by Holly Müller
‘Then it’s even more kind that you’ve come,’ said Ursula. ‘And all for Frau Hillier.’
He looked at her. ‘For the boy,’ he corrected.
‘And for her.’
He cleared his throat. ‘Yes, for her too, I suppose.’
She realised then that he didn’t think anyone knew. Mama and Dorli’s speculations filled idle moments but of course no one spoke of it in front of him; his romantic feelings were a private thing.
Closer to the centre were domed churches and many-windowed buildings with gilt eagles spread-winged at their apex. The glass was gone from a lot of the frames. The train pulled in at the station and they alighted, the nurses from their compartment following along the platform and towards the exit. Members of the League of German Girls stood in pairs and handed out leaflets with rosy smiles. Ursula refused the pamphlets and passed them by. There were soldiers resting on benches in the concourse of the station and others milling in the main entrance hall. Many panes of glass were missing here, but the grandeur of the place was still staggering, and Ursula gazed up at the beams and struts of the mighty roof.
But they had little time to dawdle and hurried onwards, out of the station and across a busy street. Ursula immediately smelled the city – smoke, dust, exhaust, refuse, sewage – a pungent, choking mixture. It was noisy – there was construction work or road work near by, the sound of hammers and the throb of a large vehicle. The buildings soared far above her, many of them smudged with soot, scorched by fire. Some had no windows at all and here and there the plaster had fallen away in chunks on to the pavements. Everywhere rubble was heaped high against walls to clear the streets. Cars trundled along the adjacent road, and people – city people – walked or cycled, cautiously progressing in the icy conditions, wrapped from head to toe in shawls and overcoats, a hurrying multitude compared to the slow few who trod the narrow roads and tracks of Felddorf, every face recognisable. She stared around, stumbled on uneven paving slabs, and sweat beaded her forehead and lip despite the cold – here was the war, the bombing, the death she’d heard about on the radio, the wide streets a foreign place with signs and telephone poles and wires confusing the eye, a spider’s web of tram lines overhead and tracks shining like rivers, dividing, merging and curving off around corners in the road. She followed the farmer closely; he kept his head down and made a beeline for a tram stop near by. A red-and-white tram waited, taking on passengers.
Herr Esterbauer hailed a passer-by, a dark-clothed man with smart hat and gloves, to ask the way to Hartburg. The man swivelled and pointed at another tram stop on the opposite side of the road and advised taking a certain tram then changing lines. He smiled tightly, not unfriendly, his dense moustache trimmed to a short rectangle like a wire brush.
‘Thank you very much,’ said Herr Esterbauer, touching the brim of his hat. They crossed the road through sparse traffic and whirring bicycles, Ursula stepping around mounds of dirty slush left over from the recent snow. They joined the queue at the tram stop and Herr Esterbauer readied his money. She untied her knapsack and retrieved her few coins but he waved her to put them away just as he had done on the train. A tram soon pulled up with a quiet moan of brakes and they hopped aboard. Shoppers and workers sat in rows along the wooden seats or held leather straps that dangled from the ceiling – the people here all looked dreadfully thin and worn out, not a sign of the glamour she’d imagined. Herr Esterbauer proffered his marks to the driver, but the man shook his head. He explained that tickets must be bought in advance at the adjacent tobacconist’s shop – he pointed along the street.
‘You’ll have to get the next tram now, my friend!’ called the driver as they stepped off on to the pavement. The driver had the distinctive seesawing vowels of the Viennese accent. Herr Esterbauer waved his acceptance but cursed under his breath as they made for the yellow-lit door of the tobacconist’s.
Ursula thought of Schosi, lost in the city. Every delay was a calamity. Herr Esterbauer withdrew his pocket-watch and checked it; she pictured the hands moving busily around the face. She could almost hear the whirr – impatient, anxious.
The lights on the trams were switched off as evening began and they groaned and breathed along their tracks, concealed from enemy planes just as the houses were. She sat in the dark interior alongside the farmer and gaunt strangers, women wearing darned gloves and tattered hats, old men coughing as if they’d any moment die. She and Herr Esterbauer didn’t converse – what could she say to him? He was so old and so taciturn, his usual jollity gone. She fingered the coins in her pockets and wondered if she should apologise now for pushing aboard the bus and then the train, for not answering him when he’d spoken to her, for imposing herself. But he didn’t seem to expect anything and she was too awkward to blurt it into the taut silence. Her stomach squealed loudly and she gripped her middle, embarrassed.
‘You’re hungry?’ he said. He took slices of cheese from his bag and offered them to her. She thanked him and ate them with some of the bread from her knapsack, enjoying the tasty cheese, aware that it was a generous gift and that she didn’t deserve it. She smiled at him, watching him, unsure if he was still cross; he must be thawing, forgiving her. The silence seemed a little less heavy. Outside, churches sailed by, gloomy and magnificent, and statues stood in silhouette along the rims of roofs. Once, she saw the ominous hulk of a flak tower, which loomed huge and brutal above the other buildings, its concrete walls pitted, the angular ramparts supporting air defence guns visible on the protruding platforms. She pressed her eye close to the glass, heart kicking, breath clouding the window, desperately trying to see before the tower was lost to view. This was the type of place where Anton hoped to be stationed, manning those lofty guns. She scanned the tower for figures and the pedestrians on the adjacent pavement for a glimpse of his face.
‘Built to last a thousand years,’ murmured Herr Esterbauer close to her ear. ‘To be plated in gold when the victory comes.’
No matter how you dressed those towers, she thought, they’d always be dreadful and warlike, but then perhaps that was what the Führer wanted. And her brother too – this hardness and death. She shivered and dreaded him just then. Why was he drawn to ugly things? She supposed in some way he’d always been like that, chopping the eyes and hearts of animals caught in his traps, pulling blue and stinking insides into a pail with delight. But she’d seen his gentleness too – once had anyway – his need for consolation. He’d nuzzled in, eyes closed, and asked for songs and stories, kissed her fingertips.
A little while later, the tram passed the twilit extravagance of the Schönbrunn Palace, twin columns topped with more eagles and the famous Gloriette, a symmetrical skeleton on the horizon above. Ursula had seen many pictures and it was strange to see with her own eyes where the emperors had lived, both more and less impressive than she’d expected it to be. The palace retreated as the tram made its way up the hill. She wished there was some way of letting Schosi know that they were close. She focused on the dark lobbies of the passing buildings and the ten-foot painted doors, her fear and confusion making all she saw unsettling and unfriendly; the dirty corners and rubble and scuffed, peeling paint seemed squalid and alien. Through a partly opened shutter she glimpsed a red-scarfed woman inside a wash house working alone at the row of sinks. A strange, soulless place. Perhaps Herr Esterbauer was right. She longed for home, not home as it was now but home as it used to be when she and Anton lived in a world that included no one but them, had escaped into one another, into intense games and caresses like slipping below the surface of a pool, no longer able to hear doors crash, the bellow of Papa’s voice, the threats and tears and blows; they floated beneath and there was never a question of leaving each other, never this distance. She berated herself; her anger flared as she remembered his viciousness, his ill will towards Schosi, his disdain for her. A ripple of something stirred in her mind, of being unable to breathe, frozen but burning. It frightened her; she had the sense that if the feeling were allowed to
grow it would gape wider and wider like a great mouth and swallow her. She pushed the jumbled thought away.
The tram stopped. Once they were on the pavement Herr Esterbauer took directions from a fellow passenger.
‘You’ll see it soon enough,’ said the man. He was elderly and had swollen cheeks like two dumplings. ‘The gateway is obvious. You can recognise all the brick and the church in the centre. A great maze of a place.’ He began to shuffle away along the pavement. Then he stopped, turned and addressed Ursula. ‘You got someone in there?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Our neighbour.’
‘I’m sorry for you.’
They followed the route suggested, walking along streets lined with apartment blocks. Small shops were just closing, shutters fastened across the outside of windows; signs and produce were being taken in from the pavement. They found a post office still open and took the chance to send telegrams home. Herr Esterbauer wrote a short note to Frau Hillier:
Discovered his whereabouts. Vienna Hartburg Hosp. Must overnight here. Will send news tomorrow. Have strength.
Ursula wrote to Mama explaining that she’d gone with Herr Esterbauer and was sorry for any worry. She almost included a note to Anton but thought better of it. She’d nothing to say to him, except to lose face by begging him not to go anywhere, or to promise that she’d be back soon to make amends.
—
By the time they arrived at Hartburg Hospital it was completely dark. Ursula could see the tall gateposts only very faintly against the sky as she passed between them, thick pillars supporting cast-iron gates; the gates themselves stood open amongst the bushes. There was very little moonlight and the edges of the path were barely discernible. She strayed into the flower borders once or twice, her boots striking the frozen soil. Herr Esterbauer damned the darkness and after a while took her arm, as much for himself as anything. He cleared his throat often and took deep huffing breaths.
They followed the narrow road for quite some time – she wondered whether they were in the right place; there were no buildings, no sign that this was a hospital. Perhaps they’d strayed into a park, mistaking the gates for those of Hartburg. To the sides and ahead were leaning trees and areas of grass surrounded by miniature fences and evergreen shrubs. There were smaller paths branching off left and right and, far off in the gloom, the perimeter hedge, taller than two men. After a while they saw a shape, large and square and unlit. They walked towards it; the path curved to the right and she could soon see other buildings, blacked out and obscure, one with a high broad dome, which she guessed was the church that the old man had mentioned. One of the structures was much bigger than the rest.
‘I expect that’s the main building,’ said Herr Esterbauer, looking ahead with a pinched expression and knitted brows. His rubbed his hands together restlessly. ‘That’ll be the place to begin our enquiries.’
Close to the buildings the trees grew very dense, firs with thick foliage near their tops. They produced a deepening blackness, enclosing Ursula and Herr Esterbauer in a tunnel, and there was a hush beneath the branches, an eerie quiet. It didn’t seem right to chatter here and Ursula was glad of the sound of Herr Esterbauer’s heavy boots to keep her company. One or two figures passed, stepping noiselessly on the thin carpet of pine needles. She supposed these were staff going off shift, or visitors returning home. Ursula and Herr Esterbauer spoke to none of them, even though some murmured a greeting.
The main building when they reached it showed no sign of activity, the façade lifeless, all the windows shuttered and the grand double doors closed. At the entranceway steps, Ursula looked upwards at the dark expanse of brick, tier upon tier of windows, the roof seeming to swing against the sky – a formidable place. Herr Esterbauer blew air through his lips, cleared his throat several more times, adjusted his hat, and looked up also.
‘I’ll go inside and ask a few questions,’ he said. ‘At least to find out where he is.’
Ursula felt sudden terror at the thought of waiting alone in the muffled air. ‘I’ll come too,’ she said hastily.
‘Better not. We don’t know what you might see in there.’ The farmer patted her shoulder. He adjusted his hat again before approaching the doors and turning one of the enormous handles. It moved stiffly then stopped. Herr Esterbauer rapped on the thick panels, the wood absorbing the knock so that Ursula wasn’t sure whether anybody would hear him. After a few moments there were footsteps within and locks, bolts and chains clattered and banged. A crack of light appeared and the head and shoulders of a man wearing a cap. A hospital porter or night watchman.
‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Good evening,’ said Herr Esterbauer, straightening and using a businesslike voice. Ursula stepped up close beside the farmer. She tried to peer beyond the porter. ‘I need to find out about a patient – he’s been brought here by mistake. We’re here to collect him.’
‘Stop!’ The man held up a supercilious gloved hand. ‘You realise of course it’s beyond curfew? Visiting hours are from ten in the morning until twelve, resuming at one until three thirty. Please come back during those times.’
The man began to close the door.
‘Wait!’ said Ursula. The watchman paused. ‘It’s just that we’ve come a long way and we need to know whether he’s here.’ The man’s face was indistinguishable. ‘Can you at least ask the receptionist to check the files for his name?’
‘No. I cannot. The receptionist went home hours ago. What makes you think she’d be here at this time? Come back in the morning.’
The door was unceremoniously slammed and relocked from the inside.
Ursula stung with humiliation. Herr Esterbauer scowled as though he was considering wilder options, such as breaking in, or threatening the porter with a beating.
‘We have to be patient,’ he said after a moment. ‘And above all respectable, if we’re going to succeed.’ He walked down the steps on to the gravel. ‘We’ll have to get a hotel for the night.’
They began the murky walk, retracing their route across the grounds, the vast lawns and immense buildings stretching out dimly on either side of them, the thick boundary hedges concealed by the deepening night so the place seemed limitless, the soft rustling of the trees the only sound. They continued in silence, two specks amongst edgeless shadow, beneath a blank, starless sky, and they registered for the first time the reality and magnitude of their task.
19
You.’ The chalk-faced nurse stood beside a bed containing a boy, the same one who’d not risen quickly the morning before. ‘Get up!’
The boy moved but didn’t rise. The nurse pulled him to a sitting position. His head lolled, eyes open but unseeing.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘You’re coming with me.’ She dragged him to his feet, supporting him heavily because he swayed like a drunk, then led him out of the room. ‘Washroom!’ came a distracted call from the corridor. ‘Five minutes.’
Schosi, Aldo and the others in the dormitory had watched the boy’s removal in silence. As soon as the nurse was gone they began their usual scurry to find clothes, but this time a hum filled the room. Schosi and Aldo listened to the voices – it was strange to hear the boys come suddenly to life. A low urgent buzz like bees waking after a long winter. The two boys nearest to Schosi and Aldo were looking over at them, as if they wanted to tell them something. For the first time one of their neighbours addressed them.
‘Poor bastard,’ said one. He had a mouth full of gums with teeth that seemed to be struggling to emerge. He gestured with his thumb. ‘We ain’t going to see him again.’
‘What d’you mean?’ said Aldo. Aldo’s pyjamas were on back to front, his hair in a wild cockscomb.
‘He goes down the other corridor now. The sisters will put him on a different mealtime. Feeding up, ain’t it? That’s the end of him.’
Schosi couldn’t understand what he was trying to tell them. Where was the poorly boy being taken? Why was everybody so excited? A fee
ling was growing between the boys in the dormitory, like before a storm breaks and there is pressure inside the skull. Their neighbour with the gums seemed unable to manage the fastenings on his shorts. His friend, whose fingers were just as shaky, tried to help him. Schosi realised he wasn’t dressed himself. He rushed to throw on his shirt and shorts, yanked his collar straight, and his cuffs. Aldo followed suit. They forgot for a moment about anything else.
The tall leader boy didn’t lead the line this time on the way to the washroom but walked at the back, a white blanket or coat wrapped around him, his arms trapped across his chest, tied with a white strap, a punishment for swearing at a nurse. Schosi washed at the sink, teeth chattering. Aldo cough-coughed like a dog. It echoed and made Schosi anxious and annoyed. Schosi went to the urinal to pee; another boy stood beside him and steam rose into their faces. When he turned round the tall boy was standing on the edge of the sink near the window. He raised his leg and balanced on one foot. Someone warned him to be careful, but the tall boy ignored it and kicked the window with all his might so his foot went through the glass. The pane fell, some of it outwards, some inwards, and smashed in pieces on the floor. Blood splashed all over the sink. One of the smaller boys screamed. Then the tall boy fell off the sink into the glass. The white coat trapped his arms so that he banged his head. Blood spread across the white tiles. Three nurses arrived; the small-nosed one pinned the tall boy to the floor. The other boys ran out of the washroom and Schosi followed, glad to be gone because the blood horrified him.
20
Ursula woke in a squeaking bed, springs sharp as knitting needles in her side, and the pillow soaked with drool. She wiped her face on her sleeve. She’d spent a restless night, her mind full of the hospital and of Schosi, of fears that they were already too late, her thoughts reeling in a never-ending loop of useless worry. She’d lain down exhausted, with most of her clothes still on because she hadn’t remembered to bring a nightdress, but she’d not been able to settle. She was either too hot beneath the blankets, or too cold above them, and she soon grew uncomfortable in any position, turning and shifting, the bed springs jangling in protest. By morning, she was more exhausted than she’d been before she went to bed; her heart nudged uncomfortably and anxiety buzzed in her veins. She only knew that she must have slept eventually because the postal worker woke her at five o’clock with his cheerful whistle, floating up the spiralling stone stairwell from the letterboxes below.
