Blitzfreeze (21 page)

Brumme laughs long and noisily, without really knowing why but feeling it to be best.

‘I’ve also got some bottles of ’36 wine,’ he fawns when he feels he has laughed long enough.

‘My recruit year!’ shouts Porta in a barrack square voice. ‘The wine
belongs
to us!’

Stabsfeldwebel Brumme snatches the gigantic roast, presses it to his bosom, and rushes to the kitchen to prepare a banquet for himself and the secret commission.

As the meal progresses, the atmosphere becomes more and more friendly. After two hours they have only got to the meat course. They eat like Vikings of old with both fists firmly gripping great chunks of meat. The gnawed bones fly in graceful curves over their shoulders.

Porta eats and drinks as if he aims to split his liver apart in record time. Four times Tiny has to lie across the table while the other two thump him on the back to loosen a couple of pounds of meat stuck in his throat. But when Brumme also begins to choke and only misses death from suffocation by a hairsbreadth, they send for the medical orderly, to stand by in case of a repetition. He is given a normal ration to amuse himself with.

‘The coolies have to eat,’ explains Brumme largely, ‘but who the hell says they have to be satisfied? We NCOs must keep the slaves down or we’re finished. This stuff about “workers of the world unite” isn’t my kind of thing. The only place they ought to be united is in a mass grave!’

‘Little Sir Echo!’ cries Porta as a resounding fart escapes from him between two great gulps of tender meat.

‘These ’ere cultivated types as spell cunt with four bleedin’ dots ain’t for me neither,’ says Tiny with his mouth full of juicy roast.

‘No, by Jesus, you’re right!’ shouts Brumme with a scowl. ‘Just like my boss, Oberintendant Blankenschild, who thinks Stabsfeldwebels are for wiping his arse on. If you could peel his skin off over his ears upwards you’d earn a place of honour at the NCO’s table in Valhalla with the right to fill your boots up with German beer!’

‘Tearing the arse off a Mongolian ape like him would be an easy matter for us,’ boasts Porta throwing a cleanly gnawed thigh-bone over into the corner where the medical orderly is sitting.

‘We’ll rip ’is bleedin’ belly up an’ tie ’is guts round ’is ears, so ’e can only shit backwards,’ Tiny whoops with laughter, and takes a long swig at a bottle. Half of it runs down over his chest.

‘My boss is a fucked-up whoreson bastard who lives on regulations and shits out orders and paperwork like a dysentry patient on his death-bed,’ snuffles Brumme raging. ‘A nigger must’ve pissed in his grandmother’s porridge.’

‘Skoal!’ shouts Porta and swings the big quart-pot over his head, before emptying it in one long slobbering draught.

They drink their own health collectively three times. They drink one another’s individually, and demonstrate a raw heartiness not by any means to be confused with what is called friendship.

‘I’ll explain the position to you, comrade,’ says Brumme confidentially, and helps a great lump of meat on its way down with a bottle of wine. ‘That pig of a suet soldier is a treacherous jackal, a stinking red-arsed baboon, a dirty, depraved south sea cannibal, who ought’ve been eaten by his tribal enemies long ago. Now he puffs himself up in an Oberintendant uniform, the dirty bastard.’ He snatches up a
piece of meat and forces it into his mouth. ‘Bring the
tatar
!’
⁷
he shouts through the open door to his men, who are all on the alert. Most of them have been waiters in civilian life. One of them has, in fact, been headwaiter at ‘Kaminski’.
⁸
He is Brumme’s personal cupbearer. An insurance against the front line and a hero’s death. ‘That stinking Arab,’ Brumme continues his report on the Oberintendant, ‘is so greasy and insinuating that his black conscience oozes right through his skin. There’s no doubt whatsoever. That cunt-eater is readymade material for a court-martial.’

‘We’ll look after him,’ promises Porta readily, laying a piece of ham on top of the
tatar
. ‘Where in the name of hell will the Fatherland be if that kind of meat-basher is allowed to sit there quietly sabotaging the war effort?’ He puts a bottle to his lips and empties the whole contents down his throat without any visible appearance of swallowing. He swills his mouth out thoroughly with the last drops, ready for the fifth course.

‘Don’t you run into a lot of unpleasant things when you’re making these inspections?’ asks Brumme, digging Tiny with brutal friendliness between the ribs.

‘No, we know what we’re doin’. We flatten ’em before they open their yaps, but we’ve got ’eavy weapons back of us, and know all the dirty tricks that’s ever existed,’ says Tiny gently. ‘And nobody’s stupider than ’e was born!’ He gets on his feet and sings in a piercing voice:

A false friend flattered and lied,
And angry and bitter I cried.
I lost my heart and my mind;
A Stabsfeldwebel swung in the wind
.

‘Are there often inspections, here?’ asks Porta interestedly. ‘I’d heard it has been a long time since the last one?’

‘Oh, it’s not so long ago,’ answers Brumme, sourly. ‘The
blasted Nosey Parker’s have got their snouts in all over the place. We need a revolution! Sorry . . .’ he adds politely, as he realizes that his innermost thoughts have run away with him.

‘Quite all right,’ smiles Porta in friendly fashion. ‘Tell me, have you never been
taken
? I mean have you never been visited by a couple of con-men playing at being Control Commission auditors?’

There is a moment of threatening silence in the room, and then Brumme emits a long and violent roar. His face goes an unnatural shade of blue and his eyes pop halfway out of his head. Ten or a dozen blood clots must be on the way to ending his military career. Ten minutes or more are needed for him to come back to normal.

‘God’s death! If anybody had the nerve to try
that
on Stabsfeldwebel Brumme!’ he gasps. ‘I’d send the bastards to feed the heroes in single rations of mince meat.’ He hammers his knife into a piece of meat lying on the table and hacks away at it madly. ‘I’d cut their God-damned arseholes out! Like this! And this!’

‘I’d recommend you be on your toes, nevertheless,’ says Porta in his friendly manner. ‘You’ve no idea how many of these swindlers there are about trying to con Supplies NCOs and civil servants. We’ve run across quite a few of them!’

‘It won’t happen to
me
,’ Brumme assures him. ‘I can smell that kind of gaol-bait, before they even start their spiel. That kind of thing should carry the death penalty. Mother-fuckers they are! Dying’s too good for ’em!’

‘Dead men are always good men,’ intones Tiny unctuously.

After four and a half hours of unbroken eating they arrive at the dessert. A freshly-made apple charlotte. Porta takes half of it immediately, pours in half a bottle of cognac and stirs it to a thick soup which he drinks noisily.

‘Enjoy life while you’ve still got it,’ he grins. ‘Both the Nazis and the Communists are trying hard to take it away from you!’

‘If I’d known it was that dangerous, I’d never ’ave let meself get bleedin’ born,’ sighs Tiny sadly, throwing half a black pudding into his apple charlotte. He says it tastes wonderful.

The former head waiter from ‘Kaminski’ serves champagne. A bottle apiece. Less than a bottle a man is unthinkable at a German stag-party. Brumme has put on a deferentially doltish expression and addresses his guests as ‘Old Goat,’ and ‘Noble Cow.’

‘We should be friends for the rest of our lives,’ decides Tiny waving his arms wildly to emphasize his honest intentions, ‘and we will never wear brown shoes, to avoid being suspected of certain sympathies.’

They embrace and kiss one another on the cheeks in the Russian manner. They are, after all, in Russia.

‘When you get to Hamburg, I’ll introduce you to “Gerda the Gun”,’ promises Tiny. ‘The thing she’s got tucked away in ’er pants ‘d make a bleedin’ gorilla shed ’is ’air an’ ’ide ’is prick in a bleedin’ cactus.’

‘My coolies fear me more than they fear death,’ Brumme’s beery bass rings to the farthest ends of the great slaughterhouse and echoes back again. He throws a meat-bone at the Sanitätsgefreiter.

‘Hop like a kangaroo! Hop till you shit yourself!’ he orders. Proudly he points to the medical orderly who begins to carry out the command immediately. What won’t a man do to avoid the front. ‘That’s what they call discipline!’ He bends confidentially over Tiny. ‘I know just exactly how to kill an enemy so that he’ll stay alive a long time and die badly!’

‘So do we!’ admits Tiny with a satanic laugh.

‘In my unit there is good German order and discipline,’ roars Brumme harshly and shows his clumsy dentures. Beery breath streams out like a banner from his open mouth. The medical orderly and the former headwaiter look as if they are ready to faint.

‘Order is a good and wise thing,’ smiles Porta, beginning again on the first course. ‘So that here it is not necessary to
fear auditors who arrive without warning and stick their old tomatoes into your accounts and stocks. But you look to be an honest man, comrade Brumme!’

An oppressive silence sinks over the room. They watch one another like old experienced tom-cats preparing to go into battle.

‘No idiot, with even a minimum of cunning, blows the war horn straight away,’ says Porta mysteriously. ‘Intelligent people like us prefer to employ the tactics of diplomacy. Why in the world should we take the broad road of idiocy when we can use the narrow path reserved for people with grey matter under their wigs.’

Brumme whinnies delightedly and long, even though he has not understood a word.

‘I’ll give you a nice parcel to take with you when you leave,’ he promises willingly. ‘I knew right away you were real Ironheads,’ he adds grinning noisily. ‘I
did
wonder once if you were a pair of sly wolves, out on a little con,’ he grins with false heartiness and stares cunningly into Porta’s sly blue eyes.

‘Dear friend,’ smiles Porta resignedly. ‘Who hasn’t been doubted since January 1933? Either you’re a dangerous PU
⁹
or an even more dangerous patriot. We live in dangerous times. Duplicity is king. Those you least expect it of are scoundrels. As I told you earlier, Brumme, don’t invite just anybody to sit at your table!’

‘Did you volunteer for the armed forces!’ asks Brumme confidentially, taking a large bite of meat.

‘Volunteer, that’s putting it strongly,’ considers Porta, ‘but on the other hand I have nothing against membership of the weapons club until things get better in Civvy Street. The uniform is good protection at present.’

After coffee and cognac they go out to inspect a new sausage machine.

‘What do you think?’ shouts Brumme proudly, as the
machine, working at full pressure, spews sausages out in long strings.

‘It’s like a cow shitting in a warm shed,’ says Porta without attempting to conceal his astonishment.

‘My Stabsintendant is a holy pig,’ confides Brumme, when they are sitting at the table again, confronting fresh-made sausage swimming in red wine.

‘It’s dangerous! Dangerous as ’ell!’ roars Tiny, trying to drown himself out. ‘In my experience keep away from the ’oly religious leaders ’ere in the Army. Bastards as believe in the life after bleedin’ death don’t give a shit for the few lousy years we ’ave ’ere on earth, an’ take all sorts of bleedin’ risks. They’re sniffin’ at an ’ero’s death an’ a place up there with Abra’am. A bleedin’ ’eathen as only thinks about number one is better. ‘E looks after the one life ’e’s got an’ ’olds back when things get tough. ‘E won’t let ’is slaves dirty their weapons usin’ ’em on the neighbours’ bleedin’ coolies. Then there ain’t no talk of all this revenge shit. Units what’ve got that kind of godless leaders almost always get back intact, whatever they’ve been through. Look at all the fallen padres we ’ave. They mumble a prayer and wander straight into the enemy lead an’ they’re up there with Abra’am before they know where they are.’

The feast of the unholy trinity really steps up the decibels a little after midnight.

Wir halten fest und treu zusammen
Hipp-hipp-hurra! Hipp-hipp-hurra!
Wir halten fest und treu zusammen
Hipp-hipp-hurra! Hipp-hipp-hurra!
¹⁰

they sing, so loudly that they can be heard in the most distant huts.

At two o’clock in the morning they start mixing vodka in their beer and the female personnel are invited to join the
party. They start immediately with strip poker. They’re in a hurry. In the early hours of the morning a highly treasonable speech is made, which would have turned a court-martial white as a sheet. The Führer and his personal guard are discussed intimately in the role of corpses.

Tiny suggests that they should start by throwing red-hot cartridge cases into the mouth of the largest of them and watching the interesting grimaces as the cases cooled on his tongue. Later they could try some of the refinements the Christians had used to convince the heathen during the religious wars.

‘By hell!’ enthuses Brumme. ‘I can’t wait for it! Did y’ever see how the cardinals tortured the holy Emmanuel? There’s a picture of it in the cathedral at Leipzig. They’re jabbing him both here and there with red-hot sabres. The Popes can teach us a lot.’

It is late the next day when life comes back to them. they are, all three, lying in Brumme’s antique bed, an heirloom from Bulgaria.