The Zookeeper's War, page 23
The soldier who had stolen her watch was among the last to leave. He flicked open a satchel and took out a hammer with the same oblong head as the one on the Soviet flag, so that for a moment Vera expected him to produce a sickle and perform some kind of ideological pantomime. Instead he struck the door-lock a single blow that sent the cylinder clattering into the corridor. He turned to the Stamm, doffed his forage cap and bowed, eddying the cap through the air until it paused by his toes. His comrades laughed and bundled him through the door. For a time the Stamm was motionless, then Schiefer shut the door. This was no more than a gesture. The air seemed warmer and Vera’s heart raced. Frau Eckhardt was still snoring, and from the tunnel to the next cellar came urgent talk. The liberation had come and seemingly gone, leaving the Stamm like fish dumped onto a deck.
After a fitful sleep through what was left of the night, Vera rose early with the others. She yearned for tea but there was only water. The Hitler Youth boys had taken much of their food.
Schiefer picked up his cards from the table and tapped them into their box, crossed to his bed and started packing his suitcase. ‘That’s it, then,’ he said when he was done.
‘You’re going?’ said Frau Ritter.
‘If it’s safe,’ he said. ‘I don’t hear any shooting.’
‘But so soon?’
For once, Vera felt that Frau Ritter was speaking on her behalf, and she felt ashamed of her cowardice. As Flavia had long ago predicted, living like worms had come to feel normal, and the idea of a sky free of steel seemed far-fetched.
Schiefer gestured at the mutilated lock. ‘There’s no point staying.’
‘What about the rest of us?’ asked Frau Ritter. Her voice was quavering. ‘What’ll we do?’
Vera pictured Schiefer’s reinforced door. It was natural that a man with a key to such a door should be the first to abandon the Stamm.
Frau Ritter started whimpering, then cried aloud when Schiefer made a move to the door. He stopped and scrutinised the weeping woman, narrowed his eyes and suggested she could join him. Frau Ritter clapped her hands together, then collected herself and smoothed her skirt and thanked him for his hospitality. The rest of the Stamm was silent. Frau Ritter packed up her belongings, Schiefer opened the door, and with a show of nonchalance Frau Ritter followed him into the corridor.
Vera turned to Flavia. ‘It’s time I got Axel.’
‘I’d better go with you.’
‘Will you stay in your flat?’ asked Erna. She looked forlorn.
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Vera. ‘I’ll see what Axel thinks. Would you and your mother like to come upstairs for a few days?’
Erna considered this offer then shook her head. ‘Better off in our own place, don’t you think? And your flat is too small for five.’
Vera let her know she could change her mind, aware she had hurried to take no for an answer, though Erna was right about the size of the flat. Another thought nagged at her, more calculating and callous: she wanted to be as unobtrusive as possible.
Vera promised to send Axel to help Frau Eckhardt up the stairs, then with Flavia she left the cellar. The sound of battle was diffuse and distant, no longer the roar of the day before. They peered into the courtyard and saw no sign of movement. The sky was clogged with cloud. Though she tried to tread softly, her shoes clopped like hoofs.
On the second-floor landing, Schiefer appeared with a bundle of sheets in his arms.
‘Dirty already?’ asked Flavia.
‘To hang from windows,’ said Schiefer, pretending not to hear. He handed some of the sheets to Vera. ‘We don’t want anyone shooting at us.’
Vera agreed to drape the sheets from the upper-level windows, then she and Flavia climbed the stairs to the bus-driver’s flat. Axel had escaped the loft and was sitting at the demolished brink of the living room.
‘Our lot has gone?’ he asked.
‘Yes. And the others have arrived.’
‘You’re both…safe?’
‘We’re all right, yes.’
She explained that the Stamm was abandoning the cellar, and Axel agreed that Flavia should join them in the flat.
He pointed at the sheets and asked what they were for.
‘To remind the Soviets we’ve surrendered. Schiefer’s idea.’
With Flavia’s help she unfurled a sheet above the courtyard and secured it with broken masonry. The fabric barely rippled on the bricks. From this high up it was possible to trace the noise of the fighting in the north and west—the Mitte, the zoo.
‘I feel like a medieval bride after my wedding night,’ said Flavia.
‘Let’s hope the Soviets see it,’ said Axel.
Vera turned and saw his face colouring. He opened his mouth as if to explain, seemed to think better of it and said nothing.
The sheet hung limply in the stagnant air.
When the water ran out, Vera announced she’d get more.
‘I’ll go,’ said Axel.
She was ready for this. ‘You should stay till we know what’s going on. You might be rounded up.’
‘That’s just speculation,’ said Axel.
‘Maybe. But I haven’t fended off the Wehrmacht to see you taken for forced labour in the Soviet Union.’
‘I can’t allow it.’
‘Axel, please.’
He looked at Flavia. ‘Do you want to go?’
Flavia shrugged. ‘I’m game for anything.’
Axel kept arguing. Vera sympathised. One way or another he’d been powerless from the time he’d learned of her affair, yet having held on to him then she was determined not to lose him through an act of carelessness now. At last he relented, though vowing to ignore her the next time. Schiefer and Frau Ritter refused to venture out, but Erna agreed, and fetched two pails.
In the courtyard, sunshine crowned the top half of the northern wall, though in the shadows the cobbles remained slippery and cold. Sheets were hanging from several windows, and overhead the sky was a pale-blue square.
Apart from their own footfalls, she realised, there were few sounds of any kind—the noise of gunfire had ceased, and when a moment later the meaning of this silence became clear, she could barely stop herself crying out in jubilation and waltzing Flavia across the cobbles. The high band of sunlight on the northern wall made do as a symbol of radiant peace.
In the next courtyard she saw that Reichenbergerstrasse was alive with troops and horses, and her stomach rolled. Erna trod on her heel, blurted an apology then stepped on the other, so that Vera reached the street still stomping back into her shoes. She felt unshucked, exposed. Two soldiers looked up from a team of horses hitched to an artillery piece, stared for several seconds then returned to their work. The tableau of horse and cannon was Napoleonic, yet this was the army that had crushed the panzers.
The conquerors had turned the street into a bivouac. Scores of soldiers lay asleep on the cobbles or lolled in their singlets in the sunshine, and several eyed the women with open curiosity. Brown overcoats and tunics hung from timber in the wreckage. After days of gunfire, the noiseless sky seemed unreal.
Near the pump, about twenty troops were sitting on ammunition boxes around a bonfire. Bottles of schnapps bobbed from hand to hand, and there was shouting and laughter. A giant ox of a man in a padded jacket bellowed to a friend as the two of them launched furniture onto the flames, adding scorched varnish to odours of horse dung and petrol. Behind the veil of fire, the giant’s flesh seemed to ripple.
Locals huddled in a queue at the pump. The body of the hanged man was gone from the oak tree, though the electric cord, now severed, still dangled from its branch. The queue was shorter than usual and included men of Axel’s age whose presence, Vera noted, seemed of no interest to the Soviets. Some of the locals wore white ragged armbands of surrender.
Vera stole glances at the Soviet soldiers and saw that two of them were women. Both wore thick brown skirts and stockings, as well as tunics and caps the same as those of their comrades. Hair tied in buns. Plump cheeks flushed red. They swigged the schnapps as often as the men and their shouts were equally loud, and Vera envied these joking, laughing women. In their mustard-brown uniforms they should have seemed anonymous, but instead it was she who felt bland, just one more head in the civilian herd. Her cotton dress felt flimsy compared to the women’s tunics. Their shoes were battered but polished. Vera was filled with admiration for their travelworn shoes.
The pump was damaged and would have fallen apart already if someone hadn’t bound it up with wire. Half of the water spilled onto the pavement. A Hausfrau at the head of the queue asked an old man behind her to steady the pump while she worked the handle. He bent down, clutched the column of the pump and sank to his knees. Water soused the man’s hands and sleeves. His knees ground the pavement, wetting the fabric of his trousers.
The revelry around the bonfire grew louder. A soldier backed away from the fire, paused and then sprinted towards the flames, leaping at the last moment between the two women then skimming the fire and slapping feet-first onto the cobbles. He pulled up at a jog, his comrades cheering. Immediately several others backed away at different angles, waving their arms to clear an approach, only to howl in protest when the giant soldier lumbered forward and hurled a bookcase on the fire, spilling books and spraying cinders on the superheated air.
To Vera the leap looked impossible now, but one by one the soldiers ran at the flames, until men were hurtling, moments apart, over the apex of the fire. Several capered as far as the pump and, to the cheers of their comrades, raised their arms above their heads before turning and scraping the cobbles with their toes.
At the fire, a soldier with a cavalryman’s moustache challenged the giant to jump, and though clearly drunk he thumped his chest and drew backwards to charge. His comrades doubled over with laughter, and the other leapers paused. Some way up the street he stopped and rocked on one heel, brayed and then set off across the cobbles, gaining pace only to tire and mince through the last few steps. He took to the air with his legs askew, demolished the bonfire then crashed belly-down and skidded to a halt. Friends rushed over and brushed embers off his breeches before hoisting him upright. He looked stunned but unhurt and ventured a smile.
The moustached soldier slapped the giant on the back, gripped him by the wrist and raised his arm. The pair swivelled towards the pump and beamed at the locals, then with exaggerated thoroughness Moustache dusted off the giant’s uniform, tidied his fringe and started spruiking him in Russian to the women in the queue, pointing out the girth of his biceps and thighs. The giant looked sheepish and ludicrously flattered.
The Hausfrau at the pump snatched her pails and hurried away, bringing up the turn of the elderly man. Vera steadied the pump, but when the old man failed to raise more than a dribble Flavia elbowed him aside and filled his pail. The pump handle whimpered.
Flavia handed the man his pail and set to work on the first of the Stamm’s. Leaking cold water numbed Vera’s fingers. From the corner of one eye she saw the moustached soldier draw nearer, then he jabbered in Flavia’s face and started mimicking her movements, raising howls of laughter from around the bonfire. Moustache levered his arm in front of the giant’s grin, causing further guffaws.
Two or three Hausfrauen dropped off the back of the queue. Vera searched Flavia’s face for a sign that she wanted to leave, but though scowling she continued to pump.
A hand touched Vera’s arm and she jolted. She turned and looked up. Their tormentor was older than she’d thought—about the age of the century—though the moustache harked back to an earlier era. His eyes were bloodshot. He was swaying heavily, then he snatched the giant’s hand and lunged it at her face. She smelt soot and sweat and drinker’s reek, reared away then realised that her throat was bared and forced herself to look back. Moustache turned the great paw upwards, a courtly burlesque, then thrust it onto her breasts. She locked her arms together. Immediately Moustache started scooping at her ribcage, then he saw that the hand had fallen limp and let it go. The giant rubbed his wrist, looking uneasy. His comrades laughed.
Vera scoured all emotion from her face. She picked up a pail and passed it to Erna, who looked terrified. Vera nodded to reassure her, then took a turn at the handle, though what she wanted most of all was to leave.
When the pails were filled the women moved off in tight formation. Wolf whistles split the air. Vera looked around as Moustache made a show of pursuit, egged on by his comrades. The loudest of them were the two soldier women, and Vera felt strangely betrayed. If not for Flavia and Erna, she would have started to run—as a group they were clumsy and unkiltered. The handles of the pails crushed her finger pads.
Moustache and the giant were following at a walk, then a third soldier caught up and handed over two Tommy guns before returning to the bonfire.
Vera wheeled beneath the tenement archway and hurried with the others through the outermost courtyard. ‘What’ll we do?’ said Erna in a high breathy voice, ‘What’ll we do?’
‘Walk fast,’ said Flavia, ‘keep together.’
‘Leave the water?’ suggested Vera. ‘Come back for it later?’
Flavia scoffed. ‘And lose the pails?’
Vera looked backwards as the two soldiers jogged into the courtyard. Erna started sobbing and Flavia told her to shut up. The water smacked in Vera’s pails and splashed her skirt, gluing the fabric to her calves.
At the front of the block she looked behind her and saw the Soviets a dozen paces away. The giant was scanning the tenements and clearly wanted to be elsewhere, while Moustache looked ungainly, his joints unyoked.
She crossed the threshold, stumbling under the dead weight of water, then while the others rushed inside she lowered both pails and stopped. Flavia beckoned her furiously, but Vera shook her head. ‘I’m going that way,’ she said, pointing outside, then with less conviction, ‘I’ll be all right.’
The soldiers arrived and Vera smiled, then Flavia was at her side. ‘What the hell happens now?’
Vera wasn’t sure but knew she couldn’t bear to be degraded in front of Axel.
‘Simper,’ she said, hoping the soldiers spoke no German. ‘Follow me and get ready to run.’
Taking Flavia by the hand, she brushed past the two men and re-entered the courtyard, sauntering between the craters. The soldiers followed. From the vestibule of the opposite block she led them into another courtyard, a place she had never visited but that in desolation looked much like the rest. Moustache protested. He wanted to know where they were going. She smiled at him, pointed at the nearest block, and then hand-in-hand with Flavia she entered the gloom. The building’s layout was the same as their own, and the wrecked rooftops were a maze.
‘What do you say?’ she asked Flavia, still smiling at the men. ‘On the stairs we go?’
‘Suits me,’ said Flavia. ‘Lead the way.’
There was no time to argue with this act of courage, and with a sultry gaze towards the men she led Flavia onto the stairs. Moustache leered and nudged the giant, who shook his head. His comrade chuckled and said something sharp, and looking stung the giant followed him up the stairs, scanning about with his Tommy gun raised.
Vera’s breaths were wing beats. She reached the second flight, tapped Flavia’s arm and started running, bounding two steps at a time and hauling on the balustrade, with Flavia close behind her. Moustache yelled and came after them, hollering abuse. Vera kept her head low, terrified of bullets, then saw that the giant was unsighted and that Moustache’s gun was still slung on his back. She lunged onto the next flight and heard clattering metal, looked past Flavia and saw Moustache sprawled on the steps. The giant was a flight further back. On the fifth-floor landing, Flavia skittered past, and between the banisters Vera glimpsed Moustache waving goodbye, his parting smile a dart of admiration.
Down corridors and stairs they made for the block, pausing often to survey the way ahead, and giving a wide berth to some soldiers they glimpsed in a courtyard. All the doors of the flats they passed were shut.
They reached the block, entered the vestibule and saw Axel standing at Erna’s door. His face was grim. The jamb was splintered, the door ajar. He thrust a finger to his lips and motioned to the stairs, shaking his head fiercely when Flavia tried to get the pails. Beyond Erna’s door, Vera heard the laughing of men.
Obeying Axel’s urgent gestures, she crossed the vestibule and let herself be herded with Flavia up the stairs. On the third floor they paused, but Axel urged them higher and led them into the bus-driver’s flat. ‘There are two of them,’ he whispered. ‘I did what I could.’
‘You’re saying what?’ asked Vera.
‘I asked them to stop.’
‘Asked them?’ she whispered, appalled he’d run such a risk.
‘They had guns,’ he said, misunderstanding her. ‘There wasn’t anything else I could do.’
‘And Erna?’
‘She told me to leave.’
Vera tried to imagine this and failed.
‘Was she hurt?’
‘I don’t think so. I’ll go back when they’re gone.’
‘Frau Eckhardt?’
‘…Was there too.’
Axel looked pained and Vera guessed how excruciating he would have found it to stand by and do nothing.
‘What did they look like?’ she asked.
He was puzzled by this but went on to describe two soldiers who were clearly not the same men she and Flavia had escaped.
‘We have to hide both of you,’ said Axel.
Flavia held up her palms. ‘Not me.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Vera.
‘I’ll be off home.’
Vera seized her by the arm. ‘It’s not safe.’
‘I’ll take my chances. Vera, please—don’t look so wretched. I’ll be back soon enough. One of us has to get food, you know.’
