Read Before the Feast for Free Online

slot at the top of the machine, the coin comes out again at the bottom. Herr Schramm gets his pistol out of the car.
    After ten minutes Captain Karrenbauer stood up and groped his way, dripping sweat, toward the exit. Karrenbauer, the fattest man in the sauna. Dark curls, though. Skin and fingernails infuriatingly well groomed. Karrenbauer always wheezed as he breathed. Trunov jumped up, had already positioned himself between the exit and the Captain, hand on the pommel of his saber. The Jew dunked the towel in the drain outlet and began working the General over with it vigorously.
    â€œWhere you go, soldier?” called Trunov. He wasn’t looking at Karrenbauer. He was looking over Karrenbauer’s massive head, through the sauna wall, out to the interrogation cell,the Albertina library and on, far beyond Leipzig, through mountains, over plains, and as he didn’t spot an enemy to look daggers at anywhere he finally saw himself in his bitter native land, riding along the cotton fields, through the valley of the River Surxondaryo, on his stallion whose name was All My Prayers.
    He wanted to go out, Karrenbauer nervously replied.
    â€œSo tell me, soldier, why I let you out?”
    Karrenbauer stammered, “I-I c-can’t take it any more. M-my heart. I’m n-not supposed to. . .”
    â€œYou joking? I not ask about your anatomy. And I not ask why you no stay. I ask why you worth I let you out. Convince me you important, soldier!”
    Herr Schramm is an upright man with poor posture. Herr Schramm puts his pistol to the temples of the cigarette machine.
    In the new Federal German states people are more inclined, on average, to repair defective items themselves, whereas the people of the old Federal German states think first of buying a new item, then of finding an expert to repair the old one, and very few of doing the job themselves.
    It did everyone in the sauna good to sense the heat of Karrenbauer’s fear. Because it was the fear of a man who was as bad and as good as themselves, and because it was his fear and not their own.
    Karrenbauer fell to his knees.
    Trunov drew his saber.
    Herr Schramm dries the coin on his trousers. Stands still like that, one hand on his pistol, the other, holding the coin, close to the slot. He looks along the main road. From here he could reach the outer perimeter in fifteen minutes. Anti-aircraft rocket station Number 123 Wegnitz. Stationed there for seventeen years. In the “jam factory.” In the “textile mill.” In the “milking shed.”
    Once mushroom-gatherers came. Schramm had just finished doing his round, and there they were by the fence: mother, father, child, another child, dog, mushroom baskets, weatherproof clothing. They’d ignored the warning notices, had wandered through the woods in the no-go zone for hours without being stopped by the guards and patrols, and now they were gawping straight at the installation. You could see half the firing position from there. The anti-aircraft battery. The starting ramp. The technology. They were confused, who wouldn’t be? You go looking for chestnut bolete mushrooms, you find anti-aircraft rockets.
    Schramm goes over. Afternoon. Mmph. The fence between them. So what have you got to say for yourself?
    Says the father, “Looks like we’ve got a teeny little bit lost.”
    Schramm picks fluff off his uniform.
    Says the mother, “I suppose we can’t go any farther.”
    Schramm raises his eyebrows.
    Says the little girl, “Are you a soldier?”
    â€œNo, I’m a forester,” says Schramm, giving the girl a fairly friendly tap on the finger she’s putting through the fence.
    Says sonny boy, pointing to the starting ramp, “Is that a rocket, Comrade Forester?”
    What do you say now?
    Says you, “I’ll ask you to vacate the grounds of the Wegnitz jam factory.”
    Schramm never again met such a vital man as Trunov, a man so much at