Restitution (18 page)

‘I’m going to open the front door now.’ He gave Alix’s mother a last look. Her face was absolutely serene. She nodded and placed her hand on his.

‘You’ve grown up into such a fine man. Your parents would be proud of you. Look after yourself, Gregor Fischer.’ She ran towards the back of the house, her footsteps light,
even in the boots.

And now Gregor could hear feet crunching through the snow at the front of the house. He walked to the front door and pulled open the bolts, which ran smoothly under his
fingers. Vavilov stood under the porch, snow clinging to his boots, flakes floating around his outline. Below him in the drive the others blew on their fingers and stamped their feet.
‘Fischer.’ Vavilov’s eyes were like chips of amber. ‘You spent the night here?’

Gregor stood aside to let him in. ‘Yes Comrade.’ He’d planned it all out in his head. ‘There’s something upstairs you might like to see.’ Vavilov’s
companions were still outside, pointing across the gardens at the farm workers’ cottages. Please let them spend time searching those cottages . . .

Vavilov’s gaze traced the antlers mounted on the walls, the marble floor, the portraits.

‘One of the most successful examples of eighteenth-century architecture in this part of Pomerania.’ Vavilov pointed at a cornice. ‘The family brought an Italian out from
Florence to do all this plasterwork. I believe he also did the salon as well.’

The older man appeared very relaxed this morning. ‘Would you like to see that room before we go upstairs?’ Gregor nodded at the door. Enough in there to distract him for another
twenty minutes or so. The more time they spent in the front of the house, the better for Marie and Alix; the parkland leading to the forest couldn’t be seen from these windows. Vavilov strode
into the room. ‘You made yourself at home, then?’ He was looking at the open lid of the piano, the music on the stand. The dustsheet rolled up on one of the sofas. The open gramophone
player.

‘Interesting to see how such people live.’ Gregor closed the door quietly behind him.

‘Indeed, Comrade, indeed.’ Vavilov examined the plaster cornice. ‘Such detail.’ He stood admiring the work for some minutes. Then the photographs of Marie caught his
attention. ‘And the baroness, Maria Weissmüller, as she used to be.’ He studied her with concentration.

Vavilov turned to Gregor. ‘Now, what did you have to show me upstairs?’

‘A Gestapo officer. He appeared last night, taking shelter from the storm.’ Gregor opened the door and led him out.

‘And you overpowered him single-handed?’ Vavilov’s tone expressed surprise. ‘Most impressive, Comrade.’

‘His pistol is in my pack.’ They’d reached the top of the staircase, Gregor led the older man down the corridor to the bedroom in which Preizler lay bound.

The key was still in the lock but the door stood open. A pair of nail scissors and some cut silk scarves lay on the floor. A dent on the quilted bed showed where the man’s body had rested
overnight.

Alix

Two days later, west of the river Oder, February 1945

Trains were still running, someone told Alix when she woke, head spinning, throat parched, trying to remember where she was – in a station waiting room, crushed between
the wall and a family with three children. Her legs had grown numb during the night and as she stretched her muscles screeched a complaint.

Loudspeakers blasted out military marches and Hitler’s speeches. On the walls posters still advertised ‘Strength through Joy’ cruises, promising invigoration and fresh air for
patriotic workers. The door swung open and the stationmaster waded through the refugees and eyed the loudspeakers, shaking his head. ‘They make me play this stuff night and day, damned
idiots.’

He was taking a chance, speaking out like this in a roomful of strangers. Alix had been dreaming of dancing with Gregor. She had kissed him and he turned into a wolf, baring white teeth and
lifting his head to howl.

When she’d dragged herself out of the forest, bleeding, dizzy, she’d promised herself she’d never cry again, that from that day onwards Alexandra von Matke would give all her
energy to protecting herself, putting herself first always.

The music stopped and everyone sat up. The stationmaster held up ripped wires. ‘If they give me trouble I’m going to say it was bomb damage.’

Except bombs didn’t sheer through wires, leaving rooms untouched.

‘Where are you going?’ the stationmaster asked her.

‘Berlin.’ She’d decided Papi might be there, if Preizler’s colleagues hadn’t had him killed. Berlin was against Mami’s instructions, but everything’d
changed now.

‘Don’t.’ He dropped his voice even though the family next to Alix were preoccupied with sharing out a loaf of bread. ‘The Russians are well over the river now. Go south,
make for Dresden and then head west. Try and get to the Americans.’

‘What will you do?’

He fished something out of his pocket, a tattered card with a photograph on it. ‘Communist party membership. Kept it safe for sixteen years.’

Alix stood and shook out her legs one by one to get her circulation going. An engine whistled and people began rolling up blankets and calling children to order. The train pulled in and the
crowd surged towards it. Grabbing her coat and rucksack, Alix half-closed her eyes and let the throng propel her out of the waiting room towards the platform. Someone pulled her up into an open
wagon. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked the man in the sheepskin coat next to her.

‘God alone knows,’ came the answer.

She clutched her knees to her chest, examining the soot falling onto her hand. She’d been on the train for three days now and hadn’t eaten for two. They’d had
water this morning, brackish-tasting, but welcome. Now it was night again and the train had stopped. Something had woken her. She concentrated and worked out what it was: the carriage was vibrating
to the sound of planes, hundreds and hundreds of planes. She could see them above her in the night sky. Around her people whimpered and prayed, some of them on their knees on the soiled
straw-covered floor. They’d stopped
meckering
– complaining – long ago. Papi had once told Alix that it would be a bad time for Germany when its people stopped moaning.
She’d noticed how they’d quietened over the last year or so. Fear. Despair. Lack of energy. Terrible memories.

Don’t think about it.
Something in her breeches pocket was digging into her leg. Gregor’s mouth organ. Alix almost welcomed the discomfort. She hadn’t imagined that
night together in bed, fingers placed to one another’s lips in case they woke the others. She hadn’t dreamed his whispering of her name, over and over again like a spell. She pulled out
the mouth organ. It was blood-stained, like her clothes.
Don’t let yourself remember what happened in the forest.
She’d hardly dared examine herself. The worst of the pain had
subsided.

Alix put away the instrument. She needed to concentrate on more immediate needs. More soot fell on her. She followed the gazes of her fellow passengers and saw how the horizon blazed yellow and
red. ‘Where’s that?’ she asked the woman next to her.

‘Where
was
that, you mean. Dresden.’

‘Dresden?’ They’d come further south. Porcelain shepherdesses and paintings. Mami’d taken her there just before the war had started and they’d visited museums and
palaces.

Two men in the wagon returned from a foraging trip with cans of water, which they passed round the wagon. Two children had died in the night. Frozen, probably. When they tried
to take them from their mothers, the women screamed. Nobody had the heart to insist. But now it was getting warmer. ‘A thaw,’ an old woman said. ‘Sudden too.’

‘Their tanks will get stuck in the mud,’ said a girl with two long brown plaits.

Alix knew that nothing could stop them, nothing, nothing, nothing. Anything in their way would be ripped apart, tossed aside. She wanted to tell the people in the wagon what she knew about the
Russians but there was no point. They’d find out.

They were supposed to be heading north-west to Leipzig now. Or so rumour had it. It was impossible to tell by observing the direction the train took. Sometimes they stopped for hours. Sometimes
the train took them in circles, causing mutters of alarm when the morning sun blazed into the passengers’ eyes and warned them they were heading east again. Nobody seemed to know if they were
any closer to the Elbe now. They needed to cross the river to reach the Americans, but the bridges might all have been blown. The train seemed uncertain where to go, shunting from one place to
another like a disoriented caterpillar, its passengers becoming more apathetic as each day passed. Perhaps they’d sit in the stinking straw until the end of the war.

A man climbed into the wagon as the train slowed to pass over a bridge and jumped down, landing on two middle-aged women who pushed him away with curses. He wore clothes like pyjamas and his
eyes burned yellow in his thin face. He said nothing for hours. When Alix stood up to stretch her legs he stared at the bloodstains on the insides of her breeches. She caught his eye.

‘A Russian?’ His voice was educated, with a faint middle European accent – Czech, perhaps. She looked away. ‘A Russian, wasn’t it?’ He cackled. ‘A
Russian got you, little Aryan girl, didn’t he?’ And tears of laughter fell from his eyes. She backed into the corner of the wagon, causing people to shout at her as she trampled on
blankets and coats. When she looked back at where the man had been he’d gone. Perhaps she’d imagined him. Perhaps he’d jumped off the train again. Perhaps they’d pushed him
out of the wagon.

Sometimes they could get out and stretch aching limbs, relieve themselves, fetch water from fast-melting streams and ponds. One day the engine gave a final shudder and a blast
of its whistle and came to rest for good. Outside, a guard walked along the wagons, ordering them out.

‘No more coal, the driver’s abandoned the engine. He’s walking up the tracks to the town.’

‘Which town?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Where are we?’

‘Don’t know.’ The guard looked dazed. ‘All the signs have gone from the stations.’

‘I’m not moving.’ The man next to Alix pulled his hat over his eyes and folded his arms. Two or three hours passed. The passengers rearranged bedding and possessions and tried
to sleep. Alix woke to the sound of engines and made out the faint lights of trucks on the track beside the line. As they came closer she saw the red crosses on their sides. Nurses approached the
train, calling out for volunteers to unload wounded soldiers from one of the wagons. Alix stood, winced as the blood ran into her legs and pain shot through her pelvis. She waited until the worst
of it passed before clambering out of her own wagon. ‘You there!’ called a nurse to Alix, as she moved back to allow a young private with a head wound to pass. ‘Come and hold up
this drip.’

‘Where are they going?’ She followed the nurse to one of the trucks.

‘We’re taking them west to the Americans. We have special passes.’

Another hundred-odd miles nearer to the Rhineland, to Cousin Ulla’s house where she, Mami and Lena had been supposed to take refuge.

‘Better than just sitting here till it’s all over.’ The nurse gave Alix the ghost of a smile.

Progress was slow. On several occasions they had to stop to move burnt-out vehicles and bodies off the road. Abandoned suitcases spewed photographs, clothes and food. A
dachshund sat obediently beside a hat-box. Alix learned not to look at these lost possessions unless there was a hope of salvaging food or blankets. Sometimes they saw worse things: scores of
wagons and tanks and carts crushed together, bodies hanging out of them. A shard of metal, the size of Alix’s arm, impaling a horse’s neck; the horse, improbably, still whinnying and
pawing the earth with a hoof until a young Wehrmacht officer pulled out a revolver and shot it.

She screwed up her eyes against the dying sun and tipped water into a soldier’s mouth. ‘Where are we?’ His hand clutched hers.

‘I’ll ask.’

‘They won’t know.’ His hand relaxed its grip. She reckoned he’d be gone before dawn. They’d carry his body into a village graveyard and mutter a brief prayer. The
Russians were already in the village a few miles behind them and their gunfire cracked in the dark. Frontline troops. The nurses muttered. Alix pulled the white apron they’d given her when
she’d joined them tightly around her body and said nothing. When they stopped again to repair a flat tyre she found herself staring at a hoarding on the side of the road. ‘It is thanks
to our Führer!’

When the Russians overtook the ambulances they threw the nurses bread and sausage. ‘Well, there you are,’ said one of the women. ‘All that talk about Soviet atrocities, it was
all exaggeration.’

Alix tightened a bandage round a conscript’s temples. Her fingers shook and she dropped the pin she needed to fasten it.

As quickly as they’d appeared the frontline troops vanished and in their place came regulars, accompanied by shaggy little ponies pulling supply carts called
panje-wagons. Some of the soldiers had Mongolian features and dark skins and brought with them the miasma of thousands of miles on foot without adequate water and sanitation. Alix tried not to make
eye contact. They gave food to any children they encountered but at night their kindness seemed to evaporate. The nurses learned to disguise themselves in men’s clothes or hide under their
vehicles. Sometimes Alix put her fingers into her ears to block out the sobs of women who hadn’t concealed themselves well enough. An occasional stabbing pain from her pelvis would cause her
to bite her lip, but most of the time she could ignore her body and concentrate on fetching water for men with fevers or scavenging clean rags to tie round wounds. Thank God she’d come away
with the nurses – there was no time to think while she helped them. She kept her eyes on her patients no matter what they passed on the side of the road: a small dead child or, once, a nun,
lying face-down and crumpled, like a shot and bloodied white stork, her stained habit and veil rising and falling in the breeze.