Lieselotte had shrugged. ‘If necessary,’ she said, adding, ‘It wasn’t easy.’
‘What did you have to do?’ Bette said.
Lieselotte had ground her teeth, nostrils flaring. ‘What do you think? Let him rape me. Again and again and again.’
She gave a queer smile. ‘I told him at the beginning he was the only one, made him feel important, told him to keep me for himself.’ She’d wiped her nose with the back of her finger. ‘Deep down, he’s a halfway decent man, Bette. He kept us alive.’
Bette hadn’t told Lieselotte that Vasily knew, that she lived in fear of him returning. There was too much else to worry about, too much sadness to bear. Grief hung over them like a vapour and they breathed it in with every lungful.
Boris carried a rucksack. He put it on the kitchen table and lifted out pickled fish and bacon, sausages, butter, cheese, a freshly baked loaf. They’d had little to eat since Mutti had died, rye bread, groats, rotten potatoes, a broth that Lieselotte had made from nettles and dandelions and a rib from a dead horse they’d found, its meat long since scavenged. Lieselotte had had to give the man at Friedrichshain Park the rest of Boris’s sausage and herring for space in the communal grave, before they could lower Mutti into it. They’d wrapped her body in blackout paper.
Bette tore at the bread, broke off some cheese, gave it to Lieselotte, did the same for herself. She didn’t care where it came from. Boris sat, nodding, waiting. Then he beckoned Bette over and put his arm round her shoulder.
‘Man of house,’ he said, pulling her towards him. For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her, that Vasily had told him. He delved into the bag again, took out a revolver and placed it in her hand. The gun was cold and heavy and Bette shrank away, shaking her head. She wanted nothing to do with it.
Lieselotte stepped forward. ‘He’s too young,’ she said, taking the pistol from her and placing it on the table.
Boris shrugged. ‘Bad men,’ he said, ignoring Lieselotte, nodding at Bette, holding his arm out straight and pointing two fingers. He smiled, added, ‘Luger. German gun. Gut, ja?’
All weapons had to be handed in, that’s what the notices said. Boris was giving them one. Did that make it all right? Or did he want them caught? Everyone in the building would be punished if it was found, not just Bette.
‘Your sister,’ Boris said. ‘You protect her. Bad men. Sometime Russian bad man.’ He gave a crooked smile, pushing the gun towards her. ‘For you.’
Bette picked it up. It was heavy, cold to the touch, its barrel cloudy with greasy fingerprints. She held it with two hands, lifted it to her nose, sniffing sulphur and the empty smell of steel. She’d never been that close to a gun before, able to lift it, breathe it. She rubbed her finger along the barrel, down the smooth wood of the grip, studying the trigger and the springs and toggles of its mechanism. She laid it down again, eyeing it while Boris rummaged in the bag once more, fishing out two heavy bolts and a screwdriver. He took off his jacket and walked over to the service door, pulled a pencil from his pocket, lined up the bolts and marked out the holes. He made a line of screws which he held between his teeth, took them out one by one, fixing them in place.
When the bolts were secured, he pushed them to, straightened up, bowed. He threaded his arms through his jacket, fastened the newly polished buttons, buckled the belt and stood to attention. Bette wondered why he was doing this. He’d never paid so much attention to his dress. He picked up his gloves, slapped them on the back of his hand. One was dark brown, the other a lighter tan, and the cuff of his shirt was frayed. She wanted to laugh, the victor trying to be all proper when his gloves didn’t even match and his shirt was tattered.
‘I leave now,’ he said. ‘Danke, Fräulein. I will not forget you.’ He picked up his cap and put it on. ‘You marry me, yes?’
He walked out into the hall, paused by the door.
‘My friend, Vasily,’ he said. ‘Very clever man. He lieutenant now. Big man.’ The front door clicked shut behind him.
§
The steps leading to the attic were not as broken as the ones lower down, though the wooden bannisters and handrail had been ripped out over the winter and the plaster had fallen off the wall in places when the bombs had shaken the building. The stench wasn’t as bad up here as nearer the ground.
Lieselotte opened the attic door and unlocked their storage space. The light cast a dim beam along the floor. Bette let her eyes adjust. They hadn’t been here since Mutti had packed away their precious things, wrapped them in newspaper, sealed them in suitcases and hidden them under the broken chaise longue. She half expected them to have gone, the space to have been broken into, splinters and rubbish spewed across the floor. But it was as they’d left it. Dusty now from the ash that filled the city air, dull and unloved.
Lieselotte pointed to a shape at the back. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Careful how you step.’ She walked over and pulled away the dust sheet which Mutti had wrapped around it. ‘Help me. It’s too heavy to carry by myself.’
She lifted one side and Bette stepped forward and took the other. They sidled out of the space, and through the attic door.
‘Sideways down the stairs,’ Lieselotte said. ‘One at a time.’
Step by step, to their landing.
‘You stand guard,’ Bette said. ‘I’ll fetch the records and lock up.’
She left Lieselotte on the landing, ran up the stairs to the attic. The records were in a box with a handle. Mutti used to dust them each week, taking out the black shellac discs and wiping them with a damp cloth. The holder was heavy and Bette knew the records would break if she dropped it. She flipped it open. Mutti had organised the music into sections. Ballet, dance, folk. Lieder, opera, orchestral. Each in alphabetical order, artist or composer, concerto or symphony. She lifted out the ballet and opera, the orchestral and lieder, and stacked them against the wall. The container was lighter now, and she could lift it. She locked the attic and heaved the box, a step at a time, to her landing, into their hallway, and the sitting room, two hands on the handle, careful with your back, Bettelein, use your thighs. Then she and Lieselotte carried the gramophone and placed it on the table between the window frames, where it always used to sit.
‘Now what?’ Bette said.
‘Now we see if it works. You can choose the music.’
Lieselotte took out the handle and wound it up, checked the needle and blew on it, like Mutti did, for the dust. Neither she nor Lieselotte had been allowed to use the gramophone in case they scratched the records or put them back in the wrong place. Bette bit her lip. Everything they did spoke of Mutti. She lived in them still, filling her dressing gown with her smell, their bed with her shape. Sometimes Bette saw her in the cracked mirror in the bathroom or glimpsed her in the street. She had found Mutti’s mother-of-pearl hairbrush which she’d hidden from the Russians, and used it every day, her hair rising with her mother’s static. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand.
She plucked out a disc. ‘Bimbambulla’. It had been a favourite. A foxtrot. Mutti said that after their performance, the corps de ballet would go to a cabaret, or to the Theater des Westens, watch Josephine Baker. Can you imagine, Bette? A negro? In Berlin? Ach, damals…! Sometimes the principal ballerinas came too. That was before, she always said, before That Man. Bette wiped her sleeve around the record, lifted the arm, placed the disc on the turntable, lowered the needle and waited. There was a moment of crackle before the music started.
‘Now,’ Lieselotte said. ‘Stand so, feet together, then on your toes. I’ll tell you what to do.’
‘How can you dance?’ Bette stood stiff and lumpen as a stone. ‘How can you be happy?’
Lieselotte lifted the needle off the turntable and waited until it stopped spinning. She swallowed hard.
‘I’m not happy, Bette,’ she said. ‘I’m not dancing because I’m happy. You don’t understand.’
‘Then what’s this all about? Are you going to sell it?’
‘Sell it?’
‘It’s Mutti’s,’ Bette said. ‘We can’t sell it.’ Her voice choked. She almost said, She’ll want it when she comes back.
‘No,’ Lieselotte said. ‘Dancing classes.’
‘Dancing? Classes? You?’
‘Mutti taught us how to dance.’ Lieselotte tried to sound superior. ‘Waltz, foxtrot, quickstep. Tango.’ She lifted herself onto her toes and turned a pointed foot to the right. ‘Polka.’
‘And who wants to learn to dance?’
‘Actually,’ Lieselotte said, ‘this was Mutti’s idea. She said to get people’s minds off the war, the bombing. She said it was up to the women to make a new life.’
‘Who will pay you?’
‘We won’t charge much,’ Lieselotte said. ‘We’ll take food and cigarettes, marks, even those Russian marks. Anything.’
She started the record again, moved forward. ‘Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow.’ She grabbed Bette’s arm, kicked her knee so she moved backwards. ‘Slow, quick, quick.’
‘Ouch,’ Bette said. ‘Do it on your own.’ She walked out of the door, stomped into the kitchen.
‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ Lieselotte was standing in the doorway.
‘People will know we have a gramophone,’ Bette said. ‘And then what? They’ll find a way in, steal it. Besides, my tummy aches.’ Hunger hurt, gripped her guts in sharp talons, twisted them into tight skeins.
‘Mine too,’ Lieselotte said.
Boris had kept them alive these last weeks, bringing them food, supplementing their rations. I’ll fight my way. Bette understood now what Lieselotte had done.
‘I’ve another idea,’ Bette said.
§
They struggled down the steep stairs from the attic, back to the apartment, laid the suitcases in the sitting room, opened them.
‘Be careful,’ Lieselotte said. ‘It’s Mutti’s Meissen.’
Bette unwrapped a figurine, a small bird. ‘I always loved this one,’ she said. ‘Mutti wouldn’t let me touch it. She said it was too valuable.’
‘It costs a fortune,’ Lieselotte said, revealing a cake dish with a porcelain lace surround, purple and yellow pansies and butterflies painted in the centre. ‘I know Mutti loved this. She always used it, do you remember? When Oma came to visit. She’d make an apple cake. Somewhere here…’ She felt the packages in the suitcase. ‘Somewhere there are the silver pastry forks.’
‘Where shall we put it all?’ Bette said. ‘In the cabinets again?’
Lieselotte stared into the suitcase as if her look could reveal the contents, but Bette saw her sniff.
‘We can sell it.’
‘No.’ Bette grabbed the paper again, shawled it round the figurine. ‘No. This is Mutti’s.’
‘We have to,’ Lieselotte said, her voice calm. ‘We have no money.’
‘No.’ She clutched the package close to her. ‘You can’t.’
‘It’s only porcelain. They’re only things.’
‘No,’ she whimpered in that grizzly tone that Mutti never tolerated. Tears get you nowhere. She stopped, paused. ‘My idea was to sell the clocks.’
‘But they’re Vati’s.’
‘Vati’s not here,’ Bette said. ‘He’s probably dead.’
Lieselotte rocked back on her heels and looked up at Bette. Dusk was approaching and the room was dim. Bette couldn’t see her sister’s face, not clearly, but she heard her take a breath as if she was about to speak.
‘The clocks,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think about Vati’s clocks. They can’t be hard to find in all this.’
‘You see,’ Bette said. ‘I do have some good ideas.’
They both reached towards the remaining suitcase, each took out a package.
‘I wonder why he collected clocks,’ Bette said, unwrapping a small mantel clock. He had taped their details to the backs of them. ‘He used to have this on his desk.’
‘Perhaps it wasn’t the most valuable,’ Lieselotte said. ‘Because he kept the others under lock and key in the cabinet.’ She paused, smiled, ripped off another wrapping. ‘Do you remember this? Kienzle. Designer: Heinrich Möller. 1933.’
‘I never liked that one,’ Lieselotte said. ‘Just too modern.’
‘Nor me,’ Bette said. ‘Its face is cold and empty.’ She lifted a small brass carriage clock. ‘I preferred this. And wasn’t there one that showed the phases of the moon?’
They both leaned forwards into the suitcase and for a moment Bette felt light-headed, as if the sorrow from Mutti was flowing away and the anguish which had sat in her bones was leaching out. They could sell the clocks. She hated every one of them. If her father came back, she’d ask him, Where were you? They’d start with the Kienzle clock.
‘Tomorrow,’ Lieselotte said. ‘I’ll take it tomorrow.’
They bumped their heads as they rummaged and laughed, the first time since Mutti had died. Stopped. Hammering on the back door, shouting. Bette froze. They hadn’t heard them climb the stairs. Soldiers. Russian soldiers.
Lieselotte began to shake, her face crumpling, her blood filtering away. Bette had never seen her sister so frightened.
‘Where’s the gun?’ Bette whispered.
Lieselotte pointed to Mutti’s bureau, her hand quivering. ‘Secret drawer.’ She clamped her hand over her mouth, shaking her head, eyes wide in terror.
Bette crept to the bureau. They used to play with the secret drawer all the time. She knew the crannies where the latches were hidden, the sequence to be pressed and pulled, but her fingertips were damp and the latches slipped. She could hear Lieselotte whimpering behind her, the soldiers yelling and hammering outside. She wiped her fingers on her trousers, played through the sequence again, please, please work, and the drawer swung open. Bette pulled out the gun, turned round. Lieselotte was not there.
She looked behind her. Lieselotte stood on the window frame, filling the empty space.
‘No,’ Bette said, her voice quavering with fear. ‘Come away.’
The soldiers were kicking the door, their voices loud, coarse. Bette guessed they were drunk.
‘I’ll shoot them,’ she said. ‘I will. Don’t jump. Don’t go.’
She wanted to cry, Don’t leave me, but her heart was pounding too hard to say a word, to think at all. She crept into the kitchen, holding the pistol in front of her, two hands, finger on the trigger as Boris had mimed.
The soldiers were shouting. Fräulein. Vulgar guffaws and belches. Hure. Whore. Bette was standing in front of the door. If they broke in, she’d shoot. Point-blank. Grab Lieselotte, run.
There was a sound of laughter, of water running. A trickle of urine seeped under the door. They hammered again. Bette heard them talk, heard their tread as they went back down the steps, their banging on the service door of the apartment below them. She didn’t know who lived there now. So many people were bombed out, strangers moved in anywhere, like hermit crabs into empty shells.
The bolts had held. Bette ran back into the sitting room. Lieselotte was crouched on the floor, vomiting over Mutti’s Meissen. Bette went over to her, knelt down next to her, laid her head against her sister, fear and grief punching like a fist from the earth. And hunger. Such hollow, angry hunger.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Berlin: July 1945
Life was routine, humdrum even, and John was glad for that. It had been tough on the road but now he was collected each morning and taken to Spandau prison, delivered back in the evening. The interrogations tested his vocabulary, but he had a good dictionary and was able to correct the transcripts afterwards, writing in the margins, reproduced in triplicate. Admiralty orders. Bloody bureaucracy. He wasn’t sure how Arthur was deployed, but their paths hadn’t crossed so often in recent days and the sergeants’ mess was a ten-minute distance from his own. He missed his company.
It was early evening, the summer air hot and sticky, thick with flying ants. Sure sign of a storm. His brain buzzed with formulas and impacts. Walking helped clear his head, even if it was jus
t around the barrack grounds.
‘Well, sir, good to see you, sir.’ Arthur stopped, saluted.
‘What are you doing out, sergeant?’
‘Thought I’d stretch my legs,’ he said, smiling. ‘As a matter of fact, sir, I’ve got a bit of news.’
‘Oh?’ John batted an ant, caught it on the back of his hand, slapped it hard.
Arthur pulled out his cigarettes, offered the pack to John, took one for himself and lit it, dragging hard before he looked up and smiled.
‘My demob papers have come,’ he said, cupping his cigarette in his hand, holding it behind him. Smoke furled through his fingers. John was silent for a moment, gathered his wits.
‘That’s wonderful news, sergeant,’ he said. ‘When do you leave?’
‘Not long after the Victory Parade. Just under two weeks. I’m counting down the days.’ He smiled, added, ‘You won’t see me for dust.’
‘I think this calls for a celebration,’ John said. He should be smiling, sharing the joy, but he felt as if his guts were drawing tight, grabbing him hard. Arthur was the only friend he had here, even though he was an NCO.
‘I’d like that, sir,’ Arthur said. ‘We could go back to the Blue Angel, if you like.’
‘The Blue Angel it is, sergeant. This time the drinks are on me. Tomorrow?’
His liver wouldn’t survive another night drinking with Arthur, but he’d make the effort. He owed much to his sergeant. In the distance, he heard the rumble of thunder and the first few gobs of rain splattered on the ground.
§
They sat at a wooden table, a magnum of champagne on the side. Arthur’s chair was tilted on its back legs and he was grinning, his thumbs in his waistband. His lighted cigarette lay on the ashtray, a thin column of smoke winding its way to the ceiling.
‘I’m not under any illusions,’ Arthur said, blowing through his lips. ‘It’s not going to be easy, back home. Never met my son. Haven’t seen my wife for years. Don’t know my own home. They moved. Couldn’t take the bombing. He lifted the cigarette and tapped the ash. ‘I know the address well enough, but I couldn’t tell you the way to my own lavatory.’
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