Devastation Road (14 page)

‘Thank God,’ Owen murmured.

The river churned around them. He clutched the child to his chest.

They joined a road that grew busier, everyone heading in the same direction it seemed. Many were German soldiers, all exhausted, sometimes walking in small groups but often
alone, the abandoned or the deserters, some already holding white handkerchiefs ready to give themselves up. There were families too, dragging tired children with leaden legs or pushing their goods
in carts fashioned from crates, or prams, or nothing more than flat pieces of wood attached to rattling wheels and pulled by lengths of rope. Some walked without anything. But all of them were
hurrying. Owen could see the anxiety in the tight expression on their faces.

All four of them were still damp and shaken, and slopping in their shoes. There had been little conversation but something in their group had now shifted, like four tiny pieces of a watch
mechanism clicking into place. Just a glance sometimes from one to another. A single shared thought.

Janek blamed himself. He had crafted the papoose, after all.

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Owen told him.

But the boy would not listen. He watched Irena press her cheek to the baby’s head.

Just outside a village the three of them scrambled up on to the verge as four open-topped trucks rattled noisily past. There were hordes of thin-faced men piled in each. They
were singing raucously, some sitting, some standing and swirling the French Tricolore. They slapped at the sides of the cart as it rumbled by, banging out a tribal rhythm to accompany an accordion,
and in their wake, Owen could hear cheers of ‘
Liberté
’ and ‘
Vive la France!
’

‘What’s happened?’ he shouted to them. ‘
Qu’est-il arrivé?
’

‘
Votre Hitler est mort
,’ one called back. ‘
La guerre est finie
.’ Then the man threw a bottle that shattered on the road at Owen’s feet and
laughed.

‘
Saloperie d’Allemand!
’

It was hard to know what to feel – the end of a war that in his mind had barely started. There was not relief or despair. There was simply disbelief, as if he had found
out he had been cured of a terminal illness that he had only just learnt he had.

He lay on his back in the long grass staring up at the blue and the soft trail of clouds like smoke from the last guns. Perhaps the sight of a plane would jolt a memory. He stared up at the
great expanse, waiting, but nothing came.

He did not know what he had expected from Irena or Janek, but it was not this clenched silence. Their numbness was mirrored everywhere. There was no sigh; no long breath released that had been
held for all these years; no joyous hug or sudden embrace that they might later be embarrassed by.

‘It’s over then,’ he had said to Janek, as if perhaps Janek hadn’t understood.

‘
Ano
,’ said the boy. That was all.

He wandered blindly up the road as if Owen had said nothing more than the sun was out or his bag was undone or there might be bread for supper. He kicked along the grass verge, occasionally
pulling a stalk of oat grass and flicking it around for a bit before letting it drop from his hand. Irena walked some distance behind, gently jigging the baby, her head nodding in time as if in her
thoughts she was quietly agreeing with it.

And so the war had ended – not with a bang but a slow death, a last exhale to nothing.

A mile or so later they passed the remnants of a German battalion scattered along the verge like debris. They sat bent in the grass, or lay flat on their backs, or stood about puffing on
cigarettes and staring blankly through the smoke, their sniper rifles lying discarded at their feet. Nobody spoke. Behind them a single soldier stumbled around in the middle of a ploughed field,
tripping over the muddy furrows as if drunk and clutching his head in his hands. Even from the road they could hear him moaning and then he pulled a pistol from its holster and, before Owen could
register what he was doing, the man had put it to his head and fired.

They did not speak but walked through the dream. At one point they passed a man sitting in the grass on a milking stool, hunched over and staring at his undone laces as if it
were the undoing of these that had been the undoing of his war.

Janek drew a deep breath. He threw them both a look, hands in pockets, saying something and nodding as if something at last had been decided, they could set forth with a longer stride.

‘He says everyone will be freed now,’ Irena translated. ‘His brother will be free. And we will find him.’

‘Yes,’ said Owen, smiling at him.

Everyone who was lost would be found. Everything would be mended.

They sheltered in a hay store that night, in the middle of some woods. Inside it was just large enough for the three of them to lie out, the baby in a bundle between them. One
end of the store was entirely open so that they could watch the boughs being blown about, casting shadows across the clearing that were like figures wandering lost in the dark.

After a while, Janek took his rusty knife from his bag and started to scrape away at the side of the shed, etching out the shape of the wings, then a beak. Owen wished he wouldn’t; it was
starting to annoy him. Like a bloody calling card, as if he were leaving a trail for Czech savages to follow. The scratch and scratch and scratch grated on his nerves.

When he had finished the carving, Janek sat and pulled out photographs to show Irena. Petr, his parents, Lukáš, Nicol. Irena nodded and asked questions that Owen didn’t
understand. There was no mention of Kate
ř
ina.

They were at a narrow brook near the hay store, lit by the moonlight that fell through the trees and slid over the wet stones like melting wax. Owen dipped the canister in to
fill it then watched as Irena slipped her shoes off and stepped into the stream. The moonlight reflecting from it lapped around her calves.

‘It’s cold,’ she said.

‘I’m not surprised,’ he told her. ‘It’s late.’

‘Are you coming in?’

‘No.’

She picked her way over the stones and then, bending down, scooped handfuls of water up over her face. Already, after only a day with her, it felt different. She would be the glue or the wedge
between them, he thought; he just didn’t know which yet.

‘You shouldn’t call him “it”,’ he said.

‘Who?’

‘Your child.’ Janek had called him ‘
mala veverka
’, but Owen, as his mother would have done, would call him Little Man.

Irena took no notice.

‘I could die here,’ she suddenly said. Then she threw her arms out wide. ‘I am floating in the water,’ she shouted. ‘I am a little star.’

He smiled and lifted his gaze as he took a sip from the canister.

When he looked again Irena had her back to him and was undoing the knot of her headscarf. He was surprised that her head was completely shaved down to the scalp. She glanced over her shoulder
and caught his eye.

Was that almost a smile?

The moonlight dripped from the leaves and washed the curvature of her skull with a soft coral glow, and the water around her ankles was flickering and in pieces.

He lay beside the fire outside, the patch of material held between finger and thumb. He gently rubbed at it, his forefinger circling the thumb and the fabric, the feeling
almost sensual as the material slid around, slowly warming as if, through the skin and knit of fibres, a connection was starting to ignite.

He tried to find her voice tucked away somewhere inside his head, perhaps the sound of her saying his name, as if that might be a way of bringing her back to him. He caught wisps of her: the
flurry of her dress, the hem billowing around an ankle as she passed by where he lay, his head in the grass; but she was gone before he could look up and see anything of her but the waft of
material, the flash of an ankle, the sun bright upon her pale thin feet.

He rested his head on his outstretched arm and held the square up to the fire. As his hand moved it this way and that, there were tiny pinpricks of light burning through; not accidental or
moth-eaten holes but regular ones made by a blunt needle or even perhaps the point of a compass, a loop of them in the top right corner that, as he moved his fingers away, he saw marked the outline
of a shape – a circle. No, not a circle. The pinpricks of flickering light shining through formed the outline of a heart.

From the crest of the hill they had seen the road sweep in on a curve and then score a ruled line across the flatlands that swarmed with people as far as the eye could see
– a river of them with no end and no beginning, coursing through the fields in an endless trudge of feet and turn of wheel and clump of weary hooves. They walked six or seven thick, and where
there was a cart or some other obstruction, they surged around it, moving with a shared momentum. Hundreds. Thousands. And in among them: traps and wagons and carts and barrows, homemade trolleys
piled with suitcases, bags, blankets, and children, even battle-beaten soldiers dressed in winter greatcoats, despite the vehement sun.

They called out to Janek as they threaded their way through the throng, Owen almost careering into the back of a bike as a man wheeled it past, and then, turning to avoid it, falling over a
child instead who was holding on to her sister’s hand, both of them clutching small bags. Someone shouted. Another child was crying. There were books scattered all over the road that people
were tripping over, and a motorbike trying to get past. And in among it all, Janek’s head would appear in the bobbing crowd or at one side of a cart or another, there for a second and then
gone.

‘Janek,’ Owen shouted. ‘Wait!’

Irena had wanted to stay in the fields but Janek had already set off tramping down the hill, taking the baby with him, and now they were caught in it too.

‘Janek,’ Owen shouted. But the boy would not stop.

When they finally caught up with him he had the baby balanced in one arm and was holding the photograph of his brother in the other hand, flashing it at an elderly couple with a suitcase carried
between them, and then a pair of war-torn soldiers, their faces grey with dirt, and then a girl in a mink stole.

‘This man,’ Janek said, thrusting the photograph into their faces. ‘
Tady toho mu
ž
e . . . Nevid
ě
li jste? Haben Sie ihn gesehen?
Please. Please, he is Petr
Sokol.’

He turned his attention to a younger woman carrying a satchel, with clothes draped over her arm that were still on their hangers. Then another with three children gathered close, herding them
like sheep. Then a woman with thin ankles clumping in soldiers’ boots. He kept trying, turning in circles, as the crowd on the road peeled around him. He held the photograph in front of them.
‘
Tady, toho mu
ž
e. Dieser Mann
.’ But none answered. A tired-looking soldier with a dachshund in his arms gave it a cursory glance.

‘Leave it, Janek,’ Owen said, trying to pull him away.

The boy shoved him off and grabbed a woman’s arm as she tried to slip past, holding the picture up to her.

‘
Podívej se na to!
’ he shouted. ‘Look at it!’

The woman pushed him away.

The lucky ones had carts, stacked with belongings and as many people as they could, children spilling out over the sides, holding sticks to the wheels so that they made a steady clicking as the
tips hit the turning spokes. Others simply sat, holding something precious to them as the wheels groaned through the dirt. There were prams with children and prams without, piled up with other
things. One woman pulled a sledge that kept tipping, everything scattering, cases and books and rusting saucepans, a lid freewheeling towards the ditch. Most, though, had nothing but the clothes
they walked in, sometimes not even shoes but rags tied and knotted around their calloused feet.

As they moved westward, Janek seemed intent on trying everyone, the photograph of Petr still clutched in his hand. He disappeared for hours sometimes, pushing through the crowds, and only
occasionally coming back with other news that he had unearthed. Irena translated as best she could: the road would take them to the Americans. All of Germany had been taken. The British were
further north. There were camps everywhere with people in; hundreds, thousands, no one knew. They had seen terrible things. Some on the road had been liberated. Others were fleeing something. When
they got to a town where the Americans were, Janek reported, there would be food, so much food, he said. The Americans were feeding everyone, putting everyone up, and giving them chocolate,
cigarettes and clothes. Some were even going to America, he said; they were putting the lucky ones on aeroplanes and flying them to New York. These were the things that some had said. Others said
that none of it was true. It was just crazy talk.

‘Where are we going then?’ said Owen. ‘Has anyone said where the road actually goes?’

Janek didn’t know. No one did. They all just wanted to get away from the Russians. The war might be over but the Red Army, they had heard, was still coming.

Owen couldn’t help but laugh. ‘You mean no one knows where the road goes?’

‘Leipzig,’ Irena said.

‘And how do
you
know?’

She hitched the baby further up in her arms. ‘I know this road,’ she said.

He was barely conscious of the people around him any more, his mind tumbling deeper and deeper into his own thoughts. Only occasionally did a sight catch his eye: a girl with
the head of a small cat poking out through the zip of a bag; a man with an accordion bumping against his waist, so that with every step it made a wheeze, giving sound to his puffing breath. Then,
further ahead, he spotted a man with a sawn-off rifle for a leg, the end of the barrel digging into the dirt, the rest of it disappearing up a cut-off trouser leg. As they caught up, the man met
Owen’s eye and said a few words.

Irena smiled. ‘He says, you must not worry. It is not loaded. It is the gun that blew his leg off. Now it is new leg.’