~ ~ ~
WE WENT SO far without stopping that we couldn’t hear anything — not even the echo of the first shots. As cold as it was, we could bear it for the moment. At one point, we thought we could see the sun, but it turned out to be car headlights.
We did not leave the road. We didn’t see the point in doing what we’d been sent out to do just yet. A little earlier, we’d gone through a Polish village, drab as a filthy iron plate. At that time, all was still asleep, though we could hear hens clucking somewhere. A chicken would have done us the world of good, that was for sure, but we didn’t want to waste time looking for it.
Finally, we saw the pale sun rise. It gave off a little light, but the sky’s colour barely changed. It would be noon before it might begin to warm us. And how much warmth it would provide, it was impossible to say.
We could see the horizon now, and dark shapes outlined against it, but that was all. From afar, we could make out forests and hills. The dawning of the new day was like a portent. It was like leaving a place we hated. We stopped to smoke. Around us was nothing but vast fields. The wind had made waves in the snow, sculpting long, regular shapes that had long since been frozen by the cold. We looked around, and it was as if we were surrounded by a white sea. It was the same up in the sky, except for the eastern horizon where the mist was tinged by the sun.
In the time it took us to light our cigarettes, our hands began to feel burned by the cold. We put our gloves back on. It was a pain in the neck, smoking with gloves on. The gloves were thick. Of course, that was not something to moan about, most of the time. But when we smoked, we moaned about it.
All we could hear was the faint crackle of our cigarettes, our breathing, and occasionally the sound of one of us sniffing back little ice crystals. Smoking on an empty stomach is less pleasant than smoking on a full stomach, but we enjoyed that particular cigarette, all the same. Because the gymnasium and Graaf and the day that was dawning over there were all behind us. We were in the middle of a frozen sea. Around us, everything was ugly and covered in ice, and we were smoking on an empty stomach, but at least we felt safe.
Suddenly Emmerich said: ‘I’m afraid he’ll start smoking. And what good would it do if I asked him not to do it? Sure, I could write to him that he mustn’t smoke, but I don’t think it would make a difference. He’d just shove the letter in his pocket and forget about it.’
Emmerich often talked to us like this. He would be thinking to himself, sometimes for quite a while, and then suddenly he would speak his thoughts out loud. It was up to us to quickly grasp the sense of his words, to clamber aboard the moving train of thought. Sometimes we couldn’t do it. But this morning, it was fine. We had understood, even before he’d finished speaking, that he was thinking about his son. The boy was one of Emmerich’s constant preoccupations. He was plagued by worries about him. We helped him as much as we could. We listened to him for as long as he needed. If he asked us for our opinions, we gave them. We felt sorry for him too: it was tough to see him torment himself like that.
Bauer replied to Emmerich, about the letter: ‘You can’t know for sure that he’d just shove it in his pocket.’
‘Come off it,’ said Emmerich, with a faint smile. ‘You know perfectly well he would.’
Bauer said, ‘Tell him you’re coming home, and that he won’t be able to hide the smell if he’s been smoking, because you’ll arrive without warning.’
Emmerich thought about this, making small movements with his head. We couldn’t tell if he was agreeing or disagreeing. Our cigarettes were nearly finished: to make them last as long as possible, we had to remove a glove. Our fingertips burned, from both heat and cold.
I said to Emmerich: ‘Tell him we’ve been given leave, and that it could happen any day now. Don’t go into details — just say you might turn up at any moment, and that if he’s been smoking, you’ll know it as soon as you open the door.’
‘But that won’t happen,’ Emmerich replied quietly. ‘So he’d be waiting for me. That would be pretty sad. Each evening, he’d be disappointed.’
Bauer and I glanced at each other. Then I replied to Emmerich, for both of us: ‘You’re right. Don’t tell him that.’
Emmerich managed a brief smile, and wiped his mouth with his hand. Then he stared at his boots. We helped him as much as we could, you see, but we couldn’t think of everything.
When we’d finished smoking and tossed the tiny cigarette butts on the ground, we put our gloves back on and pulled our scarves up to our eyes. That was the beginning of a long silence. We stared down at the frozen road and each of us retreated into his own thoughts. I knew what Emmerich was thinking about. With Bauer, it depended on the day.
My own thoughts didn’t stray far. I returned to the memory of the previous night’s dream, to my tram. But, already, it seemed far away. That’s just how it is with dreams. Within a week, it would have vanished into a black hole, where it would remain forever. If only we could put whatever we wanted into that black hole. .
~ ~ ~
MY BACK HAD gone into spasm in the cold, and now it was painful. We started up again, Emmerich in front. Just before we set off, he had let us know, with a shrug of his shoulders and a kind of sigh through his scarf, that he hadn’t finished with his problem. So Bauer and I, walking behind him, continued to try to find ways to help him persuade his son not to smoke. Deep down, though, I thought that if he’d decided to smoke, none of us here would be able to stop him. I didn’t say that to Emmerich, of course: it would have been like smashing the butt of my rifle into his back.
Bauer and I did not have children. Everyone in the company had them except for me and Bauer. Emmerich had often told us that it was both a boon and a curse; that, before the war, it had been simply a boon, but that now it was a curse as well. We half-understood him.
‘Tell him it will bring you bad luck if he does it,’ Bauer suddenly shouted.
Emmerich and I jumped. Even through the scarf, the sound was like a rifle shot or the cry of a wild animal.
Our work here had changed Bauer’s voice. It exploded without warning. And it had nothing to do with the meaning of his words. He would sometimes start yelling even if what he had to say was perfectly ordinary. Emmerich and I no longer complained about this, not to Bauer and not even to each other. But it still made us jump whenever it happened.
Turning towards us and trembling, Emmerich replied to Bauer: ‘If he smoked, and something bad happened to me, his life would be ruined.’
‘He’s right,’ I said to Bauer.
Bauer caught up with Emmerich and touched him on the shoulder. In his true voice, low and thoughtful, he said: ‘First something bad would have to happen to you. What could happen to you here?’
‘Here? Nothing, I guess,’ Emmerich replied. ‘We’re safe for now. But there’s a chance we might be sent somewhere else.’
‘Sure,’ said Bauer, ‘but not tomorrow. And why would anything bad happen to you here?’
Emmerich had slowed down so he could walk alongside us, and he said to Bauer: ‘Who knows? Listen, say he smokes, and something bad happens to me — just like that, through chance. What would he do then? I don’t want his life to be ruined by chance.’
‘That’s true,’ I said to Bauer. ‘He’s right.’
Bauer mumbled something behind his scarf. Emmerich said, ‘I can’t threaten him with that. I’d rather he smoked.’
Bauer lifted up his scarf and said, ‘Send him your ration.’
He was talking about his ration of cigarettes. I heard Emmerich give a short laugh. It wasn’t very cheerful, but it was better than nothing. And once again, we walked in silence, each lost in our own thoughts. But Emmerich’s son walked with us now. Bauer and I didn’t know what he looked like. Emmerich didn’t have photographs with him. We had never dared ask why. There was maybe some superstition behind it.