Fifteen Words

by Monika Jephcott Thomas

  She closed her eyes, ignoring the rather dubious scent of the upholstery beneath her head there in the NSV office. The secretary found a blanket, with an equally curious odour, but Erika allowed herself to be covered in it and imagined it was the one Max used to bring down from his room in their digs. She imagined she was snuggled against her love under the blanket and soon found herself looking around her draughty room at her friends who had all gathered for gossip and coffee before they went off to the lecture theatre.

  Edgar was there. Dearest Edgar Klein. Such a wonderfully ironic surname since he was usually the tallest person in the room. Best friend to both Erika and Max. They were all in the same exam group. Brilliant at his studies and an equally brilliant musician, his determination to succeed in life left Erika sometimes inspired, sometimes depressed that she wasn’t as dedicated.

  ‘You are as dedicated,’ Edgar said, tapping out some rhythm on his knees which sounded to Erika like some new swing beat from the USA. Typical Edgar: anything the government banned was likely to get him interested. Which is why he couldn’t keep still this afternoon, the anticipation of the lecture was such. Erika tried her hardest not to be infected by this delicious dissentient, ‘You are as dedicated. It’s just I haven’t got the gorgeous Max as my boyfriend to distract me from my studies,’ he lisped and lolled in a camp enough manner to generate the laugh he required from the rest of the gang.

  ‘Sometimes I wonder about you, Edgar, you play the part of a lady too well.’ That was Kurt, or Babyface as he was called only by the people in this room – his nearest and dearest. He acquired his nickname not just because of the incredibly smooth and hairless skin he still had at twenty-one, but because of his unwavering desire to specialise in paediatrics.

  ‘Well, at least I can grow a beard,’ Edgar retorted, with a surprising lack of intellect, Erika thought. She caught him blushing as he got up and danced and tapped his way nonchalantly to the window. Why the rush of blood to the head? Erika asked herself. Embarrassed by his lack of wit, or had Babyface hit a nerve when he drew attention to Edgar’s skill at effeminacy?

  ‘What’s so special about Friedrich Hass anyway?’ said Horst who sensed a slight modulation in the subject matter was in order.

  ‘What’s so special about Friedrich Hass?’ Edgar turned from the window where he’d drawn a thick cross in the condensation, like an arrow slit in battlements. ‘Not only is he a great pathologist and a great speaker, but his research on the role of hypoxia in congenital malformations is seminal.’

  ‘But it’s not hypoxia that’s got you itching to see him talk today, is it?’ Max piped up from the blanket under which he wedged himself into the armchair with Erika, trying to keep warm.

  ‘No, of course not. He’s speaking on the Oath of Hippocrates and apparently the Gestapo have already warned him not to touch on euthanasia.’

  ‘Really?’ said Horst, still playing dumb, though in fact he just liked to push people’s buttons and watch them go. It was so much more comforting than silence for him, Erika observed, though she liked nothing more these days than lying under this blanket with Max and exhaling wordless shivers with him. She squeezed Max’s hand under the cover and he reciprocated.

  ‘Yes, Horst, really,’ Edgar enjoyed showing his exasperation. ‘Are you a medical student or just some Rheinlander who’s lost his way to the vineyards?’

  Despite appearances, Horst and Edgar loved each other as much as Erika loved every one of these boys in her room that day.

  Edgar went back to his arrow slit in the window and peered through it. ‘We should get going,’ he said, chewing his bottom lip. ‘People are flocking in already. Come on!’

  He headed for the door. Babyface and Horst warmed their mouths and insides on the still hot coffee they were forced to down too soon whilst Erika and Max examined each other’s faces, reading excitement to get to the controversial lecture, but also comprehending a desire to stay under the quilt as long as possible before they had to leave the warmth they had kindled there.

  ‘Come on, Max and Dorothea, that means you too!’ Edgar called dramatically, enjoying, no doubt, his voice, echoing down the bare stairwell.

  ‘Dorothea?’ Horst feigned ignorance again. ‘But her name’s Erika.’

  Edgar didn’t rise on this occasion, he was almost through the front door and already out of earshot, so Babyface, proud to get the reference, piped up, ‘Max and Dorothea are the lovers in that…’

  ‘… poem, I know,’ Horst gave one of Kurt’s irresistible baby cheeks two quick light slaps with his chunky hand and set off after Edgar with a whoop which also made the most of the acoustics in the stairwell. Spurred on by all this energy, Max and Erika darted out from their quilted nest, she grabbing her purple coat, since Max had told her how lovely she looked in it just a few days ago, and they chased the others out of the house.

  Five coffee cups stood in various locations around the room and in various states of emptiness, but all still steaming. The vapours hurried to the window to fill with condensation the gap made by Edgar’s arrow slit, which was already changing shape, now spreading to resemble the solid even red cross of the humanitarian services, now dripping to resemble a bleeding crucifix.

  They were lucky to get a seat at all, let alone five in a row. But the sunlight streaming down from the high window pointed the way to the perfect spot for them. The hall was full of the sound of sensible shoes flamencoing against the wooden floor of the rakes, as students sought the best place to sit. Erika looked down to see that the first layer of this year’s snow had clung to their shoes, eager not to miss out on the gathering, and had left little white cakes on the floor as its contribution to the party. She tap-danced the rest from her soles as a thousand other shoes noisily took their places. Erika loved the sound. The sound of excitement, the sound of an eagerness to know and learn. But mostly she loved the fact that it was not the sound of high-heeled dress shoes and the swish of ball gowns on marble floors; the kind of sound her parents wanted her to be familiar with.

  High society, they thought, was the echelon their daughter should be part of, since she was the progeny of a textile factory owner and his wife. Her father pulled strings whilst her mother pulled her hair into styles Erika felt silly in, and they managed to find her a place away from their tiny village of Kunzendorf, where boys like Richard the carpenter’s son were all too accessible. She was sent to Berlin to study at the Lettehaus and live with Frau von Geröllheimer in the hope that some of the noblewoman’s impeccable manners would rub off on the “wayward” Erika.

  Frau von Geröllheimer was an overbearing and stiff old hag, Erika thought, but even she felt compelled to give the old lady a kiss when she managed to get Erika into the parliament building during the Chancellor’s birthday celebrations.

  The flat, plain, functional building was that day rippling with red. The street was draped with red. Red seemed to rain and reign as the government flags adorned everything. And Erika was of course in red too. A long and bustled ball gown, which in combination with the reams of other red material everywhere that day had her feeling almost part of that high society her parents insisted was their right. She was directed through a corridor lined with red carpets, hung with red tapestries and punctuated with high backed red chairs against the wall every fifteen feet or so.

  What on earth are those chairs there for? Erika couldn’t help wondering as she hurried up the stairs. Why would anyone want to sit in a corridor? There aren’t even any rooms off it to wait outside. Perhaps these weren’t the kind of practical questions a lady of high society should be asking herself. Rather she should be concentrating on her footing and her dress in order not to—

  Erika trod on the hem of her gown and tripped herself up. She fell and her hands slapped the cold smooth marble of the Mosaic Room just before her face did, announcing her faux pas to the entire assemblage. All the guests briefly turned to see if the clapping sound was meant to indicate some new direction in the evening’s proceedings
, but as soon as they saw it was just some girl making a fool of herself, they went back to their small talk and schmoozing. Erika was mortified, of course, and swore at her parents inwardly over and over again for sending her to Frau von Geröllheimer in the first place, but before too much silent profanity had passed her lips, there was more clapping, this time of hands on hands rather than hands on stone, and not from her but from one of the stewards – the parade was beginning.

  Erika was ushered to the enormous window at which Frau von Geröllheimer had reserved her a space and she caught her breath. Not just because of the celestial spectacle of a thousand flaming torches marching past in the street below, held by deputations from all over Germany, but by the fact that on the balcony which jutted out right next to her window stood the Chancellor himself. Their Führer. Her leader. She felt tiny and gigantic all at once. She blushed and she blanched. There he was! In the flesh. This was the first time she had ever seen him in real life, but she felt like she knew him, she had seen his image on so many posters and read his words in so many magazines. He had saved the country from utter ruin after the Great War. Saved the economy and so kept her parents’ factory from going under. He had led the National Socialists to power, despite all the ridicule and disdain. He is not about high society, Erika thought, though she stood under a chandelier as big as her bedroom. He is about a new Germany united and equal, strong in the face of alien oppressors. The tired, the happy, the doubter, the fat, the thin, the rich, the soldier – the song went – they are all equal before God’s sun.

  The Russians made them march in pairs out to the end of the street and off towards the airstrip. When they eventually got there they told them to keep going.

  ‘Where are they taking us?’ a soldier in front of Max hissed to his mate.

  ‘Russia, I suppose,’ his mate replied.

  ‘Then why are we heading south?’

  Max, like a schoolmaster among children on an excursion, counted around seventy people left in his unit. It was hard to get an exact figure being in the midst of all those bobbing heads and faltering feet himself. He was sure there were other units still in the city, some may still be resisting the Soviets, but all of them he was sure were greatly depleted like his.

  After hours of marching he was strangely glad not to have his heavy medic’s bag any longer, although he was concerned that neither Edgar nor himself had any medical equipment now. He still carried the backpack of letters though and for him it was the lightest bag of gold any man had ever carried. Some of the soldiers were even struggling now under the weight of their sixty kilo packs and the patients from his hospital were not able to keep up.

  A shot rang out from the rear. Every one of the prisoners’ instinct was to stop and look behind them but the soldiers guarding them ordered them to keep going. Max knew, as well as the others, it was a patient who was too weak to walk any more.

  Another shot. Another patient.

  And another. And another.

  Max felt his eyes fill with tears. He was livid at the contempt this signified his captors had for the infirm when he had made it his mission in life to mend and cure them.

  ‘Oh God!’ the soldier in front of him cried. Max couldn’t be sure if he cried for the patients being shot or for himself as his trousers dripped with urine.

  All that coffee this morning with Jenny was having the laxative effect it was fast becoming associated with in some medical journals. He thought about asking one of the Russians if they could stop for a break, appeal to their better nature, but then another shot rang out from behind them and he realised shitting himself would be the least of his worries. But he settled on urinating, like his comrade in front, just to ease the pressure on his bowel, buy a few more hours, he hoped.

  He looked at Edgar as he did it. To lock eyes with him perhaps. To keep Edgar from looking down and seeing him do it. Edgar smiled at him in the way Max had seen him smile at the monk crushed under the masonry. Horst and Lutz were behind him. They probably saw, he thought, but what could he do about that now?

  Night came and they were still being marched around the burning city. They were clearly not heading for Russia. Perhaps this bunch of Ivans had no idea what they were doing. Perhaps they were awaiting orders from elsewhere and were just killing time – and killing Germans – until then.

  Knowing his food hoard was in his backpack now languishing on the bed of the truck which rumbled along beside the captors (where one shift of Russians rested whilst the others prowled among the prisoners) made Max think about food more than he otherwise would. By now all the Germans were hungry and he saw the lad in front of him signal to his partner, who then delved into the lad’s backpack and found some dried bacon to munch on. He then returned the favour and the lad rummaged quietly in his partner’s pack until he came up with a chunk of bread. This way they didn’t have to take off their packs or stop marching. This way, in the darkness, they could feed themselves without Ivan noticing. The lad drew the short straw though. He got the bread. His mate got the bacon. I’d rather have bacon any day, Max thought to himself. He was salivating. He could taste the meat in his own mouth right then. He looked at Edgar. Edgar was without a bag too.

  His stomach growled.

  So did a Soviet somewhere up ahead. ‘No food!’ he shouted in German and the sound of a rifle butt striking a body punched its way through the darkness towards Max. He felt at once jealous of the lad and his bread and relieved he did not have any food that could get him in trouble.

  An hour passed. It felt like an hour. Max looked at his watch – the cheap one on his wrist, which he’d bought in Freiburg for five deutschmarks. He was surprised it was still intact. He felt under his coat for his quality pocket watch, the one he used for all things work related. It was still there. It had been a few minutes since he last looked, not an hour at all.

  He felt someone prod him in the back and began to tremble. He hadn’t been eating, drinking, talking, not recently anyway. They had taken all his equipment and supplies, so what the hell had he done to deserve such attention now? He kept marching, kept his eyes on the road. The prodding came again. This time accompanied with a little hiss. He threw a glance over his shoulder. There was no Russian there. It was Horst.

  ‘Take it!’ he hissed again.

  Max reached behind and grabbed whatever it was his friend was telling him to take. It was a piece of bread. Edgar was getting the same from Lutz. He bit into it gratefully. It was hard and cold, but Max instructed his brain to tell his taste buds it was warm and soft, fresh from the oven and oozing with butter melting all over it.

  And so it was.

  When dawn came the next day they were marching between the pink sunrise and the constant sunset red of Breslau burning. Men started to slow, flounder, complain of pain. Max could feel his own feet blistering despite his heavy duty ski boots – hardly standard issue, but he was so glad now that Erika had loved skiing so much even though he was useless at it. These boots would last him much longer than the regular ones the other soldiers wore.

  From all the friction and sweat of marching, his buttocks were beginning to get sore. He knew if this carried on he wouldn’t be able to walk much further, no matter how good his boots, and they all knew the fate of those that couldn’t go on. He started scanning the ground for a solution.

  A spent rifle cartridge, a burnt book, a sock, a stone…

  He had a tub of Vaseline in his medic’s pack.

  ‘Oh my kingdom for some Vaseline!’ he chuckled mirthlessly to Edgar.

  Edgar just winced in empathy.

  … a broken wine glass, the frames of some spectacles, a cork…

  He lunged and swiped the cork from the ground without even disturbing his comrades’ step behind him.

  It was the cork from a bottle of champagne. He turned it over between his fingertips examining it for a moment. A big fat cork from a big expensive bottle of booze. Who had been celebrating? What had they been celebrating? And when? A long time ago, he ima
gined. Perhaps a few years back when some Nazi supporters had heard about France surrendering. Or the damage done to Coventry in England. He couldn’t imagine what anyone could have been celebrating in more recent times round here.

  Satisfied it was good for the job, he slipped the cork down his trousers and inserted it between his buttocks. It kept his cheeks from rubbing together beautifully. It can plug up my arse whilst it’s there too, Max thought with the hilarity induced by such relief, stop that shit from coming out.

  But the others weren’t so lucky. Some of the men were stopping, crippled by sores, begging the Russians to let them rest.

  They were shot.

  ‘If I could just get to my bag,’ Max said desperately over his shoulder to Horst, his relief short lived by the terror of more of his unit being murdered, ‘we could pass some ointments and pain relief around.’

  He thought about just asking for it, demanding it back even.

  Another soldier fell from exhaustion. He was shot. Max thought again.

  Sometime during the next night Thomas broke rank from his place behind Lutz. He had heard Max wishing for his bag and he knew exactly where it was. They all did. It had been staring at them, taunting them under the bench on the back of the truck for days now. The food in it had been eaten by its new owners, but they had not required any of the medical supplies yet, so it remained there half forgotten.

  ‘What the hell…?’ Max heard Horst say through gritted teeth and squinted past Edgar into the dark to see the diminutive figure of Thomas – Maria’s Little Sweetheart, her Lovey, her Little Husband – skipping quietly to the slow moving truck, plucking the bag from the back, right under an Ivan sleeping on the bench, and falling back into line with all the grace of a cat.