War Stories Page 15

  To speed his return, Sembrano opened out his engine and turned out to sea.

  When Attignies looked round, the mechanic was rubbing his hands, which were covered with oil from the bomb-releasing controls. Attignies looked at the sky in front again, full of round clusters of cumulus-cloud reminding him of the animated cartoons; eighteen enemy pursuit planes – overdue – were approaching in two groups. And still more behind, probably.

  Their bullets began whizzing through the front gun-turret.

  Sembrano felt a ferocious cudgel-blow on his right arm, which went limp. He turned to the second pilot: ‘Catch hold of the stick!’ Reyes was holding not the joystick but his stomach, with both hands. But for the belt which held him up, he would have fallen on top of Attignies, who lay prone behind his seat, with one foot a mass of blood. Now that the enemy fighter was behind their plane, it would probably fire on them from above; there was no possible protection; faced with that number of enemies, the five Republican fighters had to cover the escape of the other heavy bomber, which was in a better position to put up a fight. The holes in the fuselage were like shell-holes: the Italians were using big quick-firers. Was the tail gunner wounded?

  As Sembrano turned to look, the starboard engine caught his eye; it was alight. Sembrano cut it out; all his machine-gunners had stopped firing now. The plane was losing height every second. Attignies was bending over Reyes, who was down off his seat and calling repeatedly for something to drink. ‘A stomach-wound,’ thought Sembrano. A new enemy onslaught swept over the plane, only hitting the right wing. Sembrano was piloting with his feet and his left arm. Blood was trickling gently down his cheek; he had probably been hit in the head, too, but he felt no pain. The plane sank lower and lower. Behind, Malaga; beneath, the sea. Just the other side of a strip of sand ten yards wide, a reef of rocks.

  Parachutes were out of the question. The enemy fighter was following, and their machine was already too low. To climb was impossible; the elevator, probably torn by the explosive bullets, scarcely answered the controls. The water was so near now that the lower gunner drew in his projecting turret and lay flat in the cockpit; his legs, too, were covered with blood. Reyes had closed his eyes and was talking Basque. The wounded men were no longer watching the enemy fighter, from which only a few final bullets were reaching them now; they were watching the sea. Several of them could not swim – if swimming were possible with an explosive bullet in one’s foot, arm, or stomach. They were more than half a mile from the shore, and a hundred feet above the sea; beneath them, twelve or fourteen feet of water. The enemy fighter returned, opening fire with every gun again; the bullets wove a pattern of red streaks like a spider’s web around their plane. Beneath Sembrano the clear calm morning waves threw back the sunlight placidly; the best thing was to shut one’s eyes and let the plane drop slowly down, until . . . Suddenly he noticed Pol’s face, alarmed, blood-stained, but still to all appearances jubilant. Spurts of red flame flashed round the blood-soaked cockpit, in which Attignies was now bending over Reyes, who was down off his seat and seemed to be in extremis. Pol’s face, the only one of which Sembrano could get a full view, was also streaming wet; but in the smooth cheeks of the fat, vivacious Jew burned such a desire for life that the pilot made a last effort to use his right arm. The arm had disappeared. With all the strength of his legs and left arm he pulled the plane’s nose up.

  Pol, who had lowered the wheels, now began to take them in again. The body of the plane glided along the surface of the water like a flying-boat; for a moment it slowed up, then plunged deeper into the waves and capsized. They struggled against the water which came flooding into the plane, like so many drowned cats. It stopped short of what was now the roof of the body. Pol threw himself against the door, tried to open it in the normal way, downwards; failed, realized that now that they were upside down he ought to look for the handle at the top, but the door had been jammed by an explosive bullet. Sembrano, having righted himself in the overturned plane after seeing the pilot’s cabin tilt over in front of him, was groping for his arm in the water like a dog chasing its tail; the blood from his wound was leaving bright red stains in the water, already pink, that filled the cockpit, but his arm was where it should be. The lower gunner had forced a way through one of the main panels of his turret, which had come open during the somersault. Sembrano, Attignies, Pol, and he succeeded in getting out and at last found themselves facing the endless stream of fugitives, with the upper halves of their bodies in the open air and their legs in the water.

  Attignies was shouting as he propped himself against the mechanic. But the waves drowned his voice. Maybe the peasants saw him beckoning to them as they fled, but that was all. And Attignies knew that each member of a crowd believes that an appeal for help is meant for his neighbour. A peasant was walking along the beach. Attignies crawled as far as the sand: ‘Come and help them!’ he shouted as soon as he was within earshot. ‘Can’t swim,’ the other answered. ‘It’s not deep.’ The peasant stood there. When he saw Attignies close beside him, out of the water, he said at last: ‘I’ve got a family.’ And moved away. It may have been true, and what help was to be expected from a man who would leave that headlong flight to wait patiently for the Fascists? Perhaps he was suspicious; Attignies’s fair and strongly moulded head looked too much like the Malaga peasant’s conception of a German pilot. In the east, the Republican planes were just disappearing over the tops of the mountains. ‘Let’s hope that they’ll send a car for us,’ Attignies muttered.

  Pol and Sembrano had got all the wounded out, and had carried them to the beach.

  A group of milicianos broke off from the surging mass of fugitives. Poised on the roadside embankment, and as a result much taller than the crowd, they seemed more in keeping with the rocks and heavy banks of cloud than with living things; as though nothing which did not join in the stampede could be alive. Their eyes fixed on the plane, which was burning itself out and sending short flames out of the waves that hid the colour of the wing-bands, they dominated the rush of jutting shoulders and upraised hands like keepers of some legendary vigil. Between their legs, wide splayed to resist the sea-wind, the heads seemed fluttering past like dead leaves. At last they began moving down towards Attignies. ‘Help the wounded!’ They waded out to the plane, step by step, impeded by the water. The last man stopped and took Attignies’s arm on his shoulder.

  ‘D’you know where there’s a telephone?’ Attignies asked him.

  ‘Yes.’

  The miliciano belonged to the village trainband; without artillery and without machine-guns, they were going to attempt to defend their homes of rubble against the Italian mechanized columns. On the road, in tacit sympathy with them, one hundred and fifty thousand unarmed citizens out of the two hundred thousand inhabitants of Malaga were flying till their last breath from ‘the liberator of Spain’.

  They stopped half-way up the bank. ‘People who say bullet-wounds don’t hurt can have this one!’ thought Attignies; and the sea-water did not improve matters. Above the embankment, the bent figures were still retreating eastwards; some walking, some running. In front of many mouths a fist held up an ill-defined object, as if all were playing on some silent bugle; they were eating. Some short, thick, vegetable; celery, perhaps.

  ‘There’s a field of them,’ said the miliciano. An old woman trotted down the bank, shrieking; went up to Attignies and held out a bottle. ‘The poor things poor little lads!’ She saw the others below, withdrew her bottle before Attignies had taken it, and hurried down as quickly as she could, shouting the same words again and again.

  Attignies trudged up the slope, leaning on the miliciano. Women went running past, stopped, started to scream when they saw the wounded airmen and still smouldering plane, and ran on.

  ‘The Sunday promenade,’ reflected Attignies bitterly, as he reached the road. Against the background of the noises of the flight, punctuated by the pulsing of the sea, another sound, and one which Attignies recognized, was growing more
insistent every second: an enemy pursuit plane. The crowd scattered; they had already been bombed and machine-gunned.

  It was making straight for the big bomber, where the last flames were dying into the sea. The milicianos were already carrying the wounded away; they would reach the road before the enemy plane arrived. They did their best to make the crowd lie down but nobody heard them. On Sembrano’s instructions the milicianos laid the wounded at the foot of the little wall. The plane came down very low, circling over the multi-seater, which with its undercarriage sticking into the air and the glowing sparks coursing over it looked like a chicken on a spit. A photograph was no doubt taken, and the plane flew away again. ‘Don’t forget your lorries’ feet are sticking in the air as well!’ Attignies grinned.

  A cart was passing. Attignies stopped it, and took his arm off the miliciano’s shoulder. A peasant girl gave up her place for him, and went and squatted between an old woman’s legs. The cart started off again. There were five peasants in it. Nobody had asked any questions, and Attignies had not said a word; the whole world, just then, was moving in the same direction.

  Heinrich Böll

  THE POSTCARD

  When Heinrich Schnitzler, the protagonist of Böll’s posthumously published novel, The Silent Angel (1992), returns to the ruins of his hometown at the end of the Second World War, he recalls the deceptively undramatic way the war had first entered his life.

  THE POSTCARD ARRIVED one morning while he was still sleeping, on the first day of his vacation and his mother had thought, It’s nothing important. The postman had handed her a whole packet: the newspaper, a few catalogues, a letter, a statement of account for her pension, and she’d signed a receipt for something or other. Anyhow it was hard to see in the semi-darkness of the vestibule, and it was dark in the hall as well; only indirect light entered through the large greenish glazing above the hallway door. His mother had leafed through the pile quickly and tossed the postcard on the table in the hall before she went into the kitchen, an ordinary printed postcard that she considered totally unimportant.

  He slept late that day. It was the first day of his life, if you could call it a life. Up till then everything had been school – school, poverty, apprenticeship, hardship – and the day before he’d finally passed his apprentice’s exam and gone on vacation . . .

  When she returned he was still sleeping, and the small, white postcard was still lying there. She put her shopping bag on the table and picked up the small, typed card, and now, in spite of the darkness, she suddenly saw the strange red marks on it, a white card with a red rectangle, and inside the red rectangle, spiderlike, a thick black R. A vague feeling of uneasiness swept over her. She let the card fall to the table; there was something strange about it. She didn’t know you could register postcards, too; a registered postcard seemed suspicious, it frightened her. She picked up her bag quickly and went into the kitchen. Maybe it’s a certificate from the chamber of commerce, she thought, or some professional group like that, saying that he’s passed his exam, something important that had to be registered. She felt no curiosity, just uneasiness. She set the bowl down on the table and pushed open the shutter because it had suddenly turned dark outside, and saw the first drops already beginning to fall in the courtyard, plump, round drops, falling slowly and heavily, fat ink blots on the asphalt. The carpenters stood in their blue aprons in the courtyard in front of their shop, quickly draping a canvas over a large window frame. The drops fell faster and more thickly, rattling now. She heard the men laugh before they disappeared behind the dusty panes of their basement workshop . . .

  She removed the cloth from the table, took the kitchen knife from the drawer, pushed the bowl into place and began to prepare the cauliflower with trembling hands. The large, bold-faced R inside the red rectangle produced a fear in her that was gradually turning to nausea; her head started to spin, she had to pull herself together.

  Then she started to pray. Whenever she was frightened, she prayed. As she did, a fitful series of random images floated through her mind – her husband, who had been dead for six years, standing at the window, grimacing as the first major deployment passed by below.

  She thought too of the birth of her son during the Great War, that tiny, gaunt little boy, who never did get very strong . . .

  Then she heard him go into the bathroom. The helpless stirring in her breast remained, a clump of pain and agitation, fear and suspicion, and a longing to cry that she had to choke back.

  When he emerged from the bathroom his mother was already setting the table in the living room. The room was tidy and clean, flowers stood on the table, along with butter, cheese, sausage, and the brown coffeepot, the yellow cosy, and a can of milk, and on his plate he saw a large, tin box with cigarettes. He gave his mother a kiss and felt her trembling; he looked at her in shocked surprise as she suddenly burst out crying. Perhaps she was crying for joy. She held his hand tight and said softly, still crying, ‘You mustn’t be angry. I wanted to make it so nice.’ She pointed at the table, crying harder, then broke out in violent sobs, and he saw her broad, handsome face swimming in tears. He didn’t know what to do. He stammered, ‘My God, Mother, it’s nice, it really is.’

  ‘It is,’ he said again. She looked at him, searching his face, and tried to smile.

  ‘Really,’ he said, before going into the bathroom. He quickly donned a fresh shirt, put on a red tie and hurried back out. His mother was already sitting there; she’d taken off her apron, brought her cup from the kitchen and was smiling at him.

  He sat down and said, ‘I slept wonderfully.’

  She thought he really did look better. She took the cosy off the coffeepot and poured him a cup, followed by a thick stream of canned milk. ‘Didn’t you read a little too long?’

  ‘No, not at all,’ he said with a smile. ‘I was tired yesterday, too tired.’ He opened the tin box, lit a cigarette, began to stir his coffee slowly and looked into his mother’s eyes. ‘Everything’s so nice,’ he said.

  Without changing her expression she said, ‘There’s some post.’ He saw the corners of her mouth tremble. She bit her lip; she couldn’t speak, and a dry, deep sob arose. Suddenly he knew that something had happened, or was about to happen. He knew it. The post had caused it, it had something to do with the post. He looked down, stirred his cup, inhaled more deeply on his cigarette, and took a sip from time to time. He had to give her time. She didn’t want to cry, but she had something to say and she had to have time to recover fully from her long, dry sob before she could speak again. It was something to do with the post. He would never forget that sob for the rest of his life, a sob that contained everything, all the horror not one of them could have known about then. It was a sob that cut like a knife. His mother sobbed, she sobbed just once, a long, drawn-out, deep sob, and still he looked downward, staring at the surface of his coffee cup in which the canned milk had now dispersed to a smooth and even light brown. He saw the tip of his cigarette, saw the ash tremble, grey and silver, and at last he sensed that he could look up.

  ‘Yes,’ she said softly, ‘Uncle Eddy wrote. He’s an assistant schoolmaster now, but he’s been transferred, too. He says the whole thing makes him sick.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said. ‘It would make any normal person sick.’

  She nodded. ‘And my pension statement,’ she said. ‘There’s less again.’ He laid his hand on hers, which seemed small, broad and worn atop the blossom white tablecloth. His touch released a new series of deep, piercing sobs. He removed his hand and kept the memory of his mother’s hand, warm and rough. He kept his gaze lowered until the series of piercing sobs and repressed tears had passed. He waited. He thought. That’s not what it is. Uncle Eddy and her pension wouldn’t upset her that much. It’s something completely different. And suddenly he knew it had to be something to do with him, and he could feel himself turning pale. Nothing would upset his mother this much unless it concerned him. He simply looked up. His mother pressed her lips together tightly,
her eyes were moist, and now she forced out the words, opening her mouth tersely but firmly. She spoke haltingly. ‘A postcard came for you, it’s out there – in the hall . . .’

  He put down his cup at once, got up and walked into the hall. He could see the card even at a distance; it was white and perfectly ordinary, a regulation-size card, three by five inches. It lay innocently on the table beside the dark vase of spruce sprigs. He rushed over to it and picked it up, read the address, saw the red, white and black sticker with the red rectangle surrounding the thick black R, then turned the card over and looked first for the signature. It was scribbled illegibly above a long line that read: ‘District Recruitment Commander’. The word ‘Major’ was typed beneath it.

  Everything was quiet; nothing had changed. A simple postcard had arrived, a perfectly ordinary postcard, and the only handwritten word on it was the illegible scrawl of some major or other. The greenish light from the upper portion of the hall door made everything seem to float as if in an aquarium: the vase was still standing there, his coat hung on the wardrobe, his mother’s coat hung there, her hat beside it – her Sunday hat with the dainty, white veil at the top, the hat she wore to church when she knelt beside him, quietly praying, while he slowly turned the pages of the missal. Everything was as it should be. Through the open kitchen door he heard the laughter of the carpenters in the courtyard outside, the sky was clear and bright again, the storm had passed, an ordinary postcard had arrived, hastily signed by some major who might have knelt not far from him in church on Sundays, who slept with his wife, reared his children to be decent Germans, and who signed stacks of postcards during the week. It was all quite harmless . . .