Döhring, however, had not wanted to endanger his family, at least not in this period of transition. Things would sort themselves out later.
Because he was branded under his armpits, he decided it would be best if for the time being he stayed by himself.
The religion teacher who that morning relieved the bank director in the tower shouted down to the people that there was no big trouble, no reason to be afraid, but some group was approaching, that’s how he put it, probably from the outside. Yet he also thought that no one had stayed alive out there. There are about twenty-six of them, I’ve counted them twice already, he shouted. The oddest thing was that they were coming in close formation, just as they had once been marched out to work.
In close formation, twenty-six of them, he shouted.
People on the ground could not see the religion teacher in the open tower, but he could see them, small white faces above the darkly shining stones, turning toward him. Even their shivering reached him, but he chose to look through his field glasses again. The shivering was his own. He could see there would be trouble after all. They held things in their hands, sticks, boards.
As soon as they reached the first houses, they moved right in.
Who could have anticipated this. This meant that the camp guards had left behind not only corpses but living prisoners as well.
Get going, he shouted down to the square.
But those on the church square did not understand where they were supposed to go, they wanted more precise instructions from above. The other people were already entering a second house, but the religion teacher was so paralyzed with fear he could not make any corrections. Or rather, for long moments he had to cope with the thought that the fate of this village of Nordwall, with all its inhabitants, was now in his hands. That meant nothing but trouble. Had he called out to them immediately he might have been able to save some of them, but he kept quiet, and they all had to perish.
They kept coming on the road, in files of three; three of them veered off at the third house and entered it.
They had already drunk from the water of the Niers; what they wanted now was food, warm clothes, money, and revenge.
When the religion teacher from the tower hysterically made people understand what they should do, since some were already jumping out the windows of the first houses, they quickly took off toward Nordwall. By the time they got there, panting and exhausted, the village was in flames, and although some tenants managed to get out at the last minute, others, beaten to a pulp and frozen in their own blood, were awaiting a fiery death. Seeing this sight, the townspeople knew no mercy. They knocked milk mugs out of the mouths of some; some they tore away from pantry shelves along with fruit jars clutched in trembling fingers; they took some prisoners out of clothes closets from among hidden furs or biscuits, or caught them when, trying to escape, they got stuck on fences or high hedges.
They beat them to death with spades and shovels; they pierced the hearts of twenty-five of them so they would never rise again. Some resisted fiercely, and many of the townspeople, despite their numerical superiority, were left on the scene badly wounded. The twenty-sixth got away. They couldn’t find him, or the religion teacher miscounted. But they did not give themselves enough time to see to the wounded, help put out the fires, and calm down a little. In the heat of killing, they piled fresh corpses on handcarts, pushcarts, wheelbarrows, on any old conveyance; they were proud that there were so many corpses and that they were the ones who had produced them. The corpses were dripping with blood and slippery with splattered brains, there were too many ears, noses, truncated parts; hastily they collected what they could find and then pulled, tugged, dragged their burdens to the burning ditches to be done with the job before dark. The damn ditches were far from here, and they had already lost a lot of time.
They reached the camp in the afternoon. It was impossible to tell whether humans or animals had picked and gnawed so brutally at the corpses lying on the deserted roads.
To be honest, nobody tried seriously to answer this question.
The important thing was to burn the corpses as soon as possible so the ditches could be covered over and the land above them properly plowed.
The sole escapee who survived was picked up by a British patrol near Venlo, among the greenhouses of St. Thomas Monastery, and at this very hour he was regaling them with the story of his escape while they fed him with lukewarm sweet condensed milk, covered him with a blanket, though his whole body kept shaking uncontrollably.
Slowly, slowly, motioned the British officer, there’s plenty more where that came from. Take small sips. You’ll get more, but first we’ll give you a bath, put you in a nice warm bed. In the meantime, I’ll bring somebody who speaks your language.
So until that time he saw not him but his twin brother.
He screamed in his sleep that he did have a twin sibling, after all, and it was a boy.
Yes, he mixed them up.
From which he gathered that, luckily, the other boy had made a mistake. His twin brother could not have burned to death if he reached this place and was still alive. Because of this final realization that put everything in its place, a happiness of enormous proportions and unknown source gripped him, though he knew he was dreaming; still it was as if he were rescued, because at least in his dreams they were both alive.
How old are you, asked one of the monks curiously.
The question was so unexpected that, no matter how hard he thought, he could not answer it.
Don’t tire him out, said the other monk. He can’t be more than fifteen.
Or maybe he just can’t call out of his dream to tell us.
I think he has to be a little older than that.
It was odd that he could not understand the simplest things.
His grandfather had taught Döhring that the devil always wears a disguise and never sleeps. Or even if he stops to rest sometimes, a cautious person never leaves hatchets, knives, sickles, or scythes unguarded.
When the basket was filled with firewood, he put the short-handled hatchet among the freshly chopped wood, as was his wont, and took the basket under his arm. He kicked the door open with his knee. Nothing fatal happened in that instant. The flinging door of the shed covered the boy with the sharpened stake, crouching and waiting for him, and almost hit him on the forehead.
Döhring did not look back, because the door worked on a spring and would shut automatically behind him.
Unsuspecting, he walked toward the house with his basket.
And the boy did not immediately follow him, because he was certain that here indeed was that German, either someone who looked just like him or the man himself, though he had had no contact with the prisoners until the last few weeks.
But then he had revealed himself to them.
He took after him only when the familiar figure had almost reached the open door of his house.
He found himself facing the ones coming downstairs from the upper floor.
Because they had found nothing in the house. This calmed them down, though at the same time the mute house with all its possibilities upset them. Their mouths and hands were full of dried apples and prunes, their pockets stuffed with them too. Up in the ice-cold bedrooms fruit stood in open sacks and baskets; they had stuffed themselves with fruit, kept on chewing. Here is the bad egg, look, one of them yelled in an incomprehensible language, his mouth full.