The High White Forest

CHAPTER ONE-2

Franz listened with growing interest. “Then of course, if one was fortunate one might find companions—though not always, regrettably, of the highest moral character. There was a girl named Yvette. While you and the Herr Oberst and the others are putting the snatch on General Eisenhower, I might just—but no. No, I guess that would be impractical.”

Franz lay back on his bunk. In the SS you didn’t make jokes about military affairs, even obliquely. You seldom felt the desire to, for the SS was an iron inner priesthood within the larger priesthood of the Reich. Still, a break from habit was sometimes a good thing in itself and there couldn’t be any real harm in listening awhile longer to this bubbling, unabashed, and outrageously, illogically likable young scoundrel from the soft and bumbling Wehrmacht.

“I find myself, like old Kaspar in the sun, groping for ancient memories,” Erich went on lyrically. “It seems to come to me faintly, as though from a great distance, that there was also a girl in Berlin. A girl in Berlin named Else. Ah yes, it becomes more distinct by the moment.”

Franz threw him a cigarette. Tannenbaum fielded it expertly in mid-air and put a lighter to it without losing more than a breath or two. “Now that the details come back I remember it as a most practical arrangement. My girl in Paris supplied me with perfume and silk, which I took to my girl in Berlin; my girl in Berlin supplied me with Bratwurst and goose liver, which I took to my girl in Paris. I would not have dreamed such days could come back so soon.”

“Weren’t the girls jealous?”

“Indescribably. Ferociously. That is why I did not trouble their pretty heads with an excess of needless information.”

“And tell me.” In spite of himself Franz entered the spirit of jovial irony. “During all this international trade in love and goose liver and Bratwurst and perfume did no money change hands?”

“Providence, as I have indicated, does provide certain compensations,” Tannenbaum admitted. “There was usually a little money for Yvette in Paris and a little for Else in Berlin and sometimes, God willing, a bit left over for me. Quite a bit when I was able to squeeze a few cigarettes into the equation.”

“In other words,” Franz said, ashamed to be discussing so monstrous a matter so casually, but still half spellbound, “you were working the black market.”

Tannenbaum sprang to attention. “Herr Hauptscharführer, if you will repeat that remark on our return to Heidelberg, you may expect a call from my friend Prince Scharnhorststauffel. In the meantime the answer is yes. Ah, Paris! Allons les enfants de la—”

“God! What a cynic!”

“Au contraire, mein lieber freund. Just the opposite. I am a fanatical and devoted idealist.” He sprang to attention again and raised his arm in salute. “Heil Yvette! Heil Else!”

Franz was almost stunned. “Cut that out!” he shouted. But the black rage he should have felt sputtered out in semispeechless shock. “If they catch you at that—if anybody else catches you at anything like that—kaput! curtains!”

“Alas, how true, mein lieber freund. If anybody catches me at anything the result will be a most unhappy one. If the police catch me at the black market it’s assuredly curtains. If the Gestapo catches me displaying my deepest and most exalted feelings for Yvette and Else in the deepest and most exalted manner at my command, it is of a surety kaput! If the Schweinhund Englisch or the sales Americaines or the debased Canadians catch me in my incarnation as Sergeant Roger Harding Foster it is both curtains and kaput. And if, by any hideous misfortune Yvette should catch me with Else, or vice versa, it then would be not only curtains and kaput but zut! zut! zut!”

“Tell me one more thing,” Franz said, “before we get back to work. How in the name of God did a Kleinlich like you ever get into an outfit like this? You must have volunteered like the rest of us.”

“Ah,” Tannenbaum reflected, “yet another story, equally sad. You remember the wording of the appeal for volunteers?”

“Pretty well,” Franz said. “My company commander read it to me in private.”

“For my part,” Tannenbaum said, “I remember to the letter, as any man granted an advance look at it would remember his own epitaph. No, no, don’t take that literally. I fully intend to survive our forthcoming adventure, whatever it may be and wherever it may lead us. The epitaph I refer to applies not to the corporeal Unteroffizier Tannenbaum but to the part of him that is forever Yvette, forever Else, forever the fine ripe burgundies of the officers’ club on the Rue des Italiens. Do you have another cigarette to spare?”

He sat down on the bed across the narrow hut from Franz and swung his feet up from the floor until he was half reclining.

“I would perhaps never have heard of the call for volunteers except for what I must regard as the most disastrous single mistake of my entire military career. We, that is to say, the management of the officers’ club in Paris, had by now been driven all the way back to Paris along with the other, er, civilizing agencies of the Wehrmacht. However, my fighting spirit unimpaired, I had plunged back into the fray as chief steward of another officers’ club on one of those excellent little streets off the Kurfürstendamm. In view of the somewhat altered fortunes of war, it was not a bad little club at all. Better, let us be fair enough to concede”—Tannenbaum paused to regard their bare dormitory—“than this.”

“It was there,” he continued, “that I made my critical error. One quiet morning I allowed my ravishing Yvette to visit me there. My superior, a dreadful fat pig of an Oberleutnant, chanced upon us in the hallway and insisted on being introduced. The next thing I knew—it couldn’t have been more than a day or so afterward—there I was standing at attention while he read the message from headquarters. Remember, my dear Franz, up to then I had been indispensable to this swollen, comatose head of Blumenkohl. But here he was now, having filled his fat Blumenkohl head with sinful and illicit thoughts of my fair Yvette, plotting to get rid of me at once and altogether.”

Tannenbaum paused. “If you find this too painful, my dear Franz, pray stop me. I know you have an intense sense of justice and the rest of the story may be more than you can endure.”

“Go on,” Franz said.

“Well, there I was standing before this unspeakable Abzugskanal. As I have said, every syllable is burned eternally on my soul. ‘One,’ the fat pail of Abfall read, ‘The Führer has ordered the formation of a special unit of a strength of about two battalions for employment in reconnaissance and special tasks on the Western Front. The personnel will be assembled from volunteers of all arms of the Army and Waffen SS, who must fulfill the following requirements:

“ ‘“A.,” ’ the bloated tub of Eingeweide read on, ‘ “physically A-1, suitable for special tasks, mentally keen, strong personality.

“ ‘“Paragraph,” ’ the indescribable Entsetzen continued, ‘ “B. Fully trained in single combat.

“ ‘“Paragraph,” ’ the obscene Geschwulst concluded. ‘ “C.” ’ Knowledge of the English language and also the American dialect.” ’”

Tannenbaum paused again. “Then this decaying Venusmuschel peered at me out of his crafty little eyes and said, ‘I shall not, of course, stand in your way, Unteroffizier Tannenbaum.’ I tried vainly to explain that although I did, indeed, have a knowledge of the English language, my knowledge of the American dialect ended with the last Hollywood pictures of 1941. The grinning Ungeheuer said a man of my intelligence would have no difficulty in bringing myself up to date. Then I hinted that I was not only not fully trained in single combat but that I was not trained in single combat in any manner or degree whatsoever. ‘There will no doubt be facilities,’ the mound of Teig assured me. ‘And there is no question that you are mentally keen. As for your strong personality—well, we hardly need to go into that, do we?’ The loathsome Spinne had the nerve to laugh out loud, thinking out loud of my lovely Yvette.

“I saw, however, that I was defeated. I decided at least to give the monstrous Kröte something to think about. ‘That leaves only the question of physical fitness, doesn’t it, Herr Oberleutnant?’ I asked.

“ ‘That’s the general idea,’ he said, grinning evilly.

“ ‘I regularly run a thousand kilometers in three minutes and chin myself a hundred times without missing a breath,’ I said, fixing him with a dignified and manly stare. ‘There’s not a gram of fat on my entire body,’ I added for good measure. The overstuffed Klumpen did not even have the decency to blush. And that, my dear Franz, is how you find me foursquare at your side, a fellow volunteer in Operation Greif.”

“You know.” Franz got to his feet after a few moments’ silent contemplation. He stood before the Unteroffizier, half a head taller, visibly leaner and harder. In spite of the ease with which Tannenbaum had dominated the conversation there was not the slightest doubt of who was in command, in fact as well as in rank. “You know, there’s only one thing that encourages me about you, Erich. I think even your phoniness is a little phony. I think you may be all right, or anyway you’ll do your best to be all right. If I had any real doubt you know, of course, I’d turn you in. If I thought you meant real disrespect to the Führer, if I thought your attitude to this coming job was as impossible as you make it sound—”

“You’d turn me in.”

“All the way in,” Franz said evenly. “All the way in to the Gestapo, Erich. You shouldn’t have forgotten I’m a member of the Schutzstaffel. I shouldn’t have forgotten either.”

“Well,” Erich said, solemn for the first time, not visibly frightened but wholly solemn nevertheless, “since you’ve been frank with me, I’ll be frank with you. I’m not a traitor and I don’t intend to become one. If I have to give this war my blood, I’ll do so; I won’t give it my reverence.” He looked straight up into Franz’s still-appraising blue eyes. “I told you my father was in the diplomatic service. I didn’t tell you he was killed just before I reported here.”

Franz started to murmur something.

“No, no. Please. There was nothing heroic about it. A bomb jettisoned on one of the safe suburbs; naturally my father had found a safe suburb as soon as they called him back from England. He’s only worth a little mourning; I can provide that myself and still have plenty left for later uses.”

Franz stirred uneasily. “My father was of the Junker class,” Tannenbaum went on. “He had a good record in the first war. As a staff officer, of course. Nothing so grubby or dangerous as this. Naturally he was against the Führer from the outset, considered him a hideous, vulgar little upstart. Now sit still, Franz. I’m not going to subject you to another display of sedition. The fact is I always considered the Führer right and necessary for Germany. I still do.”

“I’m sure the Führer would be relieved,” Franz said coldly. “Then we don’t have to go any further, do we?”

“Please let me finish, Franz. It’s important to me, at least, that you tolerate my eccentricities, and you can’t tolerate them unless you understand them.”

“I find it growing harder to do either.” Franz still kept his voice firm and distant.

“My father joined the National Socialist party in 1934 and had a safe and moderately successful career in its service until that purely accidental bomb hit him late last month. In 1933 my father was a proud and charming man, full of sparkling lively talk, bursting with ideas, and incidentally the best fly fisherman I ever saw. In 1943 he was nothing, less than nothing. He spoke in nothing but party clichés; since the Reichstag fire he made a career of fawning on his natural enemies and betraying his lifelong friends.”