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“Right, come on," said Cadet Rednitz, sounding the advance.
Mösler and Egon Weber followed him excitedly, holding their bottles by their necks and swinging them like hand-grenades. They crouched low as they hopped across the concrete road of the barracks and disappeared into the Kommandantur, determined to take the communications center and the girls by storm.
When they got there, however, they found others there before them.
Captain Feders, Section H's tactics instructor, sat enveloped in thick clouds of cigarette smoke, thinking, writing and smoking, in a state of complete exhaustion. He tried to concentrate on his class's subject for the following day: transport of an infantry battalion by rail. But utterly without success. And sleep wouldn't come to him.
The night seemed to be filled with a dull roaring, as if of distant aircrafts, or trains running continuously on the other side of the hill. But he knew this was an illusion. The darkness all about him was empty save for the wreathing cigarette smoke, the bare walls of the room and the floor-boards which let in the cold. No sound reached his ears—none of the sounds of the life around him: the breathing of a thousand sleeping men, their groans and muffled heart-beats under the bed-clothes, the gurgling of water-pipes, the scraping of the sentries' boots, the panting somewhere or other of a couple of lovers. He knew that all this was there, but heard none of it.
Captain Feders, the tactics instructor, was one of the cleverest brains in the training school, the sort of man who could never help trying to tie people up in knots, and who was always being tempted into sarcasm, being a great scoffer and fond of debunking for its own sake. Whenever he sensed that he had any sort of audience he wore a permanent, cold, ironical smile on his face. But when he was alone, as now, he was a tired man with a haggard face, whose eyes showed him to be tortured and desperate.
He listened anxiously, wanting to hear something only in order to prove to himself that what his reason told him was there really existed. He drew at a cigarette—he heard that. He blew smoke out of his mouth—he heard that too. His wife lay in the bedroom. She must have been tossing about restlessly, pushing the blankets away, breathing noisily—but however hard he listened he heard nothing.
“It’s as if everything were dead," said Feders to himself” Everything seems to be decaying."
Marion, his wife, had been called up for military service like all the other women in the barracks. The previous officer in command of the training school had arranged for her posting to Wildlingen-am-Main, simply as an act of generosity. He saw to it that the couple got a small apartment in the guest house, for Frau Marion Feders knew how to exercise her charm.
The present commanding officer, Major-General Modersohn, tacitly accepted the situation. It could hardly be supposed that he would allow it to continue indefinitely. For Modersohn didn't seem to recognize such a thing as private life, and certainly not at his training school. This suited Feders, particularly in the circumstances, though he hadn't the strength to tell his wife openly.
He forced himself to concentrate. He wanted to hear her, in order to realize again—over and over again—what a desperate senseless business it all was. But he heard nothing. He got up, went over to the door that led into the bedroom, opened it and switched on the center light.
And there lay Marion, his wife, with her short, bright blonde hair. The bedclothes had slipped from her strong, sunburned shoulders, and he noted the clean sweep of her hips and the magic of her skin glistening with the sweat of sleep.
“Are you coming to bed?" she asked, blinking, and rolling over on to her back.
“No," he said.
“Why don't you?" She was so sleepy that her lips hardly moved.
“I just wanted to get a book," said Feders, picking up a book that lay on the bedside table. Then he turned his head abruptly, put out the light and left the room.
He returned to his desk and stood in front of it for a while. He put the book aside and stared at the harsh light, at the billowing clouds of smoke from a couple of dozen cigarettes, and beyond, into the darkness which seemed to lie in wait for him. And in that moment it finally became clear to him that life—his life at any rate—was rotten and useless. Hardly worth bothering to do away with.
The moon rose higher. The hard silhouette of the barracks melted in the pale frostiness of the night, until all outlines disappeared. Roofs seemed to become flatter; roads merged with patches of lawn into an indeterminate greyness, and it was as if the walls of the place simply sank into the earth. A flat uniformity seemed to absorb everything.
The thousand human beings there were now lost to the world. Hardly a man among them was not sunk deep in oblivion. Even the sentry dozed wearily. He had lost almost all sense of his surroundings by now. The utter emptiness all about him was like some infinite extension of his own state of mind. The most comfortable of all worlds to guard would have been one in which all life was extinct.
As the hours slipped by they stripped the sentry of all personality; of his vague emotions, his cautious appetites, his rare flickering of purpose, and his overwhelming despondency. He merely patrolled his beat: a mechanical being with a brain that was already asleep.
The hills above Wildlingen-am-Main on which the barracks now stood had once been covered with vineyards, where, barely two centuries ago, a wine had been bottled under the label “Wildlinger Galgenberg." A dry, fruity, full-bodied wine, so the connoisseurs said. But then times had changed for the worse, and people turned from wine to schnapps, which made them drunk more quickly.
Then, however, times had become great and heroic again, as the newspapers and radio stations never ceased to proclaim. The German people, it was said, had once again become conscious of their great and glorious traditions. And so one fine morning in the year 1934 a truck drove up on to the hills. Army officers, engineers and officials looked, nodded, and gave the word. Wildlingen was found worthy to become a garrison town, a decision which caused great joy to the citizens of Wildlingen, who liked to serve the nation, particularly when they were well paid for doing so.
Two years later the barracks was built, and soon afterwards an infantry battalion moved in, and money started rolling into the pockets of the citizens of Wildlingen. Tears came into their eyes when they beheld their valiant soldiers. And the birth-rate rose astonishingly.
When war came the infantry battalion was replaced by an infantry reserve battalion. Otherwise there was little change. The brave citizens no longer wept from emotion, but the birthrate continued to rise, for procreation and death proved themselves effective partners.
In the second year of the war the barracks above Wildlingen were transformed into Number 5 Officers' Training School, whose first commanding officer was Major-General Ritter von Trippler, later killed at the eastern front. The second commanding officer, Colonel Sänger, fell victim to a prosecution for a misappropriation of Wehrmacht property. The third commanding officer was Colonel Freiherr von Fritschler and Geierstein, who was relieved of his duties for demonstrable incompetence and given a post in the Balkans, where he was highly decorated. The fourth commanding officer was Major-General Modersohn.
Major-General Modersohn now lay quietly asleep in his bed, breathing regularly. It was almost as if he were ceremonially laid out in his coffin, for there was no situation in life in which Modersohn's attitude was not exemplary.
Wirrmann, the Judge-Advocate, was also asleep. He lay there breathing heavily as if packed between documents and covered with the dust of many court-martials. Kater, commander of the headquarters company, had fallen into a similar sort of heavy sleep. Three bottles of red wine kept all his worries at bay.
Elfrida Rademacher still lay beside Lieutenant Krafft. And their expressions made it clear that they hoped the night would never end.
Captain Ratshelm smiled in his sleep. He saw himself in his dream standing beside a pure, vigorous young wife in a meadow full of flowers, surrounded by a troop of adorable healthy children. And all of them both spouse and progeny were cadets: cadets of his training school, on his course, cadets of his company—his very own cadets!
But none of the cadets were dreaming about Captain Ratshelm, not even Hochbauer. He hardly ever dreamt. If he occasionally gave in to daydreams while awake, these were shot with reds and golds and browns, and they revolved round visions of titanic glory, of mighty achievement and renown. Every imaginable sacrifice for the great goal! In times of desperation, his beloved Führer had wielded a house-painter's brush; he too was ready for a similar sacrifice, if there was no alternative.
Cadets Mösler, Rednitz and Weber had gone to sleep in a great state of dissatisfaction. They had been deeply disappointed to find the terrain they coveted already occupied. But they hadn't given up hope. After all, the course had only just begun—a mere twenty-one days ago. Eight full weeks still lay ahead of them, and they were determined to make the best possible use of them.
Captain Feders still couldn't get to sleep. He stared at his watch: the hands crawled round with appalling slowness. He closed his eyes. And he felt how lust reached out with quivering tentacles into nothingness. And he saw only a hopeless void. All was dead. Life was a mere transition between death and death. All was rottenness.
The sentry on the gate yawned.
6. A SECTION OFFICER REQUIRED
“I was told to report to the General at ten,” said Lieutenant Krafft to the girl who looked up to see what he wanted.
“Then I must ask you to wait until that time, Lieutenant.”
Krafft looked pointedly at his watch. It was five minutes to ten. He drew attention to the fact and even tapped his wristwatch.
“Quite correct,” said the girl with friendly aloofness. “You’re five minutes early.”
The name of the girl he was speaking to was Sybille Bachner. She worked in the General's ante-room under Bieringer, the A.D.C., who however wasn't there just then, being busy probably checking the bread ration for his commanding officer. Anyhow, Sybille Bachner seemed determined to apply the General's principles, and simply left Krafft standing there.
Krafft promptly sat down in the A.D.C.'s chair. He crossed his legs and eyed Sybille Bachner with interest.
After a while he said: “So you're the General's principal assistant, so to speak. You'll notice I choose my words with care.”
“I’m employed here as secretary, Lieutenant, and that's the full extent of my duties or obligations. Anything else you'd like to know?”
There was a certain tolerance about Sybille Bachner's smile. She seemed quite used to being eyed like this and having to submit to questions.
“How long have you been in this outfit actually, Fräulein Bachner?” inquired Krafft.
“Longer than the General,” said Sybille, giving him a cool, impersonal smile. “Isn’t that what you want to know, Lieutenant? The General neither brought me with him nor applied for me to be posted here. He simply took me over.”
“In every respect?”
“My duties weren't limited in any way.”
Sybille Bachner said this quite ingenuously, straightening a stack of paper on the little typing table beside her as she did so. She seemed anxious to get on with her work, which gave Krafft plenty of opportunity to observe her more closely.
This girl Sybille Bachner occupied a rather special position among the women in the barracks, for she worked in a proximity to the commanding officer that made discretion imperative. A room of her own was intended to help her preserve this quality but unlike most of the other women's rooms this did not lie in a separate corridor of the headquarters building but in the so-called guest house. Not so far away from where the General himself lived.
This prompted a good deal of speculation. With anyone else the inference would have been obvious. But with Modersohn things were different. Few people found themselves able to imagine that a general like him could be beset by ordinary human weaknesses, and those that did were influenced primarily by Sybille Bachner's looks, which seemed to make absolutely any sort of weakness understandable. For she was a dark, Latin type of beauty of about twenty-five, and her skin was soft and the color of apricots and her large eyes were black as night. Silky hair framed her face like a shawl, a face dominated by slightly prominent cheek-bones and a soft, sensual mouth.
Krafft stopped eyeing the Bachner girl as soon as it became clear that she was interested only in work. Secretaries in important posts in ante-rooms were usually only interested in work, and he hadn't noticed a single gesture of hers, or heard one word, which suggested that she wished to be treated as someone who had the commanding officer's ear. She was neither ostentatiously formal nor absurdly refined. And in any case for him she represented simply a brief encounter soon to be forgotten, for he felt sure that before many minutes were up, his short stay at the training school would be over.
“It’s ten o'clock, Lieutenant Krafft,” said Sybille Bachner pleasantly. “Go in, please.”
“Just like that?” asked Krafft in astonishment. For the Bachner girl had neither left the room nor made a telephone call. Neither had any little bell been rung, nor message been given to her. She had simply looked at the clock.
“It’s ten o'clock,” said Sybille Bachner, and her smile broadened slightly. “The General thinks punctuality very important and keeps to his daily schedule exactly. Go in please, Lieutenant, don't bother to knock.”
Sybille Bachner was left alone in the General's ante-room, looking at the walls, which were hung with nothing but training schedules. Documents, files, regulations lay all over the place—on the A.D.C.'s table, on her own table, on shelves, on the window-sills and even on the floor. She was literally surrounded by work. She pulled open one of the drawers. In it lay a mirror in which she looked at herself thoughtfully. She felt depressed by what she saw. She was gradually growing old, wasting her life here among papers and the rattle of typewriter keys, stuck in one of the culs-de-sac of the war.
She heard footsteps approaching and hurriedly closed her drawer again: The A.D.C. came in. Her looking-glass face vanished and she shifted a bundle of papers in front of her.
“Well,” asked Lieutenant Bieringer, the A.D.C., “is this fellow Krafft with the General?”
Sybille Bachner nodded. “He was only five minutes early,” she said, “and didn't seem particularly overawed. On the contrary, he was even rather fresh.”
This was really a compliment. Most people seemed to regard the ante-room as the antechamber to hell, and those who gathered here were either anxious and nervous or absurdly stiff. They usually arrived at least ten minutes early in order to make sure of being punctual. Krafft, then, at least was not one of this servile minority.
“Fresh, did you say, Fräulein Bachner? Do you like him?”
“I found the man extremely sure of himself.”
“Not a bad start,” said Bieringer.
“I wasn't thinking of starting anything,” said Sybille Bachner abruptly.
“But why not?” suggested Bieringer. “You know what a high opinion I have of you, Fräulein Bachner, and my wife loves you like a sister. We're worried about you, though. You work too hard and are alone too much. Don't you think it might be good for you to allow yourself a little relaxation?”
Sybille Bachner looked the A.D.C. straight in the eye. Bieringer's smooth, rather pale face wasn't much to write home about. He looked rather like someone who was hoping to be a teacher, and was certainly not what could be called a soldierly type. But he was a man with a sixth sense for everything that concerned the General, taking the place for him of a calculating machine and a whole bundle of notebooks and thus preserving him from a vast amount of unnecessary work.
“Herr Bieringer,” said Sybille Bachner, “I’m completely satisfied with my job here. I find no need of any relaxation.”
The A.D.C. pretended to be very busy with a file of documents.
“Well,” he said slowly and with certain wariness, “that is only as it should be. After all, the General is wholly dedicated to his work too. And he has no need of any relaxation either.”
“Kindly keep any unnecessary remarks of that sort to yourself, Herr Bieringer,” said Sybille Bachner indignantly.
“By all means,” said the A.D.C., “by all means that is in so far as they are unnecessary. Believe me, my dear Fräulein Bachner, I've known the General for a long time now; since long before you knew him. You can be quite sure of one thing: he neither has any private life nor ever will have any. And if you're clever you'll find yourself someone who will distract you in time from any false hopes you may be entertaining—someone like this fellow Lieutenant Krafft, for example. Always provided, of course, that this fellow Krafft stays with us. But that's for the General to decide.”
“Lieutenant Krafft, sir, reporting as ordered.”
Major-General Modersohn was sitting behind his desk, which was placed exactly opposite the door. The seven yards or so between him and the door was covered by a plain green hair-cord runner. In front of the desk stood a single hard chair.
The General was busy making extracts from a document and didn't seem to want to interrupt his work. He merely said without looking up: “Come in, please, Lieutenant Krafft. Sit down.”
Krafft obeyed. Modersohn seemed to be making quite a fuss of him. All he had expected was two or three annihilating sentences, a curt and brutal ejection in the unmistakable language of a pure-bred Prussian.
But the General seemed to be taking his time.
“Lieutenant Krafft,” began Modersohn, looking straight at his visitor for the first time, quite impersonally yet with the intensive scrutiny of someone who is a complete master of his subject. “Have you any idea why you were posted to this training school?”
“No, General,” said the Lieutenant truthfully enough. “Do you think your ability had anything to do with it?” “I don't suppose so, General.”
“You don't suppose so?” drawled Modersohn. He never liked this expression. An officer didn't “suppose “anything—he “knew,” he “assumed,” he “held it as his opinion.” “Well?”
“I assume, General, that my ability was not the decisive factor in my posting.”
“What was, then?”
“An officer was due to be posted from my unit and the choice fell on me.”
“There was no reason for this?”
“I don't know the reason, General.”
Lieutenant Krafft didn't feel entirely at ease. He had come prepared for a severe dressing down from the General, not for an interrogation. So he tried to fall back on the traditional technique of the old soldier and acted dumb, answering everything as shortly as possible, and appearing to agree with his superior officer at every opportunity. This was a technique which usually saved considerable time and trouble. Not with Modersohn, however.
The General pulled towards him a writing-pad that lay on his desk. “Have you seen your personal file, Lieutenant?” he asked.
“No, General,” said Krafft in some astonishment but also truthfully enough. Modersohn was slightly taken aback by this. (Not that anyone would have realized the fact. His hand, which was on the point of thrusting the writing-pad away, merely stopped for a second.) For the General knew the form. Personal files were theoretically “Secret,” but there were always ways and means of getting a look at them if only one were determined and smart enough. And this fellow Krafft was smart, the General could see that. So there was only one conclusion to be drawn, namely that he had had no wish to take a look; his personal file was a matter of indifference to him. Presumably he knew from experience how haphazardly these accumulations of paper were compiled.
“Why do you think you were made an officer of the headquarters company in this training school and not an officer among the cadets?”
This was a question that Krafft had often asked himself. He had been posted here nominally to train cadets, but had immediately found himself stuck with Captain Kater and all the other canteen heroes. Why this should be so he had absolutely no idea.
“I assume that there was just one officer too many for the course, General, and that one had to be transferred to the headquarters company, that it was just a coincidence that it happened to be me.”
“There are no coincidences of that sort in my command, Lieutenant Krafft.”
Krafft should of course have known this. But since the General seemed to be asking for frank answers to his questions, the Lieutenant didn't hesitate to give them to him after his fashion.
“Well, General,” he said, “I assume that I'm regarded as an awkward sort of fellow, and there's even a certain amount of truth in that. Wherever I go, I find myself posted again almost at once. I'm gradually getting used to the fact.”
The General was not impressed. “Lieutenant Krafft,” he said, “I gather from your personal file that certain differences arose between you and your former regimental commander, Colonel Holzapfel. I wonder if you would be so good as to enlighten me further about this.”
“General,” Krafft replied almost light-heartedly, “I had occasion to lay certain information against Colonel Holzapfel regarding misappropriation of ration supplies. The Colonel used to move about with his own baggage train, and not only thought it proper to withhold rations from the front-line troops but also deprived them of military vehicles in order to transport his spoils to the rear. The Colonel was court-martialled, severely reprimanded, and posted elsewhere. It was his successor who transferred me to the training school.”
“You had no misgivings, Lieutenant Krafft, about laying information against a superior officer?”
“No, General. For it was not a superior officer against whom I was laying information but a swindler.”
The General did not indicate what he thought of this answer. Without further introduction he suddenly asked: “Have you concluded your investigations into this alleged rape of the day before yesterday?”
“Yes, General.”
“With what results?”
“A summary of evidence on a charge of rape would not be justified by the facts. The three girls maintain, plausibly enough, that at first they merely intended to play a joke. They couldn't foresee that it would get out of hand. Moreover, three empty bottles were found on the scene of the alleged crime. Corporal Krottenkopf admits to having drunk one of these all by himself in the course of the proceedings. A detail which effectually rules out rape. The whole affair should be dealt with on a disciplinary level.”