The Undertaking (21 page)

55

The Weinarts sent him a car for his second birthday, a small red one, but there was no birthday party or cake, just Katharina and her son in the park, his feet paddling in the water, his mother holding on to him, ruffling his hair with her kisses.

56

Berlin, October 24th, 1944

    
My darling Peter
,

        
Aachen surrendered today, my love. That beautiful cathedral in the hands of our enemies. I once spent a day in that warren of streets, and now it’s theirs. The people who want to destroy us. Humiliate us
.

        
How must it have been, my darling, to know the Americans were coming, to sit waiting, knowing your troops were doing their best, but watching them flee, your protectors, fleeing in the face of the enemy?

        
I suppose that I shall find out. My father refuses to tell me anything about the Russians, but I know it is imminent. The whole city knows it
.

        
I spend most of my days alone with our son, with barely any adult to talk to. Mrs Weinart seldom invites us to visit any more, maybe once a month, or every six weeks. She is not as sociable as she used to be, or else I am no longer welcome. Truth is hard to find these days
.

        
I wonder who will reach us first? The Russians or the English and Americans? I think about fleeing; all day I consider my options. The truth is, my love, I have none. I have nowhere to go. No one who would want to house me and our son. The roads are already clogged and my father refuses to leave anyway. He insists that Berlin will be safe. I don’t know why he thinks that. Nowhere else is
.

        
I squirrel away what food I can, hiding it even from my parents. I need to keep our son alive, so that you will meet him one day. Whenever that will be, I don’t know, but it will be because I know that you are alive. I know that you would not die on me. I know that, so I will keep waiting for you. Here. In this house. Where we first made love. Where we made our son
.

        
My God, I love you. You and Johannes are all I have
.

        
Katharina

PS I will store this letter and keep it for you. So that you know how much I missed you. How much I needed you
.

57

He vomited as she lifted him out of his chair. She cleaned him up and laid him in his cot in fresh clothes, watching as he fell asleep. She lay down too, uncertain why she was so reluctant to leave him. He had vomited before. Eventually, she fell asleep, lightly enough to hear him yelp, to be beside him as he vomited a second time, his face flushed, his eyes glazed. She picked him up. He was limp, in some state other than sleep. She washed and dressed him, pulled on their coats and ran down onto the street and across the city, stumbling under the child’s weight because trains and taxis could no longer function. She carried him in her arms, on one hip, then on the other, wishing she had her old pram, with its excellent suspension. She ran again, but then walked, exhausted by his weight. His leadenness. She reached the doctor’s door and knocked. Mrs Weinart opened it.

‘Thank God you’re home, Mrs Weinart. It’s Johannes. He seems really sick.’

‘I’ll fetch my husband.’

They followed him to his study where he undressed her son, removing his coat, his sweater, his shirt and vest, revealing skin covered in a red rash. He examined the child’s eyes, listened to his breathing, and moved his neck backwards and forwards. The doctor sighed. He put the boy’s vest back on, buttoned his shirt and trousers. He handed Katharina the child and his sweater.

‘Katharina, it’s not good news.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Johannes has meningitis.’

‘Thank God I brought him to you.’

‘He needs antibiotics.’

She breathed into his hair.

‘That’s fine. He can have them.’

‘I don’t have enough.’

‘Enough?’

‘No.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t have enough to give him any, Katharina.’

‘But you have some? You could give him some and make him at least a little better?’

‘Supply is very limited, Katharina. Restricted.’

‘I really don’t understand, Dr Weinart.’

‘I need it for other children.’

‘Other children?’

‘The children of senior party members. I have to keep it for them.’

‘They’re not sick. My son is sick.’

‘They might become sick and need it.’

She felt her legs sag. Mrs Weinart guided her to a chair, so soft that she could barely feel its leather.

‘You can’t do this, Dr Weinart.’

‘I’m afraid that I have to.’

She looked at the doctor, at his wife.

‘But you said he was like one of your own.’

‘He is, Katharina,’ said Dr Weinart.

‘So, give him the medicine. As you would give it to one of yours.’

‘I can’t, Katharina.’

‘Who would know?’

‘I would.’

‘So lie to yourself.’

He laughed.

‘I can’t do that, Katharina. I am too honest a man.’

‘So who are you saving it for, Dr Weinart? The Führer doesn’t have any children.’

‘At this stage, all my paediatric medicines are for the children of senior party members.’

‘Like Joachim?’

‘Yes, like Joachim.’

She stroked her child’s hand. His cheek.

‘And the women with the blue crosses?’

‘In all likelihood, yes.’

‘But I don’t qualify?’

‘No, Katharina, you do not.’

‘What more should I have done?’

‘There’s no point in going into that now, Katharina.’

‘Now seems as good a time as any other.’

Mrs Weinart put a hand on Katharina’s shoulder.

‘You’re upset, Katharina,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should go home.’

Katharina nodded and began to dress her son in his sweater and coat.

‘I remember that coat,’ said Mrs Weinart. ‘It’s adorable on him.’

Katharina picked up her bag and stood up.

‘So what happens to my son, Dr Weinart?’

‘He’ll go into a coma, Katharina, and not come out of it.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Was my brother not enough for you, Dr Weinart?’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Faber?’

‘Not enough of a sacrifice?’

He screwed the cap back onto his pen.

‘I think you should leave now, Mrs Faber.’

‘First my brother, now my son. Possibly my husband too. For the great cause.’

‘You’re upset, Katharina.’

‘I am, Mrs Weinart. I am upset.’

‘It’s understandable.’

‘When is it your turn, Dr Weinart? Your turn to sacrifice? Your wife, first? One of your children?’

‘You should go now, Mrs Faber.’

He took her arm and steered her through his study door to the hall.

‘One day you will see that this is better for your son, Mrs Faber.’

‘Better?’

‘His father failed his country. It is hard for a child to live with that legacy.’

He led Katharina to the front door.

‘And these things can have a genetic component, Katharina.’

‘What things? Meningitis?’

‘No, no. Bravery, courage.’

She stared at him, her child against her chest.

‘Choose more carefully next time, Katharina.’

She went to a hospital to show them her son. They sympathized, but had nothing. Nor did the next hospital. He had a seizure in the third hospital. Still they had nothing.

She returned home at dawn and crawled into their sheets, their child cradled in her arms. She took off his hat and kissed him on
the forehead, on the lips and cheeks, over and over. She brushed back his hair and sang to him, a lullaby, soothing him, holding him, rocking him, as though he were asleep.

58

He saw them at the head of the queue. Three of them, laughing. One of them holding a knife. He tucked his bowl into his chest and looked down, pretending not to see them, focusing on a small yellow flower shutting down for the day. The end of the first day of April.

He could see them moving down the line, their guards’ boots stopping intermittently. They stopped at him. They were drunk and shouting in broken German. One of them shoved him. He remained upright. They moved on and stopped at the next German. They pushed him. He fell and they yanked him from the line, to a place where everybody could see. They kicked him in the head, the back, the belly, and stamped on him, snapping bones, all the time shouting victory to Russia. And then there was the knife, stabbed in and out of flesh, blood spurting. Screams. Shouts. Russia would fuck Germany’s women. Faber stared at the flower, its yellow almost hidden by green sepals.

He moved up the queue, collected soup and bread and sat down. They gathered around him, jackets wet with blood. He was the only German left. They had shot Schultz, and the others had died, leaving him with a handful of Austrians, Romanians and Hungarians. The other prisoners were Russian, sent north for theft, murder and dissent.

He carried on eating, pretending everything was normal. Just another moment to be endured. The soup tasted of nothing. Of worse than nothing. Of spit. Of urine. Of their hatred. Of all the things to be avenged now that Germany had lost. The other prisoners were staring at him, their spoons suspended, their bodies leaning away. He tipped the soup into his mouth. A man can survive anything when his wife is faithful to him. That’s what the Russians say. He dipped the spoon back into the bowl and lifted it towards his mouth. They seized him, dragged him from the bench, splinters digging into the underside of his emaciated thighs, and pulled him across the yard, past the dead German, to the box. A space too low to stand up in, too narrow to lie down in. They closed the door and bolted it. No bench. No pot. The only light and air from gaps in the slats of wood. He buried his face in his hands. His bowl would be gone. His spoon too. He’d never get them back.

He touched the wood, its coarse planks and rusting nails. He had probably built it himself, one of dozens of watch-towers, sheds and huts thrown together over the years as they moved from one camp to the next, remaining only long enough to cut down all the trees within a ten-mile radius. He tried to stretch his legs, to get comfortable, but it was impossible. He sat on his heels, a bird perched in a small cage.

He heard the other prisoners at evening chores, their feet shuffling over dried mud as they swept paths, filled in holes and chopped wood, their breath heavy and laboured, their matchsitck bodies throwing shadows as they passed the box.

It was strange to be apart from the other prisoners and the guards. He had not been on his own since Stalingrad. It was pleasant in a way, to escape the tedium of chores, the stench of the shed packed with wooden slatted cots piled on top of each other, layer upon layer
of filth, grime and disease. He was always on a bottom bunk, always vulnerable to the drip of men pissing in their sleep, too exhausted or sick to visit the pot. He leaned his head against the side of the hut. He should rest. Sleep. He had been through worse. He had slept in smaller, tighter foxholes. He’d be fine.

He woke when it was dark. He needed to urinate. He unfastened his trousers and projected as far as he could, but it splashed him anyway, wetting his feet, his knees. He stretched a leg, lost his balance, unfolded the other, toppled again and returned to his initial position, his only possible position. He started to shiver. It was cold.

In the morning, he listened as the men lined up for breakfast, his ears straining for conversation. He heard nothing but intermittent coughing, the near silence broken by the guards’ shouts, the barrage of orders and commands that would last the whole day. He had thought that only he had withdrawn from conversation. But all the prisoners had, silence being easier to bear than contact with men who would die or disappear in the night. He had had no energy anyway. No energy to do anything but breathe and work.

They opened the door and shoved a bowl of gruel at him. Water too. But no spoon. He scooped it up with his hand and swallowed. It would keep him alive but it wouldn’t repair his stripped muscles, frostbitten toes, dry skin and loose hair. He had no vitamins, no nutrients, none of the good things he had told his pupils of in their lessons. The importance of fruit. An apple. It would hurt now to eat one. To bite into one with his red, damaged gums.

He tried to stretch his limbs, his back, but it was hopeless. He listened to the morning roll call. His name was left out. Gone from its usual position between two Russian names. He knew neither
of them. He knew nobody. He didn’t want to know anybody. His bowl and spoon were gone. So now he had nothing. The photographs of Katharina and Johannes were gone too. Sold to somebody who had no wife or child, or just lost or shredded. Was that what they meant by communism? Owning nothing? Every man equal in deprivation?

On Sundays, he attended classes on the merits of communism, the instruction given by prison guards doubling as teachers. The room was warm and he was given a hot drink. Sometimes chocolate, or a biscuit. He sat near the fire, even in summer when the grate was empty so that he retained his place, feigning interest in their ranting, their insistence on one philosophy over another. He understood much of what they said, because they said the same thing over and over in Russian and pidgin German, underscoring their points with newspaper pictures of a shattered Berlin, shouting that they would prevail because they were right. He never sought an argument. Only warmth and extra food.

He heard the other men moving out of the yard to begin their slow walk to the forest, to resume the cutting of the day before. Fir and pine trees. He preferred cutting rowan, oak and spruce because it was warmer where they grew, and the animals were less threatening – foxes, deer and squirrels rather than wolves and bears. It was brighter too, the light able to penetrate the leaves, to reach the forest floor. For he hated the dark. Men went mad in the darkness, walking naked through the snow, Russian and German alike; they were left behind when the camp moved on, abandoned, feral.

His legs began to cramp. He banged at the shed door, but nobody came. It was silent. He could not even hear the guards. Maybe they had gone, moved to a new camp. It never took long to leave; they had nothing to carry except a few tools for chopping and cooking.
The men he loathed had left him. He banged harder. Somebody banged back, the butt of a gun pounding the roof.

‘Shut up, you German bastard. Stalin will never let you out.’

They could do what they liked now. There would be no retaliation.

He slept until he heard the prisoners return, legs heavy with fatigue. They would wash, cursorily, and queue for food. Suddenly the door was opened, and he reached towards the light, the fresh air, but it was shut off again, a bowl of soup and cup of water at his feet. It had potato and traces of some fowl, probably turkey. The prisoners again started their evening duties, indifferent to his light taps against the wood, his yearning for contact.

What had he done? He was a soldier fighting in a war. It was his duty. He had done only what was asked of him. He had done nothing wrong, but they would leave him locked in a box, dying of hunger and thirst, leave him until only his bones remained, until nobody could tell it was him, nobody could tell Katharina how hard he had tried to live for her.

He started to shout, demanding to be let out. They banged on the box with their guns and fired bullets. He crouched and fell silent. He had been through worse. Stalingrad was worse.

When it was dark, they gathered around the shed and pounded on the roof. Dozens of them. Laughing. Shaking the box. Rattling it.

They left and he fell asleep until they returned to taunt him again. Three more times during the night, and again at dawn, whispering through the cracks in broken German.

‘We’ll fuck your wife, Faber.’

Faber shouted at them, screamed.

‘Leave my wife alone.’

Again they banged their guns against the shed and laughed.

‘It’s our turn now, Faber. Our turn with your women.’

‘I never went near your women. Never touched them.’

They shouted at him again, something he didn’t understand, and left. There was silence. It was the hour when the wolves retreat and the birds emerge. He was sobbing, at the pain in his back, his hips, his knees, at the injustice. He had never raped, never even touched a Russian woman. He was a married man.

He slept then, waking when he heard the men at breakfast. He started shaking, his body a knot of pain, fatigue, hunger and loneliness. He banged at the door.

‘Leave my wife alone.’

Nobody came near him. He rested his forehead on his knees and cradled his legs. A child in a broom cupboard. He passed the laurel hedge and went into his parents’ living room. He sat on the sofa. His mother came in, drew back the curtains and set down a cup of tea for him, a matching cup and saucer, and a side plate from the same service, with freshly baked biscuits.

‘Thank you, Mother.’

She kissed his head.

‘You’re welcome, darling.’

He drank and ate and gazed at the shelves, at the books lined up alphabetically and the ornaments still clean from their weekly dusting: the ballerina, pink, dainty porcelain in a house with no girls; the carriage clock as old as the marriage; the plates on display; and his gifts to her from his youth movement trips: a little blue bus from Bonn, a red ceramic train from Dusseldorf; she kept everything, every gift he had given her was dusted every Tuesday. He wondered
what day it was. Was it Tuesday? Was she dusting? Would they bring him breakfast?

They didn’t. He screamed at them, screamed for food. A guard came, banged on the shed, and walked away.

Faber crawled back onto the sofa and picked up the blue bus. He rocked back and forth. Toe to heel, heel to toe. The blue bus had always been his favourite. Hers too. He started to cry, calling for his mother. They hammered at the shed again. He screamed. They battered the wood, splinters flying at his face. He screamed louder. They fired a shot into the hut, over his head. He fell silent. They walked away. He buried his head in his hands. He wanted Faustmann. Faustmann would know what to do, how to help him through. Or Weiss. Or Fuchs. Even Kraus. They’d keep him straight. A boot in front to focus on, a path to follow. But he had no one. He was alone, dependent on himself, with only splinters of daylight to break the darkness.

He rocked harder, heel to toe, toe to heel. He buried his face in Katharina’s hair. Shutting his eyes harder, shutting out Weiss’ spilling stomach, Kraft’s shit, his shit, everybody’s shit. He didn’t want it any more. Any of it. All he wanted was his wife. A man can survive anything when his wife is faithful to him. That’s what the Russians say. He would survive if she was faithful, if she was waiting for him.

They brought him soup and water. He wolfed both, but didn’t ask for more. He fell into a deep sleep. They let him out the following morning, in time for breakfast, in time for the march to the forest.