The Woman at 1,000 Degrees

93 Piglet in the Woods 1944

Mum saved Dad by luring him out of the war and leading him into the forest. But what then did the little pig do, the one that came running in the afternoon along the forest floor, pale pink with singed ears, and constantly shaking his head to rid himself of the pain?

My father regained his senses from where he had prostrated himself on the ground before God and mankind – Come, take me, take all my senses, because I used them to back the wrong horse! – and was resting his head on his helmet, with the summer sun on his forehead. The village crackled in the distance. Isolated gunshots resounded through the ruins. The war shift was about to end.

The pig was followed by voices, almost laughing voices, which echoed through the hall of the forest, and then a shot. My father hoisted himself up on his elbows. Another shot. The pig collapsed in spasms. His tongue slid out, thick and glistening, like a cryptic message from death to life. Dad fumbled for his rifle.

But the Russians got there first. They were suddenly standing over the pig, armed soldiers, and one of them noticed the ‘German’ who was gawking at them as if he’d never seen other humans before. The Icelander’s life rapidly rewound all the way back to his childhood by Reykjavík Lake, and it was there that my father found the most appropriate response. Like a six-year-old boy playing Cowboys and Indians in the summer of 1914, he threw his arms in the air: I surrender! Then he clambered to his feet and held them even higher: I surrender! They didn’t shoot. Maybe they didn’t realise at first that the soldier was German. Maybe the absence of his helmet had saved him. Either way, my father had become a Russian prisoner of war.