Men of Snow (12 page)

Paris was a shape in his mind when he had things to plan. At other times it was a huge hole in which the army of occupation was disappearing. The city was the real enemy. Its culture could destroy more than all the weapons they had faced. It had waited and then enclosed them, wrapped its warm arms around every soldier, giving all it had. When expectations had been realised the demand was for more and Paris could give more. He hated this city because there were no tactics by which it could be defeated. The longer they were here the more incapable of real action his men had become. He knew Russia was waiting. He understood its inevitability.

‘We’re here for the duration. We’re good at what we do. And the French, well so many of them can’t wait to help us. They’d betray their own mothers if they thought that would buy them more time. They are patriots of a way of life, not a country. They couldn’t care less about France so long as they can live as the French.’

The boulevards smelt warm and relaxed. More troop carriers rattled past. More couples strolled along as though there was no war. Paris had resisted for a few days and then had quite readily capitulated and in the next breath had continued as before. The cafes, the clubs, the restaurants were all thriving. Every officer he knew had at least one mistress.

‘You want to keep me just for yourself. Go on, tell me you do. That’s what they all want. It makes everything so much easier, especially for a busy, important officer like yourself,’ Chantelle had said and for once he had listened.

Every evening the receptionist would be waiting for him.

‘Your key Herr Brucker,’ he would say, holding it ready.

‘What if I said no Jean?’

‘Then I would put it back on its hook,’ was his sharp answer.

‘You should be a German.’

‘You say that all the time.’

‘So it must be true.’

‘A compliment I take with great thanks.’

He looked at Jean with his short black hair and slightly tanned face.

‘I should hope so,’ was his last comment before he took the lift to the fourth floor.

In his suite he opened the windows fully and stepped out onto the balcony. The city’s shadowed outlines were like pieces of jigsaw in the sky. He often wished the Fuhrer had let the whole place be bombed flat. But even he seemed to have been captivated by its reputation.

There was a sharp knock on the door and Steinhof stepped in.

He offered up a bottle of brandy and smiled.

‘So you are here Brucker and not with your lady.’

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘It is when all you do is criticise everybody else.’

‘That sounds like you’ve had a good drink already.’

‘The truth doesn’t depend on fucking brandy.’

‘The truth?’

Steinhof was tall and thin to the extent his uniform always looked too large and his boots too big. He occupied the room next to Franz’s.

The officer plonked himself in an armchair, stretching out his long legs before yawning.

‘Christ Franz. You always think we’re going East at any moment. At any moment the command will come through and you’ll feel vindicated. Have you ever seen a fucking Russian woman?’

‘Have you eaten?’ was Franz’s reply as he unbuttoned the top buttons of his uniform.

There came another rap on the door and Hauptmann and Fredericks came in. The two officers had rooms further down the corridor and were always looking to join any drinking party.

‘We’ve been out all day inspecting fucking road blocks,’ Fredericks complained as he set an armful of beer bottles down.

‘We told the men that anything suspicious you fucking shoot it, no matter what.’

‘The French are past caring. Their resistance groups are pathetic. They’re all fucking desperate to betray each other to save their own skin. They make me sick,’ Steinhof put in.

‘It’s been the same in every war against them.’

‘Except Verdun,’ Hauptmann added to Frederick’s remark.

‘Open a bottle.’

‘Have a brandy.’

‘Who has got a cigarette?’

‘Where are we going to eat tonight?’

‘Who are we going to fuck?’

Steinhof laughed, ‘We should try Franz’s. He’s keeping her nice and private but I think he should let his friends have a look see.’

‘An inspection,’ Hauptmann said.

‘A close inspection.’

‘To catch a spy.’

‘Who might be hiding in her pants.’

‘Or up her arse.’

‘Or between her tits.’

‘A fucking  traitoress.’

Franz was standing by the window ignoring their usual banter.

‘But the Russians are coming,’ Steinhof said in a low voice.

‘Can they come? That’s the question.’

‘Snowmen from the East.’

‘So we melt them down.’

‘Not until we’ve had something to eat.’

‘At Julien’s.’

‘Or Frubert’s.’

Steinhof waited at the door when they were leaving.

‘You’re such a fucking prick Franz. Why don’t you request a new posting if you feel so strongly about it? But you won’t. You’re no fucking different to the rest of us. So come on and join us. For once just try and be like everybody else because that’s all you are.’

‘I don’t think I will,’ was Franz’s answer.

‘Over here we’ve won but I still think you don’t understand that. Good night Brucker,’ were his last words before the three of them went out.

He pulled a chair to the open window, the lace curtains wafting against his legs as he sat down and lit a cigarette.

‘Culture is the soul of a country, especially France. We believe it is the best. That’s why you keep invading us. There’s nothing military about it. You want to overwhelm something you can’t. You know that Herr Brucker. The Germans hate the idea of France’s history. You would very much like to change it but that’s not possible, thankfully not possible,’ he could hear Proustain saying.

The old man enjoyed putting himself on the edge. He saw it as the challenge. At every opportunity he pushed himself a little closer. His intellect had turned fear into a motivation.

‘The systematic approach never frees the spirit sufficiently. You want to organise creativity. You think it can be formulated. Your architecture is a perfect example. It’s so grandiose it becomes a parody of what it’s trying to achieve. Berlin is like a stone machine. It will never move anybody,’ had been his attempt at humour.

Proustain always wore a tweed jacket and grey slacks, jumper, shirt and tie and even in summer had a woollen shawl around his shoulders. It was as though he wanted to be older than he was.

‘I would like to be in a permanent state of convalescence from some illness or other,’ he had said, ‘Then I have every excuse for doing nothing but what I want. So please Herr Brucker, don’t try to be my doctor.’

He was surrounded by a huge display of artefacts. Every flat surface in his apartment had something displayed on it and then reflected from all the mirrors he had strategically placed.

‘You can take anything you want. I say that sincerely, even though I couldn’t stop you. Imagine there is nobody in France that could do that.’

‘I don’t care so long as you visit. That’s all I ask. Don’t leave me in uncertainty,’ was Chantelle’s simple request.

Finally he got up and went over to the phone and asked to be put through to his office.

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After twenty minutes the car he had ordered stopped outside an apartment block near the Champs Elysees.

His driver was ordered to wait for him.

He glanced along the empty street. It was almost in complete darkness before he went up the steps and pressed the buzzer.

The hallway was marble floored, his boots sounding loud over its polished surface. The flight of stairs he went down was lit every few yards.

A guard opened the first metal doors which lead into a wide passageway that had several more green metal doors on either side.

‘Are Braun and Schubert here?’ he asked the guard at the second of the security doors.

‘They have been here for hours sir,’ was the guard’s clipped answer.

‘Any results?’

‘Not that I know of sir.’

In the next passageway it was Braun who opened one of the cell doors. In his open necked shirt and braces he saluted stiffly as Franz entered.

‘So?’ was his question.

Schubert was standing in front of the prisoner and answered, ‘Nothing.’

‘That’s not good enough.’

‘No sir.’

‘He’s a tough shit,’ was from Braun as he shut the heavy cell door.

‘And you’re supposed to be able to deal with that.’

‘He will tell us.’

‘You’ve had him nearly forty eight hours now.’

‘Sometimes it can be a little tricky and can take longer.’

‘I haven’t got any longer,’ Franz said strongly.

Braun stepped forward and grabbed the prisoner’s hair to lift up his blooded face.

‘I’d say thirtyish, smooth hands, well looked after teeth, had smart shoes. Doesn’t fit the usual profile sir. A bit posh this one.’

There was a metal beam running from one side of the cell to the other to which the prisoner was strapped by the wrists. He was hanging there naked. His testicles were swollen and a dark purple colour. There was a bullet wound in his right shoulder. Some of his finger nails had been ripped off and there were narrow knife cuts across his chest that had singe lines on either side. One of his feet was twisted at an odd angle. The prisoner’s left eye was swollen closed and there was fresh blood dribbling from his mouth.

‘But we’ll get him sir,’ Schubert said.

‘I don’t want him dead before he tells us what he knows. That’s essential. I want to know whether this was a random attempt or not. I want to know why he was shooting at me. I might have been the first German coming down the street or there might be something more to it than that and I want to find out what that is. Do you understand?’

‘Yes sir,’ they both said at the same time.

‘I want to know by tomorrow morning,’ he reminded the two of them, ‘I find it hard to believe that this is still going on. Your stay in this city will be drastically shortened unless you get results quickly,’ were his last words before he left the cell.

Back in his hotel room he tried to sleep, something that never came easily. Ever since he had come to Paris it had been more difficult, only managing fitful, broken periods of unconsciousness.

Foot patrols sounded out on the street. A few military vehicles would go by. The usual revellers would clatter and shout their way along the hotel corridor looking for their rooms.

Again he heard the sound of the bullet ricocheting off the wall a few inches away from his head as he had walked down the Rue des Invalides. He had always accepted those few inches, the distance of survival or an ending. But on this occasion it had felt more personal.

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‘It’s like nothing else. You feel you are nowhere. There is nothing at all to focus on, only the endless snow, white, after white with no horizon, no edge, no point to reach.’

The sergeant in his hospital bed a few days ago had been describing to some of the officers his experience on the Eastern front. Somehow he had finished up in the luxury of a Parisian ward for the wounded.

‘I’ve seen some of my men frozen to death on guard duty, in the morning still standing, covered in snow and ice, blue faced, eyes crystallised. The plains are so flat, without dimensions. It gets so cold everything is a pressure against your body. You don’t think about anything but somehow trying to find some warmth, anything to keep yourself alive. You stop thinking about the war. Out there it doesn’t exist, only the whiteness and the cold, the unbearable cold. Nobody should be there. It’s not a place for humans. The East is a frozen hell. That’s what it is.’

Franz had absorbed every word. The Eastern front had become a fascination, an obsession, a test, challenge, the ultimate contrast with the boredom of Paris.

‘You must be the only soldier in the whole of the German army who wants to be posted there. You must be fucking mad,’ Steinhof had told him one drunken night, ‘How the hell can anybody in their right mind prefer fucking Russia to Paris, Franz, you crazy man? You’re looking for the great sacrifice but it’s not there because nobody will care a shit.’

He knew that Stalingrad was going to be the significant battle and he wanted to be there. He knew that everything in the East had been drawn into that fight for the city on the Volga. It had to be his battle.

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