Crack of Doom (19 page)

Vohringer raised his head a bit and stared at him. Then he dropped his head again and groaned.

The two Gestapo men looked at him in amazement. "What's wrong with him?" asked the Fat One.

Herbig went over. "Anything the matter?"

"Throw the beggars out," groaned Vohringer.

The Redhead looked at Herbig in confusion. "What's he got against us?"

"He's got something against everyone," Herbig enlightened them. He bent down for Vohringer's tommy-gun, which was lying near the door. "Can either of you handle this?"

The two men eyed each other in embarrassment. "Not that one," said the Fat One. "I can manage a submachine gun all right, but . . ."

"This is the same. If you can work one, you can work the other." He showed them how to put the magazine in and set the gun at continuous fire. "A child could handle one," he said. "I wish we had a dozen more here. What interests me most now is why you've come to Oviz."

"Wish we'd never seen the place," grunted the Fat One, and told Herbig how they had driven straight to Szomolnok, where they found only Lieutenant Menges. In Oviz they stopped at the first house, and inquired about the NKVD man.

"You mean to say there's an NKVD man here and you simply drove up in your car?" Herbig asked.

The Fat One made a grimace. "What could we do about it? It's just like the inspector. In Dobsina he. . . ."

"Doesn't interest me," Herbig cut in rudely. From this place near the window he could see the shot-up car, with the dead partisan lying on his stomach a few yards away, already covered by snow. "Looks as if the NKVD chap must have known him," he remarked.

The Fat One cautiously took up position near Herbig and glanced out at the corpse. "Of course—it was he that led us here. We caught him with some others in Kosice blowing up the district headquarters. He obviously knew he'd get this sort of reception, otherwise he wouldn't have denied knowing which house the man lived in. If you hadn't called to us, we'd have run exactly the wrong way."

"You should have dropped behind the car, instead of hopping around in the street like frightened chickens. By the way, do you know why we are here?"

"The inspector heard about it from your adjutant. But back at division they think you're real deserters."

"Good God," said Herbig, stunned. "Why hasn't anyone told them?"

"I've no idea. I wasn't present when the inspector talked to your adjutant, we had to stay in the car to watch the prisoner. He only told us afterward that you weren't deserters at all. Weren't there three of you?"

"There still
are
three of us, I hope," Herbig said. "But one of us had better go."

"Where to," asked the Fat One, looking startled.

"To Szomolnok. We need a truck for the casualty."

"Out of the question. You can't set foot outside the door. He can die here as well as in a hospital. Out of the question," the Fat One repeated.

"It'd be plain suicide," the other hastily agreed.

"Then I'll go myself."

"You're staying here." They all looked at Vohringer. "You're staying here," Vohringer repeated. With his bloodless lips, yellow skin and shriveled face, he already looked like a dead man.

Herbig went over to him. "Aren't these two enough for you?"

"They can go hang themselves. If a partisan sticks out his tongue at them, they'll faint on the spot. The hole in my belly is enough for me, I don't want my throat cut as well."

"But just now you said I should get a doctor."

"I've changed my mind. We'll wait till Kolodzi comes."

"Hope we don't wait till we're blue in the face."

"Not with that conscientious bastard," said Vohringer, pressing his hands to his stomach and screwing up his face. "He's just as dense as you."

Herbig turned to the Gestapo men, who had followed this brief conversation with blank expressions. "All right, you can stay here. But you know that the spot we're in will get tighter and tighter. The partisans are sure to be getting reinforcements." Herbig went into the bedroom with them and pointed through the window to the edge of the wood. "They may try to get in this way. The kitchen's next door, but it only has a small window, they won't come through that." After giving them some more instructions, he returned to the front room.

"Do you want a cigarette?" Herbig asked. Vohringer moved his head feebly. "It'll soon be over," he said.

"No, it's just starting."

"Not for me. My pains have stopped, and when you stop feeling pain with a thing like this, it's the beginning of the end. I'm still thirsty, though."

Herbig brought him some water. "A bucket of brandy would be better for you now. Don't you really want a cigarette?"

"Yes."

Herbig pushed it between Vohringer's lips, and noticed his own hands were shaking. He went back to the window. "If only I knew what those boys were up to," he said. "And I wonder where the civilians are. The woman isn't in the kitchen any more. Did you notice how she stinks?"

"Like the Russians," said Vohringer, grinning with his yellow face. It was painful for Herbig to see but he suppressed this feeling and said, "Yes, just like the Russians."

"What we've been through," said Vohringer, the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

"Plenty," Herbig agreed.

He looked out of the window again. The dead partisan on the street was gradually being covered by the snow. He had his face turned the other way so that Herbig could only see his reddish hair, parts of which still glinted in the snow like the embers from a heap of cinders. There was nothing more to be seen of the two in the car. A thick blanket of snow had covered up the shattered windshield. Somewhere a dog barked, and Herbig noticed how quiet it was in the room.

"Are they coming?" Vohringer asked sleepily.

Herbig looked at him. "What's the matter with you?"

"Don't know, I'm so sleepy."

"Then sleep on."

Vohringer moved his arm a bit. "Damn."

"Does it hurt?"

"No, only I can't get my arm up. D'you mind scratching me, my face is itching."

Herbig rubbed his cheeks. "Here?"

"Yes, that's fine. If only I knew what was wrong with my arms."

"They'll be all right again soon."

"I don't understand it," Vohringer muttered indistinctly. It was an effort for him to keep his eyes open. "Now it's becoming funny," he went on. "After all, I'm pretty tough."

"Nobody said you weren't."

"They'd better not. But it's so funny. If I close my eyes, I feel I'm falling."

"You've got fever."

"Seems like it." After a while he said softly: "Listen."

"Yes."

"Just in case. She doesn't need to know about getting it in the guts."

"Who?"

"My wife. Just in case, you know. Write to her that it was a head wound."

"All right. If you think so."

Vohringer smiled at him. "Sometimes one can talk to you. That idiot Kolodzi should make sure he runs before it's too late."

"You can tell him so yourself."

Vohringer stopped smiling and looked up at Herbig in silence.

"All right," said Herbig grimly. "I'm sure we can manage without him."

"You'll never see sense," Vohringer answered.

Five minutes later he was dead.

Herbig stayed sitting by the dead man's side for some time, then he took Vohringer s blanket, laid it over his face, took the pack with the ammunition over to the window, and looked out on to the street. His mind was a blank. He had no idea how much time had gone by when he heard gun fire behind the house. He rushed over to the bedroom, where a glance showed him that the two Gestapo men had nothing to do with the fire. He looked across to the edge of the wood, and saw Kolodzi, standing between the trees with his legs apart, firing his tommy-gun at someone who was out of Herbig's view.

Now Kolodzi dashed across with his head down and vaulted over the garden fence; the sub-machine guns were still hammering away from the left. Herbig chewed his lip excitedly. Kolodzi was making directly for the window. When Herbig yelled out his name, he gave a start, then came bounding along, and hurled his legs over the window-sill. His first glance fell upon the two Gestapo men who stared back at him in amazement. "Who are they?" he asked.

"Gestapo," answered Herbig. He had a strange feeling in his bones, a sort of delayed-action shock from all he had been through.

Kolodzi's face froze, then he realized that the two men, although curious about his sudden appearance, seemed to have no personal interest in him. He looked out of the window. "There are at least ten of those boys," he said. "I found their tracks in the woods. Is it you they're after?"

Herbig sprang to life, remembering that there was now no one at the front window. He rushed back to the other room, and there breathed again; nothing had changed. He heard steps behind him.

Herbig looked at Kolodzi's face and from there to Vohringer. Kolodzi hadn't seen Vohringer till then, but now he went over to the corpse and lifted the blanket from his face.

"He said you should run," said Herbig.

Kolodzi slowly turned his face toward Herbig. "When did he say it?"

"Not long before he went. You should have come sooner."

"Did he say that too?"

"No, that's what I say."

Kolodzi dropped the blanket again and sat down on the bench by the stove. "I've run from Szomolnok in two hours."

"You should have stayed here."

"I did more than anyone else would have done in my place."

"Anyone else wouldn't have left us stranded on our own here."

Kolodzi was silent. His hard features looked suddenly corroded, the scar seemed deeper than usual. "How did it happen?" he asked after a pause. Herbig told him.

"One of us must go to Szomolnok," said Kolodzi, gazing at the car in the street. He noticed the dead civilian. "Who's that?"

"Some partisan from Ko§ice. They caught him. . . ."

"I see. . . ." Kolodzi leaned against the wall and looked hard at Herbig. "You haven't yet told me why Vohringer went to the sanatorium?"

"How would I know?"

"You're more level-headed than he was. Why didn't you stop him?"

"Didn't see him go. I was in the kitchen."

"Cleared off for no reason at all?" asked Kolodzi suspiciously.

Herbig stuck out his jaw. "Let's get one thing clear. It was his own fault. You know well enough that he never listened to anything I said. Why didn't you tell me where you were going?"

Kolodzi did not answer. His fury subsided abruptly, like a fountain when the water is turned off. He felt he was doing Herbig an injustice. The idea that Vohringer might still have been alive if he hadn't left him alone with Herbig, made him feel more and more remorseful every minute. The pressure of guilt was so strong in him that it stifled every other emotion. Wearily he moved away from the wall and back to the window.

"He was too trusting," he said. "Unless one actually beat him over the head, he thought everybody was a decent fellow."

"He didn't think that of me."

"You never understood him."

"He never understood me."

"You made it too damned hard for him. But the swine over there shall pay for this."

"But they're your dear fellow-countrymen."

"So dear they hanged my father."

"Your. . . ." Herbig's face turned very red. "The bastards!"

"Yes," said Kolodzi and looked again into the street at the dead civilian, or rather the heap of snow covering the body. Although this was all he could see, he felt oddly uneasy all of a sudden. "If the man was from Kosice," he said to Herbig, "I may know him. Did you hear what his name was?"

"No, but you can ask the M.P.S. He had red hair, too. Perhaps they're related."

Kolodzi's face grew pale. He rushed to the M.P.s. "What was the name of the dead partisan?"

"Oh, hell, I don't know," the Fat One scratched his head and turned to the Redhead. "Wasn't it something like Krasko?"

The Redhead's voice reached Kolodzi as though through a padded wall. He returned to Herbig, who took the cigarette out of his mouth as Kolodzi came up.

"D'you know him?" asked Herbig.

Kolodzi looked through the window on the heap of snow. "He was my fiancee's father."

"This is getting too thick for me," said Herbig. "Did you know he was with the partisans?"

"I guessed."

"Then I'd have told him where he got off, if I'd been you." Kolodzi's face looked so empty and pale that Herbig felt sorry for him. "What'll you do now?" he asked.

"No idea," said Kolodzi. "My fiancee and my mother are at Kosice. If the front goes back any further, I'll be leaving them stranded there."

"They can go back too, can't they?"

"My mother is very sick."

"Then they'll just have to wait till we return to Kosice."

"Do you seriously think we'll get back to Kosice once we've lost it?"

"Why not?"

Kolodzi looked at his indifferent face and from there toward the body of Vohringer, whom he had stopped from deserting, and who now could not desert any longer. He thought of Vohringer's wife, and when he tried to imagine her face, it suddenly turned into Maria's face, and it was her voice, sounding as distinctly in his ears as if she were there before him, as if he only needed to take her by the hand and go with her to Baska.

He turned to Herbig wearily. "One of us should go to Szomolnok."

"Suicide," said Herbig.

"The whole war is suicide. There's only one explanation for things over there being so quiet: the partisans are expecting more men. Once they're there it will be hopeless trying to get out even by night. Two hours to Szomolnok and two hours back—you can easily do it before dark."

"Here, wait a moment," Herbig swung around. "You said one of us."

"What is the difference," Kolodzi said tiredly. "Now I happened to say
you're
going. Are you afraid?"

Instead of answering, Herbig said: "I suppose you don't want anyone left who might mention that you were in Kosice."

"You'll have enough chance of mentioning it in Szomolnok."