Free Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything by Daniela Krien, Jamie Bulloch

procession stopped. To finish we sang the last verse of “Peat Bog Soldiers.”
    That was my turning point, something snapped inside me, my resistance dissolved. I felt at one with the others, strong and invincible. It was an uplifting moment, indescribable, and at the same time one of the most unsettling aspects of my entire stay.
    When Gisela asks to hear the song again and I launch into “Peat Bog Soldiers”—with a certain frisson of excitement—it’s not long before Siegfried, Hartmut, Marianne, Alfred, and Frieda join in, in that very order.
    Far and wide as the eye can wander,
    Heath and bog are everywhere.
    Not a bird sings out to cheer us,
    Oaks are standing gaunt and bare.
    We are the peat bog soldiers.
    We’re marching with our spades to the bog.
    Marianne hums the tune in her clear voice, because she doesn’t know the words, and when we get to the final verse—“But for us there is no complaining, / Winter will in time be past. / One day we shall cry rejoicing, ‘Homeland dear you’re mine at last!’”—there’s no stopping Siegfried. He belts out the words so loudly that the rest of us fall silent, and Gisela grips her chair with both hands. None of us says a word and I feel a bit embarrassed for Siegfried. We’re all thinking our own thoughts, and when the silence goes on for too long I embark on the conclusion to my story. When, after six weeks, I camehome and sang Russian war songs at the dinner table, my mother, in tears, asked me, “What on earth have they done to you?” I cried and missed my friends. It took me a while to get used to being at home again, and my yearning for camp life eventually turned into a rejection of everything collective.
    Siegfried had no idea that it had been like that. Now he looks at me rather sympathetically. Gisela finds it all “barbaric,” like under the Nazis; Hartmut agrees with her, even though he’s been singing along heartily, too. “Bastards!” he says repeatedly. “Miserable bastards! They broke children in those camps.” Then Frieda brings in the dessert. Tiramisu. We’ve never had it before. Even the name sounds exciting. Gisela made it; she brought the ingredients with her. I wonder whether Hartmut is right, whether they really broke me, but on balance I think he’s exaggerating.
    None of us noticed Johannes taking photographs of us while we were singing. Tonight, when he develops them, I’ll be able to see how Alfred was looking at me. We go to bed late, very late, and Johannes holds me gently in his arms.
    In the other room is my bag and another note from Henner. I’m saving it for tomorrow.

9
    I’ve been neglecting The Brothers Karamazov . I left it at the point where something dreadful happened. Fyodor Karamazov is dead, murdered, and all the evidence suggests his son, Dmitry, is the culprit. But in the midst of the greatest adversity, and when he no longer cares about anything, Grushenka shows him her love. There are times when love saves everything.
    Before I start the next chapter, I take out Henner’s note and read it. “Come stay with me, just for a day . . .” Every time I read his words it’s as if the ground has fallen away beneath me, and every time I feel like running away and leaving it all behind, even Johannes. But I don’t. I harbor the same sense of foreboding Zossima had when he bowed down before Dmitry. I have no idea what it might be,Henner’s future suffering, but I fear it may have something to do with me.
    Downstairs they’re sitting all together at the breakfast table. The children have been absorbed by the farm. They romp about in the animal sheds and in the meadows, and only appear at mealtimes. I don’t feel like eating. I’m completely full; Henner doesn’t leave room for much else. Johannes is telling them how he met me: at that first demonstration in P. Thousands of people were there; the march was so long we couldn’t see where it began or ended. Carried by the throng, we surged past the big