A Kiss for the Enemy (49 page)

Anna was still trembling, still pressing close against him.

‘I have asked Cousin Kaspar to come here soon for a while. I have always loved him, and Lise, as you know, is far away. He must not be alone for too long at this time.'

‘Of course not.' Anthony's mind was still following Frido – through echoing passages, towards what foul execution shed? Anna was murmuring with urgency.

‘My darling, it would be impossible for Cousin Kaspar to be here, and to avoid picking up some hint about you. Of course, he, himself, would have no doubts about his duty. For him, whatever is going on, Germany is at war. But even if he discovered or guessed nothing he would be compromised if there were later suspicions or investigations. They would associate those suspicions with Frido's record. They would give Kaspar the benefit of no doubt.'

She seldom referred to her own risk. She must, Anthony
knew, be living all the time with the fear of arrest, questioning, torture, death.

‘I could not have you both here at the same time,' she whispered, sadly but firmly. ‘It would be too dangerous. For all of us. I'm sure of it.'

Anthony said, ‘I'm fit to go. I'm a bit feeble and I'll go in short stretches. You can advise me on route and stops, the best way to plan it. I think it's mild, for January.' This last was certainly untrue. She put her arms round him. He smoothed her hair.

‘My darling Anna, I'll get away safe, the war can't last long. I'll come for you, and we'll make a new life together, won't we? With Franzi?'

She didn't answer, but kissed him. Then they began talking of practical matters with great earnestness.

Hard, sickening work, and a general fear that overshadowed even their private horror, made the days race past for the two girls during that appalling winter.

All the nurses had heard the news of a Russian attack on 12th January. It was described as having been successfully beaten back with heavy losses and at first it had seemed far away, somewhere in central Poland, still that ‘East Front' which, remote and barbaric, had so much dominated their imaginations since coming to work at the hospital. The hospital was pleasantly situated on the edge of a large village by the Oder river, a short distance north of Frankfurt-an-der-Oder and about ninety kilometres south-east of Berlin. It was not a military hospital although it had become customary to admit ‘complicated' cases from the front, referred to the hospital Director by the military authorities.

Since 12th January, all had changed. Officers of the medical branch of the Wehrmacht had arrived with urgent demands. Every bed, the time of every doctor and every nurse, was to be made available for the wounded of Army Group A, now meeting the full fury of the greatest Russian offensive yet experienced in the war. Rumour spread like poison gas through the wards and corridors. It was whispered that the previous Saturday the enemy had first crossed the frontier into Silesia:
and that, further north, they had broken into East Prussia. The Red Army was on German soil! It was unbelievable! It was horrible! But, as one broken soldier after another found consolation in muttering for a few snatched, precious minutes to a nurse about his private nightmare, none could doubt any longer that it was true.

The population of the village had feared this for some time. Cowed, murmuring behind doors and by now sceptical of the Führer's promises, they had made their own deductions from the bland, official communiqués. Fighting around Warsaw, fighting east of the Masurian Lakes was one thing. Fighting the Bolsheviks who had crossed the Vistula and were tapping at the gates of Danzig was quite another. The people were gripped with terror, a terror which infected all within the hospital. Nobody had been allowed to leave the district – the Party's local leaders had strict instructions and these were as strictly enforced. There was to be no flight westward. German soil would be triumphantly defended. It was defeatist treachery to doubt it.

But now the Russians were in East Prussia and Silesia. One day, perhaps soon, they would be here.

The wounded Panzer Grenadier admitted on 20th January, was small and very young. He had a surname but the nurses immediately knew him as Willi. He whispered that he was seventeen years old, but Lise was confident that he had not yet seen his sixteenth birthday. He had a brown, country face, glistening brown eyes, a smile to delight, no legs and only one arm. And there were other injuries.

Willi caught Lise's hand with his remaining limb as she shifted his pillow. Despite wounds and weakness he had discovered her name and never failed to produce his smile for her. For him these were treasured moments.

‘Fraülein Lise, what day is it?'

‘It's Thursday, Willi, 25th January, 1945, to be exact.'

‘Where is this hospital?' She told him. A Saxon himself, he knew the geography and understood her.

‘When are we all to be taken to the west?'

‘There are no plans that I know of to do that, Willi. You are safe here. We are a long way behind the front.'

Willi looked at her from his pillow. He had shed his smile.

‘You must get away before they come, Fraülein Lise! They will come. We've got nothing to fight them with. They pour over us – tanks, guns, horses, men. Everything!'

‘Hush, Willi, it's going to be all right –'

‘No, you can't imagine! You know, we attacked, my company. It was a little counter-attack, the lieutenant told us we did it well, we surprised them, we took a village. A German village. The Ivans had been in it for twenty-four hours. There wasn't a soul alive. And my God, what they'd done to them! Children, the lot. And as for the women! My God, Fraülein Lise, whatever they order, you must get away!'

Lise gently detached her hand. ‘And who would look after you, Willi? I think I'd better stay, to make sure you're good and get well.'

‘Oh, I'm done for,' he said without emotion, ‘but you – and the other, your friend, you must get away. Go secretly.' He was always on the edge of delirium.

‘Fraülein Lise!'

‘Now I must go, Willi. I'll be back later.'

‘Fraülein Lise, your friend – she's not German, is she?'

‘No, she's not German. Now settle down, Willi. I want you to sleep a little.'

Lise hastened away. From the doorway, the sharp voice of the matron cut through the ward.

‘Fraülein von Arzfeld!'

Lise hurried to report.

‘You are to go to the Superintendent's office immediately.'

Lise scuttled along the corridors.

A stranger, a grey man, stood in the Ward Superintendent's office. His face was colourless – not exactly white, thought Lise, but devoid of definable colour tones. Fleetingly, she wondered how one would paint it. It was not an old face, but the hair was sparse and grey. Outside, a bitter east wind was accompanied by flurries of snow and the man had not removed a grey raincoat. A grey, felt hat, with the damp of melted snow on the crown, stood on the Superintendent's table. The Superintendent murmured something and left the office. The grey man looked at Lise.

‘You are Fraülein von Arzfeld?'

Lise nodded. She felt sick. She also felt fear but no surprise.

‘My name is Müller. State Police.'

Lise supposed so, and said nothing. Müller opened a folder. Then he grunted and sat down in the Superintendent's chair, opening a notebook and taking a pencil from his pocket. His face was completely without expression. Lise remained standing in the middle of the room. Müller started writing.

‘When did you last receive a letter from your brother, Frido von Arzfeld?'

‘I have heard nothing from my brother since before Christmas. Just over a month ago.'

‘A month ago,' said Müller, nodding and writing. ‘And when did you last see him?' His inflexion seemed to imply that it was a matter of little importance. Lise was trembling, but fighting a fierce battle to conceal it.

‘It was at Christmas, 1943. Over a year ago. Immediately before I came here.'

‘We will talk about that again in a minute,' said Müller, in a bored and even tone, still contemplating his notebook rather than Lise. ‘Now let us have one or two particulars about your friend – the young lady who came here with you and whom I shall be talking to later. It seems a strange story, does it not? A strange story indeed.'

Early that morning in Berlin, Horst Brauer surveyed himself in the long glass and approved of what he saw. He straightened his white tie a little, moved his white waistcoat fractionally, to ensure the buttons were exactly central. He settled his tailcoat so that it sat properly on his shoulders. Although cut to give plenty of freedom to the arms it could still appear smart and snug to the figure. Horst Brauer nodded at his reflection and took his top hat from a small polished table beside him. They were going to send a car, difficult though it often was for them. In the glass, Brauer could see his wife enter the room behind him. She smiled at him with an expression of humble and affectionate pride.

‘You look really impressive, Horst, dear. I wish you always dressed here at home instead of – there. Then I could admire you more often. Oh dear, it's cold in here.'

Brauer ignored this and frowned.

‘Ilse, it appears impossible to produce properly starched collars. This one is below the standard required of me and by me. Why is that?'

‘Horst, my dear, it
is
very difficult. It's not easy to get the proper stuff. Everybody, of course, is having to make do with substitutes –'

‘I am not everybody. I am an official of the State holding an extraordinary and delicate position. My appearance according to regulations is a symbol of the dignity of the State. Furthermore, it is because I have a right to expect that such things can be properly ordered that I, on a few occasions, bring my – my uniform – home. So that all can be attended to decently.'

‘I've brushed your suit, Horst dear, and cleaned the trousers. I think they're spotless now. I know about the collar –'

He did not listen to her further mumblings. He was sure that with more energy and ingenuity these things could be better managed. He saw his wife's inadequacy reflected in the starched finen of other men. Even his detested assistant Fichter – a bungling lout with the bearing and manners of the provincial butcher he once had been – was sartorially impeccable. Ilse was bleating on about something else as she set his coffee before him.

‘Last night's raid was really terrible, Frau Steiner told me. Thank Heaven we're some way out. It's the centre of Berlin that's been getting it worst. Oh, dear –'

Brauer also thought it providential that they lived in the outer southern suburbs but he did not care to imply that his life was of particular importance when measured against the sufferings of the Reich.

‘Frau Steiner always exaggerates.'

‘Will you be – late, Horst?'

‘Certainly not.' He considered the day's business. Then he rose and peered out of the apartment window. The official car had not yet arrived. Brauer looked at the clock on the wall and frowned. His temper was always upset by the possibility of unpunctuality. His wife tried to distract him.

‘There's one more awful story on the wireless this morning, Horst, about another man who's been betraying the Reich – caught preparing messages to be broadcast to our soldiers telling frightful lies about the Führer. The man on the wireless
said that everybody, not just the soldiers, should be aware and on their guard. What with that and all these other revelations –'

‘There are traitors in every phase of history,' said Brauer grimly. ‘Rats who gnaw at the supports of the house while the gale batters it from outside.' As if giving emphasis to his words, the freezing January east wind howled round the corner window of their sitting room.

‘Yes, and it's so hard for one to credit it, this man was an officer – a German officer doing that! And with a famous old German name, too – I can't remember it. Then, last summer –'

Brauer looked at her contemptuously.

‘If you saw as much as I do of the actions – and the deserved fates – of some of our “famous old German names”, nothing would surprise you.' He finished his coffee and looked out of the window again. The official car, four minutes late, drew up at the street door of the apartment block, black and beetle-like against the snow. It would soon be dawn, and there was some grey light in the eastern sky already. Fires burning in the centre of the city illumined the northern horizon.

A few minutes later Brauer was being driven through the bleak, suburban streets. The driver was talking with resignation about the previous night's air raid. Brauer reflected that there were too many excuses made these days: failure of duty, inattention to detail – it was always blamed on an air raid. True, the city was devastated. Nothing was left of block after block but charred skeletons of buildings. In other whole quarters there wasn't a pane of glass. People huddled, shivering, where they still survived. For that one could thank not only enemy bombers with their indiscriminate fury, but those Germans who betrayed their own folk, soldiers, Führer. Brauer thought of Ilse's ‘famous old German names' and snorted.

Nevertheless, life and business were, somehow, kept going. It was unpardonable to throw up one's hands, abandon standards, give in. It would be a pity, not a disaster, but most unfortunate, if he, Horst Brauer, were prevented by circumstances from the punctual discharge of his particular duties. There were six ‘particular duties' today, 25th January. He looked at his watch. He had no confidence in the assistant
executioner, Fichter. The man was awkward. Besides, there were so many new-fangled ideas thought up these days that a man had to have intelligence as well as strength and resolve. He looked at his watch again. The driver caught his eye in the mirror.

‘We've got to go a long way round. They've blocked off the whole of Charlottenburg, the Heerstrasse's closed, the …'