The Reunion

by Geoff Pridmore

  Both Karl and Thomaz had made up their minds to stay for at least another year – Karl happily admitting that his worst fears had been unfounded.

  *

  Freitag 28th Juni 1963, 2.44 pm

  Oberwinkel

  ‘You have all the time, nah?’ asked Hugo of a dawdling Hanne, who didn’t seem to want to come off the path and back onto the main road that led to the village.

  ‘No … Maybe?’ she replied, picking at a long stalk of rye grass from the bank. ‘No, but I like it up in the meadow. I can see everything.’

  ‘Your mother and Oma will think we’ve been captured by the border guards.’

  ‘We’re on holiday, aren’t we?’

  Hugo had not considered the return as a “holiday” as such, but to Hanne it most certainly was. He sat down in the long grass and beckoned her to sit beside him.

  ‘The first time I came back… This is not the first time, nah? I came back here long before you were born – 1947. I had not seen Oma since 1943, not my brother or sisters. My brother – your uncle – had been a POW too. We all came here in 1947 and it was a happy time for us. We’d survived – it was good. Yes, but Germany was sad – people were starving, life was hard. Oma had black hair when I left in 1943. When I came home she had white hair like snow!’

  ‘Did you recognise her?’

  ‘Yes, but Germany I did not recognise. The cities were destroyed: rubble not buildings; thousands – millions – without homes, without shelter. People dying on the streets – hunger and disease. The living working hard to build again. It made us sad. My friends lost families. I was lucky.’

  ‘Did you cry?’

  ‘Yes, we cried.’

  ‘Is that when you went home to Cornwall?’

  ‘Yes, I went “home” to Cornwall.’

  ‘I’m glad you did or you might have starved.’

  ‘You need to know what happened – you, and your cousins and brother, so that it never happens again, nah? You must keep meeting here – maybe every two years. Bring your children and they will bring their children and you will keep a reunion that we have started – our little family – and then no one will starve again or leave their homes. Willst you do that, Hanne?’

  Hanne assured him that she would always come back. Always.

  *

  Mittwoch 10th Dezember 1947

  A full moon through a train window

  ‘Why don’t you send Wally a postcard? A German postcard – a genuine German postcard. He will be more than pleased, I can assure you of that.’ Karl could be very convincing.‘

  ‘He was very good to me, nah,’ replied Hugo. ‘He deserves something better than a card, but for now it will have to do. I’ll get one at the station while my mind is on the job in hand. Tomorrow I will have forgotten.’

  ‘How can you forget Wally of all people?’

  ‘No! Not forget him, but I will be almost home and my thoughts are with the family.’

  ‘Ah yes, the famous Oberwinkel. A village with a mad priest, a crazy nun and a worn-out old nag of a horse.’

  ‘Laugh all you want, my friend!’

  ‘You gave me the storyline long ago, comrade. I know your abode as well as you do if not better!’

  ‘Then come along and see for yourself when Christmas is done. We will make you welcome and show you the real Bavaria. You’d like that, nah?’

  ‘I am a terrible houseguest, Hugo. I would taunt your brother and enrapture your sisters.’

  ‘Imagination is cheap and requires no audience. You would be a most welcome guest, providing you didn’t mind bedding down with Gertrude and Gilda – our oxen.’

  ‘Luxury! We have slept in worse places and don’t we know it.’

  Brakes hissing, the train was beginning to slow; passengers walking along the corridor braced themselves on hand rails. Hugo wiped the condensation from the window with his sleeve, though there was little to see now the sun had set. The red sky reminded him of Cornwall – POW days stood on the cliff top watching the sun sink into the Atlantic. How could he be nostalgic for a place where he’d been a prisoner? But nostalgia it most certainly was.

  Frankfurt-am-Main. Behind schedule this evening by eight minutes. Hitler was no longer running the railways. There were other plans underway – American plans. This was going to be the new capital of Germany. Berlin was ruined, largely Russian and isolated like an island in the middle of a sea of communism. Frankfurt was the obvious choice.

  Only, for Hugo and Karl, it wasn’t. It was clearly a ruined city, bombed to hell and controlled by American soldiers who demanded to see papers and to roll up their sleeves to bare forearms that would show telltale signs of SS indoctrination.

  ‘We’ve been through all this many times!’ protested Karl in his best English.

  ‘And you’ll go through it again! Many times!’ barked an Afro-American infantryman who was no more happy to be standing on a bleak Frankfurt platform on a cold, dark evening challenging any amount of incoming passengers alighting from the 17:32 express.

  Satisfied, but nonetheless pissed off with his lot, the tall, bulky NCO wasted not a second more and with the palm of his hand slapped their shoulders as if they’d been errant kids caught scrumping by the farmer.

  ‘We didn’t get a greeting like that at Lostwithiel, did we?’

  ‘Or St Erth. This is our welcome home, Karl. Better get used to it, nah?’

  Picking up their meagre luggage, of Karl’s two suitcases and Hugo’s canvas rucksack – luggage donated by well-wishers in Cornwall – they made their way past travellers and the wretched dispossessed to the station entrance, where outside its glass roof darkness shrouded their return.‘

  My God! Hugo, look at Kaiserstrasse!’

  ‘How can this be Kaiserstrasse?’

  Ahead of them, in the murky gloom, rows of varying shapes that at first they could not quite comprehend: a jagged landscape of darkness where shadows melted against the day’s weak, winter light. In the air, the sound of steel on stone as if some ancient mason were chipping away at the Earth’s core.

  ‘Some of them will work well into the night,’ came an unexpected, whispy voice from out of the darkness, causing them both to jump a little. ‘They won’t stop until they’ve rebuilt Frankfurt.’

  ‘Who won’t?’ asked Karl, unsure as to who or what he was addressing.

  ‘The women, of course.’

  ‘What about their men?’ asked Hugo.

  ‘Men? What men would they be? There are no men here save for the Americans and they won’t help.’

  The voice emerged from the shadows of the arched station entrance: a short, emaciated figure, her sunken features immediately causing them to step back in repulsion.

  ‘My beauty offends you?’ she demanded.

  ‘No!’ snapped Karl, losing his cool.

  ‘Then I am yours – and yours,’ she said, pushing a bony finger into each man’s chest. ‘But I ain’t cheap. Don’t you think that I am cheap, because I am a fine lady of Frankfurt who has dined at the richest tables – tables you cannot imagine the like of.’

  Her mood began to darken with every utterance. ‘I was born of nobility I’ll have you know. My kin were the most famous in the land until the Nazis came and stripped them bare. They stripped me bare too, but I’m still here. You won’t find me breaking rocks with that sow herd down there!’

  She pointed into the distance toward the sound of hammering, then paused to gauge their reactions. ‘You are fine German men, I can see. You’ve come for a good time, I can see. I am reasonable in my price, but my body is that of a royal and you should respect that.’ She grabbed Hugo’s hand to bring him close to her emaciated chest, but he pulled away shocked.

  He reached for his pocket. ‘I can buy you some bread, not much but it will be enough.’

  ‘Let’s get out of here, Hug
o!’ urged Karl.

  Panicking in his retreat, coins spilled from Hugo’s trouser pockets, and the woman dived to the pavement to gather what she could like a gull in a fish market swooping down for the guts cast into the gutter.

  Running away from the station entrance they left her foraging in the cobbles, fearing that she would pursue them. Karl glanced back over his shoulder.

  ‘My God, Hugo, we ran into Hell itself in 1944 and now we’re running from a woman!’

  ‘It’s not funny, Karl!’

  ‘Do you see me laughing? Where is Germany? Where’s the Germany we knew?’

  Blowing steam in the cold air of early evening, there was enough distance now to stop and relax a little.

  ‘Look at our breath, Hugo – steam! I haven’t seen steam in my breath since… since… I don’t know. Since we were last here in that other lifetime of ours!’

  ‘Cornwall is so warm and the air is always… That’s…’

  ‘What is it, Hugo?’

  ‘My rucksack! I must have left it at the station!’

  ‘You idiot! She’ll have gone through everything. Was your wallet in it?’

  ‘I’m going back for it.’

  They had not run so far, and there was a chance that it would be okay, but if the woman had found it she would demand a high price for its return.

  ‘Better to let her have it, Hugo!’ Karl called after him.

  As he reached the entrance there it was in the very spot where he’d dropped it, straps still buckled tight, the canvas bulging with Christmas presents bought in Penzance and a carved chess set he’d made with Wally in their spare time.

  The plan was: he would snatch it up like a thief before dashing out into the darkness, keeping an eye out for the pitiful woman and other lost wretches who were now gathering under the rare lights of the station entrance.

  The rucksack was untouched – mercifully, as he must have left it a sure five minutes ago if not more.

  On the ground nearby, a heap of clothes – black rags it seemed. And spilling out onto the cold, dirty concrete from the black rags was black hair. Hugo’s assumption that somebody else must have run off and left… but then he knew the smell of death only too well. Rather than run, he knelt down and pulled at the bony shoulder to reveal the sunken, staring face.

  Around her lay the coins Hugo had dropped – some pfenigs clasped tightly in death.

  Then, unexpectedly from behind, a stern man’s voice: ‘Did you kill her?’

  ‘No! Of course not!’ Hugo turned to see a large man standing over him – a porter, judging by his uniform.

  ‘I saw you talking with her only a few minutes ago!’ the porter accused him. ‘You and another man!’

  ‘I didn’t kill her!’ Hugo picked up his rucksack and ran into the darkness, narrowly missing a tram and some cars in his haste to get away from the scene. Karl was waiting for him.

  He could hear the man shouting after him and maybe the word “Polizei”.

  ‘Run! Run, Karl! The woman is dead; they think I killed her!’

  ‘That’s all we need! Come on, we’ll keep to the dark streets.’

  They doubled their pace, but keeping speed was difficult with two laden suitcases and a rucksack. Hugo suggested they dump the cases and return for them when things died down a bit. They could already hear a distant siren approaching – the exact type of two-tone siren they’d last heard being used by the Gestapo. Then, it was never a consideration, now it was a siren heading straight for them. The headlights of a car picked them up in the blackness and they knew they’d been spotted – hopefully not a police car.

  ‘Stay calm, Hugo, it’s just a car. Let him go by. We’re not doing anything wrong.’

  They slowed to a walking pace; Hugo slipped his hands into his pockets – no hurry here. ‘If it stops, we tell the truth, Karl. I’m telling the truth. If we start to lie, they’ll find us out.’

  ‘I can’t lie – I wasn’t there. I didn’t find her. You did.’

  ‘Why’s he slowing down? It has to be the police!’

  ‘Let’s take this side road, Hugo. Now!’

  Into the black street they ran at full pelt, kicking up their heels. Every loud step reverberated off shattered walls; shouts ricocheted. They could hear the car stop so there was a hope that its occupants had not seen them clearly enough and were not inclined to follow on foot. Their only way out of this predicament was to stay in the dark areas and get out of the city by morning. No buses, no trains, stay calm and use their military training to avoid capture. Travel under darkness, put some distance behind them and avoid contact with anybody.

  The street was a dead end. There was no way out other than to retrace their footsteps. They’d lost their pursuers, whoever they were, and the siren had gone on elsewhere to some other incident, so best to turn left back onto the road they’d been travelling. It had to go somewhere and particularly away from the station.

  ‘We’re okay, Hugo. We’ll just walk.’

  ‘I’m starving! All I wanted was a bed for the night and a meal.’

  Suddenly, they were illuminated from behind. They hadn’t spotted the car that had stopped short of the lane and waited for their return. The engine started; it was difficult to ignore its presence, but that was Karl’s advice, and in the absence of a better idea it seemed sensible until some other escape route appeared. The car began to move, quietly matching their pedestrian pace, creeping behind them like a tiger about to pounce on its prey.

  ‘We’re done for!’ exclaimed Hugo, turning defiantly to face into the headlights. Surrendering, he raised both hands; the game was up, he’d come clean.

  In response, the car – an American Chevy – pulled up alongside him, the driver winding down his window.

  ‘Better jump in,’ urged the German voice behind the wheel.

  Was this an arrest?

  ‘Where can I take you and your friend?’

  ‘You’re a taxi?’

  ‘Of course! Did you think I was the polizei?’

  ‘Yes – we did!’ said Karl, bouncing into the vacuous American back seat, mightily relieved.

  ‘Why would I be polizei? Have you done something wrong?’

  ‘No, but we have a guilty conscience,’ said Hugo.

  ‘About something that happened back at the station.’

  ‘Where do you want to go?’

  ‘A hotel. Somewhere affordable and away from the station.’

  ‘I know just the place. What happened at the station, my friends?’

  ‘This woman was dead on the floor when Hugo went back, and somebody thought he’d killed her.’

  ‘Is that all? She was a prostitute?’

  ‘She was offering her services.’

  ‘People are dying here all the time. It’s a good place for an undertaker. The Americans keep people hungry; it’s a crime, but who’s going to do anything about it? The station is full of corpses and they bring in more desperate bastards by the planeload every day. Fly them in, bus them out to the tracks and let them find their own way. Turks, Sudeten Germans, Czechs, Poles… Germany’s a graveyard. So what are you doing here in Hell?’

  ‘We were POWs. We’ve come home for Christmas and to find work.’

  ‘What was your unit?’

  ‘Luftwaffe – in support of the 3rd Parachute Regiment.’

  ‘I was Kriegsmarine. We’re the lucky ones, eh? The Royal Navy sank my ship and sent me to Canada. What about you?’

  ‘They sent us to England – Cornwall.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Near Canada.’

  ‘What say we eat together, my friends? I know a good place, the food is okay, nothing special.’

  “The Chicago Café” illuminated in neon, its shop window covered in condensation, its inside lit with warm, yellow light; outside,
steam venting like some ship waiting to embark on a voyage, the little building was a bountiful oasis in a sea of wrecks, quite ethereal but so very welcome. The car glided to a halt. The driver swung out of his capacious seat, and cool as could be tipped back his American peaked cabbie’s cap, adjusted the hem of his leather flying jacket, opened the back door for his passengers and bade them welcome to his pride and joy.

  They emerged from the cab cautiously, glanced over their shoulders, fearing a trap of some sort.

  ‘Did you smell Frankfurt when you arrived?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, we smelt it.’

  ‘All the bodies are in the rubble. They get pulled out each day along with the rats that grow fat on them. The Amis brought in cats and dogs to get the rats, but people were so hungry they ate the rats and the cats and the dogs.’

  ‘Amis?’

  ‘Amis – Ommies. Americans. They don’t like me much because I’m a Canadian.’

  ‘How are you a Canadian?’

  ‘I stopped being German when my ship sank. I stopped being a German when they opened the gates to Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, Treblinka. That’s why they’re starving people – because of the camps.’ His outstretched arm gestured that paradise awaited them inside.

  ‘What will you have, my friends?’

  Through the plate-glass door it was obvious there was everything to have – everything American: an American counter lined by American barstools; smoky grey walls from which hung American artwork – black and white pictures of glamorous Hollywood stars, even a grinning President Truman alongside colour adverts for Coca-Cola and Chrysler automobiles.

  Behind the counter a statuesque blonde woman of around thirty-five years stood ready and grinning, her large breasts full of American welcome, and so similar to the baker’s wife, thought Hugo. All around her work area sizzled meats grilling by the ounce, pounds of raw mince straight out of the fridge, eggs on a griddle, sliced giant tomatoes, onions, pineapple; hissing, steaming water for any amount of coffee. This was manna from heaven for two weary ex-prisoners on the run from the law.