1901

When they finally reached the Harlem River, it was a scene from Dante. Mobs of people, rich and poor, walking and in wagons or carriages, pushed or were trying to push their way onto the bridges that connected Manhattan with the Bronx. Even on a good day, the traffic was heavy; this day it was impossible. The river was little more than a narrow and muddy stream, but it was not crossable by foot. Scores of boats of all sizes ferried people back and forth, and Patrick and Katrina saw riders and their horses swimming the muck. At Patrick’s urging the four of them formed a compact mass and pushed their way through the mob, oblivious to the curses hurled at them. Finally they reached a small boat whose owner, a grinning little man in filthy clothes, demanded fifty dollars to take them across. Patrick thought about arguing, but others behind him were shouting that they would pay. Patrick handed over the money and the four were ferried across with the guards holding the reins of the horses, which swam easily alongside.

They had barely remounted when they heard the sound of shots and screams. An expensive carriage with a well-dressed family had tried to bully its way onto a bridge and had run someone over. Friends of the injured person then stormed the carriage and shot the driver, who was dragged bleeding from his seat and disappeared into the crowd. While they watched in horror, the mob turned on the family inside, plucked them out one by one, and hurled them into the river, where they were pelted with rocks and debris until they disappeared under the dark water.

Katrina’s mouth was open in shock at the sudden violence. Neither of them had ever seen anything like it in their lives. “We’ve become animals,” she said finally.

With much of the fleeing throng still trapped on the wrong side of the river, the roads were not crowded and they were able to urge their horses to a trot. They had barely gone a mile when they saw a score of horsemen in dark gray uniforms. The Germans rode with the insolence of conquerors as they idly scattered the refugees in their path like a flock of chickens.

“Patrick, they don’t even care about us, do they?” The grinning Germans passed within fifty yards of them.

“No, we’re nothing to them. They’re just scouting the area.”

“Patrick, this nightmare isn’t going to end, is it?”

No, he thought, not for a very long time.

CHAPTER FIVE

Ludwig Weber, a private in the kaiser’s Imperial 4th Rifles, gripped his usually clean and well-oiled Mauser with an unholy fervor and wished he were someplace else than this city of hell. Sweat dripped down his face for many reasons. First, it was hot, and his uniform wasn’t intended for the steamy weather. Second, he had just survived his first encounter with an armed enemy intent upon killing him, a fact that also accounted for the dirty and smudged condition of his rifle. Third, he was only a few hundred yards away from the sea of flame that seemed to be consuming the city of Brooklyn.

What a change, he thought. Was it only a year ago that he, a teacher of English in a private school just outside Munich, had been conscripted to serve the Prussians in the Imperial Army? God, what had happened to him? First they took away his dignity and made him a private soldier, an automaton, a nobody, and then they taught him how to march and kill for the glory of the emperor and the Reich.

Then they took him away from his home and placed him in a large, cramped, oceangoing vessel where he spent almost two weeks in unwashed and unwanted intimacy with thousands like him. The passage had been horrible, and he’d spent much of it covered with puke. The whole ship and its human cargo smelled of shit and piss. If he hadn’t vomited so much from seasickness, the unholy stench generated by his comrades would have made him ill. Was this why he had educated himself? He was twenty-two years old. Would his life end here?

To consummate his problems, a vengeful god had also given him to Corporal Kessel. Otto Kessel was an illiterate and hulking blond-haired brute who hated with a passion anything better than himself. He was a bully, a sadist, a murderer, and a rapist. Weber had heard with horror of Kessel’s so-called adventures in China where, apparently with the blessings of senior officers, he had behaved like a pig, rutting and killing. Weber found it difficult to believe that anything like Otto Kessel existed on an earth that God made.