Restitution (19 page)

The convoy reached the Elbe and they unloaded the soldiers onto stretchers to ferry them across the river. Beside the banks stood hundreds of women, old people and children,
clutching bundles and staring at the barges with intent. As they neared, the refugees surged towards the water and the Americans fired shots above their heads. ‘No civilians,’ called a
sergeant. ‘Uncle Joe’s orders, wounded soldiers only.’

But still the civilians ran towards the barges, dragging their children with them. The GIs jumped out and formed a cordon.

Alix stood back as the last soldier was loaded on.
‘Schnell,’
urged a doctor. ‘Last chance to get across. We only have until this evening.’

She glanced back at the crowd on the bank.

‘The place in this boat is for you, Red Cross,
schnell!’

‘I’m not Red Cross, I only helped so I could get away from the Russians.’

‘You’ve changed dressings and emptied bedpans for days now. You’ve written letters for dying men and helped bury them.’ He grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the
boat. ‘I order you to stay with your patients,
Fräulein.
You’re too good to leave to the Ivans.’

On the other side of the river they unloaded the soldiers into trucks which would transport them to a military hospital under American control in Magdeburg. Once this had been
done Alix showered and washed her clothes. The Americans fed her, but when her clothes had dried they sent her on. ‘No food for civilians, missy, but count yourself lucky to be in the US
zone.’

It was hard to see how this luck would materialize. She wandered outside into the spring sunshine feeling scrubbed and almost naked without the layers of grime she’d acquired in the last
weeks. For the rest of the day she stayed in the ruined town, walking from one shattered street to another as though she were searching for something or someone. It was the first time she’d
seen the results of heavy bombing close to hand. She’d passed through Stettin after she’d escaped from the forest but had no memory of seeing anything except the sought-after carriages
of the train, one of the last, which had carried her south. Now she noted houses like collapsed cardboard boxes, buckled strips of metal, the stink of decay. They’d been so cut off in
Pomerania; she’d had no idea.

At dusk Alix found herself back at the military hospital, like a stray with nowhere else to go. A GI with a black face and kind, dark eyes gave her a bar of chocolate and something called a Spam
sandwich. A white sergeant came out of a building and stopped in his tracks when he heard Alix thanking the GI in English. ‘Hey soldier! Any more fraternizing and I’ll haul your sorry
ass into solitary.’

Alix stood and started walking again. She walked until she’d left the town behind and spent the night in a barn.

Weeks passed. She took off her coat during the mild days and tied it round her waist. Some days she felt too weak with hunger to creep further west and lay in the sunshine for most of the day,
hoping the rays would energize her. She ate beechnuts, or dug at dead horses whose carcasses might yield meat that wasn’t quite rotten. And still she didn’t let herself remember.
Perhaps, if she kept on walking, the motion would excise all memories from her. She’d start again as Alix Matke, aged seventeen, without possessions, family ties, home or lover. Born in the
ashes of downfall, baptized in the showers of the military hospital, fed by kindly GIs and sent out as a newborn into the unknown.

May 1945

When spring had become so intense a presence that it almost seemed to be mocking the world with its insistent birdsong and fierce bursts of blossom, a middle-aged woman at a
water pump told Alix that Hitler was dead and the war was over. ‘Dead?’ The bottle in Alix’s hands shook and water ran onto her boots. She instinctively looked over her shoulder
in case someone was listening.

‘Don’t look so scared. He’s gone, they all have.’ And Papi: this might mean that someone, somewhere, was unlocking a cell and letting him out. She couldn’t think
about her father, didn’t have the energy for hope. Better to continue as this new Alix, untied to the past, unencumbered by optimism. She’d learned how to let her consciousness float
above her when necessary, just as she had when the conscript had grabbed her in the forest that morning four months ago.
Here is Alix,
she’d tell herself.
With hands blistered from
digging graves for dead soldiers. And here she is again, this time with her stomach filled with acid because she hasn’t eaten and her hands shaking so much she can’t do up her shirt
buttons. I note all these things about Alix and I pity her.

She filled her bottle and carried on walking. Ahead of her American soldiers danced in the road to the jazz music they loved. ‘Cheer up,
Fräulein
!’ a GI called to her.
‘No more fighting now.’

The countryside grew steeper. Alix turned slightly to the south, into the hills and forests lying to the east of the Rhineland where the unknown Cousin Ulla lived.

Still a long walk to go – two hundred or more kilometres. But she kept going, surprised at how far she could walk in a day if she allowed herself to retreat into semi-consciousness. Apart
from Gregor there was nothing worth thinking about, anyway. Sometimes Papi accompanied her for a kilometre or two, telling her that she ought to be grateful to him for insisting she keep her boots
in good condition, before springing onto a glossy-coated Piper, waving a casual farewell. Or Lena would walk beside her, muttering at Alix to keep her shoulders back and remember she was a girl
from a good family.
We can’t all be like your mother but we can work on our carriage.

Alix had reached the Thuringian Forest south of Erfurt when she noticed the signs warning people not to travel. She spent a night in a burned-out shepherd’s hut, hoping
the soldiers on the road would move on, but by morning they still strolled around barricades, inspecting papers and interrogating civilians.

‘I’m going to my cousin’s,’ she volunteered in English.

‘Not now you’re not,
Fräulein.
Orders are all of you are spending time in a camp. Diseases.’ The soldier shoved her papers back at her. ‘Gotta stop ’em
spreading.’ Alix looked for an escape route but armed guards stood round the barricade. She allowed herself to be pushed into an open-topped truck.

The displaced persons camp wasn’t a bad place: meals were regular, if sparse, and there were showers. But some of the women who’d trudged here from the east were slipping out of the
huts at night to tie ropes around their necks. Some of them even evaded the guards and walked to the millpond in the neighbouring village, where they waded into the water until it dragged them down
and relieved them of their worries. Most mornings there were two or three floating there. Others who couldn’t bring themselves to give up on life were swelling like she was.

Alix forced herself to work out dates. Four months. But she couldn’t be entirely certain. Starvation could make your abdomen swell, you only had to look at the children in this camp.
Perhaps her symptoms were just those of exhaustion and trauma. She tried to drift back into her detached state, to watch herself dispassionately again, but something was pulling at her, forcing her
back into her body, determined that she should feel life again: the growling of an underfed stomach, the itching of skin that bugs had bitten, the sour smell of clothes that could never be washed
often enough. She tried to resist the pull – it was easier to stay in her twilight state, less painful, less demanding – but it was no use. Her body, that hungry, tired, grubby body of
hers, demanded she pay it attention.

One morning in the queue for water a woman touched her arm. ‘You came from the east, didn’t you?’

Alix made a slight movement of her head.

‘It’s all right. I can see you’re in the same condition as me.’ Alix saw how the woman’s abdomen pushed against her dress. She hunched her shoulders to try and hide
her own swelling. ‘You’re not married are you? Me neither. Those Russian dogs.’

Alix nodded. No more explanations needed.

‘Pity we didn’t get here earlier.’ The woman leaned towards her. ‘A doctor gave some of the others something to take.’ She dropped her voice. ‘You know the
Russians are coming here, too, don’t you?’

Alix’s heart thumped against her ribs. ‘But this is American territory, they—’

‘It was all agreed with Churchill and Stalin.’

‘How do you know all this?’

The woman lowered her voice. Old habits. ‘My brother had a job which meant he could travel to Sweden. He read foreign newspapers. The Russians are to occupy this part of the country. The
Americans will move out.’

‘When?’

‘July.’ The woman was speaking so softly Alix could barely hear her. ‘Get out of here before then. Go farther west.’ Again her eyes dropped to Alix’s abdomen.
‘You and I have had enough of them.’

Alix shuffled off. Next morning she swapped her breeches and shirt for a navy and white polka-dot tea-dress that covered her stomach. It looked a bit like the kind of thing Mami might have worn
to entertain guests before the war. If you didn’t look at the boots she wore with it and the coat she still draped round her shoulders when the sun went in and the air chilled.

The camp guards were distracted by a disturbance in the shower block and Alix slipped under the barriers. Late June now. The first berries would be ripening in the gardens at
home. She walked with more purpose than she had before. But she wasn’t heading to her cousin’s house. She was following some instinct that sent her where she wouldn’t be known,
where she had no connections; away from the Russians.
Coburg.
Names from Papi’s map floated through her memory. That wasn’t far enough west. The Russians might still reach her.
She needed to walk farther, to hide herself away. Perhaps she could find a job somewhere until the child was born. And then . . .? Her mind refused to imagine what would happen. Perhaps she’d
lose the baby. If she worked very hard at some physical task, to the point of exhaustion, she might miscarry. But it was probably too late for that now. She set her gaze on the road ahead, letting
her mind fall into a trance.

It was only when the car came up so close behind her on the bend that she could smell its hot metal, rubber and petrol aroma that she leapt into the ditch at the side of the road. Behind her
brakes screeched. Someone shouted. Alix rose to her feet, brushing dust from her dress. Her rucksack lay in the road, squashed. She stared at it.

A man and woman, both in a uniform she didn’t recognize, came towards her. She froze.

‘Sprechen Sie Englisch?
You hurt?’

‘No, I’m fine,’ she replied in English, forcing herself to meet the American man’s stare. If he was going to punish her for carelessness, so be it, but Alexandra von
Matke wasn’t going to cower. Then she reminded herself that she was just Alix Matke, defeated civilian. ‘I am sorry for causing an accident,’ she said.

‘We drove over your bag,’ the woman said. ‘Sorry. Couldn’t help it.’

‘Could have been
her
we drove over.’ The man folded his arms. ‘What were you thinking of, walking down the middle of the road on a blind corner in a daydream?’

Alix couldn’t think of an answer.

‘Joseph,’ said the woman. ‘Don’t harass the poor girl.’

‘Post-defeat trauma, that’s what I call this.’ His voice was thoughtful. ‘Classic symptoms. Interesting how many civilians are involved in motor accidents. They just
can’t concentrate properly.’ He approached her. ‘Are you sure you’re OK? In your condition . . .’

Alix put a hand to her abdomen. Funny, a week or two ago this would have seemed like the perfect solution. She felt the baby move. ‘I think it will be all right.’

‘Can we give you a ride anywhere?’

‘Civilians aren’t allowed to use private transport,’ Alix answered, still in English, unable to resist a small, self-mocking smirk at her Germanic adherence to rules, no matter
how inconvenient.

‘We know the patrols on this stretch, they’re OK. Where you headed?’ The woman pushed open the passenger door. Alix struggled to understand her rapid, accented English.

‘Frankfurt.’ She named the first place that came into her head.

‘That’s a long way,’ said the man.

‘And you’re heading a strange way to get there,’ the woman added.

‘Anyway, Frankfurt’s a mess,’ said the man, handing her the squashed rucksack. ‘We’re on our way to Hammersdorf, a little village ten miles from the
city.’

‘We’re child welfare officers, working at one of the DP camps.’ The woman scrutinized Alix, perhaps interested to see how she’d respond. Alix met the gaze and nodded.

‘You got family in Frankfurt?’ asked the man.

‘No.’

‘Friends?’

‘No.’

‘There you go, pestering her again, Joseph!’

‘It’s all right, really,’ Alix said. They could ask her whatever they wanted, couldn’t they? They were occupiers. But they didn’t seem like unkind people.

He frowned at her. ‘No offence,
Fräulein,
but you’re alone, you’re expecting a baby and you haven’t got a ring. And you speak English like your nanny used to
push you round Kensington Gardens in your perambulator.’

The woman slapped his arm.

Alix waited.

‘We’ll need help in the house.’ She saw his eyes were gentle. ‘Someone to do light housework and cooking.’

‘I ran my father’s farm before the Russians came.’

‘The Russians.’ He frowned. ‘Thought so. We can’t pay much but money’s worthless anyway and you’ll have board and lodgings.’

‘But—’ She put a hand to her belly.

‘We’ll be able to help, we work for UNRRA – the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. You heard of us?’

Alix shook her head and climbed into the car, which appeared to be an Opel. Alix hadn’t seen one of these on the roads for years. ‘You don’t know who I am. Why do you want to
help me?’

He shrugged. ‘We’ve interviewed a few girls. Mostly they just look sullen. Mention what their country’s been up to over the last seven years or so and they go all defensive or
claim ignorance.’