Izzy and Bill are the last prisoners in the kitchen one dinnertime, when Berta beckons Izzy over to the stove and pulls the tin of wax from her apron pocket. She hands Izzy the tin, but holds on to it herself, quietly saying something to her in Czech. Bill freezes. She knows. He’s sure Berta knows. Izzy looks from him to Berta and almost speaks, but then clamps her lips together and hurries back to their room. Bill is close behind her.
“She knows, doesn’t she?” he whispers urgently. “And she’s offered to get you away?” But Izzy keeps walking.
Bill’s head spins with confusion. Has Izzy been holding out on him, and is she planning to escape with Berta? Would she be safer without him? Would she be happier? And how would he find the strength to carry on if he woke one morning and she was gone?
In their room, Izzy lays Bill’s, Scotty’s and Ralph’s coats on the floor, rubbing the wax into the shoulders, back and torso. Frank looks bemused until Scotty explains it will make them waterproof. Bill watches her with a mixture of pride and quiet misery at the prospect of losing her.
“Fishermen do it,” says Scotty.
Frank hurries to fetch Izzy his coat and asks if she’ll do that for him as well. There isn’t much wax, but she does. Bill still has the waxed hood and cape her mother made.
Ralph says, “I wish Max…” and Izzy nods. He goes and returns with Max’s coat, although this means she can’t do anyone’s coat thoroughly. When the tin’s empty, Izzy gives each of the men a candle and shows them how to rub it on their hats and the outsides of their gloves and boots.
Then they carry everything into the kitchen and lay the coats over the range until the wax begins to melt, and they can rub it deeper into the fabric. Some of the upstairs men complain they’re hogging all the heat, so Bill takes the last of their supply of firewood and lights the stove in their room. They all work now on their own coats, Bill helping Izzy, rubbing the warmed wax deep into the fabric. Later they pack their kit bags so they’ll be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Bill can hear the guns. They sound so close.
• • •
Despite his kind words, Herr Rauchbach is keen to get one more order fulfilled before his workers are taken away, and the prisoners are still in the quarry from dawn to dusk. Max usually tries to work in a different part of the quarry from Bill now, but Kurt orders him to join Izzy, Ralph, Scotty and Bill at a new section until the light is almost gone, while he goes off to gather in tools and to search the other prisoners on the way back to the house.
“I don’t think Kurt’s coming back,” says Ralph. “We should just stop.”
“I can’t see what the hell I’m doing,” complains Bill. “This is too dangerous.”
Max shoulders his pickax. “I’m going back. It’s stupid.”
The five of them trudge up the lane from the quarry, aching, cold, too hungry to think, when suddenly, by the tool hut, Kurt blocks their way with a gun trained on them. His fingers trace his flattened nose, eyes glittering revenge. He cocks his gun. They all freeze, and there’s no sound but one another’s breathing. Kurt advances slowly toward Izzy and levels the gun at her chest. Bill is anchored to the spot. He wants to rugby-tackle Kurt to the ground, but he knows he wouldn’t be able to move quickly enough to stop him from firing the gun and killing Izzy. He holds himself tight and forces himself to wait for an opportunity.
Kurt says something to Izzy in Czech—indicating a pile of marble slabs. The others look from him to Izzy, and her face is a mask of terror. Bill can’t bear it. Not knowing she’s already understood every Czech word, Kurt repeats what he’s said to Ralph in German. Even in the half-light, Bill can see Ralph’s face blanch, but he still doesn’t know what’s being said. Ralph doesn’t translate.
Kurt turns to Izzy with the gun still aimed at her breastbone and says, in English, “Coat. Off. Trousers down.” He points to the pile of slabs and demonstrates bending over; then he grins widely and does a grotesque mime of what he plans to do to her.
Her eyes blank with horror and despair, Izzy begins to fumble at her coat buttons with shaking gloved fingers. She can’t look at Bill and the others.
Keep calm, Bill thinks. If I can keep calm, I might have a chance to knock the gun from his hand before his filthy cock touches her.
“Raus, raus,” Kurt urges Izzy, his voice hoarse with excitement and anticipation. Izzy pulls her gloves off with her teeth so she can unfasten her coat. She drops her gloves and coat onto the slushy snow, and Kurt indicates for her to undo her trousers and turn around. He switches the gun to his left hand, but keeps it aimed at her body as he unbuttons his flies and his prick leaps out, stiff and ready.
Izzy looks away from it and begins to unfasten her trousers, trembling all over. Acid rises to Bill’s mouth, and he holds himself like a runner, waiting for his opportunity, knowing that if he intervenes too soon, she’ll be shot, and if he leaves it too late, she’ll be raped. She pushes her trousers to her knees, leaving her long underwear pulled up and glances quickly at Bill, warning him not to endanger himself. Then she turns from them and bends over the pile of marble slabs.
Kurt moves close behind her, holding the gun to her head with his left hand as his right hand pulls down her underwear. For a moment Kurt’s left hand with the gun waves wildly in the air, as he concentrates on using his right to guide himself into position. Knowing this might be his only chance, Bill leaps forward, but someone else is ahead of him by half a second, a dark shape from his left, knocking Kurt to the ground. A gunshot rings out, and as Bill lands on top of Kurt and the other man, he sees Izzy fall from the pile of slabs into the snow, lying on her stomach. Bill’s thumping the body he’s fallen on with both fists, while turning his head to see if Izzy has been hit. She doesn’t move. If she’s dead, he might as well be dead himself. Then she screams out an anguished “Bill!”
“I’m here,” he calls, scrabbling across the bodies and through the snow toward her.
Ralph yanks the gun from Kurt’s hand and sends it spinning into the slush. Izzy is struggling to roll over, hampered by the trousers and underwear around her thighs. Bill still fears she’s been shot, and all thought of Kurt is gone from his head as he rushes to help her, yelling, “Did he get you? Are you hurt?”
Simultaneously she cries out, “Did he shoot you?”
He hoists her to her feet as she yanks up her underwear and trousers.
“Are you all right?” he asks again.
She stutters, “Yes, all right. You, are you all right?”
“Yes, yes.”
They look each other over quickly to check that they are telling the truth, then turn to see Scotty lying facedown on Kurt. Max and Ralph heave his body to one side, and he is heavy and inert, prone in the snow. Bill grabs the pistol and kneels on Kurt’s chest, crashing him in the face with the butt of the pistol, shouting, “You fucking bastard!” But Kurt is completely still. A thin band of moonlight is enough for them to see a red slash has been opened across his throat, and blood is pouring out onto the path.
Ralph and Max roll Scotty’s body over, and they can all see he’s taken the bullet that was meant for Izzy. There’s a huge hole in his stomach, pumping dark blood into the snow. Bill knows it would have been him if Scotty hadn’t moved a second sooner. In Scotty’s hand is the knife he used to carve his chess set, wet with Kurt’s blood.