The four shapes scattered into the blackest depths of the vaults. Franz could feel them below him, tense, crouched, unsheathing knives, intently scanning the recesses of the walls, the hole to the sky… Not a flicker of movement. He paced his phrasing, to bring out the humor.
“Honorable fodder for the gallows and the stake! An unknown well-wisher, who doesn’t actually give a fart about anything, advises you to decamp without delay… The neighborhood is getting dangerous.”
Feeling better now, graveyard rats? Franz believed he was feeling in his own breast the beating of four terrified hearts calmed by the balm of such an improbable reprieve. Taking a deep breath, he concluded: “Reasons of State. Good night.”
A man’s deep voice rose from the cavern and said, in good German, “Thank you. Good night. Beat it.”
A pause ensued, like a rising tide of silence slowly sealing off the underground world. And the woman’s voice added, from farther away, “Brotherhood.”
Franz lost his temper. In the light of day, this woman would be repelled by him, his crutch, his stick, his rubberized extension, the hook in place of a hand, the sourness etched into his zero-hero kisser. “Which one’s the glass eye?” she’d wonder, and, “Tell me, are your balls synthetic too?” He loathed her. There’s precious little brotherhood to spare for the armless and the legless, except in official speeches… He answered violently, “And a bucket of flaming shit to you too!”
Laughter melted his anger.
You see, there’s only one brotherhood these days, and that’s in the pit, the common pit, where the same fraternal lime is shoveled over Slavs and Aryans, Negroes and Jews! They’re all the same when they’ve twitched and defecated their last, all equally stinking, putrid, impotent, pacified, delivered… All the drowned look alike, salt water or fresh, and corpses are the truest brothers, the only ones you can trust: they neither murder nor betray… Just as the devastated cities are sisters, Stalingrad, Warsaw, Coventry, London, Lübeck, and this city too: they could all be mistaken for one another in a photograph. Brotherhood.
He was still feeling jubilant, carried away by his speeches to himself, when a security patrol hailed him at the corner of an erstwhile street. It was nearly sunrise. The corporal recognized him.
“Out prowling, Franz?”
The cripple produced an engraved silver goblet he had just found, undamaged, in a thicket of scrap iron.
“It was shining like a cat’s eye!”
“Anything suspicious back there?” “Everything, you name it. A ballet of ghosts. What’s the news?” The corporal edged a step away from his men, mobilized civilians who looked like the defeated insurgents they could never be. “It seems the elite division was crushed to a pulp this morning… The general’s killed himself…” “White of him,” murmured Franz hypocritically. “Does that mean the city is surrounded?” “Only halfway,” said the corporal, a perfect vessel in which official lies were preserved forever fresh. “An army of shock troops is poised to break through their exposed flank, but not for a few days…” “Only a few days?” marveled Minus-Two, reaching for a smirk of gratification, and rounding it off with a wink. His amputated hand was beginning to throb, it must be the damp. He raised his other hand in a parade-ground salute: “Sieg Heil!”
Back at home he removed his clothes by himself, in an agony of pain. His amputated limbs felt as though they were bleeding, severed raw, gnawed by the icy cold. “Warm me, Ilse.” At such times the Pomeranian woman would stretch out on top of him so as to clasp both of his stumps, and the prostheses would cut into her; but a saving warmth crept from her body into his. He began to doze off to the vision of a flaring match which threw light onto a hand and thence onto a face strangely framed by rays intermingled with ash-brown locks. Three human shapes, molded in opacity, were worshipping or menacing that hand, that brow… So he made haste, pointing his machine gun at the hand, the brow, the three crouching forms: fire, fire, fire! I killed all. Duty. Franz let out a groan, his head struck the partition, flakes of plaster rained down on his face. Ilse still sprawled hotly on top of him, suffocating him. “Ha, strangle me would you, vermin!” He shook her off in one convulsive jerk. Ilse knew these nightmares, when he joined battle with things unseen and often hit or abused her, without waking. She made herself passive, as if she didn’t exist, and waited for the storm of the blood to spend itself through his clenched body.
“What is it? An alert?” he asked in a childish voice.
A submachine gun, great strangling pincers, white maggots in the gruesome sludge, tetanus, a vault punctured by the sky; and the sound of the Schulzes snoring in the next room, like in a stable. “Ilse,” he said plaintively…
“Try to sleep, my man,” she answered roughly. “It’ll be light soon.”
Nurse Erna Laub’s dossier had of course been “carefully reviewed” by the appropriate offices… Her father was an agronomical engineer, Oscar-Julius Laub, a card-carrying National Socialist and vice president of a national association abroad, entrusted with the most delicate assignments, awarded top marks, last heard of in 1941 at a civilian prisoners’ camp in the north Obi, Eastern Siberia (there was no more on Oscar-Julius). Erna was his only child, unmarried, a nurse with a Red Cross diploma from Riga; fluent Russian from infancy, smattering of Spanish for having accompanied her father on a six-month journey to Peru, competent French after several visits to Paris; slight Slavonic accent in German. The data regarding her character could be summarized as follows: highly patriotic, member of the National Women’s Association, diligent, conscientious, of below-average intelligence (underlined). Doesn’t speak up at meetings, but ardent in her applause. Generous with donations. Not especially gregarious, strict morals, no offspring (underlined, a black mark). War record: crossed Lithuanian lines with a group of escapees from Russian prisons, which made a twenty-four-hour stand against the Sokolin gang. Slightly wounded in the shoulder, excellent morale, exerted a positive influence upon companions. Personal acquaintance of Standartenführer F. M. B., former Communist, sterling Party member, killed at… and of Lieutenant Colonel H. W. W., a boyhood friend of her father’s. Political acumen: nil. Physical appearance: forty years of age, appears younger, medium height, well built, sober of dress, extremely proper in demeanor. Chestnut hair, pulled back from the forehead and gathered into a low bun, sprinkled with gray strands; blue-gray eyes, and a set to the lips expressing severity.