Iron Gustav (27 page)

‘You
prefer to swim with them, I suppose?'

‘Herr Doctor!' Erich almost shouted.

‘You're not going to throw me out, my boy, are you? What's the use of showing off before me, Erich? Be sensible and listen to reason. You're not a fool – you ought to tell yourself that if a member of the Reichstag personally calls on the unimportant Lieutenant X he doesn't do so merely to exchange a little repartee.'

‘I'm no shirker!'

‘All right, then, you're not. Are you satisfied now? Not yet? Well, Erich, are we going to talk or shall I go?' He did not wait for a reply however. ‘I don't know whether you've followed the debates in the Reichstag, Erich? In the last vote on war credits thirty-one of us voted against them, almost one third of my party group. Don't get alarmed – I don't belong to that section or else I wouldn't be here at the special invitation of GHQ. My party group will probably soon split into a Radical wing against the war and a majority in favour of it.'

Erich looked intently at him. The unpleasantness of a moment ago was forgotten.

‘Of course we aren't really in favour of war either, Erich. If we were really in favour of it two years ago, we've learned much since, Erich. We don't have to come to your nice little base at Lille to know that the nation is no longer united. There's only general discontent now … in the interior. It looks bad in the cities, Erich. There have been riots already.'

‘I heard about them.'

‘Of course you heard about them – things like that can't remain hidden.' The deputy chuckled knowingly. ‘But I say over and over again to my colleagues who vote No – discontent in the interior means nothing so long as the military still rule … So let's go on granting them their credits, let them carry on their war …'

Erich looked nervously at the door and windows.

‘Yes, the morale at the Front,' ruminated the deputy, looking at Erich and falling silent. Then he spoke in a louder voice. ‘This trip to the Front, my dear Erich, has been a very odd affair. We didn't catch a single glimpse of it. Once they showed us a trench – the dugouts were of concrete and I could have sworn that the duckboards had
been scrubbed that same morning. One felt reluctant to step on the clean wood … Yes, that was the trench they showed us.'

He looked at Erich but Erich was still silent.

‘It's as clear as daylight,' said the deputy with sudden determination, ‘that this government will be overthrown as soon as the Front caves in. It has too many enemies both within and without. One only needs to wait. To wait and prepare. And when it gets to that point, then – then we're there. We shall be the only alternative. Because the workers, the proletariat, in fact the whole nation, will trust us.'

‘You want to take over the government after a lost war?' Erich cried. ‘You're counting on a lost war to win power? You must—' He broke off and stared.

‘Be mad, what?' added the deputy. ‘But we're not mad, we're far-sighted. The war at the Front will be lost. Erich, you must know that if you see what's going on here. This is surely not how one wins wars!'

‘And yet you approve of the war credits,' said Erich obstinately.

‘Because we want to win that other war, the world war. Don't you understand, Erich? The other war which has raged since the world began, the war for the poor and wretched, the workers, the proletariat, for all those in chains. That is the war we want to win.'

‘I used to believe in such things once, but haven't done so for ages. Everyone's responsible for himself. It really doesn't look like the redemption of the proletariat, Herr Doctor!'

‘Yes, it does, Erich! That is if you don't just see what's before your eyes, but look from a distance. Eternal peace can only be won when mankind loses faith in military war. This present war
has
to be terrible; it must demand many worse victims. Erich, the Front is about to experience terrible things! In England they're building fighting machines – hidden under the name of tanks – steel monsters without wheels which go over all barbed wire, all trenches … Our military doesn't believe in them, but you'll find out.'

‘And it's a defeated people like that you want to govern?'

‘Erich, we won't be the only ones to lose. Everyone will be defeated. Victims are required if much is to be achieved. The continuation of the war, for which the military needs us, will smash the belief in the military for ever. Then it'll be our turn.'

‘Defeated
victors!'

‘But everyone will be defeated victors. Do you think we'll parley with the military? We'll call together the workers of the world! Do you think the French worker won't understand us when we say to him, “No More War”? Then comes the liberation of the workers of all the nations, our kingdom, Erich. You too believed in it once and you still believe in it – despite this, and this.' He touched the silver epaulette, the tunic.

‘It would be fine,' said Erich dreamily.

‘Fine? Believe me, Erich, this peace will happen in quite a different way from what people expect. They'll rush from the trenches – Germans and French and English – they'll look in each other's faces and they won't understand why they were shooting each other.'

‘It would be fine,' said Erich once more. ‘And what could I do to help, Herr Doctor?'

‘You should …' whispered the Doctor, and this time it was he who looked at the door and the windows. ‘You should …'

Towards morning the mood of those working in the packing hall of the munitions factory became still more sulky and irritable.

The charge-hand felt it plainly. If only nothing happens, he thought, putting his hands in his pockets and placing himself in front of a poster inviting people to subscribe to the sixth War Loan – he was firmly resolved to do nothing himself that would lead to an outbreak.

The women, mostly dressed in ugly overalls which robbed them of all feminine charm, sat in rows at long wooden tables packing the sticks of powder which a machine had cut from an endless band. If their work made it necessary to pass some such remark as ‘Move the case nearer' or ‘Hurry up', this was said quietly; nevertheless it sounded as if they hated one another.

Eva Hackendahl stood at her machine. She pressed a lever. Knives were lowered, cutting off a dark grey stick of powder. Hands stretched out for the stick and she released the lever, which automatically
returned into position; then once again she laid her hand on it, to press it down.

This she had done since eight o'clock the previous evening. Deadly fatigue oppressed her – everything, even her own self, nauseated her. Fatigue lay like a ring bearing down on her head, not letting go for a moment. She sensed it even right inside her mouth where it left a stuffy taste, and it gave her a saggy feeling in her knees. Nothing but a lever that rose to meet her hand like something living, the grey ribbon of powder, the hands reaching between the knives …

She sighed. Only half an hour to the end of the night shift, yet this half-hour seemed unending. She thought of her bed, her nice warm bed, sleep and oblivion. Tutti she knew was already queuing up before some butcher's or baker's, but the bed which she herself used in the daytime and Tutti at night would have been made ready for her. She had to press the lever for one half-hour longer and then she could go home, to sleep.

But the time seemed endless – the last quarter of an hour was always the worst.

She remembered her schooldays (she depressed the lever) and the last few minutes before the bell rang (she released the lever) when often something would happen (the lever rose and lay under her hand) to spoil all her free afternoon. And even if nothing happened (she depressed the lever and the knives sank) those last minutes were always insurmountable (the lever was released and the women's hands appeared). Nothing was changed. Everything had stayed the same. She had experienced much. (The hands had now taken the sticks; the lever rose.) She was still going to school. She depressed the lever, the knives sank and, as in her childhood, so now the last deadly minutes must be endured in all their horror.

As in school! It was for this you went on living, suffered evil, learned to be patient, assumed responsibilities – just to go to school again, for ever. The marks Life gave you were bad. You were never moved up. You stayed at the same desk world without end.

Eva Hackendahl looked over the rows of women workers. She saw necks sticking out of grey blouses, necks bent over the table – weary, overburdened necks – and she knew that all these women, almost all of them, had a more difficult life than she, whom Tutti
relieved of practically all housework. These women went on the night shift only because they had families to care for. No sooner had they returned from the factory than they had to wash and dress their children, make breakfast and send them off to school. Then they would rush to the food shops; their knees trembling with fatigue, they had to queue up, or fetch a bag of coal perhaps. During the day they snatched three, four, or if they were lucky five hours' sleep. They often remained in their clothes for days – what was the good of undressing for an hour or two?

And in a spare moment, before hurrying off to the endless night shift, they would tear a page out of the children's exercise books. For he is always in their minds; he is still thought of as the breadwinner, although they have replaced him. He has become the symbol of the good times of peace, when there was work but also an end to work, when one knew what hunger was but could eat one's fill too.

‘Dear Max,' they wrote on the thin blue lines, trying to write as well and as clearly as they had done at school – ‘Dear Max, The children and me are still all right and I hope the same of you. This week we had an extra half-pound of groats on the ration cards and I get the heavy worker's allowance, so we manage quite well.' (The ‘quite well' underlined three times.) ‘So you need not save up your sugar. We make ends meet quite well.' (Again underlined.) ‘It would be nice if you could come home for good. Can't you end the war soon? Please excuse this joke, I know we have to carry on …' That is how they wrote, without complaint, amid quarrelling children and the everlasting cry for bread. They wrote as they worked, as they looked after children and fetched food: naturally, without a fuss. They wrote so that father knew, after all, that we were all still well and alive. Life – that was what it was about. Life was sacred. They must preserve it for themselves, for their children. They didn't think about it. They acted.

‘Carry on' – a slogan hammered into every brain. ‘Carry on' – that meant to remain alive. Why? To what end? Was life worth it with the children almost starving? No good thinking about it – one had to go on living however difficult.

The lever rose, was depressed, was released, rose. At the
beginning Eva had dreamed every night about this lever and its knives, and the hands between these knives … She dreamed of hands bleeding, of amputated fingers, and would wake with a scream … It was nothing out of the way – it happened to all these women. Their men were at the Front; they saw more than strange hands covered with blood; they saw their own husbands mutilated.

Eva Hackendahl was indeed better off than the others, at least in theory, for Tutti had taken over nearly all of her daily chores. Eva had no children to look after, no husband at the Front to worry about. She knew she was better off, though she in fact wasn't. Once, and not very long ago, she stood on a small, stony, slippery ledge. Not far beneath her, invisible, the water sucked and splashed. She didn't do it. And yet – although Eugen was so base and repulsive, the conflict between her weakness and his brutality had somehow given meaning to a life which was now quite empty.

The charge-hand pushed the cap off his forehead and turned away from the poster. It was five minutes to seven – once more, against all expectations, the shift had gone off well.

And at that very moment he heard the scream. A piercing scream. He leaped to the control – one movement and he had uncoupled the transmission belts. The drone of the machines grew deeper, then stopped altogether.

In this silence the shrieks were louder.

‘She did it intentionally. She saw I had my hand in the machine.'

Trembling and deathly pale, Eva Hackendahl stood there, the accused. Without a word in self-defence she was looking at the hand held out to her, a hand dripping with blood.

‘She did it on purpose,' cried the injured woman – a little creature with a birdlike face. ‘I was looking at her because I was a bit behind and she looked at me. And that was the moment she let the knives come down …'

‘That's true,' cried another woman.

‘Don't talk nonsense,' contradicted a third. ‘You were asleep.'

‘I wasn't asleep, I was a bit behind.' Suddenly she started to weep. ‘Why did you do it? I've never done anything to you. Oh, my hand – I can't work now! See, I can't move my finger.'

‘Show
it me,' said the charge-hand. ‘Don't make that noise! It's nothing, only a scratch. You won't even get sick leave for that.'

‘No sick leave?' she began.

‘Blood!' shrieked a woman far gone in pregnancy. ‘Blood! Get out of my way, I want to see it.'

The bell which was the signal for the shift to knock off had died away, unheard.

The tumult increased. Other charge-hands arrived, and an engineer.

‘Silence! Keep the women quiet!'

Eva Hackendahl stood beside her machine. She was the only one who had not uttered a word. She was thinking: they say I did it on purpose. Did I? I don't know. Perhaps I did do it on purpose? I don't know … You can't always worry about something that is perhaps never going to be … These fatal last minutes at school when anything might happen… Perhaps Eugen will find me one day and all the suffering here will have been for nothing …