Arno was an amateur strategist. He knew tactics, his years of service as a Panzer Follower and infantryman being evidence of that. Higher level operations and strategic matters weren’t really his cup of tea but as intimated he had heard a few things and he now reflected over them. Like thinking of such things as “strategic offensive followed by tactical defensive,” thus the mottis such as those at Minsk, Smolensk and Kiev in 1941 were created and obliterated. And he thought of concepts such as cordon, cut the vanguards, supplying a motti by air, attacking with armoured divisions in the lead, scout and block, attack and chop up, wipe out.
He had been a platoon leader. Of the art of leading a division he of course knew nothing. He had no staff training. He had no officer training. He mostly went by instinct, he knew what he knew, what he had learned at the front and behind it. His world was that of a sun that shines, dispelling the clouds and drying up the rain-soaked meadows and fields; in this world, he lived with ammo boxes, mess-tin lid with soup, collar patches, insignia and explosive cartridge, blast mine type 28. The war was over but he still lived in a world of dive bombing plus artillery, advance patrol in SPW, combat engineers laying a bridge, infantry patrol in hardwood copse, armour in pine forest and storm boats on a lake at night. This was his world in symbols, this was his creed, his tangible gospel.
He wanted to portray his life in solar euphoria: golden sun, freedom, light and life. Being a combatant in an eternally present moment: such was the existence of the Operational Scout, his personal philosophy that was taking shape. But he still didn’t see this creed clearly enough to write it down.
Time and time again, he remembered his war. His memories were partly organised, partly chaotic. Such as the memory of a front zone with operations and figures, and grey uniform and heavy army pistol – and heavy tanks from a heavy motorised army with heavy support that rumbles in the night and, in the sky, heavy bombers illuminated by the beams of the searchlights.
He remembered a battle in a city: cloud shadows drifting over heaps of broken rock, empty house fronts staring down on a dead street – and smoke clouds over a river, empty cases on a lawn.
He remembered thermos flask and signal pistol, off-road driving and the training suit worn inside the uniform, double socks and newsprint insoles. He remembered contrails in the sky and a river crossing at a conquered bridge – the enemy forgot to blow it up, how lucky, now we thunder over it with heavy tanks and heavy footsteps, rattling boots on reverberating vaults.
“Distance between the groups! Smokes away!”
“Attention, squad leaders to me!”
“Platoon forward, single file after me!”
He remembered swans in a pond, swimming in the evening sun. He remembered whispering willows, grease jar and cleaning brush – maples in a grove, dense vegetation, tall trees, lush green, like an entrance to a cave, a portal to a cooler world with slower rhythms, more muffled sounds, rippling water from a source you couldn’t see – repeat the task, distribute the personnel, officer vacancies and register completed, deleted and drifting away along the patrol paths in no man’s land, away to the Secret Land, the Promised Land, the Dreamland – the Land where all our desires are fulfilled, where all our dreams come true – the Battle Zone that never was.
Bypass unit, what luck –
Wandering cauldron – movable hedgehog position – armed amoeba negotiating the countryside –
Cobbled streets lined with stone houses, the rattle of tracks on the pavement, echoing in the street space –
31
New Dream
Arno lived in his cabin. It was now the autumn of 1946. He had money in the bank, food in the pantry. He had time to process his war memories.
But something nagged him. It was the dream he had had when he was in the hospital in Hanover in 1944. The dream where he burnt the world.
It wouldn’t go away; it was a pain in the neck, a virtual nuisance. He must take hold of this, this debility: burning up the world and liking it. He knew that it was “only a dream” but it was also a lucid dream, an extraordinary dream.
To burn up the world and be proud of it, this wasn’t healthy. He had no wish to dream a similar dream again, a dream where he enjoyed killing. The thought of it gnawed at him. And he realised that the way to deal with this must be done in dreaming itself. He must find his dream guru, the Ringo Badger he had met in some previous dreams. The Badger had said that he was Arno’s soul guide. Then maybe he could help him decipher the dream of when Arno set fire to the world.
It might have seemed far-fetched, aspiring to dream consciously in this way. But Arno had been a seasoned esotericist since his youth. He believed that dreams mattered and that going into them, going consciously into the psychic landscape of the astral realm, you could determine things which had a bearing on your waking, everyday life.
He would dream up a meeting with the Badger. Maybe he could give answers to a few things.
Said and done. One evening in September Arno pulled the blinds in his bedroom, put on his nightshirt and crawled under the sheets. He would dream deeply, he would dream intensely, he would dream consciously.
He fell asleep. And at long last he began to dream. But this was no sweet dream: he dreamed he was flying in a biplane, an old-school aircraft, and when he looked down at the world he saw flames, red flames and smoke everywhere. He said:
“What the hell is this? The world is on fire again!”
“Indeed,” said Ringo Badger, sitting in the plane’s rear cockpit. Thus Arno at least had managed to find his soul guide, Ringo Badger. But Arno didn’t rest on his laurels. He listened to his guru, who next said:
“The world is burning and you’re the culprit! You’ve set fire to the world. You recall that you drew The Cherubim Sword, don’t you…? This is the result.”
Arno by this, in the dream, remembered the other dream he had dreamed, in 1944, the Dreamland experience of how he got a sword from a deva – and how he, as he pulled the sword, the flaming sword, sent fire over the world. The world was up in flames and in this dream they were back in it.
Arno watched the world being burned down, the old world. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. But out of the ashes maybe a new world would sprout.
The fire raged constantly, spread over green woods, it ruled supreme in all the climes they flew over.
The forests burned beneath them. The flames threw their reflection against low clouds and gave everything a ghostly glow, like searchlights illuminating the underside of clouds, the German finesse in some wartime operations.
The plane flew on. The Badger was the pilot and Arno the passenger. He looked out over the world of people screaming, of flames and smoke, of Red Dogs and burning forests. He was chased by the god of fire, he gasped for water, he glided across a land of iron under a sky of copper. He was chased over the world’s edge, he reached the Abyss and he fell forever and ever.
In the next phase of the dream Arno was down on the ground, on terra firma. But still, it was a torn world. Arno saw burnt turf, a charred grove and, a short distance away, a village in ruins – black ruins, burned ruins. Smoke hung on the wind.