To Die in Spring Page 2

  The grey tabby jumped onto the table, and Walter nodded and moved his toes in his boots. In spite of the ointment they still hurt. ‘It was almost boiling . . . She said she didn’t fancy me. Or actually she said it to her friends, Ortrud and Hedwig, over her shoulder: “I don’t fancy him.” And splat, the whole bowl! Even though I was barefoot, from treading cabbage! Luckily Thamling had bandages.’

  Frau Isbahner drew on her pipe and blew smoke through her nose; she didn’t want him to see her chuckling. ‘Yes, women say that kind of thing when there’s a full moon. It’s not necessarily a bad sign. She doesn’t think you’re too bad, if I know my own kid. I know who her dad was, too . . . Buy her something colourful and give her a good spin on the floor, you’ll be fine.’

  She pushed aside the curtain on top of the dresser, scooped some cream from a jug and put it in the soup, with a quick glance at the door. ‘What do you think?’ she asked quietly, almost fearfully. ‘What’s going to happen? Are they going to take you off like they did the others? Dear me, you’re just kids, you and Fiete! You don’t know a thing. I let you fool around with my Elisabeth because you’re handsome and you have an honest face, and then she’ll end up with a cripple.’

  Her eyes were moist, but Walter grinned. ‘I’m nearly eighteen!’ he said, standing up straight. ‘But they don’t need me anyway, Frau Isbahner. Even when I was in the Hitler Youth I couldn’t hit a thing. Bit of a squint. And we’re important here, we’re indispensable. Someone’s got to milk the cows and bring the calves into the world. No war without milk, Thamling always says.’ He walked to the stove and looked into the pot: white beans. ‘It’ll be over soon anyway,’ he whispered. ‘The Yanks are still advancing and the Tommies are already at the Dutch border. We just need to hope they get to the village before the Russians do.’

  ‘I see,’ said Frau Isbahner, smiling again. ‘Who’s been listening to the enemy stations? Do be careful, son – that noose doesn’t take long to tie.’ She stroked the cat’s back and held out the spoon to it. ‘And now do a bit of work. Liesel should be at the Fährhof, I think. Kobluhn came and fetched her – that sawmill worker on the motorbike. Her and the other girls. He looks pretty smart in his uniform! If we’d had fellows like him before Danzig, we could be in West Prussia now.’ She drew on her pipe, which sputtered gently, and stared at the guardian angel. ‘Why is the Food Production Estate giving you beer, by the way?’

  Walter shrugged and said goodbye. He walked quickly through the small park with its dark conifers. The gravel on the paths, slightly frozen in the evening frost, barely crunched, and a few deer darted away almost without a sound. Even in the back windows of the manor house the lights weren’t burning; on the terrace there was a little pile of pine cones, and the kitchen door – he rattled the handle with disbelief – was locked. He lifted the lamp and looked through the pane, with its frosted decorations, at the table inside. A pepper-pot stood on it. Cursing quietly, Walter crossed the courtyard.

  Since the strafe attack, the only way to get to the milkers’ rooms under the roof of the byre was by ladder; the shattered remains of the outside stairs were in the slurry. There were ten rooms up there, hardly more than sheds made of boards, many without doors and only a few with windows – eyebrow dormers. Shoes covered with hay pollen stood by the beds, there were books and magazines on the chairs, on the walls were family pictures or photographs of Marika Rökk and Magda Schneider. But most of the farm workers who had lived here had died long ago. On one of the checked cushions lay a service book, on another a silver Stalingrad Cross. Walter had weighed it in his hand and found it disappointingly light.

  Even though it was impossible to heat the narrow rooms, each with a bed, a chair and an enamelled wash basin, they were always warm thanks to the animals beneath. Walter pulled off his overalls, turned on the tap and washed himself with the piece of lavender soap that his mother had sent him. Then he ran his fingers over his chin and cheeks, put a new blade in his razor and pared the calluses from his hands.

  He put on his mustard-coloured corduroy trousers and took a fresh shirt from the cupboard on the wall. It was crumpled but white, and he left the collar open and slipped into a thick blue woollen jacket with two rows of buttons. He shaped his hair – which the barber in Sehestedt always called ‘wire nails’ – with some milk grease, which he also smeared his boots with, polishing them till they shone. At last he took money from the tin with the embossed Moor’s head and climbed back down the ladder – that is, he slid down the struts – took his bicycle out of the empty bull’s box and rode without light to the canal.

  *

  In the fields the tips of the early crop gleamed like glass under the moon, which was still low in the sky. Fighter-bombers glided past it, a little squadron heading for Kiel, you could see the pilots in the cockpits. On a marked-out meadow by the roadside, thick-coated heath sheep stood around a pile of hay and a collie darted out from under the shepherd’s cart, but didn’t jump over the ditch. It ran in silence beside him to the forest, its coat floating upwards with each step it took, and then turned round as quietly and proudly as before. Among the high beech trees the moonlight looked hazier, and the nutshells on the path crunched beneath the bicycle’s rubber tyres.

  The music from the Fährhof came from a record or a radio; Walter recognized the voice of Hans Albers. The pub built close by the embankment and surrounded by darkness was lit mostly by electricity; Sybel Jahnson, landlord and ferryman, could turn his boat engine into a generator with a few flicks of the wrist. Camouflage netting was stretched in front of the bar; a canopy of pine branches over a Hanomag van and two dusty Mercedes 170s with SS runes on their number plates. Their headlights were blacked out.

  Walter leaned his bicycle against the sidecar of Kobluhn’s Zündapp motorbike and ran his fingers through his hair once more before he opened the door. The smoke hung thick above the counter with the old figurehead – a wind spirit in a gold dress – and the singing, laughing and clinking glasses echoed behind him across the water. Fiete’s girlfriend Ortrud was pouring beer with her mother and waved to him, pointing into the hall. She looked happy, in spite of her miscarriage three weeks before, and the light sheen of perspiration made her smiling face look still more radiant. No one made their lips up as red as she did.

  ‘It’s not the end of the world,’ a voice buzzed from the radio on the wall. Beside it hung the banner of the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture, sword and ear of corn. Bareheaded soldiers holding cigarettes or schnapps glasses stood among the guests, chatting affably. There were senior officers of the Waffen-SS in clean field-grey and polished boots; while Walter walked towards the door of the hall he could smell the pomade in the hair of a Scharführer. His left arm was in a sling and the whole left side of his face was burned; one enormous scar. His left eye was weeping.

  Helmets hung from hat stands. Elisabeth was sitting on the window seat beside the stage. In the dark green dress with the upright collar that Frau Thamling had given her, she no longer looked girlish, particularly since she was made-up and held herself very straight. Her black curls were tamed by a mother-of-pearl hairband, her mascara extended slightly beyond the corners of her eyes, and she had clearly used Ortrud’s lipstick. Along with her silk dress she wore the only shoes she owned, the rubber boots in which she had escaped from Danzig, and as soon as Walter nodded to her she raised her chin and looked past him as if she were expecting someone else. But then she stuck her tongue out at him, just the tip.

  *

  Over the stage hung a banner with the words ‘Fight to Victory! Sooner Dead than a Slave!’. The others had noticed him too now. Hedwig, who was sitting next to Elisabeth, stretched her arms in the air and waved with both hands. Fiete, swaying back and forth, grinned at Walter as he rolled himself a cigarette. His hands were dirty and he was still wearing the kit in which he milked every day; steel-tipped shoes, wide canvas trousers and a moth-holed blue pullover. ‘Here comes our foreman,’ he slurred. ‘Sieg Heil, comrade.
How’s it hanging?’

  Hedwig – Ortrud’s sister, the Thamlings’ housekeeper – jammed an elbow into Fiete’s ribs and Walter shook his head. ‘What were you thinking?’ he asked, picking a straw from Fiete’s blond curls, straightening the collar of his pullover. ‘Couldn’t you wash yourself and comb your hair and put on some decent clothes? And how come you’re so drunk already?’

  Fiete crossed his legs and drew on his cigarette, which was rolled far too loosely. In the corners of his lips, as so often, there was dried spittle, and when he closed his dark-ringed eyes he looked like a girl: his face narrow, his skin hairless and his eyelashes long and curved. ‘At your service, mein Führer: I haven’t got anything decent to wear. Never have. And we’re in the byre here, aren’t we? That’s what it smells like, at any rate. I see nothing but SS beef cattle.’

  Now it was Walter’s turn to nudge him. ‘Tired of life, you idiot?’ He said it between his teeth. ‘Rather than mouthing off all the time, you should think about doing your work properly! What are those shitty boots and aprons doing in the milking parlour? The straining cloths weren’t soaked, there were brooms all over the place and the calves were standing in a draught. As soon as the old man’s gone, you let everything slide. Even your room looks like a pigsty. I tell you, if he gives you another warning, things are grim. You can forget your apprentice exam.’

  ‘Pff.’ Fiete brushed the ash from the edge of a plant pot. ‘Great Chief Ata has spoken. Everything must be clean as a whistle.’ He took a bottle of three-star brandy out of his trouser pocket and swigged from it. ‘But then you’ve got the bloody refugee women, Christ alive! They don’t know which end of a cow is which. They’d milk broom handles. So I tell them how it works, and of course that takes time: spread on the grease gently. Don’t pull on the tits, push. Finish the job, don’t stop halfway, squeeze the beast dry. And afterwards don’t forget to put your clothes back on . . .’ He held the bottle out to Elisabeth. ‘Isn’t that right, little one?’

  She grimaced and tapped her forehead. ‘Fiete, you’re an old pig, you’re so vulgar!’ she said. ‘No wonder they threw you out of secondary school.’ Then she took a drink of brandy, shuddered and passed the bottle back to her friend.

  ‘No,’ said Hedwig, wiping the neck with the ball of her hand. ‘He’s a young pig. Where did you get this booze from, you crook? My kitchen?’

  Fiete sank back against the window frame, puffed out smoke and fell silent, and Walter said, ‘He probably swapped it for cream. Doesn’t matter whether we can deliver butter, all he cares about is undermining military morale. What’s a few years in a camp, after all . . . And where were you tonight, anyway? Weren’t you going to make me something to eat?’

  Hedwig, who had woven her chestnut hair into braids, two interlocking hoops, opened her eyes wide. ‘Excuse me? I did!’ she said, insulted, and straightened her back. ‘What’s wrong with you today? A plate full of ham on bread, with gherkins and an egg. And even a bit of stewed fruit. It was in the room!’

  She was wearing a plissé woollen skirt and her BDM blouse, with no tie, and he pointed to the key chain that dangled at her neck. ‘But I couldn’t get into the kitchen,’ he said, and she gasped and held a hand to her mouth.

  But she was smiling behind her fingers. ‘Sorry, Ata! I’m really sorry. I’ll make you your favourite meal tomorrow, promise! I’ve got another tin of spinach.’

  Ernst Kobluhn, her fiancé, came out of the taproom and put a little tray of freshly poured beer down on the window seat. He too was wearing the field uniform of the Waffen-SS, with a collar patch and the black Wound Badge level with his heart. ‘Long live the Reich Food Estate!’ he said, and clapped Walter on the shoulder. They knew each other from the Ruhr; they had been neighbours in Essen-Borbeck. They had both planned to be miners when they left school, like almost everyone in the class, but when most of the mines were closed because of the air raids the labour office had sent them to the north. ‘Well, mate, how’s it going? Haven’t seen you for ages. Heard anything from your old man?’

  Walter took a beer. ‘No, nothing new. There’s been no mail since he was transferred – or at least that’s what my mother says. So, what are you and your comrades doing here? Shouldn’t you be at the front?’

  Ernst – who was really an accountant in a sawmill – had volunteered a year before, and he clapped his hand against the polished leather of his holster with a grin. ‘Ah, we are, you see, Ata, we are! We’ve stopped doing things in stages these days. The front is everywhere!’

  Walter nodded mutely and looked at the stage, where the musicians, likewise in uniform, were taking their places. Some of them had to set their sticks and crutches down on the floor in front of them before they could pick up their instruments. Fiete screwed the cap back on his brandy and turned to Ernst. ‘Hello, great warrior! Another medal? Is it true what we hear? They shot one of your balls off?’

  Elisabeth pinched his arm, but the other man stayed cheerful. ‘Well, half and half. It was a ricochet during a punitive expedition. It’s even happened to generals, Imi. Sometimes people forget to take their belts off and a bullet bounces off the buckle. But if you really must know, everything’s healed perfectly, and it’s all working as well as ever.’ He winked at Hedwig. ‘You can ask your sister-in-law.’

  She opened her mouth theatrically and raised her hand as if to slap him. Fiete, who was stubbing out his cigarette butt on the windowsill, wouldn’t let it lie. ‘So you shoot off one of your own balls, and you call that a punitive expedition?’ he asked, ignoring the expression on Walter’s face. ‘How about civilians, did you manage to shoot any of those?’

  ‘What a clever fellow.’ Ernst studied him contemptuously. ‘What do you think we do at the front, sit around sipping coffee? Look: the partisans killed some of our men, so we went to the villages and wiped out their families and cattle. Grenades in the stables, bang! You think I like doing stuff like that? I can still hear the screams of the horses. It’s hard to bear. But that’s war for you – it’s not work for the weak.’

  Fiete grunted and took out a handkerchief, a claggy rag. ‘Grenades in the stables, wiping out families . . .’ he murmured as he pulled it apart. ‘Oh, you poor sawdust soldier, what do you know? Have you ever helped a cow calve? When they get cramp because their womb is twisted? Or the pelvis is too narrow and the calf is at an angle and won’t come out? It pulls your joints apart, the veins in your eyes burst. Bringing something into the world, that’s the hardest work. Any idiot can destroy and kill.’ He blew his nose and added in a more muted tone, ‘No disrespect to you, of course. There are intelligent idiots as well.’

  Ernst blanched and gritted his teeth; his cheekbones twitched. ‘Fiete!’ cried Hedwig, her voice shrill. She raised her sharply painted eyebrows and her anxious gaze flickered back and forth between him and her fiancé. ‘You’re pissed, you idiot! How can you say such things!’ She quickly grabbed two beers from the tray and held them out to Ernst and Fiete; her hands were shaking. ‘Now mind your manners, you hear me? I want peace in the family.’

  But the apprentice milker ignored the drink and put his handkerchief away again. ‘You shouldn’t have landed a guy like that,’ he murmured, slipped from the windowsill and strolled diagonally across the hall to the toilets; the bottle of brandy bulged in his trousers.

  At that moment a drum roll sounded, and the one-armed trumpeter blew a fanfare into the smoke, the signal for the dance to begin. A dog barked somewhere and the guests, mostly women and older men, embraced in the starting position and looked each other in the eye. Some of them tapped their feet or counted the beats, and as soon as the band struck up, couple after couple whirled across the floor, a dense crowd smelling of sweat and schnapps and rose water, into which Hedwig and Ernst disappeared with the rest. There was no sign of Fiete’s fair hair.

  ‘A friend, a good friend . . .’ Elisabeth, both hands resting on the windowsill, let her legs dangle and hummed along with the tune. She avoided looking at Walter.
She nodded to an acquaintance and waggled her finger at her younger sister, who was pressing herself against a squaddie. ‘So, what’s the matter, Starekowski?’ she sniggered. ‘Never seen a silk dress before? Aren’t you going to ask me to dance?’

  She had blackened the area above her temples, where her hair was very thin, with charcoal or a burned cork. Walter was sipping from the foamless beer. ‘No, I can’t dance,’ he said. ‘I’ve got scalded feet, if you remember. Every step hurts. Why didn’t you come by last night? You could’ve put some ointment on.’

  But Elisabeth didn’t reply, or not directly. She straightened up slightly, jutted her chin out and looked into the taproom; as she did, she pushed her lower lip above the upper, and scratched her throat with her little finger. ‘Fine, as you wish,’ she said at last. ‘Crybabies aren’t my thing. I’ll find someone else.’

  Air puffed audibly from her boots as she jumped down from the windowsill. She ran forwards and joined the soldiers, where Mark Hunstein, the fat local farmers’ leader, immediately gave her a cigarette and poured her a glass of schnapps. He said something into her ear as he did so and Elisabeth laughed; Walter was struck once more by the fact that she wasn’t really pretty. She had crooked, slightly grey teeth, her nose was far too long, she had tiny breasts and hardly any hips at all. But you still thought you could feel the smoothness of her skin under your fingers just looking at her. There was also something sparkling about her, perhaps something to do with her cheekiness, a quite special power that was less apparent in her small, always rather anxious-looking eyes than in the gleam of her black eyebrows. Sometimes he thought there was actually something of the gypsy about her.

  *

  Now the band was playing ‘That Wouldn’t Shake a Sailor’, and the trumpeter was singing. Walter pushed his way through the dancers to the kitchen door with the porthole, and was already tugging on its handle when someone clapped him on the back. His complexion red, his lips cracked, Klaas Thamling was there in a leather coat with the gold party badge on the lapel. ‘Deserters will be shot!’ he joked, smoothing back his sparse hair. The marks from his motorcycle goggles emphasized the bags around his eyes. ‘Where are you heading off to? Is everything all right?’