudged up the hill behind the burned-out school.

  The last cemetery that he came to after another day of fruitless searching was on the edge of some vineyards. The vines had just been pruned and drops of water gleamed where the cuts had been made. The drops were sticky and tasted sweet, and as he licked his fingers he read the names on the few remaining crosses. Where a bomb or a shell had struck the hill, birch twigs were being used to prop up the budding vines. The paths between the rows of plants were paved with gravestones bearing Hebrew inscriptions, and in this graveyard, yellow with crocuses, once more he failed to find his father’s name.

  In the market square again, he saw from a distance that his reserve petrol was gone, the canister’s strap dangling over the ground. Laughter shrilled from the open hotel door; a sergeant with his cap pushed far back into his sweat-drenched hair stumbled over the threshold and threw up. In the corridor and the taproom were drinking soldiers, mostly of higher ranks; Walter skirted around the building’s bowed front and looked for another way in. From the narrow, open windows, painted with tar, came the sound of piano-playing and song, roaring, screeching, clapping.

  He climbed a flight of wooden steps to the smoky kitchen. Private soldiers and female auxiliaries sat inside at a long table, eating soup. The heat beneath the low-beamed ceiling was intense, condensation dripped from the blue and white tiles, and here too no one seemed to be sober: faces gleamed, voices slurred. Countless stone bottles stood on a side table – German schnapps – and a man with a salt-and-pepper beard, a Wehrmacht quartermaster to judge by his uniform, beckoned Walter over to the stove. ‘We’ve got some beef goulash,’ he said, filling his plate. ‘Dig in, son! In the camp you’ll get nothing but stones.’

  An orderly belched and made room for Walter on the long bench. He held out a bottle of wine and a basket of bread, and Walter took off his coat and sat down next to a woman. With her forearms on the table and her cheek resting on the backs of her hands, she seemed to be sleeping, a thread of drool hanging from her twisted mouth. She sat there with her legs spread, her bottom stretched on the edge of the bench, her skirt hoisted to the buttons of her suspenders. Walter smelled a hint of eau de cologne, tore off a piece of white bread and dipped it in the goulash.

  It was thick and hot, but the meat was tough, and as he chewed he heard music coming from the next room and only noticed after a while that the woman was looking at him. Without lifting her head, she licked the corner of her mouth and said, ‘Yeah, right, another fine promise . . . So, are you all done fighting? It’s all over, right? The trucks aren’t getting through any more.’

  Her hair and eyelashes were strawberry blonde, her eyes weary. Even though she was only a little older than Walter, perhaps in her mid-twenties, she already had fine wrinkles under her eyelids and around the corners of her mouth. ‘If only I’d stayed at home, silly cow that I am. Never volunteer for anything, Grandpa always said, the best seats in war and the cinema are at the back. You’ll hurt your eyes at the front! But no, I wanted to go out and see the world . . .’ She jutted out her bottom lip and blew a thin strand of hair out of her face. It only floated back. There were tiny freckles on her cheekbones. ‘Well, even dying doesn’t last for ever, right? You look familiar. Waffen-SS? Have I seen you here before?’

  The brass emblem on her sleeve, the lightning bolt of the telephone unit, glittered in the candlelight, and Walter shook his head. ‘Not likely,’ he said. ‘I’m only passing through. I’ve been looking for a grave, my father’s grave. Do you think I could sleep here tonight?’

  She sat up with a yawn, pulled her skirt straight and loosened her tie. ‘’Course, there are more than enough soft beds around here. Used to be a hotel, after all. Famous people used to stay here – Reich ministers, for example. Or Zarah Leander and Willy Birgel – very charming.’ Tilting her forehead, she lowered her voice: ‘But if you don’t play for the other team, I’d think long and hard. For young privates there’s only room one-seven-five, a very, very hot and stuffy room. You’ll hardly catch a wink.’ She pressed her knee against his. ‘Did you hear me, young man?’

  Walter closed his eyes for a moment and drank carefully from the bottle of wine, whose neck, he now noticed, was broken: suddenly the sharp opening glued itself to his lip and the woman chuckled. ‘Greedy enough . . . Do you know what I was dreaming, just now? Shall I tell you?’

  Walter shrugged, and the woman drew a crocheted handkerchief from her sleeve. It smelled like her perfume. ‘I was working at a beautiful palace, just imagine. Gold and crystal everywhere, and I was supposed to be guarding this sort of jug. It contained the elixir of eternal life, and everyone prayed to it, every Sunday. It was a state job, you see. But despite my responsibilities, I still drank from the jug, and gave the rest to my fiancé, because I didn’t want us or our love to die. I mean, it’s funny, I’m not even engaged, I don’t even have a boyfriend. But the man in my dream had beautiful eyes, like Josef Loibl . . . Wait a second, you’ve cut yourself.’

  She dabbed some blood from his top lip. ‘Anyway, I refilled the bottle with water, but somehow someone found out anyway, and we were sentenced to death, just like that. We were standing beneath the gallows, with nooses around our necks, when I said, “Stop now, stop! Think about it! If that liquid really granted eternal life, you couldn’t put us to death! It’s impossible! If we die, everyone will be able to see that it was all lies, that the whole cult is just opium for the people! There would be a palace revolution!”’ Smiling, she held out the palms of her hands. ‘And what do you think happened? They took the ropes off again and set us free!’

  Walter exhaled gently through his nose and pushed his plate away; the woman leaned against him, ran her finger through the last of the goulash and licked it. ‘Impressive, don’t you think? I’m clever in my dreams at least. Couldn’t you put your arm around me?’

  He stroked her temple, and again she pressed her thigh against his. He could feel the button of her suspender. She reached for his hand, rubbed the damp palm with her thumb, but at that moment the door flew open and an officer in shirt-sleeves, braces hanging from his waistband, stared, blinking, around the room. Piano music, a Bavarian polka, interspersed with whistling, forced its way into the room with him, and he clapped his hands and cried, ‘We need more schnapps, damn it! Juniper for the final victory!’ Tottering, he pointed to Walter and the young woman. ‘Come on, come on, you turtle doves, take a few bottles to the front. But the large calibres, if I may be so bold! So that nothing’s left of us, afterwards . . .’

  She pulled a face. ‘He’s homosexual, too!’ she muttered as she got to her feet, and they both took earthenware bottles from the side table and followed the man down the corridor. Old hunting weapons, antlers and stuffed boar’s heads hug on the walls of the crammed pub, which was lined with cork to shoulder height. The wax of countless candles dripped from the lampstands – huge cartwheels – and the oven plate was glowing as Walter pushed his way through the crowd and set down a Steinhäger bottle on the sill of a blacked-out window. There were sub-machine guns resting against it as well.

  The pianist was naked to the waist, and a young woman in a short petticoat was dancing on a nearby table. With one of those crescent-shaped military police badges on her chest, she wound her way through outstretched arms, knocking over glasses and stepping on plates and trays. The soldiers’ fists and knuckles showed under the black silk fabric like
the vertebrae of lithe animals, and when she threw her head back, laughing and crying at the same time, her mascara ran into her ear. Beneath the pictures of Hitler and Szálasi in reception, men drank schnapps from each other’s mouths and reached under each other’s uniforms. From the next room, a billiard room, came the cries of people having sex.

  A fat sergeant pushed a dancing couple over the chalk line a good two metres from the stove. ‘Next!’ he cried. ‘She’s built up some pressure now! All bets are off!’ They formed a circle, and an elderly woman wearing only a pair of suspenders and a soldier’s cap put her arms around the shoulders of two squaddies, who reached down to the backs of her knees and lifted her legs up. Her pubic hair, a broad triangle, grew to her navel, and her heavy breasts, bitten red and blue, hung to the sides of her ribs. When she laughed she revealed a gold tooth.

  The piano fell silent, and for a few seconds almost everyone was quiet; it was an expectant silence, as the woman stared at the ceiling and gnawed at her lower lip as if trying to concentrate – and already the silence was too long for one major, who dribbled more schnapps into his cup quite audibly. Then the pianist played a trill, and at last the old woman closed her eyes and pissed a bright yellow glittering stream in a high arc onto the plate of the oven, where it steamed with a pop and a hiss. There was a round of applause and cheering, banknotes changed hands, and the smell of burnt urine made Walter gag for a moment. He swallowed a bitter burp.

  A drunk man, his shirt drenched in sweat, jostled Walter, slurred something in his ear and felt his muscles, before turning towards the Blitzmädel. Walter left. It was already getting dark outside; he took a breath of the cold air and walked slowly across the courtyard. Between the bins lay a dead officer, a gaunt man with an oak leaf on his collar patch, his gun still in his open mouth. He was wearing new jackboots with Wehrmacht stamps on the light-coloured heel-breasts, and as Walter buttoned up his coat he checked his foot against one. Too small.