Graeber looked at his hands. They were black in the insubstantial light. The blood that ran down from them was black too. He did not know whether it was his own. He did not even know that he had been scratching away rubble and splintered glass with his bare hands. They went on working. Their eyes streamed; the acids in the vapor from the bombs bit into'them. They wiped them dry with their sleeves but they quickly filled again.
"Hey, soldier!" someone shouted behind him. He turned around. "Is that your knapsack?" asked a figure that wavered in his tear-blurred vision.
"Where?"
"Over there. Someone's just making off with it." Graeber was about to turn back. "He's stealing it," the figure said, pointing. "You can still catch him. Quick! I'll take your place here."
Graeber could no longer think. He simply followed the voice and the arm. He ran down the street and saw someone climbing over a pile of rubble. He caught up with him. It was an old man dragging the knapsack. Graeber stepped on the strap. The man let go, turned around, lifted his hands and emitted a thin high squeak. His mouth was big and black in the moonlight and his eyes glittered.
A patrol came up. It consisted of two S.S. men "What's going on here?"
"Nothing," Graeber replied, and slung his knapsack over his shoulder. The squeaking man was silent. He was breathing quick and loud. "What are you doing here?" one of the S.S. men asked. He was a middle-aged troop leader. "Papers." "I'm helping dig people out. Over there. My parents used to live there. I must—"
"Papers!" said the troop leader more sharply. Graeber stared at the two. There was no point in questioning whether the S.S. had the right to check on soldiers. There were two of them and both were armed. He fumbled for his furlough certificate. The man got out a flashlight and read it. For a moment the piece of paper was as brightly lighted as though it glowed from inside. Graeber felt his muscles quivering. Finally the light went out and the troop leader returned his certificate. "You live at Eighteen Hakenstrasse?"
"Yes," Graeber said, mad with impatience. "Over there. We are just digging the people out. I'm looking for my family."
"Where?"
"Over there. Where they're digging. Can't you see?"
"That isn't Eighteen," the troop leader said.
"What?"
"That is not Eighteen. That is Twenty-two. Eighteen is here." He pointed to a ruin out of which iron girders rose.
"Is that certain?" Graeber stammered.
"Of course. Everything around here looks the same now. But that is Eighteen. I know that for sure."
Graeber looked at the ruins. They were not smoking. "This part of the street wasn't bombed yesterday," said the troop leader. "I think it was last week. Or perhaps even longer ago."
"Do you know—" Graeber choked and then went on. "Do you know whether the people were saved?"
"I don't know. But some are always saved. Perhaps your parents weren't even in the house. During alarms most people go into the big bomb shelters."
"Where can I find that out? And where can I find out where they are now?"
"Nowhere tonight. The town hall .was hit and everything's mixed up. Ask at the district office early tomorrow morning. What were you doing with this man?"
"Nothing. Do you think there are still any people under the ruins?"
"There are bodies everywhere. If we wanted to dig them all out we'd need a hundred times as many men. The damned swine bomb a whole city indiscriminately."
The troop leader turned around to leave. "Is this a forbidden area?" Graeber asked.
"Why?"
"The air raid warden over there said it was."
"That warden is weak in the head. He's been fired from his job. Stay here as long as you like. Perhaps you can get a place to sleep at the Red Cross office. It's where the station used to be. If you're lucky."
Graeber was searching for the door. At one place the rubble had been cleared away, but nowhere was there an opening that led into the cellar. He climbed over the wreckage. In the midst of it rose a section of the staircase. The steps and the landing were intact but they led senselessly into emptiness. The rubble behind them was piled high. A satin-covered chair stood there in a niche, precise and orderly, as though,someone had put it there on purpose. The rear wall of the neighboring house had fallen diagonally across the garden and had piled up on ihe other ruins. Something hurried away in that direction. Graeber thought it was the old man he had just seen, but then he saw that it was a cat. Without thinking he lifted a stone and threw it. He had suddenly had the baseless notion that the animal had been gnawing at corpses. Hurriedly he climbed over to the other side. Now he knew that it was the right house; a small part of the garden had remained undamaged and a wooden arbor still stood there with a bench inside and behind it the stump of a linden tree. Cautiously he ran his hand over the bark and felt the grooves of carved initials that he himself had put there many years before. He turned around. The moon was coming up over the ruined walls and now lighted the scene. It was a landscape of craters, inhuman and strange; something that one dreamed about but that could not be real. Graeber had forgotten that in recent years he had hardly seen anything else.
The back entrances seemed hopclessy buried under rubble. Graeber listened. He knocked on one of the iron girders and stood still, listening again. Suddenly he thought he heard a whimpering. It must be the wind, he thought. It can't be anything but the wind. Then he heard it again. He rushed in the direction of the stairs. The cat leaped away in front of him from the steps on which she had taken refuge. He went on listening. He realized he was shaking. And then all of a sudden he was absolutely certain that his parents lay under the ruins, that they were still alive and shut up in darkness and that they were scratching with desperate, skinless hands and whimpering for him—
He tore at the stones and rubble, then thought better of it and hurried back the way he had come. He fell, gashed his knee, rolled over mortar and stones down to the street and rushed back to the house where he had been working with the others.
"Come! This is not Eighteen. Eighteen is over there! Help me dig them out!"
"What?" asked the overseer, straightening up.
"This is not Eighteen! My parents—over there—"
"Where?"
"There! Quick!"
The other looked over. "That's am old one,'" he said then, very considerately and gently. "Much too late, soldier. We've got to go on working here."
Graeber threw his knapsack off his shoulder. "They're my parents! Here! I have things, I have food, money—"
The man fastened his red, streaming eyes on him. "That a reason to let the people down here die?"
"No—but—"
"Well then—the ones here are still alive."
"Perhaps you could later—"
"Later! Don't you see these men are dropping with weariness?"
"I have worked with you here the whole night. You might at least—"
"Man," said the overseer, suddenly angry, "be reasonable. There's no longer any point in digging over there. Can't you understand that? You don't even know whether there is anyone underneath, Probably not, otherwise we'd have heard something about it. And now leave us in peace."
He reached for his pick. Graeber stood there. He looked at the backs of the working men. He looked at the stretchers. He looked at the two medical corpsmen who had arrived. The water from the broken main was flooding the street. He felt that all his strength had left his body. He thought of going on shoveling. He could no longer do it. Wearily he dragged himself back to what had been Number Eighteen.
He examined the ruins. Once more he began to push stones aside but soon gave it up. It was impossible. After the debris had been cleared away there were iron girders, concrete and ashlars. The house had been welt built and that made the ruin almost impregnable. Perhaps they had really been able to escape, he thought. Perhaps they had been evacuated. Perhaps they're in a village in south Germany. Perhaps they are in Rothenburg. Perhaps they are somewhere asleep in bed. Mothe
r. I'm empty. I no longer have a head or a stomach.
He crouched down beside the stairs. Jacob's ladder, he thought. What had that been? Wasn't it a stair that led to Heaven? And didn't angels climb up and down on it? Where were the angels now? Transformed into airplanes. Where was everything? Where was the earth? Was it only for graves? I have dug graves, he thought, many graves. What am I doing here? Why doesn't anyone help me? I have seen thousands of ruins. But I had never really seen one. Only today. This one is the first. This one is different from all others. Why am I not lying under it? I ought to be lying under it.
It grew quiet. The last stretchers were lugged away. The moon rose higher; the sickle hung pitiless over the city. The cat appeared again. She watched Graeber for a long time. Her eyes shone green in the insubstantial light. She approached cautiously. Silently she glided around him several times. Then she came closer, rubbed against his feet, arched her back and began to purr. Finally she crept beside him and lay down. He did not notice it.
CHAPTER VIII
THE morning dawned radiant. It took Gracber a while to realize where he was; he was so used to sleeping among ruins. But then everything came back to him with a jolt.
He leaned against the stairs and tried to think. The cat was sitting a short distance away under a half-buried bathtub, peacefully washing herself. The devastation made no difference at all to her.
He looked at his watch. It was still too early to go to the district office. Slowly he got up. His joints were stiff and his hands bloody and dirty. In the bathtub he found some clear water, probably left over from the fire fighting or the rain. His face stared back at him from the surface. It looked strange. He got a piece of soap out of his knapsack and be-, gan to wash. The water turned black and his hands began to bleed again. He held them in the sun to dry. Then he looked down at himself. His trousers were torn, his coat dirty. He rubbed at it with his moistenend handkerchief. That was all he could do.
He had some bread in his knapsack; in his canteen there was still coffee. He drank the coffee and ate the bread with it. Suddenly he was very hungry. His throat was as raw as though he had been shouting all night. The cat approached. He broke off a piece of bread and held it out to her. She took it cautiously, carried it away, and sat down to chew it. At the same time she kept watching him. Her fur was black and she had one white paw. The sun glittered on the splinters of broken glass among the ruins. He picked up his knapsack and climbed down to the street.
Below he stopped and looked around him. He no longer recognized the silhouette of the city. There were holes everywhere like missing teeth in a damaged jaw. The green dome of the cathedral was gone. One spire of the Katharinenkirche had collapsed. On all sides the lines of the roofs were scabby and ravaged as though huge primeval insects had been rooting in an antheap. In Hakenstrasse Only a few houses were standing. The city no longer looked like the home he had expected; it looked like Russia.
In the house of which only the façade remained a door opened. The air raid warden of the night before stepped out. There was something ghostly about seeing him emerge, as though everything were in order, from a house that was no longer a house. He looked at Graeber and motioned to him. Graeber hesitated for a moment. He remembered that the troop leader had told him the man was crazy. Then, in spite of it, he went "over to him.
The air raid warden bared his teeth in a snarl. "What are you doing here? Pillaging? Don't you know it is forbidden to—"
"Listen!" Graeber said. "Cut out this damn nonsense and tell me whether you know anything about my parents. Paul and Marie Graeber. They used to live over there."
The air raid warden thrust out his haggard stubble-covered face. "Ah, it's you The front-line warrior! Just don't shout so loud, soldier! Do you think you're the only one who has lost track of his family? What do you think that is over there?" He pointed to the house out of which he had come.
"What?"
"That, over there on the door. Have you no eyes? Do you think that's a collection of jokes?"
Graeber made no reply. He saw that slips of paper were tacked up on the door and he went over to it quickly.
They were addresses and appeals for missing persons. Some were written directly on the door panels with pencil, ink, or charcoal; others were on sheets of paper fastened with thumbtacks or Scotch tape. "Heinrich and Georg, come to Uncle Hermann. Irma dead. Mother," was written on a large lined sheet that had been torn out of a school exercise book and stuck in place with four thumbtacks. Directly under it on the lid of a cardboard shoebox: "For God's sake supply news of Brunhilde Schmidt, Thueringerstr. 4." Next to it on a postcard: "Otto, we are in Iburg, Primary school." And at the very bottom, below the addresses in lead pencil and ink, on a lace-bordered paper napkin in pastel-colored crayon: "Marie, where are you?" without a signature.
Graeber straightened up. "Well?" asked the air raid warden. "Are yours there?"
"No. They didn't know I was coming."
The madman twisted his face as though in silent laughter. "No one knows anything about anyone else, soldier. No one! And the wrong ones always survive. Nothing ever happens to scoundrels. Haven't you found that out yet?"
"I have."
"Then write down your name here! And wait Wait like all the rest of us. Wait till you turn black!" The warden's face changed. It was suddenly torn as though by helpless anguish.
Graeber searched about in the rubbish for something to write on. All he could find was a colored print of Hitler, hanging in a broken frame. The back of it was white, without any printing. He tore off the upper part, got out a pencil, and paused to think. Suddenly he did not know what to write. "News of Paul and Marie Graeber requested," he finally wrote in block letters. "Ernst here on leave."
"Treason," the air raid warden said softly behind him.
"What?" Graeber whirled around.
"Treason Vou have torn a picture of the Fuehrer."
"It was torn already and it was lying in the dirt," Graeber retorted angrily. "And now stop your nonsense and leave me alone."
He could not find anything with which to tack "up his notice. Finally he loosened two of the four thumbtacks with which the mother's appeal had been fastened and used them for his own. He did it unwillingly; it was a little like stealing a wreath from a stranger's grave. But he had nothing else and two thumbtacks served for the mother's appeal as well as four.
The warden had been watching over his shoulder. "All right!" he announced, as though giving a command. "And now Sieg Heil, soldier. Mourning forbidden Mourning clothes as well. Weakens the fighting spirit. Be proud that you can make sacrifices. If you swine had done your duty this would never have happened!"
He turned around abruptly and stalked off on long, thin legs.
Graeber forgot him at once. He tore a small piece from the remainder of Hitler's picture and wrote on it an address that he had found on the door panel. It was the address of the Loose family. He knew them and intended to stop there later and ask after his parents. Then he tore the rest of the print out of the frame, wrote on its back the same message he had written on the other half, and went back to Number Eighteen. There he clamped the notice between two stones so that it was easily visible. Thus there were two chances of his appeal being read. That was all he could do at the moment. For a while he continued to stand in front of the heap of stones and rubble, which might or might not be a grave. The satin chair in the niche above gleamed like an emerald in the sun. A chestnut tree on the street beside it was still entirely undamaged. Its delicate foliage shimmered in the sun and chaffinches were twittering in it as they built their nest.
He looked at his watch. It was time to go to the district office.
The counters in the missing persons bureau were made of new boards rudely hammered together. They were unpainted and still smelled of resin and the forest. At one side of the room the ceiling had fallen. Carpen'ers were hammering, putting beams in place. Everywhere people were standing about waiting with silent patience. A one-armed offici
al and two women sat behind the counter.
"Name?" asked the woman farthest to the right. She had a flat, broad face a,id wore a red silk ribbon in her hair.
"Graeber. Paul and Marie Graeber. Clerk in the tax department. Eighteen Hakenstrasse."
"What?" The woman raised her hand to her ear.
"Graeber," he repeated more loudly through the noise of the hammering. "Paul and Marie Graeber. Tax department clerk."
The woman official searched the records. "Graeber. Graeber —" Her finger slid down a column and stopped. "Graeber— yes—what was the first name?"
"Paul and Marie."
"What?"
"Paul and Marie!" Graeber was suddenly furious. It seemed to him unendurable, on top of everything else, to have to shout out his misery.
"No. This one is named Ernst Graeber."