Georg’s group left before dawn. They climbed over broken glass and foundation stones and house timbers blackened from the flames. It took more than an hour to reach the Haug church and its ruined dome because there were no straight lines left in the city. Every street was blocked. The men slid and twisted their ankles and scraped themselves against the rubble, and one boy fell hard and bled from both his palms, but it would be just as bad for the Amis coming from the other direction, and they wouldn’t expect resistance, either. They’d be taken by surprise. Krauss was ahead in the line. Even in moonlight Georg saw his white head. He followed it like a lantern. He tripped over a jagged metal pipe and twice he stubbed his foot, and Krauss walked ahead, never bobbing and never swaying, steady as a beacon, and there was a soldierly grace in the way he went between the piles.
The other groups had left from their places, too. They made their way westward toward the river. The middle group went up Ludendorffstrasse, and the third group left from the south railway station and crossed up Edelstrasse. It was only a little ways from there to the Hall of Justice and then to the old crane by the bank, and God help those men, Krauss was saying up front, they have it worst of all. They pulled an unlucky number because their route was the hardest to defend, and nobody knew where the Amis were. The men beside Georg shook their heads in sympathy, and still they were grateful they weren’t in the southern group.
The sky went gold and then pink and there weren’t any clouds. A perfect spring day. Georg’s group passed Theaterstrasse, and they could double up in places now because the streets were wider and the Russian prisoners had cleared them out. They came to a stretch where all the streetlamps had bent to the ground like ribs and their canisters had popped and melted. It was stranger than any place he’d read about, stranger even than the planets Sannah had visited. He wanted to step aside when he saw them. He wanted to sit for a while and close his eyes, but he held his rifle and kept marching. He followed Krauss and his lucky lighter. They were headed toward the river. They were headed toward the bank where the Amis were crossing. He steadied himself, reaching with his free hand for signposts and fences and broken-down walls.
They came to the small streets, Rittergasse and Reibeltgasse and Holztorgasse, where the houses were built one right next to the other and no cars could pass. Neighbors could stand on their balconies and almost join hands across the street. They could look inside each other’s windows and smell the meat cooking in kitchens three doors down. All gone now. Just smoke and stones and dirty lace curtains. The climbing was harder here, and the men slowed. Some knelt behind the piles and rested, but Georg pushed on. He didn’t stop because Krauss wasn’t stopping. He didn’t reach for his canteen or his bread bag or bend down to tighten his laces.
Someone tapped his shoulder and whispered. The other groups hadn’t made it to the river. They were stopped down by the Justice Hall, and all their men had scattered. “There’s no one to meet us,” a fireman said. “We’re by ourselves.” They had climbed across the city, and the bridge was only a few hundred meters farther, just beyond the alleys and the houses. They had guns but not enough bullets and only a single Panzerfaust for when they got close. An old man stood up and began to wave his arms, and three boys pulled him down and covered him. “Let’s go to a cellar,” somebody said, “let’s get inside, let’s turn around before they spot us,” but they didn’t move. They didn’t march forward, and they didn’t retreat.
Georg stopped when he heard the news. He knelt behind the nearest pile, and Krauss was there already. He was drawing maps in the ash.
“Here’s the bridge,” Krauss was saying. “And here’s the crane, and this alley here will take us to the water. Every house has cellars on this street, and the primary school still has some walls. For cover,” he told them, and all the boys nodded. They listened extra carefully because it was a soldier talking, and he had a plan.
Georg looked at the circles and the squares Krauss drew. He drank from his canteen. He was awake as he’d ever been, and all his aches were gone, the blisters and the cuts, his itching feet and the burning in his eyes. He could see every movement, hear every scrape of boots against the broken stones, and still it was a surprise when the shooting began.
It made him queasy, how loud it was, and he spit up the water he’d swallowed. Men ducked into doorways and dove behind the piles, and there was no order to things. He was flat on his belly. He didn’t remember jumping down. Plaster fell over his head, and a piece cut deep into his cheek. He crawled toward the nearest door, and Krauss was inside already. He was always just a little ahead. They were in an empty living room. There were no tables left and no chairs, and the floor was covered with glass and plaster. The Landser behind him wasn’t quick enough. He went to his knees and toppled sideways, and his hands were dark from where he held his neck. He cried for the longest while, “Mutti,” he kept saying, “Mutti,” and Georg pressed his palms against his ears. Let him stop with his calling, let him go quiet, and then the soldier lay still.
Krauss touched Georg’s shoulder and pointed to the stairwell that led down to the cellar. They were outnumbered here in the alley. They needed to find the others so they could make a plan. They went together down the steps, feeling the wall with their free hands. There was a break in the foundation stones, and Krauss worked it with his hands, pulling out pieces and letting them fall. He huffed from the effort, and Georg came and knelt by the hole, and together they dug through the cracks. The dust stung their eyes and stuck fast to the sweat on their faces. Their fingers bled. They could see the neighboring cellar already. They worked more quickly then and pushed the last pieces through the hole. Krauss went first and Georg pushed him from behind, and then Georg went through, and Krauss pulled his arms. God help us, Georg thought, we’re retracing all our steps from inside the houses. We’re tunneling like cellar rats.
They worked their way from one cellar to the next, and when they reached the end of the block they waited together and listened. There was no way out from the cellar except up to the first floor of the house, and so they climbed the stairs. Someone was shooting across the way, five shots and then a pause, and eight more came from farther up. German and Ami, five and eight, five and eight, back and forth it went. They stopped only to reload or to run and find a better spot. They were in all the windows. Georg and Krauss hid behind the living room curtains and waited for an opening, and closer still a machine gun fired and rattled the empty window frames. The sound took away all his air. Georg held his rifle against his chest. He grabbed the stock and squeezed.
The shots slowed and then stopped, and the only thing Georg heard was roof tiles falling to the street. Krauss looked from behind the curtains. He signaled to Georg with his pistol. Time to go. Quick, before they start again. Krauss climbed through the window frame. Georg waited below the sill. He counted, one, two, and he went on three, jumping down to the stones. The air was thick all around him. Things moved slowly and only he was fast, and he saw things with a peculiar sharpness. Curtains fluttered in the empty frames. They hung like streamers and the doors were open to all the houses and even now a few flowerpots sat on the balconies and their vines had started to turn. He heard shots farther down and shouts from the men, and somewhere on Holztorgasse the tanks began to roll.
He was only ten paces behind Krauss, only eight, and Krauss was shooting at a window. He was weaving as he went, but Georg ran straight. Shots came from the windows across the alley. Three quick shots, then three more. Just before they reached the nearest house, Krauss fell and got back up. His leg was stiff, but he reached the door and rolled inside. He was sitting against the wall when Georg came through. He held his thighs with both his hands and fought back when Georg tried to see. The hole was smaller than one of the Ladies. It was clean and the skin puckered around it was clean, too, and white as candle wax, but the blood that came was a revelation. Georg had never seen so much before. It ran down Krauss’s leg and pooled on the rough floor, and there was no end to it.
Georg pulled a curtain from the window and shook the dust from it. He folded the fabric lengthwise and tried to tie it above the wound. Georg wasn’t even done yet with the knot when the blood bloomed in the lace and soaked it through.
“Give me my gun.” Krauss reached around the floor. Sweat beaded over his lips and the first drops rolled down his forehead.
Georg found it by the door. He set it beside Krauss, who gripped the handle and pulled it to his lap. His fingers were black with blood and powder, and he left marks on the wood. “It doesn’t hurt,” he said. His head tipped down.
Georg shook him by his shoulders and tugged at both his arms. “Wake up,” he said. “Open your eyes and look at me,” but Krauss didn’t hear. His breathing turned fast and shallow. He began to pant. Georg knelt down and reached inside Krauss’s pocket. The trench lighter was where he’d said it would be, where he could always reach it, even in his sleep. It was tiny as a lipstick case, and its metal had no mark, not even a scratch or a dent. Georg lit it and snuffed the flame and set the lighter against Krauss’s leg. Dust floated in the rays from the window, and Krauss sat in the sunshine, a perfect square of light, and only his eyes were dark. That was how Georg left him, with his luck charm and his gun.
Georg went down to the cellar of this new house and stepped through the hole to the next cellar and the next one after that. They were all connected by common walls, the houses on these small streets, and their rooms looked just the same. He tunneled through four houses, and sometimes he didn’t need to dig because the holes were big as doors. He found an old couple in the third cellar, and they lay together on the dusty floor as if sleeping. Their faces had no marks. He covered his nose and kept on climbing.
The walls in the fifth house were thicker than the rest and the hole was smaller. Georg wiped his forehead, and his hands were still sticky from wrapping Krauss’s wound. Krauss might be awake now. He’d be hot in the light from the window. He’d need fresh bandages. Someone to wipe his brow. Georg pulled hard on a rock and fell back when it came loose. He pushed himself through the broken wall and dropped to the floor on the other side. He stopped to catch his breath. A hand reached through the hole. Someone was behind him, following through the cracks. The boy made it look easy, the way he jumped to the floor, his bare legs flashing white. He wiped his hands across the front of his shorts. His knees were knobby, and his clothes hung loose. He carried an old Mauser pistol on his belt.
“We were almost there,” he said. He pushed his eyeglasses up with his thumb. One of the lenses had cracked. “All the way to the wooden gate and they tell us to turn around.” He shook his head at the shame of it.
Georg set his finger against his lips. Best not to talk, not even in low voices. The Amis might hear. They could be just up the stairs. They could be just outside the cracked cellar walls.
The boy shrugged. He walked across the room and looked through the next hole, stepping high on his toes to see. “Soon as I find my group we’ll be coming back. Those Amis don’t know what they’re in for.” He hoisted himself up. He kicked his legs like a swimmer and was gone.
Georg didn’t follow him. This hole was too small for him. It needed work before he’d fit, but he stayed where he was and didn’t try to make it wider. He couldn’t hear anything in the adjoining cellar. The knobby boy had slipped through another hole by now. They were reconstituting themselves, those boys, working their way back to the courtyard so they could begin again. Rolling together like mercury drops, and there was no end to things. The Wehrmacht officers were probably still shouting orders from the steps. They were eating and sitting at their tables and waiting for their men to come back from the center city and the wooden gate. Come back and go out again because there was time still to turn things around. Fight for the streets and the alleys and every last house, fight for the broken stones. They’re ours and we’ll fight for them, and all the while the Amis were taking the city, winding round it like a rope.
Georg crouched beside the cracked wall that led to the street outside. Krauss must be thirsty by now. Georg wanted to turn around and give him water. He wanted to go back to Ingrid and Irmingard and back to September when the leaves were just beginning to turn. Maus was waiting in her room. The windows were wavy with their old glass, and the sun shone through each afternoon and warmed her spot. They were digging every day and hauling up their buckets, and some days the air was warm as summertime. How good to fill buckets and to sleep at night on straw. How good it had been and he hadn’t known. The wall was gone and all the boys and the men who’d been there were gone, too. They planted boys in the stony fields and up along the hills. They planted them, and crosses grew.
He could hear voices from the street through the broken cellar wall. Some boys were outside, shouting. This cellar was more elevated than the others and the walls were halfway above the ground. Georg stood on some broken stones and looked out through the biggest crack. The knobby boy was standing in the alley with a taller boy in knee socks. “Drop your guns,” one of the Americans said in a funny sort of German. “Hände hoch.” The taller boy lifted his rifle. “Verdammt,” he said, and he swung it around, but the Amis were too fast for him. They shot from the curb and from windows and somewhere overhead. All his joints went loose. He went to his knees and spread his arms across the rubble. The knobby boy turned around. He ran toward a doorway and raised his pistol, and then he fell, too. He made no sound as he bled out. He lay on the street like somebody sleeping, and there were only old men left, who let their guns drop down. Four came out from one of the houses and then another three. They wanted no trouble, those gray men, they held up their hands and stayed in their places. One of them knew some English.
“Don’t shoot,” he said. “We have nothing but our helmets.” They knelt on the street like penitents and waited for instructions.
Georg stepped back from the wall. The Americans had all the river streets. The fight would move toward the dome now and the center of the city. He could still hear shots outside, but they were farther now and beginning to recede. Boys were dying just beyond the alleys. They were fighting and dying, and their fathers and grandfathers surrendered. They stood in line and held up their hands and lived. They followed the Americans who led them to the bank. Who knew there’d be so many men left in the city, the Amis must be wondering. Where to put them, where to keep them all.
Just a few houses away Krauss was sitting, and he’d be sitting there still when his window went dark. His fingers were probably still wrapped around his gun. All those winters in the field, all his walking from one town to the next, and none of it mattered now. Men had fallen around him and were buried in the snowbanks because there’d be no digging in the ground before April, and he had lived through Finland and Russia and all those strange islands. Men stopped to listen when he talked because he’d seen things that were worth telling. He had lived when his comrades died. He had lived and now he was gone. He was like Müller. He took his stories with him.
Georg paced around the room. His cheek hurt where the plaster had cut him, and his fingertips were scabbed. He lifted his gun and set it back down. He’d gotten one of the nicest ones on the table. The others had been jealous, he’d seen it in their faces, and he knew even then it was wasted on him, this fine Mauser with its wooden stock. He thought of Krauss and his luck charm. Who knew why his luck had changed, why all the things he’d done before had lost their spell.
More voices from the street. It was English that he heard now, only English and no German. He listened and was surprised when he understood. He’d been better at French than English and better still at Latin and at Greek. He’d go farther back if he could, to Sanskrit and Chinese, to the hieroglyphics the Egyptians left on their tombs, with their pictures of stars and birds and strange slanted eyes. How nice it would be to sit beside old Zimmermann’s shelves and read all those dusty grammar books. Rules were what he needed, rules and quiet and the chance to close his eyes. There’d be no medals for him, no ribbons or carved crosses. Müller was gone and Krauss with his lighter and the coins fell faceup when he dropped them. He wanted reasons for things. He lived while braver men had died, and he wanted to understand.
He tapped his pocket where the ladies were and went upstairs to the first floor of the house. He took a curtain from the wall. The fabric was yellow with dust. He wrapped it twice around his hand. He climbed through the broken window and held the curtain high over his head. Smoke rose from the dome and down by the south rail station. It softened the light and turned it gold, and all the buildings and the men had a halo around them. He stepped over the stones. He walked between the dead boys who had tried to shoot their guns. The English came back now that he needed it. He remembered all the words.
“Don’t shoot me,” he said. “I have no gun.” The wind caught the curtain, and it flapped in his hand like a banner.