The Ragged Edge of Night(96)

Anton hurries after him. “They’re coming to take the bells. Before they take us, I mean—or maybe after; I don’t know.”

Emil sets the bucket beside his door, the little side entrance only the priest ever bothers to use. “I’m sorry to hear it,” he says, flat and defeated.

“But I won’t let them do it, Father. They can’t.” Through the darkness, Emil watches Anton. The priest’s eyes pinch at the edges with sympathy, but not enough, not enough understanding. He doesn’t understand.

They already took the children. They can’t have music, too. They can’t have the full bronze throat of joy and sorrow. They can’t take the light from the world. He remembers the parachute opening above him, the calm of his fall toward Riga.

“Those bells have rung since before the Reich existed,” Anton says, his voice cracking with the strain. “And by God, I will see to it that they will ring long after Hitler falls.”

Emil pauses, one hand on the doorknob, and the hard lines of his face soften. His silence says, You really believe he will fall?

Anton takes him by the shoulder. The rules that govern men don’t permit him to do more, but Emil seems to understand. The priest nods, heartened—as much as one may be uplifted, knowing the gray buses are coming.

“You should plan how to do it,” he tells Anton. “We should both plan. Tomorrow. Can you find your way back home in this darkness?”

“I can. But there’s nothing for me to go home to.”

“Then stay here.” Emil opens the door. “I’ve got candles enough to work by.”





38

It takes six nights for Anton and Emil to dig their pit in the unused field behind the church. They do it under cover of darkness, or by moonlight and starlight when the clouds part, for no one must know, no one must see, even those whom they call friends. They take it in turns, one swinging an old pickax into hard, frozen earth, the other working with a spade, clearing away the loosened soil. When they strike layers of stubborn, ice-hard frost, they boil kettles of snow over Emil’s tiny stove. They carry the water out into darkness and pour it on the steaming ground, and in this way the earth is made to yield.

Six nights of work; they sleep by day, so weary from the digging that they dream no dreams. And then, when the pit is as deep as Anton is tall, and wide enough that a farm wagon could fit inside, they know their plan is ripe.

On the seventh night—the night of their final act of resistance—Anton and Emil ascend the bell tower together. They have draped their shoulders with lengths of heavy felt, which trails behind them as they climb. Up there, by the light of one tiny candle in a pierced brass shutter, they examine the bells. Even in virtual darkness, the ancient bells are beautiful, gleaming wherever a speck of light slides along their metal. A holy air hangs about them, captivating, sublime. Anton runs his hand over the nearest, tracing its graceful curve, and the bronze trembles beneath his palm. He can feel, in that caress, the echo of a thousand peals. The memory of these bells reaches back hundreds of years and more to a different world, when we were a different people. In the curve of their deep-bronze flanks, you can sense all the lives, long gone, that have listened to their tolling. He could never count the people who have heard the song. But he feels their presence, more numerous than stars, shuddering faintly under his touch.

He thinks, I will take this with me, too, into the gray that waits. I will feel memory and music alive in my hand.

Carefully, working on their knees, Anton and Emil wrap the heavy clappers in felt to silence St. Kolumban’s bells. When they have finished, Anton rests his hand on one of the old bronze singers again. This time, his touch is an unspoken apology. We must silence you for a time, my friend, though not forever. One day, when we know we are free, we will hear your voice again.

It seems impossible, that two men should be able to move the four massive bells—especially Anton and Emil, who are no longer young. But by the grace of God, the strength comes. They free the knots in the ropes and lower each bell carefully, laying hard against the great, rough lines, struggling and panting as they ease each sacred relic to the ground. It takes half the night to coax the bells out of the tower and the other half to roll them over the ground to the dark, frozen pit. With their ropes, they lower each bell again, until it stands upright at the bottom of the grave. Down there, not even moonlight can reach them. They are invisible, swallowed up by the earth.

The first light of dawn pinks the sky; time is running out. Exhausted, aching, trembling with weakness, they shovel soil over the bells, flatten all evidence of their work, and push snow atop the disturbance. Then, wracked with weariness, they kneel on the spot and pray. They ask that God might divert their enemies’ eyes from this place—make Unterboihingen invisible once again.

Neither man presumes to ask the same mercy for himself. It’s too late now to evade their fate. They can only beg the Lord to send them swift and easy deaths, and to shelter those they love when they have left this world behind.





39

Anton drops into sleep on a small cot in the corner of Emil’s room. When he wakes, groggy and disoriented, the low yellow light of a late-winter morning pools beside the window. The smell of old snow hangs heavy in the air—snow and fresh ink. He thinks, I’ve had an hour or two of rest, at least—a small but notable blessing.