Restitution (11 page)

She obeyed him, wishing she had the courage to use one of them to shoot off the back of his head. She’d shot rabbits and hares for the pot without giving it a thought. And once even a deer
while hunting with Papi. If only she could shoot this man. She cursed her cowardice and let the guns clatter onto the table, before sitting down herself.

Mami came into the kitchen and fixed those famous eyes on Alix, questioning, pleading. Alix looked away. Who was her mother this evening? Still Anna Karenina, perhaps. Or Cressida, a part Marie
had always detested? Yes, let her be Cressida, soiled and despoiled. Pity and contempt jostled in Alix’s heart. She couldn’t meet her mother’s eyes. But surely she had this wrong?
Mami and
Preizler?

‘Marie,
Schatz,
take off your furs and those wet stockings,’ Preizler said without taking his eyes off Gregor, and exchanging the pistol for his own Walther. ‘You need
to warm yourself.’

Again that familiarity, that assumption that the Baroness von Matke would do as he said. Gregor stood beside the stove, watching the guns.

‘Alix?’ said Mami again, slipping off her coat. ‘We saw those poor people on the road. Is that why you came back?’

‘I could ask you the same thing,’ Alix said.

‘Now, Maria.’ Preizler shook his head at her. ‘First things first. Alexandra, heat some food for your mother. There are tins of soup in the basket we left in the porch.’
He replaced his wife’s gun in his pocket with one hand, retaining his own pistol in the other. Gregor’s gun still sat in front of him on the table, too far away from Gregor to be of any
use to him. Alix got up to bring in Preizler’s basket. Even under the cover of the porch, so much snow had fallen she could hardly make out its outline. Soup. Tinned asparagus. Oranges! What
looked like fresh bread. A ham. Mami’s adventure was certainly well provisioned. Alix stared out at the white and black blurred outlines of the forest. She should run away. Even if there was
nobody out there to help her, she’d survive somehow. No, she couldn’t leave Gregor. Or Mami, damn her.

She brought the basket into the kitchen and began opening one of the cans. ‘Will mushroom soup be acceptable?’ Her voice sounded mocking. She couldn’t forget that
Liebling.

‘Perfect.’ Mami sounded composed now. ‘Thank you,
Liebling.’

Alix’s hand shook.

‘Anton,’ she went on. ‘Alix and I know this young man, he’s not—’

‘What in hell’s he doing here?’ Preizler glared at Gregor and put out a hand to prevent Alix ladling out soup for him. ‘Where’s the rest of his unit? Waiting
outside for him to signal to them? Sit down here, Comrade.’ He pointed the gun at the chair opposite him.

Gregor shrugged and sat, still keeping his eyes on the weapon. ‘I’m alone. Just wanted to see if the family was still here. I thought I might be able to help them.’

‘Help them?’ Preizler seemed to bare his teeth at him. ‘Or line them up in the cellar and shoot them?’

Gregor glared at him.

‘Shall we all have coffee?’ Mami might have been concluding one of her prewar dinner parties. Any moment now she’d be asking Alix if she wanted to come upstairs and powder her
nose. Alix picked up the coffee packet Gregor had produced earlier. Preizler held out a hand for it.

‘Looted, I see.’ He gave it back to her and turned to Gregor. ‘Is that what you intended to do here, help yourself to the von Matkes’ property? Or was there something
else?’

Gregor said nothing.

‘Thought so.’ Preizler glanced at Mami. ‘Come to spy on his former friends, just as I suspected.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Alix looked from one to the other.

‘Alix—’ Mami began.

Alix swung round to glare at her. ‘I’ve worked it out, you know, I’ve got nothing to say to you.’

‘What do you mean, worked it out?’ Her mother sounded distressed, but then she’d know exactly how to convey that emotion. ‘Let me explain at least . . .’

Alix shook her head.

‘Where’s Lena?’ Mami asked, sounding desperate now.

‘The Russians got her.’ Alix stared down at her coffee cup. ‘She’s dead.’

Her mother flinched as though receiving a physical blow. ‘No! Poor, poor Lena,’ she whispered.

‘You see?’ Preizler glared at Gregor. ‘So much for the noble Red Army.’ His hand tightened on the Walther. Alix imagined those same fingers stroking her mother’s
skin and wanted to be sick.

‘Remember what your people did in the east?’ Gregor almost spat out the words. ‘I’ve seen it. You tell me one story of Soviet cruelty and I’ll tell you ten of
German depravity.’

‘Tell me what happened,
meine Liebe
?’ Mami said to Alix, as though the men weren’t there. Alix closed her eyes to try and block out the force of her mother’s
anguished face.

Preizler thumped the table. ‘But you were a German citizen, Fischer! And not really Jewish at all. You had no reason to turn traitor – nobody would have touched you. There’s no
reason for me not to put a bullet through your traitorous head.’

‘Anton!’ Mami shouted. ‘Listen to me when I tell you you’re wrong about him!’

He dismissed her with a shake of his head.

Gregor’s eyes looked like cold stones. ‘What did you think I’d do when you locked up my father and hounded my mother out of Germany?’

‘I didn’t have anything to do with your parents. My responsibilities were directed at a specific group of people that included neither left-wing intellectuals nor Jews.’

‘You were assigned to watch landowners, weren’t you?’ Alix said. ‘People with connections. Like Papi?’

‘It appears others may have similar interests.’ Preizler nodded at Gregor. ‘Ask him what he’s snooping around for.’

Alix folded her arms. He was the enemy, not Gregor.

‘Where’s the wagon?’ Mami whispered to Alix.

‘We left it on the road,’ Alix replied. ‘The horses were blown to bits, too.’ She almost enjoyed watching Mami’s face blanch. Then she felt a prick of shame.
Mami’d always cherished the little Haflingers, fellow Tyroleans.

‘So tell us how you made friends with the Soviets, Fischer,’ Preizler said.

‘I was in good company.’ Gregor snorted. ‘Remember the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact?’

‘Are you hurt?’ Mami asked Alix. ‘Did they . . . ?’

The loyal mother bleeding for her children: that was in some play or other. ‘I’m fine,’ Alix snapped. ‘Where’s Papi? Did you ever even go to that meeting in Berlin
to talk to them?’

‘Of course I did.’ Mami leaned forward. ‘He wasn’t there, Alix. They told me they’d sent him to another camp.’

‘So much for
his
help, then!’ Alix glowered at Preizler.

‘You still wear their uniform, Fischer.’ Preizler was pointing the gun at Gregor’s tunic. ‘Even when you’ve seen what they’re really like.’

‘And I’ve seen what your side is like, too,’ Gregor said.

‘I have nothing to be ashamed of.’ Preizler sounded stiff.

Mami reached a hand across the table to Alix. ‘Is there anyone else here?’

‘No.’ Perhaps she was worried that Gregor had comrades posted upstairs who’d come down to liberate him. Alix moved her own hands into her lap and heard her mother’s
sigh.

‘So, Comrade. What have you been up to here? I think we’ve established you’re not combat.’ Preizler removed a handkerchief from his left pocket and dabbed at an invisible
speck of dust on the gun’s chamber, all without moving his eyes from Gregor.

‘Anton,’ said Mami. ‘I wish you’d put that gun down. Gregor’s going nowhere. There is nowhere for him to go tonight. It must be possible for us to be civilized
about this.’

Alix noted the familiar
‘du’
she used to address Preizler.

Mami refilled their coffee cups. Preizler nodded his thanks but ignored her request to put down the gun. ‘There was a man not five miles from here who had his arms and legs chopped off
this morning before the Reds fed him to his own pigs,’ he said. ‘Another refugee told me he’d seen two little girls crucified, nailed to their kitchen table. You’ve been
very busy, Fischer.’

Alix clutched the edge of the table and watched the kitchen turn black around her.

‘There are atrocities,’ Gregor said in a flat voice. ‘I save who I can. It might surprise you to know I still think of the people here as my countrymen.’

‘Then surely you’d want to throw off that somewhat ill-fitting uniform and put on ours?’

Gregor said nothing.

Preizler sipped from his cup and raised an approving eyebrow. ‘So long since I’ve had real coffee.’ Out in the forest the tanks started rumbling again. The teaspoon on
Mami’s saucer picked up the vibration and rattled against the cup like a warning drumroll. Mami put it on the table.

‘I cannot wear a German uniform.’ Gregor sounded weary.

‘What better way to defend German schoolgirls and nuns?’

Gregor flung out an arm and knocked his cup and saucer to the floor. The porcelain broke into neat shards and the coffee spread over the tiles in a fast-moving dark stain. Mami was sitting on
the edge of her seat, staring at Gregor.

‘Sorry, Baroness.’ He shook his head.

‘Macht nichts,’
Mami whispered.

Preizler studied the mess. ‘Strange. I remember your mother as an eloquent woman.’ He nodded, as though recalling past examples of their eloquence. ‘You seem somewhat
inarticulate, Fischer, throwing china around. Probably the influence of your lumpen comrades.’

Alix rose. ‘I’ll fetch a cloth.’ She couldn’t bear to see the dark liquid seeping across the floor through the fragments of white porcelain.

‘Not now.’ Preizler pointed his free hand at her chair.

‘The Red Army won’t mind a few stains,’ said Gregor. ‘It won’t be the worst thing the floor will see.’

‘Oh Gregor.’ Mami sounded tired. ‘Anton, why don’t you just let him go? He hasn’t got a gun and perhaps he can keep the others away and—’

Someone pulled the bell at the front door. The eyes of the other three widened. Gregor leaned back and folded his arms. ‘That will be one of ours.’

Mami bit her lip.
‘Ach, du lieber Gott.’

Preizler got up, his pistol still trained on Gregor.

‘What’ll you do now?’ Gregor sounded amused. Mami sat back in her chair, examining one of her nails, all signs of fear gone. She must still be scared but her acting training
was reasserting itself.

‘Answer it. Tell them to leave,’ Preizler hissed.

Gregor smirked. Preizler aimed his Walther at Alix’s temple. She could almost feel it burn through her skin. She swallowed hard, forcing back the cry that wanted to burst from her mouth.
Mami made a sound like a whimper.

‘All right.’ Gregor scraped back his chair and stood up, making for the door.

‘Anton?’ Mami pleaded with him. ‘Don’t do this. Not to Alix!’ Alix felt wave after wave of coldness wash over her. The room was spinning.

He kept his gaze averted. ‘Such a wonderfully Germanic little head. Perfect proportions,’ he said. ‘I never really believed all that racial purity stuff, but sometimes when I
see someone like your daughter I can almost understand what Himmler and Goebbels meant.’

‘How can you?’ Mami whispered. ‘She is my only child.’

‘She’s a young woman. All across Europe young women are part of the front-line now.’

Alix heard the front door screech open. Gregor said something in Russian and slammed the door.

‘Well?’ Preizler asked as he came back in.

‘They asked if we had any pretty ones in here and I said no. They’ll be back in the morning, though. To talk to Vav-ilov.’

‘Who’s Vavilov?’ asked Mami.

Gregor slipped back into his seat, ignoring the question. ‘You can put that down,’ he told the older man. Preizler lowered the gun, but kept his fingers tight round the handle. He
looked at Alix.

‘I trust you understand that was all show, Alexandra. You and I have never been fond of one another but I would never harm you.’

She tried to give a nonchalant shrug and prayed she wouldn’t be sick in front of them all. Now the immediate danger was over it occurred to her that Preizler had taken a huge gamble. For
all he knew Gregor might have been unmoved by the prospect of a bullet piercing her skull; his loyalties to his comrades might have overridden old affections. Maybe Preizler had seen something
between them that had given away their feelings. Gregor and she had been parted for all these years but there was still something between them, some pull from the past which placed them on the same
side, despite the intervening years. All the time she’d been watching him and Mami, he’d been watching her and Gregor. Four people staring at one another over a kitchen table trying to
make sense of one another’s relationships as though they were in some comedy of manners. While outside a snowstorm raged, an empire fell and chaos rushed in to fill the vacuum.

For whole minutes nobody spoke. Alix could almost feel the electrical charges flying between them. The rumbling of tanks hushed. Even the Red Army had given up tonight. A crashing sound a mile
or so away rattled the plates on the dresser. Then there was only the moan of the wind against the shutters.

‘Another bridge or railway line being blown to pieces,’ Gregor said. ‘Germany’s nearly finished.’ Alix couldn’t read his tone.

‘Old Prussia, you mean.’ Preizler sounded satisfied. Even now he couldn’t seem to refrain from expressing the old Austrian prejudice against the Junkers. As though Hitler had
grown up in a Pomeranian village! ‘Churchill hates Prussia. He’ll let Stalin consume it.’ Preizler shrugged. ‘We’ll make for the mountains, my love.’

‘You won’t get far. It’s prison camp for you, for years,’ said Gregor. ‘Worse, if my comrades get you.’

‘The Russians will hang you,’ Alix added.

He might be armed but it seemed they had him at bay, she and Gregor. Alix thought she’d go mad if they had to stay like this much longer. Let him shoot them all if he wanted, it would
break the spell that kept the four of them sitting here throwing these conversational barbs around while the world crumbled. Laughter threatened to burst from her lips. Or perhaps a scream.

Something scratched at the door. They all swung round to look, eyes frightened, even Preizler’s. Lena’s tabby strolled in, eyed the group and appeared to sum up each of them before
she jumped onto Gregor’s lap. He stroked the animal from the top of its head right down to the tip of its tail. Alix noticed her mother give a little frown as she watched Gregor.