Authors: Sven Hassel
‘He’s dropped the mask, the wicked swine,’ thinks Brumme, feeling for the club fastened under the table. ‘Königin Alleé!
Geheime Feldpolizei!
4
Berlin-Moabitt: The Quartermaster General’s auditing service. A nasty pair of lice to have on your back.’ He regrets bitterly that he did not follow his original thought this morning and go sick, together with a bottle of cognac. Then Stalle would have had command. And if any ape in uniform deserved to end in Germersheim it was Feldwebel Stalle.
‘Herr Stabsfeldwebel, how many other ranks have you on strength as cutters?’ enquires Porta coldly.
‘Forty NCOs and men,’ barks Brumme eager to be of service.
‘Are they fully trained?’ asks Porta, slitting his eyes.
‘Best crew in the service,’ assures Brumme eagerly. ‘Every one of my men has been on the QM slaughtering and butchery course at Stettin. They work like well-oiled robots.’
‘Here we have the typical bad example,’ shouts Porta with satisfaction. ‘A gang of Moses Dragoons
5
who work like robots. These Goddam imitation soldiers chop and hack away at good meat wherever it’s easiest. The Holy Mother of Kazan would cross herself at the quality of the works carried out by these know-nothing gut-scrapers.
Robots
, in the Devil’s name! That kind should be punished.’
‘Squashed, like a frog under a tank,’ comes in a friendly voice from Tiny in the background. ‘Kicked up the arse, too!’
‘These tie-wearing bastards have joined the Supply Services merely to hide away from the front line,’ shouts Porta
indignantly, as he points a cutting knife accusingly at Brumme. ‘Here there are no bullets. The greatest risk is getting smothered under a carcase. But they’re
wrong
these funny little blubber dicers. There is more to it in the Army than these clowns realize. Cutting up meat is not
funny
! They need brains under their lousy wigs! Any imbecile from a madhouse can cut and chop away with bones and sinews flying about his ears, but to cut properly so that fine hams and cutlets can come out of a lousy, streaky sow.
That’s
the art! Sausage isn’t
just
sausage even when it
is
! Herr Stabsfeldwebel! When you mix black pudding do you stir it to the right or to the left?’
‘Stir?’ groans Brumme, his whole body a living expression of complete confusion.
‘No German idiot with the weakest glimmerings of intelligence would stir to the left. Only the English could bring themselves to do
that
,’ shouts Porta convincingly. ‘It reduces the rotational speed and the blood will clot. These robots of yours, Herr Stabsfeldwebel, you have the responsibility for them. You are in charge of the work. Am I right or am I wrong?’
‘Right,’ mumbles Brumme weakly, his brain almost boiling with the effort of trying to follow what this mysterious Obergefreiter is leading up to with all his strange hints.
‘I have no doubt that the work you were studying when we entered was
Mein Kampf
,’ Porta states in a voice not to be gainsaid.
‘Naturally,’ lies Brumme self-consciously, pushing that interesting work “The Woman Taxi-driver” under a piece of suet. The author’s name was Levi! Reading books like that could put you in front of a Racial Purity Commission and those boys there could turn a full-blooded Eskimo with blubber oozing out of his ears into a hook-nosed Israelite dehydrating of thirst in the Sinai Desert in the twinkling of an eye. Any German with the slightest trace of grey matter kept well away from the Racial Purity Commission.
‘Let us see some of your men at work,’ says Porta
obligingly, and sets a course towards the butchering unit. ‘I shall prove to you, Herr Stabsfeldwebel, that intelligence is required to lead such a unit. How many drivelling idiots do you find who decide to change their trade and buy a butcher’s shop. Think, if a cobbler, who had never sold anything but leather boots, suddenly began to perform behind the counter of a butcher’s shop!
Some
hams the fool would cut for us! He might even supply to your own favourite establishment where you and other
eisbein
6
enthusiasts meet every Thursday. You’d look funny when you found your
eisbein
to be the snout of a Polish wild pig, thanks to your cobbler/butcher. But you are perhaps a good-hearted person who prefers to think the best of his fellow-men, so you try just a little of this strange caricature of
eisbein
lying on your plate. If you are not a very well-disciplined Prussian gentlemen you will then throw the whole mess in the face of the waiter and empty the French mustard over the fat North German hausfrau sitting nearby who has been lucky enough to get
proper eisbein
. Imagine the trouble that can come of such a former cobbler’s change of profession. If the restaurant is one where true German culture predominates then the menu will consist of nothing but
eisbein mit sauerkraut
every Thursday evening, and you will not be the only disappointed guest. One of the most dangerous things on this earth is a disappointed
eisbein-fan
.
‘What
is this
?’ roars Porta with simulated rage, bringing his fist down on a piece of meat with a bang which makes Brumme’s butchers jump.
‘A hindquarter,’ answers Brumme dejectedly. It was a cut which had been set aside for the Oberstabsintendant who always shut his eyes during the army check.
‘
Now!
I’ve heard everything!’ screams Porta in outrage. ‘I’m sickened! Any tradesman can see that this is a
ruined
hindquarter! Herr Stabsfeldwebel, I shall soon be forced to state my straightforward opinion of the unmilitary conditions obtaining here. If the Führer demands a juicy roast,
you’ll be in trouble if you let one of your Moses Dragoons cut it for him. An insult to Germany’s leader – who has no liking for Jews.’
‘There are no Jews in my section,’ Brumme defends himself sullenly, making a great attempt to hide his rage behind an impeccable military front.
‘You cannot be certain of that,’ answers Porta coldly. ‘But now, say one of your pork satellites cuts a Führer roast and does not know that Adolf hates shreds and sinews.’
‘I thought the Führer was a vegetarian,’ protests Brumme wonderingly.
‘Every streak pig has the right to believe whatever he wishes in our National Socialist society,’ instructs Porta with a lifted finger. ‘He must merely always believe in the Führer. But you would perhaps wish to forbid the Commander-in-Chief the right to a roast without sinews?’
‘No, God forbid?’ shouts Brumme frightenedly. ‘If the Führer were to order a roast I would cut it myself,’ he declares proudly and grips the cutting-knife resolutely. ‘I would cut it like so!’
The knife flashes and gleams and amazingly quickly a roast of dreams lies on the table.
Porta smiles contemptuously, takes a small magnifying glass from his pocket, presses the bloody meat testingly, and turns to Tiny with raised brows.
‘What do you think of this piece of rat-bait?’
‘Unfit for ’uman consumption,’ lies Tiny shamelessly, with his mouth running saliva at the corners. ‘Nothin’ but bloody sinews! If I didn’t know better I’d think it was the arsehole of a dried-up Jew suicide.’
‘You hear, Herr Stabsfeldwebel?’ smiles Porta. ‘Before the war Creutzfeldt was leader of a special unit on the Reeperbahn. His district stretched to the far side of Königstrasse in Altona.’
‘IV 2a, Gestapo Special Section,’ thinks Brumme who had once owned a cosy little restaurant in Heyn Höyer Strasse. Two visits from IV 2a had cost him seven months. Now he
must be careful. ‘Dear God, let Germany lose this war too,’ he prays silently.
‘I will not maintain that it is a bad roast you have cut,’ continues Porta, ‘but is not a roast for the connoisseur! You are not in possession of the necessary scientific knowledge of anatomy. The Inspector General of Army Schools of Catering should give tradesmen such as army butchers, cooks, and bakers a better training. Even in our National Socialistic welfare state, there are many who need a swift and powerful kick in the slats. Welfare creates laziness and indifference. Everyone is looking for a comfortable chair in which he can plant his well-upholstered arse and wait for pension time to arrive. Herr Stabsfeldwebel, all this welfare is quite unnatural. It is best for man to have to chase after his food in the sweat of his brow. Then he is good and obedient and says thank you nicely when something is given to him.
‘But what happens now, when everybody has an abundance of everything? They all want more and even envy their wives the little something they sometimes get from a generous outsider. A society like that breeds informers, provocateurs, and is the sure way to ruin! Socialism they call it! A paradise for pampered pets, is what I call it! Pah!’
Brumme refuses to believe his own ears. This is the sharpest criticism of the National Socialist regime he has heard to date. He is completely in agreement with Porta but isn’t going to admit it. Porta sharpens the long butcher’s knife with practiced strokes and pulls a whole side of beef over to him.
‘A roast
cannot
be cut as you and your slaves do it. Have you never heard of sinews and muscles or the treacherous small bones?’
Brumme shakes his head and gives up trying to follow him.
‘Think of the underskin,’ shouts Porta, pleasurably. ‘It is Nature’s own secret building system used for everything which lives, whether on two legs or four, from a Sankt Pauli
whore to a striped East Galician sow. You would be completely on your arse, kicking, my dear Herr Stabsfeldwebel, if you were not provided with an inner skin. This is something every butcher must know, since without this knowledge he cannot excise a roast. It is a special gimmick which holds the whole affair together. Here a fine incision is required. I imagine you can follow me, Herr Stabsfeldwebel,’ shouts Porta superciliously. ‘A long lovely incision to the vena peniscellum. That has nothing to do with the penis. Do you know what the penis is, Herr Stabsfeldwebel?’ he asks with a wide smile. Brumme, who by now resembles an overheated boiler which needs a valve opened to release surplus steam, is unable to answer.
‘The penis,’ continues Porta, ‘is that comically limp piece of gristle which depends, swinging, between the legs of men, and is called, by uncultured persons, the prick. See now, we continue the cutting so, and we have a roast which could be put on show at any art exhibition, and, slapped on to a piece of canvas, would pull in a safe first prize in the shape of a gold medal. It’s exactly the same as when they twist a rusty cycle-frame out of shape and weld a kettle where the handlebars usually are and then a part from a WC in place of the saddle. It is quite simply, Great Art! The wild dream of a DT patient which nobody understands
shit
about. Nevertheless any provincial Civic Council will, with pleasure, use the tax-payers’ hard-earned money to obtain the wonder for exhibition in their home town culture park. Do you remember, Herr Stabsfeldwebel, that beautiful play which was acted at the Bergtheater with Emil Jannings in the role of the Great Elector. I am thinking of the third act where this national scoundrel is sitting with half a deer between his teeth and the juices from it running down over his jabot. Now this is not merely a play, Herr Stabsfeldwebel, but something which really happened, when the Great Elector lay encamped near the wine slopes of the mountains north of Salzburg, looking hungrily towards the castle. The cook, who had prepared the venison, was a master of masters, originally a butcher from
Berlin-Moabitt. He was promoted to Oberst with the right to wear a sword of honour decorated in the national colours.’
‘Heavens,’ says Brumme in confusion, ‘can that really happen to a cook?’
‘Very seldom,’ answers Porta. ‘As far as I know it has happened only twice in the history of the world. But here we have a really excellent roast,’ he cries enthusiastically, patting the large piece of meat affectionately.
‘It’s a
real
roast,’ praises Brumme in surprise. ‘It really belongs on the table of the Commanding General but, since he knows nothing of its existence, I feel we should eat it ourselves and make a night of it.’
‘I am not such a villain as to protest,’ smiles Porta. ‘Hunger has always been my greatest problem. Even when I have eaten my way through the pleasures of a well-laid table and convinced myself that I am satisfied, suddenly my eye will fall on a greedy pig packing himself with stuffed pigeon. Immediately my insatiable stomach begins to grown and the saliva floods between my teeth. At such a moment I am capable of committing murder to get my teeth into my neighbour’s pigeon. Usually I can get a couple of bones quickly enough for my stomach to be fooled for a few minutes! After a belch or two I start off all over again.
‘Sometimes I’ve said to myself: “Now you really can’t get another morsel down you, Herr Porta!” But the smell of a well-prepared hare from the other side of the street is enough to set me going as if I’d been seasick fourteen days in a row with the lining of my stomach turned inside out. If I can’t get it any other way then I’ll degrade myself, the Holy Virgin aid me, to stealing the odorous hare out of the hands of a hungry scoundrel of an officer. This unbearable hunger has been my lot since birth. At home we had a padlock on the larder door. My brothers and sisters and I were known as “the Locusts”. We were known all over Berlin, Herr Stabsfeldwebel. You may not believe me, but I could eat cartridge cases and wash them down with warm Polish water. For
me
food does not need to be of the best quality, such as German Army waste. If nothing
better is available I can make do with the French or Russian Army’s muck. Ordinary home-cooking such as: sauerkraut, rice balls, butter-fried leeks, pease pudding and curried chicken can turn me into a hungry tiger. I dare not tell you what happens inside me when my eyes fall on mashed potatoes with those small cubes of pork, or a mixed fish pudding with various sauces. Herr Stabsfeldwebel, I must ask you to provide me with a double helping, when we sit down to table to celebrate this unexpected meeting. I think we understand one another!’