To Die in Spring Read online

  Exhaust filled the entrance to the cave and the men sitting crammed together on benches, boxes and canisters rocked back and forth as the Krupp set off; a strangely blurred picture, since most of them hadn’t tightened their chin straps, meaning that their helmets wobbled and slipped. Only Fiete was bareheaded, and Walter raised a hand, but Fiete didn’t return his greeting, or did so only with a quiet glance, a grave smile, as he tilted his head back and, like the machine-gunner, scanned the blue sky for fighter-bombers.

  *

  The driving section of the supply column near Pécs – Fünfkirchen in German – was about to set off. Mohács, sixty kilometres away, was already under the control of Tito’s people. Along the streets and in front of mountain passes there were large signs bearing the words ‘Warning: partisans! Weapons always at the ready!’ In the rough-terrain three-ton and six-ton trucks they brought food and ammunition to the front line close to the Danube and brought back the wounded. If the trucks made it back to the former farm that was their base without any new, sizable bullet holes, and if there was nothing that needed repairing, the men would help the doctors and orderlies in the sick bays or fell birch trees and hammer together makeshift crosses.

  The Horch, a formerly elegant, now battered four-wheel-drive officer’s car, was covered with nets with fir twigs sticking out of them. It had stopped raining, the clouds were drifting further north, sun flashed in the puddles and Walter unbuttoned the leather flap and pushed it down behind the back seat to have a freer view. ‘That’s what the Germans are like,’ said August Klander, a red-haired lad from Hessen who had just come from headquarters and quickly glanced around: no officers in sight. ‘Back home there’s not a thing standing, the front is collapsing, Ivan is at our doorstep, but the field post is still on time.’

  Smoking, he hobbled around the vehicle and handed Walter a letter, postmarked three days before. In spite of the running ink Walter recognized his sister’s handwriting, her little round letters. She had turned twelve that winter, and had begun using little circles instead of full stops. The envelope had been opened, stuck shut again and stamped with the mark of the mail examination office, presumably because there was something between the pages: a photograph with a deckle edge, showing Leni with short hair, and then a finger-length black feather with gleaming blue patches.

  The letter smelled of perfume.

  My dear Walter, what do you think of my hairdo? Mashka did it for me, a Pole from the bunker. She sometimes helps at home. At first the frizzy bits were longer, but we made the curling tongs too hot, so a few more inches had to kick the bucket. I hope you’re in good health. I’m quite well, I’m barely coughing. We have no school now, it’s too dangerous, and I’m getting bored at home. But we’re not supposed to stray too far from the cellar door. Herbert, Mum’s new boyfriend, always smells of chalk and Lysol. He’s the fattest man near and far and can’t keep his hands to himself, like Dad. But we have a roof over our heads and something to eat, and since the Polish girls have been sleeping in the coffin storeroom he leaves me in peace.

  Recently I was in our old street, or what’s left of it. I climbed around among the piles of stones and blubbed. The block warden wanted to chase me away, he thought I was looting. He even had a gun, but I shouted at him. I’m sending you this feather. It comes from a blue jay, and little Micky Berg says it’s a symbol of wisdom and courage.

  Where Dad’s concerned, we still don’t know exactly where or how he is. People who have been transferred for punishment aren’t allowed to write, we hear. But a card recently arrived from Uncle Oswald, who’s been working at the army clothes office in Meissen. He’s done some research and thinks his brother might have been deployed somewhere near Stuhlweissenburg on Lake Balaton. That must be somewhere near you, isn’t it? He also sends greetings – our uncle, I mean. Everything has healed very well, and he writes almost as well with his left hand as he did with his right hand, only a bit bigger.

  Now the lamp is flickering, and I don’t know what else to tell you. I hope we won’t have to go back down to the basement again tonight. For the time being they aren’t allowing girls into the Volkssturm, which I think is a shame. Herbert has just said I’m ungrateful and a cheeky brat. I liked that. So, see you soon! Don’t forget to pick up a pen from time to time. Warmest greetings, from Mum too, your Helene

  Walter started the car. August put his helmet on, shoved a couple of stick grenades into the glove compartment and pushed a magazine into his sub-machine gun. ‘Let’s hope the bloody road isn’t blocked,’ he said, and sank into the passenger seat. He had been in an ambush a week before in which the whole supply column was massacred; after taking a bullet to the hip, August alone had been able to escape from his burning Borgward into the night. ‘News from home?’

  Walter slowly drove around the steel tank traps and avoided the puddles as best he could. They’d been given the mission of collecting three paratroopers from the mill in Brevda, a village on the edge of the mountains, which had been an ammunition dump until recently. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘My father was a guard in Dachau and got sent down, probation at the front. And now I hear that he might have been deployed somewhere near here, not far from Stuhlweissenburg. Do you know it? Have you ever been there?’

  In the pinewood they were driving through there were field hospital tents; they could hear groaning and screaming from behind the tarpaulins, and August shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘and you wouldn’t want to know it either. It’s pretty hot there. What did your old man do wrong?’

  Walter turned the corners of his mouth down. ‘Apparently, he gave some cigs away to camp prisoners. Which doesn’t really sound like him. He’s always been a tight-fisted, violent bastard. Back when he was unemployed and knocking back schnapps like it was water, he would often come to my bed in the middle of the night and say, “Why aren’t you asleep?” And I was asleep. But he was pissed and wanted to fight. He would sit down on a chair nearby and growl, “If you don’t go to sleep straight away you’ll get a thrashing.” I could smell his breath and would pray to all the saints . . .’

  At the edge of the forest Walter stopped the car, took the field glasses out from under the dashboard and peered out across the horizon. ‘But eventually,’ he went on, ‘I would be shaking with fear – I was still a kid – and he’d see it, and pull the blanket off me, and shout: “You moved! Now you’re going to find out who you’re dealing with!” And then things would get nasty. By God, did they ever. With a broom or a poker, until he broke the skin. And he’d get wilder and wilder the louder I screamed.’

  ‘And your mother?’ asked August. ‘Or your sister? Didn’t they say anything?’

  Walter put the binoculars away and steered the car out of their cover. Half-tracks stood along the road, blown up or burned out; on some of the mudguards they could still make out a white K, the tactical sign of Panzer Group Kleist. ‘Even my mother was scared, even though she’s taller than him and twice as broad. I assume she crept under her feather bed. At any rate, she slept with wax plugs in her ears. And my sister was mostly in hospital.’

  Water trickled from the rocks, thin streams that scattered when they hit outcrops. August puffed out his cheeks. ‘Pff,’ he said, ‘nice family you’ve got!’ His own parents were teachers in Paderborn, and he wanted to study geology after the war; there was always some mica or diorite rattling around in his gas-mask case. ‘Still, there must have been something decent about your old man? Handing out cigarettes in a camp . . . It’s almost heroic.’

  Walter turned into the road for Brevda. The sign warning about partisans could hardly be read for bullet holes. ‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘There was often something dark, almost crazy, in his eyes. He liked slaughtering pigeons in his own special way. He held them tenderly with one hand and pressed a needle into their hearts with the other, with the tip of his thumb. And then he let them flutter about in the loft until they were dead.’ The road became steeper, and he shifted down a gear. ‘Which could t
ake quite a long time.’

  *

  After they had been driving for three quarters of an hour the windmill came into view. The tip of its tower had been shot away and only scraps of canvas hung from the blades. Walter stopped the truck by a wayside cross and again looked through the field glasses. There wasn’t a soul to be seen, not even a dog or one of those thin goats that had been climbing around weeks before, nibbling at the faded thistles on the rocks. The gate was in ruins, the stables were nothing but a pile of rubble and even many of the old olive trees along the wall were charred or in splinters. August released the safety catch on his sub-machine gun.

  A soldier with a protective overall over his uniform came out from behind the house and waved. He wore an SS forage cap and a brightly coloured neckerchief, and Walter, exhaling in relief, drove up the road and turned into the farmyard. The three paratroopers, all older than their rescuers, late twenties or early thirties, were sitting at a table in front of the barn, scooping preserves out of big jars. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ asked the senior officer, a Rottenführer, in a tone of pure pique. ‘We’ve worn our arses out waiting!’

  His cheeks were sunken and his nose a piece of flesh-coloured Bakelite. The paratroopers had gone days without shaving. A schnapps bottle, half filled with plum stones, glittered in the sun as Walter turned the car around by a dome-shaped bread oven and called, ‘Heil Hitler! Sorry. We were only sent out an hour ago.’

  In the rear-view mirror he saw the owners of the farm; they were standing in the open barn. Walter got out, saluted and held his orders out to the Rottenführer, but the man ignored the pages; he ate a piece of cheese from the blade of his knife, studied red-haired August, who had hobbled to the well to fill his bottle, and said, ‘Shame he’s not a girl, don’t you think?’ He ran his tongue over his teeth. ‘What’s that thing they say? Rust on the roof, wet in the basement.’

  The others, both Sturmmänner, laughed, and Walter put his papers down on the table and turned round. Striped by the light that fell through the cracks in the board, the old miller, his blind wife and a hunchbacked goatherd stood in the middle of the barn, held rigid atop the blue stools on which Walter usually saw them sitting by the bread oven, holding their glasses of tea. Faces grey, lips cracked, they kept their eyes closed and didn’t seem to notice Walter as he went and stood right in front of them.

  The black headscarf of the shivering woman, who was clawing her toes into the straw-stuffed seat, was rimmed with salt, while the men’s trousers were both wet at the crotch. The wires with which their hands had been tied behind their backs cut so deep into their swollen skin that they could barely be seen. Some of their fingernails had burst from their purple beds, and the nooses around their necks were very tight, though still more or less allowing them to breathe. The ropes hung from a beam under the corn loft, which was empty at this time of year: a high-ceilinged room that echoed with the cooing of doves.

  The hunchback, with his chin close to his throat, snorted loudly as if he were sleeping standing up; he also looked completely acquiescent. The miller, too, still wearing his clogs, seemed to have lost his mind long ago; a fly ran over his unmoving face. But when his wife’s shaking suddenly became so strong that one leg of her wobbly stool beat against the stone floor, he opened his toothless mouth: ‘Zsuzsa!’ more groaned than spoken, to which she didn’t reply; but it did seem to give her new strength. With dried tearstains on her cheeks, she raised her head and wheezed.

  Someone outside clapped his hands. Walter looked round, and now he recognized the kerchief around the neck of one of the paratroopers. It was made of yellow silk with blue flowers and belonged to the couple’s daughter; a thirty-year-old widow who had hung a cage full of songbirds beside the gate every morning. Covered with little mother-of-pearl shingles, the cage lay empty and crushed in the rubble. ‘So . . .’ said the Rottenführer and got to his feet. ‘Eaten enough? Everyone ready? Then let’s go!’

  He stuffed his spoon into his boot and folded up a map. Like most paratroopers, he also wore a smock known as a ‘bone bag’ over his uniform: short trouser legs and big pockets. August screwed the cap back on his canteen and asked, ‘What’s up with those people?’ The officer turned round. His right sleeve was brown with dried blood. ‘What people?’ he asked. Frowning, he looked to Walter: ‘Who does he mean?’ And when Walter pointed behind him with his thumb, the Rottenführer spat and said, ‘Oh, them . . . No idea. They’ve been standing there all night. They’re probably waiting for someone.’

  Laughter rang out from the stove. One of the Sturmmänner, bald, brought his canvas bag to the car; grey parachute silk spilled out of it. ‘They don’t eat anything, they don’t drink anything, they don’t even get tired,’ he said admiringly and opened the boot. ‘I’d have toppled off the stool long ago.’

  The other Sturmmänner stowed their bowl-like helmets and their knee-pads and set their weapons – three MP 28s with magazines sticking out to the side – on the back seat of the Horch. ‘They’re spies,’ he explained. ‘They haven’t a drop of dignity – look at them. They shit and piss where they stand. You can shoot them if you like!’ He held a pistol out, but Walter turned back to their superior. ‘With respect: they aren’t enemies,’ he said. ‘I know them, Rottenführer, we were quartered here recently. It’s the miller and his blind wife. Their daughter, Boglárka, was married to an ethnic German, a Danube Swabian, who fell outside Budapest. She cooked for our whole platoon. And the other one herds the goats.’

  The officer, with a straw between his lips, raised his chin and narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m sorry – is a driver trying to explain my duties to me? Where are the goats around here? Do you see any goats?’ He pointed to the house with the shattered windows. ‘I can show you what they’ve got in the basement, son. If he’s a miller, I’m a monkey’s uncle.’

  Then he put the map in the leather bag hanging over his chest and looked around for his men. ‘Right then, damn it, we need to get going. Get the rest of the schnapps out of the kitchen and let’s set those birds fluttering!’

  The wind exposed the silver sides of the leaves in the trees, and again a discreet ‘Zsuzsa!’ was heard. The bald soldier lit a cigarette. ‘How old are you?’ he asked Walter, resting a hand on his shoulder. ‘Seventeen? Eighteen? Fresh out of school, right? You don’t have a mark on you yet. Have you ever put someone’s lights out?’ Walter said no, and the other man frowned. ‘Really never? What on earth do they train you kids to do, these days? Bake cakes? Right, come on, I’ll show you.’

  The soldier pulled a chair into the barn, set it behind the hunchback and climbed on. When he loosened the rope, Fredo – that was the goatherd’s name – moved his cracked lips without making a sound; a whitish coating had formed on his half-open eyes. ‘When you do this thing, you’ve got to make sure the knot’s at the front,’ the paratrooper said, and turned the rope around. ‘If it’s at the back, he just breaks his neck, which takes two seconds. But here, under the chin, the bastard gets the benefit of it. He’s conscious for a long while, and he’ll wheeze his life away nice and slow.’ He grinned at Walter. ‘You owe your victims that, at least.’

  Climbing down from the chair, he gave his audience a challenging nod, but Walter stayed at the barn door, his arms folded in front of his chest. ‘Good God, what sort of victims are you talking about? They aren’t partisans!’ he repeated, throat dry, voice thin. He gulped. ‘They’re ordinary civilians, nice people, they let us sleep in their living room. And they treated our wounded and fed the transport animals! You can’t just kill them!’

  Then the other soldier, the one with the scarf around his neck, shouldered Walter aside and said, ‘That’s enough of your opera singing! You’re inches away from crying, you know that? Partisans, Jews, who cares? What, you never heard of martial law? So off we go, one each . . .’

  The stool, the wobbliest of the three, shattered into pieces when the soldier kicked it out from under the miller, and for a moment it looked as if the man,
who let out a cry of terror, was about to fall forwards, all the way to the stone floor, his white hair suspended in space. But then the rope gripped his neck and pulled him back into a vertical position with a violence that seemed entirely out of proportion to the delicate old man – as if some invisible force somewhere above the corn loft was jerking him upwards. It was only when the body had stopped bobbing and began to spin on its axis that the clogs slipped from its feet.

  The wood clattered loudly against the concrete, and the hunchback, with his eyes firmly closed, was already dangling. A gurgling and groaning came from his thick neck, his bare feet sprinted through the air, and the bald Sturmmann, still clutching the stool, looked for a moment with interest into the dying man’s distorted face, the expression of which would have made you think less of a hanged man than of a whining child, in spite of all the stubble. The soldier clicked his tongue with disapproval and said, ‘Don’t be so greedy, man! Let go. Let go of everything . . .’

  But Fredo didn’t want to die, and it was probably his hump, the hardened vertebrae, that prevented the noose from closing his airway completely. Twitching, Fredo gritted his teeth as his feet, racing faster and faster, sought purchase. Snot bubbled from his nose, and the soldier threw the stool out of the barn and went and stood in front of his victim. ‘Stubborn bastard,’ he said. ‘Hasn’t understood a thing about life, has he? Eventually it’s just over, no matter how much of a fuss you make about it. We all have to go.’

  With a cigarette in the corner of his mouth he pulled on a pair of gloves and waited for a few heartbeats. Ash fell from the glowing tip, and then it looked as if the broad-backed soldier was hugging the goatherd – which at last he did: ignoring Fredo’s drenched trousers, the soldier hugged his hips in two, three violent movements and a backwards tug that made the beam creak, breaking the hunchback’s neck.