The Magus - John Fowles [190]
help the enemies of Germany_... _by order of a court-martial of the German High Command held last night_... _three have been executed_... _two more will now be executed_... "All the brown hands darted up, made the four taps of the Cross. Wimmel paused. German is to death what Latin is to ritual religion--entirely appropriate. "_Following that_... _the eighty hostages_... _taken under Occupation law_... _in retaliation for the brutal murder_... _of four innocent members of the German Armed Forces_... and yet again he paused... _will be executed_. "When the interpreter interpreted the last phrase, there was an exhaled groan, as if they had all been struck in the stomach. Many of the women, some of the men, fell to their knees, imploring the balcony. Humanity groping for the nonexistent pity of a _deus vindicans_. Wimmel must have withdrawn, because the beseechings turned to lamentations. "Now I was forced out from the wall and marched after the hostages. Soldiers, the Austrians, stood at every entrance to the harbour and forced the villagers back. It horrified me that they could help _die Raben_, could obey Wimmel, could stand there with impassive faces and roughly force back people that I knew, only a day or two before, they did not hate. "The alley curved up between the houses to the square beside the village school. It is a natural stage, inclined slightly with the slope to the north, with the sea and the mainland over the lower roofs, with the wall of the village school on the uphill side, and high walls to east and west. If you remember, there is a large plane tree in the garden of the house to the west. The branches come over the wall. As I came to the square that was the first thing I saw. Three bodies hung from the branches, pale in the shadow, as monstrous as Goya etchings. There was the naked body of the cousin with its terrible wound. And there were the naked bodies of the two girls. They had been disembowelled. A slit cut from their breastbone down to their pubic hair and the intestines pulled out. Halfgutted carcasses, swaying slightly in the noon wind. "Beyond those three atrocious shapes I saw the hostages. They had been herded against the school in a pen of barbed wire. The men at the back were just in the shadow of the wall, the front ones in sunlight. As soon as they saw me they began to shout. There were insults of the obvious kind to me, confused cries of appeal--as if anything I could say then would have touched the colonel. He was there, in the centre of the square, with Anton and some twenty of _die Raben_. On the third side of the square, to the east, there is a long wall. You know it? In the middle a gate. Iron grilles. The two guerrillas were lashed to the bars. Not with rope--with barbed wire. "I was halted behind the two lines of men, some twenty yards away from where Wimmel was standing. Anton would not look at me, though Wimmel turned briefly. Anton--staring into space, as if he had hypnotised himself into believing that none of what he saw existed. As if he no longer existed himself. The colonel beckoned the collaborationist to him. I suppose he wanted to know what the hostages were shouting. He appeared to think for a moment and then he went towards them. They fell silent. Of course they did not know he had already pronounced sentence on them. He said something that was translated to them. What, I could not hear, except that it reduced the villagers to silence. So it was not the death sentence. The colonel marched back to me. "He said, I have made an offer to these peasants. I looked at his face. It was absolutely without nervousness, excitation; a man in complete command of himself. He went on, I will permit them not to be executed. To go to a labour camp. On one condition. That is that you, as mayor of this village, carry out in front of them the execution of the two murderers. "I said, I am not an executioner. "The village men began to shout frantically at me. "He looked at his watch, and said, You have thirty seconds to decide. "Of course in such situations one cannot think. All coherence