Diary of a Dead Man on Leave by David Downing

Author:David Downing
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical fiction, War, World War II, Thriller
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2019-04-01T19:43:18+00:00

Thursday, July 28

Herr Skoumal has not exceeded my expectations. Soon after supper I heard feet on the stairs and the usual rap on my door, but it was Anna rather than Walter who accepted my invitation to enter. “Where is he?” I asked, surprised into impoliteness.

“Out playing football,” she said, not in the least put out. “He’s so angry that he’ll probably injure someone. Can I come in?”

She had a sheaf of papers in one hand. “His history and geography exam papers,” she explained, handing them over and taking the seat by the window.

“He did badly?” I asked incredulously.

“Take a look,” she suggested.

I went through the history paper first, noting the ticks and Skoumal’s neatly written comments. Walter had matched every date and event correctly but had “grossly understated Horst Wessel’s heroism, almost to the point of belittling it.” Reading through what Walter had written, all I saw was a failure to exaggerate it.

When it came to the question on democracy’s weakness, Skoumal had made no comment on what Walter had actually written, but was highly critical of what he hadn’t done, which was laud the “enduring strength of the Führerprinzip.” Skoumal also noted that he would have preferred to see Walter tackle the question concerning the Jews, as “his attitude in racial matters has often left much to be desired.”

“This is outrageous,” I murmured.

“Isn’t it just?” Anna agreed.

Skoumal’s final comment on the history paper concerned Walter’s “unwillingness” to explain the Führer’s greatness as “simply unforgivable.”

“He ran out of time,” I told Anna.

“I know.”

The geography paper was more of the same. According to Skoumal, Walter had forgotten to include the Saarland in his list of the new “artificial states,” but even I knew that the Saarland was already back in the Reich. The teacher could find no obvious fault—though not, I suspect, for lack of trying—in Walter’s next few answers, but expressed his disappointment that Walter showed so little appreciation of the Nanga Parbat climbers’ heroism—“He seems loath to recognize German achievement.”

The worst was kept for last. In his account of the Panama Canal, Walter had pointed out the “surprising fact” that the western end was the Atlantic end.

“Is it?” I asked Anna. “The Atlantic end?”

“It is. I went around the corner and asked Herr Hanreiter if I could look at his atlas. The isthmus runs east—west, the canal north—south, and the Atlantic end at the top is slightly west of the Pacific end at the bottom.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Neither did I. More to the point, neither did Herr Skoumal. And he still doesn’t. He humiliated Walter in front of the whole class. He said that only the most conceited of boys could make up something like that.” She shook her head. “Part of me wants to walk in there tomorrow morning and slam Herr Hanreiter’s atlas down in front of him and insist that he apologize to Walter in front of the whole damned school.”

“But you won’t.”

“No, I won’t. It would make Walter’s school life impossible.”

I said that Walter just had to know that Skoumal’s the fool, not him.

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