As he returns home in the evening, walking towards the farmhouse with its smoking chimney and lights at two of the windows, he thinks that it looks welcoming, warm. What he would give not to have this letter in his pocket. And he feels guilt too, at not sharing it sooner. He fingers it, wishes he could tear it up and throw the pieces to the wind. His steps falter – what will he say? Should he just hand it over for her to read, or should he take her aside and sit her down, and destroy her with a few words? The child should be in bed, so he’ll get it over as soon as he goes in. In his mind he rehearses what he’ll say – sit down, my darling, I have bad news. Oh dear God, this is hell itself.
Friedrich opens the door and takes off his boots. He is chilled through, not because it’s cold, although it’s a clear night and there could be frost, but frozen by his sorrow. He hears a man’s voice, and for a moment he thinks – good, I can put off telling her. Just for a moment, though, because it will have to be done tonight. So now he’ll have to be rude to a neighbour. Gisela’s laugh rings out in the house. He hasn’t heard her laugh like that for years. And a child’s laugh too, so she isn’t in bed after all. Wishing he had a stiff drink, Friedrich pushes open the door and walks into his kitchen.
His legs give way beneath him, and he grabs the edge of the table to steady himself. He must be dreaming. Gisela rises to greet him.
“Friedrich! Isn’t it wonderful? Wilhelm has some extra leave, and he managed to get home earlier than he thought.”
He nods, speechless. Beside him, Gisela prattles. He’s never been irritated by her chat before, but now it nags at him, stops him from thinking what has happened. He can’t imagine what is going on. Then it dawns on him – the letter must be a mistake. He’s never heard of such a mistake, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. He feels his mouth stretch into a huge grin and strides towards his son, holding out his arms. Wilhelm hugs him. Friedrich hugs back, then looks at him closely. Wilhelm is pale. He looks older than his twenty years; his face is pale, his eyes huge. They look like the scorch marks on their best linen tablecloth.
“Let me look at you,” he says. The scar on Wilhelm’s forehead stands out – a long jagged line above his left eyebrow. He got it when he fell on some broken glass as a very young child. They thought they’d lost him then, he bled so fiercely, but he survived. And he’s survived whatever it was that prompted that letter. But that doesn’t matter now. All that matters is that he’s here and their family is complete.
“Gisela,” he says, “where’s my beer? And bring one for my boy.” He is so happy, so relieved, he doesn’t stop to think about the deadness in Wilhelm’s eyes. He doesn’t notice how restrained the boy is, when talking about being in the army. Friedrich just wants to talk and to look at his son. It isn’t until later, when he is on the point of sleep, that he realizes that Wilhelm has said scarcely a word. But Friedrich is a little drunk from beer and happiness, exhausted from all the worry of the past few days, so before he has time to think what it might mean, he sinks into a deep slumber.
12
Jan dreams of a feather tickling his face, making him want to sneeze. He wriggles away from it, waking just enough to see a large rat scurry onto the nearby platform. Jesus! Was that what had woken him? Wide awake now, he sits up and stretches. Every part of his body hurts. The ground is cold and hard, and he has a stiff neck. As he twists it, it makes a creaking sound, like old floorboards. His grandmother used to complain of such noises in her joints, but she was ancient. It can’t be good for him, sleeping out in the open like this. Uncomfortable as he is, though, he doesn’t want to move. He’s exhausted and, for a brief moment, thinks with longing of his bed back at the prison house. At least it was warm. Well, no point in thinking about it, he needs to turn his mind to more practical things, like what he’ll eat once his little parcel of food is finished, and how can he get hold of some money.
It’s very early, and the station is not yet open. There’s no one around, so he pees onto the railway line. Later he’ll come back and use the washroom. Jan will explore the town a little while it is quiet. He hated its bustle yesterday, hated the way people pushed and ignored him. In the peace of dawn he can perhaps make some attempt to plan what he will do next.
The streets are almost empty. One or two cars pass by, and Jan keeps close to the walls of buildings, praying he won’t be noticed. He comes to a bread shop; the smell of baking bread tantalizes, and his mouth waters. If only he had money he’d buy every loaf in the shop. The prices are on display, but they mean nothing to him. For a few moments he stands at the window and dreams. This won’t help; he moves on up the street. At the end of the road there is a restaurant, and an idea comes to him. He nips round the side of the building, and sure enough there are bins there. Jan swallows hard; this will be difficult, but it has to be done. He lifts the lid of one and looks in. It’s a horrible mess of rotten food, everything mixed up together. His hope of finding a nice clean loaf of bread vanishes, and he puts the lid on again. When he’s really desperate he’ll return here, but for the moment he still has some stale bread and an apple. Despondent, he goes back to the street and continues his walk.
Before long, he comes to a square. There’s a fountain in the middle, a stone statue of a naked woman holding a pitcher from which she is pouring water into a pool. Jan smiles. He can bathe his feet there, wash and grab something to drink. More optimistic than before, he rushes across. As he leans forwards to wash his face, something catches his eye. A coin! Squinting, he peers into the shallow water, and yes – it’s full of coins. Jan can’t believe his luck. He takes off his shoes and steps into the water, bending down to scoop up as many of the coins as he can. They’re all small coins, pfennigs and halbpfennigs, but he doesn’t care. There’s enough here to keep him going for some days. The main problem will be how to carry them, but that’s a small problem compared to his worries of earlier.
Jan finds a seat in the square and counts out the piles of coins. As he thought, there’s enough to keep him in food for several days. He cannot believe how much better he feels as a result. Part of him wants to blow a large part of it on breakfast in a café, where he can get a warm drink, but he’s sensible enough to know that this would be foolish, so he wraps up most of the money in his spare shirt, careful to tie it up tightly so nothing will drop out. He’s kept aside a small amount, enough to buy some fresh bread and perhaps a piece of meat. For the moment he’s content to eat the remains of what he stole from the house.
“Give us a bit of that, won’t you?”
It’s impossible. He thought he’d never see him again. Pawel stands grinning in front of him, holding out his hand.
“You! Where have you been?”
“Here and there.” Pawel sits on the bench beside him and helps himself to the apple resting on Jan’s lap. “You ought to be more careful you know, counting out that money in public like that. It could have been stolen from you.”
“How long have you been watching me?”
“Not long. So, where did you sleep last night?”
“In a corner of the railway station. It was horrible.” Jan shudders, remembering the rat. “What about you?”
Pawel gnaws round the core of the apple before chucking it aside. “The truck started to move before I could get out. And someone had spotted me, so I thought it safest not to jump at that point. Trouble was, it was several miles before the truck stopped again, so I had a long walk back. I haven’t had any sleep.” He pokes Jan in the side with his elbow. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“Me too.”
The boys sit in silence for a few seconds, then Pawel jumps up. “Come on, let’s go see the railway station, see if it goes anywhere near where we want to be.”
The railway station is filling up with people on their way to work. The boys find a map, and after a while they find the town they are looking for. It is some distance away, but when they look at the timetable, they see that there is a train going there once a day.
Pawel is still looking at the timetable. He seems lost in it.
Jan nudges him. “Well, will you?”
Pawel shakes his head, slowly. “I said I’d see you get back your little sister, and that’s what I’m going to do. Anyway, you’d be lost without me. Sleeping in railway stations! You’ll end up sleeping on the tracks, and then where will you be?”
“Would you really come with me?”
“Of course. If I don’t, you might as well give yourself up now.”
The train doesn’t leave for some hours yet so the boys plan how to get on the train without paying. They have enough money for one fare, but that would leave them with only one ticket and no money for food.
“The best idea is to try to slip in behind a family, preferably one with lots of children. That way we can point and say that our parents have our tickets.”
“Mm, maybe. But what if they call the parents back and ask them?”
The boys think some more. “Got it,” says Pawel. “We’ll come running up at the last moment with bread in our arms and say to the guard that our parents sent us for it and there was a queue. There’s always someone hanging out of the window so we’ll point to them and say that’s them.”
“I don’t know,” says Jan. “It sounds very risky to me.”
“Well, you think of something better then.”
They can’t think of anything better, so agree to try it. “Leave the talking to me,” says Pawel.
It’s time for the train. Two minutes before it leaves. They have been to the baker to buy bread. They run up to the guard, and Pawel babbles his story. The guard is impassive, argumentative. Jan knows he doesn’t believe their story. It’s not going to work, and they are so close. There’s a woman hanging out of the window – she’s looking up and down the platform. Jan waves to her, praying she’ll wave back. A few seconds, then she lifts her arm in greeting.
“Look,” says Jan. “There’s our mother.” Pawel glowers at him; he’s not supposed to speak, but what else can he do?
A whistle blows. The train is about to leave. Jan starts to cry and waves once more at the woman. Once again she waves back. The guard gives in. “Go on then. In you get.” He pushes them onto the train just as it moves off.
“Cry baby,” mutters Pawel to Jan.
“It got us where we wanted to be, so shut up. You weren’t much good out there. If it wasn’t for me, we’d still be on the platform.”
“Yeah, well, all right then.” Pawel smiles at him. “We did it. We’re on our way.”
The journey is difficult. They hadn’t realized there would be someone looking for tickets on the train, and they have to spend their time dodging the collector. Eventually they find the guard’s van, which is full of luggage, and they crouch down behind a huge trunk. Jan worries about this because the van has no windows, and so they can’t see where they’re going.
“Look, it’s the third place we stop. You can count to three can’t you? Just stop worrying, it’ll be fine.”
“But what if it stops for signals? We might get off in the middle of nowhere.”
“I don’t think so. We’ll know it’s a station because we’ll hear the doors opening and shutting.”
Even with this reassurance Jan can’t help worrying. He thinks they’ll be caught at any moment, and so he is extremely thankful when at last the train starts to slow down to stop for the third time. They creep from their hiding place and walk along the corridor to the door.
“What if there’s a ticket collector?”
“There won’t be. They keep checking them on the train.”
The train stops, and they jump down. There’s no one in sight, and they walk along the platform to the small building that must be the station. Jan is worried. He had thought from the map that the station would be bigger. The town had seemed to be a sizeable one.
“This isn’t right,” he mutters. “There’s something wrong.”
Pawel doesn’t answer. He is reading a notice. Jan follows his gaze and tries to read what’s written there. He can’t understand a word.
“Pawel, this isn’t German. Where are we?”
Pawel doesn’t look at him as he speaks. “We’re in Poland. Not far from my home.”
13
Friedrich is worried about so many things: will the harvest yield enough to keep him and his family through the winter, will the roof leak again this year, will the war ever end, what is the meaning of the letter he has in his pocket – the one that tells him his son is most probably dead, when his son sits in front of him alive and well.
It is two days now since Wilhelm returned. They have been happy days for the most part. Wilhelm is intrigued by his new little sister; he spends much of his time trying to make her say something, but she continues to be very shy and speaks very seldom. Friedrich worries about this too. She’s not dumb, they’ve heard her talk, but although they’ve made allowances for her difficult past, he and Gisela fear that perhaps, after all, she’s not very bright.
Gisela is making soup, chopping vegetables. Helena is trying to help her; she picks up the vegetable pieces and puts them in a bowl. Most end up on the floor, but Gisela is patient with her, takes her time and shows Helena what to do. They make a pretty picture the two of them, Gisela singing as she works. She is lost in her task. Friedrich takes out the letter and pushes it over to Wilhelm. He puts his finger to his lips and then says, “Read it.”
Wilhelm’s face is scarlet as he reads the letter. This is proof enough for Friedrich. He waits until Wilhelm stops reading and says, “Well?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
If his wife wasn’t nearby, Friedrich would hit the boy, but he doesn’t want to burden her with this knowledge. He beckons Wilhelm outside, saying to his wife that they’ll take a breath of fresh air. She doesn’t look up as she tells them not to be too long, the soup will be ready in under an hour.
Outside, Friedrich leads the way until he is sure they are out of earshot.
“What the hell have you done?” He has Wilhelm by the collar, nose to nose with him. His fear makes him furious.
Wilhelm pushes him aside. “I won’t fight any more. I will not do what they ask me to do.”
Friedrich splutters, “You have no choice. This is your country.”
“What is this war about, Father?”
“I… I don’t know… to get more land for us, build up the Fatherland.”
“Do you think it is right to invade other countries?”
Friedrich turns aside. He never thinks about politics. He was too young for the last war and too infirm for this one, so far anyway. He’s a patriot, would fight if he had to, but… “I don’t know,” he says finally.
Wilhelm shakes his head. “You don’t think about these things, do you? Oh, I’m not blaming you,” he holds up his hand as Friedrich starts to protest, “I didn’t think about them either. I just went along with it all.” He kicks at the wall of the house, a vicious blow that startles Friedrich.
“Is everything all right, son?”
There are tears in Wilhelm’s eyes. “I thought when I went to war, that I’d be fighting other men.”
A fist is squeezing Friedrich’s heart. “What do you mean?”
“Do I need to spell it out to you?”
“Are the enemy sending children to war?”
Wilhelm is silent for a moment. When he starts to speak, his voice is flat, all emotion ironed out. “No, the enemy send men to fight us. I can’t tell you what a relief it would be to face a soldier from another country, armed with weapons, to fight on a battlefield. Instead I’ve been in villages. Here in Germany, and also in some of the annexed lands. In one village not far from here, they gathered us together one morning and told us what we had to do might not be all that pleasant.” He massages his temples as if he has a headache. “They said some of the o
lder men might want to avoid it, and if they did then they could back out. And some of them did. Us younger ones laughed, made fun of them. Jesus!” Wilhelm spits on the ground and is silent. The only sound is his breath, husky with a wheeze.
“Go on,” whispers Friedrich.
“They took us to the village square, brought out people for us to shoot, Jews. It went on all day. Once we’d killed them we had to load their bodies into trucks and take them away to dump them in huge pits. Some of them were children.” Tears run down his face. “Many of us were shocked that first time. They gave us strong drink when we returned to barracks. Gradually one or two regained their bravado. ‘They’re only Jews after all, it’s not as if we’re killing people’ – someone said that, and a few others laughed. Next time we were asked to do it, I felt sick, but no one was backing out, and you felt you’d be letting the others down if you didn’t do it, so you couldn’t back down. You just had to join in.” Wilhelm rummages through his pockets and brings out a packet of cigarettes. He lights one up, shielding the match from the wind with his hand, and inhales deeply. “Well, last week I thought, I just can’t do this any longer. There was an attack on our convoy of vehicles, and several of our battalion were killed. Body parts all over the place. I was blown clear, and was in the ditch. I crawled into the forest and hid while they were gathering up the survivors.”
The Search Page 9