Scholz swayed on his heels. His self-control splintered.
‘Did she tell you the truth, Davide? That her friend in the Resistance tried to shoot me that night? He had a gun in his pocket. I didn’t want the bastard dead, I wanted to question him. He forced my hand. Did she tell you that?’ His cheeks were streaked with red veins. He threw off his spectacles.
‘No. She did not.’
‘And did she tell you,’ Scholz demanded in a heated voice, ‘that the other interrogator at headquarters tore not just a prisoner’s nails off but their fingers as well. The interrogation had to be done, she was a Resistance fighter. So I did it myself. As gently as I could.’
‘Gently? For God’s sake, Scholz, there is nothing gentle about ripping out a woman’s fingernails.’
Scholz groaned at the memory.
‘And the child?’ Davide demanded. ‘What explanation do you have for the abduction of her child?’
A crow drifted low over the camp, skimming the darkening ground, a black smear that cast a shadow in Davide’s mind.
‘Have you ever heard of Lebensborn?’ Scholz asked.
He did not wait for an answer.
‘Hitler thought of everything. He thought on a grand scale. I say this quietly, Davide, to you and to no one else. Hitler had a vision, whether you agreed with it or not. And Lebensborn was one of his key strategies. It was initiated by the SS to purify our gene pool for the German race. A brilliant concept. To encourage the birth of Aryan children – blond hair, blue eyes – even among unmarried mothers. But this is the relevant point here – the children were removed and given up for adoption to German parents who were “racially” worthy. The SS even kidnapped suitable children from the countries we had conquered in Europe. Fifty-thousand children were taken to be Germanised.’
Scholz turned to Davide, face-to-face.
‘And what Polish child do both you and I know who would have been ripe for kidnap? Perfect for a carefully selected Aryan family longing for a beautiful pure Aryan daughter. Who Davide? Who would you guess?’
‘Alicja.’ Davide felt sick at the thought.
‘Exactly.’
‘You hid her from the SS?’
‘I did. In the convent. If she had been sent for adoption in Germany, Klara would never have seen her daughter again.’
‘Did she know this?’ Davide frowned. It did not tie in with what Klara had told him.
‘Of course she knew. I was trying to help her. To save her daughter.’
‘So why would Klara lie about it?’
‘Only she can answer that.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Berlin
I didn’t like hiding. I’d done too much of it.
On my trek with Alicja from Warsaw in Poland all the way to Graufeld Camp in Germany we had lain face down in ditches. Spent wet nights in forests. Slid into rat-infested culverts to avoid detection. It damages you. Strips you of your humanity. Turns you feral.
I didn’t want that. Not again.
Erich, our fisherman, was good. He knew the river like he knew the palm of his hand. At times he let the current take us, so there was not even the whisper of the oars. There was no chance the Soviet guards could see us in the dark, but that didn’t stop us holding our breath. Hanna and I buried our pale faces in our knees, hunched over like crabs in the bottom of the boat as it glided over the water.
It was choppier here. The Glienicke bridge at Potsdam lay just ahead. The Nazi army had blown up the original arched metal structure, but a temporary wooden bridge had been erected in its place. It marked the boundary. Here the British Zone of Berlin ended and the Soviet Zone of Germany began.
We heard the voice of the Soviet guards on the bridge, saw the glowing tips of their cigarettes. A truck’s engine idled somewhere close. Someone laughed. And fear slid through me like a snake.
‘Thank you, Erich. I am grateful to you.’
I shook the fisherman’s hand warmly and gave him the second cigarette from my coat pocket. It was all I had. Hanna gave him far more. She clasped him to her bosom and growled sweet nothings in his ear. When she finally released him, he returned to his boat with a grin splitting his face. She and I stood shoulder to shoulder on the riverbank and watched the night take him back to Berlin.
What you have to understand is this. Berlin lay in the heart of Soviet territory. When the Allies carved up Germany between them at the Yalta Conference, Stalin took control of the eastern sector which included the capital city. The cherry on the cake for him. It meant Berlin was surrounded in all directions by Soviet-occupied land.
There was no way back to the British-controlled Zone in the west of Germany – which was where Graufeld Camp lay – without crossing Soviet territory. That is why we were here. In the middle of the night, well outside the city limits, stranded in Soviet Germany, with rivers to cross. The border to the British Zone still miles away.
Ninety miles, to be exact.
It was going to be a long walk.
We were trudging through a field, ridged and treacherous. Stumbling in the dark.
‘Stay off the main roads,’ Magdalena had urged. ‘If you keep to the fields and woods, you should be safe. The Soviet guards only patrol the main roads.’
‘Thank you,’ I smiled, ‘we’ll take your advice.’
It was Erich who had jumped in with the truth. ‘It’s not the guards you’ve got to watch out for. It’s the filthy brigands.’
‘Brigands?’ Hanna gasped.
‘Oh yes. Robbers. Thieves. Preying on travellers. There are thousands of refugees fleeing to the west ahead of the Red Army with all the possessions they can carry.’
‘But we have no possessions,’ I pointed out. ‘Nothing to steal.’
Magdalena looked me up and down. She sighed. ‘Klara,’ she said sternly, ‘you have plenty to steal.’
The moon had risen and its darts of light skimmed the surface of the narrow river like silverfish. Beneath its skin the water looked black and solid. Its waves were churned by the night wind.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure, Hanna.’
‘It looks too dangerous. Look at the size of me and look at the size of that boat. How do you know it won’t get swept away?’
‘Hanna,’ I said firmly, ‘just get in it.’
I propelled my friend on to the end-board of the tiny ferry boat. Erich had warned us that many of the bridges were down, blown up by the retreating German army.
‘Don’t let that stop you, ladies,’ he had chuckled. ‘You can swim, can’t you?’
‘No,’ Hanna had slapped his knee, ‘I can’t.’
‘I’ll look after her,’ I told him. ‘Even if I have to carry her on my back.’
The three of us had laughed softly, clinging to the smallest of straws.
The ferry boat seated six at most. It turned out to be a hand-operated cable ferry with a rope to pull on to get yourself across. In the dark we were clumsy and the boat rocked wildly. As I stood to pull us off the bank, Hanna clutched my coat.
‘Look.’
Two scrawny shadows emerged from the darkness on the riverbank, a hand raised in entreaty.
‘Take us,’ an elderly woman’s voice begged. It was dry and rusty as an old gate.
Alongside her limped an old man, leaning heavily on a stick. Both were wrapped in black blankets, both were thin as pins.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t be out at night. Have you somewhere to go?’
‘Yes, we have. We are looking forward to getting there.’
‘Not far?’
The man smiled sadly. ‘No, not far.’
I took a grip on each bird-like claw and helped them into our frail craft. In the shifting moonlight their faces looked drawn and gaunt, people from a lost world.
No lights flickered on either bank, so I took hold of the rope with both hands, bent into it and pulled. The boat creaked. Gave a lurch. Then we were afloat, moving unsteadily across the stretch of
water, which was about eighty metres wide. I was working the rope, eyes fixed on the blackness ahead, when I heard a soft sound emerge from our two passengers. They were singing. Sweet scratchy notes whispered into the night that sent shivers of pleasure down my spine. It was a love song.
‘Silence,’ Hanna hissed. But it was half-hearted.
The song continued to its end, by which time we had reached the middle of the river, though it was hard to estimate distance in the dark. My eyes checked and rechecked the far bank, but I could see nothing to scare me. The work wasn’t hard now, standing and hauling on the rope, my feet well braced. It kept me warm. But when the boat suddenly started to rock wildly I almost pitched head first into the swirling waters.
‘Fuck!’ Hanna screamed. She gripped tight to the gunwale.
The old man and woman were standing up on the bench where they’d been seated. Holding hands.
‘Thank you, my dears,’ the woman called solemnly. ‘We go no further.’
‘No!’
My arms reached out for them but they were gone. They had stepped off the boat. Scarcely a splash. The current sucked them deep.
‘No,’ I whispered. ‘No, no.’
I started to throw off my coat, but Hanna pulled me down on top of her. The boat rocked violently.
‘It’s too late, my friend,’ she muttered, her cheek pressed to mine. ‘You’d never find them down there. The water is blacker than Stalin’s heart.’
I struggled, but I knew she was right. As I seized the ferry’s rope again and began to haul hand over hand, tears were pouring down my cheeks.
At times I thought the night would never end. Parts of the blackness seemed to stick in my mind and I couldn’t tear them away. The sound of a splash, no louder than a pebble dropping into a pond; I heard it again and again as we trudged on.
After leaving the Brandenburg region we navigated by means of the Autobahn, the A2 motorway that ran from Berlin to Hanover. Not that we went anywhere near it, not even in the dark. We skulked through the woodlands that cut across the country, keeping north of the road, using the moonlight and the occasional flash of a car’s headlamps to keep us on a westerly route.
‘I’ve got to rest,’ Hanna moaned. She leaned back against a tree. ‘Just for a minute.’
We were exhausted. Hungry and thirsty. Cut and scratched by undergrowth and branches. Desperate for sleep.
‘We’ll get cold if we stop moving,’ I said.
‘My feet are too bloody sore. They won’t go another step.’
I wrapped my arm around Hanna’s broad waist and drew her arm across my shoulders, taking some of her weight. With an effort I prised her off the tree.
‘You aren’t going to make me go any further, are you?’ she wailed.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘You bastard.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Graufeld Camp
DAVIDE BOUVIER
Davide stood at the window of his hut and made a bargain with the moon.
Keep her safe. Give her strength. Don’t let her falter. Bring her back to me.
In exchange I will wear your medallion around my neck, Diana, goddess of the moon. For the rest of my life. Diana the huntress, don’t let Klara be the hunted.
It was foolish. This deal. He knew it. He was not a religious man, despite a Catholic upbringing. He had no reassuring beliefs to fall back on. No comforting scripture to ease the terror of what the Soviets could be doing to Klara right now.
So instead he stood vigil over the moon’s cold light. He watched it glide, fitful and inconstant, through the camp, etching the edge of a roof, turning the dirt to silver dust. He pictured Klara’s eyes watching the same moonlight. He pictured it touching her face. He dared not think of worse.
It was all he had of her.
I looked after your daughter today, Klara. I kept her safe. I stuck like a leech to Scholz’s side and listened to his words dripping poison into my ear. Because every moment that he was with me meant a moment that he was nowhere near Alicja.
Is it true, what he said?
About you.
Do I know you at all?
Come back. Let me hear your voice. Let me feel your breath. Let me learn who you really are.
Come back, Klara. Come back. Until you do, I swear I will keep your daughter safe.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
There were others in the woods. I heard them. Their rustlings. Their whispers. Their tread on a stick that snapped. The quickly stifled cry of a child.
We steered clear of them. They steered clear of us. It was safer that way.
We were all headed to the West, to the land of milk and honey. Except I’d tasted their honey. Graufeld Camp honey. It tasted bad. But the fact that they were offering us – and millions more refugees like us – any kind of honey at all was a gut-warming miracle that made me kneel in gratitude.
A flame flickered in the forest. It was small and half-hidden by the trees, but unmistakably there. Burning a hole in the darkness.
‘They might have hot food,’ Hanna moaned in my ear. ‘I’m dying of starvation, you’ll have to bury me soon.’
I squeezed the shoulder of Hanna’s damp coat. ‘Shush. We’ll take a look.’
It was too tempting. We were consumed by the desire to approach it, drawn like moths to its bright heat. We crept from tree to tree, till we were close. Something was cooking. I put out a hand in the dark and held on to Hanna because I didn’t trust her not to rush forward, snatch up the cooking pot and take off into the night with it.
The travellers turned out to be a group of ten. I counted each mound on the ground, cocooned in fallen leaves. One was sitting cross-legged by the fire, stirring the pot. An old woman with long silvery hair hanging in a plait down her back. She looked like a spirit of the forest. She waved a wooden ladle in our direction. ‘I see you there. I have fox eyes.’
I was uneasy, but Hanna did not wait to be asked twice. Before I had even blinked, she was seated at the fire with a wooden bowl of soup in her hand.
‘And you my friend?’ the woman offered, her face kind behind the leaping shadows that twisted across it.
‘I cannot take your food.’ I gestured to the other figures. ‘Your family need—’
‘My family need to never forget how to be generous to others. In these violent, selfish times, it is all too easy to lose sight of it.’ She thrust a bowl of soup into my hands.
I sat hunched over it, head lowered. Fighting back the tears that dripped into the steaming liquid.
‘Thank you,’ I muttered. ‘Thank you,’ I said again. ‘For . . .’
‘For what?’
‘For reminding me.’
‘Finish your soup, and sleep. I will watch out for danger.’ She threw a log into the flames.
‘It would be better to let the fire die down. It would be safer. That’s how we found you.’
‘I know. But there are others out there,’ she waved a scrawny arm towards the black secretive trees, ‘who need soup in their bellies.’
I didn’t argue. She was right.
With soup inside her, Hanna scooped up a mini-mountain of autumn leaves on the damp bed of earth beneath the trees and burrowed into it. Within five seconds she was asleep. I settled down next to her, comforted by her familiar bulk and the dirty white kerchief around her head.
I lay among the dead leaves, unable to sleep. I listened to the wind in the trees and the night sounds of the woodland floor, its rustlings and scurryings. I thought of Davide, so vivid, so real I could touch his hair and smell his skin. He possessed that same kindness of heart as the old woman, that same belief in the inherent goodness of humanity even when it kicked him in the teeth. I loved him for that. It took courage. More courage than I possessed. I wanted to wrap my arms around him, to bind myself to him and him to me. To shrug off the past, like the dirty shabby coat it was.
I smiled at the moon as it slid between the branches and let my eyes drift shut. But the smile that awaited
me inside my head was not Davide’s. It was Oberführer Axel Fleischer’s.
‘Did you miss me, Schatzi?’
‘Of course. You know I always do, Axel.’
‘Tell me how much you missed me while I was gone for three days.’
‘Better still . . . let me show you.’
I unbelted my silk kimono and let it slip to the floor. ‘I’ve been saving it for you.’
Axel Fleischer’s pupils turned into huge black holes of desire.
But was his desire for me? Or was it for the small packet of white powder I’d pasted between my breasts?
I leave you to guess.
Afterwards he was talkative. It was always the way. The white powder loosened his tongue. His heavy leg lay across mine on the crumpled crimson sheet, and his fingers brushed with lazy pleasure over the red bite marks he’d left on my breast.
‘How was your sister?’ I asked. In no hurry. Keeping it casual. No special interest.
‘Irmgard? She’s scared. Like the rest of us. Hitler is losing this war, it’s obvious for everyone to see, and the whole of Germany will be made to suffer the consequences.’
I stroked his forehead. It was damp with sweat. ‘You don’t need to be frightened, Axel. You are ready for whatever comes. You have prepared for it.’
‘Of course I have. But millions of Germans haven’t.’
‘The Allies will not catch you.’
‘You’re right, they won’t. I am too clever for them, my Klara. I’m not stupid enough to think the people of Warsaw won’t come for me like rabid dogs when the surrender by Hitler finally comes.’
‘Can you blame them, Axel?’
‘Blame who?’
‘The people of Warsaw.’
‘These ignorant Polish peasants are lucky to be alive at all.’
‘How many of them have you killed?’
The Survivors Page 23
