A couple of soldiers laughed appreciatively. Blows created a bit of atmosphere.
‘And yet,’ continued the doctor, ‘even that isn’t the beginning, the first utterance. For as the baby passes through the gateway into the world, it suffers fear; how much remains to be established. And in order to express that fear, it shits. That’s how it greets life. The name for this calling card is “meconium”, young man. I knew you wouldn’t like it. It’s not very heroic, is it, this revolutionary act? But our nation retains the memory of it one of our vulgar expressions for mishap.’
Four men opened their mouths to speak then shut them again. Objections flared within Bertin: hadn’t reason and intellect been applied to alleviate the natural pains of childbirth through obstetrics? But he didn’t feel he could say that. The doctor had struck a commanding tone that must be allowed to fade away. And so the group fell back respectfully to let the doctor through. As he left, he turned round one last time: ‘I hope that what we’ve been discussing won’t go beyond the four walls of this room,’ he said.
‘It’s not a room,’ laughed Sister Kläre. ‘It’s a miserable barracks. Throw a trouser button on to the roof and watch it collapse.’ And with that she followed him out.
The others followed her example and began to leave. Pahl shook Bertin’s hand as they said goodbye. Bertin, looking pale, said he was on guard duty that night, as was Lebehde, and so they’d better get back pronto. ‘Get your guard duty over with, my friend, and come and see me again soon,’ said Pahl almost tenderly. ‘You really stuck it to them, my friend. You and me together: we’ll shake that baby up.’
Lebehde made a mental note to advise Bertin on the way home to be more careful, although he was less surprised than the rest by his outburst. It was an accident waiting to happen after everything he had been through and seen.
‘Wait for me outside, Lebehde,’ said Bertin. ‘I’d better go and calm my lieutenant down or he’ll bite my head off the next time I visit him.’
As Bertin made his way slowly out of the room with Kroysing on his arm, he apologised, saying he didn’t understand why he’d flared up like that. Priests had always infuriated him before, but it was the first it had happened for a while.
‘You’re a right one,’ snarled Kroysing. ‘It seems you’re not as daft as you look.’
They had reached the corridor. The door to the broom cupboard opened and Sister Kläre came towards them. ‘You’re quite a ball of fire,’ she said, looking at Bertin. ‘You’d better tone it down and sharpish. I’m going to be making a telephone call on your behalf this evening.’ And she nodded and went off down the corridor.
Kroysing stopped and pressed his fist into Bertin’s shoulder painfully hard. ‘There is going to be a redemption, then,’ he said, breathing heavily. ‘Yours, I mean.’
CHAPTER THREE
Bread for the hungry
LEBEHDE THE INN-KEEPER, disguised as a Landstürmer, his grey oilcloth cap with its brass cross tipped over his forehead, a leather belt round his hips, handed Private Bertin a long rifle, infantry issue 91 with an improved lock, at one minute to 10. ‘Right, my friend,’ he said a little shiftily, ‘take this shooter and have a ball.’
Both men were wearing their overcoats. Lebehde’s stuck out oddly at the hips. As they walked a little way together towards the barracks where the Barkopp working party was billeted, Lebehde explained in passing why: he’d taken the liberty of feeling the gigantic paper bags in the French freight cars and had been very pleasantly surprised. ‘Have a taste,’ he said holding something hard and sharp-edged in front of Bertin’s mouth.
Bertin bit in to it cautiously. It was white bread, a hard old roll. He looked at Lebehde in astonishment. He nodded solemnly. ‘White bread, my lad. For the French prisoners in Germany, so they don’t starve. The Red Cross provides it. But it doesn’t provide for our wives. We have to sort that out ourselves.’ Lebehde tapped his pocket. ‘I’ve got a whole load of it.’
‘This rock hard stuff?’ asked Bertin.
‘Listen, lad,’ said Lebehde kindly, ‘dunked in coffee and fried up with a wee bit of butter and artificial honey it’ll make great French toast. And if your wife can get hold of some of raisins and whisk those in and bake it in a mould, it’ll make a better pudding than the Easter bunny himself could wish for. It’s great quality wheat. Ask the Kaiser’s wife and if she’s in a truthful mood, she’ll tell you she hasn’t had wheat that good for ages.
And chatting away in this vein, Karl Lebehde grabbed the door handle. But then he swung round and whispered: ‘If you hadn’t sorted out that lot up there, I wouldn’t have let on about this, because there have been too many times recently when you didn’t share your tin of fat with us.’
Stunned, Bertin made his way back in his jackboots, shouldering his gun, to his beat between the two sidings at the tiny station of Vilosnes-East.
The mild glow of the spring night spread along the valley to the river. On top of the steep slope to the right, out of sight, sat Dannevoux field hospital. The earth stuck to his boots, but the damp air was pleasantly soothing compared to the smoke and stink of the barracks. Vilosnes-East station! It was there that Acting Lieutenant Graßnick’s labour company from Serbia had alighted and marched behind him in a kind of dream, past the muzzles of the Bavarian field guns almost stumbling into range of the French guns. A year had passed since then, slightly longer even – and what a year! He looked back on it the way he must have looked back on himself as first-year schoolboy when he left schooclass="underline" a moustached teenager in slacks, schooled in dancing, looking down on a trusting little squirt in short trousers. And he wasn’t even sure if the year was over. But Sister Kläre had promised to telephone someone for him tonight. He was no longer as naïve as he had been when he first met her, when she was ironing in Kroysing’s room, for example. From snippets he’d heard, it seemed there had been something going on between that lovely woman and the crown prince, which of course put a different light on things. Well, why not? Adults’ private lives were their own business. The crown prince was not well liked in the army. He refused to endure the hardships that hundreds of thousands of men were commanded to endure in his name. He paid the price for that. Packets of cigarettes were left lying in the mud on the Moirey-Azannes road. But he was also meant to be gallant and incapable of being unkind to a woman with whom he’d been on intimate terms. If Sister Kläre took up his cause, things looked promising – thank God. Even if that poisonous little toad Major Jansch stood on tiptoe and spat as far as he could, he wouldn’t reach this particular bowl of soup.
Bertin felt hopeful as he climbed over switches and sleepers on his beat between the two trains: on his right were the five closed rectangular freight cars full of damp powder, damaged shells and collected duds, on his left the open wagons of the bread train covered with large tarpaulins. He shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled on. He was glad of the chance to think for a couple of hours. He was damned if he understood what had happened up there. Like any soldier, he often grumbled. Grumbling went together with discipline. But never before had he lost his temper like that in front of strangers and superior officers to the point where Pahl had congratulated him and the medical officer had asked everyone not to repeat what he’d said outside ward 3. What was happening to him? He was 28 years old but he felt about 100. He’d gone to war full of enthusiasm for Germany’s cause, thrilled that he’d experience the Glory Years, worried only that he might miss it because of his physical infirmities. And now, barely two years later, all his hopes had turned to ash. The world around him was bleak and leering, and violence ruled – the plain and simple violence of the fist. It wasn’t the justice of the cause that held sway but the size of the boot. This war was a stamping of boots: German boots kicked French boots, Russian boots German boots, Austrian boots Russian boots, Italian boots Austrian boots, and the British, with their lace-up shoes that were sturdier than them all but more elegantly cut, helped out where they could, sticking in a few kicks of their own – and he understood that. Now American shoes had appeared, and the world had become a madhouse. Everything from peacetime had been swept aside. The world was now run by sergeant majors and you were a lucky man if you survived in it.