‘We should all stay together,’ said Frau Schmidt.
Helga shook her head. She met Frau Schmidt’s eyes. ‘You must keep Hannes and Johannes safe. I speak English.’
‘So do I . . .’ said Johannes.
‘There is no need for two of us.’
So Helga too knew it was a risk. Soldiers were soldiers. How did they know the English or American soldiers would not behave just as the Russians had? Surely their countries too had been hurt in this war.
‘I will go. Not you,’ Johannes insisted.
Helga looked hard at him. ‘Please,’ she said to Johannes. ‘Please let me do this. It is important.’
He saw her face, her pleading face, blotched by its red birthmark. Why did doing this for them matter to her so much? He could not argue with her and her quiet determination.
Helga slipped out the door. They waited, not speaking, listening to every squeak of the mice, every clatter of far-off guns. At last they heard an engine, and another.
The engines stopped.
They have seen her, thought Johannes. He clenched his fists and realised he was sweating with the tension. He waited for the snicker of a revolver, or for Helga to scream.
But Helga would not scream. No matter what they did to her, she would stay quiet, so that the others would not run out to help her and be caught too.
The engines started again. The sound drifted into the distance.
Johannes counted under his breath. When he got to ten, he would go and find her.
‘Look!’ Helga ran into the barn. She held up four blocks of chocolate and two packets of cigarettes.
‘Chocolate!’ yelled Hannes.
‘But we don’t smoke,’ said Johannes.
Frau Schmidt laughed. Johannes realised he had never heard her laugh so easily before. ‘But others do. When you smoke, you have to smoke, so people will swap food for cigarettes. Helga, were they English?’
‘American! They said there is a women’s camp across the forest. That way.’ She pointed. ‘They said if we walk now, we should get there by dark. It was a German work camp — a true work camp, not a concentration camp — but the Americans have taken it over now. They said we’ll be safe there.’
‘The war is over?’ demanded Frau Schmidt.
Helga shook her head. ‘No. The Russian soldiers are nearby, and German troops too. We must be careful, the Americans said. But they told me we’d be safer at the camp than here, with food and beds,’ she glanced at Frau Schmidt, ‘and doctors.’
Doctors! Maybe Mutti and Vati had been directed to the camp too.
He looked at the chocolate. He could taste its smoothness, richness already. ‘Should we eat that now?’
‘One block now,’ said Frau Schmidt. She was taking charge — maybe she knew she had enough strength to be the mama again, now safety was so close. ‘We finish the cheese, the other food, before we go. The chocolate is light to carry.’
It felt strange, forcing himself to eat so much. Two raw onions, a raw swede, the marrow, seven shrivelled apples, a handful of cheese, four mouthfuls of ham, on top of the chocolate. He felt slightly sick.
It was hard to leave the barn. It had sheltered them so well: the first place he had been safe since home. He stopped in the doorway as a single plane flew past, and then more. American planes, high in the air.
‘Heading for Berlin,’ said Frau Schmidt.
‘Maybe they’ll kill Hitler.’ Johannes almost didn’t recognise his own voice, so thick with hatred. ‘I hope they crush him. Rip him into pieces. I hope they kill them all!’
He meant the Germans. Though of course Helga, Hannes and Frau Schmidt were Germans too.
‘Hitler is already dead,’ said Helga flatly. ‘He killed himself. The Americans told me.’
Frau Schmidt stared at her. ‘Why didn’t you tell us? This is wonderful!’
‘I hope he’s very dead,’ said Johannes. ‘I hope it hurt and hurt.’
Helga wobbled, then sat down hard, in the doorway of the barn. ‘Hitler is dead,’ she whispered. ‘Hitler is dead.’
‘Yes,’ said Frau Schmidt gently, helping her up. ‘The monster is dead. Soon the war will be over. Soon we will be safe.’ She put her arm around Helga. ‘You have cared for us so wonderfully. Now let us care for you.’
They gathered their scavenged possessions into bundles, and walked towards the forest.
Chapter 20
JOHANNES
GERMANY, MAY 1945
The snow had vanished into the earth and air. Branches cracked underfoot. The trees were too sparse to hide them from soldiers, but it was still safer than walking along the road, where trucks and tanks would certainly find them.
‘Which way?’ asked Frau Schmidt.
Helga hesitated, then pointed. ‘That way,’ she said.
They walked. As the sun rose higher, they stopped and ate chocolate.
‘We should have brought a bucket of water,’ said Frau Schmidt.
Johannes remembered the thirst in the cattle car and shuddered, but soon after they began to walk again a spring bubbled up, cold and sweet.
They drank. They walked. Frau Schmidt lagged now, sweat on her face, although the day was cold. Whatever was wrong with her had not yet healed.
Shots. Johannes turned and saw far-off figures floundering among the trees, too distant to distinguish. The four of them flung themselves onto the ground, lying still, even without Frau Schmidt’s whisper to be quiet.
A woman screamed, and then another — perhaps the same woman. Two more shots.
They waited, still as the fallen branches. At last Johannes peered up.
The forest seemed quiet.
They walked more cautiously now. The sun sank into a red ball, bouncing on the horizon. Shadows purpled, gathered the whole forest in. Then they saw the light. A big light, or many lights.
‘There!’ cried Frau Schmidt triumphantly.
Johannes hesitated. What if they had come the wrong way? What if it was a prison camp? For the others a camp meant safety, but for him . . .
‘Come,’ urged Frau Schmidt. She began to run, stumbling through the trees towards the light. The others followed her.
A clearing, the trees felled. Lights. Barbed-wire fences. A barbed-wire gate. But this barbed wire was only single strands wound around posts. It looked as if it were meant to keep people out, not people in. Perhaps they really were safe . . .
A shot cracked out from behind them. Someone yelled, in German.
Hannes slumped to the ground.
Frau Schmidt screamed. She flung herself on her son, held him in her arms. Helga made no sound, but hugged them both, as if to take any other shot into her body, not theirs. Johannes froze, trying to work out what to do.
More yells, in English this time. Men in strange uniforms ran from the gate and fired past them towards the trees. One ran to them. ‘You okay?’ he asked.
English. He was English. No, American. Johannes glanced back at the trees, but whoever had shot at them was gone.
And Hannes was dead.
Chapter 21
JOHANNES
GERMANY, MAY 1945
They had three bunks, together, in a corridor, but they were at the end, almost as if they had a room of their own. Buckets of water to wash in — cold but clean, and even a shrivelled piece of soap and threadbare towels. Pillows, sheets, quilts; bread and ersatz coffee for breakfast; bread and cocoa and cheese for supper; but a hot meal in the dining room each midday, of tinned meat and vegetables all stewed up — not tasting particularly good, but filling.
Frau Schmidt did not leave her bed, so Helga and Johannes took turns staying with her, the other bringing two bowls of stew back, making sure Frau Schmidt ate.
‘She’s ill,’ said Helga softly as at last Frau Schmidt fell into a mumbling sleep. ‘It isn’t just the grief over Hannes. She has lost everything. Her home, her children, her husband . . .’
‘Children? You had another brother or sister who died?’
Johannes nodded.
More people arrived each day, men as well as women, whole families, their houses and villages destroyed by bombs or taken by the still-fighting armies. Sometimes the people looked battered, bloodied and in shock, as if their lives had vanished suddenly. Others wore the wide-eyed stare of concentration camps, those who knew that death had been long planned for them, but had survived. Most of these were brought from hospitals, or from the houses where the owners had been paid — or forced, unwillingly or even cruelly — to care for them, for there were not hospitals enough for all who needed them. Their bodies had recovered, at least enough to travel. Unlike the other refugees, they had long known their past lives were gone forever.
Every day he hoped Mutti might arrive, or Vati, or someone who knew them. But no one had heard of a Dr Wolcheki. There were no doctors in the camp, nor any nurses, so there was no one they could ask to help Frau Schmidt, despite what the Americans had told Helga.
Even if there had been, Johannes knew enough about medicine to know that any internal injuries from the Russian soldiers were probably infected, and would have been so for a long time. There was nothing that could be done for infections like that, except for rest and care, or sulpha drugs. Even back before the ogre there had been few such drugs in Vati’s hospital, and only for families of members of the Nazi Party. There would be no chance of finding sulpha drugs for Frau Schmidt in a camp like this.
The camp had no radio for the inmates, nor did the Americans provide more than protection and food, but the newcomers brought news from the outside world: Russians here, Allies there. The war battered on, but at least it did not batter here.
At night the camp gate was shut, but only to keep roving soldiers out. Most of the German army, it seemed, had deserted, and was combing the countryside for pillage or food. But still the planes flew overhead; still the thunderstorms were the sounds of war, not rain.
Green fuzzed the trees, for spring. A patch of white bloomed — snowdrops, not snow. The air turned sweet with the scent of growing things. Helga and Johannes helped Frau Schmidt out into the sunlight.
‘My father says sunlight is good for you,’ said Johannes. ‘All the patients at his TB hospital sat in the sunlight twice a day, and in the glassed-in area when it rained or was too cold.’
Frau Schmidt smiled vaguely. She walked, hesitantly, one hand holding Johannes’s, the other Helga’s. Helga hardly left her side these days.
Johannes spread a blanket on the ground. They sat and watched more stragglers arrive: two elderly women, each carrying a baby; a mother and father and two children, younger than Johannes, but even the children carried two suitcases each, all that was left, he thought, of their old lives. An American truck filled with grey men in grey rags, who looked like they had been prisoners. The soldiers helped the men down. Some could hardly walk. But they were all smiling.
Smiling?
One of the men stopped inside the gate. Tears ran down his cheeks, even as he smiled. He came no further in, just stood and yelled, ‘It’s over! The war is over!’
‘What?’ Frau Schmidt struggled to her feet. All around them others were shrieking too.
‘It’s over? Is it really over?’
Johannes ran to the fence. ‘Is it really finished?’ he asked the American soldier, a black man, the first black man Johannes had ever met.
The soldier’s voice was deep and kind. ‘Yes, kid, it’s over.’
What was a kid? ‘Thank you,’ said Johannes politely.
‘Here.’ The soldier handed him two packets of chewing gum.
‘Thank you,’ said Johannes again, and he shoved them in his pocket. Chewing gum could be traded, just like cigarettes.
Someone had brought out a violin, and women danced, women with white faces dancing with men with hollow eyes.
‘It’s over,’ whispered Frau Schmidt. ‘Mein Gott, at last. The war is over.’
‘Yes,’ said Helga, not rejoicing like the others, her voice empty. ‘It is over.’
Chapter 22
JOHANNES
GERMANY, 1945
Nothing changed, except the faces. Many people left to see whether there was anything left of their homes, to try to find relatives or friends or shelter. As many came for refuge. American trucks brought soldiers, food. Planes still criss-crossed the sky.
Pieces of paper grew like butterflies on the doors of the dining room, small almost-poems. ‘Does anyone know Frau Gruner? I am her daughter.’ Or just a name, Konrad Freuden, and a question mark. Sometimes a reply was scribbled on the bottom of the note. ‘My friend says she worked in the uniform factory and was safe when last seen in September.’ But mostly people studied them, in hope, then shook their heads and walked away.
At last the mealtime gossip said that there were new camps being set up under British or American control in the western section of Germany. No formal announcement was made, but now the trucks that had brought the soldiers and ex-prisoners took people away instead, to the new camps, as many volunteers as could fit in every truck.
Every person must go home. If you could not go home because the Russians had occupied your homeland, as they occupied Poland, and the part of Berlin where the Schmidts had lived, you were ‘a displaced person’. Displaced persons would have new camps, created especially for them.
Displaced, thought Johannes. It was a good word. He had been displaced from the real world, swallowed.
‘We need to go to one of the new camps,’ said Johannes. ‘The closest one.’
Helga looked at him in surprise. ‘Why?’
‘Why not? No new people are being brought here, but maybe my parents or your father are in one of the new camps. Maybe there will be records of who is where, so people can find each other. If we are put on a list, my parents or your father might even find us too.’
Maybe, somewhere, his life still waited for him, his real life. Maybe even with the Russians in charge, they could go home. Helga and Frau Schmidt could come with them, share their big house . . .
Helga shook her head. ‘The journey might be bad for Frau Schmidt. We don’t know what it is like in the new camps. Here we have beds, enough food . . .’
‘They say there are beds and food in the other camps too.’ Johannes had asked the black soldier. He had been kind and given him two more packets of chewing gum and three blocks of chocolate. Johannes did not think the soldier would lie about the displaced persons camps. And he and Helga and Frau Schmidt were displaced. Perhaps such a camp was the best place to be ‘placed’ again.
‘Please come,’ he said. He had to find Mutti and Vati, but he knew he could not leave Helga and Frau Schmidt behind either.
‘All right,’ said Helga.
The black soldier helped Frau Schmidt up into the truck. He did not seem to see the camp’s pillows Helga was carrying under their bundles of clothes so that Frau Schmidt would be more comfortable on the journey. ‘Here, kids,’ he handed Johannes another block of chocolate, and one to Helga too, ‘you look after yourselves, and your mom too. Okay?’
‘Okay’ meant yes. ‘Okay,’ said Johannes. His mind was too full of other things to explain to the soldier that he was not related to Helga or Frau Schmidt.
The truck drove. Villages, as perfect as if they had been frozen all the war and thawed out, still perfect when it ended. Piles of rubble that had been villages, but where people now peeped out of cellars that were the only shelter left. Forests, sometimes standing like a wall of Christmas trees, sometimes shattered into matchsticks by the bombs. A train station, where women waited, holding placards with the names of their husbands, fathers, sons, even those not ‘displaced’, desperate for news of those who might be dead, or lost, or miraculously found.
And then the camp.
It was a camp. Exactly that. Barbed wire, the kind to keep people out, not in. Barracks, and
not new ones. No one said what it had been used for before, nor did Johannes ask. He did not want to know if the people who had been here before had been the killers, or the killed.
He and Helga helped Frau Schmidt out of the truck. They stood in line, carrying their bundles, while guards stood next to two soldiers at two desks, checking papers.
At last they reached a desk. ‘Papers,’ said the soldier, not looking up. Frau Schmidt held out hers and Helga’s. The soldier nodded. ‘What about your son’s?’
‘My name is Johannes Wolcheki,’ said Johannes. ‘I am not part of their family.’ And yet they were a family, he realised, bound together by so much.
Would he be sent away, into the forest, because he had no papers? Would he not exist? Perhaps he should have asked Frau Schmidt if he could have used Hannes’s papers. But he couldn’t rob the dead boy of the only thing of his that was left, and, in any case, he needed to be himself here, in case his parents were searching for him.
But the soldier simply nodded, as if he was used to people with no papers. He began to scribble on a form. ‘Name? Date of birth? Parents?’ he asked in German.
Helga waited, supporting Frau Schmidt, while Johannes answered all the questions, was given papers — his own papers, with the big letters ‘DP’ stamped on them.
Displaced person. But he was a person now, at last a legal person once again.
‘Please,’ said Helga to the soldier. ‘Is there a hospital? Mutti needs help.’
‘Over there.’ The soldier waved vaguely. ‘Next!’
They stumbled to the furthest barracks building, grey, like every set of barracks sitting on the grassless ground. Johannes opened the door.
Beds, double bunks, all crammed in long lines, with just enough space to walk between the rows. The strong stench of disinfectant.
And then a voice.
‘Johannes!’
It was Nurse Stöhlich.
Goodbye, Mr Hitler Page 7