by Nick Gifford
Eva hugged him.
“I...” He gestured at his bad leg, an old war wound. “I do not wish to be a burden. It is some time since I could claim to be a man of action.”
“You’re no burden,” said Eva.
They followed an alleyway and minutes later they saw the River Spree through the wire. The Factory Fighters had strung barbed wire across the end of this alleyway, leaving an open promenade by the river clear, a no-man’s land.
Bernhard cut the lower strands of wire with a pair of pliers and carefully peeled them back.
They crawled through and then scurried across the open area to the shelter of a tree. There they began to strip off their clothes, down to their underwear.
All the time, Eva was aware of a small figure, sitting on the wall by the river, face hidden in the shadow of his felt hat.
She turned, and saw that Walter had only removed his coat. He was grimacing.
“My knee,” he said. “I strained it under the wire.”
“You will be okay,” said Eva, more an instruction than a question. “We swim together. I will help you.”
“Yes, yes.”
Already, the other two were on the wall, ready to drop into the dark waters of the Spree.
Go on! You have little time, my children. Leave him, Eva, go!
She couldn’t. She helped Walter with his jacket.
She heard the soft splashes as the others entered the water.
Walter took her arm. He had her top in his other hand. “Put this on,” he said. “Go back. There is still time.”
That was when she began to understand Hodeken’s warning.
You could trust no-one these days. Anybody might turn out to be an informer, telling stories to the People’s Police, or worse, to the State Security Police, the Stasi.
Anybody.
She took her top – she had to, he thrust it right at her – and backed away, feeling as if her world had been dragged out from under her feet.
She reached the low stone wall, but it was too dark to see anyone in the water.
She looked across, and Walter had produced a pistol, a Luger, and he was aiming down into the water.
She kicked out at him, the man she had loved. She struck him on his injured knee and his leg buckled. His hands swung upwards, and a shot went high into the air. The flash from the gun’s muzzle surprised her almost as much as the sudden noise, so close to her head.
That must have been the signal, the first shot. A floodlight came on, shining down from the bridge, and its beam swung across the water.
Someone shouted a warning, and a shot was fired. Then another. Another.
The floodlight was suddenly extinguished and the firing halted.
Blinking, Eva peered up at the bridge, and there she saw a tiny figure skipping along the parapet.
Hodeken!
There was more shouting up there now.
She turned and looked down, wondering now why Walter had gone quiet.
He was dead.
A stray bullet must have struck him. A ricochet.
Go. Too late to swim now.
She ducked down and took Walter’s gun, and then, clutching her clothes to her chest, she ran for the gap they had cut in the wire.
~
“They didn’t do what I said, Danny. I told Eva not to tell Walter.”
They were in the Berlin apartment again, Eva moving around in a trance, packing the things she would need. She was not going to stay here for much longer. It was too risky, now that the rest of her family had fled.
“It is futile,” said Hodeken, shrugging. “The Stasi will come for her and arrest her and this time there will be nothing I can do. There are some things in this modern world that are hard for an ancient being like me to deal with...
“The Neues Deutschland only reported one death: Bernhard Schmidt, Konstanz’s husband. Shot in the water and pulled out the next day. Your grandfather, Danny. I am so sorry, but what could I do?”
“You failed them,” said Danny. “You got it wrong.”
Hodeken shook his head sadly. “If only little Eva had done as I told her. Everything would have worked out. You just need to trust me, Danny, and everything will be fine.
“Konstanz found her brothers, Christian and Dieter, in West Berlin and, eventually, when they had given up hope for Eva, they left for a new life in England.
“Poor Eva. On her own now, in a city that has become a different city. She does not know what has happened. While she is in prison, she will vow to reunite the family, and I will promise to help her. But it is hard, and it is a long time before I get her out of jail. And by then it is a struggle simply to survive, as she hears no news of her brothers and sister... She will cope. She will survive. And when Eva finally finds her family again, I know I will be needed and so I travel with her, all the way from Berlin.”
Hodeken turned, and gazed at Eva as she packed.
Danny watched her, too.
When she had finished, she slid down with her back against the wall, and sobbed. Hodeken went to her, and put his arms around her, and the two embraced.
Finally, Hodeken looked up and winked. “Trust me, Danny. Trust me and you will get your wish.”
Danny blinked, and when he looked again, Eva was alone, hugging herself tightly. From beyond the room, there was a heavy knock at the door.
~
When he woke, there was a pressure on his chest, a gentle weight. Something pressing softly down.
He felt the panic rising.
Half-awake, he swung an arm.
And struck something. A figure, a creature. A being.
He opened his eyes, but it was dark.
He brought both arms up again, but this time there was nothing.
He pressed at his chest, clawing at himself as if trying to peel the tee-shirt from his body.
He fumbled for his lamp, fearfully, not wanting to reach out from his bed, thinking at any moment that some nightmarish creature might grab his wrist.
The light came on, momentarily blinding him.
He peered around the room, but nothing. No thing. Nobody.
He turned onto his side and curled up into a tight ball.
Out in the kitchen, Oma was still moving about. She was humming softly, and now the sound drifted into Danny’s room, calming him, soothing him. She had done this when he was little, singing for him, calming him when he had woken with the night terrors.
He closed his eyes tightly and longed for morning.
14 Voices...
...in his head. Echoing around inside his skull as he lay awake the next morning. Eva sobbing, alone in the empty Berlin apartment. Konstanz, giggling over a glass of sparkling wine on the night before Berlin was split in two. All four of them, talking nervously on the night of their attempt to swim across the River Spree, a night on which two of them were to die and one would be stranded, lost, and finally arrested for aiding those violating border regulations.
And Hodeken, of course. The hinzelmannchen. Their family guardian.
Their family madness, now lodged deep in Danny’s head.
Trust me, Danny. Trust me and you will have your wish. Together we will fix everything and your family will be as it was, and as it should be.
He couldn’t get that nasal little voice out of his head, no matter how hard he tried.
He took his phone out, and looked in the address book under “C”.
Only one entry there.
Cassie knew stuff. She understood, despite her kooky, off-centre approach to things.
But he was frightened she would turn him away. He didn’t think she wanted to have anything to do with him any more, after they had argued on the way home from school. He wouldn’t, if he was her.
Trust me.
~
He walked to school. He was with the usual group from Hope Springs, Tim, Won’t, Jade and Little Rick. Or rather, he wasn’t really walking with them. He was walking in the same direction, at the same speed, but he wasn’
t taking part.
He was walking to school alone, shutting the others out.
Cassie was ahead, with Jo Lee and a couple of the other Wishbourne girls. She didn’t look back a single time.
Danny was exhausted, as if he had not slept at all the previous night. He wanted to share it all with Cassie, to unburden himself, but he knew he could not. He had to keep it to himself.
“Val tells me you’re going visiting again on Saturday,” said Rick, at Danny’s side.
Danny glanced down at him. “That’s right,” he said.
“Must be tough,” Rick said.
“It’s how it is,” said Danny. Mr Cool, keeping the world at arm’s length. Walking to school alone, in a crowd.
~
“Do you like it here?”
Thursday evening, and Danny and Val were working one of the vegetable plots, hoeing carefully between the rows of onions in their raised beds. Josh was in one of the empty beds, digging with a spare trowel he seemed to have found from nowhere. Danny had paused to watch him, drawn to the little fellow’s obsessive digging. He had excavated quite an impressive burrow in the rich soil.
Danny looked around at the lake glistening through the trees, the Hall beyond the plots, the hill beyond that. Until recently, it had been a peaceful place. They had settled into a way of life, a way of moving on from tragedy.
“Like” wasn’t a word he would have chosen, though.
“We’re doing well,” he said in reply. “It was a good move.”
“Good,” said Val. “We can make it work, can’t we?”
“Why are you asking?”
She hugged herself. “I need reassuring,” she said. “Sometimes I need to be told that things are okay. Do you know what I mean?”
“Maybe you should come with us to see Dad,” he said, watching her carefully. She looked away instantly. “See how he’s changed. He seems ... stable. We’ve all made progress.”
She shook her head. “I’m not on the Visiting Order,” she said. “It’s just you and Oma. Someone has to stay here and look after Josh.”
Excuses. They both knew she was simply making excuses. She could always be put on the VO next time. She was avoiding the issue, as she always did.
“You could divorce him.”
“No.” An instant answer, no need to consider.
“Why?” Why not make a completely clean break? He had never dared press her on any of this before.
She looked at him now. “Because it scares me,” she said, finally. After another pause, she continued, “I don’t want to push too hard. I don’t want any of the old weirdness to come back into our lives.”
Danny swallowed. He had to deal with this himself. He couldn’t confirm her fears.
“Dad’s in prison. He can’t do anything.”
She tipped her head to one side, shifting her gaze to somewhere in the distance.
“I know,” she said. She didn’t seem convinced that was enough, though.
She forced a smile. “I’m glad you’re happy here, Danny. We’ll make it work, won’t we?”
~
Danny sat with Oma Schmidt in the Visitors’ Centre. Children were all around them, laughing and playing and fighting, and tired-looking mothers yelled at them or ignored them altogether.
As usual, Oma was happy. She sat in her plastic seat, rocking back and forth, humming a little tune with a smile on her face.
She was going to see her little boy, and all was right with the world.
She had another photograph with her. It showed Danny with his father and one of the German great uncles on a beach somewhere. Danny was wearing a nappy that sagged to knee-level. His father was supporting him by the hands, and to the side, the uncle stood with his trousers rolled up to mid-calf, ankle-deep in the sea yet still wearing a tie and jacket.
“I wonder where they are now,” said Danny. He meant Dieter and Christian, Oma’s two brothers.
“They were scared,” said Oma. “But they will be back. Many years ago we made a promise to each other. We would support each other. Brothers and sisters. Family. Fifty, sixty years ago – we went through much, but we survived. Is good now. Your father, he is having his appeal. After that, my Christian and Dieter will remember their duty to the family.”
Danny said nothing.
Soon, their number was called and they went through to be searched and scanned, and finally to be allowed in to the visiting hall.
~
The faces greeted them, and then all but one turned away again, disappointed.
His father looked at them blankly, without the usual uncertain smile, or the wave to come over and join him at his table, in case, for some reason, they might otherwise decide to sit elsewhere.
They went and sat.
He didn’t reach out and take Oma’s hand. He didn’t say anything.
Danny felt dizzy. As if he were tumbling headlong down a funnel into the past. His father ... this man sitting across the table seemed like an empty shell of the man he had expected.
Oma Schmidt was not her usual prison-visiting self, either. She seemed to sense that something was not quite right. There was no smile in her eyes, no air of contentment simply to be with her son once again. She had the photograph in her hand. She reached forward and placed it on the table, smoothing it with her fingers as if it might otherwise curl up into a ball.
Danny’s father looked at her, and then down at the picture.
“How’s the appeal?” asked Danny. “What’s happening with that?”
Now, his father’s eyes lifted slowly. Still, he had said nothing.
“Your appeal. The journal. Mr Peters,” said Danny, struggling to find the switch that would flick his father back to normality.
“I thought I’d stopped it.”
His father’s voice was flat, as if every word was a struggle.
“What? The appeal? You’ve stopped it?”
His father shook his head, briefly. A single movement. He raised a hand to his temple and pressed – so hard that Danny could see the tendons and veins standing out on the back of his hand.
“I had their tongues. I shut them up.”
Danny stared at him.
“I thought I’d stopped them.” His hand was still pressing. “The voices,” he added. “Stopped...”
Danny didn’t want to be here. Didn’t want to be listening to these words or seeing his father like this.
He wasn’t here for this. He was here to ... to move on, not back.
His father spoke again, but the words came out in a rush, a guttural eruption of something that sounded German and yet was either too fast or too distorted for Danny to make out. And he spoke those words in a voice that was different: higher-pitched, more nasal, as if he was pinching his nose as he spoke. More penetrating.
Danny wanted to look away, but he could not. He was transfixed.
He stared at his father’s eyes, but they were not his father’s eyes. They were pale, the irises tiny black pinpricks, the whites netted with red blood vessels. The skin around his eyes was darker, more leathery, broken by lines and warts.
He felt that he was falling, and yet he knew he had not moved from his chair.
He stared into Hodeken’s face.
“It is okay,” the nasal little voice said to him, soothing him, smothering the panic that had been bubbling to the surface. “It will not be long now. It is all okay.”
Danny felt calm now. He managed to smile. All okay.
“Hey, I remember that.”
It was his father again. He still had the hand on his temple, but now he had spotted the photograph. He smiled, nervously. “Eastbourne, wasn’t it?” He rubbed at his head, then lowered his hand.
Oma smiled at him. She always managed to bring something that would get through to her son.
Danny sat back in his chair. He felt dizzy. He did not know what it was that he had just experienced.
He put a hand to his temple and pressed hard.
Nothing.<
br />
He lowered his hand, pleased that Oma and his father seemed happy. Whatever it was ... it didn’t matter now.
15 Talking
“Who is Hodeken?”
Oma looked up at Danny, eyebrows raised. “Is a funny question,” she said, and then returned to the washing up.
Danny took another plate to dry.
“It was the name in Dad’s journal,” he said. “I expect it’ll come up in his appeal.” He watched her reactions closely, wondering how much she might reveal about the family’s past, how much of it might even be true.
“It means ‘Little Hat’,” she told him, a distant look in her eyes. “Is a hinzelmannchen, a household spirit from the old tales. A legend. Like Hansel and Gretel, Rumplestiltskin and Snow White, yes?”
“Fairy tales,” said Danny.
“The tales are not to be dismissed,” she said. “Is much truth in the old tales. Your Great Aunt Eva always loved Hodeken. Is the only story she remembered our mother telling to her. Hodeken, he lived with the Bishop of Hildesheim and the two of them, they had good times together and they helped each other greatly. Hodeken is a practical joker and he brings laughter to the life of the Bishop. But then they had a falling out and the Bishop banished Hodeken who was left to make a life wherever he could. After that neither of them were happy again for a long, long time.”
“And what is the truth in that old tale?”
Oma laughed, and flicked some foam at Danny. “The truth there is that you should listen to us old ones. If you go against the old ways like the Bishop did you ignore the old wisdom, too, and you will not be happy for a long, long time!”
He wanted to ask her if she believed in Hodeken, if what he had seen in his dream was the truth.
But he couldn’t. How to ask such a question? On this sunny afternoon, it didn’t seem like a thing he could ask without looking stupid.
And maybe, just a little, the answer frightened him.
~
Cassie would be able to suggest something. She had ideas and insight, where it was all Danny could do just to get by.
But he couldn’t ask her.
She would look things up, he knew. Investigate. He could do that just as well.