‘I’m Effi, he’s Hanno.’
‘Hanno, it’s the same name as my child. Is he called Johannes?’
‘How should I know? I met him on the road, I’m not his godmother.’ Mockingly, the girl went on: ‘I know what your name is. Ida Rupf, and you own a hotel in the Giants’ Mountains. Near the Snowcap.’
‘Cheeking me again,’ said Ida, ‘but I do own that hotel, and maybe after the war you might marry someone rich enough to bring you there. Because I’ll go back. I’ve got the title deeds to the house in my pocket, and I’ve got all the silver buried in the garden.’ But her mind went running round the garden now, trying to remember where she’d buried the silver. Under the roses, maybe? ‘It was such a rush when we left,’ she said aloud. ‘I’d never have believed we’d have to leave like that, dear God, we had people in the hotel who’d been evacuated there, away from the bombing. So many things have happened that we can hardly believe.’
The doctor said, ‘I have to get that train.’
‘Where do you come from?’ Ida asked.
‘From Sterbin. I was senior paediatrician at a hospital there.’
‘Saving kids’ lives,’ said Effi, half-jeeringly, and Ida wondered why. ‘Earning gold cigarette cases. Have it back, by the way. I don’t need it.’
‘Why not?’ he asked. ‘It was your payment for getting me the tickets.’ But he took the cigarette case and put it away as if he had a right to it. He noticed that there was blood on his fur collar from the horses. He pulled the collar to his nose and sniffed fastidiously at it, then let it drop and dusted his two fingers together.
‘You can have this one on me,’ the girl said, grinning. ‘I’m a kind person, I go around doing good.’
‘I have always been a compassionate children’s physician,’ he said. ‘I have always striven to prevent unnecessary suffering.’ Then his shoulders shuddered together and his hand flew to his throat as if he was pushing something away from it. His eyes shot to the right, again. ‘I have problems with my nerves,’ he said. ‘War service.’
‘You just said you ran a kid’s ward?’ asked the girl. Magda gave a loud snore and woke herself up; she looked startled, and Ida remembered how she used to bawl in her cot in the mornings when she was a small child.
The girl said, ‘I was in hospital once. I hated it. I hated the doctors.’
‘Children don’t always understand what is good for them,’ Dr Hungerland said.
‘They made me have a bath as soon as I got there, as if I was dirty.’
‘Maybe you were,’ said Magda, sniffing.
‘And they made me stand against a horrible cold sheet of metal and they all went out of the room as if it was too dangerous to stay in there but I had to stay and there was this horrible whirring noise.’
‘A chest X-ray,’ said the doctor. ‘A necessary investigation.’
‘They didn’t explain anything to me. They didn’t talk to me. They just said: “Breathe in” or “Breathe out”.’
‘What would you have understood?’ said Hungerland. ‘Children have to obey.’
‘They gave me a drink of hot milk every night and stayed till I drank it. I used to think maybe it was poisoned, they were so keen for me to drink it.’
The girl looked straight at Dr Hungerland and he looked back at her. Then he gave one of his ghastly twitches. Ida felt a pain at her heart. Keep quiet, she told herself. Stay out of this.
Magda knew what was in her mother’s mind, and she didn’t want it even thought about. Magda was ashamed of her poor little brother. She said loudly: ‘Tell us about your war service, Dr Hungerland.’
He was relieved. He took a deep breath. ‘As the Front drew nearer, the hospital was evacuated, and we treated wounded soldiers. Although I am a physician and not a surgeon I volunteered to remain and serve my country. In fact, I had always believed I could have become a surgeon, I have a steady hand – at least, I had a steady hand. It was the experiences of the past few months that attacked my nerves.’ He gave the girl an offended look. ‘I was dealing with more soldiers than I could count. There was no time to count. I was dedicated, I never spared myself. I’d have to deal with a wound full of splinters, then a case of pneumonia. I am not as young as I was. In the end, they said to me: “Dr Hungerland, you are too dedicated, you have exhausted yourself. And now the Russians are coming. You have to accept that you can do no more here.” And of course, if the situation had not been so chaotic, arrangements would have been made – maybe a ticket for the train was sent to me, but didn’t reach me.’
Magda put a hand on her heart. ‘Did you ever treat a soldier called Lehmann? From Silesia?’
‘My good woman,’ the doctor said, ‘how do you expect me to remember? I might have treated fifty Silesian soldiers called Lehmann.’
Magda said, ‘It’s my husband. He doesn’t know where we are, I haven’t any way of finding out what has happened to him.’
Now Ida’s heart hurt for her daughter, and yet she said: ‘Magda, pull yourself together. You mustn’t give way.’ You couldn’t be sweet and kind to Magda, it didn’t work, she hated it. She was like Rupf. If you put your hand on her shoulder, she’d shrug you off.
‘I sympathize,’ said the doctor, but not as if he meant it. ‘My son-in-law is in the army. A colonel.’
He sat up and pushed his chest out to let them know he was an important man and everyone connected to him was important. As if he wasn’t on the run. He was mad. Mad people always had delusions of grandeur, he’d be telling them he had royal blood next. And now he jumped again, as if the thing he was afraid of had come up behind him to stop him boasting. Is there a train? thought Ida. Once upon a time I might have believed so, just because the doctor believed it. But it’s a long time since I believed doctors knew best. And the girl gave the doctor his cigarette case back. As if she had a conscience about deceiving him. Oh, dear, I’d rather not think the boy was lying. Not just because I’d like to get on a train, I’m wearier than I’ve ever been before in my life. No, it’s because he makes me think of my little Hans. Only he’s got good strong legs, he’s healthy.
The doctor said: ‘If my wife had been alive I would have evacuated with the hospital. But she left me ten years ago. Pleurisy.’ He said it as if she’d let him down by dying.
Ida thought, And what’s come over him all of a sudden that he won’t stop talking? Really, it was better when he kept his mouth shut.
He went on: ‘My only daughter lives in Lindau, on Lake Constance. She has two girls and a boy. Fine, healthy children.’
‘In Lindau,’ said Ida. ‘I suppose the Americans are coming to Lindau.’
‘I believe so,’ he said, and jumped, so that Ida thought a detachment of Russians were coming, but there was nobody. He leaned over to her and whispered: ‘Do you see eyes?’
She didn’t like this. ‘I can see your eyes,’ she said, ‘and I can see through my own.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Look behind me. There are at least a hundred pairs of eyes. One can see them most clearly at night, but even in the daytime – they follow me everywhere, but perhaps if I board the train I can leave them behind.’
There was a sound of boots tramping among the trees. Maybe the Russians were coming now after all. But it was the boy, and with him a big man, so it looked as if the story about the train might be true after all.
*
Otto, thought Effi. Oh no. This is where it gets really nasty.
‘This is the man?’ asked the doctor, standing up and holding his hand out to Otto. ‘The man who’s selling you my ticket? Hungerland,’ he said. Otto took the hand and gave it a sharp tug, no more Heil-Hitlering nowadays.
Ma Headscarf said, ‘Is there really a train leaving Kummersdorf for the west tomorrow? And you have tickets for it?’
Otto couldn’t be drunk now because you could see his mind going clicketty-click, fitting everything together. Easy for him, with Ma Headscarf feeding him the lines. Hungerland was putting his hand out again, Ott
o was digging his hand into his pocket and pulling out the ticket Effi had made for Hanno. Effi knew what else he had in there. The gun. And probably the diamonds, too, because Hanno had a furious, miserable look on his face. This was the Devil at work, a fiendishly clever director who’d engaged Otto to star as the man with the tickets. Hot as hell, this show was, and the Devil must be laughing his head off at the rest of them.
Otto gave the ticket to the doctor, who stowed it quickly in his own pocket. Hanno walked away from him and came close to Effi, but Otto kept his eyes on him and his hand on the bulge in his pocket.
Hungerland asked: ‘Will you show me which way to go?’
‘You paid well,’ said Otto. (So he had got the diamonds from Hanno. Poor Swing Boy.) ‘I’ll take you to the train. We can leave as soon as the fighting finishes over there.’
‘What kind of train is this?’ asked Ma Headscarf. Nothing more from her about there not being a train, she was gaping at Otto as if he was Jesus Christ come to be her saviour.
‘It was meant for a few selected high Party officials,’ said Otto, ‘but some of them weren’t able to leave Berlin, so we have some tickets to spare. At a price, though,’ he said, and his eyes ran over the women.
‘Mother?’ said Magda Headscarf to the old dame. Otto looked warningly at Hanno and shoved his hand in his pocket again. Fine policeman he was, the best con man of all. And he wasn’t about to let Hanno or Effi give the game away.
The old woman looked at Hanno too, and then she said roughly, ‘I haven’t got anything.’ She knew – old Rupfi had rumbled Otto.
Ma Headscarf hadn’t, though. ‘Mother –’ she said again. She believed Otto, just because he was a big evil-looking man? You’d think she’d have learned after twelve years of Nazi rule. ‘We could go to Aunt Dorothea, as you said.’
Hanno whispered to Effi: ‘He made me give him the diamonds. And the ticket. He came back here with me to find out who I got them from. I couldn’t stop him.’
‘He’s evil,’ Effi whispered back. ‘But at least he hasn’t killed you yet.’
Otto gave them a threatening look. They’d have to be so careful now.
Ida Rupf asked: ‘Where is Kummersdorf?’
‘South-west from here,’ said Otto, promptly.
‘We can go there,’ said Frau Rupf, staring at him, ‘and see if there really is a train.’
‘Stupid old woman,’ said Otto, laughing at her. ‘You’ll have to get your ticket before they’ll let you within half a kilometre of it.’
‘All right,’ said the old dame, pulling herself up. ‘We’ll go to within half a kilometre and see the guards. Then I’ll buy a ticket.’
You could see Otto’s mind working: She’ll get so tired by the end of the day, she’ll be ready to drop, then she might change her mind and buy a ticket without expecting to see the guards. But if he wanted her valuables, why didn’t he just shoot her now and get them? He could make her take her clothes off first, the way he probably had with Jews in Russia, and go through them when he’d finished her off. Maybe it did make a difference to him that she was Aryan. He’d have shot an old Jewish dame without thinking twice about it.
He said, ‘We’ll all go together to the train.’
So that was it. No chance of Hanno and Effi sneaking off yet, that’d give the game away. And what did he mean to do with them when he’d fleeced Frau Rupf? It wasn’t fair, anyway, she’d started to like the old woman.
The doctor put his hand on his suitcase. ‘I am ready to go,’ he said, trembling slightly. ‘As soon as the way is clear.’
*
Hanno walked with the others across the swampy field with the bulrushes. The track ran across a dyke, so their feet stayed dry. Otto was walking at the back, watching everybody. Frau Magda, beside him, was saying something about ‘a comfort to have someone who knows the way’. The cow plodded resignedly along, and little Barbara went with her pale face and her closed lips, staring down at the ground. The wood ahead of them was a mess of smashed and smoking trees.
‘Do you think this is safe?’ Effi whispered to Hanno.
‘It’s gone all quiet over there. Look, anywhere we go is dangerous when we’re with him.’
She said: ‘He can’t threaten us directly because we’re supposed to want to get on the train. Is this just about getting the old dame’s valuables?’
‘How should I know? I hate him.’
‘I’d say we look for a place where we could slip away, but I want to warn the old dame. I don’t want him fleecing her.’
‘I want to get the diamonds back. They were my loot.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t care about them.’
‘Why not? Have you got the cigarette case?’
‘I gave it back to Hungerland.’
‘Why?’
‘Too complicated to explain, kid. Look, what matters is that we’re together.’
Hanno stared at her. She liked him after all. He’d hoped so, she’d looked a little bit pleased when he’d found her after she’d run away. For a moment, he didn’t care about the diamonds, but they were for her. And he remembered Otto, his gun in his hand, making him hand over the diamonds: right, boy, I’m taking everything now. Laughing at him. And there’d been nothing he could do but obey. His stomach tightened and he clenched his fists.
In front of them, Hungerland was saying to Frau Rupf, ‘And of course, I was presented with a decoration by the Führer in person – you, boy and girl, keep your dog under control. He keeps knocking into my legs. And slobbering on my coat.’
Cornelius growled at him.
‘Dogs are degenerate,’ the doctor said to Hanno and Effi, telling them off. ‘What is there to associate an animal like this with the ferocious nobility of the wolf?’
‘Our Dr Hungerland sees eyes,’ said Effi to Hanno. ‘Come on, Cornelius, you don’t want to waste your time on him.’
‘Eyes?’ said Hanno.
‘Hundreds of them. Hanging in the air. He told the old woman, but she didn’t ask him whose eyes they were.’
‘Is there a train?’ Frau Rupf asked Hanno.
Otto said, ‘Careful!’ Hanno knew what he meant, and he went on, for the benefit of the others: ‘We don’t know what we might find in the woods.’
The doctor continued with his lecture. ‘When the dog is bred for selected characteristics,’ he said, ‘such as a long body, like the dachshund, or floppy ears like the spaniel, it not only brings with it associated health problems – ear canker in the spaniel, back trouble in the dachshund – but also behavioural problems. If you breed a dog to have floppy ears like a puppy, its nature will remain juvenile for the whole of its life. Subservient, foolish. At least the Alsatian or the husky are physically close to the wolf.’ And on he droned, you wouldn’t have thought he had the energy to talk so much.
Chapter Fourteen
The wind had been blowing towards the wood, so they’d picked their way about fifty metres in among the wrecked trees before the smoke from the battle got really thick; then it got worse with every step. Hanno remembered the smell and hated it: spent explosives, burned-petrol fumes, and something worse. It caught in his throat, he was coughing, they were all coughing. They all stopped still. Cornelius whined and dragged on his string. They were looking at broken trees and a fog of smoke.
‘They’ve been using phosphorus,’ said Otto grimly. ‘But we have to go through here if you want to reach the train.’
The doctor put his suitcase up in front of his chest and went ahead of them all. At least he wasn’t talking any longer. Hanno heard men crying out. Wounded men. Frau Magda heard it as well, and her hand went to her heart for a moment, then she took Barbara by the hand and walked forward, tripping over a tussock of grass. Frau Rupf shrugged her shoulders and followed her.
‘Move,’ said Otto, behind Hanno.
‘If you say it’s safe, Herr Major,’ said Effi in the silly-girl voice she’d used with him before.
‘Don’t fool around,’ sa
id Otto. They walked forward. It was horrible to feel him behind them. But maybe they could get away in the smoke, find a broken piece of wood, he’d hit Otto over the head with it and get the diamonds out of his pocket. That’d be better than just escaping. He didn’t want Otto to get away with it. He wanted to punish him.
They went gingerly along the track. And there was a German corpse: fair-haired, blood-soaked, and another whose head was too much of a mess to see what colour his hair had been. Frau Magda stared at him, then looked quickly away. We’re crazy to come here, thought Hanno.
They almost fell into a sandy crater, then there was a rearing broken tank, an armoured car, a fallen helmet like a blackened cooking-pot and a bare-headed dead soldier. They had to go round dead horses and broken carts, and a pram, just like the cart, with a lot of bundles spilled out of it. A woman and a child were lying there dead. Nothing to do for them. They walked on, coughing, eyes streaming. Most of the time Hanno and Effi had to carry the cart between them. Cornelius kept close to Effi with his tail down between his legs. The cow didn’t like it either, she kept stopping and mooing and Frau Magda had to drag her along. Now suddenly there were grey men leaning against grey metal, splashed with blood. Other men writhing on the ground. The cries were animal or babyish, any language or none. And there were Russians right here, Russians who had come to the wounded with stretchers. When little Barbara saw the Russians she let out a scream. Her mother seized her and clapped her hand over her mouth. Barbara twisted herself free, dropped to the ground and screamed again, hunching herself into a ball.
There were four Russians and they all had guns. The doctor was standing quite still now, with his shoulders hunched. Hanno turned round to look at Otto and saw him in the same posture, scared rigid, the filthy coward. Frau Magda had put her hands over her face. Frau Rupf was shaking. Hanno reached out to Effi’s arm and felt a small, stiff tremble going through her. Cornelius growled.
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