The Uninvited Guest

by John Degen

  His shirt soaked, Tony begins to feel the cold of the forest air. He draws closer to Diana, pulling her warmth to him.

  “How does a brilliant strategist like Napoleon fail to complete his vision of a continent under his cloak? He thinks only of the position of pieces on a board and has no thought for the rolling of the dice. In the dice are the Russian winter; in the dice are burnt livestock and destroyed crops; in the dice are his own advancing age and madness.

  “Backgammon is the real game of war because it is possible to lose at the table even when you are the far superior player. It is possible for the dice to decide you need to be brought low, and when the dice decides such a thing, you are brought low. Roman emperors and generals understood better the whims of war, and this is why they were fascinated by backgammon. They wanted the dice to decide against them, knowing eventually it would decide for them as well. We are all Romans in that way, waiting to have favour returned to our lives. Sometimes, it does not return. For my great uncle Stefan, who died here in this village during the war, favour did not return.”

  Diana pushes harder on Tony’s shoulders, walking him further into the village. Her voice continues, echoing against wooden buildings and out into the dark forest.

  The village of Ilisesti is not much of a village. There are two roads: one that travels generally to the east or west, and one that intersects, travelling generally to the north and south. The north-south road is made of earth. Every year the town sprays it with oil to keep down the dust. The east-west road has been covered in asphalt by the regional government, to encourage tourism to the historic monasteries of Bucovina. Buses from Suceava travel this road, but they almost never stop in the village, continuing on to the larger villages containing the medieval monasteries famous for their fantastically painted churches.

  There are one or two small inns on the main road. Some villagers have talked about building a restaurant for tourists, but worry they are too close to Suceava to convince anyone to stop. The tourists will have eaten before boarding the bus and by the time they get to Ilisesti they will not be hungry enough to stop for food. And food is all they have to offer. The village has been populated by farmers since before anyone can remember. Farmers have wonderful food, but if someone doesn’t want food, there is little point in it being wonderful. Not hungry is not hungry.

  The villagers of Ilisesti have been conquered by the Turks, by the Hungarians, by the Russians several times, and by the Germans. They are a people who wish to stay where they are and farm the same land they have farmed for too many generations to count. That is the history they wish for themselves. One generation after the next, farming the same fields and raising the same animals.

  When the country went fascist, a prison was built several miles from the village and young Communists were transported from Bucharest to spend the war behind its walls. It was a working prison, a farming institution where the young idealists were set to work growing vegetables for their German captors. Throughout the growing seasons they worked in the vegetable fields, producing potatoes and cabbages for German soldiers, and they themselves were fed a diet of little more than boiled cornmeal.

  The Nazis took food from the villagers as well, as one would expect during an occupation. But always the local farmers managed to have enough for the occupiers and for their own families as well. If the Germans took three pigs from a farmer in one year, he kept two hidden in the cellar beneath the barn. Everyone in Ilisesti kept a secret cellar, and shared out the food among neighbours and friends.

  Secret slaughters were carried out in these earth-lined, underground rooms—the squeals and screams of the dying animals drowned out by drunken singing—and the meat transported by night from village house to village house. If one house had extra meat, they would exchange it for some milk from another house, or for some ţuică from yet another neighbour, and in this way the people of the village sustained each other under occupation. They had less than at other times, and it was difficult, but never desperate. It was the young Communists in prison who ate the corn meal every night, and worked all day growing food they would not taste. Their signatures had appeared on paper, so the cornmeal was theirs.

  In 1944, after years of occupation, the Nazis were still in control of the region, but it was certain they wouldn’t be for much longer. The Russians were pushing the lines ever closer. The German soldiers spent much of their time studying maps of the routes leading back toward Germany, and in the evenings both the soldiers and the villagers would listen to the voices of Soviet propagandists broadcasting in increasing strength on an increasing number of radio frequencies. The Russians counselled patience, advised the Romanian peasantry that soon their comrades would arrive to liberate them from the Nazis.

  The German garrison slowly depleted itself until all that was left were a few small rear-guard panzer units and the division of prison guards who, no one doubted, were to make sure no Communist prisoners were left alive to join with their liberators. One evening, a group of these few remaining German soldiers, a tank crew, blasted Ilisesti’s old stone water tower to rubble and arranged the debris in the central intersection, blocking both roads as they crossed in the middle of the village. Their work completed, the soldiers retreated to the village tavern to drink, gamble and spend another nervous night waiting for the order to retreat.

  There were seven village men in the tavern when the soldiers entered. By the time the Germans had ordered their drinks and sat down to begin playing each other at table, only three villagers remained. There was little luck to be had around soldiers at that time, so in the initial disturbance of their entrance to the room, four villagers, their hands fluttering up around their eyes, managed to slip out of the tavern and make their way home along the darkened streets. The old tavern owner and his middle-aged son had nowhere else to go. They stayed to serve the soldiers and suffer whatever fate waited them. The only other villager to stay was a small, strong man named Stefan.

  Stefan lived in the centre of the village in a tiny house, and grew beets in a field adjacent to the water tower, now destroyed. He owned the lumber mill at the edge of the forest. Stefan’s hands milled all of the wood used for the fences and barns of Ilisesti, and all the wood was cut from the village’s own forest. Though a smart man, Stefan had a weakness for alcohol, for the ţuică he made himself in a shack beside his mill. It was Stefan’s ţuică that most of the village drank at the tavern.

  A month before this night, Stefan’s wife had died giving birth to a son. He was in misery, and had been drunk already several hours before the soldiers walked through the door. He sat in the corner of the tavern, hunched over a backgammon board and a bottle of his own ţuică.

  The presence of the Germans in town was more misery to Stefan, as they forced him to work longer days in the mill to supply lumber for their own purposes. Stefan made it a habit to regularly express his hatred for the Nazis, but only under his breath and never within their hearing, even when drunk. He was an intelligent man who understood the reality of life under occupation. But as the war dragged on, it became apparent to everyone in the village that, even when the Germans were defeated, Ilisesti would not be rid of idiot masters. Hearing the Soviet broadcasts and anticipating a seemingly unending trouble, Stefan became less careful.

  In the tavern that evening, drinking ţuică followed by beer and then more ţuică, and playing backgammon with the owner’s son, Marian, Stefan had watched the soldiers enter. Against his own good judgment about such situations, he had decided to stay. He stared darkly at the three young men in their combat uniforms, his expression so ugly Marian hissed at him to leave while he still could. But Stefan would not leave as long as there was backgammon to be played.

  “My great-uncle Stefan was a genius at the table.” Diana walks Tony to the central intersection, a winding paved road interrupted by dirt. The remnant foundation stones of the old water tower sprouted tall weeds by the roadside. Tony feels controlled, manipulated. He enjoys the feeling.

>   When the dice were with him, Stefan could not be beaten, and on this night the dice were with him. With the German soldiers watching, he beat Marian eight games to two in a match for fifteen. It was a destruction. The entire time they played, Stefan drank ţuică followed by beer and then more ţuică; and the entire time they played, Stefan was being watched by these three panzer soldiers. They watched him and marvelled out loud at his luck with the dice, as though luck is all a Romanian needs to play the game. When the match against Marian was at an end, of course one of the soldiers offered to play Stefan.

  It was not wise to say no to a German soldier without very good reason. Even through his drunkenness, Stefan was aware of the danger of his situation and of the even greater danger awaiting him when he accepted the offer. As unwise as it was to play, it was certainly less wise still to beat a German soldier at backgammon, or any game for that matter.

  It was difficult for Stefan to lose when the dice were with him. Such was his skill at the game that he could have found a creative way to lose without it looking like he was giving the game to the soldier. But he had been in the tavern all evening, and was just drunk enough from ţuică followed by beer and then more ţuică to lose this part of his skill. Contributing also to the moment was Stefan’s great sadness, a certain mood of hopelessness, a despair that he would never again be his own man in a tavern without soldiers from some foreign country watching his every move.

  Stefan agreed to play the soldier a match of fifteen, and the wager was set at one bottle of ţuică. For Stefan, this was a meaningless wager, just something to make the game decisive. The winner would get the ţuică, and the loser would pay for it. It would have been very easy for Stefan to lose this bet since he would hardly feel the loss of one small bottle of his own ţuică. With the tavern owner and his son Marian watching, Stefan began the match in a manner certain to lead to his loss. He dropped the first two games slyly, leaving pieces uncovered and then reacting in horror when the soldier rolled the dice, to make sure the capture was not missed. But as the match progressed, and both men continued drinking, something changed. To the horror of the tavern-keepers, Stefan slipped back into his normal style of play. He had forgotten who his opponent was. He began to play again like the champion he was and, eventually, won the match eight games to five. Not so humiliating a match record for the soldier, but still a loss at the hand of a Romanian peasant.

  Realizing he had made a mistake, Stefan opened the bottle of ţuică and poured out large glasses for himself and the three soldiers, smiling and apologizing for the dice. The soldiers smiled and accepted the free drinks, but were not so easily distracted. Another of the soldiers now wanted to play Stefan. This young man, drunk and sick to death of fearing an imminent Soviet attack, intended to win back the honour of the German Army on the table. Marian complained about the time, about the need to close up the tavern and go home to a wife and children, but the soldiers refused to be moved.

  Another hard-fought match of fifteen began, and with the games tied at five apiece, Stefan did something unimaginable. He offered to raise the bet. The soldiers laughed and slapped Stefan on the back. They had decided to like this courageous little Romanian with the incredible luck at dice. But Marian and his father sank into despair. They knew that for Stefan to raise the bet at this point meant he had decided he would win, and that could only mean trouble for everyone in the room.

  The Germans were satisfied with their position in this match. Their wins, through Stefan’s skill at deception, had seemed decisive, and Stefan had made sure his own wins were the result of blind luck. To anyone who did not know Stefan, it would have seemed the dice were on the side of the Germans, and so when Stefan offered to make it more interesting, the Germans assumed he was bluffing, desperately trying to make them back away from the match. They asked him what he had to offer.

  In the distillery shed at the back of his lumber mill, Stefan had just completed bottling over three hundred new litres of ţuică from that year’s plums. He made it known to the Germans he was willing to wager the entire three hundred if they would put up something of equal value. The soldiers laughed. They were far from their homes. What did they have to wager with? Stefan had no interest in their German Army money, and anyway it is doubtful they would have had enough between them to cover the cost of three hundred litres of ţuică.

  It was Stefan who smiled then. He didn’t want their money. If Stefan won, he said in his best, most formal and polite German, the soldiers would agree to retreat from Ilisesti, when the time came, on horses that Stefan himself would supply. Stefan would end up with their Panzer tank, the pride of the German infantry.

  Marian could stand it no longer. At the mention of the tank he jumped from his seat behind the small bar and rushed to the gaming table. He swore at Stefan in Romanian and in the same sentence was politely conciliatory to the Germans in their own language. Obviously, this fool had been drinking too much ţuică. Obviously he would never try to insult the great German army with such a foolish joke. If they would end the tournament now he, Marian, would see to it himself that Stefan delivered to them as much ţuică as they could take with them, when he had slept off his idiocy, when he was not such an embarrassment to the Romanian people.

  But the Germans would not hear it. The mention of the tank reminded them where they were, reminded them of the distance to their own homes and of the possibility that Stalin’s troops were at that moment plotting how they were to be killed. Their tank was everything to them. It was the reason they were now a target for barbarian Russians, and it was the only thing that could save them from those same barbarians. At the mention of their battle home, all three soldiers began to nervously finger their side arm holsters. Stefan kept his eyes on their eyes. Somewhere deep within his drunkenness he recognized the line he had crossed. He smiled at the soldiers. They smiled at him.

  Stefan had Marian bring another bottle of ţuică from behind the bar, and all the glasses were refilled. The match continued, Stefan playing for a German panzer tank, and the soldiers playing for a year’s supply of the best ţuică in the country. But now, with the stakes as high as they could go, it was apparent Stefan would not allow a loss. He wanted to take the tank from these men. He had begun to feel he was fighting a war with the table, that perhaps his success at the table would mean success for his village once and for all against these and any future invaders. Stefan played a heroic final three games, beating the Germans in a humiliation, three games to nil. With the final roll of the dice, he slapped his palm on the board and shouted, “The panzer belongs to Ilisesti.”

  Refilling the glasses yet again, he toasted the soldiers. He toasted Germany. He toasted the factory and the factory workers who had made his fantastic tank. The soldiers remained silent throughout all of Stefan’s drunken, victorious toasts. When Stefan looked around the room to share his victory with the village, he discovered that he was alone with his gambling partners. Marian and his father had slipped out the back door of the tavern and were hurrying through the dark fields. Stefan’s tank sat in the town square, directly in front of his house where it had often been seen, its gun trained on the road into town from the forested hills of Bucovina.

  There was no witness to Stefan’s final moments that night. Marian claims to have seen Stefan and the three soldiers stumbling up Ilisesti’s main road very drunk, singing German army songs. The men were arm in arm as though friends for life. There is no witness for what happened, but the entire village is aware of what they found the next day. Stefan lay in front of his tank, his face in the dirt of the road, a hole in the back of his head. The three soldiers sat against the side of Stefan’s house in the centre of the village, drinking his ţuică.

  They sat with their Lugers drawn and told of how they had played yet another match after leaving the tavern, won back their tank and the three hundred bottles, and that Stefan had then attacked in a rage, trying to sabotage the panzer and shouting insults about Germany. They had not wanted to shoot him,
but as members of the great German army they had no choice.

  For the people of Ilisesti, it was an anxious, dangerous morning. The soldiers were still very drunk and in a blood rage from senseless killing. The villagers worked hard to make the killers comfortable again, to draw them back to humanity so no one else would be lost. They cleared Stefan’s body from the roadway and congratulated the drunken men on both their win and the completion of their duty. The women of the village brought the soldiers breakfast and made sure to keep their ţuică glasses full. Finally, overcome by their long night and many bottles of liquor, the Germans collapsed into sleep where they sat, crumpled against the house of the man they had murdered.

  That is the last anyone ever saw of those men, or their precious panzer tank. The tank and the three murderous soldiers disappeared that morning. Other soldiers from their division swept the village before the final retreat but nothing was found. They searched through every house, looked through every barn for the tank. They burned down Stefan’s lumber mill trying to intimidate someone into talking, but the villagers were unmoved by their story. The three soldiers had become very drunk one night in the tavern and had talked openly to some of the townspeople about deserting. They had asked for help from the villagers, who had refused, for the villagers believed in the German cause. The soldiers became violent, breaking into the distillery for more ţuică, killing Stefan in the process. Then they boarded their panzer and drove out of the village into the forest, toward the advancing Soviet army.

  Tank tracks in the dirt road supported their claim. This was the story on the lips of every citizen of Ilisesti, and though the Germans searched for three days, they could find no trace of the tank or their soldiers.

  “A division of Nazis could not find the tank.” Diana laughs, pointing up the roadway to the squat lumber mill built decades before to replace the one destroyed by Germany. “Stalin’s glorious army found no panzer when they liberated Ilisesti. The panzer is still hidden in the village. There are pieces of it here and pieces of it there. Ilisesti won that tank in an honest game at the table, and they will never give it up.