Then he hears a dog barking—time to give up on this hen—comes outside sees a lady in her Wehrmacht auxiliary outfit 30 meters away leveling a shotgun and the dog charging in growling, teeth bared, eyes on Slothrop’s throat. Slothrop goes scrambling around the henhouse just as the gun kicks off a good-morning blast. About then the pig shows up and chases off the dog. Away they go, eggs cradled in pig mask, lady yelling, hens raising hell, pig galloping along beside. There’s a final shotgun blast, but by then they’re out of range.

About a mile farther on they pause, for Slothrop’s breakfast. “Good show,” thumping the pig affectionately. She crouches, catching her breath, gazing at him while he eats raw eggs and smokes half a cigarette. Then they set off again.

Soon they have begun to angle toward the sea. The pig seems to know where she’s going. Far away on another road, a great cloud of dust hangs, crawling southward, maybe a Russian horse convoy. Fledgling storks are trying out their wings over the haystacks and fields. Tops of solitary trees are blurred green, as if smudged accidentally by a sleeve. Brown windmills turn at the horizon, across miles of straw-sprinkled red earth.

A pig is a jolly companion,

Boar, sow, barrow, or gilt—

A pig is a pal, who’ll boost your morale,

Though mountains may topple and tilt.

When they’ve blackballed, bamboozled, and burned you,

When they’ve turned on you, Tory and Whig,

Though you may be thrown over by Tabby or Rover,

You’ll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,

You’ll never go wrong with a pig!

By nightfall they have entered a wooded stretch. Fog drifts in the hollows. A lost unmilked cow complains somewhere in the darkness. The pig and Slothrop settled down to sleep among pines thick with shreds of tinfoil, a cloud of British window dumped to fox the German radars in some long-ago raid, a whole forest of Christmas trees, tinsel rippling in the wind, catching the starlight, silent, ice-cold crownfire acres wild over their heads all night. Slothrop keeps waking to find the pig snuggled in a bed of pine needles, watching over him. It’s not for danger, or out of restlessness. Maybe she’s decided Slothrop needs looking after. In the tinfoil light she’s very sleek and convex, her bristles look smooth as down. Lustful thoughts come filtering into Slothrop’s mind, little peculiarity here you know, hehheh, nothing he can’t handle… . They fall asleep under the decorated trees, the pig a wandering eastern magus, Slothrop in his costume a gaudy present waiting for morning and a child to claim him.

Next day, about noon, they enter a slow-withering city, alone on the Baltic coast, and perishing from an absence of children. The sign over the city gate, in burned bulbs and empty sockets, reads ZWÖLFKINDER. The great wheel, dominating the skyline for miles out of town, leans a little askew, grim old governess, sun catching long streaks of rust, sky pale through the iron lattice that droops its long twisted shadow across the sand and into the plum sea. Wind cat-howls in and out the doorless halls and houses.