Their relationship developed rather sweetly. They socialised as cohabitants, they made love, went on outings, attended parties. They went through thick and thin, having a relationship with some depth, experiencing peaks and troughs in the vortex of love.
37
Huber
Bauer and Arno sat in a Munich pub, having a beer after work. It was a September day in 1965. This was a simple Kneipp downtown. The walls were of wood imitation plastic panels, the tables were decorated with oil cloths and plastic flowers. There was also a rather low ceiling; the owner had put in an intermediate floor to take advantage of the premises to the full, thus creating an extra space upstairs serving as a banquet hall.
It was a somewhat odd, worn-down pub. But they liked to sit here sometimes, Bauer and Arno. The food was simple but good. And beer is the same everywhere. On this occasion, they fell to talking about comrades of yesteryear, something that, for some reason, they had never really done in depth before. They went through the ghosts and old faces, and Bauer mentioned Huber.
“Is he alive?” Arno said.
“He is,” Bauer said. “In Nuremberg. But he’s missing one leg.”
“Mm-hm.”
“In any case, he’s alive. He has an invalid’s pension. I go and see him every now and then. To cheer him up or whatever. Want to join me?”
Arno didn’t really want that. He had completely disconnected himself from the subject of invalids and comrades of bygone days, almost everything to do with the social side of the war. He himself, Arno, survived. The rest was neither here nor there to him. He simply wasn’t the chummy type, the gregarious type. But he realised that it was impossible to say no to Bauer’s request. So they decided to go to Nuremberg next weekend.
They would meet and greet Huber. Private Huber had been wounded in the foot by a mine. It was during the reconnaissance patrol before Operation Spring Awakening in 1945. When the patrol returned to their own lines Huber had been carried to the BMS. After that he had never been heard of, not by Arno, not during the war.
But now he had resurfaced, miraculously resurrected from the Land of Shadows. And now they would go and visit Huber in Nuremberg. The Saturday in question they went in Bauer’s black Mercedes 220S, the model with a pontoon body, tailfins and a six-cylinder engine. Bauer drove. And Arno had the meeting prepared with a certain item, a poem he might recite.
While the wooded Bavarian countryside raced past the wide tarmac road, Arno said, as he sat in the passenger seat:
“So he’s OK then? Huber? Or is he depressed and beside himself?”
“Well,” Bauer said, “he’s single and maybe having a hard time making the time pass. Retired, with a little apartment. Now we’ll go there and do what we can, talk a little bit. Of course, you never know what people are really thinking. Maybe he enjoys life, even though he lacks a leg. I mean, you may recall Lutzow…?”
Arno remembered Sergeant Lutzow, in the final stage Leader of the Company’s 1st Platoon.
“He made it through the war as we did. More or less unscathed. Bodily unharmed. But he’s said to have fallen on hard times since. With what? With memories? Memories of the dead, memories of killing, what do I know. What did he do? He wasn’t a monster. But –”
“Maybe the other way around,” Arno said. “He was an ordinary decent human being. But common decency isn’t enough to make it through the fire storm. You have to raise yourself mentally, steel yourself to the tribulations.”
“Like you.”
“Indeed,” Arno said. “I’ve gone through hell with open eyes and it has helped me. Both during the war and after.”
“Mein lieber Gott…”
“What do you mean by that?”
Bauer didn’t respond. He had to overtake a lorry. Having done that, he said:
“So you have to be a superman to persevere, right…?”
“Call it what you want. But you then, you were just carefree all the time during the war? I mean, you were a good comrade in the war zone, good to have along. But you weren’t always the joking, hearty fellow. When the enemy was 30 metres away then you were a tiger, a predator on the go. A man having raised himself mentally in order to cope with the challenges.”
“OK, that’s who I am…” Bauer said and smiled.
Hypocrite, Arno thought. You can’t always get out of an argument with a smile. Well, the jovial Bauer could. The one moment a joker, the next, a killer.
“Anyway,” Bauer continued, “Lutzow eventually took his own life. 1953 I think it was. I heard it on a comrade gathering. He shot himself. He had family and everything, but for this he rented a hotel room. To be alone. Put a Walter HP to his head.”
“May God have mercy on his soul,” Arno said. He had nothing to add. Privately he thought, you must be mentally guarded, steeled, before the trials of war. Both before and after the battle. Being in constant combat mood, not maniacally so, but all the time trying to stay calm, cool and collected, in and out of the combat zone – this was what had saved him from going mad, Arno thought. Making the soldiery persona your second nature and functioning decently in the everyday world that way. More or less.
At length they came to Nuremberg. They saw medieval houses and other traditional buildings, rebuilt from the ashes of the wartime firestorm. Huber, however, lived in a newly built apartment house in an area on the outskirts of town. Bauer had been there before so he quickly found the way and parked the Mercedes close to Huber’s. Then he led the way among the elongated apartment buildings with red brick fronts and flat roofs.
The weather was overcast. It was mild but looked like rain. Arno followed Bauer into a house. It was on the ground floor. Logically, since Huber was disabled and the house had no lift.
They rang the bell. The door opened. The one-legged Huber stood there, leaning on crutches. The injured leg was cut just above the knee. Huber smiled when he saw Bauer:
“Ah, der Alte…!”
“And here,” Bauer said, we have an even Älterer: Arno, Feldwebel Greif…!”
Arno stepped forward, smiled uncertainly and held out his hand to Huber. The other man looked a little pale and was balding. But he seemed relatively vigorous.
“Guten Tag, Herr Feldwebel!” Huber said with a tinge of irony and held out his hand, crutch under his arm. There was a twinkle in his eye; there was a certain warmth in his voice. Arno admitted that he liked it. He had thus been approved by his former subordinate, now living in the sanctified realm of martyrdom. The martyr, the invalid, had given him absolution by welcoming him – him, Arno, the more unscathed veteran.
They went inside, they sat down in the kitchen. It was modern with an electric cooker and fridge freezer. Table, three chairs and a green oilcloth. They had coffee. It was a rather animated conversation for a while. Huber asked what Arno had done since last time and Arno replied. He in turn asked about Huber’s life story, like what happened after the patrol. Huber answered; his shattered leg had been amputated in an Army Field Hospital followed by several years in and out of others. After the war he retrained as a cobbler, and worked repairing shoes while people were still in post-war poverty. And then full-time retirement when the opportunity presented itself. Huber said:
“I had the offer of retiring at the age of 45. Perhaps odd when I still could mend shoes. But I wanted to go in retirement, actually. I shouldn’t complain. I have my hobbies, I have pen pals, I go around in my Kabinenroller, going down to the bus depot and talking to people. I have some acquaintances…”
Arno glanced at the other and tried to judge how he really had it. It later transpired that Huber had really wanted to be a bus driver. But with only one leg it was impossible. He also didn’t become a car mechanic, which he would have liked. Mender of shoes was what he was offered as disability training. And, after having performed this profession for some years, he now had retired from it.