介绍:
CHAPTER EIGHT （2）
The church made a better shelter than the barns and walls the women had had before. When
they had passed abandoned farms and stayed overnight, the uniformed security force and the female
guards had taken the living quarters for themselves. Here, in the almost deserted village, they
could commandeer the priest’s house and still leave the prisoners something more than a barn or a
wall. That they did it, and that the prisoners even got something warm to eat in the village seemed
to promise an end to the misery. The women went to sleep. Shortly afterwards the bombs fell. As
long as the steeple was the only thing burning, the fire could be heard in the church, but not
seen. When the tip of the steeple collapsed and crashed down onto the rafters, it took several
minutes for the glow of the fire to become visible. By then the flames were already licking
downwards and setting clothes alight, collapsing burning beams set fire to the pews and pulpit, and
soon the whole roof crashed into the nave and started a general conflagration.
The daughter thinks the women could have saved themselves if they had immediately gotten together
to break down one of the doors. But by the time they realized what had happened and was going to
happen, and that no one was coming to open the doors, it was too late. It was completely dark when
the sound of the falling bombs woke them. For a while they heard nothing but an eerie, frightening
noise in the steeple, and kept absolutely quiet, so as to hear the noise better and figure out what
it was. That it was the crackling and snapping of a fire, that it was the glow of flames that
flared up now and again behind the windows, that the crash above their heads signaled the spreading
of the fire from the steeple to the roof—all this the women realized only once the rafters began to
burn. They realized, they screamed in horror, screamed for help, threw themselves at the doors,
shook them, beat at them, screamed.
When the burning roof crashed into the nave, the shell of the walls acted like a chimney. Most of
the women did not suffocate, but burned to death in the brilliant roar of the flames. In the end,
the fire even burned its glowing way through the ironclad church doors. But that was hours later.
Mother and daughter survived because the mother did the right thing for the wrong reasons. When the
women began to panic, she couldn’t bear to be among them anymore. She fled to the gallery. She
didn’t care that she was closer to the flames, she just wanted to be alone, away from the
screaming, thrashing, burning women. The gallery was narrow, so narrow that it was barely touched
by the burning beams. Mother and daughter stood pressed against the wall and saw and heard the
raging of the fire. Next day they didn’t dare come down and out of the church. In the darkness of
the following night, they were afraid of not finding the stairs and the way out. When they left the
church in the dawn of the day after that, they met some of the villagers, who gaped at them in
silent astonishment, but gave them clothing and food and
let them walk on.
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