The Emerald Horizon (The Star and the Shamrock Book 2)

by Jean Grainger

  Xxx

  Liesl managed to get to the end of the letter, though she had to pause several times to steady herself. But as she uttered her mother’s last goodbye, she crumpled and great racking sobs tore through her slender body. Erich was clinging to Daniel, crying into his chest. Daniel held him tightly, his own tears shining unshed in his eyes. Elizabeth held Liesl, rubbing her back and letting her cry.

  Chapter 24

  Father Dominic was putting his vestments back in the wardrobe in the sacristy after evening Mass when he heard a commotion in the church. It was probably people seeking refuge, but they were usually quiet; the noise and shouting were unusual. He hurried out to find the church deserted but for several Russian soldiers, all surrounding Frau Groenig.

  ‘Stop!’ he called, rushing towards them. The old woman was trying to gather her dress around her body, but it had been torn. Their intention was clear.

  One of the men shouted something at him in Russian that he didn’t understand, but he pressed on. As he approached the group, a man who looked by his uniform to be more senior than the other four or five placed his hand on the priest’s arm.

  ‘She Nazi woman,’ he said in broken German, then tossed his head in the direction of the soldiers, giving them the go-ahead to continue.

  Father Dominic was horrified. Surely he didn’t intend to rape Frau Groenig? She was in her seventies at least.

  He stood four-square before the officer, towering over him, and spoke slowly in German, not knowing if the man had any idea what he was saying or not. The soldiers stopped and watched.

  ‘She is a parishioner of this church and she works here – let her go this instant.’ He tried to sound commanding, to ignore the Mosin-Nagant rifles the soldiers had slung carelessly across their backs and the overpowering smell of alcohol. The man who spoke also had a kind of sub-machine gun.

  ‘No. She Nazi,’ the man uttered again, this time more forcefully.

  ‘Please…’ Father Dominic realised he held no authority where they were concerned, so he tried to appeal to their sense of right and wrong. Though Stalin, and Lenin before him, tried to eradicate religion in Russia, the grace of God was surely not that easily erased from a culture. ‘This is a house of God. Do not send yourselves to hell by committing such a sin in His house.’

  ‘You Nazi priest, eh?’ the man asked with a sneer, then translated for his men, and one or two of them laughed. Dominic noticed two of the Russians were young and seemed very uncomfortable.

  ‘No. No, I am not. I hate what they did.’ He caught Frau Groenig’s eye; he had just confirmed what she always suspected. ‘But this woman is not one of them. She is innocent, like most Germans are. Please, you have mothers yourselves, sisters, wives… Show some kindness and let her go.’

  The officer gazed at Dominic, his cold grey eyes betraying no emotion. ‘You don’t know what they do in my country,’ he said darkly, his accent very pronounced. ‘You do not see what Nazi pig do.’ He spat on the tiled floor. ‘My family, my sisters, all…’ – he struggled to find the words – ‘all dead now, bad, bad, dead. You, Germans, not bad. They bad. Bad. She’ – he pointed at Frau Groenig and opened his fist to show the NS- Frauenschaft Nazi pin he had pulled from her dress – ‘have this, here.’ He thumped his chest over his heart. ‘She Nazi.’

  With an incline of his head, the officer gave the order to his men. As three of the five soldiers descended on her, ripping her dress from her thin body, she screamed. Father Dominic lunged forward to protect her. Her scream, the gunshot and Russian laughter were the last sounds he heard.

  It was no good – she would have to take her chances downstairs. They had not eaten for two days. She and Willi had had words about her going out, but surely he wouldn’t just abandon them? Of course not. Something must have happened to him. Frau Braun had said barely a word; it was as if she’d given up completely.

  Ariella heaved the trapdoor open. She tried to be quiet, but it was impossible to do it silently. She’d been listening, but amid the explosions, gunshots and screaming that was all anyone could hear these days, it was impossible to tell if there was anyone downstairs.

  She took the rope with the knots tied at intervals and prepared to slide down, her limbs aching once more.

  Outside, loudspeakers made announcements in Russian, and she was glad that her governess had taught her that language, though at the time, she’d had no interest in it. They were issuing instructions to their own men, not to the citizens of Berlin.

  There were no options left. As she always did, she closed her eyes, breathed deeply in and out, and pictured Liesl and Erich. She would get to them, no matter what. She would do it.

  She pushed herself off the edge with her hands and scraped the back of her thigh on a rough piece of wood. She was just registering the pain of that when she reached the bottom of the rope. She slumped on the floor. Her hands stung, and every muscle and joint ached, just like before. She dragged herself to her feet. The room swam before her; she was dizzy and weak with hunger. The door to Willi’s bedroom was open, the bed unmade. A sour smell emanated from it, but there was no sign of life. She fought the urge to just lie down, to fade away, to stop fighting.

  Above her, Frau Braun’s face appeared in the trapdoor opening. ‘Is Willi there?’ she whispered, her voice weak.

  ‘He’s not in his room. I’m going to check downstairs,’ she whispered back, pulling herself up using the bannister. ‘Pull the rope up and slide the trapdoor over again, just in case.’

  She crept downstairs, gripping the wall for support. The spring breeze was blowing through the now mostly glassless windows, and the house seemed silent. She gingerly opened the kitchen door and jumped when a rat ran across the floor. There was no sign of anyone having been there for days. She opened cupboards, desperate to find some food, anything at all.

  She remembered Willi asking his mother if she still had jars of pickles in the pantry, and Frau Braun had said that there might be. Willi had taken them, she assumed, but it was worth a look. The tiny pantry to the right of the kitchen was shelved, and all the shelves were bare.

  Where was Willi?

  She left the kitchen and tentatively entered the hallway where the body of Hubert Braun had once lain. There, in the tiny front parlour, she saw him. He was lying on the small settee, his pallor grey. Perspiration prickled his skin.

  ‘Willi!’ She ran to him.

  He was barely conscious, and the smell was nauseating. She knew instantly – his leg was infected and he was trying to fight the infection but failing. She had to do something.

  She ran upstairs and banged on the trapdoor. Frau Braun appeared once more, her eyes like saucers.

  ‘Willi’s ill. He’s downstairs but he’s not conscious. His leg is badly infected. Come down and be with him. I’m going to see if I can find some food and medicine.’ She had no idea where she would go or how she would do that, but she could not just let him die.

  With more agility than Ariella would have given her credit for, Frau Braun scrambled down the rope ladder. Together, they went down the stairs.

  The smell in the sitting room was horrid, so they opened a window but kept the drapes closed, and Frau Braun put a cushion under her son’s head, all the while murmuring softly to him that he was going to be all right.

  ‘We’ll give him some water and try to keep him conscious. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  She stood up to leave but immediately froze. She dared not move – there were voices coming from the street outside. Russian voices. There were three, maybe four. She could catch the odd word. ‘Women, nothing, Nazi bastard.’ A crude laugh.

  ‘What are they saying?’ Frau Braun whispered.

  Ariella just placed her finger to her lips.

  The men went on and on, talking rapidly, but she couldn’t understand them. Then she heard it. ‘Hitler is dead, rot in hell.’ Or something like that. And a cheer.

  Could it be true? Hitler was dead? Did the Russians kill him? A tho
ught crossed her mind. These soldiers were their liberators, Hitler was dead, the war surely over… Would they not behave properly and give three Jews sanctuary?

  Willi’s warning rang in her ears; he had told her what had been done to all of the females the Russians came across in East Prussia. She couldn’t risk it.

  She wished she knew what was happening. The terrible bombing seemed to be a thing of the past, but gunshots and screaming could still be heard frequently. The house trembled constantly at the rumble of tanks moving along the main street that intersected with theirs.

  She stood there, trying to decide what to do. Then she crept back to the kitchen and got a cup of water. Giving it to Frau Braun, she said, ‘Give him this. Try to get it into him. I’m going to have to go out and see if I can get some medicine or a doctor…’

  ‘They might get you.’ Frau Braun’s eyes betrayed the terror such a prospect held.

  It struck Ariella how the tables had turned. She’d relied for so long on Willi’s mother for everything, but now it seemed the formidable Frau Braun depended on her.

  ‘I know.’ She sighed. ‘But if we don’t fend for ourselves, we won’t make it. He’ll die if we don’t get some help.’

  ‘He won’t make it anyway, not now. There’s no point.’

  Ariella was determined not to allow her to go down that road. There was a real chance he would die anyway, but she couldn’t let his mother believe it. The prospect of him dying was such a horrible one, for his mother and for their safety, but also for her personally. She missed him in a way she had never anticipated. She missed the feel of his body beside hers at night, she longed to have him to talk to, she missed so much how he could make her smile, no matter how horrific the circumstances.

  ‘And would he give up on you? Would he?’ Ariella hissed. ‘After all he did to try to save us all?’

  Her tone shocked the other woman; she was used to Ariella being much more deferential.

  ‘You won’t find any medicine. There is none.’ Frau Braun’s voice was lead, but Ariella thought she heard a glimmer of hope.

  ‘You don’t know that,’ Ariella said forcibly.

  ‘Just go. Save yourself if you can, and leave me here to die alone –’ the older woman said, but Ariella interrupted her.

  ‘Alone? What are you talking about, alone?’ Her temper flared. ‘I’m here, Willi is here, and I am sure as hell getting back to my children. I’ve lasted this long – I won’t give up now, not a chance. Liesl and Erich are mine, and Willi is yours. They need us to survive, so let’s do this for them, shall we?’

  Ariella saw the deep pain in Frau Braun’s eyes and softened her tone. ‘Look, I know it looks bad, and maybe you’re right and there is no medicine, but we have to try, don’t we? You saved me, and I will not let you or Willi down now. We are bound together now, and I won’t desert you. I’ll wait. The order that was just on the loudspeaker was for all personnel to report to their barracks, so hopefully there will be fewer of them on the streets in a while. I’ll try to clean his wound in the meantime.’

  She went to the kitchen and filled a bowl with water. After tearing a piece off the already torn curtain, she returned to the small dark sitting room.

  Katerin Braun sat up straight and gazed in the direction of the small window, beside which hung a framed signed photograph of Adolf Hitler. It was Hubert’s pride and joy. As she dripped water into her son’s mouth, an armoured wagon passed by, the vibrations causing the photo to fall off the wall. The glass smashed on the tiles of the fireplace.

  Frau Braun’s laugh startled Ariella. The woman cradled Willi in her arms, mopping his brow as Ariella examined his putrid leg. Gingerly, Ariella started dabbing at it, and Willi groaned.

  ‘I actually believed that jumped-up little Austrian would make our country great again, you believe that? How stupid we were. But back then, at the start, he talked sense. We were destroyed after the last war, the British and the Americans taking everything, our money, our land, even our national pride. Nothing was left. But along comes the führer, and he says to hell with them, they can’t treat us like that, and we loved him for it. Nobody will say this now, of course, but for a while, things were better than they were for years. We had jobs and money and holidays and even a car. Imagine that! And he said all this could only get better, German families’ lives would get better, we could be proud again, and the only fly in the ointment was the Jews.’ She shrugged. ‘It made sense.’

  Ariella was shocked and confused and wondered if Willi’s mother was going a bit funny in the head. But Ariella had enough to worry about and Frau Braun seemed calmer when she was talking, so Ariella resisted the urge to interrupt her again.

  ‘Look at you and your husband, for example. You didn’t have to pull heavy bags of letters. No, that wouldn’t have been fitting work for a nice Jewish lady. So you got to spend your days teaching your children foreign languages and arranging flowers in your fancy apartment while the rest of us worked like dogs.’ Despite the harshness of the words, there was no malice there; it was simply how she saw it.

  ‘All over the city, the Jews had the best houses, the best of everything, and we had to work for them, deliver their letters, mop their floors, clean their toilets. Why you were all so surprised is really the mystery. Jews had no idea how privileged they were and how the rest of us felt about them.’ She seemed locked in a reverie.

  The seconds ticked on. Ariella had never considered that Frau Braun still hated her because she was a Jew. The woman was talking like she’d forgotten who Ariella was. She tried to quell her feelings of revulsion and pain that she’d spent so much of her life with someone who saw her and her children in those terms.

  ‘So why did you hide me if you felt that way about the Jews?’

  ‘Because I thought that if I saved you, then maybe in the law of the universe or something, my boy would be safe.’ She shrugged. ‘I know it’s stupid, but that day I saw you out on the street, I knew that if I didn’t take you in, you’d be picked up and that would be that. And so in a split second, I decided.’

  ‘You thought saving me would save Willi?’ Ariella finally understood.

  ‘My boy’s mother was a Jew, so that made him one. I thought that if I saved one Jew, then maybe God, or whoever is in charge of this mess, would look kindly on my boy and spare him.’ She exhaled and her shoulders slumped. ‘Stupid, I know, but it was how I felt I had some control over what happened to him. I couldn’t bear to lose him, you see. He is so precious to me.’ She leaned over him and kissed his clammy forehead.

  ‘And now? How do you feel about Jews now?’ Ariella asked. She would do right by this woman either way, she owed her that much, but she needed to know.

  ‘Now I think we are all just victims of a cruel world – you, your husband and children, me, Willi, the people of Germany, of Britain, France, everywhere, all of us – and the sooner we all leave this place, the better.’

  Chapter 25

  ‘I’m going to go,’ Ariella whispered. The street was quiet now. She’d rebandaged Willi’s wound and cleaned it up as well as she could, and his mother had managed to get some water into him.

  Frau Braun just blinked. They were both undernourished. She’d have to find some food and something to fight the infection, but she also wanted to see what was happening.

  The dress Frau Braun had given her that first day she sent her out into the world, which felt like years ago, was now filthy and smelly, and the jacket was not much better. She’d not washed properly or changed her clothes in so long, she knew her body odour was pungent and unpleasant.

  She thought of the lovely rolltop marble bath in their old apartment, how she used to fill it with hot water, rose oil and bubbles and luxuriate for hours. Or how she would put in toy boats and rubber ducks for the children at bath time when they were little; they would spend hours playing in the soapy bubbles. She could just about conjure up in her imagination the sweet smell of her washed children, their hair soft and fragrant as the
y cuddled up with her and Peter on the sofa in their pyjamas. Peter would have them giggling, telling them funny stories about talking teapots and the giraffe with the short neck.

  They would enjoy a cup of hot chocolate together, then brush their teeth and go to bed. How often did she and Peter stand over their sleeping babies, their hearts bursting with love for those perfect little people? That was a lifetime ago. She could picture her handsome husband easily, but no matter how she tried, she could no longer hear his voice in her head. It was as if he was moving further away. She dreamed of him sometimes at the beginning. She would wake in the attic alone, but for a split second, she would reach for him. Then the reality of where she was, of what she was, would crash over her like an icy shower.

  It felt like such a long time since she’d seen Peter. He probably wouldn’t even recognise her now, filthy and stinking, a bag of bones. Her curves were gone; her once-lustrous curly copper hair hung limply now.

  ‘Please, be careful, I…’ Frau Braun didn’t have the words to say what she felt, and Ariella felt a wave of affection for her, the first ever. She’d had a difficult life, and it had made her hard, but underneath was a woman capable of immense love and kindness. To see how she looked at Willi, cared for him, a child that another woman would resent as evidence of her husband’s cruelty, reminded her so much of how she looked at Erich and Liesl. They were both mothers, and while Ariella had enjoyed a very happy marriage, the other woman’s had been miserable.

  The revelation that she had taken care of Ariella because of some belief that her actions would keep Willi safe didn’t detract from the bravery of her decision. She had hidden her for so long, and whatever the future held for them, they would face it together.

  Ariella reached over and squeezed her hand. ‘I’ll be fine. I know this city like the back of my hand as I grew up here. I’ll stick to the back streets. And besides, I stink so badly, I doubt even the most enthusiastic Russian would risk going near me.’ She smiled, and Frau Braun patted her awkwardly on the shoulder.