The Dynamite Room (24 page)

As if in response Metzger appeared at the back of the truck.
Spread out, and make yourselves seen.
He stood aside as they clambered down and fanned out across the grounds in front of the building. The rain fell steadily.

Two gray postbuses were parked over by the west wing, where the drive turned in on itself and fed back up to the road. Their windows were blackened out, but he could see the vague outlines of people inside the first one, sitting in the seats or standing in the aisle. A ragged line of women were being held in a queue alongside the second bus. They were still in their hospital gowns despite the downpour. Most of them were thin and their hair was stuck damp to their skulls. Some of the women fidgeted and fingered their gowns, pulling them up at the front so that their pale legs showed, whispering to each other or themselves. Others were silent. Something about the sight of them made Heiden's stomach tighten. Why didn't they get them out of the rain, or at least put them in some clothes? He glanced about trying to catch the eye of another comrade, but none of them seemed bothered by what they were seeing, or if they were they didn't show it. Surely Nurse Hartmann or Eva, if they came, would do something about it.

A medical practitioner walked down the line and checked his clipboard. He lifted the page and looked at the gaggle of patients, then wiped a raindrop from the paper with the sleeve of his white uniform. The line jostled.

Heiden turned his attention to the building, but although there were a lot of staff milling about, he could not see her. Metzger watched from the lawn, frowning as the rain slapped against his face. Foerster, a bald-headed factory worker from Mannheim, and Eberhardt—who in another lifetime, before the war, had been a prodigious accordion player—strolled up and down along the line of women, their fingers on the triggers of their rifles. Aachen and Rosenheim, two farming boys from Eberswalde, stood near the double doors of the entrance. The rest of the men were spaced out along the length of the building and around the drive. Nurse Hartmann came out, and he instinctively lowered his head and glanced furtively across at the buses. Foerster was making deranged faces at the women, trying to antagonize them. He grimaced at them and yapped like a dog.
Stop it, you idiot,
Heiden said under his breath, but Foerster did not stop.

The man with the clipboard called Nurse Hartmann and one of the doctors over. He scratched the back of his head with his pen and spoke quickly to them, seemingly agitated. Nurse Hartmann rubbed at her forehead and called two nurses over, who she sent running in opposite directions. The man with the clipboard approached Metzger and showed him the list, running his pen up and down it and pointing at the line of women. Heiden saw a familiar deepening in the Major's frown. Metzger pursed his lips and sucked his cheek in, and then with a raised arm and a commanding glare, he summoned the men over.

Sometimes it felt like a dream, endless corridors and endless doors. Their heavy boots echoing. The half-lit wards, the terrified faces.
We've done nothing! Please. Please, don't shoot!

We appear to have misplaced six retards,
Major Metzger had explained.
And our good doctor thinks they might have got wind of where the buses are taking them, and that perhaps they don't want to go. I want them found. And quickly. I don't care how.

The familiar entrance hall. The marbled floor and wide staircase. The brass light fittings hanging from the ceiling on long rusty chains and portraits lining the stairwell. It wasn't much more than six months since he had last been there. Eberhardt and Rosenheim sprinted up the main staircase, leaving Heiden and Aachen, one of the boys from Eberswalde, and the bald-headed Foerster, who had wasted no time charging into the main ward to the right of the entrance, waving his gun at the patients and yelling. Heiden and Aachen followed.

We've done nothing! Please. Please, don't shoot!

It was the same ward he'd walked through with Nurse Hartmann and Eva, although it looked smaller and darker now that the sky outside was thick with rain. Pale-white faces peered out from within each bed, fingers clasping at white sheets.

They went through a doorway into another ward, hurrying through it almost at a run, and then into a third, with more beds and more wide-eyed men. As they passed, Foerster yelled
Boo!
at one of them and the man started shrieking. There were cupboards, cabinets, small empty offices, a tiled bathroom with a single bathtub and nothing else but a chair and a towel; another corridor, and more doors, two nurses pressing themselves against the wall as they passed.
They can't be far. A handful of retards…
said Foerster. But Heiden didn't care about the missing women. He just needed to find Eva.

They pushed into offices and surged through another ward of men. Upstairs, children were crying. One of the soldiers was yelling,
Shut up! Fucking shut up!

They found their way into the dining room and then into the orangery. There were wicker chairs around small wooden tables which Foerster kicked aside. At one of the tables on the end an elderly doctor in a white lab coat and another man in a suit stared blankly at them.

Six women,
said Foerster as they hurried through.
Have you seen them?

N-no,
said the doctor.

You?
He pointed at the other man, who quickly shook his head.

They piled out through the far door; at the end of the corridor in front of them was the main entrance again. Through the open doors, Metzger was out on the lawn firmly holding a nurse by her elbow.

This is useless,
said Aachen.

Up above, the heavy feet of jackboots thundered across the ceiling. People running. Shouting. Somewhere a woman was wailing.

Heiden could feel a sickness sweeping through him, a sudden emptying inside. Was this what they had been reduced to? What the hell was it they were doing?

Then Foerster found a door to a set of narrow steps that lead them down into the dark. Perhaps she was down there. A dampness pervaded the air below in the endless corridors and dimly lit storage rooms full of cupboards with paint pots and petrol cans, and piles of blankets caked in clods of earth. They kicked them about to see if anyone was hiding within them. Foerster kept walking into the light bulbs, which hung low from a sinewy cord, and the dim light slapped and splashed across the dank walls.

They made their way through another door and down an unlit corridor.

Come out, come out!
Aachen muttered to himself.
We know you're down here somewhere.

They found themselves in a laundry room. Everything was dark. There were two wooden tubs and a sink, a mangle nailed to the wall, and a bucket of grubby water. He remembered Eva's complaints about not being allowed to send clothes to the laundry until they'd tried to scrub the dirt from the clothes themselves. Now here on a shelf an opened box of washing powder was still spilling its contents. He could hear the hush of the powder emptying. Someone had left in a hurry.

They went down a corridor. Aachen took the lead and Heiden turned every now and again to see if anyone was following them. He had lost sight of Foerster and could hear only his voice somewhere down another corridor. Above him, from the wards, came shouts and muffled sobbing.
Come on,
he said.
We have to hurry.

The corridor opened out into a large room whose walls were lined with pipes.

Then above them came feet pounding across the ceiling, and trails of dust issued down through the cracks. There were shouts and a shriek; more footsteps running.

They must have found them,
said Aachen.
Come on then. Let's go.

At the far end of the room was another door that looked heavy and made of iron, and when they reached it they felt a bitter draft blowing in from under it; outside they could hear the rain.

Let's go this way,
said Heiden. He was desperate now to get out.

The bolts were stiff and it took both of them to haul the top one across. He kicked the bottom one back with his boot. The door was warped and swollen, but after several attempts they managed to push it open.

She had put a clip in her hair at first, then changed it for an Alice band, then to a red ribbon knotted around her head, and then knotted around a ponytail instead but her hair wasn't long enough. Now she was trying to fasten the hair clip back in again and wishing that she had never taken it out in the first place. Her hands shook and the clip kept sliding out of place.

She tried fixing the clip one last time until finally it clicked, and she looked at herself in the mirror of her mother's dressing table. It had three sides to it, and there was no hiding from her reddened eyes and the nervous pallor of her skin. She had never considered herself pretty. She opened the drawer and rummaged around, pulling out a lipstick. She took off the top. Salmon pink? Perhaps not. She pulled another one out, taking the lid off and winding it up. That was better: a bright scarlet. She leaned in closer to the glass and opened her mouth. She had watched her mother countless times and yet now she wasn't sure how to apply it. Straight along the lip or in little dabs? She tried the former but it was rather wobbly and she couldn't keep her hand still. She then dabbed in the gaps, but she was only making it worse. She sat back and tried to calm herself, and then turned her attention to her bottom lip, this time with more courage. When she was finished, she pressed her lips together as her mother always did.

She opened up the jewelry box and wound it up. With a click, the three porcelain fairies inside pirouetted and turned to the whirr of the mechanism and its rickety chime.

As she listened to the music she slumped back in the chair. The white summer dress was not wholly appropriate, but she liked the lace flowers around the cuffs, the collar, and the hem. She had tied a long white ribbon around the waist to give her some shape. Just dressing up. Nothing more than that.

She shut the lid of the jewelry box and took out the rouge and opened it up. A soft rose pink. She dabbed some onto her right cheek with a pad. She added some more and then some more. Then she did the other cheek. With every passing moment she looked less and less “Lydia.” She tried a smile that almost worked. She wished she didn't feel so hot. She wished she could stop her heart from bumping so hard against her chest.

This is what happens in a war. These are the things that need to be done.

She listened. He was still in the sitting room. The picnic had been tidied away. He was perhaps in the chair or on the floor studying the maps, or watching through the window. It was dark outside. Quiet. Beside her the oil lamp flickered.

She remembered her and Rosie and a handful of others once running through the fields, shrieking as they ran across the lane, laughing and shouting.
Quick! Quick! They're coming! They're coming! The Germans are coming!
Up the drive and across the lawn and into the house, hot and sweating and barefooted.

You'll make them come, you will,
her mother said.
All that hollering and blazing. You go running around crying wolf, and no one's going to believe you if one day they're really here.

And now he
was
here, and it was all her doing—she had cried wolf and the wolf had come.

She stood up and looked at her reflection. She would not cry; she would not let herself. She wouldn't think anymore. She imagined her body filled with pebbles, like the people in the half-buried bungalow on the beach—a girl now made of stone.

She found him in the sitting room in her father's chair, still drinking her father's wine. He didn't look up and at first she thought he was asleep. She waited in the doorway. She wasn't quite sure how she should stand and she found herself fidgeting. He must have known that she was there. He must have heard her breathing. She could feel her heart quickening. Should she take another step in, say something, do something?

He lifted his head and looked at her.

“Scrub that off,” he said.

She stood quite still, thinking he might change his mind, then felt the blood drain from her. He got up and walked towards her, standing closer than he'd ever been before.

“I don't know what game you are playing,” he said, “but you are out of your depth, so stop it. You haven't the slightest idea what you are doing.”

She turned her head, holding it still, and waited for the slap, but it never came. And that was when she finally burst into tears.

The door was warped and swollen but after several attempts they managed to push it open. A steep bank rose up immediately from the door, and he and Aachen scrambled up it. The rain fell heavy, soaking through their greatcoats. Over to the right were some old, dilapidated stables. To the left the institute building stretched on until it reached a perimeter wall. There were vehicle tracks and broken plant pots spilling their earth and dead roots. The lawn had been made muddy with the tramping of feet, and Aachen slipped in it, cursing. Heiden searched the institute windows but there was still no sign of her.

They walked a short distance away from the building, trying to find their way back to the front. Heiden sensed something and stopped—eyes watching him perhaps. Was it her? He turned and looked towards the woods, and then signaled Aachen to follow him as he cautiously moved closer. Something was filling him with a sense of unease. For a moment they both stood at the edge staring into the darkness, to where the trees grew thick and close, and then Heiden took a few steps in and held still, listening. The rain poured down but beneath its torrent he heard a sound like a whisper being muffled. Aachen didn't seem to notice, but Heiden glimpsed movement there in the brambles—something had shifted.

He stepped in further, ushering Aachen to follow and pushing branches aside with the tip of his gun as he quietly picked his way through. His eyes caught another movement, a shuffling up ahead where the trees in the copse were clumped thickly together. Another sound. A
ssshush
. He raised his gun and took a few steps, then signaled to Aachen to take them from the other side. He didn't want to hurt them, just drive them back to the building. But something made him hold still. His hand was trembling. He could see Aachen edging closer to them, his gun held ready, finger curled around the trigger. And that was when Heiden called out, before he knew what he was doing and before he could stop himself.