“The furlough is over, my good fellows.” One of them nudged the other with his elbow. “Stand to attention when the Feldwebel – I beg your pardon – a teacher speaks to you!”
“Do not mock authority, you pitiful hog of the trenches!” another one chimed in, much to the first fellow’s delight. “He has the rod and one doesn’t joke with something of that sort!”
More guffaws and back-slaps as the teacher looked on in growing horror. The fellow with the cigarette couldn’t get his breath and was wiping his eyes.
“Wirths, I’m quite serious. Don’t get on Herr Professor’s bad side or else he’ll write a note to your mother and will keep you after the class!”
“My mother is buried somewhere under the ruins.”
“To your father then.”
“Fell under Stalingrad.”
“It’s the first time that I’m saying this, but it seems that you’re finally in luck, Wirths! No notes for you! You’ll have to belt your own behind and put yourself in the corner!”
Their laughter was deafening now, hysterical and furious at the same time. In front of the class, the teacher was opening and closing his mouth like a fish thrown out of the water. Gerlinde clenched her fists, imploring the sweating man, in his ill-fitting suit, to say something to them, to make them stop, for it was unbearable to listen to them and their words and voices that sliced, with their sharp truths, like razors, through strained nerves. But he only stood before them, a powerless adult before a young generation they had all failed so miserably; no, worse than that – betrayed in a manner so malevolent it was beyond any comprehension. He must have sensed it that he had not the right to tell them another word after everything they’d been put through but that silence of his was just as poisonous now, as the patriotic slogans from some long-forgotten years ago. It was always the old men who started wars. It was always the young ones who died for those old men’s ideas.
Gerlinde looked away from the teacher in disgust. If they, the adults, had the guts to send these boys to the front, they should have had the guts to face the veterans that had come back from it. But all the teacher could do was stand there and stare at them, as though not comprehending the loss of his authority, over his yesterday’s students, all of a sudden. Only, they weren’t his students any longer. They were veterans, embittered and betrayed and he didn’t know how to deal with them any longer.
Gerlinde did though. She was surrounded by military men her entire life and knew just what language they would understand.
“Stop it right this instant!” she shouted, in a wrathful, commanding tone. Much to everyone’s surprise, silence descended upon the classroom at once. “Is that the way the soldiers of the Wehrmacht ought to behave? You have always been famous for your discipline and class. So what that the war is over and lost? Is that any reason to act like animals to each other? You ought to be ashamed of yourselves! Acting like some Amis! You ought to set an example for everyone, and you—” She stumbled upon the right word and turned away, already regretting starting the entire disciplinary rebuke.
In the back of the class, shuffling. Someone closed the window – carefully, in order not to damage the shaking frame. Several chairs scraped softly on the floor. The Wehrmacht was settling down.
Only one person didn’t appear to be impressed by it.
“Listen to the BDM leader.” Despite the soft tone, the young voice sounded deafeningly clear in the silence of the classroom. “If you don’t, she’ll report you to her father. He’ll ship you all off to the camp before you know it. For re-education.”
Gerlinde turned sharply round. From the very back of the room, a familiar face was sneering at her suddenly paled face. She remembered him, a boy from a parallel class – Helmut Mann, a communist’s son, whose father was arrested in 1938 after someone denounced him to the Gestapo. Vati told her all about that. Helmut’s mother came to plead with him at his office and it was utterly embarrassing. He had no authority over signing any protective custody orders, as he tried to explain to her. It was the RSHA’s doing, not his. He was in charge of entirely different things but she blamed him and then cried and then raged some more (he still didn’t arrest her for he empathized with her grief very well) and then kneeled and tried kissing his boots… yes. Utterly embarrassing.
All of the eyes were on her now – on her white blouse and her navy skirt and her plaited hair and her brown shoes. Gerlinde stared at the blackboard as if her life depended on it but she still felt them piercing the back of her head, stabbing at her squared shoulders. At least the Wehrmacht fellows were strangely quiet. Gerlinde closed her eyes, regretting coming here. She was grateful for Tadek clearing his throat and finally awakening the teacher from his stunned stupor. Slowly, the man walked over to the blackboard, lowered the rod onto the ledge where the chalk lay, three pitiful pieces. Herr Trost, he wrote with an uncertain hand and for some time stood, with his back to his pupils as though it physically pained him to face them now.
“I think we all have had enough of this.” Whether he purposely omitted the word – war – wasn’t clear. “Let’s try and concentrate on history lessons.” At last, he turned around and motioned for Gerlinde toward the bookcase that stood in the back of the classroom. “Distribute the textbooks; what’s your name?”
“Neumann. Gerlinde Neumann.”
“Distribute the textbooks. The ancient world ones.”
“We should be studying modern history this year. We have already studied ancient—”
“I know!” Herr Trost looked annoyed and distraught at the same time. “The American Military
