Carrion Comfort (22 page)

“We were ordered to dig our own graves. There were half a dozen shovels lying in a clearing forty meters behind the estate and we used these to excavate a wide, shallow trench while the troopers held torches or stood and smoked cigarettes in the dark. There was snow on the ground. The earth was frozen and as hard as stone. We could dig no deeper than half a meter. Between the dull strokes of the shovels, I could hear renewed laughter from the lodge. Lights burned in high windows and threw yellow rectangles on the slate-tiled gables. Only the exercise and our fear kept us from freezing. My bare feet had turned a terrible white-blue and I could not feel my toes. We were almost finished with the digging and I knew that I had to decide what to do. It was quite dark and I felt that my best bet was to make a break for the forest. It would have been better had we all bolted at once, but several of the older Jews were obviously too cold and exhausted to move and we were not allowed to speak to each other. The two women stood several meters from the trench, vainly trying to cover their nakedness while the guards made crude jokes and held torches near them.

“I could not decide whether to simply run or to use the long-handled shovel in an attempt to club down one of the soldiers and seize a machine-pistol. These were
Einsatzgruppen Totenkopfverbände
, but they were also drunk and in a relaxed mood. I had to decide.

“The shovel. I chose the guard— a short, young man who appeared to be half dozing a few steps from me. I tightened my grip on the long handle.

“ ‘
Halt! Wo ist denn mein Bauer?
’ It was the blond Oberst crunching through the snow toward us. He wore a heavy greatcoat and his officer’s cap. When he entered the circle of torchlight he looked around. He had asked for his pawn.
Which
pawn?

“ ‘
Du! Komm her!
’ He gestured at me. I cringed, expecting the mind-rape again, but it did not come. I jumped out of the shallow pit, handed my shovel to a guard, and stood naked and shivering in front of the Oberst, in front of the one they had called Der Meister.

“ ‘You must finish here,’ he said in German to the sergeant in charge.
‘Schnell!’

“The sergeant nodded and moved the Jews together at the edge of the hole. The two women huddled at the far end, their thin arms around one another. The sergeant ordered everyone to lie down in the cold trench. Three men refused and were shot where they stood. One, the man who had been the black king, fell twitching only two meters from me. I looked down at my bloodless feet and tried not to move, but my own shaking intensified. The other Jews were ordered to roll the bodies into the Pit with them. Then there was silence. The pale backs and buttocks of my fellow prisoners glowed in the torchlight. The sergeant gave an order and the shooting began.

“It took less than a minute. The sound of the machine-pistols and light carbines seemed muted, inconsequential, a light
pop
and another naked, white form would twitch and spasm a second in the hole and then be still. The women died in each other’s embrace. The Lithuanian Jew cried out in Hebrew and struggled to his knees, arms outflung toward either the guards or the sky— I still do not know which— and then he was cut almost in half by automatic rifle fire.

“Through all of this I stood shaking, staring at my feet, praying that I would become invisible. But even before they were finished the sergeant turned back to me and said, ‘This one,
mein Oberst?
’

“
‘Mein zuverlässiger Bauer?’
said the Oberst.
My trustworthy pawn?
‘We are to have a hunt,’ he said.

“
‘Eine Jagd?’
asked the sergeant.
‘Heute nacht?’
“
‘Wenn es dämmert.’
“
‘Auch Der Alte?’
“
‘Ja.’
“
‘Jawohl, mein Oberst.’
I could see that the sergeant was disgusted. He would have no time for sleep that night.

“As the guards began shoveling a thin cover of frozen earth over the bodies, I was led back to the lodge and chained up in the same cellar where we had been kept hours earlier. My feet began to tingle and then to burn. It was very painful. In spite of that, I was dozing when the sergeant returned, unlocked my chains, and ordered me into clothes: underwear, blue wool trousers, a shirt and thick sweater, heavy socks, and sturdy boots which were only slightly too small. The honest clothing felt wonderful after months in prison rags.

“The sergeant led me outside to where four SS men stood waiting in the snow. They carried hand torches— flashlights—and heavy rifles. One had a German shepherd on a leash and he let the straining animal sniff at me while we waited. The Great Hall was dark now, the shouting quieted for the night. There was a gray translucence to the night as dawn approached.

“The guards had just turned off their flashlights when the Oberst and the old general emerged. They were not in uniform. They wore heavy, green hunting jackets and capes. Each carried a nonmilitary, large-calibered rifle with a telescopic sight attached. I understood then. I knew exactly what was going to happen next, but I was too exhausted to care.

“The Oberst gestured and the guards walked away from me to stand by the two officers. I stood there for a minute, irresolute, refusing to do what they wanted me to do. The sergeant snarled at me in bad Polish. ‘Run! Run, you Jewish vermin. Go!’ And still I did not move. The dog flung himself against the leash, snarling and straining. The sergeant raised his rifle and fired a shot which threw snow up between my feet. I did not move. Then I felt the first tentative touches in my mind.

“
Go, kleiner Bauer. Go!
The silky whisper in my mind made me reel with nausea. I turned and ran into the forest.

“I was in no condition to run for very long. Within a few minutes I was panting and stumbling along. My footprints were clearly visible in the snow, but there was nothing I could do about that. The sky grew lighter as I staggered along in what I hoped was a southward direction. I heard frenzied barking behind me and knew that the hunting party had begun to follow my trail.

“I had gone little more than a kilometer when I came to the open area. A strip almost a hundred meters wide had been cleared of trees and undergrowth. Rolls of barbed wire ran down the center of this no-man’s land, but it was not the wire which caused me to halt. In the center of the clearing a white sign lettered in German and Polish proclaimed HALT! MINE FIELD!

“The barking grew closer. I turned left and broke into a painful, gasping trot. I knew now that there would be no way out. The mined perimeter would enclose the entire estate— their private hunting preserve. My only hope was to find the road we had come by the night before, an eternity ago. There would almost certainly be gates and guards, but I would try for the road nonetheless. Better that the guards take me down than the obscenities behind me. I resolved that I would run the mine field before allowing the hunting party a clear shot.

“I had just reached a shallow stream when the mindrape began again. I was standing still, staring at the half-frozen stream, when I
felt
him enter me. For a few seconds I fought it, clutching at my temples, falling to my knees in the snow, but then the Oberst was in me, filling my mind in the way water fills the mouth and nostrils and lungs of a drowning man. It was worse than that. It was as if a great tapeworm had entered my skull and bored its way into my brain. I screamed but no sound emerged. I staggered to my feet.

“
Komm her, mein kleiner Bauer!
The Oberst’s voice whispered sound-lessly to me. His thoughts tumbled into mine, forced my own volition into some dark pit. I glimpsed images of faces, places, uniforms, and rooms. I rode on waves of hate and arrogance. His love of violence filled my mouth with the coppery taste of blood.
Komm!
The mental whisper was seductive, sickening, like a man’s tongue entering my mouth.

“I watched myself run into the stream, turning back again to the west,
toward
the hunting party, running hard now, gasping in shallow, painful bursts. The icy water splashed my legs and made the wool trousers heavy. My nose began to hemorrhage and the blood ran freely down my face and neck.

“
Komm her!
“I left the stream and stumbled through the forest to a pile of boulders. My body twitched and jerked like a marionette as I climbed to wedge myself in a gap between the rocks. I lay there with my cheek against the stone, blood pooling on frozen moss. Voices approached. The hunting party was no more than fifty paces away through the screen of trees. I assumed that they would encircle my pile of rocks and then the Oberst would make me stand so they could have a clean shot. I strained to move my legs, to shift my arm, but it was as if someone had cut the cables connecting my brain to my body. I was pinned there as surely as if the boulders had fallen on me.

“There was the sound of conversation and then, incredibly, the men moved on the way I had gone ten minutes earlier. I could hear the dog barking as it followed my trail. Why was the Oberst playing with me? I strained to make out his thoughts, but my weak probes were brushed away as one would slap away a per sis tent insect.

“Suddenly I was moving again, running in a crouch past the trees, then crawling on my belly through the snow. I smelled the cigarette smoke before I saw them. The Old Man and the sergeant were in a clearing. The Old Man was sitting on a fallen log. The hunting rifle rested across his knees. The sergeant stood near him with his back to me, his fingers tapping idly at his rifle stock.

“Then I was up and running, moving faster than I had ever moved before. The sergeant wheeled to look just as I jumped and struck him with my shoulder. I was smaller than the sergeant and much lighter, but the speed of the impact knocked him down. I rolled once, screaming silently, wanting only to regain control of my own body and flee into the forest, and then I had grabbed away the Old Man’s hunting rifle and was striking the sergeant in the face and neck, using the beautifully carved rifle stock as a club. The sergeant tried to rise and I clubbed him down again. He groped for his own rifle and I smashed his hand under my boot and then drove the heavy stock into his face until bones smashed, until there was no real face left. Then I dropped the rifle and turned to the Old Man.

“He was still sitting on the log, one hand holding a Luger he had removed from his holster, the cigarette still dangled from his thin lips. He looked a thousand years old, but there was a smile on the wrinkled caricature of a face.

“ ‘
Sie!’
he said and I knew he was not speaking to me. “ ‘
Ja, Alte
,’ I said and was amazed to hear the words coming from my own mouth.
‘Das Spiel ist beendet.’

“ ‘We will see,’ said the Old Man and raised the pistol to fire. I jumped then and the bullet passed through my sweater and along my ribs. I grabbed his wrist before he could fire again and we pirouetted there in the snow, the Old Man staggering to his feet to join me in a bizarre dance: the emaciated young Jew with blood streaming from his nose and an ancient old man lost in his wool greatcoat. His Luger fired again, harmlessly into the air, and then I had it and staggered back. I raised the gun.

“ ‘
Nein!’
shouted the Old Man and then I felt
his
presence like a hammer blow to the skull. For a second I was nowhere as those two obscene parasites struggled for the control of my body. Then I seemed to be looking down on the scene from somewhere above myself. I saw the Old Man standing rigid and my own body lurching around as if in the grip of a terrible seizure. My eyes had rolled back in their sockets and my mouth was gaping open like an idiot’s. Urine blotted my trousers and steamed in the cold air.

“Then I was watching from my own eyes and the Old Man was no longer in my mind. He took three steps back and sat heavily on the log. ‘Willi,’ he said. ‘
Mein Freund
. . .’

“My arm lifted and I shot the Old Man twice in the face and once in the heart. He went over backward and I stood staring at the hobnailed soles of his boots.

“
We are coming, Pawn
, whispered the Oberst.
Wait for us
. “I stood waiting until I could hear their shouts and the growling of the German shepherd just beyond the trees. The pistol was still in my hand. I tried to relax my body, concentrating all of my will and energy into a single finger of my right hand, not even thinking about what I was going to do. The hunting party was almost in sight when the Oberst’s control slipped just enough for me to try. It was the most crucial and difficult struggle of my life. I had only to close one finger a few millimeters, but it took all of the energy and determination left in my body and spirit to do so.

“I succeeded. The Luger fired and the bullet tore a path across my thigh and took off the small toe on my right foot. The pain was like a cleansing fire. It seemed to take the Oberst by surprise and I could feel his presence draw back for a few seconds.

“I turned and ran, leaving bloody footprints in the snow. There were shouts close behind me. An automatic rifle began to chatter and I could hear the steel-jacketed projectiles humming past me like bees.
But the Oberst did not control me
. I reached the mine field and ran into it without pausing. I parted the barbed wire with my bare hands, kicked aside the clinging strands, and ran on. Incredibly, inexplicably, I made it across the clearing. That is when the Oberst reentered my mind.

“
Halt!
I stopped. I turned to see four guards and the Oberst facing me across the strip of death.
Come back, little pawn
, whispered the creature’s voice.
The game is over
.

“I tried to lift the Luger to my own temple. I could not. My body began walking toward them, back into the mine field, toward the raised weapons. It was at that second that the German shepherd broke away from the guard holding him and charged at me. The beast had just reached the edge of the strip, not twenty feet from the Oberst, when the mine exploded. It was an antitank mine, very powerful. Earth, metal, and pieces of dog filled the air. I saw all five men go down and then something soft struck my chest and knocked me down.