As usual, the black birds – cockatoos, the Australian guards called them – picked up their trail almost immediately and shadowed the working party, flapping between the treetops with awkward grace. Occasionally one would issue a strident, harsh shriek to the rest of the forest, but otherwise they trailed above almost in silence. Somehow, Erich felt, it added to the oppressiveness of the morning.
A fly buzzed at his head, and with his free hand Erich swung at it, the gesture almost subconscious after two months with the work crew. Even this early in the day the heat of the Australian summer was stifling, baking the land, coating both trees and men in a constant layer of dust, which kicked up from their boots and settled quickly over everything, lending a feeling of constant grittiness.
Slowly, lulled by the rhythmic swing of the walk and the gentle pace of the morning, Erich drifted into reverie, as he always did, replaying the last couple of months in his mind.
At first, he’d hated being in the working party. He’d quickly realised what a favour Stutt had done him by allocating him to the hospital. Work in the forest was back-breaking and difficult. There was the incessant marching to and from the logging stands, the heat and the flies, and of course the forest with its brooding presence, its constant threat hanging over him.
He thought about Alice. Their first meeting after his release from the detention cells was still clear in his mind. He’d reported, filthy and unshaven, to the hospital for his mandatory check-up. The doctor had not been there and they’d stood in discomfited silence until she spoke.
‘What were you thinking?’
And he’d looked at her, strangely aware for the first time of how pretty she was. Not in a conventional way, not like the girls he’d known back in Germany, but pretty nonetheless. He noticed the way that light seemed to gleam in her dark hair and fall across her face.
‘Do you know how much you hurt him, Erich? Do you?’
She was flushed with anger, colour rising in her cheeks, and she tossed her long hair back over her shoulder angrily. Erich felt within him a growing bubble of quiet despair at what he had thrown away.
‘Well? Say something.’
His voice was scratchy and hoarse. ‘I do not know what I can say.’
‘Anything. I don’t care. Just tell me why you did it.’
He could not look at her any longer. Her face was crimson with anger and disappointment, so he looked out the window.
‘I do not know. It was just . . . just a moment. I cannot explain.’
And she turned and walked away, crossing to the far end of the room before facing him again.
‘That’s what Grandfather says, but I don’t believe him. And I don’t believe you. I think you were still trying to fight this bloody war. Weren’t you?’
Erich took a step in her direction, desperate. ‘No! Not at all. I was only, I was . . .’ She cut him off.
‘Don’t even start. How many times did you tell me that you, no us – that we were still at war? That we were all enemies? Well, I hope you’re happy now, Erich. I hope you’re pleased with your little battle.’
Tears ran freely down her cheeks and Erich wanted nothing more than to go to her and wipe them away. But he stood still, mute and ashamed, pride tearing him in two directions.
‘Alice, I . . . I think that . . .’
‘Do you want to know something else, Erich? All the time you were carrying on about the war and being a soldier, all that time I didn’t believe you were serious. I thought you were just covering for something, just lonely. I thought you had more to you than that. That you were more than just some’ – she hesitated – ‘some German.’
She hissed the word and it rang around the empty hospital like a gunshot. Erich felt it tear into him with a force almost physical. He struggled again to speak.
‘I . . .’ But there were no words. Alice stared at him through tear-hazed eyes and, as their gazes locked, both shuddered at the confusion of feelings which echoed around them. For an age there was nothing at all in the world but the sad dark eyes of the girl across the room.
Then footsteps sounded and the doctor entered, instantly aware of the charged atmosphere.
‘Alice, Erich . . .’
But the girl stormed past and out. Barely aware of himself or the doctor, Erich took a couple of involuntary steps to follow and then stopped, his eyes still locked on the spot where the door had shut behind her. He scarcely felt the doctor’s gentle pressure on his shoulder.
‘Come on then, Erich, let’s have a look at you.’
Through the examination the boy stayed quiet, and the doctor allowed him his silence. Then when the check-up was over and it was time for Erich to leave, the old man led him gently to the door.
‘She will come around, Erich. Have faith, Youngster.’
And Erich had nodded, said nothing and stumbled to his bunk through a fog with her words still echoing in his mind.
That had been weeks, no, months ago. And still the numbness stayed with him. Each day in the forest Erich swung his axe, hauled timber to the cart, ate and laughed and joked with the other men, but all the time part of him stayed in the hospital, listening with silent, unexpected despair as her trembling voice accused him, over and over – ‘some German.’
If the other men in the working party were aware of what he was going through, they gave no sign, and as the weeks passed his hands grew the thick calluses of the timber worker. His shoulders and back filled out, stretching at the fabric of his uniform, and the men would include him more and more in their jokes and ribaldry.
‘Come on, son, swing the thing!’
‘You’re not in the hospital now, Youngster!’
Even the hated nickname, ‘Youngster’, had somehow taken on a new meaning. Now they called it with affection, even a kind of respect, which was something Erich had never experienced before, not from men. Time passed and he began to feel more accepted, a part of the crew, and a little of the fog faded and lifted.
‘Here we are then, quick drinks!’
Stopping at the end of the trail, the men flopped to the ground and drank deeply from their canteens. Their crew leader was a thirty-two-year-old known to everyone simply as ‘Kaiser’. He’d been a tank commander before he was taken prisoner, while hauling the rest of his men from their burning vehicle. Before they formally captured him the British had allowed him to continue while they’d sat and watched. In the process he’d been badly burned and his skin was wrinkled and pock-marked.
‘Right then, usual jobs. I want to get that big one we started yesterday down first, and then make a start on at least three more. Let’s get to it.’
The men rose from the patches of ground where they’d thrown themselves and headed into the woods.
Erich had an easy task to start off with – keeping the blade of the two-man felling saw cool with water as the other members of the crew worked the blade through the hard, red wood. The tree was a massive old jarrah, and the day before they’d managed about two-thirds of the cut. Axe men had been chipping away above the incision, knocking away the trunk in the direction that they wanted the tree to fall.
‘All ready, Youngster?’
‘Ja . . .’ Erich had fetched a bucket from the wagon and filled it from a small tank they carried with them. ‘Ready when you are.’
The two men started, slowly working the blade into the slot they’d created the previous day.
‘Watch out! Here it goes!’
With a groan that seemed to tear through the restive afternoon, the great jarrah gave way and with surprising slowness plunged to earth. Erich watched, aware of the unexpected majesty in the tree’s death. As men darted from beneath its path, it dropped with a resigned, almost splendid elegance and when it finally crashed into the undergrowth, all present felt the earth shudder beneath them. In the moments that followed the entire bush fell silent, as though mourning the death
of that great giant. Then slowly the gentle background rustle would start again, and the men would laugh and joke exuberantly.
‘That was a monster, eh Helmut?’
‘Ja. Even bigger than the one that took Günter’s leg!’
Erich had quickly discovered that this was the benchmark against which all tree-fellings were now compared.
‘Come on, Pieters, jump to it, Youngster.’
‘I think he must be tired!’
‘Are we keeping you awake?’
The men were grinning.
‘Nein. I just wanted to let you all feel good about yourselves before I show you up for the old men that you really are.’ Erich grinned back.
Kaiser replied, ‘Big words from a little boy.’
They all laughed again, and then Erich fell to the task of severing the branches from the main trunk, dropping quickly into his regular rhythm of swinging and chopping, enjoying the solid thump and the bite of the blade into hard wood.
All the time, though, he was aware of the force of the forest. Most of the men seemed unaffected, some even seemed to like it, but working in the dark, muted light between the jarrahs had done nothing to alleviate any of its foreignness as far as Erich was concerned. The feeling that something was watching, observing, was with him whenever he was out there working in the semi-twilight or marching along the rough trails they’d hewn. He felt a presence that followed them out and back and during the days watched the slow destruction they inflicted upon the living timber.
‘Hey! Look!’
Kaiser was holding up something. Something small and noisy. The men all stopped and went across to him. Cradled in his hands was a baby bird, a bundle of black down.
‘It was in there.’ He gestured at a hollow junction in the branches of the fallen tree.
The men crowded around. Nests weren’t uncommon, but this was the first time a living chick had been recovered from one. In Kaiser’s big hands it trembled and mewed piteously.
‘Is it all right?’
‘Ja. I think so.’
‘What do we do with it? Can you see its parents?’
‘Nein. We should take it back to camp.’
‘What for?’
Kaiser shrugged. ‘We can’t leave it out here like this. Günter can look after it. He’s an old woman now!’
The men laughed.
‘Youngster, would the doctor or your sweetheart be able to get us a box to put it in?’
Faces turned to Erich expectantly and he felt his colour rise. ‘Your sweetheart’ had become, despite his protestations, the accepted term used to refer to Alice.
‘Ja. I can ask.’
‘Good. In the meantime, it can live in my shirt.’
Carefully, Kaiser carried the chick over to where his discarded shirt lay draped across a branch. It was odd to watch his large, scarred hands dealing so delicately with the tiny creature.
‘Come on now, you lot, back to it. Now.’
When the working party got back to the compound that evening, Kaiser released the bird to Erich and he took it over to the hospital. The tiny creature’s heart was beating at a million miles an hour. Erich could feel it beneath his fingertips. The evening was warm, small insects were drifting here and there and the forest beyond the wire was settling into its nightly forage. Erich paused at the door, hesitant, and knocked lightly with his free hand. Footsteps within, and Alice was there.
They’d not spoken since the day of his release from detention and now the memory of her anger and his shame came flooding back. She appraised him coolly.
‘Erich. Hello.’
‘Good evening . . .’ Unsure of where to go next, he held out the bird, awkward, embarrassed, uncertain. In his hands it chirruped, the tiny cry the only sound between them. ‘We found it in the forest.’
Alice took the tiny bundle and briefly their fingertips brushed. The contact sent a tiny shiver running through him and he thought the girl stiffened slightly. Doctor Alexander called from behind his desk, ‘Is that Erich?’
‘Ja, Doctor.’
‘Well, come in, son. Don’t stand out there all night.’
Stepping into the dim light, Erich was suddenly aware of the fact that he’d been working all day and shuffled his feet, feeling embarrassed and dishevelled. The doctor came over and shook his hand.
‘It seems like so long since we’ve seen you. You were going to look in, remember?’
‘Yes, Doctor. I am sorry.’
‘No, no. There’s nothing to apologise for. I’m sure you’re fairly tired in the evenings.’
‘That is true.’
The girl said nothing but retreated to the shadows by the cold stove and gently stroked the downy bird. That moment of contact with Erich had, what? Scared her? No. It was something different – unsettling. Not fear then. While the doctor and Erich talked, she looked at him, surprised at how different he seemed from the boy who’d stood in almost the same place just a couple of months earlier. The work in the forest had filled out his body, and it suited him, though somehow he still looked ill at ease in it. There was something else about him too, something beyond the physical changes, that she couldn’t describe. It intrigued her and Alice felt the vestiges of her anger starting to waver.
‘I have something here for you.’
The doctor retrieved a package from some shelves.
‘They arrived a few weeks ago.’
Erich took the heavy bundle, wrapped in brown paper.
‘Open it.’
Inside were books. Medical texts.
‘Are you still interested in doing some more study?’ The doctor’s eyes were bright. He looked more alive than he had for months, Alice thought.
Erich’s brow furrowed with puzzlement. ‘What would be the purpose? I cannot use it.’
‘Not now, perhaps, Erich, but you never know. Knowledge is a valuable thing. And I am sure that you would enjoy the distraction.’
‘Ja, thank you.’ Erich nodded. ‘I think it will help fill in my spare time.’
‘Good then.’
Alice still hadn’t said anything. The bird chirruped again, attracting the doctor’s attention.
‘And what’s this?’
‘A cockatoo. A baby. We knocked down its nest today, and Kaiser asked me to find a box and some padding to keep it in.’
Alice offered the bird to her grandfather, who took it carefully, scratching its head lightly with his little finger.
‘Poor little thing. I don’t know enough about animals to offer much advice, but we’ll see what we can do. Alice, would you mind looking under the cupboard there for a small box?’ He nodded at the supply cupboard which stood open.
‘I can, Doctor.’ Erich was closer and made a step towards the cupboard, but Alice interrupted.
‘No. It’s all right. I’ll do it.’ She moved quickly before Erich had a chance. As she bent to search, she could feel his eyes on her.
‘Will this do?’ She held up a small cardboard box, a little larger than a shoebox.
‘We’ll put some gauze in to pad it. And give you a syringe to feed it from.’
‘What should we give it?’
The doctor shook his head. ‘A little sugar and water, I imagine. To be honest, I’m not sure, Erich. Birds aren’t my speciality.’
‘I will ask the other men. Someone will know something of this.’
Outside, the stillness of the bush twilight was broken by the growing wail of the camp siren.
‘That is rollcall. I must go, I am afraid.’
‘That’s fine, Erich. It is good to see you again.’
‘Ja, Doctor. And you also.’ Erich looked at Alice. ‘Both of you.’
The girl looked down, refusing to meet his gaze, remembering the last time the two of them had been alone together.
‘You must come back and tell us how your little bird is going, all right?’
‘I will, Doctor. But now I must go.’
‘Goodnight, Erich.’
Alice watched him as he left. Clutching the box beneath his arm he cleared the steps of the hospital in an easy bound and loped away towards the mess.
Nineteen
February 1944
In the morning the bird was dead. Sometime during the night the tiny heart had stopped beating and they found it cold, a black shadow of life huddled in soft white gauze. Kaiser wrapped it gently in an old shirt and carried it back into the forest with them.
The death of the small creature lent a sombre atmosphere to the morning and Erich felt the forest to be somehow more suffocating, more alien, than normal.
Kaiser used his axe to scrape a shallow hole at the severed stump of the jarrah from which the cockatoo had been recovered. Both prisoners and guards stood around as he placed the small bundle in the depression and covered it with rich forest soil.
None spoke. The trees stood watching, impassive sentinels over the strange burial. Kaiser’s eyes were wet and Erich wondered at the forces that could move a man like this to tears over the death of a bird. When it was done they stood quiet for a moment, remembering distant places, lovers and times. It wasn’t so much a tribute to the bird, Erich realised, as to each of them there.
‘Right, then.’ Kaiser’s voice was still unsteady. ‘Let’s get on with it, shall we?’ And the men drifted in twos and threes to their assigned tasks.
All day, Erich felt unsettled. It might have been the bird, or something else, but the men laboured the hours in relative silence. During lunch break there were a couple of half-hearted jokes, but nobody had the spirit to carry them on and during the early afternoon a hot, dry wind picked up from the east, blowing hard between the trees and carrying with it dust and discomfort. The wind-howl through the canopy seemed from another world, and when the whistle sounded for afternoon break, all the men stood around, gritty, smoking in quiet conversation as the sweat dried on their arms and backs.
‘That’s a bad breeze, Youngster.’
‘Ja.’ He had not heard Kaiser coming up behind him, but turned to face the former tank commander as he approached.
Fireshadow Page 13
