In Burma and Japan a general is the piece we call a queen, but in China and Korea a general is the piece we call a king.
Saturday, November 2nd
Pankow is a sort of Hampstead of East Berlin, comfortable and bourgeois; the dogs wear little overcoats and the kids play without shouting. Fist-sized shrapnel holes pockmarked the grey face of number 238 and as I mounted the wide stone staircase, the smell of Eisbein and fried onion walked alongside me.
Apartment number 20 was on the top floor. The small brass plate said ‘Borg’ in the Gothic script. Ex-Wehrmacht General Borg lived here.
A young girl answered the door. She wore one of those short frilly-edged aprons that maids wore in the ’thirties. The room she showed me into was over-decorated but under-furnished. A fierce-looking woman with her hair drawn tightly back into a bun glared out of a plain oval frame like a tiger leaping through a hoop. Under the large photo sat Colonel-General Erich Borg, Commander Panzer Group ‘Borg’.
General Borg was a tall thin man. Sitting low in the ancient armchair, all knees and elbows, he looked as delicate as a stick insect. His face was very white and very wrinkled like a big ball of string, loose to form eyes and mouth. Under his right hand was a pad of paper and an ancient fountain pen. With his left hand, he raised a tall glass of lemon tea to his face and sipped secretively at the almost transparent liquid.
At Borg’s feet there was a large tray of sand in which the contours of central Belgium had been carefully moulded. Tiny strips of coloured wood and bright drawing pins were meticulously arranged in neat rows. I walked across to the sand tray and studied it. ‘Four-fifteen P.M.,’ I said.
‘Good,’ said Borg. The girl was watching us both.
‘Just before the British artillery start to fire double-shotted charges.’
‘You hear that, Heidi,’ said Borg. He prodded the sand around the rectangle of Hougoumont with a thin length of cane. ‘Ney’s cavalry are cantering up there towards the British guns, five thousand horsemen and not a grain of intelligence between them. Just shouting “Vive l’Empereur!” and hoping for the best. When they reach the guns, they don’t know what to do, do they?’
The General stared up at me. I said, ‘You can’t spike guns without spikes or drag them away without horses and harness.’
‘They were stupid,’ said Borg. ‘Hammers and nails would have done it.’
I shrugged. ‘They could have smashed the sponge staves,’ I said.
Borg beamed. ‘You hear that, Heidi?’ He nodded. ‘The sponge staves, yes, that would have been something.’
‘I learned about the battle from an artilleryman,’ I explained.
‘No better way,’ said Borg. ‘Artillery was the key to the battle. Read War and Peace. Tolstoy knew it.’
‘Napoleon should have known it too. He was an artilleryman.’
‘Napoleon,’ said Borg. He prodded deep into Rossome Farm until the cane bent and flipped a small red cube across the room in a spray of sand. ‘Vollidiot,’ snarled Borg as the Emperor disappeared under the sideboard.
‘I’m glad he was,’ I said, ‘or Waterloo Station would be in Paris.’
‘What would you care?’ said Borg.
‘I live behind Waterloo Station,’ I said.
Borg rapped me across the ankle with his cane. I cowered back to avoid the next blow. Borg smiled icily. It was a Prussian gesture of friendship. The girl made a seat for me by moving a map of central Poland, a book of medieval armour and Der Deutsche Soldatenkalender for 1956. I sat down.
‘Droll men, you French,’ said Borg.
‘Yes,’ I said. The walls of the garret room sloped like a tent and the big windows fitted into it like an awning. Along the window stood a line of potted plants, which shone in the artificial heat. Condensation dribbled down the glass, making an impressionist painting of the view across the dusty roofs.
‘Heidi,’ the general’s voice was high and clear.
His daughter brought me a small cup of strong coffee. She watched me as I tasted it and asked if I was too hot.
‘No,’ I said. I felt a trickle of sweat move down my forehead and sweep across my cheek like an errant tear.
She laughed. ‘Papa feels the cold so,’ she said.
‘I understand,’ I said. I polished the condensation from my spectacles again.
‘What’s that?’ said the general in a loud voice.
‘You feel the cold,’ I said.
‘I am,’ said the general.
‘What?’ I said.
‘I am old,’ he said patiently. The girl patted his shoulder and said, ‘Of course he doesn’t think you look old.’ She spoke to me. ‘Papa lip-reads; you must face him when you speak.’
‘Then he must be a fool,’ said the general.
I looked out through the dribbly glass; there was a banner on the building opposite. ‘Peace must be armed’, it said.
General Borg said, ‘The passing of time is like the passing of two trains; when you are young the other train is travelling at almost the same speed. Time hangs upon your hands. You grow older, the train gains speed slightly. Then it’s rushing by faster, faster and faster until it’s gone and you see the green countryside again.’
‘Yes,’ I said. The general gazed at me intently. ‘I’m trying,’ he said very slowly. ‘I’m trying to remember you. Were you in the war with me?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I was on the other side.’
‘That was wise,’ he said and nodded in admiration.
‘It’s about your collection of regimental diaries,’ I said.
The general’s face brightened. ‘You are a military historian. I knew it. We have a large collection of records – are you interested in cavalry uniform – that’s my principal interest at present – I am writing an article.’
‘It’s a simple enquiry,’ I said. ‘It’s a Wehrmacht unit that was evacuating people from a concentration camp. I’d like some details of the personnel.’
‘Heidi will look it up for you,’ said the general. ‘That’s a very straightforward matter. We have a roomful of unit records. Eh, Heidi?’
‘Yes, Papa,’ she said. ‘I can hardly get in it to clean,’ she said to me. I gave her the details written on a slip of paper.
‘I’m sure you manage,’ I said. She pattered off to get the files.
The general sipped his tea and talked about nineteenth-century cavalry uniform.
‘You came on the advice of Colonel Stok?’ the general said.
‘That’s right. He said that you have one of the best collections of military records in the whole of Germany.’
The general nodded. ‘Fascinating man, Stok,’ said the general. ‘He has let me have some most interesting Red Army historical material, most interesting. Very kind. It’s rare, you know.’ I wondered whether he meant Red Army history or kindness.
‘Have you lived here very long?’ I said finally, to break the silence.
‘Born in this very building,’ said the general. ‘And I’ll die in it. Used to have the whole thing when my father was alive. Now we are just a small apartment in the roof, eh? All under Government control, the rest of the building – still people are homeless, can’t have everything, mustn’t complain.’
‘Have you ever thought of living in the West?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘My mother was very keen to move to Köln. That would be about 1931, but we never went.’
‘I mean since the war. Why do you live here in East Berlin since the war?’
‘My old friends cannot visit me,’ he said.
I pursed my lips to reform the question, until the general’s quiet simper told me he had answered it.
‘Do you do any work for Bonn?’ I asked.
‘For those ruffians – certainly not.’ He tapped the arm of his chair as though his fist was a gavel. ‘For a decade after the war, I was too much of a Nazi for any decent German to take coffee with me.’ He put the words ‘decent German’ into roughly tongued inverted commas. ‘My only conversations were with two colonels from the American Army Historical Department. We fought all the way from the Bug to the Volga together. Do you know …’ He leaned forward confidentially. ‘… every time we did it, I made less mistakes. I tell you, a couple more visits from those Historical Department colonels and I think I might have taken Stalingrad.’ He laughed a humourless treble laugh. ‘For a whole decade I was too much of a Nazi for the German politicians.’ He sipped his tea. ‘Now I’m not enough of a Nazi for them.’ He laughed again, without humour, as though he had made that joke and laughed at it many times before. Heidi came back with a bundle of large brown envelopes.
‘Do you know Colonel Stok?’ she asked me.
‘My girl’s rather taken with him,’ said the general and laughed as heartily as he could laugh without shattering into a million fragments.
‘She could do worse,’ I said, wondering if I had been guilty of impropriety.
‘Exactly,’ said the general.
‘Are you a colleague of Alexeyevitch?’ the girl asked.
‘I’m a business rival,’ I said.
She laughed and set before me the big envelopes that contained more details of the life of Broum.