As the Lieutenant had driven into the city and taken Cpl. Albers along, there would be no instruction tonight.
After closing the galley, the girls sat in the Mess Hall, stocking feet pointed at the potbelly stove. Some of the boys were playing cards, Chris and Tom doodling cartoons on old envelopes.
“May I see that?” said Lilly, examining the special mourning stamp, featuring Hitler’s profile on an orange background, framed in black.
“Looks like HE’s dead, doesn’t it?” said Tom. “Scary, we need him to get us out of this hideous mess.”
“Yes, but will he,” said Motz, “sensational art, Chris. That’s one hell of a funny pig family, and you make it look like the work of a pro.”
“Do you ever use water colours?” asked Lilly.
“Water colours? NEVER. I’m highly suspicious of water. Don’t trust the stuff. I brush my teeth with it, that’s it,” said Chris.
“Me, I would mostly use erasers!” said Motz.
“Well,” said Chris, “you don’t need an eraser if you think first about the precise image you want. Like here, I stopped that line behind the ear of the pig and put in the roof of the doghouse first. I guess you work that way when you do it a lot. If you start looking around for an eraser, you’re probably having a bad day.”
“Yup, I can certainly relate to that. Do you think the Lieutenant has a really big eraser in that desk? I would love to erase a couple of recent bad days.”
Motz joined the girls at the cold stove. The nights had turned chilly again, but there was no fuel left to heat the place.
“Funny, but MY parents never told us anything about life directly,” Anna was saying. “They don’t really talk much with us. I mean, they convey things, but modeling the way they think we should behave or grow up to be. Once my Dad said it took real character to keep a secret. And my Mom believes you can NEVER break a promise. Never. That sort of thing. And you can’t ever ask people personal questions, because that would be prying. Our next-door neighbour told her little kid in the back yard once “there was NOTHING icky about the human body.” We overheard and looked at each other, and were probably all thinking, “our parents would never say anything like that. Something so practical and right down to earth. And a message of comfort.” On the other hand we’ve always had the clear impression that it’s our responsibility to contribute something, you know, to the quality of life on earth, to humanity, in our own way. The thing all parents tell their kids — you grow up with it: first serve your society. You expect you’ll recognize the challenge, the opportunity when you see it in front of you. Not plans, just vague ideas in your head.”
“Oh Anna, you already started, years ago. Don’t you realize? We all have,” said Lilly. “And yes, our parents approved, they allowed us, even encouraged us after all to go downtown into that nightly inferno three times a week and—”
“I hate to do this, but I haven’t the foggiest idea what you girls are talking about. My parents wouldn’t dream of laying that kind of noose around my neck. They told me to beat the shit out of them. My Dad gave me boxing lessons. He was an athlete, the best!” Everybody looked at Eddie.
“Who is ‘them’, Eddie?” But Motz raised a hand.
“Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing, but as we are constantly reminded, the walls have ears. I’m thinking of a neat pair.”
“It’s gone downtown,” someone yelled.
“Shall we leave it for another time just the same,” said Motz.
“Yes, another time then,” said Axel very quietly, not looking up.
“Eddie’s so funny,” said Emma. “I know he volunteered in the bunkers downtown during the air-raids. For months and months. I guess that doesn’t count in his book.”
Axel was sitting at the piano, feeling the keys for a song, one of his own.
“No one’s mentioned Immanuel Kant lately,” he mused.
“What does HE have to do with anything?” said Gus.
“Oh, the business about ‘enlightenment’, you know. Seizing the courage to trust your own judgment, acting on that, I suppose.”
“The guy’s dead. He wouldn’t exactly fit in nowadays, would he?” Gus again.
“Something bigger,” said Hansi. “I was taught to believe in something bigger, that I would be part of—” his voice wobbling upwards.
“That’s what my grandmother talks about. She says we’re part of a larger plan and if we patiently walk along — TADA! There it’ll be. Um, I didn’t mean to belittle her,” said Gus.
Eddie looked morose.
Toni begins slowly.
“I think it depends on what sort of a conversation I happen to remember this particular moment. I’m sure my Dad told me something like Eddie’s Dad SOMETIME in my life: ‘Stand up! Fight!’ Other days the circumstances bring out another side of his character and that too pops out in my memory of him. I expect it’ll go on for a long time — different things, some not so important.”
Rainer says he’ll fight the Russians since they’re coming, but would much prefer to get back at the bastards who bombed his hometown to smithereens, hiding up there, by the thousands.
“I lie in bed sometimes and wonder how they do this time after time, war after war — send hundreds of thousands of young guys like us out to kill hundreds of thousands of other guys they’ve never heard of before, let alone met — deprive them of their lives. Why the hell do we let them do this? Why play along with it — do you ever wonder?”
“Yes, my girl and I, we talk about it for hours,” says Tom.
“Ahaaaaaa, he and his GIRL…”
“Amelie thinks it must somehow be easier to fight, in spite of everything, than not to fight, to refuse or something. But if we know they have done something so awful to us, or are about to, don’t you think it’s okay to defend yourself? Stop them?” says Tom. “Like in my own private life? Shouldn’t I resort to a big stick to beat off an attacker? I’d hate him for getting me to do that, putting me in the position — but I would try to defend myself, you know, prevent him.”
“Yes,” says Chris, “teach him a lesson, and make sure others hear about it too, so they think twice — and isn’t that the lesson of war as well?”
“I don’t know if it’s EVER simple when it comes to wars. My reading of history tells me they’ve been started for the most trivial of reasons, over misunderstandings even, as well as power struggles, greed, and religion,” says Axel. “And the people never get asked their opinion — too often common sense would prevail, wouldn’t it? But I’m not saying we don’t have the responsibility to our people to defend their and our country. That’s a given, to me, once you are in it, in a war.”
“Who exactly is it we are defending ourselves against, though? Isn’t THAT the biggest question really? Wasn’t that always what revolutions are about - people realizing they weren’t owned by a father but by an OGRE,” says Chris. “They just weren’t going to be owned anymore.”
“Do you feel owned then?” asks Tom.
“In a way, yes, dammit, come to think of it, I do.”
“I don’t feel owned,” says Tom, “more like ignored. They’ll remember me when they want to use me for their game. I’d never felt like that before.”
Axel looks around again from the piano, where he has been playing bits of something classical and unimposing. “The job is to decide which of the values to run with. How do WE want to be remembered?” he says. “What do I want to be my epitaph?”
The sirens wail. Once again the enemy’s schedule is conflicting with theirs, and they turn off the lights and stay put. But the Sergeant appears in the door.
“Alright,” he says, “you all heard what I heard. Let’s continue the conversation in the shelter. Move. They’re not taking long these days, getting here.”
Chris stumbles along just ahead of Anna and walks all the way to the end of the trench, usually the most unpopular spot. He squats and holds his face in his hands.
“Chris?” says Anna.
“No, I — I just can’t talk.”
“Before God created the world, He was alone. After putting an end to it, He will be alone once again…” a sonorous voice intones in the dark.
“Yikes, another one of those dreadful ideas from the mystic tradition,” says Rainer.
“To quote my neighbour, ‘that’s disgustingly highbrow,’” says Eddie. “If we carry on like this, we’ll get the job done all by ourselves.”
In these weeks Anna was to feel as intimately close to the brotherhood of men as she would ever come. Occasionally feeling a hundred years old, unexpectedly belonging to something frighteningly authentic, still eager and groping for anything lasting to contribute, all they would be required to offer was their body and the ability to kill. And they accepted it, ultimately accepted it as a ritual of passage, an honoured, if despised tradition not to be dispensed with this time around.