Devastation Road

by Jason Hewitt

  ‘A family in Hoyerswerda.’

  ‘A German family?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I thought perhaps . . .’ He didn’t know. ‘Your English is very good, that’s all. A relief, actually,’ he added. ‘I can’t tell you how exhausting it’s been with Janek.’

  ‘Janek?’

  ‘The boy,’ he said.

  She nodded.

  ‘Yes,’ he went on. ‘All grunts and hand gestures. A lot of gesticulation.’ He laughed. She gave him a thin, polite smile.

  ‘I’m impressed anyway,’ he said.

  How long must it have been since he’d had a decent conversation? The girl, he had decided, might at least be a mediator between them. He had never been one for chatter – that had always been Max – but, God, he needed it now.

  She gave him a coy glance then bent to pick a dandelion. ‘I wanted to teach languages,’ she told him. ‘In university.’

  ‘But you didn’t?’

  No,’ she said. ‘The war.’

  Oh yes, he thought. That. ‘Perhaps you could do it after.’

  She didn’t seem convinced. She twiddled the flower carelessly in her hand and then, looking at her stained fingertips, discarded it in the grass.

  ‘And you speak German?’ he said.

  She nodded.

  ‘Excellent. And Czech too? Český?’ He smiled.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. That’s a pity,’ he said.

  Awkwardly, he reached across and pinched one of the daisies from her bouquet. He tickled the baby’s nose with it and held it under his chin, forgetting that it wasn’t a buttercup.

  ‘I’ve been wondering where the father is.’

  ‘He is not here,’ she told him.

  ‘I can see that. Is he fighting somewhere?’

  She laughed at him. ‘No.’

  ‘What about your family then?’ he said. ‘Your parents?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She was quiet a moment, then, on an impulse, she threw the daisies out into the field, a sudden shower of white and yellow, and draped herself over the fence. ‘I don’t care anyway.’ She kicked at the lowest slat, and then turned to him with a challenging gaze. ‘You have children?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ She looked surprised. ‘Oh. You are good with baby,’ she said. ‘You have a wife?’

  ‘Yes. Well, I don’t know. I think so.’

  ‘You are not so very sure of much.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said, standing up straight. ‘Now I understand. She is leaving you, or she is coming back now, or you don’t know. You don’t trust her.’

  ‘No, it’s not like that.’

  ‘She is one of those women.’

  ‘No, it’s not that at all. I don’t know. I don’t remember.’

  ‘You don’t remember.’ The way she laughed at him sounded like an accusation.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s gone. Lots of it’s gone. That’s all. I fell or hit my head, a bomb blast or something, I don’t know. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.’ He tried to explain, struggling to find the words to express how it was like an empty sea and only now were occasional islands starting to surface, the smallest fragments of land that he might cling to.

  ‘Like this war,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what’s happening, what has happened, who even is fighting any more. It had barely started, you see, but now this . . . I mean . . .’ He shrugged. ‘It might not even be the same one as far as I’m concerned. All of this,’ he said, hoisting the baby up on his shoulder and waving his hand across the field at the clogged line of military traffic worming along the road. ‘I can hardly believe in it. I don’t even know how I got here.’

  ‘You could live through the war like I have and still not believe it,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, well, I just want to go home,’ he told her.

  ‘And,’ she added, ‘I do not believe you have lost your memory. You cannot lose memories.’

  That’s not true, he thought.

  ‘So you are liar, or they are not lost, they are hidden, and you don’t want them.’

  ‘Not true,’ he said, but she wasn’t listening. She was waving at Janek, who was coming up through the field with what looked like a loaf under his arm and, good God, was that a flask of wine?

  She smiled. ‘I don’t think he likes me,’ she said. ‘Look. He does not wave.’

  ‘He doesn’t know you yet,’ Owen said. ‘He was the same with me for days.’ Or maybe it hadn’t been that long. Owen could not be sure.

  ‘You trust him?’ she asked, not taking her eyes from the boy as he cut his way up to them through the crop. ‘I don’t think you should trust him.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You should not trust anyone.’

  ‘Well, that’s going to make this rather difficult then, don’t you think?’

  She turned and gave him a smile. ‘Come. We must go.’

  It was Janek, of course, who found the motorcycle and who – commandeering Owen’s help – hauled it out of the ditch. He stood with it on the road, holding it upright while he studied it. It was an old BMW R12. Max had been a motorcycle fanatic and had obsessed about such things. This one, though, was battered and covered in dents and prangs, but after Janek had kicked the throttle and it had stalled several times, it eventually belched into life.

  He revved the engine and soon he was tearing down the lane, kicking up dust and stones, and then swinging the bike around and pelting back. They stood on the verge and watched, Irena rocking the child.

  The boy showed no fear, squeezing the throttle, pushing the bike to go faster as he rode back and forth, head down, back low, the wind shaking his collar and rippling through his trousers. Just like Max, Owen thought, roaring through the country lanes, with him clinging on behind, yelling, Max, slow down. You’re going to have us in the ditch!

  ‘Waah!’ Janek shouted.

  He swerved to a halt in front of them. He wanted Irena to get on the back.

  ‘Nein. Nein,’ she said, laughing, but finally he persuaded her and she pressed the baby into Owen’s arms and lifted her dress to hitch her leg over the seat. She wrapped her arms around Janek’s waist, looking petrified. He revved the engine and they were off, Irena shrieking all the way, pushing the side of her head into his back and clenching her eyes shut.

  It took several runs before she would open them and several more after that before she was laughing and they were both shouting at the thrill of it, the heads of meadow grass bowing as the motorcycle whistled past, and dandelion seeds dancing in the road, whipped up in the backdraught.

  Owen followed them along the verge with all the paraphernalia of the baby, the bags and canisters. Just as he was starting to get annoyed, the motorcycle ran out of fuel. He watched as in the distance they freewheeled to a stop, laughing and sticking their legs out like stars. They got off and Janek pushed the bike over to the side of the road and let it clatter down. They waved at Owen and he waved back, setting off to catch them up, but they were already walking on ahead.

  He watched her. He had watched her – this other girl who had entered his thoughts and was gone again. There, within that blink of his eye, in the passenger seat of an Austin Eton, or on the back of a disappearing motorcycle, or hurrying down the stairs at a party, and in another blink lost as he stared down from a balcony at the hazy swill of people.

  He just wanted to hold her in his mind long enough to see her face.

  He watched this girl in the same way: the back of her milky pale calves greasy in the sun, the faint silhouette of her legs through the white fabric of her dress, the curve of her hip, the hump of the infant held in front of her – whom she carried with care but had not cared to name; whom she had given away but could not let go of. She seemed too young to be a mother and yet too bruised now and altered to remain a girl.

  Sometimes, as Janek and Irena walke
d ahead and their outlines blurred in the soft haze and flicker of sunlight and shadow, he could imagine the two of them standing in for him and this woman he so dimly remembered. He wondered if that was the gait of her, the shape of her, her laugh; if what he saw was, in fact, her standing on a distant pavement, gazing at him one last time. But he knew if he ran to her and turned her around she would be gone, just as he was to her, slipping even from himself, bleeding memories and slowly ebbing away.

  The scrap of material lay loose in his hand, a short fringe of frays around each edge and the whole thing no more than two inches square. He turned it over and back again.

  ‘What is that?’ Irena asked, her eyes on him as she changed the baby’s nappy.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he told her. ‘Nothing.’

  Just a plain bit of material and not even cut with any care. It had the same colour as a raincloud, snipped from the sky.

  Clouds he knew. Cumulus. Cirrus. Stratus. Altostratus. He had looked down on them and through them, the aircraft barely making more than an indentation as if the clouds were no more than ghosts, so that not even a bullet-shaped plane cutting through the belly of them would distract them from their drift. His first flight as a new recruit in the Air Training Cadet Corps came to him. It was in a small yellow Tiger Moth called Quincy and the updraught had taken her up like an elevator. Seated nervously next to the pilot, he had fallen in love with the sky that day – finding God somewhere in it, and the wonder of the heavens. They had flown low over the Hampshire countryside and then out as far as Bristol and the Severn Estuary. It was early morning and everywhere the fields and countryside were lightly veiled in mist, and at one point steam from a railway locomotive had risen right up through it. He had got his first sense of it that day – the glory of being a pilot.

  The river was fast-flowing as it bumped and splashed over the rocks, scurrying around in whirlpools and leaping the fallen branches. His finger searched up and down the map but he couldn’t fathom out where they were.

  They struggled along the bank between the trees until first one and then the other direction became unnavigable, the bank so steep and the willows leaning so far over that there was no way around and they had to turn back.

  ‘What now?’ said Irena.

  Whichever way they looked there was no sign of a shallower calmer stretch and, unable to orient themselves, they didn’t know how far they would need to walk until they found a bridge.

  ‘Here is not so deep,’ said Janek hopefully. ‘I will take baby,’ he announced, but Irena wouldn’t let him.

  ‘Let me then,’ offered Owen.

  ‘I don’t need your help,’ she said.

  They sat on the bank and took off their shoes and socks, Janek and Owen tying the laces and hanging them around their necks. They secured the baby into the papoose to keep him safe, then Owen fastened the milk and water canisters to his belt; their coats and blanket he hooked around his neck as well to keep his hands free.

  They edged their way in, Janek first, Irena and the baby in the middle, and Owen bringing up the rear. He could hear the sound of their breath, taut with concentration.

  The water was freezing, and the current a lot stronger than it had looked from the bank. It pulled at his calves as they edged in deeper, using their fingertips to steady themselves against the slippery rocks and their bare feet fumbling in the torrent for each footing. Beneath him he could feel broken branches, the sharp edge of stones, and the sludgy sponge of algae.

  ‘Fish!’ Janek exclaimed.

  ‘Where?’ Owen felt the unexpected whip of something hard like a snake against his leg. ‘An eel!’ he said.

  It darted away. He saw it tunnelling through the water but then he lost sight of it. He carried on, feeling his way slowly forward, until there was a yelp from Janek and Irena shrieked, and they both splashed in. Their arms flailed as they tried to find their feet again, the water surging around them. Owen scrambled down, slipping in to reach them as they struggled to help each other against the fierce flow.

  Irena cried, ‘Das Baby!’

  The fall had already taken her several feet downstream and as she tried to stand Owen could see the empty papoose swilling in the water around her neck. He and Janek dived in, struggling against the flow. Irena was feeling around in the water with her hands, dipping her head under to look and then up again as she tried to keep her footing among the rocks. The water crashed and roared around Owen as he surged downriver, desperately searching for a glimpse of the child.

  Behind him Janek came up choking.

  ‘I can’t see him,’ Owen yelled.

  ‘There!’ Irena quickly shouted.

  Owen turned and saw the infant caught in the relentless tumble of the river, under and up again, turning and turning. Janek flung himself forward to reach him and Owen dived too. He pulled hard strokes, his legs kicking against the rocks and weeds, the canisters banging against his back. In front of him the baby disappeared again, sucked under. Then the child was there and Owen lunged for an arm. He pulled the infant in and held him close as the current washed them against a fallen tree trunk. Then Janek grabbed Owen’s shirt to steady him and threw an arm around Owen to keep the three of them upright. They both spluttered and coughed. He was aware of Irena upstream, her hands clutched to her head. He felt Janek’s laboured breath against him as the two of them held each other and the child between them. The water splashed hard against their faces. The baby started to howl.

  ‘Thank God,’ Owen murmured.

  The river churned around them. He clutched the child to his chest.

  They joined a road that grew busier, everyone heading in the same direction it seemed. Many were German soldiers, all exhausted, sometimes walking in small groups but often alone, the abandoned or the deserters, some already holding white handkerchiefs ready to give themselves up. There were families too, dragging tired children with leaden legs or pushing their goods in carts fashioned from crates, or prams, or nothing more than flat pieces of wood attached to rattling wheels and pulled by lengths of rope. Some walked without anything. But all of them were hurrying. Owen could see the anxiety in the tight expression on their faces.

  All four of them were still damp and shaken, and slopping in their shoes. There had been little conversation but something in their group had now shifted, like four tiny pieces of a watch mechanism clicking into place. Just a glance sometimes from one to another. A single shared thought.

  Janek blamed himself. He had crafted the papoose, after all.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Owen told him.

  But the boy would not listen. He watched Irena press her cheek to the baby’s head.

  Just outside a village the three of them scrambled up on to the verge as four open-topped trucks rattled noisily past. There were hordes of thin-faced men piled in each. They were singing raucously, some sitting, some standing and swirling the French Tricolore. They slapped at the sides of the cart as it rumbled by, banging out a tribal rhythm to accompany an accordion, and in their wake, Owen could hear cheers of ‘Liberté’ and ‘Vive la France!’

  ‘What’s happened?’ he shouted to them. ‘Qu’est-il arrivé?’

  ‘Votre Hitler est mort,’ one called back. ‘La guerre est finie.’ Then the man threw a bottle that shattered on the road at Owen’s feet and laughed.

  ‘Saloperie d’Allemand!’

  It was hard to know what to feel – the end of a war that in his mind had barely started. There was not relief or despair. There was simply disbelief, as if he had found out he had been cured of a terminal illness that he had only just learnt he had.

  He lay on his back in the long grass staring up at the blue and the soft trail of clouds like smoke from the last guns. Perhaps the sight of a plane would jolt a memory. He stared up at the great expanse, waiting, but nothing came.

  He did not know what he had expected from Irena or Janek, but it was not this clenched silence. Their numbness was mirrored everywhere. There was no sigh; no long breath
released that had been held for all these years; no joyous hug or sudden embrace that they might later be embarrassed by.

  ‘It’s over then,’ he had said to Janek, as if perhaps Janek hadn’t understood.

  ‘Ano,’ said the boy. That was all.

  He wandered blindly up the road as if Owen had said nothing more than the sun was out or his bag was undone or there might be bread for supper. He kicked along the grass verge, occasionally pulling a stalk of oat grass and flicking it around for a bit before letting it drop from his hand. Irena walked some distance behind, gently jigging the baby, her head nodding in time as if in her thoughts she was quietly agreeing with it.

  And so the war had ended – not with a bang but a slow death, a last exhale to nothing.

  A mile or so later they passed the remnants of a German battalion scattered along the verge like debris. They sat bent in the grass, or lay flat on their backs, or stood about puffing on cigarettes and staring blankly through the smoke, their sniper rifles lying discarded at their feet. Nobody spoke. Behind them a single soldier stumbled around in the middle of a ploughed field, tripping over the muddy furrows as if drunk and clutching his head in his hands. Even from the road they could hear him moaning and then he pulled a pistol from its holster and, before Owen could register what he was doing, the man had put it to his head and fired.

  They did not speak but walked through the dream. At one point they passed a man sitting in the grass on a milking stool, hunched over and staring at his undone laces as if it were the undoing of these that had been the undoing of his war.

  Janek drew a deep breath. He threw them both a look, hands in pockets, saying something and nodding as if something at last had been decided, they could set forth with a longer stride.

  ‘He says everyone will be freed now,’ Irena translated. ‘His brother will be free. And we will find him.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Owen, smiling at him.

  Everyone who was lost would be found. Everything would be mended.

  They sheltered in a hay store that night, in the middle of some woods. Inside it was just large enough for the three of them to lie out, the baby in a bundle between them. One end of the store was entirely open so that they could watch the boughs being blown about, casting shadows across the clearing that were like figures wandering lost in the dark.