If, on Judgment Day, God were to ask Paul which of the two should rightly be his eternal residence, Heaven or Hell, Paul would likely suggest that, by his own and by Cosmic standards, Hell was his destiny—recalling the wretched thing he had done. The Almighty, in all His Wisdom, might recognize that Paul’s life on the whole had been a harmless one, and that his tender conscience had already tortured him mightily—for the thing he did.
Paul’s garish adventures as a prisoner of war in Sudetenland lost their troubling forms as they mired down in the past, but one dismal image would not sink from his consciousness. His wife’s playful banter at dinner one night served to recall what he longed to forget. Sue had spent the afternoon with Mrs. Ward, next door, and Mrs. Ward had shown her an exquisite silver service for twenty-four, which, Sue was astonished to learn, Mr. Ward had liberated and brought home from the war in Europe.
“Honey,” Sue chided him, “couldn’t you have brought home just a little something better than you did?”
It was not likely that the Germans bewailed Paul’s plundering, for one rusty and badly bent Luftwaffe saber was the whole of his loot. His companions in the Russian Zone, under post-war anarchy, Free Enterprise par excellence that lasted for weeks, came home laden with treasure like Spanish galleons, while Paul was content with his foolish relic. Though he had weeks to seek and take what he would, his first hours as a swashbuckling conqueror were his last. The thing that broke his spirit and his hate, the image that tormented him, began taking shape on a glorious morning of Spring in the mountains, May 8, 1945.
It took Paul and his fellow prisoners of war in Hellendorf, Sudetenland, some time to get used to the absence of their guards, who had prudently taken to the forests and hilltops the night before. He and two other Americans wandered uncertainly down the teeming road toward Peterswald, another tranquil farming village of five hundred war-bewildered souls. Humanity moved in wailing rivers, flowing in both directions with a unanimous lament—“The Russians are coming!” After four tedious kilometers in this milieu, the three settled on the bank of a stream that cut through Peterswald, wondering how they might reach the American lines, wondering if the Russians were killing everyone in their path as some said. Near them, secure in a barn-sheltered hutch, a white rabbit sat in darkness, listening to the uncustomary din without.
The trio felt no part of the terror that surged through the village, no pity. “God knows the arrogant block-heads have been begging for it,” said Paul, and the others nodded in grim amusement. “After what the Germans did to them, you can’t blame the Russians, no matter what they do,” said Paul; and again his companions nodded. They sat in silence and watched as frantic mothers hid with their young in cellars, as others scurried up the hillside and into the woods, or deserted their homes to flee down the road with a few precious parcels.
A wide-eyed, long-striding British lance corporal shouted from the road, “Better get a move on, lads; they’re in Hellendorf right now!”
A cloud of dust in the west, the roar of trucks, the scattering of frightened refugees, and the Russians entered the village, pitching cigarettes to the astonished citizens, and giving wet, enthusiastic kisses to all who dared show themselves. Paul cavorted about their trucks, laughing and shouting, and catching the loaves and chunks of meat thrown to him by those liberators who heard his “American! American!” above the wild accordion music that streamed from the red-starred trucks. Happy and excited, he and his friends returned to the brookside with armloads of food, and at once began to stuff themselves.
But as they ate, the others—Czechs, Poles, Jugoslavs, Russians, a fearsome horde of outraged German slaves—came to smash and loot and burn for the merry hell of it, in the wake of the Russian Army. Systematically, in purposeful knots of three and four, they went from house to house, breaking down doors, threatening the occupants, and taking what pleased them. Overlooking plunder was not likely, for Peterswald was built in a narrow draw, only one house deep on either side of a single road. Paul thought that thousands must have explored every house from cellar to attic before the moonlit evening came.
He and his friends watched the earnest pillagers at work, giving them sickly smiles whenever a group passed by. An exultant pair of Scotchmen had made friends with such a group, and, while on a cheerful foray, stopped off to talk with the Americans. Each had a handsome bicycle, numerous rings and watches, field glasses, cameras, and other admirable trinkets.
“After all,” one of them explained, “you don’t want to be sittin’ down on a day like this, you’ll never get another chance like this one. You’re the victors, you know, you’ve a bloody good right to anything you like.”
The three Americans talked it up among themselves, Paul at the fore, and convinced each other that they would be completely justified in looting the homes of the enemy. The three together beset the nearest house, one which had been vacant since before their arrival in Peterswald. It had already been well-exploited; no glass remained in the windows; every drawer had been dumped, every garment torn from the closets; cupboards had been stripped bare, and pillows and mattresses had been disemboweled by searchers. Each of the marauders before Paul and his friends had examined the heaps discarded by his predecessor until nothing but shreds of cloth and a few pots remained.
It was nearly evening when they picked over the sorry lot, and they found nothing to interest them. Paul remarked that there probably was not much in the house to begin with; whoever had lived there had been poor. The furnishings were shabby, the walls peeling, and the outside in need of painting and repair. But when Paul climbed the stairway to the tiny upper floor, he found an amazing room that did not fit into the impoverished pattern. It was a bedroom decorated in gay colors, with beautifully carved furniture, fairyland pictures on candy-striped walls, and freshly painted woodwork. Discarded loot, a forlorn hillock of toys stood in the middle of the floor. The only undisturbed objects in the whole house, leaning against the wall near the head of the bed, were a pair of, “I’ll be damned; look, kids’ crutches.”
The Americans, having found nothing of value, agreed that it was getting too late for treasure hunting that day, and proposed that they set about getting supper. They had a good quantity of food on hand that the Russians had given to them, but got the idea that supper on this day of days should certainly be something special, with chicken, milk, and eggs, and maybe even a rabbit. Seeking such delicacies, the trio broke up to scour the neighboring barns and farmyards.
Paul peered into the small barn behind the house which they had hoped to plunder. Whatever food or livestock may have been here had been carted east hours ago, he reflected. On the dirt floor near the doorway were a few potatoes which he picked up, but nothing else. As he stuffed the potatoes into his pockets and prepared to move on, he heard a slight rustling from one corner. The gentle noise was repeated. When his eyes became accustomed to the darkness he could see a rabbit hutch in which a fat, white rabbit sat, twinkling his pink nose and breathing quickly. This was sensational luck, the pièce de résistance for the banquet. Paul opened the door and removed the unprotesting animal, holding it by its ears. Never having killed a rabbit with his hands, he was dubious as to how he might do it. At last he laid the rabbit’s head on a chopping block and smashed its skull with the back of an axe. It kicked feebly for a few seconds and died.
Delighted with himself, Paul set about skinning and cleaning the rabbit, cutting off a foot for good luck in surely better days to come. Finished, he stood in the barn doorway, contemplating peace, the sunset, and the stream of sheepish German soldiers shuffling home from the last pocket of resistance. With them were the weary civilians who had fled down the road that morning, only to be turned back by the Russian advance.
Suddenly Paul was aware of three figures who detached themselves from the dismal procession and moved toward him. They paused before the battered house. A wave of remorse and sorrow billowed in Paul’s chest: “This must be their little house and barn,” he thought. “This must belong to that old man and woman, and to that crippled boy.” The woman wept and the man shook his head. The boy kept trying to get their attention, saying something and gesturing toward the barn. Paul stood in the shadows so they could not see him, and he ran away with the rabbit when they went into the house.
He brought his contribution to the place that the others had chosen for a fireplace, a knoll from which Paul could see the barn he had left through a gap in a poplar windbreak. The rabbit was placed with the rest of the booty on a cloth stretched over the ground.
As the others busied themselves with preparing the food, he watched the barn, for the little boy had come out of his house, and was moving toward the barn as swiftly as his crutches would carry him. He disappeared into the barn for an agonizing long time. Paul heard his faint shriek, and saw him come to the door, carrying the soft white pelt with him. He rubbed it against his cheek, and then sank to the doorsill to bury his face in the fur and sob his heart out.
Paul looked away, and did not look again. The other two did not see the child, and Paul did not tell them about him. When the three sat down to supper, one boy began grace: “Our Father, we thank thee for this food thou hast set before us…”
Heading for the American lines, moving casually from one village to the next, Paul’s companions accumulated a sizeable quantity of German treasure. For some reason, all that Paul brought home was one rusty and badly bent Luftwaffe saber.
