Only the ever-practical Walt, the most level-headed of them all, didn’t seem to share their sentiments.
“Maybe he doesn’t want to talk about the war,” he mused out loud with a pensive expression one evening. They lay around on their beds in their dorm room. It was that quiet hour just after dinner and before the lights-out during which the cadets were supposed to write to their families or read.
“He’s a hero! Why wouldn’t he want to talk about it?” Willi sat up, cross-legged, on his bed. “I, for one, would be bragging about it right and left!”
“Papa was an ace in the Great War too and he never talks about it,” Walter replied, with a shrug, as though stating the obvious, without tearing his eyes away from the textbook.
Walt always studied, Johann noticed it during the few short weeks that they’d known each other. Not only did he dedicate all of his free time to memorizing nearly every textbook, line by line, but asked the instructors to provide him with additional material that he could also consume with a sort of obsessive greediness, not like Rudi who merely wished to get into the instructors’ good graces by asking for the same books as Walt, but to excel in every single task and test. Teacher’s pet, Willi teased him unmercifully but without malice. No; there was something of a frantic desire to prove himself in Walt’s reserved perfectionism, Johann noted to himself. He fought some invisible battle against some unknown force while Willi tested the patience of the authorities with every new stunt of his. Walt’s battle was a rebellion as well, only against what, that Johann was yet to understand. Asking him in a straightforward manner was entirely out of the question. Johann had already realized that Walt was wary of people, much like a dog who’d been kicked far too many times. Why though? He was a grand fellow, likable and sharp as a whip…
“Perhaps you’re right,” Willi agreed with surprising ease. “My father was in the infantry, but he doesn’t talk about it either.”
“Must be nice to have a Wehrmacht General for a father!” Rudolf teased him in his usual half-serious manner.
He always threw those remarks in an attempt at a kind-hearted jest, yet couldn’t quite conceal the undertone of jealousy in his voice. It was false and bitter and forgivable too because he came from a rather poor background and everyone around knew that he only had National Socialism and Der Führer to thank for such an opportunity◦– to be equal to the ones who he wouldn’t even dream of being equal to in the old, Weimar Germany. Pilots had always been the elite, the privileged class and he was a butcher’s son from a village near Kiel, whose only advantage was his quick adaptation skills; as the first nationalistic wave swept through German schools, he promptly put two and two together and was one of the first ones to enlist in the local Hitlerjugend and soon even his academic success wasn’t as important as his patriotic fervor and desire to serve the New Reich, as it was duly noted by his political leaders.
Johann had already grown used to Rudi’s strange fascination with anything remotely connected with power and discounted it as harmless; Willi outright resented it. “It’s all right, I suppose,” he replied somewhat coldly and reached under his mattress in search of his cigarettes.
Johann leaned over the edge of his bed and snatched both the pack and the golden lighter out of Willi’s hands before he had a chance to light one. “How many times did I warn you about smoking here before the lights-out, Du verdammter Idiot? You know perfectly well that a Fahnenjunker on duty makes his rounds; do you want him to report you to the Hauptmann or to Ostwald?”
With a dramatic groan, Willi fell back onto his bunk. “I wouldn’t mind a negative entry in my file in exchange for a smoke, if I’m entirely honest.” He didn’t attempt to retrieve his possessions from Johann’s hands much to the latter’s surprise as though succumbing to common sense, for the first time.
“Did your father give it to you?” Johann softened his tone, noticing the initials W.v.S. engraved in the lighter’s golden surface.
“Mhm. For my sixteenth birthday, when he finally remembered that he had a son.” Willi’s voice suddenly took on a very cruel and mocking tone.
When he had just met Willi, Johann mistakenly decided that there was nothing else to the bratty Berliner than that disdainful and sardonic aloofness which he carried around himself with a wonderful arrogance of someone with the upper hand. But then one night Johann spent a few hours, under the blanket and with a flashlight in his mouth, writing an essay for his ever-absent roommate just so he wouldn’t fail the course and saw such unfathomable gratitude in that roommate’s eyes the following morning that he started doubting that very first assumption of his. Willi didn’t take it for granted as he had expected; on the contrary, he nearly choked with emotion demanding in a soft, embarrassed voice why would he, Johann, do such a thing... he shouldn’t have, it was really all right; they wouldn’t fail him anyway but... He’d pay him back, of course; Johann should just tell him how much. And then, another startled gasp followed as Johann stalked away from him, offended. “I didn’t do it to earn money, you Dummkopf!”
“No, no, no; I didn’t mean it! I’m so sorry! Please, forgive me!” And then Willi caught his hand in a silent plea, nearly brimming his wonderful golden eyes with tears and Johann watched in amazement as the last pieces of that grand, aloof facade fall apart before his eyes.
“Did your father put you into this school?” he asked Willi, still trying to look stern.
“No. I wanted to become a pilot myself.”
“Why are you working so hard at sabotaging your prospective career then, Wilhelm? You’re such a gifted student and you have all the prerequisites to become a fabulous pilot. If it wasn’t against your wish to study here, what are you rebelling against? I don’t understand you.”
Willi looked at him, at a loss, as though he himself couldn’t find an answer to this question. Only his hand pressed Johann’s wrist. “I’ll do my homework from now on, I promise.”
He stayed true to his word, much to Johann’s amazement. The mocking tone and jests were back in place before the others but now Johann saw beyond them. Willi submitted all of his assignments on time and invariably with a short, subtle glance in Johann’s direction.
Only one subject was still off limits, even to Johann and even more so in front of Rudi and Walt; Willi’s father. “He left my mother when I was three. Hadn’t seen him for about twelve years. On my fifteenth birthday, he decided it was a good time to come back. Arschloch,” he grumbled the last word◦– asshole◦– under his breath, with unconcealed hatred.
“Maybe, he feels guilty,” Johann offered quietly.
“I don’t care what he feels,” Willi countered with a cold smirk. “He gives me money and gets me out of trouble and that’s all I need to know.”
Johann felt a surge of sympathy for the boy that very instant. How much pain he was hiding behind that devil-may-care façade; how wretched and lonely he must have felt all those years… Johann grinned, thinking of his own father, kind, round-faced and invariably smiling, who adored spending every free moment with his two sons. Willi didn’t have a brother; he’d told him. How lonely he must have been growing up!
“I know that it’s two months away but do you want to come by my house for our leave on Christmas?” Johann offered before he even had a chance to think his proposition through. “We’ll have such a grand time! We always have all the relatives coming and there’s a huge slope near my house from which we can go down on the sled! And maybe, if the weather is fine, Papa will give us the plane to fly. What do you say? You can risk a few days, can’t you? If you don’t have any other plans, of course…”