A Small Town in Germany (43 page)
'They'll be murdered,' de Lisle insisted. 'The crowd will murder them!'
'And so, my friends, this is what happened. Our victors in all their purity, and all their wisdom, taught us the meaning of democracy. Hurray for democracy. Democracy is like Christ; there is nothing you cannot do in the name of democracy.
'Praschko,' Turner declared quietly, 'Praschko wrote that for him.'
'He writes a lot of his stuff,' de Lisle said.
'Democracy is shooting Negroes in America and giving them gold beds in Africa! Democracy is to run a colonial empire, to fight in Vietnam and to attack Cuba; democracy is to visit your conscience on the Germans! Democracy is to know that whatever you do, you will never, never be as bad as the Germans!' He had raised his voice to give the sign, the sign the band expected. Once more Turner looked across the crowd into the alley, saw the white hand, white as a napkin, fall lazily in the lamplight, glimpsed the white face of Siebkron himself as he quickly relinquished his place of command and withdrew into the shadow of the pavement, saw the first head turn in front of him, then a second, as he himself heard it also: the distant sound of music, of a percussion band, and men's voices singing; saw Karfeld peer over the pulpit and call to someone beneath him; saw him draw back into the furthest recess while he continued speaking, and heard, as Karfeld assumed his sudden tone of indignation, heard through all Karfeld's new anger and his high-pitched exhortation, through all the conjuration, the abuse and the encouragement, the unmistakable note of fear.
'The Sozis!' the young detective cried, far out across the crowd. His heels were together and his leather shoulders drawn well back and he bellowed through cupped hands. 'The Sozis are in the alley! The Socialists are attacking us!'
'It's a diversion,' Turner said, quite matter of fact. 'Siebkron's staging a diversion.' To lure him out, he thought; to lure out Leo and make him chance his hand. And here's the music to drown the shot, he added to himself, as the Marseillaise began. It's all set up to make him have a go.
No one moved at first. The opening strains were barely audible; little, irrelevant notes played by a child on a mouth organ. And the singing which accompanied it was no more than the male chant from a Yorkshire pub on a Saturday night, remote and unconfident, proceeding from mouths unused to music; and to begin with the crowd really ignored it, because of its interest in Karfeld.
But Karfeld had heard the music, and it quickened him remarkably.
'I am an old man!' he shouted. 'Soon I shall be an old man. What will you say to yourselves, young men, when you wake in the morning? What will you say when you look at the American whore that is Bonn? You will say this: how long, young men, can we live without honour? You will look at your Government and say; you will look at the Sozis and say: must we follow even a dog because it is in office?'
He quoted Lear, Turner thought absurdly, and the floodlights were extinguished at one turn, at one black fall of the curtain: deep darkness filled the square, and with it, the louder singing of the Marseillaise. He detected the acrid smell of pitch carried on the night air, as in countless places the sparks flickered and wheeled away; he heard the whispered call and the whispered answer, he heard the order passed from mouth to mouth in hasty conspiracy. The singing and the music rose to a roar, picked up suddenly and quite deliberately by the loudspeakers: a mad, monstrous, plebeian, unsubtle roar, amplified and distorted almost beyond recognition, deafening and maddening.
Yes, Turner repeated to himself with Saxon clarity, that is what I would do if I were Siebkron. I would create this diversion, rouse the crowd, and make enough noise to provoke him into shooting. The music boomed still louder. He saw the policeman turn and face him and the young detective hold up a hand in warning. 'Stay here, please, Mister Bradfield! Mister Turner, stay here please!' The crowd was whispering excitedly; all round them they heard the sibilant, greedy hiss.
'Hands out of pockets, please!'
Torches were lit all round them; someone had given the signal. They rose like wild hopes gilding the sullen faces with belief, making mad dreams of their prosaic features, setting into their dull eyes the devotion of apostles. The little band was advancing into the square; it could not have been more than twenty strong, and the army that marched in its wake was ragged and undecided, but now their music was everywhere, a Socialist terror magnified by Siebkron's loudspeakers.
'The Sozis!' the crowd cried again. 'The Sozis are attacking us!'
The pulpit was empty, Karfeld had gone, but the Socialists were still marching for Marx, Jewry and War. 'Strike them, strike our enemies! Strike the jews! Strike the Reds!' Follow the dark, the voices whispered, follow the light, follow the spies and saboteurs; the Sozis are responsible for everything. Still the music grew louder.
'Now,' de Lisle said evenly. 'They've drawn him.'
A busy, silent group had gathered round the raw, white legs of Karfeld's scaffold; leather coats were stooping, moon faces flitting and conferring.
'The Sozis! Kill the Sozis.' The crowd was in mounting ferment; the scaffold was forgotten. 'Kill them!' Whatever you resent, the voices whispered, kill it here: Jews, Negroes, moles, conspirators, rejectors, wreckers, parents, lovers; they are good, they are bad, foolish or clever.
'Kill the Socialist Jews!' Swimmers leaping, the voices whispered; march! march!
We've got to kill him, Praschko, Alan Turner told himself in his confusion, or we shall be wearing the labels again....
'Kill who?' he said to de Lisle. 'What are they doing?'
'Chasing the dream.'
The music had risen to a single note, a raucous, crude, deafening roar, a call to battle and a call to anger, a call to kill ugliness, to destroy the sick and the unwieldy, the maimed, the loathsome and the incompetent. Suddenly by the light of the torches the black flags lifted and trembled like waking moths, the crowd seemed to drift and lean until the edges broke and the torches floated away into the alley, driving the band before them, acclaiming it their hero, smothering it with close kisses, dancing in upon it in playful fury, smashing the windows and the instruments, causing the red banners to flourish and dip like spurts of blood, then vanish under the mass which, cumbersome and murmuring, led by its own wanton torches, had reached into the alley and beyond. The radio crackled. Turner heard Siebkron's voice, cool and perfectly clear, he heard the mordant command and the one word: Schaffott. And then he was running through the waves, making for the scaffold, his shoulder burning from the blow; he felt the survivors' hands holding him and he broke them like the hands of children. He was running. Hands held him and he shook them off like twigs. A face rose at him and he struck it away, riding the waves to reach the scaffold. Then he saw him.
'Leo!' he shouted.
He was crouched like a pavement artist between the motionless feet. They stood all round him but no one was touching him. They were packed in close, but they had left room for him to die. Turner saw him rise, and fall again, and once more he shouted, 'Leo.' He saw the dark eyes turn to him and heard his cry answered, to Turner, to the world, to God or pity, to the mercy of any man who would save him from the fact. He saw the scrum bow, and bury him, and run; he saw the Homburg hat roll away over the damp cobble and he ran forward, repeating the name.
'Leo!'
He had grasped a torch and smelt the singeing of cloth. He was wielding the torch, driving away the hands, and suddenly there was no resistance any more; he stood on the shore, beneath the scaffold, looking at his own life, his own face, at the lover's hands grasping the cobble, at the pamphlets which drifted across the little body like leaves in the gathering wind. There was no weapon near him; nothing to show how he had died, only the crooked arrangement of the neck where the two pieces no longer fitted. He lay like a tiny doll who had been broken into pieces and carefully put together, pressed down under the warm Bonn air. A man who had felt, and felt no more; an innocent, reaching beyond the square for a prize he would never find. Far away, Turner heard the cry of anger as the grey crowd followed the vanished music of the alleys; while from behind him came the rustle of the light, approaching footsteps.
'Search his pockets,' someone said, in a voice of Saxon calm.
END
-------------------------------
Qvadis
Express Reader Edition
www.qvadis.com
-------------------------------