The old gentleman passed one of the weighty tomes of the encyclopaedia over to Captain Gedig.
‘Have a look at this, why don’t you? It’s a magnificent work. Colour plates incorporated into the text, that’s a real novelty! And they’ve completely re-edited it according to National Socialist principles. The publishers went beyond the call of duty there.’
‘Just so long as it gives you pleasure, Father,’ Frau Helgers beamed at her husband. Eva had gone to lean over the captain’s chair. She put her arm round his shoulders and craned over him to look at the book. Her fingers played coquettishly over the two gold stars on his epaulette. She hummed along with the tender melody coming from the gramophone. A strand of her hair dangled down and brushed her fiancé’s cheek. He looked up at her with a smile.
‘Werner, Darling, you’re going back today,’ she whispered. ‘When will we see one another again?’
Her eyes welled up, wet with tears.
‘Next summer, children! At the latest!’ blustered Herr Helgers, breaking in. ‘If there’s a spring offensive like the one last year, the war’ll be over in no time! So, tell us a bit about Russia, young man.It’s not like you to be so withdrawn.’
‘Leave him be, Father! Not on Christmas Eve, of all days, please!’ Frau Helgers interjected.
‘So, what about the Russian girls?’ Eva teased him, sitting on the arm of his chair. ‘Come on, tell me how many hearts you’ve already broken, you rascal! Who’s prettier: the peasant girls in the Ukraine or Cherkessian girls? Or maybe the young Communist girls with their “free love”, hmm? Maybe they’re more to your taste?’
She playfully tugged the captain’s ear. He turned red, like a schoolboy.
‘Evi, please!’ he stammered, half-indignant and half in embarrassment. ‘I… I haven’t… that is, I didn’t… Besides, you’ve got quite the wrong impression. That stuff about “free love” is way off the mark! Russian girls are much shyer than German girls. They don’t even know how to bat their eyelashes at a man!’
‘Oho, so you tried it on, did you, you philanderer, and got the brush-off, eh?’
Saying this, she dug her sharp fingernails into the captain’s ear lobe. His future father-in-law smiled knowingly at the captain from over his pince-nez.
‘Come, come, my friend, that’s not quite true now, is it? This entry here on Bolshevism’s got some quite interesting things to say about love and marriage in the Soviet Union. I reckon I might have to chuck that particular volume away! Eva’ll be having sleepless nights if she reads that.’
‘Ach, that’s all a load of nonsense!’ muttered the captain indignantly. ‘Believe me, I know what I’m talking about! Besides, there are no girls left in Stalingrad anyhow.’
Eva removed her hand from her fiancé’s shoulder and sat up. A shadow flitted across her face.
‘In Stalingrad?’ she said in a flat tone of voice. ‘I thought you said you weren’t in Stalingrad any more!’ Captain Gedig bit his lip.
‘No, of course not,’ he hastened to reassure her. ‘We left there ages ago. I was just using it as an example.’
‘When the war’s over, they’re going to have to rework the entry on Russia from top to bottom, in any event,’ said the old man, still fixated on his pet subject of the encyclopaedia. ‘It’ll look quite a bit different then. The regional party leader here gave a talk recently about the plans for a New Order in the east. That was really fascinating, I can tell you! They’re aiming to set up four great Imperial Commissariats. Ukraine and the Eastern Territories, they exist already, and in addition to those, there’ll be the Caucasus and Russia. Moscow will be razed to the ground. It’ll simply be wiped off the map.’
He’d stood up and walked over to the map on the wall, where a forest of little paper swastika flags marked the line of the front.
‘That’s probably the best way to go about things, too – cut out this running sore once and for all, root and branch! And then there’s the Crimea; that’s going to be made an integral part of the empire, a Reichsgau. Bet that surprised you, eh? Herr Ley’s got plans to site a huge “Strength Through Joy” camp there!’
The captain found himself becoming increasingly angry at the smug, presumptuous and clueless complacency of their bourgeois outlook.
‘I really wish,’ he said, more vehemently than he intended, ‘you could come to Russia one time and see things for yourself. Then you wouldn’t get such stupid ideas in your heads! There are a hundred and eighty million people there who know exactly what they want, so you can’t just go treating them like they’re some negro tribe! At the very least they’ve got the right to self-determination. You need to win people’s hearts and minds, not oppress them. But thus far we haven’t made the slightest effort to make any friends there. And what’s the upshot of that, I ask you? We’re hated wherever we go, and we’re forced to deal with passive resistance and a partisan movement that makes our lives more difficult by the day.’
‘So, do you think the Russians are even capable of governing themselves?’ the old man flared up. ‘We’ve had plenty of opportunity to see what happens when you let them do that!’
‘There you two go, at each other’s throats again!’ wailed Frau Helgers. ‘Always the same old song. Just let it lie for once – you’ll never agree.’
‘Very well, whatever you say,’ Bailiff Helgers mumbled appeasingly. ‘But just explain one thing for me if you would, Werner. I’m not sure where to put my flag down here around Stalingrad any more. Whereabouts does the front run now? One moment the Army High Command report mentions defensive battles in Stalingrad and then in the next breath talks about heavy fighting in the Don elbow… but that’s a long way west of the city! What’s going on?’
The captain shrugged his shoulders uneasily.
‘Well, I don’t know for certain myself,’ he said finally. ‘There appear to be some breaches in the front at places… you’d best leave this sector open until the situation becomes clearer.’
‘I do think,’ replied the old man, ‘that the Wehrmacht reports ought to be more accurate. Confusing statements like that just put people on edge. Why, just the day before yesterday, Mother came back all in a tizz from the baker’s, where someone had said that an entire army had been encircled at Stalingrad! People are very susceptible to such rubbish.’