Times of War Collection

by Michael Morpurgo

  Karli seemed happy enough with that, but there were many times after that when I could feel he was keeping an eye on us, and that worried me. I certainly did not want Mutti to have any idea how I really felt about Peter. Not because of what she might think about it, but because it was private, very personal, and I wanted to keep it that way.

  The food we had brought with us from the farm lasted as long as we could make it, but in the end of course there was none left. After that, finding something to eat became our greatest problem. Not for Marlene. She would only have to brush the snow aside with her trunk or her foot, to be able to find something edible underneath. And once the snow had gone, Marlene simply grazed as she went. She was on a constant scrounge, her trunk searching ahead of her. For much of our journey we kept to the valleys, so there was always plenty of water for us to drink, from the rivers and streams. And there were many days when Peter found us a hay-barn to hide in where Marlene could gorge herself all day long.

  But food for us was much harder to find. Again, it was Peter who saved our bacon, so to speak. In the air force he had done some training in living off the land – it was something they all had to do, in case they got shot down. And anyway, luckily for us, back home in Canada he was used to finding food in the wild, scavenging for it, fishing for it, hunting for it. He had done this all his life, but, as he said, until now scavenging had not included stealing.

  Early every morning we would settle into our new shelter for the day, make ourselves and Marlene as comfortable as we could, and then sooner or later Peter would disappear. He would be back an hour or so later with something: eggs from a hen-house maybe, or a sausage, ‘liberated’ he called it, from someone’s larder. There were carrots sometimes, even apples once or twice. It turned out that there were many homes and farms lying empty and deserted in the countryside. So many people, like Uncle Manfred and Aunt Lotti, had abandoned their houses and fled.

  And Peter scavenged for more than food. Once he came back with a fishing rod, and after that we quite often had grilled fish for our breakfast. But there were times when he came back with very little: a few nuts and some half-rotten root vegetables. Several times he returned empty-handed altogether. Then we just went hungry, and those were the days, with no food inside us, when it was hardest to keep ourselves warm, even if we could manage to make a fire.

  Those were the worst times during our whole long trek, the days of hunger. The endless walking I got used to. I even got used to my blisters, to my freezing hands and ears, and my numb feet. The snow went away, but the cold never did. Sometimes, when I felt I could not take another step, I would feel Mutti’s arm around me, and she would say always the same thing, “Just put one foot in front of the other, Elizabeth, and we’ll get there.” It was her constant mantra. When I was at my lowest ebb, I would keep saying that to myself, trying my very hardest to believe it. There were so many times when I came close to giving up altogether.

  Thinking back, though, it was Marlene as much as Mutti’s mantra that kept me going. Through wind and rain, mud and frost, Marlene just plodded on. She was our pace-maker, and we kept with her. When I was walking anywhere near her I could hear the hollow rumblings of contentment from inside her. And that for some reason always made me smile, and so lifted my spirits. We all envied her ability to find food on the move, snuffling up dead leaves, tugging at what little grass there was. We took great comfort and courage from her endless patience and perseverance. And she treated us all now, Peter included, with great affection, as if we were her family. We certainly felt she was part of ours. She was for ever touching us with the soft tip of her trunk, reassuring us, and reassuring herself maybe. If Peter was our guide and provider, and Mutti was our strength, then Marlene was our inspiration.

  Sometimes, after the long hours of walking through the darkness of the countryside, when we were all hungry and cold and tired, and the night seemed never-ending, Mutti would get us singing. We would sing her beloved Marlene Dietrich songs, or Christmas carols, or the nursery rhymes and folk songs Karli and I had grown up with. Peter knew some of these from his Swiss mother, so he would join in then too. Of course Karli would sing out louder than any of us, conducting everyone from high up on Marlene. These were the moments, as we were singing our way through the night, that I felt all my fears fly away. I felt suddenly light-headed, and full of hope, hope that all would be well. I cannot imagine why just singing together should be able to do this, but it did. It did not only pass the time. Somehow it lifted my heart, gave me new strength, and fresh determination just to keep going. It was the same for all of us, I think.

  I suppose we must have been three weeks or so into our journey across Germany, and we were making much slower progress than Peter had expected. It was the streams and rivers that were holding us up. Streams we could have forded easily enough – Marlene seemed quite happy to go back and forth carrying two of us at a time. But to cross the rivers we had to find a bridge, and a bridge that was not guarded, as many of them were. So whenever we came to a bridge, Peter had to scout ahead to find out if there were sentries. And if there were, it meant a long diversion along the river until we found an unguarded bridge. This made our journey a lot longer, and so we lost a lot of time that way.

  We knew that anyone and everyone who saw us or met up with us was a danger to us, but we could not avoid them altogether, however hard we tried. Even at night we did meet a few people, some walking home to their village after dark, or sometimes shepherds out in their fields checking their sheep; and once a farmer, I remember, who we came upon suddenly behind a hedge. He was trying to help one of his cows give birth, and he needed a hand, he said. So Peter got down on his knees at once, and pulled alongside the farmer. It took a while, but the calf came out alive and kicking. The farmer was delighted, and shook all our hands energetically. It was only after it was all over that he seemed to pay any attention to Marlene. Mutti told him our story, and he seemed quite happy with that. We had a night in his barn and his wife brought us some hot soup. They asked no questions, but kept bringing more and more of their family in to see Marlene. Far from attracting unwelcome attention to us, as Peter had thought, Marlene was turning out to be a kind of talisman. She seemed to divert attention away from us, and away from Peter in particular, which was of course just what we wanted.

  Hidden away during the daytime, huddled together inside some shed or barn, we had heard and sometimes seen fighter planes flying low overhead, but we were safe from them, always well out of sight. Day and night we had heard too the drone of bombers overhead, but like the fighters, they passed us by, and left us in peace. Had it not been for the ever more distant thunder of Russian guns we might almost have been able to forget that there was a war going on at all. The deeper we went into the countryside, the quieter it became and the safer we felt. There were some days and nights so still and silent now, that it really seemed to me sometimes as if the war might have ended already, and we just had not heard about it.

  I remember Karli became ill quite quickly.

  Weakened by his asthma, he had never been a strong child. It began one evening with a little cough that would not leave him. Mutti swathed him in blankets, and for the best part of that night he rode up on Marlene as usual, but it was becoming obvious after a while that he just did not have the strength to stay up there, that he could fall off at any time. Much against his will Mutti persuaded him down, and carried him the rest of the way in her arms.

  Peter and I were scouting ahead, looking urgently now for a place to shelter – anywhere would do, just so long as we could get Karli out of the cold. There were no lights in the houses, of course, because of the black-out. But it was a moonlit night, which was why I caught sight of the dark looming shape of a huge building in the distance, and then the ribbon of a tree-lined drive curving through the fields towards it. From the sound of his cough and his wheezing, we could tell that Karli was getting worse all the time. He needed more than just a shelter for the night, he needed a docto
r. We had no choice. We knew it was a risk, but we walked straight up the gravel drive and knocked loudly on the huge front door. It was a while before anyone came, and Peter was beginning to think that the house had been abandoned like so many others. But then the door opened. We saw the light of a lantern. Holding it was an old man in pyjamas and nightcap.

  He did not look at all friendly.

  T IS THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT,” GROWLED THE OLD man. “What is it that you want?”

  “Please. We need a doctor,” Mutti told him. “My son, he is very sick. Please.”

  Then from further inside the house came another voice, a woman’s voice. “Who is it, Hans? Is it more of them? Let them in.”

  The door opened wider, and we saw then a lady in a dressing gown, coming down a huge wide staircase, and then hurrying towards us across the hallway.

  “She says they need a doctor, Countess,” the old man said. They were both peering at us now, from behind the lamplight.

  “We are from Dresden,” Mutti told them.

  “Am I seeing things?” the lady asked. “Or is that an elephant?”

  “I can explain about that later,” Mutti replied. “But my son is ill, seriously ill, and I have to find a doctor. Please. It is urgent.”

  The lady did not hesitate. She took Mutti by the arm and led her into the hallway. “Come in, come in,” she said. “I shall send for the doctor from the village right away. And Hans, you will find a place for that animal in the stables.”

  I had no idea that night who these people were, and neither did I care. We would soon have a doctor for Karli, and we had found shelter for him too. That was all that mattered. And it would be warm too. I could even smell food. But I did not get to go in right away. Mutti asked me to take care of Marlene, and to make sure that she had something to eat and drink. So, led by Hans, the old man in the nightcap, who muttered angrily to himself the whole time, I took her round the side of the house, through a great archway and into a stable yard. I saw to it that she had all she needed, hay and water both, and left her to it. She seemed quite happy, happier certainly than the horses across the yard from her, who were becoming increasingly unsettled at the appearance of this strange intruder.

  As we walked back towards the house – the place seemed immense to me, more like a castle than a house – Hans was still grumbling on, but less to himself and rather more to me, about how he could never get a good night’s sleep any more, how it was bad enough that the countess had opened her doors to all and sundry, but now she was turning the stable yard into a zoo. It was all too much, he said, too much.

  It was not until he was leading me back into the house and up the grand staircase that I began to see for myself what he was complaining about. Everywhere I looked, every centimetre of floor space, was occupied. People were lying fast asleep, in the corridors, on the landings, and, I presumed, in every room. And those that were not asleep were sitting there on straw-filled sacks looking up at me blankly as I passed by. There was bewilderment on every face I saw. Hans took me up to the top of the house, to the attic, where I saw Karli lying stretched out on a mattress by a fire with Mutti kneeling over him, bathing his forehead. Peter was busy piling more wood on the fire.

  “He has a fever, Elizabeth,” Mutti said, looking up at me, her eyes full of tears. “He’s burning up. Where is that doctor? Where is he?”

  For the rest of that night Karli lay there tossing and turning, sometimes delirious, and all three of us took it in turns to try to cool him. None of us slept, we just sat there watching him, hoping the fever would leave him, longing for the doctor to come. When he did come at long last, the lady came with him, dressed now rather grandly, and all in black. The doctor examined him, and said that Karli should be kept warm at all costs, and that the more water we could get him to drink the better. The doctor gave us some medicine for Karli and told us that on no account was he to go out in the cold, or travel, until he was completely well again.

  It was only now, once he had gone, that the lady in black introduced herself. “Everyone just calls me Countess,” she said, shaking each of us rather formally by the hand. “We do not bother much with names here – it is safer that way. I think we have about seventy refugees now in the house – all sorts, mostly families from the east resting up for a few days. Everyone is passing through. It seems as if the whole world is in flight. We have soldiers on their way home on leave, or returning to their regiments at the front, some deserters no doubt, and we have a few vagrants too. I ask no questions. We have a hot meal only once a day, at midday, and then soup and bread in the evening. It is not much, but it is the best we can manage, I’m afraid. As you know, food is becoming very scarce everywhere now. You may stay as long as you like, certainly until the young boy is better, but I would not advise you to stay on much longer after that. The Russians are not so far away now, maybe a few weeks away, no more. The Americans are closer, by all accounts, but who knows who will get here first?”

  Mutti thanked her from the bottom of her heart for all her kindness towards us.

  “Having said I ask no questions,” the Countess went on, with a smile, “I have to say that I am rather curious about the elephant.”

  As Mutti told her the story about working in the zoo, about Papi being away fighting in Russia, and about our escape with Marlene from Dresden, the Countess listened intently.

  Then she said, “I too had a husband in the army once, but he is dead now. And like you I also have a son. Like your husband, he is fighting the Russians in the east. Maybe they know one another, you never know.” She was looking very directly at Peter now. “My son is just about your age, I think,” she said. “And he has brown eyes, deep-set like yours. It is my greatest wish to see him again, alive and well. We can only hope.”

  We stayed on with the countess for several days. It took Karli three or four of those days to recover. Peter gave him the compass to look after, and that made Karli so happy. He would go to sleep clutching it in his fist. I remember he told Peter once, that it was better than any teddy bear. And he said afterwards, when he was well again, that he was sure it was Peter’s compass that had made him better in the end, and not the doctor’s medicine.

  Mutti did not want to risk setting out again on our travels until she was quite sure Karli was strong enough. The trouble was that the longer we stayed and the more comfortable we became, the more we did not want to leave. We would sit down at midday with all the other refugees in the great dining hall and eat good hot food. It was the countess who was responsible for creating a feeling of great fellowship amongst us. She made us all so welcome. She took time and trouble with everyone. She was generous too, and thoughtful. When Karli told her he was good at juggling one day, she gave him two tennis balls – if he was happy, it would help him to get better, she said.

  As the countess had told us, all sorts of people were there, coming and going, and everyone had a story to tell – and as it turned out, a song to sing as well. There was a group of twenty or so school children that arrived just a day or so after we did. These were the children we got to know best, and of course that was because of Marlene, and Karli too. Once Karli told them – and naturally he wasted no time in doing this – that we had had an elephant living in the garden back home, that we had brought her with us, that she was living out in the stable yard right now, we could not keep them away.

  With Karli getting stronger every day now, it was impossible to keep him inside for long. Mutti tried to make him stay on his mattress up in the attic, but he was for ever going missing. We always knew where to find him of course. He would be down there with Marlene, both of them surrounded by a large audience of admirers. The school children were utterly amazed by the elephant, and they loved to watch Karli doing his juggling tricks too. But what they loved best of all, was when Karli decided he would perform his juggling act high up there astride Marlene’s neck! And that was how Karli, quite unintentionally, landed us all in very great danger.

  One afternoon,
I came into the stable yard with Peter and Mutti, looking for Karli, who had disappeared, yet again. We saw him sitting up there on Marlene, and juggling away. There was a whole crowd around him – Hans, the countess’s manservant, was there, and forty, maybe fifty of our fellow refugees, and the school children – and Karli was showing off even more than usual. As he juggled, he was telling everyone about how he had ridden Marlene all the way from Dresden. I shall never know what made him do it. But suddenly he just stopped his juggling, plunged his hand into his pocket, and held up the compass. “You know what this is?” he said proudly. “This is my big brother Peter’s magic compass. He just follows where the arrow points, and we follow him. It is how we got here. Simple.”

  “Juggle with it!” one of the school children called out. “I bet you cannot do it with three!” Then they were all clamouring for him to dare to do it. “Go on, Karli! Go on!”

  I shouted at him not to, but I knew even then that it was no use, that he would be unable to resist the temptation to show off even more. I pushed my way through the crowd to try to stop him, but I was too late. He was already juggling by the time I got there, with the two balls and the compass.

  For a while it looked fine. He was juggling brilliantly. I had seen him juggling as many as four balls before, many a time, and he had hardly ever dropped one. I am sure it was because of all the hullabaloo the crowd were making that Marlene was becoming a little unsettled. She was wafting her ears, and swaying from side to side, a sure sign she was agitated. Then she lifted her trunk and shifted forward suddenly, throwing Karli off balance. I saw the compass flying high into the air. I dashed forward to try to catch it. I think I knew it was hopeless, that it was way out of my reach, that there was no way I could make it. I tripped then and fell heavily.