The Conduct of Major Maxim

"Brigitte Schickert. "

"Oh, her. Did he send you?"

He? Whichhe? Of course, the presumably-still-alive Rainer Schickert. Now we find out if they really don't know what became of him. "No, not her husband. Just a London lawyer wanting to know where she's buried. They don't tell you what it's all about, but they pay you for it. " He took a second picture and pocketed the camera. "I have an unfinished beer at the Wirtshaus. Would you like to join me?"

The solid old barrel of a body moved stiffly but not very carefully, like a heavy vehicle in low gear. Seeing the village again, from a new angle, Maxim could see other scars of the blast and its debris. The great linden tree, the traditional place for a village parliament, was lopsided even now from missing branches, and the nearest farmhouse was patched with un-matching brickwork and some of the window frames were too square to be old. But the signs of prosperity far outweighed those of damage: the new BMWs and Mercedes, freshly painted woodwork and the constant noise of machinery from the outhouses.

"A nice village, " Maxim commented. "How many farms is it?"

"It used to be three, now it's two. The Leistritz family packed up and sold out, just after the war. Two of the boys were killed in Russia, then their father was killed by The Bomber. The last boy couldn't keep it going."

"You lost more in the war than we did," Maxim said, and instantly felt he'd pitched it too strong.

But the old man nodded emphatically. "Yes, we did that. You're right. War is a terrible thing."

"What happened about the Leistritz farm?"

"That's it." The stick waggled at a great building nesting among its outhouses at the bottom of the village. "Karl Scholz bought most of the land and my father bought the house and the rest and gave it to me to run. It was a terrible business. "

Maxim said nothing more until they were back at the i

The old man's name was Bre

For a quarter of an hour, Bre

"Not well, no. They only came in the last winter of the war, just a few months. Old Leistritz took them in – he got paid, naturally. Everybody was taking in women and children from the cities, away from the bombing, or storing their furniture for them. My father said he'd never known a season before when chairs and commodes were the best crops." He chuckled, and finished his Korn as well. "After 1941 the village was full of strangers. They even sent us some French and Belgians, people like that, to work the land. Our own lads were getting killed in Russia, so they sent us Belgians to play with their widows. War isn't just terrible, it's ridiculous."

"But you did know them?" Maxim persisted.

Bre

"And her?"

"Ach."Bre

"Of course. Would you like another drink?"

While the woman was bringing more beer and the bottle of Korn, three other men came in. One wore a city suit but was carrying the jacket; the other two were in farm clothes. Bre

"This young Englishman wants to know something about Frau Schicken- do you remember her? What was her first name?"

"Brigitte,"Scholz said.

"That's right."

Maxim asked what Scholz would drink. He wa^ a hulk of a man in his middle fifties, inches taller than Maxim and instinctively stooping under the low beams of the tap-room. He moved with a delicacy that emphasised his power, and he had a slow smile and a gentle handshake.

They drank and Scholz asked bluntly: "What did you want to know about her?"

"Nothing much… just that she was killed by the bomb."

"The Bomber." It was said just the way the woman and Bre

Maxim had wondered about that: the blast effect had seemed pretty widespread for just a bomb. Now they were talking about perhaps four tons of bombs toppling out of the sky one morning when Dornhausen thought the war had passed it by. And not even an air raid warning to send them into the cellars.

Maxim thought of asking if the bomber's crew had bailed out, but decided it might be tactless.

"She didn't actually get killed by The Bomber," Scholz went on. "She died later. Oh, there would be seven or eight who died later, in hospital."

Maxim sat for a while, absorbing that thought. "She didn't die here then?"

"That's what he said." Bre

"You didn't help take her to hospital, or anything?"

Scholz took out a meerschaum pipe that was burned to a dark orange and blew through it. "The Americans did that. They were quick with it, too. Their medical service was probably the best thing about their Army."

Maxim glanced at him sharply and Scholz smiled a slow smile back. "I was in the Army then. Field engineers. But I picked up glandular fever and liver trouble in Italy that winter and I was still at home on sick leave when the whole thing finished. So… I just privately discharged myself and let the Americans think I'd been here all along. " Maxim instinctively smiled at him, then despised himself for the silly band-of-brother-soldiers stuff. Anyway, they didn't know he was a soldier.

"Do you know how badly she was hurt?", Bre

Scholz listened gravely, taking pinches of tobacco and pressing each gently into the pipe with his thumb, then sucking noisily to make sure it wasn't too tight. "I think I remember seeing her. She got it in the back of the neck. With neck wounds you can't tell, it could be nothing or everything. Her husband, Rainer, he wasn't hit but he went in with them. He spoke the best English. Then he came back the next day – I think it was the next day – and told us who'd died. Then hecame again a couple of days after and took the baby. "

"He just took it away?" Maxim was surprised. "It was only five months, wasn't it?"

Scholz lit his pipe and puffed quickly. "What else should he do? We couldn't look after it forever. He said he was going off to find his sister. It wasn't easy, travelling, in those days, but it wasn't as if he belonged here anyway."

"Who arranged things like the death certificates?"

Bre