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It was also baking day. He loved seeing his mother bent over the enormous kitchen table, elbow-deep in dough, moving to the measured rhythm of making bread. She kneaded the ingredients, formed long rolls of dough, divided them, and from each piece produced a round loaf. Before, in times of plenty, she had put aside a bit of the dough, added milk, eggs, and cinnamon, and made buns that she stored in a tin—one for each child for each day of the week. Now the flour was mixed with bran, and the result was dark and harsh, like bread made of sawdust.
    The day had begun with a commotion in the street—movement of the occupation troops, shouted orders—but no one was overly startled; their fear had been exhausted in the rout of defeat, and they had little left to expend in premonitions of bad omens. Following the armistice, the Russians had moved into the village. Rumors of brutality preceded the soldiers of the Red Army, and the terrified populace awaited a bloodbath. They are beasts, people said; they slash open thebellies of pregnant women and throw the fetuses to the dogs; they run their bayonets through old people; they stick dynamite up men’s asses and blow them to bits; they rape, burn, destroy. However, none of that happened. Searching for an explanation, the mayor concluded that they were indeed fortunate; the soldiers who occupied their town had not come from the most war-ravaged part of the Soviet Union, and therefore they had less stored-up bitterness and unfulfilled revenge. They had rumbled into town, heavy vehicles pulling all their matériel, under the command of a young officer with Asian features; they had requisitioned all the food, stowed everything they could find of value in their knapsacks, and had shot six prominent members of the community accused of collaborating. The soldiers set up camp on the edge of the village and stayed to themselves. That day, however, they had rounded up all the townspeople, mustering them over loudspeakers and going into houses to roust out the hesitant. Frau Carlé wrapped a jacket around Katharina’s shoulders and hurried outside before the soldiers could come in and commandeer the hare and the week’s bread. With her three children, Jochen, Katharina, and Rolf, she went to the public square. The village had survived those war years in better shape than most, in spite of the bomb that had fallen on the school one Sunday night, converting it to rubble and scattering splinters of desks and blackboards far and wide. Part of the medieval cobblestones were missing, because various troops had used the stones to construct barricades. The enemy had appropriated the clock in the mayor’s office, the church organ, and the last wine harvest, the only local treasures. Buildings were all in need of paint, and here and there some were bullet-pocked, but the village had not lost the charm acquired over centuries of existence.
    The people congregated in the square, circled by enemy soldiers; the Soviet commandant, in his tattered uniform, worn-out boots, and several days’ growth of beard, walked past the group, closely observing each one. No one looked him in the eye; they stood with heads lowered, shoulders bowed, expectant; only Katharina fixed her meek eyes on the officer, and stuck a finger in her nose.
    â€œIs she retarded?” asked the officer, pointing to the girl.
    â€œShe was born that way,” Frau Carlé replied.
    â€œThen she doesn’t have to go. Leave her here.”
    â€œShe can’t stay here by herself, please. . . . Let me take her with us.”
    â€œAs you like.”
    Under a pale spring sun they stood and waited for more than two hours, at gunpoint, the elderly leaning on the strongest, the children asleep on the ground, the youngest in their parents’ arms, until finally the order was given, and they set off, following behind the commandant’s jeep, under the watchful eye of soldiers who tried to