Lost everyone I know,
but I’m happy all alone.
Her voice was coming on, there was a note in it, Pierre said so – well, it came from Mama. Mama’s voice growing again in Effi’s body. So she wasn’t alone, she’d better remember that. She fetched the harmonica out and improvised as she strolled ahead. She’d go and see Ma Headscarf and annoy her.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ said the old dame. ‘What have you been up to?’
Ma Headscarf snorted. Old Hungerland was there, too, but he was busily tidying all the leaves up on the ground under one of the trees, laying them in lines and throwing little twigs or broken leaves out of the way. He was forcing himself to concentrate on them but you could see his eyes twitching, wanting to look over his shoulder at his ghosts, who must be people he’d murdered or betrayed.
‘Oh,’ said Effi – you got used to shouting, but once the fighting stopped they’d have to be careful and talk more quietly – ‘I’ve just got myself a ticket for a train to Frankfurt and as soon as the fighting’s over I’m on my way to catch it.’
‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’ Ma Headscarf wanted to know. ‘Telling lies like that?’
Effi started to whistle. Hungerland looked up at her for a moment and a cold shiver ran down her spine. He made her think of Otto; he’d kill her too. But not in the same way. She remembered the way he’d cut the meat out of the horses. He’d kill coldly. But she wasn’t going to let him scare her. She was Effi Mann.
‘A whistling woman,’ said Ma Headscarf, ‘and a crowing hen –’
‘Deserve to have their heads cut off,’ said Effi. ‘Yes, I know the saying. The Ivans’ ammo makes more noise than I do, anyway. Why bother?’
The old dame was peering behind Effi, into the trees.
Effi asked her: ‘Are you looking for your little Hitler Youth, do you want to give him some more potatoes?’
And all at once the dog was there, jumping at Effi, licking her face, almost knocking her off her feet. Oh no, she thought, now it’ll get complicated again. And he’ll be angry, but he’s no right to be, he doesn’t own me, nobody does.
She grabbed the dog by the collar and made him sit. ‘Nice dog, isn’t he?’ she said to the little silent Barbara. ‘Come and give him a pat.’
Hungerland spoke, with a creepy kind of eagerness in his voice. ‘A train? Where is it departing from?’
‘Kummersdorf,’ said Effi. ‘Tomorrow at noon. The tickets are hellishly expensive but I had my mother’s diamond ring and I swapped that for mine.’
‘She’s telling lies,’ said Ma Headscarf. ‘There is no train.’ No wonder the kid didn’t bother to talk, her ma was the sort who’d shove anything you said back down your throat.
‘I don’t care if you believe me or not,’ said Effi. ‘We bought our tickets from a man, but he’s flitted. I don’t want you on my train.’ She did the whistle again, went on to the chuff-chuff notes. She had to play loudly because of the noise. Pierre said you have to know how to do a train if you play the harmonica, the audience loves it. But this audience wasn’t loving it. It was getting up their noses. They were standing by the track, watching the carriages shoot past, no chance of hitching a lift, and there they were on their two feet without so much as a handcart.
‘Oh, give our ears a rest,’ said Ma Headscarf, ‘for pity’s sake.’
Effi stopped playing. She got her ticket out of her pocket and waved it around. Hungerland stood up and took a step towards her.
‘Let me see those.’
Effi shoved the ticket back in her pocket and set the train running again. And here was Hanno, pushing the cart.
‘Hello, sweetie,’ she called out to him.
He gave her a dirty look, and Ma Headscarf scowled. Frau Rupf’s face went soft, my Lord, was she sweet on Swing Boy. The dog, who was determined to make a carnival out of everything, started jumping at Hanno as if he hadn’t seen him for hours.
‘She says,’ Frau Rupf looked at him, you could see her thinking, Now this nice lad’s come we’ll get right to the bottom of things. ‘The girl says you’ve bought tickets for a train to Frankfurt.’ Effi set the train going on the harmonica again but she backed out of Ma Headscarf’s reach because the look on her face said she was the ear-boxing type and any moment now Hanno was going to tell them it was only a wind-up. She whooped through the harmonica, it wasn’t really a German train at all, it was an American train with a cowcatcher in front and a big fat funnel, riding endlessly across a sea of waving grasses.
They were all staring at Hanno, Frau Rupf, Ma Headscarf, and Hungerland. Hanno didn’t say anything. He frowned.
‘Well,’ asked Ma Headscarf, ‘are you going to tell us the truth?’
As if she had a right to know – who did she think she was?
‘I don’t know –’ said Hanno.
‘What do you mean,’ shouted Ma Headscarf, ‘you don’t know? You know it’s all a lie, don’t you?’
‘Let him speak, Magda,’ said old Frau Rupf, fiddling with her fox-heads. That had been quite a nice fur once.
Hanno shook his head at Effi. ‘You promised to keep it quiet.’
All right, thought Effi, we’ll wind them up a bit longer.
Hungerland jumped in feet first. ‘Can I find this man who sold you the tickets?’
Well, thought Effi, thank you, Sperling, this is your work. And for a moment she saw him; he was standing behind Hungerland, killing himself laughing.
‘Herr Doctor,’ said Ma Headscarf, ‘don’t take any notice of them.’
So Hungerland was a doctor, was he? Again, Effi felt the cold shiver down her spine and she remembered the awful nights in the hospital after Mama died. Anyway, this doctor was going to look a nice fool in the end. Hanno would laugh in his face.
She played the train music again, as quietly as she could and still be heard, the track was a kilometre or so away and the trains were rattling along there. The dog was sitting aside, grinning as if he was master of ceremonies (and now for the famous double act, Effi Mann and Hanno Frisch).
‘Sweetie,’ she said, ‘I’m so sorry I let it out, but look, it’s no use anyone trying to buy tickets unless they have the sort of valuables the man’s interested in.’
‘I’ve nothing at all,’ said Frau Rupf, but she put her hand to her waist. There must be something tucked away inside her corsets. ‘The Ivans took my gold watch. It’s a shame, my sister-in-law lives near Frankfurt. Is this man genuine?’
‘Well,’ said Effi, ‘it could be a con trick, but I don’t think so, and I’ve seen through some con men you dames would have trusted your little boy to.’
There was another huge explosion, but that wasn’t what made the old woman shiver.
‘What sort of man is this?’ the doctor asked.
Hanno looked innocent. ‘He’s in the woods,’ he said, ‘a big man in a suit.’
Ma Headscarf got her rosary out and started telling her beads, but no Aves, Paternosters or Glorias, instead train tickets, suits and con men. Dr Hungerland coughed as if he was going to speak, but instead he started to mess up all the leaves he’d been arranging so carefully, and again he coughed, and again, and, at last, he spoke.
‘I have – I have something that might be of interest to the man. If he could be found. If you could take me to look for him – or go on my behalf, maybe –’
He really was crazy or he’d never have been taken in. Now was the time to tell them, laugh at Hungerland, and run off. But Hanno said: ‘You’d need to make that worth our while.’
‘I have this,’ said Dr Hungerland. ‘It might satisfy you.’
He fished in his pocket and brought out a gold cigarette case. He passed it to Effi, who found herself turning it over to see the hallmark. Inside there were three cigarettes and a message engraved on the underside of the lid: For Doctor Hungerland, with heartfelt gratitude. The Brandt family.
‘I am an able physician,’ he said. ‘I saved this child from scarlet fever and she suffered n
o complications.’
‘Never mind that,’ said Hanno. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got for the fare.’
The doctor coughed again. ‘I think it would be better for us to go aside.’
Now the three of them were walking away behind a tree trunk and the doctor was bringing a little leather pouch out of a body-belt inside his shirt – he had horrible grey hair on his chest – and opening it for them.
‘Diamonds,’ he said. A plane screamed in the sky right overhead. They just had time to flinch before it was gone.
‘How do we know they’re genuine?’ asked Hanno. And Effi thought, what’s the boy up to, does he really want diamonds?
The stones were lying in Hungerland’s palm like drops of water, only you couldn’t cut facets in water. They were cold and starry, lovely diamonds – one day, thought Effi, someone will give me diamonds like that. Then she heard Sperling, as if he was just behind her, ‘Fräulein Effi, Frisch is getting them for you now.’ Laughter in his voice. Part of her screamed with laughter too, because the boy thought she was a criminal, was he doing this to impress her? Or even to get back at her for the things she’d said to him?
Maybe Sperling was the Devil. He might be; it was easier to believe in the Devil than it was to believe in God, nowadays.
Dr Hungerland got a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles out of his pocket with his other hand.
‘My reading glasses,’ he said. He pushed them at Effi. She didn’t want to take them, because they smelt of him and felt like him, but she did, and he scratched one diamond across the glass surface. There was a small chiselling sound. He tested the second diamond, and the third. His hand quivered as he did it. He was bricking himself with terror all the time, she thought, a filthy terror that made her feel dirty when he was so close to her.
She looked at Hanno, but he wouldn’t meet her eye. There was a stubborn look on his face. She thought, You’ve only yourself to blame, Effi – if you hadn’t run away none of this would have happened.
Hanno said, ‘All right, they’ll do. I’ll take your glasses, though. So that the man can test the diamonds for himself.’
‘Not both of you,’ said Hungerland at once. ‘The girl can stay, you can go. I don’t want you both disappearing and leaving me without my ticket.’
Wonderful, thought Effi, now I have to stay with this lot. Well, she’d keep the dog, she didn’t think he was much of a fighter, but it’d make her feel better. And there were the others, they’d dilute Hungerland’s company. It was coming to something when she was glad to be with Ma Headscarf.
Chapter Thirteen
Hanno walked away into the woods, making sure he knew where he was going: no sun to help him, but there was a broken tree; here there was a stand of old oaks and one of them had a stump of a branch reaching up at the side of the main stem. He squirrelled the details into his head, making a map there – that was something useful he’d got from the Hitler Youth, anyway. Now he wondered where Kummersdorf was exactly. He thought it was somewhere south of Berlin.
Somewhere in the woods there was a non-existent man selling non-existent tickets. Hanno kept on walking as if he really expected to find him. He almost shouted for him. That was stupid, though. He stopped when he reckoned he was half a kilometre away from the others. He stood under a smaller oak and looked up at the trunk straining up into the dark sky. Tiny red leaves were just beginning to come out on the branches. He sat down, elbows on his knees, hands dangling. He shouldn’t go back at once.
Now he had time to wonder why the joke about the train had turned so serious, and why he was sitting there with three diamonds and a pair of reading glasses in his pocket. He’d give Effi the diamonds. That’d show her.
He was really a criminal now – this went far beyond the theft of the soldier’s pack. What would Wolfgang have thought about it? He might have thought it was a cool stunt – but no, Hanno realized he had no idea what Wolfgang would have thought. He’d moved on into a world that Wolfgang had never imagined. He’d set foot in it the moment he’d gone on the run and broken the oath he’d sworn to Hitler. Obedience till death.
But Hitler had been a bad leader; they were all saying that now. He’d led Germany into a war that couldn’t be won. Why had they all followed, then?
He remembered the heavy, limp body that had been all that was left of his twin brother. And Sperling, alive and joking one moment, bleeding to death the next. And the old Jew on the street, having to be frightened of a lot of little boys. He remembered those rumours about Jews being gassed – he thought they came from the English radio. Mother said they were lies. She said in the First World War each side had lied about awful things that the others were supposed to have done. It made him feel confused, all the same, because now everything was so different from the way it was supposed to have been.
Not Germans, he said to himself. Germans wouldn’t murder all those people. But a cynical voice came back at him from inside his head: Why not? You know what they said about Jews. You know what happened in Russia. You know what they were doing to the sick kids in the hospitals. And it made him feel ashamed to remember how Emil had hit the old Jew in Sternberg – and then he thought of Otto and how he should have known Otto was a murdering brute. Why? Because murder and brutality had been going on in the background of his life. He’d known it, but he hadn’t noticed it. Maybe because all the grown-ups went along with it. It felt as if it hadn’t been possible to notice it.
He said aloud to himself: ‘They should have stopped it before Wolfgang had to go out and die.’ And then, as if his father could hear him: ‘Why didn’t you stop it?’ And he thought about the boxing lesson, and Keller shouting: ‘Do you want to hit someone now?’ His head had still been swimming, but he’d hit out. Yes, he thought. I want to get back at someone. At a grown-up. A horrible grown-up like Otto. Only he’s not here, so Hungerland will do.
What was it Effi had said? You danced around the music line? He remembered Louis Armstrong doing that on his trumpet. Now he’d made his own solo out of the train-theme she’d played on her harmonica. He tried to grin. Then his thoughts started to lecture him: OK, how far would you go, Johannes Frisch? Would you cheat the old woman and her daughter? And the poor kid who doesn’t speak?
He was going to do it – that was all. No point in arguing.
He’d have to score the glasses again, as if he’d done it for the man. He stood up and got the pouch and the glasses out of his pocket, brought out a diamond and scraped it across the glasses again. Hungerland had scratched the left lens so he scratched the right one. Then he put the glasses on to see what he’d done. The scratches flew across his vision like insects and the lenses reshaped the world, pulling everything sideways, widening the oak trunks, stunting their upward growth. It made him feel dizzy. He took a step and tripped over a tree-root. The open pouch tumbled out of his hand along with the loose diamonds. He picked up the pouch. It was empty. There was a lot of grass here and he couldn’t see where the diamonds had gone.
He took the glasses off. He shouldn’t have mucked about like a silly kid, now look what had happened.
He crawled forward on all fours, searching the ground, his eyes picked up clover, dandelion and grass, and the greyish sandy soil underneath – and he saw a white gleam under a ragged leaf of dandelion. He put his hand out and found the small faceted hardness of a diamond. He grabbed it at once, afraid it’d escape again. He put it back in the pouch. He went on looking and at last he found the second stone. He went on hunting. He was looking so hard at soil, grass and leaves that when he shut his eyes for a moment they were still there. He might have to go back with only two diamonds, well, that would do, surely? But he wanted the third one, he didn’t want to tell Effi he’d lost it. And there it was, sitting on a clump of dry grey moss.
He stood up, holding the pouch, and someone came behind him. A hand took hold of his shoulder.
‘What are you doing, boy?’
It was Otto.
*
Ida
Rupf watched the girl. She was sitting with her eyes half-closed, one hand on the dog’s collar, the other on the side of the cart. She’d been pretending to doze for the last half-hour, but she was awake and alert, watching for the boy’s return.
‘Don’t worry,’ Ida said to her. ‘He’ll be back soon.’
‘I’m not worried.’
‘Dear God,’ said Ida, ‘you’re so young to be in love.’
‘In love, Granny? Not me.’
It was odd how nice it was to have the Berlin brat call you Granny when your own granddaughter was sitting there saying nothing and looking at nothing.
‘You don’t fool me, you baggage,’ said Ida.
The girl said: ‘My aunt said you always knew when you were in love because when he looked at you your heart raced and your knees went weak. The war does that to me, so how can I tell?’
Ida said, ‘You’ve all had to grow up too quickly, that’s the trouble, you boys and girls. With this terrible war – and now the Russians have come to tear the last of your innocence away. God help you.’
‘I don’t want to talk about the Russians.’
‘You’re probably right. Better not. But you’ve no respect nowadays, in my youth we really were young. We were innocent, so we respected our elders and did as we were told.’
The girl smiled, dear God, she was pretty when the corners of her mouth went up. ‘More fools you.’
‘Cheeky brat,’ said Ida. ‘There was a time in my life – in 1904, I was nineteen then – when I didn’t want to do as my father told me. I did in the end, though. I don’t know where I’d be now, if I’d followed my own way.’
‘It was a man,’ said the little baggage, ‘wasn’t it? Someone you wanted to marry. Does she know?’ She jerked her chin at Magda, who sat against a tree, snoring a little, with Barbara close beside her. The cow, which Magda had tethered to the same tree, was eating grass just behind them.
Ida said: ‘You’re too clever for your own good. No, she doesn’t know. And I might never have had her. Or my little Hans. He died, the poor child. He was so sweet. He looked like that boy. What are your names?’
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