War's Last Dance

by Julia Underwood

  ‘No! No! My darlink – one more dance with Oleg,’ He waved his arms around in a frantic parody, trying to grab her back to his embrace, growling playfully. ‘You are so beeootiful.’

  The others laughed, highly amused, but Isabel detected an air of menace in his protestations and she moved close to the refuge of Bill’s side. She was certain that if all the others had not been there Oleg would have pressed himself upon her even more enthusiastically. She had heard too many stories of the Russian soldiers’ epic sexual incontinence not to be wary.

  Before long it was time for them all to get ready to go home. The time for curfew neared and the streets became much more dangerous late at night, prowled by destitute scavengers and homeless risking apprehension by the curfew patrols. Even with an Army escort it was not wise to be out.

  As they gathered in the hallway to put on their coats Anya came over to say goodnight. ‘It was lovely to meet you, Isabel. I hope we can get together soon, coffee perhaps. Maybe I could come to tea at you apartment? We can have fun, no?’

  Isabel made suitable noises of acquiescence, a little overwhelmed by the energetic young Russian. As Anya turned away Isabel thought she caught the whisper of a note of calculation in the girl’s eyes as if the words she spoke bore little relation to her inner thoughts. Outside, Isabel jumped into the jeep, drawing the new blue coat around her. A shiver passed through her that owed little to the biting wind.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Anya

  Anya shivered under her thin coat as she watched the others leave the hotel. Look at those stuck-up bitches, she thought, living in the lap of luxury with their fancy clothes whilst I have nothing but what I stand up in. There they go in their Ami jeep with a driver to take them wherever they want to go; lording it over the rest of us, the victors patronising the vanquished.

  John came up behind her and took her elbow. She switched on a bright smile as she turned towards him.

  ‘Where to now, schatz?’

  ‘I’ll drop you off, Anya. I’m sorry. I’ve got an early start tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, come on. Can’t I come up to your place? You’ll like it.’ She caressed his tie with tender fingers.

  ‘Sorry, babe, another time. Like the Americans say, I’ll take a rain-check.’

  ‘I’m not sure what that means.’

  ‘No, darling, neither do I. Later, eh?’

  John had parked the khaki Volkswagen round the corner and the little engine soon coughed into life. It rattled like a machine gun, but it got you around, thought Anya.

  John dropped Anya off at the corner of her street.

  ‘Good-night, baby,’ she purred. ‘See you soon.’ She turned with a casual wave as he drove away.

  She never let him come into her home. She knew he’d be horrified at the way she lived, although it was commonplace in today’s Berlin. She lodged in the basement of what had once been the block of flats where she had lived with her parents. Most of the block had been reduced to rubble by Allied bombs and its remnants littered the street. She had to climb over carefully stacked heaps of reclaimed bricks, arranged by the trümmerfrauen, and down a flight of steps into the basement that she shared with twenty other tenants. This had held the laundry rooms and maintenance areas for the flats above. Rough partitions now enclosed makeshift cubicles. Luckily drainage and water had been reconnected, even though all water for drinking still had to be boiled. A communal kitchen had been constructed in a utility room. The rudimentary electrical supply had been rigged up by someone who had been an electrical engineer in another life. Wires festooned along the corridors in a haphazard mess. The unreliable supply caused the basement, with only small windows at the front and rear, to be constantly clothed in gloom.

  Anya’s room was barely larger than a cell. There was enough space for a single bed and an open cupboard with a curtain across the front that enclosed her surviving possessions, her clothes, her books and the cache of artefacts and household effects that she had managed to salvage after the bombing, wrapped in an old sheet. Some of these had come from Russia when her parents fled the revolution in 1917. She had been an infant when they escaped the Bolsheviks. They had gathered together whatever valuables they could; jewellery, furs and money, though their roubles had proved to be worthless in Germany. Anya’s mother had insisted on bringing her precious samovar, an irksome burden on the journey that had followed.

  As a respectable lawyer and his wife, loyal to the murdered Tsar, they could see no alternative but to join the tide of refugees leaving the country to find a new life. Tales of vicious purges confirmed their fears. After weeks of arduous travel through Czechoslovakia and Poland they reached their goal, Berlin, the golden capital of Germany. But defeat in the First World War had brought Germany to its knees and life proved more difficult than expected.

  Anya’s memories were all of Germany; of the modest apartment in which they lived and the local school which she attended. Her father, a well-educated man, could only find work as a clerk for a kindly Jewish businessman who owned a manufacturing company.

  Everything changed when Adolf Hitler began his rise to power in the 1930s. His impassioned outpourings roused the population into a fever of nationalism and anti-Semitism. Nazis and Hitler Youth prowled the streets and vandalized Jewish businesses. Eventually they found Papa’s boss. They dragged him away and beat him up, smashing the factory and putting everyone out of work – Jews, gentiles, Germans, Russians, Poles and Czechs all became unemployed. This happened to Jewish-owned businesses throughout Germany. Many unemployed fled to foreign lands as soon as they could; to England, America and other European countries willing to take them in. Some found jobs in the re-armament industry, some returned to their native lands, all fearing the rise of Nazism. But Anya’s parents chose to stay.

  ‘The Germans have been good to us,’ said Papa. ‘They took us in when we had nothing. This National Socialism will blow over. This lunacy cannot last. They will soon put paid to that madman.’

  ‘But look what happened in Russia,’ said Mama, always the voice of reason. ‘You said that Bolshevism would blow over too. But look at them, still going strong twenty years later. And now with Stalin it’s even worse.’

  ‘Don’t worry so, drogaya, we’ll be safe here.’ He reassured her with gentle caresses.

  However, as a precaution they took a German name and Papa managed to get papers in the name of Schreiber. Few people remembered that he was Russian.

  ‘Call yourself Anna, sweetheart,’ said Mama. ‘It’ll be safer. Nazis don’t like foreigners.’

  But Papa had lost his job and by 1939, when the war began, their carefully smuggled valuables had dwindled, sold in the flea markets, and his part-time work barely paid their rent. Anya was 23 by then and worked in the house of a Wehrmacht General as a nursery maid, the best job she could find. She didn’t mind being a skivvy as she was fond of the two children and Frau Gallen was not too bad and rarely visited the nursery anyway.

  Life during the conflict was unrelentingly hard. Rations were meagre and Papa’s job at the Records Office did not bring in enough money, even combined with Anya’s wages, to supply everything. Constant bombing by the British put them in danger and on many nights they huddled in the basement where Anya now lived, to sit out the air-raids. But their luck held, their block was not hit until the very end, at a time when the war should have been over if Hitler had only capitulated and admitted defeat instead of insisting that Berlin fight to the death even when defeat seemed inevitable. Many high ranking officers, warned of the approaching Russians bent on vengeance, made their escape while they could.

  With the Allies almost at the gates of Berlin, Anya went to work one day to find the General’s house abandoned. She stood in amazement in the opulent hall. Clothing, books and papers littered the floor as if a whirlwind had gathered everything up in passing and flung them down again. They had left in a hurry.

  Anya, gathering with her anything worth scavenging, went home to her parents and
told them what had happened. The larder had supplied a rich haul of tinned food that must have been too heavy for the General to carry in their car. A supply of bed linen and blankets was equally welcome as they had lost many things in the bombing.

  ‘They’ve probably gone to Switzerland or Austria along with the rest of the Nazi gang. They know the war’s over. Rats leaving a sinking ship,’ said Papa in disgust.

  ‘At last! I can’t believe it’s almost over. They say the Russians are coming.’

  ‘That may not be a good thing, mama. The communists hate Russians that have left the Motherland,’ said Anya.

  ‘Don’t worry, Natalya,’ Papa told Mama. ‘They will be glad to meet others of their own kind when they get here. We speak Russian and German fluently, Anya also speaks French. I could work as an interpreter.’

  But when the Russians arrived their inhuman behaviour gave no room to anyone wishing to work for them. They swarmed through the city wreaking havoc with artillery fire, as if the bombing had not done enough damage. They raped and ransacked as they went, nothing remained safe from the onslaught. They ravaged any females that crossed their path; women young and old, children, even nuns.

  Inevitably Anya was found one day on her way back from the ration queues. She heard that dreaded call in the street.

  ‘Komm, frau.’ The shout came from a gaggle of drunken Russian soldiers; dirty, stinking and overpowering. They grabbed her hair, ignoring her screams, and dragged her behind a heap of rubble, tearing at her clothing until she was shivering in her slip. Terror paralysed her and all her strength seemed to desert her. Her limbs had turned to frail shivering twigs. It was only with a tremendous effort that she could utter a protest.

  ‘Nein! Nein!’ she yelped, as loudly as possible.

  A passing Russian vehicle slowed and stopped. A tall Russian officer strode over to the group. Even in her fearsome predicament his fair hair, blue eyes and slim build made Anya think of Hitler’s ideal man; the epitome of Aryan physique. His Russian, when he spoke, was cultured; an educated man.

  ‘Stop!’ he ordered. ‘Enough. What are you, a pack of animals?’

  The men rearranged their clothing, trying not to look at the cowering Anya gathering her torn frock into her hands and slipping into her shoes.

  ‘Come, young lady,’ the officer said in German. ‘Put your dress on and come with me.’

  Anya needed no further prompting. Still shaking with fear she shrugged into her dress; gathered up her shopping and sped to the officer’s side; rescued just in time.

  ‘Be off with you. There’s been far too much of this sort of thing.’ The officer dismissed the grumbling men. They shuffled off and doubtless found easier prey further on.

  ‘Colonel Igor Pravdin,’ the officer said. ‘Where may I take you?’

  ‘Thank you, sir, for rescuing me. It was frightening, but I’m fine now. I can find my own way home. I was careless.’

  ‘I must apologise for those men. We are not animals. They must learn to show some self-restraint.’

  Anya thought that this seemed an unusual opinion amongst Russian officers, who generally seemed to have given the victorious troops carte blanche to do whatever they wished.

  ‘I will walk a little way with you.’ He offered his arm to help her over the rubble and ordered his driver to follow. They picked their way through the debris to her turning.

  ‘Thank you, sir. I live down here,’ she said in her native tongue.

  ‘You speak Russian?’

  Anya realised her mistake, it might not be a good idea to reveal her origins to this man. ‘Just a little,’ she replied.

  ‘Well, it may be useful to you now we are here. You could find a job with our administration. We need Russian speakers.’

  So, Papa had been right about one thing.

  ‘That would be wonderful. I need work to be eligible for more rations for myself and my parents.’

  ‘You live down there?’ He peered into the gloomy alley. ‘Alone?’

  ‘I live with my mother and father; in the basement of that block. We were bombed out of our apartment.’

  ‘They will look after you. Be careful on the streets.’ He turned to leave with a mock salute. ‘I will see you again soon, I think.’

  Within a week Anya was under Igor’s protection. He came back for her, meeting her on the corner of the street. He took her to a bar in Potsdam, little damaged by the conflict. Respectful and considerate, it was a couple of weeks before he took her to bed and a month before he moved her into a room in a mansion near his barracks. A passionate man, he showered Anya with love and made her feel secure for the first time in years.

  ‘I have not been entirely truthful with you, Igor,’ she confessed, when it became impossible to keep her secret to herself. ‘We are from Russia. My parents fled from the revolution in ’17.’

  ‘But I am delighted, darling.’ He drew her closer into his arms. ‘Now I don’t have to speak to you in German. Such an ugly language.’

  His billet was in a half-bombed-out hospital. When the Russians arrived the few remaining patients had been emptied out to fend for themselves, many of them dying in the process. Igor no longer spent much time in this depressing place, preferring the room he had found for Anya. The house was barely touched by the bombing and represented considerable luxury in the deprived city.

  In the late summer of 1945 the repatriation began. Joseph Stalin had decreed that all Russian citizens in Germany, released prisoners of war, Cossacks and members of the Vlasov army (both of whom had been loyal to the Tsar and wished to remain in Germany) and White Russians who had fled the revolution, any Russians who had spent time in Germany were to be returned to the Motherland whether they wanted to go or not.

  The British, now occupying their own Zone and not understanding the motives of the Russians occupiers, helped them and rounded up all the resident Russians they could find. After all, they reasoned, the Russians are our allies; we must do as they wish.

  Propaganda held that all Russian expatriates would be welcomed back to the Motherland. Past sins would be forgiven; past allegiances forgotten.

  Papa had been reading the works of Karl Marx, forbidden by the Nazis, but now available to those who wished to read them.

  ‘“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs”,’ he quoted. ‘I like the sound of it. It seems to make sense.’

  For a man brought low by the excesses of National Socialism and almost starving in the ruins of a defeated nation, the idea of communism suggested a bright future of fairness and order where everyone had a job and plenty of food and accommodation would be provided for all.

  ‘But the Russians are appalling, Papa. Igor is an exception, he’s an educated man. Look at them, Papa. Dirty great apes; uncivilised and greedy.’

  ‘Those are just the common soldiers, my darling. No more than peasants. Most Russians are like Igor. Back in Russia I am sure society is much more civilised. I think we should return. I miss my country; it has been a very long time.’

  ‘I won’t go,’ said Anya. ‘I don’t trust them.’

  ‘You are an adult now, Anya. You must make up your own mind. But it will be hard for your mother and me to leave you here where things are so difficult.’

  Igor advised her not to go. ‘In fact, if you intend to stay, I suggest that you pretend to be French. You mustn’t be part of this repatriation.’

  Anya took his advice and changed her name again and Igor obtained papers for her in the name of Anne Ducros, a refugee from Alsace.

  Anya would never forget the day her parents left for Russia. They tramped into the Russian Zone with eager expectation, carrying what possessions they could; the precious samovar strapped to Papa’s bent back. They were herded onto trains, in much the same way that the Nazis had herded Jews on their way to the camps. But first they separated the young from the old; the soldiers from the civilians; the men from the women.

  ‘Niet! Niet!’ shrieked mama as Papa was
torn from her side. ‘He comes with me.’

  ‘Niet, babouschka. He goes with the old men.’ A uniformed soldier wrenched them apart. Papa fell heavily to the ground and the samovar, cherished for so many years, smashed on the cobbles. Mama wailed in fear and grief.

  Anya watched in horror from the parapet of a bridge over the Havel as the swarm of terrified people were prodded on to the transport. The moustachioed Cossacks marched to their doom, stoic and dignified, the last of their protests silenced.

  Eventually the segregated carriages shunted away. Later Anya heard that many of the passengers, the old, the soldiers and anyone else deemed to have been disloyal to Mother Russia, were summarily executed barely a few kilometres into Russian territory and their bodies flung into open graves. Others were sent to the gulags in Siberia.

  Anya never heard from her parents again and could only assume that they too had met this dreadful fate. Her grief prostrated her for weeks. Dear, deluded Papa, his poor judgement had finally proved fatal.

  Shortly after the repatriation debacle Igor received news of his posting to Czechoslovakia. Anya cried with sorrow at his loss and fear for her future.

  ‘I will always be grateful to you, Igor. You saved my life and helped me through a terrible time.’

  ‘Anya, you have helped me also. You have made my stay in this city bearable.’

  As he wiped away her tears he spoke of love and gratitude; of redemption and hope and then he was obliged to leave.

  She had to leave Igor’s comfortable room and return to live in her parents’ old home in the basement, turning her back on comfort. Igor gave her what money and food he could and left Berlin for the East, bequeathing her a lasting picture of a dashing blond officer fondly waving his last farewell. She knew she was unlikely to see him again.

  She took to loitering in the British Army’s NAAFI with other girls. They were frequently offered cups of tea and biscuits by the lonely men in need of a few moments companionship. The relaxing of the fraternisation rules had made this kind of social interaction commonplace. Some girls took it further and went off with men for the night and even, if they were lucky, a longer term arrangement of co-habitation. Anya avoided this commitment until she met John.