The Second Victory, page 10
But this morning’s visit had nothing to do with love. Gretl’s husband was home again—halfway home, at least. He was a patient in the Feldlazarett. On the retreat from Russia he had walked into a grenade blast. They had brought him back, wretched but alive, to the pointless purgatory of the Lazarett. Gretl visited him dutifully every evening, and every second evening she walked back home with a strapping young orderly from the hospital. This fact, like all others, had been entered in Fischers big folio. Now he intended to make use of it.
Gretl met him at the door with her hair in curlers and her plump body wrapped in a loose dressing-gown that gaped a little wider when she greeted him. Fischer grinned with satisfaction and patted the nearer curves as he moved past her into the apartment.
She giggled with pleasure, kissed him roundly and drew him into the small sitting-room, where she sat beside him on the settee.
“Karl! This is a nice surprise. What brings you here so early?” She bridled girlishly. “Don’t tell me you…”
“No, Liebchen,” he assured her genially. “Much as I’d like to, I’m a busy man and I’ve got a hard day ahead of me. I’ll have to save my strength. I want you to do something for me.”
“Anything you want, Karl, you know that.” She drew the dressing-gown over her plump chest. There was no point in getting cold if there was no pleasure at the end of it.
“Good. This boy friend of yours, Gretl…”
She pouted prettily and tossed her curl papers.
“That one! He’s nothing. He talks too much and does too little. Sometimes I think he’s half a you-know-what. But what’s a girl to do? All the good ones are dead or damaged.”
“It’s a hard world,” agreed Karl Adalbert Fischer. “Is he fond of you?”
“Raves about me,” said Gretl emphatically. “There’s never been a woman like me. If my husband were dead he’d marry me. Probably because I remind him of his mother,”
“That’s good too. I want you to get him to do something for me, privately, you understand. No names, no questions.”
“What is it, Karl?”
He handed her the list of drugs that Rudi Winkler had written for him.
“This lot—all of them should be available in the hospital. Your boy friend should be able to lay his hands on them easily enough. Get him to bring them to you, a little at a time if he has to. But I must have them quickly.”
She stared at him in surprise.
“You mean, steal them?”
“Acquire them,” said Fischer with a gentle smile. “If he asks any questions tell him there’s money in it. I’ll pay for them.”
“But if he refuses?”
“You told me he was crazy about you, Liebchen. If he did refuse…” He shrugged away the threat. “It might be hard to recommend your tobacco licence when it comes up for review.”
“You wouldn’t do it, Karl!”
He patted her breast with a reassuring hand.
“Of course I wouldn’t, Gretl. I just want you to understand that it’s important. That’s all.”
“I—I understand., Karl.” She bent towards him, so that the gown fell open-again. “Couldn’t you stay a while…a little while?”
“Long enough for a cup of coffee,” said Fischer briskly. “Then I must go. Another time, eh?”
Half an hour later he was knocking on the door of the small cabin that stood at the foot of the Gondelbahn, the long aerial cable that swung the shining gondolas up the slope to the summit of the Grauglockner. The man who opened it to him was the engineer who ran the machinery and maintained it in the off-season. Fischer gave him his instructions bluntly and briefly.
“This is police business. No one must know that I’ve been here. Fit me with skis and a pair of sticks. Then start the engine and hoist me to the top. If anybody wants to know why the Gondel is running, tell them you’re testing the motors. I’ll be gone a couple of hours. When I’m ready to come down I’ll telephone you from the peak. You’ll tell me whether the coast is clear before you bring me down. Is that clear?”
It was clear. The engineer was a canny fellow who knew when weather was blowing up. He brought out his own skis and shifted the clamps with a screwdriver so that they fitted snugly on the small feet of the policeman. He gave him a pair of women’s stocks, because he was a small man. Then he led him over to one of the small aluminium gondolas and closed him inside.
Three minutes later, Fischer was swaying out over the pine tops on the first stage of his journey to the Gamsfeld hut.
When he got out of the gondola, lugging the skis and sticks after him, an icy wind struck him, whipping at his cloak, searing his eyes and his nostrils. He cursed savagely and struggled into the shelter of the small log hut. He should have known better. He was too old for this sort of thing. He shed his cloak, folded it neatly on the wooden bench and laid his uniform cap on top of it.
He pulled on a skier’s cap, laced it under his chin and pulled up the hood of his jacket. Then he bent down to lock his boots into the skis and shuffled out into the snow, keeping in the shelter of the log walls. Then he looked about him.
He was ringed by mountains—a tumult of waves in a petrified sea. Their troughs were dark with the pine belts and the nestling of villages. Their peaks were bright with snow spume, spilling downwards in a continuous flow broken only by black tors and knife-edge spurs, jagged and sinister. The desolation dwarfed him. The cold wind shook the props of his small courage. He had to make an effort of will to thrust out from the shelter of the wall for the long, transverse run down to the Gamsfeld.
His goal was a small log hut, about five hundred feet from the saddle on the opposite side of the range from Bad Quellenberg. In the old days it had been the first stage of a half-day run for the novices—d own to the Gamsfeld, two miles more down to the Hunge valley, up by the chair lift and then a long, steady run home to Quellenberg. Fischer had done it a hundred times in his youth—now it was a middle-aged folly, forced on him by the ties of blood and family. Besides, he couldn’t afford time for the Hungetal run. He would have to climb back to the saddle and take the Gondel.
He could see the hut clearly from his take-off point—a low stone building crouching like a big animal under its snowy roof. A thin spiral of smoke rose from the squat chimney and was blown away down the valley by the driving wind. They were there, then. His journey had not been in vain. He pushed himself off, uncertainly at first, but when he felt the blades bite in for purchase and the wind whipping his cheeks, he began to relax. His slack muscles responded to old memories, and for the first time in years Karl Fischer began to enjoy himself.
Like most pleasures, this one ended all too quickly.
The door of the hut faced downward over the valley. His approach brought him to the blind side of the building. He slipped off his skis and walked carefully round it, bending low as he passed under the window. If his nephew were in one of his crazy fits, there was no knowing how he might be welcomed.
When he reached the door he stood to one side of it, flattening himself against the wall. Then he reached over and knocked firmly. There was no answer, but he heard a small rustle of movement inside the hut. He called loudly:
“Martha! Johann! It’s me, Uncle Karl. Open up!”
There was a pause, then a man’s voice, harsh and strained, challenged him:
“If you’re not, I’ll blow your head off.”
“Nonsense, boy! Look, I’ll step back so that you can see me from the window. For God’s sake try to talk sense to him, Martha.”
He heard her chiding her brother angrily:
“Don’t be silly, Johann. I’ll go. Nobody will harm me; besides, that’s Uncle’s voice.”
Fischer stepped back into the snow and, a moment later, the curtain was drawn aside from the window and his niece’s face looked out at him. Then the door opened and, half laughing, half crying, she drew him into the hut.
The first thing he saw was his nephew crouched in a corner of the bunk, his pistol aimed at the doorway. Fischer grinned at him cheerfully. “Put it away, lad, for God’s sake! You’ll hurt someone.”
Johann stared at him for a moment with sullen mistrust, then slowly lowered the pistol and put it down on the bunk, still within reach. Fischer peeled off gloves and cap and moved over to the old round-bellied stove to warm himself. The girl followed, questioning him anxiously:
“What is it, Uncle? What’s going on? What will happen to Johann—all of us?”
“Nothing,” he told them breezily. “Nothing at all. Uncle Karl has fixed everything. I’ll tell you about it later. Now I’m cold and hungry. Can you fix me something?”
“Of course. Oh, Uncle, that’s the best news we could have.”
She threw her arms round his neck and kissed him, then bustled away, rummaging in the knapsacks for bread and cheese, spooning black ersatz coffee into a saucepan of snow-water. Fischer took out his cigarette case and held it out to his nephew.
“Like one?”
“Throw it to me.”
“Just as you like.”
He took out a cigarette for himself, lit it, then tossed the case and the lighter to his nephew, who took out three cigarettes. One he put in his mouth, the other two he laid down on the shelf at the side of the bunk. He lit up and began to smoke avidly.
“You can have the lot, it you like,” said Fischer mildly.
“Thanks.”
He emptied the case and tossed it back to Fischer with the lighter. The lighter fell short and Fischer moved across the floor to pick it up. Johann raised the gun and kept it trained on him until he had retrieved the lighter and moved back to his place beside the stove. Fischer said nothing, but smoked placidly, watching him through the smoke drift.
‘Like a wolf,’ he thought. ‘Scarred, hungry, run down to the rib case, but he’d snap your throat out before you could say God’s mercy. Not so long ago he was a child, with a bright pink face and his mother’s eyes. I used to dandle him on my knee and feed him with sugar plums. Then he was a student, feckless as most, but with a charm to him. And afterwards the big thing—Universität—when he’d come home sober and serious at term’s end, with his mouth full of big words and his head full of dreams about saving the world with a scalpel and a bottle of dill water. Now look at him. What did the war do to him that he hasn’t told us? Or is it simply that if you hunt a man long enough and keep him running far enough, you turn him into a wolf? And what do we do with you now, boy? How do we coax you out of your corner and begin to make you a man again?’
Suddenly his nephew began to speak, and Fischer felt the hairs bristling on his nape. The voice had changed completely, although the man himself still sat tense and crouching, with staring bloodshot eyes, the fingers of his free hand still lying on the gun butt. It was a calm voice, measured, mild, almost academic in its dryness, as if another man were speaking out of the distorted wolf’s face. It said:
“I’m sorry to be a worry to you, but you must try to understand. There’s a name for this trouble of mine—a doctor would know it—trauma. It’s as if I were cut in two, with the best part of me on one side and the worst on the other, and the good beyond my reach. If you tried to take my gun now I’d shoot you, I know that. I’d know I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself. Instinct, instead of reason. The control mechanism doesn’t function. The family told me I killed a man. I—I remember it vaguely. I saw them driving up the road. I thought they were Russkis coming after me again. I was tired of running. I wanted to get down and fight it out, once for all. I know I should give myself up. But I can’t. I’d go screaming crazy, without hope of recovery. I’m a good enough doctor to know that. Maybe if I could rest a while, stop running, have a good doctor to help me, I could get better. But that’s not possible now, is it?”
As he spoke the wild look died slowly from his eyes, which became glazed and dead, and when he had finished, two large tears squeezed themselves out of the inflamed ducts and rolled slowly down his lean, stubbled cheeks.
His sister watched him spellbound, the saucepan suspended in mid-air, but Fischer went on smoking casually. After a while he said, very quietly:
“That’s what I came to talk to you about. I’ve found a doctor for you, and a place where you can be treated in quiet and safety.”
“I won’t go. I can’t.” The wild light came back into his eyes His fingers closed convulsively round the pistol.
“It’s up to you,” said the little policeman calmly. “The English have patrols out, searching the valleys and the heights. They’ll do it for months if they have to. Which means I’ll have to keep shifting you round from hut to hut. A few weeks of that and you’ll be dead. The only other alternative is the one I’ve given you. Take your pick.”
“Where is this place? Who’s the doctor?”
“His name is Winkler. He’s on the run like yourself. I’ve offered him new identity papers if he‘ll take you in, nurse you a while, then do a plastic on your face so that we can get you out into the American zone when you’re well again.”
“Where does he live?”
“Quellenberg. He’s got a chalet tucked away in the trees at the wrong end of the Mozart promenade. “He chuckled amiably. “His housekeeper’s got a face like an axe, but she cooks like an angel. I dined with them last night. Winkler’s got a good cellar too. You could live like a king—and thumb your nose at the world. Think it over anyway, while we have some coffee.”
The girl took the hint and turned back to her preparations. Fischer sat down on the opposite bunk and began leafing through a four-year-old copy of the Wiener Zeitung full of smiling Party men and marching heroes. He felt like tossing it into the stove, but it gave him something to do and left the boy free to sort out his tangled thoughts. After a while he spoke again, and for the first time a note of uncertainty made itself heard:
“How—how would you get me down to town without being seen?”
His uncle looked up from his newspaper and answered easily:
“That one worried me at first, but I think I’ve got the answer.”
“What?”
“It means staying up here another day or two, of course. But that’s nothing so long as we can steer the Englishmen away. I might start a rumour or two to take them to the other side of the valley. Toss me another cigarette, will you?” Without thinking, his nephew reached out and threw one of the cigarettes from the pile at his elbow. Fischer felt a small flutter of hope. He lit the cigarette and went on: “December the sixth is St Nicholas’s Day. The saint visits all the houses with his page and with the Krampus following behind to scare the naughty children. There’ll be twenty or thirty Krampuses coming into town on that night; if we dress you in goatskins and put a Krampus mask on your head, who’s to tell what you are?”
“Uncle!” The girl swung round excitedly, almost overturning the coffee pot. “That’s brilliant. It couldn’t fail. You know yourself, Johann, you’ve never been able to guess who it was under the goat masks. Say you’ll agree, say it, please!”
She went to him swiftly and sat on the bunk beside him, and for the first time his hands reached not for the gun but for her. He buried his face in her shoulder and said wearily: “I wish I could believe it, Martha.”
Fischer turned studiously back to his paper, while she coaxed and pleaded with him until the coffee boiled over on the stove and she had to leap up to rescue it. There were only two cups, so she gave one to each of the men together with a round of black bread and a large slice of cheese. It was rough fare and Fischer felt himself choking on it, but his nephew ate and drank ravenously as if afraid it might be snatched from him.
When it was all gone he put down the cup and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Then he lit a cigarette and stretched out on the bunk, smoking and staring up at the timbers of the roof. Without turning his head he asked cautiously:
“Are you sure we can do this, Uncle?”
“I’m risking my own neck,” said Fischer with a show of irritation. “If I’m caught, I’ll have a harder time than you. Any lawyer could get you mitigation—a good one might save you altogether. For me there’s no defence. You’re not even my son!”
“I’ll do it, then.” He said it in a voice so near to normal that they both stared at him. Then Fischer told him bluntly:
“There’s condition.”
“What?”
His nephew slewed round sharply to face him.
“I want you to give me your guns.”
“No!” Instantly, he was an animal again, tense, staring, his lips drawn back in a rictus of fear.
“When you go into town,” said Fischer calmly, “you will be afraid. If you carry your guns, you will kill someone else as you killed the Englishman. You must know that. If you don’t give them to me now, I wash my hands of you. You can go your own way, running and running till you die in your tracks or somebody puts a bullet in your head. I’m risking my whole career on you, lad. The one thing I won’t risk is another killing. That’s final!”
There was a long silence. The girl and her uncle looked warily at the haggard face and the wild eyes, hoping for some sign that reason had penetrated to the still functioning intelligence. They could see the eyes glazing again, the mouth slackening, after the first impact of panic. Then a new question was tossed at them:
“I—I trust you, Uncle. But what about the others? You know what the town is like for talk. Sooner or later they’ll know I where I am, and who I am. What then?”
“It’s a fair question, boy. I’ll give you a straight answer.” Fischer stuck his thumbs in his belt and rocked gently back and forth on his heels, grinning cheerfully. “I know the people better than you do. First, they’ve got too many worries of their own to stick their noses into my business. Second, they know that there’d be no profit if they did, I know too much about ’em. Third—and this may surprise you, but it’s true—they don’t want you caught. They need you safe and well. So many of the boys are gone, the ones that are left are doubly precious. Once we’ve patched you up you’ll have so many offers of marriage you’ll have to beat ’em off with sticks.”
