by Holly Müller
She thought about Anton constantly. She wished more than ever he was here; she didn’t want to be without him when the Russians came and couldn’t bear to contemplate that he might have been killed. She was always first to meet the postal worker at home in the mornings, heart galloping with hope and trepidation. The house gaped without him, the rooms fusty and forsaken, the balcony now just another area that must be swept free of cobwebs and leaves, a sad place to sit rather than somewhere to meet or a route to Anton’s bedroom after nightfall. His eiderdown was smooth and stale, its neatness and the absence of his things striking her every time she looked into his room. Once or twice, she climbed between the sheets and tried to conjure him in her mind, his face, their conversations, many of which had been silent, each knowing the other’s thoughts, the other’s body. But without his tight-wound presence, his weight on the mattress, she felt small, unsafe, less than whole. She listened to the house cracking as it only seemed to do in the dark and the thought that she might never see him again made her heart swell and thump. What if she forgot him? She pressed the pillow to her nose and breathed the remnant of his smell until she managed to remember, to really remember the sensation of his touch, his voice saying ‘My own’. But his imprint on the bedlinen grew faint and an image intruded of him in the Hillier yard springing at the prisoner’s throat; his gun bucked, eyes fixed on the inky blood as if he would taste it. She tried to slip beneath in the creaking dark, to enter the pool that belonged to them, to find refuge, but it evaded her, as did her certainty about who exactly he was, this savage brother who’d destroyed so much.
Mama had needed assistance since the birth of the baby, which had left her limp and melancholy; a sturdy daughter named Waltraut (or Traudi for short) had arrived hollering into the bedroom with Frau Hillier as midwife. It was as though the bright-eyed little thing had sapped Mama of spirit, taken everything for itself; it suckled and slept, soft, fat and rosy, while Mama crumpled into the hollow slumber of exhaustion or wept over the smallest trifle, because she couldn’t get the shutter properly closed or her blanket slid to the floor. Ursula wondered had there been any point in ridding the house of Siegfried when all Mama did was lament over the fatherless baby; Anton had deserted her in any case, so it all had come to nothing.
Frau Hillier outlined for Mama a list of tasks which must be done before the Russians arrived in Felddorf. She found a trunk in the shed that could be nailed shut and filled it with Mama’s best linen and china, the crystal ornaments, gramophone, keepsakes from Siegfried, including the wooden carving of the Alps that had hung on the dresser. Mama wept as these were stowed, showing them to Traudi who put them to her mouth, dribbled and stared dreamily. Frau Hillier also hid a tiny store of old Schillings, just in case they’d ever be of use again. A separate box, full of provisions, was to go to the cellar. In the living room, Dorli cried as she lifted the Führer’s portrait from the wall. She chopped the frame using a small axe, tore the portrait and rolled it. Into the Tirolia it went along with the book Mein Kampf. The fire belched and roared.
Later that day the sisters took the bike to see what was happening in the village and to collect rations. In the centre of Felddorf, Wehrmacht soldiers loitered around the fountain and went in and out of shops. The two girls sidled as close as they dared. Dorli adjusted her dress countless times, patted her hair and pinched herself on the cheeks to make them colour up, being still rather pale after her fit of grief for the Führer. The soldiers cupped their hands into the fountain, rubbed water across their faces. They didn’t speak and were filthy and shattered. Most of them weren’t much older than Anton. One or two looked over at the girls and smiled and winked. After a while a stocky sergeant, who’d been snoozing on a bench with a hat over his face, stood and called them to attention. The men moved off down the road in lines with bags and guns dangling.
‘My blessing goes with them,’ said Dorli. But it was empty talk, fruitless talk.
On their way home they passed the Sontheimer house. Sepp sat on the steps with his forearms resting on his knees. Ursula hadn’t seen him since the school had been closed and hadn’t spoken to him since before her trip to the city. Not long ago, she’d discovered that Sepp had taken Marta as his sweetheart. She’d overheard Marta’s plump friends discussing it one day and took the news with painful resignation, a dart that stuck into her body and produced a dull ache for a while. She’d known it would happen and somehow it felt right, more comfortable, to be sure that Sepp was out of reach, belonging to another.
Today he looked anxious, his mouth downturned. Behind him, the door to his house stood open; from inside came voices.
‘Grüss Gott,’ called Ursula, stopping on an impulse. Dorli stopped too and waited a little way off. Ursula very much wanted to be friendly; she’d been so chilly with him before, so confused.
‘Grüss Gott,’ he replied.
Irate tones flared suddenly from behind him and Sepp glanced nervously around. There was no one visible in the neat Sontheimer hallway or on the polished wooden stairs. She wondered what was going on. He turned back to her with a skittish grin.
‘How are you?’ she said. The words arrived awkwardly. She couldn’t seem to be natural and never had anything worthwhile to say. She rubbed one bare foot against the other. Sepp too had bare feet, but then probably his shoes waited for him in the stair cupboard of his house. Mama insisted on saving footwear as soon as spring arrived and so there were to be no boots as long as the fine weather lasted. Near by Dorli tapped her basket against her legs and looked on, impatient to be home to claim her share of the rations, to lick fat from her fingers.
‘I’m all right.’ Sepp gave his ready smile, though it was subdued today. The rascally beauty of the dimple in his cheek and gleam of teeth had the same effect as always on Ursula; she grew ill at ease – it was as if something opened inside her without permission, something she didn’t understand or know what to do with. She reminded herself that he’d a sweetheart now but it made no difference to how she felt. Anton’s words from months ago revisited her: If he knew you like I do, do you think he’d smile at you then? She clenched her hands behind her back.
‘Inspection,’ continued Sepp, indicating the house. ‘Herr Adler. Told me to wait outside.’
Ursula quickly scanned the windows – she’d managed to avoid the Party inspector over the last few months, ducking from sight whenever she glimpsed him in the village. She’d heard he was meaner than ever these days, digging his heels in and his teeth too, Frau Hillier said, so as not to look defeat in the face. He was less methodical but more tyrannical; he refused to give up.
Frau Sontheimer’s soft voice drifted out into the street and then came a snippet of Herr Adler’s hard-edged tones. Ursula shifted warily; she pictured his face, his angry eyes, small and repulsive. She should leave now before he saw her. She should hurry.
‘I hate inspections,’ said Sepp.
‘Me too,’ she answered, remembering the sense of violation as Herr Adler had interrogated her about Schosi, poking and prodding amongst her things. He’d fingered her books and thrust his arms into her wardrobe, into Papa’s bureau, barking out questions all the while. It had been truly terrifying.
‘Every week he comes.’ Sepp rubbed his head, making his hair stand on end. ‘There’s some reason, Auntie thinks.’
Ursula recalled with misgiving Anton’s catcalling to Frau Gerg’s house. Would another of her friends now be punished? She tried to imagine Sepp sneaking a starving Russian into his cellar.
Sepp stood and came on to the road; he came close, leaning towards her ear, his lips almost immobile as he spoke, his body near enough for her to feel the heat of it. ‘Auntie says that ash is falling on Vienna.’ He glanced over at Dorli then continued. ‘They set their documents on fire – the Party. They’ve run like cowards and old Adler knows it.’ He gripped her wrist and squeezed it; his eyes were intent on hers. ‘The Russians are taking ground in the capital. It must really be the end.’
She thought of Anton and Siegfried in the maze-like streets, adrift in a grey blizzard, faces smutted by charred paper, seeking the enemy, or evading it – she daren’t think of the tanks and fire and death, the Mongol hordes, as the Russians were called in the newspaper; that lofty, alien place flooded with foreigners now as never before. And just beyond the doors and walls of the Sontheimer house was Herr Adler and his desperation, his fury that might any moment be unleashed upon Sepp and his genteel aunt. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, the warmth and firm press of his fingers bringing unplanned words. ‘Sorry for being rude before. And for what’s happening – you know, all of this. Your troubles. And . . .’ But she couldn’t tell Sepp what her brother had done.
‘Come on!’ called Dorli from across the road. ‘I want to go.’
‘All right!’ replied Ursula.
Through the open door of the Sontheimer house the rotund form of Herr Adler appeared, passing between two rooms. ‘You two!’ he snapped, glaring out at them. ‘Stop talking!’ He came through the door and pointed at Ursula with a fat finger. His eyes narrowed as he recognised her. ‘You!’
She backed hastily towards the far pavement.
‘What are you doing here?’
His small black eyes skewered her from under their swollen lids, his livid cheeks and accusing finger, and in that moment the strangest thing happened – a window in her soul flew open to a long-forgotten memory: Saint Nikolaus above her in the kitchen pointing just so and berating her, saying, ‘You!’ The reddened hand bloated so that the fingers could barely bend, a pig’s trotter. Dressed as the saint he’d sent her out into the night with the Krampus. He’d watched from the doorway as she was pushed into the snow, his coal-black eyes alight; he’d held her brother’s arms to keep him back. She felt again the snow through her perforated house shoes with the moon climbing up to watch her as she trembled and froze. She remembered the touch of frightful hands, burrowing, grabbing, fastened round her throat.
The memory knocked the breath out of her and then she was running, heart thudding, away from Herr Adler, towards her sister who’d begun to sidle off. Sepp called after her, an unheard goodbye. Dorli called too as Ursula passed her, forced to run behind with the basket; she yelled to her to slow down or she’d give her a hiding – what on earth was she playing at? Glancing back, Ursula saw Herr Adler descend the Sontheimer steps. He snatched Sepp by the collar and hauled him into the house. She groaned aloud and then Dorli seized her elbow, pinched hard through her clothes, twisting a swatch of her flesh. Ursula slowed.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Dorli clamped her arm to Ursula’s, furious, as they marched towards home.
‘Nothing.’
‘You’re acting completely mad! You behaved like you’d seen the devil. Now he’ll think we’ve something to hide, you silly idiot!’
Ursula fixed her eyes on her own bare toes, dust-blackened and splaying over stones as they turned on to the track, concentrated on the jab of pebbles and prickle of plants on her soles. She couldn’t quiet the thoughts that flew in a clamour in her mind. She remembered that Anton had broken free of the saint and followed. He had seen her pushed on to the snow with stones underneath. It would’ve gone worse, he said, if he hadn’t yelled. That blaring shout, oddly muffled, harsh and fierce then swallowed, silenced. She hadn’t recalled the sound of it till now.
‘You’re doing that thing, that panting thing you do in your sleep,’ Dorli snapped. ‘Stop it! I hate it. You sound like a goat with its throat slit.’
Ursula hadn’t noticed her breath rushing in and out so loudly. She struggled to quieten it.
‘Was it that Sontheimer boy?’ Dorli snatched one of Ursula’s plaits away from her face to better see her expression. ‘Did he say something bad to you?’
Ursula shook her head vigorously. ‘My chest,’ she said, putting a hand there. ‘It’s just my chest hurts.’ It was true that her chest felt constricted, without much room for air, and it throbbed awfully as though bruised.
Dorli tutted and said something about her being a weakling. Ursula trudged alongside her and tried not to think about a murky figure and Anton with his hands about her neck, pressing her into the eiderdown, his face above hers. A wrong thing – a shameful thing.
That evening, Frau Hillier and Mama sat with the girls in the kitchen and Mama fiddled continually with Traudi’s knitted bonnet although it was perfectly straight. Occasionally she rose and wiped the edge of the sink with a tea towel or picked up onion skins from the floor, and Frau Hillier smoothed the tabletop with her fingertips before speaking.
‘When they come you must hide,’ she said. ‘In the cellar or the hayloft or the woods.’
Ursula watched Mama who stared off into the corner of the room. It was clear she was in another terrible mood; she exuded harsh distress and Ursula knew to be wary. Until being called into the kitchen, she’d taken pains to keep away from her by offering to do all of the outside tasks unaided. She’d wanted to be alone in any case and had spent the time in the yard and sheds thinking about Sepp and Frau Sontheimer and hoping they were safe. She’d hated to see Sepp manhandled and dragged roughly up the steps as if he were a disobedient child. She dwelled on the moment when he’d stood close to her, the warm squeeze of his fingers on her wrist, the way he’d pressed them there for so long, as though checking for her pulse. She’d revisited the memory a hundred times as she swilled cow dung from the shed floor and gathered sticks for the Tirolia. She could conjure the actual sensation, as if his fingertips were still there, making a depression in her skin.
‘You must keep together,’ continued Frau Hillier. ‘Don’t speak to them or smile.’
‘Do you not hear?’ said Mama when the girls only stared, saying nothing. ‘The time is over for wandering into town – for trying to look pretty.’
‘Yes! Fine!’ Dorli replied, affronted, perhaps embarrassed by her interest in the young soldiers earlier that day and how she’d tried to attract them.
Ursula thought regretfully of her yellow ribbons, the only pretty things she owned. She presumed she’d now have to give them up.
Frau Hillier drew out two pieces of cloth from her pocket, rolled them and dipped them into a dish of dark red liquid. The smell of wine filled the air, heady and strong. She handed one to each of the girls. ‘Stuff them in your underwear.’ She gestured between her legs and looked at them squarely, but her throat gulped visibly. ‘They have a terrible fear of women’s blood.’
Ursula held the soiled cloth and watched the dark stain seeping, spreading; the edges of the splodge of wine fanned softly out through the off-white material, which was made from a torn pillowcase. She was still waiting for her own monthlies to begin. With so little to eat, Frau Hillier said, it would take for ever. The colour on the cloth had a purple tinge, deep and rich, like the intense smell of the wine that she breathed. ‘Is this what it looks like?’ she said. ‘Will it fool them?’
‘It’s near enough,’ said Frau Hillier. ‘They won’t know the difference.’
‘You must really shout it,’ said Mama. ‘Bleeding! Bleeding! And run towards wherever there are people.’ Her face was tight and her voice stiff. ‘Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Mama,’ said Ursula, fear turning in her belly, growing solid like curd so that she felt sick. Could she run like that? She’d surely be caught. What would be done to her? Anton wasn’t here to holler; she’d be alone this time.
32
Herr Esterbauer proposed to Frau Hillier at the Gasthaus after church that Sunday in front of a few surprised onlookers. They watched amused, assuming that the proposal was all part of the frenzy before Ivan came, a kind of insurance policy against the grasping Russians. The Hildesheims weren’t there to see the farmer present the ring but they soon found out that he had suffered public humiliation – Frau Hillier came to the house to deliver shopping and announced in a brusque but not unfriendly tone that she’d refused him. She said that she knew it was the right decision and wanted to tell them now
before they heard it from some loudmouth in town.
‘But why?’ exclaimed Mama, dumbfounded, as she divested her friend of the shopping bags. ‘He’s a good catch, Gita!’
Ursula and Dorli hung over the banister, watching as Frau Hillier removed her coat, her rounded breasts and belly showing through her work dress. She took out her handkerchief and blew her nose; it made a short honking sound like a goose. ‘I’ve been married once,’ she said. ‘That’s enough for me.’
‘Come now. He’s rich.’ Mama set down the bags in the kitchen and thumbed the fingers of her left hand as she counted off Herr Esterbauer’s attributes. ‘He’s fit for his years. He adores you and your son.’ Her voice rose in disbelief. ‘And no one else is going to ask you.’
Frau Hillier merely smiled and shrugged. ‘Don’t nag me,’ she said as she went into the pantry and began putting the food away, leaving the dried beans out ready for the evening meal. Most of the food they’d normally receive was missing: the shops were unstocked, the supply disrupted.
‘Stop that, I can do that.’ Mama shooed Frau Hillier out of the pantry. ‘Now, explain yourself.’
The girls crowded into the room and took seats at the table.
‘You’re all so nosy.’ Frau Hillier folded her arms. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘You mean you’re not going to tell?’ said Dorli.
‘No, it’s private.’
‘Private!’ Mama was incredulous. ‘I’ll ask him myself.’
‘Good luck with that.’ Frau Hillier brushed her sleeves with her hands and straightened her cuffs. She turned nonchalantly to her coat and put it on. ‘I can’t believe you care so much. There are more important things, you know.’ She opened the door. ‘Such as, today I learned Ivan’s just thirty kilometres away. I was going to say so. Some poor crazed refugees came through about an hour ago – Hungarians – shouting “Russians coming!” “Lock doors!” “Women, put on all your clothes!”’