The Auslander

by Paul Dowswell

  He could hear the relief in her voice. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘He’s shopping in Hackescher Markt.’

  He could be there in twenty minutes if he hurried.

  He waited in the crowded market for ten minutes before Anna sidled up to him. Peter immediately leaned forward to kiss her.

  ‘No, no,’ said Anna. ‘Just walk with me. Close by, in the same direction. Someone could be watching us. Are you sure no one followed you?’ she said. She was being very businesslike. ‘Good. Vati has been arrested. I’ll tell you more later. Just trail behind.’

  They took the S-Bahn to Jannowitzbrücke. As they waited for their train she explained the steps they’d have to take. ‘If you’re being followed, we need to outwit them, otherwise we’ll lead them straight to where we’re hiding.’

  Peter nodded.

  ‘We’ll go our separate ways, then take the U-bahn to Senefelderplatz. I’ll meet you in the park just up from the northern exit. I’ll be lurking around the bandstand.’

  ‘I don’t want to lose you, Anna,’ said Peter. He was starting to feel very afraid.

  ‘You won’t,’ she said. Then she was gone.

  He walked to Alexanderplatz and caught the U-bahn. It was only a couple of stops. Then he waited, and waited. She turned up eventually. He felt angry with her – making him wait like this.

  ‘Peter, don’t be so bad tempered,’ she chided. ‘I thought someone was following me. I had to walk down to Moritzplatz to try to shake them off.’

  Peter shook his head. He felt stupid now.

  ‘Now take the U-bahn to Görlitzer Bahnhof. There’s a church off to the right, on Lausitzer Platz. I’ll be on the steps. Wait ten minutes before you follow me.’

  She could see he was getting impatient again.

  ‘Peter,’ she warned him, ‘you have got to learn that this is the only way any of us are going to stay alive for the next couple of weeks.’

  She was right, of course. And Peter was surprised at how cool she was being. His own fear was making him so edgy.

  .

  It took him half an hour to get there. The stink of stale sweat in the carriages was particularly strong that day. But there she was, as she had said, on the steps of a grand red-brick church.

  She nodded towards an apartment block just to the left of a café. ‘We’re on the fifth floor,’ she said. ‘Klein. Give me five minutes before you come.’

  Klein – that could only be Eugen Klein. Peter had never met him, but the Reiters had talked about him. He worked as a designer at Ula’s Frauenwarte magazine.

  Peter trudged up the red lino staircase of the apartment block until he came to a heavy wooden door marked Klein. Anna had been waiting for him, peering through the spyhole. She opened the door just as he was about to knock.

  ‘Did anyone see you?’ she asked in a whisper.

  Peter wanted to say ‘How the hell should I know?’ but he didn’t. ‘I don’t think so. Everyone just seemed to be going about their business. I don’t think anyone even noticed me coming in here.’

  Ula Reiter came to greet him in the corridor. She too was talking very quietly. ‘Peter! Thank heavens we found you. Come and sit down.’

  Before he could ask, Ula said, ‘The Gestapo have taken Otto. We saw him being dragged away. Thank God we weren’t there when they came. It looks bad. They’d beaten him already, so we fear the worst.’

  Peter felt sick to the pit of his stomach. ‘I’m sorry, Frau Reiter,’ he said.

  She looked terrible. Drawn, sick with worry. She showed him into the living room. The apartment was small – the room was packed to the ceiling with overflowing bookshelves. It was like Professor Kaltenbach’s study, on a grander scale. Peter moved a pile of books on the sofa and sat down.

  ‘Why are we whispering?’ said Peter.

  Both of them looked at him as if he were stupid.

  ‘We don’t want any of the neighbours to know we’re here,’ said Anna.

  ‘It’s a tiny place,’ said Frau Reiter. ‘Just the one bedroom, so we can’t stay for long. Just until Eugen gets our documents sorted out.’

  ‘What documents?’ asked Peter.

  ‘We’ve got to go – leave Berlin as soon as possible,’ said Frau Reiter. ‘This is what we’re going to do . . . Eugen will be back this afternoon with his camera. We need to disguise ourselves. I’ve been to the chemist. We’re going blonde.’

  She produced two packets of hair dye.

  ‘Shouldn’t I go dark?’ said Peter.

  She shook her head. ‘No. We’ve thought about this. We’re a family now. You and Anna are brother and sister. I’m your mother. We’re all heading back to Sweden for your grandfather’s funeral.’

  Before he could ask another question she carried on.

  ‘Peter and I are going to be short-sighted.’ She fetched out two pairs of black-rimmed spectacles. They had plain lenses in them. ‘I got them from a theatrical props shop.’

  Anna continued, ‘Then Eugen is going to do us some fake identity papers and travel warrants.’

  ‘It’s a good time to go,’ said Frau Reiter. ‘Half of Berlin is sending their children out to the countryside.’ A week earlier Hamburg had been severely bombed. There were rumours of hundreds of thousands killed and a million made homeless. The German capital was sure to be a target for similar attacks.

  ‘There’ll be a lot of people for them to check,’ Frau Reiter continued, ‘and we can hide amongst them. We’re Swedes, returning to Stockholm.’

  ‘I don’t speak a word of Swedish,’ said Peter. ‘I don’t even know how to say hello.’

  ‘I don’t speak much either,’ said Anna. ‘Just a few phrases from visits to Tante Mariel. We’ll just have to hope no one asks us. I’ll teach you a few words later on.’

  ‘We’ve worked it all out. We’ve been living in Berlin as your father is working for the Swedish Trade Association here.’

  They spent the rest of the afternoon putting the dye on their hair and eyebrows. ‘You have to be careful,’ said Frau Reiter. ‘Leave it in too long and you look like you’ve dipped your head in yellow paint.’

  They all admired themselves in the bathroom mirror. ‘Now your glasses too,’ said Anna.

  Peter was quite surprised how easily they had changed their appearance.

  ‘It’s not brilliant,’ said Frau Reiter, ‘but it’s a start.’

  It felt strange, hiding here, trying to be quiet. It was almost like a children’s game, but then the awful reality of the situation would hit them. Otto in Gestapo custody. All of them fugitives.

  Eugen Klein returned that evening. He was a small, dapper man with a bald head, neat beard and wire-framed glasses.

  ‘Frauenwarte are all very concerned about you,’ he said to Ula. ‘Magda is convinced you have been killed in an air raid. Helene thinks you may be too ill to come to the telephone. She is going to your apartment this evening to see if you are all right.’

  ‘Let’s hope she doesn’t come here to tell you no one’s home,’ said Ula.

  ‘That’s OK,’ said Eugen. ‘We all need to remember to whisper and no one answers the door. Simple. Anyway, you both look marvellous. Shame you can’t stay dark, but they’ll be looking for two women with dark hair.’

  He fished out a camera from one of the shelves and they set up a plain sheet against the one part of the wall that was not covered in bookshelves or picture frames. As soon as the pictures were taken Eugen said, ‘I’m off to the studio. I’ll be home by midnight. Help yourself to some supper.’

  Peter said they could eat the food he had taken from the Kaltenbachs’. ‘We don’t want to clear your larder.’

  As they ate, Peter raised a question he had been burning to ask. ‘I wonder how they found out?’

  Ula shook her head. ‘It’s barely worth thinking about. It could have been anyone. Maybe they’ve known for months. Maybe they’ve been following us on our deliveries. Maybe one of our helpers or one of the U-boats was arrested and had our names t
ortured out of them. Maybe the boy who came to our door had something to do with it . . . You could spend the rest of your life trying to untangle that particular mystery. I can’t think about it. There’s too much else to worry about.’

  For a brief moment, Peter wondered about Segur. The last time he’d seen him, he’d given him that stamp. He wouldn’t have done something like that, would he? No. Segur was his great friend. He was sure it wouldn’t have been him.

  .

  They were all trying to sleep when Eugen came back. Anna on the sofa, Peter and Ula, uncomfortably, on the floor. Peter heard the door open but the others only stirred when Eugen switched on the light. Peter looked at his watch. It was half-past two.

  ‘Look,’ Eugen said. ‘Train tickets, travel permits, passports, the lot. You are now Magdalena, Karin and Nils Edlund!’

  They were all wide awake now. ‘These look perfect!’ said Ula. ‘What time does the train leave?’

  ‘There’s one tomorrow morning, at ten-thirty, heading for Sassnitz. You take the ferry there to Trelleborg. You’ll have to buy ferry tickets. I can’t forge them.

  ‘One final thing,’ said Eugen. ‘Peter, you will need a smarter overcoat. You will be mistaken for one of our foreign workers in a shabby coat like that. You can borrow mine.’

  Eugen fetched a lovely herringbone wool overcoat. It was a little short for Peter. But Ula could always claim he’d just started to grow out of it.

  ‘I couldn’t,’ Peter protested. ‘Haven’t you got something older?’

  Eugen knew what he was doing. ‘The three of you need to look like a family. You need to look like ordinary people that no one will give a second glance to. If Ula and Anna look smart and you look scruffy, then you will stand out. I’ll swap you, though. You let me have your Luftschutz uniform – it will come in handy for something soon. One of our Jewish friends can make use of it.’

  That seemed a fair exchange, and after all, Peter could not be carrying a Nazi uniform with him. How would he explain that?

  Ula gave Eugen a huge bear hug. ‘My dear friend, I shall miss you a great deal. Thank you so much.’

  He gave her a sad smile. ‘We shall miss you. And all the Onkel Klauses will too. But it’s good that you go as soon as possible. Try to rest now, and I’ll sort out a picnic for you in the morning.’

  .

  CHAPTER 34

  August 9, 1943

  .

  Leaving the safety of the apartment was like walking naked into a school assembly. All of them felt terribly self-conscious, expecting a tap on the shoulder or a brusque demand to halt. But the world carried on, paying no heed to a mother and her two teenage children.

  ‘Don’t forget, while we’re waiting,’ said Ula, ‘we mustn’t talk. If we’re questioned and we say we’re Swedish, and the people behind us have been hearing us chatting away in German then we’ll be in trouble. You’ll just have to look morose. Children your age often look like that anyway! I will do all the talking.’ She turned to Anna. ‘I shall talk like your Uncle Lennart when he speaks to us in German.’ They both managed a giggle at that. ‘But let us hope we don’t meet anyone who talks to us in Swedish.’

  There were so many things that could go wrong, thought Peter. Who knew what questions they might be asked? It was one thing to think of something clever to say in the safety of your own home. Quite another to parry an awkward question from a policeman or soldier with a crowd of curious onlookers hanging on your every word. Then, a wrong answer could be the first step to the guillotine.

  .

  Lehrter Station was besieged. Queues five or six people wide and hundreds of people long snaked out from the magnificent main entrance. Almost all were women and children loaded down with bags and suitcases. They all waited in an orderly manner but they were tense and irritable. Mothers screamed at children for no good reason. Children bawled their heads off. It was a parade of human misery.

  They found the back of the queue and waited. They felt very conspicuous there at the end, but soon hundreds more had arrived behind them. Sometimes the queue shuffled forward. Often it stayed still for ages. The time of departure for the train they had tickets for came and went. ‘Never mind,’ said Ula, ‘they’ll have to put us on another one. Maybe that one is running very late and it hasn’t left yet?’

  Anna and Peter, who had been sitting on their cases pretending to catnap, or glumly staring ahead, shook their heads. Ula realised she had spoken to them in German and blushed. But no one seemed to be paying them any attention.

  The queue surged forward just after eleven o’clock in the morning. They moved out of the summer sunshine into the cool interior of the station. Peter had never been inside Lehrter Station and he was awed by its grand hall and the beautiful glazed tiles that decorated the walls. Ahead were soldiers and policemen.

  As they moved closer to the checkpoints, the soldiers moved up and down, looking for someone who stood out. Jews, or foreign workers trying to escape, or young men of military age in civilian clothing. The first policeman to get that far down the line made a bee line for them.

  He spoke directly to Ula. ‘Why are these children leaving the city? They are both old enough to serve in the Luftschutz brigades.’

  Peter’s heart began to thump in his chest. Ula looked affronted. She began to speak in a halting, heavily accented manner. ‘Ve are now returnink to Sveden for a funeral. My husband vork here.’

  The man’s manner changed at once. ‘I beg your pardon, madame. You will understand, I hope, if I ask to see your papers.’

  She fetched their documents from her handbag. They had agreed that she should carry everything, as a mother in a foreign land probably would. Especially if her children did not speak the language.

  The policeman took a long time. Peter’s first instinct was to stare at him anxiously. But he knew this would make him look suspicious, so he looked away. It took every atom of willpower not to look at the man. Peter scarcely dared breathe while they waited to see what he would do next.

  ‘Come with me, please,’ he said. Peter began to get up, and Anna. Ula spoke to them quickly, in Swedish. Fortunately, the man didn’t notice they had understood him. Peter could tell in Ula’s eyes she was fuming at their stupidity.

  Was this the time to run away? What was happening? Not being able to speak was making this situation far worse. They all walked behind the policeman. Ula said something else to them in Swedish. They nodded and said ‘Ja’ – that was easy at least. The word for yes was the same in both Swedish and German.

  The policeman took them to a small police post at the side of the station. Then he showed them into a waiting room and left.

  Peter could contain himself no longer. No one else was in the room so he whispered, ‘What’s happening? What are we to do?’

  Ula said, ‘We’ll just have to see what he’s doing. Look. He’s left us here on our own, unguarded. If we go, we’ll just make them suspicious. We’ll just have to wait.’

  Anna put a hand on Peter’s arm and gripped it very tightly.

  They waited. Peter could see one of the station’s clocks. The hands moved in minuscule, quivering steps from 11.43 to 11.58. It took a lifetime.

  In his private thoughts, Peter could imagine what would happen. They would all be bundled into a police van. They would be beaten black and blue. Bones would be broken. Teeth would be knocked out. He had heard far more than he ever wanted to about Gestapo interrogations. Then they would be dragged before the People’s Court and sentenced to death. All three of them. How would he behave when they frogmarched him up to the guillotine? Would he whimper in fear, or would he be brave? And what would happen then? Was it really as quick as they said it was? Did your head live on a bit? Would he feel it when his head fell into the basket?

  .

  The door to the room crashed open. A railway official came in. ‘Frau Edlund? Good. The next train with a connection for the Sassnitz ferry is not until four o’clock this afternoon. We will, though, ensure
you have a place on it. Please accept our apologies. You may remain here while you wait. Can I get you anything?’

  Peter tried not to smile. It was difficult pretending he did not understand.

  Ula looked ten years younger in an instant. ‘Zhank you zo much, zir,’ she replied in her Swedish-German accent. ‘Coffee and cake vould be great appreziated.’

  ‘I shall see what I can do, madame,’ said the man, and gave a little bow.

  As soon as he was gone, they all let loose an enormous sigh of relief. But Peter was still suspicious. ‘Why are they being nice to us?’

  Ula had a theory. ‘On my last day at the magazine, we had a memo from the Propaganda Ministry. Sweden is to be praised to the skies. We knew what that was about. Sweden is under a lot of pressure to stop trading with us,’ she whispered. ‘The Americans and the Soviets are both saying they will treat the Swedes as collaborators – almost as an enemy nation – if they continue to trade with Germany. I think the Nazis are trying to be as charming as possible. They want the Swedes in Germany to go home and tell their friends how wonderful the Germans are.’

  The coffee and cakes arrived and Anna and Peter remembered not to say anything to the boy who delivered them other than ‘Tack’, which was Swedish for ‘thank you’.

  The train was two hours late arriving, but before anyone else was allowed on Ula and Anna and Peter were taken to the front of the platform. When the gates were opened, they were at the head of a queue of passengers desperate to scramble aboard.

  .

  The train left shortly after seven that evening. The day had gone well. There had been no daylight bombing raid. If the British were coming, they would not arrive until after dark.

  The train crawled through the Northern suburbs – first past the dense apartment blocks and factories and marshalling yards, then kilometre after kilometre of little houses with their own gardens. Then the flat dull landscape beyond the city. Staring from the window in the crowded carriage, Peter was surprised he could still see the distant domes and spires of the city. Only when they passed Oranienburg did he lose sight of Berlin altogether. It was then the train began to pick up speed. The evening light cast long shadows from the trees and telegraph poles, making the yellow of the cornfields and the green hedgerows and trees look vivid and beautiful.