The End of War - A Novel of the Race for Berlin - [World War II 02]

by David L. Robbins

  Foom, foom, foom, FOOM! The last report comes from somewhere scarify near. Lottie jerks, rattling the handle on her cello case. Dust sifts out of the floorboards with every shiver of the ground. Eyes are pinched shut in the cellar. Hands in hands are veined with the effort of squeezing. Mr. Preutzmann uncrosses his arms now and finds the hand of his wife.

  A moment of silence descends. Lottie in her mind enters the sky with the bomber pilots. The first wave of planes has passed the target. They’ve dropped their loads, taken their hits from the guns below, and banked for home. The second flight of planes follows close on their heels.

  The bombardiers zero in on the fires already started beneath them in Wilmersdorf.

  It’s easy.

  In the cellar, Lottie wraps her legs and arms around the Galiano. She cannot protect it, she is not hard enough, only a soft human.

  Another explosion somewhere in the depths. The monster closes.

  Another. Foom!

  Another.

  The lightbulb flashes and leaves them.

  Mr. Preutzmann curses again.

  Lottie licks her lips. There is the savor of real coffee there.

  She thinks, That was the last of it.

  She closes her eyes. The cello case is against her cheek, cool and dear.

  The last of it.

  FUH-WOOOM!!

  Lottie’s eardrums are rammed inward. Her mouth flies open in a reflex of pain.

  The world comes uprooted. The cellar jumps, spilling everyone onto the floor. The air is clotted with dust and smoke, splinters hail from the floorboards. Some sandbags have burst, grains bleed out.

  Lottie lies deafened under a jumble of arms and legs and luggage. Her cello is still in her arms, she has saved it. There is dirt on her lips; the coffee is gone. The people in the ruck scramble as best they can to arrange themselves. In the confusion she notices there is light again. Did the bulb come back?

  She looks up when a knee is taken from her head. No, there is no light-bulb anymore. There is a hole in the ceiling. Through the opening, the flat above is awash in flames.

  Lottie’s heart sinks. Her building, her home, on fire.

  She cannot rise from the floor, one person is still heavy across her back. She waits a second for whoever it is to gather herself and rise. When she does not move, Lottie kicks.

  “No, no!” Lottie’s ears are stunned, the voice seems far off. It is Mr. Preutzmann, coated in white dust like a baker, blurting. The man scoops his beefy hands under the armpits of the woman on top, then lifts Lottie to her feet, and bends again for the cello. The woman who had splayed across Lottie’s back is on the floor, face up, but without a whole face. Beside her lies one of the floor joists, swooped from its place, bloody and guilty. The woman is not one known well to the rest in the cellar, she was a displaced person assigned last week to their building. Lottie cannot hear all the syllables when someone says the woman’s name, Frau Something.

  Lottie wants to shudder at the sight of this stranger’s death, the proximity of it, but she can’t out of relief that it was not her own fate. She doesn’t reproach herself for this; she sees the thin gruel of horror and gladness in the others’ faces too, even the neighbor who knew the lady’s name.

  The floorboards crackle. Lottie wants to see how bad the fire is. Maybe it hasn’t spread upstairs yet, maybe her flat is all right. She moves with Mr. Preutzmann beneath the hole and glances up. The entire first floor is being consumed. A wind whips through the rooms, the flames inhale through busted windows. The blaze splashes here and there as though on the tip of a painter’s brush. Upholstery ignites, carpets and white curtains drink flame like wicks. The Preutzmanns’ flat is volcanic; the conflagration takes only seconds to consume everything while Lottie and the owner watch. Sparks rain into the basement. Lottie stares in disbelief. Her flat. Her sanctuary.

  Mr. Preutzmann pulls her away. The hole is the mouth of a furnace.

  The building’s residents cluster around Mr. Preutzmann, the only man among them. The same expression sits on all their flickering faces. They are homeless. Shocked. The war has come knocking, hard. The woman’s body with the staved head reminds them that death—war’s mate—is here too.

  Mr. Preutzmann looks at them, stymied. His building above is burning, it’s going to crash down on them. Or it will first consume all their oxygen. The wooden steps to the cellar are already on fire. Even if they weren’t, who would climb them into that?

  Lottie says, “Mr. Preutzmann, we’ve got to get out of here. Now.”

  The landlord stands mum, ghostly in his coating of white dust. He runs his hands over his face. His sweating palms wipe clean swaths, now he looks striped.

  Another woman prods, “Mr. Preutzmann? What are we going to do?”

  When he makes no reply, panic sends out shoots. The women bunch closer around the big landlord. The man backs away from them, until he is against a wall.

  “Do something,” they insist. “We’re going to die down here. You see? Do something!” Lottie does not take her hands from her Galiano. She drags it with her toward Mr. Preutzmann. It too must get out.

  She crowds the landlord with the other ladies. She resents them their presence in the basement, where they will die along with Lottie. Her life will end down here and people will say, “What a shame, thirteen people were killed in that building.” Instead, she wants them to cry out, “Oh! Lottie the cellist died there!” She’s afraid to be subsumed in their number, divided to one-thirteenth. Her life mustn’t be robbed of its singularity.

  Mrs. Preutzmann shouts over the pressing women. “Hans!”

  Lottie turns her attention when Mr. Preutzmann does. His wife stands at the far wall, behind the corpse. Mrs. Preutzmann holds the pickax.

  She shouts to her husband, to all of them. “Next door! The building next door! It has a basement just like this. Right behind this wall!”

  A bolt goes through Mr. Preutzmann. He stands firmer. The women step away to make room for him.”We can dig to it!” he calls to his wife, advancing. “We can get out that way!” He says this as though the idea is his. The landlady nods, yes, yes, yes! and waves him to come faster.

  Several of the women hurry to the far wall with him, patting him on the back, uttering encouragement. They slide the dead woman out of his way, then stand aside while he takes the first whack with the pickax. Brick bits skitter across the floor. The dent Mr. Preutzmann made in the wall is no more than a chink.

  Upstairs something heavy falls, a chandelier perhaps. A howl skates across the fiery opening, a splitting sound.

  Mr. Preutzmann spits in his hands. He takes a full swing. The pick sticks in the wall. When he levers it out, several bricks tumble broken at his feet.

  In one minute of intense labor the landlord has broken through a fist-sized aperture into the next cellar. The wall between basements is three layers thick. The pick droops in Mr. Preutzmann’s mitts. He is exhausted.

  Lottie looks over her shoulder. The first five treads of the wooden staircase have caught fire. It’s as though the flames are walking down the steps to get to them. Lottie leans her cello case into the hands of the woman beside her. She strides forward and reaches for the pick from the landlord. He shakes his head, no, just give me a moment. Lottie takes the tool from him. She is a cellist, with athletic shoulders and long, strong hands. She is more than merely one of thirteen.

  The pick is heavier than she imagined. But she is sturdier, less clumsy than she thought she would be with her first clout against the wall. Bricks spew under her onslaught. She attacks the wall ten, fifteen swings. Lottie descends into a mindless fury, banging, banging, twenty swings. She grunts. Mr. Preutzmann and the others watch. Then someone cheers. Lottie senses performance. Through the heat and smoke, the clang of the blade and bricks, this emboldens her. She’s the youngest one in the cellar, the most beautiful and talented. They will all live because they are with her. Lottie rescues them. That’s what they’ll say.

  She reaches her
limit. Her shoulders and back ache. She pauses to take a breather before she continues. In that still moment, the pain in her hands scales up her arms and overwhelms her. The pickax slips from her numb fingers. The handle is slick and red. Her knees are rubbery; Mrs. Preutzmann steps up and supports her. Blisters have burst in both of Lottie’s palms. She is disappointed to be so frail. A pick handle is not a cello, it seems. A rescue is not so simple a thing.

  Behind them, the entire staircase smashes down, charred from its mooring. Everyone jerks and cringes. Now the fire, like death, lies close at their feet.

  In desperation, the women as one assault the wall. They claw at it like trapped rats, with the shovel and pick, with blackened shards of the disintegrating building that drop through the hole at their backs, even ripping their own nails and hands. Beneath the hole a pyre of burning debris forms on the floor. Smoke begins to sour in Lottie’s lungs. A woman takes the damp towel from around her throat and swabs Lottie’s hands.

  Mr. Preutzmann holds the cello case while the women tear at the wall. Within minutes the hole is made the size of a rain barrel. One woman crawls through, landing roughly on the floor in the adjacent basement. She rises, almost laughing. She reaches back for the next in line. Together the eleven remaining women help each other to safety. Lottie is last.

  Once through, she unravels her hands from the towel and reaches back for her Galiano. Mr. Preutzmann is not there with it. Lottie cries out for him.

  In a moment he fills the hole. It is not her cello the landlord pushes through the opening but the body of the poor woman. Mrs. Preutzmann muscles Lottie aside, screaming through the wall, “Hans! What are you doing? Come through! Put her down! Hans!”

  “Take her!” the landlord demands. “Take her. We can’t leave her in here!”

  Some of the women have already scurried up the stairs to flee this cellar for the street. Three of them who have stayed behind push past Mrs. Preutzmann. They reach their arms into the opening. With effort, they pull the limp form through, bumping her on the sharp edges of the bricks. The corpse is shunted up the steps by the last of the women. All have gone now except Lottie, the landlady, and her husband. No one knows how long it will be until this building too is ablaze. Lottie thinks it’s on fire right now. The basement was empty when they broke through; that’s not a good sign. They must get out, all of them, immediately.

  The wife shouts again, ”Hans! Come!”

  Lottie shoves her head into the cavity.

  “My cello! Please! Mr. Preutzmann!”

  The landlord whirls for the hard shell case. He rams it into the hole. But the bottom of the case is too broad. It jams and will not come through.

  Lottie gasps.

  The landlady points at her husband. “Leave the damn thing! Hans!”

  Lottie watches though the hole. The basement behind the landlord fills with dripping fire. Flaming floorboards break and dangle, they loll like burning tongues. The inferno on the fallen staircase is in full bloom. The big man sets the Galiano on the floor. He takes up the pick, yelling, “Get back!”

  Mr. Preutzmann winds up and takes a swing. His strength has returned. More bits of brick ricochet and scatter. The hole needs only to be enlarged a few inches.

  After a half-dozen blows, the landlord drops the tool. Lottie rushes forward while he wriggles her cello case through the cavity. She leaves crimson prints on its length, her hands flare gripping her cello as though the flames are in her flesh.

  She looks through the hole. Mr. Preutzmann stands erect. His face is flushed. He’s satisfied, he’s done his job as landlord, and a man. He puffs his cheeks, as though to snuff out a candle.

  His wife sticks her head in beside Lottie.

  “Hans.”

  Lottie senses a rumble in the wall and floor. Her dread rises fast. She opens her lips to yell to Mr. Preutzmann but her mouth is stopped by a gigantic and invisible hand swatting her and the landlady backward from the hole. Their feet lift from the shaking floor, a gale of furious, scalding wind flings them backward across the room, unleashed by the collapsing building. Lottie clings to the cello in the dusty air on the cusp of the blast.

  Blinking, Lottie sits up. Her eyes are baked dry in their sockets. The back of her head will have a lump. Her cello is beside her. Mrs. Preutzmann has been blown to the other side of the room and sprawls moaning in a thicket of debris, a new widow. Wood and twisted metal fill the hole, sticking out of it like broken bones.

  Lottie is stunned. Every part of her sears. She has cuts on her legs and arms. She wobbles to her feet. She lifts her cello. The ground looks very far off; she seems to stand on top of some tall mound, a pyramid of events molded out of the last several terrible seconds, stacked so high under her she is dizzied. She does not shake her head to clear her mind. She wants to stay muddled right now, swaddled in the bafflement. There’s too much.

  Lottie is blank.

  One notion only.

  Get out.

  She hesitates to take a step, afraid she will tumble from the peak. She might not get up if that happens. She stumbles to Mrs. Preutzmann.

  Must get out.

  Teetering over the prone landlady, Lottie does not know what to do to wake the woman. She appears to be a long way down. In these seconds another single thought bubbles up through the miasma. It floats beside her, outside her. She doesn’t want the thought, doesn’t want to be sensate. But she cannot chase it away, she can’t hide from it on the blurred mountain of events. Lottie closes her eyes. She feels herself swaying. The thought enters her.

  That was the last of it.

  The last of it.

  ~ * ~

  * * *

  February 5, 1945, 1:30 p.m.

  The Hürtgen Forest, near the Belgian border

  Germany

  the driver asks, “sir?”

  Bandy looks at the corporal behind the wheel of the jeep. He’s been bumping along with this assigned courier for fifteen minutes out of Aachen and the lad hasn’t said a word until now. Bandy likes this. It’s a country way. You don’t always have to be flapping off about something.

  “You don’t have to call me ‘sir.’”

  The boy, rawboned and freckled, speaks without taking his eyes from the rutted mud road. The steering wheel jumps a lot in his thin hands. His knuckles are pink. His knees are up almost to his chest, he’s tall.

  “They told me you was a captain.”

  “I am and I’m not. All civilian war photographers get that rank. But it doesn’t mean anything. Just unless we’re captured. Then all of a sudden we’re officers.”

  Bandy sees in profile the boy smiling. “That sounds dumb, don’t it?”

  Bandy agrees. “FUBAR.”

  The jeep tires cut hard to the left in the muck. The soldier, maybe nineteen, fights the wheel, straightens the car. Bandy resists the urge to drive, but the boy is serious, he’s doing his best.

  “Are you the Charles Bandy?”

  Bandy grins. He has no advantage with a camera over other photographers. If there’s action in front of you, you snap it. You send the film through the censors to the photo pool, then it goes home. You hope it gets in print. All of them out here in Europe and in the Pacific have the same crapshoot. Bandy has just one edge on the competition. His name. And the title behind it, life special correspondent. He’s famous.

  “Yes, I reckon I am. And you are?”

  The boy hesitates. He steals a quick glimpse at his passenger.

  “You interviewing me?”

  “I just take pictures, son. No, I’m not interviewing you.”

  The soldier nods. “Stewie.”The boy waits until he reaches a smooth enough plot in the road to handle the steering wheel with one mitt. He flashes the free hand to Bandy for a quick shake. “Stewie Stewart. Pleased.”

  “Same, Stewie. Where you from?”

  “California. Outside Stockton.”

  “Cattle?”

  “Horses. Quarter horses.”

  “You play ball?
You look like you did.”

  “Yeah. You can tell, huh? In high school. You?”

  “Naw.”

  Most of the snow has melted along this ridge, leaving the trail soupy. The road approaches a sharp turn along the lip of a gorge. The tendons in Stewie’s wrists work like guy wires behind his fingers. The conversation drops. In the heavy woods below Bandy’s shoulder in the open jeep, an abandoned tank and a few trucks are spilled on their sides. They did not negotiate these slippery curves. Bandy pulls his camera bag into his lap, in the event that Stewie doesn’t either and he has to jump.

  Bandy says nothing. He could reanimate the talk, share what he knows about horses and basketball, which isn’t much. He could be famous for tall, skinny, far-from-home Stewie Stewart, give him something to write his folks about. The corporal seems like a nice kid. But Bandy decides to leave it. Stewie’s a soldier, yes, but not a combatant. Bandy doesn’t want to hear about Stockton.