The Undertaking

by Magee, Audrey

  ‘Not a lot, no.’

  ‘Well then, why bother asking?’

  ‘It hasn’t gone very well for us, has it, Katharina?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I wonder how it might have been if you had married the doctor’s son?’

  Katharina went back to her room. She closed the door and sat at the window, looking down at the street, at the woman draped across the kerb, her body beginning to bloat. The buildings opposite were gone, and the row of houses beyond them had been flattened too. Their side of the street, however, remained untouched.

  She was still awake at four in the morning, smoking, drinking hot water, when her father returned.

  ‘I’ve got food,’ he said. ‘Wake your mother.’

  They watched as he unwrapped the newspaper, showing off his four pieces of grey meat, long and narrow, each one about half the width of a chicken breast. Katharina poked at them with her finger.

  ‘What is it, Father?’

  ‘Meat.’

  ‘It’s rat, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s food. Take it or leave it.’

  The gas still worked in their house. He fried the meat and she ate.

  ‘Why did you come back, Father?’

  ‘I couldn’t cross.’

  ‘That’s a surprise.’

  ‘I’ll try again in a few hours.’

  ‘Does it matter? West or east, we’ve lost.’

  ‘The Russians are bastards, Katharina.’

  ‘And we’re not?’

  In the morning, they moved into the cellar. The other neighbours were already there, Mrs Sachs among them. Katharina sat on the floor, a blanket over her legs, staring as Mrs Sachs poured coffee and handed a cupful to her husband with a chunk of still-warm bread. Katharina swallowed her saliva.

  ‘Where did you find that, Mrs Sachs?’

  ‘I have connections, Katharina. Ones more reliable than yours.’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘You’re better off without anyway, Katharina.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Help you lose a little weight. Those Russians like a bit of fat around the bottom, women used to cream cakes and chocolate. Like yourself, Katharina.’

  She curled under a blanket to wait, to listen, although she was uncertain for what she was waiting or listening. She had seen the women arriving from the east, terrorized. They talked feverishly or not at all; their eyes staring straight ahead, looking at nothing, seeing everything.

  ‘It’ll be a relief, won’t it, Mother?’

  ‘What will be, Katharina?’

  ‘When they’re here and we can just get on with things again.’

  ‘We’re being invaded, Katharina.’

  ‘But at least it’ll soon be over. Waiting is worse.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘She has a point, Mrs Spinell,’ said Mrs Sachs. ‘Waiting is always the hardest part. It won’t be as bad as we think.’

  ‘Your communist friends will be here at last, Mrs Sachs,’ said Mr Spinell.

  ‘Where are your friends, Mr Spinell?’

  They fell silent, cramped into the small cellar, its door under the stairs fortified by three chairs and a desk. Their toilet was in the darkest corner, a bucket tucked behind a scrap of curtain, its contents emptied during lulls in the shelling, piss, shit and crumpled newspaper scattered over the street.

  They were there all of a sudden, as though a dam had broken, thousands of them hammering the streets with their feet. She looked at them through the tiny window. At their big, clumping, filthy boots. The tanks, grinding at the tarmacadam. Half-tanks and jeeps. Heavy guns pulled by horses, ponies and American trucks. Animal dung all over the pavements. She sat down again and buried her head under the blanket, pressing the wool against her ears. But she could still hear the triumphant rattle of the machine guns and the bellicose singing, the victorious, drunken swagger of them all. She had not expected so much aggression. She had expected soldiers like her husband and brother, gentle men carrying out their duties. But these men were angry and terrifying. And they wanted revenge. She stuffed the blanket into her mouth and screamed. She wanted her husband.

  They barely moved for two days, sipping water and nibbling crackers, accepting Mrs Sachs’ offerings of dried sausage, her father’s gratitude muted. They heard them on the stairs, hard to tell how many, charging from one apartment to the next, smashing down doors, shouting at each other, running along hallways until they crashed through the cellar door, unperturbed by the barricade, torchlight swinging from one side of the room to the other. The soldiers staggered, laughing, looking first at Mrs Sachs, then at Katharina; their beams focused on her as she pressed into her mother. Mrs Spinell moved away from her daughter. Katharina leaned towards her father. He moved away too. The soldiers shouted at her and gestured with their torches towards the door. She was still. One of them hit her across the head with his torch, the beam careering across the room. She looked at her mother, at her father. They looked at their feet. She held onto her father’s sleeve but he jutted his chin towards the door.

  ‘Good girl, Katharina.’

  She stood up and they slapped her bottom. She climbed the steps to the entrance hall where dark was settling. They knocked her to the floor, but she scrambled away from them, on her hands and knees to the bottom of the stairs. They grabbed her legs and flipped her over, a flat fish on the pan.

  One of them slapped her face, ripped her knickers and pulled apart her legs. The first. Pushing at her. His fist in her face when she tried to stop him, to close herself down so he couldn’t enter. Then a searing, ripping pain. His weight on her chest, suffocating her, his cloying, acrid stench; drink, horse manure, campfire smoke and sweat. She turned her face away from him, towards the stairs, staring at the fraying linoleum, the wood worn smooth by her childhood feet running up and down the steps, to and from school, and later, when she was older, to and from work. And then Peter. His feet on those steps. She felt a final thrust. He fell on top of her, belched into her face. She closed her eyes. He pulled out and spat at her. At her face, her eyes. She rubbed his spit away and tried to sit up. The second pushed her back down and ripped her blouse, her bra. Reeking of cigarettes, he pinned her shoulders to the floor. And then she saw her son’s little feet, up and down. Crawling, then walking, his little hands gripping one bannister, then the next as he hauled his way up. The third. Rougher than the others. The fourth. More gentle, or was she so numbed? Then the first again. More hitting. More spitting. More of him when she wanted none of him. The second. Or was it the third? The smell of cigarettes. The fourth only once. The first insisting that he could go a third time, his fists against her face when he failed. He stood and pissed on her, the others laughing as they hauled up their trousers, picked up their guns and left, the hall door open so that she could see the street, the horse and human dung smeared one into the other by wheels and tracks, the city no longer hers, no longer German; the grocer’s shop shuttered, the shop empty – Mr Ewald had fled to the Black Forest. She was waiting for Peter. She had promised she would.

  She reached out to pick at a fraying thread, but it was too far away. Her hand fell to the floor. Why had she bothered going up and down those stairs? What had been the point? Her son and brother were dead. Her husband might be dead too. Was she as good as dead? Would she ever be known as anything other than the woman given away by her father, by her mother? She whispered to Peter, begging him to be alive. He was all she had.

  It was dark when she woke, blood crusted on her face, legs and clothes, their fluids mixed with hers. She pulled herself upright and, using the bannisters, dragged herself up the stairs. The door was open, the flat ransacked, but the bed was intact, the sheets still on. She crawled under the covers and went to sleep, waking to find Mrs Sachs beside her, a basin of water and cloths on her lap.

  ‘I’ll wash you, Katharina.’

  She struggled to open her eyes, her mouth. Her voice rose only to a whisper.

  ‘Where�
�s my mother?’

  ‘In the cellar. She’s not able, Katharina.’

  ‘She was able when it was Johannes.’

  ‘It was a different time, Katharina.’

  ‘I’ll do it myself.’

  ‘It’s a big job, Katharina. You’ll need some help.’

  ‘I needed help earlier, Mrs Sachs. Not now.’

  Mrs Sachs left. Katharina fell back to sleep. When she woke again it was daylight. Mrs Sachs was again beside her.

  ‘Do you think Peter did that? He was a soldier.’

  ‘A German soldier, Katharina. Properly behaved. A good man.’

  ‘He hated being a soldier. I didn’t understand then, Mrs Sachs. But I do now.’

  ‘What, Katharina?’

  ‘That they mould them to be like each other. As mad as each other. As vicious. That’s what armies do.’

  ‘Not the German army, Katharina.’

  ‘Pillagers. Rapists. That’s what all armies are, Mrs Sachs. What they become.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘Those Russians hated me.’

  ‘Come on, let’s clean you up, Katharina.’

  Mrs Sachs helped her sit up and began to wash her face, her body, the water cold, the tears streaming quietly from Katharina’s eyes, both women silent. Three of her teeth were broken, and her nose, eyes and lips were badly bruised. Her vagina was torn, her breasts and stomach covered in deep purple bruising. Mrs Sachs handed her some hot tea with a little sugar and covered the worst of her wounds with home-made poultices, the herbs older than they should have been.

  ‘Thankfully you don’t appear to need antibiotics.’

  Katharina sobbed then.

  ‘What am I going to tell Peter, Mrs Sachs?’

  ‘I doubt, Katharina, that you will ever have to explain anything to him.’

  ‘But what if he comes back? What do I tell him?’

  Mrs Sachs leaned into her.

  ‘You tell him nothing, Katharina. You tell nobody about this.’

  ‘Won’t people find out?’

  ‘We won’t tell them. You’ve been through enough already.’

  ‘What if there’s a child, Mrs Sachs? How will I explain that?’

  ‘We’ll deal with that when it arises.’

  ‘You know somebody.’

  ‘I do, Katharina. He’s good. And safe.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Her parents stayed in the cellar until the Russians stopped drinking and began serving soup to those still in the city. They took the soup and moved back into their bedrooms.

  ‘You’ll feel better soon, Katharina.’

  ‘Will I, Father?’

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  She went to her bedroom and locked the door. She looked at herself in the mirror, at her bruises and her broken teeth. She lifted her scissors and cut her hair. Piece after piece falling down her back, to the floor.

  60

  The other men in the carriage had written. He had decided against it.

  He stared through the window, silently watching the landscape change and shift, relieved when the enormous forests fell out of view.

  He looked for Katharina at the station, even though he knew she would not be there. The women who were, wives and mothers, sobbed when they saw their men, running fingers over hollowed cheeks, setting their heads against the men’s bony chests. He moved away from them, towards the back of the station, through a horde of old men and women pushing photographs into his face, pictures of strong-shouldered sons, clean uniforms and smiling faces. He shook his head. Over and over. No, he knew none of them.

  He went to a clinic where they washed and fed him, and treated him for lice, gum infection and scabies. They let him sleep for several days and, when he wanted to go, dressed him in a second-hand suit. They gave him money too, and a brown paper parcel that he could tuck under his arm.

  ‘I’m going to see my wife and child,’ he said.

  ‘Good luck, Mr Faber.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He pressed the doorbell and stepped back onto the pavement. He nodded at the grocer stacking his stall with bright, red tomatoes. Nobody came to the door. Faber went into the shop, paid for a tomato and ate it, licking at the juice dribbling down his chin, his mouth thrilling at its sweetness.

  ‘You enjoyed that, Sir,’ said the grocer.

  ‘Are the Spinells still living here?’

  ‘I’ve only just opened. I don’t know the neighbours yet.’

  ‘Do you have any dark chocolate? Any white flowers?’

  ‘No Sir, those things are still hard to come by.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Faber pushed at the door. It was unlocked. He went into the dark hallway and up the staircase, covered still in fraying linoleum. He stopped outside the door and listened, but heard nothing. He knocked. Lightly. A second time, with a little more force. She opened the door as he turned to leave. Spoke to him. Whispered.

  ‘Peter.’

  She reached out her hand, and he took it, wrapping it in both of his.

  ‘You’re still here, Katharina. You waited for me.’

  She nodded, her lips and eyes closing. He stepped towards her. She buried her head in his chest. He kissed the top of her head.

  ‘But your hair?’

  ‘It’s more practical this way, Peter.’

  ‘I liked it long.’

  ‘It’s short now.’

  A door opened. It was Mrs Spinell, her grey hair long and unkempt.

  ‘Johannes?’

  ‘No, Mother. It’s Peter.’

  The old woman closed the door again.

  ‘Come in,’ said Katharina.

  He bowed his head, and stepped inside.

  ‘I tried you first at the other address.’

  ‘We moved back here a long time ago.’

  ‘There is nothing of the house. Nothing left.’

  ‘No. Nothing. Would you like coffee?’

  ‘Please.’

  She started to walk down the corridor. He pulled her back to him.

  ‘It’s good to see you again, Katharina.’

  ‘And you, Peter. Come on, I’ll make coffee.’

  She turned to go, but he held her still.

  ‘What happened to your teeth, Katharina?’

  She hesitated.

  ‘I fell,’ she said. ‘During an air raid. In the dark.’

  ‘We can fix them.’

  ‘I’ve learned to live with them as they are.’

  He let her go and followed her down the hall, staring at the shortness of her hair, the narrowness of her hips. Her shoulders were bent forward, rounding her spine. She was different. But then so was he.

  ‘Are you all right, Katharina?’

  ‘I’m all right. And you?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  He went into the kitchen, condensation still shimmering on the walls. A child was sitting at the table, his schoolbooks in front of him. Faber hunkered down beside the chair and touched the boy’s arm.

  ‘Johannes.’

  ‘Hello. I’m doing my homework.’

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘I’m not supposed to talk. I’m supposed to concentrate.’

  Faber smiled and stood up again, stemming his tears.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll let you get on. We can talk when you’re finished.’

  The child nodded.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Johannes. To meet you at last.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the boy.

  He returned to his homework.

  Katharina had her back to them, slowly taking cups from the cupboard.

  ‘We’ll go to another room,’ she said. ‘Are you hungry?’

  ‘Probably. I have learned not to be.’

  She cut two pieces of bread and spread them with honey. She slid them onto a plate and poured coffee into the cups. There were no saucers. She led him to the room at the end of the hall, her bedroom.

  ‘I remember this so well, K
atharina.’

  ‘You smell better this time.’

  He smiled, briefly. She set down the cups and plate. He wrapped his arms around her, kissed her on the cheek and left his lips there, his eyes closed.

  ‘It’s so damn good to be here, Katharina.’

  ‘How hard was it, Peter?’

  ‘Terrible, but another time. Not now.’

  She ran her hands over his face, her fingers lingering in the crevices.

  ‘You’re so thin.’

  ‘I thought you liked me skinny.’

  ‘Not like this. We’ll have to feed you up.’

  ‘I find it hard to eat a lot.’

  ‘We’ll go gently.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Eat now. The bread.’

  He sat down on the end of the bed. She stayed by the window, sipping her coffee, looking down at the street, at a German man stepping off the pavement as Russian soldiers approached him.

  Faber finished eating and lay down on the bed. She lay beside him and drew a blanket over both of them. He kissed her, on the lips.

  ‘I missed you, Katharina.’

  ‘How did you get through it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I had you and Johannes. That helped. Enormously.’

  She kissed his lips, his cheeks.

  ‘And how was it here, Katharina?’

  ‘Awful. But you’re here now. I knew you would be. One day.’

  He ran his fingers over her lips, over her thinner face, and kissed her. She was crying, tears quietly sliding down her face.

  ‘Why did you cut your hair?’

  ‘I wanted to, Peter.’

  ‘Will you grow it again? For me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But I like it long. It’s how I think of you.’

  ‘You’ll have to think of me differently, Peter.’

  He removed the blanket and sat up. He lit a cigarette. She took it. He lit a second.

  ‘The room looks the same,’ he said.

  ‘I share it with Johannes.’

  ‘He’s a fine boy, Katharina.’

  ‘He’s a good child.’

  ‘I lived to see him, you know. To hold him.’

  She stood and looked again down at the street, at the Russians surrounding a woman, checking her papers.

  ‘He’s not yours, Peter.’

  ‘Who isn’t?’

  ‘The boy. In the kitchen. He’s not your son.’