Manfred gets in, pats my cheek and slams the door shut.
‘You’re daydreaming,’ he says. I put the Kübelwagen into gear and pull away into the convoy.
He takes Bronstejns’s head from the basket and places it on the dashboard.
‘What do you reckon?’
The head is mounted on a wooden board, the holes in the skin covered up with pastel. I tap the forehead with the knuckle of my index finger.
A rustle of wood wool.
The green eyes glisten.
‘I’m not sure,’ I say.
He offers me a cheroot, I have to ask him to light it for me as I hold it between my teeth.
‘A handsome fellow,’ he says, turning to Semjon and the two Schwabenland brothers on the back seat, offering the packet. ‘Don’t you think?’
‘He’s the spit of Franz,’ says Michael after pausing to think.
‘Franz Bibermann?’ says Hans. ‘The grocer on the corner?’
‘Yeah. Frogface.’
‘You’re right!’ Hans splutters. ‘Frogface! He had a skin problem.’
‘I hated him,’ says Michael. ‘He was a bastard.’
‘Franz Bibermann …’ says Hans. ‘Fucking hell!’
Michael takes something from his breast pocket, a small case he passes to Manfred.
‘I can’t stand to look at him,’ he says.
Manfred opens the case and clicks out a pair of round eyeglasses with mirrored lenses. He bends the pliable earpieces around the delicate ears and pushes the glasses into place at the root of the nose, adjusting the angle of the frame.
‘There we are …’ he says.
‘I’m feeling a bit off,’ I say shortly afterwards.
‘There was something funny about that chicken, wasn’t there?’ says Manfred.
The roads
The sun is thick, fat. The landscape swells and seeps away at the edges. I unbutton the jacket of my uniform. I ask Manfred to stop the car. He looks at me, and his mouth cracks into a grin.
‘Look at him … a true Norddeutscher …’
I am not laughing.
I am holding my hand up to my mouth. I swallow.
I ask for the binoculars. Michael hands them to me.
I stand up in the vehicle, wind buffeting my face. Dust blows up from the road.
I put the binoculars to my eyes: a shimmering, oscillating section of landscape reels in the heat haze.
My legs buckle. I sit down.
‘You’re white as a sheet, Heinrich.’
‘Yes, Manfred, I am white as a sheet. Where are we going?’
‘Wait and see.’
‘Just answer me, for God’s sake!’
He twists round to face me, looks at me in astonishment, his arm hooked around the seat.
‘Wait and see, I said …’
_ _ _
SS marschiert in Feindesland
Und singt ein Teufelslied
Ein Schütze steht am Wolgastrand
Und leise summt er mit …
SS men march in hostile lands
And sing a devil’s song
A steady guard, on the Volga stands
And hums this tune along
‘Again! Come on, Heinrich. Don’t be so bloody boring.’
‘Again!’
‘Well, if we must.’
‘That’s the spirit!’
Manfred raises his index finger, points at us in turn, me, Hans, Michael, Semjon, then twirls it in the air, conducting:
‘One … two … three!’
SS marschiert in Feindesland
Und singt ein Teufelslied …
I take the bottle Michael hands me.
_ _ _
Navahrudak, we pull up outside Oscar Dirlewanger’s house. Former Freikorps man, convicted of pederasty and murder before Hitler took power, now Oberführer with his own battalion, Sonderbataillon Dirlewanger, Belorussia’s most notorious slayer of partisans, not even Generalkommissar Kube or the Polizeiführer can keep him in check. Himmler waxes lyrical, calls him Heinrich the First’s robber king, the Teutonic Cossack, the Slavic campaign of 928 incarnate, buccaneer, marauder, Landsknecht. But a bastard murderer is what he is, and I am reeling drunk on schnapps.
Manfred is not here.
I sit in the vehicle, bottle in hand, shivering with cold.
The bottle is plump, fascinating.
It has a cork that pops when I remove it, a partial vacuum inside.
I remove it again. Pop.
Pop, once more.
Now with my thumb.
Pop. Or perhaps more of a pfop. The equalisation of pressure is not quite as forceful. Thop?
I wait. I drink.
Drink and wait.
Thwop.
Like a skull being cracked with a crowbar.
I have a fever. I need to piss.
I pull on the door handle and tumble out of the car.
Michael, who is standing smoking on the other side of the vehicle, comes round to me.
‘Ups-a-daisy,’ he says, pulling me to my feet. ‘Oberleutnant …’
‘Where’s Manfred?’ I ask. ‘Where the hell is he?’
I jab a finger towards Dirlewanger’s house, the fine cast-iron gate, the driveway and the wide steps leading up to the main door of the yellow-washed residence. There is an espalier of red roses. I jab at that too.
‘When did he go in? What time is it anyway?’
I pull up my shirtsleeve and stare at my watch, but the hands are a blur.
‘It’s been hours …’
‘We need Dirlewanger on our side,’ says Michael, and thrusts out his lower lip, turning down the corners of his mouth. ‘Without Dirlewanger we can forget all about it.’
‘About what?’
‘Wait and see …’
‘I’m going in to get him.’
‘No,’ he says, then more softly: ‘Don’t.’
I stand for a minute, then offer him the bottle. He wipes his mouth on the sleeve of his uniform, twirls his thumb around the lip, sticks it inside and pulls it out, that sound again, and raises the bottle to his mouth. Saliva bubbles on his lips, he takes a good swig.
‘Erst ploppt’s, dann schmeckt’s … first the pop, then the taste.’
‘What?’
‘The one with the stopper. You know …’
‘No, I don’t. What?’
‘The bock beer, Schwaben Bräu …’
I swipe the bottle from his hand and drink again. I watch him as I swallow, his ruddy face, the mealy eyes, mealy, benevolent eyes, transformed now, welling with sentiment. He prods my chest.
‘Du …’ he says.
‘What?’
‘It can get to you, all this, can’t it?’
‘How do you mean?’
He is breathing heavily in my face. His right fist is on my shoulder.
‘Like having a great big hole knocked into you, and it’s all …’
‘All what?’ I say. ‘What?’
‘Like all it takes is something to prick a hole … for it all to rush out through your arse, whoosh …’
‘Whoosh?’
‘Yeah. Everything we are … Our, whatever it’s
