Buddhist or a Hindu or a Confucian. My own
family, as far as I know, had no religious
feelings at all, but that made little
difference to the fanatics. My mother,
suspecting possible trouble that night,
had sent me over to sleep with an old
German couple who lived in a building next
door. I donтt remember whether I said
good-bye.
Johann Achtenberg became my foster father,
a stocky old man, bearded and forever
smelling of cigar smoke. "We will stay,"
my foster father would often say, over and
over. "It is our city; the barbarians
cannot drive us out." Later in the siege,
in a grimmer mood, he might add, "They can
kill us, but they will never drive us
out."
The next few months were full of turmoil,
as the Orthodox Resurgence tried, and
failed, to take Salzburg. They were still
disorganized, more a mob than an army,
still evolving toward the killing machine
that they would eventually become.
Eventually they were driven out of the
city, dynamiting buildings behind them, to
join up with the Pan-Slavic army rolling
in from the devastation of Graz. The roads
in and out of the city were barricaded,
and the siege began.
For that summer of 2082, the first summer
of the siege, the life of the city hardly
changed. I was ten years old. There was
still electricity, and water, and stocks
of food. The cafОs stayed open, although
coffee became hard to obtain, and
impossibly expensive when it was
available, and at times they had nothing
to serve but water. I would watch the
pretty girls, dressed in colorful Italian
suede and wearing ornately carved Ladakhi
jewelry, strolling down the streets in the
evenings, stopping to chat with T-shirted
boys, and I would wonder if I would ever
grow up to be as elegant and poised as
they. The shelling was still mostly far
away, and everybody believed that the tide
