Stefan was tall for his age, and strong. After a while, they left him alone; Stephen Lander, the mongrel English boy.
His father used to say he was a mongrel German and sooner or later the weakness of an English mother would show itself. Now it had. He was living in the country she longed for and he was homesick for the place she hated.
After he deserts Maud’s Crazy Golf, he walks to the top of the town. The afternoon is tawny gold and seagulls clamour round the fishing boats down in the harbour. There is distant bleating on a briny breeze, and Stefan sits on a bench looking out across a flat expanse of fields. A notice says that two hundred years ago this salt marsh was the sea. A gun on a plinth also has a notice, which says it was fired at Spanish galleons.
Stefan ponders on the uselessness of a sea port without a sea and cannon aimed at sheep. He laughs out loud and knows he must seem crazy, though the madness brought on by Crazy Golf has gone and he is sorry he has spoiled Maud’s treat. She seems fond of him and likes holding his hand, although it makes his muscles ache and something alter in his mind like a creature stirring in the dark. Unaccountably he wants to cry. Elisabeth notices his discomfort and coaxes Maud away. ‘Leave Stefan, Maudie darling. He needs some peace.’
It’s often as hard to tolerate Christina and Alice, whose presence can be unbearable. He loathes their calculated coyness, despises Christina’s doltish Slavic face and furnace-coloured hair no less than Alice’s cunning gypsy eyes and contrary mouth. At other times he likes them and enjoys their two kinds of prettiness, even though their conversation bores him and he’d prefer it if they didn’t talk to him.
They are fourteen, the same as Gerda, and they remind him of her – not because they’re like her but because she was so different. For all her ugliness and stringy pallor, he longs to be with Gerda Seffert.
His thoughts turn to her, over and over. He closes his eyes to find the room in Müllerstrasse where they lived together and sometimes he has a fleeting remembrance of its chilly twilight smell of mould. The house was dying with a hole in its heart because half a blazing plane fell through the roof and was embedded in the basement.
Rain floats in the chasm, down past the truncated landings and dissected rooms. The wallpaper runs with black and peels like skin. The stink of leaked fuel and charring intensifies with the wet and there must be a corpse somewhere – perhaps it is the British pilot – because the smell of rotten meat permeates everything. Stefan tastes it in his mouth and smells it on Gerda’s breath.
At night she lights candles in the dry part of their room, and they feed the fire in the marble fireplace with the smashed furniture which is always to hand. Although the house is filthy with soot and debris, plenty of things survived the scorching passage of the plane; they have a nice hearthrug, a chiming pendulum clock in a glass dome and some ornaments of shepherdesses on the mantelpiece which Gerda dusts and rearranges when she does her housework. They aren’t starving any more because she gets food from the Americans, who are far from home, Gerda says, and lonely for their wives.
She gets vodka and schnapps, and cigarettes as well if she can. When she comes home, Stefan pours them both a drink and she tells him about her day, or night. They roll around on the floor, splitting their sides and shouting with laughter at what the Americans ask Gerda to do. They especially like my BDM uniform, says Gerda, and she hoots with mirth. Stefan grabs her and pins her down to kiss her, and she whispers what a soldier taught her this time – then she does those things to him. He is astonished at the exquisite brutal happiness she can magic in him. He can’t imagine loving anyone but Gerda for as long as he lives.
They lie on their mattress and smoke Lucky Strikes while they contemplate America, where a baby deer called Bambi makes grown men cry and there’s nothing on God’s earth can beat blue jeans on a girl.
They drink vodka from Venetian glass and imagine the rich people who lived here once upon a time and the dead man in the plane downstairs, idly wondering if his limbs and head are still attached and if he has turned into a see-through ghost with a lovely shine like vodka.
Rain falls past the hole where a wall once was and it catches the light of the fire, twinkling streams of stars, then turning black again on its way down to the rusting half-plane in the basement and its decomposing pilot.
There are times when Gerda will punch him if he touches her and bare her teeth. In this mood, Stefan can’t follow where her mind goes or why it bounces off certain subjects and dives into the depths of others. She used to giggle on and on, but now he has to put up with monologues he mustn’t interrupt or she will set about him with her fists. The things she says are vicious, mysterious, and he wonders how Gerda’s fragile throat can give voice to so many vile things. While the mood is on her he reminds himself it won’t last long and he has plenty of practice at switching off his ears.
This night he cannot stop his ears, or stop Gerda, or stop the thing that happens.
Gerda hasn’t spoken since she came home. He lit the candles for her, but she doesn’t thank him and he knows something is brewing when she lies down on the mattress beside him and sniggers at the ceiling. After a while, he thinks that’s all she’ll do, but then she begins to mutter, too softly to hear at first, then, as the quiet settles, he picks up words: ‘… What a pretty … all soapy wet she turns around … hold up the towel and out she steps …’
Stefan has stopped breathing because he wants to listen now. This is not Gerda’s voice but it often happens that a different Gerda possesses her. ‘… White lacy panties, nice as pie stepping in, the flimsy kind the Jew can work a finger into … then madam says that’s all, off you go …’
His heart jumps at the name. Their housekeeper at home called his mother ‘madam’. Stefan feels dread, a dread that swallows him. ‘Gerda, please stop. Please don’t.’ He leans over to kiss her, but she punches him so hard he sees sparks inside his eyelids and his nose starts to bleed.
‘… The Jew was punished, nicely bashed first time around, but oh, yes, madam wanted more – a second helping – whorish cunt, my Artur said …’
‘Gerda, stop. I swear I’ll stop you if you don’t shut your mouth.’ Stefan jumps up from the mattress and grabs some clothing – it might be his or Gerda’s – to staunch his nose. His heart is rushing and he leaps across the room and stands braced in case she fights him. The voice in Gerda ceases for a breath, then starts up again. ‘… The Jew, the English goat. Michael Ross, she liked the taste. Ha! Baby Antje, out she popped, Jew-brown eyes and pretty as a strudel …’
Stefan is transfixed by his sister’s name amongst the gibberish. Sweet little Antje can’t be part of Gerda’s nightmare. And he hears the English name, remembering another story Gerda told him long ago about his mother’s death. He hauls Gerda up. ‘Who is Michael Ross?’ and he shakes her hard. He is ready to fend off the punches but she flops against him. ‘… Our baby girl is gone and madam, she’s gone mad, the bitch is sorry for herself …’
Stefan wants to hit Gerda hard enough to shock her to her senses, but all he can bring himself to do is push her away. She staggers back against the wall, then feels her way along it with her palms as if she’s blind. ‘… Madam’s not the only one to grieve, my heart is broken too …’
Gerda stops. The wall has gone and there’s empty air down to the basement. She sways, her eyes are shut. ‘… Oh, yes, she asked for it, we know, oh, yes, Frau Landau thinks we’re daft, the skinny little tart …’
He knew his mother’s name would come. Suddenly Gerda flaps her hands and the voice is higher, sweeter. ‘… What’s the matter, Gerda? Tell me, darling, what is it?’ Then Gerda’s own voice shrieks so loudly that Stefan cowers. ‘RUN! Run quick, run please, now NOW ! Quick now …’
Gerda is dragging at her hair, yelping and whooping. She stamps the splintered floorboards at the edge and Stefan has to back away. There are many voices now coming out of Gerda’s mouth and they are hoarse and bellowing. ‘… Got her, here she is, hold on tight, she�
��ll have to learn, yes, she will, punch the slut …’
‘Shut up! Shut up!’ His own voice is nothing against the might of Gerda’s and she doesn’t even pause.
‘… Let’s see the goods, yes, ha ha, hold her legs, a fighter this one, ha! Wants a smack, yes! This is what she likes – watch out …’
Then suddenly it stops. Gerda sighs. The voice is soothing. ‘… Hush … it’s no one, Gerda Liebling … go home … look away … it’s nothing … nothing …’
Gerda hangs her head and the fetid draught rising from the basement lifts her hair. The room shudders like a bell. Stefan reaches out to draw her back and his fingers touch her lightly between her shoulder blades – the place where wings might grow. She tips forward, her arms fly up hopefully, even though they’re thin and featherless, and the little cry she gives is Gerda’s own voice come back to her.
Then something happens which Stefan’s memory can’t explain. Wings unfold from Gerda’s back. They are huge and muscular, brighter than the moon. Blue light fills the room, and the gust from the first slow wingbeat pushes Stefan back against the wall and snuffs out the candles. Gerda is lifted up an inch or two, then she flies into the darkness.
The Kentish breeze is on his face and he wonders at the faulty memory of Gerda flying. Wherever she is, he knows she’s waiting because while he thinks of her he feels flesh and blood again and she lights up every particle of him.
He can’t remember why he left the house in Müllerstrasse. The flashes of tumbling down the ruptured staircase must be faulty too because he recalls the wreckage of the plane glistening in the dark, and searching with oily bloody hands – for what he doesn’t know.
Then there is the oddest memory, or perhaps another dream to which his mind keeps on returning: beside the plane he finds a little deer lying in the wet with blood running from its mouth. Its hoofs are human hands reaching out to clutch his shirt and the fingers have bitten nails. Its back is broken and it cries, Mutti, Mutti, which makes him weep because he feels broken too. He wipes the filth from its face and rocks it in his arms until it’s quiet, then he carries it to the garden and covers it with rubble.
There is white noise in his head until a doctor with metal eyes talks to him. He doesn’t answer, not because the man is French but because Stefan has forgotten how to speak.
Now he’s sitting on a bench in Kent looking at a salt marsh and it is difficult to work out how these things join one to another to bring him here. What is clear is that this is just a pause in the real business of his life, and he must go back to the house in Müllerstrasse so he and Gerda can put their heads together and work out how to mend the roof and get the plane out of the basement.
Gerda had said a name, Michael Ross, and Stefan had heard this name before, years ago on a summer evening when Antje was playing with the blossom in the garden. Hede and his mother were arguing, and for a long while they didn’t see him standing by the door. They need not have worried; he couldn’t follow anything they said. All he remembered was the name.
None of it really matters now. Whatever it might mean is buried in the wreckage of the past, and he is weary of searching and finding only broken, sullied things. What he knows for sure is Gerda.
He hears Rye’s church bell chiming five. Swallows are squealing in the dusk, diving up under the eaves of the houses. He left the others playing Crazy Golf almost two hours ago and he should go back.
The sky is still light, but the cobbles under his feet are in shadow and as he descends the hill he stumbles, cursing loud enough in German for people to hear.
• • •
The next day, Christina sought him out with a proposition. ‘You said in Yorkshire you would teach me to shoot, remember? What about today?’ She laced her fingers and twisted her hands in a knot, looking quickly up at him, then at her socks.
His preference for her over Alice had grown. There was something about the placid lustre of Christina that took his mind to Gerda – not the real Gerda, but a biddable unblemished Gerda with a soft stomach and milky skin who came to him in the quiet moments when everyone left him alone.
Today he liked Christina’s glossy pony tail and the little reddish curls by her ears and on her neck. She was so clean. She was wearing blue jeans sent from America by someone called Toby Schroëder and Stefan had never seen jeans before except in Western films. It was true what Gerda’s Americans said about blue jeans on a girl.
Christina’s jumper had a pattern of snowflakes round the yoke, like the jerkins children wore for skiing in Bavaria, and he couldn’t help being distracted by the way the knitting stretched across her chest and the snowflakes distorted. He could tell she wasn’t used to her brassière because she squirmed against its tightness, even in front of him. She had no idea about the things Gerda used to do with the Americans and he wondered when some boy would teach her.
Christina said, ‘Would you, Stefan? I’ve thought of a place where we can go.’
He laughed at the collision of his thoughts with hers, and she smiled, assuming they were friends. She waited expectantly for his answer, but it was an effort to summon up the will to speak as happened more and more these days, even though his throat had healed and didn’t hurt him any more. Most things he started to say seemed too trivial to persevere with.
‘Would you?’ Christina said again. ‘Alice and Maud are going to ballet this afternoon. I said I have a headache.’
‘Ja,’ he said. No more was necessary. He was already tired of this conversation and he stood watching her until she gave up and went away.
He waited on the drive, ready to direct Elisabeth when she backed the car out of the garage. He would have offered to do it for her, if he could have been bothered to explain that he’d been handling bigger vehicles than this since he was twelve. All Hitlerjugend boys learned to drive.
As Maud and Alice were chivvied into the car with their ballet cases, Stefan could see Elisabeth’s mind running over the problem: Should I leave Christina alone with him? We can’t always be watching … but can I trust him?
If she had asked, Stefan would have told Elisabeth not to worry, even though he sometimes sat on the stairs outside Christina’s room in his vest and trousers and smoked a cigarette in the middle of the night. Her door was always open and she sounded like someone on the wireless acting an impression of sleeping. He imagined that in years to come, Christina’s wholesome lungs would calm a wholesome husband when he woke up in the night worrying about something or other. Stefan didn’t envy the man, although it would be good to have a girl like Christina, who did not rant or punch him, good to unfold her from drowsiness and discover a sweeter body than Gerda’s. He and Gerda were as good as married and he would never be unfaithful, but he liked being near Christina when he couldn’t sleep, that’s all, just near her; anything more would be crossing the threshold to another life. It was comforting to see its possibilities laid out in front of him like the view along a pleasant road, knowing he wouldn’t ever choose to go that way.
He would not want to be alone with Alice. She stirred up his thoughts, which were unruly enough as it was; they ran amok like a pack of dogs hunting out things to pounce on, or flee from. Alice’s face troubled him so much he couldn’t take more than a glance at her before he had to look away. She was a wire in his brain that set off a gruesome little reflex, like an electrode in a frog. It ought not to cause him pain because there wasn’t any thought or reasoning behind it, but it felt like a spasm of terrible yearning for something he had forgotten, or forgotten how to feel. Perhaps a dead frog yearned to hop again.
Little Maud he loved so much it had already begun to hurt, and this was good because it proved to him the numbness of his heart was only temporary.
• • •
The Daimler had driven off ten minutes ago and they were alone. Going shooting with Stefan Landau would be the first time Christina had been anywhere alone with a boy, and as she rummaged in the cupboard for her shoes, she wondered how something could feel
so entirely new when she was fourteen and had experienced quite a lot of life already. Her head was upside down, tying her laces, fingers like sausages and the blood rushing to her face, when she heard Stefan coming downstairs and opening the front door. She licked her finger and smoothed her eyebrows like the girls in the Milk Bar in Folkestone, picked up her spectacles, put them down and ran, buttoning her corduroy jacket that had got too short in the sleeves this year.
He was standing by the porch, wearing George’s coat, with a rifle on his shoulder and smoking a cigarette which he let fall and ground with his heel. Then he gave her a longish look.
He was sixteen and too old to be a boy, she realized, nor was he the bony ghost she met in Yorkshire. She felt her face heating up again. Sometimes it did really seem as if her head was on fire and not just her hair, which appeared that way.
Stefan looked out at the hazy nothingness of the sky and his eyes were the colour of the air which had too many blues to count, millions of glassy motes of new-made sunlight. He turned up his collar.
‘You are sure you would like to do this?’ he asked – a long sentence for someone who rarely spoke and had never asked her a question before, and suddenly, unaccountably, she knew he was untrustworthy and also that she could trust him. He was asking if she would lie to Elisabeth and George this evening at the dinner table, whatever might happen, because those were the terms.
The German Boy Page 34