Enchanted Forests (24 page)

He doesn't nod, but emotions play over his face like shadows.

He was surprised. He still doesn't understand it.

"Your strength is that you might do anything." I lower my

voice, lean toward him. "Anything." I smile. "But that's the dan-

ger, too. Do you understand? Hitler purged his lieutenants. You

should know that. You should know what history can teach you

about yourself."

From the books on the floor, I select Shirer's Rise and Fall.

"We could start here," I say hefting the thick volume. "Shall I

read you a chapter? Shall we begin at the beginning?"

Oh, the hate in his eyes.

"No," I say. "That's not the right sort of history for you. You

need something tailored to you, yes? Something more personal,

more relevant to your present situation. In fact, let's not call it

history at all. Let's call it a crime story, set in me winter of '44.

A crime story. A puzzle. I'll give you the crime. You tell me the

motive."

The snow was deep, and in places the wind was piling it

deeper still. Here and there, it came up to my belt.

I held my rifle at port arms and kept a good ten feet between

myself and my prisoner. I doubted that he'd try to jump me for

the gun—his own lines were far away, now, melting back into

Germany—but SS soldiers were a cocky lot.

I wished for tire ruts to walk in. Even with the prisoner blaz-

ing the trail, wading through the snow was wearing me out, and

we were still a long hike from Battalion HQ.

I heard, like an answered prayer, the sound of engines. A cou-

ple of Jeeps emerged from the forest below and turned toward us.

The paths left by their churning wheels invited me, and I

thought, Hallelujah!

Planning to wait for the jeeps to pass, I said to the prisoner,

"Hold up. Halt."

An explosion belted my gut like a sucker punch. I hit the deck,

but the German remained standing, hands still clasped calmly be-

hind his head. He smirked at me-

THESE SHOES STRANGERS HAVE DIED OF 159

"Nur cine Landmine," he said in a voice that might be ex-

plaining thunder to a child. "Nichts befurchten."

Memory is tricky. That probably isn't exactly what he said. I

did not leam German until after the war.

One of the jeeps was upside down, and the snow had been

blown clear for ten feet around it

I stood up and let my rifle point more emphatically at the Ger-

man while I brushed snow from the front of my jacket with my

other hand.

Around us trees swayed in the wind.

"Okay," I said as deeply as I could manage. "Now march!"

A third jeep had pulled up behind the other two, then turned

around to go back for medics. Running down the opposite slope

of the valley, churning snow before him like a plow, was some

GI who must have popped out of a foxhole. He was shouldering

an aidman's bag.

I didn't have to hurry my prisoner. He waded forward reso-

lutely, as if eager to draw closer.

One of the jeep's passengers, an infantryman, was lying

facedown in the crater. He had no legs. Another guy was ly-

ing beside the tree trunk he'd been thrown against, and nothing

but his mouth was moving. He said, "Jesus, sweet Jesus," again

and again.

The third man, a lieutenant, lay on his back with the jeep pin-

ning his chest. The aidman leaned close to see if he was breath-

ing.

He wasn't.

Clicking his tongue as we passed, my prisoner said, and this

I'm almost sure of, "Daft ist also das Kriegsgluck."

The aidman looked up. There was an 82nd Airborne patch on

his shoulder. "What did he say?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I don't speak German."

From the other jeep, a man said, "Thinks he's clever, don't

he?"

It was true. The German was smirking as he surveyed the

scene.

The dead lieutenant looked asleep, eyes half closed, mouth

slack. He was young, a ninety-day wonder.

"You take that Jerry son of a bitch into the woods," the aid-

man told me, "and you shoot that grin off his goddamn face."

The prisoner shook his head very slightly and clicked his

tongue again. I prodded him with the gun barrel. "Stop that shit.

Keep moving."

160                 Bmce Holland Rogers

The aidman crouched beside the man who'd been thrown

against the tree, but over his shoulder he said, "If you were Air-

borne, you'd take my advice."

It was easier to walk in the tire ruts.

A while later, the jeep that had gone back for help came

rolling through the snow, ferrying medics to where the mine had

blown the first jeep. They drove slowly, slaying in the tracks,

wary of another mine. We stood aside to let them through.

Very quietly, the prisoner started singing, bobbing his head in

time with the song. It was a march. It was a true believer's song.

"Knock it off," I said to his back-

He stopped, but before long he had started it up again.

"Come on," I said. "You've made your point."

He stopped singing, but he still bobbed his head from side to

side, and he turned slightly, awkwardly because his hands were

still clasped behind his neck, I saw enough of his face to see the

smirk again.

"What is it with you?" I said. "Halt!"

He stopped and turned full around to face me.

We stood, watching each other.

His eyes were the color of ice, of winter skies.

"Let's take a detour. Up there." I gestured with my head, up

the slope, away from the tire ruts.

He unclasped his hands and pointed, tentatively, over his head.

"You got it," I said. "Let's go."

As we walked, wading again through deep drifts, he began

once again to sing. Loudly. This time, I didn't shut him up.

The farther we went, the more densely the pine trees crowded

around us.

Remember, this is a mystery. Why was I doing this? I can tell

you, it wasn't the Malmedy massacre. And all the rest, all the ru-

mors, smacked of propaganda.

I made him stop, then turn to face me.

The trees circled us like witnesses.

I brought the Ml to my shoulder and pointed it at his chest.

"Doctor's orders," I told him, "courtesy of the 82nd Air-

borne."

I watched where I was aiming—the center of his chest.

The rifle report echoed from the surrounding hills.

He pitched back and hardly kicked. It had been a clean shot,

a hunter's shot His back arched for a moment, then fell.

Then, when it was too late, I wanted to know what his face

THESE SHOES STRANGERS HAVE DIED OF 161

had been like before I had shot him. Was he surprised? Was he

smirking?

I couldn't tell. Dead, his face was a mask.

My knees got weak. I knelt next to him in the snow.

There was a secret here.

The smell of blood was like copper in the cold air. I thought

of hunting again, of killing and dressing out deer, spilling their

steaming guts onto the snow.

I detached my bayonet, opened his coat and shirt, unbuckled

his belt. A bayonet is not a hunting knife. It's made for stabbing,

not slicing. The blade is too long for good leverage. But I made

it do, opening him up, spilling him out, looking for clues. Blood

up to my elbows.

Months later, when we began to liberate the camps, I told my-

self that there was justice in what I had done. But the killing pre-

ceded the motive. Even though I had heard the rumors, I only

believed in the camps when I saw them myself.

"So," I say to him, "it's a mystery, isn't it? Why did I kill

him?'

He had listened intently. I pat his leg, and he doesn't try to

kick me.

"And here you are, another mystery. Another Nazi, delivered

into my hands. But things are different. I didn't kill you, I saved

you. What for? What happens next?"

His eyes are wide.

There is more. After I dressed out the SS trooper and strung

his unreadable entrails across the snow, I pulled off his boots.

My hands were sticky. I washed them with snow, then undid

my laces with numb fingers.

I had to stamp down hard to get his boots to fit my feet

I walked around him, in his own boots, searching. Then I hap-

pened to rest my hand on the trunk of a pine tree.

And I felt him inside.

If the bayonet was a bad hunting knife, it was even worse for

carving. At best, I could only strip the bark in the place where

my trembling fingers detected him. But he was there. If I could

free him of the wood, I would know what his face had looked

like in his last moment.

But I lacked the tools.

For the rest of the war, I kept rinding other faces in other trees.

At Stavelot, where the SS had shot Belgian children, I found a

162                 Bruce Holland Rogers

face in a garden birch tree. In broken French, I explained. A

farmer lent me his hand ax, and I did the detail work with an-

other man's pocket knife.

The farmer, watching me work, watching the face that

emerged, shed quiet tears. The face, I was made to understand,

was his niece's.

Many times since the war, I have searched the Ardennes for-

est. I have never been able to find the spot where I killed the

trooper. I have never been able to find the tree.

I remove his gag.

He says nothing.

I say, 'That's belter. That's much belter."

He is looking at the wooden faces, shaking his head. "It's bull-

shit," he says at last. "I don't fucking believe you."

"What part don't you believe?"

"Ghosts," he says. "I don't believe m ghosts."

"Not ghosts," I tell him. "That's not what they are."

I go back to the studio to work, to finish what I have worked

on all the time that he's been here.

Really, it is necessary to wear the uniform, to pull those shin-

ing boots over your calves and pose and smile. I have the Luger

that matches the uniform. It is not a heavy gun, but without the

weight of it in its glossy holster, the uniform and its truth are in-

complete.

The commander of SS troops at Malmedy, at Stavelot, was Lt.

Col. Jochen Peiper. Sentenced to hang, confident of reprieve, he

called the war "a proud and heroic time. Wherever we stood was

Germany, and as far as my tank gun reached was my kingdom."

The boots are proud and heroic.

The holster is proud and heroic.

The insignia gleam.

When I come downstairs again, he has freed his hands and is

working at the ropes that bind his feet. He hears me coming, but

seems unconcerned until he looks up and sees the uniform.

I unholster the Luger.

He hardly seems to notice the boots and canvas bag I carry in

my other hand. All his attention is on the gun.

"Isn't it beautiful?" I say, but I mean the uniform, not the gun.

"Go on." I wave the muzzle at him casually. "It's time for us to

go. Finish untying yourself."

THESE SHOES STRANGERS HAVE DIED OF 163

He doesn't move.

"Come on," I tell him. "I haven't gol all day."

"What are you going to do?"

"Shut up," I tell him, "and get those ropes off your feet"

When he has freed himself, I tell him to stand. He grunts and

holds his side where he must have taken a kick to the ribs. I

make him strip and dress in his own clothes. All but his boots.

"Wear these," I say. I toss the boots—very much like the ones

I am wearing, only these ones do not shine. They are boots that

have seen the battlefield. They are scarred. The leather is

cracked.

I say, "You can't get them on by staring at them."

He had no coat when I found him. I tell him to bring the blan-

ket from the couch. It's an old woolen one that I won't miss.

"Now out," I say. "Back to where I found you."

"I'm thirsty," he says, "and hungry."

"If you had the gun and I were the one who was hungry,

would you feed me?"

He thinks about it. "Yes."

"All right." I herd him into the kitchen. Without taking my

eyes from him, I get down a box of crackers. At the sink, oe

drinks water from his cupped hands. Then he eats a handful of

the crackers.

"That's enough," I say. 'Take the box. Eat them later."

The snow has gone on falling almost all me time he's been

with me. I can find no tracks. The snow is up to our knees.

We need a tune for marching. I whistle the regimental march

of the Liebstcauiarte Adolf Hitler.

Very quietly, he says, "Please,"

I stop whistling.

We march.

He says, "What will happen?"

I say, "What are we to do with the killers, with the people who

are filled with hate?"

"I never killed anyone," he says-

"But you have hurt people. Don't ask me to believe that you

haven't done that."

I start to whistle the march again. Then I stop to say, "Do

you know that in Germany, that music is illegal? They'll throw

you in jail just for carrying the tune. There's a long list of for-

bidden music. What do you think of that?"

He says, "I don't understand you. Who are you?"

By which he must mean, Whose side are you on?

164 Bruce Holland Rogers

Once I was at a gallery opening of my recent work. This set