Bill aims the gun at Kurt’s lifeless face, but Ralph wrenches it from his grip. “Stop now—it’s done. It’s over.”
Izzy is shivering violently from shock and cold. Bill picks up her coat and gloves and wraps the coat around her shoulders. “Here, put these back on.”
Black puddles spread around Scotty and Kurt as Bill helps her push her arms back through the sleeves of her coat. “Hush now,” he says. “It’s over.”
Lights flashed on in the house at the sound of the gunshot, and now Herr Rauchbach and some of the office workers are hurrying down the path toward them with strong torches.
“There’s been a terrible accident,” calls Ralph, repeating it in German.
Herr Rauchbach lifts his torch above his head to cast light on the bloody scene. Kurt and Scotty are sprawled in the snow, both obviously dead, with a stream of black gore from each of them now running down the path toward the quarry. Ralph begins to retch and turns aside to vomit into the snow.
“What happened?” demands Herr Rauchbach.
Clouds of steam rise from their breath as they wait for Ralph to wipe his mouth with the back of his hand and stand to speak. He doesn’t look again at the bodies.
“An argument,” stutters Ralph. “A terrible argument between them. Scotty must have had a knife. And look, Bill’s found Kurt’s gun.”
Bill frowns at Ralph; he was planning to keep the gun. But he hands it to Herr Rauchbach, who drops it in a pocket.
Thin flakes of snow begin to fall.
“We can’t leave them here,” says Max. “They’ll be covered in snow by morning.”
“How about the toolshed” asks Ralph. “Not very respectful, I know, but away from the wolves until they can be buried properly.”
Herr Rauchbach nods assent, and between the four of them they carry Scotty and then Kurt. As they lift Kurt, Herr Rauchbach takes in Kurt’s open fly and flailing member. He steps forward and tucks it away. Kurt’s and Scotty’s arms and legs slip from their grip, and they make slow progress, but eventually lay them side by side on the shed floor.
Herr Rauchbach says something in German and Ralph translates, “A violent man meets a violent death.”
Herr Rauchbach padlocks the toolshed and they trudge slowly back to the house, shocked into silence.
For once nobody is hungry, and Bill lies most of the night thinking of what almost happened to Izzy, feeling that he’s failed her utterly. He isn’t the one who saved her, and if he had, it would be him who was dead, not Scotty. He reaches the painful decision that she might be safer escaping with Berta. These thoughts chase one another round and round his head till he falls into an exhausted sleep just before dawn.
In the morning Kurt’s family comes to claim his body, and two Nazi guards arrive from Saubsdorf. They instruct the prisoners to lift Kurt onto the cart. His body is stiff as frozen washing now and easier to carry. Izzy doesn’t glance at his face, but Bill looks hard and remembers what he wanted to do to Izzy, what he would have done to others throughout his life if he’d had the chance, and thinks, I hope he burns in hell.
Herr Rauchbach covers him with a blanket. Kurt’s mother is crying noisily, but everybody else is silent.
Herr Rauchbach says something in German, and the Nazi guards salute. He repeats it in Czech, and Kurt’s father spits in the snow.
• • •
Once the cart has pulled away, the guards instruct Ralph and Max to dig a grave for Scotty in the woods. They clear snow from a patch, but the ground is thick with tree roots, and even with pickaxes, they can’t get down more than a few inches into the frozen earth. Berta and Herr Rauchbach and Rosa and the other prisoners stand around watching as they lift Scotty’s body into the shallow grave. He is barely below the surface of the earth. Ralph lays a handkerchief over his face.
Bill hunts around for two suitable sticks to make a cross, and once he understands what Bill’s doing, one of the guards cuts off side branches with his bayonet. Berta goes to the kitchen for a length of string to tie the cross together. Then everyone stands around the makeshift grave with their heads bared, even though the snow has started falling again.
Ralph stutters, “He was a good man, and we’ll never forget him.” Bill’s never seen Ralph lost for words before, so Bill takes over. He says the Lord’s Prayer, and Herr Rauchbach repeats it in Czech. Izzy crosses herself, and Bill sees Berta exchange a long, long look with her. Izzy’s going to stay here when we leave, thinks Bill. And the thought is like lead in his stomach.
Bill and Max shovel soil over Scotty’s poor body, but he’s barely covered by it. The wolves will dig him out before morning.
“There are buckets of chippings from the quarry,” Ralph says. “We could heap those over him.”
The guards give their approval, and Izzy, Bill, Ralph and Max begin to ferry the buckets of marble chips from the toolshed. Although their fingers have now lost all feeling, they carefully build a cairn with all the white marble chippings. They carry a heavy marble slab between them, then lay it on the top. Bill thinks Scotty’s grave is as good as a Nazi general’s. He remembers Scotty cooking the Christmas meal and knows his death has saved both Izzy and himself. A debt like that can never be repaid. Should he repay it by insisting that Izzy escape with Berta or by refusing ever to be parted from her? They stand quietly until the snow is thick on their hair and shoulders.
Eventually, “Come on,” says Bill, “we need to pack our things.”
As they gather their small belongings together, Bill wonders who else might die because of him and Izzy. Or has she already decided she puts them in too much danger?
• • •
Later in the afternoon a truck arrives to take them back to Lamsdorf. As Bill returns from the latrine, he sees Berta by the range, urgently whispering to Izzy in Czech. There’s fear as well as hope in Berta’s face, and Bill knows what a risk she would be taking. For a moment he imagines Izzy hiding in her house, dressing in her daughter’s clothes with a scarf around her short hair, being smuggled by one neighbor and then another until she’s knocking at the door of her farm. Her mother opening the door. And then? What then? What about the Russians? Has Scotty saved her from Kurt only to face worse?
Izzy raises her head to him, and Bill thinks he can’t bear this to be the last time he ever sees her. She looks deep into Bill’s eyes and slowly places her right hand over her heart. Then she’s moving toward their room, stammering something to Berta as she leaves the kitchen with Bill.
Berta follows with a basket of bread and drops a packet of raisins and a small bottle of plum brandy into Izzy’s pocket, whispering one last thing in Czech and crossing herself. Bill is in a hurricane of emotion—relief and joy that Izzy isn’t leaving him, whirling with anxiety and fear about what they might have to face next. He thinks he can face anything with her beside him. He thinks she is the bravest person he’s ever met.
Herr Rauchbach, Berta and Rosa stand on the track to watch them leave. Frank, in the back of the lorry with them, is slumped in despair, because Rosa’s eyes are sad but dry. He isn’t the man she loves, and he knows it. Bill hopes she’ll get away before the Russians come.
The truck is canvas covered, and though that keeps the sleet off them, it does nothing to keep out the cold. They are wearing all their clothes, and wrap themselves in blankets, but are almost frozen by the time they arrive at Lamsdorf. On the road Bill thinks of Scotty and the life he might have had. He swears to himself that he and Izzy will make it home, and one day they’ll tell their children about Scotty, about the man who died so they could live.