The Bloody Road to Death (16 page)

‘May I touch you?’ asks Porta, apparently overwhelmed. ‘I’ve never met a hero’s wife before.’

They walk through the royal park, pausing by the temple of Zeus, where they eat birds from the Seich-Sou woods. It is
nearly light when they tip-toe up the stairs to Katina’s flat.

‘Please go quiet,’ she whispers. ‘There would be trouble eef anyone found we ’ad Germans here. They all Communists in thees quarter.’

‘Ought to be bleedin’ shot!’ shouts Tiny, spitting on a crudely drawn hammer and sickle.

‘Red Front!’ shouts Porta to an old woman, peering inquisitively through the crack of a door.

She snarls at him and bangs the door.

The Party is always right,’ grins Carl, kicking at the door.

The flat smells of cheap perfume. Sula throws herself on her back on a broad bed and kicks her feet in the air, exposing a stretch of bare thigh above her stocking-tops.

Tiny rolls his eyes and pushes Katina on to a large sheepskin lying on the floor.

She screams indignantly, presses her legs tightly together, pulls down her skirt around them and hangs on to it with both arms.

‘That’s right,’ whoops Tiny with satisfaction. ‘
Nice
girls ’ave their drawers
took
off!’ He finds a goosefeather and tickles her under the arms to make her let go of her skirt, but she is not ticklish.

‘What ees thees theeng you do?’ she asks in wonder. ‘Ees thees some new German perversion? I ’ave a captain one time, ’oo scratch me weeth a nail. When thee nail make marks on my legs ’ee shoot ’ees load!’

‘I’ll fix you up with some marks, my girl,’ promises Tiny solemnly, ‘but not with no bleedin’ Greek nail I won’t!’ He catches her by the ankles and holds her up as if she were a hen hanging for sale in a Sicilian market.

Katina turns her body in the air like an acrobat and sinks her teeth in his crotch. With a howl of pain he drops her and presses both hands between his legs.

‘I need to pee,’ she giggles and runs out to the unbelievably tiny toilet, use of which makes pins-and-needles an occupational disease.

Tiny bulls after her. From his experience he expects her to make a run for it. His huge body blocks the door opening.

She hums happily. Water tinkles into water.

Tiny thrusts a cigar between his lips and expels a cloud of smoke.

‘That’s enough pissin’ for a kid of your size,’ he shouts impatiently and grabbing her by the hair he drags her back into the room.

She lets out a piercing scream, kicks him in the shins and bites one of his ears almost off.

‘Jesus Christ, she loves me!’ he howls in his cracked bass.

‘I ’ate you, bastard!’ she snarls, struggling wildly to free herself.

You love me, you bitch!’ Tiny shouts with pleasure. ‘Give us a kiss!’ He tears at her clothing, but it is made of stout material not easily ripped. She is wearing a knitted skirt which gets longer and longer the more he pulls at it.

She rolls over and over until she resembles a roll of carpeting. They battle fiercely over the skirt. Coat, blouse and brassière have long since been torn to bits. He seems to be trying to tie her into knots. His sighs of passion alternate with roars of pain. At one moment he is on his knees on the bed, the next his head is hanging over the edge of the table.

Somehow they arrive up on top of the enormous wardrobe. It topples and falls with an ear-splitting crash.

Suddenly they are out in the kitchen drinking water. There is a scream of terror to alarm the whole house.

Tiny is hanging out of the window head downwards, while she smashes away at his crotch with a rolling-pin.

‘Feelthy peeg, enemy of my country,’ she screams and pours a can of petroleum over him.

Porta and Carl get there in time to stop her setting fire to him.

In two giant jumps they are back in the living-room and continue their battle for the remains of her clothing.

‘Jesus Christ you’re the best bleedin’ tart I ever did meet,’ gasps Tiny, biting her in the thigh, ‘but now you’re goin’ to get the lot!’

Before she knows where she is she has only one stocking and a shoe left.

A tangled ball of jackboots, leather belts, stockings, shoes and suspender belts rolls across the floor and under the bed.

There is a second of silence. Then a piercing howl is heard and the wide bed is lifted on end so that Porta and Sula are thrown out of it.

Tiny rushes round the room, out of the kitchen and up the narrow staircase, with Katina riding him like a jockey.

A little later they come crawling down again. Tiny with a split upper lip and with a bunch of black hair gripped in his hand. They roll across the table, fall to the floor with a crash, but no matter what Tiny does Katina always turns the wrong way. With a wrestling grip he immobilizes her arms and legs but somehow, suddenly, she is free again. Over by the window, still grappling, they come close to falling down the fire escape.

‘If they fall out,’ whispers Porta fascinatedly, ‘we’ll be going to a funeral tomorrow!’

Mysteriously they regain their balance and fall back into the room. Katina jumps up and down on his stomach and hits him in the face with a high-heeled shoe. He spins her like a top, attempting to make her dizzy.

With a shattering noise they fall over the wardrobe and go through the thin backing in a shower of wood and splinters. The wardrobe turns over, the doors fly open and out comes Katina. Tiny is after her with blood in his eye.

Carl and Thea manage to duck just in time as the two fly over their heads.

Then Tiny is on top. She kicks her feet up towards the ceiling.

There is a sound like a baker kneading dough. Sucking, slapping, panting, gasping.

‘Maybe we’ll get some peace now,’ sighs Porta wrapping his arms round Sula. They go at it energetically in the big bed.

When they get hungry they toast sausages out on the tiny balcony. Then they change partners. Katina climbs into bed with Carl and tells him he is the man she has been waiting for all her life.

Tiny throws himself flat on the floor and says he is dead, but Sula pulls him on to the bed and sits herself across him.

Thea and Porta join them. Soon satisfied sighs and gasps are heard.

In the middle of it all an eiderdown splits and the air is filled with tiny, spinning feathers like snowflakes.

Sula gets cramp in her belly from laughing so much.

Suddenly the door slams open with a crash and a huge man, completely bald, with a dried fish swinging in his hand, rolls into the room.

Katina, who is hanging round Carl’s neck, tears herself away and begins screaming at the top of her voice.

The German peeg ’as raped me!’

‘
Did
he?’ roars the bald man. Catching her by the hair he pulls her down over an old-fashioned box-sofa and beats her viciously with the dried fish.

Then he opens the box-seat and throws her into it, grabs Carl and throws him in on top of her, and sits on it to make it close properly.

‘Fuck!’ he roars wildly. Tuck till your fuckin’ hair falls off an you’re bald as me! Fuck! Then
I’ll
fuck you both till your arseholes are spread all over Athens!’ He falls down heavily at the table.

‘My wife’s a whore,’ he addresses the air. ‘She’s fucking the enemy, the sow! I’ll kill ’em both! Fucked if I won’t!’

‘That’s the way,’ says Porta in a friendly voice, pushing a bottle of beer within reach of the cuckolded husband who is lying sobbing across the table.

‘Old Greece is goin’ under,’ he sobs, ‘our women’ve got their noses up the enemy’s arsehole.’

‘True, true!’ Porta heaves a deep sigh. ‘People have no moral backbone anymore. It is because your king has left you.’

Sula dresses herself slowly. First she pulls her stockings up over her outstretched legs, and wriggles into a black and red striped suspender belt. She plays with her brassière before fastening it in front and cupping it to her breasts. A short black underskirt is draped over the table.

Tiny kneels on the bed and watches her interestedly. He is still wearing his jackboots.

Over at the table the bald man sobs even more loudly.

‘Striptease arse-about-face,’ mumbles Tiny delightedly.

‘It’s enough to make all ten toes on a castrated Arab stand on end,’ says Porta.

‘An’ turn ’im into a bleedin’ rapist,’ whispers Tiny.

Sula smiles, and wriggles her bottom inside the tight black panties. She has everything a man wants a girl to have and she knows it.

Tiny takes the electric light bulb out and throws it into the street. It gets no darker. He hasn’t noticed that it is now daylight again.

A tram rattles through the streets. Two Messerschmitts whine overhead.

Sula wobbles towards the door, throwing a jug of water over the sobbing cuckold in passing. At the door she turns and throws half a sausage to Tiny on the bed.

‘’Ere Fido!’ she says condescendingly.

Before she can turn the doorknob they have reached her and thrown her back on to the bed. Her clothes come off faster than she’d ever have thought possible.

It is almost dark again before they leave. The bald man and all three girls wave to them from the balcony.

They walk backwards down the street waving for as long as they can see them.

‘It will be boring when the Germans leave Greece,’ says Sula with a deep sigh.

‘Then the English come,’ smiles Thea. ‘They can also be fun. The uniform is different, the rest the same.’

For the sake of appearances they put the handcuffs on Carl as they approach the station. He is, after all, a prisoner on his way to jail.

‘It makes a better impression,’ says Porta apologetically as he snaps the cuffs together. ‘Here’s the extra key,’ he adds putting it in Carl’s pocket. ‘Then you can always get ’em off if we escorts get knocked off or the war’s suddenly over and we forget to release you in our rejoicing.’

‘Couldn’t you put something over ’em so everybody can’t see I’ve been pinched?’ grumbles Carl, holding the shiny handcuffs up in front of him.

‘No, no, man!’ declares Porta. ‘If people can’t
see
them you might as well not have them
on
. Liven up now and look downhearted. Somebody might give you something we could split afterwards out of pity.’

‘If we’re asked, we’ll say you’ve knocked an oberst’s ’ead in,’ says Tiny craftily. ‘People like that, they do!’

‘Oh Lord!’ sighs Carl sadly.

‘Now don’t get angry with us when we hit you across the back with our truncheons,’ continues Porta. ‘We have to show people what socialistic discipline is in the Prussian Army. Get that
gruff
look on your face,’ he says, nudging Tiny as they tramp into the station building with plenty of heel-banging.

The escort and prisoner arouse satisfactory notice. Most send Carl pitying looks whilst the two cigar-smoking escorts are regarded with hate-filled eyes.

‘They’d bleedin’
kill
us, if they dared,’ whispers Tiny happily, blowing a cloud of smoke into the face of a little man in a bowler hat.

An old woman with pigs on a lead-rope pats Carl on the cheek and runs her hand pityingly over the handcuffs.

‘He’s in for a rough time, the poor little soldier!’

Carl gives her a nod of agreement.

‘Don’t worry my lad. Life down here’s not worth much anyway, and if you’ve shot an officer or robbed the rich there’ll be a place in heaven for you.’

She digs Porta angrily in the ribs.

‘But your kind’ll end up in hell! Running the big men’s errands for them and taking poor boys to the gallows!’ She pats Carl again on the cheek.

‘Go with God, little soldier. They, can’t hang you but once. Here’s a piece of cheese for your long trip.’ She pushes a large round goatsmilk cheese under Carl’s arm.

‘Cocksuckers!’ snarl two gefreiters, sitting on a bench and rolling dice.

‘Obergefreiter Joseph Porta,’ Porta bows in acknowledgement.

‘The train, the train!’ people scream and rush like an avalanche along the platform.

Civil and military police try to maintain order but it is hopeless.

The pig woman comes rushing along the train like a battering-ram. The pigs are squealing like mad things.

‘Think this is one o’ them trips they calls
Kraft durch
Freude?
’ asks Tiny wonderingly, and swings his arms like a windmill to make room in the crowd.

Sweating conductors run along the train banging doors shut. Baggage is thrown through windows. The owners crawl after it.

The train is off. Everyone caught it but the buffers are packed. Everybody but two fat MP’s, that is.

‘We’ve
got
to get on board!’ they shout. They try to jump on but nobody will make room for them. One of them falls on his face on the platform, his steel helmet rattling in under the train.

At Lamia the Red Cross bring round pork and beans and Turkish coffee. Porta, of course, gets three helpings.

A prison car is coupled on to the train. A long goods waggon with heavily-barred doors and ventilation openings.