then look for the sentries on the right. But it’s a long way yet.’ He didn’t ask to see Pauli’s papers. Pauli wondered if an officer could be shot for such disobedience. With Brand quoting the appropriate rules and regulations, it seemed highly likely. He wished he hadn’t come, but it was too late now.
‘You’ll get a ride on the ration wagon,’ said the policeman. ‘It will be coming back this way. Wait in the shelter, if you want to.’
‘I’ll keep going,’ said Pauli. The other two policemen might not be so negligent about his written orders, or rather, his lack of any.
‘I’m not even German,’ said the policeman. ‘I was born in Vienna.’ It was hardly necessary to say it: the man spoke with a strong nasal, Viennese accent.
‘So was I,’ said Pauli.
‘Really? I wish we were there now, don’t you?’
It was at this point that Pauli felt the policeman’s familiarity had become insubordinate, but even now he didn’t want to upset the fellow. ‘Soon we will be,’ said Pauli.
‘Yes, Herr Leutnant,’ said the policeman. Sensing the young officer’s resentment, he saluted. The rain made his helmet shiny and ran down his face like tears. Of course the man didn’t believe that Pauli had been born in Vienna. Pauli had never had a Viennese accent – although he could mimic one with commendable accuracy. He’d grown up to know the voices of Berlin, and his voice, although not his manner, was that of the Officer Corps.
By the time he started walking again, it was raining heavily. He passed the bloated, rotting corpses of two huge horses. Alongside, a broken wheel stood like a grave marker. The stench was overpowering. Pauli buttoned his overcoat tight against his neck and took off his steel helmet to wipe the sweat from his head and face. To some extent he was sweating with the exertion of his walk, but he felt hot with fear, too.
Only a few hundred yards past the crossroads, he got a ride on the ration wagon that was going back to the depot empty. He sat up beside the driver – a taciturn man, thank goodness – and watched the rain-washed Zeeland horses plod along the ridged track. Their pace was little faster than he’d made on foot, but up here on the driver’s platform was better than picking his way between the submerged potholes and deep mud patches. The landscape was dull, misty and monochrome. There was little movement except for military traffic on the road and a few peasants who, despite everything, clung desperately to their patches of soil.
It was nearly 9:00 a.m. by the time he reached Divisional HQ, situated – as the policeman had promised – in a grand house. There was a large paddock and a dozen magnificent cavalry horses grazing there. They looked at Pauli as he walked past, then went back to their fodder. Clerks were bivouacked in the orchard, and there was a soup kitchen sited in what must once have been a herb garden. Pauli didn’t want to go to the officers’ canteen in case he saw someone from his regiment, so he asked the Feldwebel for something to eat and got a metal cup of hot dried-pea soup with two miserable bits of sausage floating in it. Both soup and sausage were bland and almost tasteless, but it warmed him.
In the grand, marble-paved entrance hall an NCO wearing the smart uniform of a Bavarian rifle regiment was seated at a table. Around him was a constant traffic of messengers, while noisy young staff officers were grouped at the foot of the great staircase. Their voices were not of the sort that Pauli had heard on the parade ground at Lichterfelde; they were the shrill, excited voices of wealthy young aristocrats. The NCO stared at Pauli. Men straight from the battlefield were seldom seen this far behind the lines, and the NCO clerk – who’d not been to the trenches – had never before seen an officer so dirty.
After his inquiries Pauli went up the magnificent staircase and found Peter in an upstairs room talking to an elegant-looking captain. The captain was about forty years old and wore the badges of a heavy cavalry regiment. His striped armband marked him as a staff officer from Corps HQ. Peter and the captain were laughing together as Pauli went into the office and saluted.
Peter! This was the moment he’d risked so much for. This was the meeting he’d waited for so impatiently. Peter! He wanted to throw his arms around his beloved brother and hug him, but that wasn’t something he could do in the presence of a stranger. So he stood anxiously smiling at Peter.
‘So this is the brother?’ said the captain, and both men laughed again. Pauli envied the way his elder brother could make friends so easily. Peter was able to bridge the gap that rank and age created. Peter could even laugh and joke with his father, whereas Pauli was always treated like a baby, both by family and by strangers. Whenever Pauli got away with some misdeed or other, it was always by means of his charm, but Peter talked to other men as an equal, and that was what Pauli so admired. This relaxed and sophisticated elder brother of his would never have endured the bullying of Leutnant Brand; he would have found some way of dealing with him. But God only knows how.
Peter stood up and clasped Pauli’s offered hand. ‘Pauli,’ he said, ‘Pauli.’
Without taking his eyes from his brother for more than a moment, Pauli sat down on a hard wooden chair. It always seemed strange to sit on a proper chair after a long spell in the trenches.
‘I’ll leave you together,’ said the staff officer. ‘There’s not much doing over the Easter weekend. Most of the staff are probably in Brussels on leave.’
The friendly staff officer gave Peter and Pauli the use of the little office room and even sent a soldier to serve them coffee and schnapps.
‘You’re in a terrible state,’ said Peter when they were alone together. He was staring at his younger brother’s dark-ringed eyes and shaved head and at his rain-drenched greatcoat and mud-caked boots. As Pauli loosened his collar, he caught sight of a dirty undervest, too. ‘Haven’t you had time to change into a clean uniform?’ It was the voice of the grown-up brother admonishing the baby about his gravy-stained bib, but Pauli didn’t allow the condescension to spoil things.
For a moment Pauli didn’t reply. He knew, of course, that the civilians didn’t realize that the front line was no more than a filthy ditch from which the sound of bronchial coughing could be heard across no-man’s-land, and where pneumonia was as deadly as enemy bullets and shells. But that his brother should think it was someplace where clean uniforms and pressed linen were available shocked him. ‘There was no time,’ said Pauli. He wished he could take Peter to the trenches and show him what it was like. He’d never understand otherwise. No one could visualize it. It was useless to explain.
‘It’s an officer’s first task to set an example,’ said Peter primly. ‘Surely they taught you that at cadet school.’ Oh, God, how like Leutnant Brand he sounded, thought Pauli. But Peter smiled suddenly and the mood changed. ‘You’ve grown so big, Pauli. So big across the shoulders…’ Was that Peter’s polite way of saying that Pauli had not grown much taller? Pauli had always wanted to be as tall as his brother, ever since he could remember, but now he knew he would never be tall, slim, and elegant: he’d always be short, thickset, broad, and clumsy.
‘You’re promoted,’ said Pauli. Perhaps his elder brother’s shiny new gold ring on that so very clean, neatly pressed naval uniform had gone to his head.
‘Oberleutnants are little more than office boys in Brussels, where I work,’ said Peter. But, in a gesture that belied his modesty, he brushed his sleeve self-consciously as he spoke.
‘You’re looking well, Peter.’ He made no mention of his elder brother’s mutilated hand and tried not to look at it. Peter’s injury frightened him in some way that the firing line did not. Peter was family:
