“Shock,” he said decidedly. “She’s had about as much as she can take.” He pulled the coat back. “Look at her arms,” he said grimly.
Katie, who had watched without any visible sign of emotion the shooting of her brother, had not moved to help him. When she saw Leo leap down from the wall and heard the splash as he hit the water she began screaming. “You’ll never get him! Never! Never! You’re all fools! Fools!”
She kicked and bit the man who had caught and held her, but he did not release her.
“We’ll get him all right. Warn the river-patrol boat! Warn the patrol!” shouted the man in charge. A policeman raced out to a car to send a radio message.
“He’ll never make it in that current, the storm’s made it worse tonight,” said the man holding Katie.
“He will! You’ll never get him! Never! Never!” she screamed again. She was bitter and angry. He had gone off without a thought for her. He’d only been concerned with saving his own skin. She struggled wildly with the policeman, trying to wrench herself free. “You’ll never get him!” She burst into angry bitter sobs.
“Come along now. Come along. It’s no use struggling like this. It’s all over!” said the man holding her.
Paul stood up with Krista in his arms. She was now quite unconscious. Bob, who had been up on the wall with the police trying to see where the fugitives came up, was concerned for his friend. “Don’t worry,” he said, “she’s probably only fainted.”
“I don’t think she’s hurt,” agreed the policeman who had first reached her, and lifted her off Hank’s body. “But they’ll soon find out in hospital.”
“Must she go to hospital?” asked Paul. “Can’t I take her home?”
“I’m afraid not,” said the man. “She’s a very important witness. We shall want you all at the police station.”
“But how did you get here?” asked Paul. He had been given Eddie’s address by Anna as soon as he reached the house in answer to her letter, and had arrived just after the police.
“We went out to the house. The father came to us this afternoon. We acted as soon as we could,” said the man.
At the mention of her father Katie looked as if she could not believe her ears. “You mean to say my father actually blew the gaff to you?” she demanded incredulously. “I don’t believe you. You’re trying to make me talk.”
“You can talk to him yourself at the police station,” replied the man dryly, “He’s on his way now.”
“The swine! The double-crossing swine! What a nice father!” cried Katie bitterly.
“The ambulance is here, they’re bringing a stretcher for the boy. The police surgeon will see him before you move him. He’s just coming,” called a voice.
Below the wall of the yard a great commotion was still going on. Searchlights were now playing on the water trying to locate the swimmers. The storm which had been threatening all evening now broke with terrific violence, and torrential rain was added to the brilliant lightning. There was a shout. Eddie had been caught by the river-patrol. But Leo had got away. He could swim under water longer than any other swimmer Katie knew. She listened intently to all the search directions, ignoring the rain and the storm.
The police surgeon had been examining Krista, whom Paul had laid on a seat under the trees. “Yes, let them take her,” he said to the policeman giving orders to the ambulance men; “I think this is concussion of some kind. Did she get a blow on the head?” he asked Katie.
“She may have knocked it when she fell down the stairs,” answered Katie indifferently, “But she’s not hurt. Not she! I wish she were. I wish she were!”
Katie hadn’t so much as glanced at Hank when he was put on the stretcher. Her face was a white mask, her head held high. Only her shaking hands gave her away, and she thrust them into her pockets. She ignored the policemen on each side of her as if they did not exist. Indeed, for her they and everyone else had ceased to matter now that Leo had got away. Outside in the street, in the blinding rain, the police car bringing Joseph turned and followed the ambulance.
XXXI
AND now at last it was quiet. So quiet that Joseph sitting under the acacia could hear the hushing sigh of each leaf as it fell. Tonight was All Souls’, and in spite of the mild clear evening a chilled sadness pervaded the garden. The children were in bed. He saw to that himself now.
For weeks the place had resembled a circus, with police, press, photographers and sightseers tramping all over the scene of the now notorious bunker gang case. Nothing had been spared them, either in Court or in the press. Everything had been brought into the open—except the affair of Moe and Rudi. Everyone knew of it, but nothing had been said. Joseph had resented this furiously, had felt it unfair that he should have to take all the blame. For the judge had not spared him. His comments had been scathing; he, like the police, had found it difficult to believe that the father had known nothing of his children’s activities. Joseph had now accepted it all as just, as he was accepting the attitude of Moe and many others over his having given away the gang to the police.
He thought of all those glaring headlines in the newspapers: he thought about them all, but about Krista in particular. The story of the unknown girl found unconscious in an air raid had caught the interest and sympathy of the press. She had unwittingly achieved as much publicity as any film star. Photographs of her had been blazoned on front pages with the story of her romance with Paul. Well, he accepted that as well; she loved the fellow, and all he wanted now was her happiness.
The leaves fell, one by one, the slight breeze from the river blowing them on to the grass. Through the thinning branches he could see the lights far up the river. If he stood on the low wall under the tree he could see the twin spires of the cathedral. They were floodlit, two slender silver fingers in the indigo sky. As he stood there looking at them his thoughts were on Hank. On Hank, and that last scene at his death. Joseph had betrayed him to the police, but only after a torment which surely Hell itself could not reject.
Hank was dead. But what of Katie? Katie who had looked at her father without the faintest sign of recognition and at Moe with only the slightest emotion as she had been sentenced. Katie, who was to bear the child of the now notorious Leo who was still at large. And the twins? He could still hear Moe’s frantic cries as they had been torn from her clinging arms to be taken away to a reformatory.
It had been horrible . . . horrible. A nightmare. But now it was over. But was it? Was anything ever over? Moe had said that for her it had only begun. His hate was dead, he felt only humility and great compassion; but hers had just come to life. She had called him Judas, had shouted the name at him in her violent grief over Hank’s death. Couldn’t she see that if the boy had survived the shooting he would have stood his trial for murder, and spent the remainder of his life behind prison bars? Like that lion. He had noticed the spires particularly on that day when he had noticed the iron bars of the lion’s cage. Had the impact of the two things been intentional? A warning? Had it taken Hank’s life to force him to face up to things?
Last Sunday they had signed the Paris Peace Treaty. He supposed in time it would go through. The Frenchman had come over and discussed it with him. But he had got over his burning feelings about it and the rearmament which would come with Treaty. He felt now as if he had come into some kind of haven after the racking storm of the last few months, and a measure of calm was slowly returning to him.
Today had been very quiet. No hammers, the scaffolding everywhere empty, the bricks lying idle, the suspension bridge deserted—it was All Souls’. But he no longer resented the building. It was right. Inevitable. It came out of the destruction. A new country, they said, was arising out of the ruins of the old, as birth from death. One should get out of the filth of the past. He looked at the new high cement-wall being erected between this house and the one next door. The British family were packing up to leave and the German owner’s first reaction to coming out of prison had been to put up this great wall.
But what did it matter to him? He was going to have a house himself. He still couldn’t believe it. He’d given up all idea of his dream of building. The children had said in Court that one of the reasons they had joined the gang had been because their father had insisted on their contributions towards a house. What had Hank said to him? That there was no place in this world for dreams. He’d given up the whole idea, and although he had felt apprehensive when the news of the Peace Treaty had come, and again when the owner of the next door house had had his property returned, he had hoped for the best. And now? He fingered the paper in his wallet. The land was his. Building would soon begin.
He had avoided not only Peter but all his workmates during the publicity of the police proceedings. He had imagined their disgust and condemnation. He had bluntly refused to have anything to do with their mass protest meetings against Rearmament although he felt just as strongly about it as they did. He had finished with all that!
So he had been astounded when Peter had sought him out one evening and told him that the men had actually held a mass meeting about him, Joseph! They had decided that he’d had a pretty raw deal and they wanted to help him. The decision had been unanimous, Peter said. They had approached Franz, the builder, and the outcome of it was that the money for the deposit had been found. Found by his fellow workers whom he had treated with surliness and unfriendliness for the last few months. They liked him, Peter said; they actually wanted him as their nominee on the worker management board. He had refused of course—Peter could do that far better than he could—but the fact that the men wanted him in spite of all this horrible business had restored his morale as nothing else could have done. He hadn’t wanted to accept the deed. He had refused. But Peter had argued with him, goaded, scoffed and finally shouted at him, “Come off it! Put your bloody pride in your pocket and be thankful. What d’you think I dragged you through all those blasted campaigns for? Hauled you across those frozen plains step by step for? So that you can cave in now? You said you couldn’t go on then, but you did. And you’ll go on now. You’ll live all this down. But not in this dump! Stop all this bellyaching and get on with something new! You’ve got to!”
Peter was right. He was a good friend. One of the best. He’d accepted the deed. But it was for the little ones he had accepted it. So that they should have a better chance—which they must have. On an impulse now he went into the silent house. Karl and Robert slept alone now in the great sun room. It smelt of geraniums, of damp, and was littered with the rubbish boys love. The two truckle beds, empty by the far corner, belonged to the twins. He stood looking down at Robert. He loved this child passionately, as he did Krista. There was a poignant look of sadness on his face even in sleep. He thought of the child’s anguish as he had stood sobbing in Court, being pressed to answer innumerable questions about the gang. Robert had suffered something of his father’s agony in the scorn and contempt with which he had been regarded for having spied on his brothers and sister. As he looked at the fine clearly-cut features, the high forehead and the sensitive mouth, he thought of Moe’s confession flung mercilessly at him. This boy was not his. Well, he had always known it somehow. It made no difference anyway, except to make it more ironical that both the beings he loved most in the world were not his own flesh and blood.
In the other room Franz Joseph and little Peppi slept. They lay together, their arms entwined. For the first time Joseph saw this child of Katie’s as something to be loved and pitied. Katie’s brat! This was how this baby had always been spoken of. The beauty of his sleeping face with its pathetic vulnerability moved him strangely. Franz Joseph was clutching a little basket tied with red ribbons in his hand. And he smiled in his sleep, laughing suddenly aloud. Hank had looked so like this when he was small. And as he lay dead. His face then had been that of a tired child with all the brutality wiped from it.
He wandered back to the garden. Moe and Anna would be back soon. They had gone to the cemetery with a lantern for Hank. They had waited until it was late so that all the villagers would have returned from their pilgrimages. Hank lay under the dark cypresses beside Moe’s old mother. Some of the villagers were angry. They thought that he had no right to be there. But Hank had made his peace with God and was above their petty quarrels now.
Anna had said they were going to visit Krista. She was in the convent with the nuns, convalescing after her concussion. In the spring she would marry Paul. Moe had scarcely spoken to Joseph since Hank’s death. Her resentment was still burning in her. A father who had betrayed his own son! She hated him now, hated him. That young man, Rudi had left the village. He’d left as soon as the police court proceedings had become public. Joseph hadn’t said a word to her about it, but he’d seen that under the hard pride she’d taken a knock. She’d soon got over her anger with Krista. No, it was only against him that she still felt this furious anger.
He looked round the garden. It was tidier, much tidier. True, there were not so many of them to mess it up. But he was strict now; and since the day when Moe had slipped on the potato peelings not one had been flung down in the yard or garden. The dog, sitting close to his master, suddenly raced away barking to the gate. They were returning from the cemetery. Anna went straight into the house, but Moe came very slowly and hesitantly across the grass to him. She was very pale and he saw that she had been crying. When she was close to him, she said, without looking at him, “I met Father Lange in the cemetery. I am going to him tomorrow.”
They were the first voluntary words she had addressed to him since Hank’s death, and he saw that she was tremendously moved. He got up and held out a hand to her. “Margarethe,” he said very gently. She did not take his hand. For a moment she stared stonily at him; then suddenly something in the taut mask of her face flickered, as if a curtain had been drawn across a window. She put her hands blindly over her eyes and turning from him broke into terrible sobbing.
He couldn’t bear the nakedness of her suffering. She seemed to him now as one of the children needing infinite compassion. He turned away in unbearable pity as the sobs grew wilder. There was nothing he could do—yet. She must go through the fire. For him the worst was over. For her it had but begun.
Finis Cologne. November, 1954.
The following newspaper story by Frances Faviell was originally published in 1956, in the London Evening Standard. It was part of a series of articles, by various authors, published under the heading: ‘Fact or Fiction? The Answer will be given tomorrow’. Unfortunately we don’t have the answer to the Standard’s question, though the piece is undoubtedly informed, at least in part, by the author’s experiences in Germany after the war, as recorded most notably in her books The Dancing Bear and A House on the Rhine.
THE RUSSIAN FOR SARDINES
IT WAS Oktoberfest in the Zoo in Berlin and the whole Tiergarten had been turned into a Carnival. East mixed with West for this occasion. It was easy to pick out the Easterners not only by their clothes but by an air of uncertain bewilderment.
The small guests for whom I was waiting at the entrance near the Bahnhof am Zoo were late. I stood there watching the milling crowds, trying to see Tomas, Gela and Barbel. At last they came –not running excitedly as most of the children were, but sedately, cautiously, Barbel, the eldest, with a motherly eye on the two younger ones.
They waved gaily when they saw me, and, looking carefully from right to left, rushed across the street to me. “We were held up! The guards at the barrier made us take a test in Russian! That’s their latest! That’s why we’re late!” cried Gela.
“Hush! You’re talking too loudly!” reproved Barbel anxiously. Tomas, the youngest, said nothing – his eyes were on the flags and banners in honour of the Oktoberfest.
The children had come by train from a small village 30 kilometres from Berlin in the Russian Zone. Each of them had a special pass-card for the occasion.
The zoo was crowded with gay visitors, loud with the canned music of merry-go-rounds and monster gliders and chairoplanes. Only the
animals in their cages seemed depressed. At every booth and stall were lotteries and exciting games of skill and chance. The prizes were not the kind we find in similar fairs in Britain: they consisted of food for the most part.
There were tins of milk, fish and meat. Kilos of groceries and Cellophane packets displaying the succulent charms of chickens, ducks and even geese. These last were the very top prizes, we were told, and took a great many vouchers. There were any amount of chocolates and sweets.
The children had East German marks, and although I had money for them they wanted the excitement of changing them themselves at the special kiosks set up for the purpose. They were disappointed at having to give up five of the East marks for each West one.
The gaiety of the noisy crowds, the sunny October afternoon, the music, streamers and balloons everywhere excited them, and we set off to try our luck at some of the many games of chance and skill.
The one we liked best was in the charge of a fat, motherly woman. Set in a huge circular map were all the important towns in Germany. Each person chose a town and received a voucher in exchange. The woman then released a lever which set a ball in motion as in roulette. At whatever town the ball stopped, the holder of its voucher won a prize.
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