Carnival by J. Robert Janes Page B

saw.’
    â€˜Hanging is never pleasant.’
    â€˜And I’m fresh out of cigarettes. Sorry.’
    â€˜Then try one of these. Ach , take two. You may need them. These days one never knows.’
    They were Junos and right away they brought moisture to Herr Kohler’s eyes, for they were often a Berliner’s first choice and he’d once been a detective there. ‘Two?’ he asked, as if the truth were hard to accept and he’d been away too long.
    â€˜Sweepings. Hay, chaff, dried herbs and other things like carrot tops. With tobacco, of course, or else they couldn’t legally have sold them as such, could they, a government that doesn’t lie?’
    Berlin, and Louis should have heard him! ‘The Gauloises bleues and Gitanes we’ve been getting have rat shit in them. There aren’t many horses left in France, so it has to be that. I use the leaves of the red beech, cured in a biscuit tin I keep buried deeply in one of the manure piles out at the racetrack, but because of the threat of terrorism from the Banditen , the Résistance, if you like, they’ve had to move the races to Le Tremblay from Longchamp. When black and crumbled, the leaves have no taste and are perfect for thinning good tobacco, if you can get it. Twenty percent. More and they’re a waste; less and it just keeps getting better and better.’
    A connoisseur. ‘Then you’ll understand that it’s hard to keep paper here.’
    Dorsche indicated the all but spent roll of grey, unbleached tissue most POWs would never see. ‘Was he taking it for his pals?’
    â€˜When he thought he could get away with it, but when one has nothing else but the pages of one’s Bible why, one does what one can, is that not so?’
    It was. ‘What’s the ration?’
    â€˜Two packets of twenty a fortnight, or fifty grams of the loose, with papers. The POWs are supplied through their parcels from home and those of the Red Cross, so they don’t always need what we bring in for their canteen, when we can get it, of course.’
    And don’t need it! ‘Was there anything else here?’
    â€˜A little something … ’
    The copy of the magazine, Schöne Mädchen in der Natur , was thin, the full-page black-and-white spreads well taken. All the girls were totally naked and generously posed. They lounged, stretched, bent over backward and pressed their hands to the gymnasium’s floor as they grinned.
    â€˜Every man, even a Kriegsgefangener , needs a little diversion from time to time,’ mused Dorsche.
    â€˜Pants down when found?’
    â€˜Up. Belt and buttons tight. No signs of an erection on death as can be quite common. None of the—’
    â€˜All right, all right! Who left it and why?’
    Now that was a good question, but a shrug would be best. Ach , the shoulders, the rheumatism …
    Dorsche winced and Kohler let him be for the moment. Though the Nazis had a damp view of pornography, they encouraged healthy eroticism to boost the birth rate. All of the major hotels offered these above-the-counter ‘health-and-art’ magazines which often found their way to Paris where they were earnestly compared with photos the French produced in spite of the extreme shortages of photographic materials.
    â€˜You’d best let me keep this, Lagerfeldwebel.’
    â€˜Certainly.’
    â€˜Anything else?’
    A thorough detective, was that it? ‘His carpenter’s nail and stone, set carefully on the floor to one side. The left. Here, you can have those too.’
    â€˜And this?’
    Herr Kohler indicated the magazine and had best be told a little something to keep him happy. ‘Angrily folded and jammed behind that roll of tissue in the dispenser, and wet with his tears, I think, since there was also this.’
    And torn from another magazine, the upfront buff-shot of a grinning young Wehrmacht stallion, one of the