Ashes

by Haunted Computer Books

  “It gives the men a chance to rest. The shooting is—mentally exhausting.”

  “They’ll be more exhausted if we have to continue this into the night, working by the headlights of trucks.”

  “There’s another problem. The forest trail is already becoming cluttered with bodies. Maneuvers are difficult.”

  “Try this. Use only two guards to escort each group of Jews. The others can reload and be ready when the group arrives. Start at the farthest end of the trail so that each succeeding trip is shorter.”

  Von Offhen’s brow furrowed. “I’m not sure the men will like it. Especially those doing the shooting.”

  Wolfram thought of Scherr’s pink, joyful face. “Let anyone who wants to be relieved come down and watch the square. I’ve no doubt there will be plenty who will take their places.”

  Though they were of equal rank, Von Offhen saluted and went to implement the suggestions. Efficiency, Wolfram thought. It all comes down to a question of efficiency.

  The day wore on, in an endless parade of Jews and a cavalcade of rifle shots. Wolfram went from the square to the train station, where Drukker and Wassen shared a canteen. When Wolfram got close, he smelled the alcohol.

  “Cognac,” Drukker said, offering the canteen. “A gift from the Polish Catholic priest.”

  Wolfram declined the drink. “See if the Poles have enough for all the men on duty. A cheap price for having their dirty work done.”

  Drukker hurried off, a bit wobbly.

  Wolfram lit a cigarette. “What will you write to your family tonight, Private Wassen?”

  “I think I’ll write fiction tonight.”

  Wolfram’s laugh turned into a smoke-induced hack. “I think we all will. And I pity us for the dreams we’ll suffer.”

  Wassen appeared uncomfortable, hearing such things from an officer. Wolfram wondered if any of the men would report him for erratic behavior. Besides Scherr, none of them had a chance of promotion if Wolfram were declared unfit for duty. He saluted the poet and said, “It’s a question of efficiency.”

  Wolfram took a circuitous route through the forest. He came upon the first bodies several hundred feet from where the firing squads were now at work. They all lay face down, most bearing a single bullet wound to the top of the neck. Some, no doubt the victims of reluctant or inattentive shooters, had the tops of their skulls blown off, and bits of blood, bone, and brain pocked the carpet of leaves.

  It was evening, and he knew he should make an appearance for the benefit of morale. He followed the trail, bodies girding its length on both sides where the Jews had willingly and tacitly participated in their own deaths. In some ways, the Jews were even more efficient than their killers, as if they were in a hurry to help.

  The nearest group of shooters was comprised of members of Wolfram’s platoon. Kleinschmidt recognized him and lifted a tired arm in greeting. He appeared drunk. The priest must have had a good supply of cognac.

  “Herr Oberleutnant,” the corporal shouted, nearly as jolly as Scherr had been earlier. “We are doing good work now.”

  “There are only eight in your squad,” Wolfram said.

  “Some of the men became sick after only a couple of rounds. Scherr relieved them.”

  As Wolfram watched, another group of Jews was led along the trail. Von Offhen had bettered Wolfram’s suggestion and now used only one guard to march each group to the woods. “Down,” Kleinschmidt bellowed. “Filthy Jew pigs.”

  The ten Jews, all but two of them women, fell onto their hands and knees, then prone onto their stomachs. Some of them held hands with the persons beside them. Wolfram noticed that when the echo of the shots died away, the forest was eerily quiet.

  “Aim,” Kleinschmidt ordered, and the squad placed the tips of their bayonets at the bases of the skulls of the Jews in front of them. “Fire.”

  The two Jews on the end, one a boy of about four, the other a gray-haired woman wearing a cowl, had to wait for two policemen to reload. The boy wore a small Dutch cap similar to the one Wolfram had given his son Karl for Christmas. The boy whimpered while the old woman tried to calm him with what Wolfram believed must be some kind of prayer. Whether her words asked God for mercy or for a swift death, he couldn’t tell. Hebrew was a crude, inferior language and any god worth knowing wouldn’t abide such a tongue.

  The nearest two shooters touched the tips of their bayonets to the assigned victims. The boy’s cap was blown off as the bullet demolished his skull. The old woman’s shot wasn’t immediately fatal, and she flopped on the ground for a moment as if suffering a severe electrical shock.

  “Inefficient,” Wolfram said, though he kept his own Luger holstered. A stream of guttural Hebrew spilled from her throat, a demonic, animal howl. Finally she lay still.

  Scherr came along with the next group of Jews. He had apparently assigned himself to guard duty rather than participate in further shooting. His hands shook and his eyes were wide and bloodshot.

  “How many more in the village square?” Wolfram asked

  “Fewer than fifty,” Scherr said.

  “We’ll be done before dark. Hermannsbiel will be pleased.”

  “Good,” Scherr said. “I don’t want to be here at night.”

  “The night is an ally,” Wolfram said. “In the darkness, all things are hidden.”

  Scherr gave an uneasy glance into the growing gloom, then trotted back to the village. Wolfram paced the trail, encouraging the men, reminding them of the rations waiting back at the barracks after their duty was finished. The priest had plenty more to drink, he told them.

  By now, nearly the full length of the trail was lined with dead Jews. The bodies were no longer bodies;they were merely dark shapes on the shadowy forest floor. Occasionally one of the shapes would moan and lift a limb, but among the trees, who could tell flesh from wood?

  Once the marketplace was empty and the Jewish quarters were quiet, a few Poles ventured into the streets. Wolfram appointed a detail to stand guard in case any stray Jews had been hiding and attempted to flee in the night, then ordered the rest of the platoon back to the station. He took a final walk along the twilit forest trail. He needed to own this memory, though he knew the reservists would speak little of it. A day’s work well done.

  He came upon a figure standing on the trail, a darker silhouette against the sunset-dappled forest. It was a boy wearing a small Dutch cap.

  “Juden?” Wolfram asked.

  “Ja,” the boy said, and for a moment, the voice sounded like his son Karl’s, who was probably now asleep, nestled against his mother’s nightgown in a soft bed back in Hamburg.

  Wolfram fumbled for his Luger, swallowing, the air thick with the wet-fur smell of blood and loam. Hermannsbiel had been quite clear. No survivors.

  He drew the pistol, though it was heavy in his hand. A leader should never ask his men to do what he was unwilling to do himself.

  He pointed the Luger at the boy, who still hadn’t moved.

  If only the boy would run, Wolfram could finish it.

  But the boy didn’t run. Instead, he moved toward Wolfram, feet making no sound in the leaves. Wolfram stood aside as the boy passed, accompanied by a cool breeze from the wind that rattled dead leaves. A last stray beam of sunlight pierced the canopy and shone on the boy’s cap, revealing a single bullet hole in the wool.

  Wolfram holstered his weapon as the boy merged with the gathering darkness.

  Later, at the barracks, he availed himself of the priest’s cognac. He sat down at a small table and in the midnight glow of a candle, he filed his full report for the day:

  July 12, 1942. Jozefow, Poland

  Third Company, Reserve Police Battalion 101, was given cold rations of sausage, bread, marmalade, and butter. In the future, please note that cold rations do not hold up well in the summer heat. Jewish resettlement actions continued. No special incidents occurred.

  Wolfram lit a Turkish cigarette and watched the smoke rise from the glowing red tip toward the f
lickering ceiling of the barracks, then out into the deepest and blackest places of the world.

  ###

  WORK IN PROGRESS

  The cutting was the most demanding.

  During his career as an artist, John Manning had sliced glass, trimmed paper, chipped granite, chiseled wood, shaved ice, and torched steel. Those materials were nothing compared to flesh. Flesh didn't always behave beneath the tool.

  And bone might has well have been marble, for all its delicacy and stubbornness. Bone refused shaping. Bone wanted to splinter and curl, no matter how light John's touch on the hammer.

  How did you build yourself alive?

  Bit by bit.

  Karen on the wall was a testament to that. Because Karen never lied.

  And was never finished, an endless work in progress.

  So building himself had become a mission from God. John knew from his time at college that art required suffering. He'd suffered plenty, from no job to canceled grants to broken fingers to Karen's last letter. His art had not improved, though he'd faithfully moved among the various media until his studio was as cluttered as a crow's nest.

  He crushed out his cigarette and studied the portrait. Much of it had been done from memory. The painting had grown so large and oppressive in his mind that it assumed capital letters and became The Painting.

  When he'd started it three years ago, the memory had flesh and was in the same room with him. Now he had to stagger through the caves of his brain to find her and demand she undress and model. And she had been so elusive lately.

  Karen.

  Her letter lay in a slot of his sorting shelf, just above a cluster of glass grapes. The paper had gone yellow, and rock dust was thick across its surface. If he opened the letter and read it, maybe she would come out of the smoky caves inside his skull. Except then he'd have to finish The Painting.

  Looking out the window was easier, and had a shorter clean-up period. Painting had been foolish anyway. Every stroke was wrong. When he needed a light touch, he cut a fat swath. When he needed bold colors, he bled to mud.

  He was born to sculpt, anyway. And now that he had the perfect subject, his frustrations could fall away. The anger and passion and sickness and hatred could go into the new work in progress and not poison his brain any longer. No more dallying with oil and charcoal, no more dancing with acrylics. That was a dilettante's daydream, and the dream was over.

  Because this was real.

  This was the most important moment in the history of art.

  This was The Living Painting.

  Except the materials didn't cooperate. Not Cynthia nor Anna and not Sharon in the trunk of his Toyota.

  Life was a work in progress. Nothing was sacred. Art was a work in progress. Nothing was sacred.

  If you rearranged the letters of "sacred," you got "scared."

  John had not been scared when he asked Cynthia to be his material. Cynthia was a work in progress. Cynthia was an artist. Cynthia was art.

  The body beneath the canvas in the corner of John's studio dripped.

  John wondered if the blood would seep between the cracks in the floor and then through the ceiling of the used bookstore below. Even if it did, no one would notice for months. His studio was above the Classics, a section almost as long-dead as the authors themselves. Proof that even when you created something for the ages, the ages could care less.

  So all that was left was pleasing himself. Envisioning perfection, and striving for it. Pushing his hands and heart to match his mind's strange hope.

  He lifted the razor and was about to absolve himself of failure forever when the knock came at the door.

  The studio was a shared space. John loathed other human beings, and other artists in particular, but his lack of steady income had forced him to join five others in renting the makeshift gallery. They were drawn together by the same fatalistic certainty of all other dying breeds.

  Knock, knock.

  And the knock came again. Some people didn't take "no answer" for an answer.

  One of the five must have knocked. Probably wanted to chat about art. Not like they had anything better to do. John threw a spattered sheet of canvas over the corner of the room and went to the door.

  Karen.

  Karen in the hallway, glorious, almost perfect.

  The last person he expected to see, yet the right person at this stage of the work in progress.

  Karen as a statue, as a painting, as the person who shaped John's life. John tried to breathe but his lungs were basalt. Karen had not aged a bit. If anything, she had grown younger, more heavenly. More perfect.

  John could read her eyes as if they were mirrors. She tried not to show it, but truth and beauty couldn't lie. Truth and beauty showed disapproval. That was one look she hadn't forgotten.

  John weighed every ounce of the gray that touched his temples, measured the bags under his eyes, counted the scars on his hands.

  "Hello, John," Karen said.

  Just the way she'd started the letter.

  "Hi." His tongue felt like mahogany.

  "You're surprised." Karen talked too fast. "My old roommate from college still lives here. I had her look you up."

  "And you came all this way to see me?" John wanted a cigarette. His hands needed something to do.

  "I was passing through anyway. Mountain vacation. You know, fresh air and scenic beauty and all that."

  John glanced out the window. A plume of diesel exhaust drifted through his brick scenery. College buildings sprawled against the hillsides in the background. The mountains were lost to pollution.

  John had been silent too long and was about to say something, but his words disappeared in the smoky caves inside his head.

  "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" Karen asked.

  "You're not interrupting. I was just thinking about my next piece."

  That meant his next sculpture rather than his next sexual encounter. Karen knew him well enough to understand.

  She could never interrupt, anyway. John was an artist, and artists never had anything to interrupt. Artists had years of free time, and artists would rather give their free time to other people. Art was sacrifice.

  His time was her time. Always had been. At least, it had been years ago. Now she lived two thousand miles away with no forwarding address and John had endless buckets of time to devote to his art.

  Except now she stood at the door of his studio, eyes like nickels.

  "Can I come in, then?"

  Come.

  In.

  To John's studio.

  With Cynthia lying in the corner, weeping blood and becoming. Becoming what, John wasn't sure.

  Himself, maybe. His soul. The shape of things. A work in progress.

  John tried on a smile that felt fixed in plaster. "Come in."

  Karen walked past him and lifted objects from his workbench. "A metal dolphin. I like that."

  She touched the stone sailboat and the driftwood duck and the rattlesnake walking stick and John watched her until she finally saw the portrait.

  Or rather, The Painting.

  "Damn, John."

  "I haven't finished it yet."

  "I think you just liked making me get naked. You painted me slow."

  Not as slow as he should have. He wanted the painting to take a lifetime. She had other plans, though she hadn't known it at the time.

  "It's a work in progress," he said.

  "What smells so funny?"

  Oh, God. She had flared her wondrous nostrils. John did not like where this was headed.

  "Probably the kerosene," John said. "Cheaper than paint thinner, and works just as well, if you overlook the stink."

  "I remember."

  She remembered. She hadn't changed.

  Had John changed?

  No, not "Had John changed?" The real question was how much John had changed. A soft foam pillow in the corner was studded with steak knives.

  "Did you ever make enough money to buy an acetyl
ene torch?" She ran a finger over the rusted edge of some unnamed and unfinished piece. "I know that was a goal of yours. To sell enough stuff to—"

  John knew this part by heart. "To buy an acetylene torch and make twelve in a series and put an outrageous price on them, hell, add an extra zero on the end and see what happens, and then the critics eat it up and another commission and, bam, I'm buying food and I have a ticket to the top and we have a future."

  Karen ignored that word "future." She was the big future girl, the one with concrete plans instead of sandstone dreams. John's future was a dark search for something that could never exist. Perfection.

  Karen walked to the corner, hovered over the spattered canvas.

  No one could see it until he was finished.

  John looked at the shelf, saw a semi-carved wooden turtle. He grabbed it and clutched it like a talisman. "Hey. I'll bet you can't guess what this is."

  Her attention left the mound beneath the canvas. "How could I ever guess? You've only made five thousand things that could fit in the palms of your hands."

  "Summer. That creek down by the meadow. The red clover was fat and sweet and the mountains were like pieces of carved rock on the horizon. The sky was two-dimensional."

  "I remember." She turned her face away. Something about her eyes. Were they moist? Moister than when he'd opened the door?

  She went to the little closet. John looked at her feet. She wore loafers, smart, comfortable shoes. Not much heel.

  Beneath the loafers rested Anna. The experiment.

  The smell had become pretty strong, so John had sealed the area with polyurethane. The floor glowed beneath Karen's shoes. John let his eyes travel up as far as her calves, then he forced his gaze to The Painting.

  "Aren't you going to ask me about Hank?" she said.

  As if there were any possible reason to ask about Hank. Hank had been Henry, a rich boy who shortened his name so the whiz kids could relate. Hank who had a ladder to climb, with only one possible direction. To the top where the money was.

  Hank who could only get his head in the clouds by climbing. Hank who didn't dream. Hank who was practical. Hank who offered security and a tomorrow that wasn't tied to a series of twelve metal works with an abstract price tag.