The Young Lions Part 27

"Go ahead," shouted Hardenburg irritably. "Talk!"

"Yes, Sir," said Christian. Then, helplessly. "About what?"

"Anything. The weather." Christian looked around at the weather. It was the same weather they had had for six months. "It's going to be a hot day," he said.

"Louder," shouted Hardenburg, looking straight ahead. "I can't hear you."

"I said it's going to be a hot day," Christian screamed into the Lieutenant's ear.

"That's better," Hardenburg said. "Yes. Very hot."

Christian tried to think of another subject.

"Come on," Hardenburg said impatiently.

"What else would you like to talk about?" Christian asked. His mind felt drugged and incapable of this exhausting intellectual effort.

"Good G.o.d! Anything! Did you go to the Greek wh.o.r.ehouse they set up in Cyrene?"

"Yes, Sir," said Christian.

"How was it?"

"I don't know," said Christian. "I waited in line and they closed up three men in front of me."

"Did anybody you know go?"

Christian thought hard. "Yes," he said, "a Corporal with a head wound."

"How did he like it?"

Christian tried to remember. "I think he said the Greek girls were not much. They had no spirit. Also," Christian remembered now, "he said it was too official. He had difficulty managing it under the time limit. And the girl didn't do anything. Just lay there. He thought the Army ought to get volunteers, not just anybody they can put their hands on."

"Your friend is an idiot," Hardenburg said viciously.

"Yes, Sir," said Christian. He fell silent.

"Come on." Hardenburg waved his head sharply, as though to clear his eyes. "Keep talking. What did you do on your leave in Berlin?"

"I went to the opera," Christian said promptly, "and I went to the concerts."

"You're an idiot, too."

"Yes, Sir," said Christian, thinking, warily, he is getting terribly light-headed.

"Any girls in Berlin?"

"Yes, Sir." Christian thought carefully. "I met a girl who worked in an airplane factory."

"Did you have an affair with her?"

"Yes."

"How was it?"

"Excellent," Christian said loudly, peering anxiously out across the Lieutenant's bent head at the desert stretching in a growing glitter ahead of them.

"Good," said the Lieutenant. "What was her name?"

"Marguerite," said Christian, after a slight hesitation.

"Was she married?"

"I don't think so," Christian said. "She didn't say."

"s.l.u.ts," Hardenburg said addressing the girls of Berlin. "Have you ever been to Alexandria?"

"No, Sir," Christian said.

"I was looking forward to going there," said Hardenburg.

"I don't think we'll ever get there now," Christian said.

"Keep quiet!" shouted Hardenburg. The motorcycle took an alarming twist before he righted it. "We'll get there! Do you hear me! I said we'll get there! And get there soon! Do you hear me?"

"Yes, Sir," shouted Christian into the wind streaming back across the Lieutenant's head.

The Lieutenant twisted in his seat. His face was contorted and his eyes gleamed between the crusted lids. His mouth was open and his teeth were a garish white against the black lips. "I order you to keep quiet!" he shouted insanely, as though he were on a windy drill field, discipling a full company of raw troops. "Keep your G.o.dd.a.m.n mouth shut or I'll ..."

Then the handlebars jerked to one side. The front wheel skidded around and the Lieutenant's hands bounced away from the grips. Christian felt himself falling and lunged forward, grasping the Lieutenant. The impact knocked the Lieutenant over the bucking front wheel and the machine skidded crazily off the track, the engine roaring loudly. Suddenly it dipped to one side and crashed. Christian felt himself flying through the air, screaming, but somewhere inside of him a voice was saying quietly, This is too much, too much. Then he hit and he felt a numbness in his shoulder, but he got up to one knee.

The Lieutenant was lying under the motorcycle, whose front wheel was still spinning. The back wheel was a ma.s.s of twisted junk. The Lieutenant was lying quietly, blood spurting from a gash in his forehead, with his legs at a very queer angle under the machine. Christian walked slowly over to him, and started pulling at him. But that didn't work. So he laboriously lifted the motorcycle and toppled it over to the other side, away from Hardenburg. Then he sat down and rested. After a minute or so, he took out his first-aid kit and put a bandage clumsily over the blood on the Lieutenant's forehead. It looked very neat and professional for a moment. But then the blood came through and it looked like all the other bandages he had ever seen.

Suddenly the Lieutenant sat up. He looked once at the machine, and said crisply, "Now we walk." But when he tried to get up he couldn't. He looked at his legs reflectively. "Nothing serious," he said, as though to convince himself. "I a.s.sure you, it is nothing serious. Are you all right?"

"Yes, Sir," said Christian.

"I think," said the Lieutenant, "I had better rest for ten minutes. Then we shall see." He lay back with his hands clutching the sodden bandage over his forehead.

Christian sat next to him. He watched the front wheel of the motorcycle slowly stop spinning. It had been making a small, whining noise, that grew lower and lower in tone. When the wheel stopped, there was no more sound. No sound from the motorcycle, no sound from the armies intertwined with each other somewhere else on the continent.

The face of the desert looked fresh and cool in the new sun. Even the wrecks looked simple and harmless in the fresh light. Christian slowly uncorked his canteen. He drank one mouthful of water carefully, rolling it around on his tongue and teeth before swallowing it. The sound of his swallowing was loud and wooden. Hardenburg opened one eye to see what he was doing.

"Save your water," he said automatically.

"Yes, Sir," said Christian, thinking with admiration: That man would give an order to the devil who was shoveling him through the door of the furnace in h.e.l.l. Hardenburg, he thought, what a triumph of German military education. Orders spurted from him like blood from an artery. At his last gasp he would be laying his plans for the next three actions.

Finally Hardenburg sighed and sat up. He patted the wet bandage on his head. "Did you put this on?" he asked.

"Yes, Sir."

"It will fall off the first time I move," Hardenburg said coldly, objectively criticizing, without anger. "Where did you learn to put on bandages?"

"Sorry, Sir," said Christian. "I must have been a bit shaken myself."

"I suppose so," Hardenburg said. "Still, it's silly to waste a bandage." He opened his tunic and took out an oilskin case. From the case he took a sharply folded terrain map. He spread the map on the desert floor. "Now," he said, "we see where we are."

Wonderful, Christian thought, fully equipped for all eventualities.

Hardenburg blinked from time to time as he studied the map. He grimaced with pain as he held the bandage on. But he figured rapidly, mumbling to himself. He folded the map and put it back briskly into the case and carefully tucked it away inside his tunic. "Very well," he said. "This track joins with another one, leading west, perhaps eight kilometers away. Do you think you can make it?"

"Yes, Sir," said Christian. "How about you?"

Hardenburg looked at him disdainfully. "Don't worry about me. On your feet," he barked, again to the phantom company he was continually addressing.

Christian rose slowly. His shoulder and arm pained considerably, and he could move the arm only with difficulty. But he knew he could walk several of the eight kilometers, if not all of them. He watched Hardenburg push himself up from the sand with a furious effort. The sweat broke out on his face and the blood began to come through the bandage on his forehead again. But when Christian leaned over to try to help him, Hardenburg glared at him, and said, "Get away from me, Sergeant!"

Christian stepped back and watched Hardenburg struggle to raise himself. He dug his heels into the grainy sand as though getting ready to take the shock of being hit by an onrushing giant. Then, with his right elbow held rigid, he pushed ferociously, with cold purpose, at the ground. Slowly, inch by inch, with the pain shouting mutely from his livid face, he raised himself till he was half-bent over, but off the ground. With a wrench, he pulled himself upright and stood there, wavering, but erect, the sweat and blood mixed with the grime on his face in a thick, alarming compost. He was weeping, Christian noticed with surprise, the tears making harsh lines down the nameless paste on his cheeks. His breath came hard, in dry, tortured sobs, but he set his teeth. In a grotesque, clumsy movement, he faced north.

"All right," he said. "Forward march."

He started out along the thick sand of the track, ahead of Christian. He limped, and his head bobbed crazily to one side as he walked, but he continued steadily, without looking back.

Christian followed him. He was feverishly thirsty. The gun slung over his shoulder seemed maliciously heavy, but he resolved not to drink or ask for a rest until Hardenburg did so first.

They shuffled slowly, in a broken, deliberate tandem, across the sand, among the occasional rusting wrecks, toward the road to the north where other Germans might be beating their way back from the battle. Or where the British might be waiting for them.

Christian thought impersonally and calmly about the British. They did not seem real or menacing. Only two or three things were real at the moment: the coppery taste in his throat, like sour brewery mash, the crippled, animal-like gait of Hardenburg before him, the sun rising higher and higher and with increasing, malevolent heat, behind their backs. If the British were waiting on the track that was a problem that would have to be solved in its own time. He was too occupied to grapple with it now.

They were sitting down for the second rest, stunned, sun-lacerated, their eyes dull with agony and fatigue, when they saw the car on the horizon. It was coming fast, with a swirl of dust like a plume behind it. In two minutes they saw that it was a smart open staff car, and a moment later they realized it was Italian.

Hardenburg pushed himself up with a bone-cracking effort. He limped slowly out into the middle of the track and stood there, breathing heavily, but staring calmly at the onrushing machine. He looked wild and threatening with the b.l.o.o.d.y bandage angled across his forehead, and his purple, sunken eyes. His bloodstained hands hooked ready at his sides.

Christian stood up, but did not go into the center of the track beside Hardenburg.

The car raced toward them, its horn blowing loudly, losing itself somehow in the emptiness and sounding like the echo of a warning. Hardenburg didn't move. There were five figures in the open car. Hardenburg stood cold and motionless, watching them. Christian was sure the car was going to run the Lieutenant down and he opened his mouth to call, when there was a squeal of brakes and the long, smart-looking machine skidded to a stop an arm's length in front of Hardenburg.

There were two Italian soldiers in front, one driving and the other crouched beside him. In the rear there were three officers. They all stood up and shouted angrily at Hardenburg in Italian.

Hardenburg did not move. "I wish to speak to the ranking officer here," he called coldly in German.

There was more Italian. Finally a dark, stout Major said, in bad German. "That is me. If you have anything you wish to say to me, come over here and say it."

"You will kindly dismount," Hardenburg said, standing absolutely still, in front of the car.

The Italians chattered among themselves. Then the Major opened the rear door and jumped down, fat and wrinkled in what had once been a pretty uniform. He advanced belligerently on Hardenburg. Hardenburg saluted grandly. The salute looked theatrical coming from this scarecrow in the glaring emptiness of the desert. The Major clicked his heels in the sand and saluted in return.

"Lieutenant," the Major said nervously, looking at Hardenburg's tabs, "we are in a great hurry. What is it you wish?"

"I am under orders," Hardenburg said coldly, "to requisition transportation for General Aigner."

The Major opened his mouth sadly, then clicked it shut. He looked hurriedly about him, as though he expected to see General Aigner spring suddenly from the blank desert.

"Nonsense," the Major said finally. "There is a New Zealand patrol coming up this road and we cannot delay ..."

"I am under specific orders, Major," said Hardenburg in a sing-song voice. "I do not know anything about a New Zealand patrol."

"Where is General Aigner?" the Major looked around uncertainly again.

"Five kilometers from here," Hardenburg said. "His ar mored car threw a tread and I am under specific orders ..."

"I have heard it!" the Major screamed. "I have already heard about the specific orders."

"If you will be so kind," Hardenburg said, "you will order the other gentlemen to dismount. The driver may remain."

"Get out of the way," said the Major. He started back toward the car. "I have heard enough of this nonsense."

"Major," said Hardenburg coldly and gently. The Major stopped and faced him, sweating. The other Italians stared at him worriedly, but not understanding the German.

"It is out of the question," said the Major, his voice trembling. "Absolutely out of the question. This is an Italian Army vehicle and we are on a mission to ..."

"I am very sorry, Sir," said Hardenburg. "General Aigner outranks you and this is German Army territory. You will kindly deliver your vehicle."

"Ridiculous!" the Major said, but faintly.

"At any rate," Hardenburg said, "there is a road block ahead, and the men there have orders to confiscate all Italian transport. By force if necessary. You will then have to explain what three field grade officers are doing at a moment like this so far from their organizations. You will also have to explain why you took it upon yourself to disregard a specific order from General Aigner who is in command of all troops in this sector."

He stared coldly at the Major. The Major raised his hand in a strangled gesture. Hardenburg's expression had not changed at all. It still was weary, disdainful, rather bored. He turned his back on the Major and walked toward the car. Miraculously he even managed for these five steps not to limp.

"Furi!" he said, opening the door to the front of the car. "Out! The driver will remain," he said in Italian. The man beside the driver looked around beseechingly at the officers in the rear of the car. They avoided the man's glance and stared nervously at the Major, who had followed Hardenburg.

Hardenburg tapped the soldier in the front seat on the arm. "Furi," he repeated calmly.

The soldier wiped his face. Then, looking down at his boots, he got out of the car and stood unhappily next to the Major. They looked amazingly alike, two soft, dark, disturbed Italian faces, handsome and unmilitary and worried.

"Now," Hardenburg gestured to the other two officers, "you gentlemen ..." The wave of his arm was unmistakable.

The two officers looked at the Major. One of them spoke rapidly in Italian. The Major sighed and answered in three words. The two officers got out of the car and stood beside the Major.

"Sergeant," Hardenburg called without looking over his shoulder.

Christian came up and stood at attention.

"Clean the back of the car out, Sergeant," Hardenburg ordered, "and give these gentlemen everything that belongs to them, personally."

Christian looked into the back of the car. There were water cans, three bottles of Chianti, two boxes of rations. Methodically, one by one, he lifted the rations and the bottles and put them at the Major's feet on the side of the road. The three officers stared glumly down at their possessions being unloaded onto the desert sand.

Christian fingered the water cans thoughtfully. "The water, too, Lieutenant?" he asked.