My Own Dear Brother

by Holly Müller

  She wrapped her coat more tightly around herself, juddering in the cold of the basement, imagining a nondescript container arriving by post, ashes inside; Frau Hillier would see the name tag then howl and howl. Ursula banished the horrifying thought. She glanced at Herr Esterbauer. Perhaps he did fret. Late in the night, not long before the raid, she’d heard his slow footfalls and sighs through the wall. She clung to the hope that he’d lied about Anton. But she knew it wasn’t so. What reason had he to be dishonest? And added to his cautioning voice was her own inner one; it whispered a warning, had always whispered such things. She began to feel too warm, despite the chill, and her anger flared again. But why was he delaying? Why was he doing nothing? Couldn’t he see that there was no hope of getting Schosi out without breaking the rules? He thought he was important, a Party member, and that that was enough, but nobody cared or listened to him. He treated her like a nuisance and tried to bar her from everything. He knew how much it meant to her – her friend – her friend . . .

  The flak settled into continuous fire, like hail on a tin roof, and eventually she breathed more normally and heard it less.

  She must have dozed because she woke from a dream of Sepp, of soft, warm skin and tingling pleasure, to find herself one of the only occupants of the circle of chairs. A couple of the oldest people slept with white hair disarrayed and clinging thinly to the sofa cushions under their heads. Children were curled beneath blankets. The adults stood near by, including Herr Esterbauer, their talk loud enough to have woken her. The sirens still called. The record was at its climactic finale; the hammer of timpani and shout of horns resounded in the cellar and people were laughing, a couple of bottles circling the group. Frau Wilhelm danced alone, raising her arms and swinging her hips. Her dressing gown hung undone revealing the ripple of chest bones. Ursula was fascinated. She’d never seen a woman behave like this. She got up and joined the group. Herr Esterbauer, his stubbled face a shining half-moon in the lamplight, nodded a greeting and raised his beer bottle. She ignored him.

  Frau Petchka watched the swaying Frau Wilhelm and spoke in a voice that was a little too loud. ‘When the Soviets come she’ll get more trouble then, mark my words.’

  ‘They say that they’re just too many,’ remarked an old man.

  ‘We’ll take the brunt of it all right,’ said someone else.

  ‘Unless the Yanks intervene.’

  ‘Not if Ivan gets here first.’

  ‘Which he will.’

  ‘They’ll save the worst of it for Germany.’

  ‘D’you think they know the difference?’

  ‘It won’t be safe to walk the streets.’

  ‘There’ll be hangings,’ asserted Frau Petschka.

  ‘Don’t start your scaremongering!’ somebody snapped.

  Frau Petschka bridled and fell silent, as did the others.

  A quiet voice spoke. ‘She’s right though.’ It was Frau Wilhelm. She had stopped dancing and cradled one of the bottles against her skinny chest; she was statuesque beside her neighbours, her forehead glistening after her exertions. ‘They’ll make us suffer. And if you knew what’d been done to them, you’d understand.’

  ‘Whatever can she mean?’ said a woman who stood beside Ursula.

  Frau Wilhelm turned to face her questioner. ‘My Walter saw many horrors in the East, committed by Germans.’

  Someone tutted and an old man took a step forward, holding out his arm as though to chaperone Frau Wilhelm away, to hush her. But she waved him off.

  ‘Why shouldn’t you hear it?’ she said. ‘They burned villages. They hanged civilians. It’s true. In plain view on the signposts of the town. He sent me photos taken by his comrades. They posed for pictures as if they were on holiday, in front of the swinging bodies.’ She shook her head. ‘It was too much for him to bear alone, he had to show what they did, what he was forced to be part of.’

  Ursula realised she’d been holding her breath, thinking with horror of Papa and wondering if he too had done such things. She told herself that of course he hadn’t, would never. She released her breath slowly. People began to shift and whisper. Ursula supposed Frau Wilhelm was drunk. She could be denounced by any one of them for speaking against the Wehrmacht.

  When Frau Wilhelm spoke again, as if to herself, the party was immediately quiet in order to hear her. ‘They pulled off the uniforms to make the dead ridiculous. Stood the frozen corpses in the fields against trees, or propped them upright with sticks. My Walter was one.’ She faltered. ‘Well, he might’ve been. They laughed at how the cold defeated us. They were vengeful then—’ She grew quiet. Every eye was on her. She looked up at the gathering and her attention paused on Ursula, her expression sad, wistful as if she gazed into a mirror rather than at another person.

  Ursula dropped her eyes to the dusty stone floor; she couldn’t stand to think of her father dying in that terrible way, being derided.

  ‘Not all our boys can have been so cruel,’ said a woman.

  ‘Not all,’ said Frau Wilhelm.

  Far off, a bomb dropped and Ursula felt the rumble beneath her feet. Frau Wilhelm leaned against the side of the wardrobe and wouldn’t say anything more.

  26

  The silence was the most awful thing about the cell. Not long after the morning light had arrived in the frosted window and woken him, there was a brief period when Schosi heard water running, echoing sounds – quiet voices – which sounded like a washroom. There was clanking inside the wall or ceiling but then nothing else for a long time. Later, while he ate a slice of rubbery bread and a small bowl of broth that had appeared through an opening in the cell door, he heard hatches being lowered and raised on the adjacent cell doors, and snippets of conversation.

  ‘Get up, Ulrich!’ came the voice of a nurse.

  ‘I can’t,’ said a child.

  ‘You must!’

  Then some whining and scuffling, the clanging of a door and the rattle of keys.

  Schosi watched the birds beat their wings against the wind outside – there was a tiny section of unfrosted glass in the window allowing him to see out. They cried loudly as they flew and he found the noise exciting and unsettling all at once. The birds had ragged black feathers and sharp grey beaks that opened and closed. They were the same as the birds that had reminded him of the Krampuses, the ones he’d seen in the trees alongside the path. They’d frightened him then but now they were a comfort. Birds like these roosted in the trees at home. His mama called them rascals because they gobbled seeds in the soil before they had a chance to grow. She threw stones and tied tin cans on strings to scare them away. But he was glad to see them here, never more than two or three perched in the snowy branches at a time, their heads swivelling to and fro, dislodging crystalline showers as they launched themselves free into the sky. If he closed his eyes and tried very hard, then he could almost feel he was back in his loft, the birds squawking, the hornets bumbling in and out of the window in summer, moths on the walls and beetles on the floor, dormice scampering in the roof and the sound of his mama chopping logs outside – her warbling songs. When the owl made his wooden echo in the evening his mama pulled funny faces to make him less afraid. He missed her cosy body, nestling next to her in front of the wood-burner. He missed the smell of her. She’d be alone in the house, getting the wood into the basket, wearing her housecoat and felt shoes, feet propped on the embroidered footstool.

  At dusk the birds became very loud, many returning to the trees near the window, to their lopsided nests. While airborne they wheeled in a cloud above Hartburg, darkening the sky, calling harshly. Schosi prayed for a while – he prayed that his mother would come to fetch him. He prayed that he would soon go home. He thought that God and Jesus and Mary couldn’t know about this place because they wouldn’t let him be stuck here when he’d done nothing bad. Then he lay on the low bed, the clamour of the birds becoming strange and otherworldly, like the furious babbling of a brook, and in the hubbub there seemed to be many voices, though he cou
ldn’t make out the words.

  The hole in the door snapped open and an eye looked in. Two nurses entered. They were big and fat, or at least big and wide, their arms as broad as a man’s and their necks filling their starched collars. One of them tugged the blanket from Schosi’s body and tossed it aside. Then they took hold of his arms and propelled him from the cell and out into the corridor. His toes brushed the floor; their hands clamped tight and the light in the corridor was sharp so that he had to close his eyes. The nurses crushed against him and when he turned his head he saw only their cheeks and ears and caps. They conveyed him down several corridors and through wide dormitories to a short passageway, which finished in a blank wall. A large clock hung overhead, suspended on a stiff iron rod; its second hand ticked as he looked at it. He remembered his wristwatch and wished he could hold it.

  The nurses took him into a small washroom with a couple of sinks and a large bath. One immediately bolted the door from the inside. Pipes scrambled along the walls and ceiling; there were cabinets on the right-hand side, which were glass-fronted and contained files of different colours, and there was a set of extremely shallow drawers, too thin to contain anything at all, and going on for ever. On each skinny drawer-front was a label. Schosi was able to recognise that each label had two words on it and that the words were names.

  The bath in the washroom was magnificent. It was long and deep and white and already filled with water. He’d never been in a proper bath – the one he used at home wasn’t much bigger than his own backside and flakes of metal came adrift while he washed. He wondered whether he’d be given clean shorts, or something warmer to wear.

  ‘Get your things off,’ said a nurse, donning thick rubber gloves of liverish red. The other woman dragged a small chair to the head of the bath. Schosi undid his buttons and took off his dirty shorts – he removed his shirt and vest and socks and put them in a heap on the floor near the strange chest of drawers. One of the nurses patted the seat of the chair. He went over to it, covering his private parts with his hands. He didn’t like to be naked in front of anyone apart from his mother. He began to shudder because it wasn’t very warm in the sparse washroom. He glanced around for a towel or blanket but there were none. The nurses’ strong hands closed around his arms, another hand was placed on his back, and finally the back of his head was gripped firmly. The women moved in unison, shoving him forward over the edge of the bath. Head first he plunged below the surface of the water, his stomach and chest bashing the side of the bath. His feet left the floor and his knees knocked against the enamel rim. Breath left him in a violent stream of shock – the water was icy cold. His lungs were emptied and he opened his mouth. Cold water rushed in and he swallowed instinctively, only for more water to flood in. He fought but there was no hope against the burly nurses. The coldness of the water was completely disorientating; he swallowed more water and breathed some down his nose – it felt like fire and he coughed underwater again and again. His skull began to thump and his chest burned so that he thought he would die any second. His legs kicked thin air. He knew that he was drowning.

  They wrenched him upwards and out. He gasped and coughed and coughed. Then he was being forced downwards again, submerged, his face this time pressed against the gritty base of the bath. He clamped his lips shut and opened his eyes: whiteness. The nurses pummelled his back until he released his breath in a spew of bubbles, gulped water and kicked and writhed, and only then did they drag him heavenwards and allow him a snatched and desperate breath, before dunking him once more.

  The sloshing surface of the bath enveloped him countless times, the interludes so brief he could scarcely draw air. The cold was so intense that his body was soon beyond his control – he coughed convulsively and was hardly aware of whether he was above water or below it. His stomach expelled the swallowed water in a rush of transparent vomit, and he was swallowing and swallowing again. He stopped struggling and each time he went under his head crashed against the enamel. After a while he no longer felt the blows.

  The drink treatment was discontinued after the seventh day and Schosi was allowed to sleep, told that he could rest providing his behaviour improved. He slept through a whole day and night and partway through the next day too, before he finally woke and needed to pee in the chamber pot.

  He couldn’t think of much once he was awake, except his hunger and the cough that had taken hold of him and racked his body by the minute. His thoughts were blurred. He’d been given no food or water for some days. He thought about frothy milk after working hard on the farm, about good Schwarzbrot and apricot dumplings and bilberry pancakes. He loved bilberry pancakes more than anything. Bilberries cooked with sugar into sweet, staining syrup, served with cream. He dreamt of Eierschwammerl mushrooms and Knödl with smoked pork and Sauerkraut, hot and good and filling, potato salad and tomatoes with onions, boiled sausage with mustard, and liver dumpling soup. He chewed on the corner of his grey hospital blanket and saliva flooded his throat and ignited a coughing fit so violent that he clutched himself in agony. He went to watch his friends in the tree, the black birds with grey beaks. But the branches were empty and there was nothing to see.

  27

  They put you on drink?’ asked Moritz. ‘Or wrap?’ He’d materialised beside Schosi holding a dustpan and brush just as Schosi opened his eyes. Schosi looked around at the room – green bars over the windows and high walls, many beds and the blinking light on the ceiling. He was back in his old dormitory in pavilion fifteen. He leaned forward and tried to embrace Moritz but his friend drew back.

  ‘They put you on drink or wrap treatment?’ asked Moritz again.

  Schosi shrugged, uncertain.

  ‘Thought you were done for. Thought you’d definitely had it.’

  ‘Where’s Paulin?’

  Moritz shook his head and grimaced. ‘And we’re next,’ he said. ‘Starting on the four thirty.’

  Schosi regarded him blankly; sometimes Moritz made no sense at all. Moritz scowled and his knuckles went white from gripping the brush handle very hard. ‘Feeding up! You and me!’

  ‘But where’s Paulin?’ Schosi persisted.

  ‘I told you already! Wheeled off in one of them barrows. Poor bastard. Ain’t coming back.’ He watched the door. ‘No point wishing for it, no point at all.’ There were footsteps in the corridor. Moritz dropped quickly to the floor and began to sweep beneath the bed. The steps passed by. ‘No point praying for ourselves neither.’ His voice rose from below the bed. ‘God’s a heartless bastard – a bloody mean, heartless bastard.’

  Schosi was shocked. Moritz spoke about God as though he hated Him. He wondered whether he should warn his friend about Hell and blasphemy.

  A couple of other boys passed Schosi where he lay. He didn’t know them. They crouched on the floor with cleaning cloths and brushes. They tickled the tiles and wiped the legs of the beds, sidling, their bodies low, their gaze malicious.

  A nurse stood over Moritz until he placed his spoon in his mouth and chewed and swallowed the contents.

  ‘Finish the bowlful,’ she said.

  Schosi’s semolina was already gone and he longed for more; the sweetened cocoa powder that had been added by the nurses tasted delicious and his stomach contracted around the measly portion, which had been nowhere near enough to sate him. The other children at the four-thirty mealtime slurped greedily, loudly. Chocolate was smeared from chin to cheekbone and fingers were coated in brown mess. A girl with sparse dandelion-seed hair lolled on to the table, her hands draped near her bowl and her scrawny spine knobbling through her tunic. She heaved and vomited on to her arms. A nurse shouted and the girl was taken away.

  When all were done the nurses scrubbed the children with cloths, then ordered them to their dormitories. Schosi went to lie down and remembered the boys that used to sleep during the early evening instead of doing chores. He was glad now that he was one of them. He’d envied their rest.

  Once they were unsupervised Moritz grasped Schosi’s sl
eeve. ‘They poisoned it!’ he whispered. His eyes popped unnervingly in their sockets. Schosi cowered away. Moritz shook him a little bit. ‘Don’t you see? Don’t you understand? Damn it!’ Some of the other boys looked over from their beds, curious. ‘No one does, ’cept me,’ he hissed, releasing Schosi. ‘I s’pose that’s why you’re in here. Damn idiot!’

  He went to his bed and Schosi climbed into bed too. A strong wind pulsed the closed shutters. Schosi was very sleepy. His chest hurt and he couldn’t stop coughing for a long time even though Moritz told him to shut up and said that if he were a dog he’d be put down for barking too much. Drowsiness quickly overtook him and he slept till morning, dreamless and still.

  Schosi’s days became bleary waking dreams; his sleep was as deep and empty as a chasm that he could never fully climb out of. Moritz was subdued and drooping most of the time but often prodded Schosi gently and tried to look into his face as though searching for something.

  One day, Schosi’s slumber was disturbed by the scream of his friend.