Prologue

“Why are you here?” Abrams asked.

“General Pearce ordered me to see you, I’m seeing you,” Bianco said. He peeled tinfoil off the insides of a cigarette pack.

“Major, Major,” Abrams scolded softly, “I meant why are you in Nuremberg?”

“Because I’m in the Army,” Bianco said. He concentrated on rolling the tinfoil into a ball.

“You can be in the Army at Bragg, Jeffersonville, Tacoma . . . why Nuremberg?”

He turned in his chair and looked out of the open window. The breeze that came in was hot and full of stone dust from the rubble that still covered the city. A mansion had stood on the lot next door; wrought-iron gates showed through dust and broken columns.

“You were supposed to go home in January, Lou,” Abrams said. “It’s July. That’s seven months in this hole that you didn’t have to spend.”

Bianco rolled that last of the tinfoil and held up the ball.

“For the war effort,” he said.

“The war’s over,” Abrams said.

“So it is.” Bianco pitched the ball into the waste­basket.

“Then why are you still here?”

“Pearce told you, didn’t he?”

“Pearce says you’re waiting for them to capture Johann Speiser,” Abrams said.

“With his permission,” Bianco said.

“He thought you meant a couple of weeks, not seven months.”

Bianco didn’t say anything.

“What did you do here for seven months?” Abrams asked.

Bianco shrugged. “Memorized Gone with the Wind, screwed whores, went to the movies.”

“And to the trials?”

“At first,” Bianco said.

Abrams leaned across the desk. “How’d you feel?”

It wasn’t a trick question, Bianco realized, Abrams really wanted to know.

“I felt sorry for them,” Bianco said.

“Me too,” Abrams said softly. “They were just shaky men whose clothes didn’t fit . . .” He trailed off, and lit a cigarette. After a moment he said, “You opened Belzec, didn’t you?”

“It’s in the file, Doctor.”

Shouts came through the open window; they heard glass breaking somewhere.

Abrams said, “Speiser was commandant of Belzec, right?” No answer from Bianco. “That’s why you’re waiting for him, isn’t it, Major. For what he did at Belzec.” His voice got very gentle. “Look, Lou,” he said, “if we capture Speiser, we’ll hang him. If no one gets him, he spends the rest of his life rotting in a Brazilian jungle. What can you do to him that’ll be worse than that?”

“I don’t want to do anything to him. I want to ask him a question.”

“You waited seven months to ask a question?”

“I guess I did,” Bianco said.

“What question?”

Bianco didn’t answer. The office was quiet in the heat; the breeze stopped and the stone dust in the air settled, leaving another layer of powder over everything. Bianco lit a cigarette. The smoke didn’t move and he looked at Abrams through it.

“What question?” Abrams asked again.

“You’re a psychiatrist, right?”

Abrams nodded.

“So Pearce can’t order you to tell him what I say.”

“He can, but I don’t have to obey.”

“Will you?” Bianco asked.

“Not if you don’t want me to.”

Bianco sat back. “I don’t.”

Then he said, “Okay, I’ll tell you. I want to tell someone. But it’s not what you think. It’s not because of the lime pits and ovens. As bad as that was, we were used to it by the time we got to Belzec. No, not used . . . I’m still not used to it. But that’s not why I’m here. It’s something else. A feeling I got there . . .”

“I’m supposed to be able to deal with feelings,” Abrams said.

“Sure, sure.” Bianco paused, then said, “I don’t know how to start . . .”

Abrams leaned over and opened a metal cabinet next to his big carved-oak desk and took out a bottle of whisky and two paper cups.

“A little schnapps’ll make talking easier,” he said, and he poured two stiff shots and gave one to Bianco. Bianco sipped. It was good stuff and went down smoothly—the spoils of war, he thought. He took another sip, then drank it down at once and waited for it to settle the shaky feeling he had most of the time. The wind came up again, riffled papers on Abrams’s desk, then died, and everything was quiet.

“We got to Belzec in April,” Bianco said quietly. “April ninth, just as the snow was melting.” He held out the cup, and Abrams refilled it. “The weather was crazy then. It would rain, then the sun would come out, then it would rain again. Little squalls like that all day long. It was warm for April, but there was still a crust of ice on the ground, and our boots broke it and sank in the mud, so we had to go slowly, staggering from barracks to barracks, following the food trucks and medics. There was an English squad with us and their major was an aristocrat of some kind. Named Reynolds. One of those thin-nosed Englishmen who looks like everything smells bad. Only there it did. Awful. And Reynolds had this silver flask with him and he’d take a sip, then hand it to me, and when we finished it, he’d send his sergeant back to the truck to fill it up again. I can see that flask clearer than I can see Reynolds’s face. It was silver, and it had vines and flowers carved on it; and the guy’s initials, and some kind of crest . . .” Bianco stopped, then smiled. The skin around his narrow light brown eyes was dark, and he was too thin, but the smile was attractive and made him look younger. “I’m not here to describe English heirloom silver, am I?” he said.

“No,” Abrams said gently.

“The point is, I looked at the flask so I wouldn’t look at what was all around us. We drank, and checked lists to keep from looking at it. Ah, the lists . . .” Bianco finished his third whisky, and Abrams poured another.

“The Krauts kept lists of everything. Who the prisoners were, where they came from, when they died. Lists of kapos, and the Jews who wouldn’t be kapos. Lists of the supplies that came in and of the stuff that went out. . . . That was some list, that was.” He leaned forward, holding his cup. “Clothes, money, jewels, gold by the ounce, from their teeth, Captain. But you know that. They cut the women’s hair, weighed it, put it on a list, and sent it home to stuff mattresses . . .”

Bianco’s voice had gotten shaky, and he stopped. Abrams was quiet, and after a moment, Bianco went on.

“By noon, we’d checked the dead and dying in Barracks 552, and went on to 554 . . . pretty drunk by then. Staggering in the mud with the wind blowing rain off the pine needles. I remember I had to keep wiping my glasses. We stopped in front of 554, swigged some more, then pushed open the door. It was pretty dark at first, so I couldn’t see who was there and who wasn’t. Then the sun came out, lit the place up, and two little boys ran to us . . . ran . . . and yelled ‘Welcome, Americans!’ in English. I realized then that the place didn’t smell. I mean it did, but only of mud and wet wood. So I thought they were long dead and gone, except for the kids. Then I saw them. Thirty-­five of them standing next to their bunks in a line, like soldiers at inspection. We all stared at each other for a long time. They had hair, and teeth. Oh, they were thin, but not starving. And pale, but winter pale, not the color of starvation.

“Then one little man left the lineup and came up the aisle. He had dark hair, with a beard, and a little cap on his head. Tears ran down his face and he held out his hand to me, and said, ‘My name is Jacob Levy. Thank you for coming,’ in English. I didn’t want to touch him; the prisoners were covered with lice and there’d been typhus in the camp. But I took his hand. I couldn’t help it—something about the man—and I started to say something, I don’t know what; ‘you’re welcome’ maybe. But all at once I started crying. Then Reynolds shook hands with him, and he cried. Christ, what a scene. They all came toward us then, all in tears, but all smiling; and me and Reynolds and the little guy stood at the door like hostesses at a wedding, and shook hands with those ghostly-­looking men as they went out into the open air. They hugged the little guy, and he was the last one to leave. Just before he did, he looked back at the place, and I watched his face. But it was blank, except for the tears. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Then he followed the others outside as one of the transport vans pulled in through the mud.

“I know I was drunk. But even so, I knew it was nuts for thirty-­five men, all from one village . . . they were, you know . . . one village . . . to be alive, and well. So I stayed there to look around. I didn’t expect to find anything but I looked anyway. I walked down the aisle between the bunks with the sun going and coming, and at the back wall, behind the bunks, I found this pile of sealed cartons. I ripped one open, and found the answer.”

Bianco paused, and Abrams leaned forward.

“They were full of cans of food,” Bianco said. “Cans and cans. Beans and figs, fish, and some kind of meat paste. Meat, Doctor. In Belzec in 1945. They were from Poland, Germany, Latvia, and I picked them up and looked at them like I’d never seen a can before. I tore open the other cartons and found more food, enough to feed a platoon. I sat there on my haunches, a little dazed and trying to figure where they got the stuff. Who they murdered or bribed. Then I saw some gray stuff on the wall in front of me; and I stood up to look closer at it. It was faint, but there all right, and I touched it gingerly because it could have been any kind of crap. It was powdery, and it came off on my fingers. I looked around and saw that it was everywhere. You just had to look for it. It was under the windows, embedded in the wood grain of the wall and floor. Everywhere. The sun had stayed out, the barracks was getting hot, and I started to sweat. But not just from booze and sun. There was something about the place all of a sudden. About those cans of food, and that gray stuff all over. I didn’t like having it on me for some reason, so I bent down and ran my fingers against the floor to get it off. But more got on me from the floorboards, and I was really getting spooked. Then I heard something behind me and I pulled my gun. I don’t know what I thought I’d see, but there was this hazy figure in a dusty beam of sunlight, and I was so shaky I almost fired at it; but it was the little Jew. He stepped out of the sun and looked at me, then at the torn-open boxes.

“I said, ‘I found this food.’ And he nodded and said something in German. I don’t know what. Then I said, ‘Where’d it come from?’ and he smiled at me—the sweetest, gentlest smile I’ve ever seen—and he said in broken English that it came from God.

“I wanted to tell him that I couldn’t believe that. God wasn’t at Belzec that I could see, and I wanted to ask him about the gray stuff on the walls and bunk sides, but he shook his head, and, like a magician doing a trick, he stepped back into the sunlight. I yelled at him to stop, but he didn’t answer. Then I ran after him, but the place was empty. I just stood there for a second, all alone with the cans of food, and that dried mud or whatever it was. I meant to go back and make one more list of what I’d found. I even turned around to do it; but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. Don’t ask me why, that’s part of what I have to ask Speiser. Something in there scared the shit out of me, and after a minute or two, sweating and shaking, I gave up and left the place.

“The van was gone by then, but I wasn’t worried. They were taking the healthy ones to DP camps, and I thought they’d be there for days yet and I could question them in the morning. But Resistance Jews had started hijacking the trucks and helping the refugees get to Palestine; or as close to Palestine as they could. And they got that truck and all the men on it.”

Bianco put the paper cup down, “I don’t know where they are now. Or if they’re anywhere.”

Abrams stared at Bianco for a moment without saying anything, then he asked, “Is that it?”

Bianco nodded.

“Cans of food,” Abrams said, “and gray dust on a wall? That’s what you want to ask Speiser about?”

“Yes,” Bianco said.

“You waited seven months in Nuremberg, away from your wife, kids, home, to ask about shit like that? And a spooky feeling that grabbed you after you’d had a couple of flasks of whisky?”

“I know it sounds lame.”

“Lame isn’t the word. Speiser probably won’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“He will though. He requisitioned that food . . . he forged the papers to get it, and we thought it was for him and his brass. But all we found in their mess was moldy potatoes.”

Abrams opened Bianco’s file and started writing. “I’m asking Pearce to send you home, Major.”

Bianco jumped up. “You can’t do that. If you send me home now, I’ll never find out. . . .”

Abrams went on writing.

Bianco said, “Listen to me, for Christ’s sake; just listen.” He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and shoved it in front of Abrams. It was a list: of names arranged in alphabetical order:

Alldmann, Dabrowa, Poland

Dworkin, Dabrowa, Poland

Feldsher, Dabrowa, Poland

Fineman, Dabrowa, Poland

Gershon, Dabrowa, Poland

The list went on down the page.

“Thirty-­five of them,” Bianco said, “all from that one village. Some were old, two were little kids. All transported in 1941, and all alive. Why? And not just alive. Fed! That was a death camp, Captain. They were killing them day and night at the end. Thousands of ’em. But not these men. These men they fed when they were starving themselves. Thirty-­five Jews ate applesauce and canned fish while the SS ate garbage. Why?”

General Pearce closed Bianco’s folder. “Captain Abrams says I should send you home, Major. I’m sending you home.”

“I thought we had an agreement,” Bianco said.

“We did,” Pearce said. “I’m breaking it.”

“Why now . . . sir?” Bianco asked.

“You are, according to Abrams, ‘at serious risk emotionally’; he recommends you go home to get treatment.”

“Do you think I need treatment, General?”

Pearce didn’t answer; he concentrated on folding the orders. When Bianco first saw him, he’d had a pink, tight, midwestern-­looking face and the beginnings of a belly. Now his face was gray and slack, like Bianco’s, and his uniform was too big. Pearce put the orders in an envelope.

“Kind of sudden, isn’t it?” Bianco asked without the sir.

Pearce looked up. “There’s a truck convoy leaving for Frankfurt tonight from Dürer House at nineteen hundred. Don’t be late. From Frankfurt you have a lift to Kirkwall. . . .”

Bianco loved night flying, looking down at the black North Sea flecked with white foam. At Kirkwall there’d be strong tea waiting for him, oatmeal in the morning, and a view of Scapa Flow.

“From Kirkwall you catch a morning flight to Mitchell.”

Mitchell was fifty miles from home. Bianco had planted hemlocks the spring he left, and juniper to edge the driveway. That was four years ago.

Pearce held the envelope out to Bianco. Bianco didn’t move.

“I’ve been waiting for Speiser for seven months, and all I got for that were some drunken questions at the Easter dance. Now all of a sudden, I get an hour with the busiest psychiatrist in the world and orders to leave tonight. Why?”

Pearce said, “Take the envelope, Major.”

Bianco hesitated, then took it. “You’re going home, Major,” Pearce said softly. “Good luck.” He swiveled his chair to the side and picked up the phone. Bianco saluted and left the office carrying the envelope.

He was going home. The thought was so sudden, so full of emotion, that he had to stop and lean against the hall wall. Men passing looked curiously at him, and he pushed himself away from the wall and went into the men’s room. Like everything else in Nuremberg, the toilet belonged in a palace. The commode was raised on a marble pedestal, the sink was chipped marble, shaped like a shell. He ran water and looked at himself in the gilt-framed mirror over the sink. He looked sick and old, nothing like he had the last time he saw his wife, and he wondered how she’d react to this face.

He was smoothing water through his black and gray hair when it hit him that they weren’t sending him home because he’d waited longer than was sane for a man who’d never be found. They were sending him home now . . . tonight. . . because they’d caught Speiser at last, and they were afraid he’d find him and kill him before the Tribunal could hang him.

Abrams was half-­drunk when Bianco tracked him to the club. They were showing Grapes of Wrath for the third time and a bunch of officers sat in the club lobby, drinking and waiting for the movie to start.

Abrams sat alone, threading his fingers through his beard, drinking. He looked away when he saw Bianco, but Bianco came to the table and sat down.

“They got Speiser, didn’t they?”

Abrams closed his eyes. “How’d you know?”

“Just figured it out.”

Abrams said thickly, “They found him in a basement, in Munich. Munich. You’d think he’d have gotten farther in all this time. Still, he’s lucky it was us, not the Russians.”

“Why?” Bianco asked. “They’d hang him higher?”

Abrams finished his drink without answering.

“Did you believe what I told you today?” Bianco asked.

“I guess so,” Abrams said. “Yes, I did. Yes.”

Bianco grabbed Abrams’s hand; officers at nearby tables noticed and looked away, embarrassed.

“Let me see him,” Bianco said, trying to keep the pleading out of his voice. “It means everything to me. If you believed me, you know I won’t hurt him. Let me see him.”

They looked into each other’s eyes. Abrams looked away first.

“I can’t . . .” he said.

Bianco squeezed his hand. “I won’t have a second’s peace if you don’t. Not for the rest of my life.” Bianco was whispering, but the pleading in his voice was raw. He felt Abrams’s hand go limp in his.

“You swear you won’t hurt him?” he asked.

“I swear,” Bianco said.

Then Abrams said, “I want to hear what he says. What those men did.”

“Okay,” Bianco said.

Abrams thought another minute, but Bianco knew he had him. Then Abrams said, “It’s my ass if they find out.”

“Do you care?”

“No,” Abrams said, “I don’t.”

They stood up together; Abrams bought a half-­pint of vodka, and they opened the bottle and drank from it as they walked through the empty ruined streets to the Tribunal. Nearby, everything was quiet, but they heard yells in the distance, and the echo of someone running in another block. It was almost nine, but still light. The long northern twilight had just started and their shadows blended with the shadows of broken walls. At the Tribunal entrance, Abrams capped the bottle and put it in his pocket. A WAC with high, pointy breasts pushing her khaki jacket sat in the hot marble reception area. She nodded at Abrams and barely looked at Bianco, and together the two men went up the curving marble staircase to the second floor.

At the top of the stairs, MPs guarded double carved-oak doors. Abrams asked if the prisoner had been fed; one of the men said he had, but hadn’t eaten much. Abrams asked if the Judge Advocate’s man had been there yet. He had, said the MP, and they were coming back at ten to move the prisoner. Then the MP opened the door and closed it after them.

Bianco thought the room was empty until a tall man came out of the shadows next to the windows and stood in the middle of the room looking at them. Abrams and Bianco saluted, and the man returned the salute. He looked like Bianco thought he would: thin and blond with wide-­set blue eyes and white lashes. His hair was combed back from his high forehead, and a protuberant ridge in his skull made a line from his hair to his eyebrows. His nose was thin, so were his lips, but they were well formed, with a deep bow. He would have been handsome except that his skin was yellowish-­white, and Bianco remembered that he’d been in hiding for six months. In a basement without sun or fresh air.

The room they’d put him in was typical Nuremberg; except for the scarred oak-­paneled walls, everything in it was red—carpet, drapes, torn plush chairs. It was a deep red, almost maroon, and where the fabrics were worn, the nap was pink. The color of the room trapped the heat. Bianco’s shirt stuck to his back in a second and Speiser’s face shone with sweat.

“Ah, the Jewish doctor.” Speiser’s English was good. “I didn’t expect to see you again. But I welcome visitors. This room isn’t restful.”

Abrams said, “This is Major Bianco.”

Speiser smiled at Bianco and Bianco saw that his gums were swollen and gray, and his teeth looked loose. If he had scurvy, the Army would give him fresh oranges and massive doses of vitamin C before they hanged him. Bianco smiled back.

“And who is Major Bianco?” Spieser asked.

Abrams answered, “He commanded the American squad that opened Belzec and he has some questions to ask you.”

“I’m not required . . .”

Bianco interrupted, “I’m not from the Tribunal. In fact I’m going back to the United States tonight. This is a . . . personal question.”

“You don’t have to answer any questions, Commandant,” Abrams said quickly. “You have the same right as any prisoner in a democratic . . .”

Speiser waved at Abrams to be quiet, and he looked closely at Bianco. “Bianco’s an Italian name, isn’t it? Are you Italian?” he asked.

“My grandfather was,” Bianco answered.

“Ah . . . so it’s the grandfather who comes from that country of yellow scum that sold out the noblest army in history. . . .” He was full of life for a second; Bianco could imagine him in the gray uniform with the lightning on the lapels. Then the man sagged and lowered himself shakily into the worn plush armchair. “You hear the creaking of a corpse,” he said. “I don’t care where you or your grandfather came from.” He turned to Abrams. “Before the major asks his question, could I have some tea, and maybe a small piece of cake? They gave me meat to eat, but I couldn’t get it down. Still, I’m very hungry.”

Abrams almost ran to the door. “Of course,” he said. “Of course . . . in a second . . .”

He left them alone, and Bianco offered the commandant a cigarette, then lit it for him. Speiser inhaled deeply, then said, “The question is about Belzec.”

“It is.”

Speiser grinned, showing those ghostly gums. “I would have thought everything you found there was clear.”

Staggering rage overcame Bianco. He wanted to hit Speiser in the face, to smash the cigarette against his mouth. He took a deep breath, and said as steadily as he could, “It was clear.”

Abrams came back with the tea and a plate of cupcakes. They poured the tea, held their cups, and drank. Speiser put four cubes of sugar in his cup, and ate three of the cupcakes, then licked his fingers, poured another cup of tea, and sat back and said to Abrams, “Leave us alone, Captain.” It was an order. Abrams looked at Bianco and Speiser said, “He won’t hurt me, but I don’t care if he does. Neither should you.”

“But I—”

“Leave us alone, Captain.”

Abrams gave up and left them.

“It’s hard to discuss Belzec in the presence of a Jew,” said Speiser. A fog had come up and was drifting in through the open windows. The dampness settled on their skin, made them feel itchy, and the air took on a misty look that softened the red color of the drapes and carpet. Bianco wondered if Speiser was as uncomfortable as he was. He wiped his face, and handed Speiser his list of names, looking again as he did.

Levy, Dabrowa, Poland

Lippmann, Dabrowa, Poland

Luria, Dabrowa, Poland

“Do you remember those men?” Bianco asked.

Speiser glanced at the list, started to hand it back. “There were thousands in the camp. I don’t remember their names. . . .”

“These were special,” Bianco said softly. “They were all in Barracks 554.”

Speiser’s hand held the list in midair stretched toward Bianco. Sweat rolled down the side of his face and his pale skin got whiter. After a moment, he drew the list back and looked at the names again. “Are they alive?” he asked softly.

“They were when we opened the camp. Alive and well, alive and fed in a death camp—old men, children—with the gas and ovens going day and night . . . but they all survived . . .”

“Not all,” Speiser said mildly. “Three of them died in 1941.”

Bianco sat back. “You remember.”

“Of course,” Speiser said, then he laughed. “Don’t look so tense, Major. I remember, and I’m going to tell you all about how those men stayed alive.” Here Speiser’s smile changed; his eyes shone and Bianco had a sudden impulse to follow Abrams out the door. Speiser leaned forward so his face was close to Bianco’s. Bianco looked down at his hands, then folded them like a little girl at communion, and waited. Nothing happened and he looked up again. Speiser was still smiling. He deliberately reached out and put one of his hands over Bianco’s with a gentle touch such as he might give a woman.

“But I’m warning you, Major, you don’t want to hear it. Go after the Jew; get drunk together, find a woman, go home. Do anything but stay here and listen to me.”

“I want to hear,” Bianco said. He sounded stubborn and silly to himself, like a child. He looked up at Speiser, and Speiser patted his hand.

“Good,” Speiser said. “Very good, because I want so much to tell you. But I did warn you, didn’t I? So my conscience is clear.”

Bianco laughed at that before he could stop himself. Speiser laughed, too, then he stopped and drank down the rest of his tea. Bianco leaned forward and Speiser put the cup down.

“You’re very anxious, Major.”

“I’ve been waiting a long time,” Bianco said.

“The waiting’s over,” Speiser said quietly, then in the same soft voice he started to tell Bianco what had happened in Barracks 554. It was a long story, he told it well, and after a while, Bianco forgot to smoke, forgot to give Speiser cigarettes, forgot everything but what the other man was telling him. They laughed again later, crazy, joyless laughter that they couldn’t control, and Speiser grabbed Bianco’s arm, and Bianco tried to break free and he saw their wrestling shadows on the oak paneling, which made him laugh harder. Still later, Speiser spilled his tea, which they let run across the scarred table and drip on the red rug.

When Speiser stopped talking, Bianco stayed in a listening posture with his head to the side for a few minutes, then without a word he stood up, put the pack of cigarettes on the table, and went to the door.

“Aren’t you going to thank me?” Speiser asked from his chair.

Bianco opened the door and the MPs stationed on either side came to attention. Behind him Speiser called, “Don’t forget I warned you. Don’t forget they’ll live for years. . . .” Bianco slammed the door and took the stairs two at a time. But no matter how fast he ran away from that room, he thought he could hear Speiser’s voice coming from behind the heavy carved doors, “Alive somewhere . . . Palestine . . . America . . . somewhere . . .”

Abrams was in the lobby with the bottle, and right there, surrounded by inlays of green and rose marble, with the big-­busted blond WAC frowning at them from behind the receptionist’s desk, he opened it and handed it to Bianco.

“What’d he say?” he asked Bianco. Bianco took a swallow, handed the bottle back, and walked out onto the street. Abrams followed.

“What’d he say?” he asked again. “Why did he feed them?”

“He doesn’t know why he did anything,” Bianco answered. “He’s crazy.”

He left Abrams and hurried up the street toward Dürer House. He had six minutes to make the convoy. Abrams stood uncertainly on the Tribunal steps, then, clutching the bottle, he ran after Bianco. He caught up at the corner, but Bianco didn’t stop. The city was fogging up from the heat, the stone felt warm under their feet.

“He’s not crazy.” Abrams was out of breath. “Sick, scared, but not crazy.” Bianco ignored him and kept going. Abrams got a pain in his side and had to stop for a second, then he ran on, but by the time he caught up again, they were at the convoy. The headlights of the thirty or so trucks coming through the fog blinded Abrams and he thought he’d lost Bianco; then he saw him handing his orders to the convoy leader. Abrams wasn’t usually persistent, and even though he was drunk, he felt shy about asking Bianco again. But when Bianco got his orders back from the captain and started down the line of trucks, Abrams grabbed the other man’s arm. Bianco pulled away and swung up on his seat next to the driver.

“I know he’s not irrational,” Abrams shouted, but just then the motors started up. The roar was deafening, and Bianco shook his head to show that he couldn’t hear over the noise.

Four months later, the day after his first Thanksgiving home, Bianco and his brother David decorated their variety store for Christmas. They packed away the cardboard turkeys and plastic souvenir whales; they wrapped silver demitasse spoons with “Craig Harbor, L.I.” enameled on them, and packed them in a box with sateen gold-fringed flags and pillows that also said Craig Harbor. They took orange and gold paper leaves out of the windows, and put paper holly in their place; they put long-­sleeved blouses on the half-­forms in the windows, and on the display racks inside the store they hung plaid mufflers, ruffled aprons, and ties that said Merry Christmas. They put ribbon and wrapping and cards in the bins and put away the hunting boots and work shoes. They brought out boxes of costume jewelry and arranged it—pins, rings, bracelets, and earrings—on green velvet.

Before the war, Bianco had enjoyed the decorating, and had done most of it himself. He’d liked the sense of order it gave him, and he’d found that he was even a little fussy. Now it annoyed him. The jewelry seemed too small for his hands to manage. His cuff caught in the gold-­filled chains and pulled them off the velvet, and he gave up, left the jewelry arranging to his brother, and went down to the basement to get the toilet water and cologne they’d ordered for the season. He tried to carry too much and he dropped a seven-­dollar bottle of Prince Matchabelli’s Duchess of York cologne. It smashed on the cement floor and, as the heavy sweet smell of the stuff filled the basement, he had an impulse to smash the rest of the bottles against the furnace.

He cleaned up the mess and they finished the windows and displays, then unwrapped the cellophane Christmas tree they’d been using for years. The transparent needles were limp and torn; the decorations brightened it up some, but it was still a dismal-­looking thing. They hung scallops of tarnished tinsel across the ceiling, and he and David stood back to admire the effect.

Bianco thought the place had looked better before they decorated it and that his brother was acting like an old maid. He longed for his clean spare quarters at Camp Lee and the sense of doing things that mattered.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said to his brother.

They locked the front door and drove home.

A green Packard was parked in front of the garage, the living room lights were on, and when he opened the door, he heard Captain Abrams’s voice. He was telling June that German pastries were wonderful. Bianco closed the door quietly, and stood in the living room entrance to the side so Abrams couldn’t see him.

“Puff pastry filled with cream,” Abrams was saying, “covered with chocolate and nuts.”

“Bullshit,” Bianco cried. “There wasn’t an ounce of cream left in Germany.” Abrams laughed and they shook hands.

“What was I going to talk about?” Abrams said shyly. June said something about dinner and left them alone. He hadn’t been Abrams’s friend, they barely knew each other, but Bianco was enormously glad to see him. They examined each other, openly, kindly. Bianco realized that Abrams was dressed to go with a Packard, in the new look, with narrow shoulders and lapels and thin-­legged trousers. He looked taller than Bianco remembered, much handsomer; and Bianco wished he had something better on than his old hunting jacket and plaid shirt, he wished he was in uniform. During dinner he admitted it to Abrams and Abrams said he’d only been back a week and hadn’t had a chance to miss being a captain yet. Over dessert, coffee, and whisky, he told Bianco that Pearce’s diverticulitis got so bad they sent him home. He also told him that the trials were more unpopular than ever and they were even having trouble finding judges. Finally, after they took the bottle of whisky into the living room to sit in front of the fire, and June had said good night and gone upstairs, Abrams told Bianco that Speiser had been tried in August, found guilty, and hanged at Spandau two weeks ago.

“That’s why I’m here in a way. I saw him the day they hanged him; he asked me if I would ever see you again and I said I might, and he said, ‘Tell the major not to forget that the men from 554 were still alive.’ ”

As soon as Abrams said that, Bianco felt a grim, perverse satisfaction. The store, the Christmas tree, the decorations were a lot of fussy shit; the peace and sense of belonging they were supposed to give was specious. Somehow, and for all time, Bianco thought, Speiser had had the last word.