A procession of vehicles – three or four cars and a lorry, all keeping a sensible distance and in good order – was inching its way past others that had ground to a halt and got wedged against one another. An officer was supervising the tricky and dangerous operation.
‘Steer left! … Left, I said! I suggest you stick your nose out of the car so you can see where you’re going, you halfwit!’
Breuer stopped. The voice struck him as familiar.
‘Von Horn?’
The man he’d addressed turned round and walked over, bringing his blond-bearded face close to that of the questioner. A monocle flashed at Breuer. He couldn’t suppress a smile. A monocle – amid all this chaos? Oh well, why not! It was some people’s way of keeping things in order.
‘Ah, Breuer, it’s you!’ The officer’s voice sounded clear and fresh. ‘This is all a bit of a closing-down sale, eh?’
‘Where are you off to?’
‘Why, to the municipal theatre of Stalingrad, of course! It’s where all the best people are headed, don’t you know? The curtain’s about to go up on the final performance there!’
‘Can you take us with you?’ Breuer asked.
But the Tank Corps adjutant had already leaped onto the running board of the last car and vanished like a shadow in the night.
They must have struggled on about another kilometre when Breuer stopped again. He tried to peer through the fog that was shrouding the road and growing denser by the minute. ‘Look over there!’ he shouted. ‘Aren’t those houses?’
Corporal Görz cast a sceptical glance over at the vague dark shapes in the grey wall of fog. ‘Come on, Lieutenant, sir!’ he replied. ‘The city can’t be far off now, honestly!’
‘No, we can’t go on – it’s too much. Just look at him, will you?’
Dierk was hanging limply from the shoulders of his helpers. His breath was coming in choking gasps. They wouldn’t get much further with him in that condition. The corporal recognized that too. They turned off the road and made for the dark something, which began to emerge more clearly from the surrounding grey as they drew nearer. Indeed, it was a house – actually, more of an unprepossessing log cabin whose windows and doors were boarded up. The corporal knocked, but the house remained lifeless and silent. Should they break in? – A short way off, there seemed to be another house. It was dark and shuttered like the first. But here they could smell smoke and feel some warmth, and through the gaps in the boarded windows they made out chinks of light. Breuer tugged at the door, which was bolted from the inside. ‘Open up!’ he shouted.
Nothing stirred. He banged his fists against the boarded windows and kicked so hard at the door that the wood began to splinter.
‘Open up! Open up!!’
Inside, a door banged. There came the sound of whispering voices and faint footsteps were heard approaching the front door. In the freezing air, the mist of someone’s breath came out through the gaps in the boards.
‘Open up, God damn it! We’re German officers! … Open up or we’ll blow the place to pieces!’
Hesitantly, the bolt was slid back. Breuer pushed open the door. In the darkness, he could discern what looked like the figure of a woman, and behind her another person; stumbling over clutter, he entered a kitchen. Behind him, the corporal dragged the lieutenant in.
The kitchen was bright and full of soldiers – men just like the thousands who were roaming around the fields out there. Some were sitting there still wearing their greatcoats or with bandages wrapped round their heads, while others were busy unwinding the stinking rags from round their feet or warming themselves and brewing tea at the hot cooking range. In among them were some others, clean-shaven, with clean clothes and the pale faces of people who spent their time indoors – evidently the occupants of the house. A wizened babushka was pottering about at the stove. She was the first woman Breuer had set eyes on in the Cauldron, just as this was the first house in it that he had stepped inside. Seeing that they were officers, she obligingly pushed open the door to the adjoining room. Görz and Breuer stared open-mouthed at the brightly lit scene that met their eyes. A table laid with a blue woollen cloth, a red plush sofa, two beds piled high with cushions, some dusty pot plants and walls covered with faded framed photographs and matt-gold icons. As they entered the parlour, a girl, barely twenty, with shining black hair and a broad, fresh face, flitted past them with an anxious yet inquisitive expression, trailing behind her a waft of cheap perfume. The whole scene was as improbable as an absurd dream, but at the same time exhilarating in its unquestionable reality.
A corporal, clearly taken aback by their intrusion, got up from the sofa.
‘These are staff quarters!’ he said, in an unmistakably Slavic accent.
Breuer flopped down on the sofa.
‘Sorry, old chap! Looks like you’re going to have to make room for the three of us.’
All of a sudden, he felt unburdened and relieved. But he was also well aware of how deceptive this enchanted picture of cosiness and security really was.
The corporal did not get up again to make any further trouble; he could see that he was outranked. Breuer set about piling up the contents of his pockets on the table, while Görz, without more ado, laid the semi-conscious lieutenant down on one of the beds. At the sight of the cans of food and the loaves, the corporal’s face brightened considerably. He was visibly relieved. As Breuer was getting comfortable on the sofa, a rosy-cheeked NCO came in with another girl. They were chatting away intimately in some Slavic language or other. The mystery of this place and its occupants was soon explained. They had stumbled upon the staff office of a Croatian artillery regiment, which was attached to a German infantry division fighting on the Volga front. Breuer now recalled having seen a lorry out on the road with the familiar insignia of that division: a stylized fir tree with a line through the crown and an ‘S’ beside it. The troops had reinterpreted this ingenious rebus[5] – which was meant to represent the name of the division’s commanding officer, General Sanne – in their own inimitable way: the division was commonly known as ‘Shit in the Woods’.
‘You’re in clover here, aren’t you?’ Breuer said to the newcomer, as he took one of the pre-sliced loaves from its tinfoil wrapping. The Croatian NCO smiled sheepishly but dismissively at the suggestion. Görz emptied out some braised tinned meat into a billycan lid. They tucked in and talked about the day’s events.
‘Things are going to get pretty nasty here too, and fast!’ reckoned Breuer. ‘The Russians aren’t far away. The airfield at Stalingradski’s already been evacuated.’
The Croatian’s eyes widened. They clearly had no idea what was coming. His conversation dried up and after a short while he got up and left. The old woman brought in a steaming samovar. Görz gave the lieutenant, who was awake but clearly unaware of where he was, a few sips of tea, talking comfortingly like a mother to him as he did so.
‘Hit in the arm by a shell burst,’ he explained in response to Breuer’s enquiry. ‘Plus he got shot clean through the upper right thigh – and the frostbite on his feet is really bad… And now it looks like he’s got brain damage as well…’
He tucked the lieutenant in and then went to make up a bed for himself on the floor, where the Croatian NCO was also planning to bunk down. Breuer took the sofa, while the Croatian corporal occupied the second bed. After the light had been turned out, one of the girls came in and joined him, whispering and giggling. Despite being dog-tired, Breuer slept fitfully on his strangely soft bed. He was repeatedly disturbed by the couple’s canoodlings and by Dierk’s heavy breathing. At length, he sank into a leaden state of oblivion.
5
‘this ingenious rebus’ – the German word for a fir tree is