First I thought I’d fallen over a stick, a piece of wood, some largish object. It was a while before I took it in.
Me and Farmer Sterzer, we just stood there. If Hauer hadn’t been there to clear the straw away, I reckon we’d have stood there forever. I reckon we’d just have stood there unable to move.
When I saw those dead bodies I felt sick.
Not that it’s that easy to upset me. I saw more than enough in the war, believe you me. Everyone who was in the war saw enough dead bodies to last them a lifetime.
But a thing like that. All of them killed stone dead.
I mean, I’d known them all, they weren’t strangers, they were people you saw every day.
I couldn’t look at them. I was out of that barn double quick, and I threw up outside the machinery shed.
Everything else, it was like the world around me had stopped. All I still felt was that sickness. That horror. Whoever did it can’t be human. Whoever did it is a devil. Can’t be anyone from around here, we don’t have monsters like that in these parts.
If Farmer Hauer hadn’t gone on and on at us like that, I’d never have gone into the house to look for the others. Never in my life.
Farmer Hauer kept pressing us to go in, though. We followed him like lambs to the slaughter. He didn’t lose his nerve. I mean, it was almost unbelievable. He didn’t lose his head like us, like Farmer Sterzer and me. Everything he did, he was very calm and self-controlled. And he was the one who knew Danner and his family best. I mean, he was kind of almost like his son-in-law. Well, he was little Josef’s dad, right?
In his place I could never have kept such a good grip on myself. He never lost his nerve, not for a moment. I must say I admired him for that, for being so self-controlled. Almost cold-blooded, he seemed.
I’ve seen things in my time, back under Adolf they called us boys up at fifteen years old. They put us in uniform, gave us guns, and told us to go and shoot at the enemy. The enemy. What a laugh! The enemy was old men and mothers with their children, and I was supposed to shoot at them.
I was stationed in Regensberg. The Yanks had already surrounded the whole town. We were told it had to be defended to the last man. Better dead than fall into enemy hands, they said. What a load of garbage, none of that mattered now.
This group of mothers with their children and old men, they were walking through the town. They wanted the place to surrender without a fight. Only women and children and old men, they were, the other men were all at the front or taken prisoner.
The Party top brass had already headed for the hills, the filthy cowards. We even had to help them pack their cases.
They wanted to scarper for it quick, those gentlemen. They sent us kids, just kids of fifteen we were, out into the street. Told us to shoot the demonstrators. We were supposed to shoot those old men, and the mothers with their children.
So in all the confusion I scarpered too. Threw my gun away and went down to the Danube. I hid in the cellar of a burned-out house there. That evening I swam across the river under cover of darkness. I’m a good swimmer.
I was scared then. Terrified. I was scared to death.
I thought that was the worst thing I’d ever have to see in my life.
On the other side of the Danube, in Walch, an old woman hid me for three days. She didn’t have anything for herself anymore. Hid me till the Yanks came into the town.
She gave me some of her dead husband’s old clothes, too. Because I still had my Wehrmacht uniform on, and if the Americans caught me wearing it they’d have taken me prisoner. And the Nazis, if they’d caught me they’d have shot or hanged me out of hand for deserting, for betraying the Fatherland.
I walked home from Walch. Took me almost a week before I was finally back. The whole country seemed to be on the move after the Nazis cracked up. I saw ragged figures, dead people, hanged men.
But a horror like we saw at that farm, there’s no words for it. The way they were butchered—like animals.
What kind of man could he be? I mean, it was a monster, a lunatic.
And can you tell me, why the children too? Why those poor little mites, I ask you? Why?
Thou who lentest Thine ear to the thief on the cross,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
Thou who fillest the elect with joy in Thy mercy,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
Thou who holdest the keys of Death and Hell,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
Thou who wouldst liberate our parents, relations and benefactors from the pains of Purgatory,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
Thou who wouldst more particularly show mercy to those souls of whom no one on Earth thinks,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
Thou who wouldst spare and forgive them all,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
Thou who wouldst satisfy their longing for You right soon,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
Thou who wouldst take them into the company of Thine elect and bless them forever,
we beg You, hear our prayer.
The room is bathed in faint light.
He can’t tell whether the curtains are drawn or not.
He sees the room before him immersed in shimmering, milky whiteness. As if through a veil as thin as gossamer.
He sees the furniture of the room. The chest of drawers, dark brown oak, a heavy chest with three drawers. Each drawer has two brass handles. They are dulled, worn with use. You have to hold both handles of the drawers, that’s the only way to pull them open. They are heavy drawers.
A picture above the chest of drawers. A guardian angel leading two children across a wooden bridge. The children walk hand in hand. A boy and a girl. A stream races under the bridge at the bottom of the picture. The guardian angel, wearing a billowing white robe, has spread its arms protectively over the children. Barefoot, the angel is leading them over the wild torrent. A mountain range casts its shadow in the background. White snow can be seen on the mountain peaks.
The picture frame is gilded, the gilt is beginning to flake off in many places. The white of the frame beneath shows through.
He knows that the bed is on the far side of the room. With the bedside table next to it.
Both made of the same dark brown oak.
A death cross stands on the bedside table, with candleholders to its left and right. The candles are lit.
A girl lies on the bed. Little more than a child. Her eyes closed. Her face translucent, pale. Her hair, plaited into braids, hangs far down over her shoulders. A myrtle wreath has been placed around her forehead.
Hands folded on her breast. Someone, perhaps his wife, perhaps the woman who came to lay out the body, has put a death cross into her folded hands.
The girl wears a white dress. White stockings. Her feet are in white stockings, no shoes. Her figure seems to be slowly dissolving in the light of the room.
“Look at her, oh, do look, she is an angel now.”
He hears the voice of a woman. His wife? Feels his throat tightening more and more. Notices the nausea rising gradually inside him.
“She’s an angel now. Isn’t she beautiful?”
The nausea almost takes his breath away.
He turns and runs to the door.
Almost tears the door off its hinges, or so it seems to him. Hurries downstairs. All he wants is to get away. Out across the fields and meadows to the woods.
There he drops to the ground. He lies with his face in the cool moss. With every breath he takes in the cold, earthy aroma of the woods. A scream rises from deep inside him. The scream makes its way out. He screams in his despair. There is nothing human about the scream, he screams in despair like a wounded animal.