Berlin: A Novel (17 page)

'The Fuhrer must be told at once!'

Zastrow's barking laughter turned to a coughing fit. 'The Fiihrer?' he croaked when the coughing had died down. 'Him? He gets his executioners' reports fresh off the press on his desk.'

'He knows about it?'

'He laid the foundations for this madness. You can read all about it in his book - Mein Kampf, it's called. He leaves other people to carry out his plans.'

Helga returned to the immediate problem. 'Papa Zastrow, I have to get away from here, only - only not on my own. Please help us!'

'Us?'

'Karl and me.' Quickly. she filled him in.

Zastrow thought for a moment. 'Do you know the branch of the river that runs outside the little gate?'

' Yes.'

'On Christmas Eve they'll be celebrating.' He gave her a large iron key. 'The spare key. No one knows about it. The lock will be oiled. Slip away around seven that evening. When you're out there, signal with a light. Mato will strike a match to show you where the boat is. He's my youngest. He'll take the two of you to safety.'

Gi tze was being Father Christmas, handing out sugar stars and gingerbread. Some of the children were frightened of his white beard, others were stuffing themselves happily. Candles burned on the wooden Yule pyramid. Dr Urban had installed this piece of pseudo-Germanic folklore in person, before setting off to join his family in Berlin. Helga could have screamed with fury and outrage at the murderer's cynicism.

Nurse Evi had taken little Hans on her lap and was singing, 'Silent Night'. Her young face wore a childlike, devout expression. Karl was looking at her with the awakening interest of puberty.

Helga glanced at the clock. Time to get moving. She sniffed, wrinkled her nose, and drew her son closer to her. 'Oh, Karl, a big boy like you, having an accident!'

Karl protested. 'Didn't dirty my pants!'

'We'll see about that. Evi, we're going to freshen up. It may take a little time.' The student nurse raised her hands and struck up '0 Tannenbaum'.

Helga took her son's arm. The corridor and the stairs were deserted. She heard a babble of voices from below. The staff were celebrating in the hall, along with those inmates who were in any state to do so. In her room she put woollen stockings on her son, socks, a track suit and a thick sweater, as well as gumboots and a woolly hat, items that she had removed one by one from the stores. 'Didn't dirty my pants,' Karl insisted.

'No, no, you didn't,' she soothed him. 'Now, listen hard. You and mama are going away from here. You must keep very quiet so that nobody notices anything. There's nothing to be frightened of. Mama is with you.'

'Didn't dirty my pants. Not frightened either,' Karl announced.

She slipped into her boots and loden coat, and tied a scarf round her head. She put a small torch in her pocket. Her few things were packed in her case, around which she had put a leather strap. She slung it over her shoulder and took Karl's hand. They went quietly down the stairs. Helga opened the front door of the building - and immediately flinched back. Grabbe stood before them, a bottle of schnapps in his hand. His alcohol-laden breath wafted towards them.

Helga forced a smile. 'Happy Christmas, Herr Grabbe,' she said cheerfully.

'Happy Christmas,' Karl echoed her.

'Same to you,' replied Grabbe thickly, patting Karl's head.

It was snowing. The wind drove large, wet flakes into their faces. Helga avoided the forecourt, which was brightly lit. They took the path to the coach house and then went on through the bushes to the barred gate in the wall. The lock was well oiled, as Papa Zastrow had promised.

'Mama, I'm cold,' Karl said in a loud voice.

Alarmed, she put her hand over his mouth. She pointed her torch in the direction of the water, switched it on, and waited for a response, her heart thudding. A thousand thoughts went through her mind. Suppose Zastrow's son didn't come? They couldn't go back to the hospital. They would have to flee into the unknown. If it went wrong, she would put her scarf around Karl's neck as if she were applying a tourniquet. It wouldn't take more than twenty seconds. And then she would follow him.

A match flared up, illuminating a face. Through the driving snow, she saw the indistinct shape of a rowing boat in the reeds. She took her son on her back. He was heavy, his weight pushed her down into the icy mud until it came over her knees. It was a torment to haul her feet, step by step, from the suction of its embrace. Then strong arms heaved her into the boat. 'Get under the tarpaulin,' her rescuer told her.

How long the boat journey lasted she didn't know. It seemed as if she lay freezing under the tarpaulin for an eternity, her son, shivering with cold, in her arms. She heard the monotonous splash of the oars dipping in and out of the water. When the boat turned right she peered out. The driving snow had stopped falling, and the night was clear enough for her to see a few metres ahead. Her ferryman was punting the boat with one oar, towards a place in what looked like an impenetrable wall of reeds. They parted. Willows bent low, their branches lashing the tarpaulin. Driftwood scraped the outside of the boat with a dull sound as they glided into a narrow arm of the waterway. The branches of alders reared aloft like ghosts.

It was another quarter of an hour before the boat came up against a landing stage. Their rescuer made it fast and helped them out. They climbed a slope, a house towering black above them. Everything around it was wet and cold, and Karl clung to his mother for protection. My God, where have we ended up? Helga thought desperately.

The door of the house was opened. Golden light streamed out to meet them. Inside, the place was warm and comfortable. There was a scent of baked apples and cinnamon in the air, and a Christmas tree with burning candles lit the parlour. Five people, four women and a man, surrounded the new arrivals. The women wore festive costumes, elaborately winged caps and finely embroidered shawls. The man was wearing a blue and white patterned smock. He had dark hair streaked with grey, and a ruddy complexion. He stepped forward and said solemnly, Witamy was wutsobnje w Blotojskem.'

Helga was at a loss, but her host repeated it in German. 'You are very welcome to the Spreewald. My name is Fryco Hejdus. This is my wife Wanda, these are my daughters Marja, Slawa and Breda, and you know Zastrow's son Mato already.'

Her ferryman turned out to be a handsome man of twenty with nutbrown hair, who was watching her admiringly. She gave him her hand. 'Thank you, Mato. Thank you all. Karl, say thank you.' Karl obediently shook hands with everyone. The girls giggled and kissed him on the forehead. They were somewhere between fourteen and eighteen years old. Helga was surprised to see how naturally they accepted the boy, although they had probably never seen a mongol child before.

In the bedroom next to the parlour, Hejdus's wife Wanda gave them dry clothes to put on. Then they found a large, steaming bowl of punch waiting in front of the Christmas tree to warm them up. The master of the house filled wooden mugs with a wooden ladle. It was all done in as friendly and natural a manner as if they were old acquaintances.

Helga was anxious. 'Suppose they come looking for us?'

Hejdus dismissed the idea. 'They won't, not on Christmas Eve. And certainly not in this filthy weather. We can talk in peace tomorrow.'

There was baked carp with boiled potatoes and green Spreewald sauce, and pickled cucumbers with dill on the side. Karl ate tidily and with obvious pleasure. The girls mothered him. Helga couldn't remember when she'd felt as relaxed and as much at home, as she did here, at the table of these strangers. They spoke fluent German but occasionally lapsed into their native Sorbian. The fact that young Mato had eyes only for her both amused and flattered her.

Wanda Hejdus had made up the bed in the room next door for them. Mother and son fell asleep holding each other close.

A bright, sunny Christmas Day emerged from the mist. The Hejdus family had already gathered around the breakfast table when Helga and Karl appeared. There was gugelhupf, yeast cake baked in a ring mould, and cocoa with milk for the young people, and real coffee for the adults. Wanda Hejdus had bartered several dozen eggs for the coffee in Lubnjow.

'To think we have to do such things.' said Hejdus. 'This damn war.'

'Nonsense,' said his wife. 'Our grandparents and great-grandparents bartered goods whether it was war or peacetime. Money's always been in short supply in the Spreewald.'

After breakfast they went out. The house that had looked so forbidding the night before lay bathed in sunlight. A little way behind it stood a reedthatched cottage. 'That's where Zastrow and his son live,' Hejdus explained. 'We farm the Kaupe together. The Kaupe? That's what we call the sandy island enriched by the waters of the Spree that our ancestors settled and reclaimed for cultivation three hundred years ago,' he told his guest with pride. 'We grow cucumbers, onions, horseradish and buckwheat, and of course potatoes. Our catches of fish make a great contribution to the final victory, that's what the local Party leader says, and he has the fattest carp parcelled up for himself.'

'Repaying us by turning a blind eye if we forget to fly the Party flag on the Fiihrer's birthday yet again,' added his wife.

Mato waved up at them, smiling. He was sitting in the rowing boat, fishing. Karl ran down to him, and Mato helped him into the boat.

'He ought to be on the Eastern Front,' Hejdus muttered. 'But he won't fight for a regime that ranks us as second-class citizens. We Sorbs are Slavs and don't belong to the Germanic master race.'

'Suppose someone sees him? A healthy young man, not in uniform ... ?'

'Then he'll end up like young Lenik. Lenik was a rebellious lad even at school. He tore up his call-up papers in front of Liibben Town Hall, said he had better things to do than go to war for those madmen. The SA fetched him from his bed at night. We found him in the morning. He was in a cucumber barrel, head down in the brine.'

Hejdus's eldest daughter sobbed. 'They were engaged, Marja and Lenik,' said her mother sadly.

A duck quacked in alarm some way off. 'Quick, come indoors.' Hejdus took Helga's arm, and Mato followed from the landing stage with Karl. In the kitchen, the master of the house opened a trapdoor. Helga looked down a shaft, and saw her face reflected in water a metre below. A couple of rungs led down the shaft. Hejdus pulled a chain, and there was a rushing, gurgling sound. The water flowed away, revealing a hatch secured by four large, wing-nut screws. Mato let himself down, undid the screws and raised the hatch. 'Right, you and the boy go down there,' Hejdus told them.

Helga helped Karl into the shaft and climbed down after him. Mato caught mother and son at the bottom. A ladder led from the hatch into a room measuring about three by three metres, and the height of a man. Mato lit an oil lamp on the table. In its dim light, Helga saw stools and camp beds. Meanwhile, Hejdus was screwing the hatch back into place overhead. They heard rushing water. 'It will rise to a height of half a metre,' explained Mato with satisfaction. 'Don't worry, the way down is well sealed. The inner tubes of bicycle tyres stuffed with women's hair are the best seal there is. They even use something similar to make U-boat hatches watertight.' The young man pointed to an opening halfway up the wall. 'The ventilation pipe. It ends in a tree stump outside. We have plenty of food and drink, and as long as we keep quiet no one will find us here.'

'How do you know when someone's coming?'

'You couldn't see it in the dark yesterday, but there's an old raised hide for duck shooting at the mouth of the channel. One of us is always on the lookout up there. When someone's coming he quacks like a teal on the decoy whistle. That gives us a good ten minutes to disappear.' The sound of an engine was heard, buzzing angrily like a hornet. Mato raised a warning hand. 'It's Barsig.'

Helga held Karl close, ready to bury his face in her lap to suppress any sound. But the boy looked slyly at her with his narrow, mongol eyes and put a finger on his lips. He had understood.

Deadly fear rose in her, as if icy fingers were tightening around her neck. The sound of the engine cut out. Indistinct voices came down to them. Sweat ran down the back of her neck, and she struggled for air. Mato moved his stool under the opening of the ventilation pipe, and indicated that she should climb up on it. The cool air was a great relief. She took several deep breaths.

Up above, the engine came on again, and quickly receded. Long minutes of anxious waiting followed. Waiting for she didn't know what. At last the water flowed away, gurgling. The hatch was opened, and she saw Hejdus's head. All clear, you can come up now.'

The girls took Karl out of doors with them to play hide and seek. Helga sat down at the table with the others. She was trembling. A glass of juniper spirit helped to calm her. 'Who's Barsig?'

'The sergeant from the police station in Lubnjow. Tough as they come. He turns up unexpectedly all over the place in that boat of his, with its outboard motor. He was probably hoping we wouldn't be reckoning on a Christmas Day visit. That's how he took the Siwalniks by surprise last Easter when they were killing a pig on the quiet. Now they're all in jail in Cottbus.' Hejdus clasped his hands so hard that the knuckles turned white. 'If it didn't mean everyone would be in trouble, we'd have done for him and a few others long ago.'