Restitution (17 page)

‘Bang bang!’ Jacob had slunk up to him without a sound, holding up his fingers in the shape of a gun. ‘You’d be dead if I was a Russian.’ He pushed a thin lad of
about ten wearing a black cap and a coat several sizes too big for him towards Gregor. ‘This is Cyrek. Cyrek, this is . . . a friend.’ Cyrek extended his mittened hand and Gregor shook
it. The fingers felt light and fragile.

‘If you lift that loose white stone,’ Reuben pointed at the cemetery wall, ‘you’ll find a space where you can stuff the baker’s papers. He’ll pick them up
when he comes to put flowers on his aunt’s grave.’

Gregor found the stone and as he replaced it his ears caught the clink of metal. He listened again, heard a cough. He crawled back to the others. ‘Someone’s coming.’

Reuben’s eyes swept the cemetery. ‘Take Cyrek out the back gate and wait for us in the lane. There’s a burnt-out charabanc in the ditch you can hide behind. Jacob and I will
head them off. We’ll come back for you later. Go!’

No time for discussion. Gregor grabbed Cyrek by the arm. They zigzagged from gravestone to gravestone. Gunfire burst out from the main gate. Gregor spotted the bus, a remnant from the fighting
in thirty-nine. They scurried up the lane and crouched behind it and waited.

Jacob and Reuben never appeared. Eventually the gunfire stopped. Each time Gregor thought of creeping back to the cemetery he caught sight of Cyrek’s scared face and
dismissed the temptation. They climbed inside the bus and shared the bread and cheese the baker had given Gregor. Night fell. Cyrek moved closer towards Gregor. Gregor told him about his life in
Berlin before the war and about Alix’s big country house with the ponies and lake. He described Alix’s school for toys and Cyrek laughed softly, catching his breath as though the story
were so amusing it hurt. They dozed, huddled up together, Cyrek’s fingers clasping the sleeve of Gregor’s coat.

A light shining on Gregor’s face woke him. Cyrek cried out.

‘You boys think we not find you?’ The Russian grinned through black teeth. ‘Out you come.’

Gregor tried to stretch out his legs on the filth-encrusted wagon floor but the man next to him snarled an objection. Next to him the boy Cyrek groaned and whispered something
about his school. Probably thought he was back in the classroom again. Yesterday he’d been convinced they were all sitting a Latin test.

‘Dehydrated.’ The old woman in the corner sighed. ‘That wound’s gone septic and he’s burning up.’ Her rosary beads rattled. Gregor wished he could believe in
whatever she believed.

Cyrek hadn’t even cried out when the bullet had grazed his skinny thigh in the cemetery, and Gregor hadn’t noticed the injury, so desperate had he been to keep them warm and quiet
while they waited in vain for the Gronowskis. If he’d seen the graze he could have cleaned it up a bit. It had only been on the third day of the journey that he’d noticed the swelling
under the boy’s threadbare trousers and pulled up the leg to reveal the infected wound.

He tipped the last of his water into Cyrek’s mouth. Like trying to put out a fire. Cyrek had stopped calling out now, and lay still, his brown eyes dull and staring at nothing.
Occasionally he’d clench one of his hands, as though he were trying to grab hold of something. Before the infection had taken hold Cyrek had talked about his old life in Warsaw. His mother
was a friend of Mrs Gronowska’s.

‘I almost envy him.’ The old woman put away her rosary and laid a hand on the boy’s brow. ‘He’ll be out of it soon.’

Alix

Pomerania, February 1945

Alix waited for him to continue. ‘What happened next?’ she asked when he didn’t.

‘Tomorrow.’ Gregor yawned. ‘You need to sleep now while you can, while we’re safe for a few hours.’

Alix switched off the lamp and tried to let herself drift off. Preizler in the next bedroom, Gregor in the chair at the foot of her bed, his story still unfinished—

Something howled outside, only metres from the window.

Alix sat up. ‘I’ve never heard him before.’ Please God don’t let the wolf wake Preizler, bound though he was.

‘I saw them in Russia, sometimes in Poland,’ Gregor said. ‘But mainly they kept away from us.’

‘Why’s he here tonight?’

‘The fighting must have driven him from his territory.’

She got out of bed. Gregor had already crossed the carpeted floor, a blanket around him like a toga. Soundlessly Alix opened the windows and shutters.

The wolf sat on the snowy terrace, so close they could make out the black rings round his eyes. ‘He’s magnificent.’ Alix wished her father could see him. ‘He can see us
watching him.’

The wolf studied them, his breath forming a mist in the night air, the snow falling round him.

‘Wonderful,’ Gregor said, his shoulder against hers. ‘I wonder what he must think of the human race.’

‘All those legends about bloodthirsty wolves, but we’re the ones who torture and kill our own.’ But staring at the wolf Alix felt some of the anger and fear drain out of her.
The world had shrunk to this room: Gregor standing so close to her; the wolf gazing up at them both.

‘Aren’t you cold?’ Gregor whispered.

She couldn’t imagine ever being cold again.

She couldn’t be sure which of them turned first to the other. She could feel his breath on her face, smell something that must be Red Army issue toothpaste, harsh and medicinal, and
Papi’s bath oil and something else warm and musky that must be Gregor himself. ‘We shouldn’t do this,’ Gregor said.

She wasn’t hearing his words; his physical presence was filling her senses. Her fear of Preizler, her longing to leave the house, all these things were fading.

‘Alix if you stand this close to me, I . . .’

She put an arm round his neck. ‘Don’t push me away.’

‘I won’t.’ His voice caught. ‘But you don’t know what you’re doing. I’m – I’m a soldier. Where I’ve been men don’t treat women
with kid gloves.’

‘You could never treat me badly.’ She moved so they stood chest to chest. No mistaking his response now: she hadn’t been sure at first. She and Jana, the slave worker from
Warsaw, had spent hours discussing the mechanics of sex.

Gregor let out a long deep breath that seemed to express his sadness for all the years they’d lost. ‘Do you remember that night in the cellar when I kissed you?’ he said.

‘Of course.’

He nodded. ‘I thought you did.’

‘Come to bed with me.’ It seemed a natural conclusion to the music-less waltz, to the wolf’s mysterious arrival. ‘You want to, don’t you Gregor?’

He made a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a gasp. ‘I don’t think you need to ask me that.’ He held her chin in his hand. ‘But there are things you don’t
know about me, things I should tell you—’

She put a finger to the hairs curling on the back of his neck. They felt as silky as she’d imagined when she’d watched him playing on the Steinway. ‘Don’t tell me. I
can’t cope with anything more. It’s only one night.’ She closed her eyes and leaned against him. ‘It could be all that’s left.’ She closed the shutters and
window, catching one last glimpse of the wolf still watching the window.

Outside on the landing Papi’s wall clock struck the quarter-hour. ‘This isn’t really happening.’ He put his lips to the hollow underneath her collarbone and kissed it and
an electric thrill went through her and it was like that time she’d first galloped on Papi’s horse, too fast, impossible to pull back.

Alix

Next day

She woke from deep, dreamless sleep. Beside her Gregor slept on, his breath warm on her neck. She had to force recollection of last night’s events on herself: the horses
blown to pieces, running with Lena through the forest, Gregor’s smashed coffee cup. Preizler. Mami.

Gregor sat up, reaching across her for her Patek Philippe. She felt his muscles tense against her. ‘We overslept.’

She buried her head in his chest and took in the scent of him, warm and sweet. Please let all the rest be just a bad dream. He reached for the blanket she’d pulled off him last night and
wrapped it round him. ‘I wish we could stay here for ever, but you’re in danger, Alix. Let’s get moving.’ He handed her the watch.

Her body tingled. There were still whole inches of her body he hadn’t had time to explore. The injustice struck her:
this
was what was important, the two of them together in this
bed. Yet they’d be torn apart, forced to continue on divergent paths until powers they couldn’t influence decided that the killing could stop and people could go back to bed with their
lovers. Already last night’s terror was catching up with her again.

Alix got up, too, shivering – no Lena to light her fire this morning. Her mind reluctantly switched to the immediate dangers. ‘I don’t know what to do about Mami.’

Gregor padded over to her and took her hands. ‘We need to hurry.’ His voice was urgent. ‘Vavilov will be here any moment.’

She saw the strain in his face and felt scared again too. She stuffed on her shirt and pulled on her layers of woollens, one on top of the other. They still smelled of cordite and burned metal
and Mami’s cigarettes. ‘Will Preizler have woken? How long do those sleeping tablets last?’

‘If he wakes he can’t do anything. He’s trussed up like a chicken.’

Even so Alix couldn’t help glancing at the door. She found her socks and watched Gregor dress. He held up his left foot awkwardly to put on his boot and then stiffened.

Alix heard the purr of an engine. Gregor cursed under his breath. ‘We can get out through the boot room,’ she said. ‘They’re at the top of the drive, they won’t be
able to use their vehicle, they’ll have to walk through the snow.’

‘Quick.’ He grabbed her rucksack along with his own pack and pushed her out of the door. Her fingers clutched at the mouth organ he’d left on the table.

‘What about Mami?’ Adulteress she might be, but they couldn’t just leave her here for the Reds.

‘I’ll come back for her.’

They’d reached the ground floor now, heading for the passage that led from the kitchen past the cellar steps to the back of the house.

Last night’s snow had jammed the boot-room door. Gregor cursed again and shoved it with his shoulder. This time it moved; the porch had shielded it from the worst of the blizzard.

‘Run for the forest, I’m going back upstairs for your mother!’ he told her.

How close to the house were Vavilov’s men now? Gregor should be leaving with her. But Mami . . .

‘Alix, run!’

‘I can’t just leave you and Mami, I can’t.’

‘We’ll catch you up in the forest. But don’t wait, keep running. You swear?’

His eyes reminded her of the wolf’s last night. She nodded and forced herself to turn away from him.

She waded across the snow-covered flowerbed, home, in summer, to her mother’s night-scented stocks. ‘Run,’ he hissed again at her retreating back.

She cut through the whiteness, skirting the chestnuts under which aconites and celandines would bloom in a few months. The snow seemed to want to detain the last of the von Matkes at
Alexanderhof, grabbing at her calves and threatening to trip her. At last she reached the stables. She brushed the snow from the top of her boots and kept on going, her breath coming in spurts, her
muscles still tired from yesterday’s run from the soldiers. The beeches and firs were in front of her now. If she didn’t draw breath she’d die. She thought she could still feel
Gregor’s gaze on the back of her neck like one of those searchlights she’d once seen in Stettin during an air raid.

She kept running, a von Matke, running like a scared doe. She wouldn’t stop until he said they could.

Gregor

February 1945

Gregor ran back through the passageway and into the entrance hall. How far down the drive was Vavilov now? He flew upstairs to the door of the bedroom into which he’d
locked the baroness and pulled out the key.

‘Gregor!’

Marie stood in front of him. Even now, with perspiration drenching his neck and his legs shaking, he blinked at the sight of her. The tentative dawn light from the window behind her illuminated
her face, showing faint lines that couldn’t mar the purity of her skin, as luminous as the pearls strung round her slender neck. Her mink coat hung from her shoulders and she wore a fur hat.
Anna Karenina. Leather boots on her feet, ready for the snow. ‘Baroness, you need to get out of the house now!’ Could they reach the boot room before Vavilov reached the house?
‘Come on!’ Any second now they’d be pounding on the bolted front door. He grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the staircase.

‘I can’t just leave him like that for the Russians.’ She spoke very softly and it took a moment for him to work out what she’d said.

‘Are you mad?’ He seized her arm and dragged her out of the room. ‘Get away now while you can. Your daughter is out there in the forest, go and join her!’

‘I drugged him and we tied him up like an animal. He’s defenceless. I only helped you last night so that you and Alix could escape.’ They’d reached the sweeping staircase
now and he was still pulling her.

‘He’s a criminal,’ he hissed. ‘Remember that gun pointed at Alix?’ He tugged her down the stairs but she was surprisingly strong.

‘I have to untie him, Gregor. You know what they’ll do to him.’

‘He deserves it!’ At last they were on the ground floor. Gregor thought he heard voices coming from the front. He’d go and let them in, create a diversion so she could escape
through the back. He halted beside the door to the salon. From his pack he removed Clara Preizler’s pearl-handled pistol. ‘Go out of the boot room and across the park. The trees will
shield you and you can hide in the stables. If it’s clear you can run for the forest, that’s where Alix is.’

‘But what about you, Gregor? Aren’t you coming?’

He shook his head and pushed her towards the back of the house. It was too late for him to catch up with Alix now. The only thing he could do for her was to delay Vavilov and the intelligence
unit and buy her precious minutes.