Aaron spent the remainder of the evening in some manner of exhaustion induced haze. Watching, quietly, as the Basterds went about their own business as if his presence there meant as much to them as a passing squirrel. Aldo and Wicki spoke very little throughout the course of the night. The superior of the two muttering something as he sharpened and cleaned his long, blood soaked knife that would occasionally stir a chuckle from the larger of the two men. Stiglitz didn't speak at all; having skinned and cleaned his rabbit, the former German soldier sat in statuesque silence, staring out into the darkness. Not one word escaping his lips the entirety of the night.
The rest of the men however, certainly made up for their lack of conversing, speaking loudly and fast enough that Aaron could only understand snippets of what was said. To hear people speaking and laughing was very comforting, as all he had had to listen to for the past several weeks had been the sounds of the forest. And despite being able to understand very little of what the Americans said, to hear them speaking English was a bittersweet comfort..anything but German.
To hear his own language sent the Jew's stomach twisting in knots.
Germany had made it very clear that though his -type- spoke German, looked German and, if the phrase was suitable, seemed Germanâ¦that they were most certainly not. To the Reich, they were subhuman, no, subcreatures, whose existence was as pestilent as the rats in the sewers.
There had always been a maintained duel-identity of sorts before. Who you were in your country, and who you were in the Jewish-community. Now however, they were no longer recognized as legal citizens of the Motherland. Deemed a plague upon German's wholesome moral values. There was no community to fall back onto anymore; everyone was gone or scattered. Every German-Jew left now existed in some perplexed state of being, clinging extensively to their Jewish heritage, for that was all they had.
Aside from each other; if they were fortunate enough to find another like themselves.
By the time Aaron fell asleep, nodding off sitting upright by the dimming fire, something had been said about the smaller man Utivitch and his "baseballs" being more like "golfballs." A comment that had sent most of the others into hysterics, but left Aaron questioning his own ability to translate. At some point during his sleep, likely after his body had slumped over comfortably onto the grass, his brain had processed the joke, arousing a soft chuckle from his healing lips in the middle of the night.
Everyone had fallen asleep somewhat centralized around the campfire when Aaron awoke, save for Hugo who was standing beside one of the trees on the western hilltop. Some of them had curled up alone on top of their own bags and weaponry, others absentmindedly propped against one another after some instinctive desire to find something warm in the middle of the night.. which would no doubt stir some rather interesting comments, or at the very least uncomfortable glances, when they did wake.
The wind had blown the smoke from Hugo's cigarette downward, catching Aaron slightly off guard as he stood. His bones creaking and aching, long disheveled hair hanging over his face that was not quite as brutally swollen as the night before. The bruises were still there, mapping across those slender cheekbones with lovely shades of black and blue, but the left side of his face had seemed to level out with the right. His left eye no longer swelled out and closed like a blinking chameleon, but the area around his eyelid was still a heavy black.
His head was pounding...
His stomach was shrieking.
It had taken a few moments of standing in the twilight hours, listening to his own head throb and his stomach plead for any sort of scraps, for Aaron to muster up the courage to approach the only other person who was awake in the area; Hugo Stiglitz.
The man didn't even turn his head when he approached. He continued to take long, silent drags on his cigarette, puffing the smoke down wind as Aaron nervously toyed with his own fingers, asking in German in a hushed tone of voice if he could borrow a knife.
Nothing. Not even a blink.
Aaron felt a tickling at the back of his throat, balling up one of his bruised fists to bring against his lips to cough more so out of uneasiness than to alert the man's attention.
Birds chirped above, singing to the rising sun as Aaron stood staring at the grass by the man's boots, watching flicks of ashes from his cigarette flitter their way down onto the ground.
Darting his tongue across his lips, Aaron asked again, this time in English. Drawing in his lip, he glanced up after another moments passed in silence and literally gasped aloud, finding the man staring dead at him. He had jumped, only slightly, but still it was rather embarrassing. Even more so because now that the man was staring at him, Aaron couldn't break his own gaze away, and so they stood for another several awkward moments, at least for the smaller of the two, just staring at each other; until Aaron took a step back.
" I em..I was not meaning to bother you." he smiled hesitantly, bringing a hand up to scratch at the back of his own head. "I..I will go find us breakfast ja?" As he was about to turn and try not to sprint towards the lake, the SS Slaughterer, extended his hand forward, holding out a small knife. Biting on his lip, Aaron tentatively took the knife and smiled somewhat, giving a small nod and a very soft "Danke" before walking back towards the center of the camp. Tiptoeing quietly around and over snoring bodies, he picked up two cooking pots before walking towards the north.
The sun was pouring over the horizon when Aaron returned, his soaked jacket slung over his forearm, his trousers soaked around his ankles. One pot filled with an assortment of flowery grasses, and the other filled with twitching , decent sized fishes and a pale brown wet clay. Crouching down beside the fire, Aaron set down the pots and began gutting out the fish. Biting his lip very lightly as pulled out the intestines of each one. The pale innards squishing and slicking over his hands. His eyes narrowed, as if recalling some long forgotten instructions that he hadn't really listened to before..
When the pile of fish was no longer twitching and flipping about, the intestines piled aside and replaced inside the fish with the various contents of the other pot, Aaron dipped his hand into the clay and began rolling it around each individual fish. Forming a solid little ball around each one before digging at a space in the fire's ashes with a large twig, dropping the clay ball into the center, and burying it with more ashes. Clay-baked fish was not anything special as far as campfire culinary was concerned, but it would due..At least Aaron hoped. The wild herbs he had found were scarce and would add only a bit of flavor, but it was better than just plain fish for breakfast.
Every Jewish kid had had gefilte fish for breakfast at least one morning....
It was not a pleasant memory.
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