To Die in Spring Read online

  Walter nodded. ‘Nothing particular to report. Paraffin and salt licks are slowly running out. And the white one might be about to calve. You can see the bag of waters.’

  The old man loosened his tie. ‘Well, why not? Schnitzel for the final victory! And how much milk?’

  ‘Just under six hundred litres. Most of it has been collected already, without a receipt. Did you get the tractor back?’

  ‘No,’ said the administrator, tapping his swastika and shaking his head: ‘This little bauble wasn’t much use.’ The badge had belonged to the owner of the farm, Wehrmacht General van Cleef, who fell at the start of the war; Thamling, who wasn’t even a party member, sometimes used it when he visited the authorities. ‘They’d fob off the Führer, I swear. They want to give us horses instead, Polish nags, cavalry leftovers. We might as well go back to using a scythe.’ He brought out his cigarette case. ‘OK, I’m going to smoke a fag and have a chat with that local farmers’ idiot, about milk fat quotas and what have you. Keep an eye on your mate, and don’t stay up too late, you hear me? I want to see light in the stables at half-past four. They’re collecting the animals for slaughter at seven.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Walter and opened the kitchen door. The Jahnsons had fish traps all over the place – they always had a few eels or plaice in the pan – and there was a smell of frying bacon as he stepped through the doorway. Uniformed men stood in the room, twenty or more, eating potato salad from their mess tins. Rifles and sub-machine guns leaned against the walls, some with bayonets still attached, and there was an officer sitting on a stool by the hatch.

  He wore the red ribbon of the Iron Cross in his button hole, and was stirring a cup of tea. Walter gave the Hitler salute, but with his arm bent because there was so little room. Then he peered through the hatch, set a one-mark coin down on the counter and said, ‘Can I get a fish sandwich, Sybel? Haven’t had dinner yet.’

  The music in the hall fell silent, tables and chairs scraped and the commander, whose stripe bore the word ‘Frundsberg’, the name of his division, looked Walter up and down. He took a sip, licked his lips and said, ‘Well, if this isn’t a fine specimen for the regiment. Do I know you, comrade? Have we met?’

  Someone in the hall seemed to be delivering a kind of speech – there were loud cheers – and Walter shrugged. ‘I don’t know . . .’ he replied. ‘Back in the taproom, maybe. I work here, as a milker.’

  The officer pushed the peak of his black cap out of his eyes with his teaspoon. ‘As a what? Why? And, meanwhile, who’s fighting for the Fatherland?’

  Walter took the sandwich that the landlord pushed towards him across the counter along with his change. It was a double-decker, thickly buttered and filled with smoked eel; Walter immediately bit into it and said with his mouth full, ‘I’m only seventeen. We’re important for the war effort here.’

  Someone nearby applauded, and the officer laughed, a mocking sound, and opened the button on his right-hand glove. He pulled the glove off his fingers with his teeth, and after he had lit a cigarette he dropped his match on the floor, where it went on burning. Walter didn’t dare stamp out the little flame.

  ‘War effort . . .’ the officer grunted. ‘Hard to believe! Young and healthy, and hanging out in the milking parlour. Don’t you have women to do that sort of thing around here?’ He took another sip of his tea and waved Walter away with the back of his hand. ‘You go back and sit in the hall, my friend, they’ll tell you what’s important to the war effort.’

  Walter nodded, took another bite of his sandwich and went to the door without a word. The silver braid and embroidered death’s heads on the soldiers’ caps shimmered dully, and although hardly any of them were any bigger or stronger than Walter was, they seemed to look down on him and made way only reluctantly. He bumped into holsters and ammunition pouches, and probably trod on someone’s foot; the lighting was terrible.

  The musicians had set down their instruments. The guests were sitting at the tables or on the benches along the walls. Walter gulped down his last piece of eel and pulled the kitchen door shut. Elisabeth was twisting a paper flower around in her fingers and seemed, like everyone else, to be paying close attention to the speaker, that officer with a half-scarred face and his arm in a sling, and yet something had relaxed in her stern mouth, making her look gentle and very elegant as Walter tried to sit down next to her. An SS man got in his way, however; a broad-shouldered man with a dagger of honour in his belt: ‘Up front, comrade. Let’s have you up at the front!’

  Startled at being barked at, Walter blinked into the smoke. A few streamers from New Year’s Eve still hung from the antler lamp, and it was only now, as he reached for the soldier’s hand and removed it from his arm, that he noticed how the audience was divided: apart from old Thamling, to whom Ortrud was pushing a beer across the counter, all the men from the area, including the oldest, the wounded squaddies on home leave, the apprentices from the neighbouring farms and the white-haired local farmers’ leader, were sitting in the front third of the hall. Walter quickly wiped his sleeve and sat down next to Fiete on the bench. Fiete held out his bottle to him.

  ‘. . . but we held our position!’ the officer said on the stage and waved dismissively when someone started to clap. ‘We defended our position and more: the reputation of the Waffen-SS as the firefighters of the front received its finest confirmation. “Where we are, there is victory,” everyone knows that. And what makes us so strong? Why won’t we be scattered by a hail of shells?’ He struck his chest with his fist. ‘Because we have the right attitude, a sense of honour, and that isn’t an empty word, it isn’t mere sermonizing by bloodless moralists. Because when we say “honour”, men, we mean something concrete, something that benefits everyone. When we utter such a word as honour, men, we mean something quite tangible, something that helps everyone, and to which each and every one of us can lay claim.’ His brown suede gloves were worn down at the fingertips, and he pointed to the circular buckle on his belt: ‘Here it is, cast in metal: My honour is loyalty. And that means loyalty to the Führer, to the people and to the Fatherland, loyalty to the division and to our comrades, no matter what their suffering. And loyalty to our unshakeable belief in victory!’

  There was silence for a moment. With his hands clasped in his lap and the back of his head resting against the panel of the wall, Fiete kept his eyes shut and made a quiet snoring noise. ‘Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. I was almost killed,’ the officer went on. ‘Enemy gunfire had whirled around us like autumn leaves. With a piece of shrapnel in my armpit, I lay beneath a burning tank and might well have panicked. But I wasn’t afraid. I knew that I could count on the loyalty of my comrades, knew that they would, if necessary, climb down into the inferno to rescue me. And so it was, men, and so it will always be: they hauled me out. We thought of the barbarian hordes, of the Bolshevik menace and our innocent children, we shook the dirt from our shoulders and charged on – on to victory!’

  With his final word he stamped his heel and threw up his sound arm, whereupon the local farmers’ leader and a few women in the hall replied with a loud ‘Heil!’ Their applause was halting, but it was spurred by louder clapping from the soldiers along the walls of the hall, and at last some of these guests even stamped their feet, while the speaker, with sweat dripping from his chin, glanced briefly at Fiete’s motionless hands.

  The speaker took a sip of water, and now Mark Hunstein came on stage. The steps creaked under the big man’s weight. He wore his jacket open, and his belly, his waistcoat flapping over it, bulged heavily above the belt of his trousers. There was a gold party badge pinned to his collar, and when he smiled he flashed his teeth and narrowed his eyes beneath his white eyebrows until his irises could barely be seen. Shaking the wounded officer’s hand, he said something into the man’s burned, crablike ear before turning to face the audience.

  ‘Thank you!’ he bellowed, and loosened his tie. ‘Many thanks for the great honour that you have done us by paying us a v
isit, my dear Frick, bearer of the Knight’s Cross, and for your spectacular descriptions of events! I am sure that no one here will soon forget what they’ve heard tonight. Here in this room, at any rate, there is no one who fails to admire your achievements, and we can only hope that our actions and our influence here on the home front have in turn contributed something to your men’s fighting capacity. Because what is it that my old friend Thamling always says: no war without milk?’ Winking, he patted his belly. ‘And the occasional glass of Kümmel doesn’t hurt either.’

  The audience laughed, someone whistled, and Hunstein raised a finger. ‘I know, dear friends, you want to go on dancing. You want to enjoy yourselves and be carefree once more, and you have deserved it, you should indeed dance. Let me just say one more thing: these are difficult times, full of hardship, but as we have all just heard, others suffer greater adversity still, suffer greater hardship, and we will not hesitate to stand by them! What an abject part of the Fatherland would we be if, after these accounts of sacrifice and selflessness, we simply went on as before?’

  He pointed at the soldiers along the walls. ‘Who could send these brave men, these men who are willing to make such sacrifices, back into the field tonight, back into the fire, and then just go home as if this had been nothing more than an evening of dancing, free of fate and obligation? Oh no, dear friends, such things no longer exist! We too serve the Führer, we too have an honour and a loyalty that no foe can trample. Fight to the last bullet, is our motto, sooner dead than a slave, and so . . .’ He came up to the edge of the stage, which was decorated with red plissé material, and clenched his fat hands. ‘And so, my friends, I will make a suggestion: that every man at this party, whatever his age – everyone who loves his family and his native soil and who can hold a rifle – should tonight volunteer to join the victorious Waffen-SS. We owe that to our heroes at the front!’

  Pressing his fists against his hips, he rested his chin on his chest, and for a few heartbeats it seemed as if the silence that had fallen following his words was born of total paralysis. No eyelid twitched, no hand; just a little cigarette smoke circling about, while the farmers’ leader opened wide his tiny eyes. ‘Anyone who doesn’t like my suggestion . . .’ he added more quietly, brushing back his hair, clicking his tongue as if he had something stuck between his teeth: ‘Anyone who doesn’t like it can stand up now.’

  The wounded officer coldly mustered the men directly in front of the stage, and Walter gave a start when Fiete stiffened, almost imperceptibly, and gazed into the hall, in which people were beginning to whisper, murmur and shuffle their feet. A woman sobbed, briefly, darkly, as if she had clapped her hand over her mouth, and since Walter was sitting so close to his friend, since their shoulders were touching, Walter felt the quiet tremble that ran through Fiete, he heard the noises in his belly, his resolute intake of breath . . . Walter quickly reached behind Fiete’s back and wrapped the fabric of his friend’s pullover around his fist, stepping on his foot, his work boot, at the same time, and hissing in his ear, ‘Are you crazy? Stay where you are! The kitchen is full of SS. They’ll make mincemeat out of you!’

  Fiete closed his eyes and sank back against the panel. The wounded officer lit another cigarette, and the local farmers’ leader clapped his hands once and rubbed them together. ‘There we are – I knew there were no slackers here. German hearts, the Reich can be proud of you. All young men fit for military service come forward to where Ernst Kobluhn is sitting. He’ll register you for tomorrow morning. Then you’ll get your instructions. And now let the band strike up, if I may be so bold! Warriors need to dance too. Heil Hitler!’

  Only a few people applauded or returned the salute; the musicians bent for their instruments. The one-armed trumpeter crooned ‘Buy Yourself a Colourful Balloon’, and Walter stood up and looked around for Elisabeth. SS men were combing the room and parting the dancing couples, unless they were both women, demanding to see the men’s pay books, sick reports and leave passes, and one of them even reached for the trousers of a limping man, pulling the cuff up a little to study his wooden leg with its nailed-on shoe. And when the man’s wife protested, another soldier covered her mouth with his cap.

  ‘Idiots, all of them,’ Fiete murmured, drinking the dregs of his bottle and putting an arm around his friend’s neck. ‘Well, bollocks to it! Come on, let’s go and die.’

  Somewhere some drinking glasses fell to the floor. A small group had already formed by the regulars’ table with the bell in the middle. Thamling reached into his coat and nodded to Walter. ‘I suppose I should have seen that one coming,’ he muttered. ‘As if the Reich Food Estate would dream of donating a barrel of beer out of the kindness of their hearts . . . How are things going to work from now on? I guess I’m supposed to make do with foreign workers or something? Tomorrow, after milking, leave all the keys on the steps, including the ones for the dairy. And don’t worry about the white cow tonight, I’ll take care of her. Look after your girls instead.’ He ran his fingers through his tousled hair and shook their hands, something he’d never done in all the years they’d known him. ‘If you get back safe and sound,’ he added, ‘you can always start working for me again.’

  He took his leather cap out of his pocket and pushed his way outside. Cold, almost icy air blew in, and Ernst Kobluhn, now wearing a pair of round wire-frame glasses tied at the back of his head with a strap, waved an old man out of the way before frowning when Walter and Fiete stepped up to his table. ‘Well, isn’t this a turn-up for the books,’ he said. ‘Ata and Imi are coming to the front! You’re going to clean up nicely. But first you’re off to lovely Hamburg-Langenhorn for training, and then who knows . . . You might wind up with Ivan’s bayonet up your arse and get to sleep through the rest of the war in a field hospital . . .

  ‘Anyway – be out by the builder’s yard tomorrow morning. Heavy footwear, light bags.’

  He stamped two recruitment notices as Walter looked around the bar counter. There was an officer having a button sewn on by Ortrud’s mother; another officer was reading the Völkischer Beobachter; while the guards beside the front door were busy watching the dancers. Walter leaned forward and tapped the list, which already contained a number of names and addresses. ‘Don’t put us down there, Ernst, what good will it do?’ he asked quietly. ‘The Tommies are in Kleve, the Russians are outside Berlin – it’ll soon be over. We’re friends, aren’t we? What’s the point of making us bleed?’

  But Fiete pushed him aside. ‘Out of the question!’ he slurred, clinging to a hat stand, setting the helmets on its hooks knocking one against the other. ‘Don’t listen to this cowman! He’s a yellow-bellied coward. I want to fight, I’m your secret weapon, with added ricochets. Put me down as a general . . . brother-in-law!’

  He leaned forward and burped in Kobluhn’s face, making the latter flinch. Pearls of sweat on his nose, his lips a thin line, Fiete unscrewed his green Pelikan, the same one he had used in school, and when Walter stepped in close to talk him out of it, he shook his head and hissed, ‘I’d keep my mouth shut now, Urban . . .’

  Through the reflection of the lamplight in Ernst’s glasses you could only just see his eyes, and quicker than the ink flowed through his pen he signed the papers and waved them on: ‘Seven on the dot. Staying home is desertion. Heil Hitler!’

  Walter’s shoulders slumped. But Fiete saluted, muttered, ‘Three litres!’ and turned on his heel.

  In the hall, where a dance was just finishing, there was cheering and clapping, a rhythmic request for more music, which the drummer picked up and the flautist turned into the first bars of the ‘Königgrätzer March’. Ortrud manoeuvred her way through the guests with a tray full of broken glass. Her flaxen hair was loose and tears ran down her cheeks, and when she untied her apron strings her hands were trembling. Yet she was trying to smile: kissed and hugged her boyfriend, whispered something in his ear, then she looked at Walter and said, ‘You’ll watch out for him, won’t you? He’s such a stupid boy.’
r />   ‘I’ll try,’ Walter replied. ‘Don’t worry. It’ll probably all be over before we’ve finished training.’

  Ortrud’s mother passed a drink across the counter to him, a pale golden aquavit in a glass covered with condensation. Now the band was playing ‘A Night Full of Bliss’, and he craned his neck to look over the dancers. Elisabeth was smaller than most of the guests, and as he couldn’t see her mane of hair with its mother-of-pearl hairband, he bent down a little and searched among their legs for her boots, also in vain.

  Hedwig was dancing with the farmers’ leader and waving; Walter held out the palms of his hands and mouthed her friend’s name. She shook her head, so he waved too and left the pub.

  It was colder now; lone snowflakes fell almost vertically over the canal. Cigarettes glowed in the cabin of the Hanomag van, and beneath the tarpaulin there were men laughing and a woman squealing. The handles and leather saddle of Walter’s bicycle, wrapped in raffia, were ice cold, and he rode slowly through the little forest of beech trees where the frozen puddles crunched under his tyres. The stalks of winter wheat along the road, previously stiff and transparent in the moonlight, now hung down in all directions beneath a coat of frost.

  The shepherd’s hut and the moorland sheep were no longer to be seen, and no light burned in the semi-circular windows of the feed kitchen. There was hardly any washing on the lines as Walter rode to the farmyard, opened the stable door a crack and pushed his bicycle into the bull’s box. Then he lit the paraffin lamp and climbed the ladder to the milkers’ rooms. Frost also glittered on the moss between the bricks. The unpainted floorboards – you could look down at the hayloft and the byre through the chinks – bowed under his footsteps.