Eva Luna (5 page)

It was night by the time they finished digging the pits. Rolf noticed that the spotlights in the guard towers had been turned on, and night had become as bright as day. The Russian officer gave an order, and people were dispatched two by two to bring the bodies. The boy brushed off his hands, wiping them on his pants legs; he dried the sweat from his face, and with his brother Jochen walked forward to what awaited them. With a hoarse cry their mother tried to stop them, but the boys continued on; they bent down and picked up a cadaver by the ankles and wrists: naked, hairless, bones and skin, weightless, cold and hard as porcelain. They lifted it effortlessly and, tightly gripping the rigid form, started back toward the graves they had dug in the open square. Their load swayed slightly to and fro, and the head lolled backward. Rolf turned and looked at his mother; he saw her doubled over with nausea. He wanted to make a gesture of consolation, but his hands were occupied.

It was past midnight before they completed the task of burying the prisoners. They filled the graves and covered them with earth, but the time had not yet come to leave. The soldiers forced them to go through the barracks, to enter the
death chambers, to examine the ovens, to walk beneath the gallows. No one dared pray for the dead. In their hearts they knew that from that moment they would try to forget, to tear that horror from their souls, resolved never to speak of it, with the hope that time would erase it. Finally, slowly, exhausted, feet dragging, they returned home. Last came Rolf Carlé, walking between two rows of skeletons, all equal in the desolation of death.

*  *  *

One week later, Lukas Carlé returned. His son Rolf did not recognize him; when his father had left for the front, the boy was not yet at the age of reason, and the man who burst into the kitchen that night did not in any way resemble the photograph on the mantel. During the years he had lived without a father, Rolf had invented one of heroic dimensions. He had clad him in an aviator's uniform and covered his chest with medals, imagining a proud, brave warrior with boots so shiny a child could see himself in them. He did not associate that image with the person who appeared so suddenly that night and, thinking he was a beggar, did not even bother to say hello. The man in the photograph had a carefully trimmed mustache, and his eyes were as leaden as winter skies—authoritarian and cold. The man who flung open the kitchen door was wearing an oversized pair of pants held up by a cord around the waist, a threadbare jacket, a filthy kerchief around his neck, and, in place of the mirror-shine boots, rags wrapped around his feet. He was a rather small man, badly shaven, his bristling hair cut in clumps. No, that was not anyone Rolf knew. The rest of the family, on the other hand, remembered all too well. When his wife saw him, she clapped both hands to her mouth; Jochen leaped to his feet, over
turning his chair in his haste to retreat; and Katharina ran to hide beneath the table, something she had not done in a long time, but which was an instinctive act lodged in her memory.

Lukas Carlé had not returned out of any nostalgia for the hearth. Being a solitary person without a sense of country, he had never felt he belonged to that village—or to any other. He had returned because he was hungry and desperate; he preferred to risk falling into the hands of the victorious enemy rather than drag himself around the countryside any longer. He had deserted, and had survived by hiding during the day and traveling by night. He had stolen the identification papers of a fallen soldier, planning to change his name and erase his past, but soon realized that he had nowhere on that vast destroyed continent to go. The memory of the village with its pleasant houses and orchards and vineyards, as well as the school where he had taught so many years, held little attraction for him, but he had no other choice. He had won several decorations during the course of the war, not for bravery but for exercising cruelty. He was different; he had explored the murky depths of his soul; he knew exactly to what lengths he would go. After having tested the extremes, having passed the boundaries of evil and pleasure, it seemed a lowly fate to return to his former life and resign himself to teaching groups of runny-nosed, ill-bred children. It was his belief that man is made for war. History demonstrates that progress is never achieved without violence: grit your teeth and bear it; close your eyes and deal it out—that's why we're soldiers. Everything he had suffered had failed to instill in him any desire for peace; instead, it had etched in his mind the conviction that only gunpowder and blood can produce men capable of steering the foundering ship of humanity to
port—abandoning the weak and helpless on the high seas, in accordance with the implacable laws of nature.

“What's this? Aren't you happy to see me?” he asked, closing the door behind him.

Absence had not diminished Carlé's capacity for terrorizing his family. Jochen tried to say something, but the words stuck in his throat; only a guttural sound escaped him as he moved in front of his brother to protect him from an undefined danger. Frau Carlé's first act, as soon as she recovered, was to run to the linen chest and take out a large white tablecloth, which she spread over the table so her husband would not see Katharina—would not, perhaps, even remember she existed. With nothing more than a quick glance around, Lukas Carlé took over the house and regained control of his family. His wife seemed no less stupid, but the fear in her eyes and the firmness of her rump were as apparent as ever. Jochen had grown into a tall, husky young man, and Carlé could not understand how he had escaped being conscripted into the youth brigades. He scarcely recognized Rolf, but it took him only an instant to appreciate that the boy was tied to his mother's apron strings, and needed a jolt or two to wipe the spoiled lapdog look off his face. He would make it his business to make a man of him.

“Warm the water for my bath, Jochen. Is there anything to eat in this house? And you must be Rolf. . . . Come here and shake hands with your father. Did you hear me? Come here!”

After that night Rolf's life was never the same. In spite of the war and all its hardships, he had never known fear. Lukas Carlé taught him. The boy would not have a good night's sleep until years later when his father was found swinging from a tree in the forest.

The Russian soldiers who occupied the village were crude, destitute, and sentimental. In the evening they sat around the campfires beside their weapons and equipment and sang songs of their homeland, and, hearing the sweet sound of their village dialects, some of them wept with nostalgia. Sometimes they got drunk, and quarreled or danced till they dropped from exhaustion. The villagers avoided them, but a few girls, in exchange for a little food, went to their camps to offer themselves, quietly, never raising their eyes. They always returned with something, despite the fact that the victors were as hungry as the vanquished. The children were also drawn to the camp; they were fascinated by the soldiers' language, their war machines, their strange customs, and they were enthralled by a sergeant with a deeply scarred face who entertained them by juggling four knives in the air at a time. Rolf usually went closer than any of his friends, even though his mother had specifically instructed him not to go there, and one day found him sitting beside the sergeant trying to understand what he was saying, and practicing tossing the knives. Within a few days of their arrival, the Russians had located all the remaining collaborators and deserters in hiding and had begun the war trials—extremely brief because there was little time for formalities. Few people attended; they were worn out and did not want to listen to further accusations. Nevertheless, when it was Lukas Carlé's turn, Jochen and Rolf slipped in and sat at the back of the room. The accused did not seem to regret anything he had done: he merely stated in his own defense that he had obeyed his superiors' orders; he was not in the Army to deliberate, but to win a war. The juggler sergeant saw Rolf in the room, felt sorry for him, and tried to take him outside, but the boy sat firmly in his seat, determined to listen to the end.
It would have been difficult to explain to the sergeant that his pallor was not caused by any concern for his father, but by his secret hope that there would be enough evidence to sentence him to the firing squad. When, instead, Carlé was consigned to six months of forced labor in the mines of the Ukraine, Jochen and Rolf considered it an unbelievably light punishment, and secretly prayed that Lukas Carlé would die in that faraway land and never come back.

Hunger did not end with the peace; for years foraging for food had been their first priority, and that did not change. Jochen could scarcely read, but he was strong and persistent, and after his father left and after the shelling had destroyed the fields, he had taken charge of providing for his family by cutting wood, selling blackberries and wild mushrooms, and hunting rabbits and partridges and foxes. Soon Rolf was a partner in his brother's efforts and, like him, learned to pilfer odds and ends in the neighboring villages—always without the knowledge of his mother, who even during times of greatest hardship acted as if the war were a remote nightmare that had nothing to do with her; she was not, furthermore, one to compromise when it came to instilling moral values in her children. The boy became so accustomed to the gnawing in his innards that long afterward, when the markets were overflowing with the earth's bounty and fried potatoes and sweets and sausages were being sold on every street corner, he continued to dream of stale bread hidden in a hollow in the floorboards beneath his bed.

Frau Carlé succeeded in maintaining her serenity and her faith in God until the day her husband returned from the Ukraine to claim his rightful place in the household. Then her courage deserted her. She seemed to shrivel up, and she withdrew, engaged in an unending dialogue with herself.
The fear that had always been present finally crippled her; she had no outlet for her hatred, and it destroyed her. Unshirking, she continued to carry out all her responsibilities, slaving from dawn to nightfall, tending to Katharina, serving the rest of her family, but she stopped smiling or speaking—and she did not return to church, because she was not willing to get down on her knees to a merciless God who had ignored her just prayers that Lukas Carlé burn in hell. She also gave up trying to protect Jochen and Rolf from their father's excesses. The yellings, the beatings, the quarrels, all came to seem normal to her, and evoked no response. She sat and stared out the window with vacant eyes, escaping into a past where there was no Lukas Carlé and she was still a young girl untouched by affliction.

Carlé held the theory that human beings are divided into anvils and hammers: some are born to beat, others to be beaten. Naturally, he wanted his male children to be hammers. He would tolerate no weakness in them, especially in Jochen, on whom he experimented with his theories on teaching. He was infuriated when the boy's stuttering only grew worse and he began to chew his fingernails. Desperate, Jochen would lie awake at night inventing ways to free himself once and for all from that torment, but with the light of day he would bow to reality, hang his head, and obey his father, never daring to stand up to him, even though he was twenty centimeters taller and as strong as a workhorse. His submissiveness lasted until one winter night when Lukas Carlé felt the mood coming over him to use the red boots. The boys were old enough to guess what that oppressive atmosphere meant, those strained looks, the silence heavy with portents. As he always did, Carlé ordered the children to leave them, to take Katharina and go to their room and not
come out for any reason. Before they left, Jochen and Rolf glimpsed the terror in their mother's eyes, and saw her shivering. Soon afterward, lying rigid in their beds, they heard the Victrola blaring at full volume.

“I'm going to go see what he's doing to Mama,” Rolf announced when he could no longer bear the knowledge that just across the hall a nightmare was being enacted that had existed in this house for as long as he could remember.

“You stay there,” Jochen replied. “I'll go. I'm the oldest.”

And, instead of huddling deeper under the covers as he had done all his life, he got out of bed, his mind a blank. With precise movements he pulled on his trousers, his jacket, and his wool cap, and laced up his heavy boots. Then he unlocked their door, crossed the hall, and tried to open the door to the living room, but the bolt was shot. With the same slow and deliberate motions he used when setting his traps or splitting wood, he drew back his leg and with one strong kick burst the metal bolt from the door. Rolf, barefoot and still in his pajamas, had followed his brother, and when the door flew open he saw his mother, totally naked, teetering in a pair of ridiculous red high-heeled boots. Enraged, Lukas Carlé roared at them to get out, but Jochen continued forward; he walked past the table, brushed aside the woman attempting to stop him, and approached his father with such purpose that the man took a hesitant step backward. Jochen's fist struck his father's chin with the strength of a hammer blow, slamming him onto the sideboard, which collapsed with a sound of splintering wood and shattering china. Rolf looked at the inert body on the floor, gulped, ran to his room, pulled a blanket from his bed, and brought it back to cover his mother's nakedness.

“Goodbye, Mama,” said Jochen from the front door, not daring to look at her.

“Goodbye, Son,” she murmured, relieved that at least one of her sons would be safe.

The next morning, Rolf rolled up the legs of his brother's long trousers and wore them to take his father to the hospital, where a doctor reset his jaw. For weeks Carlé could not speak and had to be fed liquid through a straw. With the departure of her elder son, Frau Carlé sank into depression, and Rolf had to face his detested and feared father alone.

Katharina had a face like a little squirrel and a soul innocent of memory. She was able to feed herself, ask when she needed to go to the bathroom, and run and hide under the table when her father arrived—but that was the extent of her capacity. Rolf used to look for little treasures to bring her: a beetle, a polished stone, a nut she opened carefully to extract the meat. She repaid him with absolute devotion. She waited for him all day, and when she heard his footsteps and saw his upside-down face peering between the table legs, she murmured like a sea gull. She spent hours beneath the huge table, protected by the rough wood, until her father left or fell asleep and someone rescued her. She became adjusted to life in her shelter, attuned to approaching or receding footsteps. Sometimes she did not want to come out even though there was no danger, and then her mother would pass her a bowl of food, and Rolf would get a coverlet and slip under the table with her to curl up for the night. Often when Lukas Carlé sat down to eat, his feet nudged his children—mute, motionless, hands tightly clasped—beneath the table, isolated in their refuge where sounds, odors, and alien presences were muffled by the illusion of being underwater. The brother and sister spent so much time there that Rolf Carlé never forgot the
milky light beneath the tablecloth, and many years later, on the other side of the world, he awakened one morning weeping under the white mosquito netting where he slept with the woman he loved.