Now they were led inside a barn cavernous enough to hold at least 100 cattle. Beck instructed them to climb a wooden ladder to the hayloft, and then to ascend to the rooftop. Wolf measured his pacing as they made their way toward the rickety wooden ladder. He slackened his pace deliberately, falling back in line.
Don’t be the first, he told himself. Be second, or tenth. Anything but first. To see a boy jump before him and land safely was marvelous for Wolf’s courage.
By the time he reached the ladder, he was third in line. He climbed behind two other boys into a spacious loft that slanted sharply to accommodate snow drainage. A prominent steeple at the apex allowed for heat ventilation as well as an exit onto the rooftop for occasional repairs.
Looking down, he saw that Albert had finally caught up. He had no shoes or shirt on, and he looked rattled, wet and out of breath as he stood at the bottom of the ladder.
He soon found himself in the sunlight, standing near the steeple. He paused to admire the vast expanse of golden farmland. Hundreds of majestic acres bristled in the gentle morning breeze.
Suddenly he was jostled forward. He found himself at the head of the line. Beck’s voice cut through the morning, urging them to jump. Wolf looked left, down the eastern slope of the roof. He saw Beck, his finger pointed toward the far edge of the roof. Himmler, Vogel and the two longcoats were by his side. All waiting for Wolf to leap.
A flip of white-blond hair tottered back and forth on his forehead. Goose pimples rose over his legs as the breeze picked up. His peripheral vision was suddenly rimmed with darkness, as if looking through a pair of old binoculars. He stood on his tiptoes, but he could not see the landing zone.
As each succeeding student exited the steeple, Wolf found himself bumped further down the rooftop. He felt Lang behind him, hands pressed against the small of his back, pushing him. He heard Lang’s breath in his ear. “Go on, Sebastian! Jump!”
Suddenly Albert ran past him. Wolf was thrown off balance. He teetered, then felt Lang’s grip on his bicep. He recovered his footing just in time to glimpse Albert’s body disappear over the horizon.
The boys held their collective breath, waiting for the sound of Albert’s inevitable war cry. It did not come. Only a crunching thud and a chorus of worried noises erupted from Himmler’s entourage. One of the longcoats rushed to the film camera and switched it off.
Forgetting his fears, Wolf walked to the edge and peered over the side. Albert was a broken smear of skin and bones and flesh over a parked threshing machine. A large piece of torn netting was pinned between the body and the machine’s cylinder. The truncated ends were tied to nearby trees, flapping like windsocks in the morning breeze.
Now there was no sound except that of the wind and the breathing of the other boys and their footsteps as they took turns walking to the edge to see Albert’s body. They had all, of course, seen other dead children. Outbreaks of flu, tuberculosis, whooping cough and smallpox routinely thinned the ranks. But to see a cadet die in this way was truly novel. But Wolf detected no evidence of pity in the other boys. The boys’ overriding emotion seemed to be fascination. Except Lang, of course. He had always been a sensitive boy. Even now, his body convulsed as he tried to suppress his tears.
The sharp report of a pistol broke the silence. Wolf’s eyes snapped toward the ground in time to see Beck’s breath cloud the chilly air. Then Beck fell face-first onto the field. The trigger man stood over the body. It was Heinrich Himmler.
*
The unit was relieved of duties until lunchtime. Lang held himself together until he and Wolf returned to their room. The sight of Albert’s bed and footlocker set him off. Wolf stood by idly as Lang came unglued, unsure whether he was more upset by the force of his friend’s emotion, or by the lack of his own.
When Lang finally gathered himself, he said, “I’ll go first.”
Wolf went to the door, leaning against it and holding the doorknob tightly with both fists. With the door secured, Lang kneeled before Albert’s bed and began to recite a psalm.
This act — standing guard for each other during prayer — was a daily ritual. The two boys shared a secret. They were practicing Catholics.
Being Catholic was not yet an official crime, but Wolf knew that someday soon, it would be. He had not seen a priest since 1939, when the government had closed the Catholic school he and Lang had attended in Munich, and along with it, every parochial school in the country. Their parish church had been closed later in the year and converted into a government building. And yet priests still presided over the weddings of high-ranking German officials, a fact he knew only because of occasional photographs in the newspaper. It was all very confusing.
When Lang was done, Wolf took his turn kneeling at the foot of Albert’s bed. He clasped his hands before him, but when he closed his eyes, he did not see Albert, and he certainly did not see God. He instead saw Himmler, eyes peering through wireframe glasses, standing over Beck’s body. Resting his boot on the man’s chest as if he were a hunting trophy. He then looked up at the barn and saluted the boys on the rooftop. I punished this man for his negligence, the gesture had seemed to say. I did this for you, boys. This is how much you mean to the Fatherland.
*
Later that morning, the cadets washed and dressed in brown shirts, brown pants and black ties. Although they were too upset to feel hungry, the daily rituals of the Reich School remained unbroken. When Wolf and Lang made their way to the dining hall, however, they quickly found their appetites as they sat down to a lunch of smoked trout, potatoes and milk.
“Something’s up,” Lang said as he regarded the meal before him with suspicion. Although the students at the Reich School had the best of everything, to see fresh fish was unheard of. The whole of Germany had been on rationed food portions for some time. The Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, had recently set civilian rations of meat at one-tenth of one pound per day and had also downgraded portions for bread. Vegetables were impossible to find, especially in the cities.
“Putting on a show for Himmler,” Wolf speculated.
“No,” Lang said. “Himmler’s been here before. He’s impressed by performance, not nutrition.”
Wolf bumped Lang with his elbow and motioned across the dining hall. Two soldiers were erecting a poster depicting a proud cadet brandishing a dagger. The slogan read:
THE SONS OF GERMANY GIVE THEMSELVES FREELY FOR FUHRER AND FATHERLAND
“You’re right,” Wolf said. “Something is up.”
*
In mathematics, Wolf and Lang sat before a slab of varnished pine that was angled at 15 degrees. There were 39 other students in the class. Albert’s chair was empty.
The math instructor had written this word problem on the chalkboard:
German armor enjoys vast superiority over Soviet ground defenses. At an average loss rate of just three German tanks in exchange for the destruction of 35 Soviet pillboxes, how many tanks would be required to break through a front line consisting of 607 pillboxes?
Wolf opened a black leather-bound notebook and began to work out the problem with a deftly sharpened pencil. Academically, Wolf took after his scholarly father, who had, before the war, been a professor of Indo-Germanic studies at the University of Munich. Wolf was far above average in all subjects, but especially in biology, math and foreign languages. He credited his early education for this, having studied under a handful of strict, but scholarly, Jesuit teachers, all of whom had been excellent linguists and mathematicians.
But the Reich School curriculum had dulled Wolf’s passion for numbers. The mathematics problems were always war-centric. He found these exercises disturbing. When party leaders spoke about the French threat, or the Russian threat, Wolf felt anxious, like all Germans. But he did not possess the bloodlust of the other cadets. He had no desire to kill. He wanted to teach in a university, like his father.