He thought now about how good it felt to be walking. To be on his feet. With this Wehrmacht corporal accompanying them, he hadn't even considered climbing back under the sacks of feed or the few bags of apples and beets that remained. Before they had set off again he had wanted to tell Anna or Mutti that this soldier knew he was a British POW, but there hadn't been the chance--and the corporal seemed in no hurry to confront anyone. Besides, with only three horses remaining it was clear that the Emmerichs wanted to burden their animals with his weight only when they absolutely had to. With any luck, he told himself, the German soldier's presence would actually prevent anyone from challenging his identity.
When they reached the end of the path through the field, they turned onto a paved road with a sign for Czersk. A teenage boy in a Hitler Youth uniform--no coat, Callum guessed, because he wanted to show off his dagger and his black scarf and his starched white shirt--was barking orders, but no one was listening. He was telling people to keep moving and to continue on to the northwest, but it wasn't as if anybody was going to stop, or anyone in his right mind would even consider turning left and traveling toward the southeast. Still, Callum was careful not to meet his eyes as they passed near him.
"I don't know what we would have done if you and that soldier hadn't rescued the horses," Anna said to him suddenly. Mutti and the corporal were leading the wagon ahead of them, well out of earshot.
"Wasn't all that much. Theo was already up and at them."
"Still . . ."
"It was all reflex," he went on. "Besides, my sense is those that lived were going to be fine, regardless of what we did. Really. There is, it would seem, a good measure of luck involved when you survive something like this."
She nodded. "Imagine if you'd been killed by one of your own planes."
"It wouldn't be the first time someone was. And it wouldn't be the last."
"Mutti was right. What you did--what you and Manfred did-- was very brave."
"He knows I'm no one named Otto," he told her. He spoke suddenly, surprising even himself.
She turned toward him, alarmed, her eyebrows collapsing down around her eyes. "How do you know that?"
"He told me when we were rounding up Ragnit."
"What did he say?"
He recounted for her the conversation he had had with the soldier over the remains of poor Labiau, occasionally pausing to listen, almost curiously, to the way the Hitler Youth lad was continuing to scream at no one in particular. The boy was behind them now, and as they had passed him it had grown clear to Callum how very much he was reveling in this role he had been given. He wondered why the boy was having so much fun. Did he really not understand that the end was near? Good Lord, he shouldn't be wearing that ridiculous uniform, Callum thought, he should be burying the damn thing.
"What do you think the corporal's going to do?" Anna asked him, her voice buoyed by little eddies of worry, when he had finished telling her about Manfred. She looked beautiful to him, despite the small, dark bags that had grown beneath her eyes. There were wisps of her lovely yellow hair emerging from underneath her scarf near her ears, and the cold had given her cheeks a rosy flush.
"I don't think he's going to do anything."
"He doesn't care?" She sounded more incredulous than comforted.
"What? Does that seem irresponsible to you?" he asked her, smiling. "Do you want him to shoot me? Turn me in?"
"I'm just surprised. I'm relieved. But I'm also surprised."
"I think he has perspective."
She seemed to consider this. He knew how hard it was even for her to contemplate the end. Then: "Can we trust him? Can we trust him completely?"
"Well, I don't think we have a choice. And, as you observed, his helping me rescue the horses was a rather thankless task. It would certainly suggest he's a good egg."
"Sometimes . . ."
"Yes?"
"Sometimes I wish you were German. Or I were English."
"I know."
"Everything would be easier."
He thought of the first time they had kissed by one of her family's apple trees. And then of the time they had kissed beside a horse chestnut. And, once, near a beech. Always the air had been crisp because they had fallen in love in the autumn. "In weeks or months," he said, "it won't matter."
"But it will."
"No. It's--"
"It's the truth," she corrected him. "Where could we even live, if . . ."
"Go on."
"If we even live through this?"
He saw Mutti and the soldier were engrossed in a conversation of their own and Theo was quietly singing one of his folk songs to himself. And so he took the liberty of actually reaching out his free hand and taking Anna's fingers in his as they walked. Instantly Anna glanced at Theo, saw her brother was oblivious of them, and allowed him to hold on to her.
"We'll live in Elgin," he reassured her. "I've told you, we've plenty of castles in Scotland. You'll think you've never left home." He had thought often about what would happen to them when the war ended. He had even imagined introducing Anna to his mother--his chic, stylish, well-traveled mother who, these days, didn't have a particular fondness for Germans. Nevertheless, he continued to believe that eventually they would all do well together: Although Anna viewed herself as a country girl, the reality was that by any standards but her own she was a bloody aristocrat. A horsewoman par excellence. Even her gloved fingers seemed elegant to him right now.
Still, he understood her fears. He knew she still didn't want to believe the rumors that were spreading fast now about what the Germans had done--for all he knew, were still doing--to the Jews. But he also knew she was beginning to realize there might be some truth to even the most horrifying stories. And so, like many of her neighbors, she had begun to wonder about what sort of retribution might be awaiting her. Not just from the Russians. But, perhaps, from the Yankees, the Brits, and the French, too. He could almost hear in his head his uncle's quiet but intense interrogation of this young German girl he had brought home from the war like a souvenir. Well, then, tell me, Anna: Precisely where did you think the Jews were going? Oh? What about the Poles, then--you know, your help? And what's this about your mother and the fuhrer? She really seems to have been quite enamored of the old boy.
And yet Anna really didn't know much, did she? Insinuation. Hearsay. Stories. It was he who had first told her that the Jews were being sent to the camps. And what in the name of heaven was she supposed to do about it--about any of it? She had only just turned eighteen. She had led a life that was at once sheltered and isolated. It wasn't as if she had grown up in a city where she could see the discrimination that was occurring on a daily basis: watch the SA smash the glass windows of the Jewish businesses, round up whole families and send them away. Make them wear those bloody stars. It was more like naivete, wasn't it? He almost stopped where he was and shook his head, as if he were trying to shed the idea from his mind like chill rain from his hair. Naivete, indifference. What did that really mean?
He felt her fingers massaging his and exhaled. He told himself that right now he should be focusing on nothing but survival: his survival, and this family's.
Behind them, his hoarse voice finally disappearing into the clamor of the wagons and the animals and the general murmur of the refugees, the Hitler Youth squad leader continued his shouting, despite the fact that no one was listening.
mutti couldn't recall when she had ever been more tired. Her legs felt like giant blocks of granite she was trying to lift with her thighs, and her back was aching in a way it hadn't since she had been thrown from a horse when she was a child and been laid up in bed for six weeks. She remembered the slicing pain well. Then, however, she hadn't had to trudge westward all day long, leading the remnants of her family through the cold, the wind always pricking at their faces and wanting to freeze any exposed flesh.
She half-heard the horse behind her snort in the chill winter air and was vaguely aware of the animal as he shook his long
winter mane. Mostly, however, she was focused on this handsome corporal who, like a guardian angel, had appeared out of nowhere and helped to salvage three of their horses and was now leading Ragnit so she could rest her arms. She had been telling him stories of her own sons, of Werner and young Helmut, to pass the time, and he had been telling her about some of his own experiences in the war. She was aware that he was consciously shying away from whatever he had endured in battle, and she surmised this was both because he was such a modest young man and because he wanted to spare her any images that might cause her to worry even more about her husband and her boys. Besides, as Rolf had said on more than one occasion, real soldiers didn't talk about war. It was only the cowards who felt the need to tell people stories about what they had done. And clearly this Manfred was a real hero of the Reich.
Now he was helping to buoy her spirits with his conversation, and to ensure that the Emmerichs kept their place in the stream. There had been rumors that Cossacks--not merely Russians, but Cossacks!--had been sighted nearby.
"Where are your parents?" she asked him. "Are they still in Schweinfurt?"
"They are."
"Have they lost much in the bombing? Until recently, we've been spared this far east. But I know that the western cities are a frightful mess."
"I haven't been home in a while. But my sense is I wouldn't recognize my old neighborhood."
"My cousin said Stettin is largely unscathed."
"Good. You and your family should be safe there for a while."
She thought about this. For a while. He hadn't emphasized those words, but they had seemed a meaningful coda.
"Where do you think we'll stop the Russians?" she asked, longing for the sort of reassurance she had once gotten from her husband and her oldest son.
He continued to stare straight ahead, but she saw a small, ironic smile forming at the edges of his--she noticed now--painfully chapped lips. "Oh, I'm just a soldier," he said modestly. "I don't know anything. I just go where I'm told and do what I can. You probably know more about what's going on than I do."
"I know this," she said. "I never thought I'd be running for my life from the Russians. How did this happen? Is it just that their country is so big? Do they just have so many young men they can afford to lose?"
He seemed to contemplate this. "I've asked myself that, too: How did this happen? And it seems to me it has less to do with the Russians--the Russians or the western armies, even--and much more to do with us. I think when this is all over, the Germans will have only themselves to blame."
She recalled how her husband and her brother had talked on occasion about the foolhardiness of attacking Russia--how the Reich had plenty of land and didn't need to take on Joe Stalin. She assumed this was what Manfred was referring to now: the difficulty of waging a war on two fronts. They, the Germans, should have been satisfied with the state of things in 1941 and made peace with Britain. After all, no one had any gripes with the British. Look at Callum. Or the other POWs they had had working for them on the farm through the autumn. Good boys, fine young men. It didn't make any sense at all to be at war with Great Britain.
"Yes, we just don't have the manpower," she murmured, hoping she sounded both agreeable and wise.
"Well, we don't. But that isn't what I meant. I meant we haven't exactly been a civilized empire ourselves. The answer to your question, 'How did this happen?' It's actually pretty simple. We asked for it."
She thought of how long and thin his face was, and how much he had probably suffered. It was as if he had emerged whole from an El Greco canvas, just walked into the world from the frame.
"I've heard that our armies behaved badly sometimes," she said simply. "But then I think of soldiers like you or Werner. Or Werner's friends. We had naval officers at our home in the fall, and they were nothing but gentlemanly. We played music together, they danced with my daughter and her friends. All completely civilized. And so I have to ask: Who? Who then are these German soldiers who have done the things people whisper about? Where are they?"
"I've met some. And it's not just the soldiers. It's the whole German people."
"Who have you met?" she asked. "What have you seen?" She realized that she sounded like a devastated child: a girl who has just learned there are no such things as fairies. Instantly she regretted the tone and tried to reclaim a semblance of dignity. "Tell me, please. I want to know."
He shrugged. "The eastern front is more barbaric than the west, I'll admit that. But there have been atrocities everywhere. And the worst has had nothing to do with the front lines. It's what we have done behind the lines. Behind the barbed wire."
"The work camps? Yes, I've heard stories about them. But I'm sure they're exaggerations, aren't you?"
"I'm not sure of that at all."
"Have you been inside one?"
"No. But once . . ."
"Please. I can bear it," she told him. "I seem to have lost my home and virtually everything I've ever owned. I'm a strong woman, I assure you."
"Once," he said, "I was on a train." His voice had taken on an uncharacteristically somber cast. "It was filled with Jews being sent east."
"You were a guard?"
"No, I wasn't a guard. I was simply a courier. I was bringing some papers to a general in the east. The jeep I was in was strafed and the driver was killed. But I heard a train coming and it was going in the right direction, and so I hitched a ride. There I saw firsthand how we were treating the Jews. It was disgusting. Shameful. Old people, children--everyone--were just jammed into cattle cars. No water, no food, no bathrooms. Inside there they were dying. Literally: They were expiring."
"No."
"Yes."
"Maybe they were criminals."
"The children? The old people? You know that's not true."
"But why would we do that? That's what I don't understand. What could possibly be gained from killing the Jews? It doesn't make sense."
He stopped walking, halting the horse, and stared at her. His eyes seemed sympathetic and kind, and she couldn't decide if he felt guilty for sharing with her what he had seen, or whether he was baffled by how little she knew. Perhaps it was a little of both.
Behind them, on the other side of their wagon, she heard Anna calling out, asking if she was all right.
"We're fine," Manfred shouted back, but Mutti felt his gaze holding her in place. Then, his voice much softer, he said only to her, "No. It doesn't make sense. It makes absolutely no sense at all."
in the middle of the night, Uri awoke and told Callum--who heard him rise--that he was going outside to have a cigarette. They were camped on the floor inside a village gymnasium with perhaps two dozen other refugees, all of whom were asleep at the moment.
Callum had said he would join him, but Uri had insisted that he remain here with the women and Theo. You just never knew. And then he walked as quietly as he could in his boots over the sleeping women and children, offering a hearty Heil Hitler as he exited the gym to the ancient policeman with a Volkssturm armband who was nervously patrolling the streets.
They were near a train station, and Uri had learned that one of the ways he could slow the ovens was to slow the trains. And so he lit his cigarette and strolled casually there: The village was largely deserted this far east, but he knew there were still trains passing through here going north and south. He'd heard one of those vexing whistles only an hour ago.
When he arrived, he saluted the two guards. They chatted briefly about the state of the war--the pair were noncommittal, unsure who he was and whether he might be the sort who would turn them in if they said something defeatist--and how, at the very least, the trains were still running. Yes, they were slowed by air strikes, but they were still on the tracks and that was testimony to how much fight the nation still had left. He agreed and offered each of them one of the precious cigarettes he had gotten from Callum. They accepted. And then, as they were lighting them, he shot them both. Two quick shots, into the base of the skull of the first
and into the face of the second, because that second soldier had turned, stunned, at the sound of the blast. Then Uri had gone inside and shot the fellow who was, apparently, in charge of marshaling the trains onto the proper tracks: It was possible, he saw, to switch and cross the cars onto parallel tracks at this particular station.
Skeletons at the Feast (2008) Page 17
