The Writing on the Wall and Other Stories

by Penny Edwards

  One was a photo of a man and a woman, each holding a small child high above them, both only a few months old. Maybe they were twins. Behind them, a woman was standing on a chair, seeing if this would allow her to see over the wall. She had her hands on her waist, inquisitive yet defiant. Her hair was in a bun and she wore a smart skirt and cardigan but comfy slippers adorned her feet. A man in an overall seemed to be having a conversation with the woman on the stool…

  “Can you see anything?”

  “Not much, oh there’s Frau Trenkner. Frau Trenkner! Frau Trenkner! Frau Trenkner!”

  “Stop waving like that. You’re going to get into trouble.”

  “No, I’m not. We’re OK here.”

  “But Frau…”

  “Frau Trenkner! What’s happening? She can’t hear me. She’s knocking on Herr Kielberg’s door by the look of it. They seem to be doing something at the end of the road, but I can’t see what. Let’s hope they’re not going to pull down Herr Miller’s shop. Bastards.”

  “Shut up, Petra.”

  The young man, his child still held high above him, turned to the woman who was loftier than any of them.

  “Can you see a young woman, about my age?” He smiled nervously. “Actually, she looks very like me. It’s my sister. She wants to see the children and we said we’d be here now. It is eleven, isn’t it?” He indicated that it would be dangerous for him to look at his watch. Instead, the woman consulted hers and nodded that it was ten-past.

  “There’s someone walking towards the wall who could be her.”

  “That’s my sister. Always a bit late. Well, if it is her,” he added, not wanting to judge a stranger in any way.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Anna.”

  “Hey, Anna! Anna! They’re here,” and she pointed across to the children, who were only a little lower than she was.

  The woman broke into a run and started waving frantically. “Siegfried! Martha!”

  “She’s coming,” and the woman smiled at the couple who now completely straightened their arms so the children were as far as they could possibly go.

  “Is that you, Siegfried?”

  “Yes, hello. Can you see them?”

  “I can. I can. They’re beautiful. They look so like you, Martha. Which is a good job! How are you both?”

  “We’re OK. We haven’t had much sleep with these two, but we’re managing. How about you?”

  “I’m OK. It’s OK.” And she repeated she was OK, a little more quietly the second time.

  The man and woman looked at one another and lowered the children. They walked right up to the wall and touched it with the hand that was free.

  Helen walked towards another photo. It was of two soldiers.

  “What did you really want to be?”

  “You mean apart from being a soldier?” and his mate laughed.

  Bernd smiled. “Oh, I dunno. My dad wanted me to be a lawyer, but I never did well enough. I think he was upset about my results, but he didn’t show it.” Bernd stared through the wire and readjusted his rifle.

  “What’s that?” His mate turned to look in the same direction as Bernd. They could see someone loitering a few metres away.

  His mate sounded stern. “I could swear I’ve seen him before. Troublemaker. Hey, you! Yes, you! One more move and I shoot.” He cocked his rifle. The man ran. “Well, that’s probably the most excitement we’ll see on this duty.” He grinned.

  Bernd smiled. “Yeah, usually, it’s so…”

  “Boring?” suggested his mate.

  Bernd only half smiled. He never knew who he could truly trust.

  She gathered around a group watching the TV. It was footage showing people jumping from the windows of their apartment blocks down onto the street below. Many had their arms outstretched, trying to catch those who were crawling down the walls of the apartments. Many were crying. Many yelling. She vaguely remembered seeing this years ago in the comfort of her home. She reached for a board, which was lying on one of the benches, that described what was happening in English. It was Bernauerstrasse. The street she’d visited with Hans and Rosa. The place where Stephen had helped dig a tunnel.

  11

  Peter thought about what the electrician had said the other day, how people these days couldn’t seem to be able to live a minute without being connected up to something or another, as if they’d die if they couldn’t put the telly on or get the internet. He’d pointed out that what his tenant had wanted was hot water, not so much of a luxury, but it got him thinking. The electrician was right. People could live without more than they realised.

  Immediately after the war, there was always a joke in their house that Freddy, the English soldier, fraternised. It was the only time he heard his aunt use an English word and it was Freddy himself who started the joke.

  When Freddy was with them, he got them all to say it as quickly as they could to see who’d say it the most times without tripping up. Peter remembered he usually won, though looking back he suspected they let him, and a great cheer would go up accompanied by much clapping. Freddy was running quite a risk, because without a wall or windows on one side of their house they could probably be heard at least a few metres down the road.

  He was a gentle man and when he was older Peter always wondered how on earth Freddy had ever got through the war to be so emotionally intact. And physically it must’ve been a struggle for he was slight and not very tall. He had a kind face that smiled a lot and winked at Peter when he was joking, using mime rather than a raised voice to overcome the language barrier. He would smuggle in a bit of extra soup or whatever was going that day and there wasn’t much. It didn’t matter they didn’t understand what he was saying. Such a gesture was common language enough.

  “You know, Frau Gunther said they’re calling our windows ‘sparrows’ delight’.” His mother looked thin and weary. “Though God knows what sparrow…” She seemed surprised to see him standing next to her. “Hello, my fine young man. And when did you wake up?”

  He didn’t say the same time he started to hear her walk about, which was probably about 5.30. This was when she told his aunt she usually woke. The cold did it. No matter how many rugs and blankets they tucked around their bodies and pulled over their faces, the howling wind and chilly night air disturbed them all intermittently throughout the night and after 5.30 it was only rarely possible to catch any more sleep. But he didn’t tell his mother that. He liked her to think he felt better than he did. None of this was her fault and he was frightened by the fear in her face every time she stepped out of their living space to begin the exhausting hunt for food. Nothing would have induced him to add to what had become, to him, her permanent look of anxiety.

  Sometimes, he would’ve given the world to let out a good moan about the lack of food. He could hardly remember a time when he didn’t feel slightly hungry and since the end of the war it had become just hungry; there was no slightly anymore. His mother would say, “Peter, food is scarce and hard to come by,” again and again, so by now, apart from being bored by her saying this, he felt they were being punished, which he thought was hugely unfair as he’d never killed anyone in his life and never wanted to. And his mother and aunt had always tried to save the lives of the tiniest of insects; this was true even now, when there were so many of them it was tempting to tread on the lot.

  She hugged him. “We have some milk.”

  He squeezed her hand because he could feel how happy she was. That they had milk was a great achievement. Yesterday, they hadn’t managed to get any and he’d heard his mother complain to her friend Heike, something about her ration card having the lowest grade possible.

  “Housewives,” she groaned. “In the pecking order we apparently have the same grade as Nazis.” He heard her asking Heike about working in the American canteens, but Heike
had replied that that wasn’t much good if she was trying to get food for Peter because she’d heard somewhere that they resented German women taking any food away with them, but what did they expect? It’s a woman’s instinct, isn’t it? How could you enjoy feeling well fed when your children were starving? And the state of a lot of children she’d seen recently was… and he didn’t catch Heike’s next words for she’d lowered her voice into a whisper, but he’d guessed them anyway. Exactly how old did Heike think he was?

  “Good Germans, bad Germans, we’re all the same,” Auntie Gerda had added. Well, he’d heard that from some of his friends often enough and it was true; the people who were in charge now didn’t seem to know the difference. They were all bad in the eyes of their old enemies. Sometimes he felt like he did at school when a teacher gloated over his innocent stumblings, as if the moral triumph was always theirs for the taking. Which was why Freddy was so special.

  The Russians got to them first and they didn’t see any other soldiers for weeks. Both his mother and aunt started to look tenser than they ever had during the war. And if they went out, they were always with a group of friends. That was when she and Auntie Gerda got to know Heike.

  Once, they came back and his mother asked him for his bicycle. It was a strange question because she liked walking better, but he thought it was probably difficult underfoot, so he got his prized possession, which had survived everything, from beside his bed and gave it to her. His father had given it to him just before the start of the war and had lived for only another eight days, so Peter had done everything in his power to look after it. His mother knew how much it meant to him and had said that the best place to put it during the war was in the cupboard under the stairs.

  His mother was crying when he passed it over and disappeared outside with it. When she came back she was still crying and she didn’t have his bicycle. Despite her protests he rushed onto the street and saw a Russian soldier cycling on it, pleased with his new acquisition and showing it off to his comrades.

  At that moment he was so angry with her he thought he could never forgive her. He hated her and that felt very odd because he couldn’t imagine his life without her. He heard a German voice behind him. It was saying, “Never mind.” Peter shrugged and turned round. A man, probably only a few years older than him, offered a consoling look. He looked dirty and smelt foul. He touched Peter’s shoulder. “Never mind,” he said again and gave Peter a sad smile. Peter burst out crying. Once he started he couldn’t stop and the man offered his arm to Peter’s face. Peter rubbed his snotty nose up and down the grey flannel sleeve, said thank you and walked away from his bedraggled comforter.

  It was doubly painful because he’d have to walk everywhere. There were no buses and no trains, so on top of his mother not feeding him properly he would only be able to go to places he could walk to. He didn’t speak to her or Auntie Gerda for two days afterwards and his mother, he was almost glad to see, couldn’t have spoken to him anyway because she spent all the time crying. That night he wanted dark to come more than anything because then he wouldn’t have to look at her; they’d run out of candles, and he could think about his father, who would never have betrayed him like this.

  After what seemed like a very long time, other soldiers came to Berlin and Peter got to know Freddy.

  His mother had warned him that one day, when they were out walking, he might see some horrible things. Really horrible. And she squeezed his arms so hard, he could only respond with, “Ow, you’re hurting me,” and didn’t really hear what she said next. He couldn’t understand why she was saying this. They’d seen almost nothing but horrible things when they went out of their house in the last few years – houses blown to pieces; people crying; soldiers shouting – and only yesterday he’d helped her clear the rubble of a house while the person who, he supposed, had lived there stood by and wailed. And then he’d seen that bastard of a soldier ride off on his beloved bicycle.

  “Peter,” she implored, “when we walk past these things, these photographs, I’ll tell you to close your eyes and you must hold my hand.”

  Inwardly, he felt annoyed that, like Heike, his mother didn’t seem to understand he was growing up and that he would much prefer to see something horrible than face the humiliation of holding her hand in public.

  So it was when he was disobeying her and looking at a photograph of what seemed to be a tractor ploughing something that Freddy said, “Hello,” and he turned, before understanding the photograph, to hear an English word spoken by an English person. He felt a tingle of excitement, but his mother looked worried and pulled him towards her.

  Frankly, he was getting a bit sick of her doing this. The war was over. Life was hard, but it was about time she let him stand up for himself a bit more. He smiled back at the man. He liked the look of him, but his mother said, “Come on,” and he was forced to walk away. “Don’t talk to foreign soldiers,” she said. “They don’t like us and they’re not supposed to talk to us.” But he didn’t care. He was fed up with his mother and Auntie Gerda being the only adults he had anything much to do with, so when she wasn’t looking he turned and waved at the soldier, who waved his right hand a little and waved back.

  They saw him again about a week later when they were helping clear another lot of rubble.

  “You make us clean up what you caused,” he heard the grumbles and whispers amongst the women.

  *

  Freddy was helping to organise the operation. God, this must be back-breaking work and he felt sorry for the sad-looking women; most of them had probably lost their husbands, spending most of their day with bent backs, carrying loads that would’ve defied the strength of a well-fed bloke. What a bloody mess this all was. A world gone mad. Arthur had said this was nothing compared to Dresden; you wouldn’t think it was a city, he’d said, so much history just plain wiped out. None of us like them, he’d said, but… and there he’d been lost for words. Freddy wasn’t sure he didn’t like them. Seemed all right a lot of the time. Well, considering.

  There was that boy again with his mum. Freddy felt a bit choked up because he was the image of his Johnny back home. Jean had said he was doing well in her last letter. He’d had scarlet fever, which had been a terrible worry and had occupied his mind most of the time over the last couple of weeks, but he was slowly getting back to normal and that had been a fine old day when the letter had come from Jean saying the doctor had given him the all-clear.

  God, he missed him and he worried that Johnny wouldn’t recognise him when he went home. How he’d gone over that reunion in his head. About a hundred times a day, he reckoned.

  The boy seemed to recognise him, so he gave him a wave. Ridiculous, this not fraternising with the Germans, though he’d have to be careful, otherwise he might get his leave cancelled.

  He wished he could speak German; he knew they weren’t supposed to frat, but they had to give them instructions and it would make his life a whole lot simpler. But he probably wasn’t clever enough. It took him all his time to read and write in his own language.

  “Is that heavy?”

  The boy gave him a quizzical look and his mum seemed to tell him off, probably telling him not to stop. She looked very frightened. Freddy smiled at the boy because he didn’t want either of them to think they were in trouble, and mimed carrying something very heavy. The boy laughed, but his mum still seemed unsure.

  He looked round; no one was watching. Freddy held out his hand.

  “Freddy Butler,” he said.

  The boy shook his hand and said he was Peter Bayer.

  *

  The next time they went to the rubble Peter said “Hello” to Freddy in English. He was beginning to pick up a few words, hearing as he did the Americans as well. He knew “Hello”, “Thank you”, “My name is Peter”, and “Hi”.

  He also knew his mother and aunt didn’t like having the soldiers about a
nd he didn’t like the way they were living, but part of him was beginning to think it was a bit exciting. Listening to conversations you don’t understand must, he thought, be what it’s like when you visit another country. He couldn’t wait to grow up when he’d be able to earn enough money to go abroad. He even began to think that maybe he wanted to travel more than he wanted a new bicycle.

  Freddy shook his hand like he did the last time. He seemed to like him, a feeling Peter hadn’t got from a lot of the foreign soldiers, who still looked at him as if he were the enemy. They were particularly unfriendly near the photographs, which were by now inescapable. He’d insisted his mother tell him the meaning of them, but he couldn’t really understand what she said and when he opened his mouth to ask a question she’d told him she had some pans to wash. It was Freddy who explained the photographs a few weeks later when they both had a little of one another’s language, and Peter had to make the ghastly connection between them and the disappearance of their old neighbours, the Kleins. Every time he saw the photographs he watched the foreign soldiers as they passed by, looking sideways to see the Germans’ reactions. They didn’t have to say anything; the words under the photographs said it for them.