Carlos Fuentes - A Change of Skin

Ulrich again, panting, exhausted, in his undershirt, with the suitcase in his hands. Franz asked him if anyone had seen him. The boy shook his head. Franz told him that they must hurry, but hurry cautiously. Those who pursue always expect those who flee to travel at top speed and they themselves move all the swifter; slow flight might deceive them. He had just dreamed this, Franz told him, the way to escape. The boy did not answer. He stood with the suitcase in his hands. After a moment of silence, Franz nervously took the suitcase and opened it. He looked up at the boy and the boy knew that he would have no other opportunity to be commanded, to obey orders; he stood stiffly at attention and stared straight ahead without blinking. Franz thought: some day this child too will throw his hand to his cap in salute, click his booted heels together, drink too much beer while singing songs ripe with sentimentality. He wondered if the boy had already looked into the suitcase and seen what it contained: the uniform of a Luftwaffe general, the complete uniform, gray-green, gold buttons, black belt, black velvet collar, insignia of rank, cross pinned to the chest. It was the Ritterkreuz, proof of courage and loyalty. And it had been abandoned in the forest.

“Whose uniform is this?”

The boy did not blink an eyelash.

“Whose?”

The boy lowered his head.

“Did you see him run away? Was he wearing civvies?”

The boy nodded without looking at Franz.

“Was a woman with him? And before he left, did he order you to notify the reserves that the Americans were closing in? Did he tell you and the other boys that the glory of the Fatherland demanded you must fight to the end? That you must die?”

The boy nodded and grimaced as he held back his tears. Then at last he wept without restraint, throwing himself into Franz’s arms, tears of frustrated bravery, of confusion, inability to understand. Franz felt like crying too, dry tears, hidden, as he thought of Germany’s leaders in flight with their women and their wealth and their works of art while the old men and the children were given hand grenades and left behind to be the final line of defense, the last show of pointless courage; and if he knew now that it was pointless, later they would all know it; indeed, they had known it all along, and for months later, as he walked and walked across the destroyed land trying to make his way back to Prague without knowing anything or learning anything, he would tell himself that in the end the only patriotism worthy of reward is that of simply sinking into the war-torn earth and serving as a stone in a highway or as seed or fertilizer, lost forever beneath the wheels of trucks and tractors. Dressed in a stolen suit that was too small for him, worn at the elbows, the knees threadbare, the seat thin, the cuffs frayed, he wandered across fields where abandoned trucks and rusting bazookas lay deep in the winter mud, deep beneath the autumn straw, through dead cities where the burned-out shells of cathedrals still rose above the slap of bare feet, the scurrying of beggars and prostitutes, obsessed with only one idea, to see Prague again and discover some certainty even if that certainty should be a name on a tombstone in the Jewish cemetery.

“Come on, Ulrich. We have to get out of here. We’ll leave the suitcase.”

He took the boy by the hand. They couldn’t go to his home, Ulrich said, that town had by now been taken by the Americans. We’re going there to surrender, Franz said quietly. He told the boy to put his tunic on again. They would surrender in uniform. He took him by the hand and they climbed down from the loft and went past the old forge out into the May fields, walking toward distant slopes where the sound of guns could be heard, artillery, tanks. The earth was covered with clover and daisies. The sun insisted on seeming benevolent and joyous, the sun, the earth his parents had wanted to preserve. Out in the open, Ulrich was transformed. He squeezed Franz’s hand and told him that when they reached his home, he would give him food. He began to talk about his schoolmates, to wonder what had happened to them. They had been formed in groups and sent to defend the highway and the bridge, and some of them, like him, had been sent to join and notify the reserves, and now maybe they would all come safely home again if it was true, as some peasants had told him on his way back to the barn with the general’s suitcase, that the war was over. But many didn’t know it was over yet and many others had been told time and again that even if they heard the war was over, they must go on fighting until the last man fell, not one German soldier was left alive. That was what they were told, the boy repeated; the enemy must not find one single German still alive. They walked on, the boy leaning against Franz for support because of his leg, following the winding course of the river, for that would lead them to the town. It came to Franz that in this way, suddenly, everything could have ended a long time ago; and now there was no possibility of going back to that moment. They walked along a slope above the sleeping river and he asked the boy for a drink of water. The boy pushed back a lock of yellow hair and opened his canteen. He laughed and turned it down; it was empty. “Wait,” he cried, and laughing as he ran with difficulty, his sprained knee obviously hurting, he went down toward the river through a bank of thistles, the thistledown rising around him like a cloud of tiny butterflies. He reached the bank of the river and knelt and dipped the canteen. There were two dry rifle shots. The boy cried out and pitched forward, face down, into the water and lay still. For the first time during the war, Franz screamed. He ran through the thistles, ran summoning something to his aid, asking the earth, the thistles on the breeze, the sun itself to save a little life for that guiltless child. He knelt beside the boy’s body. Two American soldiers appeared, their short combat boots sinking into the mud, their rifles cradled in their elbows, as Franz lifted the boy’s head from the water and kissed his cheeks and temples. One of the Americans knelt too. He shook his head and said, “Goddammit, just a kid.”

“It ain’t our fault they make their kids fight.”

The American who had spoken first shook his head again. “I was just practicin’. How the hell did I know I could get him at that range?” He fitted a new cartridge into his clip. “Going to frisk him?”

“Naw, what would a kid have?” With the butt of his rifle the American prodded Franz’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Buster, if that helps. Come on with us. The war’s over.”

Franz fell sobbing on the boy’s body and knew no more.

* * *

Δ “Not only madmen were locked up in the Charenton asylum,” Javier said as the four of you turned your backs on the scene below. “They also kept libertines and spendthrifts there.”

“Look,” said Isabel, glancing at the patients a last time. One of them was trying to tie his shoes and was laughing at his futile efforts. “My God, the way he shows his teeth.”

Franz ran his finger along the stone balustrade, heaping a little pile of dust. “That’s what happens to you when you’re locked up long enough. You grab everything that happens as an excuse for laughter. And usually nothing is very funny. It just happens to be unusual, to break the monotony.”

“There’s rather more than that to it,” said Javier. “Notice how furiously he laughs. Habitually he is sad, and now he laughs as if he wanted to destroy whatever is amusing him.”

“He knows the amusement won’t last long, that’s all,” you said, Dragoness. “Come on, let’s go, please.”

“Let’s go into the pyramid,” said Isabel, passing her hands through her silky long hair.