A smartly dressed housewife had already pushed past him to the desk, invoking the authority of some Oberleutnant and waving a paper that was not in her name but in that of a dead woman. Distracted by the pounding cannon fire, Fauckel struggled to grasp that she had been signing in the deceased’s name in order to obtain her rations. “It was my sister-in-law, I’ve taken in her daughter, Grete, her husband’s disappeared and the Oberleutnant assured me that…”
“Of what did he assure you, the Oberleutnant? That I can resurrect a sister-in-law?” He continued: “And that a forgery is not a forgery?”
His fit of bluster subsided into throat-clearing, because the paper he was reading had caught his attention.
“So your husband is in the Party, an army chauffeur?”
He most certainly is, and very well regarded, ask anyone in the twelfth sector… When evacuation orders are imminently expected, it’s sound policy to do favors for the drivers, especially those of the twelfth sector. “Very good, you’re free to go while inquiries proceed. Send your husband to see me…”
The Italian, Giacomo Pitelli, was explaining to Commander Gutapfel that he’d momentarily lost his head under the bombardment; his chiefs and supervisors had vanished, and there was only one way to get out, in the direction of the enemy as it happens, but he didn’t realize, he thought he was catching up with what was left of the company. “Couldn’t you see where the firing was issuing from?” “Apparently from the sky, sir, I swear, all hell was crashing down on top of us…” “That’s enough,” said Gutapfel, energetically scratching his thigh. “Court-martial, transfer him…” The Owl did not dare to mention that there was nowhere to transfer him to, and that the courts-martial were no longer functioning… After eighty minutes of business the commanders called it a day. Standing by their motorcycles, they conferred, stiff with mutual mistrust. “Not very promising,” Fauckel said. “Should I evacuate the archives on my own initiative?” “Your archives are your responsibility… I’m against evacuation.” Gutapfel shrugged a padded shoulder. “I’m staying, unless ordered personally.” The small vial of poison, hanging from a cord against the fleece of his chest, steeled him while burning a hole in his heart. (He was counting on receiving that personal order…) What titans were about to fall! Germany would never recover. But having served in an extermination camp for Jewish vermin in Poland, he did not greatly rate his chances of “crossing over” in the event of a capitulation. This abject colleague was the last person he could tell of his decision not to be hanged by a cabal of New York Jews, now that everything was hopeless. “What about you people?” he inquired unpleasantly. “The pullback of our offices has been postponed for the moment, in view of the imminent counteroffensive, I understand.” “Oh?” Fauckel had evoked this counteroffensive merely to infuriate the fanatical dullard before him, the kind of maniac who would like nothing better than to drag a whole people to suicide. “But your department is hardly essential to the front line!” Gutapfel objected, in a derogatory tone which Fauckel chose to overlook, edging closer to speak privately — for there were other motorcyclists nearby, who might have read derision or defeatism into a perfectly reasonable remark: “Whatever may lie in store, I have faith in the genius of the Führer.” (If that’s of any consolation to you, my friend!) “Don’t we all!” cried Gutapfel angrily. You fraud, he thought, if you haven’t already wangled yourself an Alsatian passport, I’ve lost my nose for cowards and quitters. They parted with a exchange of rigid salutes.
The Frenchman was wandering through the ruins. He would go up to policemen, waving his violet card and asking for the new address of the Workforce Center for Foreign Defense Workers, apparently no longer at the address marked. They answered him politely, with dazed incomprehension. Panic was rising. He drank a cup of potato-flour broth. He was hungry. His fountain pen and half of his cash had been retained by the Owl, that was inevitable. To unstitch his jacket collar and remove a banknote, he would need some privacy. Breaking in somewhere and stealing things he could sell on the black market seemed simpler and, above all, more attractive. On pain of death, of course, but then the Todestrafe stared you in the face every hundred yards in the form of laughable notices, treacherous holes in the road, collapsing walls, dangling power lines, uniforms of every stripe, informers without uniforms, marauders on the prowl — and it could also drop on you by the purest of chance, like a meteor. Best to not be entirely innocent, you’ll feel less of a fool when you get caught.
Toward the end of the afternoon Alain’s attention was caught by the shuttered prow of a house in a badly damaged neighborhood; the tradesmen’s entrance was masked by a pair of tall thin walls, leaning toward each other like parodies of the Tower of Pisa, the sparse bricks sagging until the tops nearly touched, a truly comic sight… No imagination, however wild or drunk, could ever conceive the wealth of fantastical architectural effects to be found in bombed-out cities. Kids growing up in them may someday, as these visions mature within them, create a new art that will be neither realistic nor surrealistic, for destruction nurtures a special reality basically close to the unreal. The bogus reality of civilization reverted back to first principles, violent death, the dissolution of beings and works, the anxious persistence of a life force free of justification… Paintings of individual psychological terrors would seem ridiculous here. Start expressing the Great Authentic Terror, or buzz off… You’re still busy thinking, my boy, as though it were of any use, as though there were avant-guard journals to…
Anyway, let’s go inside! Alain tapped with sly insistence at a the obviously locked door. What if someone were taking a nap inside? I’d say, “Please excuse me, madame, sir, or would you rather I crushed your larynx and jugular with these fingers here?” Silence. The kitchen shutter was easily prized off. Alain stepped over sacks, mattresses, and broken glass to reach a small room furnished in light-colored wood, presumably occupied, for it was as cluttered with odds and ends as a fairground cart. Shiny tins ranged on a shelf contained some sourdough and bitter herbal tea. “How little it takes to reawaken my good intentions! If my unknown host turns up, I’ll be all apologies. I was terribly hungry, madame or sir, and it’s time you knew you’ve lost the war… Whereas I am winning it, so, though I may not look much like a conqueror, allow me to offer my protection…” All the same he picked up the meat cleaver, an excellent means of persuasion. If they come back in a group of two or three, I’m done for. Death is the penalty, my friend. A coin tossed in the air for the hundred-thousandth time. You can’t win every time, but maybe the hundred-thousand-andfirst time. Let’s win!