With the shelling over, I slipped into the courtyard. Looking around, I realized this was no ordinary farm, but a country estate.
The only things left of the Nazis were a few discarded guns, a couple of crates, and a two-wheel wagon with a horse dead in the harness. On the wagon was an enormous wheel of Swiss cheese. A dead German soldier was lying at the entrance of the courtyard. His boots looked like they might fit me, but the spray of bullets coming from four Soviet tanks kept me from retrieving them. There was no sense getting mistaken for the enemy, so I ducked back through the open stable doors.
Jean and Michel were crouched beside the German soldier.
Michel looked up at me. “We thought you ran away. Say, you have a machine gun.”
“Did you shoot this one?” Jean asked. “I don’t see any blood.”
There was no time for explanations. One of the four tanks had pulled up in front of the stable doors. The turret hatch opened and the tank’s commander peeked out. Thankfully I had picked up some Russian while in Auschwitz.
“Nitchevo, tovaritch!” (Don’t do anything, comrade!) I cried.
The commander ordered us to come out. When he saw what sorry specimens we were, he sat himself on top of the turret. He was young, unshaven, and had sweated through his tunic. “Germanski?”
“Tree Franzusie. Germanski.” I pointed in the direction that the Nazis had fled.
“Da,” he frowned and jumped down from his tank. He took large gulps of water from the pump, then without a word climbed back into the turret. The tank pivoted, its metal treads sparking on the cobblestone, then rumbled off, choking the courtyard with diesel smoke.
Better get those boots, I told myself. As I started toward the courtyard entrance, the remaining tanks sped by. The first ran over the body, popping open the skull. The second tank’s treads crushed the legs and chewed up my boots. Shit! All that I could salvage was a bayonet and a pouch that contained a shaving kit and a few cigars.
Soon after, the Soviet infantry arrived like a horde of locusts.
On foot, on horseback, and on anything with wheels—Russians, Cossacks, Tartars, Ukrainians, Mongols, Georgians, men and women, swept by. Because of the warm weather, many of the soldiers had shed their coats and shirts. Even women stripped to the waist, their breasts bobbing with every step.
With tears in our eyes and cigars in our mouths, Jean, Michel, and I cheered on our liberators, far into the night. When we finally climbed back into the loft, we realized our asses were peppered with wood splinters from the tank shell. Ecstatic that the war was over for us, we disregarded our pain and the fact that the Red Army had confiscated our wheel of cheese, which left us only raw horsemeat to eat, and we dropped into peaceful slumber.
The following morning I butchered the horse with my German bayonet. Growing up, I had cut up chickens and rabbits, but never an animal that large. Luckily I had done well in my zoology class.
Stepping over a few Nazi corpses, I then gathered fresh asparagus.
From the snickering of passing Soviet soldiers, I guess I was a real pathetic sight crouching there in the dirt. Since the kitchen in the manor house was still well equipped, I was able to boil the asparagus with a pot of potatoes. On the side of the house I built a makeshift spit and barbecued two beautiful horse tenderloins. The rest of the mare went to fill the ravenous bellies of the Red Army.
After eating our first civilized meal, complete with white linen, crystal glasses, antique porcelain, and silverware from the trunk, I found Michel and Jean trying on fine tailored clothes in front of the master bedroom mirror. An armoire stood empty; the clothes that had been hanging inside were now strewn across the floor. Every pair of pants had its pockets pulled out. On a dresser stood a framed photo of an SS officer greeting the Führer. Whoever lived here was definitely a big shot in the Nazi Party. In those custom-made clothes, and after a few more hearty meals, Michel and Jean could certainly pass themselves off as the heirs to the estate.
“For the time being we better keep our ‘pajamas’ on,” I said. “The last thing we want the Soviets to mistake us for is three boches. At least I have a tattoo.”
Michel and Jean sadly agreed.
“Forty-eight hours ago I would have been shot on sight walking around here in these putrid rags,” Michel murmured. “And now they’re going to keep me alive in this god-forsaken place.”
The next day we continued scavenging around the farm in between extended visits to the outhouse. There was a price a Muselmann had to pay for enjoying such a rich dinner.
We kept our distance from the bands of Soviet soldiers who would come and sleep for a couple hours in the house or barn, then leave with whatever they could carry. I never saw an organized regiment, battalion, or platoon that one would expect from a victorious army. The soldiers seemed to be no more than marauders, and many were surprisingly ignorant. They were expert marksmen who could shoot sparrows on the wing, but they behaved like children on Christmas morning when they had their hands on a bicycle or a discarded toy. They were mystified by the simplest household items. With one Georgian, I swapped a dented old alarm clock for a superb gold chronograph. They would discard their uniforms whenever they found something better to wear, even if it was an article from a German uniform. A Red Army truck driver discovered a tuxedo in the armoire that tickled his fancy, even though the coat wouldn’t button over his potbelly. With his helmet on his head, the strap buckled under his chin, and the tails tucked into his pants, he left ready for the ball.
These soldiers were also not particular about what they drank.
As soon as they saw that a liquid might contain alcohol, it went happily down the hatch. I had discovered a suitcase full of perfumes and eau de colognes in one of the bedrooms. At gunpoint, a female soldier liberated them from me and enjoyed a few sips. She offered me a drink from a heart-shaped bottle, but I respectfully declined.
Shortly thereafter, a burly sergeant joined her. Once they had polished off the larger bottles, they drained the small-necked ones into a goblet. I guess that was their dessert cocktail. Later I found the couple asleep in the stable, nestled naked on a bale of hay.
On the heels of the Red Army came Russian peasants, traveling in canvas-topped wagons drawn by horses or oxen. These muzhiks, whose ancestors had been the serfs of Russian aristocrats, had received parcels of farmland after the Russian Revolution, but Stalin took their lands and bunched them into large communes. When the Nazis invaded Russia, the retreating Red Army scorched the earth, forcing the muzhiks to roam like nomads for four years. Now they hoped to settle down again, no matter how or where. With their tools and kitchen utensils hanging from their wagons, they looked like the American pioneers I had seen in movies grabbing up Indian land. Their manner and their way of life, though, spoke more of medieval times. They took possession of German farms; and if the properties weren’t abandoned, they would run off the owners or kill them.
On the third day of our liberation, Germany still hadn’t con-ceded defeat. From the kitchen I heard explosions. German teens were making craters in my asparagus field with a discarded Panzerfaust. It made me uneasy, and I wished I hadn’t left the submachine gun buried under the straw in the barn’s loft. A little later, as I was smoking my last cigar, a Russian tank rumbled into the courtyard.