Men of Snow (40 page)

Again they had to queue to get back on the autobahn. The snow was increasing and was being whipped across the six lanes of slow moving traffic.

They had only been driving a few minutes when Franz said, ‘Why don’t you tell him?’

Leon glanced in the mirror at David’s pale, stiffly set features.

‘Go on, tell him.’

‘Tell me what?’ Leon wanted to know.

He thought he was ready for anything but not the fact that David had a gun.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Shut up,’ was all David could manage.

‘He’s got a gun. Didn’t you know that? When you were in the washroom he threatened me with it, said if I didn’t start talking he was going to use it, and he told me how, one bullet in one leg and then the other and so on until I started telling him what he wanted to hear. I don’t mind doing that. I’ll tell you anything you want to hear. It doesn’t bother me. But I just thought you should know that your son has a gun and is quite likely to use it.’

Leon could hardly breathe. He realised then that David had had a lot of time by himself back in Hamburg, time enough to organise anything he wanted.

‘You promised,’ he finally said.

‘Just concentrate on the road,’ he was told.

‘He has a gun in his coat pocket,’ Brucker put in.

‘Is that true?’

‘What if it is? Do you think there’s any other way?’

‘But you promised.’

‘Circumstances have changed.’

‘I don’t.......don’t see how.’

‘Just drive father.’

‘You can’t do this David.’

‘Tell him,’ Brucker tried, only for David to pull out the revolver and hit him with it across the head.

‘Stop it! Stop it David! Stop this!’ Leon was shouting, the strain of it hurting his throat as the vehicles in front of him started to accelerate.

‘Just watch the road. Watch the road,’ David was telling him.

He looked in the mirror to see the blood trickling down the German’s face. Brucker appeared untroubled. There was even the hint of a smile on his lips.

‘I’m going to pull over,’ Leon said.

‘You keep driving,’ David insisted.

‘I’m going no further.’

‘Just keep going father. This is what he wants. This is just what he wants.’

‘You have to stop him,’ added Franz.

‘Nothing has happened,’ David said.

‘You promised me.’

‘Show him the gun.’

‘I want you to keep driving father.’

‘No.’

‘You keep driving.’

‘No David.’

‘I’ll shoot him if you don’t keep driving.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘I said keep driving or I’ll shoot this....this thing.’

‘David, what are you saying? What are you saying to me?’

‘I mean it. I will. I’ll shoot him.’

His son’s voice was unrecognisable. Leon had lost him. He was doing the one thing he had promised he would not do.

‘I want to know where you are taking me,’ was Franz’s new attempt.

There was no response so he repeated his question, ‘Where do you think you are taking me?’

Leon felt weak and emptied out. There was nothing left, no energy. All he could do was try to keep the car in its lane as the lines on the road disappeared. The lorries sprayed wet snow over the windscreen so the wipers could hardly cope. Outside was a grey confusion of sky and land merged into the snow storm. He could feel the cold sweat down his face. His arms were aching as he gripped the wheel. The situation was beyond him. Now when he glanced at the German it hardly mattered what happened to him. For a few moments his mind was filled with the images of what Brucker had done and from them came a resignation, a sense that he could do more. He was tired and aching and filled with a sudden disgust.

Franz had his own considerations. The gun had taken things to an extreme he had not expected. Now he had to believe that the one called David was capable of killing him. He tried to calculate how far south they had driven. He was trying to pull everything into a sharper focus to where his mind was even more detached.

‘It’s not what I wanted,’ Leon finally said.

‘The turn off is in a couple of miles,’ was David’s response.

‘Where are we going?’ Franz tried again.

‘I can’t see any signs,’ Leon complained, ‘I can see hardly anything out here.’

‘Just indicate to go into the inner lane and start slowing down, carefully.’

Leon did as he was asked, hoping that the vehicles behind could see his indicator light through the lashing snow.

Gradually he took his foot off the accelerator and started looking for any road signs.

‘I saw it back there,’ David said, ‘I’m sure I did, the sign for our turn off.’

Out of the dimness Leon could just make out the sign half covered in snow.

‘I see it.’

‘This is where we turn.’

‘Alright David, I see it.’

‘But carefully or we’ll be skidding all over the place.’

‘Where the hell is this?’ was from Franz.

‘I was there,’ Leon said then as he came onto the narrower country road, ‘I saw you. You had them all slaughtered.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You Brucker, in Volnus, in the forest.’

‘You’re talking rubbish. I told you I was never in Poland. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Watch the road,’ was David’s interruption.

‘You’re mistaken. This whole thing is a mistake. You’ve got to stop him. You’re his father and you’ve got to stop him. You know that. You know it,’ said Franz with more intensity now that he realised he was losing the old one, ‘You can’t have seen me because I wasn’t there.’

‘Shut up,’ David told him. 

‘A son should listen to his father,’ Franz said, sensing the change in the one driving.

‘I knew somebody else’s son once. He was somebody’s son, a good son, the best kind of son. And you had him killed like all the rest. No, you had him butchered. And I saw that as well, saw you Brucker giving out the commands. Then you watched. Are you watching now? Are you watching Brucker?’ Leon asked in a strained voice.

‘Christ. You’re both as crazy as each other,’ Franz answered as he became increasingly disturbed. He looked out to see the snow falling against a line of trees. Now he had no idea where they were. The situation was every moment becoming more dangerous and he was desperately trying to work out what to do next.

‘Turn right when you come to the next junction,’ Leon heard as he shifted forward on his seat to try and see the road ahead.

‘I want you to stop this,’ were the German’s words, ‘this is totally wrong, all of it. You’ve got the wrong person, the wrong person,’ he repeated, acknowledging that the edge to everything was becoming even sharper. Now his head was aching where the younger one had hit him with the gun. But he was more alert than ever, still following his instincts to pick up the slightest change in either of the Jews, especially the older one who now seemed almost incapable of keeping control of the car.

It swerved to one side and then righted itself as they passed between a few houses, their lights shining through small front windows.

‘Take a left here,’ he was told, turning then the wheel automatically onto a narrow, forest track.

He was being brought back to the old world and he had done this, had created a son who had always wanted to take him back there. This was the world of the German, of all the killing.

‘Slow down,’ David told him.

‘I was there,’ Leon said.

‘Not so fast.’

‘I was there and saw what you did,’ he continued, meeting the eyes of Brucker as he glanced at him in the driving mirror, ‘And however many times you deny it makes no difference. I am here for all those you had slaughtered. I am here for them.’

‘What does this do?’ was the German’s question, ‘What the hell difference will this make?’

‘The next turning,’ was from David.

Now he could see them, mother, father, Hella, uncle David, Polyna, Kas, Adam, so many eyes staring at him through the smudged windscreen.

Franz was again imagining his escape, weaving between the fir trees as the Jew’s gun reverberated through the silence. He calculated that he would be able to run faster than the Jew. He was going to use all his strength and energy to make another attempt.

David knew the car was going too fast, far too fast for this narrow forest track.

‘Father! Father!’ he tried as the car seemed to speed up.

Now all Leon wanted to do was find relief from the pain and exhaustion. The old world had gathered him in and was squeezing the life out of him as he momentarily closed his eyes and let the wheel slip out of his hands.

The car veered off the track and started rolling down an embankment where trees had been felled. The first stump it hit made it spin upwards before it crashed back down, the car ripping up the snow smeared soil and roots as it tumbled down the steepening slope.

The moment it left the track Franz instinctively prepared himself. David, being a lot taller, had his neck snapped over the back seat with the impact of the car hitting the first tree stump. With his eyes closed Leon had not had time to tense up ready for the crash. Instead his head smashed sideways into the side window.

As the Audi turned over and hit another stump Franz’s door was ripped open. David’s head was jerked forward against the back of the driver’s seat with such impact it broke his nose and left cheek bone that splintered upwards into his brain. At the same moment Leon’s chest was struck against the steering wheel breaking several ribs.

Glass was shattering cutting into skin. Part of his door frame twisted as the car suddenly rolled again and Franz was thrown out, his head and upper body hitting the ground first, the fall slightly cushioned by the deep snow as he momentarily lost consciousness.

There was a clattering and screeching of metal as the car bounced on its front. Leon was lunged forward through the windscreen as the vehicle turned again, his head and hands sliced by the glass, the blood splattering over the snow as he rolled away.

Finally as the car crashed into another tree stump and came to a stop the engine burst into flames. The snow flickered dark orange. Black smoke billowed up into the dull sky. Tyres started to melt. The sounds of metal changing shape creaked and groaned in a confusion of twisted noise. Snowflakes falling dissolved in the lifting heat. A few branches caught fire, flames curling round the tree and moving upwards. It was an explosion of sound and colour against the forest’s winter silence, against the dull whiteness laid between the straight firs.

As Leon dragged himself through the wet coldness his legs were numb and blood was dribbling down his face. His chest and right arm was an agony of pain, but slowly he pulled at the snow thick ground with his left hand, pulled and groaned and shifted forwards.

Finally he half levered himself up against the next tree. For an instant he could see through the smoke and flames. David’s head was melting in the heat, its viscous skin reflecting light. His son’s mouth was stuck open and the side of his face was like a red liquid slowly moving, there in the back of the car, the moment’s impression and then the dribbling head was lost in the flames.

Conscious of his painful breaths Leon waited. The bark of the tree pressed against the back of his head and the blood was in his mouth. Each intake of breath was an agonising pressure against his broken ribs. His right arm was gouged out above the elbow. He could smell the acrid smoke as gradually the flames began to lower leaving the blackened outline of the car. Its metal was still creaking and shifting. Now he could see nothing of David. The interior was charred lines and hanging bits of the roof.

Leon had to close his eyes and wait. The sounds from the car began to cease. To look again was to see only the snow falling, its taste mixed in with his blood as he tried to wipe his lips with his tongue. Then it was as if he could hear it, the sense of the snow touching the ground and the branches and over his arms and head and legs, the snow slowly covering him.

It was only as he flickered open his eyes again that he noticed the Brucker. He was leant up against the side of some kind of ditch. There was frozen breath coming out of his shadowed mouth.

Leon tried to peer through the white, moving lines. He knew Brucker was looking at him. They were almost facing each other with only a few yards of snow covered earth between them.

In the silence of the coming night nothing moved but the falling snow. Darkness entered the forest. The two figures were gradually becoming two white mounds, their shapes outlined and held because neither of them could move. Only the snow was shifted a fraction by their eyelashes as they continued to watch each other, the tiniest flickers of movement, the only signs of life as the snow piled over them.

Further into the night the two mounds began to freeze into sparkling crusts of tiny light. The snow stopped and an almost full moon emerged from between fast moving clouds. Each shape had its own energy emitting the reflected light. There was nothing else. The forest was settling into its long night, held in the still, frozen silence, preparing for the deeper winter that would come from the East, always from the East.