The Last Shot (11 page)

It was time they left. Bertha shook her coat out; she was ruining the shape of it, using it as a blanket and as a rug. She packed her things slowly. She was humming again. Then she sang what she had been humming:

Hand in Hand gehn wir beide dutch das schöne Land, Und die Sonne lacht hinter uns her
…

She hummed again as she combed her hair. Everything could be done at such a leisurely pace from now on. The urgency of their lives had gone. The whole panic of their flight out of Czechoslovakia had dissipated.

It took longer than ever to uncover the bikes from their hiding place. And it seemed to take longer to push them back through the forest until they met the road again. When they reached the firm ground of the road, they felt a sadness between them, as though they would never see the lake again.

But you can’t go back. Besides, Bertha wanted to keep going, now that she had started this new journey.

They cycled for a while along a flat road which seemed to veer right around the small lake, until they reached the bottom of a steep incline. Though they could no longer see the lake, they were certain they had circled right around it by now. Franz rode ahead. The sun stung their backs. Damp ringlets of hair still bounced around Bertha’s neck. At the bottom of the hill, they stopped.

They passed a little farm-house set in off the road and decided to go in and ask for something to drink. They were both so thirsty. Some tea or fresh water, maybe. But as soon as they began to walk in towards the house, they heard a large dog barking at them. There was nobody around. They waited a
while at the gate, then decided to leave it. Perhaps the occupants were out.

They moved on, facing into the steep hill. Somehow, it made the speed at which they had travelled up until then seem ridiculous. Bertha felt stronger than ever, but she was actually going slower, lagging behind. She put her head down as she pushed the bike, as though she was examining the patterns on the road moving back beneath her. She heard the dog in the distance behind her, barking furiously, then stopping, then barking a last few times to make sure they were gone.

The incline of the road was so steep that it seemed to go on for ever. Franz said he could see the top and encouraged her. She wanted to stop for a rest, but any time she did so, the bike would start rolling back before she could engage the brakes. Then she discovered that by placing her foot like a wedge under the front wheel, she could stop the bike very well. She would have sat down but didn’t want to ask Franz. He was still walking ahead of her, faster than ever, she thought.

She heard the dog begin to bark again behind her, beneath her in the valley. When they had reached a great height, she looked around and found that the lake had come back into sight again. Then she stopped for a good reason; she discovered she had a puncture in the front wheel and called out to Franz.

‘What’s wrong, Bertha?’ he asked. His voice sounded different. A different place on the road, a different echo in the trees.

‘It’s a flat tyre,’ she shouted back. When the echo came back to her, she felt as though the whole world was listening to her.

‘Ach, yes.’ He laughed. ‘That was waiting to happen.’

Franz put his bike down and came back to her with the pump. She smiled and shrugged. He knelt down and began to pump the wheel, but the air seemed to escape almost as fast as he pumped. He checked the tyre for a nail and found nothing.

‘You can’t cycle on that. We’ll have to stop at the next house and repair it. I might need some water.’

He checked to see that he still had the repair kit.

They walked on. At the summit of the hill where the road veered off to the left and down the other side of the hill again, they found a lane leading to another house. From here they could look right back over the lake, and the place on the opposite side where they had spent the night. They could also see the other farm-house in the valley.

‘I’ll sit down here and look at the lake,’ Bertha said. She was exhausted.

Franz began to take off the tyre. He worked quietly, perhaps with a slight rush of vanity, knowing that Bertha was admiring his skill. Bertha sat looking over the lake, knowing that Franz was proud to be repairing her bike. He first tried to find the puncture by feeling for an escape of air. Then he spat over a spot where he suspected the puncture to be. It didn’t work. He had to look for water.

‘I won’t be long,’ he said as he began to walk towards the house, hidden in the trees. The small rucksack was still on his back. He came back and kissed her and said he would be back soon.

‘Bring back something to drink, if you can,’ she said.

Bertha blew him another passionate kiss as he walked away along the lane towards the house.

She placed her elbows on her knees and propped her chin in her hands to look at the lake. She thought she would never be as happy as she was now, and tried to fix that picture of the lake in her memory for ever. The lake looked far more blue from this height. She looked for a name to call the lake. Blue lake of homecoming. She hummed a little. The strong sun was behind her. She could have fallen asleep with the sound of birds, both near and far away. But then she heard a crack in the trees behind her on the other side of the road.

She ignored the noise.

She heard other noises, clear sounds of movement in the trees close by. She heard footsteps coming along the sandy lane, and at first thought it was Franz. She looked around, wincing against the sunlight, and found a man coming towards her.
Perhaps he looked like Franz but less tall. Another man emerged quickly from the trees on the other side.

She stood up. Maybe they were local people, she thought. But there was something wrong. She was certain of that. There was no time to wait and ask. She made eye contact with one of the men. Then she was sure.

She shouted. ‘Franz…Franz…’

She decided to run. Her way to Franz was blocked, so she ran away. She ran down-hill, back down the hill she had just climbed. She heard them running after her. She was faster, she thought. She was getting away, travelling so fast she thought she was on the bike again. When she arrived down at the bottom of the hill, she ran into the trees, just short of the farm-house. She would be safe at the farm. Or maybe she could double back up again to Franz.

The mad notion crossed her mind that it was such a waste to run back down. It was the least of her concerns. She knew she was going to be attacked.

She hid behind a tree for a moment. She watched one of the men arriving on Franz’s bike. The other man was on foot, running hard. They didn’t seem organized. She knew her dress would give her away in the trees. Again, she thought of trying to make her way back up the hill towards Franz again. Where was he? On second thoughts, she knew her legs would never make it up the hill again.

She ran, knowing that her bright summer dress was shining in the woods. It was getting torn, too. At one point she was jerked back suddenly while running. She heard the fabric strain and rip. She stopped, went back to free herself, and then ran on. This was all wrong. This shouldn’t have happened. She wished she had stayed where she was at the top of the hill. Franz would come soon. As she ran away, she had a strange urge to look back and see if one of the men was really Franz. But that was impossible. Her fear was playing on her.

She heard the men shouting after her. The language was foreign to her. It made her run faster. She emerged from the
trees into a small field of red poppies. She ran straight through them into a wide farmyard. She kept running across the yard towards the house. But she hadn’t gone far when she was set upon by a large brown dog. She couldn’t even see the dog’s eyes. All she could hear was the bark. She could see the teeth.

Bertha froze with her back against the wall of one of the wooden sheds. She felt all the power go out of her legs. She shook. It was a different kind of fear, she knew. She could do nothing; nothing but try and look invisible. She hardly trusted herself to move her head to look around the farm.

There were a number of things that came into her head right then, quite irrational thoughts. It occurred to her that all this was unleashed upon her life by the encounter with Franz. But she dismissed that. She wanted Franz to be with her now. He would beat off this dog, and the men who were following her.

She thought of more irrelevant things. Apple fritters. She was aware that there was sand in her right shoe and that she would like to have taken it off and shaken it out, standing on one leg for a moment. She was aware of sweat under her arms, a cool trickle running down along the side of her breast. She thought of the fountain in the market square in her home town, Kempen. She imagined that she had no legs, either that, or that she was standing up to her waist in water; floating. She was aware of a farm stench in the yard, something like burning fat in a pan. She was also aware of an increasing population of flies, around her, around the dog, around everything, treating everything as though nothing was happening.

The dog drew breath, pulled back, only to leap forward again with another ferocious stream of barking, coming so close to her that she could smell the stench of its breath. Now and again, she caught a glimpse of the dog’s eyes underneath the hair. She felt a cold rush along her back; hair standing up.

When the dog drew its next breath, she asked herself to produce one last act of defiance. Seeing the house at the top of the hill where Franz was, she gave the biggest shout of emergency she had ever heard herself give, almost leaping
with it out of the yard and up the top of the hill.

‘Franz…Down here…Franz…’

At that moment, the two men came running into the yard. She saw their faces clearly. They saw her, calling up the hill. The dog saw the two men and abandoned her, to attack and bark with renewed ferocity at them. They stopped and walked backwards, pinned back towards outhouses, holding out their hands, concentrating like tight-rope walkers on the dog’s upper lip drawn back over its yellowed front teeth.

The men then became aggressive. They shouted at the dog, which only made it worse. It snapped at them. The dog was almost hoarse. And still no occupants came out of the house.

Bertha slipped away.

Where was Franz Kern?

There was no reply for a long time at the house he went to. The occupant there, an old man, had at first taken him for one of the marauding bands who had been drifting around the hills since the end of the war. They had already stolen everything from his house and from the house below in the valley.

Franz asked him for a small vessel full of water in order to repair the puncture. The man showed Franz the well outside and then brought him into the house for a moment to get a bucket. The old man was curious. He talked to Franz about the war. He was a little deaf. And while Franz was inside the house, the shouts from Bertha came up from the valley. The old man had heard nothing and registered great surprise when Franz dropped everything to run away.

Franz reached the road and found Bertha gone. He found his own bike gone too. He knew that something was wrong. He called her, and when he got no answer, he was certain she was in trouble.

He panicked. He had no idea where to run at first. Either ahead, along the road, or back down-hill. He saw the bright blue lake, calm as ever. He heard the dog barking below in the valley and made the choice to run down. It was only when he found his own bike hastily discarded in the trees halfway down that he was sure. It seemed as though somebody had stolen the bike and temporarily hidden it among the new trees.

He looked around. He looked up the hill. He called her quietly, thinking that she might be somewhere close by, hiding. He ran aimlessly into the wood. It was only when he heard her shouting again, this time quite clearly from below in the farmyard, that he knew where he was going. He heard the terror in
her voice. And he knew so well it was her voice; he would never forget Bertha’s voice.

He kept running down through the trees until he came out short of the farm-house. The dog had stopped barking. Franz had to cross a small stream to get on to the path leading to the front of the farm-house. He realized he must have chosen the most difficult place to cross because he had to fight his way through shrubs and bramble. But at least nobody could see him.

He had a soldier’s instinct. Instead of calling for her again, he decided to remain silent. The advantage of revealing his own presence to Bertha would be outweighed by the fact that her attackers would know that too. He was talking about an enemy now. He knew there had to be men in the area; he assumed they were Polish or Czech exiles returning home. But he didn’t know how many. He imagined four, maybe five. He cursed himself for having left Bertha alone on the road.

Creeping along the side of the path, he approached the farm-house from a concealed point and examined all the windows of the house at first. There was nothing. Some of the windows reflected the sunlight. There was no sound anywhere except the ridiculous sound of birds. For some reason he looked at his watch to see what time it was. It was just past noon. It made him hurry. He edged along the wall and entered the yard. Flies gathered around him in the heat; he was sure they would give him away.

Flies give everything away. Franz realized why the dog had stopped barking. A swarm of flies hovered around a large brown animal stretched out at the side of the yard. The dog might as well have been asleep, but that was impossible. Franz ran over to the dog. A long hay-rake lay beside him. Blood, by now a dark maroon-coloured stream, still flowed slowly along the bright sand, taking it in grain by grain, granule by granule, coagulating. The dog’s tongue lay stretched out of his open mouth. It too had collected grains of sand and dust. The fresh wound above the dog’s eyes gleamed like a wet, red and brown cloth in the sun.

Franz listened. He heard nothing but water. Somewhere near by there must have been a stream, or a waterfall. Everything around here ran into the lake.

These were some of the irrational things that struck Franz as he turned to look around the farmyard, wondering where to find Bertha. He thought of Nuremberg. He thought of smaller dogs which his aunts kept all their lives. He thought of the noise his Wehrmacht boots would make along the gravel. Better to be in the forest. He had time to think of the fact that he could have just left and gone home on his own. And how crazy it was even to think of leaving her like that. He thought of Bertha, how beautiful she was. He had time to think that all of this was his own fault. He would fight them all, five or six, no matter how many of them there were.

He got ready to run. He wished he knew where he was going.