The Bloody Road to Death (23 page)

They run into three prostitutes and go home with them. ‘Just,’ as Carl says, ‘to see how they live.’

All Porta remembers of this episode is naked girls and a kitchen chair which collapses.

‘It’s all right, Nico, all we want is a few titbits,’ explains Porta pleasantly to the head waiter in evening dress at the high-class restaurant ‘Zlatni Bokal.’

A string orchestra is playing Strauss and there is a scent of expensive perfume in the air.

Well-dressed people crowd the foyer.

‘My name is not Nico!’ says the head waiter, coldly.

‘No? The resemblance is striking!’ smiles Porta, swaying on his feet. ‘Step aside, Nico, and let us at the trough!’

‘My name is
not
Nico!’ snarls the head waiter, his cheeks reddening. ‘My name is Pometniks!’

Porta bows from the waist and raises his yellow hat.

‘Obergefreiter Joseph Porta, and this is obergefreiter Creutzfeldt. Come here Tiny and pay your respects to Monsieur Nico!’

‘’Ello, mate,’ grins Tiny foggily, grabbing the head waiter’s tiny white hand and crushing it in his giant fist.

Pometniks draws a deep breath and straightens his white tie.

‘I regret M. Porta. This is an exclusive restaurant. You would not feel comfortable here, and regrettably all tables are taken.’

Tiny breaks out into a meaningless roar of laughter and runs his hand through the head waiter’s well-oiled hair, making it stand up in spikes.

‘Nico, Nico, you’re a bleedin’
cardl
There’s a table empty there with two chairs.’ He lifts Pometniks up so that he can see over the heads of the crowd of guests.

‘Great stuff!’ shouts Porta. ‘We’ll take one of these chairs!’ And with a chair under his arm he pushes his way through the thickly-carpeted restaurant.

Pometniks has to run to keep up with them. He is swearing softly, but viciously, in Serbian and German.

The table is reserved,’ he pants, ‘you can have that one in the corner, but only for one hour. Then that too is reserved.’

‘And when are
you
reserved for, Nico?’ asks Porta, tickling him under the chin.

‘
Pometniks
,’ he wheezes.

‘You mean to say you
aren’t
Nico, the notorious sex criminal? Unbelievable, the resemblance!’

‘You’re
all
right!’ grins Porta pushing his hand through the head-waiter’s hair again. He takes off his uniform jacket and hangs it on the back of the chair, pulls his tie and shirt open and scratches his hairy chest.

The guests gape over at their table. The orchestra misses a beat as the leader forgets to swing his baton.

A tiny waiter with a face like a mouse hands them the menu and waits with pencil poised.

‘Mickey, remove the reading matter!’ says Porta. We’re not in a library, are we?’

‘Is
’is
name Mickey?’ asks Tiny, looking at the waiter with the expression of a hungry cat on his face.

‘Isn’t it obvious,’ laughs Porta. ‘He’d never get past a hospital. They’d have him inside in a cage with the rest of the experimental animals in a minute.’

The messieurs wish?’ asks the little waiter, unwillingly.

‘
Prase
,’ Porta demands arrogantly, leaning back and rocking his chair.

‘Regret, monsieur, we have not sucking-pig roasted on the spit.’

‘Mouse-arse,
can
you
perhaps
manage
Djuvic?

‘With pleasure, monsieur. You wish it to be strong?’

‘Of
course
, Mickey. You don’t think we eat Serbian hash that’s
not
strong? But let’s have a good big dish of
Poddvarac
first to sharpen our appetite.’

‘Chicken in sauerkraut
before the hash
}’ gasps the waiter. ‘I do not think the messieurs can manage . . .’

‘Think, stink!’ grins Tiny. ‘Bring it on, mate!’

‘Bring us first of all some plum tea to get the shit out of our teeth. Better make it two bottles immediately,’ orders Porta.

The waiter has hardly opened the first bottle before it is empty.

‘That’s the best bleedin’ tea I ever did taste in my life!’ shouts Tiny excitedly.

‘It hasn’t got a fuck to do with tea,’ answers Porta. ‘It’s spirits.’

‘Why they call it tea then?’ asks Carl in wonder.

Then they don’t have to lie to their wives when they say they’ve been out drinking tea,’ explains Porta.

When they have finished the second bottle Tiny drops his arm over the shoulder of a lady at the next table who is wearing a low-cut dress and flips one of her breasts out.

Porta begins to sing an obscene song in a high piercing voice.

Carl grabs the cigarette girl and begins to dance the
spjetka
with her. They trip and cigarettes fly all over the floor.

The head waiter comes rushing over followed by two waiters and a doorman.

‘This is enough,’ he shouts, softly. ‘This is not a brothel. Out with you!’

‘We’ve not eaten yet,’ protests Porta. ‘Be a good boy, now, Nico. Mother
said
we could go in here on our own!’

‘Out, or I call the MP’s!’

‘Don’t bother, we’re here already!’ Porta holds up his invaluable brassard.

‘Throw them out!’ the head waiter orders the commissionaire.

The man puts out a respectably-sized hand towards Tiny.

‘Come on, don’t let’s ’ave no trouble now!’

‘Hit him in the teeth!’ shouts Porta, catching up a plateful of sauerkraut rolls from the table next to him and dashing them into the head waiter’s face. He throws a glass of red wine back at Porta. In a few seconds there is nothing left on the table to throw. Tiny swings back his iron-tipped boot, size 12, and lets it go. It contacts the doorman’s instep. He lets out a scream and dances round on one foot.

Two waiters, in green hussar uniform jackets, grab at Carl, who cracks a chopping board down onto their heads.

The cigarette girl comes running and scratches Tiny’s face. He throws her into the orchestra, which all the time continues playing the Blue Danube waltz.

Porta drives a fork into the head waiter’s hand. A tureen flies through the air, lamb soup showering out in all directions.

The guests roar with laughter. They think it is an act. In ‘Zlatni Bokal’ there is always some kind of surprise act.

A Generalmajor laughs so heartily that his false teeth fall into his soup.

As they leave, Porta takes two bottles of Slivovitz from a shelf and declares them confiscated by the military police for analysis.

As Tiny passes the buffet a pot of Servian hash is pushed out from the serving-hatch. He regards it as a gift, but puts his head through the hatch first to say thank-you.

Nobody protests. The head waiter is glad to see the back of them. He could see his whole establishment on the way to being smashed to bits.

‘I’ll put a Molotov cocktail into that joint, sometime!’ screams Porta, as they climb into a horse-cab and drive to the station. They go into the first class waiting-room, where the chairs are softer, place the Slivovitz and the pot of hash between them and go to work on them.

‘We ought to go back and shoot that bleedin’ Nico bastard’s ’ead off!’ shouts Tiny with his mouth full of food. Then we ought to set fire to that doorman bleeder, an’ watch ’im cook. That’s what
I
think. We’ve lost
face
, we ’ave! We’ve let ’em
piss
on us. We ain’t represented the Fatherland as we ought to’ve done!’

A railway official, who is on his way over to them to throw them out of the first class waiting-room, changes his mind when he hears Tiny’s remarks.

The train rocks through dark mountains, and crosses the border without stopping. It is already two days late. Outside Budapest there is a stop for the entry signal.

Carl’s eye falls on some military graves with rusty helmets hanging on cheap crosses.

‘Poor sods!’ he says in a melancholy voice. ‘The Fatherland doesn’t give the dead heroes much, does it?’

‘The Fatherland’s a load of cunning Jewboys!’ states Porta.

A large gull lands on one of the crosses. It screams a protest when a crow chases it off.

Inquisitively the crow sticks its beak under the helmet, stops to preen its feathers and then investigates again.

‘See him looking,’ says Porta. ‘The black bastard hasn’t forgotten the good times when they let the soldiers’ bodies lie on the ground long enough for the crows to get their favourite delicacy, human eyes.’

A Rumanian soldier shows them his stump of an arm.

‘Bang, crash,
Germanos
,’ he explains in a strange homemade lingua franca, at the same time gesticulating fiercely with his good hand. ‘
Malo koszenep szepen
¹¹
.
Job tvojemadj! Nic hamm nesjov
¹²
.’

The train crawls into the Budapest main station. Three hours to wait. Troop transports have first priority.

In the dirty station restaurant, which stinks of unwashed soldiers, they try to get some food.

There is a very elegant menu. They choose chicken soup piquant. If the menu is to be believed it contains: chicken meat, celery, carrots, dried ginger, onions, bean shoots, eggs and
sliced lemons. It turns out to be yellow-white water in which the closest inspection shows no trace of even fat on the surface. The piquant chicken soup is also cold.

‘This soup is cold!’ says Porta, pointing to his plate.

The waiter, in his greasy dinner jacket, sticks a finger into the soup to test it, and shakes his head with a smile.

‘Is warm, herr German soldier!’

‘Is cold, herr Hungarian waiter!’ replies Porta.

The waiter fetches the cook, a big, fat wicked-looking fellow, who, without a word, takes Porta’s spoon and tastes the soup.

‘Warm!’ he grins, showing blackened teeth, and turns on his heel to go.

Tiny catches him by the back of his collar and pushes his face down into the soup.

‘Get drinkin’ then, you gypsy bastard!’ he yells, raging.

The cook drinks like a thirsty horse to avoid drowning in the soup. They pour the two other plates of soup down inside his trousers, and followed by earnest threats to shoot his head off he bolts into his kitchen.

When they leave the restaurant with their hunger still unsatisfied, the Rumanian veteran comes running after them.

‘Nicn ham
¹³
!’ he shouts despairingly.

The train is more than crowded. There is only room in the first class. There they can put their feet up, whilst everywhere else passengers are packed like sardines. They even have to stand in the toilets, where they laugh at people who want to use them.

‘Piss out the window,’ they advise, ’not against the wind, please. Here’s a lady wants to go. Anybody got a rubber pocket?’

Every Central European uniform is on display. MPs with shiny half-moon badges push their way roughly through the crush. They nod discreetly to leather-coated civilians with pulled-down hat brims. Gestapo. There is always a check on. Let your mouth flap too loosely and you’ll feel a heavy hand on your shoulder as you leave the train:

‘Geheime Staatspolizei!’

Without a ripple another person has disappeared.

There are three thousand people packed into the long express train, which thunders, without light, through the country on its way to Germany. Germany, lying like a tumour in the guts of Europe, with its barracks, prisons, concentration camps, hospitals, execution squares and cemeteries. A land where tortured millions spend most of their nights sheltering in cellars.

The engine-driver takes a swig from his thermos of coffee. He has been driving for eighteen hours without a break. Rules say, no more than eight hours, but there is a war on and engine-drivers are in short supply.

His mate shovels coal into the flaming maw beneath the boiler.

In the first class carriages people are getting ready for bed. An oberst in long underpants is listening to a major from the secret police.

‘In Odessa we used to stand them up on a truck. When we drove away, they were left there hanging,’ laughs the major. ‘It was quite comical to see.’

The oberst nods silently, and continues to press carefully at a pimple, staring into the mirror.

Loud sighs can be heard from the next carriage where a Rumanian oil engineer is taking care of a German oberst’s wife. She has been to Bukarest to visit her husband who is seriously wounded. The engineer kisses her and slides his hand over her rounded bottom. She giggles and pushes at him.

He bends her back on to the plush of the seat, lifts her grey pleated skirt so that a black suspender belt comes to view. He lifts her a little higher up.

She laughs excitedly as he pushes her legs apart.

‘No!’ she whispers. ‘You mustn’t!’

He catches her around the behind and pulls her towards him. To the rhythm of the train they enjoy the pleasures of love.