Of Smiling Peace

Stefan Heym

• Publisher: Arcole Publishing
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781787209183
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Of Smiling Peace is a novel about the hazards of victory, told in the human terms of liberators, liberated and oppressors. As a story it is an absorbing duel of wits and force between resourceful Bert Wolff, American Intelligence officer, and Major Ludwig von Liszt, highly placed German Staff officer. Caught up in this duel—as bait or prize, no one knew which—is the beautiful, shrewd Marguerite Fresneau, Liszt's mistress.Between the dueling forces is the man Jules-Marie Monaitre—the cynical betrayer-collaborator, the man of Vichy who thinks he can trade "masters" as casually as mistresses. The Monaitres, the Liszts made French North Africa a wilderness of subtly hazardous intrigue.Upon entering Algiers, Wolff is sent to arrest the Nazi Armistice Commission that had been "legally" looting the colony. One man is missing, Liszt, of Franco's staff, whom Wolff knew by reputation during his days with the Loyalists in Spain. Liszt is a Junker, contemptuous of Nazi party hacks, with German superiority and destiny deeply rooted in his blood and background. To Wolff Liszt becomes the embodiment of the enemy, martially and emotionally.

CHAPTER ONE

AT 4.31 IN THE MORNING, the French opened fire from their positions in back of the beach and along the road which ran parallel to the shoreline towards Algiers.

At that very moment the landing craft carrying Sergeant Shadow McManus and some of his men crunched on to the sand. The ramp of the barge fell open, forming a short gang-plank into the shallow breakers.

Shadow, who had crouched behind it, felt as if someone had torn the warm cover from his bed. He felt naked and cold. Between him and the orange fire of the mitrailleuses was nothing—just some hundred yards of flat beach.

But his dream went on. There were two soldiers named Shadow—one who did all the things he had learned in innumerable rehearsals of this particular operation, who jumped forward, catlike, his moist hands holding his tommy-gun above his head, who waded to shore, lifting his legs high to offset the resistance of the water, and who, after reaching ground, zigzagged ahead, signalling his men to follow, and finally threw himself flat on the sand, panting. The other Shadow observed the first one and kept saying: None of this is true. None of it. It can’t be. It’s a movie or something like that. Nobody can be crazy enough to aim at you and fire. Nobody can be so stupid as to run headlong into such fire.

The eerie light of dawn, torn by the flashes of the ships’ batteries from the seas, and the answering flashes of the coastal guns, heightened the observing Shadow’s sense of the unreal. This is terrific, he thought. For whom is this show being put on?

Then he noticed that the active Shadow was afraid. Or at least he seemed to be, for he had drawn his head deep between his shoulders, and his stomach was all over his body—in his throat and in his feet, an all-engulfing stomach which rocked with convulsions.

An arc of bullets struck the beach a few feet ahead of Shadow, dousing him with sand. Someone yelled, and then the yelling ceased as abruptly as it had started. That guy’s been hit, said the observing Shadow, and he’s probably dead. Say, kid, you were lucky this time.

That ended the Sergeant’s odd sensation that he was split in two. Suddenly, the world regained its perspective. He remembered that he was not alone. He realized that his men were round him and that, if he couldn’t get up, they would have to get up without him and go forward, and that would be the end of him.

Lifting his head cautiously, he saw that the beach was peopled with men in all postures—running, walking, standing, kneeling; some were lying as he was, others were sprawled on the ground as if flattened by a truck; an officer was gesticulating, but Shadow could not hear what he was saying. He looks foolish. Shadow thought, He saw other men labouring to move equipment—guns and boxes of ammunition; a few jeeps and light tanks came splashing out of the water and began to pick their way through the mêlée.

All this chaos roused his desire for order and organization. This must be stopped, men must be lined up. Didn’t they know what to do? Hadn’t he drilled them time and again?

He jumped up and signalled them to form a skirmish line. Ah, they moved! Good boys—they saw his signal and followed orders—there was something which, after all, had weathered the test. The beach here was not at all different from the beach in Virginia—same sand, same dunes, same principles.

Yes—but were they the same men? Was he the same?

He recognized the gaunt figure of Corporal Pope, his second in command. Pope was moving up behind him and waving to him, his thumb and forefinger forming a circle—the way Pope waved to the waitress when he ordered another round of beers. At the extreme right of the skirmish line, precisely where he belonged, sat Slotkin. He was resting his elbows on his knees to hold his rifle steady, and kept firing away at the dunes. That Slotkin, the slowest man of the squad, who always had to be helped along by the others, should be the first to fire, amazed Shadow. In fact, it reminded Shadow that he was carrying a gun himself.

Why did Slotkin do that? What had propelled Slotkin into doing something on his own? Shadow shook his head.

And then the unexpected happened. It was as if a strange fist had struck a vicious blow against Shadow’s skull. Inside his helmet, the blow sounded like an explosion. Thoughts began to pour with unimaginable speed.

I think, therefore, I am still alive. It must have been a bullet that grazed my helmet. His hand shot up, his fingers touched the jagged dent. That was meant against me. That was meant to kill me, kill me dead, snuff me out. They are shooting at me. What the hell am I—a clay pigeon?

It may have been the pain of shock, or the fury that rose in him and threatened to choke him, which cast a red veil before his eyes. Everything he saw was red—for the first time in his life, he saw red. He rubbed his eyes to get them clear, he began to shout—wild, inarticulate sounds to free his throat.

Shouting, he ran forward. Soon, the running became a jogging trot, because the sand was heavy under his feet, and he wanted to steady his gun on his hip. His voice kept pounding from his throat. It was as if his shouts were carrying him forward. Now he had reached the middle of the beach. The incline was not too steep, but he had gained sufficient height to recognize the enemy. He saw their helmets like turtle backs on top of the dune, and, between them, the belching machine-gun. He moved directly ahead. There was no sense zigzagging before a machine-gun. He did not know those men firing at him, but he hated them with a fierce, vengeful hate. He even gave his hate a colour—it was white, glaring white. He hated them because they were out to hit his knees or his testicles or his belly—they could not hit his chest or his head, their angle of fire was too low.

He wanted to kill them. He did not care whether his squad was behind him, he did not care whether he was alone on the whole field of battle. He felt warm and good. It was good to hate and attack, attack and hate. Running, he fired. The butt of his firing gun, pressed against his side, shook him. That was good, too.

Then he was upon them. Only much later did he realize that the enemy must have ceased firing long before he reached their emplacement. How otherwise could they have been lined up as they were, kneeling, their hands raised above their heads?

That none of them was wounded or dead was a disappointment. For all of Shadow’s pain and exertion, his fear and self-conquest, they had not suffered the least

Then he saw their shabby coats, their hollow, dirty faces. “Get up!” he ordered.

They did not understand or did not want to understand. “Camarade!” said one of them, his eyes anxious, pleading.

Pope, who had come up and held his rifle trained at them, said, “Camarade—hell!”

But Shadow shrugged his shoulders. “Take them back,” he ordered Pope. Then he gathered the squad. As they were marching inland, through the broken line of the enemy, he saw many groups such as his, winding in and out of the dunes. He waited for Slotkin and slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Well?”

“Well—what?” replied Slotkin, acting unconcerned.

They both broke into laughter.

*****

The two men leaving Marguerite Fresneau’s house in the Rue d’Epignan were not similar at all. The one in the lead was of slight build and his face, half hidden under a wide-brimmed hat, was smooth. Though the other was not much taller, his powerful body made him appear hulking, ill-proportioned in his much too tight clothes.

He was buttoning his jacket and having trouble with it. Damn this indecent haste!” he puffed. “Give me a chance to get dressed, will you? Where’d you get a suit with such a waist-line, anyhow?”

“It wasn’t made for you, Tarnowsky,” said the slight one, slowing his steps. “You ought to be glad I had one to spare. You wouldn’t like showing yourself in your usual get-up, would you?”

“No,” said Tarnowsky, “I guess not. What are we coming to, I ask you? Things must be in a fine mess that we have to hide in these—these——”

“I wish you wouldn’t talk that loud—at least not in German. Can’t you hear those guns? They aren’t ours.”

“Very well, sir.” Tarnowsky’s voice indicated that he was accepting an order. Then it changed. It became timid and nagging. “Major,” it asked, “how is this going to end? I don’t like being on the spot. What are you planning to do? You must have some idea!”

Now, as they walked beside one another, their feet moving in equal step, their shoulders erect, the difference between them curiously seemed to vanish. They were dogs of the same breed, officers of the same Army—and at this point they were caught in the same predicament.

But while Tarnowsky floundered on his fears, the Major was outraged to such a degree that he forgot the very real threat which lay in the sound of the invaders’ fire.

“Diese Unverschämtheit!” he muttered. “The nerve!”

He felt the American assault like a personal slap against the foresight and omniscience of himself and his colleagues. It was inconceivable that these minds could have been fooled so completely! Had they not planned and plotted and led an Army which had overrun one continent and ruled sections of two others and now was about to embark on the final conquest of the rest of the world? The even keel of his own mind—and his was one of the leading brains of this Army in spite of his youth and minor rank—demanded that he deny that a basic error had been made.

“Tarnowsky,” he said, “how long are the French going to hold?”

Tarnowsky was an artillery specialist. His big, fleshy ears would register the sound of the howitzers and anti-tank guns, the nervous cackling of small-arms fire, the whole throat-gripping instrumentation of battle, and he could note them on paper like a musical score. He turned his head against the wind. He recognized the popping of the French 75s—that was familiar enough. He had heard it often, while accompanying the Major on visits to the French North African garrisons: surprise visits which served as check-ups on the garrison commanders and on how well they kept themselves to the restrictions of the Armistice. Not that he or the Major or any member of the German Armistice Commission in North Africa had been afraid of the French. The French had been beaten and cowed and knew that their outmoded arms and their outnumbered troops were no match for the German divisions. He remembered those visits, he remembered the subservience of the French which he accepted stiffly, and the childish pride with which they demonstrated the few popping 75s left to them—the same guns which, now, were almost drowned out by the deeper roar of the strange invaders’ strange cannon.

“I give them three hours,” said Tarnowsky, answering the Major’s question. “The Americans must have landed 105s and 155s, and the real heavy stuff comes from their ships. Three hours at most. Then the French will be blotted out.”

“And the coasta...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• CHAPTER ONE
• CHAPTER TWO
• CHAPTER THREE
• CHAPTER FOUR
• CHAPTER FIVE
• CHAPTER SIX
• CHAPTER SEVEN
• CHAPTER EIGHT
• CHAPTER NINE
• CHAPTER TEN
• CHAPTER ELEVEN
• CHAPTER TWELVE
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER