He had betrayed the country only through his conscience …
Madame Snow held Balamir’s hand.
The child could not sleep and listened to the mother’s breathing.
Dancers wearied and each time the record stopped, the silence made them anxious.
The wind struggled and sighed and could go no farther than the edge of the canal.
A cow with its eyes shut clawed at the empty board walls of a barn with teeth like a hare but found no straw.
The boy had gotten himself lost in underworld tunnels, caught between hanging floors and rolls of wire, and he caught his pants on a bent thick nail.
The Duke followed closely in his step, cane raised sharply in the darkness, feeling his way carefully into the blind hole, and it began to rain. The tall man followed the boy through the gaping plaster wall and found himself in the theater. Madame Snow’s one-legged son and noiseless wife were somewhere overhead near the projection room. The boy traveled in circles among the thousands of molding seats while rain trickled down the sloping floor and a field telephone covered with dust looked like an enormous trap on a chain. The theater grew darker. Carefully the Duke followed the shadows, slid like an elder actor to the ticket-seller’s booth and doffing his hat stepped through the door and waited, surrounded with black glass, rolls of wet tickets, a red handkerchief. A rotted playbill masked his face. He saw something walk across the stage in false breasts and tights, heard the boy drawing fitfully near.
“… It is you who will die,” said the Priest to the Mayor. That had been the day when the motorcycle rider and the rest of the Allies had first passed through Spitzen-on-the-Dein. The convoy crept up the long bright highway through the snow, through the handful of silent watchers, down the main street like a centipede with the motorcycle first, followed by the jeep, ending with proud band of four riflemen. An American colonel and two corporals rode in the jeep, an automatic rifle propped in the back seat, their canteens filled with rum, and the dispatch-rider in the lead wobbled from side to side and waved the children off, flurries of snow shooting up behind him.
“So this is Germany,” said the Colonel, and leaning out from behind the cold wheel he blew his whistle and the convoy stopped. Before the eyes of the crowd he got out and fastened a slender wire-cutter to the smoking radiator, then with a final quick word to the motorcycle man they made their way to the center of town, pulling on their mufflers, eyes frozen ahead. On the floor of the jeep beneath the jutting rifle, they carried their black robes and a few sealed envelopes. The foot-soldiers alternately ran and walked to keep warm.
By the middle of the afternoon they had stripped Madame Snow’s apartment and established a headquarters, of three maps, a table and chair, temporary seat of American representation in the evil zone. The jeep was under a tarpaulin in the rear garden in the shed, the four troops billeted in the hall, and the dispatch rider was standing guard over his still warm machine. Through the uncurtained window, glancing for a moment from the red envelopes, the Colonel saw the sky darken for snow, and worried, he peered at his highly secret route through the nation, studied the undecipherable diagram and code. Satisfied, he signaled the corporal who quickly brought forth the three robes. The Colonel, short, heavyset, graduate of a technical institute, a brilliant engineer, thought in dotted parabolas, considered in fine red lines, and while lonely, overworked, and short in the knees, directed the spreading occupation. Except for the silver eagle sewn above the pocket of his black robe, he might have been the foreman of a jury pointed out to speak before the supreme law. Once more he carefully read the letter of instruction, tapped his pen on the bare wood, then dropped the paper into the heater in the corner, an open can of flaming petrol. The Mayor, Herr Stintz and myself stood in a comer, as there was no anteroom, watching these preparations, while out in the cold alone, walking up and down, waited Miller, the prisoner, thinking of the sweet children and his fair wife.
The robed men muttered together at the far end of the room behind the table, and we three, the witnesses, waited while a thin soot from the burning can settled over the floor, the walls, collected on the Colonel’s two musette bags and on the neat small row of cracking army boots. The maps, freshly tacked to the wall, grew darker and the chill in the air grew worse with the promise of snow, soot speckled the grease on the Colonel’s mess tins tied to the bedroll. Once one of the corporals turned, “No talking there,” and we did not understand, for only the Colonel spoke German. Then, after a short silence, the Colonel seemed to remember. “My God, Corporal, get my pistol — and you might bring my pipe.” The young man, holding the black hem above his boots, scowled once at us, the witnesses, and searched in one of the small dirty bags. Then a pause while they fumbled under his gown to arm him and he lit the pipe, his black cassock skirt and tough hands stiff with cold. The motorcycle rider’s white helmet moved back and forth across the window, scattered flakes of snow dropped on his jacket.
“Mayor,” the corporal called, and the frightened old man stepped into the dock, tensed for a dangerous question.
The Colonel took his place and spoke:
“How old are you?”
“Eh, what’s that?”
“Your age, age.”
“I’m sixty-one.” His paper collar wilted, the official sash sagged on his waist, and he was afraid.
“Where were you born?”
“Right here, here in this very place.”
“I understand you keep some sort of civil records?”
“I did, quite true, very fine writing. But they’re gone, burned up, shells hit my house, zip, zip, and in the fallen glass the flames spread, so my papers are all gone.”
“Well, I want to know something about,” the Colonel looked at his notes, “a man named Miller.”
“I’ve known him for years, his wife, children.”
“Now, is it true he was a pastor?”
“Pastor? Ah, yes, pastor.”
“But now he no longer is?”
“No longer? Well, not actively, the war, I don’t think there were many people to listen …”
“Did he want to stop being a pastor?”
“Well, there was a good deal of trouble in this town, we suffered …”
I called from the corner, “He is a pastor.”
“Silence, keep quiet, there.”
Then Herr Stintz came forward, a primer under his arm, smiling, and he edged himself in front of the Mayor.
“If you’ll permit me,” he said.
“Well, what is it?”
Stintz stepped closer, glasses pinching over his nose. “Herr Colonel, I think perhaps you should take into account that there was, you know, a new gospel, the war made a change in what a man might want to preach to the dumb people — other ears heard, the new gospel was a very strong thing, even his wife could do nothing with Miller.”
The Colonel looked for a long moment at the Mayor.
“Is this true? Was there a change in Miller?”
“Well, everyone, the war was a hard thing but,” the old man found himself staring at the eagle on the Colonel’s chest, and it seemed to glow with a phosphorescent sheen, “but I’m alone, I don’t know him that well, he was away …” The eagle grew bright and the old man wiped his chin, tried to fasten the sash tighter, “but I think, maybe, he did change …”