The Puppet Boy of Warsaw (25 page)

One December morning, he woke early with a terrible cramp in his stomach. Hunger, naked, relentless hunger, gnawing away at his insides. It was still dark as he swivelled his stiff legs over the edge of the bed and got up, moving quietly along the line of bunks. He remembered seeing Sepp, one of the men who slept near the entrance of their building, hiding a piece of bread the size of half a palm under his makeshift cushion the night before. Max listened to the man’s regular breathing as he carefully searched next to his head. With one swift movement he pulled out the bread and wrapped it in an old rag. Sepp stirred but didn’t wake. Max returned to his bunk, ripped the bread into small pieces and swallowed them whole.

A memory flashed before his eyes. How often had he marched past children starving on the ghetto streets, their stick-thin arms reaching out to him? A wave of nausea washed over him and he rushed outside, retching until he brought up all of the stolen bread. An hour later the dull sound of hammer against metal sounded – the camp’s wake-up call.

‘
Schweinehunde!
’ Sepp’s voice thundered through the quarters minutes later. ‘Which bastard stole my bread?’ No one answered but Max felt ashamed to the core, and from then on he shared his meagre rations whenever he could.

Camp 267 was also devastating for the mind; only a few smuggled books made the rounds and in the first two years no one was allowed post.

In the third year, on a cold February evening in 1948, the prisoners were told to assemble in the canteen around the long tables. The guards placed small postcards, printed with a red cross, in front of them, along with a pencil stump for each prisoner.

‘Write. You can write one card each month. Keep it simple. Good words only – no complaints,’ the guard bellowed. They might have composed letters or whole stories in their minds, but the men had not actually written anything down for three years.

‘Good words, what do they mean? I guess they won’t send the cards if we tell the truth?’ Max wondered. His hand was shaking. What should he say? How to condense three years’ longing into a few crooked lines. In the end, the message read simply: ‘
Meine liebste Erna, mein Karlchen
–
I am interned in Russia as a prisoner of war. I am safe and healthy, please don’t worry about me. I hope you are safe. I miss you so dearly and hope I can hold you in my arms again soon. Kisses to you both. Your Max.’

Over the following weeks many of the men fell silent, lost in memories of their loved ones. They had lost the war, but no one knew what had happened to their families back home. Max had heard rumours about Nuremberg’s destruction. Had Erna and the boy survived?

It took three months. One evening in May 1948 the prisoners were gathered in the yard. After the evening roll call more names were called out. ‘Peter Schreiber. Heinz Bauer. Max Meierhauser.’

Max stepped forward and received a single postcard.

Back in the sleeping quarters he hugged Anton.

‘They are alive – Erna and Karl, my little boy. The house is gone, bombed to bits, but they are safe. They moved to a village outside Nuremberg.’

‘I’m glad for you, Max,’ Anton said quietly. No postcard had arrived for him.

‘I’m so sorry, Anton, how selfish of me. You might get a reply soon.’

‘Maybe.’ Anton’s voice sounded flat.

Some prisoners only received a three-line message scribbled by an official. So much life squeezed into a few lines on a postcard. Finally, in the summer of 1948, they were allowed to receive one postcard per month and one parcel per year. Max carried his postcards under his shirt at all times, close to his heart.

E
arly one morning in the summer of 1949, Max pulled the prince out from under the straw. There was a dangerous glimmer in his eyes as if he were running a fever.

‘I can’t go on like this any more. I am starting to forget, I can’t remember my wife’s face or my son’s. I keep trying to picture them, their features, how they used to walk, their voices, their smiles, but it’s just one big blur. God, I’ve lost them. What shall I do?’ He stared at the prince as if he might extract an answer if he waited long enough, but the prince remained silent.

From then on, Max debated with the prince every night.

‘Look, I don’t think I can survive another winter here. So many of us have died.

‘I’ve become a walking skeleton. I don’t want to end up being stored in a shed for months, only to be thrown into a shallow grave in this godforsaken place. What could be worse than staying in this hellhole?’

‘You could get yourself shot if they catch you,’ Anton whispered.

Does he never sleep?
Max thought, irritated.

‘Remember when Otto from Hamburg tried to escape last winter? They caught up with him after only three hours,’ Anton continued. ‘Then there was Peter Karpf from Hamburg. Both of them shot in the middle of the yard, right in front of us. And the group with Rainer and the guys from Munich who tried their luck that first year. They were gone for five days but in the end the guards caught them too with their dogs. Shot them the next day, remember? It’s hopeless, Max.’

‘But what about Thomas and Stefan?’ Max hissed. The pair had disappeared one brilliant blue day last autumn and had never been caught.

‘Who knows. But just because the dogs didn’t get them doesn’t mean they didn’t freeze to death. They might’ve lost their minds, starved to death, got lost or dropped dead from exhaustion. And what about the wolves, you’ve seen them. Siberia’s one big prison.’

It pained Max to hear the young man who had once been an eager medical student sound so utterly defeated. Yes, there were rivers to conquer, an army of Soviet soldiers and officials to avoid and a whole continent to cross. But wasn’t all this better than dying here in the camp?

Max had made up his mind. But it would be easier in a group. Luckily, after three more nights of whispered debates, Anton changed his mind. Shortly afterwards Hans came on board. Like Max, he had been a carpenter before the war, and although a Northerner, he was always up for a joke, even in the most dreadful of circumstances.

Camp 267 was as remote as the moon and hence not heavily guarded; the Russians knew that not many would dare to escape during those terrible winters. But there were other seasons too. The summers in Siberia blazed with heat for a few short weeks and the prisoners soaked up the warmth, each sunny day a precious gift for their frozen bones. Summer also brought some colour, a comfort to the eyes and hearts after the endless black and white of winter: brown in all shades, mossy greens and even some berry-reds. Clear blue skies stretched high and wide and the harsh winter winds died down to a gentle breeze. Summer would have been a greater relief still, if not for the Siberian plague: swarms of blood-sucking mosquitoes that arrived in huge buzzing swarms, stinging everyone into a red, swollen pulp.

‘Damn flies, you want to suck the last of my blood from me?’ Max cursed, waving his arms wildly. ‘Worse than the cold, those little devils.’

It made working in the woods unbearable. The prisoners needed all their remaining willpower not to scratch themselves bloody and the guards were even more bad tempered.

‘Let’s go at the very end of summer,’ Max suggested. Anton and Hans agreed and the men started to prepare. They saved some of their bread, a few shrivelled beets, dried berries and a small tub of lard. Anton managed to find two small flint stones – without fire they would not have a chance.

Although they had been very careful, some of the other prisoners got wind of their plans.

‘So, it’s not good enough for you here, ha?’ Sepp sneered. He had always suspected Max of stealing his bread.

‘Leave me alone,’ Max snapped back. But others supported their little group, sharing some of their precious rations. Then, just a week before the planned date, the Russians stepped up their numbers at the gate.

‘We’re not going to make it,’ Hans whispered, ‘they’re too many of them.’

Anton also seemed deflated. ‘They’ll catch us before we can even get out of here.’

‘I’m going anyway,’ Max mumbled under his breath, ‘we’ll die one way or another. At least I want to die one step closer to being a free man. I can wait a while longer, but not long. Are you with me?’

It was autumn when they finally tried their luck. Fired up by Max, Anton and Hans joined him. The three men agreed that autumn would be actually the better season as in the summers, with all the snow melting, the ground turned into a sponge and they could have drowned in the bogs of the tundra. Autumn dried out the earth. Autumn would still spare them the snow for several weeks and provide plenty of berries and mushrooms on their way.

The evening before the planned date, Max wrapped the prince in a piece of cloth and tucked the puppet under his flimsy clothes, together with the crocodile, the girl and the Kasperl.

‘Please leave me at least some of your puppets Max, I’ll die of boredom here,’ pleaded Martin Schneider. Since Martin had had an accident the year before, when his axe had slipped and cut deep into his left leg, he had walked with a heavy limp. And although he longed to join the small group of escapees, he knew he would only hold everyone back.

‘Take good care of them, Martin, and maybe they’ll take care of you,’ Max said, handing over the rest of the troupe: Herr Tod, the devil, the grandmother and the policeman.

‘I wish you luck.’

‘You too.’ The men hugged.

Max, Anton and Hans had studied the movements of the guards carefully and discovered a small window of time, a few precious minutes, in which they could slip unnoticed underneath the fence. Over the previous weeks they had dug a shallow hole, just deep enough to scramble through.

They wore all of their winter clothes: two shirts, a shabby, padded jacket, a cap, gloves and their boots. They managed to collect together one blanket each, a few pieces of hard bread, a handful of dried forest berries, the flint stones and their battered metal bowls and spoons.

Max held on to their most precious possession: a map of Russia that Heinrich, a former geography teacher from Munich, had drawn over many nights on a crumpled piece of paper. Heinrich tried to remember every river, mountain range and forest as clearly as he could. The three men had bowed over the map as if looking into a crystal ball.

‘It’s a crazy mission,’ Heinrich had said, ‘you’ve only got this basic map, winter on its way, and a country to cross that’s as big as the ocean.’

‘But anything’s better than this,’ Max had whispered. ‘I know one important thing for sure: our direction is westwards. We’ll follow the sun by day and at night the stars. We eat what we can find and we’re not coming back.’

Seeing Max’s determination, some other men in the quarters had chipped in and added small gifts to their supply: a few more shrivelled vegetables, a small piece of dried sausage and even one sugar cube.

Now the sun had disappeared behind the forest and night was fast approaching. The three men lay waiting for their moment.

‘Quick, now,’ Max whispered. They slipped underneath the fence, then ran straight into the forest, its dense wood offering them the best protection. They could hear the wild barking of the dogs and the shouting of the guards but they didn’t seem to be getting any closer.

The three ran and marched all through that first night, staying close together, keeping each other in sight, and only when dawn began to break did they huddle together in a hollow, covering themselves with a thick layer of branches and leaves.

They were lucky. Very lucky. After a while they could no longer hear the troops pursuing them, nor the bloodthirsty dogs which undoubtedly had been sent after them. Day after day the men trudged on, step after painful step, forest stretching ahead, no end in sight. And although they had all known that Siberia was enormous, they hadn’t bargained on its utter boundlessness, its limitless vastness. Siberia was as big and empty as the moon.

The three men trekked one behind the other, never coming across any sign of human life, feeding off their meagre supplies and the berries and mushrooms they found along the way. Although far from home, Max had a keen eye for edible mushrooms.

‘They’re all the same, the whole world over. Look at that beauty,’ he said, grinning, pointing out a huge brown mushroom that grew from the damp forest floor.

Max reached under his shirt and pulled out the prince. He sat the puppet on top of the mushroom and laughed.

‘Have a dance on the biggest mushroom in Siberia, my friend.’

‘You’re sure we can eat that one?’ Anton said suspiciously. ‘I don’t want to die from eating a damn mushroom after all this!’

In the end their hunger outweighed their caution and they ate the whole mushroom raw. No one died that day, but the men’s stomachs complained and every so often one of them would disappear behind a tree, clutching their belly. Only after four days, when they were far enough away from the camp, did they dare to light a fire and cook some of the mushrooms.

A few days later the weather changed suddenly and the first snow arrived.

‘This wasn’t meant to happen, not yet. It’s only September,’ Anton grumbled.

‘Look on the bright side; we’ll have water wherever we are going. We can melt the snow and
voila
!’ Hans replied. Max smiled; this was why he had gladly welcomed Hans into their group – he was a practical guy, always looking for the positive. But as the snow kept falling it grew colder by the day. The men hardly spoke but kept moving.

‘I wouldn’t care if I never see another tree in my life again,’ Max said.

‘You can say that again. But then the forest has given us the mushrooms and berries,’ Hans replied.

‘And the runs,’ Anton added.

After ten days the forest began to take its toll. Hans, who had marched in the middle of the three men, suddenly collapsed, lying sprawled like a dead bird in the snow. He opened his blue eyes, looked up at Max and smiled.

‘Hey, Max, I think if I were back home I would miss all this snow. I’d better stay right here. You go ahead with Anton. Good luck.’ With that he curled into a ball and did not stir again.