by Holly Müller
They were just as anxious by evening and hungry. They hadn’t been to the village for rations as they usually would and were making do with a scant meal of potatoes, greens and onions accompanied by a brass band on the wireless, and a report about the bravery of German troops. There was plenty of disdainful talk about the quailing disorganised Russians. Something was mentioned about the temporary retreat of the Wehrmacht in Eastern Europe; but victory was imminent, they would prevail, the Russians were falling in thousands. And they fall outside in ones and twos, thought Ursula, the fatless vegetables half chewed in her mouth tasting suddenly revolting. Before they’d finished eating Herr Esterbauer arrived. He brought bread for them and news.
‘Have they caught them?’ said Mama. ‘Is it safe to come out?’
‘Did you see any shot?’ said Anton.
Herr Esterbauer shook his head, and it wasn’t clear which question he was responding to, or whether he simply meant that he didn’t wish to answer. ‘School tomorrow – everything will be as normal. Please come to work, Frau Hildesheim.’ He sucked his moustache for a moment. ‘But it’s not over yet.’
After he’d gone, Anton said that Herr Esterbauer had probably seen men screaming for mercy and executions in the village and now he was going to rejoin the hunt. Ursula thought about when deer were flushed out of the forest in culling season, how they buckled and flipped in the sweep of the wooden hunting towers.
That night, Anton asked Ursula to come to him before sleeping. She crept along the balcony to his room, avoiding the planks that groaned or rattled loosely. She climbed into his bed to lie beside him and it was almost like normal again, like before Papa died, except that he spoke to her less. She smoothed his hair, the lantern at low wick. He shut his eyes, took her hand, rested against her. She watched his face, the pearlescent lids fragile and flickering, the shadow of his lashes forming a lattice on his cheek, the slope of his nose with its broad bone that cut close to the skin.
‘Stay with me,’ he muttered, his mouth squashed against her arm. She waited for him to fall asleep but it was a long time until his hand stopped gripping hers and he rolled away beneath the eiderdown.
Schosi waited while his mama got the belt; he cried and said he was sorry but she said she had no choice; she had to beat him for visiting the Hildesheim place.
‘You can’t go there,’ she said as she came back into the living room. ‘You know that.’
‘Sorry,’ he said again.
She rolled his trousers up above his knees and made him turn his back.
‘Now, where are you allowed to go?’
‘The farm,’ he said.
‘And you can go to the woodshed to feed the cats when you’re home but nowhere else.’
He waited for the lash but it didn’t come straight away.
‘I don’t like to do this, little mouse,’ she said softly. ‘I will only do three.’ She paused. ‘It’s to keep you safe.’
She whipped the belt against his legs and he yelped. Pain flared on his calves and the smacking noise frightened him.
‘Hush,’ she said.
She whipped again harder then struck him a third time. Schosi wasn’t sure if another lash would come. He couldn’t count.
‘All right,’ said his mama. She turned him by his shoulders to face her. Several tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Sorry, Schatzi.’ She took his hand. ‘Now you stay here and say your prayers and think about what you’ve done. You’re a good boy really but you must obey me.’
She went to put the belt away. Schosi looked at the painting of the Holy Mary that hung on the living-room wall opposite the portrait of the Führer, which his mama said was an ugly thing. He thought so too and averted his eyes from the stern and narrow face. Instead he looked at the vivid blue and gold of Mary’s dress and knelt to pray and clasped his hands together. His legs were hot and sore. He asked Mary and Baby Christ to forgive him. He’d only wanted to make friends with the girl, Ursula. She was nice and smiled at him.
His mama came back and stroked his bowed head. ‘Don’t cry, my little rabbit. You’re a big boy now so stop crying.’ But she sniffed herself and patted her cheeks with the bottom of her apron.
After a moment Schosi turned to look at her. ‘I want to have a friend,’ he said.
She put her arms around him. ‘But you do have a friend,’ she soothed. ‘Herr Esterbauer is kind to you. You’re his favourite.’
Schosi nodded. But it wasn’t the same as when he played with Ursula.
‘And that brother of hers means you harm. You should avoid him.’
Schosi wiped his nose on his sleeve. He didn’t like Anton – he was frightening.
‘I’ll make you something hot to drink,’ said his mama and went off. ‘Come into the kitchen to get warm, Schatzi. It’s cold in here.’
He stayed kneeling for a while and thought about how the house wasn’t only cold but silent too when his mama was at work. He was to go to the farm three times a week. On the other days he was to stay inside or go to the woodshed to see if the cats needed company and fill the log basket. He wept a little more. He wished he could see Ursula. Once or twice when she’d come to the farm she’d said hello instead of ignoring him like other people did. He’d enjoyed listening to her speak and the game of throwing sticks from the bridge. He liked her quick blue eyes that reminded him of chips of stone and her gold plaits covered in flyaway down. There were hairs on her legs too – little white ones like on the underside of a pumpkin leaf.
He went to the kitchen to join his mama and she gave him a cup of hot milk.
‘I don’t want to lose you, son,’ she said, sitting at the table. ‘There are bad people out there who don’t understand, who think cruel things and don’t care about you.’ She squeezed his forearm. ‘It’s up to me to make sure you’re safe.’
In the evening Herr Esterbauer called on his way back from the Hildesheims’. Schosi’s mama answered the door and the farmer handed her a small pot and something wrapped in paper. They stood on the step for a while and Schosi watched them from the kitchen. Herr Esterbauer reached out to Schosi’s mama and tucked some of her hair behind her ear. Then he leaned forward and kissed her. Schosi couldn’t tell whether it was on the cheek or on the lips. She stepped backwards into the house and Herr Esterbauer stayed on the doorstep, looking ill at ease. The adults said a few more things, which Schosi couldn’t hear, then Herr Esterbauer touched his hat and walked away. Schosi’s mama shut the door and brought the pot and package to the table. In the pot was pork dripping – thick, grainy and delicious, and in the paper were six pieces of finest bacon.
Ursula was in a bad temper the following day when she and Anton walked to school, ice melting from the twigs, fat droplets puncturing the snow. The morning had been fraught and chaotic after another restless night of shallow sleep.
‘He did his duty in a crisis,’ Mama had said over breakfast. ‘They’re bad people. They’re locked up for a reason.’ She’d dabbed her eyes then screwed up her handkerchief and made a bony fist. ‘And maybe your papa’s soul can rest a little easier now.’ Amongst her tears, Dorli’s nagging and Anton’s goading, Ursula had become preoccupied with the unjustness of the fact that everything she wore was no good. Cold wetness seeped through to her socks because her boots were full of holes. Her skirt was hastily darned in far too many places. She’d torn it again last week on a nail in the cowshed and Mama had made a hash of the repair, a large, lumpy patch of wrong-coloured thread that deformed the cotton and that Ursula would have to try to conceal with her hand once she arrived at school.
Marta Fingerlos ran from her house to join them, the bright flash of new leather around her feet and ankles, her dress devoid of clots of thread, and Ursula’s misery deepened. She covered the blemish on her skirt with her satchel but even this was an embarrassment, the leather darkened and cracked with a long curling strap that hung like a tail. If only something of hers was smart. She anticipated with heavy heart the calls of ‘Gypsy’ or ‘Ragbag’.
Marta would abandon her at the school gates, as was agreed; it really was too much to ask her to become tainted as well.
‘Hello, Anton!’ Marta called, fluttering her fingertips. He didn’t reply but instead sped up. He didn’t like Ursula’s friend who he said was a spoiled brat with a duty-shirking father who should be at the Front instead of pretending to be ill. Herr Fingerlos was well enough to keep a mistress and bastard in Lillienfeld so he ought to be well enough to fight. Marta registered the snub with a few blinks of her eyelashes then turned to Ursula. ‘I heard you saw a dead man. What was it like?’
‘Ever so scary.’ Marta widened her eyes, thrilled. She had an endless appetite for drama and while Ursula could hold forth and entertain her or listen to one of Marta’s own intrigues, then all was well between them. Marta nudged her in the ribs, eyes gleaming.
‘You tell first, then I’ll tell what happened to me.’
Ursula described the SS corporal and his pistol, the dark and frenzied dash across the fields, the sound of shots, her brother’s brave battle one-handed against the knife-wielding prisoner who aimed to stab them all. ‘He shot him straight through the heart,’ she said as a final flourish.
‘Really?’ Marta gawped at Anton, who trudged ten metres in front, as if he might sprout claws and horns and turn and devour them. Then she insisted on hearing every detail about the body and the blood, which Ursula valiantly provided, ignoring the awful sensations that lingered in her, queasy and unsettling like a nightmare that remains in the morning.
Then Marta began her own story. ‘The SS corporal came to our house too, and Herr Esterbauer killed two men in the field. Papa fired at shadows and thought the trees were people and shot at them. I’ve never seen him look so wild – he drank three glasses of schnapps afterwards.’ Marta twirled her pigtails and chewed them like a baby, lips wet with saliva. ‘Toni’s very courageous,’ she cooed, watching Anton. Ursula felt irritated. She wished Marta wouldn’t call him Toni.
They reached the road – here the snow was churned oatmeal, frozen chunks turned over into the gutters. Workers moved towards the factory, abnormally silent. The newspaper seller didn’t shout as loudly as usual. Marta freed her arm from Ursula’s, widened the gap between them until it appeared they did not walk together at all. There were calls of ‘Hey! Hey!’ as several boys saw Anton and came to absorb him into their ranks. A football rolled from boot to boot, Anton’s bandage snowy-white when he pulled up his coat to show them. Rudi was there, a friend of Anton’s. He was Viennese, evacuated six months ago. He’d seen terrible things – bodies twitching in pieces after a bomb. His parents were dead. But he always laughed when he told about it so Ursula thought he mustn’t care that much. Herr Adler, who housed Rudi, beat him as hard as he could but it did no good – Rudi stole and fought daily. Ursula dawdled, allowing Marta to increase still further the distance between them. Rudi was much like Anton, she thought. Her brother too brawled regularly. But he did it to defend the Hildesheim name.
At school there was a special announcement before lessons began. Herr Gruber stood in front of the class and clicked his heels together between sentences, which indicated the seriousness of the topic, and stared about from behind his crooked glasses.
‘Today is a difficult day for the village,’ he said. ‘And the last thing we want is unruly children getting in the way. None of you are to leave the school grounds at break time and if you hear any disturbance don’t go gawping at the fence, because you’ll most likely see something you don’t want to. Leave the authorities to get on with the job in hand.’
Herr Gruber said he’d appreciate there being no gossiping and unseemly behaviour. There was a war on and they should conduct themselves like respectable German citizens. He handed out their exercise books.
But, of course, at morning break there was tale-telling aplenty and huddles of children gathered around those with something to report. Ursula joined a knot of children, which included Marta.
‘My mama saw a man this morning by the beehives in the orchard, looking for honey.’ The girl who spoke was one of Marta’s friends; she wore a dirndl that strained at the seams and Ursula wondered how she could be so fat in these frugal times. ‘Mama shouted, “You! What are you doing?” and he ran away.’ The girl looked around at everyone. ‘He had on striped clothes so he must have been one of them.’
Another child, one of the youngest Siedler boys, was forced to tell all, though he looked tearful and as if he’d rather not.
‘The SS man searched through the straw in our barn.’ He was timorous in front of the gathered crowd. ‘And Papa went through it with his pitchfork. He stabbed the Russian and I heard him screaming.’ His lip began to tremble. ‘He had a jar of dripping under his arm and his mouth was full of food he’d nicked from our larder.’
‘See!’ The older boys were triumphant. ‘He must’ve been in their house. Imagine, a thieving Russki in your pantry, sneaking about while you’re in bed.’
Ursula gasped involuntarily, imagining the stranger – desperate, violent. But then she remembered the dead man and how wretched he’d looked, the emaciated limbs brittle as tinder, not menacing at all, only sad and disgusting.
‘Tell your story!’ Marta instructed Ursula.
When Ursula shook her head, embarrassed by the assembly of faces that turned to stare at her, Marta told it for her, giving much emphasis to Anton’s bravery. ‘I mean it’s lucky Toni is a good shot!’ she exclaimed. ‘The man was a criminal and quite mad.’
‘They’re not criminals,’ said a sturdy boy with a bowl haircut who Ursula didn’t recognise. ‘Auntie says they’re officers in the Red Army and that they’re being murdered. Shamefully.’
There was a babble of surprise. ‘What do you know?’ somebody scoffed.
‘They’re thieves. They broke into houses.’
The sturdy boy turned to face the speaker. ‘They’re starving,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you?’
There was uproar as the older boys began to argue. ‘Commie! Russki-lover!’ they cried. ‘Auntie’s a batty old witch!’ In the upheaval the sturdy boy slipped away and Ursula saw him enter the school through the side door.
After the group had disbanded, she and Marta went to their hiding place, which was at the back of the school rubbish bins. Tucked between the bins and the wall they could play without being seen. This was a luxury not often bestowed by Marta. She brought out her paper doll, a game they were far too old for, but fun none the less. Ursula had forgotten hers in the bedlam of the morning, so they made do with one.
‘Who was that boy?’ said Ursula. ‘The one with the bowl haircut. Is he new?’ She’d liked his broad, healthy face with freckled nose and wide elastic mouth. His eyes were dark and slanted, like an animal of some kind. He was very beautiful.
‘He’s from Wiener Neustadt,’ said Marta. ‘He’s come to live with his aunt. I think his family were killed. His name’s Sepp.’ She paraded the paper doll in the snow, sashaying its hips in a salacious manner. She’d pencilled breasts on to its dress-front. ‘Oh, Sepp,’ she said, in a honeyed tone. ‘How lovely to see you.’ Ursula reddened and folded her arms across her chest. She hated to be mocked. Marta could be cruel. Marta walked the fingers of her other hand towards the doll pretending they were a pair of legs. She used a deep voice, ‘May I have the pleasure of being your Confirmation partner?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Ursula. She prickled with embarrassment.
The doll and fingers danced, then pressed together for a kiss.
‘Perhaps I’ll have him as my partner,’ said Marta. She flicked a glance at Ursula.
Ursula forced a smile. ‘Perhaps,’ she said. Of course Marta wanted him; she wanted every novel thing. And usually she got her way.
Marta discarded the doll and prattled on about preparation classes, the expensive lace on her Confirmation dress – her relative was a haberdasher in Vienna – and the delightful gifts she’d get from her mentor. All this would impress the boys, she said; her hand
flopped about on its milky wrist. She eyed Ursula. Ursula adopted an uncaring look. She’d no interest in Sepp in any case, she told herself. She picked up the doll. She bent its leg into a jagged shape; she wanted to tear it. Instead she tossed it aside, deliberately beyond the shelter of the wall so that it caught a gust of wind and skittered off. Marta gave a cry and scarpered after it with hands outstretched. Ursula felt very slightly better.
Later that day there was shooting outside the school, not far away, and the class ran to the windows to see. Ursula saw droves of people hurrying. A small throng gathered and a few grey-clad SS men waved their arms and bellowed orders.
‘Sit down!’ yelled the teacher.
In dribs and drabs, the children returned to their desks. But they couldn’t concentrate for the remainder of the lesson and the teacher was shaken and distracted. When there was another shot, startlingly loud, a boy stood up near the window and looked outside.
‘There’s blood on the snow!’ he squawked.
Ursula’s heart beat hard and she sweated. She looked at the girl who shared her desk, a dull child called Annaliese who’d been told that Ursula had fleas and was terrified of accidentally touching her. The girl returned the look surreptitiously then bent close to her exercise book as though inspecting every fibre of it.
The day was further disturbed when a loudspeaker, mounted on an army vehicle, drove past the school. The teacher’s voice was drowned by the announcement that blared forth in High German.
Two dozen prisoners have escaped from the concentration camp. They pose a great danger for the population. They must be rendered harmless at once. None are to be taken captive – all are to be destroyed on sight.
This caused mayhem – even Herr Gruber went to the window and watched the van as it crawled the length of the road, repeating the threat of Assistance – death. Concealment – death. After a moment he turned round.
