The Ragged Edge of Night(39)

“But Maria—”

“Be quick!”

He runs up to the altar, no time to pay proper respects. He crosses himself as he goes, a terse bid for the Lord’s forgiveness—for mercy, if any is to be had. He blows out the candle, and the sanctuary plunges into darkness. Anton calls over the roaring engines, “Where are the children?”

From somewhere close by, Emil answers. “The boys are with Elisabeth; I told her where to go.”

“Maria! We must find her!”

Just then, Anton hears the girl crying. She is somewhere below his feet, but he can’t see her, can’t feel her when he drops to the ground, pawing through darkness. Father Emil is beside him in a flash, falling to his knees, pulling the cloth from the altar. The blackness is so dense, Anton pushes his hands through it as if he might part shadows by force and reveal his small daughter, cowering and afraid, in a shaft of protective light. But there is no light here. The dark is everywhere, stifling and thick.

Maria screams, “Machen Sie die schlechten Bomben weg!” Make the bad bombs go away! Beneath the altar table, her voice is everywhere, splitting Anton’s head, strident with fear. But still he can’t find her. His hands grasp only emptiness. Where is she? Merciful Lord, give me back my child!

“I have her,” Emil says. “Come!”

One hand on the priest’s shoulder, Anton follows him, stumbling through the darkness. Emil knows where to go. There is a dry rasp of old door hinges, barely audible over the sound of the planes. Emil murmurs soothing words to Maria, who wails wordlessly, her cries muffled, face pressed hard against the priest’s shoulder or chest.

“Reach down, Anton,” Emil says. “Directly down from where you stand. The door to the shelter is just below.”

“I can’t see.”

“You’ll find an iron ring near your feet. Pull it straight up.”

The planes roar closer, closer. This is the night when Unterboihingen will be seen, when our perfect village, our sanctuary of brotherhood, will be struck, destroyed, undone. In the morning, we will find it broken, shattered houses bleeding children’s cries into icy streets. Someone has left a candle burning. Someone has left a curtain open. It’s all over now.

He finds the ring; he strains upward. A creak of wood and age, almost as loud as the planes, and something opens below. A gust of cold, damp air pummels him in the face, a smell of decades and mildew.

“Careful, now,” Emil says. One hand steadies Anton, strong on his upper arm. “Take Maria from me. I’ll go down first and get a light burning. I know where the candles and matches are kept.”

The girl is stiff with terror when Anton scoops her against his chest. He rocks her, singing a lullaby close to her ear, but she doesn’t hear him. She hears nothing but the thunder of death, feels only the rattling of the church’s fragile old bones. A moment later, a spot of light appears, down in a pit beneath the floor. The light is dim, but it’s enough to illuminate the tiny room in which they’re all standing. Elisabeth is cowering by a wall; the boys have buried their faces against her body. At Anton’s feet, a ladder descends into the darkness, six, seven, rungs down.

“Boys, quickly,” he says. They don’t move, too frightened to obey. He speaks low and calm, firm and commanding. “Boys. Do as I say. Now.”

They tear themselves from their mother and scramble down the ladder into the cellar. Anton nods to Elisabeth; she follows, and as soon as her feet are on solid ground, she reaches up for Maria. He passes the girl down to her mother. Only when his family is tucked away does Anton crouch and find the rungs with his groping feet. He descends into the shelter as quickly as he can and then slams the trap door overhead.

Even here, buried beneath the floor of St. Kolumban, in a passage hidden by some ancient closet, the engines with their hellish screams overwhelm every sense and all rational thought. Still clinging to the ladder, Anton fights against his fear, forcing himself to observe, to know. Emil’s small candle lights the whole room. The room is close, lined with shelves. There are four sturdy benches, one along each wall, and on the shelves, a supply of food and water in jars and tins. The family huddle with their priest on a single bench, pressed close together. Maria is curled in a ball on Father Emil’s lap, still screaming with a fear that can be expressed no other way. Anton staggers to his family. He stretches his arms wide, sheltering his wife and sons—as if he can protect them, as if he can do anything to stop the bombs from falling. And after the bombs, the bricks and masonry and timbers of the church. He can feel the weight of the building overhead. Through the engines’ roar, he can almost hear St. Kolumban grinding, sighing, ready to fall.

No one speaks. They wait; they shiver. They count their heartbeats, listening for the blasts, wondering whose houses and lives will be gone, wiped out, when they emerge from the cellar, if they emerge at all.

The roar thins and dwindles. The planes are still out there, but they have passed over Unterboihingen, passed the village by. Did they never see us huddled here, or are we merely unimportant? Anton fills his lungs with cold, wet air. He releases his family slowly, his hand sliding over the fur of Elisabeth’s collar. We will not be bombed—not tonight. He thinks with great effort; he orients himself by force of will, dragging his mind out of terror, sequestering what remains of his fear in an unused corner. He mentally retraces their steps as best he can, the route they took as they fled the nave. He believes they are on the south side of the church. That means the planes are headed west.