MY FAVORITE GENERALS
I don’t look for perfection in them. Perfection on a game board: what does it mean but death, the void? In the names, the brilliant careers, in the stuffof memory, I search for the image of their sure-fingered white hands, I search for their eyes watching battles (though there are only a few photographs that show them thus engaged): imperfect and singular, delicate, distant, gruff, daring, prudent—in all of them one can find courage and love. In Manstein, Guderian, Rommel. My Favorite Generals. And in Rundstedt, von Bock, von Leeb. In neither them nor others do I demand perfection; I content myself with their faces, open or impassive, with their dispatches, with just a name and a tiny deed sometimes. I even forget whether General X started the war at the head of a division or a corps, whether he showed more skill at commanding tanks or infantry; I mix up the scenes and the operations. Not for that do they shine less bright. They fade against the larger picture, depending on how one looks at it, but the picture always contains them. No exploit, no weakness, no resistance, however brief or prolonged, is lost. If El Quemado had the slightest knowledge or appreciation of twentieth-century German literature (and it’s likely that he does!) I’d tell him that Manstein is like… Celan. And Paulus is like Trakl, and his predecessor, Reichenau, is like Heinrich Mann. Guderian is the equivalent of Jünger, and Kluge of Böll. He wouldn’t understand. Or at least he wouldn’t understand yet. I, however, find it easy to assign these generals occupations, nicknames, hobbies, types of house, seasons of the year, etc. Or to spend hours comparing and compiling statistics from their respective service records. Arranging and rearranging them: by game, by decorations, by victories, by defeats, by years lived, by books published. They’re not saints or anything like it, but sometimes I see them in the sky, like in the movies, their faces superimposed on the clouds, smiling at us, gazing into the distance, rehearsing salutes, some nodding as if clearing up unspoken doubts. They share clouds and sky with generals like Frederick the Great, as if the two eras and all games had merged in a single jet of steam. (Sometimes I imagine that Conrad is sick, in the hospital, with no visitors—except maybe me, standing by the door—and in his suffering he discovers, reflected on the wall, the maps and counters that he’ll never touch again! The era of Frederick and all the other generals escaped from the laws of the afterlife! The void knocking fists with my poor Conrad!) Sympathetic figures, despite everything. Like Model the Titan, Schörner the Ogre, Rendulio the Bastard, Arnim the Obedient, Witzleben the Squirrel, Blaskowitz the Upright, Knobelsdorffthe Paladin, Balck the Fist, Manteuffel the Intrepid, Student the Fang, Hausser the Black, Dietrich the Autodidact, Henrici the Rock, Busch the Nervous, Hoth the Thin, Kleist the Astronomer, Paulus the Sad, Breith the Silent, Vietinghoffthe Obstinate, Bayerlein the Studious, Hoeppner the Blind, Salmuth the Academic, Geyr the Inconstant, List the Luminous, Reinhardt the Silent, Meindl the Warthog, Dietl the Skater, Wöhler the Stubborn, Chevallerie the Absentminded, Bittrich the Nightmare, Falkenhorst the Leaper, Wenck the Carpenter, Nehring the Enthusiast, Weichs the Clever, Eberbach the Depressive, Dollman the Cardiac, Halder the Butler, Sodenstern the Swift, Kesselring the Mountain, Küchler the Preoccupied, Hube the Inexhaustible, Zangen the Dark, Weiss the Transparent, Friessner the Lame, Stumme the Ashen, Mackensen the Invisible, Lindemann the Engineer, Westphal the Calligrapher, Marcks the Bitter, Stulpnagel the Elegant, von Thoma the Garrulous… Firmly ensconced in heaven… On the same cloud as Ferdinand, Brunswick, Schwerin, Lehwaldt, Ziethen, Dohna, Kleist, Wedell, Frederick’s generals… On the same cloud as Blücher’s triumphant army at Waterloo: Bülow, Ziethen, Pirch, Thielman, Hiller, Losthin, Schwerin, Schulenburg, Watzdorf, Jagow, Tippelskirchen, etc. Symbolic figures with the ability to storm into your dreams to the cry of Eureka! Eureka! Awake! and make you open your eyes, if you’re able to hear their call without fear, and at the foot of the bed you find the Favorite Situations that were and the Favorite Situations that might have been. Among the former I would single out Rommel’s ride with the Seventh Armored in ’40, Student falling upon Crete, Kleist’s advance through the Caucasus with the First Panzer Army, Manteuffel’s offensive in the Ardennes with the Fifth Panzer Army, Manstein’s campaign in the Crimea with the Eleventh Army, the Dora gun itself, the Mt. Elbrus flag itself, Hube’s resistance in Russia and Sicily, Reichenau’s Tenth Army breaking the necks of the Poles. From among the Favorite Situations that never were, I have a special fondness for the capture of Moscow by Kluge’s troops, the conquest of Stalingrad by Reichenau (rather than Paulus), the disembarking of the Ninth and Sixteenth Armies in Great Britain (parachute drop included), the securing of the Astrakhan–Arkhangel’sk line, the triumphs in Kursk and Mortain, the orderly retreat to the far side of the Seine, the reconquest of Budapest, the reconquest of Antwerp, the sustained resistance in Courland and Königsberg, the holding of the line along the Oder, the Alpine Redoubt, the death of Zarina and the switching of alliances… Silliness, idiocy, useless feats, as Conrad says, in order to avoid witnessing the generals’ last farewelclass="underline" happy in victory, good losers in defeat. Even in utter defeat. They wink an eye, rehearse military salutes, stare offinto the distance, or nod. What have they to do with this hotel that’s falling apart? Nothing, but they help, they comfort. Their farewells stretch on for an eternity and remind me of old matches, afternoons, nights, of which all that remains is not victory or defeat but a movement, a feint, a clash, and friends’ claps on the back.
AUTUMN 1942. WINTER 1942
“I thought you’d gone,” says El Quemado.
“Where?”
“Back home, to Germany.”
“Why would I leave, Quemado? Do you think I’m scared?”
El Quemado says no no no, very slowly, almost without moving his lips, avoiding my eyes. He only stares at the game board; nothing else holds his attention for more than a few seconds. Nervous, he shifts from wall to wall, like a prisoner, but he avoids the balcony area as if he doesn’t want to be seen from the street. He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and on his arm, on the burns, there’s a very faint gloss of mossy green, possibly the residue of some lotion. And yet it wasn’t sunny at all today, and as far as I can remember I never saw him applying lotion even on the most scorching days. Should I deduce that this is a growth? Is what looks to me like moss actually new skin, regenerated? Is this his body’s way of replacing dead skin? Whatever it is, it’s disgusting. By the way he moves I’d say that something is bothering him, though with his kind it’s impossible to say for sure. Suddenly his luck with the dice is overwhelming. Everything goes his way, even the most lopsided attacks. Whether his movements are part of an overarching strategy or the result of chance, of random strikes here and there, I can’t say, but it’s undeniable that beginner’s luck is with him. In Russia, after a series of attacks and counterattacks, I’m forced to retreat to the Leningrad–Kalinin–Tula–Stalingrad–Elista line, at the same time as a new Red threat, double-pronged, looms far to the south in the Caucasus, poised to attack Maikop, which is almost undefended, and Elista. In England I manage to hold on to at least one hex— Portsmouth—after a massive Anglo-American offensive that, despite everything, fails to achieve its goal of running me off the island. With Portsmouth still in my grasp, London remains under threat. In Morocco, El Quemado disembarks two corps of American infantry—his only simpleminded play—with seemingly no purpose other than to annoy and to divert German forces from other fronts. The bulk of my army is in Russia, and for now I don’t think I can pull out even a replacement unit.