The Krakatuk Nut
Verdun , December 1916 . In the former nave of Saint Nicholas Cathedral , it smelled not of incense, but of sweet rot, carbolic acid, and stale sweat. The stained-glass windows had long been blown out by blast waves; instead of the faces of saints, the gray, indifferent sky of Picardy peered through the openings. Ober-arzt Drosselmeyer was making his rounds. He was not a kind godfather, but a mechanic of the flesh. His pockets were stuffed not with sweets, but with the "gifts" of war: hinged prostheses, glass eyes, and ampoules of morphine . — "Here is your new leg, soldier," he threw a rough piece of wood onto the cot. — "And for you—oblivion." He injected a dose into a screaming artilleryman, and the man went quiet. Drosselmeyer was the only one here who understood: sometimes a person cannot be fixed, one can only gift them a different reality. In the corner behind a screen lay Marie—the daughter of General Stahlbaum , caught under the shelling o...