Officer Factory. Hans Hellmut Kirst

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СКАЧАТЬ being busy probably checking the bread ration for his commanding officer. Anyhow, Sybille Bachner seemed determined to apply the General's principles, and simply left Krafft standing there.

      Krafft promptly sat down in the A.D.C.'s chair. He crossed his legs and eyed Sybille Bachner with interest.

      After a while he said: “So you're the General's principal assistant, so to speak. You'll notice I choose my words with care.”

      “I’m employed here as secretary, Lieutenant, and that's the full extent of my duties or obligations. Anything else you'd like to know?”

      There was a certain tolerance about Sybille Bachner's smile. She seemed quite used to being eyed like this and having to submit to questions.

      “How long have you been in this outfit actually, Fräulein Bachner?” inquired Krafft.

      “Longer than the General,” said Sybille, giving him a cool, impersonal smile. “Isn’t that what you want to know, Lieutenant? The General neither brought me with him nor applied for me to be posted here. He simply took me over.”

      “In every respect?”

      “My duties weren't limited in any way.”

      Sybille Bachner said this quite ingenuously, straightening a stack of paper on the little typing table beside her as she did so. She seemed anxious to get on with her work, which gave Krafft plenty of opportunity to observe her more closely.

      This girl Sybille Bachner occupied a rather special position among the women in the barracks, for she worked in a proximity to the commanding officer that made discretion imperative. A room of her own was intended to help her preserve this quality but unlike most of the other women's rooms this did not lie in a separate corridor of the headquarters building but in the so-called guest house. Not so far away from where the General himself lived.

      This prompted a good deal of speculation. With anyone else the inference would have been obvious. But with Modersohn things were different. Few people found themselves able to imagine that a general like him could be beset by ordinary human weaknesses, and those that did were influenced primarily by Sybille Bachner's looks, which seemed to make absolutely any sort of weakness understandable. For she was a dark, Latin type of beauty of about twenty-five, and her skin was soft and the color of apricots and her large eyes were black as night. Silky hair framed her face like a shawl, a face dominated by slightly prominent cheek-bones and a soft, sensual mouth.

      Krafft stopped eyeing the Bachner girl as soon as it became clear that she was interested only in work. Secretaries in important posts in ante-rooms were usually only interested in work, and he hadn't noticed a single gesture of hers, or heard one word, which suggested that she wished to be treated as someone who had the commanding officer's ear. She was neither ostentatiously formal nor absurdly refined. And in any case for him she represented simply a brief encounter soon to be forgotten, for he felt sure that before many minutes were up, his short stay at the training school would be over.

      “It’s ten o'clock, Lieutenant Krafft,” said Sybille Bachner pleasantly. “Go in, please.”

      “Just like that?” asked Krafft in astonishment. For the Bachner girl had neither left the room nor made a telephone call. Neither had any little bell been rung, nor message been given to her. She had simply looked at the clock.

      “It’s ten o'clock,” said Sybille Bachner, and her smile broadened slightly. “The General thinks punctuality very important and keeps to his daily schedule exactly. Go in please, Lieutenant, don't bother to knock.”

      Sybille Bachner was left alone in the General's ante-room, looking at the walls, which were hung with nothing but training schedules. Documents, files, regulations lay all over the place—on the A.D.C.'s table, on her own table, on shelves, on the window-sills and even on the floor. She was literally surrounded by work. She pulled open one of the drawers. In it lay a mirror in which she looked at herself thoughtfully. She felt depressed by what she saw. She was gradually growing old, wasting her life here among papers and the rattle of typewriter keys, stuck in one of the culs-de-sac of the war.

      She heard footsteps approaching and hurriedly closed her drawer again: The A.D.C. came in. Her looking-glass face vanished and she shifted a bundle of papers in front of her.

      “Well,” asked Lieutenant Bieringer, the A.D.C., “is this fellow Krafft with the General?”

      Sybille Bachner nodded. “He was only five minutes early,” she said, “and didn't seem particularly overawed. On the contrary, he was even rather fresh.”

      This was really a compliment. Most people seemed to regard the ante-room as the antechamber to hell, and those who gathered here were either anxious and nervous or absurdly stiff. They usually arrived at least ten minutes early in order to make sure of being punctual. Krafft, then, at least was not one of this servile minority.

      “Fresh, did you say, Fräulein Bachner? Do you like him?”

      “I found the man extremely sure of himself.”

      “Not a bad start,” said Bieringer.

      “I wasn't thinking of starting anything,” said Sybille Bachner abruptly.

      “But why not?” suggested Bieringer. “You know what a high opinion I have of you, Fräulein Bachner, and my wife loves you like a sister. We're worried about you, though. You work too hard and are alone too much. Don't you think it might be good for you to allow yourself a little relaxation?”

      Sybille Bachner looked the A.D.C. straight in the eye. Bieringer's smooth, rather pale face wasn't much to write home about. He looked rather like someone who was hoping to be a teacher, and was certainly not what could be called a soldierly type. But he was a man with a sixth sense for everything that concerned the General, taking the place for him of a calculating machine and a whole bundle of notebooks and thus preserving him from a vast amount of unnecessary work.

      “Herr Bieringer,” said Sybille Bachner, “I’m completely satisfied with my job here. I find no need of any relaxation.”

      The A.D.C. pretended to be very busy with a file of documents.

      “Well,” he said slowly and with certain wariness, “that is only as it should be. After all, the General is wholly dedicated to his work too. And he has no need of any relaxation either.”

      “Kindly keep any unnecessary remarks of that sort to yourself, Herr Bieringer,” said Sybille Bachner indignantly.

      “By all means,” said the A.D.C., “by all means that is in so far as they are unnecessary. Believe me, my dear Fräulein Bachner, I've known the General for a long time now; since long before you knew him. You can be quite sure of one thing: he neither has any private life nor ever will have any. And if you're clever you'll find yourself someone who will distract you in time from any false hopes you may be entertaining—someone like this fellow Lieutenant Krafft, for example. Always provided, of course, that this fellow Krafft stays with us. But that's for the General to decide.”

      “Lieutenant Krafft, sir, reporting as ordered.”

      Major-General Modersohn was sitting behind his desk, which was placed exactly opposite СКАЧАТЬ