Devastation Road (31 page)

She walked on oblivious, but then at the gates she stopped, hoisting the child further up on her shoulder and repositioning the strap of her bag around her neck. And then she quietly pulled the
gate open and slipped delicately through. Only then did he glimpse the pale skin of her face. She turned and walked down the road, and he watched as she disappeared almost silently into the
dark.

Connie’s arm was wrapped around him and hot against his chest. It was the lifting of it away from him though, the unpeeling of her from him, that woke him properly.

He opened his eyes.

Has your bear lost an eye?
Six words, and a hand reaching beneath the bench to pull out the button that had been lost in the dark. And she had seen right into him, perhaps heard the
slight English tone in his accent, seen the tension in his neck, or the nervous way he gripped the papers, fingers stained with sweat and ink that was lifting from the documents. She had given him
a chance. In the chaos that then ensued – the upheaval in the carriage this small child was making for him – he had inadvertently slipped the button into his pocket as he had made his
escape. Now he sat on the bed and held it in his hand.

He had ducked unnoticed from the carriage and was standing outside on the timbered platform holding on to the rail, looking up at the plane – sleek, silver and beautiful, turning above
them as the train pulled across the bridge and the river rushed below. He had stared as the plane passed overhead, its engine guttering over the rattling clank of the train’s wheels. From the
swollen belly of the plane, a single pellet appeared. He watched it fall, slowly at first and then gathering speed as it plummeted through the sky, faster and faster, falling furiously towards
them.

Out in the compound, dawn had broken and the morning was making a sluggish start. People wandered about, the odd truck kicked up stones as it rumbled through, and the medical
students were trudging out in their ghost-white suits, skirting puddles where it had rained during the night. He had seen neither sight nor sound of Janek since last night’s party. But here
was Anneliese, returned, standing behind the wire fence staring in, the forest stretching on behind her and the grass growing around her ankles as if she had been there as long as the trees. Her
mouth was open, her eyes wide and gazing blankly at him, not with fear but bafflement. It was only then that he realized how dirty she was. Her arms were locked rigid and plastered in mud right up
to her elbows. She couldn’t catch her breath.

He walked closer.

‘Irena,’ he said without thinking, and then corrected himself. ‘Anneliese, I mean. What are you doing? Are you all right?’

She stared at him. She tried to speak, her mouth shaping a sound that would not come.

He stepped closer and took hold of the wire.

‘What is it? What the hell’s wrong? And what are you doing through there anyway? Where’s the baby?’

Then the realization dropped.

‘Oh my God,’ he said slowly. He saw it in her eyes, in her soil-covered hands and arms, in her shaking. ‘Jesus, no. Where’s the baby? Where’s the baby, Anneliese?
Anneliese
? Listen. Listen, look at me. Look at me, Anneliese. For God’s sake look at me! Where’s the baby?’

Her eyes were red, her chest heaving. Behind him the sounds of the camp faded. He tried to keep his voice calm as he clung to the wire.

‘What have you done?’ But she wouldn’t answer. He shouted it again: ‘What have you done?’

‘He is gone,’ she said, her voice no more than a whisper.

‘What?’

‘I had to bury him.’

‘What? Oh, Jesus, no. No, Anneliese.’

‘No one wanted him,’ she said. ‘But it is all right now.’

The girl was in a dream, sounding so distant even though she was right there. He flushed pale. He shook the fence so hard it rattled, and then shouted: ‘Where is he?’

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I buried him properly. I planted him like a seed.’

‘Jesus Christ. Where?’

‘In the field,’ she said. ‘You didn’t want him. Nobody wanted him.’

But Owen wasn’t listening. He was already running. He flew along the perimeter, yelling: ‘Martha! Janek! Somebody! Help!’

There were people looking at him.

‘Oh God! SOMEBODY HELP ME!’

He reached the gates and pushed through them, then ran out across the road, beneath the hang of trees with their dappled light and shadows, then swerving off over the grass to the field, all dug
up in earthy furrows. He ran across it, tripping and scrambling. She wouldn’t do it. She hadn’t. She couldn’t have done it.

He thought he was going to be sick. In the middle of the field he stopped, turning again and again, hunting for any sign, but everywhere he looked the field’s surface looked the same. He
saw Anneliese had reached the edge of the field.

‘Where is he?’ he shouted at her. ‘Where is he?’

He fell to his knees. He started to dig, desperately clawing at the soil, doubled up and gasping, unable to breathe.

He was dimly aware of voices and figures approaching, slowly at first and then breaking into a run, and his own frantic cries of ‘the baby, the baby’, as if the words alone might
push the infant up and lift him from the earth.

Anneliese was being dragged across the furrows, but she couldn’t tell them where the child was. They couldn’t even shake a voice from her.

He didn’t know how many there were but they dug frantically with their hands, scrabbling at the earth, and all the time he kept thinking the field was falling away from him. It kept rising
up and tilting so that clods of soil skittered away, the earth trying to tip him from it.

Then a voice. A sudden rush of people hurriedly gathering into a circle. Guppy was there, and Hamilton too, nurses he’d seen from the hospital, and inmates drawn by the cries for help.
They collected around a single spot, two or three on their knees, furiously digging and brushing the dirt away. He didn’t move. Nor Anneliese. She stood a short distance away, her arms limp
at her sides and sobbing. They dug and dug until the murmurings of encouragement stopped and then something small and pale was slowly lifted, and a woman in a shawl had to quickly turn her head
away.

At 11.00 on Tuesday 15 May 1945, they buried him. No one knew exactly how old the child was, not even Anneliese. The engraving on the cross simply stated:
An unnamed
infant
.

There were mass graves in Camp 1 filled with the infected, but Little Man was buried among the trees at the spot where only hours before Owen had sat with Janek on an overturned oil drum. The
small group huddled among the ferns, while the Jewish chaplain and then Hamilton spoke a few words. Throughout it all Anneliese’s gaze was lost in the distance. Martha stood beside her with
her arms folded, seemingly unsure whether her face should be showing sympathy or rage. There was no sign of Janek and no time to find him.

By 11.15 it was done. The Czech deportees were leaving at twelve; there were plenty of other things to be getting on with. One by one they dispersed, the chaplain back to his office, Guppy back
to the estate car he was attempting to fix, Haynes and the handful of nurses back to their blocks and the tens of thousands of others who still needed their attention. Martha had last-minute
paperwork to collect before the transport convoy arrived. She stepped towards Owen before she left and brushed his arm with her fingertips.

‘You’ll need to be back before twelve,’ was all that she said.

He stood there alone, his eyes on the little cross that Guppy had hastily fashioned. He would dig another grave if he could. He would bury himself in it and let the earth gather itself around
him. He would take comfort in its embrace.

Turning, he then saw Anneliese just as she had appeared that first night, stepping out from the undergrowth with no child in her arms. This time, though, he could not meet her gaze. He pushed
through the ferns right past her, not knowing or caring any more.

She came crashing through the foliage after him as he headed towards the road. She was talking so fast. She kept grabbing at his arm, saying: ‘I had to. Don’t you see?’ And
then: ‘Now I can come with you,’ she kept saying, over and over. ‘Take me. Take me with you. Take me with you. Please.’

He could knock seven bells out of her; knock her into the ground. ‘For God’s sake, no!’

‘Why not?’ She tugged at him. ‘Please. Please,’ she said, ‘I beg you.’

He stumbled over the grass, walking blindly out on to the road, his hands and arms as muddy as hers now. He could kill her with them. He could slap her right down.

‘Don’t leave me,’ she said. ‘You don’t have anyone either.’ She clung to him. ‘Just take me with you.’ He kept trying to pull her off but her
hands were all over him, pulling at his neck and his face, trying to force him to look at her.

He tried to wrench her away – ‘Get off!’ – but she wouldn’t let go. ‘I said get off!’ He took her by the shoulders and shook her as hard as he could so
that she sobbed even harder, shouting: ‘What the hell have you done?’

He shoved her away, and walked on, his blood roaring in his ears. He left her in the middle of the road, muddy and weeping.

In the distance behind him, trucks were coming through the field.

They barely slowed as he stood on the verge, a jeep and four trucks with open backs, their dark canvas sides buffeting in the wind. They rattled past, wheels rumbling and spitting up stones,
before turning through the gates.

He paced after them with such a filthy, brutal rage storming in his head. He should have taken the child from her. He should have taken him from her and not given him back. He could put her in
the ground beside him. He could push her into the soil.

The trucks disappeared around one of the blocks into the parade ground. People stood and stared at him, at his muddy hands and his face that could so easily crumple into tears.

The four trucks were parked in a line, each with their back to the square. A handful of Czech soldiers milled around, smart in their uniforms, a couple of them smoking
cigarettes before the drive to Celle. From there, Martha had said, the refugees would be put on a train to Prague, other Czechs joining them from the countless other DP camps scattered across
Germany; each changed for ever, broken and rebuilt again, survivors who had somehow clawed on to life and – against the odds – had finally regained some of their dignity. He saw it
around him now as they waited, clutching their few possessions, a man playing a harmonica, a child holding a naked doll, its hair cropped as short as the child’s.

There was no sign of Janek. Nor Martha. Hamilton wandered about among them with a clipboard and list, trying, Owen thought, to evoke an air of orderliness, while Haynes was ushering the Czechs
together, his arms open wide as if he were a goatherd readying himself in case one of them suddenly bolted from the group.

Around the square others had appeared too: the French, the Poles, some Yugoslavs, all eager to wave the Czechs off, knowing that in the days and weeks that followed, it would be them piled into
jeeps and trucks as the whole camp cleared out. Some of the women were hurriedly decorating the trucks with ivy vines and thin blossoming branches and sprigs of wilting wild flowers, festooning the
vehicles with garlands like festival floats.

‘You’ve not seen your Czech boy then?’ It was Hamilton with his list.

‘No,’ said Owen. ‘Have you asked those two?’ He pointed out Otmar and Mikoláš.

‘They say they haven’t seen him.’

How fast friendships were formed and forgotten, Owen thought. The two boys did not seem at all bothered that Janek wasn’t there. They sat in the dirt playing cards and slapping at each
other’s hands. They would soon be up on their feet and pushing, as the tailgates of the trucks were lowered and there was a rush for seats.

‘Where’s Martha anyway?’

‘With this major,’ Hamilton said. ‘Some bloody high-ranker. It’s usually a bunch of lackeys. Half the time we have to organize the transportation ourselves, but this time
they’ve actually sent somebody.’

‘Yes, Martha said,’ said Owen. The major had been asking for someone but Owen couldn’t now remember what it had been about.

‘Look, are you all right? You look as white as a sheet.’

‘Dicky stomach,’ he said. It was true. He felt incredibly faint, as if Anneliese had taken the life from him too and only the shell of him was left.

Over Haynes’ shoulder he saw Janek appear from behind one of the blocks, his bag hauled over his shoulder, moving with a nonchalant air as if it made no odds whether he went home or
not.

‘Oh, here he is,’ he said with relief.

‘Well, thank Christ for that,’ said Haynes.

He slipped through the crowd to intercept him and Owen would have gone too but Hamilton was blocking his path and saying something.

‘And I hear you’re being ferried up to Hamburg. Someone’s landed you a cushy flight.’

‘Yes, something like that,’ remarked Owen. He could see Haynes and Janek talking. The boy was paler than ever. He nodded at something that Haynes said. With a hand at the boy’s
back, Haynes then guided him over to join the other Czechs as a nervous anticipation started to fill the square.

‘If the major has Martha giving him a guided tour, we could be standing here for bloody hours,’ Hamilton grumbled. ‘And that’s not going to go down well. They want to be
off and out, and you can’t blame them. We’ll have a bloody riot on our hands.’

Haynes raised a hand to one of the Czech drivers and the soldiers dispersed to their trucks. As soon as the first tailgate was dropped the refugees were swarming, clinging on to friends and
family, elbowing their way forward and fighting for seats. Bags got caught in the crush, and then the shouting began. Before long, as the trucks filled and the scramble for seats became more
ferocious, the inevitable happened. There was a commotion as families, lovers and friends were split, hysteria starting to set in as if they didn’t believe the trucks were all going the same
way.

Hamilton tried to calm the situation before somebody got hurt. ‘There’s room for everyone!’ he shouted, but no one took any notice.