After they had returned to Potsdamer Platz and said good-bye to Diana, Jörg asked Lila if she was tired.
“Yeah. I can’t believe they can stomach that food. Adults really are strange. If I were German, I’d throw a fit if someone told me they were going to make sausages with rat meat.”
“People end up getting used to things like that when their quality of life degrades just a little bit at a time. And before they realize it, they’ve adapted to living in horrendous conditions. It was the same on the front lines. Killing people, eating next to corpses, not washing for days—none of it made me feel anything. And once you accept that that’s your life, it’s hard to go back to normal.”
The next day, Jörg and Lila took a steam train out to Kleinerbrunn. It was a wine region renowned even across Europe, and vineyards stretched all the way along the river. Hordes of visitors including foreign tourists had come to the area during more peaceful times to enjoy the local wine and food.
The closest station, Sylphestadt, was surrounded by complete silence, just like every other stretch of the German countryside. Stagecoaches and bicycles served as the primary methods of transportation here, and there was even a horse-drawn omnibus in front of the station. Cars were rare, and the town didn’t have electricity, so there were no streetlights looming over the square as there were in Paris. There weren’t any portals directly connecting to Xandra’s inn, either, so Jörg and Lila had arrived by the normal means of transportation.
The train pulled up to Sylphestadt station, and Jörg and Lila disembarked. Lila was dressed as a boy again today. She’d taken a liking to the outfit, saying it was easier to move around in than a dress.
The smell of coal was dispersed by the breeze, and they filled their lungs with crisp, clean air. A line of low, gently sloping mountains overlapped one another on the other side of the station building, the tallest of which had been transformed into shadow by the afternoon sun. The thick scent of spruce and beech drifted through the air, laced with the bittersweet smell of tree sap, which permeated their nostrils. The area was much colder than the city, presumably because of the cool breeze coming off the Rhine River.
Jörg and Lila climbed into a stagecoach waiting in front of the station and soon arrived at the home of Hanna Bauer—the woman whose name Bernadette had given them. Bernadette had also told them that all the men in the house had been sent off to war, so Hanna looked after her elderly parents as well as the farmhands.
When Jörg knocked on the door, it opened a crack to reveal the face of a young man.
Fabrice LeRoy.
The sudden encounter surprised Jörg. He had assumed that Fabrice would be working in the fields at this hour, but here he was with Hanna.
“Can I help you?” Fabrice asked in German.
“A woman named Bernadette from Paris told us about this place. I believe she already contacted you.” Jörg produced a letter from his coat pocket and handed it to Fabrice. “This is a letter of proof. Please give it to Hanna and ask her to verify it.”
“Very well. Please wait a moment.”
They didn’t have to wait long. The door soon opened again, and Fabrice led Jörg and Lila into the room.
Hanna was sitting in a chair in front of a fireplace, both elbows resting on the armrests. She wore a white apron over a long cotton dress and had her hair tied back into a high bun. Wrinkles large and small ran from the corners of her eyes to her cheeks, across her dry, sunburned skin. Her arms resembled thick oak logs. She seemed exhausted, as if she’d just returned from the fields, but her eyes were as sharp as a wild beast’s.
Hanna invited Jörg and Lila to sit. She didn’t offer them any refreshments, apologizing for not having anything available, and Jörg told her that was quite all right.
Fabrice remained standing next to Hanna, as if to protect her in case something happened. He hadn’t said anything since their first interaction. They had no idea how much German he understood, but there was a good chance he was listening in on everything they said.
“It’s definitely her handwriting in this letter,” Hanna said slowly, perhaps so Fabrice could understand. “Let’s talk. What do you want, and how much?”
“For now, we’d like enough food to support one family and their relatives,” Jörg replied. “We’ll make regular purchases.”
“Any plans to scale up?”
“The food situation in the city is bad, so once it gets out that we’re able to trade for it, I’m sure lots of people will want us to do the same for them.”
“I really wish I had a lot to sell you, but we’ve had an exceptionally bad year this year. We might not have anything to offer.”
“How bad?”
“Harvests have been declining ever since the war started because the men and horses we need to work the fields were taken for the battlefield. It’s too much land for women, children, and the elderly to farm, so if we can’t plow a field by sowing time, we have no choice but to let it go fallow. There’s also the fertilizer problem. The nitrogen we need to add to the fields is all being used to make gunpowder for rifles and artillery shells. Without fertilizer, the vegetables won’t grow. Simply put, the war is making us sacrifice food, too. This year’s potato harvest was abysmal. We might not even be able to use potato flour to make food substitutes. Instead, the government will probably start mixing in turnips and straw. It’s getting to the point where we can’t even call it human food anymore.”
“So you’re saying you don’t have anything to send to the cities?”
“It’s hard for us to take on new customers. It’s no longer a matter of money.”
“Would you mind if we tried talking to other farmers?”
“Knock yourselves out,” Hanna answered readily. “Even we don’t know exactly what the situation’s like at other farms.”
“I appreciate that,” Jörg replied.
Once they left Hanna’s house, Lila asked, “Are we really going to visit other farmers?”
“I want to know what the situation’s like in the village as a whole,” Jörg said. “Even if other farmers might not be able to help us, I want to understand what’s going on. Things here are worse than I thought.”
“They really are.”
“We also need to make a return portal somewhere in town.”
“Like where?”
“A small bar would be good. It would make sense for out-of-towners to go there.”
“Wouldn’t a big dining hall be easier to find?”
“The way things are, the Bierhallen and Lokale are probably all closed.”
“What’s a Bierhalle?”
“A restaurant where people can go to drink beer. A Lokal is a smaller version of a Bierhalle.”
They asked people on the street where they could find a bar and came across a decent-looking establishment called Erster. The sign on the door said it was closed, but the place didn’t look abandoned, just that it only opened at night.
After making sure no one was around, Jörg raised his left palm toward the door. The pattern on the back of his hand instantly imprinted itself into the door panel. Now they could go back to Xandra’s inn without having to take a train.
They walked around the fields, speaking to any farmers they came across. Jörg informed them that he and Lila had come from the city and were willing to pay any amount for food, but the sweat-caked women all made the same dubious expression and shook their heads. The only responses Jörg and Lila got were “Sorry,” “It’s for the government, so even we don’t have enough food for ourselves,” and “Try asking someone else.”