Death in Rome Read Online Free PDF Page B

aromatic waters like a pasha. But in camp he soaped himself, scrubbed himself down with a stiff brush till his skin was raw, he shaved with the old German pocket razor that had accompanied him all the way from the Weidendamm Bridge to the desert. He felt good, like a scorched wild boar, he thought to himself. He heard man sounds: water splashing, buckets clanging, whistling, oaths, jokes, orders, boots scraping, doors banging. He smelled the barracks smell compounded from detention, service, leather polish, gun grease, strong soap, sweet pomade, sour sweat, coffee, heated aluminium dishes and piss. It was the smell of fear, only Judejahn didn't know it: after all, he didn't know what fear was. He told himself so in front of the mirror; naked, thick-bellied, he stood in front of the fly-blown glass. He did up his belt. He was old school in this. The belt held in his paunch and hitched up his buttocks. An old general's trick. Judejahn went out into the passage. Men flattened themselves against the walls, dutiful shadows. He ignored them. He was going outside. A blood-red sun floated on the sandstorm. Judejahn inspected the front. The wind tore at his khaki uniform. Sand cut into flesh like shards of glass, and rattled against tanks like hailstones. The sight amused Judejahn. See the sons of the desert on parade! He looked them over and saw dark, moist, treacherous almond eyes, brown skin, burned faces, blackamoor countenances, Semitic noses. His men! His men were dead. They lay buried under grass, under snow, under rock and sand, they lay near the Arctic Circle, in France, in Italy, in Crete, in the Caucasus, and a few of them lay in boxes under the prison-yard. His men! Now that meant these here. Judejahn had little appreciation of the irony of fate. He did the old troop-inspector's strut and looked firmly and severely into the moist, treacherous and dreamy almond eyes. Judejahn saw no reproach in those eyes. He saw no accusation. Judejahn had taken the animal gentleness from these men. He had taken their pride, the natural dignity of these male harem children. He had broken them by making them obey. He had planed them down, by the book. Now they stood in front of him, upright and braced like tin soldiers, and their souls were gone out of them. They were soldiers. They were troops. They were ready for action and expendable. Judejahn hadn't wasted his time. He hadn't disappointed his employers. Wherever he went was Grossdeutschland, where he was in command it was Prussia's old glory. The desert sand was no different from the sand of Brandenburg. Judejahn had been forced out, but he hadn't been uprooted; he carried Germany around with him in his heart, Germany still one day the saviour of the world. The flagstaff soared in the storm, it soared up alone towards the sand-occluded sun, it soared alone and tall into a godless void. Orders were given. Shouts ran through the ranks of soldiers like electric shocks. They stood up even straighter and stiffer as the flag climbed once more! What a majestic symbol of meaninglessness! The red morning star glowed on a green ground. Here you could still flog used goods, nationalism, fealty and hatred for the Israelis, those perennially useful people through whom Judejahn had once more come to money, position and respect.
    The dark suit wasn't right, either. It made Judejahn look like a chubby confirmand and it enraged him as he remembered how his father, the primary schoolteacher, had forced him to dress up like that and walk up to the altar of the Lord. That was in 1915 and he had had enough of school, he wanted to fight, only they wouldn't take little Gottlieb. But then he had his revenge on them, they gave him his leaving certificate in 1917, and he got a place on the officer training course, not the battlefield, but later there were bullets aplenty whistling round the ears of Judejahn, the Freikorps, Annaberg battles, Spartacist uprising, Kapp Putsch, Ruhrmaquis, and finally the