Last Train from Kummersdorf

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Last Train from Kummersdorf Page 17

by Leslie Wilson


  ‘Senile hag,’ said Otto, but he herded them all out and then shut the door.

  He stood in the salon tipping cognac down his throat, straight out of the bottle. Some of it ran down his chin and dripped on the floor.

  ‘We can have a party,’ said Effi. If they were in for it, they were in for it and she wasn’t going to show she was scared. ‘A party for Sperling and other loved ones we’ve lost. Are there any fags about?’

  ‘Look in the desk drawer, boy,’ said Otto.

  Hanno pulled it open.

  ‘Cigars,’ he said.

  ‘They’ll do,’ said Otto.

  ‘And there’s a wind-up gramophone here,’ said Hanno. ‘In the kneehole of the desk.’

  ‘Are the records any good?’ asked Effi.

  ‘I can’t see any. There are matches. And a little silver knife to cut the heads off the cigars.’

  Otto went over and started the men’s rigmarole of cigar-cutting and lighting. Effi remembered Schulz doing the same thing. Maybe the cigar would slow down Otto’s boozing. Then the kitchen door opened and old Ida came out with a lovely string of pearls in her hand. Otto held out his hand for them. She dropped them into his palm.

  ‘Now I’ve nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing except my family and this boy and girl and their dog. And tonight’s dinner. I’ve paid for it.’ She laughed. Good for her. It bemused Otto. Probably he’d been hoping to see her cry. She went back into the kitchen.

  ‘Nice silver cutlery,’ she called out to them. ‘Champagne flutes, a porcelain dinner-service – Dresden! Cut-crystal dessert dishes, here’s a lovely damask tablecloth with napkins. And a carving knife and fork with bone handles, and a strop, everything right and proper.’

  ‘As nice as in your hotel?’ asked Effi.

  ‘I’ll have a cigar,’ said Frau Rupf. ‘After all, we’ve all paid our share, haven’t we, Herr Otto?’

  And Otto just handed the cigars out and a moment later they were all smoking except little Barbara, who was happy just to nibble chocolate. By and by Frau Rupf put her cigar down on a crystal ashtray she’d found, brought one of the damask cloths out of the kitchen and spread it over the table. Ma Headscarf fetched an armful of silver cutlery.

  ‘Listen,’ said Frau Rupf suddenly. ‘I can hear the cow.’

  There was a loud mooing outside the carriage. The cow needed to be milked and she was standing there asking them for help. Poor creature.

  ‘You’d better go out and milk her,’ Frau Rupf said to her daughter. ‘For Barbara.’

  ‘There’s condensed milk here,’ said Ma Headscarf. She didn’t want to go outside the train.

  ‘And there’s tomorrow, and the day after, and a cow walks with milk inside her. You won’t be able to carry all those tins.’

  ‘Tomorrow we’ll be on the train,’ said Ma Headscarf. Her mother opened her mouth to contradict her, then she glanced at Otto and shut it again. The cow kept calling to them. Effi was scared then, because it was the cat that had got Otto going back at the farm, but he just snapped: ‘Go and milk that beast, she’ll bring the Russians!’

  You couldn’t tell who he was giving the order to, but it was Ma Headscarf who went. She took a silver champagne chiller for a pail.

  Otto got up now, cigar in one hand, and started tapping along the walls with the other hand as if he was doing it for fun.

  Effi nudged Hanno. ‘He’s looking for a safe. What do you think he means to do? Because now he’s got the pearls there’s no reason why he shouldn’t shoot the lot of us.’

  ‘Come here,’ said Hanno. ‘Look what I’ve found.’

  He’d opened one of the doors of the enormous desk. There were records there, a rack of about fifteen in their brown paper jackets.

  ‘What’s there?’ she asked.

  He pulled out a record and whispered, ‘It’s something to do with me. I think so, anyway. He knows I don’t believe him about Father and he wants me to believe it. He wants to hurt me, then he might start shooting.’ Loudly, he said, ‘“The Blue Danube”.’

  ‘That sounds nice,’ said Frau Rupf. ‘Put it on.’

  ‘Hang on a bit,’ said Hanno. ‘Let’s see what else there is.’ He whispered, ‘We’ve just got to be on our guard, ready for anything.’

  Effi crouched next to him. ‘Maybe he wants dinner served up to him before he kills anyone. I’m going to act harmless, anyway. As if I was all carried away by the party.’

  He went on pulling the records out one by one. His face was intent, then he turned round and looked at her and suddenly his eyes went all soft the way Pierre’s used to when he looked at Aunt Annelie.

  He loves me, thought Effi. Did my heart go bump because of that, or is it only because of Otto?

  ‘We’ll have this one,’ said Hanno.

  ‘Let me see.’

  ‘You’ll hear.’ He held the record out of her reach with his hand over the label.

  ‘OK,’ she said, and started to wind up the gramophone.

  ‘Don’t look.’

  Otto was patting the walls and keeping one eye on them both. She didn’t care now.

  Hanno put the record on. It was Louis. Nobody else had that croaky, wonderful voice, amused, tender, with a hint of a sadness he wasn’t ever going to give in to, there was so much in his voice. And when he went on to play trumpet – Pierre used to say nobody else could give the trumpet that clarity and brilliance. It made you forget you were tired, all you thought about was dancing. Now Hanno showed her the label. Of course it was Louis. It was dangerous to make a noise, but you could only worry about so much danger.

  Effi stood up and started to dance, held out her hand to Hanno. He picked up the rhythm easily. He was a really sweet mover. When she touched his hand a buzz went right through her – do I love him? she thought. Would it help if I had a daisy to pull the petals off? Dr Hungerland gave them both a bad look, but he didn’t say anything. Then Frau Rupf shook her head and she was moving to the music while she set the table, even Otto was patting the wall to the rhythm of Louis’s trumpet, and suddenly the little Barbara was there, though she didn’t smile and she was clumsy, not quite with the rhythm, but she was dancing. Ma Headscarf came in with her silver milk pail, and stood there gobsmacked to see what her kid was doing.

  ‘I know what,’ said Effi, stopping still. ‘I’m going to have a wash. So should you, Swing Boy.’

  ‘In what?’ he asked.

  ‘Champagne. I bet it’s really good for the skin.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Effi fetched four bottles of champagne out of the kitchen.

  ‘Two for you, Swing Boy, two for me.’

  She’d almost forgotten they were in danger. She took him by the hand, picked up her lamp, and started towing him towards the bathroom. Cornelius, who’d eaten all the horsemeat, now got up, stretched, and made to follow.

  ‘Not so fast,’ Otto said sharply. ‘You’re not both going in there together.’ His face was hard all of a sudden, watchful, but he kept on tapping the wall.

  ‘One at a time,’ put in Frau Magda, ‘a boy and a girl in a bathroom together, whatever next!’

  Hanno started to laugh, Effi laughed too. It was better than screaming, anyway.

  Dr Hungerland said, ‘Thank heavens that terrible noise has finished. How can there be such music on this train, degenerate, Negro music?’

  ‘So you recognize Louis Armstrong?’ asked Effi. ‘What else is there, Hanno?’

  Hanno put his two champagne bottles on the desk, crouched down behind it and started pulling out records.

  ‘The Quintet of the Hot Club de France, Stephane Grappelli, Django Reinhardt and Larry Adler?’

  ‘He plays harmonica,’ said Effi. ‘He’s brilliant.’

  ‘Then there’s more Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman. Goodman’s Jewish, isn’t he? They were such hypocrites, the high-ups.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Otto. ‘The top brass thought they couldn’t be corrupted. That kind of music – jungle music – it’s not for Ger
mans. Look at you all just now, dancing and drooling like black baboons.’

  ‘It got to you, too,’ said Hanno. ‘Didn’t it?’

  Otto stared across the room at him with his glassy blue eyes. Hanno stared back. Careful, Swing Boy.

  Otto said, ‘I suppose you’re glad we lost.’

  ‘You were lying about my father,’ said Hanno. It wasn’t just that Otto wanted to hurt Hanno. There was some kind of duel going on between them. Otto was taking his time, why shouldn’t he? He had a gun. Just as long as he didn’t get too drunk. Maybe religion would help them all. Hail Mary, full of grace, keep this swine policeman sober.

  ‘No,’ said Otto.

  There was a loud pop. Otto jumped and pulled his gun out. Cornelius started barking. Then Otto laughed, half-angrily. Frau Rupf had opened a bottle of champagne.

  ‘We’ll all have a drink,’ she said.

  ‘I want apple juice,’ said Hanno.

  ‘What a good boy,’ said Frau Rupf, but Effi guessed why he was drinking apple juice. She thought the old dame guessed, too. He wanted to keep his head clear.

  Frau Rupf said, ‘Barbara can have apple juice, too, but I expect the baggage will want to drink champagne as well as washing in it. Go on, hussy, or you’ll keep us waiting for ever for our dinner.’

  So Effi went along the corridor with her bottles of champagne. Cornelius’s head went this way and that, unsure who to go with but then he turned towards the food smell from the kitchen and decided to stay put.

  *

  Effi went into the little bathroom. It had its own toilet, best-quality paper too, and a sea sponge hanging from a chrome hook on the wall. She put the champagne bottle down on the floor and the lamp on the little shelf beside the sink. She undressed, throwing her clothes on the floor. They were stiff with dirt, it was so good to take them off. Now she popped the first cork and set champagne smoking and frothing into the sink. She got the sponge, wet it with champagne, and hopped into the bath where she cleaned herself off, especially her feet, they were filthy – and shivered with the cold of it. Grapes in the rain, she thought, somewhere down in France where Pierre was born. Only he said they don’t make champagne in Alsace. They make sparkling wine on the German side of the Rhine. The British are on the Rhine now, and the Americans.

  She imagined American soldiers laughing, taking her hand, pulling her along the street. Shouting: ‘Bruno, here’s your kid!’

  Papa getting up from behind a desk. Papa with his arms spread wide. On the photograph he was wearing a linen jacket and a summer hat, but he’d be in Ami uniform. And Hanno would be there, too. She wasn’t quite sure what would happen about Hanno. Papa would get in touch with his mother and his sister. Would he have to go away then?

  Aloud, she said, ‘Don’t dream too hard, kid.’ She opened the second bottle and poured it down over herself, cold as a rainshower, squeaked with the cold and saved a drop to drink. She dried herself with the fluffy towel that was hanging there. That felt warmer. She rubbed her hands down over her belly. It was hollow and hard. ‘I’ll make you bulge tonight,’ she promised.

  There was a little cupboard behind the mirror. She opened it. Treasure. There was an unused lipstick, nail varnish, a manicure set, a brush and comb and a new bottle of French perfume. The lipstick was bright red. The Nazis used to say the pure German woman shouldn’t wear makeup, so which impure woman was going to use all this stuff? Magda Goebbels, maybe? Or fat Hermann Göring’s floozy wife Emmy?

  She combed the tangles out of her hair – it hurt, but it was so good to feel them coming out. Then she pushed her lips forward and outlined them in the dim yellow-amber light from the lamp. She dug the dirt out of her nails, fingers and toes, and painted them bright red too. She squeezed the rubber globe of the perfume bottle. It smelt good, even on top of champagne.

  She didn’t want to get dressed in her dirty clothes. Maybe there was something in the sleeping compartments that she could wear? She wrapped the towel round her and took her lamp out into the corridor. There were cupboards under the beds, men’s pyjamas in three of them, in the fourth she hit the jackpot. A pair of white silk satin pyjamas, only a little too big for her, but the legs were short and she could tear the waistband open a little and make the elastic tighter. A white silk satin kimono, as well as satin slippers with swansdown trimmings, also too big, but she’d wear them.

  Back in the bathroom, she bundled up her skirt, her shirt and knickers and put them in the bag with the cotton reels and Schulz’s cigarettes. That bag was as fat as a beat-up featherbed now, but she had to carry it. She’d have to put the jacket on over the pyjamas to hide the bag. So she couldn’t wear the kimono, pity about that, but the jacket looked surprisingly good. Now she’d go back to the party. She’d have to carry her boots in her hand, that wasn’t very elegant, but it didn’t matter.

  Otto had given up tapping the walls and was sprawled in a chair opposite Hungerland, watching Hanno while Ida Rupf and Ma Headscarf set the table. They’d been hard at work: they’d found some candles and silver candlesticks, and there were thin slices of smoked salmon set out on black bread. Heaps of caviar glittered blackly in crystal saucers, and there was a serving dish full of new potatoes, peas and carrots. Who cared if they were cold!

  ‘Hussy,’ said Frau Rupf, setting down a dish of gherkins – you could smell their sharpness from three metres away. As for Hanno, the way his eyes opened wide you’d have thought Greta Garbo had come into the carriage. She thought, I was pretty before, was I, Swing Boy? Just look at me now.

  Otto looked at her from his chair, his blue eyes cold and hostile. And Dr Hungerland looked. Intently, as if he could see right through the silk pyjamas. He wasn’t just thinking dirty thoughts, though, there was something far worse going on inside his head. For a moment, she wished she’d put all her ordinary clothes back on. Then he shut his eyes as if he had a headache and kept them shut. She was glad.

  Ma Headscarf looked too, and for a moment there was a yearning look on her face. And little Barbara came over to Effi and put her fingers on the pyjamas. They were rough and snagged the silk. She shook her head, thought for a moment, turned her hand over and stroked the silk with the back of it.

  ‘Nice,’ she said.

  Effi grinned.

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  Frau Rupf started to say something, then put her hand over her mouth. Ma Headscarf got her rosary beads out and started to tell them. Almost frantically, poor ugly dame.

  ‘Hanno boy,’ said Effi. ‘Go and get washed. I’m hungry.’

  He went.

  ‘Your dog likes smoked salmon,’ said Frau Rupf. Cornelius was her friend now, slavering next to her. ‘I didn’t give him too much, though. Dogs mustn’t be spoiled, though they’re always hungry. I wonder how much you’d have to give a dog before he’d stop eating? I think he’d burst.’ She laughed, she didn’t care about the dog or anything else, she was like a dog with two tails herself, because Barbara had spoken.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Barbara, as if there was nothing special about her talking. Her grandmother seized her and kissed her, then let her go.

  Effi went to look over the records for herself. She found the Larry Adler record and thought she’d put it on, till she found another that made her whistle. It was ‘Raindrops Shining in Your Hair’. Papa’s music. The Nazis had bought it, just like they’d bought Louis Armstrong’s black-man’s music and Benny Goodman’s Jewish music. There was another of Papa’s on the other side, ‘Riviera Nights’. She wound up the gramophone, she couldn’t wait. She’d never heard the record before, and here she was going to listen to it in a Nazi fat-cat carriage before a feast of looted food, with battles going on all around her and a Nazi with a gun waiting to murder her, maybe.

  I’m lost and broken-hearted

  lonesome, weary and blue

  and I’m writing these words, dear, to tell you –

  She was so proud, she wanted to shout: ‘My father wrote those words and the music, and the Nazis boug
ht his record, not the crappy German version about the soldier taking his sweetheart’s photograph to the Front.’ Of course, it wasn’t Papa singing, but it sounded as if it was his voice, singing to her.

  I’m waiting for you now, my darling,

  I’m just longing to kiss you again

  To see your bright eyes smiling –

  Hanno was back with his face all clean. OK, she still wasn’t sure if she loved him, but it sure made her happy to see him come through the salon door. Now they’d eat, to the sound of Papa’s words and his music. She danced to the table and snatched up black bread and smoked salmon. Did it taste good! But she thought, This is like me and Pierre in the burning house, I can’t feel the flames this time, but they’re all round us.

  *

  At dinner, Dr Hungerland said, ‘I used to have good dinners when I visited other specialists in my field. When I went to Dr Pfannmüller’s institution in Bavaria we had Château Mouton-Rothschild, duck with orange, crêpes suzette. Liqueurs and coffee. But I couldn’t agree with his policies. I didn’t believe in causing unnecessary suffering.’

  Effi saw Otto nod to himself. Otto understood what bad business had taken Hungerland down to Pfannmüller’s place.

  She took a teaspoonful of caviar. The little black globes popped against her tongue. They tasted soapy, but she liked the popping. Cornelius, the gourmet dog, was walking round and gazing up at all of them, drooling. Barbara gave him bread and a spoonful of caviar.

  ‘It’s good,’ she said.

  ‘The champagne’s superb,’ said Frau Rupf. ‘Louis Roederer.’ The dog whined, he thought he ought to have champagne as well as smoked salmon and caviar.

  ‘Not for dogs,’ said the old dame. ‘A drunken dog – that would be a fine thing.’

  Effi sipped the French champagne. It popped against her tongue in a different way from the caviar. When she was famous and had her tame lion and the pink limousine, she’d have champagne for breakfast every morning. And bath in it first. She could just scoop a glassful of champagne out of her bath and drink it then and there. And she’d have caviar in the soap dish. Only where would Hanno be? No, she wouldn’t worry about that, she wouldn’t worry about Otto either. Not at this feast.

 

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