Assentierung (Part VII)

“The last group is coming before the commission!” 

We all entered. There were not twelve, but only nine of us left. I decided to enter with the last group, because to the end I hoped, the entire time fervently prayed in my head, that maybe something unexpected would happen at the last moment. Some earthquake, some bombardment, World War Three, or maybe even some other horrible disaster which would unexpectedly and brutally interrupt the work of the commission. 

Unfortunately by this time along with the rest I was politely undressing myself in the small room adjoining the commission. The room in which the commission got along its business was intestinal, long and thin, some six by twenty meters. The main wall had two large windows with lower panes painted white. In the front was the beam medical scale, to measure height and weight. Next to it was a small stool with some mysterious medical accessories. Here officiated the feldsher and two nurses. The military doctor, a lieutenant colonel, went briefly to sit further on among the officers. Not far from the medical setup, began a really long table in the shape of a very elongated letter L, only an L upside down from the perspective of the entering prospective, because the shorter end of the letter, the so-called base, found itself under the windows. 

The chairman sat there, older already in age, a colonel, and the previously seen major midget. At either side of the chairman sat the petty officer, who at the beginning gathered our military booklets, and the secretary. The chairman even looked intelligent, but he definitely did not know who was Chu Berry, Bix Beiderbecke or even Woody Herman, whose name might remind him of Herman Goering, but despite this he did not look, unlike the others here, like a complete idiot. A long section of the table was occupied by officers representing the various branches, like artillery, anti-aircraft defense, corps of engineers, army rail, aviation, naval forces etc, etc… Among them, there were also three or four dismally miserable civvies. 

The whole assemblage sat at one side of the long table, against the wall. At the other side, on which there was more space, there was something like a catwalk. After they undressed, it was obvious the last group was not the day’s best. Two were decidedly round shouldered, if not even lightly hunchbacked, of which one, though he was only twenty years old, was already bald like a kneecap. 

The next wight had a pathologically shorter, much thinner and less muscular right hand, the fourth, a very tall, thin blonde man in glasses, which must’ve had very strong lenses, because they looked like the bottoms of bottles; he stood on thin, crooked, bandied legs, and was also prematurely balding. I heard his colleagues laughing at him, that seven times he went to Lollobrigida, and he corrected them that it was only five. 

I remember well, that with a suspicious and strange face, he constantly circled there. The next two, by measure the most normal, except the one who came in at a meter and a half with a hat on, but at least with an impressively sized organ. The seventh, normal too, even fairly athletically built, except for his lazy right eye, permanently shut, and after that Karl, evidently, and me—the exemplar of good health, slightly underweight. 

With the exception of myself, I noted as a curiosity while undressing that every gentleman in my group already obligatorily wore long underpants and almost all had very long and yellow toenails. The first to go were the two hunchbacks, height, weight, the stupid questions of the commission. They were pressed into panzer tank service. Their excitement had no end. The chairman had even said: “Don’t worry yourselves; the army will straighten you out.” 

In their village, they were as invalids, but here they were normal soldiers, thank you very much. The one with the shorter arm, unfortunately, was acknowledged as unfit for service, “because how with this arm can you defend your homeland?” He left completely heartbroken. 

The athlete with the shut eye, conscripted.... “With this eye, it will be easier for you to aim to kill the Anglo-American imperialists when push comes to shove,” the major joked in a friendly manner.

Karl stepped up next. He had been complaining that his stomach ached badly, he was emasculated, pale, his moves were slowed. When with some trouble he crawled onto the beam medical scale, and even got to being weighed, there was no way to measure his height, because he had been literally contorted. 

The feldsher and the nurse attempted to stand him straight on the scale, in order to finally and officially settle Karl’s height, and when in the course of this process the nurse with her shapely feminine hands lightly pressed on his stomach, it wholly sufficed. 

The ostensible peace was broken first by some such sudden strange, unbelievable noise and immediately after this the feldscher’s desperate holler, “O fuck all!” 

All eyes turned in that direction. It appeared that the light touch of the shapely hand caused the standing Karl to release an uncontrolled three-second stream of total fecal expurgation. 

The nurse, simultaneously the accomplice, made it to cheep “oh Jesus!” and jump out of the way in a split second and this saved her, but the feldsher had the misfortune of finding himself at that moment behind Karl and, in addition to this, zoned out, and so he quickly tore off the feldsher smock and threw it to the floor with crazed eyes, and paying no attention to his footgear or the fact that in the pocket of his smock he had his official thermometer, trampled on it, as if to smother it to the ground. 

During these very long, unfortunate three seconds, Karl, disoriented to the max, had the time to execute bemusingly a quick rotation around his axis, something approaching the so-called German TEUFELSMUHLE. Because of the tremendous pressure on Karl’s insides, long amassed and long delayed, the attack force and dispersion, or actually the spatter of excrement, was monstrous. 

Within range found themselves several officers and one probably very important civvie, together with the papers on their tables, the stool with the medical accessories, and not to mention already the same beam medical scale and a very large surface area of the floor. 

The commodore, sitting at the very end of the table, and at the same time the closest to the beam medical scale, seeing what was beginning to happen, tried to save himself with a risky lunge of a jump, like a third league goalkeeper trying at any cost to catch an unexpected ball shot to the opposite post. Unfortunately, he got himself a concussion on the forehead and serious injuries to his hand, and truthfully speaking, it netted him nothing in avoiding the inevitable. 

The entire cadre of officials clustered around the chairman, who in a wild fit was trying to force ajar the never opened windows. Because the unkind odor began to spread itself rather quickly, they hurried us back to the changing room to get dressed immediately, with the obvious exception of the perpetrator, who immobile and with a dramatically serious face, stood on the beam medical scale, lisping every so often “one meter sixty four… one meter sixty four… one meter sixty four…,” because in this entire mess he had the time to measure himself precisely. 

For a very long time nothing happened. From the adjoining hall came raised noises, from which could be distinguished the calm, low, heavily Russian-accented voice of the chairman and the major’s shrill treble. After some half an hour we were allowed to go back to the main hall, where by the emptied stage the entire company with their auspiciously recovered papers had almost completely reconvened, but every so often one of the officers, demonstrating a naked disgust and repugnance, left. 

Even Karl, in a sense the day’s hero, stood at attention in the disposition of one who shat, he wore his long johns, overwhelmed with emotion his drawstrings left untied, and an undershirt with three linen buttons under the neck. He had the facial expression of a declared culprit and looked like the defendant in a court of law awaiting a sentence of death or life imprisonment.

The chairman’s voice took over. 

“So happened a disagreeability, or sabotage, or an accident. I believe it as an accident. The major suspects sabotage. I think, if this were to be sabotage, it would have taken place hours ago. You”—here he turned to the still standing in his whites and at attention Karl—“you will clean everything here. You will stay here so long as it takes and you will do everything. The sergeant will check on you every hour. If you do not complete your task, the major will direct to the prosecutor the case for sabotage, and then you’re really up shit’s creek. Tomorrow morning I want to have this place shining, formally shining, and not the single slightest trace of this feculence that you committed here. And I will tell you for the future, watch out so that”—here the chairman took a look into one of the books he held in his hand—“Kudlinski, you don’t shit away your entire life. When you are done cleaning this filth, the sergeant will return your military booklet and you can go home. You have until tomorrow at seven in the morning. 

"And you”—here he turned to all of us—“you five, who because of this disagreeable accident, unfortunately, did not have time to stand before the commission, in a few days you will receive a summons”—here I’m not sure why the amused chairman threw me a glance—“you will receive a summons to the next commission in the EXTRA time schedule.” He returned our documents to us.

 “Dismissed!”