Dissonance (40 page)

‘Hergert,' the lieutenant whispered. ‘Are you keeping your eyes open?'

‘Yes, Lieutenant.'

The officer pointed to his rifle. ‘You may need to use that.'

Erwin took hold of his rifle and they walked, quietly.

‘Well?' Gnade asked.

‘I was wondering if there was any way …'

‘What?'

‘The thing is, my wife and mother don't get along. They never have. And now I'm getting these letters and phone calls and Luise – '

‘Your mother?'

‘My wife … she says she's going to take my son and leave, which isn't so simple, because she has no one. Her mother was killed by a bomb.'

Gnade's eyes were scanning the forest and he was losing patience. ‘Why are you telling me all this?'

‘I thought if I could return for a few days and sort it out.'

‘They'll have to work it out.'

Erwin shouldered his rifle again and took out Luise's letter. He removed it from its envelope and opened it out.

‘What are you doing?' Gnade asked.

‘This is from Luise, saying what – '

Gnade grabbed the letter and screwed it up. Then he bit his lip and dropped to the ground, curling into a ball and moaning. ‘Down,' he managed. ‘Everyone down.'

Some men had found a fallen tree or boulder, but most were just lying flat, waiting, wondering what to do. The forest was silent. Erwin knelt, and then lay, beside Gnade and asked, ‘What should I tell them to do?' There was no reply. He studied the officer's chest but it was still. So he crawled behind a tree and called out, ‘The lieutenant is dead.'

‘Where did it come from?' someone asked.

‘Is there just one?' a second voice added.

Silence.

Erwin could smell the pine oil and feel himself settling into the needles. ‘Where's the sergeant?' he called.

There was another short silence and then the sergeant came forward, hunched over, tripping on a rock and falling.

‘Come on, we can't wait all day,' Erwin cried.

‘Let me think.'

Erwin could feel his heart racing. His tunic was soaked and he took it off, folding it and leaving it beside the tree. He reached over and reclaimed his letter from Gnade. He flattened it out, folded it and replaced it in his pocket.

He looked to the east and could see, in the mid-distance, a patchwork of paddocks covered with tall grass. The forest stopped along a precisely ruled line and there was light and sheets of wheat and oats the colour of his son's skin.

‘Look east,' he said. ‘We should keep low and move fast. What do you say, Sergeant?'

‘Good. Let's get out of here. On my orders …'

They moved.

But it wasn't a single sniper. There were bursts of machine-gun fire, rifles and a few small explosions. There were men groaning and falling, standing, wondering what to do.

Erwin kept low and sprinted. He didn't stop to look back or find cover to return fire. He just ran for his life, thinking of nothing but the open fields and a shed that appeared to his left.

‘Erwin,' someone called, and he stopped to look back. Herbert was lying flat, lifting himself with one arm.

Erwin looked at him. ‘Are you shot?'

Herbert nodded, but then collapsed into a shadow of ferns.

Erwin watched his friend for a few seconds but he didn't move. He didn't know what to do.

Then he thought of his son, and turned and ran as fast as he could. He cleared the forest, crossed a dirt road and jumped the remnants of a fence. He was on the edge of a farm, only metres from safety. He looked back but no one was following him. The sound of gun fire was receding and he thought, I'm a coward, I'm running away from it.

But he didn't care. He was nearly there. He dropped his head lower still and ran faster. He was thinking what he'd say: I wanted the men to take cover, to regroup, or would it be, I wanted to get home; because of my mother, you see; my mother.

Then there was a flash, and he could feel his body falling, crushing grass, thumping, like a heavy post dropped on bare earth. He could smell gunpowder and see light, and he was lying in a twisted pose he couldn't alter.

He felt pain, up and down his left side – his leg, thigh and stomach, and even his face and neck.

‘Christ,' he muttered.

His left leg was bent up, and the butt of his rifle stuck into his ribs. He couldn't move. So he settled, took a deep breath and closed his eyes. ‘It's nothing, Mum … maybe a way out,' he whispered. He could feel himself getting colder, and weaker; he could feel his shirt clinging to his body where blood was coming from his side.

Did you think I was running away, Mum? Did you think I was leaving them?

And then the pain started to subside. ‘Help,' he managed to call. ‘Over here, in the grass.'

‘Come in, son,' his dad was saying, sitting up on his camp stretcher, and smiling.

‘Mum said to say, there wasn't enough in the envelope this week.'

‘Oh she did, did she?' Jo sat up and patted his bed. ‘Come on, sit down.'

And Erwin did as he was asked.

‘You tell her, it's all I've got to give, eh?'

‘It's all you've got to give,' he parroted.

Then Jo put his arm around his son and said, ‘You be warned, son, that woman will never be happy.'

Erwin stopped to think. ‘Why?'

‘One day you'll come in here and say, Dad, I know.'

But Erwin just smiled, and shrugged.

Back beside the shed, only a few metres from the door, he lifted his head and said, ‘Jo.'

The shooting and shouting had stopped. He settled, waiting for help. His fingers played the opening to his ‘Pie Jesu'.

Thank God, he thought, as he felt the strength in his hands and fingers and realised there was still music.

Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem …

Everyone was there, listening to him: Madge and Jo, holding hands in the front row, Luise and Sara, freshly ­showered, smelling of talc and wet wool, Declan, professors Knorr and Schaedel, both of them following pocket scores, turning and discussing form and texture, harmony and counterpoint, Erwin's eleven-tone reach and prodigious memory – even Reg Carter and Father O'Gorman.

And then he saw himself, playing the harmonium, biting his lip as his legs swung from the stool.

‘Over here,' he called, and then someone was beside him.

‘Hergert.' He felt them turn him over. ‘It's superficial,' they said, but it didn't feel that way.

‘I must get back to my studies,' Erwin managed.

‘Pardon, Corporal?'

‘Now that I can, I must.'

But they ignored him.

Luise was woken by the wind. The shutter outside the bathroom window was slamming. She looked at the clock: quarter to three. She slipped her legs out of bed and sat looking at Frans; he was snoring.

‘It's his adenoids,' Madge had told her. ‘Erwin's father had big adenoids, but he'd never have them out.'

She walked into the sitting room and it was cold. Someone had opened all the street windows. She closed them and then noticed that the front door was open. She went to close it and saw Madge's slippers in the hallway. So she stepped out of the apartment and picked them up. She stood up and looked up the stairs. Madge's dressing gown was draped across the ­banister and there was an envelope on the floor with the word ‘Mum' written in Erwin's hand.

‘Madge,' she called out, cautiously.

Nothing, just a distant clock, and the high branches of an oak tree brushing against the stairwell window.

‘Madge.'

She gathered the dressing gown and headed up the stairs. An envelope with ‘Frans' in big, bold letters sat on Madge's nightdress, resting in a loop where it had slipped off the old woman's shoulders. She heard a door opening and closing in the wind, looked up and noticed that it was the exit to the roof.

‘Madge,' she said, as she dropped everything and flew up the last few stairs, as the air raid siren sounded from the post office at the far end of Blumweg.

Luise arrived on the flat, tar-sealed roof and was almost blown away. She held the top of a ventilation duct as she strained to see. Spotlights pierced the cloudless sky as the hum of bombers grew louder. She could hear voices and movement from below as mothers and fathers herded red-eyed children to the cellar.

‘Madge,' she called, cupping her hands over her mouth.

She saw her mother-in-law, standing on the far corner of the building, perched two or three feet away from the unprotected edge. She was naked, apart from potato-sack undies that were filled with rolls of cold fat. Her breasts were hanging down over her ribs like mummified elephant ears; the areolas were wide and dark, lightening towards nipples the size of roofing nails.

Luise made her way over. ‘Madge, what happened?' she asked.

Madge turned and looked at her without a hint of shame, and then turned back towards the darkened city without replying.

The bombers were dropping their load over the Inner Harbour, Freeport and Stülcken shipyards. Luise could hear the explosions and see the flashes of light. ‘Come in, Madge,' she said. ‘We need to go downstairs.'

Madge was holding a piece of paper. ‘I found this, in the piano,' she said. ‘In case I don't return, he says, and this one here, to Frans, do you know what he says about me?'

‘Madge, we'll both be killed.'

‘Evil, evil old woman.'

‘Madge, he doesn't.'

‘He does. How I poison people, and turn them against each other.'

‘He doesn't.'

‘How do you know?'

‘He showed me, Madge.'

But she just turned, and stepped towards the edge. ‘Evil, evil old woman,' she repeated. ‘Evil … keeping him away from his father. But I had to.'

Luise stepped towards her. ‘I know, Madge.'

‘You don't …'

‘I found the letter, from the doctor.'

There was a long pause; the bombs were falling closer.

‘But you didn't tell Erwin?'

‘I did … but now we can help you.'

Madge turned back towards the city that had promised so much: fame and wealth, a full-blooded culture to replace their own aborted foetus, real musicianship and composers. Now, she sensed, Hamburg was filled with a different sort of music. Everything had come to this: scales, ocean liners and hands bleached by glue. She took a step forward and she was on the edge.

Luise came up behind her. ‘Madge … I want to help you. Will you let me?'

Madge turned to her. The girl's eyes were sweet, and blue, and they promised Beethoven, bagatelles and fresh Tanunda bread. All at once she was standing in the backyard of God's Hill Road, hanging out washing, smelling Jo's cigarettes from the shed and calling out, ‘Do you mind? My whites will smell like Turf?'

Luise extended her hand. She smiled. ‘You're taking me home,' she said.

Madge studied the girl's long fingers. She looked up. ‘If that's what you want. But it isn't much of a farm.'