The Undertaking (12 page)

27

She read his letter at the breakfast table, over and over, each time struggling to contain her disappointment.

‘He’s not coming.’

‘Of course he’s not,’ said her mother.

‘He’s been refused leave.’

‘So he says.’

‘He’s very upset about it. And apologetic.’

‘They always are. In the beginning, anyway.’

Mr Spinell spread butter on his bread.

‘Don’t worry, Katharina,’ he said. ‘Your husband will be home soon.’

‘Unlike your brother,’ said Mrs Spinell.

He hurried his chewing.

‘I’ll be back tonight.’

‘Off with the boys again, are you?’

He slammed the door as he left. Katharina stood up to gather the dishes.

‘Leave them,’ said Mrs Spinell. ‘I’ll do them.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I feel better today. I’ll manage them.’

‘That’s good, Mother. I’ll get the baby ready.’

Johannes was awake in his cot by her bed, the trace of a first smile on his face. She scooped him up, rubbing her lips across the downy softness of his head. She sat on the chair that had been in her brother’s room and laid the infant across her thighs, humming and smiling at the squareness of his small chin, at the curl of hair hanging over his forehead. He yawned, then cried and snuffled. She pushed aside her nightdress, and lifted him to her nipple, her back taut, waiting for the shot of pain as he sucked. She slapped her feet against the floor and sang until the pain passed, until the nerves coursing up and down her spine settled into the rhythm of his feeding.

‘I got a letter from your daddy, sweetheart. You’re going to have to wait a little longer before you meet him.’

She returned to the living room, the baby on her shoulder, the dishes still on the table, her mother motionless, staring at nothing.

‘I told you that you should have married the doctor’s son,’ she said. ‘He liked the comforts of home. You could see that in him.’

‘Stop it, Mother.’

‘He’d be here now. With you and your child. Not off with the boys.’

‘There’s a war on, Mother.’

‘You’ll end up like me, Katharina. You chose a husband as useless as your father.’

Katharina paced the room, rubbing small circles into her son’s back to release the tension in his tightly curled legs.

‘That’s just what Johannes used to do,’ said Mrs Spinell. ‘He looks so like him.’

‘He looks nothing like him, Mother. Johannes was round and chubby.’

‘But he has his eyes.’

‘They’re Peter’s eyes. Please, Mother, not again.’

The baby burped and his legs relaxed. Katharina slid him off her shoulder to cradle him in the crook of her left arm.

‘Will you hold him while I tidy up?’

‘No.’

She laid Johannes on a blanket, a towel beneath his bottom, and took off his nappy. She gathered the dishes and filled the sink with hot, soapy water, deliberately using more than her mother would have permitted, and scrubbed furiously at the light stains on the crockery, at her mother’s words, at her husband’s letter, harder and harder, certain that nothing would ever be clean again, never back to the way it had been. To the way it should be.

‘Damn you, Peter Faber. Damn you.’

She dried and put away the dishes, washed and dressed the child and went downstairs to the pram Dr Weinart had given her. It was large, elegant and modern, made of navy fabric and shining chrome. She liked the way the other women looked at her as she pushed it.

She set the child into it, tucked blankets around him and pulled his white cotton cap over his ears. She rolled back her shoulders, raised her head and wheeled him onto the street, where the air was fresh but warm, the day’s heat still to come. She turned towards the park, to sit and watch the waltz of sunlight and leaves.

She chose the bench she had shared with Peter, turned the pram against the sun and inhaled the newness of the day. She closed her eyes and rested, and then took a magazine from the bottom of the pram. The doctor had given her several back issues from his clinic. Before, leafing through a magazine, she would pause at the pictures of coats, dresses and hats, but now she found herself poring over kitchens, bedrooms and living rooms. She wanted a home for her child. To be away from her parents. From her mother.

A shadow fell over the magazine. Katharina looked up. It was a woman, in a summer dress that had once been elegant, a baby at her hip and a young child hanging from her skirt. Both were boys.

‘It works well, doesn’t it?’ she said.

The dark circles under her eyes covered much of her face.

‘Sorry?’ said Katharina.

‘The pram. It’s very good. I used to have one just like it.’

‘Yes, I like it a lot.’

‘The suspension is excellent. Better than the model I had for my first child. My daughter.’

Katharina shielded her eyes from the sun to look up at the woman, at the yellow star dirtied and torn.

‘Yes. Yes. It is.’

Silence fell between them.

‘How old is your child?’ said the woman.

‘Six weeks.’

‘Your first?’

‘Yes.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘Thank you.’

She wanted to return to her magazine, but all three were staring at her, snot dribbling from the older boy’s nose.

‘How old are yours?’

‘Almost one. And the boy is three.’

‘And your daughter?’

‘Eight. Only she’s gone. Taken with her father.’

The woman’s legs buckled, and she pressed her hand onto the back of the bench for support. Katharina looked at her, at her hand on the bench, at the doctor’s pram, at the people who passed by. They could see everything. They could see Katharina talking to a Jew.

‘You can’t sit down here,’ said Katharina.

‘I know that. I’m just tired.’

The woman straightened her back and moved the baby to the other hip. She walked away, the boy still hanging onto her skirt. Katharina checked her child, shifted him out of the light and returned to her magazine.

28

Berlin, August 20th, 1942

    
My dear Peter
,

        
The Führer has just announced that we are to take Stalingrad. To hear it from our leader’s lips is thrilling. Imagine it, Peter, a German Empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Volga. It is beyond anything I could have hoped for. The man is truly a genius
.

        
And you are to be part of it, Peter. I am very proud of you and promise to stop badgering you about home leave. You have an
important task to achieve. Your son and I will support you as best we can. I have enclosed three bars of chocolate to help you along a little of the way
.

        
Everything here is fine. You have nothing to worry about. Johannes is thriving. My father and I took him on a little trip to the lake the other day, when the weather was hot, and dipped his feet into the water, although not for too long, as the water remains quite cold. He is a good child, Peter. You will be entranced, my darling. I am sure that I am hearing his first attempts at a giggle, especially when I tickle his belly
.

        
My parents are well, and very much enjoying their first grandson
.

        
My father tells me that Stalingrad will be ours within a few weeks, that the war will end quickly after that and that you, my darling husband, will be home by Christmas. For ever
.

        
Good luck on your road to Stalingrad, my love. Go speedily so that you come home faster
.

        
All my love
,

        
Katharina

    
PS I will have a second photograph taken of Johannes very shortly and will send it to you. You will see how much he has grown, in such a short space of time. All my love, again. K
.

29

She sealed the letter and put it on the hall table, ready for posting. But then picked it up again. The table was dusty. So was the mirror. The bust. And the floor was grubby. She wiped the end of her apron across the table surface and set the letter down again.

She was exhausted by it all – by the night feeds and day feeds, by the queuing for food, cooking food and the laundering, increasingly with cold water. She went back to the living room. Her mother, her skin pasty and flaccid, lay on the sofa, reaching for another cigarette.

‘Mother, I’ve asked you not to. I want Johannes to have fresh air to breathe.’

Mrs Spinell lit her cigarette and inhaled, throwing her head back to look at the ceiling.

‘How long is this going to last, Mother? I can’t do everything.’

There was no reply. Katharina went to the kitchen and made coffee, aware that she had only a short time before her son would wake, wet and hungry. She sat on the floor at the end of the room, and wrapped her hands around the cup. It was a sunny afternoon, but she was cold. The apartment was cold.

Her father came home, sweating.

‘I’m going to Russia,’ he said.

‘God, we must be in trouble,’ said Mrs Spinell.

‘Are you not too old, Father?’

‘I’m not fighting, Katharina. I’m going to look after the harvest.’

‘You know nothing about farming, Günther.’

‘I’m security, Esther. Making sure we reach it before those bastard partisans.’

‘It’s their wheat, Günther.’

‘It’s our wheat, Esther. It’s on German soil and German families need it for the coming winter.’

‘I expect Russian families do too.’

‘That’s enough from you, woman. I’m going in an aeroplane, Katharina. With Dr Weinart.’

‘That’s so exciting, Father.’

‘We’ll be gone for about a month, and Mrs Weinart has asked that you visit her, to keep her company.’

‘We’d love to, Father. Wouldn’t we, Mother?’

Mrs Spinell said nothing.

‘And I have some other news,’ he said.

He went back to the hall door, opened it and brought in a young woman, his hand tugging at her arm.

‘Cleaning is no longer a job for a German woman. She will do it for you so that you ladies can go off and enjoy yourselves with Mrs Weinart.’

Katharina hugged her father.

‘That’s marvellous news. Will she be able to mind Johannes sometimes?’

‘Of course. Whatever you want. She doesn’t speak German, so you will have to show her things.’

‘Is she Russian?’ said Mrs Spinell.

‘Call her Natasha,’ said Mr Spinell. ‘They’re all called Natasha.’

Mrs Spinell sat up.

‘I’m not having a Russian in my house.’

‘She’s here to help you, Esther. And she’ll sleep in the basement.’

‘I don’t want her.’

‘I do,’ said Katharina.

Mrs Spinell went to her room and closed the door. Katharina took Natasha to the kitchen.

30

His feet were sore and his face was sunburned. He flopped onto the ground.

‘How much longer?’

Weiss hunkered down beside him and lit two cigarettes.

‘Kraus says one more day. The bombing is already under way.’

‘They shouldn’t have started without us.’

‘Well, they have.’

Kraus shouted at them and pushed them on until the city spread out in front of them, a mass of white-painted concrete shrouded in black cloud.

‘That place is finished,’ said Weiss.

‘Let’s go home now, then. Leave them to it.’

‘And miss the big show?’

Stockhoff gave them pea soup and bread. They stared as they ate, at the planes weaving in and out of the clouds, at the explosions of fire and trails of smoke across the sky.

‘We have them,’ said Weiss. ‘Their backs against the river.’

‘I can feel the vibrations,’ said Faber. ‘How far away are we, Kraus?’

‘About ten miles.’

‘It’s the longest river in Europe,’ said Faustmann.

‘The longest in the German Empire,’ said Weiss. ‘What’s it called again?’

‘The Volga.’

‘Oh yeah. I remember,’ said Weiss. ‘I’ll swim in it. To mark our new frontier.’

‘And freeze your balls off,’ said Faustmann.

They laughed.

They sang and marched all day. That night Stockhoff fed them beef and carrot stew, the meat so tender that even Gunkel was pleased.

‘It’s almost as good as what you’d get in my shop,’ he said.

Kraus told them to rest, to prepare for the next day when they would move towards the north of the city. Kraft drank, more than he should have.

‘You’re lucky, Faber, to have a wife and son,’ he said.

‘Why’s that, Kraft?’

‘It’s something to fight for, Faber.’

‘You have your mother.’

‘She never wants me to leave her. To go out on my own.’

‘She’ll have got used to being without you now. You’ve been away so long.’

‘I have no life. Nothing of my own.’

‘Kraft, you’re not even twenty-five. Something will turn up.’

‘Maybe. She’s ill, you know.’

‘I know, Kraft.’

‘No, really ill. I got a letter from a neighbour.’

‘She’ll be fine. She always is.’

‘Kraus won’t let me go home. To see her.’

‘This won’t take long.’

‘I hate it.’

‘What?’

‘Killing. Watching people die. I hate it.’

‘You’ll be fine.’

‘I’ve always hated it. Killing. Hunting. My father called me a coward.’

‘I have a photograph of my son.’

‘He was always mocking me. Maybe he was right. That’s what I am.’

‘Do you want to see it?’

‘What?’

‘The photograph of my son?’

‘I should sleep, Faber.’

Faber reached into the inside of his tunic for the picture that had been taken not long after the birth, his son asleep, a loose fist resting against his right cheek. He kissed the child, and his wife’s hair.

At dawn, they began their march towards the city, hundreds of thousands of them.

‘This is it, Faber,’ said Weiss.

‘Home by Christmas, Weiss?’

They both laughed.

‘We’ll be heroes, Faber. Feted for generations to come.’

They stamped their feet into the ground, claiming it as their own. The planes rolled and dived over their heads, owning the sky, thrilling the soldiers underneath, schoolboys on the winning team. They fell quieter on the outskirts of the city, silent but for their steps and
breath as they moved along streets of mud and wooden houses, past neatly curtained windows. Inside, the tables were set for breakfast, but everyone was gone. Shoes and bags littered the roads.

They turned left onto a boulevard, its tar blasted and cratered, concrete strewn across the middle of the road, fires smouldering, apartments razed, shops blackened and burned, a thick veil of smoke and dust hanging over it all. He could now identify the smells of death – the initial stench of copper and shit, followed by the suffocating sweetness of rotting blood that lingered for days. He pressed on, past the infant boy, his body charred, only his fingernails still white. He found Kraus, crouched behind a chimneystack that no longer had its house. Weiss, Kraft, Gunkel and Faustmann were with him.

‘We’ve walked into hell, Sergeant,’ said Faber.

‘There’s a school close by that will serve as our company base. We’ll move across the city from there.’

‘How long will it take, Sergeant?’

‘Not long, Faber.’

‘You always say that.’

‘So stop fucking asking.’

The school still had most of its roof and all of its desks, though no longer in neat rows. The men went down into the basement, and found an extensive network of passages and rooms. Stockhoff was already there, preparing his kitchen. Queues had formed for the barber, tailor and cobbler, and small amounts of hot water were being dispensed for washing. The doctor was busy with blistered feet. Faber went there first.

‘I prefer the way my wife does it,’ said Faber. ‘Letting them soak in hot water first.’

‘I presume she only has one husband. Go on, out of here.’

Washed, shaved, his hair and nails cut, he settled down to clean his gun, stripping it back to dust and oil each part, his fingers practised in the routine. He slept well, despite the barrage of tank and artillery fire that continued through the night. It was not his problem. He was safe.