Restitution (2 page)

The horses flicked back their ears and shivered. They were bred for steadiness but they’d never encountered anything like this before. Alix made encouraging clicks with her tongue. As long
as they could just keep moving west . . .

Lena tightened the scarf round her neck. ‘If we get separated don’t wait for me.’ Her voice was tight, her normally pink-cheeked face already grey with fatigue, though
they’d only been travelling for an hour or so. Alix focused on the tips of the horses’ golden ears to calm herself.

A moan above them told her the planes were overhead again. Through the dirt encrusting her eyes she saw them dive towards the earth. The wagon shook. Lena called out something she couldn’t
hear and slumped sideways out of the seat. Alix shouted at the horses but then she was falling herself, watching dark particles blow past her. Parts of her earlier life floated with her: falling
off a pony at eleven; tumbling off the orchard wall as an eight-year-old; toppling downstairs as a toddler; falling, falling, always falling. She heard the horses scream before someone turned off
the volume.

The earth rose to meet her. For a moment she couldn’t tell which way up she was. Her eyes stung. Apart from that nothing seemed to hurt. High above, planes still buzzed. She stayed down,
blowing snow and dirt from her mouth and nose. It was all taking such a long time, as though she were watching a film in slow motion.

Time shot forward again. The planes were still screaming but becoming more distant now and people whimpered around her. Alix rose, checking herself for injury and finding herself unscathed
– all those layers of clothing – and the rucksack still fastened to her back. She turned to the wagon and saw it lying on its side, suitcases and boxes spilling out from the canvas
covers. One of Papi’s clocks had fallen on top of the fur rug Mami had told them to take. At least it would have cushioned its fall . . . But this was no time to bother about trifles. The
chickens had broken out of their basket and were running into the forest edging the road. Alix glimpsed a cream-coloured tail splayed across the snow. One of the horses shrieked and twitched and
then they were both motionless. She couldn’t look at them. She’d cared for them when they were colts and helped Papi break them to harness. She began to run back along the road.
‘Lena!’

Alix’s heart lurched. There she was, face-down in the snow, recognizable only because of the blue scarf she wore, the one Alix had knitted as a Christmas present with wool unravelled from
an old jumper. Finally Lena sat up, a hand to her brow. She looked suddenly old and confused, far from the sturdy middle-aged woman she normally was. Alix threw herself down beside her.

‘What happened, Alexandra?’

‘The planes shot us.’

‘Are you hurt?’ Lena’s eyes swept Alix.

Alix shook her head.

‘And the horses?’

She couldn’t answer.

Lena clicked her tongue. ‘Ach, that’s too bad. Is there anything we can salvage from the wagon?’

‘Probably. I didn’t look closely. All our things have fallen out onto the road. The hens escaped into the forest.’

‘We’ll catch them.’ Lena started to rise to her feet and fell back onto her knees. ‘Just give me a moment.’

Slowly she pushed herself up. Alix knew better than to offer assistance. At the sound of aeroplanes, Lena looked up at the sky. ‘Under the trees, quick!’

The air was acrid, painful to breathe, the sun hidden behind smoke. Alix followed Lena through the beeches and silver birch, her racing pulse starting to slow now they were away from the road.
She heard clucking and spotted the tail feathers of one of the hens. As she went to catch the bird Lena stopped and put out an arm in warning. ‘There’s a soldier over there.’ She
nodded to the right.

‘A Russian?’ Alix whispered. ‘It can’t be. They haven’t broken through yet.’

‘I tell you it’s an Ivan.’

‘But—’

Lena put a finger to her mouth and pulled Alix down behind a bush. ‘When I say run, make for that track. I think there’s an old bridge down by the stream. We can hide.’

Alix nodded, feeling her panic as a knot in her chest. Lena looked to the right.

‘Now!’ She pushed her towards the path. Alix ran, head down, fists pounding the air. Spotting the bridge, she scrambled down to the stream, branches scratching her cheeks, her breath
harsh in her throat. She squatted below the single span, the icy scum at the water’s edge soaking her boots, feeling her blood scorching her veins. She glanced up the bank.

‘Lena?’ she whispered.

A deer shot down the bank from the path, hurling itself into the water, ice splintering beneath its hoofs. A gun fired once. Alix hugged her knees to her chest and lowered her head. She thought
she heard a shout. Then there was nothing.
Count to a thousand,
just like she’d done as a child when she’d played hide and seek with Gregor.

A thousand came and went and still Lena didn’t reappear.

Alix pulled herself up the bank, peering along the path, listening out for the crunch of frozen leaves or the crack of a twig, trying to pick up the scent of unwashed Russians and their
discharged guns above the reek of smoke. How many times had Papi taken her out hunting? ‘You must use all your senses,’ he had said.

No sounds of a human running through the trees, no low boughs swaying . . .

But then there was something – an engine rumbling further along the track. Alix stooped behind a tree and strained her ears. A car. It sounded like the Mercedes that Preizler used to drive
when he came visiting Mami. The Russians wouldn’t come to Pomerania by Mercedes.
Unless they’d stolen it. Be quiet,
she told herself.
Listen.

The car was large and black, the swastika on its bonnet hung limply in the smoke-filled air. Alix stepped forward. The driver’s window opened. He was young, probably only a year or so
older than Alix, very pale, black shadows under his eyes.

‘Nearly shot you.’ He waved the revolver in his hand. ‘Thought you were a Russian. They’ve already got hold of one woman.’ Words were rushing from him. ‘I
couldn’t do anything for her.’

‘Where—?’ The world spun.

He pointed back along the way he’d come.

‘What did she look like?’

He shrugged. ‘Hard to say now.’ He frowned at her. ‘Jump in, I’ll take you as far as I can. It’s not safe for you here.’

‘No.’ She stepped back.
‘Danke.’
She was turning down her best chance of escape. But she couldn’t get into the black Mercedes. Cars like that scared her.

‘Please yourself.’ He wound up the window and let out the clutch.

Alix turned and ran back into the trees, crouching behind a bush until the car had pulled away.

Almost evening now. The birds were making roosting sounds and the faint sunlight was fading. How long had it been since the planes had attacked?

Oh, Lena . . .
But she pushed away her longing for the older woman. No time for that now. Get back on the road. Find the abandoned wagon. Grab the fur rug, food and water. Continue the
journey. Mami would meet her in the little village on the other side of the Oder, just as they’d planned.

Keep heading west.
Alix found herself shivering. An owl hooted beside her and every shadow seemed to host a menacing figure. The Russians might already have reached the wagon. Suppose
they were already squabbling over Papi’s clock, the cooking pots and the woollen blankets? The soldiers might be waiting in the gloom for the owners of these goods to return so they could rob
them in turn. She already knew the kind of treatment she could expect from the Ivans, if they caught her.

Alix took a single step along the track and came to a halt.

She could creep back home through the trees. She knew this forest. Within a kilometre or so it became part of the von Matke estate. She could find something to eat in the house. They’d
left some food behind in case Papi had been released and found his way home. Some of Alix’s clothes still hung in the wardrobe. She could change into something warm and clean. The stove in
the kitchen would still be hot – Lena had riddled and stoked it for the last time this morning so they’d have warm water before they set off on their long journey. The stove also heated
some of the bedrooms. The house would give out its own particular scent of wood smoke and beeswax, mixed with the cinnamon and nutmeg Lena used when she baked.

She could approach the house from the back garden, check for signs of occupation. If it was safe she’d lock herself inside for the night. At dawn she’d leave for the west again. At
least she’d have one more night at home. In the warm. With Papi’s few remaining clocks ticking round her.

Two days earlier

They’d waited so long that when the news came Alix could barely believe it.

Lena bustled into the salon where they were covering furniture with dustsheets in the hope that the announcement would come in the next week. ‘You’ll never guess!’ Her face was
the colour of the plum velvet cushions on the sofa. ‘The Preizlers are packing up that house of theirs. Frau Preizler’s moving to the south, the Tyrol or Bavaria, they say.’ She
looked at them both. ‘So we can leave too, can’t we? We can go west now?’

The pupils of Mami’s eyes contracted into tiny dots. ‘Anton said nothing of this when I saw him last week.’

‘I heard it in the town this morning from a girl who works at the house.’

‘What does it mean for Papi?’ Alix asked. It had been six months since the black car pulled up outside his office in Berlin.

Mami shrugged. ‘Who knows?’ She reached for her cigarette box. ‘We need to start sorting things out, packing up the wagon. And quickly.’ The telephone rang and she got
up. ‘I’ll take it.’ She went out into the hall, closing the salon door behind her. Alix sat on a chair and fixed her gaze on one of the nymphs in the mural on the opposite
wall.

The conversation was short. When Mami came back in she looked pale. ‘Gestapo headquarters. They want to see me in Berlin. Tomorrow.’ She caught sight of Alix’s face. ‘No,
Schatz,
not what you think, it’s fine. Anton Preizler will be there, he’s arranged this interview, he says it will help Papi.’

‘The excuse he needed to run away from the Russians.’ Alix couldn’t help saying it.

Mami appeared not to have heard. ‘I’ll go up to town on the afternoon train, if it’s still running.’

She might have been talking about a shopping trip.

‘You’d better get our things packed up while I’m away,’ she went on.

‘We really are going?’ Alix asked.

‘If the Preizlers are moving out it means they can’t stop us now. It also means the Russians are closer than we thought.’ Mami drew on her cigarette. ‘We’ll leave
these dustsheets now and concentrate on getting you and Lena ready for the journey.’

‘When do we go?’ Lena asked.

Mami rested the cigarette on the ashtray. She’d been rationing herself; this was the first one Alix had seen her smoke in days. ‘The day after tomorrow. Before dawn. They’ll
stop watching the house while I’m in Berlin. Go and fetch Papi’s map, Alix.’

Alix went into her father’s study. Already it seemed to have lost some of its particular aroma, a mingling of Papi’s bath oil and his leather boots. On his desk the photograph of
Mami as Cressida in her last film,
Troilus,
sat in its usual place, next to the silver blotter. Alix found the map in his desk drawer and brought it back to her mother. Mami opened the red
calfskin covers, flicking through the pages until she found the section of Germany west of the Oder and south of Berlin. ‘Somewhere around here.’ She ran a finger over the page,
pointing at villages Alix had never heard of. ‘Perhaps this junction. And from there we will make for the Elbe. Magdeburg, perhaps. Then south-west through either Kassel or Erfurt to Cousin
Ulla’s in the Rhineland.’ She looked at Alix and her soft eyes were suddenly hard. ‘Repeat that to me, Alix.’

‘West to the Elbe at Magdeburg—’

‘Avoiding Berlin,’ Mami interrupted.

‘Avoiding Berlin, then head for either Kassel or Erfurt.’

‘Good.’ Mami nodded.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever met Cousin Ulla.’

‘I’ve only met her a couple of times myself, years ago, but she was close to your father when they were children. She’s a kind woman, and one of . . .’ Mami waved a hand
in place of the missing words.

One of us,
she’d meant: someone who approved of what Papi had done. Mami bent her head to the map again. ‘This whole journey depends on the bridges. We must pray we can cross
the Oder and then the Elbe. We’ll stay with Ulla until the worst is over.’

Ulla must be brave to offer to take in the family of Peter von Matke.

Mami gazed out of the window and the small wrinkle on her brow became a furrow. She was probably thinking of the snow, of the weeks to be spent in a wagon, of the Russians closing in, of the
bridges across the great rivers and what would happen if those bridges were blown. She’d be remembering the stories that had already reached Pomerania with the first waves of refugees from
East Prussia. Of how the Reds had killed women and children, had burned, looted and destroyed. Mami didn’t know that Alix had overheard her and Lena whispering about these horrors. She
didn’t know that Alix had gone to her bedroom and sat on the bed staring at the familiar photographs in their silver frames without moving until it was time for her to go out and milk the
cows.

They’d talked of heading west for months, written lists, sent the cattle on ahead a few at a time so as not to raise suspicions. Serviced the farm wagon in preparation. Checked the
horses’ hoofs. But it had all seemed theoretical somehow. And Alix had never imagined travelling without Mami.

Alix went to see Jana in the cottage that housed her and the other Polish workers. ‘You’ve heard?’

Jana raised her head from the pine table in the little kitchen. Alix saw she’d been packing her possessions: her flute and a few books Alix had given her. ‘I heard.’ Behind her
glasses her eyes flickered with something Alix had never seen before. Not hope, exactly, but some spark that might represent the precursor to hope: an acknowledgement that things were changing,
that she might yet go home, back to her parents and her music career. Assuming the academy still stood and the professors had survived. A shift was occurring in the girls’ relationship: the
slave worker would soon be free, and as for Alix – who knew?