The Chosen Ones (40 page)

The Queen of the Well
   Once upon a time, there was a little girl and her name was very pretty, just like yours, Imogena. There was a well in the garden of the house where she grew up. The girl used to sit by the well, resting her arms on the edge. Now and then, she threw a stone into the well and counted – one, two, three – to find out how long it took before it hit the water. Once, she dropped a big stone into the well, listened and counted, but this time she heard nothing. Instead, a strange creature appeared before her: a beautiful woman with long blonde hair. Her large eyes shimmered and glittered like water. She was the Queen of the Well. Every time you drop a stone into the well, a human being dies, the Queen of the Well told the girl. But because you’re just an idle, disobedient girl who knows no
better, I have bewitched that last stone you threw. Here, do you want to hold it? she asked. Imogena said yes and held out her hands. Hedwig Blei put her hands on the girl’s. The Queen of the Well opened her hands to show not a stone, but a small bird, a sparrow. The girl held the bird in both her hands, feeling its tiny heart beat and beat. Then she parted her hands a little (like this, Hedwig Blei said and showed how) and the bird flew away, high up into the sky.

The March into the City
   They’re here now, Otto says as he bends over her. She is lying on the bed, fully dressed. The first thing she thinks of is what Nurse Blei said when they last spoke, that she would go nowhere,
not for as long as children are here
. When she said this in the blind girl’s room, it had sounded almost like a threat but Anna Katschenka doesn’t doubt that Blei meant every word. And so she, too, must go to work. There is no other way. She puts her hand on her brother’s arm but almost faints when she tries to get up. The cloth in Otto’s overcoat feels rough under her fingers and smells sourly of sweat and smoke. When his unshaven cheek touches hers, something else is there that feels damp and sticky. Blood? Or tears? But from inside his strained, deeply tired face, her brother looks at her with dry eyes that seem as innocent as ever. Now, she registers for the first time that the rifle fire and heavy-artillery bombardment of the last few days has stopped. Silence must have fallen hours ago without her being aware of it. Her brother has carried a bucket of water up to the kitchen. She splashes a little water on her face, brushes her hair, pulls on her coat and steps out at Otto’s side into the pale dawn. The air is heavy with the fatty, sickening smell of diesel fuel and burnt rubber. Margaretengürtel is transformed into an avenue of ash between overturned or abandoned army vehicles. A burnt-out German tank has come to a halt with its gun barrel
pointing at the railway tracks and the marshalling yard. Everywhere, there are towering stacks of masonry and other debris from bombed houses. The stacks must have been used as defensive positions, because dead soldiers, lying on their backs or sides, are scattered among the ruins. Their bodies, like everything else, are covered by a thin layer of dry, grey ash. Anna Katschenka is amazed at how quickly the fighting has come to a decisive end, after all the uncertainty and waiting. At first, the story was that the Russians had reached Wienerberg, then that they had been pushed back to a line three kilometres to the south-east of the city. She can’t remember who said that but it was probably Otto. A little later, a rumour circulated that Russian forward units had taken Südbahnhof. That same evening, the battle went on late into the night. They hadn’t dared to go down to the shelters and instead curled up where they could on the floor in the flat. The sounds of grenade explosions and artillery fire seemed to come from every direction and, soon before dawn, there was what sounded like a very close bomb blast. She remembers the awful whistling sound before the impact, then the shell exploding with such a powerful detonation she thought that ceiling and walls would fall on top of them. The terrifying roar of artillery mingled with the tiny, helpless, squeaky voices of people who had been trapped underneath shattered masonry and were screaming with pain or shouting for help. No one dared to leave the shelters for fear of being shot, or buried under falling buildings. One rumour was that the Nazis tried to retake the railway station and, to make up their numbers, captured civilians and forced them to fight. Apparently, the Wehrmacht had put up roadblocks on all the side streets below Belveder, along Rennweg and also Wiedener Hauptstrasse, in order to stop the Austrian soldiers from deserting. But by the morning, the Germans were already in retreat and the roadblocks had
been eliminated, Otto said, and when she insisted that she had to go to the hospital, he told her that their part of town was still reasonably safe but that nobody knew what the rest of the city was like by now. The first Russian soldiers they catch sight of look like men from a forward unit of engineers: two young men in padded, mud-brown uniforms, one bare-headed and the other wearing a kind of fur hat with earflaps. The bare-headed one is crouching, bent over a field telephone that he is trying to rig up while the one in the fur hat is unwinding a long cable across the street. In Margaretengürtel, she stops to watch a seemingly endless column of muddy army vehicles. A provisions unit with a field kitchen attached rolls along in the middle of the sea of motors. Next, the soldiers, thousands of them, on foot or crammed into lorries. Without a plan in her head, she instinctively starts walking, then jogging along the column. Perhaps she even shouts something to the passing soldiers because, without warning, a small four-wheel drive car stops at her side and a man leans out of the mud-spattered, half-open window and tries to say something. She comes closer to hear better.
Dolmetscher?
he seems to be saying. Then, the penny drops. They need an interpreter. He speaks in marked Austrian dialect and has a red and white band around his sleeve. It calms her down a little. In the rear seat, she sees someone who is clearly a Soviet officer of fairly senior rank. He looks just as keen as her countryman. She shouts back that she is a nurse but either they don’t hear her or else they misunderstand, because the Austrian speaker has already moved back to sit next to the officer. She turns to them and repeats that she is a
nurse
and that she must get to Steinhof quickly.
Please, drive me to Steinhof
, she says.
There are very, very ill children there. They won’t live if they’re not looked after
. The Austrian nods at her to get in and makes a place for her but doesn’t seem to hear what she says. The car starts the instant she
closes the door. They all seem too impatient to wait or even listen to her. She begins to feel afraid and wishes that she were back with Otto but as they seem to be going the right way, she keeps quiet. So far, few civilians have dared to go out into the streets but lots of people are already gathering at windows or in gateways. Some of those on the pavements look elated, others scared or numbed. A few young women call out to the soldiers, others wave with handkerchiefs or shawls, whether from fear or joy is hard to say. The Soviet army officer seems to take no notice of the civilians and is constantly questioning the Austrian resistance fighter, who in his turn is trying to explain the way to the completely uncomprehending driver. Suddenly, the Austrian stretches out one arm, the vehicle makes a sharp right-hand turn and starts driving up Gumpendorfer Strasse. That is the completely wrong direction.
No!
she shouts and grabs the Austrian’s coat sleeve. He pulls his arm free and continues to show the way with big gestures. They pass Esterházy Park, and the large anti-air-craft battery to which her brother and other ‘voluntary’ recruits have been so busy delivering ammunition. It now seems to be under Russian control. She has no time to see because they are going full speed up Mariahilfer Strasse. The Austrian points and waves his arms about until, after a sharp turn, they dash in through the gate leading to the Stiftgasse barracks. Presumably, this was their goal all the time. Anyway, the officer steps quickly and resolutely out of the car and the Austrian communist (she assumes he must be a communist) signs irritably to her to follow suit. Suddenly, they are all gone, the driver too, and in a moment of desperation she can’t think what to do. The Germans must have abandoned the barracks in a hurry because commandeered weaponry as well as uniforms and greatcoats are stacked on the exercise ground, next to piles of ammunition boxes. The entire area around the barracks has been cordoned off and a convoy of
Russian troop-transporters are reversing into the compound, an exercise that apparently requires huge precision from the soldiers who are directing the event. Crowds of people are on the move around her, most of them young privates but also civilians with obscure tasks. Some of the soldiers grin suggestively at her but nobody blocks her way as she leaves, almost at a run. There are many more ordinary citizens walking up and down on Stiftgasse now, and on Mariahilfer Strasse large groups of men and women of all ages are on the move, silent but determined. She hears the sound of breaking glass when they start kicking in shop windows. Immediately behind her, a group of women is looting a shop selling dress materials. They are helping each other as well as themselves to rolls of fabric from the well-stocked shelves. There are Soviet soldiers nearby on the pavement but instead of intervening, they shout encouragement and laugh when some of the women stagger outside carrying huge bundles of goods. A large number of men have formed a protective chain outside the big store Gerngross, near to where the burnt-out tram still stands with its useless trolley and wiring like a perverse crown on its roof. The chain includes many with white and red ribbons on their sleeves, like the Austrian resistance man in the car. But, by now, many have brought implements and the mob is becoming restless. Her heart beats faster as she watches the scene. She can’t think what to do and returns to the Stiftgasse barracks where, by some miracle, she finds the Russian driver in the milling crowd. He has returned to his car and is smoking and chatting to two young women.
Please, drive me to Steinhof
, she says even though she knows that he won’t understand and that it is pointless to ask. One of the women takes on the duty of translating and the driver listens patiently but not a muscle moves in his face. The woman tells her in broken German that she is from Ukraine. Why she is in Wien and what she is doing
at the barracks she doesn’t say, but she smiles at the driver, who smiles back through the cloud of cigarette smoke. Anna Katschenka grasps that this might be her last chance of being understood. She comes close to the Ukrainian woman. Steinhof, she says. Then: The children. They are dying, she adds. And emphasises with gestures that she tries to make as persuasive as possible. The woman explains to the driver who listens, apparently still unmoved. Then he gets out of the car and walks away. Anna Katschenka’s heart sinks. She thanks the woman and has turned to go when the driver comes back. He has brought three soldiers with him, the oldest of whom declares in stilted but very polite German that they have a car of their own and that she should come with them. Afterwards, she realised that it had been insane for a woman on her own to set out in a car with unknown soldiers, and enemy soldiers to boot. Their motives might well have been very far from helpful. But she has no time to plan another approach. The sky is ripped apart above them and a formation of German fighter planes sweeps in over the city. Civilians and soldiers run off in the same direction across the yard and she doesn’t resist when her three soldiers pull her along to their car, another four-wheel drive vehicle, very much like the one she travelled in before (even the mud-streaked windows look the same). It is when they are driving off that she first realises that the fighting is not yet over and that the Germans might well be launching a counter-offensive. They pull into a backstreet behind Westbahnhof and the driver shuts the engine off, a cue for everyone to light up cigarettes (evil-smelling Russian ones) and for one of them to produce a half-bottle of vodka. The talk becomes noisier. She turns to the German-speaker, who seems to be an officer, and tries to tell him very carefully, street by street, how to get to the hospital. The officer translates but the driver seems more concerned about getting his turn with the vodka. When
they finally start again, it is with a sharp jerk and an abrupt turn that almost ejects her from the car. The car speeds shakily off towards Hütteldorf. There are intermittent roadblocks along Linzer Strasse. They are waved past some of them, stopped at some, and at a few they stay on to chat to the soldiers on guard. She uses every opportunity to explain the route to the officer but he has long since given up on the finer points, and the men in the back behave less and less like escorts and more as if she were a prize possession to show off. Everywhere, they see looting, small-scale and large, and this is what seems to interest the men most of all. In Penzing, some of the villas are on fire and, here and there, men are carrying out furniture and stacking it on army lorries. She thinks that, unless the soldiers decide to stop her, she can walk to the hospital from where she is now. It would take her fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. Of course, it is unlikely that she will be safer there than anywhere else. The car stops again outside a villa where four men are struggling with an enormous grand piano. Many more items of furniture are already stacked on the pavement. The officer and the driver get out. The two men in the back try to march her into the villa but are stopped by the officer who has turned up again, blood-red in the face and shouting at them in their incomprehensible language. Possibly, all that was not about her at all, but in the momentary confusion she manages first to back away a little, and then, when no one seems inclined to grab her again, she turns and runs up the steep street. Three blocks further along, she stops and looks over her shoulder but can’t see anyone coming after her. Dusk is already gathering by the time she arrives at Baumgartner Höhe. She has cramp in her legs after running, something she hardly ever does, and when she draws breath there is a sore, stinging sensation in her chest. The wind carries the smell of burning from somewhere and the slight haziness in the air lends a dream-like
insubstantiality to the outlines of buildings and people. Steinhof looks as normal, though, except that the red Nazi flag no longer flies in front of the main building. The guard’s hut by the gate is empty and instead a young soldier stands there with an uncertain hand on the strap of his rifle. I am a nurse, she says and holds up her identity card. Instead of giving it to him, she snatches it back. He looks shocked and calls something after her, but she doesn’t respond and walks calmly and steadily towards the pavilions. He calls again, perhaps wanting somebody of higher rank to come to his rescue and, shortly afterwards, she hears running, booted footsteps on the path behind her. She knows that is someone who might take aim and shoot, and that everything could end forever now, but nobody shoots and the end doesn’t come.