Carrion Comfort

by Dan Simmons

  “The Old Man hunched forward like a pale spider and his king’s knight moved out in front of the bishop’s pawn. The knight was young and strong, too strong to have been in camp more than a few days. He had an idiot smile on his face as if he were enjoying this nightmare game. As if in response to the boy’s smile, the Oberst moved our frail bishop onto the same square. I recognized the bishop now. He was a carpenter from our barracks who had hurt himself two days earlier sawing boards for the guards’ sauna. The little man lifted his good arm and tapped the black knight on the shoulder, the way a friend taps another when relieving him on duty.

  “I did not see the muzzle flash. The rifle fired from somewhere on the balcony behind me, but the noise was so loud that I jumped and started to turn before the vise of the Oberst’s control closed on my neck. The young knight’s smile vanished in a red and gray mist and his skull exploded from the bullet’s impact. Pawns behind him crouched in terror before being brought upright in pain. The knight’s body slid back almost to his starting square. A pool of blood had already formed on the white pawn’s square. Two SS men came forward and dragged the corpse away. Splinters of skull and brain matter had spattered several of the adjoining black pieces, but no one else had been injured. The room was loud with cheers.

  “The Old Man leaned forward again and his own bishop took a diagonal step to where ours waited. The black bishop lightly touched the carpenter’s ban daged arm. There was a pause this time before the rifle spoke. The bullet caught our bishop below the left shoulder blade and the little man staggered forward two steps and then remained standing a second, his right arm coming back as if to scratch an itch, before his knees buckled and he collapsed to the tile. A sergeant came out, placed a Luger to the carpenter’s skull, and fired once before dragging the still-twitching corpse off the board. Play resumed.

  “The Oberst moved our queen forward two squares. Only one empty square separated the queen from me and I could see where she had bitten her fingernails almost to the quick. This reminded me of my sister, Stefa, and I was amazed to find tears clouding my vision. It was the first time I had cried for Stefa.

  “The Old Man made his next move to the roar of the drunken mob. His king’s pawn moved quickly to take our queen’s pawn. Our pawn was a bearded Pole, obviously an Orthodox Jew. The rifle fired twice in quick succession. The black king’s pawn was covered with blood as he took our queen pawn’s place on the square.

  “No one was in front of me now. I looked across only three empty ranks into the face of the black knight. The torchlight threw long shadows. The SS men screamed advice from the edge of the tile. I did not dare turn to see the Oberst, but I watched as the Old Man stirred on his roost. He must have realized that he was losing control of the center of the board.

  He turned his head and his king knight’s pawn advanced one square. The Oberst moved our surviving bishop to the next square, blocking the enemy pawn and threatening the Old Man’s bishop. The mob cheered.

  “The openings completed, the two players proceeded to develop their middle games. Each side castled. Both brought their rooks into play. The Oberst moved our queen to stand in front of me. I stared at her shoulder blades, sharp against the fabric of her gown, and at the tendrils of frizzy hair touching her back. I clenched and unclenched my hands. I had not moved a foot since the game had begun. A terrible headache sent spots dancing before my eyes and I was terrified that I would faint. What would happen then? Would the Oberst allow me to collapse or would my unconscious body be kept upright in its place? I gasped for air and concentrated on watching the torchlight shimmer on a tapestry against the far wall.

  “On Black’s fourteenth move, the Old Man sent his bishop to where our peasant knight stood in the center of the board. There was no shot this time. The heavy SS sergeant came out onto the board and handed his ceremonial dagger to the black bishop. The room grew silent. Torchlight danced on the sharp steel. The squat peasant knight writhed and squirmed. I could see the muscles in his arms bunch in a vain effort to break free of the Oberst’s control. He could not. The bishop slit his throat with a single swing of the blade. The SS sergeant retrieved his knife and gestured for two men to remove the corpse. Play resumed.

  “One of our rooks took their intruding bishop. Again the knife was used. I stood behind the young queen and squeezed my eyes shut. I opened them several moves later when the Oberst moved my queen forward a square. I wanted to sob, to cry out, when she left me. The Old Man immediately brought his own queen, a young Dutch girl, down the diagonal to the fifth square on his rook’s file. The enemy queen was only one empty square from me on the diagonal. Nothing stood between us. I felt my bowels loosen with fear.

  “The Oberst now began his attack. First he advanced his knight’s pawn on the left side. The Old Man moved out his rook’s pawn, a red-faced man I recognized from the forest brigade, to counter our pawn. The Oberst matched the move with our rook’s pawn. It was hard for me to see. Most of the other prisoners were taller than me and I could see backs and shoulders and bald heads and sweating, terrified men rather than chess pieces. I tried to visualize the chessboard in my mind. I knew that only our king and a single rook remained on the rank behind me. The only other piece on the same rank as me was the pawn in front of the king. Ahead and to my left was a cluster of queen, pawn, rook, and bishop. Further left, our surviving knight stood alone. To his left, the two rook pawns were deadlocked. The black queen continued to threaten me from my right.

  “Our king, a gaunt Jew in his sixties, moved a diagonal step to his right. The Old Man consolidated his rooks on their king’s file. Suddenly my queen moved back to the second square on our own rook’s file. I was alone now. I could look straight ahead across four empty squares to where the Lithuanian Jew stared back at me. There was an animal panic in his eyes.

  “Suddenly I was moving forward, my feet dragging across the marble tile. There was the terrible, undeniable presence in my skull, pushing me, restraining me, clenching my jaws tight against the scream which welled up from the base of my spine. I stopped where our queen had stood earlier, other white pawns on each side of me. The Old Man brought his black knight up to face me across an empty white square. The mob was screaming more loudly now. I heard shouts of ‘Meister! Meister!’ building into a chant.

  “I stepped forward again— only one square this time. I was now the only white piece beyond the middle of the board. Somewhere behind me and to my right was the black queen. I felt her presence as strongly as I felt the presence of the unseen rifleman on the balcony. Half a meter in front of me were the sweaty face and gaunt eyes of the black knight. Behind him cowered the Lithuanian Jew.

  “The black rook passed me on my left. When he entered the white pawn’s square the two men grappled. At first I thought this meant a loss of control by the Oberst or the Old Man and then I realized that this was part of the game. The German soldiers screamed their bloodlust. The black rook was stronger, or he was not being restrained, and the white pawn bent under his grip. The rook got both hands on the pawn’s throat and squeezed more tightly. There was a long, dry rattling sound and the pawn collapsed.

  “They had no sooner removed the body of our pawn when the Oberst moved our surviving knight to the square and the struggle resumed. This time it was the black rook who was dragged away, bare feet scraping on the tile, eyes distended and staring.

  “The black knight shuffled past me and again there was a struggle. The two men stumbled against each other, fingers clawing at each other’s eyes, knees flailing, until the white knight was forced out of the square onto the empty square behind me. The rifle must have been fired from the balcony directly in front of me. I felt the rush of air as the bullet passed my ear and I heard the impact. The dying knight stumbled against me as he fell. For a second his hand clutched feebly at my ankle as if seeking help. I did not turn around.

  “My queen was behind me again. The black pawn on my right moved forward to threaten her. I would have grabbed him then if I had
been permitted to do so. I was not. The queen retreated three squares. The Old Man advanced his queen’s pawn a square. Our other bishop’s pawn was brought up by the Oberst.

  “ ‘Meister! Meister!’ chanted the mob. The Old Man drew his queen back two squares.

  “Now I was moved again. I stood face-to-face with the Lithuanian Jew. He stood rigidly, paralyzed with fear. Did he now know that I could not harm him as long as we were on the same file? Perhaps not, but I was acutely aware that the dark queen could remove me at any second. Only the unseen presence of my own queen five squares behind me offered me any security. But what if Der Alte was willing to trade queens? Instead, he moved his rook back to the king’s original square.

  “To my left there was a commotion as the other bishop’s pawn removed a black pawn and was removed in turn by the surviving black bishop. For a moment I was alone in enemy territory. Then the Oberst brought the white queen up to stand in the square behind me. What ever happened next, I would not be alone. I held my breath and waited.

  “Nothing happened. Or rather, the Old Man stepped down from his tall chair, made a gesture, and moved away. He had resigned. The drunken mob of Einsatzgruppen troopers roared their approval. A contingent of soldiers wearing Death’s Head insignia rushed to the Oberst and carried him around the room on their shoulders. I remained standing there, facing the Lithuanian, both of us blinking stupidly. The game was over and I knew that somehow I had been instrumental in winning it for the Oberst, but I was too dull to understand how. All I could see were tired Jews standing in confused relief as the hall resounded to shouts and singing. Six of our men in white had died. Six of the black pieces were missing. The rest of us were able to move, to mill around. I turned to embrace the woman behind me. She was weeping. ‘Shalom,’ I said and kissed her hands. ‘Shalom.’ The Lithuanian Jew had collapsed to his knees on his white square. I helped him up.

  “A squad of enlisted men with machine-pistols moved us through the mob into an empty foyer. There they had us disrobe and tossed our tunics onto a pile. Then they took us out into the night to shoot us.

  “We were ordered to dig our own graves. There were half a dozen shovels lying in a clearing forty meters behind the estate and we used these to excavate a wide, shallow trench while the troopers held torches or stood and smoked cigarettes in the dark. There was snow on the ground. The earth was frozen and as hard as stone. We could dig no deeper than half a meter. Between the dull strokes of the shovels, I could hear renewed laughter from the lodge. Lights burned in high windows and threw yellow rectangles on the slate-tiled gables. Only the exercise and our fear kept us from freezing. My bare feet had turned a terrible white-blue and I could not feel my toes. We were almost finished with the digging and I knew that I had to decide what to do. It was quite dark and I felt that my best bet was to make a break for the forest. It would have been better had we all bolted at once, but several of the older Jews were obviously too cold and exhausted to move and we were not allowed to speak to each other. The two women stood several meters from the trench, vainly trying to cover their nakedness while the guards made crude jokes and held torches near them.

  “I could not decide whether to simply run or to use the long-handled shovel in an attempt to club down one of the soldiers and seize a machine-pistol. These were Einsatzgruppen Totenkopfverbände, but they were also drunk and in a relaxed mood. I had to decide.

  “The shovel. I chose the guard— a short, young man who appeared to be half dozing a few steps from me. I tightened my grip on the long handle.

  “ ‘Halt! Wo ist denn mein Bauer?’ It was the blond Oberst crunching through the snow toward us. He wore a heavy greatcoat and his officer’s cap. When he entered the circle of torchlight he looked around. He had asked for his pawn. Which pawn?

  “ ‘Du! Komm her!’ He gestured at me. I cringed, expecting the mind-rape again, but it did not come. I jumped out of the shallow pit, handed my shovel to a guard, and stood naked and shivering in front of the Oberst, in front of the one they had called Der Meister.

  “ ‘You must finish here,’ he said in German to the sergeant in charge. ‘Schnell!’

  “The sergeant nodded and moved the Jews together at the edge of the hole. The two women huddled at the far end, their thin arms around one another. The sergeant ordered everyone to lie down in the cold trench. Three men refused and were shot where they stood. One, the man who had been the black king, fell twitching only two meters from me. I looked down at my bloodless feet and tried not to move, but my own shaking intensified. The other Jews were ordered to roll the bodies into the Pit with them. Then there was silence. The pale backs and buttocks of my fellow prisoners glowed in the torchlight. The sergeant gave an order and the shooting began.

  “It took less than a minute. The sound of the machine-pistols and light carbines seemed muted, inconsequential, a light pop and another naked, white form would twitch and spasm a second in the hole and then be still. The women died in each other’s embrace. The Lithuanian Jew cried out in Hebrew and struggled to his knees, arms outflung toward either the guards or the sky— I still do not know which— and then he was cut almost in half by automatic rifle fire.

  “Through all of this I stood shaking, staring at my feet, praying that I would become invisible. But even before they were finished the sergeant turned back to me and said, ‘This one, mein Oberst?’

  “ ‘Mein zuverlässiger Bauer?’ said the Oberst. My trustworthy pawn? ‘We are to have a hunt,’ he said.

  “ ‘Eine Jagd?’ asked the sergeant. ‘Heute nacht?’ “ ‘Wenn es dämmert.’ “ ‘Auch Der Alte?’ “ ‘Ja.’ “ ‘Jawohl, mein Oberst.’ I could see that the sergeant was disgusted. He would have no time for sleep that night.

  “As the guards began shoveling a thin cover of frozen earth over the bodies, I was led back to the lodge and chained up in the same cellar where we had been kept hours earlier. My feet began to tingle and then to burn. It was very painful. In spite of that, I was dozing when the sergeant returned, unlocked my chains, and ordered me into clothes: underwear, blue wool trousers, a shirt and thick sweater, heavy socks, and sturdy boots which were only slightly too small. The honest clothing felt wonderful after months in prison rags.

  “The sergeant led me outside to where four SS men stood waiting in the snow. They carried hand torches— flashlights—and heavy rifles. One had a German shepherd on a leash and he let the straining animal sniff at me while we waited. The Great Hall was dark now, the shouting quieted for the night. There was a gray translucence to the night as dawn approached.

  “The guards had just turned off their flashlights when the Oberst and the old general emerged. They were not in uniform. They wore heavy, green hunting jackets and capes. Each carried a nonmilitary, large-calibered rifle with a telescopic sight attached. I understood then. I knew exactly what was going to happen next, but I was too exhausted to care.

  “The Oberst gestured and the guards walked away from me to stand by the two officers. I stood there for a minute, irresolute, refusing to do what they wanted me to do. The sergeant snarled at me in bad Polish. ‘Run! Run, you Jewish vermin. Go!’ And still I did not move. The dog flung himself against the leash, snarling and straining. The sergeant raised his rifle and fired a shot which threw snow up between my feet. I did not move. Then I felt the first tentative touches in my mind.

  “Go, kleiner Bauer. Go! The silky whisper in my mind made me reel with nausea. I turned and ran into the forest.

  “I was in no condition to run for very long. Within a few minutes I was panting and stumbling along. My footprints were clearly visible in the snow, but there was nothing I could do about that. The sky grew lighter as I staggered along in what I hoped was a southward direction. I heard frenzied barking behind me and knew that the hunting party had begun to follow my trail.

  “I had gone little more than a kilometer when I came to the open area. A strip almost a hundred meters wide had been cleared of trees and undergrowth. Rolls of barbed wire ran
down the center of this no-man’s land, but it was not the wire which caused me to halt. In the center of the clearing a white sign lettered in German and Polish proclaimed HALT! MINE FIELD!

  “The barking grew closer. I turned left and broke into a painful, gasping trot. I knew now that there would be no way out. The mined perimeter would enclose the entire estate— their private hunting preserve. My only hope was to find the road we had come by the night before, an eternity ago. There would almost certainly be gates and guards, but I would try for the road nonetheless. Better that the guards take me down than the obscenities behind me. I resolved that I would run the mine field before allowing the hunting party a clear shot.

  “I had just reached a shallow stream when the mindrape began again. I was standing still, staring at the half-frozen stream, when I felt him enter me. For a few seconds I fought it, clutching at my temples, falling to my knees in the snow, but then the Oberst was in me, filling my mind in the way water fills the mouth and nostrils and lungs of a drowning man. It was worse than that. It was as if a great tapeworm had entered my skull and bored its way into my brain. I screamed but no sound emerged. I staggered to my feet.

  “Komm her, mein kleiner Bauer! The Oberst’s voice whispered sound-lessly to me. His thoughts tumbled into mine, forced my own volition into some dark pit. I glimpsed images of faces, places, uniforms, and rooms. I rode on waves of hate and arrogance. His love of violence filled my mouth with the coppery taste of blood. Komm! The mental whisper was seductive, sickening, like a man’s tongue entering my mouth.