LITMIR.BIZ

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was nearly 9:00 a.m. by the time he reached Divisional HQ, situated – as the policeman had promised – in a grand house. There was a large paddock and a dozen magnificent cavalry horses grazing there. They looked at Pauli as he walked past, then went back to their fodder. Clerks were bivouacked in the orchard, and there was a soup kitchen sited in what must once have been a herb garden. Pauli didn’t want to go to the officers’ canteen in case he saw someone from his regiment, so he asked the Feldwebel for something to eat and got a metal cup of hot dried-pea soup with two miserable bits of sausage floating in it. Both soup and sausage were bland and almost tasteless, but it warmed him.

      In the grand, marble-paved entrance hall an NCO wearing the smart uniform of a Bavarian rifle regiment was seated at a table. Around him was a constant traffic of messengers, while noisy young staff officers were grouped at the foot of the great staircase. Their voices were not of the sort that Pauli had heard on the parade ground at Lichterfelde; they were the shrill, excited voices of wealthy young aristocrats. The NCO stared at Pauli. Men straight from the battlefield were seldom seen this far behind the lines, and the NCO clerk – who’d not been to the trenches – had never before seen an officer so dirty.

      After his inquiries Pauli went up the magnificent staircase and found Peter in an upstairs room talking to an elegant-looking captain. The captain was about forty years old and wore the badges of a heavy cavalry regiment. His striped armband marked him as a staff officer from Corps HQ. Peter and the captain were laughing together as Pauli went into the office and saluted.

      Peter! This was the moment he’d risked so much for. This was the meeting he’d waited for so impatiently. Peter! He wanted to throw his arms around his beloved brother and hug him, but that wasn’t something he could do in the presence of a stranger. So he stood anxiously smiling at Peter.

      ‘So this is the brother?’ said the captain, and both men laughed again. Pauli envied the way his elder brother could make friends so easily. Peter was able to bridge the gap that rank and age created. Peter could even laugh and joke with his father, whereas Pauli was always treated like a baby, both by family and by strangers. Whenever Pauli got away with some misdeed or other, it was always by means of his charm, but Peter talked to other men as an equal, and that was what Pauli so admired. This relaxed and sophisticated elder brother of his would never have endured the bullying of Leutnant Brand; he would have found some way of dealing with him. But God only knows how.

      Peter stood up and clasped Pauli’s offered hand. ‘Pauli,’ he said, ‘Pauli.’

      Without taking his eyes from his brother for more than a moment, Pauli sat down on a hard wooden chair. It always seemed strange to sit on a proper chair after a long spell in the trenches.

      ‘I’ll leave you together,’ said the staff officer. ‘There’s not much doing over the Easter weekend. Most of the staff are probably in Brussels on leave.’

      The friendly staff officer gave Peter and Pauli the use of the little office room and even sent a soldier to serve them coffee and schnapps.

      ‘You’re in a terrible state,’ said Peter when they were alone together. He was staring at his younger brother’s dark-ringed eyes and shaved head and at his rain-drenched greatcoat and mud-caked boots. As Pauli loosened his collar, he caught sight of a dirty undervest, too. ‘Haven’t you had time to change into a clean uniform?’ It was the voice of the grown-up brother admonishing the baby about his gravy-stained bib, but Pauli didn’t allow the condescension to spoil things.

      For a moment Pauli didn’t reply. He knew, of course, that the civilians didn’t realize that the front line was no more than a filthy ditch from which the sound of bronchial coughing could be heard across no-man’s-land, and where pneumonia was as deadly as enemy bullets and shells. But that his brother should think it was someplace where clean uniforms and pressed linen were available shocked him. ‘There was no time,’ said Pauli. He wished he could take Peter to the trenches and show him what it was like. He’d never understand otherwise. No one could visualize it. It was useless to explain.

      ‘It’s an officer’s first task to set an example,’ said Peter primly. ‘Surely they taught you that at cadet school.’ Oh, God, how like Leutnant Brand he sounded, thought Pauli. But Peter smiled suddenly and the mood changed. ‘You’ve grown so big, Pauli. So big across the shoulders…’ Was that Peter’s polite way of saying that Pauli had not grown much taller? Pauli had always wanted to be as tall as his brother, ever since he could remember, but now he knew he would never be tall, slim, and elegant: he’d always be short, thickset, broad, and clumsy.

      ‘You’re promoted,’ said Pauli. Perhaps his elder brother’s shiny new gold ring on that so very clean, neatly pressed naval uniform had gone to his head.

      ‘Oberleutnants are little more than office boys in Brussels, where I work,’ said Peter. But, in a gesture that belied his modesty, he brushed his sleeve self-consciously as he spoke.

      ‘You’re looking well, Peter.’ He made no mention of his elder brother’s mutilated hand and tried not to look at it. Peter’s injury frightened him in some way that the firing line did not. Peter was family: an injury to him injured Pauli.

      ‘There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be back on flying duties. As an Oberleutnant with my experience, I’d probably get command of one of the new high altitude zeppelins. I even tried for the High Seas Fleet. But the damned medical board won’t clear me. Sometimes I wonder whether Father hasn’t found some way of keeping me from active duty.’

      ‘There’s no doubt he’d try if he got the chance,’ said Pauli. They both knew that their father would have done anything to keep Pauli from the Western Front, and for Pauli his efforts had obviously failed.

      ‘Now that the army have stopped using airships, Father probably has less influence with them. But the navy still listen to him.’

      ‘When did you last see him?’ asked Pauli. He scratched himself. Fleas were a fact of life in the trenches – and lice, too – but Pauli noticed his brother’s look of horror as he realized he was lousy.

      ‘Christmas. I got seven days’ leave. Everyone hoped that you’d come home too.’

      ‘Training. I got a twenty-four-hour pass for Christmas. No one was permitted to leave the barracks. Even the colonel stayed.’

      ‘The infantry are winning the war,’ said Peter.

      ‘We’re not winning the war,’ said Pauli. ‘We’re being shot at, and we’re shooting back. We are not winning the war. We will win it, of course – no one doubts that – but for the time being it’s a sort of stalemate. Neither side advances more than a few metres, and the English leave battalions of dead on the barbed wire.’

      ‘At least the Russians are kaputt,’ said Peter.

      ‘We don’t get much news where we are.’

      ‘It started in March; there were food riots in Petrograd, and when the troops were called out they shot their officers and joined the mob.’

      ‘My God!’

      ‘You didn’t hear?’

      ‘Only that the Tsar abdicated and a provisional government was formed. The troops joined in? It’s true?’

      ‘Including the Imperial Guard. Some say it started in the Imperial Guard but even in Brussels it’s difficult to get reliable news. Each newspaper story contradicts the one before. A fellow I know on the Supreme Command at Spa told me the little I know.’

      ‘What will happen now?’

      ‘The Russians can’t go on fighting much longer. In Berlin there are rumours that the Kaiser has arranged for Marxist revolutionaries to be given safe passage across Germany to return home to Russia.’

      ‘The Kaiser would allow such a thing? Never!’

      ‘The revolutionaries have always been opposed to the war – the world brotherhood of man, and so on. So

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