Читать книгу Bomber - Len Deighton - Страница 14

Altgarten was a small country town with nearly five thousand inhabitants. Five hundred of them had moved there since the regular bombing of the nearby Ruhr district – the so-called Battle of the Ruhr – had begun in March.

In the Middle Ages a great monastery had marked this crossroads where the trade in Flemish cloth met German iron. A fine stone bridge had once been needed to cross the stream that trickled along Mauerstrasse, the eastern boundary of the town. Altgarten never grew large, for a bigger trade route passed south of here, connecting Cologne to the important seaport of Bruges and its Venetian ships. Altgarten remained a spot on the map where travellers changed horses and gulped beer hurriedly in order to reach the Dutch border or Cologne before dark. The monastery fell into ruins, and its orchards – the fame of which had spread as far as Amsterdam – became a wilderness and were gobbled up by the town. Eventually, of the medieval buildings only the Liebefrau church remained, and fruit and vegetable farms covered the flat surrounding country and row upon row of greenhouses trapped the sunshine. There were silk factories too, and now that they were making harness in the sheds behind Frau Kersten’s farm, parachute manufacture provided work for nearly two hundred townspeople, mostly women.

The town centre, around Liebefrau church, was a cobbled triangle of seventeenth-century houses. When the military convoys passed through, the policemen had to divert them to Bismarckstrasse and past the railway station, for the heavy lorries would never have been able to negotiate the narrow cobbled streets of the old town. The war had brought great change to Altgarten, or at least it seemed like great change to the people who lived there, for few of them had witnessed the rest of Europe turning from butterfly into earthworm.

Of course the flowers and fruit on the farms had given place to vegetables, but that had happened long before the war. The disused factory near the brewery had become a cage for Russian prisoners of war while they worked on widening the main road, but at the rate the Russians worked they would be there for years. They were a dirty lot, always hungry, and they seemed to spend most of their time hanging around the town watching the gutters anxiously for cigarette butts. Lately they’d brought from door to door madonnas carved from old crates. Catholic residents exchanged potatoes, cigarettes and bread for them.

The hospital had expanded enormously since the air raids upon the Ruhr had increased. There was an annex and a training centre for Red Cross ‘Samariter’ (as they called the young trainees who did the three-week emergency nursing course). Adjacent to these buildings there was a big hutted camp where amputee casualties from the Eastern Front came for convalescence and learned how to use their new false limbs. These establishments dominated the town. Some afternoons Dorfstrasse was so crowded with medical staff and convalescent soldiers that local people felt out of place there.

Where Winkel’s was once a sea of blossom there was now a Technische Nothilfe camp, full of specialist troops ready to send heavy rescue and repair convoys to bombed towns in the Ruhr. Lately the TENOs had been building a railway siding there for their heavy equipment. It was heavy work and each night they drank a lot of Frenzel’s thin wartime beer.

The housing estate on the north side of town, intended as rehousing for the slums around the gasworks, was now occupied by doctors and TENO engineer officers, which did nothing to endear the visitors to the locals. Not that everyone complained about the influx of personnel. Herr Frenzel, who owned the best restaurant in Altgarten, never complained. The downstairs bar was always full of TENO engineers and was sometimes a little rowdy, but the restaurant upstairs was chic. It commanded a view across Liebefrauplatz of the church itself and the seventeenth-century houses beyond it. This was the very heart of Altgarten and these buildings, from this viewpoint, were its proudest asset.

The Liebefrau was one of the hall-style churches that you get only in the north. The tracery windows were extra large to let in the sparse northern light, and the roof was extra steep to shed the winter snow. Its slim buttresses ran down like anchor chains stretched tight by a stiff tide and behind it the white houses were like chalk cliffs against which it was moored.

By lunchtime the cold front and its dense dark low cloud had passed eastwards over Altgarten without causing rain. Now the whiter clouds moved gently, shrinking in the subsiding air to reveal blue sky beyond and permit golden pools of sunlight to hurry through Liebefrauplatz, finger the ancient church walls and transform the gloomy interior with its glowing stained-glass pictures. In front of the church a crowd was gathered at a highly publicized fund-raising drive. Anyone contributing two marks to Winter Help was invited to hammer a nail into a wooden map of Britain. Since the Burgomaster had driven home the first nail that morning many of the town’s most influential people had joined in the witchcraft. The map was studded with a pox of nail-heads that concentrated around London, for only the tallest could reach Scotland. A Hitler Jugend fanfare band was playing, helping with the Winter Help collection. The boys played loudly and expertly and the music was audible inside Frenzel’s in spite of the rattle of dishes and the chatter.

‘Frenzel’s Stube’ was spelled out in carved wooden letters across the doorway. The upper storeys were ochre-coloured plaster and carved black beams built upon a brick first floor. The ancient house was bent and bowed like an illustration from a book of fairy stories and the interior was dark even on a sunny day like this. There were other, more luxurious restaurants in the old town, but none had Frenzel’s chef or was able to get meat as good as Frenzel’s served. Whether he obtained the meat on the black market was a matter of constant speculation. Meanwhile Frenzel’s Stube was patronized by Altgarten’s most important citizens and none of them asked questions. There was good wine in Frenzel’s cellar and champagne and old brandy too. For those with money to pay there were Bayonne ham and paté Strasbourg studded with truffles. For without Britain and the USA, and with the mark pegged artificially high, Germany had become the best customer for Europe’s home-grown luxuries.

Müller, who owned the parachute factory, came to Frenzel’s almost every night. Nazi Party officials held banquets here. The commanding officer of the TENO engineers was a regular and so was the electricity station chief. So also was Frau Kersten who ran the vegetable farm. Tonight, however, was to be special. The Burgomaster was sitting near the window with Herr Frenzel himself, planning every detail for the Burgomaster’s fifty-third birthday dinner.

Walter Ryessman, the Burgomaster, was six feet two inches tall, a white-haired ex-cavalry officer with a duelling scar on his forehead. He had joined the Nazi Party in 1928 when dignified upper-class members were in short supply. The Burgomaster was still an ardent Nazi but also a German of the old school. He was a calm dignified man to whom honour meant telling the truth, fighting to the death and ruthlessly rejecting all non-Aryan influence. Over half of Altgarten’s population had grown up in Catholic homes but the Burgomaster’s political creed did not extend to anti-Catholic persecution. The crucifixes in the Volkschule had, of course, been removed and destroyed and there was no longer any religious instruction but no policemen had ever been posted at the church to record the names of worshippers. As Herr Ryessman had boasted at a Party gathering in Dortmund, ‘No non-Jewish citizen who is prepared to march forward with National Socialism to victory and honour need fear injustice from me.’

But the Burgomaster’s greatest and most popular triumph was a bureaucratic one. Just five months previously he had, by string-pulling, form-filling and judicious bargaining, saved the bells of the Liebefrau church from being melted down for armaments. The response from all sides had surprised him. In one month he had managed to find favour with Catholics, traditionalists, historians and colleagues. Oddly enough, Herr Berger – senior full-time SS officer in Altgarten – had been one of the first people to congratulate him.

‘Not a large affair,’ the Burgomaster explained. ‘Eighteen persons, most of them of my family.’

‘I understand,’ said Frenzel. ‘I will personally supervise the Herr Bürgermeister’s food and wine and service.’

‘A Burgundy. The same one as last year.’

‘I have it written down,’ said Herr Frenzel.

‘Who’s that with Herr Bach?’

The Burgomaster had respect for August Bach. Not only had Bach had a distinguished career in the First World War but he was a man of good family and a serving officer of the Luftwaffe, a true German, honourable and silent. Furthermore, his cousin, Gerd Böll – although a frivolous and unconventional fellow – was one of the town’s most prosperous tradesmen. Mind you, if Bach had paid a little more attention to practical politics he could have done far better for himself than Oberleutnant’s rank. A man with the ‘Blue Max’ – the highest decoration of the first war – at his throat should be a general. What couldn’t the Burgomaster have done if he’d had that medal.

‘His housekeeper,’ said Frenzel without looking up, for he had already surveyed his restaurant and amended his knowledge of his fellow citizens.

‘He’s lunching with her?’ asked the Burgomaster.

‘Yes,’ said Frenzel.

‘How long since his wife was killed?’

‘Thirteen months,’ said Frenzel, who had already calculated it.

‘She’s a very beautiful girl,’ said the Burgomaster.

‘A beautiful girl,’ agreed Frenzel. ‘Her father is from Breslau: a high-ranking official of the Propaganda Ministry.’

‘Indeed,’ said the Burgomaster. He fingered the Party badge in his lapel.

August Bach was seeing an Anna-Luisa that he had only suspected might exist. She laughed readily and was delighted with everything he said and did.

‘I’m glad to see that Herr Frenzel’s sausages also burst out of their skins,’ she said and giggled. She wasn’t used to drinking two large glasses of wine at midday. ‘They are full of bread,’ she explained, solemnly stabbing the Mettwurst.

‘No,’ said August. ‘It’s a secret ray the British have. A man in London flicks a switch and every sausage skin in the Ruhr splits from end to end. The great Wurstwerfer, is the British secret weapon.’

She searched his face, for she had not yet got used to the idea that this man was capable of teasing her, then she laughed at his silliness and her own happiness. It was a nice laugh.

‘Kirschtorte,’ said August; ‘Frau Frenzel makes it herself.’

‘Yes,’ said Anna-Luisa, gazing into his eyes without hearing him.

She was still laughing as they came out of Frenzel’s through the bar room. At the bar there were several people they knew. A group of TENO engineers waved to Anna-Luisa and she blew them a kiss.

‘They are friends of little Hansl’s,’ she explained. ‘Last week they took him for a ride on the heavy crane. He loved it. Everyone likes your little son, August.’

They had walked only a few paces along the street when they heard a voice calling August’s name. Across the road there was a grey van with the name ‘Gerhard Böll’ painted on its side. Gerd himself was driving. He got out and came across the road.

Gerd Böll had been a widower for four years. He was a cheerful little man, with long arms and large powerful hands which combined to make him look like a laughing bald gorilla. This resemblance Gerd did nothing to disguise, and after a few glasses of the schnapps which he distilled in the garage behind his grocer’s shop he would swing around lamp posts and frighten people picking their way carefully through the blackout. At least, he used to frighten passers-by in this way but by now too many local inhabitants had grown used to it. Gerd Böll’s practical jokes were often of a more complex nature that befitted a man who had once been a doctor of engineering at Leipzig University. Gerd Böil had two grocer’s shops in Altgarten and a relative managed another one in Krefeld. Each evening he reported with his van to the air-raid defence office at the Rathaus. For putting his van at the disposal of the Luftschütz he was eligible for sixty litres of petrol per month. After particularly heavy air raids upon the Ruhr cities Gerd took his van to the bombed areas to help. Sometimes at the bar he would tell hair-raising stories of the death and damage he had seen and the TENO engineers would add tales of their own.

‘August,’ he called. ‘I’ve been looking for you. I stopped by at the house hoping for some of that real coffee.’

‘What is it? We were shopping this morning.’

‘It can wait,’ said Gerd. ‘I didn’t know you were with Anna-Luisa.’

‘We are going to be married, Herr Böll,’ she said.

August’s cousin looked so surprised that both Anna-Luisa and August laughed. ‘Is it so awful?’ Anna-Luisa asked him.

‘It’s wonderful news,’ said Gerd Böll.

‘It looks like it,’ August said.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Gerd.

‘Herr Oberleutnant,’ called a rough voice from the roadway. Parked against the kerb there was a Kübelwagen, the military version of the Volkswagen. Its camouflage was hidden under ancient mud and its equally dirty windscreen was folded flat upon the bonnet. There were dents in its side and four rusting bullet holes ran in a line above the rear wheel. The car bore SS registration plates and the rear seat was piled high with kit. In the front sat an unmistakably Russian driver and alongside him a Waffen SS officer in a very battered leather coat and dust goggles. The officer threw Bach a perfunctory military salute. ‘There is an SS unit here?’ He looked at Anna-Luisa appreciatively.

‘The Wald Hotel,’ said August.

‘Which way?’

Gerd said, ‘Go to the end of this road and then turn right following the old walls. The Wald Hotel is where the trees begin. You’ll see the black-and-white sentry boxes.’

‘Thank you,’ said the officer.

‘It’s no trouble,’ said Gerd.

‘Heil Hitler,’ said the officer. He glanced at Anna-Luisa again and without waiting for Gerd to return his salute he gave the driver his instruction in a language unknown to the others. They watched the car pull away with a roar. It steered round the horses and carts that moved slowly past the Liebefrau church, their metal wheels rattling on the cobblestones like drum-rolls. They stared after it for a few minutes.

‘What was it you wanted?’ August asked Gerd.

‘It can wait until your next leave.’

‘I’ll be back here in two weeks,’ said August.

‘That’s fine,’ said Gerd. All three looked at each other in silence, wishing to break away and yet not knowing how.

‘I go back to my unit in an hour,’ said August. ‘But first we must buy a ring, and then I will write to Anna-Luisa’s parents.’

‘I mustn’t delay you,’ said Gerd, but he didn’t take his leave.

‘There’s something wrong, Gerd.’

Gerd took August’s hand and gripped it warmly. ‘Enjoy yourself, August, and you too, Anna-Luisa. There is little happiness in the war for anyone.’

They walked slowly across Liebefrauplatz. ‘He’s usually such a cheerful man,’ said August. Gerd drove past them and waved again.

‘He’s a funny man,’ agreed Anna-Luisa. ‘Everyone says that he’s the jolliest man in Altgarten.’

‘He’s not jolly today,’ said August Bach. ‘He’s in a very strange mood.’

‘Anyway it didn’t rain,’ said Anna-Luisa, anxious to make him smile again.

‘That’s true,’ said August, smiling down upon her and hugging her arm secretly. ‘Although they say the farms need some rain. The countryside is very dry.’