Ludwig Feicht loved his summer life on the long lake, and his broad, red face radiated goodwill. He had two small children in Tutzing, and while he was away his wife Theresa single-handedly ran a grocery shop and delicatessen for the many spa guests who packed the place out. Even now – especially now – the starving Prussians descended on the place to fill their bellies with Bavarian milk, dumplings and smoked meats, leaving their money behind, the new brown or blue 20 Mark notes. And Ludwig Feicht had been very happy with his life. He’d even faced the transfer to Douaumont with a certain composure, believing himself immune to the vicissitudes of fate. But as of that day, as of the two instances of shellfire, that feeling had been abruptly overturned. That the French had fired those two shells at the fort, that they were so bloody expert that they only needed those two: this took his breath away when the gunners from turret B explained it to him. His goal had been to return home in one piece with some tidy savings. Now he wasn’t sure what to think.
‘Feicht,’ the captain said in his new, depressed voice, employing the thick Bavarian dialect of their lakeside homeland, ‘answer me one question – not in your official, military capacity, but as a neighbour who’s in, you know, the same tight spot as me, as a Tutzinger to a Weilheimer, who has a dispute with someone from Nuremberg. Imagine the two of us are in a shooting hut above the Benediktenwand ridge and a nasty Nuremberger is due to turn up early in the morning wanting something from us – a Franconian, a right bastard.’
Feicht sat there squarely on the stool, bent forward, elbows on his knees. This was it. This was why he’d been brought to this evil vaulted place. He’d always made fun of clergymen and churches and pilfered from the steamship company without a second thought. Money was his second favourite thing in the world. But he should have kept his hands off dead men’s belongings. There was something wrong with that. ‘Captain,’ he said hoarsely, ‘I know what this is about.’
Niggl nodded. An intelligent man such as his neighbour would of course understand the ways of the world. Who would have thought that meek little mouse Sergeant Kroysing would have the devil incarnate for a brother. The brother had claws and he dug them in. He pursued his goal with tenacity, and his goal was to destroy.
Yes, exclaimed Feicht, waving his right hand about, which, being a sergeant major who understood what was proper, he’d never have done in a different mood or under other circumstances. Lieutenant Kroysing struck him as a crab that might skewer a pencil someone had put between its claws as a joke. There was only one solution: wave goodbye to the pencil or chuck the crab in boiling water.
‘You see, Feicht, that’s just it. We can’t chuck the crab in boiling water, but perhaps the lanky bastard will fall in by himself when he’s floating about with his mine throwers at the front line. Perhaps we could help him, shine a torch on him when he has us all up at the front and we’re under cover and he’s on the top. Until then, we’ll have to give him the pencil. Have you got the list?’ Feicht said that he had. ‘Do you know where the various things are?’ Without so much as a blush, Feicht considered for a moment, then said, yes, he knew where the things were.
‘What writings there were are still among my paperwork,’ said Niggl. ‘I’ll pull them together for you and leave them packed up here on my bed. Package everything up nicely while we’re gone – everything, old chum! Work out his pay up until the day of his death, not a Pfennig short. Can we produce the paper that the company commander signed when the belongings arrived?’ Feicht nodded. ‘By tonight the package is to be on the table in Lieutenant Kroysing’s room. I’ll answer any questions he may have. We mustn’t leave him any openings, Feicht,’ he said, eyeing his portly subordinate pensively. ‘For the time being, we have the weaker hand. For the time being. Now, be off with you, old chum. Tell Dimpflinger to get me a decent bit of meat, even if it’s from a tin. I want to see this game through. We’ll see who laughs last.’
Feicht looked with deepest sympathy at the gentleman perched on the bedstead in his slippers and blue knitted waistcoat with deer antler buttons. Here was a proper compatriot who wouldn’t turn his men over to that insane, scrawny Nuremberger, that rag and bone merchant. ‘It’ll be all right, old boy, even if it is a bit of a headache,’ said Feicht. ‘Whoever puts his trust in this retired civil servant from Weilheim will always have family. And when we’re all happily back home, Feicht will know whom to thank.’
‘Off you go, Feicht.’
The sergeant major walked to the door, turned the key and clicked his heels together, every bit the soldier. They’d understood each other without speaking plainly.
When there were spoils to share out, the sergeant major kept the lion’s share and gave something to the clerk who was working on the case, as well as the postal orderly and one or two of the NCOs to whom he was well disposed. It was very painful to have to cough up gifts already received, but a wise man does not questions orders from on high and he would no doubt get his reward in due course.
All alone in the small, square room that had been assigned to him and Simmerding the company commander as a billet and office, Ludwig Emmeran Feicht busied himself with the objects that the now almost forgotten sergeant had left behind in July. The company’s list lay on the table, and the cheerful electric light was working again. The door was closed, and a tumblerful of red wine and a filled pipe sweetened the unpleasant task. A coup had failed – never mind, they hadn’t meant any harm. Now in slippers himself, the portly man moved about putting everything in order, then sat astride the stool to take stock. Every time he found something he made a cross on the list with a freshly sharpened pencil.
First a leather waistcoat, worn but still usable, and (secondly) this fountain pen with the gold lever: they had formed the clerk Dillinger’s share. He’d been wide-eyed when he handed them back but he’d understood. Funny how the whole company had grasped that something to do with dead Sergeant Kroysing was in the air when that lanky fencepost of a brother appeared. Oh, they’d gloated a bit at the beginning, the little ASC men. But not any more. They visited their comrades in the sickbay and thought bitterly about how they had Lieutenant Kroysing to thank. Perhaps one or two workers from Munich thought about it more deeply and held the orderly room responsible for the disaster. But that way of thinking had no momentum, because the French shells had so much more momentum; he who dies, dies. Nowt for it. And so the Frogs helped keep discipline, and one army supported the other.
Pipe, tobacco pouch and pocket knife; Sergeant Pangerl had obediently brought them back. The knife had a deer antler handle and was stuck in its sheath like a dirk. The lad Kroysing had hardly used the pipe, which was of the best Nuremberg workmanship, and had kept it in a leather pouch. Now it would atrophy in a drawer – what a shame. Sergeant Major Feicht looked tenderly on the broad ebonite mouthpiece, the gleaming briar wood bowl and the wide tobacco chamber fitted with an aluminium tube. He put the parts back together again, wrapped the pipe in its pouch and crossed it off the list. A wallet full of slips of paper, a notebook, a leather-bound booklet with the calendar for 1915, a narrow moleskin notebook with writing – with poems! The kinds of verses that rhymed at the end. Ludwig Feicht’s lips curled in contempt. Typical. People who wrote verses should steer clear of other activities. If things went wrong for them, they only had themselves to blame. But now the most important items: the purse, watch and ring. Shame about the ring. He’d intended to give it to his wife Theresa as a souvenir, a holiday surprise. It was set with a beautiful green stone, an emerald, and the ring itself was in the shape of snake biting its tail and was patterned with scales. He, Feicht, had wanted to wear the watch, either on his wrist or strung on a long, thin gold chain across his waistcoat. It had all gone sour.