Michael is standing over there with the boy from the forest, holding him by the shoulders.
‘Come on, Heinrich,’ Manfred shouts, and thumps Michael on the back. ‘Come on, for goodness’ sake!’
_ _ _
There is a passage running from the pigsty into a system of pens, the smallest some five by five metres. This is where Manfred leaves me, two hands on my shoulders: wait here …
The earth in the pen has been rooted up – trotter marks everywhere, cloven hooves stamped in the mud.
Manfred lights a cigarette.
He opens his eyes wide:
‘Piggies!’
_ _ _
The boy’s head has been shaved.
He looks down at the ground and shows no reaction to the Lithuanian yelling at him.
The Lithuanian goes up and punches him in the face. The boy staggers backwards and looks up inquiringly. The Lithuanian yells some more.
The boy moves his lips in an echo, unable to understand.
The Lithuanian lifts the butt of his rifle.
‘He’s deaf, for God’s sake, Bulbis,’ Manfred calls out, laughing, and puts his hands to his ears. ‘Deaf! He can’t hear anything! Hello!’
The Lithuanian smiles, embarrassed, then turns back to the boy, holds his hands up in front of him, joins them together, flutters his fingers down as he draws them apart, a mime concluded by his hands tossing something over his shoulder.
The boy is perplexed. He stands open-mouthed, watching the man’s hands.
The Lithuanian exaggerates his movements, the tip of his tongue protruding from his lips in concentration, but to no avail.
Manfred laughs.
Then he shouts:
‘Come on, get on with it!’
The Lithuanian removes his belt and pulls down his pants, nodding to the boy. Now he understands.
Everything off?
With each item of clothing the boy removes he glances up.
This too?
That too.
And there he stands, in underpants and boots, body crooked and deformed from malnutrition, his navel a tight knot.
Boots as well?
Boots as well.
The boy hesitates, shuffles his feet, and gazes back at the ground. He does not remove his boots.
The Lithuanian steps forward and knocks him down, pulls the boots from his feet and tosses them on the dungheap. The boy gets up and stares at his boots.
He bends down and takes off his underpants.
The Lithuanian doesn’t waste any time.
He snatches him up, one arm between his legs, the other under his chest, throwing him into the pen.
Manfred howls with laughter. Hans and Michael join in.
Someone produces a hip flask and offers it around.
The boy is covered in mud, he stands quite still, eyes on the ground.
Then he lifts his gaze and smiles awkwardly.
He cannot yet hear the screaming hogs in the sty, though they batter at the door. Nor can he hear the Lithuanian who climbs the fence and kicks the pin from the hasp.
_ _ _
One of the boars, black with a white spot on its right ear, charges immediately, rams the boy at the hip, butting him with the side of its head.
The boy is sent flying. He scrambles to his feet, struggling to find purchase. The boar is upon him, raging, battering the small of his back with its head, tossing him around the pen – the boy flails, upended.
He has hurt his head; his face is in the mud.
He is very still.
The boar gores at him now with its snout, snorting and grunting. The boy lifts his head; the boar recoils, four, five metres, then returns, snout to the mud, flipping him over with a toss of its head.
The boy’s mouth is full of earth.
Michael goes up and pokes at him with a stick, thrusts out his lower lip, shrugs.
‘Dead,’ he shouts.
‘What, already?’ says Hans.
The second boar has been passive – this one is smaller, mottled pink and black, with white ears. An aperture in its flank is held open by a surgically inserted metal collar with a glass peephole, exposing the guts that churn inside. Pus seeps from the wound. It trots over nimbly, skipping across the mudbath, stretching its great curved head out, nostrils moist and flaring, and issues a grunt from its pink jaws.
Its tongue is between the boy’s lips now, trailing saliva across the mouth of the corpse.
The other discharges a hard jet of piss into the mud.
The smaller one is the first to bite.
To begin with they do not penetrate, but toss and flail their heads.
After a moment they rip and tear.
Manfred grips my jaw, clasps my head tight in his hands.
‘Look, Heinrich, look …’
I see the slop turn inside, through the glass: the boy’s flesh devoured, ingested into the intestines, the stomach.
‘There we are,’ he says. ‘Just like that.’
He lets go, and I twist away.
‘Only it ought to be slower,’ he says. ‘Much slower.’
_ _ _
The water is sweet and cool; I scoop it up in my hand and drink, splash my neck, dip my head into the bucket, rub my scalp, and groan.
Michael and Hans laughed. I couldn’t keep it in. But I made eye contact with Manfred, my hands on my knees. The look in his eye was hard as stone.
I straightened up, and teetered over to the well without looking back. I feel better now.
‘It’s an instinctive reaction, that’s all,’ says Manfred, and squeezes my neck. ‘It’s because we’re animals. And animals don’t like to see other beasts suffer.’
‘I can’t go on with this, Manfred,’ I say. ‘Why am I even here? My part of the job is done …’
‘Rubbish,’ he says. ‘It’s like when you see someone yawn, you yawn too. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.’
I wrench myself away.
‘I want nothing more to do with this, Manfred … This isn’t police work, it’s a slaughterhouse …’
‘But you must, Heinrich. You have to be with us for the hunt …’
I am about to reply, but pause as he puts an index finger to his lips.
‘I’m not SS,’ I tell him, staring
