- and the basement smelled of old cigarette smoke and chipped paint.
It smelled like sweat and urine – infecting the air like musky perfume – and the walls seemed to whisper quiet prayers along with the huddled Germans on the basement floor. They were soot-smeared with fear – both the walls and the Germans – and their prayers tumbled to the ground and shattered against concrete like Christmas tree baubles. The concrete was cold. Dieter thought that it felt like the skin of a corpse as he crouched on it with his arm around Ada. The floor was a dead body and the walls and the ceiling of the basement were coffin planks, nailed shut by the phlegmy coughs of the American and British bombs.
Falling on Dresden like the footsteps of drunken giants dancing on rubbled ballroom floors.
Gutting buildings.
Causing the ground to sigh and exhale ash that boiled in the air like ticker-tape parades.
In the darkness, someone groped for his hand and held it tightly and Dieter suddenly imagined that they were all gathered in the basement that night for a séance. For a communion with the dead. Holding hands, bowing heads, as candles were lit outside. As trees withered like wicks and fire bearded buildings like wax.
Ada curled even further into his chest so that his nose was nestled in her hair, which smelled and tasted like burnt books and roses. She felt so delicate in his arms. Her bones were drinking straws, hollow and brittle. Each time a bomb laughed outside – complimenting the opera-house alto of the air raid alarms with a trombone bass – she contracted. She flickered like the flame of a cigarette lighter.
Whoever was holding his hand had practically oiled their hands with sweat.
ADA [whispering]: Is it ever going to stop?
DIETER: Just think of it like a symphony.
ADA: I've never heard something less musical in my life.
DIETER: Snare drum, bass drum, oboes, clarinets, trumpets...
ADA: It's not working.
DIETER: Everything's going to be fine.
ADA: Should we pray?
DIETER [pausing]: To who?
ADA: To God.
DIETER: I think praying to Roosevelt or Herr Hitler would work faster. Heaven is pretty far away and our voices are so soft.
ADA: You're a terrible Christian, Dieter.
DIETER: Who said I was a Christian?
ADA: How else can someone survive through a war like this?
DIETER: War is too distracting, darling. I don't have the patience for faith. I just can't concentrate on salvation and repentance with all these dead bodies lying around and all this beautiful music in the air.
ADA: You must be tone deaf.
DIETER: No, you're just not listening closely enough.
The floor trembled and outside it sounded like a hundred buildings were falling to their knees, beaten and penitent. Little sprinkles of dust fell from the ceiling like mustard gas. It hung the air like a curtain before an opening act. Dieter was closing his eyes. He was trying to capture the musical elements of the scene taking place outside. The bombs descending on the city like bocce balls. The air raid alarms lilting grainy screams through gramophone mouths. The grunts torn from the ground and spattered in the air like quarter notes on sheet music. It wasn't pretty, but there was a pattern. There was order in the chaos. Dresden had been transformed into an orchestral hall and filled with the applause of airplanes making bombing runs. There was no doubt about.
Ada just needed to listen.
Another nearby explosion. Violent enough to make the ceiling cough more dust. Whoever had been holding his hand slipped away and someone began weeping softly. Their tears joined the shattered prayers on the ground and Dieter imagined that the basement floor looked something like the Jewish neighborhoods on Krystallnacht.
Dieter desperately needed a cigarette. But he was out of tobacco and his rolling paper was sitting in his house on his table like crumpled origami frogs. He could only savor the air. He could only find comfort in Ada at his side and the music of the bombing of Dresden.
His ears popped like popcorn as the third explosion blistered the basement; closer this time.
And Dieter wondered how God could possibly hear the prayers over these giant incendiary hail stones –
– felt like a stork swaddling newborn babies and dropping them down chimneys baptized in soot. Max could see the bombs as they pulverized the city; red-orange corsages on tuxedo shirts. They looked like desert roses or miniature suns or overflowing beer glasses and as he watched them blossom his hands buttered themselves with sweat.
Either that or blood.
Bombing Dresden seemed a little too much like slaughtering a lamb.
The fires below laughed cheerfully.
MAX: They don't even have any anti-aircraft guns, Sunshine.
SUNSHINE: That's their problem, isn't it?
MAX: It's like killing little kids though, don't you think?
SUNSHINE: Nah. The Jerrys had it coming. Besides, little Jerrys grow up to be big Jerrys. Kinda like rats or cockroaches. They all start out small and nice-lookin'.
MAX: They're people.
SUNSHINE: They're cockroaches.
MAX: We're all out of packages.
SUNSHINE: I'm telling you, kid, we're just carrying out science here. Good, proven genetics. That's what this whole God-awful war's about anyway. This is just spring-cleaning, kid. We're just burning the compost pile.
MAX: We're all out.
The bomber buzzed mosquito soliloquies into Max's ears as Sunshine nodded and wheeled the throbbing airplane around. No matter what Sunshine or anybody else said, he couldn't shake the image of a trillion people – civilians – combusting like witches burning at telephone pole stakes. He couldn't shake the image of pyramids of putty-skinned corpses or hollow, serrated buildings with windows that were charred and blackened; bleeding mascara.
As the plane headed back to the airbase, Max heard little prayers knocking on his plexiglass windows as they floated up to heaven like ash.
