Georg kept stacking the buckets. He didn’t want to stop. He didn’t want to listen, but he could hear Schneider and everything he said. They’d gone only eight kilometers before the border police found them. Eight kilometers in three days because they went in circles once they were in the forest. He’d heard it from Graf who overheard the nurses talking by the infirmary, and so it had to be true. They walked around the same trees and couldn’t find their way, and on the third day they lay down beside a beech tree and went to sleep. That’s how the police found them, sleeping by a stream.
He saw them the next morning when he marched to the hole. They were strung from two of the linden trees in front of the church. They swung like lanterns, and the littlest one had reached around the rope and his fingers froze like that, they clenched tight by his throat. All day Georg thought of them and how they swung. He stopped by again that afternoon. He stayed late at the trench so he could walk back alone and visit them. Idiots, the way they did it. They should have planned it better. They should have brought maps with them and a compass and warm clothes because the weather was turning already and soon the snow would start and what would they do then, what would they do in their shorts and their thin socks. They could have asked him. He would have gone. He and Müller both, and the five of them would be far from the trench and the mattresses and the linden trees. They might even be home already. He tried to feel sorrow for them, but only anger came. He wanted to bring them back so he could shout at them and tell them all the things they’d done wrong. He wanted to shake them by the shoulders. He stood below the branches instead and looked at their muddy shoes.
The next morning someone had lettered a sign by the base of each tree where they hung. Look at me, the signs said, look how far I ran. They hung for four days, and then they were gone and the signs were gone, too, but he could still see the marks the strap had left on the branches.
5
Etta waited until Max had left before she went into his room. He was out walking again. He left every morning after breakfast. He came home for lunch, but he left again right afterward and was gone until dark. Who knew where he went or what he did outside. When he came back at night he paced around his room, and she heard him knocking sometimes against the walls. The sound kept her from sleeping.
“This one’s a roamer,” her mutti had always said when Max was just a baby. “I can tell from the light in his eyes.” He followed the tracks when he got older, all the way to Hafenlohr and farther on to Rothenfels. He was restless, so different from Georg, who stayed inside his room even on sunny days. Max climbed trees and dug around the muddy banks, and he brought home frogs and worms and river snakes. He hid them in secret places, but she found them anyway. “This is a house,” she’d say, “a house and not a zoo,” and she’d march him back to the river. “You have to put them back in their spots. You have to bring them home.” He hid them and she found them, even the snails in their sour brown water. What a mess you’ve made, what a stink, and though she aired his room and mopped his floors with vinegar, the smell lingered. She scolded him then. She shook her finger in his face, but he looked at her with those pale eyes, crestfallen that his three snails had died neglected in their jar, and she gave up.
His room was messier now than it had been when he was little. She took off the sheets and pillowcases and dusted all his books. An old almanac and Bernhardt Otto’s Natural History of Birds and the complete works of Lucretius and books in Greek and English and French. His room looked more like the library in Würzburg than a bedroom. She left the books open so he wouldn’t lose his place. He had underlined some passages in pen and marked the margins with strange scribblings, with stars and numbers and arrows that pointed to nothing. They taught him strange things in the army. He hadn’t written in his books before, not even with a pencil.
She opened his window to bring fresh air inside. A lone black bird flew in circles above the trees. She caught a motion below. It was Josef out there in the garden, hopping on one foot. She leaned on the sill to get a better look. There he was, jumping up and down first on one foot and then the other, his face flushed from the damp air. He stopped his hopping and started to run in place. Puffs of steam came from his mouth as he exhaled. He was exercising, and in the cold. It was no good, these strange exertions. Every day he became more peculiar. Sometimes he sat in his chair and rubbed his chin and she wondered who he was, this old man with his pen and paper, and what he’d done with her Josef.
She went down the stairs and out the back door. “Josef,” she said, “stop for a while and come inside.” She reached out to touch his arm, but he kept running. “It’s too cold out here. You’ll catch a chill. You’ll get a lung infection.”
“I’m getting ready,” he said. His nose dripped, but he didn’t stop to wipe it.
She sniffed but could smell no beer on his breath. “Tell me what you’re doing.” She reached for his arm again and caught it.
“They need me.” He licked his lips. He was tired from running and began to slow his pace.
“Come inside for a while,” she said again. So he’d seen the posters and wanted to join. She knew he’d see them when he went into town. They were everywhere, by the waterspout and the bank and outside the beer hall, calling for old men and boys to sign up and fight. Come and join the Volkssturm, they said. We’ll all do our part. For freedom and survival. Men were joining in all the towns and cities, old men and the injured and veterans with bandages. Soon there would be only women left in Heidenfeld, old women and the bell ringer and the priest to bless the dead.
Josef squinted at her but didn’t resist. They went to the kitchen together, and she pulled his damp jacket from his arms. Drops of sweat rolled down his forehead and into his eyes. “I don’t have much time,” he said, and he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.
“Have some soup, and then you can go back outside.”
“We meet next week.” His hand shook a little as he lifted his spoon. “We’re all going together.”
She set a spot for Max in case he came back early. Josef dipped his bread and drank from his bowl, but he stood up from the table as soon as he had finished. He went back outside, and she watched him from the window. He ran between her beds, where the chamomile grew and the peppermint. He stopped every little while and bent at the waist. She shook her head. All those old men training like soldiers. They were an army of grandfathers, and it was a sorry thing to see. He pumped his arms. His hair was wet and lay flat on his head, and as he hopped she saw his bare ankles under the cuffs of his pants. He’d forgotten to put on his socks again. She noticed this only now. She’d set them out for him, and still he forgot. He’d get blisters in those stiff leather shoes, but she didn’t go to him.
How good it felt to move in the damp air. How good to get the heart pumping instead of sitting by the radio waiting for more news. He had another half hour before the announcers came back on. Every day the battle was coming closer. Every day another place was lost, and they’d have to work together to push the Bolsheviks back, every boy and every man from nine to ninety. Age didn’t matter when duty called. It was almost two years since Stalingrad was lost, two years falling back, and it wasn’t any better to the west. The Amis were pushing hard against Aachen and Metz, but none of the sacrifices were in vain, the announcers were certain. Every battle lost was a prelude to the victory that would come, and so he ran around Etta’s rosebushes and the low herb beds. He slipped on the wet stones and went down to his knee like a suitor asking a girl to dance. His wool pants were torn. His knee throbbed. It would swell and turn blue, but he didn’t care. He looked up toward the kitchen window to make sure Etta hadn’t seen, and then he pushed himself back up and kept on with his running.