Devastation Road (11 page)

‘Jesus Christ,’ said Owen. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

There were voices outside, then shouts.

‘For fuck’s sake, come on!’

Then the two of them were scrambling through the rubble, the baby held to Owen’s chest as they pushed through the charred remains of the doorway and out into the rain. They sprinted across
the field, towards a line of trees, a bank and a river. He could hear a lone soldier chasing them and shouting, ‘
Halt! Halt, oder ich schieße!
’

The trapped man was still shrieking as a shot whistled past, and another, and they heard the clang of a bullet hitting metal.

Owen and Janek ran.

They let the river take them, the slow current like invisible hands pulling the boat downstream. Around them the rain hissed, hundreds of thousands of droplets spearing the
water and splashing up again, every one a heartbeat. There were no oars and they were left to the river’s will; only occasionally would one of them lean over the side and paddle a little with
a hand to stop the boat from beaching or getting caught up among the overhanging branches. Otherwise they glided, hopelessly adrift.

The boat was flimsy and the water rose up to just beneath the gunwale. Owen held the baby, keeping him as dry as he could within his open jacket. The infant’s arms and legs squirmed, and
his face screwed up and puckered but no tears came. Owen wore the mushroom cap Janek had given him and the towel requisitioned from the farmer’s widow wrapped around his shoulders. The rain
stuck his trousers and jacket to him and gradually filled the boat until there was water seeping in through the bottom of his shoes as well.

They did not talk, Owen facing forward, while Janek sat opposite him, his back to the oncoming river, shaking uncontrollably. He would not look at Owen. He stared into the water as it passed
beneath them, furiously alive with rain.

They were out of control, Owen thought. This boy was out of control.
Brothers
, Janek had said. But in Owen’s mind, whatever bound them together was starting to feel more like a
knot tightening around his neck.

The house was tucked away behind the trees, but even as they stole past in the boat, they had seen that the ruins were empty. They walked around it, warily at first, as the rain
pattered down. It had peaked gables and a brown slate roof, and all the windows were without glass, some without even frames. As they came around the side through the thick grass and birch saplings
that pressed against the walls, they found stone steps that led up to a missing door, and inside a landslide of rubble where part of the back wall had completely fallen in. Through the paneless
windows, branches reached in like stretching arms, and where the roof had collapsed, grass had taken root along the top of the walls as well as nettles that were lined in regimental rows.

There were two rooms downstairs but only one still with a ceiling. The cement rendering was falling away, exhibiting the brickwork beneath that looked pink and sore, as if the rendering had been
protecting it like a scab. Against the two window frames, cobwebs hung in drooling rags.

‘We ought to make a fire,’ said Owen. ‘For the child.’ He pointed at the grate.

The floor was strewn with concrete dust and crushed bricks, bits of wood and loose nails. By the crumbling stone hearth there were animal bones and a rusty fork, and a man’s muddy unlaced
shoe.

Janek kicked at a scorched water canister, mumbling something to himself.

‘Well, at least it’s dry,’ offered Owen.

In the adjoining room, where the ceiling was in tatters and there were bars at the window, Janek had found an old bathtub and cleared out the rubble. Now he lay in it beneath the one bit of roof
that was still intact, the baby’s papoose like a hood pulled deep over his eyes and his bag placed as a lumpy pillow behind his head. His arms and legs dangled like spider legs over the
side.

Sitting by the fire, Owen gave the child the last of the milk, though he vomited it up almost immediately and then started to wail. When Owen undid the baby’s clothing, the one nappy they
had was soiled through. He hesitantly took it off as the baby’s little face strained puce, then jerked his head back at the sour stench. He had never seen diarrhoea so yellow. The skin around
the baby’s bottom and sides was a fiery pink and there was a rash developing across his cheeks that felt like sandpaper.

‘No wonder you’re making a fuss.’ He cleaned him up as best he could. ‘I’m sorry, Little Man,’ he said. ‘I know, I know. I should never have picked you
up. But we couldn’t leave you, could we, eh? No. And you can kick and scream all you like, Little Man, but I’m going to see you right. I promise. I’m going to see you
right.’

The fire crackled, casting a flickering light across the floor and strange shadows that reached up the brickwork and spread thin-limbed across the ceiling. Clean and warm the
baby slept, but his breathing became so light that Owen had to keep checking that he was still alive.

Janek huddled, brooding in the corner. There was no water left, no bread, no tins, just half a packet of biscuits that had got so soggy in the downpour not even Janek would touch them. He poked
nonchalantly around with a stick, and then scratched the familiar curling wings of a ‘V’ into the dirt and then the smaller ‘v’ beneath it and marked a box around them
both.

‘What is that?’ said Owen. ‘You keep drawing it.’

Silent, Janek rubbed it out. He glanced at Owen over his shoulder. Then, with an evident change of mind, he sat himself down again and, pressing the stick hard and flat in the dirt, he swept out
a space. With careful precision he drew the two ‘V’s in the dust.

He pointed at the larger one with his stick. ‘
To jsou k
ř
ídla
,’ he said. ‘
K
ř
ídla
.’ He flapped his arms like wings.

‘Ah,’ said Owen. He looked more closely. ‘Oh. And this one.’ He pointed at the smaller ‘v’ beneath it. ‘That must be a head. Yes?’

‘
Ano
, yes.’

‘Yes,’ said Owen, ‘I see. It’s a bird.’

‘Ano,’ said Janek. He nodded. ‘Bird. Yes. How you say . . .?’ He thought hard, his mouth trying to shape words that he couldn’t find. He tried coaxing the words out
with his hands, and then huffed. ‘I not know. Er . . . bird, yes? We say
sokol
. It is
sokol
. Yes?’

Owen nodded. He wasn’t sure. It looked like a bird of prey.

Janek then drew the box around it. He put the stick down and motioned with his hands, shaping cubes and squares, then shaking his fists and murmuring words in Czech that Owen didn’t
understand.

‘Box?’ Owen guessed. ‘Cage? Trap?’

‘Cage. Yes,
ano
.’ The boy smiled now, pleased with their progress. He pointed at the bird again. ‘
Č
eskoslovensko, ano?
People.’ He signalled at the
cage.

‘You’re saying the bird is the people?’ Owen said. ‘In a cage, yes?’

‘Cage. Yes,’ said the boy. ‘But . . . mm.’ He thought about it. ‘One day.’ He rubbed out the box and fluttered his hand through the air.

‘Oh,’ said Owen. He nodded. He understood now.

‘One day.
Nebudou tady N
ě
mci
. No
Deutsch
,’ the boy said. ‘No
Rusové
. No
bolševici
. No
komunisté. Jenom
Č
eši
. Only Czech. Yes?’

‘Yes,’ said Owen. ‘You’ll be free.’

The boy gave Owen a grin.

‘And this man today, then?’ asked Owen. ‘Who was that?’

The boy’s smile fell and his face tightened.

‘I not understand,’ he said. But Owen was certain that he did. He stared at the bird scrawled in the dust.

‘He was the same man though, wasn’t he?’ said Owen. ‘The man we saw at the farmhouse. Do you remember? You know who I mean, don’t you?’

‘He is Nemecek,’ said Janek.

‘Is that his name?’

‘He is traitor,’ he said. He gazed into the fire. ‘Like Kate
ř
ina.’

Then he scuffed out the bird with his hand and walked out of the room.

What if she was gone – this wife, this lover, this girlfriend, this missing part? What if she had not forgotten him but had given up on him? How long had she been waiting?
He wondered if he had written her letters; if she had written to him, and what she might have said; what private things they might have laughed at, what shared secrets, the codes of lovers trailing
back and forth between them in little more than the flow of ink. He wondered at what point she might decide that he was dead; whether, in fact, she had decided already and had put her pen down for
the last time, her last words to him already parcelled in an envelope, sealed with a kiss.

He watched Janek dozing, flinching occasionally as if his mind were balanced on the brink of sleep while his body kept trying to yank him back. Plenty old enough for girls himself, Owen thought.
He wondered whether the boy had broken hearts like Max had, or perhaps beneath all that Czech bravado he was shy and still unsure of himself – all his mistakes yet to be made.

He shuffled closer to the fire. He sat in nothing but his undergarments while his clothes dried on a makeshift teepee of branches that he’d gathered from outside.

The jacket and the trousers and the shirt still bothered him; he couldn’t fathom how he had ended up with them. At least the jacket fit, though both of the shoulders were strangely ripped
at the same point, broken cotton threads hanging where something had hastily been removed. There were similar holes and threads around the cuffs. He wondered if there had been an insignia; if it
was a pilot’s jacket, perhaps.

He slipped the shoes back on and poked at the fire, then unhooked the shirt from the branch and turned the sleeves inside out to dry the other side. He did the same with the trousers, and the
jacket. Only then did he see something attached to it – a dead leaf clinging to the lining – but when he shook the jacket out, the leaf was still there.

Not a leaf, he saw as he looked more closely, but a square scrap of grey material the same colour as the lining and lightly tacked to the inside pocket with a fine red thread. He picked at it
with the tip of a finger, puzzled. Some of the threads holding it in place were broken and frayed and grubby. The inside of the jacket didn’t look ripped; yet the cotton square was stitched
there as if it were a patch sewn on and snipped from dead grey skin.

He sat beneath the window and listened to the rain dripping through the house, holding the baby so that his head touched Owen’s chin and he could feel and smell his
warmth. The infant was fighting hard to stay awake but the weight of sleep kept pulling him under. Perhaps when Owen fell asleep too this nightmare would fall away and he would wake to find himself
somewhere else. In a bed somewhere. A house. A house, he decided, with red geraniums in pots on each of the steps that led down from the door to the small yard and the door in the fence that opened
on to the street. He would sit on one of the steps and roll a cigarette, smoking it before he let himself in. A moment with the geraniums and nothing but his thoughts. He would sit and smoke and
think and plan, and collect up the fallen petals and hold them, an offering for her, red and curled in the palm of his hand.

It was still dark when he jerked awake with a strange sensation of being watched. The fire had burnt itself out and the night was thick at the windows. At least twice he had
been aware of the baby waking and each time the boy had picked him up and taken him out. Owen had heard crying outside. Now the baby was no more than a curled heap of clothing on the floor, while
Janek lay on his side, pressed into the wall, his hands kept warm between his thighs and his leg twitching.

As Owen crossed the room in the darkness, his feet kicked something – a tin – and the baby woke, gave a murmur at first and then started to cry.

‘No, shhh, shhh,’ he whispered. He scooped the child up, glancing at Janek, and clambered up the rubble mound to look out, jigging the baby up and down. He strained his eyes but he
couldn’t see anything.

He heard the soft crunch of foliage. A flicker of movement among the trees. Taking the baby with him, he made his way precariously over the debris to the main entrance and stood on the steps. It
was cold and he could see the vapours of his breath. He stepped carefully down on to the grass and stopped; he could make out nothing but darkness and shadows. A slight crackle. A quivering
breath.

‘Who’s there?’

With his free hand he groped in his pocket and pulled out the pistol, struggling with it in his hand.

‘Who’s there?’ he said again nervously. Then louder: ‘I said, who’s there?’

There was silence; and then a figure slowly and cautiously edged out from behind one of the trees.

‘
Bitte
,’ she said softly. Then, in a familiar accent: ‘Please. Don’t shoot.’

‘Who are you?’ he said. ‘Jesus Christ. What the hell do you want?’

She took another step forward. It was the girl from the roadside. She wore a long coat but it was the pink cardigan and tightly tied scarf around her head that he recognized in the darkness
– and the wildness in her eyes. She gazed at the baby in his arms.

‘Take me with you,’ she said, her eyes glistening with tears and her voice breathless. ‘Please.’ She stepped closer. ‘You have to take me as well.’

‘I am Polish,’ she said. ‘A Jew.’

‘Your name?’

‘Irena. Irena Borkowski.’

‘And where in Poland?’

‘Pabianice,’ she said. ‘Near
Ł
ód
ź
. Do you know?’

Owen didn’t know any places in Poland. He didn’t know why he had asked. He was surprised she’d told him she was Jewish; he rather fancied that given where they were, he would
have kept that to himself.

She sat in her long coat, her legs folded to one side, the grubby hem of her white dress showing along with the blotchy scratches on her calves and her filthy patent shoes. The pink cardigan was
embroidered with white and orange daisies. She didn’t have anything else with her, not even a bag.