A Meal in Winter

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THEY HAD RUNG the iron gong outside and it was still echoing, at first for real in the courtyard, and then, for a longer time, inside our heads. We would not hear it again. We had to get up straight away. Lieutenant Graaf never had to ring the iron twice. A meagre light came through the frost-covered window. Emmerich was sleeping on his side. Bauer woke him. It was late afternoon, but Emmerich thought it was morning. He sat up on his bed and looked at his boots, seeming not to understand why he’d slept in them all night.

In the meantime, Bauer and I had already put our boots on. Emmerich got up and went to look through the window, but he couldn’t see anything because of the frost, so he kept on struggling to disentangle night from day. Bauer explained to him that it was afternoon and Graaf was calling us.

‘What, again?’ Emmerich groaned. ‘What for? So we can freeze to death?’

‘Hurry up,’ I told him.

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