Graeber was standing close to the emaciated skull of one of the bowed prisoners. He put his hand in his pocket, pulled out a package of cigarettes, and in turning let it fall near the prisoner. "Many thanks," he said to the senior troop leader. "We'll look in the woods tomorrow. It could easily have happened there."
"No need for thanks. Heil Hitler! And warmest congratulations on your wedding!"
"Thanks."
They walked in silence side by side until the prisoners were out of sight. Like a flight of flamingos, a row of clouds, mother-of-pearl and rose, drifted across the sky which was now clear.
"I should not have gone over there," Elisabeth said. "I know that."
"It doesn't matter. That's the way people are. Barely out of one scrape and we run the risk of another."
She nodded. "You saved us with the brooch. And with Hildebrandt. You're a really good liar."
"That," Graeber said, "is the thing our country has learned to perfection in the last ten years. And now let's go home. I have the absolute, certified right to move into your apartment. I've lost my home in the barracks; this afternoon I moved out of Binding's place; now at last I want to go home. I want to lie luxuriously in bed while you dash off to work early in the morning to earn bread for the family."
"I don't have to go to the factory tomorrow. I have two days' vacation."
"And you haven't told me till now?"
"I wasn't going to tell you until tomorrow morning."
Graeber shook his head. "No surprises, please! We haven't time for them. We need every minute for rejoicing. And we'll begin right away. Have we enough for breakfast? Or shall I make another trip to Alfons?"
"We have enough."
"All right. We'll have a noisy breakfast tomorrow. To the strains of the Hohenfriedberger March, if you like. And then when Frau Lieser comes roaring in full of moral indignation we'll push our marriage lines under that informer's disappointed snout. What a face she'll make when she sees the name of our S.S. witness!"
Elisabeth smiled. "Perhaps she may not make so much of a row after all. Day before yesterday, when she gave me that pound of sugar you left for me, she suddenly said you were an upstanding fellow. Heaven knows what produced the sudden change! Do you know?"
"No idea. Corruption, probably. That's the other thing our country has learned to perfection in the last ten years."
CHAPTER XX
THE air raid came at noon. It was a mild, cloudy day full of growth and dampness. The overcast hung low, and the flames of the explosions were thrown against the clouds as though the earth were hurling them back at an invisble foe, to claw him down with his own weapons into the vortex of fire and destruction.
It was the lunch hour, the most crowded time in the streets. Graeber had been directed to the nearest cellar by an air raid warden. He had thought it would only be an alarm, but when he felt the first explosions he began to force his way through the crowd of people till he was near the entrance. The moment the door opened again to let in new arrivals he leaped through.
"Back!" shouted the warden outside. "No one is allowed on the streets! Only air raid wardens!"
"I'm an air raid warden!"
He ran in the direction of the factory. He did not know -whether he could reach Elisabeth, but he knew factories were the prime targets of the raids and he wanted to try at least to get her out.
He came around a corner. In front of him at the end of the street a house slowly rose. In the air it broke into pieces which separated and seemed to fall silently and gently, without making any noise in that uproar. Graeber threw himself into the gutter with his arms pressed over his ears. The shock-wave of a second explosion seized him like a giant hand and hurled him several yards backward. Stones pelted down like rain. They too fell silently in all the din. He got to his feet, reeled, shook his head violently, pulled at his ears and struck himself in the forehead to clear his mind. From one instant to the next the street in front of him had become a sea of flames. He could not get through and so turned back.
People plunged toward him with open mouths, horror in their eyes. They were screaming, but he could not hear them. They raced past him like hunted deaf mutes. After them came a man with a wooden leg carrying a huge cuckoo clock, whose weights dragged after him. A big shepherd dog followed, slinking. In the corner of a house stood a five-year-old girl. She was holding an infant pressed close against her. Graeber stopped. "Run to the nearest cellar!" he shouted. "Where are your parents? Why have they left you here?"
The girl did not look up. She kept her head bent and pressed herself against the wall. Graeber suddenly saw a warden soundlessly screaming at him. Graeber shouted back and did not hear himself. The warden went on screaming soundlessly and making gestures. Graeber waved him away and pointed at the two children. It was like a ghostly pantomime. The warden tried to keep hold of him with one hand; with the other he reached for the children. Graeber pulled free. In the tumult it seemed to him for an instant as though he had no weight and could make gigantic bounds and immediately afterward he felt as if he were made out of soft lead and was being beaten flat by immense hammers.
A wardrobe with open doors sailed over him like a plump, prehistoric bird. A mighty current of air laid hold of him and whirled him about, flames shot out of the ground, a harsh yellow wiped out the sky, burned away to a more intense white and fell to earth like a cloudburst. Graeber inhaled flame. His lungs seemed on fire, he collapsed, pressed his head into his arms, held his breath until his head seemed to be bursting and looked up. Through the tears and the burning in his eyes a picture slowly formed itself and steadied: a torn, bespattered wall thrust backward over a staircase and on the stairs, impaled upon the splintered steps, the body of the five-year-old girl, her short plaid skirt thrown high, her legs sprawled and bare, her arms outstretched as though crucified, her breast pierced by a bar.from an iron fence whose knob extended far beyond her back—and to one side, as though provided with many more joints than in life, the air raid warden, headless, slack and now spouting only a little blood, twisted into a knot with his legs over his shoulders, a dead contortionist. The infant was not to be seen. It must have been hurled somewhere in the gale which now returned hot and flaming, driving the fire before it in the backdraft. Graeber heard someone beside him shouting: "Swine! Swine! Damned swine!" and stared at the sky and looked around him and realized that it was himself who was shouting.
He sprang up and ran on. He did not know how he got to the square where the factory was. It seemed undamaged; only on the right there was a fresh crater. The low, gray buildings had not been hit anywhere.
The factory air raid warden stopped him. "My wife is here!" Graeber shouted. "Let me in!"
"Forbidden! The nearest cellar is on the other side. Over there at the edge of the square."
"Damn it, what isn't forbidden in this country! Get away or—"
The warden pointed to the rear courtyard. A little flat block house of reinforced concrete stood there. "Machine guns," he said, "and a guard! Military shits like you. Go in if you like, you clown. Begin a civil war! You're just what we have been waiting for!"
Graeber needed no further explanation; the machine gun commanded the courtyard. "A guard!" he said furiously. "What for? You'll be standing guard over your own crap next. Have they got criminals in there? Or what is there in your damned army overcoat factory to guard?"
"More than you think," the warden.answered contemptuously. "We don't just make army overcoats here and we have more here than women workers. In the munitions factory there are a couple of hundred prisoners from the concentration camp. Do you understand now, you front-line calf?"
"Yes. How are the cellars here?"
"What do I care about the cellars? I have to stay outside. And what's happening meanwhile to my wife in the city?"
"Are the cellars safe?"
"Of course. After all, the people are needed for the factory. And now disappear! No one's allowed on the street. The men over there have noticed you
already. They are on the lookout for sabotage!"
The heavy explosions had ceased. The anti-aircraft guns went on firing. Graeber ran diagonally back across the square. He did not run to the nearest cellar; he ducked into the fresh bomb crater at the end of the square. The smell in it almost choked him. He crept up to the edge and lay there staring at the factory. It was a different war here, he thought. At the front each one had only to look out for himself. And if you happened to have a brother.in the same company that was a lot: but here each one had a family and it was not he alone that was being shot at; all the rest were being shot at as well. It was a double and triple and ten-fold war. He thought of the body of the five-year-old girl and then of the numberless others he had seen and he thought of his parents, and of Elisabeth, and he felt a spasm of hatred against the ones who had caused all this; it was a hatred that did not halt at the borders of his country and that had nothing to do with any understanding or with justice.
It began to rain. The drops fell like a silver shower of gentle tears through the stinking, violated air. They splashed up as they struck and darkened the ground. Then came the next wave of bombers. It was as though someone were tearing his breast in two. The roar grew to a metallic delirium and then a part of the factory lifted itself into the air, black in front of the fan-shaped, glowing light, and burst apart as if a giant were playing with toys under the earth and tossing them on high.
Graeber stared at the fire which sprang up white and yellow and green. Then he ran back to the factory gate. "What are you after now?" the-warden shouted. "Don't you see that we've been hit?"
"Yes. Where? In what section? In the one for overcoats?" "Overcoats, nonsense! The overcoat section is way at the back."
"Are you sure? My wife—"
"Oh, kiss my ass with your wife! They are all in the cellar. We have a crowd of wounded and dead here! Leave me alone."
"How can you have wounded and dead if everyone's in the cellar?"
"But these are the others, man! The ones from the concentration camp. They aren't in the cellar. Or do you think we build cellars especially for them?"
"No," Graeber said. "I don't think that."
"Well then! At last you're getting some sense. And now leave me in peace! An old soldier oughtn't to be so damned jumpy. Besides that, it's over for the moment. Perhaps even for good."
Graeber glanced up. Only the A.A. guns were barking. "Listen to me, comrade," he said. "I only want one thing. I want to know whether there was a hit in the overcoat section. Let me in or go and ask. Aren't you married?"
"Of course. I told you that once before! Don't you think I'm in enough of a funk about my own wife?"
"Then go and ask. Do it and you can be sure that nothing has happened to your wife."
The air raid warden looked at Graeber and shook his head. "Man, you've got the haunts! Or are you God Almighty?" He went into his booth and came back. "I have telephoned. Overcoats are in order. Only the concentration camp brothers got a direct hit. And now beat it! How long have you been married?" "Five days."
The warden suddenly grinned. "Why didn't you say so at once? That's entirely different."
Graeber walked back. I wanted to have something to hold me, he thought. But I didn't realize that makes one doubly vulnerable. It was over. The city stank of burning and death and was full of fires. There were red and green and yellow and white ones; some were nothing but crawling, serpent-like flick-erings over the fallen ruins, and others glared steadily out of roofs up toward the sky; there were fires that wrapped themselves almost tenderly around the still-standing house fronts, embracing them closely, shyly, cautiously; and others that shot violently out of windows. There were conflagrations and fiery walls and fiery towers, there were blazing dead and there were blazing wounded who burst shrieking out of the houses and spun around and tried to climb up the sides of walls and ran raving in circles until they collapsed and crept, mewing hoarsely, and then only jerked and croaked and stank of burned flesh.
"The torches," someone standing beside Graeber said. "You can't rescue them. They burn up alive. The damnable stuff from incendiary bombs gets spattered on them and burns right through everything, skin, flesh, and bones."
"Why can't they put them out?"
"That would take a separate fire extinguisher for each one, and I don't know even then whether it would help. That devilish stuff eats its way through everything. And the shrieking!"
"They ought to be shot quickly if they can't be rescued."
"Just try it and get hanged as a murderer! And just try to hit one while they're racing round like mad! The miserable part of it is that they run like that! That's what turns them into torches. The wind, you understand! They run and that makes the wind and the wind fans the fire and in an instant they're all in flames."
Graeber looked at the man. He had deep eyesockets under his helmet and a mouth in which many teeth were missing. "You think they ought to stand still?"
"It would be better, theoretically. Stand still or try to smother the flames with blankets or something like that. But who has blankets handy? And who thinks of it? And who will stand still when he's on fire?"
"No one. What are you? Air Defense?"
"Nonsense. I belong to the corpse brigade. Wounded, too, of course, when we find any. There comes our wagon. At last."
Graeber saw a wagon drawn by a white horse rolling up between the ruins.
"Wait, Gustav!" shouted the man with whom he had been talking. "You can't go any farther this way. We'll bring them over. Have you stretchers?"
"Two."
Graeber followed the man. Behind a stone wall he saw the dead. Like a slaughterhouse, he thought. No, not like a slaughterhouse; a slaughterhouse was more orderly; the animals were killed, bled, and drawn according to rules. Here they were mangled, crushed, mutilated, singed, and roasted. Scraps of clothing still hung on them; an arm of a woolen sweater, a dotted dress, one leg of a pair of brown corduroy trousers, a brassière in the wires of which hung bloody breasts. To one side lay a nest of dead children, every which way. They had been caught in a cellar that was not strong enough. Single hands, feet, trampled heads with a little hair, twisted legs; in the midst of this a schoolbag, a basket with a dead cat, a very pale boy, white as an albino, dead without a wound, stretched out as though he had not yet lived and was waiting to be animated, and in front of him a corpse burned black, not very deeply but quite uniformly except for one foot that was only red and covered with blisters. It was no longer possible to tell whether it was a man or a woman; the sex and the breast had been burned away. A gold ring gleamed brightly on a black, shrunken finger.
"The eyes," someone said. 'To think the eyes burn too!"
The corpses were loaded on the wagon. "Linda," said a woman who was following one of the stretchers. "Linda! Linda!"
The sun came out. The rain-wet streets shimmered. Those trees that had not been destroyed glistened wet and bright green. The light after the rain was fresh and strong. "That will never be forgiven," someone behind Graeber said.
He turned around. A woman with a coquettish red hat was staring at the children. "Never!" she said. "Never! Not in this world or the next!"
A patrol came by. "Move on! Don't stand here. Get a move on! Forward!"
Graeber walked on. What would never be forgiven? he thought. After this war there would be horribly much to forgive and not to forgive. A single lifetime would not be enough for that. He had seen more dead children than these—he had seen them everywhere, in France, in Holland, in Poland, in Africa, in Russia, and all had had mothers who wept for them, not the Germans alone—if they still could weep and had not already been liquidated by the S.S. But why did he think about that? Had not he himself an hour ago been shouting, "Swine! Swine!" at the sky that held the airplanes?
Elisabeth's house had not been hit, but an incendiary had fallen on the house two doors away, the wind had blown the flames across and now the roofs of all three houses were on fire.
The b
lock warden was standing in the street. "Why doesn't anyone put it out?" Graeber said.
The warden made a sweeping gesture over the city. "Why doesn't anyone put it out? he asked in turn. "Isn't there any water?"
"There is still some water, but we haven't any pressure. It just trickles. And we can't get at this fire. The roof may cave in any time."
On the street stood chairs, suitcases, a cat in a canary cage, pictures and bundles of clothes. From the windows of the lower stories people with excited, sweaty faces were throwing things wrapped in blankets and pillowcases out into the street. Others were running up and down the stairs.
"Do you think the house will burn all the way down?" Graeber asked the block warden.
"Probably. If the fire department doesn't come soon. Thank God, there's no wind. We turned on all the faucets on the top floor and carried out everything that was inflammable. There's nothing more we can do. By the way, where are those cigars you promised me? I could use one."