Jew: a novella by D.O. Dodd

"The ending will change
your view of history."
-Gaston Maudet


Chapter 1


THERE WAS cold weight pressing upon all parts of his body. He found himself awake in blackness, his eyes coming open uneasily, as though his lashes were webbed together. His breathing was strained in the confined space. It lingered to return to him; the invasive stench of refuse left out in the sun for months on end. It was difficult to move his eyes, to move his body against the chilled smoothness that squat his legs, back, chest, stomach, groin... His cheek was flattened. He inched his head sideways to relieve the pressure on his nose and lips. He found that his tongue was out and he languidly worked it back into his mouth. On that sideways angle, he tried lifting his head. He could not. The movement pained his ear.

The reek was now a potent stain in his lungs, urging him to action.

Incited, he took notice of his arms, stretched away from his sides, and realized that he was trapped. Panic surged through his heart, but his body, weak and pinned as it was, could not shift. He struggled to move his left foot, his toes were bare. His right foot would not budge. He became aware of light-- pale white, filtered vaguely green and pink-- as he noticed that his left arm was bare, that his entire body must be naked. Why naked? Then came the drone of buzzing, as though from beyond a wall. He tried moving his fingers on each hand. The fingers on his right hand were jammed against two cool smooth surfaces, like marble. As he stirred the fingers of his left hand, they felt what must have been hair, cold and dusty-dry.

It was a trick to turn over, to face what he suspected might have been up. As he strained and struggled, he felt hard edges intrude upon his body, attempting to tangle with him as they became displaced. The light closed over in one space and opened in bits in another. The drone of buzzing became louder. He felt what must be a foot with his foot. Sole to sole. Frigid. The muscles in his neck went taut as he turned his head to see a stopped living thing unto itself, an orb, an eye, trained on him with vacuous intent. Then—as though bared by a shadowed hint of dawn-- a face became apparent. A woman with her breathless mouth open. Stalled.

It was then that he found the strength. He thrust his left hand upward. It smacked against a bulk, his fingernails digging in, then plucking out, his palm searching round, finding the edge, his fingers sliding around to discover space before another bulk. The severe meeting of shapes beneath his back was atrocious. He turned on his side and pushed with his right hand, his straight arm, trying to bend his elbow in the confines, inching toward the indefinite outline of the bulk above him. He squirmed with his shoulder and kicked down to find a place for his feet, working his way into the irregular wedge of space between what he now knew to be two bodies. The strain had brought on a sweat, and the warmth of his body smeared against cold flesh to all sides of him.

Again, he reached up with his left hand up; his fingers-- while fearing touch-- frantically scrambled for space and found a small, dry hollow, crowned by rough edges, teeth. He drew back his fingers as best he could, his elbow striking something bone-hard behind skin. He pushed with his right hand, his fingers slipping, the contours of the bodies becoming plainer to him now, his mind battling to realize what he was touching. What part. A shoulder? A buttock? A breast? A knee? An elbow? All inflexible. He did not want to know.

Avoidance necessitated movement.

Noise was mounting in his head. He was almost vertical. Holding his breath, he shoved higher, squeezed through the bodies and thrust his left hand upward, his fingers desperately shuffling, swishing, pawing across each figure.

Out. Out. Out.

Where?

With his head turned upward on an awkward angle— allowed by the pressure of the bodies—his right eye saw light. An illumination of grey with moving black specks, as though wavering and sparkling darkly at once. He feared that he might go mad, and raged against the weight to all sides of him. Gasping for a breath, he held it trapped, and kicked with his feet and knees, pushed with his arms, elbows, hips and back. At once, he stopped kicking. He retched, the pressure in his nostrils blooming. With one arm stretched upward and the other bent at his side, he could not wipe his eyes. His fingertips— prying toward the opening-- soon found space. Cool, open air. He struggled until he felt that he had gained an exact vertical position. The heels and sides of his feet searched now, his toes pried into edges, climbing. He was slipping free of the bodies; sweat greased everything to all sides of him. Hair matted to his forehead.

Elbows squat close to his sides, he worked to span them out.

He did not stop struggling until the top of his head felt fresh air. It was easier now, to rise inches at a time. Flies batted off his forehead, off his nose, lips and ears. He pulled his right hand straight up from the hole. Again, he retched, this time due to sensation rather than smell. The spasm of a dry heave struck with such violence that he feared it might tear open his throat. Water filled his eyes so that he had to swipe the blur away.

With his torso still buried, the bodies now seemed set on holding him to them, on preventing him from breaking away as he shoved his hands against the cruel geometry of hard flesh to rise out of the hole he had made. Struggling as though in concert with his struggling, the bodies stuck, clung on, then eventually released their grip.

He found it an arduously uneven task to stand, but did not want to squat with his hands touching dead flesh. His knees trembled. His calf muscles flinched spasmodically. Dizzy to the point of tipping toward unconsciousness, he knew that he had to walk or faint away, yet could not find the strength. He could not crawl. He could not drop and roll. The bottoms of his feet were too sensitive. Itchy. His stomach knotted with revulsion. He rubbed the tears away with the back of his arm, his head hanging. Then he raised his head to glance around for signs of life. His chest was clutched by a sob, yet the sob seemed incapable of taking hold. It started, stopped, then started again. He cupped his hands over his mouth and nostrils.

A grey sky overhead. Two sheds nearby, a smear of black leading from one toward the pile of bodies. His knees continued shivering where he stood. It was bad enough to have his feet set there. He thought of leaping into the air, but then imagined coming down. He could not convince himself to step across this surface. He was naked, the air cool on his skin.

He was relieved, yet terrified. He was free of this horror.

Flies.

What was this horror? He tried not to look down. The drone was deafening as he shut his eyes and took his first step. He continued, carefully stepping in bare feet across dead bodies. He tried spitting the flies away, weakly swatting at them. Snorting them out of his nostrils. He opened his eyes. Where to step? On a back? A stomach? He avoided the rigid faces, the hands, the feet. What not to offend? That sound of buzzing like a million tiny engines powered by mere drops of blood.
He slipped on the hard incline of a leg and fell on his backside, thudded against a child’s head, which bounced beneath him, his hand having grabbed for the safety of a woman’s face, her lips and nose, so many spaces to lose his hands in.

His yelping was its own erratic scramble as he rolled down the side of the mound, hurried off, stumbling. He collapsed, crawled, then gazed back, shifting away with his fingers digging into earth while he sat.

The pile of bodies was fifteen feet high.

He was free, yet he was confounded and horrified. The drone of flies distantly filled his ears. Not so loud now. Regardless, he spit and spit. If he breathed through his nose, the flies went in. He hawked and spat, trying to clear his tongue of the flies already drowned in his saliva. If he opened his mouth, the flies entered, troubled the back of his throat. He kept hawking and spitting and swatting, backed away another two meters. Then stopped.

Stopped dead still.

There was movement in the mound. He made a motion to stand, was on his feet, when he saw a long thin tail follow after the movement. He stopped himself. He faltered, plunked back down and checked his toes and fingers. He felt at his ears for ragged pieces. Nothing seemed tattered. When he regarded the pile again, he saw other movement, which gave him optimism for another fleeting second, until, again, he saw the grey fur and the flick of a tail.

He had come out of the centre of it. He had escaped, yet he had no idea why the bodies were there, why he had been in the bodies. What had he been doing there? Had he been dead? Or simply left for dead? He glanced over his shoulder. There were two small buildings.

Free from this horror, he now realized he had no idea where or who he was.

A wide, black trail lead back to the first shed. Flies were clouded along the smear, settling and rising in restless swirls.

Inside the shed, the floor was tacky. The feeling made him want to curl his toes upward. There were clothes to be found on the ground, rags bundled toward the corners. There was a smell in his nostrils that came to him from the clothes, the same smell as had been in the mound. He wiped at his nose. But the stench would not be dispelled. He squeezed his nostrils shut, held them that way. He was hungry, yet he was dizzy and appalled. Again, he retched, then made a shuddering sound with his lips.
Hung on a number of hooks in the wall were clothes of a cleaner variety: a black shirt and black trousers, a jacket with shimmering insignias on the sleeves.

He swayed for balance as he carefully pulled on the trousers and fastened the hasp. Drawing up the zipper, he noticed his thin fingers, their sickly whiteness, the tremble in them. There was no profit in taking more notice, yet he could not help but wonder if he might be ill. A disorienting buzzing rose in his ear. He shut his eyes and braced one arm against the rough wall until the upwelling passed. He slowly fit his arms into the sleeves of the shirt. Pulled on the jacket. Then he saw the wide leather belt with the holster. He lifted it down. It was heavy. He admired the weight of it, knew what it was made for, how to buckle it around his waist. He was not shivering so much now. He felt almost calm, confident.

There was movement against his toe. He flinched back, turned his foot on an angle. A rat, sniffing at him. He backed away, while the rat chewed at a shapeless clump stuck to the floor. There were boots stood toward one of the walls. He put them on. They were half a size too big for him.

To his left, there was a door. A man’s sound came to him, perhaps a mumble from sleep, followed by the creaking of bed springs. He froze and was sweating at once; the living gap that was his stomach contracted. He found that his hand was already on the holster, that his fingers had unfastened the catch and the abrasive handle was gripped in his palm, the revolver swept clean of the holster, the barrel pointed toward the door.

The soles of his boots stuck and released as he approached the door and quietly pressed it open. Through the crack, he saw a man on the bed, sleeping on his side, his arm across the chest of a naked woman with snipped-short black hair who was lying on her back, her arms stiff at her sides while she stared at the ceiling. The naked man’s feet were stained deep red with black highlights.

He crept into the room and the stickiness beneath his boots became pronounced. His boots made a sound that woke the naked man who rose up on one elbow to look directly at him. The man stared with surprise and then with confusion and awe, as the man could have been his twin.

The woman took no notice, but kept staring at the ceiling, as though pressed into that pose, anchored dutifully to her place on the bed.
The naked man said something that could not be understood as he sat fully up. The man’s tone was demanding yet reasonable, as though engaged in bargaining with someone familiar to him. He outstretched his hand for the gun or comparable assistance.

This gesture alone was sufficient to set him off. Where he had merely meant to tighten his grip on the revolver, he was startled when it fired, the noise exploding attentiveness through his head. It swelled out from the centre to echo and ring.

The naked man fell back onto the bed, back onto the stained mattress which creaked and shifted beneath the woman who did not change her position. Pressed back against the mattress, the naked man watched him, stared at him. The naked man quietly said a word, a name.

He noticed that his fingertips, where they were holding the revolver, had warmed from white to dusty pink.

In the second shed, he discovered a lidded silver serving tray sitting on a table slapped together from grey planks. He raised the rounded lid to uncover slices of bread, meats and cheese prettily arranged. There were green grapes and plump strawberries edged around the border. Beside the tray there was a silver thermos. He ate the bread and meat, his eyes searching around as his throat made noises while he chewed. At one point, in a fit of furious swallowing, he choked on a wad of bread but managed to dislodge it.

He opened the thermos. The fluid inside was warm. It was coffee. He gulped it down, then devoured a few grapes and strawberries, walked back out into the yard. Alive.

All around the mound of bodies, there was crushed stone bulldozed into hills, as though the site had once been an excavation pit. There was a road beyond the mound, a road that stretched across a straight, desolate plain of land, where the orange of small fires was evident in the distance.

There was a sedan at the back of the second shed. Beside the sedan, he was struck by sickness and bent forward, vomiting. He could smell the scent of the naked man whose body he had dragged from the shed. It had taken him some time to deliver and deposit it on the pile of bodies that was more of an oddity to him now that he was no longer a part of it.

When he straightened, he saw, beyond his reflection, the passenger seat of the sedan. A hat was sitting there. He opened the door and lifted out the hat. Doing so, he noticed keys dangling in the ignition. He went back into the second shed and washed his face and hands in the trickle of coffee that remained in the thermos.

Back outside, he looked at the bodies then up at the grey sky. A fat raindrop hit him in the face, just beneath his lips. Soon, patterings tapped at the ground everywhere, as the clouds began to let loose. He climbed into the sedan and watched the rain beat down upon the windshield. Then he turned the key, engaged the engine, switched on the windshield wipers for a clearer view, and drove away.

At a roadblock, a man in a uniform held up his hand.

He slowed the car, but then the man--leaning forward to peer in the window-- waved the car on. He sped up, kept going. It was necessary to keep moving, to find another place that was far from the other.

Fires burned in the dusty fields, as soldiers stood around tossing in books and bodies. He passed though two more roadblocks, and at each one he was waved ahead.

A kilometer beyond the final roadblock, he entered a village. People walking along the sides of the streets stopped when they saw the shiny black sedan, their faces dumb and watching.

He pulled over in front of a pub, climbed out of the car to feel that the rain had stopped. There was not another car to be seen. Stepping up onto the front wooden landing, his boots banged loudly. A man coming out the pub door decided to abort his departure and took a wide stride backwards.

Inside, standing at the bar, he said: "I’ve just come from a mound of bodies." His words sounded foreign in his own ears. The silence that followed amounted to a daze.

The barman laid a beer on the bar and nodded silently, his eyes steady and watchful. The pub had turned dead quiet upon his arrival.
He turned to see that the faces were watching him. Then, a man stood. Another man reached out for the man who had stood, but the standing man pulled away.

"You’ve gone over to the other side," said the man, stating a name. "How is that possible? A sudden change of faith." He laughed meanly. His eyes on the insignias. "And quickly risen in the ranks."

"Who are you?"

A sneer stretched the man’s lips. "Who am I?"

"Yes."

The man spit on his boots, then eyed his holster. "You can have your friends shoot me now. Or you. You can do it yourself."

"Why would I do that?"

"You’re all meek kindness then," the man said with sarcasm. "The winning quality of a Jew these days."

He raised the beer mug to his lips and drank. At once, he felt light-headed. And he knew it would only get worse. He turned to the barman.

"Is there something here to eat?"

"Of course." The barman nodded deeply, respectfully. "Food, you mean.

Yes."

He felt a hand on his shoulder. When he turned, he saw that the man-- whose face was now occupied by hatred-- was holding on with a resolute grip.

"Is that what you are, a Jew?" the man shouted in demand.

"I don’t know." He studied the man’s hand, then sighed because the man was becoming a nuisance.

"You don’t know."

"Does it matter?"

Tight, low laughter came from a few of the tables, only to be interrupted by a woman’s scream in the street. The men at the tables ignored it. The man removed his hand to turn his head toward the door.

He was the only one to move. He stepped toward the door and looked out.

"Stop," he said, fully pushing through the door, his voice barely loud enough. He cleared his throat. Outside, across the road, two soldiers down an alleyway were bent over a woman, pushing her into the mud. The soldiers both looked at him. Froze. Their faces were jeering. Their hands were on the woman’s arm or gripping her long black hair.

"Leave her," he said, and the soldiers took their hands from the woman. He watched them straighten and step back. The woman ran off with a surge like something wild let loose.

A plate was laid on the bar when he returned. Pickled eggs and a salt shaker. He ate both eggs and asked for another, pointing at the plate.

Two more were quickly given over.

The room remained quiet. He patiently watched the men who watched him. They did not move an inch. Their tongues could not have been stiller.

"Do you know who am I?’ he finally asked the men at the table nearest him.

"We know," said the man who had questioned him. "No need to brag about it."

Chapter 2

AFTER LEAVING the pub, he noticed two soldiers stood near his car, checking it over with interest. They took a few steps to approach him and saluted.

"Where do I go from here?" he asked.

"We’ll take you there," said the younger soldier, hoisting a rifle strap higher on his shoulder. They led him down off the wooden landing, where they walked in the centre of the dirt road.

"Did you have a comfortable journey?" asked the younger soldier, who seemed to be of a more pleasant nature than the other.

After giving no reply, he was not asked another question by the two soldiers. He stared ahead, his boots striding, his uncertain haste mistaken for a pledge to duty. He wondered where he was being taken.

At the end of the town, they stepped into a low wooden building with a sign marking it as the post office. A balding man in a uniform with insignias on its sleeve was seated behind a desk. Two filing cabinets stood as sentinels at either side of him. The man rose from his chair, said what might have been one of their names, and saluted.

He did not return the salute, but merely stood there and glanced at the two soldiers who took this for a gesture of dismissal and left at once.

Indicating the chair, the balding office said: "Please, have a seat."

He did not sit. "Please," he said, "explain what is going on here."

The balding officer squinted, his mouth made a strange shape of itself as his eyes glanced at his desktop. "How do you mean, sir?"

He said nothing, merely counted the insignias on the man’s sleeve and then counted the greater number on his own. "Tell me?" He leaned forward, as he had been stammered by a rush of weakness, and braced his hands on the edge of the desk.

The man’s eyebrows crowded together. Lines etched into his forehead. Beads of sweat sprouted there. "I… don’t…"

He sat back into the chair, almost fell, his descent making a great deal of noise,
as he had kicked the front of the desk with his boots.

The man in the uniform flinched.

Behind him, the door opened and he turned, straining to see the two soldiers rush back in.

The balding officer raised his hand to the soldiers. The younger one nodded and backed away, the older one was more reluctant, his mind and body banded by mechanisms of mistrust.

He stared at the man behind the desk.

"We were expecting you yesterday," said the balding officer.

He simply stared. "There were hundreds of bodies."

"Yes."

"You know how this happened?"

"Yes, yes, of course." The officer stood and stepped out from behind the desk.

He gestured toward his own chair with both hands. "Please."

He stood and went around the desk, sat in the chair that was already warm. He joined his hands on the desktop. They were regaining warmth, almost fully coloured, moving from warm to hot.

"We were told to expect new orders for the district, sir?"

"Orders?"

"Yes." the officer said, newly doubtful of his own abilities.

"I would like something done about those bodies. There was a woman in a
bed."

"Yes," confirmed the officer, almost timidly. "I’ve heard from ___." He said a name, averted his eyes, shifting them again toward the desktop where two files lay opened. Women’s names were printed on the tabs. The files contained photographs where flash bulbs had been used in confined places. "He was stationed at Shalom Camp 7. The bodies will be burned. The woman, too. You have no need to worry, sir."

"Worry?"

"Not that we worry," the officer said nervously, but more toward gruff rudeness.
"I want the bodies brought here."

The officer’s face changed somewhat. "The woman?"

"All of them."

"To this town, sir?"

"YES." He startled even himself with this outburst, every nerve in his body shocked to life so that his hands trembled. He tightened them into a fist to hold steady.

At once, the two soldiers entered. The younger one must have been only eighteen. The older one was in his twenties and kept his head tilted on an angle while he watched wordlessly.

"The commander would like the bodies from Shalom Camp 7 brought here."

"Yes?" asked the younger soldier, his finger pointing to the floor.


"To this town," said the balding officer.

He shut his eyes and listened. It would be effortless to drift off, to sleep.

"In the fields? Should we make a compound?"

He opened his eyes, "No, inside."

"There’s not a building large enough, sir."

"I want them in the houses."

"The houses?" The younger soldier looked from him to the balding officer stood off to the side. "I mean, I’m not certain I understand, sir."

"The homes." From where he was seated behind the desk of the post office, he stared at the younger soldier. The look on the older soldier’s face was making him angry. "Back where they belong."

"In the truck, sir?"

He stared and shifted his jaw.

"Yes?" asked the younger soldier.

"Yes."

The younger soldier knew better than to ask another question.
His eyes were back on the photographs. Three men around a woman with a black hood over her head. One of the men had been laughing, his lips pursed jovially as though he were saying something precious into the camera.

"Sir?" asked the older soldier.

"Yes?" He looked up.

"You have some markings here." He raised his hand and touched his own cheek. "And here." The older soldier moved his hand to his forehead.
He quietly wiped at his forehead with his fingertips while the older soldier watched him with interest. The gritty texture of dirt, first against his fingertips, soon crumbled to the desktop. He brushed it all away.

"Leave me alone now."

And the three others saluted, and left.


That night, he walked to the edge of town. It was not that far. In the darkness, there were three fires that he could see. Only in the nearest one, perhaps a half kilometer away, could he discern the shadows of movements. What might have been soldiers were lifting what might have been bodies. Occasionally, there seemed to be the white fluttering of wings, which he soon realized were white pages from books being flung into the air.

Behind him, the low wooden buildings and houses to either side of the road were quiet. He sensed that—inside those structures-- people were talking about him, giving speculation to what not even he could verify.

When he turned from the wall of blackness with the three various-sized flames, he faced a woman watching him. At first, he thought she might be dead on her feet; so still did she stand there. She had long coal-black hair that was parted in the middle, and equally dark eyebrows and lashes. Her face was oval with a full serious mouth and a pronounced dimple in her chin. Pink flecks were scattered on her cheeks as though from a rash that had healed. A strand of hair hung toward the front of her face, revealing the entirety of her left ear. She was holding her hands outstretched, and in each of her palms was a bagel.
He watched the woman’s face and thought he might know her.

"I made these for you," she said, observing him with her large brown eyes. "For helping me."

He took the warm bagels from her hands. She had long fingers. The sight of them charged a sense of her femininity through him. When he took the bagels from those fingers, the woman turned and walked away. He watched her walk off. The two soldiers smoking outside the post office gave her some unkind attention as she passed.

When he came to the post office, he heard the younger soldier say: "She could be brought to you, sir. She’s soon to go out on transport. You need to keep her here if you favour her."

He wondered what the soldier meant.

"Should we retain her for you, sir?"

Not certain of the appropriate response, he nodded and went inside.

"We’ll arrange her for the new commander," the older soldier said to the younger one. "Maybe just so. The way they say he likes them." Then the older soldier looked at the door to the post office. In the lamplight from the small window, his eyes were intense and incredible.


The bodies from Shalom Camp 7 were scheduled to be transported to the town commencing at 0800 hours. The lists of names had been drawn out from one of the filing cabinets by the balding officer who knew exactly where they were. Each name belonged to a body in the pile.

He thought that by looking over the names he might recognize his own, but they were merely names, a list that brought nothing to mind. Yet as he watched the words, he saw the lines and dots twist, lengthen and arc to form the outline of the pile he had crawled from.

The names of the women were held in his head. They brought to mind the photographs he had seen earlier in the files that the balding officer had deposited in the cabinet.

Standing from his chair, he went to the cabinet in the farthest corner and searched in the space where the balding officer had slid away the files in question. He found them from memory and returned with them to his desk. Opening the top one, he saw the hooded woman. He flipped deeper until encountering the bare face in the formal photograph taken when the woman had been first apprehended. It was the exact woman who had given him the bagels. In the other file, the photograph was of a woman he had not seen. The files informed him that both woman had been assigned to bakery duty.
He took his time going through the photographs of the black-haired woman. After viewing the images, it was not so easy to read the words. He read about her birth and her childhood, her job. She had not married. Other details were sketchy and made him suspect that what he was reading was pure speculation on the part of whoever had written out these supposed facts.

Done with the words, he returned to the details of one of the photographs. The woman’s arms were held out by her sides. Her feet spaced a wide distance. A wooden device rose to an edge between her legs. Again, he returned to the words and read about her family. A dead father. A mother thought to be alive. He turned the page to study another photograph. Documents were included outlining the woman’s reaction to the various indignities that were inflicted on her. The methods used were ingeniously vile. He worked his way toward the bottom of the file where he came upon something that caused him confusion. The final sheet of paper was the woman’s death certificate.

While he was reading over the certificate, which was dated for a time he had no way of authenticating, his fingertip absent-mindedly pressed against one of the photographs, making a smear toward the woman’s right shoulder.

Glass shattered to his left and a stream of glorious orange gushed into the room. With a powerful, incinerating whoosh, fire fanned out across the floor. He stood as the flames clung to the walls. The compelling fragrance of gasoline filled his lungs.

The path to the doorway was clear. As he hurried toward it, he felt the heat intensify in his hair and on his face and the back of his hand that reached for the knob. The door opened from the other side, the younger officer hurrying to help.

He stepped out to the sound of machine gun fire in the darkness.
It was remarkably hot for night. He looked at his arm and saw that his coat sleeve was ablaze. The younger soldier tried patting it out. When no progress was made, he pulled off his jacket and threw it out into the street where it burned in a small pile. The heat against his back was growing noticeably harsh. He stepped down the stairs as a soldier hurried toward him with a bucket of water and ran into the post office without giving him notice. Another soldier arrived with a wide flat tank on his back and sprayed the post office.
More machine gun fire, soft and feathery. Men’s shouts, rough and halted. Women’s yielding screams.

The two soldiers desperately battled the fire, but their struggle was ineffective. The post office burned in a bright blaze, a harsh, snapping crackle that grew higher and drove him and the three soldiers back further. He turned to look at the houses across the street, the reflection of brilliant orange in the windows. The woman who had given him the bagels that now burned on his desk was stood behind a pane on the second floor. He wondered why the woman remained in the window, why there were not more people in the street.
He called over the soldier with the flat metal tank strapped to his back, and pointed to the windows. "They should come out."

The soldier with the tank appeared to have no idea how to answer.

"Get them out," he said.

"They’re not permitted, sir," the younger soldier spoke up in a voice raised to compete with the roar of flames. "In darkness."

One of the two soldiers unknown to him, the one with the bucket, came over and watched his face.

From down the dirt street, a shadow emerged. The shadow was leaned one way, dragging something. As the shadow neared, it took on the look of the older soldier. In the soldier’s other hand, a machine gun was pointed toward the sky. When he arrived, he let loose the arm of the body.

"This is him," said the older soldier.

"Who?" he asked, seeing the man who had accosted him earlier in the pub.

"The one who threw the Malatov cocktail."

"Get the people out of those houses." He turned his head and pointed to the houses next to the post office.

"And shoot them?" asked the older soldier.

Caught by surprise, he looked at the older soldier’s face. "What?"

"There’s only the women left now. This," He nudged the body on the ground with his boot. "is one of the last of the men. And the others." He pointed back into the darkness, down the centre of the road where no houses or buildings showed a single sign of life or light. "The others, the men with him are back there. Silent now, too. They were involved." He straightened the barrel of his machine gun, as though to vouch for his own unarguable potency.

He looked at the house next to the post office. It was already on fire. "Get them out of there." Again, he pointed.

The older soldier did not move.

"They’re not permitted outside at night, sir," put in the younger soldier.

"Orders from the supreme commander."

The balding officer hurried into the light of the fire. He was fitting his left arm into his jacket. He looked at the body on the ground, then at the blaze.

"What was saved?" asked the balding officer. "The files?"

The house next to the post office was entirely engulfed in flames. He heard a moaning scream from within. A wailing, much like a chant. No one paid it any mind. He hurriedly strode toward the house, up the two steps, and kicked open the front door. A woman stood there in the fire-engulfed hallway. Ablaze, she knelt down and touched her palms and head against the floor.

He felt his eyebrows and lashes dry against the intense heat. At once, his lungs contracted and he coughed violently.

The wailing scream that he had been hearing crackled out as the woman steadily became a ball of flame. In the centre of the flame, the form that had ignited was shrinking.

The colour of blood in his stinging eyes. The heat grew greater as the hairs on the backs of his hands seemed to singe. He felt a hand on his shoulder, gently pulling him back. He jerked his shoulder to free it, and the movement brought on a coughing fit.

"Sir," said the younger soldier, wearily, worried.

He coughed again and kept coughing. There was no way of suppressing it. His eyes ran with tears, blurring the colours.

The woman was nothing but fire now, like the house itself. There was no difference.

"Sir?" The voice had taken a step back. Yet a hand reached out and tugged at the back of his shirt. He could not stop himself from leaving the fire. He wiped at his eyes and allowed himself to be returned to the other men. While his coughing subsided, the balding officer stared with doubt at his face.

"Were the files rescued?" the balding officer asked around.

"No," he answered for all present, his bile-raw throat constricting. Regardless, he wanted to say that word, to somehow penalize the balding officer with the finality of it. He spoke it again: "No."

"In the cabinets."

"No"

"Nothing?" The balding soldier seemed desperate.

"Get the women out of those houses."

"That’s impossible, sir."

"Impossible?"

"They’re not permitted out after dark."

He shook his head. Again, he shook it. Dumbfounded.

The expression on the balding officer’s face turned remarkably plain.
A thought jerked his head. He coughed while he spoke: "Where are the children?"

"They’ve been sent away. We’ll never know now." The officer stared toward the burning post office. By the expression on his face, he might have been contemplating the possibility of entering. The building’s frame creaked and violently snapped as the roof caved in and the entire structure collapsed backward with a furious roar, as though a million voices had shouted agreement at once. A stream of fire propelled higher into the sky. A gush of expelled flames followed by sparks and smoke.

In the house beside the one that was burning, a figure ran out in a nightdress. The figure was choking, holding its throat. The older soldier walked toward it and fired while he was walking. The figure fell over. The older soldier stood over the body and stared.

He looked at the soldier with the tank on his back. "Refill your tank," he said, pointing toward the flames.

"One tank per fire, sir," the balding officer reminded him.


One side of the street had been entirely burned, a charred skeleton that continued to smolder. The other side of the street was intact. Above it all, the sky had been spread black. The smell of ash and soot lingered everywhere. It was the taste in everyone’s mouth.

They set up a new office in the bakery. This was where the woman who had given him the two bagels worked. Four women in head scarves with flour on their noses and cheeks. They had salvaged a number of desks from the schoolhouse before it burned. There was furniture in the road. Bureaus and tables. Nothing of true value, as all articles deemed of worth had already been confiscated and forwarded to the regional treasury. The filing cabinets in the town hall office could not be rescued, but the ones from the school house had been removed. Within the cabinets, there were files on all the residents as children. These files had been overlooked at first.

The balding officer was encouraged by the discovery of the school files. He sat at his desk in the bakery and hurried through each folder, anxious to salvage an overview. It would not be a problem to bridge the years between childhood and adulthood. He could do that in his mind, for he has exterminated many of the people in the files and recognized their younger faces. He was also heartened to learn that the current files on current students were discovered as well. These could be duplicated. The relief he felt was exhilarating.

While the balding officer was busy writing on paper and updating files on the residents remaining in the town, an empty filing cabinet was brought in and set up beside the commander’s desk. He had not slept last night, his body mindful that it should be active in darkness. He sat behind the desk and watched the writing officer, who occasionally glanced up at him with a non-committed expression.

The four women worked in silence in the open bakery behind the counter. The one who had given him his bagels would glance at him when one of the other women broke down in tears and quietly wept. The balding officer ignored all of it.

From his desk, he had a clear view through the window. A truck pulled up while he was wondering what he might do next. Whenever a vehicle arrived, he felt an inherent fear that the transport might be coming specifically for him. He watched the driver walk toward the back of the truck and raise the canvas flap to expose the emptiness within.

The four women went about loading the truck with metal trays of baked good. The driver came into the office and saluted. He was wearing a small cap on the top of his head.

"What happened there?" the driver asked the balding officer, glancing over his shoulder.

A whiff of soot had trailed in after him.

"Insurgents," said the balding officer, still writing. "What does it matter to you. It’s their own town."

The driver looked at him and said nothing.

He nodded.

When the women had finished loading the truck, the driver saluted, left the bakery and drove away. All of it was nothing new to him.

"Fresh baked goods," muttered the balding officer, as though disgusted.


He assumed that the balding officer knew where he was going. The sedan continued down the lone dirt road that had lead out of town over a half hour ago. There was nothing to be seen to either side of the vehicle except the occasional mound of charred remains. Ahead of them, toward where the straight road lead, there was absolutely nothing to hold their attention.

"Let’s hope they have a spare telewire," said the balding officer from the driver’s seat. "Otherwise, our orders will have to arrive by transport. Delays lead to confusion. At this stage of the conflict, that could prove disastrous."

He nodded and made a noise, thinking on the burning woman, her knees, palms and forehead pressed against the floor. For reasons unknown to him, he thought that she might have been sent to him, that she had been his and now she was lost. He could not remember her face. It had been alight when he arrived. What am I doing, he wondered. What? He turned his head to look at the balding officer, who was talking about one of the women in the bakery.

"It will be a shame," he said with an indefinite smile.

"What?"

"She was unknown really, her origins."

"Who?"

"The woman who gave you the bagels." Top lip pulled up, teeth pressed together. "I heard of that."

"What about her?"

"We have no idea, one way or the other."

"What do you mean? I read her file." He thought of the dead woman on the bed. Was that who she reminded him of? The burning woman in the house? What? He could make no sense of the similarity.

"A fabrication to warrant the end of her, if need be. We found her wandering. She had no idea. We marked her ‘of unknown origin’. But she’ll go out regardless. We’ve already issued her death certificate." The balding officer looked at him as though a truth might be uncovered, or not. The officer shifted his eyes toward the windshield and nodded his head. "Here we are," he said.
Up ahead, there was a town, much like the one they had left behind.
The sedan entered the street and the women—all naked-- stopped to watch them, their expressions flat, clay-tight, as though dug up and excused.


"This is Commander _____," said the balding officer. The new officer stood from behind the desk in the post office and saluted. The new officer and the balding officer seemed familiar with each other. They exchanged glances. The balding officer nodded in a clandestine manner, as though there was a secret held between them, as though they might be old friends or brothers. One was much like the other, in appearance as well as voice.

The balding officer eyed the telewire, went to it and quietly touched its glass and metal top.

"We need to send a message, our telewire was lost. We require another."

"Certainly," said the new officer, his tone lacking civility to the point of disrespect. "By fire. Your files as well, I hear."

The balding officer looked at the new officer.

"The fire was set by insurgents," said the new officer, as though they might not have known this crucial bit of information. He settled back in his chair and kept his hands on the armrests.

"They were dealt with," said the balding officer. "No further worries there."

"Aw." The new officer shifted his eyes from the balding officer to the commander. His eyes were curious. "I’ve heard quite a bit about you, Commander _____."

He nodded.

"Might I ask you a question, sir?"

"Yes."

"As you know, I spent some time at Shalom Camp 7. I was there shortly before your arrival."

"Yes."

From the tone of the discourse, the balding officer appeared to be taking special notice.

"There was a man there named _______. You know him, of course."

"Of course."

"In fact, it was you, personally, who ordered his extermination."

He said nothing in reply, merely gave the new officer a look that might cause him to give particular consideration to the forthcoming choice of words.

"Your half-brother."

"Yes, I know." His eyes shifted to the balding officer, who was expressing supreme interest.

"I can’t recall if it was by another mother or father."

"Father," he blurted out, about to add a remark that might twin as a warning.

"Yes, of course." The new officer cut in, keeping all other words to himself, despite the fact that he seemed to have others in urgent need of presentation.

"Yes, of course. One was of our faith, the other not. The mothers."

"Yes," raising his voice. "And your point?"

"Just to let you know, sir, that your orders were followed." He gave a slight nod of his head. "I handled it personally."

"Good."

"The resemblance is uncanny."

He looked at the balding officer and determined that action was required.

"Stand up," he said, flashing his eyes back to the new officer.

The comfortable and knowing look of penetration that had prided the new officer’s expression faded at once. He pressed his hands against the armrests and stood.

"Are you familiar with the word ‘insubordination’?"

"Of course, sir."

"In word as well as in action?"

"Yes, sir."

He drew his revolver from his holster and leveled it at the new officer’s face. He took two steps around the desk and pressed the hard point of the pistol to the new officer’s temple. The new officer’s eyes tried not to look at him. They strained to stare ahead.

A moment later, he turned the gun on the balding officer, then, deliberately, back on the new officer, aiming near the left eye, the eyelash blinking, fluttering against steel.

"Which one of you should die for this?"

The balding officer squinted, as did the new officer. They watched each other, as though plotting to halt the disintegration of their future.

"You think I’m stupid," he shouted, licking the spittle from his bottom lip.

They shook their heads in unison.

In unison, he thought, then barked: "Kneel."

The new officer held up his hands, placed them on his head, and knelt.

"You," he said, pointing at the balding officer, who could not hide his astonishment, yet knelt regardless, in the same pose. "Over there."

The new officer walked on his knees toward the balding officer. Side by side, they were of the same rank. They wore the same uniform. The same boots. The same pins and insignias. They had the same face, one a little more hair than the other, but he could not tell which one. The one on the right? The one on the left?

"I’ll ask you a question."

Neither of the two responded.

"Which one of you is unlike the other?"

They thought for only a moment, almost hopefully, before they were profoundly confused.

He repeated the question, spacing the words: "Which… one… of… you… is… unlike… the… other?"

He expected a show of hands. Still, there was no reply. He tried the question in another language, a language that flew out of him and seemed composed for the timbre of that exact question.

He shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice booming hoarse: "Which one of you is unlike the other?" His index finger was sweaty and curled against the trigger. It wanted to tug the tension away, to charge the chaos out from his heart, down the length of his arm, to thicken his muscles with release, to inflict.

Yet neither one of them would raise their hand. They were trembling, their elbows shivering where they were angled out in the air.

He screamed and paced around the two men until his face was a swell of red heat and the men were sweating through a sniveling concert of tears.

"Brother," one of them whimpered at him. "Please."

He took notice. "What?"

"We are brothers," said one through the snot. "The chosen ones."

The other piped up: "We are all brothers in this, sir."

As though struck impotent, he lowered the revolver.

"Brother," said one.

"Brother," said the other, beginning to smile with optimism.

He holstered his revolver, then drew it again, and fired at the one who had begun to smile.

The smile barely changed, yet the eyes did, and the body, still on its knees, fell backward and slightly to the side. There was only one of them remaining. The balding officer, perhaps, or the new officer. It was a mystery to him now.

Although he felt startled by the shooting, he had no way of knowing if what he had done was done correctly. There were now two empty cartridges in the chambers of his revolver. The idea brought on a tremble in his arm that spread toward his shoulder and then ticked into his cheek. The only thing he seemed sure of was that the man on the floor was meant to die.

"Take the telewire," he said, putting away his revolver.

The remaining officer scrambled to his feet and-- stepping over the body-- made his way to the telewire, began disassembling the wires and the thin roll of paper on a spool.

Outside, the street was deserted. No doubt, they had heard his shouting from the post office. And, more notably, the single gunshot.

While the remaining officer brought the disassembled telewire out of the post office and loaded it into the sedan, the commander walked down the length of the street, calling out an order for evacuation to the houses on one side, then the other. It seemed it might now be possible to save something from this place.

Women appeared in each doorway. They were naked. Knowing what must be done, they hurriedly formed a straight line across the width of the dirt road and turned away. Their backs to him, they bowed down on all fours, their foreheads to the earth.

The remaining officer shut the door of the sedan and hurried over to the commander.

"Where are their clothes?" the commander asked the remaining officer, his heart thudding again.

"Confiscated to prevent escape." There was a sheen of sweat on the remaining officer’s face which now held a nervous expression that imparted his urgency to please. "A new order from just yesterday."

Two soldiers—a young one and an older one-- walked up and down in front of the women, checking that their heads were bowed, their eyes to the dirt.

From the same father, he thought. Different mothers.

This was not his town. It was like his town, but it was not. He recognized not one of the women, old or young. They reminded him of no one. He recalled shooting the officer in the post office. The body was still there, on the floor, hidden behind walls. It might be dragged out and thrown down before these women so they might see what he had done for them.

He watched the naked women in the street. It was all beginning to make sense. From different mothers, he thought, yet he had no memory of who. No confusion came from this. It was not troubling. In fact, his sense of lacking was almost pleasing; the way he felt now prompted the statement: "Show me what happens next."

The remaining officer gave him a look as though the commander might be coming back to his senses.

"Selfsameness procedure?" asked the remaining officer, already drawing his night stick.

The commander nodded.

It was a relief to the remaining officer. His step held the tempered agility of a sprint as he went from one woman to the other with exceptional vigour, bending forward and thrusting his arm back and forth while sounds came from the women. They bared the remaining officer’s willingness as best they could. They endured. They did not complain. Not one of them. In this way, they were invariable.

It was no secret that the remaining officer was pleased to be back in command of his little patch.

The two soldiers stood at each side of the woman that the remaining officer was breaching, making certain there was no attempt at withdrawal.
When he had finished with the line, the remaining officer returned to the commander’s side. His night stick glistened with fluid of a colour that could not be determined because of the hard blackness.

"Back into your houses now," the commander said, almost pitying them.
The women fanned out before him. A few were hobbling, while others walked slowly or hurried. Any one of them, he thought, studying their bodies. A different mother. It was peculiar the way they reacted, at varying paces, some wishing to conceal their nudity, others not bothered by it.

With his eyes, he followed an older grey-haired woman, the way her buttocks were loose, her heavy breasts stretched and hanging, her stomach slack and wrinkled scar-like, the way her step was impeded by some arthritic ailment as she walked away, her eyes on her feet. She clutched at the plain wooden railing as she went up onto her step. It was a chore to watch her.

Once the old woman had entered her house, the commander set his attention and followed after her. She was standing by a lone wooden chair in her living room when he entered. There were no artifacts hung on the walls. Above the coal stove, the shelf displayed nothing, not even dust. He watched the old woman’s face; her eyes were cast down so that he might not connect with her, her arms hung from sloped shoulders at her sides.

He walked around the empty room, his boots sounding against the swept floorboards. Pacing felt natural to him. This is not my town, he thought. He felt his breath turn hotter in his nostrils as he explored the space that had been cleared of everything. He shot a glance back at the old woman. Whose mother?
Toward the corner, he paused to search out the window. A group of four men in uniforms were gathered in an unruly circle, engaged in discussion. He thought he might shoot a few of them for sport. One of the soldiers looked toward the doorway of the house he now stood in.

As the commander tread nearer the window, his boot disturbed a loose floorboard, and his step faltered. He looked down to hear the old woman whimper.

The old woman was using her eyes on him now. They were meant to change him, distract him, dissuade him. He bent to straighten the floorboard and saw a glimmer of golden light beneath it. Shifting the floorboard away, he discovered a small frame which featured a photograph of a man in a uniform from a period he did not recognize.

The old woman ran toward him, her bare soles slapping the floorboards. Already she was screeching and snatching for the photograph.

"No," she said, clamping her bony, wrinkled fingers onto the frame and yanking.

He released his hold of the frame, allowed her to have it, for it meant something to her.

The old woman clutched the photograph in both hands. As she stared down at it, tears filled her brown eyes, a blush—a stain of concealed blood-- came over her grey face.

The commander searched the hole with his fingers, stretching his arm deeper into the chasm until he felt something like hair that edged away from him, the strand slipping through his fingertips. At first, he suspected vermin, yet the length and the curl of the hair canceled trickery. Bending his face to the hole, he searched down.

The old woman was making noises that forewarned him of inevitable hysteria.
He looked up and put a finger to his lips, the gesture quieting her. She slapped her hand over her mouth and wept, hugging the frame to her bare bosom and whimpering behind her palm.

Again, he bent his head to the hole, tilted his head so as not to block the light, so that wedges of light might reveal what was hidden beneath the house. He heard child-like whispering, then stillness.

"Here," he said.

The old woman fussed and nearly cried out.

"Come here," he said into the hole, He watched there but nothing happened. "I won’t harm you."

Again, the old woman fussed. He looked at her and she was shaking her head. Panicky, she gazed toward the window and removed her hand from her mouth to point. The soldiers had drifted nearer, as though to see what might be happening inside, as though to witness proof of the legendary status of the commander.

"It’s just me," the old woman muttered consolingly to him, "Me.. . me…"

The commander searched back into the hole and saw the white of an eye, the slimly-lit arc of a young face, the curl of dark hair. A girl. He smiled for what seemed like treasonous reasons.

"How do you get down there?" he asked the old woman.

She shook her head. Fretfully, she checked toward the window.

"Tell me. I’m not who you think I am." He watched her naked body, the meaty thickness of her breasts and hips, the unruly tangle of her pubis, and thought he might give up on this, might do what he suspected he came here to do. But then there was the thought of the eye beneath the floorboards, the photograph in the old woman’s arms. He reached down into the hole, searching around. He felt something wooden, shifting near his hand, and took hold of it, brought it up through the hole, had to turn it sideways to fit it fully through. It was a clock. The time, perhaps, correct. He reached down and there were other items at his fingertips, as though they were being handed to him at once to avoid the grasp of something dearer. A pink and white wedding garter. A small book in which poems were hand-written in deep-green ink. A summer dress which the old woman grabbed up and slapped against her body as though in rescue.

"How do you get under here?" he asked.

Boot steps on the front landing.

The commander stared at the old woman, almost recognizing her now. That dress was becoming.

The front door opened and the remaining officer stepped in, his stride charged with significance.

The old woman shuffled back, pressing the dress tighter against her body.
From his holster, the remaining officer drew his revolver and aimed it at the old woman, who knelt and dropped the dress, but retained her one-handed grip on the frame which she clenched protectively against the top of her head. Her open palm pressed at the air as though to hold back the moment. Trembling, she lowered the frame and held it over her face with both hands. The remaining officer shot the old woman in the head, shattering the glass.

The old woman spun a little and fell face-first. The frame hit the floor, its bottom corner sticking into the wood like a knife.

"Sir?’ said the remaining officer, only now seeing the commander on his knees toward the corner.

The commander covered the hole with the board. "A hiding place for trinkets," he said, more interested in the old woman now that she was dead. On her belly, her legs and arms apart, her head turned away from him. She would never set her living eyes on him again. "Leave us alone," he said.

The remaining officer holstered his revolver, gave one nod, and backed away.

The front door was shut.

The commander rose from his knees and went toward the old woman until he was stood over her. He then stood nearer. With the tip of his boot, he nudged her foot. The dirty heel tilted one way. In this position, so near the dead, he felt himself come to life.

From beyond the window, the laughter of three men.

Chapter 3

THE DRIVE back was travelled in silence. He held the image of that town in his head until he entered their own, and the memory was replaced.

The remaining officer was the first out of the car.

The commander sat in the passenger seat and watched through the windshield.

The remaining officer hurriedly spoke to the two soldiers who listened and nodded, looked where the remaining officer was pointing from house to house along the unburned side of the street. Then the two solders promptly strode off.

He would not remove himself from the sedan nor roll down the window to clearly hear what instructions were being dispatched. He found comfort in the sensation of being sealed inside while he watched the soldiers enter the doorways and come out some time later with torn garments-- held away from themselves as though soiled—which they piled in the centre of the road. When all of the houses had been entered and the new orders carried out, gasoline was chucked onto the mound of clothes and set afire.

The flames burned as the coloured tears of clothing that lay along the periphery were held up by sticks and dropped in. The remaining officer stood beside the two soldiers and slapped the younger one on the back. The way his mouth was moving, the remaining officer seemed to be telling a joke.

The commander wondered what new part of him might now exist with these three others.

There had been no dreams. No sleep since his journey from the pile of bodies. But when his eyes finally shut that night, his head was crowded with movement. When he awoke in the morning, he remained on his back. Calmed by a good night’s rest, he sorted through the images that remained audibly and visually dear to him. The veiled faces. The stir of lips muttering for forgiveness.

The horizon obliterated by black dots of supplicated bodies, knelt in submission, knelt in surrender.

Already, his room above the bakery was filled with the warm scent of baking that led him to believe it might be any other day. Sunlight was sunlight, after all. It was there through the glass in his bedroom window.

He heard the voice of the remaining officer barking harshly beneath him. He rose and dressed. First, he brushed his hair with the silver brush and then he combed it. His hair would need to be trimmed soon if he were to conform with regulations. Stood before the mirror, it was impossible not to catch glimpses of his face in reflection. Where his eyes had not interested him in the slightest, had not seemed to involve him, they now became more fascinating by the moment. He stared into them until he felt himself drawing nearer.


The remaining officer was stood toward the corner, muttering about the diabolical threat of technology while connecting the telewire to current.
Having come from his upstairs room through the doorway above the alley and climbed down the outside stairs, the commander now stood at the front of the shop.

The remaining officer noticed the commander after a few moments and—red faced-- straightened to snap out a salute.

The commander saw that there were only two women working in the bakery now. They were both naked, save for their head scarves, and he recalled the old woman who had been shot and the young face whispering secretively beneath the floorboards. Back in that town, when he had finished with the duties required of him, as attached to the old woman, he had uncovered the floorboards once again and searched down there. Obtaining a crowbar from one of the soldiers, he had worked to tear up a group of floorboards in an eight foot square. The space was wide enough for him to drop into. Hunched in the space and crawling amid the dirt, he found only a pile of bones toward the far corner. There was no young girl. This had angered him, for he had plans to save the girl, in his own singular way.

The woman who had given him the two bagels would not meet his eyes. She went about her work, trying not to be ashamed. Her body was well-made. Natural. The other woman was larger and worked with more energy as though the absence of clothing held no bearing over her. She was a worker. Both of the women were from the files he had perused and both wore head scarves so that their hair might not fall into the baked goods.

The commander stepped deeper into the room and neared his desk. He touched the back of his chair and thought of sitting. If he took his place behind the desk, he would have to appear to be engaged in duties.

The remaining officer gave the commander the occasional bit of obligatory attention, while continuing with his work.

In a number of minutes, the telewire made a noise resembling the discharge of a minuscule machine gun and began printing off a narrow strip of paper. The remaining officer stood over the paper, reading as it went along, his eyes eager for directives. When the printing was completed, he tore of the paper and brought it to the commander at once.

Still stood by his desk, the commander read the words. As the enemy was making headway within the allies’ once-secured borders, it was required that all female prisoners be transported at the earliest possible convenience.
The remaining officer gave immediate attention to the two women at work.
The commander looked toward the two women until the two women stopped working to look at the commander and the remaining officer.

"Who will cook for us?" asked the remaining officer.

"The retention of essential workers has been authorized," the commander answered. "Here." He laid a finger against the words on the paper. "One per officer. Assigned as required and approved by the district commander."

The remaining officer went to the heavier woman in the bakery as though she were another chore that must be dealt with. Gruffly, he took her by the arm. Her hands were white with flour. She wiped them in the sides of her thick legs as she was briskly led toward the back door.

"You’re lucky today," said the remaining officer as he hurried her out. "You’ve been approved." With this, he slapped her right buttock.

The black-haired woman looked at him. Her body was untouched along the length of her back. Not a mark. But her front was a catastrophe of injuries. She turned away from him, so that the commander watched her back muscles moving as she shaped the dough with her hands.

He was moving toward her without thought. The nearer he came to her, the more peculiar he felt. So close. He stood behind her, marveling at the texture of her skin. She knew that he was there but she would not turn.

"Look at me," he said, less of an order, more of a commiserating request.

The woman stopped doing her work and slowly faced him, her gaze lowered to the ground.

This one younger, he said to himself. Beautiful in a way that depleted him.

"Look at me." He set his finger under her chin and raised her head, tipping her brown eyes to his.

He thought that he might tell her about how he had come from the pile of bodies, how he knew that that was wrong of him to do. That he was at fault, yet he did not know why? He had no idea why he was once in the pile of bodies and now here, able to put people in the pile of bodies. That was now his duty. How was that possible? he wanted to ask her. She might have an answer. Or she might be one of them. Dead. His bidding.

He realized that his jaw and eyes were set with an expression of blankness. It would be impossible for her to tell anything from him.

Again, she lowered her eyes, because what she was seeing did nothing to convince her, to hold her to him.

"I have no idea who I am?" he said in a choked voice.

She raised her eyes to see him this time. So full of consideration. After a moment, she said in a pure-hearted voice, "Cruelty knows how to do that."


The younger soldier was removing a cloth that had been tied around the bottom half of his face. He had taken off his jacket and set down his rifle. His hands were stained. He rubbed at them, brought them toward his nostrils, but stopped himself. The expression on his face indicated distaste. A human admission.

When he noticed the commander, he saluted and said: "The bodies have all been delivered, sir."

The older soldier came up behind the younger one. He stepped with fluidity and menace, like something fearless on the prowl. He was not wearing a mask to protect his nostrils and lips from the stench. More than a single bullet would be required to bring him down.

"You wanted them in the houses, sir?" asked the younger soldier.

"They will fill the houses," said the older soldier confidently, rubbing away a spot on his palm with his thumb, his concentration entirely inward.

"Where are they now?"

The younger soldier pointed toward the houses, down the alleyway from where they had come. "Behind there. Outside for now."

He walked toward the alleyway and tread down the length of the buildings until seeing the pile of bodies. Faltering, he remembered, yet what he pictured was not the same. It took him away from everything.

The pile was not so large as he remembered, not stacked so high but spread out
over a greater area. Again, it did not fit with his memory—one of the single memories that he held as true in his head—and so he was rattled, as though a tremor had gone off inside him.

The bodies were not so grey, but tinted pink. The colour not to be trusted.
He turned quickly to look at the two soldiers coming up behind him. "Where did you get these bodies?" he demanded.

"Shalom Camp 7, sir," said the younger soldier.

He stepped nearer and there were no flies, no signs of illness, decomposition or harm. The bodies appeared to be at rest, their eyes shut in repose. He noticed that they were all women. Sleeping.

"What?" he asked, as though he might be going out of his head. "When did you get these?"

"Today."

"These aren’t the bodies," he shouted out from a prod of fear. "Where?"

"Shalom Camp 7, sir," the younger soldier maintained.

The older soldier watched the commander as though it might be some sort of trick. He laughed once, then was focused again.

"I came from the bodies," the commander said. "I was there. These are not the bodies." He stared back at the pile, expecting something. "These are," his eyes scanned to rest here and there, "fresher."

"These are the bodies that were there, sir," said the older soldier in a disbelieving, almost chastising tone.

He thought of the two officers on their knees, back in the town that was like this town, but not his own. He walked toward the older soldier and gave a shove. The contact rattled him.

The older soldier was taken by surprise and stumbled back, almost tripped, yet adeptly regained his footing. The second shove knocked him down, his hands behind him to brace the earth. The older soldier was scared and then made meaner by his fright.

The commander drew his revolver and fired into the older soldier’s chest-- where he supposed the heart had grown-- fired until the chambers were filled with empty shells. He could not stop his hot breath from raging. It was magnificent and crippling, paralyzing in a way that made him peerless. Thinking to complete the chore, he whipped his head around to look at the younger soldier.

"Where are the bodies?" he shouted, at once treading toward the younger soldier, who backed away and held up his palms in uncertainty. "Where?"

"These…"

"Kneel," he shouted.

The younger soldier knelt. "Please." He joined his hands in prayer.

The commander leveled the revolver, "Where?" With his free arm, he drew his sleeve across his mouth. "Where?" Jabbing his empty revolver forward.

"Where? Where?"

"These," begged the younger soldier, inclining his fingertips toward the bodies while staring up. "These were there, sir. These are the bodies, I swear."

The commander stopped and looked at the bodies, then he regarded the dead older soldier. He went to him and bent there, unbuttoned the soldier’s shirt, pulled off his boots, his pants... Grabbing the naked soldier’s foot, he dragged the body toward the pile.

"Come here," he demanded.

The younger soldier rose from his knees and obediently took hold of the naked soldier’s bare arm.

"Lift… and… toss."

They swung the naked soldier, back and forth, and then—on the commander’s word—they released. He body landed with a fleshy thud.

"You see," the commander said, again wiping spittle from his chin. "This is the pile." Gladdened, he thrust his index finger in the air, his breath burning.

"This, you see, this one…"

The younger soldier gazed up as a black cloud of flies descended from the sky.
Bent and twisted and green and grey, the bodies stared, each one of them with the physical crook of one haphazardly disposed-of.

To the commander’s mind, this was decidedly manageable.


There was a knock on his door. He had been seeing all of this while lying down, going over the day’s events that were remarkably vivid yet seemed barred from the stillness of his room.

"Yes," he said, pulling his mind away.

The door eased open and the black-haired woman from the bakery stood looking in. She came into the room on bare feet, the head scarf no longer on her head. Nude, she stood a moment, perhaps awaiting instruction, then—as though recalling the proper conduct and procedure-- she shut the door.
Only one side of the woman’s body was revealed in the dim light that cast its diagonal line through the window.

The commander watched her legs, then higher, not knowing what might be the proper play at action. His hands were joined behind his head, his fingers meshed. It was a strain to look at her this way, so he turned on his side. Once he had settled, he heard the woman swallow. It was enough to watch her in this light, yet he felt a need to relieve the woman of some of her expectation. He tried thinking of words and the words he thought of glazed in his eyes. In the woman’s presence, the commander felt hopeless, helpless. Should he pat the bed beside him? Should he give her explicit instruction? Should he wait for her to offer the first greeting?

From beyond the window, there came the far-off sound of machine gun fire.

In a quiet voice, the woman said: "I’m yours."

His eyes mindfully went over her face to see how the swelling in his heart changed his view of it. "By heart or by chain?"

She smiled a little, knowing that there was no harm intended. But the smile lasted only a brief moment before she, once again, became moderate.

"You can go away if you like," he said, not meaning the words, wanting to add: It’s not what I would prefer. His eyes tried not to trace the artful lines of her body, how they were interrupted by the welts and scars.

"Do you want me to stay?"

He nodded.

The woman stepped toward the bed and sat on the edge of it with her back to him.

He looked at her back, now fully in the light, the nubs of her spine. It was everything to him, the design of her. He wanted to touch there. But that would put him above her.

After a while, the woman lay back, drew in her legs and straightened her body beside his. She remained still and watched the ceiling.

His eyes skimmed over her body. With the woman this near, the commander could not help but recall the photographs of her tucked away in the file that had burned. The memory of the open wounds excited him, yet the sight of the scars softened him. That was action, he thought. Excitement. This is eventuality. The scars. Longevity. What must be lived with.
The sight of her profile made him lean forward to kiss her cheek.
She turned her face to look at him, her eyes brown, her lips full. She was wondering about him, about men.

He skimmed his hand along her shoulder, down the length of her arm.

"I’ve heard what you’ve done to people."

He gave a short shake of his head, his left wrist beginning to deaden with his hand propping his head up that way. "Not me." He eased down so that his eyes were in line with hers.

They faced each other.

"Did you know I am a whore?"

It did not matter to him because he knew there was no truth to it. "You don’t behave like a whore."

"I haven’t learned yet."

"Maybe you’ll never learn."

A moment of silence before she said: "If only they could eat up the shame."
The sound of the word ‘whore’ had prickled under his skin. It spurred the boldness, the bravery required to slip his fingertips over her breast, toward the centre, where he circled her nipple.

"I don’t want to catch this," she said, her eyes dipping toward his crotch where she felt him stiffening against the side of her leg.

"Catch what?"

"Catch any more of this." Her eyes went to the ceiling, then to the window.
Her caution made him smile.

"What I’ll catch from you," she continued, her eyes finding his again.

"Preventative measures."

He kissed her lips, and as his lips left hers, she whispered, "That’s why I am your whore."

"Not by heart then, by chain."

When he had done to her what was expected, he tried raising off of her body, but she clutched onto him, one palm pressed against his back, one arm behind his neck.

"Don’t you dare move," she said, having just reached climax.

He lifted his head from the feel and smell of her hair to look at her face. Tear trails shone from the corners of her eyes towards her temples while her eyes watched him.

In her stare, he had the feeling that it was not him she was watching. He kissed her warm, moist lips. The emotion that was returned compelled him to kiss her again, with his tongue and with his right hand coming up to caress her cheek.
Quietly, she cried, her tears and her kisses for him, but for those before.
He lay on his side and watched her face. She was watching the ceiling, her eyelids always open, her arms straight at her sides.

A moment later, he lay on his back, so that both of them were fixed in the same pose, studying the ceiling.

At this point, he turned his head to regard her profile, and the confusion buckled in his chest. Every frailty of sentiment seemed to have been blanched from the room.

"Why are you here?" he asked, confused now, almost angry.

"Because you want me to be."

"No." He sighed and turned his head toward the ceiling. How could he go about asking her these questions without revealing his deficiency of character? Again, he turned his head to regard her. Her hands were joined on her scarred belly, fingers messed, her eyes were opened. Eyes so clear. He could not understand why. He waited for her to blink. It took a while. "What are you to me? I need to know."

"I don’t know," she said. "That’s your decision."

"Why am I here? We here?"

"I don’t know."

"You don’t understand." Urgently, he rose up on one elbow.

Her eyes turned frightened at once, as though she might have been expecting this, her hands pressed into her belly, yet she continued staring above.

"I am here because I am less than you," she said. It was the thing to say, the thing she had learned to say. "Your whore."

"But I came from the bodies."

"I know that you make the bodies."

"No, no, no." There was a tightness in his head and shoulders that made him want to slap her for misunderstanding. "I came from the pile of bodies, from inside, under."

The black-haired woman turned her head to look at him and saw him with softer eyes, new eyes that had been kept private up to that point. She shifted a little; her muscles and skin seemed at ease, her breath sweetened and moved with greater affinity. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"I crawled out from the centre." He waited a stretch of time for his words to sink in. "I was supposed to be dead."

"Why?"

Perhaps she was too interested now. He intuited that her concern might create harm for him.

"I don’t know," he said vaguely.

"Why are you telling me this? To trick me?"

"No."

She watched his eyes, then his forehead and chin, as though hunting for traces.

"I am the enemy," he said, the words slipping out.

"Yes," she said.

"No." The commander softly shook his head. "Not your enemy."

"I know what you mean."

"I can’t remember." He looked at her, at once feeling that his need of her had inexplicably grown innate.

"How can you know for certain?"

"I was with the dead. Why would I be with the dead?" And then, in a vacant tone, he went over the details of the story, from the climbing out, to the shooting of his twin, to the drive through the checkpoints, to the story from this town forward.

"But that man from the shed, the one who was on the bed with the woman, he is in the pile of bodies now."

"Yes."

"He looked like you?’

"Yes, very much." His eyes became expectant, as though the black-haired woman might know more of him than she had first let on.

"And he wound up there."

"Yes."

"But you see."

"What?" he asked, wanting her answer.

"How do you know you didn’t end up there for the same reason."

Chapter 4

THE VOICES of women in the dawn woke him. They spoke to one another in worried bits of words that shivered in through the gap in his slightly raised window. Seeing that the woman from the bakery was no longer by his side, he stood from the bed and went to the window, searching for her figure. He was still unaccustomed to the mortification of the women’s nakedness. He watched down into the dim street while he buttoned the front of his shirt. Women had been gathered together by the younger soldier and remaining officer and were being helped up into the truck. Only three were not loaded. By the time he finished with his buttons, all of the women were safely stowed away.
He finished dressing and went down the side entrance, into the alleyway and then out into the street. Already, the sun was a blaze in the sky. He squinted and turned his back to it.

"There’s one old woman," the younger soldier anxiously notified him, alertly pointing two houses up from the bakery, "who won’t come out. Should I shoot her?"

The remaining soldier looked him up and down while pulling tight the ropes that secured the flap at the back of the truck.

"Let me see," the commander said and tread toward the house. On the way, he pulled on his new coat, straightened the collar. There was no need to knock, the door had been removed from its hinges. His boots sounded along the hollow flooring as he tread toward the old woman who stood in the centre of the room. There was nothing in the room, save for a wooden chair. All of the space had been swept clean.

"It’s time for you to go," he said, as though taking up a conversation where it had last left off.

The old woman’s arms dangled by her sides. She was naked. Sorry.
He watched down at her breasts and noticed the wide nipples, the decrepitly erotic sag of her skin. Not in this town, he told himself. My town. He turned and stared toward the floor near the window. Already, he could hear the whispers. They were multiplying in his ears. The hiding place had become obvious, yet the voices seemed not to care, as though he might be in allegiance with them. The whispering grew from a shush of warnings to the invariable noise of traitorous mutterings.

Sighing, he looked at the old woman. What was his place in this house? He was meant to be an intruder who claimed to belong. No, demanded to belong. Assumed. No, not to belong, but to own. Own this. Own her. His.

Frailty overcame him, his shoulders drooping. In truth, his place in this house was to know nothing of his purpose. It was with reluctance that he turned and stepped toward the loose floorboard. He crouched and lifted it out. There was the picture frame. A man was featured in the photograph. He was wearing a uniform, and there was a teenage girl stood by his side. He knew the face. It was the black-haired woman from the bakery. He knew who she was now. It was here that she belonged, in this house, with this old woman. It was here that she belonged in a casual time when he might meet her and take her to the cinema.

Peering down into the hole, he saw no movement and reached into the hollow. There came a piercing nip at his fingertip. So painful was the injury that he yanked back his hand and savagely cursed on an intake of breath.

There was blood on the tip of the index finger of his left hand. The curve of the tip and part of the fingernail had been chewed off. Clamped in a flinch of pain that he tried to cringe through, he stood, hurling the frame away. It skimmed and shimmied along the floorboards, the photograph facing up, toward the ceiling.

He held his finger, studied the damage that had been done, the spill of warm blood down over his palm where it dripped at the edge. He stared back into the hole, his face flushed with anger, his blood dripping into the hollow, to vanish.

"What is down there?" he demanded of the old woman.

"Nothing," she said.

"There is something."

"No," she said, calmly, reasonably. "Nothing. Nothing is there."

"Look." He held up his finger. "Look." With his right hand, he drew his empty revolver and aimed it toward the hole.

"No," the old woman said with fright.

"No?"

"No," she said, again calmly. "Nothing. Please," calmer still, "there is nothing."

"Nothing? This done by nothing."

With assured eyes that delved into his, eyes that understood and recognized, she paid attention in a doting way that aroused him through his rage. "Yes," she said, her voice soothing. "Nothing. Please. Shush, shush… it is nothing."

"Nothing did this?" He could not help but chuckle. It was absurd. "You expect me to believe in that?" The pain came back to him in a rush that was strangely electric.

The old woman’s eyes shifted to the revolver. In them, there was the deepness of longing. "Please," she said, placing two fingertips to the space above her heart.

"Please, this is where you catch what’s hidden."

He stepped toward the old woman, her eyes still on the revolver which he set against the spot she had indicated. She lowered her fingers, her chin touching her chest, her eyes watching the metal against her skin, the way the circle dented into her grandmotherly flesh.

"Please," she said. "This is where it is all hidden, full to bursting."

This close, he smelled the oldness of her. When he looked at her chest again, the barrel of the revolver was not placed there, but the tip of his injured finger. The old woman had shifted one for the other and continued holding his finger, her hand curled around the length of it.

"What else was there left to do," she said, "but hide everything in the foundation?" Her eyes went to the hole in the floorboards that remained uncovered.

It was not until she had fired that he realized she had taken possession of his revolver. Glass from the window behind him tinkled to the ground outside. Heavy metal thunked to the floor. He looked down to see an exit wound through the woman’s wrinkled and sagging stomach. She had held the gun behind her back and fired into her spine. The bullet had missed the commander by no more than an inch. The old woman’s legs shuddered with weakness. She fell back against the chair, sat there and watched him.

The commander looked at his fingertip to see that the wound had been staunched, the pain vanquished. Why had he thought the chambers empty? He turned his eyes to the revolver. By the looks of it, he believed that it might not be his.

"I took it, instead of you," uttered the old woman, her eyes set on something through him, through the window toward the burnt buildings across the road, through the burnt buildings and through the sky.

He noticed that above her heart, there was the red dot from where his damaged fingertip had been pressed.

"One less death for you to claim," the old woman whispered hoarsely. Selflessly, she slipped away.


A screech sounded outside and advanced nearer. Through the door, a naked body hurried, long black hair swept back, limbs and breasts swaying. The younger soldier had entered after her, in close pursuit. The woman from the bakery saw the old woman’s body and stumbled, her hands to her mouth. It was one sound that came from her: gasping, choking, weeping. Crumbling to her knees, she clutched at the old woman in the chair and uttered words mingled with a name. She fired a hate-filled look back at the commander.

"It was by her own hand," he said.

"Why… why would you say that," she cried, throwing her arm toward the other soldiers in the room. "What they say. It’s not our own doing."

The younger soldier found this amusing. He smiled and shook his head with a glimmer of esteem in his eyes. He was watching the black-haired woman’s backside where she was bent near the old woman.

You are growing up, the commander thought.

In a gesture of lewd frivolity, the younger soldier stomped forward and shoved the old woman from her chair. But the woman from the bakery scrambled to catch the body, cushioning it with her arms a moment before it struck the floor.
"We know who you are now," the younger soldier scoffed at the black-haired woman, his eyes set on the tangle of hair mounded out around her slitted centre. Again, he smiled, hopeful of encouragement, but also exuding a scent of rivalry, his nostrils flaring.

The woman from the bakery wept and clutched at the old woman, until the younger soldier took hold of her arm and leaned away, drawing her to her feet.
"You," she screamed at the commander. "You aren’t even one of them." She struck him in the chest with a small, hard fist. "You are a liar." She poked at him with such force that it hurt terribly, inciting him to grab hold of her wrist.
He watched her with what he suspected to be a look of warning.

From behind her, the old woman groaned, then farted.

The woman from the bakery broke away and threw herself down at the old woman. She tilted her head to the old lips and listened, the movements of her eyes erratic.

The old woman remained still. There was no more life left in her.

"Awwww," screamed the black-haired woman, making fists above her head and rising and turning and pointing at him.

The younger soldier grabbed hold of her arm, turned it behind her back, then wrapped a length of her hair around his free hand and pulled.

"He isn’t even one of you," she said, trying to yank away, oblivious to the pain in her arm and at the roots of her hair. "He told me so. He isn’t one of you." Such torment needing to find voice. "He came from the bodies, from inside the pile of bodies. He’s one of us, killing us now."

All of these words from an act of suicide.

"I could say the same about you," he countered, in defense of himself, learning, yet regretting at once.

"Should I put her in the truck?" asked the younger soldier.

He watched the woman’s eyes. His decision. He remembered the woman in his bedroom last night. She was different then. Nothing like this woman now. It could not have been her.

Already the old woman was being dragged from the room by the remaining officer.

"You," screamed the woman from the bakery, her teeth exposed, her expression frenzied and gnarled by savagery. She tried to claw at his face, her fingernails desperately near his cheek, barely brushing his lips. "You murderer."


The commander remained in the old woman’s living room until the sound from the truck’s engine shrank away. He sat on the single wooden chair and stared at the opened floorboards until there was tranquilizing silence. Then he stood and took the steps to the second storey. Halfway up, the stairs had a right turn in them, the second set bringing him in line with a hallway. Immediately, there were doors on his right and left, both rooms empty. Bare floors. Bare walls. No curtains covering the window panes.

Further ahead, at his right, there was another opened door and a shut one directly in front of him. He glanced to his right, in through the third door to see that that room, too, was empty. The space was charged with the energy of people having moved on.

At the end of the hallway, he reached for the knob of the shut door, fearing that it might be locked, that someone might be hidden away in there. The knob turned freely in his hand. He pulled open the door to face a wall of articles, tightly packed from floor to ceiling. It was a storage room, yet according to the architecture of the house, the room must have been as large as a bedroom. Not another item could have been crammed into the space.

Reaching ahead, the commander took hold of the wooden handle of an empty suitcase that was flatly slid in there. He drew it free and laid it upright beside him. Then he gripped the silver base of a lamp, saw the shade dislodge and crumble beneath the weight of the objects pressing down from above. He let the lamp drop to the floor, then tossed out a typewriter, a bag of noisy utensils, a plump pillow… He dug in, reaching forward and bending at the waist until the beginnings of a tunnel had been cleared.

It was peculiar how the objects remained set in place to all sides.
The commander leaned on his stomach and edged ahead, his feet rising from the floor. In his position, his breathing became compromised. A more comfortable position was achieved when he turned on his side. Settled, he worked to pry loose and expel items so that a greater width was created near his chest. He removed smaller items (a tin of body powder, several pairs of shoes, a child’s trophy) from around a phonograph, which he worked back and forth until it was dislodged and he could squeeze it in front of him and then use his feet to kick it out of the tunnel where it clunked onto the floor. Pleased with himself, he went on a spree of flicking smaller articles back out through the hole.

As he wormed his way deeper, he made a turn to the left, discerning a hint of glowing red. He continued gripping and expelling articles until he could see-- through a clutter of bound envelopes, a hat box and a stuffed fox-- a red blanket behind which, he assumed, was a window. The red blanket had been pinned up to block or filter the light. Carefully, he cleared the way, then pulled at the blanket, yet the surrounding items had the fabric pinned against the window casing and wall. The only way through was to tear a hole in the centre. Doing so, he saw the pure light from outside. He ripped the hole bigger, shredding the blanket down a vertical line. It was a window at the back of the house, which gave a view of the pile of bodies that the older soldier had been tossed into.

The commander watched the pile of bodies, his eyes tricking him into believing that they witnessed movement. This time, he knew better. He would not be deceived. Yet as he continued to watch, he saw something substantial emerge from the top of the pile, something that was not eager to enter the pile but desired to be free of it. Fingers and what appeared to be a hand that desperately grasped around open air. In time, an entire arm slid out and the bodies toward the top of the mound stiffly shifted as they were spread. A head appeared, followed by the chest, squirming loose. The man writhed clear and stood at the top of the pile. At once, he looked toward the window which the commander gazed through. The man appeared to be identical to him.
He rolled over on his back and stared up at the articles compressed together above: a doll in a button-up dress, the corner edge of a side table, a rolled-up rug with fringes, a straw basket with a few strands broken… While studying the articles compressed around him, he understood why they might have been put into storage. They were not essential. They were not needed to live a life. Austerity was the reversionary pattern used to formulate and fabricate the world he had found himself in. Simplification. Easy to understand, except for the brutality, the cruelty, which he suspected might—after all-- belong to a life that lacked embellishment.

It was impossible to shift around in his tunnel, to rearrange his position to a head-first advantage, so he edged forward on his back until his boots poked out the opening and his legs bent to find the floor. As though spring-loaded, he popped back up. Vertical and prepared. Ahead of him, there lay the trail of articles he had dispelled.


When he reappeared in the street, the younger soldier watched him in the way the older soldier once had.

There were berserk screams coming from the bakery. He looked that way and was told that the black-haired woman was being interrogated by the remaining officer.

"Why?" the commander asked, although he felt it might no longer be his duty to enquire.

"To find the truth," the younger officer plainly said, his eyes giving nothing away.

Then he noticed that the younger soldier was watching down an alleyway.
The commander turned to see a grey, naked body stood there, its hands dangling by its sides as though useless. The body watched ahead. It was trying to say something. Its lips stirring. The intentions of another step and it fell to the ground, remained lodged there on its left shoulder, its gaze level with the earth.

The younger soldier briskly walked to the body and drew his revolver, then looked back at the commander.

The commander stepped nearer, knowing on first sight that there was something about the body that would cause him injury. The younger soldier had already recognized what it might be; the body belonged to that of a man whose identity might be settled on.

The naked man turned his eyes to look up at him as he stood there.

"Brother," the man whispered.

The commander stared, his eyes becoming hot, his throat thickening.

The younger soldier said: "What?" He gritted his teeth. "You call him brother!"

"Brother," the man whispered again, a thirsty plea in his voice.

It was the man the commander had shot, the man from the bed in the shed, the man he had watched climb from the pile of bodies behind the remaining houses of this town, this town that had once been his but now seemed less and less to be.

The man naked to the world.

"Get him some water," the commander said to the younger soldier, but the younger soldier had already fired.

The shot kicked up dirt beside the naked man’s chin.

The naked man opened his eyes again. A simple gesture without a trace of fright. Merely his will to see.

"Stop it," the commander said, snatching the revolver away.

"It’s your own undoing then," said the younger soldier, but to which of the two men it was impossible to tell.


"I’m sorry," said the black-haired woman. "I should have said nothing." She tried washing the face of the naked man who had come from the pile of bodies.

"They did this to you."

The man watched the woman’s face. It was cut at the lips and there were bruises around her eyes. This was a mesmerizing treasure to him.

"It was my fault." She dabbed at his dry lips with the cloth. "I should have said nothing."

The naked man could not think why the black-haired woman was washing him, why she was apologizing to him of all people. He wondered what had happened to the woman’s face. He wondered if she might be one of them or another. He could not help but imagine her with shorter hair and a stillness in her body.

He tried not to think.

He was glad to be alive.

None of this mattered now. The distance or difference between two peoples. Now that he was alive. It was all a gift to him. Every movement. Every moment. A miracle. This lovely woman to care for him. Her gentle, precise touch. Out from the merciful clarity that he recognized as his life, he thought he might weep for forgiveness.

He took a breath and continued studying the woman’s face, the bruises, the abrasions, then lower, the welts and scars on her body. They urged something inside of him, something not so very thankful. The welts and scars reminded him that he had been shot, been in bed with a woman much like the one before him. Thankful to start anew. The bodies in the pile. He had mastered them. He had survived. He was thankful. No, triumphant. It was a gift to be alive, a gift that he had not so much been given him but that he had taken, that he had achieved. Not a gift at all, actually, but an eventuality. Destiny. A gift that he had given himself by surviving. Thankful, for his own unfaltering will.

The naked woman with the long black hair.

Thankful for his own doing.

Look at her, he told himself, reaching out and touching the woman’s left nipple with his grey fingers. Look at that.

The woman stopped.

The naked man regarded her face. He waited, then he pinched the nipple between his thumb and forefinger, the pressure swelling his fingertips pink.

The woman flinched, her touch pausing. She looked more carefully at the man’s face which had taken on an expression of fierce interest.

There was a silence, before she said: "Why did you do that?"

The commander, the younger soldier and the remaining officer listened to the crackling speaker, the voices of the naked man from the pile of bodies and the black-haired woman, both in the room next door.

The woman and the man had been thrown into one of the rooms above the bakery to see what might be learned from them. The familiarity which with they addressed each other seemed to validate certain suspicions.

"There’s conspiracy here," stated the remaining officer. He was eating an apple, cutting wedges away with his knife and sliding them into his mouth. There was red smeared on the flesh of the apple, perhaps carried over from the peel.

The younger soldier listened intently, as though it might be a program on the
radio and it would be a crime to miss a single dramatic insinuation.

"He’s already passed on confidential information," said the remaining officer, alertly. "Where did he get this information? How did he know?"

All eyes were on the commander, who mutely watched the speaker, for from it came a voice he took to be his own.

At first, the naked man was sorry. Behind closed doors, the man told the woman that when he found himself in the pile of bodies, it had made him reason with himself. It had changed him. The man had cried openly for the death that had nearly claimed him. He had felt the suffering. He was thankful to be alive. He praised the divine power for granting him salvation.

"Here," said the woman, straightening the woolen blanket around the man’s shoulders, for he was trembling. Before entering the room, the naked man had been issued a blanket as part of the convention pertaining to a prisoner. The woman, however, was not a prisoner, so she was not assigned one.

The man’s teary eyes were grateful. He thought of offering the woman his blanket to conceal her nudity, yet he felt a certain sense of righteousness to be covered in front of her. It was with mounting interest that his eyes traveled the length of the woman’s body, the weakness in him hardening with each inch of flesh discovered and personalized.

When his eyes met hers, the woman knew that an adjustment had been calculated between them.

The man’s trembling had ceased. "I wondered how I could have ended up with the dead. I am not dead."

The naked woman gave a little smile, although the smile seemed to hurt a touch.

"The more I thought of it, the more I knew I had been wronged. I wasn’t meant to be with the bodies."

"None of us are meant to be with the bodies."

The man paused to consider these words, but they found no anchor in him. "I had been betrayed."

"Betrayed?"

"Yes, betrayed."

"By who?"

"My own brother. My twin. The man whose death I had ordered."

The woman carefully stood from where she was crouched near the man.
"Twin?" she said with trepidation.

"Yes," said the man. "And he is something to you. I can see that now. That won’t do." He let the blanket slip from his shoulders, the purple erection-- pole-straight and vein-hard—poked up from between his legs. "You felt sorry for me, but it was really for him, wasn’t it? You and him, the same."

The woman took a step away, her eyes cast toward the door.

"I felt sorry for myself, too," said the man, standing from the chair. "But that does no good. The life came back into me."

The woman shook her head, refusing to believe.

"Now, I almost feel sorry for you."


The muffled cries of the woman sounded through the speaker; her lips and, perhaps, nostrils were squat hard behind something.

The remaining officer looked at his watch. "Twenty-seven minutes," he said, "up to this point. And each minute, he seems to grow stronger."

There came a thrusting roar through the speaker and the speech-sizzle of vile accusations that energized punishment.

The remaining officer and the younger officer looked at the commander. In light of the actions in the next room, they were growing unconvinced of his capabilities.

"Listen to that," said the younger soldier, reverentially. "What is he using on her?"

"Something unwelcome, like a prying neighbour" said the remaining officer, and they both laughed while facing each other and wondering what devices or objects might be in the room.

"I expect he’s inventive."

Then they both looked at the commander, their laughter turning to grins that soon vanished, faithless.

"Nothing like the story you told," said the remaining officer.

"What?" The commander lowered the volume on the metal speaker, for the woman’s cries were becoming more panicky, ragged and desperate, yet less energetic.

"What you told her last night," said the remaining officer.

The commander glanced at the speaker and realized that a similar listening device had been placed in his room.

"What were you trying to get from her using such lies?" asked the remaining officer.

By the way the two men were looking at him, he knew it was time to take action. If he did not react resolutely, in the capacity of leader, he would lose himself to the man in the other room who was presently and willingly proving himself.

Yet he could not spirit himself beyond silence. He listened to the crackle of what was being done to the woman and it made him somber. It was not natural. It was a crime. There was no anger in him and for this he would be removed from his position and another put in his place. One remarkably like him.

Finally, he tried this: "Love is a powerful tool."

"Love?" said the remaining officer incredulously. "A tool for what?"

"Extraction."

The younger soldier watched the commander as though he might have understood, but the remaining officer was having none of it.

"And what did you get from her?" asked the remaining officer.

"What I was trying to get from her I got." Yet despite his attempt at a smile, a smile that was meant to be self-aggrandizing, yet felt pathetic on his lips, the two men merely watched him, suspecting a new intrigue.



Chapter 5


That night, after being watched for the remainder of the day by the wary eyes of those once under his command, he retired early to his room in hopes of constructing a strategy. He had just come from the holding cell where the naked man had been taken after treating the woman with such violence.

"I believe it might be best to keep him alive," the remaining officer had suggested, tipping his chin toward the naked, pacing prisoner in the cell, "until we confirm his identity."

"You know who he says he is," the commander had countered, his voice unsteady as though being leached from him.

"You know who I am," the naked man had shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Yes," replied the remaining officer, brandishing an odious smile at the commander. "You, sir."

While walking away, he regretted not having shot the remaining officer. The act would have been a potent and, perhaps, pleasing diversion but—ultimately-- would have done him no good. He would then have had to shoot the younger soldier and whoever else passed through town and heard the ravings of the man in the holding cell. The only act of certainty would be to shoot the prisoner, but that would cast further suspicion upon him, and the man—once disposed of-- might merely crawl from the pile of bodies again.

The commander’s thoughts were troubled by all of this as he entered his room with his eyes on the floorboards. Looking up, he noticed a foreign bulk in his bed, the long, grey hair and the thickness of the female form. He came to a standstill, his hand on the doorknob.

At once, he glanced around the room, trying to divine the hiding place of the listening device. He assumed the overhead light fixture or the lamp on the bedside table.

"Hello," he said, the word coming from him without reflection.

The grey-haired woman on the bed did not stir.

Shutting the door, he concluded that this was meant to be a test. No, more than a test… a contest. In another room, identical to this one, the prisoner might have been placed in a duplicate situation, his actions recorded and weighed against the commander’s actions. The trick was for one of them to outdo the other.

With his eyes on the naked old woman, he heard loud footsteps beyond his door. No secret effort was being made to obscure their presence. The footsteps came to a standstill directly outside his door.

He expected a knock, but neither came. There were no voices, no mutterings or whispers, only the occasional rustle of movement. He sat on the edge of the bed with his back to the old woman, his eyes on the door, on the hook three-quarters way up. Then he stood again, removed his long coat and carefully hung it on the hook. Returning to the bed, he kept his eyes off the old woman and sat. He bounced a little to make the bedsprings creek. Conscious of the men beyond his door, he increased the momentum of his bounce. He breathed through his open mouth, made his breath an audible rasping, then snorted through his nostrils and came up with the expected sound of gratification.

What if they come in, he thought. Standing, he quickly unbuckled his belt, pulled down his trousers and looked back at the old woman. Who was this old woman? He could not tell by her face, for it had a wrinkled complexion that made her features indistinct. How long had she been dead? Her skin was grey with tinges of pink towards the extremities. And what was this old woman to him? He recalled the sign above the remaining officer’s desk in the bakery: To own the dead means to own everything.

Just then there came a rap on the door.

He flinched.

"Commander," said a voice.

"Come in," he said as he hurriedly reached down to pull his trousers up.
The remaining officer entered, followed by the younger soldier, who led the naked man into the room. The prisoner was no longer naked, but dressed in grey pants and a shirt, and—most damning of all-- his hands were not secured.

The commander locked eyes with the prisoner.

The prisoner showed no sigh of respect nor remorse, but shook his head in a chastising manner, then gazed at the old woman on the bed, his entire being seeming to seep that way.

This will be it, the commander told himself while buckling his belt. This will prove who I am.

The prisoner tread near the commander and moved past. He went to the far side of the bed and reached down between the old woman’s legs, probing roughly and without feeling.

"Dry," said the prisoner, the word like a stab.

The younger soldier and the remaining officer watched the commander, then shifted their eyes to the bed upon hearing the sound of a blow being delivered.

No cry came in return, only one slight creak of the bedsprings.

The prison muttered, "Muslim dog," before a second meatier blow sounded, followed by a slap. There was a moment of silence as the prisoner seemed to struggle with dead weight. Then came the shredding of cloth.

At this point, the commander could not prevent himself from glancing back, for the old woman had been naked. The prisoner had taken off his shirt and was tearing strips from it. With two of the strips, he secured each of the old woman’s hands to the rungs of the iron headboard.

The commander looked away, toward the open door, where he expected others to enter, to linger, to watch.

Why bind the arms of a dead woman? he wondered.

Behind him, the bedsprings creaked, as weight was added atop weight. Another blow sounded and then another, each one increasing in vigour and punctuated by vulgar words as the bounce of the bedsprings became more extreme. The iron headboard thudded into the wall. Up on the ceiling, the light fixture swayed. The bedside lamp fell over and smashed. Something struck the windowpane. The commander imagined the sole living bird, its beak crumbling.

As the thrust increased, sprinkles of plaster drifted down from the ceiling, flecking the three men in the room. Their hair and faces vaguely grey and white. Soon, the headboard was pounding into the wall. And it was raining dust.

The commander became aware of his hands. They were growing warm. He had no idea where to put them.

With eyes fixed on the bed, the younger soldier and the remaining officer quietly backed away, their expressions made rigid by the intensity of the scene, until they were stood in the doorway. At that point, at the first sound of cartilage being crushed, they both looked away, one to the left, the other to the right. And at a later point-- at the sound of bone splintering-- they stole one glance back and were compelled to shut the door to mute the living spectacle.

The commander stood still, the uproar of conquest behind his back: the silent endurance of the old woman, the submissive pleading of the black-haired bakery worker, and—ultimately, back to the beginning where the prisoner came alertly to attention then bowed out-- the secretive whisperings of the little girl who—tucked away in her hiding place beneath the floorboards—refused to sacrifice existence to this terrible dream.

Chapter 6

A MESSAGE was coming in behind the new commander. He waited for the machine to stop and then read the two words printed on the strip of paper: ‘Conflict over.’ And then the name: Supreme Commander Weisenstein. The new commander tore off the strip and brought it to the prisoner in the holding cell three houses down.

As the new commander entered the makeshift prison, the younger soldier—who had been guarding the prisoner-- came to full attention.

"Conflict over," the new commander announced, repeating the words that had been sent to him through the telewire. "We have triumphed."

The prisoner quietly looked up from his bunk to see the younger soldier smile. It was a good-natured smile. A smile that had gone missing. He was just a boy, after all. The two words spoken by the new commander had taken years off his life. The boy went to the new commander and offered his hand but the commander kept his eyes trained on the prisoner.

The soldiers would be relieved now. Returned to their homes in the various regions beyond these borders, they would sleep in beds with their benevolent wives and kiss their fortunate children good-morning. Families would be reunited. The men would return to their jobs, to take up tools, to fix and build.

The conflict was over.

All these days, while he sat in his cell, the prisoner had wondered why the new commander had not called for his extermination. Perhaps the new commander had heard rumours of the impending end of the conflict. While in command, the prisoner had believed they were losing the conflict, yet now, with the new commander in his place, they had admitted victory.

Perhaps, when all was said and done, they were brothers, and would now be brothers again.

The new commander watched the prisoner, then instructed the younger soldier to leave them. The younger soldier glanced at the prisoner, smiling to share his new fortune, to wish him nothing but the very best, then made his way from the room.

Once the door had closed, the new commander said, as though he had been saving the words up for as long as they had lived: "You remember when we were children, that time you saved me from the tiger?"

The prisoner nodded, thinking that now might be the time to smile at the recollection, yet he could not complete the emotion. Instead, he watched his hands where they dangled between his knees. "It was only an imaginary tiger," he conceded.

"No."

"It was only in your head."

"Yes, but not imaginary." The new commander drew his revolver. "You took that tiger from me. You became the strong one by comforting me."

"The weak one."

The new commander raised the revolver. "I’ve already exterminated the remaining officer, as you were meant to do. The younger soldier is your only hope now. Your faith in youth."

The prisoner stared at the new commander, wondering what he might do next, wondering if the new commander might be backing down, for it seemed as though he had lost something of his signature confidence.

"Yes, we, the Jews, have won the conflict," the new commander said, triumphant yet with a quaver in his voice. "Finally. The Chosen Ones."

"So, what need is there for me now," admitted the prisoner, plainly watching the revolver. He thought of rising from the edge of his bunk, but could not summon the resolve. He had been without spirit for quite some time.

The new commander raised the revolver and placed the tip against his own temple. "I believe the opposite is true."

The prisoner had no idea how.

"What good is there now? To rot in peace." And the new commander fired before the final word had escaped his lips. "Shalom."



That night, there were sounds that could not be explained. The direction of the distant, barely-discernible tones seemed to shift from east to west as though his ears were playing tricks on him, or the wind was changing direction, although not a breeze stirred.

From his view through the bars, he stared out into the black night. As much as he strained to look in both directions, he could not see a fire. The sounds came like whispers from a dream a hundred kilometers off. There would be a hint of something and then nothing, so that he thought it might just be his mind devising distractions.

In the morning, the sounds were more distinct, although remained fleeting and evasive. Regardless, there was a crowding in his head. The activity beyond his cell took on a more energetic stride, as though the distant, fleeting and evasive sounds were infiltrating and spurring on a local call to action.

He was checked on on five occasions that day. The younger soldier entered, his hand remaining on the door, while he cast a wary look over the cell. Then, he would leave, only to return some time later. It was peculiar to watch. The younger soldier staring into the cell, then back over his shoulder, dubious of resolution, weighing what might matter.

Gazing at the floor beyond his cell, the prisoner wondered when the body of the new commander had been taken away. Throughout the night, in the darkness, he had heard not a sound in the room, yet as the light uncovered the room again the body of the new commander had vanished. He searched around inside himself, yet could find it no where.

He thought: There is only so much time before not only I but the younger soldier will be judged.

The distant noises were not so vague now. What could be heard most prominently were machine sounds and what he thought might have been hoof beats, horses. The muted yet sustained shouting of men. Opened mouths nearing, through a wavering haze.

As he lay in the darkness, he heard the wall of noise prod out individual sounds. The noises became dissimilar and individual, like a tin map with mountain ranges being punched into definition. The land was crossed, the space occupied, no longer separating.

He stood at his window and stared out into the darkness. There was noise straight ahead of him, yet he could see nothing under the moon-absent sky. Darkness made of sound, closing in. How far away was it? he wondered. There was not a glimmer of light, not a hint of muted metal, not a stain of fire.

As the red spread through the sky, he saw that the horizon was no longer a blank line but set with the darker outline of small figures. Single-mindedly conceived, it was all farther away than he suspected, yet stampeding straight at him.



The grinding and percussion of engines could be heard, the grating and heavy squeaking of tank tracks, the rumble of hoof beats. The shouts of men. It remained as vapor, yet his ears caught the intermittent crest of it. He identified what it was.

Eventually, the nearing sound lulled him to sleep. He lay down on his bunk and shut his eyes. The louder the sound, the more exhausted he became, until he felt a transcendent sleep akin to the abstract heaviness of unconsciousness.

He woke to the roar of movement blasting to crescendo and then stilling a moment after he opened his eyes. Engines being shut off, the whinnying of horses. The sounds became voices, boot steps. He sat up on his bunk. The younger soldier entered with the troop leader of the American coalition forces.

"This is the man?" asked the troop leader, his blue uniform clean and impeccably tailored, his blonde hair slicked back. "Why hasn’t he been transported?"

"We don’t know who he is, sir."

"Give me his file?" the troop leader shot out his black-gloved hand, while his deep-blue eyes curtly examined the prisoner.

The younger soldier left and returned with the file.

"Go," said the troop leader, snatching the file, and the younger soldier left. At once, the troop leader sat at the desk and read through the file. Occasionally, he glanced over with hurried interest at the cell. When he was done, he shut the file and stood.

"This makes nothing obvious," the troop leader announced through the bars. "It seems you had a brother. One of them is dead. Obviously, it’s not you, so which one do you claim to be?"

Wordlessly, the prisoner watched the troop leader drop a cigarette to the floor and smear the life from it with his boot heel. There seemed to be nothing left to say, for the troop leader then left.

A few minutes later, the troop leader returned with the black-haired woman from the bakery.

"What choice of interrogation methods were employed here?" he asked through the bars, tilting his head toward the woman. "You saw to her."

The woman whimpered and watched him, turning her eyes toward the ground. Her naked wrists were bound behind her back. Her hair had been snipped short. She had been changed, entirely.

"She is nothing to you then," said the troop leader.

The prisoner watched the woman. She was someone he thought he might have helped.

The troop leader drew his revolver. According to the expression on his face, his gesture became more meaningful as he slowly, gradually leveled the revolver to the woman’s temple. He bit on his lower lip and his nostrils flared.

"Are you a Muslim or a Jew?" the troop leader asked in a tight voice.

The prisoner had no idea. If it was in his heart where he was meant to search, he found nothing there but a slot.

The troop leader glanced at the woman’s sobbing, disfigured face, her eyes still cast down.

"This Allah-loving whore keeps her eyes away from you, as though you are her superior." The American troop leader looked from the woman to him, then back to the woman, finding encouragement. "Or is it simply shame?" And he fired the gun, the impact-- snapping the woman’s head to the side-- splintered bone, and raised her eyes to him for one final look as she tilted toward the ground. She fell without restriction, her wrists still bound behind her back. It took a while for the sound of the gunshot and the pounding of weight against the floorboards to settle.

Now, the revolver was turned on him.

"Her Allah did nothing to save her. But you. What are you?"

He said not a word in his defense. It was impossible.

"You must know," the troop leader demanded. "How could you not know? Tell me."

"I have no memory of it."

"Memory?" The troop leader held the revolver aimed steadily between a space in the bars, the tip of the barrel framed in iron. "Memory has nothing to do with admission." His eyes shifted uncertainly, as though a thought had come over him. "If you are a commander then you were educated, trained. You would know the tenets of the Dershowitz Creed."

He said nothing.

"Tenet 9, please. You would know. No one would share that with you. Tenet 9."

The prisoner gave a feeble shake of his head.

"No? Perhaps a chant then, a string of Allah Akbars."

Nothing.

"One or the other," demanded the troop leader. "We have little time here." The troop leader watched through the bars. He waited. Then he glanced back at the file on the desk. As though in a fury, he holstered his revolver and strode toward the desk. He seized the file in both hands and tore it to shreds. Then he stormed out of the room, the door banging shut on its coil hinges.

The prisoner waited but no one else came to see him. He stared at the naked dead woman on the floor. She had worked in the bakery. A deep, black-red finger of blood crept toward him from a larger pool. He waited until it was almost too late and then moved his bare feet away to avoid the outpour.
As time went on, it became dark and the flies arrived through the bars in his window to investigate.

From the sounds that reached him, he could tell that items were being packed away in trucks. There was much activity and voices curtly giving instruction. People were being moved. The noise was heading off, one section at a time. As the light from the yellow moon came through his window, he listened to hear complete silence. Not one human sound could be discerned. The others had left. He perceived the stillness with physical acuity, as though his entire body was sensing impoverishment or relief.

The flies did not ever sleep.

He sat on the bed and waited, the odour from the front of his cell drifting to him as the sun began to brighten what lay beyond the bars. His lips grew dry from breathing through his mouth. There was no way to escape the smell. He stood and went to the pail of water on the floor at the foot of his bunk. Squatting, he kept his eyes fixed on the grey wall, and sipped what he took to be his rationed allotment, knowing that he must preserve what little water remained.

He would not use the water to clean up the blood that thickened and blackened near his feet. He moved the pail away from where it was set and placed it in the far corner. Then he took off his shirt and covered the pail to prevent the flies from polluting it.

They have forgotten about me, he said to no one but himself.



Darkness came again. Creatures entered through the bars of his window and crept down the wall to slink or scurry across the floor. From where he sat on his bed, he watched them move as shadows, his eyes following their trail toward the taller bars where they freely slipped through. Nothing could prevent them from mounting their claim. In the daylight, they were gone, taking their snorting, lapping and chewing noises with them.

The stench clashed with his hunger until his hunger was removed. The stench drew larger creatures that passed before him in the darkness, going one way, then the other, one occasionally pausing to raise its head and make a threatening noise at another. Bugs appeared of every conceivable shape and colour. Yellow and green. Red and brown. Blue and orange. Some with wings that allowed them to fly short distances only. There were ants everywhere, climbing, circling, progressing in orderly lines. Blindly, they worked in concert, for the common good of their ranks.



Chapter 7


HE WAS astonished by the speed with which a body could be stripped of flesh. So many living things with such urgent need. What would they be eating otherwise? he wondered. What was no longer famished because of this? Shouldn’t death be everywhere, he wondered. And then he realized that it was. Hysteria made him chuckle.

One feeding from the other, he thought, and the other feeding from the first, yet neither of the same flesh. A domesticated dog with a name, a homeless dog without one. No contest in choosing the one to be shot first.



When there was nothing but polished bone left of the woman, his mind decided for him. He knew who he was and who he was not. He raised the water pail and looked down into it. There was an eighth of a liter remaining. How far would that get him in the confines of his cell? In awe, he slowly turned the pail over and allowed the remaining contents to run and trickle onto the dried blood. The spill was a disburdening relief that mollified his body.

It only took water to make the blood flow again. He felt the seep pool around his toes, soak into his skin to rise along the edges of his soles. These are my stained feet, he heard himself say. And it has not been a comfortable sleep with her. He moved his eyes toward the bones that faced the ceiling.

Where his feet had been stuck to the floor, they came away with a viscous sound as he knelt in submission and lowered his lips. The sound of his kiss was the lock on his door released.


END