Otto's Phoney War Read online

  ‘Ha! You’d do better to piss on it,’ Otto cried, and whooped with delight.

  Then with a roar the motor started once more. Below, dusky Kurt smashed home reverse and they tore through the forest at a tremendous speed, snapping over the firs as if they were made of matchwood.

  The Battle of the Gennep Bridgehead!, as the Goebbels press would herald it in the morning, was over. And for a while at least, Otto Stahl was a hero.

  CHAPTER 4

  ‘What do you think?’ Kurt whispered, a little anxiously.

  ‘I’m that buggered, I’ve given up thinking for the day,’ Otto whispered back and stared up at the blacked-out structure which had appeared out of nowhere so suddenly, in the middle of the fir forest. For hours now they had been blundering through the thick firs, long after the sound of the rifles had died away behind them, trying to work their way back to the bridgehead, and becoming increasingly lost in the process.

  Now it was completely dark with a half-moon casting a faint silver light over the scene to their front and silent, save for the heavy ticking of the tank’s diesels.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ the South African said plaintively. ‘Haven’t had a bite to eat for hours … I'd really enjoy a fat juicy worm right now.’

  Otto said nothing. Instead he stared at the turreted structure to his front. The place looked like something out of a peacetime UFA horror movie: a gothic monster of dark battlements and towers, silent and somehow menacing in the ghostly silvery light. It made Otto think of vampires and werewolves and corpses called back from the dead. He shuddered.

  ‘We’ve only got diesel for another couple of kilometres,’ the dusky South African said grumpily. Still Otto said nothing as he eyed the place and considered what to do next.

  They must be kilometres away from the fighting by now, he told himself and reasoned that the lonely gothic castle, set out here in the forest, could hardly be of any importance. What was there to defend here? His stomach rumbled noisily and abruptly he remembered he had not eaten since the previous day. Suddenly he was ravenously hungry.

  ‘Listen,’ he said urgently, turning to the handful of Brandenburgers crouched behind the tank, staring at the silent castle, ‘we’ll have a go. You,’ he nodded to one of the South Africans. ‘Shin up that pole over there and cut the telephone wires. We don’t want them calling for help to the outside world.’

  Obediently the man started to climb the pole.

  ‘The rest of you,’ Otto ordered. ‘Follow me. No shooting. I’ve resigned from the Army for the rest of the day. All we want is to nick some grub, see if the cheese heads have got some diesel for the tin can, and then we’re off again back to the bridge. By this time, the Army stubble-hoppers should have linked up with the Count. Clear?’

  ‘Clear,’ his men echoed as one.

  ‘Good, let’s go!’

  On the tips of their toes, strung out in single file, hugging the shadows, hardly daring to breathe, the little group of soldiers worked their way by the tangled branches of small ornamental trees that lined the entrance to the strange place, throwing fearful glances at the gothic battlements, outlined a stark, menacing black by the moon-lit clouds.

  Time and time again Otto tried to convince himself that it was just his imagination: there was no one behind them. But he didn’t succeed; and once again he would fling a nervous glance over his shoulder, heart beating like a trip-hammer, bouts of light-headedness making him dizzy, only to find that there was indeed no one there.

  Slowly they progressed down the long walkway through the castle's formal garden, Otto’s fertile imagination populating the ominous shadows with phantom shapes, until they were halted by what appeared to be a blank wall, overgrown with ivy, in which insects rustled and scuttled.

  ‘What now?’ someone croaked hoarsely.

  Kurt touched Otto on the shoulder. He started, the bile of panic welling up sickeningly in his throat.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked thickly.

  The dusky South African swallowed the spider he had just found in the ivy and whispered. ‘There’s a door over there, Sonderführer.’

  Otto followed the direction of his outstretched hand and saw the faint line of yellow light escaping from underneath what he now saw clearly was a door. For a moment, however, he was rooted to the spot, not knowing what to do until the South African said, his mouth full of another spider, ‘Well, why don’t you knock on it?’

  ‘But we’re the invaders,’ Otto protested, finding his voice at last. ‘I mean invaders don’t just knock at doors like salesmen!’

  The other man shrugged. ‘It’s up to you, Sonderführer. Just walk in, if you like.’

  Otto swallowed hard. He summoned up the last of his courage, while summoning down his protruberance, and tiptoed to the door. His hand fumbled for the knob. He found it at the very moment that, to his horror, it started to turn in his hand. He stumbled back, as if the big iron handle had been red-hot.

  Slowly the great oaken door creaked open, the hinges squeaking rustily, and yellow light flooded into the allee, illuminating the scared, ashen faces of the soldiers crouched there, nervously clutching their weapons.

  A tall skinny old man stood there, dressed in black, looking down the length of his great beak of a nose, as if he had just discovered an unpleasant odour and was trying to ascertain its exact source.

  ‘We heard your vehicle approach, sir,’ he addressed Otto in excellent if somewhat funereal-sounding German. ‘I hope you didn’t have any difficulty finding a parking place?’

  ‘No … not at all,’ Otto stuttered.

  ‘Good sir. Now if you will follow me, sir.’

  Dumbstruck, Otto crossed the threshold while the Dutchman held open the door. The first of the South Africans began to follow, but the Dutchman barred his entrance with a politely but firmly raised hand.

  ‘Tradesmen’s entrance to the rear, soldier.’

  With a solemn creak like the lid of a tomb being lowered for the last time, the door closed behind Otto and he was cut off from his men in the long gloomy corridor, its grey stone walls hung with the fading portraits of bearded nineteenth century worthies. Their faces stared down at the dirty, ragged soldier with heavy disdain.

  ‘This way, sir,’ said the tall man, using a distinctly butlery turn of phrase, ‘if you would be so kind?’

  With due ceremony the butler strode down the corridor and into another and another, their boots echoing hollowly despite the numerous wall hangings. Finally he paused in front of a large carved wooden door to tap on it delicately with his knuckles before throwing it open with a flourish and saying, ‘Bitte, Herr Leutnant.’

  Otto stopped abruptly.

  A dazzlingly beautiful woman stood there in front of the crackling wood fire in the great hearth. She couldn’t have been more than twenty, but she had that cold northern loveliness that made her appear much older, with a slender face that appeared to have been carved from marble. A traditional blouse hung from her naked shoulders and had been tucked tightly into a slim skirt that fell to black stockinged calf muscles.

  ‘You are in charge, Lieutenant?’ she said in good German, giving the dirty, ragged young man a haughty look.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am,’ managed Otto, as if realising it for the first time. Maybe I should stick my chest out further, he thought, and thrust it forwards. With a ping, one of his buttons burst off and bounced away on the room's wooden floorboards.

  She advanced to him, back erect, small but well-formed breasts firm against the thin silk of her blouse. They momentarily filled Otto's vision. Like little noses trying to get out, a voice suggested to him. I'd happily blow those noses.

  ‘I will not give you my hand,’ she announced, stopping a metre away from him. ‘After all you are my enemy. But my name is van Elst, Countess van Elst.’

  A little confused Otto stuttered something. Had he just said that line about noses out loud? He opened and then closed his mouth.

  ‘If you assure me on your word as an of
ficer and a gentleman not to hurt my people,’ she continued, ‘I will give you my promise that I shall not attempt to escape or in any way try to sabotage your... installations here.’

  Numbly Otto heard himself doing just that – as an officer and gentleman.

  She gave him a cold little smile, revealing perfect, pearl-white, little teeth. ‘Good, then that is settled.’ She nodded to the waiting butler. ‘Dank u, Mulder … De kamer met een bed.’

  The butler gave a stiff little bow, a look of disapproval on his face, and disappeared noiselessly.

  Otto frowned. Had she said something about a bed?

  But he had no time to consider that question, for the beautiful young countess said with the same frosty smile as before. ‘Of course, you will wish to dine with me? My people will take care of your soldiers. Follow me and I will show you where you can … err,’ she blushed suddenly, ‘wash your hands.’

  Otto followed, concentrating very hard to place one foot in front of the other.

  They dined in candlelight. Elderly servants, male and female, clad in rusty black, seemed to creak as they crept in bearing silver dish after dish of food. They served the two in absolute silence under the watchful and still disapproving gaze of Mulder, the butler. Otto, still flustered, had trouble disguising how hungry he was. He had never tasted food like this in all his life, each separate dish introduced by a few well-chosen words from his hostess. Wine flowed freely too, red, white, sweet, dry; there were even bottles of French champagne, a drink Otto was now tasting for the first time, though in years to come it would become his favourite tipple.

  By the time the servants had deposited the decanters of assorted strong Dutch cordials and disappeared together with the butler, Otto was in a very happy state indeed. In the flickering candlelight he was having some difficulty in seeing the beautiful countess correctly, so that every now and again he had to close one eye in order to focus on her.

  Whether it was the influence of wine on him or not, it seemed to Otto that the Dutch aristocrat’s behaviour had changed somewhat too. Was she beginning to thaw at last? Somehow or other her white-blonde hair had come loose and cascaded over her naked shoulders. She also appeared to lean towards him a great deal across the table to reveal the tops of those delightful little breasts. Once indeed, he could have sworn he saw the two pink-red cherries which were her nipples.

  ‘I am betrothed naturally,’ he heard her say leaning forwards, a glass of cordial in her right hand.

  With her left she indicated a large photograph on the marble mantelpiece above the crackling logs. Squinting, Otto took in the blurred features of a scar faced, surly young man in uniform who, surprisingly enough, seemed vaguely familiar. ‘Dirk van Dongeren.’

  ‘Ding Dongeren,’ he blurted out with a laugh, and immediately cursed himself. What a stupid comment. Desperately looking for a distraction, he knocked his glass over, and rich red cordial ran along the rivulets in the ancient wooden table.

  ‘I'm so- so sorry,’ he offered with too much sincerity, while quickly blotting at the cordial with his napkin.

  Aristocrat that she was, she appeared to ignore the little episode, and said, ‘Undoubtedly my Dongeren will be serving with his regiment – the Grenadiers – at the front at this very minute. But I am sure he’ll understand that I couldn’t help it.’ She gave a great sigh.

  Otto paused his vigorous blotting. ‘Understand what?’

  But again she had not appeared to hear him.

  Then events grew very confusing for Otto, especially after she insisted that he refill his glass with a good strong Dutch Genève.

  ‘Made by Fokkin and Fokkin of Schiedamn, the best,’ she declared stoutly, oddly loud coming from such a perfectly formed mouth.

  ‘Fokkers – and now Fokkin and Fokkin,’ Otto slurred, shaking his head and trying to clear away the mist that threatened to enshroud him. ‘Funny country … very funny indeed.’

  Time passed, as Countess van Elst recounted the story of her own family's relationship with the Fokkin and Fokkin business. She spoke dispassionately of how her father had taken over the Fokkin side of things when she was young, teaching her the ropes at a mere eight years of age. By fifteen she knew the Fokkin factory like the back of her hand and was intimately familiar with each and every production process that went on there. Her father had always worked vigorously to keep profits up, even as the threat of war started to decimate sales.

  ‘In the end it all just got too much for him,’ she said resignedly. ‘He was hard at work when a seizure took him by surprise. He died on the job. And that was the end of the business: after father left us there was nobody else to keep it afloat. Just like so many other companies, this war has caught us with our pants down.’

  Somewhere in the long corridors an old clock chimed three with grave inexorability. In the hearth the logs had turned to glowing red embers. The dark castle creaked and groaned, and outside the trees sighed in the wind.

  Countess van Elst, adjusting her position in front of the fire on the thick white rug, revealed a great deal of delightful white thigh above her sheer black silk stocking. She gave another great sigh, breaking the heavy drunken silence.

  ‘I am very sure he’ll understand.’ She stretched up to look at the photo of her fiancée with sad eyes to reveal even more: a tightly strung garter.

  ‘Understand what?’ Otto mumbled thickly, struggling to raise his gaze to her face.

  ‘That I have been forced to sacrifice my honour,’ she answered simply, expression suddenly demure, hands folded, as if in resignation, across her silken lap. ‘I know you and your countrymen. If I do not give myself,’ she lowered her eyes for a moment in embarrassment, ‘voluntarily, you will undoubtedly rip the clothes from me, bit by bit. First my blouse, then my skirt, then – ’

  ‘Stop!’ Otto said wildly. ‘I have no intention of – ’

  ‘And finally it will be … my under-things so that I am completely naked and my poor little woman’s body will be yours to do with what you wish,’ she continued, speaking more hurriedly now, as if the thought of such horrors was too much to bear. ‘To satiate your brutal perverted desires on – all night.’

  ‘But … but …’ Otto stuttered, his dumb-struck mind finally deserting him. But already, Countess van Elst was leading him up the spiral staircase to the darkness of her bedchamber.

  CHAPTER 5

  ‘You must realise, Mein Herr,’ the countess said firmly, as she stood in front of a drunkenly swaying Otto in the bedroom's candlelight, ‘that I am doing this thing under duress.’

  Otto, in search of the safety of his glass, stumbled towards the chamber's door. The countess turned him roughly back round to face her.

  ‘You are having your way with me right now.’ She commanded, slapping him sternly. ‘At this moment of my country’s greatest need,’ she continued in her puritanical tone, ‘I have neither the time nor the interest for sexual matters. They are nothing to me now while my Homeland fights for its survival, absolutely nothing. You will have your cruel way with me … but without my aid.’ She hooked her thumbs inside his flies and ripped downwards as if she were peeling the skin off a banana.

  ‘Christ!’ Otto gasped at what was revealed and with the shock of it fell over backwards onto the big single bed, trousers around his ankles, legs stuck in the air.

  She sighed, as if sorely tried. ‘What monsters you Germans are. How your women must suffer!’ Slightly roughly she pulled the trousers and then his shoes off, saying sternly, ‘The shirt, you do yourself. It’s neither healthy nor hygienic to sleep in the clothes you wear during the day.’

  Otto obeyed, struggling to get the shirt over his head. When he had done so, he found her lying on the far side of the bed, as stiff as a corpse, a cold proud beauty, giving off an aura of icy aristocratic disdain. He rolled towards her. She shrieked and screwed her eyes tightly closed.

  ‘Now you take off my clothes,’ she whispered to him. ‘I will not fight back.’

  As Ot
to removed her blouse and skirt, she made cries of helplessness, writhing sensually under his touch. His drink forgotten, Otto performed his part in a trance, guided by the sometimes strict instruction of his countess.

  The shock of the first mortar shell exploding against the castle wall threw Otto right out of bed.

  ‘What the hell was that?’ he gasped, suddenly sobering up by three drinks.

  In the bed, the countess pulled the sheet up modestly over her naked breasts. The sound of hunting bugles could be heard outside.

  Now it was her turn to gasp. ‘It’s the Queen’s Grenadiers!’ she shrieked. ‘It’s my betrothed come to rescue me!’

  ‘You mean Dongeren?’ Otto asked from the floor.

  She nodded numbly, and then jumped as the wall trembled with the impact of another mortar exploding against it.

  ‘Jesus!’ Otto said. ‘I must say your fiancée has a funny way of showing his concern. He could kill you dead with one of those damn things.’ He ducked hastily as the leaded window blew out, showering him with glass. The wind blustered into the room, carrying with it the bugle calls, much louder now.

  ‘He’s very impetuous,’ she agreed. ‘Act first and think afterwards. But then,’ she added, as if that explained everything, ‘he is an officer.’

  On his hands and knees, yelping with pain as the glass dug into his palms, Otto crawled naked to the shattered window, while the countess watched him with sudden interest, all thoughts of Baron Dirk van Dongeren forgotten again because of what she saw.

  Cautiously, heart beating hard, he raised his tousled blonde head and peeped out.

  White clouds were whipping across the black sky, shadows skipping over the forest and fields that lay before him. Down below, small green-clad soldiers were doubling to left and right, their weapons at the ready, a familiar sword-brandishing officer directed the fire of a small mortar, located in a clump of bushes at the end of the allee, his blade flashing silver in the moonlight as he brought it down each time as a signal for the sweating crew to fire.