by William Ryan
‘Schmidt,’ Brandt said. ‘He had some records – I put them in with ours. That must be where it came from.’
Neumann examined Brandt, then looked down at the broken record. Could it really be the case? A camp officer listening to Jewish music? The man had shot himself, of course. It was possible. He swallowed.
‘Go through them. Make sure there are no other unpleasant surprises.’
‘Of course, Herr Obersturmführer.’
The sooner Jäger was gone, the better.
48
SHE’D MISS the place, Polya thought, as they tore their shelter apart. It had been pleasant, living in their makeshift home. They’d been like a family for these last few days – a happy family. It made her eyes smart just thinking of it. They’d almost forgotten about the operation that was coming. Then, twenty minutes earlier, Lapshin had come back and reminded them that they were soldiers and that their fate would be decided in the morning.
It shouldn’t have come as any surprise. All day long staff officers had been driving back and forth in their American jeeps, couriers slipping and sliding on their motorbikes – and Lapshin had been as jumpy as she could remember. He’d gone over every centimetre of the tank with her. He’d made them check the ammunition two or three times until he was satisfied that each bullet, each shell, was perfect. He’d checked the radios, the tracks, the guns – everything.
‘We don’t want anything jamming, Polya. When I press the trigger, I want to see dead Germans. Not a live one pointing a Panzerfaust at me.’
And now he’d woken them – telling them the attack was in a few hours. And so they’d shaken themselves down, and set about getting ready to move off. No one spoke much. It was always like that before a big operation. You were nervous, of course you were, but that wasn’t something they were going to talk about. Anyway, they’d a good commander and they all knew their jobs. Most importantly, they had a lucky tank – one that had been through much more than most. With God’s will, they’d see the end of the next day. Maybe even the war.
When they were ready, the commander of the battalion, Raskov, called all the crews to a nearby clearing. They found him standing beside a cut-down oil drum in which a fire burned, staring at the burning rags it contained. They waited for the last of the tank crews to arrive.
Finally, she saw Raskov check his watch then raise his eyes to look around at the circle of men, and one woman, that surrounded him. He checked his watch again – his lips narrowing as he did so. A couple of hundred flame-lit soldiers surrounded him, so silent you could hear them breathing, and it was as if the battalion had stepped down from the wall of a church. Noble, serious men. And her. Raskov looked directly at her and she felt her stomach turn with fear, not of him but at the words he was about to speak. His eyes were coal black in the night’s shadow and his mouth a slash in his marble-still skin, stained red by the fire’s glow.
‘Well, men,’ he began. ‘And Polya, of course.’
She smiled at that – or tried to. No one laughed, and she was grateful to them.
‘War has not made us tender.’
For a moment she wondered if that was all he had to say. She could have told everyone that herself and been back sleeping under Galechka’s warmth. Then Raskov coughed, cleared his throat. It was difficult to be certain in the flickering light but it seemed he felt he’d started on the wrong foot.
‘War has made us hard,’ the major said after a moment – in a quieter voice now that carried all the more clearly for it. He raised an arm and pointed behind him. Towards the enemy.
‘Soon you won’t be able to hear me. There are thousands of guns behind us – they’re lined up wheel to wheel. Then there are the Katyushas, ready to send countless rockets down on to the enemy’s heads. In front of us, there are the infantry – packed into our trenches tighter than matches in a box – and in the woods behind them there are boats. When the guns start they will begin to move, they will cross the river under the cover of the bombardment and when the guns stop, they will take the forward enemy trenches. There is no question of that.’
He looked around him once more. The battalion waited to hear what their part was to be in all of this.
‘Once the first line of the enemy defences is secured, the guns will crush the second line. The infantry will go forward again. They will take the second line. We wait. But we won’t wait long. Our engineers will already be building bridges linking us to the other side. And attacks from the salient further up the river will have broken through and made any attempt to prevent us crossing impossible. And when we cross and take our place in the general attack, we won’t stop until we are in Germany itself.’
The battalion leaned forward like hounds scenting their quarry.
‘Remember, Comrades, when we face the Germans, that we represent the Court of the Soviet People’s justice. The people have judged the enemy’s crimes and have bestowed on us the honour of carrying out the people’s sentence. We will be fearless. We will be resolute. We will be merciless.’
Polya felt that they’d become one single entity, she and the others. Somewhere to the right, in the distance, men cheered – and she realized that all along the line, commanders were speaking to their soldiers just like this. She remembered that the battalion was but a handful among millions. Polya found that tears were once again itching at the corners of her eyes and she hoped no one was close enough to see. ‘Remember the dead, Comrades, remember the innocent citizens murdered by the aggressor. Remember we were a peaceful nation attacked by the fascist beast without provocation or warning. Remember what, under Comrade Stalin’s leadership, we have withstood. The enemy knows we are coming and they tremble. And they are right to tremble. We will not halt until we reach Berlin.’
And then the artillery started to fire and the noise of it drowned out any reaction that might have been possible to such a speech. Polya looked at her watch – it was as visible in the orange glow of the shells exploding to the west as if it were daylight.
It was five exactly. The twelfth of January. The year of Our Lord 1945.
And when they went back to the tanks, the way made easier by the burning sky, she saw the slogan on Galechka’s turret that they’d decided on, its black lettering clear on her white turret in the orange light:
To Berlin!
§
Far off to the west, Brandt felt the guns’ vibrations. His tiredness, momentarily, was forgotten and adrenaline flowed through him. And fear.
The dice were rolling and he had no idea how they might land.
49
NEUMANN HAD been asleep and now he was awake.
He lay there, wondering what had disturbed him. The curtains were pulled tight and the room dark as a sealed coffin. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary but he held himself still, not breathing – listening. There was a faint noise, one that in an ordinary time and place no one would pay any attention to – more of a tremor than a rumble, really. It wasn’t coming from inside the building, or even from its immediate surroundings. It might be indistinct, this sound – and yet it was persistent. There was always the possibility that it might be far-off thunder, but thunder didn’t roll for minutes on end.
At first, he thought it odd that the noise had woken him – but then he realized he’d been listening for it, without being aware of the fact, for months now. And not only him. He could hear the enlisted men moving around on the floor below, making their way to the dormitory’s windows. Their muffled voices sounded calm enough, but they were fatalists, the Ukrainians . . .
He felt for the bedside lamp, but there was no electricity – just a metallic click when he turned the switch. That meant nothing. He pushed the blankets down and got out of bed, feeling the cold of the floorboards against his bare feet, and walked across to the window. He pulled the curtains open, hoping he was mistaken – that the persistent rolling rumble from the east was indeed, after all, only far-off thunder. Behind him, on the floor, he heard Wolf. The hound was coming to p
ush against his leg, sensing his unease.
Neumann stood there for a moment, looking across the valley at the sky above the forest and thinking how beautiful it was. He touched the fingers of his left hand to the glass and found that the chill surface was trembling – as if it were alive. And that vibration, he knew, most likely represented the destruction of thousands of men. Even here, at this distance from the Front, the building was shaking with the terror of the thing. And yet he couldn’t help but admire the way the colours swirled and shifted on the clouds.
The Ukrainians were silent in the downstairs dormitory and he imagined them standing, just as he was standing, looking out at the troubled sky, wondering what the Russians would have in store for them when they came. He didn’t doubt it would be death – but what was death but a change? He yawned. He was tired. So very tired. He reached down and rubbed Wolf behind his ears.
His eyes were already closing as he walked back across the room – back to the bed whose sheets, he hoped, would still be warm with his own body’s heat. Then he stopped.
He was no longer alone.
The old man moved from side to side as he prayed – his hands folded tight across his chest. He was the barest of outlines, but he was there, he was sure of it. But he couldn’t be there. He must be dreaming. It was a trick of the mind.
He felt no fear, he was pleased to discover. He thought that must be because there was nothing to be done. He felt regret that it had been him, not someone else, who had been on that damned train. And what did it matter anyway – he’d done what he had and now he was faced with the consequence – a silent, weaving spirit in the corner of his bedroom. This could end only one way now.
Wolf pushed against his leg, his wet nose trying to reassure him, and Neumann ran his hand through the dog’s thick winter pelt. There wouldn’t be room for Wolf in the Commandant’s car. Should he set him free? Or should he shoot him?
After a while, he felt his eyes begin to close once again, and so he lay down and pulled the blankets around his head.
If the old man wanted to stay, he was welcome to.
50
THE WORLD had changed.
They lay, as always, close together in the bunker – their bodies battered from Peichl’s assault. Agneta traced the cut on her cheek, the crusted blood rough under her finger. They were alive – they could easily not be.
‘The Lord protected us,’ Gertrud had said when they’d finally been alone in the bunker. Katerina had agreed.
‘Did you see his face?’ Joanna whispered. ‘When he told him to pack his bags for the Front?’
No one answered and it had been impossible, in the dark, to know what they might be thinking – but she savoured the memory.
‘If only he really were going,’ Rachel said.
They’d been afraid when Brandt had told them that Peichl wasn’t leaving. They’d thought he’d come after them, given they’d witnessed his humiliation – but he’d barely acknowledged their existence. It was as if he had been hollowed out by the experience. She wondered if it would last.
It wasn’t only him. She’d seen the Ukrainians talking. Bobrik, their leader, had been in conversation with one or other of them throughout the day – their faces narrow, their features pinched. She noticed the way their eyes slid towards the eastern hills repeatedly as they spoke. Had they had news of their own? She lay there awake, thinking through the permutations. She would observe everyone carefully in the morning – especially Peichl.
It wasn’t clear when she first heard the low rumble – not that it mattered. They had been asleep and now they were awake. They listened, each separately, each of them, no doubt, wondering if it could be what they’d been praying for.
‘Do you hear it?’
Rachel’s voice, quiet as a mouse’s whisper. There was no need for anyone to answer.
‘Is it them?’
Again no need to answer. It had to be. Far away to the east, the Red Army’s guns – thousands of them, tens of thousands perhaps – were firing shell after shell after shell. She’d been waiting for these guns for years now, and now here they were. She could feel them – even from this distance. The earth itself was absorbing their power and sending it to her.
‘It’s them,’ Agneta said, and regretted it. She should have stayed silent. They were all the same, she was sure of it. Each of them wondering what the Russians advancing might mean for them and hoping it would lead to an end to the hell they lived in. But that was no excuse. She couldn’t be careless now.
‘God forgive the men who die tonight,’ Katerina said.
Agneta wanted to reply – to say something less Christian in sentiment – but she restrained herself. She’d made one mistake, she wouldn’t make two. She must be invisible until the end, whatever the end was. She must not speak, she must not be seen – she must not be heard. When people looked at her, they must see through her. She must not even think about the Russians, in case her thoughts might be revealed in some minuscule twitch of a muscle. She watched the SS for infinitesimal clues as to what they might be thinking. Perhaps they watched her that carefully as well.
To die now – to not see the end of all this – that would be the cruellest thing.
51
IT HAD SNOWED – heavily – in the last hour or so, and some of it still clung to the glass. The snow had softened everything – made it seem rounder, smoother. He remembered that snow made even the camp seem beautiful. Or, at least, cleaner.
Neumann stood at a window, once again. He couldn’t hear the guns but when he put his fingertip to the window pane he could still feel them. Perhaps they were German guns now. Perhaps the counter-attack had started.
He made his way over to the row of sinks, putting his hand on a tap’s cold metal and listening to it squeal as he turned it. The noise made him anxious. He wanted silence. He wanted to preserve the calm he had woken up with.
Why wasn’t there any water?
There was a creak and a bang from the pipes and then he could hear the water coming. Thank God. That would be all they needed – to have no water. There was a trickle and then it burst out of the tap in a red-brown belch. Another belch, then it ran more smoothly. It ran a murky dark red at first, before flowing clear. Rust in the pipes, he hoped, rather than another trick played by his mind.
He examined himself in the mirror. He looked exhausted – even though he’d slept well enough, despite everything. He always hoped to see his old face, the one from before. But that face, full-cheeked, with its hearty inner glow, was gone. Nowadays his skin hung from his bones like slum washing – grey and shapeless, tired and worn. His eyes had faded to an ersatz approximation of the blue they once were and, as usual, seemed not to like the look of him much, sliding away from him as if they wanted to avoid their own gaze.
Oh well.
He raised both hands to his face and slapped his cheeks, feeling his skin cling to his fingers as he did so, clammy despite the cold. The skin swung slightly beneath the blows – but didn’t redden. What a mess he was. He rubbed his face, hard, so that the pain might bring him back to some kind of sense of himself.
He heard steps approaching along the corridor outside and then knocking on one of the bedroom doors – his, most likely. He looked at his watch. Peichl. The footsteps waited, then came towards the washroom. More knocking.
‘Herr Obersturmführer?’
Peichl’s voice sounded almost obsequious. Jäger had been right. Peichl had been so relieved when he’d told him he wasn’t going to the Front that he was sure he’d have kissed Neumann’s feet in gratitude if he’d asked him to. He wondered what Peichl had made of the artillery in the night. He must ask the auxiliaries if there was any news. Although, of course, it would be the usual nonsense if it was from the radio.
Neumann breathed deeply.
‘I’m shaving,’ he called out, and his voice disgusted him. It sounded like a weak old man’s. ‘What do you want?’
As if he didn’t know.
&nbs
p; ‘It’s time, Herr Obersturmführer.’
‘I must be running later than I thought. You take it, Peichl.’
‘As you wish, Herr Obersturmführer.’
Peichl’s footsteps walked off.
Neumann let the icy water run over his hands then leant his head underneath it and his mind went silent at the freezing shock of it. He stood it as long as he could before reaching for his towel and scrubbing the feeling back into his scalp.
That was better.
He picked up his razor. Time to decide, he thought, as he looked at the straight edge, whether to shave his throat.
Or cut it.
52
AGNETA LOOKED DOWN at her hands, pale and wrinkled, and it occurred to her that, if they hadn’t been scraping, rasping, scrubbing at yet another stained linen napkin, if they’d been just lying there, flat on the counter, detached from the rest of her, then someone might easily suspect they belonged to a drowned woman. She didn’t care. She’d rub her hands down to the bone if needs be. The water that was rubbing her hands away, atom by atom, was becoming warm anyway, now that Brandt had got the boiler working. She had nothing to complain about.
When there was a power cut in the morning, as there was now, the only light in the scullery came from a solitary window, high up in the wall – no more than twenty centimetres in height, while running in width to a little over a metre. The light was cold and weak. Behind her, in the main kitchen, Brandt began to move – slow step, slow step. They were alone. The others were sweeping the path outside. He had come out and asked Bobrik to give him one of them and she had been the one he’d chosen. He was walking towards her – he was hesitant. He stopped at the scullery’s doorway. Was he waiting for her to do something? To turn to him? He’d be waiting a long time if he was. She continued scrubbing at the napkin, harder than ever, feeling her knuckles rubbing against each other, rubbing themselves smooth. If she ignored him, maybe he’d go away. But no – three quick steps forward.