Bertin wasn’t offended. To the contrary, he was deeply moved and greatly satisfied by his inclusion.
‘All afternoon I’ve been asking myself where we went wrong, Wilhelm and I. Where was the mistake in our calculations? And I said to myself: we shouldn’t have jumped so far ahead. You and I, we’re sitting here safe and sound with our heads intact and ready to use. But for Wilhelm all that’s left is a mass grave, and the workers of Berlin will have to get on without him. And it’s a comfort to know that they will get on without him. It would have gone quicker with Wilhlem, no doubt about it. That boy had a good head on his shoulders, and he did what a man could, even if he was a bit careless in his choice of parents, and he knew that the bosses wouldn’t give anything away, and that we would hand them a box of cigars in return for a match. And yet, you see, he miscalculated, as events have shown. Where did he go wrong? Can you answer me that?’
Bertin had started folding his blankets, which had to be strapped under the flap of his rucksack. He was reluctant to answer Lebehde’s question, because his thoughts were of Pahl the living man, his way of smiling, his fondness for a well-turned phrase, for the newspaper quarter in Berlin with its machine rooms and great rolls of white paper held together by wooden battens, for the smell of printer’s ink, the aroma of paraffin from the freshly printed sheets; his fondness for Sunday outings to Treptow, to the Müggelsee, for the high banks of the Havel by the Great Window in Wannsee, the silvery green pine trees of the Mark. How could he possibly identify the mistake in Wilhelm Pahl’s calculations that had cost him his life? Were there actually any calculations?
There certainly were, said Lebehde. Wilhelm hadn’t lost his toe by chance, but thanks to meticulous planning and a sharpened nail that had been carefully made to rust.
Bertin received this news open-mouthed.
They hadn’t told him about it at the time – they could talk about why until the cows came home, but, said Lebehde, there wasn’t much point now and so it would be better to skip it. Wilhelm had wanted it done, and Lebehde had stuck the thing in, and so it was him who’d started it and he shared responsibility for how it had turned out.
Bertin was amazed at himself. Eberhard Kroysing had suffered the same fate as his brother. He would never see him again, and he would never see Pahl again, who had had himself maimed, nor Father Lochner – and what had become of Sister Kläre? It was far too much for one person, who only had two ears and one heart, and whose soul was still preoccupied by all the things that had been going through his mind when he was on sentry duty. He would need time, a lot of time, to make sense of it all. He looked at his dirty fingernails and finally asked whether Lebehdhe required people to factor chance into their calculations, because air men didn’t usually drop bombs on hospitals and so it must have been chance that directed the bomb.
Lebehde immediately said that he did. It wasn’t that he required it. The cause required it, as the facts demonstrated. It required absolute vigilance, for the opponent was ruthless and exploited even the smallest advantage, to say nothing of big advantages. They had underestimated their opponents – the capitalist world order and its wars – and now the goose was cooked.
‘Listen, my friend,’ he whispered confidentially, ‘you made all kinds of pretty speeches against violence up there, but did violence listen? Not a bit of it! It struck and made us into survivors. Perhaps that teaches us a thing or two. And if I hadn’t neglected to pay due attention to my profession, which I should have done, I might have realised it sooner. For what does a good inn-keeper do? You’re thinking he sells beer and cheers people up. If you like. But calling time and throwing out troublemakers – once they’ve settled their bill – is also part of his job, and I’ve always been a stickler for decency and good behaviour. And so I have used force for the collective good. Do you follow?’
And because Bertin thought too long, he shook his broad head. ‘But carry on speaking out against violence by others. The fewer bouncers there are for my competition, the better it is for me, especially as I’ve always got to be my own bouncer. The longer this war lasts, the more stupid the world will become. But an order backed up by a gun – everyone understands that. That’s what a certain Lebehde has learnt, and now he’s going to head back to Germany as quickly as he can. I’ll be out of here before the month is out.’
And that was why he thought it was quite right and the best thing for the cause that Bertin was pushing off to the court martial and to the east where there were no air attacks. Bertin had learnt first hand what the score was. And now he’d have an important position and learn more. The question for the future was whether it was possible to eradicate the great injustice in society. A man who worked in a court sat behind the bar where right and wrong were dished out. He was very happy about this change in Bertin’s career. ‘For what could you have written in the newspapers that would have been of any use? A load of crap. And how long would you have been able to carry on speaking to the workers while the war was going on? Three months at most. Then they would have got you by the collar and thrown you out, and the whole mess would have started again. No, my friend, you scarper off to your quiet little corner right away, keep your eyes peeled, keep your gob shut and try to reduce injustice. Wanna hear how it went when we see one another again after the war. Holzmarkstraße 47, Berlin East. I’ll give you a nice glass of Patzenhofer beer on the house and I imagine you’ll meet some people. And now get going. I’ll represent you at the funeral. And while the priest is babbling on, I’ll have a consultation with myself and try to work out how to create the force that will eventually make all force redundant.’
They shook hands, a thick hand and a thin one. Karl Lebehde had a chin that was twice as strong as his, Bertin noted with surprise, and his narrow mouth sat embedded between it and his nose, giving him the look of a painting or bust of one of the great commanders.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Full circle
PRIVATE BERTIN WAS nobody’s chump now. He didn’t even consider walking to Etraye-Ost. Wasn’t that what horse-drawn and engine-powered lorries were for? It was one of the laws of life for the soldier that it was better for someone else to get his boots dirty than to get your own boots dirty because no one would clean them for you. And the drivers were always happy to have a passenger for company. Bertin was a monosyllabic passenger compared with many others, but the carter, a Frisian from Oldenburg who’d grown up with horses and always worked on the land, had a concept of conversation more akin to a city dweller’s idea of silence.
In blank astonishment, Bertin realised that fate – or coincidence, if you preferred – was taking him down the same road that he had travelled when he first arrived in the Verdun area, from Vilosnes-East, where they had been detrained, through Sivry-Consenvoye, then left through the woods where the signpost still stood that read: ‘Not under enemy observation’. And then uphill and back down through the beech trees, which formed muddled green thickets on either side of the road. It was almost exactly a year since a marching solider had opened a letter from his bride-to-be here that said she was pushing through his marriage leave; and at that moment the first heavy gun had sent a shell roaring up into the air like some kind of primaeval forest dragon. Spring had been more advanced that year, and the winter had not been so bitterly cold. But looking at it from the outside that was the only difference.