After the laughter, the sergeant said, “Yes, Herr Obersturmbannfuhrer,” and he knocked Shmuel sprawling into the trench. “Back to work, Jew. Hurry, hurry.”
The officer was gone quickly, moving off with the younger chap. Shmuel stole a glimpse of the man striding off, calm and full of decisiveness. Could this simple soldier be the Master Shoemaker? The face: not remotely unusual, a trifle long, the eyes quick but drab, the nose bony, the lips thin. The overall aspect perfunctorily military. Not, Shmuel concluded, an unusual fellow to find in the middle of a war.
And yet because he seemed so easily in command and it was so clear that the others deferred to him, Shmuel took to thinking of the man as the Shoemaker.
Then a day came when the Germans did not fetch them for work. Shmuel awoke at his leisure, in light. As he blinked in it, he was filled with dread. The prisoners lived so much by routine that a single variation terrified them. The others felt it too.
Finally the sergeant came by.
“Stay inside today, boys, take a holiday. The Reich is rewarding you for your loyal service.” He grinned at his joke. “Important people crawling about today.” And then he was gone.
Late in the afternoon, two heavy trucks pulled into the yard. They halted next to the concrete building and hard-looking men with automatic guns dismounted and deployed around the entrance. Shmuel caught a glimpse and stepped away from the window. He’d seen their type before: police commandos who shot Jews in pits.
“Look,” said a Pole, in wonder. “A big boss.”
Shmuel looked again, and saw a large black sedan parked next to the truck; pennants hung off it limply; it was spotted with mud, yet shiny and huge.
A prisoner said, “I heard who it is. I heard them talking. They were very nervous, very excited.”
“Hitler himself?”
“Not that big. But a big one still.”
“Who, damn you? Tell.”
“The Man of Oak.”
“What? What did you say?”
“Man of Oak. I heard him say it. And the other—”
“It’s crazy. You misunderstood.”
“It’s the truth.”
“You
The car and the police commandos remained until after dark, and later that night, a crackling rang in the distance.
“Somebody’s shooting,” said a man.
“Look! A battle.”
In the distance, light sprayed through the night. Flames glowed. The reports came in the hundreds. It didn’t look like a battle to Shmuel. He recalled the sky over the crematorium, shot with sparks and licks of flame. The SS was feeding the Hungarian Jews into the ovens. The smell of ash and shit filled the sky. No bird would fly through it.
Abruptly the shooting stopped.
In the morning the fancy vehicles were gone. But things did not return to normal. The prisoners were formed into a column and marched off along a heavily rutted road through the forest. It was February now, and much of the snow had melted, but patches of it remained; in the meantime there had been rain, and the road was mud which congealed on Shmuel’s boots. The woods on either side of the road loomed up, dense and chilly. To Shmuel they were the woods of an ugly German
A mile or so away, the woods yielded to a broad field, yellow and scaly with snow. At one end of it, the earth mounted into a wall and at the other, the nearer, a concrete walkway lay and a few huts huddled in the trees.
“Boys,” said the sergeant, “we had a little show out here last night for our visitor and we’d like your help in cleaning up.”
The guards handed out wooden crates and directed the prisoners to harvest the bits of brass that showed in the mud alongside the walkway. Shmuel, prying the grimy things out — they were, it turned out, used cartridge cases — felt his knees beginning to go numb in the cold, his fingers beginning to sting. He noted the Gothic printing running across the box in his hand. Again, the melodramatic bird and the double flashes of the
“He certainly fired enough of the stuff,” said the pipe smoker to one of the other guards.
“We could have used some at Kursk,” said another man bitterly. “Now they shoot it off for big shots. It’s crazy. No wonder the Americans are on the Rhine.”
This exercise was repeated several times in the next few weeks. Once, several prisoners were jerked from their sleep and marched out. The story they told the next morning was an interesting one. After they’d picked up the spent shells, the Germans had been especially hearty to them, treated them like comrades. A bottle had even been passed around to them.
“German stuff.”
“Schnapps?”
“That’s it. Fiery. An instant overcoat. Takes the chill out of your bones.”
The Big Boss — Shmuel knew it was the Shoemaker — was there too, the man said. He’d walked among them, asking them if they were getting enough to eat. He handed out cigarettes, Russian ones, and chocolates.
“Friendly fellow, not like some I’ve seen,” said the man. “Looked me square in the eye too.”
But Shmuel wondered why they’d need the shells back in the night.
A week, perhaps two, passed, though without reference to clock or calendar it was hard to tell. Rain, sun, a little snow one night. Was there more activity around the concrete building? More night firings? The Shoemaker seemed everywhere, almost always with the young officer. Shmuel had never seen the civilian — the one they said was a kike — again. Had he been taken away like the boy said? And he began to worry about this “Man of Oak.” What could it mean? Shmuel started to feel especially uneasy, if only because the others were so pleased with the way things were going.
“Plenty to eat, work’s not so bad, and one day, you’ll see, the Americans’ll show up and it’ll be all over.”
But Shmuel began to worry. He trusted his feelings. He worried especially about the night. It was the night that frightened him. Bad things happened in the night, especially to Jews. The night held special terrors for Jews; the Germans were drawn to it unhealthily. What was their phrase?
Light flashed through the barrack. Shmuel, dazed out of his sleep, saw torch beams in the darkness, and shadows. The SS men got them awake roughly.
“Boys,” the pipe smoker crooned in the dark, “work to do. Have to earn our bread. It’s the German way.”
Shmuel pulled the field coat around him and filed out with the others. His pupils were slow in adjusting and he had trouble making out what was occurring. The guards trudged them through the mud. They had left the compound. Guards with automatic guns prowled on either side of the column. Shmuel peered up through the fir canopy. Cold light from dead stars reached his eyes. The dark was satiny, alluring, the stars abundant. A wind howled. He pulled the coat tighter. Thank God for it.
They reached the firing range. Fellows were all about, a crowd. Everybody was there. Shmuel could sense their warmth, hear them breathing. All the SS boys; the Shoemaker himself, smoking a cigarette. Shmuel thought he saw the civilian too, standing a little apart with two or three other men.
