The Forgotten

by Mary Chamberlain

  He put his kitbag on the bed, pulled out his service dress and hung it in the cupboard, sorting the rest of his clothes and placing them on the shelves. At least here they’d have their laundry done, have cooks and a proper mess, running water and lavatories. Luxury after the sessions on the roads and bivouacs and billets along the way from Normandy to Berlin and all stops in between. He’d been run off his feet in Kiel. They all had. Navy. Air Force. Rockets, torpedoes. Blimey. The Germans might not have the A-bomb, but they could deliver, at speed, long-distance, on target.

  He should write to his parents. They’d be worried sick about him, and he couldn’t put it off any longer. He pulled out a notepad and pen from his bag and sat at the table.

  So sorry I haven’t written for a while. I’ve been a bit busy. What he did was top secret, so he couldn’t say anything about that.

  ‘Nothing goes beyond these four walls, is that understood, Lieutenant? Your job is to translate, and to forget.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Gravity, friction, velocity. Equations churned and concepts swirled like rapids in a flood. Exhaust, propellant, combustion. No wonder his head reeled at night. And I’m rather tired. He paused, not sure what else he could write. Germany is finished. Difficult to see how it can recover from this. He hoped that would pass the censor. Everywhere you go are defeated people, and displaced people and refugees. His parents wouldn’t have any sympathy for the Germans. If truth be told, nor did he or any of his men, not after Belsen. Or Celle. Finding all that evidence, those terrible experiments, and now they were in Spandau, where it had begun. G-agents. Tabun, sarin. Odourless. Tasteless. Deadly. He couldn’t write that, either. We’re glad the war is finally over, though there’s still a risk of hotheads who won’t give up, taking potshots – so-called Werewolves carrying on behind our lines. I lost one of my corporals that way, but the rest of us escaped. No need to worry, though. That’s all in the past. He paused, chewed the end of his pen. Better not say that at all. His mother would go frantic. He screwed up the paper and began again.

  It’s a bit of a doddle now. Even a bit boring. Can’t tell you how much I’m missing home, and Sunday lunch. Roast lamb with all the trimmings. Apple crumble. Promise me you’ll make me that when I’m next on leave, even if it isn’t a Sunday. He looked at his watch, checked the time. In Berlin now. I have a day’s leave tomorrow so plan to see a bit of the sights with my sergeant, an amiable Londoner called Arthur. We’ll be here some time so it will be nice not to be on the move. Need to go now. Your loving son, John.

  An hour to kill before dinner. He’d welcome a bath, or even a shower, but there was a rota and his turn wasn’t yet. He took his towel and walked along the corridor to the bathrooms, turned on the tap in the basin and watched as it spluttered and spat until a steady brown drizzle came out. He splashed water over his face, under his arms, across his chest, behind his neck. Cat’s lick, that’s what his mother would call it. Still, it was better than nothing.

  He dried and dressed and wandered out into the grounds. If there had ever been gardens here, it would be hard to know. What might have been beds filled with marigolds or snapdragons were now buried beneath contours of dirt and neglect. The single shrub in which the blackbirds had made their nest was standing, but that was all, apart from buddleia pushing its way through the rubble. The lime trees had survived, though, their leaves in the flush of early summer, unfurled and brilliant. They were in full bloom too, their scent overwhelming with sweetness and promise. He breathed in, letting the fragrance fill his lungs, blowing out the fetid decay that wafted from the Spree, filling his nostrils with its cloying, suffocating stench. He understood now why they’d carried posies before their noses in the Middle Ages. It couldn’t stem death, but it could hide it. He’d hoped that here, in Spandau, the smell wouldn’t be so bad. He knew the town had taken its toll of bombing and killings and guessed the river had swallowed more than its fair share of corpses.

  He leaned against the corner of the barracks building, one boot up against the wall, pulled out a cigarette and lit it, sucking the smoke deep inside and letting it snake out through his nostrils. A silent, solitary moment. Precious few of those in the army.

  §

  John and Arthur sat in the rear seats, another lieutenant, a new conscript like John, in the front with the driver. They bumped their way east on the pitted roads. Remnants of pillowcases and sheets, ripped and grey, still hung from windows or were strung on balconies. Surrender. One or two buildings had makeshift American flags sewn together from scraps of cloth. They were coming into Charlottenburg. There were still potholes. Some had been filled by the sappers, but it was a thankless task. The armoured vehicles churned them up again sooner than you could say Jack Robinson. A couple of Humbers passed by, bigwigs, John guessed, on their way to Spandau. Either side of the boulevard were large turn-of-the-century apartment blocks. Tree-lined avenues led away from the main street. It was random, John thought, what had been flattened, what survived, as if the war had been a tornado scooping up streets, sparing others. He spotted a crude cross. Grave no 21. A little further along there was a small earth patch with garish red markers, topped with a white star.

  ‘Russians,’ Arthur said.

  John grabbed the sides as the driver swung round the corner into a landscape of brick stumps and stone hillocks. Women were in a line, digging at the scree, passing it along, one pail at a time.

  ‘They get fourpence ha’penny a day,’ Arthur said. ‘To clear it.’

  Arthur kept his ear to the ground, picked up intelligence that would float past others. It was one of the many things John admired about his sergeant. He looked at the straggling line of women balancing on rocks and stones, handing down the buckets of rubble, one hand to the next. Their dresses were faded and frayed, the hems uneven, their headscarves tied tightly. Some wore socks inside their shoes but many, John could see, had bare legs smeared in dust. He thought of the temporary graves, of the bloated bodies in the rivers, of houses resting in their ashes. He could see no hope. Where did these people live? So much was destroyed.

  The women made no sound as they worked. Pedestrians walked without a word. It was as if defeat had swallowed language. An American jeep drove past them, its engine jarring in the mortuary quiet. Their vehicle veered left again, crossed a canal, barbed wire marshalled on its banks. All John could hear was the throb of their engine, the crash of gears. Not a birdsong, or the buzz of an angry wasp, no rustle of leaves or the bark of a dog. The great city was mute.

  Ahead of them was a large space.

  ‘Tiergarten, sir,’ Arthur said. ‘More like Teargarden.’

  At the end was the Brandenburg Gate. The Baedeker guide in the school library was dated 1923. It showed imposing classical buildings embracing Pariser Platz, the French and American embassies forming one arm, the Academy of Arts and the Adlon hotel in the other. Through the archway, the finest avenue in Berlin. Unter den Linden. John knew the guidebook patter off by heart, knew the place as sure as if he had been a native of the city.

  ‘They built big in Berlin, sir,’ Arthur said. ‘Fuck-off massive, if you’ll excuse the French.’

  Their jeep drew close and John peered through the arches. The corpse of a lorry sat where it had died in Pariser Platz, cushioned in the rubble. The buildings either side were headless, gaping holes where their features should have been. Wire and bricks had been pushed to the side and more women were shovelling and clearing. The British victory parade was in three weeks. He swallowed hard. Difficult not to think that the Germans had brought all this on themselves.

  They turned to the right, drove on past stumps of trees, what had once been a great forest, John recalled, pictures from the school Baedeker clear in his mind. Now the landscape was flat and bleak, broken by vegetable plots, and beyond that the ghostly silhouette of the Reichstag, the ribs of its glass dome buckled against the sky.

  ‘Breaks my heart, that does,’ Arthur said, turning away from the Reichstag and pointing
to a battered sign pocked by artillery fire. Zoologische Garten. ‘I take it that means zoo.’

  John furrowed his eyebrows. ‘Don’t get me wrong, sir.’ Arthur spoke quickly. ‘It’s not on a par with Belsen and all that. I’m not even comparing it. But, you know, it used to be a great zoo, one of the best…’ He dried up, sat in silence.

  ‘I’d always wanted to see it, that’s all, sir, since I was a nipper,’ Arthur said, his voice soft. ‘To think they built a flak tower here. That the Nazis held out here.’ He swallowed. ‘Here, of all places.’

  They were moving left again, the spindles of a church tower before them, its nave caved in, buttresses bare against the void. They turned down another wide street, and the jeep stopped.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Kurfürstendamm, I guess,’ Arthur said. They clambered out, the buildings here little more than bare knuckles on the ground. Music was coming from one of the cellars. John recognised it. ‘Rum and Coca-Cola’. The harmonies of the Andrews Sisters. Exotic. American. A group of Yankee soldiers with cropped hair and khaki uniforms came towards them, six abreast, arms on shoulders, veering left, right, swinging, singing. ‘Rum and Coca-Cola’. There were some British soldiers standing on the opposite side of the road in their battledress, champagne bottles in their hands. They cheered as the Americans passed, held out their bottles, whistled ‘Colonel Bogey’, sang.

  Hitler has only got one ball.

  Göring has two, but very small.

  Himmler has something sim’lar,

  But Goebbels has no balls at all.

  After the silence of the journey the Kurfürstendamm was brazen in its noise. An RAF sergeant appeared, his blue battledress dusty. He stood, arms akimbo, puffing his pipe. They were all, John noted, lower ranks. Triumphalist. He felt uncomfortable, but Arthur was grinning.

  ‘After what this lot have been through, sir, they’re entitled to let their hair down. Don’t judge them. They’re brave lads.’

  There was something about the Yanks, though. They had a swagger that singled them out. Bigger, too. We look stunted, John thought, skinny runts. He felt a tug on his sleeve and looked down. A young boy stared at him, eyes sunken and round, face pasty and gaunt. His mouth was pinched tight with broken lips and snot ran from his nose. He was holding out a small, grubby hand. His shirt was too big for him, his trousers too short, his knees too bony. His shoes had no laces.

  ‘How old are you?’ John said. He spoke in German, and the boy smiled.

  ‘Zehn.’ Ten.

  He looked much younger. The army said no fraternisation, but this was a child. John fished in his pockets, gave him two cigarettes.

  ‘Take them to your mother,’ he said, patting him on the head. The boy tucked them into his shirt pocket, grinned at John and ran off. John watched as he skipped and jumped over the holes and stones. An older boy approached the lad. John hadn’t noticed him, saw him hold out his hand and the younger one take out the cigarettes and place them in his palm. An older brother. How sensible.

  ‘Street Arabs,’ Arthur said, standing beside him and watching the scene. ‘I bet that big lad’s running a right racket. Send out the pathetic ones to pull at the heartstrings. He’ll be coining it in.’

  ‘I thought it was his sibling,’ John said.

  Arthur laughed. ‘Oh my, sir, you’re still not versed in the ways of the world, are you?’

  John’s CO had said Arthur was too familiar with him, had instructed John to reprimand him for talking to a superior without due respect. John was damned if he was going to bawl Arthur out for impertinence.

  ‘That’s why I need you,’ he said, instead. They turned their backs on the boys, walked along the street.

  ‘Now,’ Arthur said. ‘First rule.’ He kicked a stone out of the way, held up his hand. ‘Basic exchange. One cigarette is worth five marks. Tobacco costs us nothing in the NAAFI. So if you have, say, two hundred cigarettes…’ He paused and smiled. ‘You can do the arithmetic. Result? We live like kings.’

  ‘But there’s a sign,’ John said, pointing to a notice posted on a ventilation shaft. ‘Says no goods from NAAFI or PX to be traded. It’s written in German too.’

  ‘Well I never,’ Arthur said, eyes wide and innocent. ‘Perhaps that’s just a suggestion, sir.’

  An old man was coming towards them, a child’s bicycle tucked under his arm. His clothes were shabby, but John could see they had once been good. Perhaps he’d been a professional man, a teacher or a doctor. Arthur stepped forward, pointing to the bike. The man held up his open hand and balled it into a fist, again and again.

  ‘Fünfundzwanzig Mark.’

  ‘What’s he say, sir?’

  ‘Twenty-five marks.’ John smiled, added, ‘Current exchange rate, five cigarettes.’

  ‘My little lad would love this,’ Arthur said. He looked around him and John followed his gaze. Milling among the soldiers were men and women carrying bulging cloth bags, or cradling goods wrapped in paper. One had a queue in front of him, a battered suitcase on the floor, was lifting out candlesticks, a coffee-pot. Barter and exchange. It was, John thought, like the Forum.

  ‘What d’you think, sir? Is it right?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, sergeant,’ John said. ‘Ethics go to the wind at times like this.’

  Arthur put his finger on his lip, frowned.

  ‘Zwanzig,’ the old man said, closing and opening his hand four times.

  ‘Twenty,’ John said. ‘He thinks you’re haggling.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ Arthur said. ‘I’ll pay a fair price. I don’t want loot.’ He breathed in. ‘I’ve never seen my son, but I can imagine his face at this. I expect his own boy’s grown out of it, got a bigger bike. How d’you say that in German?’

  The man looked up at Arthur, then John, his eyes rheumy and grey. He hadn’t shaved for some days and his chin bristled with sharp white hairs.

  ‘Here.’ He fished out his cigarettes and handed five to the man, lifted the bicycle and hoisted it onto his shoulder.

  ‘Danke.’ The old man held out his hand, and Arthur shook it.

  ‘The market decides,’ Arthur said. He laughed, nodded towards the man with the suitcase.

  ‘But that lad over there…’ He pointed to the bigger boy that John had spotted earlier. ‘Capitalist accumulation. He hasn’t lifted a finger. I rest my case. Here we are.’ He tucked the small bicycle under his arm and dived down some steps into a cellar. Above him, a painted blue sign had been nailed to the ruins. The Blue Angel.

  ‘I’m told it’s the best of the dives.’

  Der Blaue Engel. He’d watched it in the sixth form, in love with Marlene Dietrich, and now here he was, in Berlin. He hummed as he followed Arthur down the steps into the cavern below. Falling in love again…

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Berlin: July 1945

  Bette wrapped Mutti’s dressing gown round her when she went to sleep at night, buried her face in her mother’s smell, let it seep through her blood and course around her heart and lungs. The scent was fading now after so many weeks, but if she sniffed hard, Bette could catch its echo. Lieselotte had cut up a black slip and made armbands for them. Not that it mattered. Everyone in Berlin had lost someone and no one took notice anymore.

  The day after Mutti died, Lieselotte had had to report to the Rathaus, along with Waltraud and Frau Weber and all the other women in their building. She said that the Russians were taking everything they could lay their hands on, not just watches. Machinery and cars, rail tracks and cables, engines and presses, and the women had to scavenge for the scraps left behind so they could be loaded up and carried away too. Convoys of trucks stalling under the weight, teetering with the height.

  She came home that day, sat on the stool staring at the service door with the broken lock and the kitchen chair wedged against it. Her clothes were dusty, the seam of her shirt ripped, her eyes puffy and grey. The days were long but the evenings were balmy. The gas had even come on for an hour, and there was a
rumour that the S-Bahn would be working. Perhaps the water, electricity.

  ‘Do we have food, Bettechen?’ she said. ‘Can you prepare it tonight? I’m exhausted.’

  ‘What were you doing?’ Bette said.

  ‘Rubble. We have to clear the rubble now.’ She leaned forward, her head in her hands. ‘Stood in a line passing stones from the front to the back. All. Day. Long.’ She looked up, half smiled. ‘Why is it always the women who have to pick up the pieces?’

  She stretched her arm across the table, squeezed Bette’s hand. They looked at each other. Nothing said, nothing needed. Lieselotte’s fingers were chafed and raw and Bette wished they had some Vaseline to rub into them. The sound of an accordion wafted through the open window.

  ‘What’s that?’ Lieselotte said.

  ‘A squeeze box,’ Bette said, shrugging.

  ‘No, listen. What’s that?’

  Tread upon tread, echoing through the well of the service staircase. First flight. Second. Lieselotte groaned.

  ‘Oh no,’ she said, shutting her eyes. ‘Please God, no. Not again.’

  ‘Hide,’ Bette said. ‘I’ll say you’re out.’

  ‘He’ll find me. Then he’ll be angry.’

  Boris walked in through the service door. He was clean and freshly shaven, his uniform pressed, his cap brushed, its visor gleaming. His boots were blacked and shined, and he wore a pair of leather gloves. The sounds of the accordion drifted up through the opening. Vasily had been left outside. Boris removed his cap when he saw their armbands, held it against his chest, his head bowed.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said in his accented German. He pulled out a chair and sat at the kitchen table. He hadn’t visited since the bicycle episode, the night Mutti died, and that was nearly four weeks ago.

  ‘Perhaps he’s gone for good,’ Lieselotte had said.

  ‘Will you get another wolf?’ Bette said.