The Boy at the Top of the Mountain (7 page)

‘Very good,’ said Kotler, smiling. ‘I’m sorry there wasn’t another,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders at Pierrot. ‘If there had been, I could have given one to you. You look as if you’re starving!’

Pierrot stared at him and wanted to tell him exactly what he thought of thieves who were older than him stealing his food, but there was something about this boy that made him understand that he would come off worse in any exchange they might have, and it wasn’t just because Kotler was bigger than him. He could feel tears forming behind his eyes but promised himself that he wouldn’t cry, blinking instead to force them to retreat as he looked down at the floor. Kotler inched his boot forward slowly, and when Pierrot looked up, he tossed the crumpled, empty bag at him, hitting him in the face, before returning to his conversation with the boys around him.

And from there to Munich Pierrot never opened his mouth again.

When the train pulled in to the station a couple of hours later, the members of the Hitlerjugend collected their belongings, but Pierrot held back, waiting for them to leave first. They walked out one by one until only Pierrot and Rottenführer Kotler remained. The older boy glanced down at him and bent over, examining the place name on his lapel. ‘You must get off here,’ he said. ‘This is your stop.’ He spoke as if he hadn’t bullied him at all but was merely being helpful as he ripped the piece of paper from Pierrot’s coat before leaning over to read the final note:

Salzburg
.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You are not staying in Germany, I see. You’re travelling on to Austria.’

A sudden panic entered Pierrot’s mind when he thought about his final destination, and although he really didn’t want to converse with this boy any more, he knew that he had to ask. ‘You’re not going there too, are you?’ he asked, dreading the idea that they might end up on the same train again.

‘What, to Austria?’ asked Kotler, taking his knapsack from above the seat and making his way through the door. He smiled and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. He started to move on, thought better of it and looked back. ‘At least, not yet,’ he added with a wink. ‘But soon. Very soon, I think. Today, the Austrian people have a place they call home. But one day . . .
poof!
’ He pressed the tips of his fingers together and pulled them apart, making the sound of an explosion, before bursting into laughter as he disappeared out of the compartment and onto the platform beyond.

The final journey to Salzburg took less than two hours, and by now Pierrot was tired and very hungry, but as exhausted as he felt, he was afraid of falling asleep in case he missed his stop. He thought of the map of Europe that hung on the wall of his classroom in Paris and tried to imagine where he might end up if that happened. Russia, perhaps. Or further away still.

He was alone in the carriage now and, remembering the present that Simone had handed him on the platform at Orleans, he reached into his case and took it out, unwrapping the brown paper and running his finger beneath the words on the cover of the book.

Emil and the Detectives
, it said.
By Erich Kästner
.

The illustration on the front showed a man walking down a yellow street while three boys peered out at him from behind a pillar. In the lower right-hand corner was the word
Trier
. He read the opening lines:

‘Now then, Emil,’ Mrs Tischbein said, ‘just carry in that jug of hot water for me, will you?’ She picked up one jug and a little blue bowl of liquid camomile shampoo, and hurried out of the kitchen into the front room. Emil took his jug and followed her.

Before long Pierrot was surprised to discover that the boy in the book, Emil, had a few things in common with him – or at least with the person he used to be. Emil lives alone with his mother – although in Berlin, not Paris – and his father is dead. And early in the novel Emil, like Pierrot, goes on a train journey, and a man seated in his carriage steals his money, just like Rottenführer Kotler had stolen his sandwiches. Pierrot was glad that he didn’t have any money, but he had a suitcase filled with clothes, his toothbrush, a photograph of his parents, and a new story that Anshel had sent him just before he left the orphanage which he had already read twice. It was about a boy who was the subject of name-calling from people he used to think of as his friends, and Pierrot found the whole thing a little disturbing. He preferred the stories Anshel had written before, about magicians and talking animals. He moved his suitcase closer to him now in case anyone came in and did to him what Max Grundeis had done to Emil. Finally the motion of the train became so soothing that he could no longer keep his eyes open, the book slipped from his hands and he dozed off.

In what felt like only a few moments he jumped as a loud rapping on the window woke him up. He looked around in surprise, wondering for a moment where he was, and then panicking that he had arrived in Russia after all. The train had come to a stop and there was an eerie silence.

The knocking came again, sharper this time, but there was so much condensation on the glass that he couldn’t see out to the platform. Sweeping his hand across it in a perfect arc, he cleared a section that allowed him to see an enormous sign – which, to his relief, read
Salzburg
. A rather beautiful woman with long red hair was standing outside looking in at him. She was saying something, but he couldn’t make out the words. She said it again – still nothing. He reached up, opened the small window at the top, and now her words carried through to him at last.

‘Pierrot,’ she cried. ‘It’s me! I’m your aunt Beatrix!’

Pierrot woke the next morning to find himself in an unfamiliar room. The ceiling was made up of a series of long wooden beams crisscrossed by darker columns, and inhabiting the corner of the plank above his head was a large spider’s web whose architect hung menacingly by a rotating silken thread.

He lay still for a few minutes, trying to recall more about the journey that had brought him there. The last thing he remembered was getting off the train and walking along the platform with a woman who said she was his aunt, before climbing into the back of a car driven by a man wearing a dark grey uniform and chauffeur’s cap. After that, everything went dark. He had a vague idea that he had mentioned how one of the boys from the Hitlerjugend had bullied him out of his sandwiches. The chauffeur had said something about the way those boys behaved, but Aunt Beatrix had silenced him quickly, and soon he must have fallen asleep – to dream that he was soaring into the clouds, higher and higher, growing colder by the minute. And then a pair of strong arms had lifted him from the car and carried him through to a bedroom, where a woman tucked him in and kissed him on the forehead before turning out the lights.

He sat up now and looked around. The room was quite small – smaller even than the one he had slept in at home in Paris – and contained nothing more than the bed he was lying in, a chest of drawers with a bowl and jug on top and a wardrobe in the corner. He lifted the sheets, looked down, and was surprised to see that he was wearing a long nightshirt with nothing underneath it. Someone must have undressed him, and the idea of this made his face grow red because whoever it was would have seen
everything
.

Pierrot climbed out of bed and walked over to the wardrobe, his bare feet cold against the wooden floor below, but his clothes were not inside. He opened the drawers of the chest, but they were empty too. The jug was full of water, however, so he drank a little and swirled it around in his mouth, and then poured a little into the bowl so he could wash his face. Walking over to the single window, he pulled the curtain back to look outside, but the glass was frosted over and he could only make out an indistinct blend of green and white beyond that suggested a field working hard to break through the snow. He felt a twist of anxiety build in his stomach.

Where am I?
he wondered.

Turning round, he noticed a portrait on the wall of an extremely serious man with a small moustache, staring into the distance; he was wearing a yellow jacket and an iron cross on his breast pocket, one hand resting on the top of a chair, the other pressed against his hip. Behind him hung a painting of trees and a sky that was darkening with grey clouds, as if a terrible storm was brewing.

Pierrot found himself staring at the painting for a long time – there was something hypnotic about the man’s expression – and he only snapped out of it when he heard footsteps making their way along the corridor outside. Quickly he jumped back into bed and pulled the sheets up to his chin. When the door handle turned, a rather portly girl of about eighteen years of age with red hair and an even redder face looked inside.

‘You’re awake then,’ she said in an accusatory tone.

Pierrot said nothing, simply nodded his head.

‘You’re to come with me,’ she said.

‘Where to?’

‘Where I take you, that’s where. Come on. Hurry up. I’m busy enough as it is without having to answer a lot of daft questions.’

Pierrot climbed out of bed and walked towards her, looking down at his feet instead of directly at her. ‘Where are my clothes?’ he asked.

‘Gone into the incinerator,’ she said. ‘They’ll be ashes by now.’

Pierrot gasped in dismay. The clothes he had worn for the journey were clothes that Maman had bought for him on his seventh birthday; it was the last occasion they had gone shopping together.

‘And my suitcase?’ he asked.

She shrugged but didn’t look the least bit remorseful. ‘Everything’s gone,’ she said. ‘We didn’t want those nasty, smelly things in the house.’

‘But they—’ began Pierrot.

‘You can stop that nonsense right now,’ said the girl, turning round and wagging a finger in his face. ‘They were filthy and most likely crawling with undesirables. They’re better off in the fire. And you’re lucky to be here in the Berghof—’

‘The what?’ asked Pierrot.

‘The Berghof,’ she repeated. ‘That’s what this house is called. And we don’t allow tantrums here. Now follow me. I don’t want to hear another word out of you.’

He walked along the corridor, looking left and right, trying to take everything in. The house was made almost entirely of wood, and although it felt pretty and cosy, the photographs on the wall showing groups of officers in uniforms standing to attention – some looking directly down the camera lens as if they were hoping to intimidate it into cracking – seemed a little out of place. He stood in front of one of them, mesmerized by what he saw. The men looked fierce, frightening, handsome and electrifying all at once. Pierrot wondered whether he might look as frightening as them when he was grown up; if he did, then no one would dare to knock him over in train stations or steal his sandwiches in railway carriages.

‘She takes those photos,’ said the girl, stopping when she saw what Pierrot was looking at.

‘Who?’ he asked.

‘The mistress. Now stop dawdling – the water’s getting cold.’

Pierrot didn’t know what she meant by this, but followed her as she made her way down the staircase and turned left.

‘What’s your name again?’ she asked, looking back at him. ‘I can’t get it straight in my head.’

‘Pierrot,’ said Pierrot.

‘What sort of name is that?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It’s just my name.’

‘Don’t shrug,’ she said. ‘The mistress can’t abide people who shrug. She says it’s common.’

‘Do you mean my aunt?’ asked Pierrot.

The girl stopped and stared at him for a moment before throwing her head back and laughing. ‘Beatrix isn’t the mistress,’ she said. ‘She’s just the housekeeper. The mistress is . . . Well, she’s the mistress, isn’t she? She’s in charge. Your aunt takes her orders from her. We all do.’

‘What’s your name?’ asked Pierrot.

‘Herta Theissen,’ said the girl. ‘I’m the second most senior of the maids here.’

‘How many are there?’

‘Two,’ she replied. ‘But the mistress says we’ll need more soon, and when the others come, I’ll still be second and they’ll answer to me.’

‘And do you live here too?’ he asked.

‘Of course I do. Do you think I just popped in for the good of my health? There’s the master and mistress when they’re here, although we haven’t seen them in a few weeks now. Sometimes they come for a weekend and sometimes for longer, and then sometimes we might not see them for a whole month. Then there’s Emma – she’s the cook, and you don’t want to get on the wrong side of her. And Ute, the senior maid. Ernst, the chauffeur, of course. You met him last night, I expect. Oh, he’s wonderful! So handsome and funny and thoughtful.’ She stopped talking for a few moments and sighed happily. ‘And there’s your aunt, of course. The housekeeper. There’s usually a couple of soldiers on the door, but they change too often for us to bother getting to know them.’

‘Where is my aunt?’ asked Pierrot, already deciding that he didn’t like Herta very much.

‘She’s gone down the mountain with Ernst to pick up a few necessities. She’ll be back soon, I expect. Although you never know with that pair. Your aunt has a terrible habit of wasting his time. I’d say something to her about it, only she has seniority over me and would probably report me to the mistress.’

Herta opened another door and Pierrot followed her in. A tin bath stood in the centre of the room, half filled with water, steam rising from the surface.

‘Is it wash day?’ he asked.

‘It is for you,’ said Herta, rolling up her sleeves. ‘Come on, get that nightshirt off and climb in so I can scrub you clean. God only knows what kind of dirt you’ve brought with you. I never met a Frenchman who wasn’t filthy.’

‘Oh no,’ said Pierrot, shaking his head and backing away, holding both palms out in the air to stop her getting anywhere near him. There was no way he was going to take his clothes off in front of a complete stranger – and especially not in front of a girl. He hadn’t even liked doing that in the orphanage, and there were only boys in the dormitory there. ‘No, no, no. Absolutely not. I’m not taking anything off. Sorry, but no.’