Weakest
T
he warrant officer in charge of field exercises is the commandant, an overzealous schoolmaster
named Bastian with an expansive walk and a round belly and a coat quivering with war medals.
His face is scarred from smallpox, and his shoulders look as though they’ve been hewn from soft
clay. He wears hobnailed jackboots every second of every day, and the cadets joke that he kicked
his way out of the womb with them.
Bastian demands that they memorize maps, study the angle of the sun, cut their own belts from
cowhide.
Every afternoon, whatever the weather, he stands in a field bawling state-sown dicta:
“Prosperity depends on ferocity. The only things that keep your precious grandmothers in their tea
and cookies are the fists at the end of your arms.”
An antique pistol dangles from his belt; the most eager cadets look up at him with shining eyes.
To Werner, he looks capable of severe and chronic violence.
“The corps is a body,” he explains, twirling a length of rubber hose so that its tip whirs inches
from a boy’s nose. “No different from a man’s body. Just as we ask you to each drive the weakness
from your own bodies, so you must also learn to drive the weaknesses from the corps.”
One October afternoon, Bastian plucks a pigeon-toed boy from the line. “You’ll be first. Who
are you?”
“Bäcker, sir.”
“Bäcker. Tell us, Bäcker. Who is the weakest member of this group?”
Werner quails. He is smaller than every cadet in his year. He tries to expand his chest, stand as
tall as he can. Bäcker’s gaze rakes across the rows. “Him, sir?”
Werner exhales; Bäcker has chosen a boy far to Werner’s right, one of the few boys with black
hair. Ernst Somebody. A safe enough choice: Ernst is in fact a slow runner. A boy who has yet to
grow into his horsey legs.
Bastian calls Ernst forward. The boy’s bottom lip trembles as he turns to face the group.
“Getting all weepy won’t help,” says Bastian, and gestures vaguely to the far end of the field,
where a line of trees cuts across the weeds. “You’ll have a ten-second head start. Make it to me
before they make it to you. Got it?”
Ernst neither nods nor shakes his head. Bastian feigns frustration. “When
I raise my left hand,
you run. When I raise my right hand, the rest of you fools run.” Off Bastian waddles, rubber hose
around his neck, pistol swinging at his side.
Sixty boys wait, breathing. Werner thinks of Jutta with her opalescent hair and quick eyes and
blunt manners: she would never be mistaken for the weakest. Ernst Somebody is shaking
everywhere now, all the way down to his wrists and ankles. When Bastian is maybe two hundred
yards away, he turns and raises his left hand.
Ernst runs with his arms nearly straight and his legs wide and unhinged. Bastian counts down
from ten. “Three,” yells his faraway voice. “Two. One.” At zero, his
right arm goes up and the
group unleashes. The dark-haired boy is at least fifty yards in front of them, but immediately the
pack begins to gain.
Hurrying, scampering, running hard, fifty-nine fourteen-year-olds chase one. Werner keeps to the
center of the group as it strings out, his heart beating in dark confusion,
wondering where
Frederick is, why they’re chasing this boy, and what they’re supposed to do if they catch him.
Except in some atavistic part of his brain, he knows exactly what they’ll do.
A few outrunners are exceptionally fast; they gain on the lone figure. Ernst’s limbs pump
furiously, but he clearly is not accustomed to sprinting, and he loses steam. The grass waves, the
trees are transected by sunlight, the
pack draws closer, and Werner feels annoyed: Why couldn’t
Ernst be faster? Why hasn’t he practiced? How did he make it through the entrance exams?
The fastest cadet is lunging for the back of the boy’s shirt. He almost has him. Black-haired
Ernst is going to be caught, and Werner wonders if some part of him wants it to happen. But the
boy makes it to the commandant a split second before the others come pounding past.
Mandatory Surrender
M
arie-Laure has to badger her father three times before he’ll read the notice aloud:
Members of
the population must relinquish all radio receivers now in their possession. Radio sets are to be
delivered to 27 rue de Chartres before tomorrow noon. Anyone failing to carry out this order
will be arrested as a saboteur.
No one says anything for a moment, and inside Marie-Laure, an old anxiety lumbers to its feet.
“Is he—?”
“In your grandfather’s old room,” says Madame Manec.
Tomorrow noon. Half the house, thinks Marie-Laure, is taken up by wireless receivers and the
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
