He looked at the brass tray shaped like a seashell, the white stone. He no longer looked at me, ripped a ticket and the drawer emptied. A stone the shape of a tear vanished. As it had probably done a dozen times before.
‘Standing ticket only,’ he said. ‘Next!’
I ran to Etta, the train there, the train guards carried clubs instead of flags. I gave her the ticket, had to beat others from the door just to get her aboard, passed her one hundred marks.
7:16.
‘Buy a ticket from Stuttgart to Zurich. A return if you can. It will not draw as much attention as a single.’ No travel permit for that journey. But she would cope, she would do something. Women could bribe better than their fool husbands. Enough money for a taxi even. And she could cope without me. Didn’t even need me.
‘Ernst?’ Her voice choking.
‘Don’t worry.’ I shut the door. A whistle. Wheels rolling. ‘I’ll get to Kassel. I’ll call. I have your father’s telephone.’
No real goodbye. No kiss. What point in a sad kiss? We did not show in public. Held hands only if no-one could see.
The train eased out. Her face gone from the door as others elbowed their way through the carriage.
No movie farewell. No palms pressed against glass, no misty eyes and longing waves from the window. Guards were throwing cases from the doors. People tried to hang off the carriage and crashed to the platform or were swatted away by guards and passengers.
But she was safe. Safer now.
A diamond to get on a train. The way the world was now.
I walked away.
Almost got outside.
Saw the black cars before they saw me.
I turned from the front entrance, arrowed to a side exit. I swapped my hat with one of the old militia men, slapping his shoulder in faked inebriated gratitude, took his holed woollen cap in exchange for my sixty-mark fedora, thanked him for his service, called him father.
It took two trash cans for me to find a bottle, a soda bottle but it would do. I pulled down my tie and staggered out of the station, feigned drunkenness, sat on the stone beside my motorcycle, drank from an empty bottle and watched the raincoats step out of the cars shadowed by uniforms and slung weapons. They went past without a look, the falling snow helping to blur me with the rest of the world. Two cars. They had brought two cars. A thousand bullets.
I took up the bike. Hundreds of kilometres in front of me. And a little two-stroke engine puttered away from Erfurt.
No wife now. No Hans Klein, no work, no family. No choice but to go forwards.
What choice should there ever be for a good man? For heroes?
PART FOUR
Chapter 47
Civilian vehicles had almost vanished from the streets in the last two years. The destruction of our reserves and of our synthetic production the chief aim of our enemies. A war machine cannot roll without fuel. That’s the real reason we invaded Russia when we did instead of finishing the West first. We needed their oil. Simple as that. It was as Klein had said. It is always about the East. Where it leads. For a thousand years. The Silk Road now an oil slick. Only medical personnel, the police and Party officials had access to fuel. Unless you were wealthy of course. The world had not changed that much.
Vehicles were converted to run on liquid gas or anything that burned, wood chips even. Motorcycles did not have this ruling, exempt, which is why there were tens of thousands of them on our streets. It did not mean you could get petrol. This I found just outside of Waldkappel when the tank showed empty two hours away from Erfurt, a few miles out of Thuringia, the first time I had left the state of my birth. I did not even know if these people would have a different accent to mine. Hessians known to speak a low German, some as coarse as sailors. Goethe spoke and wrote the same.
Cold, after ten, but thankfully stopped snowing. I braked the bike as I reached the sign for the town. The dynamo light died, I warmed my hands close to her little engine and put down the stand to stretch my legs.
An empty straight road in a forest. I had seen no other vehicle, but still I paced the road ready to duck to the trees.
My hands were red, numb, the temperature just above freezing, grateful that the bike could not go faster to freeze me more.
I stamped, hugged my arms, watched my clouds of breath then went for the false warmth of a cigarette.
The lighter flashed, lit the trees by the roadside and I glimpsed shadows of things moving that were not there. The low branches were rifles, the knots of the trunks all stalking faces. The tobacco steadied. I did not think on the silver case and lighter, their owner, hurried them back to my pocket. A coat and wool hat. I was probably doing better than most. But not much. I drew on the Camel, mapped what I knew as I would a patent stretched before me on my ISIS board.
Not enough fuel to go back, that much settled. I had to get into town, get more. Go on, Ernst Beck. Keep on. Is this not what you wanted? What you imagined a hero does?
No good place would be open now. Find a hole for the night. I needed food and water. Shelter. I had run as if from a burning building. But I had money, a chequebook, ration pages. I threw the cigarette to the snow, fuelled by the confidence of it, its banishment of emptiness.
I had a motorcycle, money, cigarettes. I was a king. Not running. I had a mission. I was at the bike, emboldened by it.
Then I saw the yellow lights crawling along the road high behind me. No point in starting; they would be going twice as fast. I rolled the bike off the stand and tried to take her down the bank into the trees. She ran down it, took me with her. We crashed together beside the trees like drunks, every part of her that stuck out punched into me.
I waited on top of her. She was still warm, oddly comforting as my chest beat. No comfort if the car stopped.
The lights rolled above me, a sweeping roar, a spattering of slushed snow as they careened past. I looked up, the red lights from the rear falling down the trees, gone, took up the bike again. Wing-tip shoes are not suited for pushing a motorcycle up a bank. I was on my knees for the most of it.
I had to play the choke and starter like an instrument before she conceded. I had expected to see lights in Waldkappel. There were none. And even in the dark, as I got closer, I could see there was almost no Waldkappel either.
*
The buildings like gingerbread houses crumbling after New Year, the snow the nibbled icing. Drawn in moonlight, against the dark, only skeletons of homes, rib-cages of roofs, shelled bullet-wound walls. I had seen Weimar freshly burnt, living, coursing with flame, this a town of giants’ gravestones, my engine disturbing their slumber. I stopped in the middle of the street, feet to the cobbled ground.
This was kept from us. No notion that this was the state of our country. It was like reading a book that changed its story halfway through. The main character a prince switched to beggar without a paragraph narrating the exchange. All the story changed. I shut off the engine, to not disturb the tomb, wheeled the bike and felt ashamed to walk the streets. I cannot explain that.
Always head for the church in a new town, always the largest building, everything gathers around it, life gathers around it. I saw its stepped Gothic roofs against the moon.
The ancient buildings always stand, as I said. Testaments. The only thing that marked the roads were the unlit street-lamps stretching away from me like Calvary crosses. I followed them.
*
Nothing around the church but the remains of houses. So I walked on with my machine burden, my Quixotic ass. At a crossroad I saw a swinging sign on what might have been the main road. Only bars and butchers have swinging signs high on their walls. All the signs a German needs. I pushed towards it.
A good square white-washed building, the iron sign proclaiming it to be the ‘Hof Kassel’. Maybe that meant this was the road to Kassel. Better. I had done better. I hoped. I set the bike on its stand and knocked on the double oak doors as quietly as you can to still gain attention within and stepped back to the street to wai
t for a light.
An old woman opened a shutter. A real Mother Hulder in glasses and headscarf berated me from above, her words a mystery of vulgarity.
‘A room,’ I called. ‘I just want a room, mother. I have travelled from Erfurt.’
She shut the window with a curse but I saw the light travel the room. I sheltered in the alcoved doorway, pretended to be colder for pity. The door unlocked.
‘What are you?’ she asked. ‘A duck or a goose?’
I did not understand this. They have different tongues out here.
‘Only cold, mother,’ I said and hammed it up with foot-stamps and rubbing hands. She stood aside, misery all over her face as I tramped in.
‘We are closed,’ she said. ‘Ten marks if you want a bed.’ I had heard these people often spoke contradictory in the same sentence.
‘Ten? A day’s wage?’
‘Free outside,’ she flapped her shawl over her headscarf and walked to the bar with me behind her.
‘Ten,’ I agreed. ‘And some bread and cheese. Water.’
‘Ah,’ she held out her hand. ‘A queer from Erfurt. In Hesse you drink your apple wine. Draw your own water why don’t you? What else would you do?’ Her hand still out. I gave her the ten.
‘Where can I get some fuel for my motorcycle?’
‘I have cheese under that dish,’ she indicated a porcelain cow on the bar. ‘I will bring you some bread. It is grainy but good. The wine is also grainy and it will come sometime with the bread. The fuel is on the moon so fair travel to you.’
I dared not ask for anything hot. Out on my heels else. I sat at the bar and she scowled. It is their way.
‘Is there no fuel in town?’
‘It has been almost a month since we have been bombed. How blessed you are. Erfurt queers.’ She shuffled to the kitchen and I lifted the porcelain cow, took out Klein’s letter-knife and cut a good chunk for my ten marks.
A tankard of cider in her generosity, a doorstep of bread as she came back.
‘The cow says she has no butter so late.’ She slapped the plate to me.
‘Thank you, mother. Is there a farm or somewhere I could get fuel? I am going on to Kassel. Is this the road?’
‘Oh,’ she bemoaned. ‘I am questioned in my sleep? In my dreams? I am going up the stairs still asleep. Take the first door. I will be up at seven if we are not burned awake, Erfurt. Try not to play your piano too late.’ She took the lamp and I was left in the dark.
Food. Cider. A bed. Glad in the dark. I relished the sound of my jaws working. And Etta. I looked for a clock. Past ten now. Midnight when she would get into Stuttgart. We were further apart than we had ever been. Even before we met there were only scant miles between us as we grew up. I felt stretched thin. Could not remember her last words to me. What stage now? Fuel. Get fuel. Work on that. I took the oven plan from my back, stretched it over the bar in the dark. Saluted my cider to it, life coming back to my hands. A church and a bar still stood. The best cider and cheese I have ever had in my life, a bed fit for angels waiting for me above surely. Tomorrow I would find fuel, a telephone, speak to Etta. I folded up the plan and crawled to bed. No running water. A bowl and a chamber pot, a mattress without sheets or pillow.
I slept like a prince.
Awoke like a thief.
Chapter 48
It was like the night I had spent at Auschwitz. Woke without knowing where I was – as I said, like a thief waiting to be snatched, jumped awake, caught my breath and remembered.
I went to the bowl and the mirror. Red nose and unshaven face. I did not even have a comb, ran my hands through my hair with the water, stared into the speckled mirror, the black gaps like galaxies to be lost in, and thought on the little girl I had run to at the camp.
I tried to save her from being crushed. Let her be carried under the arch instead. Had hoped she imagined it like a holiday. A new bed, a new room. She could have sat on the parcel shelf of my bike. She would have fitted, like Etta had. She would have fitted.
I washed my face, looked down to the chamber pot. I could not use it and leave it for Mother Hulder. Wait for the road. Too shy to let someone else see my piss. To be judged for my piss. I thought of Etta. Her days an endless search for privacy. She would have walked a mile out of her way to not let anyone hear her toilet. I smiled. Fuel and a telephone. And all would be right again. She would be home now. I could not think otherwise. Quilts wrapped around her and her mother’s hot chocolate. Reading books by the fireside and an album of jazz records to flick through. You used to buy them like photograph albums. The recordings so short you bought a concert like a book. A lost pleasure. It is the little things you miss in wartime. Etta had not understood about the ice-cream.
‘Who wants ice-cream in February?’ she said.
I did not mean the ice-cream. I meant the simplicity. That was taken from us. The seconds of the clock were taken from us. We only had the hours, the calendars, the months. These shoes will do for another month, these pickles will last for another month, these tyres, this coffee, this ink, this coin. These people.
A war is the vanishing of tiny things. A thimble for a pail. That is how they kill us. The people in the maps.
I left the face in the mirror, put on my cold clothes and went downstairs.
Mother Hulder had not wiped clean her scowl. I asked if this was the Kassel road and she at least gave me that.
‘If you go under the viaduct that is the road. That’s what they’ve been trying to bomb. Killing us a pastime.’ She gave me a mug of buttermilk and bread-crust for breakfast then presented some sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper. The crinkle of the paper in my hand the nicest sound I ever heard.
‘Thank you, mother,’ I said.
‘Two marks,’ she said. ‘Ham in them.’
I gave her the money and asked about fuel.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘I am a journalist,’ I said. Lied. Easy. Getting easier. ‘Recording what I see. But I need fuel for my bike, mother.’
‘A queer paper man from Erfurt. I thought as much. You write a symphony for me.’
She went to her kitchen before I could answer, returned with a crock bottle.
‘This should get you to Kassel. Your pretty green girl’s bike will run on this. Farmer’s red fuel for the boiler. It will smoke but it will run.’
I took out my wallet again.
She raised her arms, hailed the empty room.
‘And now I am just awake and am insulted. God bless me.’ She passed the bottle. ‘I made myself happy by selling you pig-fat sandwiches with paper sauerkraut. If there’s anything pink in them I will marry a poor widow.’
‘Thank you, mother,’ I said. Hugged her, and she did not prise herself from it.
‘Go, paper man,’ she said, brushed me from her. ‘I will gamble that I and a blind man write better than you. Kassel indeed.’
‘Would you like my ration for the fuel?’
‘I’ll give it to the king of the moon shall I? Leave the bottle on the street. I will shut my door against Erfurt queers.’
And we were done.
Behind the parcel shelf of the bike sat a small metal box. I put the sandwiches in it. I had never checked it before. A small leather pouch of spanners inside. A young man had bought them, put them to the back of his bike. He would tighten every bolt of his old machine religiously every week. He had seen the pouch in a window. Saved his money to buy them, thought of the girl he would take into the fields on his bike and placed his spanners proudly in the little box. I unwrapped it and against the cold of the morning tightened every bolt on his machine. For him. Good boy. Good alive boy I hoped. The smallest thing I could do was appreciate his machine that had saved me.
The tank glugged the fuel, started like it was her adventure. Mother Hulder locked back in her rooms hoarding her marks taken from an Erfurt queer. Tuesday. Could adventures start on Tuesday?
The viaduct came soon enough. Arches like the plinth
s of old gods over harbours, grand as we always do them, did them. Our nineteenth-century architects imagining a future. I went under them like Jason chasing his fleece. Only one thought. If Waldkappel was almost tinder what else was west, was left of us?
Kassel safe Bernie had said. Wait there.
Wait. Or find.
Which to be?
The sun at my back. Cold clothes warming up, refreshed. The streets empty. Forty kilometres, straight road. Just over an hour. The sun, and everything, everything else, at my back.
Chapter 49
Every school-child knew this place. Knew Kassel to be the home of the Brothers Grimm. A heritage of children’s folk tales honoured in one place forever. A place of palaces, of legends. The palaces stood. The legends irremovable. The homes and streets not so.
Not a wall without some scorch-mark bruise as its smallest injury, as if the buildings had fought each other like boxers, the losers on their backs, the winners displaying their broken teeth. Not a roof complete. I felt a burning on my face to cry, too cold to do so, only the ever-watering of my blue eyes as usual. An annoyance all my life.
Dirty, ragged children chased the bike down the street, boys with sticks, their sisters watching from the pavement with doll-sized prams or actual prams with wails within.
I rolled on like watching a newsreel. Left and right of me no better view. The same as Waldkappel, the street-lamps and the road signs as mournful as scarecrows, their arms east and west, pretending, assuring that the town still existed beneath the snow and rubble.
We pulled up at a sandstone building, still intact, most of the street still there. The boys descended on my bike with their chair-leg sticks. Screaming local insults or just screaming as they slammed at the guards of the bike for no reason other than it was there, newly there, was not destroyed and so should be. I shooed them away like geese and they ran off laughing, threw stones at me.
Could not be angry at them. Pitied them. Did not know what they had seen, had endured. Most wore the coats of their fathers, their older brothers, holes in their trousers and their knees. Not one of them shouted in a whole sentence. Fragments. Fragments of speech. The barking of dogs. They were probably growing tails just the same, gnawed on bones. We were killing our children. And they relished it. Two of them flashed the nubs of their penises at me.
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