Crack of Doom by Willi Heinrich Page A

could see the badges on their coats: Military Police. More and more thronged behind them, the whole road was full of them. The first three reached the slope, and he saw Alfred kicking at them; one of them reached out with his gun and there was an ugly sound. Now they grabbed Alfred, and began battering him with their fists, kicking him in the stomach with their nailed boots, and left off only when he had stopped moving and lay in the snow, a lump of bleeding flesh. Then they came running up the embankment. Kolodzi saw their distorted faces, ugly grimaces under bobbing steel helmets: German soldiers. Half mad with terror he pushed the barrel of his gun through the crack and emptied the whole magazine. Then he was running away from the fence across the snow-covered tracks. He was crying but he did not notice it. All he could think was: that's how it is, and again: so that's how it is. Some men came toward him, he raised his tommy-gun with the empty magazine and they ran away in alarm. Instinctively he swerved off into another direction. He scrambled under a string of freight cars, crossed tracks and switches in great bounds, and came up against a wall. He vaulted over it not noticing that his hands were torn and bleeding from the glass fragments on top. He came out into a deserted street. Without reducing his speed, he ran as far as the next crossroad and fifty yards beyond; only then did he drop to a walk. Three civilians were standing under a door and stared at him. He did not see them. Blindly he marched to Maria's house. The front door was open, he went down a dark hall, and saw Maria. When Kolodzi came in, she looked up incredulously. "Yes," he said, "it's really me."
    She jumped up and flung her arms round him. "What's happened, Stefan?"
    "Nothing."
    "That's not true. Just look at yourself."
    "I'm all right." His knees were tottering, he dropped into a chair and asked: "Where's your father?"
    "I don't know. What's happened? Do tell me, please." She pressed against him, panting. "What's happened, Stefan?"
    Kolodzi did not answer. A red cloud hung over his brain, he could taste salt water at the corners of his mouth, and there was a lump in his throat so big he couldn't swallow it. But Maria was with him. Through the thin dress he could feel her trembling. He caressed her shoulders, her neck; and the warmth of her body enveloped him. Her mouth was against his ear, he heard her say something, but shook his head and pressed her to him still tighter. Somewhere there was the hum of boiling water, a clock ticked, a dull light crept through the kitchen window—it was already day.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

 
     
    CHAPTER
    5
     
     
    With Colonel Schnetzler and Captain Sitt the division had lost its two senior staff officers after the general; following the conference at headquarters, Captain Meisel also went off to an army hospital for treatment of his injured arm. For several hours the extensive and complicated machinery of division headquarters was wholly in the hands of Major Giesinger, the divisional adjutant. He was not completely at ease in his new role; he had failed to make the brilliant entrance he had previously imagined, and the quarrel with Fuchs had left him vaguely unsettled.
    The HQ was housed in the huge villa of a Czech industrialist, now living with his family on the top floor, where the servants used to sleep. By Czech standards the house was luxuriously furnished. Giesinger's room possessed a wide projecting bay with a big desk, a smoking table and four comfortable chairs. Opposite, built into the paneled wall, there was an open fireplace with elaborate wood carving and graceful pillars on both sides, which had immediately aroused his enthusiasm the first time he entered the room: it was an exact replica of a fifteenth-century chimney piece he had once seen in Florence.
    He was a passionate connoisseur, and his flat in Aachen had swallowed up over half the respectable fortune which his father had