Here you are. Look, arsehole!
See what I nicked from you?
One single word from you and I’ll poke your eye out with this!
As he said it, he pushed the sharpened tip against Jockerl’s left eye. Jockerl didn’t even blink. His little old man’s face with its corpse-like pallor was like a mask. Brief waves of shuddering kept running through his body. Adrian didn’t know what to do and wandered off towards the washroom and the toilets. The showers were lined up along one wall, opposite a row of washbasins, and behind them was a screened-off area with toilets and urinals. The doors to the toilet cubicles couldn’t be locked. The windows in the larger, lighter part of the room were different from the other windows in the pavilion in that their lower panes were made of milky, opaque glass. Two ventilation panes at the top stood open but were so narrow not even an infant could have pushed through them. For the escapist, the best thing would be to concentrate his efforts on the fastenings at the bottom. Zavlacky had showed him once how to attack them. Both window latches were attached to their hooks with a metal fastening that could be cut if one had a tool that was sharp enough. That was why Adrian had been sharpening the tip of the bullet casing. At best, the edge could function as the teeth on a saw-blade. He tried but hadn’t had time to make more than a faint score mark in the polished metal when he suddenly heard steps approaching in the corridor and then Mrs Lauritz’s voice: Ziegler …! He hid inside one of the toilets, crouching next to the seat with his back pressed to the wall, and prayed that Mrs Lauritz wouldn’t open this door. If Jockerl had decided to tell on Adrian he would have done so long ago. But Jockerl was not like the other children in the pavilion. He was never out to gain advantages, didn’t even seem to understand what was best for himself. Thoughts of revenge were utterly alien to him. Adrian felt ashamed. Now Mrs Lauritz was in the washroom, her voice echoing in there: Zie-eegler …! Then the telephone in the nurses’ room rang, Lauritz responded to the sharp noise and hurried off down the corridor on thudding cork heels. He attacked the window fastening again with renewed energy. And now it was giving way, the latch shifted a little on its hook and the milky pane moved a fraction outwards. He went for the other fastening, which was easier to break. All that remained now was to climb up on the edge of the basin, force himself through the tight gap between the window and its frame, and he was outside. He landed with a faint sucking noise on the wet, muddy grass, broke the fall with his knees and arms, and then ran across the gravelled path and towards the Steinhof buildings. If only he had known how easy it was to get out, he would have brought his rucksack, which was still in the corridor, and for as long as Mrs Lauritz stayed on the phone no one except Jockerl would have seen him. Then it struck him that because Jockerl hadn’t said anything, the likelihood was that he would have to take the punishment (again) once they realised that Adrian had escaped. Shame almost overcame him. He had a vision of himself holding up the stolen cartridge in front of Jockerl’s unmoving eye, here you are, arsehole and, suddenly, he simply couldn’t run fast enough. They had walked along the outside of the asylum wall on their excursions so many times that, although it was almost completely dark by now, he knew exactly in which direction he should run to get to the large chestnut tree where they had stopped earlier today. From the inside of the tall wall, the tree didn’t look as proud and huge as it had from the outside but he knew he could trust its long, strong branches. It was hard to clamber up the slippery, mossy trunk but he managed to climb to the first point where a strong branch joined the trunk, about four metres above the ground. From there, he had an open view of the entire hospital site. He saw the colossal mass of the Steinhof asylum and, further away, the group of gardening sheds near to where the blank surfaces of the greenhouse walls floated in an inky blue, shimmering light at the edge of the parkland, which looked black in the evening gloom. In the opposite direction, he could just make out the brooding bulk of the anatomy building and the subdued lamplight from some of its windows. He climbed higher up. He had no idea of where the wall was below him and tested the toughness of different branches. The most solid-looking one took off upwards rather than sideways but he followed it as far along as he dared. Leaves, damp with evening dew, whipped his face. The branch swung and dipped under his weight, deeper and deeper. He could hear the showers of torn-off chestnuts pattering against the cobbled pavement. It meant that he must be clear of the wall by now. In that instant, he saw a dazzling light further away. It didn’t come from a stationary source but bopped about like torchlight. From below he heard a dull rasping noise, like sandpaper rubbing against smooth wood. Were they about to catch up with him after all? His heart was thumping inside his chest. Should he hide inside the canopy of the tree or take a chance and let go? The branch made up his mind for him. It suddenly swayed and he slid down it as if poured out of the tree. He fell blindly and crash-landed with his hip and shoulder hitting the edge of the pavement. In the same instant, there was a screeching sound of bicycle brakes. Another body rolled heavily over his. Then the bicycle came down on top of them both and the handlebars slammed into Adrian’s stomach. A pair of frightened eyes took him in and a voice said:
It’s you!
It was the boy who, together with his older brother, had stopped to watch when the marching group had scattered and then stayed to listen while Mrs Lauritz and the shopping-bag lady were having words. Adrian recognised him by his broad smile and the beret he wore pushed well down over his forehead.
You’re from in there, aren’t you?
He said ‘in there’ in a deeply impressed tone.
I’ve seen you lots of times.
Adrian didn’t know what to say. The boy’s grin grew even broader.
You won’t get far, at least not in that kit!
Adrian looked down at his short trousers and dirty sandals. The boy was tugging at the front wheel of his bike which had partly jammed under Adrian. It was a good bike, with a sturdy frame and wide tyres. It didn’t have a light in front but the boy had a phosphorus lamp pinned to one lapel on his half-length jacket. In its pale light, the boy gestured to Adrian to jump on. They took off, Adrian perching uneasily on the handlebars, with the bell pressing into a buttock and his legs sticking almost straight out, while he heard his young benefactor sometimes singing behind him, sometimes panting as he pushed on the pedals and they zoomed downhill along Flötzersteig. He could just distinguish in the dark the allotment gardens they had marched past so often, then another place he recognised, the Wilhelminenspital’s towering façade. As they swept down the long slope towards Ottakring, the wartime blackout meant that all he could make out at the bottom of the valley was a jumble of roofs and chimneys, but it didn’t take long before he saw, rising out of the dark, real buildings with proper frontages facing real streets with cars driving up and down and on the pavements people walking about, real flesh-and-blood people, not half-dead prisoners. A wild happiness filled Adrian’s mind. He was free.
2 Restless we must wander in Flanders / So far away from home / The grey(-uniformed) soldiers / While the shells scream past us / Have learnt not to laugh.
VII
The Bleeding Führer
On the Run To escape is one thing but to stay alive on the run is another. While Adrian had been sharpening his secret weapon in the institution, he had made no plan, only known that he wanted to get home to his mother. Now he had to face the fact that he had no idea how to find her, that he didn’t know where she lived or what she did. Maybe he would aim for the 11th Bezirk, he thought. Someone in the old house on Simmeringer Hauptstrasse might be in touch with her or at least know where she lived now. Or he could try to look for Uncle Ferenc; but even if Ferenc hadn’t been called up (Adrian suspected that he had been) there was no guarantee that he or any of his friends would be able or even want to help Adrian. The elation seeped out of him and was replaced by worry and indecision, and after spending some time aimlessly walking the streets around Lerchenfelder Gürtel, he returned to Ottakring station
by midnight. He tried to find a suitable house where he might sleep for a while but, by then, most houses had locks on their street doors. New regulations made it obligatory for all property owners to ensure that no ‘alien elements’ were present in their buildings. The radio broadcasted warnings about the danger of Bolshevik spies. He had heard Nurse Mutsch speak on the subject. Like flies, she had said, they follow you around. Finally, he managed to get into a tumbledown house on Roseggergasse where part of the attic was used for drying laundry. The drying attic was no more than a bare, rough stone floor under a tall wooden roof. At the top of the stairs, the attic was protected by a rusty iron grille into which a wooden door had been fitted. He found a couple of dirty log-sacks and wrapped himself in them but they did next to nothing to stop the cold that rose from the stone floor. He breathed on his hands, clenched and unclenched them to keep some sensation in them and fell asleep after making himself as small as possible, with his knees pulled up to his chest and his hands tucked into his armpits. In the morning, hunger drove him out to look for food. In the daylight, everyone could of course see where he came from and what sort he was. People turned to glance at his bare feet in muddy sandals and he could almost hear them whispering to each other:
… one of those children …
He dived behind rattling trams, crossed one street, then another. He managed to snatch two apples from a stall at the corner of Ottakringer Strasse and Neulerchenfelder Strasse and ran with them under his shirt towards the big brewery on the other side of the street. The wide gateway was blocked by a barrier but he waited around. When the man in the guard hut started a shouted exchange with someone he knew who was on the other side of the street, Adrian sneaked past into the brewery yard. Near the factory building, a pair of dray horses stood waiting, ready to pull their broad wagons. The horses chomped hay from jute sacks and dumped a load of dung now and then. The rich smell of malt mingled with hay and horse manure reminded him of all the times Mrs Haidinger had made him haul radio batteries all the way to Schwechat and back. Again and again, he was almost clipped by lorries that came into the yard loaded with clunking empties. The sound gave him an idea. The empty bottles must be stored somewhere. If he could take just a few of them he could try to cash in the deposits. No one would think twice about it. There were hordes of boys who did their bit by collecting deposit money on bottles. If he came home with a pocket full of money earned in a respectable way, maybe his mother would write to the board of the institution and tell them that she was going to keep him this time. He managed to get into the huge brewing hall and ended up in front of an imposing machine spitting out endless rows of dark-brown bottles onto a conveyer belt. The bottles whizzed past strong metal arms ending in claws that lifted each one, turned it in the air and put it down again. Workers rushed up and down along the moving belt, hollering and shouting, but the noise of the machine was so overpowering that their voices were dulled as if calling out from behind a glass wall. He came back to awareness with a jump when a hard hand squeezed his shoulder. A man in a foreman’s grey coat loomed behind him and a large face hung over the boy like a lamp. The face might have asked what are you doing here? Or it might have mimed the words. Adrian didn’t actually hear anything. Waiting for my mum, he tried to shout or mime, because he had to answer something. The words were sucked into the clamouring, thumping giant machine that at the same moment grabbed hold of the necks of another half-dozen bottles, tipped them upside down and dumped them back on the belt. Wait outside then. The grip on his shoulder changed into a firm hand on his back that pushed him towards the door. The foreman apparently believed him and, as soon as they were back outside the large hall, past the packing shed and the garage for the large lorries, he completely lost interest in the young intruder. He just let the boy out and shut the factory door behind him. Adrian retreated to the corner of the yard where the drays had been waiting. The horses had left, leaving only the dung heaps and scattered remains of their hay. He crouched down and watched as the dark slowly deepened and moved up the fronts of the buildings. Soon, only the top floors were still lit by reflected sunlight. Adrian felt as if the lower, unlit windows secretly observed him. Then the dark swallowed even the attics. He might have been in the bottom of a well. All around him, walls rose to the sky. Closest to him, the tall factory walls around the brewery. Beyond them: the frontages of the buildings around the marketplace. Not one of them showed a single light. Just as in Ybbs, these buildings seemed to have no exterior: all were part of a system of inner courtyards and narrow, interconnecting paths and passages. Like a prison, but in the outside air. The shadow had by now reached the roof of the factory and, as if that were a signal, the workers walked out into the yard in clusters, five or six at a time. Most of them were men, but there were women among them, too. He wished that one of the women really was his mother and that she would see him waiting and call to him so that everyone else heard it, and then he could run to her. Some of the women pushed bicycles and had already pinned the little phosphorus lamps to their coats, ready to leave by the factory gate, climb onto the saddle and wobble along on the star-shaped network of unlit streets. For by now there was no light anywhere except for a pale, faintly green, reflected band near the horizon. He walked to the house on Roseggergasse under that green, darkening ceiling of sky and climbed upstairs to the attic where the warped wooden door still hung open. At first he thought he would never sleep, what with the grinding hunger in his guts and the raw cold that rose from the stone floor and settled in his bones, but he did fall asleep quite soon after lying down. In his dream, his mother appeared in front of him. She hadn’t stopped at just putting on her red lipstick but was also wearing Mrs Haidinger’s red dress. And I who thought you would help me, she said as she bent over him. He felt terribly afraid because he knew this wasn’t really her. When that face came close to his, the red lipstick-smile cracked and behind it were rows of teeth. Hard, bony fingers reached for his hand that clutched the cartridge, tried to force his fingers back one by one and, when he wouldn’t give way, she lifted his fist to her mouth and bit it with her pointy teeth, as sharp as a shark’s, cutting his knuckles. He screamed, woke and sat up with his heart hammering in his chest. All around him shimmered something icily white, which took him some time to realise was only the frozen vapour from his own breaths. He sucked on his hand and tasted the metallic flavour of the blood that stuck his fingers together. He must have clenched his fist so hard around the cartridge that its point had cut him. He was dreadfully cold by now; the shivering began down by his ice-cold feet and carried on all the way up to his teeth, which were chattering uncontrollably. To exercise his legs or wrap his arms around his body didn’t help at all. He tried to make some sounds, moans or whimpers, just to stop shaking, and rolled helplessly on the floor until he hit the wall. Then he heard a man’s voice, quite near:
The Chosen Ones Page 21