The next section of road has been bombed, and they pick their way through rubble.
“We couldn’t have pulled the sledge across this,” says Bill, at last convinced that he’s done the right thing in leaving it.
They cross a river, still frozen, pass mills, warehouses and redbrick factories. There’s a huge tavern right by the roadside, and it seems to taunt them. Bill thinks that inside there must be beer and food, while outside other human beings are starving. He salivates at the thought of beer.
He’s so exhausted that he can hardly form thoughts, hardly recognize sensations, so he fails to recognize the feeling of being warm, as if it’s for the first time in his life. The blankets are unbearably heavy.
Someone behind them begins to sing “The Sun Has Got His Hat On,” and Bill joins in. The singing seems to lift everyone, quicken their shambling pace, as if the sun has given them a message of change, that this can’t go on forever. Bill begins another song, “Oh, I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside,” and everyone sings it tauntingly into the faces of the posterns.
They pass along Frietal high street with its kino still showing a new film each week, as if the lives of the prisoners and refugees were more shadowy and unimportant than the flickering images on the screen. They cross a railway line and look up to the mountain behind the town, with thick snow still on its slopes. The sun sets in a ball of orange fire, and the sky is clear.
“It’ll be cold tonight,” says Bill as if it wasn’t cold every night. But he’s right. Without the cloud cover, the temperature plummets again. Bill and Max insist Izzy lie between them, where she might be a little warmer, and they throw their blankets over the three of them.
• • •
The next day the winding road runs alongside the railway through a steep valley where trees climb the slopes on both sides. Every half hour or so, a train passes and curious passengers look out at them, at mile after mile of trudging scarecrows, while they hurry to their business appointments or new postings or to visit families. A church is perched on top of a rock, and Bill wonders if anyone attends it. Harder to get to than the kingdom of heaven, he thinks, if that exists.
In the afternoon of the next day, when their billet for the night is in sight, Max begins to stumble like a man who’s drunk. Bill wonders if he’s eaten something that went bad or if he’s getting sick. They support him on both sides, knowing that if he drops out of the line, he might just be shot or they’d have to leave him to freeze to death. Bill swings Max’s kit bag onto his own back, ignoring his protests, and bursts out, “Good God, man, what’ve you got in here? No wonder you can’t walk. This must weigh twenty pounds.”
Max, almost incoherent, is supported between them. “It’s my books. I couldn’t leave my books.”
They carry him between them into the riding school where they are to spend the night. In the yard where they wait to be directed to their sleeping quarters, Max crumples down onto the concrete, and Bill drops his kit bag beside him, letting it fall from waist height. There’s no clank of tins.
They are directed to the stables, painted and carved and decorated like a palace, and retreat into a horse stall where fresh straw has been piled for them and the owner has left pails of clean water. There they all collapse on the straw, resting to get their strength back. Bill struggles to a sitting position first, and pulls open Max’s kit bag. Max watches but doesn’t stop him.
“It is bloody books!” Bill pulls out one volume after another—the whole library Max has carried with him from Lamsdorf to the quarry and back. Nothing but books, notebooks and the hat with earflaps that Bill knitted him.
Bill lines up the books in front of him, and Max watches without saying anything. What a fucking idiot, thinks Bill. There’s no food at all in his bag. Not even a carrot.
“What happened to your ration from the barn cellar?” asks Bill.
“I had to leave it. I couldn’t fit any more.”
“No, I can see that!” Bill is running his hand back and forth through his hair, making it stand on end. Izzy lays her hand on his arm, but he shakes it off.
Max cowers in front of him. Bill hardly ever loses his temper, but now he rages like Izzy. “What did you want to do, kill yourself for a few books?”
He opens one and tears out the first few pages. Max shudders and his hands flutter forward, as Bill shoves the crumpled pages under his nose. “Go on, then, eat them! Eat the pigging books, you bloody swot.”
Max doesn’t retaliate but seems to shrivel into himself.
“What have you got to say, eh? Eh?”
Izzy pulls at Bill’s sleeve again, and this time he notices her.
“What’ve I got to do, look after both of you? Is that my job? Is that what I signed up for?”
Izzy clamps her hand over her mouth with the effort of not retaliating, and jumps to her feet to kick furiously at the post separating the stalls.
“Hey, give it a rest in there,” comes a shout from the next stall.
“I don’t want you two to fall out over me,” says Max. “It’d be better if I just took myself off.…”
Izzy stands over him with her arms folded, to make sure Bill understands she doesn’t want Max to leave, and the rage goes out of Bill, as rapidly as it flared. He never stays angry for long.
“OK,” he says. “Sorry, sorry. It’s just…”
Bill can see Izzy is still fuming with him for shouting at Max. She looks like she did when she bit him, like the old, fiery Izzy, and a flood of irrational love rushes through him. He tries to think of something to soothe her.
“Maybe,” he suggests. “Maybe we could light a fire with the books, just outside the stable, and boil up the vegetables we’ve got left and make a nice soup?”
He can’t understand why Izzy smacks him hard on the arm. Max protests, “You don’t understand. I haven’t carried them all this way to burn them.”
Bill is petulant, already tasting the stew he’d be able to make, thinking they are both equal fools. “Well, why did you, then?”
Max pulls at the collar of his greatcoat. “For all the ideas of goodness that have disappeared. I thought as long as I had the books, there’s a chance those ideas might stay alive in the world. But it’s too late. It’s all gone.”
Bill knows he’s thinking of the stick-limbed people in the striped pajamas, as well as their own men left to die by the side of the road. Izzy has her hand over her mouth again, and Bill thinks that all the words she’s been damming up might come gushing out of her.
He shakes his head and then looks around him. Below the window behind the stall is a shelf with tackle and brushes. He clears the shelf, dusting it with the cuff of his coat sleeve, picks up the books and carefully, one at a time, places them spine out on the shelf.
“Here you are,” he says. “Someone will find them here. Some stable boy.” He looks at Izzy. “Or girl. And they’ll understand.”
Max’s voice is hoarse and indistinct. “But it’s too late, d’you see? It’s all too late. There’s no point to anything. If we live, and all those others die, what’s the point?”
Izzy goes to him and wraps her arms around him, but his body is stiff and unresponsive. Bill watches, embarrassed, and then goes out into the yard. Max and Izzy seem to understand each other better than he does, he thinks with a stab of jealousy.