The Company of Strangers

‘That’s not why I feel guilty. I feel…’

‘Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know,’ said Weber, sitting up and shunning him with a hand. ‘Bore your maps, Voss. Go on. But I’ll tell you this,’ he came in close again, devil breath, ‘Paulus will take Stalingrad before Christmas and we’ll be in Persia by next spring, rolling in sherbet. The oil will be ours, and the grain. How long will Moscow last?’

‘The Romanians on the River Don front have reported huge troop concentrations in their north-west sector,’ said Voss, flat and heavy.

Weber sat up, dangled his legs and gave Voss the gab, gab, gab with his hand.

‘The fucking Romanians,’ he said. ‘Goulash for brains.’

‘That’s the Hungarians.’

‘What?’

‘Who eat goulash.’

‘What do Romanians eat?’

Voss shrugged.

‘Problem,’ said Weber. ‘We don’t know what the Romanian brain consists of, but if you ask me it’s yoghurt…no…it’s the whey from the top of the yoghurt.’

‘You’re boring me, Weber.’

‘Let’s have a drink.’

‘You’re stinking already.’

‘Come on,’ he said, grabbing Voss around the shoulders and barging him out of the door, their cheeks touching as they went through, horrid lovers.

Weber slashed the lights out. They put on their coats and went back to their quarters. Weber crashed about in his own room while Voss moved the chess game, which he was playing against his father by post, away from the bed. Weber appeared, triumphant, with schnapps. He crashed down on to the bed, hoicked a magazine out from under his buttocks.

‘What’s this?’

‘Die Naturwissenschafen.’

‘Fucking physics,’ said Weber, hurling the magazine. ‘You want to get into something…’

‘…physical, yes, I know, Weber. Give me the schnapps, I need to be braindead to continue.’

Weber handed over the bottle, bolstered his wet head with Voss’s pillow, whacking it into position with his stone cranium. Voss sipped the clear liquid which lit a trail down to his colon.

‘What’s physics going to do for me?’ burped Weber.

‘Win the war.’

‘Go on.’

‘Give us endless reusable energy.’

‘And?’

‘Explain life.’

‘I don’t want life explained, I just want to live it on my own terms.’

‘Nobody gets to do that, Weber…not even the Führer.’

‘Tell me how it’s going to win us the war.’

‘Perhaps you haven’t heard talk of the atom bomb.’

‘I heard Heisenberg nearly blew himself up with one in June.’

‘So you’ve heard of Heisenberg.’

‘Naturally,’ said Weber, brushing imaginary lint from his fly. ‘And the chemist Otto Hahn. You think I don’t stick my ear out in that corridor every now and again.’

‘I won’t bore you then.’

‘So what’s it all about? Atom bombs.’

‘Forget it, Weber.’

‘It goes in easier when I’m drunk.’

‘All right. You take some fissionable material…’

‘I’m lost.’

‘Remember Goethe.’

‘Goethe! Fuck. What did he say about “fissionable material”?’

‘He said: “What is the path? There is no path. On into the unknown.’”

‘Gloomy bastard,’ said Weber, snatching back the bottle. ‘Start again.’

‘There’s a certain type of material, a very rare material, which when brought together in a critical mass – shut up and listen – could create as many as eighty generations of fission – shut up, Weber, just let me get it out – before the phenomenal heat would blow the mass apart. That means…’

‘I’m glad you said that.’

‘…that, if you can imagine this, one fission releases two hundred million electron bolts of energy and that would double eighty times before the chain reaction would stop. What do you think that would produce, Weber?’

‘The biggest blast known to mankind. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘A whole city wiped out with one bomb.’

‘You said this fissionable material’s pretty rare.’