The Commissar (33 page)

‘I’ve heard they shovelled her remains up, with the others, and they’re all together in a mass grave in Döbliner Cemetery. RIP they put on the stone over ’em.’

‘RIP? What’s that?’ asks Tiny, blankly.

‘Rest in pieces,’ answers Porta. ‘But they didn’t give her much rest under that flashy stone. A day or two after, one of those air gangsters dropped his whole load of 1,000 and 500 pounders in the wrong place. They landed bang on the cemetery, and he followed ’em up with a few thousand incendiaries for dessert. So now nobody knows what’s become of Frau Wilhelmina’s earthly remains. But this didn’t faze the good Kelp. He married for a third time. This one was Müller’s daughter, the well-known pig-dealer from Münster. She was a good-lookin’ piece who knew what to use it for. She’d been working for Kelp for some time in the sausage section, making over old sausages into new ones.’

‘Hey, now,’ the Old Man breaks in, with a crooked smile. ‘Aren’t you forgetting your potato-dealer? He was on a visit to the Gauleiter?’

‘Of course, damn it,’ shouts Porta. ‘You know how one story leads you into another. Where’d I got to?’

‘They were laying plans, across the desk of the former Minister for Justice,’ smiles the Legionnaire, lighting a
Caporal
.

‘Oh yes! Well the telephone began ringing over at the Gestapo on
Ringstrasse
,’ Porta continues. ‘The Gestapo boss was one of their Thursday card-school mates.

‘A
general
,’ he roared happily, drawing his Walther 7.65 mm from his shoulder-holster. He was pleased as a bailiff who finds something worth money at a client’s place.

‘There wasn’t almost anything the general wasn’t accused of but
he
hadn’t been wasting his time either. He’d had a ninety-minute talk with the Corps Auditor, Kurze. Everything went on report. The dog, the bicycle, the potato wholesaler, the wrecked distilleries and the long-awaited Final Victory.

‘“We’ll take
him
, all right,” Kurze promised, self-confidently. “A crummy spud-dealer can’t say what he likes to the German Army. He must be out of his mind! I suggest we start with the minor crimes, which give only fifteen years imprisonment: insulting the army, damaging military property, threatening the armed forces, jeering at the military uniform. Then we can go over to the ones punishable by death: defeatism, disseminating enemy propaganda, sabotage of the will to resistance, espionage.”

‘“What about the dog?” asked the general, vengefully.

‘“We’ll get to
him
all right,” promised Kurze, letting out a bellow of court-martial laughter. “Sabotage of military equipment, and attack on a highly-ranked officer. Both hanging offences! Even the best of defenders couldn’t save him from the rope. I’ll use paragraph 241, section 5 of the military penal codex. That paragraph got me the War Service Cross First Class with clasp. Soon as the executioner hears that one, he starts off readying the scaffold for use.”

‘Things began to move the very next day, and I mean
move
! It could all have been settled by a good beating-up, and a German kick in the arse for the dog. Anyway! Department IV/2a picked up the general for a short interview, while GEFEPO
*
Department VIIb picked up Herr Strange. He was put in irons with collar and lead-chain immediately, according to Army Regulations.

‘After some chatting about the weather, and dogs, the “interview” with Strange became more – what they call rigorous. The potato feller was given a few MP taps on the nose. He was lucky it wasn’t the 30 Year War he was bein’ interrogated in. In those days they used to nip people with red-hot pincers, and make ’em drink melted lead mixed with hot tar. This often used to help them to remember what it was they’d done.

‘All afternoon funny sounds kept getting through from the interrogation office. People thought they’d got hold of
a pig on the black, an’ were slaughtering it. The noises didn’t stop until the three GEFEPO blokes went down to “The Lame Duck” to freshen up for the second part of the interrogation.

‘The potato feller didn’t look too good by then. Unteroffizier Schulze, who’d been thrown out of Torgau for cruelty, and seconded to GEFEPO, had broken two of his ribs and had managed to turn his nose permanently upwards. Troublesome it was in rainy weather.

‘The third day Herr Strange confessed to everything, and this made the GEFEPO quite human and friendly toward him. His wife brought him food parcels and they all sat round the table together and tanked up on West-phalian country ham and drank schnapps with eggs beaten up in ’em. Between meals they smoked the cigars and drank the cognac.

‘The potato wholesaler signed a confession gladly. He was, in fact, by now so pleasant and easy to get along with that he was allowed to rubber-stamp it himself, and put it in a large Army envelope, which was then sealed with the bird and all the trimmings. And off it all went to the Judge Advocate General at Münster.

‘The good times with GEFEPO were soon over, however. One grey, rainy day, “Spuds” got put into an asthmatic DKW, and sent off to 46 Infantry Regiment’s barracks, where the Paderborn glasshouse was. They had rationing there. Two thin pieces of bread and a little blob of margarine. Even a hungry sparrow wouldn’t have been attracted by the menu. On national celebration days they got a square of pâté de foie horse!

‘His wife brought him plenty of extra food. Stabswacht-meister Rose of 15 Cavalry Regiment checked it in very carefully. Then the guards ate it all, down to the last crumb: after, of course, the potato-man had signed for receipt of it.

‘They shot Strange in Sennelager early one August morning. They did it on target range 4, which wasn’t used for
practice any more.

‘The general ended up up shit-creek without a paddle. I don’t know the details. There were a lot of rumours. Hung himself by his boot-laces, one of ’em said. It can’t be true. He never wore lace-up boots in his life. Always swaggered round in long riding boots. A friend of mine in interrogation told me three apes from Fort Zittau came with an order for him to be handed over to them.’

Porta throws out his arm despairingly. ‘Fort Zittau
eats
people. You go in, and you never come out. Even the Devil and his great-grandmother wouldn’t dream of puttin’ their heads inside Zittau’s gates.

‘This dog business was bad for a lot of other people too. There was the matter of the Gauleiter’s toilet-rolls. They turned into a political matter. The paper was red, you see, and . . .’

Porta’s story is cut off. Gregor Martin puts his frost-stubbled head in through the igloo opening.

‘We’ve got visitors,’ he says, rubbing the frost from his face. ‘Hurry up and get outside!’

It is an icy night. The sky seems to drop icicles. The temperature is down below 45°. The storm howls along the steep cliff-walls. We feel as if our very souls are freezing to ice.

We stare anxiously towards the north-east, from where we can hear the noise of motors. Shadowy motor-sledges move rapidly down the winding mountain road.

Two sharp reports sound, sending us headlong to cover behind the snowdrifts. We get back on our feet again when we realize that it is only frost splitting the trees growing on the side of the mountain.

The motorized column is now clearly in sight, up by the gulch. An armoured motor-sledge is leading it, followed by an armoured car and a half-track transport waggon.

Suddenly a flare wobbles up into the air. It explodes with a hollow sound, sending three green stars out to one side. Shortly afterwards another one goes up, this time red.

‘The Devil fuck my great-grandmother,’ howls Porta, dancing round like a madman. ‘It’s bloody
him
!. Where the hell’s that signal pistol?’

‘In the waggon,’ answers Tiny, already legging his way over to it in a shower of snow. He is back in a flash with the pistol and hands it to Porta. ‘It’s loaded,’ he grins.

‘I should hope so,’ replies. Porta. ‘You didn’t think I was going to throw the bloody thing up in the air did you? We’ve got to get our answer back quick. Else that hellhound out there’ll be on his way back where he came from again.’ He breaks the pistol open and examines the cartridge. ‘We don’t want to send up a wrong ‘un,’ he says. ‘It ain’t every day people are out pinchin’ Stalin’s gold out from under him. That boy’ll be nervous. They’ll cut him into tiny pieces if this job goes wrong.’

‘Yes, and us with him,’ comes drily from the Old Man. ‘I must’ve been crazy to get mixed up in this caper!’

‘Don’t shit your trousers yet,’ says Porta, pointing the flare-pistol up into the air at an angle. The flare goes up and explodes hollowly in a burst of red stars. He reloads with a green flare and sends it up to burst alongside the red one.

Exactly sixty seconds later a green, and then a yellow, flare goes up.

‘Fits like a prick in Lizzie,’ grins Porta, satisfiedly. He smacks the lid of the stopwatch shut.

‘
C
’
est le bordel
,’ mumbles the Legionnaire nervously. ‘That firework show must have been seen the devil of a way off!’

‘Yes, before we know where we are alarm units from all over’ll be on their feet looking for us,’ forecasts Heide, darkly.

‘I was beginning to get a bit nervous of whether that commissar bint hadn’t taken my arse,’ says Porta, tucking the signal pistol into his belt. ‘She’d have been bitterly sorry for it if she had. Wolf’s got a little rocket surprise for her if anythin’ funny should happen to Joseph Porta on this trip.’

‘Open out,’ orders the Old Man,’ ready your arms! You never can trust Ivan!’

‘We shoot first and ask questions after?’ asks Tiny, readying his
Kalashnikov
noisily.

‘None of that Chicago by night stuff here,’ explodes Porta, furiously.

With a breakneck swerve a heavy armoured sledge comes roaring down the winding road, skids sideways across the clearing, and stops so close to Barcelona’s T-34 that it would be impossible for him to bring the gun to bear on it.

‘Bloody hell!’ mumbles Gregor admiringly. ‘That’s some trick they’ve got there!’

There are a couple of minutes of excited waiting. The only sound is the whirling of the sledge’s propeller. The wind from it tosses snow into the air. The hatchway of the vehicle opens slowly and a grey-white commissar cap with its large red star comes into view. For a moment two hard grey eyes stare over towards our two tanks. Then the newcomer turns his gaze up to the clouds, which hasten, darkly threatening, towards the east. He jumps lithely down into the snow, spews out a number of Russian oaths, and rubs his knee, which he has knocked on the hatchframe. A
Kalashnikov
is handed out to him. In silence he hangs it across his chest in the Russian manner. He puts his left hand down into his deep fur pocket. It is so deep that his arm goes down into it right up over the elbow. When he withdraws it he is holding a bottle in his hand. He puts it to his lips, takes a long pull, wipes his mouth with his furry mitten, and gives out a long, satisfied snort, like a cold horse which has come home to its warm stable. His cold grey eyes examine Porta, who is leaning nonchalantly up against a soot-blackened tree, playing with a bundle of hand-grenades tied around a petrol bottle.

‘Joseph Porta?’ he asks with a wry smile, tipping his machine-pistol slightly forward.

‘The Golden Commissar, I presume?’ smiles Porta, lifting his yellow topper respectfully.

‘Right you are,’ smiles the Commissar, offering Porta the vodka bottle.

‘
Stolichna ja
,’ nods Porta, sniffing appreciatively at the neck of the bottle. He puts it to his lips and enjoys the silky taste of the Russian luxury vodka. He feels it go right out into his fingers and toes. They pass the bottle back and forth between them until it is empty.

‘You arrived late,’ says Porta,’ but you
did
arrive!’ He accepts a perfumed Russian officer’s cigarette, offered him from a gold cigarette-case.

‘It’s been a tough trip,’ answers the Commissar. ‘We had to go the long way round, more than once. How was your trip,
tovaritsch
?’

‘Apart from the hellish low temperatures you run to in your country, and the snow that piles up on what you call your roads, I’ve no complaints,’ replies Porta.

After a while we are all standing in a circle round the two ‘Mafia bosses’. More vodka comes out. This time a cheaper brand.

Tiny snatches a bottle from the hand of a little Siberian sergeant, who is preparing to take a swig from it.

‘
Herrenvolk
first,’ he protests, downing almost half the bottle. He licks his lips appreciatively before handing it back to the sergeant.

‘Pull in your tongue,’ says the Siberian. ‘Sticking out like that, it makes you look as if they’d just strung you up!’

A new bottle of
Stolichnaja
had been brought out, but only for Porta and the Commissar. The rest of us have to make do with the cheaper
Raj
.

Before very long even the Old Man is looking on the brighter side, and beginning to kick up his heels in a few dance steps. It is 6 January, the Russian Christmas, to which everyone looks forward the whole year.

The sledge-driver fishes out a balalaika and Porta his piccolo. To their accompaniment the Commissar sings in a deep bass:

‘Snow covers hill and plain.
From longing’s bitter deep
Our souls cry out in pain.’