“I'm a biochemist.” He continued to stare at Ari. This new bit of information was troubling. It could be a coincidence that the Gestapo happened to capture two analytical scientists within two days of one another, but he doubted it. “I'm interested in what you do. Could you tell me?”
“Absolutely!” The man grinned, but then, his face changed. A gurgling noise came from his nether regions. “Ooo… I don't think I can hold this any more.” He put both hands over his gut and started hobbling towards the bucket, paused for a moment as if not wanting to go, then cried out and forced himself onwards. “I'm so sorry, folks. I can't wait.”
“Um—”
“This is so embarrassing,” Ari said, pulling his pants down in a most unembarrassed kind of way. Before Dominik could grab the girls, Ari's hairy ass was staring him in the face. Lucja was stunned, but Zofia only looked confused.
“Just a minute, Ari,” Dominik said. He grabbed both girls and turned them to face the corner of the room. “Let's be nice and give the man some privacy.”
“That's so gross!” Lucja commented. She looked as if she might be sick.
Zofia whispered as if Ari couldn't hear, which he clearly could. “What's he doing, Papa?”
Ari let out another loud gust, this one propelled down into the bucket. It was accompanied by a soft, moaning noise from the man himself.
Dominik, whose cheeks were barely dry, started to laugh. It was soft at first, and then grew to something louder. “I think, honey… I think he's trying to start a car. One of those old fashioned ones with a crank in the front.”
“Hey now, I'm trying to concentrate,” Ari said. His bowels erupted. There was another loud explosion and a soft thud of wet matter into the bucket.
“I take that back,” Dominik said. “It's more like a plane that's flying by. One that's dropping bombs on us.”
Zofia, who was gripping her father's arm, loosened her hold and started to laugh. It was a completely normal sound, something he hadn't heard in days, and it was catching. Before long, Lucja had started in as well.
“It sounds to me more like a dying hippo,” she said. “One of those big fat ones from the zoo.”
Dominik started to cry anew, this time from laughter. He could barely talk he was laughing so hard. “It's starting to smell like a dead hippo in here, Ari.”
“Oh, stop it!” Ari yelled, though Dominik could hear a ghost of a grin in his voice. A piece of bread hit him in the back. “That's for you to mind your manners!”
Any hope Ari had of convincing them to be quiet, however, was lost in another blast. The three unwilling spectators erupted into fresh gales, and they couldn't stop. “Ari… I never knew… you played the trombone!” Dominik said between bursts.
They were rolling on the ground now, and Dominik had to use his arms to keep the girls from rolling too far. He looked at his daughters and thought maybe, just maybe, they would be all right as long as they stuck together.
2
“You think they want us to build a weapon, don't you?”
That's what Ari asked him when the girls went to sleep. The previous year, Ari had published a theory—the theory — on thermal diffusion as a means of separating irradiated uranium, and Dominik was almost ashamed to admit he hadn't heard of him. He had heard of Ari's teacher, of course, the world-renowned Max Planck. It was clear that Ari was one of the man's proteges.
Dominik sighed. “It doesn't quite fit. My field is biochemistry, not physics. If they wanted to build a bomb, they would have grabbed your teacher, not me.”
“But chemical weaponry? Biological weaponry? What of that?”
He had to admit it was plausible, though he didn't like thinking of such things. It was mere hours since he had lost his wife, and his mind was cluttered with other thoughts.
They were interrupted by Burke the cook, and Dominik was saved the trouble of answering. The big man bustled into the pantry, looking harried and sweaty. Dominik was so surprised that it took him a moment to realize the door to the outside world was left wide open. Then, he realized he was being foolish. Even if they overpowered Burke, where would they go? They were at sea now, prisoners of the ocean as much as The Republic. His heart sank at the notion.
“Zofia. Lucja. Wake up,” he said. “Food.”
Ari asked the man if there was any news, but when Burke answered with a rather rude, “Mind your own fucking business,” Ari shut up. He made a rather distressed little shake, and Dominik smiled to himself. He realized he was coming to like Ari. He was one of those harmless, socially inept pundits who seemed incapable of deception. Dominik figured that was the best type of man to be trapped in a pantry with, if one had to be trapped in a pantry.
“Eat up, Ari.”
By the time they were finished, the hours had already begun to dissolve. They talked some more and then slept. They stretched their legs and took turns walking back and forth, and they slept. They used the bucket, they played word games, and they slept some more. Every so often, Dominik would reach into his pocket for his pocket watch, and then remember that it had been taken when Dietrich and the fat Gestapo agent had found them.
You think they want us to build a weapon, don't you?
In the darkness, Dominik found himself returning to the question. Is this where all his years of knowledge and study had led? As a teacher, he had been removed from such thinking, and he thought the university had as well. Surely if there were a place pure and unblemished by thoughts of war, it was there. But then, he remembered his walk each morning. He remembered that for the past two years, he had passed by the monument to the 76th Army Regiment on his way to work. A huge ugly cube, it jutted from the earth in orthogonal defiance of the peaceful Hamburg campus, some two blocks away. Engravings of soldiers lined the lower perimeter, strutting around the circumference. For all the pride etched onto their faces, the metaphor of men marching in an endless loop seemed lost on the monument's architects.
This is what their country had become.
You think they want—
Something banged on the door, and Dominik jumped, wondering how long he had been sitting mute in the dark.
A moment later, a large silhouette appeared in the entranceway. It gripped both sides of the frame, suggesting a man who was either drunk or seasick, and since all of the men on board were able-bodied, Dominik did not think it was the latter.
“Do you believe this is my ship, boy?” it asked. “Well? I'm talking to you, pantry man.”
“Yes,” Dominik said, confused.
The figure nodded. “Damn right. I am the captain. I am Captain Heinrich von Unger, and this is my ship. Nobody tells me what to do on my ship. Do you believe that?”
“Yes, of course.”
The captain looked at Ari. “And you?”
“Yes,” the man said nervously.
“Very good. Then you gather up your children and you follow me. All of you.”
3
Moments later, Dominik found himself in the open air, face to face with Dietrich once more. Only instead of taking something, the good lieutenant was prepared to give. At the captain's insistence, Dominik and his family would be given a supervised escort to the deck twice daily for exercise. And though Dominik was relieved beyond measure, on some distant, secret level of his mind, he was also mollified.
Which was why the lieutenant had agreed to Heinrich's request in the first place.
A small taste of freedom can dampen — sometimes even extinguish — one's desire for the real thing. At least, for a time.