"They are liable to come in ten minutes, or ten days," said Christian, "or ten weeks. Who can tell what the Americans will do?"
"I hope they come soon," said the guard. "They are preferable to the…"
This one, too, Christian thought. "I know," he said shortly.
"They are preferable to the Russians and preferable to the French."
"That's what everybody says," the guard said unhappily.
"God," Christian sniffed. "How can you stand the stink?"
The guard nodded. "It is bad, isn't it?" he said. "But I've been here a week and I don't notice it any more."
"A week?" Christian asked. "Is that all?"
"There was a whole SS battalion here, but a week ago they took them away and put us here. Just one company," the guard said aggrievedly. "We are lucky to be alive."
"What have you got in there?" Christian nodded his head in the direction of the smell.
"The usual. Jews, Russians, some politicals, some people from Yugoslavia and Greece, places like that. We locked them all in two days ago. They know something is up and they are getting dangerous. And we have only one company, they could wipe us out in fifteen minutes if they wanted, there are thousands of them. They were making a lot of noise an hour ago." He turned and peered uneasily at the locked barracks. "Now, not a sound. God knows what they are cooking up for us."
"Why do you stay here?" Christian asked curiously.
The guard shrugged, smiling that sick, foolish smile again. "I don't know. We wait."
"Open the gate," Christian said. "I want to go in."
"You want to go in?" the guard said incredulously. "What for?"
"I am making a list of summer resorts for the Strength Through Joy Headquarters in Berlin," Christian said, "and this camp has been suggested to me. Open up. I need something to eat, and I want to see if I can borrow a bicycle."
The guard signalled to another guard in the tower, who had been watching Christian carefully. The gate slowly began to swing open.
"You won't find a bicycle," the Volkssturm man said. "The SS took everything with wheels away with them when they went last week."
"I'll see," Christian said. He went through the double gates, deep into the smell, towards the Administration Building, a pleasant-looking Tyrolean-style chalet, with a green lawn and whitewashed stones, and a tall flagpole with a flag fluttering from it in the brisk morning wind. There was a low, hushed, non-human-sounding murmur, coming from the barracks. It seemed to come from some new kind of musical instrument, designed to project notes too formless and unpleasant for an organ to manage. All the windows were boarded up, and there were no human beings to be seen within the compound.
Christian mounted the scrubbed stone steps of the chalet and went inside.
He found the kitchen and got some sausage and ersatz coffee from a gloomy, sixty-year-old, uniformed cook, who said, encouragingly, "Eat well, Boy, who knows when we'll ever eat again?"
There were quite a few of the misfits of the Volkssturm huddled uneasily in their second-hand uniforms along the halls of the Administration Building. They held weapons, but did so gingerly, and with clear expressions of distaste. They, too, like the guard at the gate, were waiting. They stared unhappily at Christian as he passed among them, and Christian could sense a whisper of disapproval, disapproval for his youth, the losing war he had fought… The young men, Hitler had always boasted, were his great strength, and now these makeshift soldiers, torn from their homes at the heel end of a war, showed, by the slight grimaces on their worn faces, what they thought of the retreating generation which had brought them to this hour.
Christian walked very erect, holding his Schmeisser lightly, his face cold and set, among the aimless men in the halls. He reached the Commandant's office, knocked and went in. A prisoner in his striped suit was mopping the floor, and a corporal was sitting at a desk in the outer office. The door to the private office was open, and the man sitting at the desk there motioned for Christian to come in when he heard Christian say, "I wish to speak to the Commandant."
The Commandant was the oldest Lieutenant Christian had ever seen. He looked well over sixty, with a face that seemed to have been put together out of flaky cheese.
"No, I have no bicycles," the Lieutenant said in his cracked voice in answer to Christian's request. "I have nothing. Not even food. They left us with nothing, the SS. Just orders to remain in control. I got through to Berlin yesterday and some idiot on the phone told me to kill everybody here immediately." The Lieutenant laughed grimly. "Eleven thousand men. Very practical. I haven't been able to reach anybody since then." He stared at Christian. "You have come from the front?" Christian smiled. "Front is not exactly the word I would use."
The Lieutenant sighed, his face pale and creased. "In the last war," he said, "it was very different. We retreated in the most orderly manner. My entire company marched into Munich, still in possession of their weapons. It was much more orderly," he said, the accusation against the new generation of Germans, who did not know how to lose a war in an orderly manner, like their fathers, quite clear in his tone.
"Well, Lieutenant," Christian said, "I see you can't help me. I must be moving on."
"Tell me," the old Lieutenant said, appealing to Christian to stay just another moment, as though he were lonely here in the tidy, well-cleaned office, with curtains on the windows, and the rough cloth sofa, and the bright blue picture of the Alps in winter on the panelled wall, "tell me, do you think the Americans will get here today?"
"I couldn't say, Sir," Christian said. "Haven't you been listening on the radio?"
"The radio." The Lieutenant sighed. "It is very confusing. This morning, from Berlin, there was a rumour that the Russians and the Americans were fighting each other along the Elbe. Do you think that is possible?" he asked eagerly. "After all, we all know, eventually, it is inevitable…"
The myth, Christian thought, the continuing, suicidal myth.
"Of course, Sir," he said clearly, "I would not be at all surprised." He started towards the door, but he stopped when he heard the noise.
It was a flood-like murmur, growing swiftly in volume, swirling in through the open windows. Then the murmur was punctuated, sharply, by shots. Christian ran to the window and looked out. Two men in uniform were running heavily towards the Administration Building. As they ran, Christian saw them throw away their rifles. They were portly men, who looked like advertisements for Munich beer, and running came hard to them. From round the corner of one of the barracks, first one man in prisoner's clothes, then three more, then what looked like hundreds more, ran in a mob, after the two guards. That was where the murmur was coming from. The first prisoner stopped for a moment and picked up one of the discarded rifles. He did not fire it, but carried it, as he chased the guards. He was a tall man with long legs, and he gained with terrible rapidity on the guards. He swung the rifle like a club, and one of the guards went down. The second guard, seeing that he was too far from the safety of the Administration Building to reach it before he was overtaken, merely lay down. He lay down slowly, like an elephant in the circus, first settling on his knees, then, with his hips still high in the air, putting his head down to the ground, trying to burrow in. The prisoner swung the rifle butt again and brained the guard.
"Oh, my God," the Lieutenant whispered at the window.
The crowd was around the two dead men, now, enveloping them. The prisoners made very little noise as they trampled over the two dead forms, stamping hard again and again, each prisoner jostling the other, seeking some small spot on the dead bodies to kick.
The Lieutenant pulled away from the window and leaned tremblingly against the wall. "Eleven thousand of them…" he said. "In ten minutes they'll all be loose."