“Enough. The guns that belong to these bullets, where they are hidden?”
The Goat made a face. Perhaps it was intended to show courage or scorn, but to Emma it appeared as if he had finally become aware of his own scent.
Thalheim advanced on him. “Conversation is ended. Now you tell me location of guns.”
“Not in a hundred thousand years.”
Thalheim cocked his pistol. “I am out of patience. And I am due at the command post to report.”
The Goat made a little sweeping motion with his fingers. “Better hurry along, then.”
The captain waved his gun in the air. “You think this is some joke?”
“No.” The Goat shook his head. “Not in any way a joke.”
“You tell me of where guns are, or I shoot you now.”
“That’s it?” the Goat said, nearly a whisper. “This is the moment?”
“Tell, or die.”
“What the hell.” The Goat shrugged. “It is a small thing to leave an unhappy life.”
“Damn you stupid bumpkin fools,” Thalheim said. He raised the gun, holding it inches from the Goat’s nose. “Contemplate your mortality.”
Emma knew this moment too well, the horrible pause. But the Goat did not blink, nor scowl, nor squint at the pistol barrel. He only looked at Emma until their eyes met, his expression revealing the inner softness he had attempted to conceal all of his life, and with frank knowledge of what was about to happen to him, no escape, that softness contained their full history, the lifetime of it, how they had nursed while their mothers sat together, how they grew and fought and strove like brother and sister, and now in the moment when it all fell away, all of that time was reduced to this strange, powerful, tender sibling affection, one fraction of a second of recognized love, a thunderbolt, then the pistol’s trigger pulled, obliteration, the maroon splash of his existence on the barn wall and a body crumpled on the earth like one more ruin.
“Dear God,” Emma said, rushing forward but helplessly and too late. And Thalheim had not holstered his pistol yet.
“You were colluding with him.”
“No. I know nothing about these bullets.”
“I saw the look he gave you.”
Emma could not help seeing the Goat’s body, his legs in an awkward position. “It was old friendship. Not conspiracy.”
“What about the poison powder you put in the officers’ bread?” He stood squarely. “Explain.”
Those legs were distracting. She wanted to put them in a comfortable posture. “It wasn’t poison. I was—”
“I saw you gagging on it with my own very eyes. Also explain of the rations you stole, which made extra loaves when the Field Marshal was here. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”
“That was for my neighbors—”
“And the fuel you stole today?” Thalheim interrupted. He holstered his gun. “From an officer?”
“I can explain all of these things. But the Goat—Didier, that is—Didier and I grew up together.” Emma waved a hand at the hog shed. “Honestly, I had no idea about—”
“You lie.” He advanced on her.
Emma retreated, talking faster. “Our mothers were friends. We were schoolmates. I am not in the Resistance. I am just trying to keep people alive.”
He poked her chest with a hard finger. “I said you lie.”
“The powder for baking is not poison.” She backed into the barnyard wall. She was trapped, pinned.
Thalheim grabbed both of Emma’s arms and shook her. “Tell me the truth,” he shouted into her face.
But if he had intended to frighten Emma, or persuade her, it backfired because he had touched her. That contact brought forth the full measure of her disgust, rising like bile for this man who taken so much from her: food, home, loved ones, peace of mind for two years. But he had never possessed her obedience, and she was not going to oblige him now.
Emma looked down her nose and spoke in a voice dripping with contempt. “You are not worth lying to.”
His stung expression showed that her insult found its mark, but she had not expected him to answer it by punching her in the face. The force of it sent her spinning, her body a vine winding around itself though he grabbed her chemise before she hit the ground, jerking her halfway back.
“Your smelly friend was right,” he growled. “You are too proud.” And he smashed her forehead with the heel of his hand, snapping back her neck. It hurt spectacularly. She raised an arm to shield herself as the captain punched her face again.
The man was wearing gloves, Emma noticed. What kind of a man wears gloves in June? A breakthrough had arrived for Thalheim, though, some dam of restraint broken, and he surrendered to its flood, pounding her repeatedly, relentlessly, so that Emma was reminded of a thresher crossing a hay field, blades spinning to pummel the wheat. No one would save her, no one would stop his hard-knuckled hand, because no protectors were left and her only friend was the ground below, yet the captain refused to let her fall against it.
After two years of frustration, two years of enduring her sarcasm and scorn, he needed four fists to express the frenzy in his heart. Instead one of his hands gripped her torn shirt, keeping her in ideal range, while the other went left and right on her face—but untidily, wildly, sometimes striking her neck or ear, the ear stung especially.
But then Emma could not distance herself any longer, because of the pain. Out of the mayhem of blows an idea came, a recollection. She reached down for the knife against her thigh. The handle felt solid in a world of blurred confusion, the knife seemed to jump from its sheath, and she managed to slash sideways once.
Thalheim grabbed at his shoulder. “You monstrous bitch,” he cried, tromping his boot on her wrist.
Then his gloves were throttling her throat and the knife fell away as Emma felt for the first time in her life the weight of a man on her body—while she thrashed till her strength turned to vapor, and the hands wrung her life away, and the world closed down to a small dimming darkness.
Yet he let her live. A motorcycle had come into the barnyard and the strangling paused. While Emma gasped for air a young voice spoke rapidly, it was a message of some kind, and she recognized the word “Kommandant.” Thalheim opened his hand, dropping her as he snarled a reply. The young voice answered, and the motorcycle rattled away.
Thalheim bent over, yanking Emma up by her hair. “Am I a sergeant tonight, clever bitch?” His face leered close, eyes bulging like a horse in panic. “Say my rank or I kill you now.”
Emma tried to answer but her tongue was stuck in her throat. A strained garble came out.
“Say it or you die.”