‘Suppose so,’ said Mark. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Fine. Mum was just stressing out, that was all. Anything happen while I was sick?’
‘Not much. Basketball practice was cancelled because of the rain. And old Haskett says we can’t have our lunches in the hall if we keep making so much noise.’
‘Where else would we eat then? Out in the wet?’
‘Dunno. Here’s Anna.’ He watched the car drive up and Anna and Little Tracey climb out.
‘My Auntie Flossy’s coming down this weekend,’ announced Little Tracey, bouncing into the shelter and splattering them both with raindrops as she unbuttoned her raincoat.
‘Good for your Aunt Flossy,’ said Ben, wiping his nose with his sleeve. He glanced at his watch. ‘Everyone’s early this morning,’ he remarked.
‘That’s because Anna’s telling us the story,’ said Little Tracey.
Ben stared. ‘You’re still playing The Game?’
Anna nodded.
‘Crikey. It must be a long story.’
Little Tracey nodded. ‘Come on, Anna!’
‘Have there been any good bits?’ demanded Ben.
Anna stared at him. ‘What do you mean, good bits?’
‘You know—battles and stuff like that.’
Anna didn’t reply.
‘There’ve been some bombs,’ said Mark, then wished he hadn’t. It sounded stupid, and both Ben and Anna looked at him like he was dumb.
‘Doesn’t sound like I’ve missed much,’ said Ben, sitting back. He folded his arms, tucking his hands in to keep them warm.
Anna was still for a moment, then began to speak.
chapter sixteen
Berlin
Fräulein Gelber came at night. She wore the coat that smelt of foxes, not her dressing-gown. ‘Heidi! Come on, wake up!’
‘What is it?’
‘A car has come for us. You must get up now. We have to make a journey.’
‘To see my father?’ It was the first time she had called him that. What with the dark and sleepiness she had forgotten to call him Duffi.
‘Perhaps. Yes. I don’t know. Come on, hurry. Schnell!’
Heidi swung her legs out of the bed. ‘To Berlin?’
Fräulein Gelber nodded. ‘The car is waiting. Dress warmly. I will pack your bag.’
‘Are the soldiers coming, Fräulein Gelber?’
Fräulein Gelber didn’t look up from the drawers she was emptying. ‘Yes. They will be here soon.’
Both of them knew that she didn’t mean German soldiers. The enemy would soon be here. They had to escape before the enemy found them.
‘What about Frau Leib?’
Fräulein Gelber shrugged. Frau Leib would have to look after herself, and besides, Heidi realised, she would never leave her family.
‘What about my rabbits?’
‘Frau Leib will take them. Schnell!’
Heidi pulled on her stockings. Thick, woollen stockings. They prickled, but they kept her warm. She glanced around her room at the bright starched curtains, the photographs on the wall. Somehow she knew it was the last time that she would see it.
She left her dolls on the shelf above her bed.
‘Come now,’ said Fräulein Gelber.
Fräulein Gelber’s suitcase was in the corner. She picked it up, and handed Heidi hers.
Down the long corridor, down the twisting stairs, along the corridor below and past the kitchen.
‘Wait a moment,’ said Fräulein Gelber.
She quickly packed a basket for the journey with bread and cheese.
But not the sausage, Heidi noticed. Duffi would not like them to eat the sausage. And she would be seeing Duffi soon.
There were three cars in the driveway, not one. Army cars, with no lights showing. The driver got out of the second car. He took the suitcases and opened the back door. Fräulein Gelber ushered Heidi inside.
The black shadows danced in the moonlight. She could see the shapes of leaves outlined quite clearly on the ground, and the gleam of the moonlight on the frog pond. The frogs were silent.
The first car started its engine and moved off. It did not put its lights on. There was enough light from the moon to see their way.
Their driver started his engine. It spluttered once, and then ran smoothly. They moved after the first car, the third one following behind.
The house was dark behind them.
There was a rug on the seat. Fräulein Gelber spread it over their legs. ‘It is a very long way to go,’ she said. ‘Try to sleep.’
‘Yes,’ said Heidi. But she did not close her eyes. She looked out the window instead, at the faint moonlit glimpses of everything passing by.
There was the hedge with the starlings’ nests. And there was Frau Leib’s farm, blacker than the moonlit darkness. Even the pigs were asleep, and the baby goat called Heidi.
A plane roared overhead and then another. Fräulein Gelber tensed, and so did Heidi. She hoped it was too dark for the pilot to see them, down below, even with the moonlight.
The planes passed overhead. No bombs dropped around them. There was silence, apart from the engines of the cars. Heidi relaxed. For the moment they were safe.
Sometime towards morning she fell asleep, her head on Fräulein Gelber’s arm. Fräulein Gelber snored softly beside her, a wisp of spit on one corner of her mouth.
chapter seventeen
The Bunker
The walls of the bunker seemed damp, though when Heidi touched them her fingers stayed dry. When she touched the walls she could feel the vibration of the explosions in the world above; the bombs and the tank shells, and other noises too, but Heidi didn’t know what they were. Your fingers felt fuzzy if you left them there long enough. It was a game that Heidi played sometimes.
There was not much else to do.
You could hear the explosions too, of course, but it wasn’t the same as feeling them. They just went on and on, so you almost got used to them. Then suddenly there would be a louder one than all the others, a high-pitched screaming noise and then the dull thump, thump would start again.
The room was small; concrete and steel deep underground, with a concrete floor. There were double bunks along the side. Heidi had wanted the top bunk, but Fräulein Gelber said, No, she might fall out, and took the top one for herself.
It seemed odd to Heidi that, with the invasion outside, the bombs and rockets and aircraft, Fräulein Gelber was worried that she might fall out of bed. But she said nothing. She was good at saying nothing. She had practised it all her life.
The room had a wooden table, with a small primus stove on top and two chairs, and a small alcove curtained off from the rest of the room. Inside the alcove was a basin with two taps, which gave cold water only, and two chamber-pots. Fräulein Gelber had to empty the chamber-pots into a bucket in the corridor every morning.
A soldier brought in breakfast. There was the end of a loaf of black bread, dusty and hard, not sweet and moist at all, and a piece of cold sausage, and two mugs of imitation coffee, one for her and one for Fräulein Gelber. Even here at the Führer’s headquarters food was scarce. Did Duffi know about the sausage? wondered Heidi. Or maybe any food was precious now.
Fräulein Gelber divided the sausage and the bread. She hesitated, then she put the bread aside. ‘For later,’ she said. The imitation coffee was hot and bitter, the sausage dry and tasteless. Heidi wondered if it was made from horse meat. Frau Leib had told her that that was all they had in the city now.
Fräulein Gelber hadn’t remembered to bring any lesson books, and it seemed wrong to sing so far underground. Even talking seemed wrong, with the noise of the explosions, and the hard, worried voices in the corridor outside.
So they sat. Heidi remembered the wind on the lake and the sun on the leaves and all the bright things in the world above. She wondered how much would be left when the planes had dropped their bombs.
A different soldier brought their lunch. It was soup made from potatoes and cabbage
; cold, with a thin sheet of fat congealed on the top, so Fräulein Gelber heated it on the stove. The stove warmed up the room, but she turned it off when the soup was hot, as there was not much fuel.
There was bread with the soup, but again Fräulein Gelber put it aside.
It was cold. They had two blankets each on their beds. It was too cold to sit on the chairs so they lay on the bottom bunk together, and Fräulein Gelber wrapped her in all of the blankets, and held her till she slept.
When she woke up Fräulein Gelber had gone. The bread had gone, too. And Fräulein Gelber’s suitcase.
Heidi felt no surprise. It was as though she had known it would happen, even though it had never occurred to her it could happen.
Of course, Fräulein Gelber would go. She would try to find her family in the mad world up above. Her family might need her, and she would need her family. What was the point of waiting for the soldiers here?
It was lonely in the bunker by herself.
She lay on the bed with the blankets around her till dinner came; more soup and bread and sausage and coffee. There was the same amount as before. No one seemed to have noticed that Fräulein Gelber had left. Or maybe they knew but didn’t care.
It took a while to work out how to light the primus. She was scared she’d burn her fingers, but at last she managed it. She drank the soup slowly to make time pass, and then she drank the coffee even though she did not like it. But there was nothing else to do. She took the sausage and the bread back to bed, though she had been told never to eat in bed.
She pretended she was a mouse and could only nibble the food with her front teeth—slowly, slowly, slowly; nibble, nibble, nibble. All the while the bombs shattered up above and thudded in the distance, and voices yelled along the corridor.
She slept again, and woke with breakfast. This time she left the door open. It was too lonely with it shut.
People tramped along the corridor, but no one seemed to look inside. No one was interested. Not now.
Suddenly there were louder voices. A man’s voice yelling. A woman’s voice cried more softly underneath, and then the man again. It was a strange yelling—more of a scream than a yell—and it went on and on.
It was her father’s voice.
She hadn’t seen him since they came to Berlin. He was busy. Of course he was busy. She hadn’t even asked where he was.
But he was here.
She slid off the bed, and put the blankets aside. She ran down the corridor towards the voice.
Something shrieked above her. An explosion split the world. Dust fell from the ceiling, or maybe it wasn’t dust at all. The bunker rocked, and then was still. She kept on running.
The screaming voice had stopped. But she knew where it had come from.
The door was open. There were three men inside, talking, arguing, their faces white with strain and with exhaustion and from being underground, and other men, soldiers, to the side of the room.
Another explosion shook the air, the ground, the walls.
‘Father!’ she cried.
It was the first time she had called him father to his face.
The man stopped arguing. He looked at her. His cheeks were sunken. His eyes were dark in darker shadows. There was grey in his moustache.
‘Father?’ she said again.
The man said nothing. He just smiled at her. Not really a smile—an almost smile. Later she thought it was a smile that said, ‘Hello, my daughter. Yes, I love you, too. But, for your sake, now I can never say the words.’
That’s what she hoped, in later years, it might have said.
And then the smile was gone. Maybe there had never really been a smile at all.
‘Who is this girl!’ demanded the Führer.
‘She’s… she’s…’ one of the guards stammered, and then was silent.
‘I have never seen her before,’ said Adolf Hitler. ‘What is she doing here? This is no place for a child!’
‘But…’ The guard swallowed what he was going to say. The rest of the room was silent.
‘Take her away,’ said Adolf Hitler. ‘Now! Do you hear me? Now!’
The guard led her to her room. He shut the door. She sat there trying to listen for her father’s voice, but all she could hear now were the bombs.
An hour later, or more perhaps, the guard came again. ‘Get your suitcase,’ he ordered.
She picked it up. She expected him to carry it for her, but he didn’t.
Along the corridor. The door to the room where her father had been was shut.
Up the stairs, along the next corridor. The noise of shell-fire was louder here.
Another soldier waited by the stairs.
‘Here she is,’ said the first.
The second soldier took her suitcase. He was older, and his eyes looked sad. He hesitated, then he took her hand. ‘Don’t be frightened, Mädchen,’ he said softly. ‘You are going to good people. Don’t be afraid.’
The smell was disgusting as they climbed up to the street. Sweet and strong, like a million chamber-pots left too long.
The soldier saw her cover her face with her hand. ‘They hit the sewers,’ he told her. ‘They blew them open.’
But that wasn’t the whole of the smell.
The world was noise and rubble and splinters of rocks that flew through the air. You could smell the blood and hatred just like you could smell the pigs in Frau Leib’s mud.
‘This way,’ said the soldier. He had grey stubble on his cheeks. His voice was tired, and full of tension, but he sounded like he was trying to be kind.
There had once been trees and gardens. Now there was just a battle, too much, too fast to understand.
They ran through the skeleton of the garden, the soldier still holding her hand. Then down some steps, shadowed, down, down, back underground.
Along a tunnel now. The world was quieter, but the ground still shivered under their feet. Along the tunnel, round a corner, along again. There were steps, but they passed them, then more steps, and they climbed those.
It looked like a railway station. She had seen pictures of railway stations. But they hadn’t looked quite like this.
They came out of the station. The soldier smoothed her hair. His hand was cold and rough but he was trying to be kind. ‘They should be here by now. They were supposed to be waiting for you by the…’
There was no noise. Or maybe there had been noise but she couldn’t hear it in the tumult all around. But suddenly the soldier lay beside her. His arm had been blown off, and red pumped onto the ground. The skin around was very white, and so was the bone. How could a bone be white with so much blood?
She touched his face, but he didn’t move.
The world seemed cold and clear and very quiet, in spite of the noise of the bombs.
She had to take her suitcase. She had to leave. She prised it from his hand—his fingers still gripped it even though the arm was half a metre from its body.
Then she began to walk.
She walked for a few seconds, or a few minutes, she didn’t know. Then something exploded behind her and reality closed in. She ran for the protection of a rubble wall and crouched there, her suitcase in front of her like a shield.
For some reason she thought of Fräulein Gelber. If only she had saved some bread as Fräulein Gelber had done.
She began to crawl from one wall to another, trying to shelter as much as she could. With every inch she crawled it seemed she left her old life behind. It was burnt out of her by the shells and smoke and fire.
Duffi’s daughter was gone. The good girl that Fräulein Gelber had tried to make her be was gone. All that was left was Heidi, a small seed deep inside her.
All she had to do was survive, and that seed could grow.
There were bodies, covered in dust and blood, so that they somehow no longer looked like they were people. There was smoke, drifting in thick pillows; at times it seemed almost solid, and at others just like fog was clouding the world.
The smell was strong and harsh and horrid, like something bad had been cooked a long, long time, but after a while you forgot the smell. The smell and the noise was the way the world was now and it seemed to Heidi impossible that it would ever change.
At first she thought it was only smoke and dust thickening the air. Then she realised it was darkness flowing through the rubble, except where the explosions burnt it away.
The noise didn’t stop. Nor did it really get dark. There were fires all around now, or perhaps it had just been harder to see the flames in the daylight. The night was red and orange with strange, sharp streaks of white. The air was full of a new sound, a high-pitched squeaking rolling, and the yellow light of flames.
She kept on walking—running—hiding. She didn’t know why she ran, or where she was going. There was no time to think now. She just knew that she had to keep on going, to get as far away as possible.
There was a tank in front of her. Two tanks. It was the tanks that had been squealing.
She could hear them rolling grinding up the road even over the noise of the shells. The metal squealed as it hit the stones.
Suddenly, one of the tanks erupted in flames of blue and grey and yellow. The world disappeared below her feet. She fell into the crater and debris rained on top of her, softly it seemed, till she caught her breath, and realised that it hurt.
Her fingers still held her suitcase. She began to crawl out of the crater, away from the flaming ruin of the tank.
‘Here! Over here!’
She looked up. A woman was kneeling at the edge of the crater. The woman held out her hand to Heidi.
Heidi took it. It was cold and smooth.
The hand began to help her up, and suddenly she could move again.
The hand hauled her the final few feet, and then shoved her, safe from the flames and debris, behind a wall.
She looked at her rescuer. She was older than Fräulein Gelber. Or maybe she was younger, and the lines on her face were only signs of strain. A boy stood beside her, a bundle in his arms. He was small—about two or three years younger than she was. His eyes were wide but steady.
‘Are you alright?’ asked the woman anxiously.
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