In Körlin, battle was raging. Crouching by the edge of the wood, we watched the Russian tanks scattered along a slightly raised road relentlessly shelling the German positions. Infantrymen were running around the tanks, lying in trenches. There were lots of dead bodies, brown spots dotting the snow or the blackish ground. We cautiously retreated into the forest. A little farther back we had spotted a little stone bridge over the Persante, intact; we returned to it and crossed it, then, hiding in a beech grove, we slipped toward the main road to Plathe. In these woods too there were bodies everywhere, Russians and Germans both, they must have fought furiously; most of the German soldiers were wearing the French badge; now, though, everything was quiet. Searching through their pockets we found a few useful things, pocketknives, a compass, some dried fish in a Russian’s haversack. On the road, above us, Soviet tanks were headed at top speed toward Körlin. Thomas had decided that we would wait for night, then try to cross to see farther ahead who held the roadway to Kolberg, the Russians or our own men. I sat down behind a bush, with my back to the road, and ate an onion, which I washed down with some brandy, then I pulled L’Éducation sentimentale out of my pocket, its leather binding swollen and deformed, delicately unstuck a few pages, and began to read. The long, steady flow of the prose soon carried me away, I didn’t hear the rattle of treads or the rumble of engines, the absurd shouts in Russian, “Davaï! Davaï!” or the explosions, a little farther away; only the curling, sticking pages got in the way of my reading. The fading light forced me to close the book and put it away. I slept a little. Piontek was sleeping too; Thomas remained seated, watching the woods. When I woke up, I was covered in a thick, powdery snow; it was falling heavily, in big flakes that whirled between the trees before settling. On the road a tank passed by from time to time, its headlights on, the light piercing whirlwinds of snow; everything else was silent. We went close to the road and waited. Over toward Körlin, they were still shooting. Two tanks came along, followed by a truck, a Studebaker painted with the red star: as soon as they had passed, we crossed the road at a run to bolt into a wood on the other side. A few kilometers farther on, we had to repeat the process to cross the little road leading to Gross-Jestin, a neighboring village; there too tanks and vehicles clogged the road. The thick snow hid us as we crossed the fields, there was no wind and the snow fell vertically, muting sounds, explosions, motors, shouts. From time to time, we heard metallic clicking or bursts of Russian voices; we quickly hid, flat on our stomachs in a ditch or behind a bush; once, a patrol passed right by without noticing us. Again the Persante barred our way. The road to Kolberg was on the other side; we followed the bank northward and Thomas finally unearthed a boat hidden in the reeds. There were no oars, so Piontek cut some long branches to maneuver it, and the crossing was easy enough. On the road there was heavy traffic in both directions: Russian tanks and trucks were driving with all lights on, as if on an autobahn. A long column of tanks flowed toward Kolberg, a fairytale spectacle, each vehicle draped with lace, large white lengths attached to the cannons and to the gun turrets and dancing on the sides, and in the whirlwinds of snow illumined by their headlights, these dark and thundering machines took on a light, almost airy quality; they seemed to float over the road, through the snow that blended with their delicate sails. We slowly retreated to hide in the woods. “We’ll cross the Persante again,” Thomas’s tense voice whispered, disembodied in the dark and the snow. “We can forget about Kolberg. We’ll have to go all the way to the Oder, probably.” But the boat had disappeared, and we had to walk for a while before we could find a fordable stretch, indicated by posts and a kind of footbridge stretched beneath the water, to which the corpse of a French Waffen-SS was caught by the foot, floating on its stomach. The cold water rose up to our thighs, I held my book in my hand to spare it another dip; thick snowflakes were falling onto the water and disappeared instantly. We had taken off our boots but our pants stayed wet and cold all night and into the morning, when we fell asleep, all three of us, without posting a guard, in a little forester’s cabin deep in the woods. We had been walking for almost thirty-six hours, we were worn out; now we had to walk some more.