The Children's War (61 page)

Teresa considered his words for a moment and finally seemed to accept them. “Don’t let them kill you,” she whispered.

“I’ll do my best.”

Teresa’s eyes strayed from his face to the other bed, to little Gisela now sleepingpeacefully. “Don’t worry about Gisela. I’ll take care of her tonight.” She looked solemnly into his eyes, then she added softly, “Good luck.”

“Thanks. I’ll need it.”

“Good-bye, Peter.”

“Good-bye, Teresa.” He kissed her forehead lightly. “Change the world.”

“I will.”

63

H
E SLIPPED OUT INTO
the darkness of the night. It was foggy and drizzling, he could not have asked for better weather! The car slid quietly out of the suburban
street onto a larger road heading away from the center. Within minutes he had no idea where he was, but he drove steadily, turning each time he reached a larger road. Eventually he saw a sign to the autobahn, and he turned onto the access road without a thought as to where it would lead other than that it would lead him away, toward freedom.

At the bottom of the ramp was a red light and an officer huddled in a tiny booth. The officer emerged as he stopped the car.

“Heil Hitler!”

“Heil.”

“Good evening,
mein Herr.
Your papers?”

He handed them over wordlessly. He knew that if the officer accepted him as Karl, then all would be fine; Karl’s papers allowed him a rare and enviable freedom of movement. To distract himself, Peter studied the drizzle as it accumulated on the windshield.

The officer perused the papers quickly. Then, as he handed them back, he said, “Very good,
mein Herr,
have a good journey!” He sneezed as he returned to his cubicle.

Peter hesitated a moment. Was the light supposed to turn green? After a few seconds he decided that it was better not to wait, and he drove off and joined the autobahn traffic. He sighed deeply and wiped the sweat off each hand in turn.

The road headed east, and without deciding anything, he followed it. It was nowhere near as empty as he had expected—there were a surprising number of trucks and he decided to casually attach himself to a long convoy of them as they rumbled eastward. When his vision blurred, as it often did, he could follow their taillights, and if there were roadworks or detours or other hindrances, they would be likely to know of them in advance and avoid them.

Time passed quickly, and he drove as if mesmerized by the blurred lights and swishing noise of the wheels rushing through water. He lit one of Karl’s cigarettes and began to relax a bit; minutes later, without warning, the traffic slowed and he peered ahead to see why. It was hard to discern anything through the misting rain, but the sudden brightness ahead warned him he was entering a floodlit area. There was nowhere else to go, and inhaling the smoke deeply to calm himself, he slowed the vehicle and pulled into one of the queues. Ahead he could make out some sort of barrier, and it suddenly dawned on him: it was the border for the special administrative region of the capital city. He swore quietly, ground out his cigarette, and nervously lit another; the floodlights were inescapable, and in such light, no one would mistake him for Karl.

The cars inched forward; his heart thundered in his chest. The trail of smoke from his cigarette created a wild pattern in the air as it traced out the trembling of his hand. As each car approached the booth, he saw how the driver’s and any passenger’s papers were scrutinized, how the guard stared into each face, even making people who wore glasses remove them so his view would not be obscured. He decided then and there that if they wanted to arrest him, he would
start shooting, aiming for anybody in a uniform. It would be unfair since nobody but young kids would be on duty at this time of night, but he could not face either alternative of suicide or capture. He would shoot until they killed him.

At last it was his turn. The tired-looking guard leaned out of his booth and asked to see his papers and registration. He asked politely—obviously the car impressed him. Peter brusquely handed over everything that remotely pertained to him or the car as if he were too important to bother to sort out which papers were the needed ones. He then threw his head back with bored disdain and let out a stream of smoke, watching distractedly as it bounced off the roof of the car. The guard fanned through the papers quickly and handed them back wishing him a good journey. The other vehicles had taken minutes, but his inspection had lasted less than thirty seconds!

He drove on, congratulating himself on the impressive vehicle that he drove. Oh, God, if only his luck might hold! He stomped out any flicker of a thought of what might happen if it did not and went blindly into the darkness ahead, not daring to think of where he was going, fearing that if he did, panic would send him fleeing in terror back to the safety of his prison.

A while later, he noticed his petrol gauge was perilously low: he would either have to fill the tank or abandon the car soon. He saw a station shortly afterward, but decided to drive past it, since they would doubtless scrupulously obey the rules, check and note his license number, and cross-reference them to the ration coupons. That would not be a problem now, but it would leave a clear trail. He exited the highway and searched the main roads of a small town for an open station. It was in vain: he only found one station and it had closed at five o’clock.

He decided he would have to head back to the station he had seen on the highway as they were too few and far between for him to try to find the next one. He reentered the highway, again passing through a checkpoint effortlessly, and headed west. The signs advertised Berlin ahead, and he shuddered as the car passed under each. Damn! What a waste of precious time! Over and over he heard the advice:
It’s not too late!
He was already heading in the right direction to preempt his suicide, shouldn’t he just go home? Back to safety and security and obedience. He grit his teeth and shook his head to dispel the alien voice that pressed him to return to his duty.
The price of disobedience . . .
No! he yelled silently into the darkness. I am free!

The petrol station he had seen slid by on his left, and he swore at himself angrily as he realized that there was no access to it from the westbound side of the road. Luckily, there was another station a few kilometers on, and he stopped there. As the sleepy attendant emerged from the booth, Peter wondered to himself why he had not thought to siphon gasoline from a neighbor’s car before he had left. Clearly, any ability at strategy that he had once possessed had been knocked out of him by years of abuse. He wondered idly, as he sized up the attendant, if he had lost his ability to act as well. Well, now would be a wonderful time to find out.

“Good evening,
mein Herr.
How much gasoline would you like?”

“Fill the tank. Here are the coupons.”

“And your registration and license,
mein Herr?”

“Ah, yes, of course.” Peter held them in his hand to show the man that he did indeed have the relevant documents, but instead of handing them over, he tapped them lightly against the doorframe. “I’m on official ministry business and it would be better if it were not known that I was in this area at this time. You would be greatly inconveniencing your government, and of course, eventually, yourself, if you were to follow routine procedure. On the other hand, you would be obeying your government’s imperative needs if you were to accept this note in lieu of the information you need for your books.” He allowed a thousand-mark note to emerge from under the registration. His instinct had argued for simple bribery, but having watched Karl in action on several occasions, he had learned that including a government threat and an implication of following orders was advisable.

The note slipped out of his hand.

“Of course,
mein Herr.”
The attendant filled the tank and immediately disappeared into the station without even glancing in the direction of the car’s license plate. Better not to know. As the sleek foreign car sped off into the night, the attendant wondered if the lady was really worth so much trouble. Then he set about cooking the books a bit to make sure the gasoline would not be missed. The extra ration coupons would come in handy. And a thousand marks! Oh, what a great night!

The next junction was an intersection with another autobahn, and Peter decided to take this road rather than retrace his steps, thus avoiding exiting and reentering the autobahn system. This one led to the southeast toward Breslau. As he drove on, the blankness of the night shrouded the unfamiliar countryside. He had an impression of woods and flatlands, but it was almost impossible to tell through the drizzle. His lights reflected in a hazy glare off the mist, illuminating the highway just in front of him as a wet ribbon leading to nowhere. The highway grew emptier, and as he glanced in his rearview mirror, he saw behind him a blankness as if his past were being swallowed into the fog.

He crossed the Neisse, and with the realization that it was now too late to return, he began to wonder if he had not made a mistake heading into unfamiliar territory. Surely he would have had a better chance if he had headed west—maybe eventually he could have managed the Channel crossing and found someone in England who would have given him shelter. Maybe Geoff, his old buddy from the labor camp. By now he was, no doubt, well ensconced in that village near Lewes that he had talked of so fondly. On the other hand, the situation always seemed so close to riotous in the East, perhaps he would be able to disappear into the chaos without difficulty? Well, he thought, the point was moot—he had let the first autobahn he had encountered make his
choice for him. That and an empty petrol tank. He lit another cigarette and drove on.

As he skirted around Breslau, he had a thought that he should search out Herr and Frau Reusch. He discarded the thought almost as quickly as it came. If they still lived in the development east of Breslau, and if he could find them, he doubted that they could help him, even if they wanted to. And Maria would be utterly horrified to see him—she had made it abundantly clear that he had outlived his usefulness to her. No, better to stay away; he would bring nothing but trouble to their lives. Better to leave them in peace.

Shortly thereafter he crossed the Oder, near Oppeln, and came to another internal border. The drizzle had ceased and the fog had lifted. The officer who took his papers scrutinized them carefully. Peter had secreted the gun next to his seat, and now he pressed his hand nervously against it as he carefully held a bored, detached look on his face.

“You are a long way from home, Herr Vogel?”

Fearing that this was a lead-in to a more detailed inspection of his papers, one he could not afford, he summoned Karl’s most peremptory tone and snapped, “That’s none of your business!”

“Sorry,
mein Herr.
Have a pleasant journey,
mein Herr,”
the officer replied obsequiously. As he watched the car speed away, he added with a sardonic laugh, “And if you don’t want any warnings, I don’t have to give you any, you arrogant son of a bitch.”

As the border post vanished into the distance and his heartbeat calmed, Peter finally managed to pry his hand away from the gun. Each time, Karl’s papers had worked like a charm. Ah, the magic of good papers! He felt loath to give them up, and for the first time he had some idea of why Karl fought so viciously to retain his position. And the car, too! Such a fine machine! It would be a shame to dump it in a lake. Maybe he could find some way to keep it. He mused about this for some time as he sped along the nearly empty road. The surface had grown worse and the car jolted now and then—just as well, it helped keep him awake. On the left he saw a glowing region of the sky and he thought it was sunrise, but then he realized it was just the indistinct glow of an industrial region. The air took on a fetid smell, and the trees along the edge of the road, outlined against the industrial fires, looked leafless and dead.

Once he had passed through the worst of the smog, he washed the windshield and marveled at the muddy residue that was swept to the sides and dribbled off the edge of the window. Whatever was in the air had left a foul taste in his mouth, and he reached for the bottle of water he had in his satchel and drank it down. Out of curiosity, he wound down the window and reached out and dabbed his finger in a bit of the accumulated slime. He inspected it and determined it had a burnt orange color, then he brought it under his nose and sniffed, but did not recognize it.

Traffic began to pick up in the predawn darkness, and he considered how he
might just merge with the vehicles and go wherever they went. They all had destinations, surely he could just follow one of them and let fate decide what happened next.

Such insane thoughts! He shook his head—it was time to make the decision he had put off since he had chosen this road. Should he head for the anonymity of a city? Or the isolation of the mountains that he knew lay to the south? The mountains were an unknown: he had no idea how to live off the land. It would soon be October, and the nights would be bitterly cold. In fact, that thought had occurred to him before he had left, but he had deliberately ignored the difficulties it had implied because he knew fixating on the details was what had kept him trapped for so long. If he had waited until spring, he would have waited forever.