The Undertaking by Audrey Magee Read Free Book Online Page B

jeep.
    ‘It’ll take a week to dig this out,’ he said.
    ‘Your fat arse is sinking it further,’ said Weiss.
    Faber looked at the task force men with their black collar tabs. He had seen some of them in Kiev, rounding up Jews. They nodded at him. He nodded back and set down his pack and rifle. He began digging. But the vehicles remained stuck. They pitched tents, felled trees and, after days of labour in the rain and mud, finally released the vehicles and fell to the earth, their bodies shattered by fatigue.
    ‘We are allowed a few days’ rest,’ said Kraus.
    Faber looked around, at the mud and trees.
    ‘Where exactly?’
    ‘Those lads were supposed to do a village about five miles south of here. The road is too bad, so we can have it.’
    ‘Is it worth it?’ said Fuchs.
    ‘They’re sure it’s untouched.’
    ‘Jews or Partisans?’ said Gunkel.
    ‘Aren’t they the same thing?’ said Faber.
    It was night when they reached the village, the rain banished by dry, cold air from the north and a flicker of something at their faces that might have been snow.
    ‘Everybody out,’ shouted Kraus.
    The whitewashed houses were still and in darkness.
    ‘You’d better translate, Faustmann.’
    ‘Yes, Sir.’
    His bass voice boomed and, one by one, the doors of about twenty houses creaked open. The villagers, holding lanterns, stood in the doorways, old women huddling into old men, young children into their mothers.
    ‘Faustmann, tell them to leave immediately.’
    He spoke again and an old woman, wrapped in coats and scarves, yelled back at him. She slapped her chest, coughed and spat at the ground. She pointed at it with her light. Green phlegm.
    ‘She says that she is too ill to sleep outside, that she has nowhere else to go.’
    ‘Nor do we,’ said Kraus. ‘Unless she knows of some hotel we can book into.’
    The soldiers laughed.
    ‘Throw them all out, Faustmann. Tell them that they can come back in a couple of days, when we have gone.’
    The old woman spat again towards Faustmann and went back into her house. She shut the door. A young child, a boy, started to cry; his distress spread to the other children, then to the women. An old man stepped forward, into the middle of the village, its centre marked by a bench under a cherry tree.
    ‘We need to get some things,’ he said. ‘From our homes.’
    ‘Five minutes,’ said Kraus.
    The villagers disappeared and re-emerged wearing blankets over their coats and hats, the sick old woman in even more clothing. The old man pulled a rickety wooden trolley, also covered with a blanket. Kraus stamped on the trolley and lifted the cover.
    ‘The food stays,’ he said.
    The old man started to cry.
    ‘But we will starve. The children need food.’
    Kraus lifted his gun and shoved it into the man’s stomach.
    ‘No food.’
    They shuffled past, about seventy of them, out into the winter. Faber took the old woman’s house, its single room still warm, smoke escaping from the metal flue attached to a stove of baked earth. Kraft slipped off his pack and began poking at the embers, scrapingaway the damp ash that had been thrown over the flames as the soldiers arrived.
    ‘How do you cook on this thing?’ said Weiss.
    ‘God knows,’ said Kraft. ‘But we can boil water.’
    Kraft hummed as he unpacked the coffee that his mother sent every month, then the pot. Faber, Weiss and Faustmann sat beside him, waiting for their share, their boots and coats scattered around the room. There were two large beds and a neat row of sheepskin slippers by the door, small and large. The walls were lined with yellowed newspaper, layer upon layer of insulation that reeked of poverty.
    ‘It’s a pit,’ said Faber. ‘How could anyone live here?’
    ‘At least it’s warm,’ said Faustmann.
    ‘Your ancestors probably came from this kind of hovel.’
    ‘All our ancestors came from this kind of hovel, Faber.’
    Kraft bounced to his feet.
    ‘Is there any food?’
    They rummaged