Professor Schiff was developing a theory around this topic, based on the great fourteenth-century epidemics of the Black Death, during a period when neither hygiene nor antiseptics existed. The plague came to Altstadt and carried off two-thirds of the population; modern knowledge would lead us to expect all of the population to have succumbed, for the known natural causes are all working in that direction with the inflexibility of a celestial clockworks. But Bishop Othon had known better, as it turned out: the scourge was turned away by prayers and penance, and the final third of the population was saved. This carpet bombing, however meticulously planned by the most expert — to do them justice — high commands, could scarcely be more effective than a medieval plague! Here the good professor’s interlocutor demurred, in view of the mathematical perfection of modern inventions… We’ll soon see! Some attacks were rather entertaining, like the plucky little airplane that would zoom in one morning, drop a few bombs, incendiaries it was thought, and hightail it away with a distant mosquito whine… Pierced by sky and breeze, the wonderfully tenacious spire of the cathedral ascended into the blue, much more sharply visible than it was a moment ago, for the last of the historic old quarter had just crumbled around its feet, raising billows of dust that had quickly blown away. If one ventured closer, pink tongues of flame could be seen to palpitate under a low, stagnant lid of grayish smoke. Nothing else had changed.
Brigitte’s roost defied every calamity. Now that the hurricanes of war had blurred the calendar, jammed the sclerotic clockworks of the administration, and filled the world with horribly banal horrors, Frau Hoffberger had left. All that remained of the building where that lady had occupied a third-floor apartment overlooking the street was a rack of window frames standing about fifteen yards high at the corner, between two eerily empty spaces, one of which contained an unexploded bomb. ACHTUNG! CAUTION! Curious passersby, sidling up gingerly to inspect the tip of a green fin, took this opportunity to launch into a rant against the Security Service — too busy with its special rations of Spam to bother about a bomb stuck between the school and the single local water pump, and in the middle of a hundred middle-class dwellings! Brigitte was living in a nearby building, which, though badly damaged, was listed as forty-seven percent habitable. Why not forty-six or forty-eight percent? — No one would ever know. The upper stories swayed gently at the slightest impact to the ground, whether at night from a convoy rumbling past or by day from a collapsing wall (walls, peculiarly enough, only fell during the day, usually under the caress of the sun’s warmth). The way to Brigitte’s second-story room was via a ladder, for the stairwell had been gutted by fire and any remaining planks had gone to feed the neighbors’ hearths. “The enchanted roost of the fairy,” as Franz Minus-Two referred to it with a snicker. “Why are you making fun of me?” asked Brigitte, startled. “But I swear to God, you are a fairy, Fraülein, and your roost is enchanted or it would have vanished long ago, and you with it… But maybe fairies are immortal?” This was his way of joking by acting the delicate suitor. Brigitte’s face fell. Immortal? Me? What a frightful curse! Mortal, mortal, I’ll prove it. Die? She was as scared of immortality as she was of death, except that her fear of death was nothing but a small fear of the flesh mingled with a great longing, whereas the other fear was becoming a vague, insurmountable dread. “Why must you always say such mean things to me, Franz?” He was genuinely stung.
“Mean things? Me?”
“Oh, you don’t understand. Such a lovely morning, and you’ve spoiled it for me. I’m going out, I have to get my food card stamped.”
A bony young girl strode up to them. Braids coiled over ears, short rubber boots, satchel on hip, armband — she must have been fifteen or sixteen, and she surveyed Minus-Two with equal measures of respect and pitying condescension. A hero; a sad reject of a man whom no one could love, unable to fertilize a woman for the virile perpetuation of the Race. On second thought… The tall young girl’s pale, sharp face grew pink. She said, “Heil Hitler! Civil Defense Evacuation and Reinscription Control and Verification Service for the…” (et cetera).
Minus-Two answered jovially, “Heil Heil! Bugles and kettle-drums! Glory!”
“Checking the papers of all non-evacuees by reason of special dispensation or overriding circumstances to be specified…”
Her pencil between her teeth, she consulted a typed list of names. To Brigitte, “Your name, Comrade of the People?”
“Brigitte.”
That was the only name Brigitte could remember, unique, inseparable from herself, like a tiny blue candle burning in the depths of a vast darkness. Franz filled in discreetly. “Very well,” said the girl. “Fraülein, you missed the third evacuation column, illness or reason unknown. You’ve failed to report to the Recovered Auxiliaries Workshop… You’re not in order.”
Minus-Two rounded on her. “What! Young Comrade of the People! I think I know rather better than you do who’s in order and who isn’t around here. Talking about the third evacuation column, what about Counterorder Number Two Amended? As for your precious workshop for the ugly, the maimed, the skewed, and the screwed, that went up in smoke, like the boxes of matches we so lack these days. And the directress took off, or didn’t you know? Brush up on the facts before throwing your rules and regulations around… Mistress Fairy here is a registered C-category exemption on grounds of nervous illness, curable, with care and respect. Brigitte, show her your papers. And you, adorable zealot, make a note of it. There’s no mistake. D’you realize who’s talking to you? Iron Cross, three citations, seriously wounded, that’s who. I’ll answer for everything.”
To himself, he added, gaily, “Because I don’t answer for anything, you skinny little goose on stilts! I’d like to know who does answer for something anymore! One less limb and I’d have been given a merciful injection and right now I’d be rotting underground, or a pinch of ashes in a one-mark urn, and even then those goddamn idiots would put the wrong name on the urn, and I wouldn’t be able to give a damn…”
“Very well,” said the teenager, somewhat worried to see that the hero displayed no Party insignia, “I have confidence in you. Your papers, Herr Noncommissioned Officer?”
And splendid papers they were too, covered with emblems, seals, stamps, and signatures… Up to date. Civil Defense Volunteer, specially enrolled by virtue of paragraph G of ordinance number… “Not that one,” said Minus-Two carelessly. “Secret.”
The girl shifted into conspiratorial mode. Her eyes, amusingly blue, seemed to glow red. Franz felt like asking her whether she still liked to play with dolls, or if she already knew how to make love. With a jerk of the chin she indicated a building some distance away, hollowed out but with one gable still standing. “It seems there’s a nest of dangerous elements in there, enemies of the people perhaps. Have you noticed anything, Herr Noncommissioned Officer?” “Dangerous as a litter of white rabbits. I know this neighborhood.” In the most depopulated section, to the west, gangs of outlaws crept out after dark from beneath the earth and its tombs… The quieter stretches of every night were interrupted by bursts of gunfire and brief, inconsequential explosions. The special security forces combed through the ruins neighborhood by neighborhood, shooting Russian, Polish, Mongolian, or Yugoslav refugees on the spot, along with army deserters and unidentified strangers who might be enemy parachutists… Other fugitives, not so easily disposed of — Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Czechs — were marched away under heavy escort, probably to be shot the next day. Minus-Two reflected on this. “All the same, don’t go there, Comrade of the People. Or I’d better go with you.”