The Chosen Ones (36 page)

I understand that you’re a Ziegler.

Adrian was holding two buckets brimful of coals, one in each hand. Had he been found out? The sharp tin handles cut into the palms of his hands but he didn’t dare to change his grip for fear of losing his balance or spilling the coals. The Silver Knife was moving off and all three of them walked through the little wood and up towards Brenner’s house:

I knew a Eugen Ziegler back in the old days;

a fine man, easy to get on with;

is he your father?

Adrian kept staring at the Silver Knife’s shoes, marvelling at how shiny and well polished they were despite all the muck and dust and mud they had to walk through every day but the real question was, how was he to understand the warmth that spread like a wave through his chest and into his whole body? He had done everything he could not to be recognised but the Silver Knife’s appreciative words about his father filled him with a mixture of pride and shame unlike anything he had felt before. From that day, Adrian’s position in the collective of coal pickers had changed. Karl Brenner showed a certain regard for him when they spoke together. When Mrs General placed the bowl of soup or goulash in front of him, there was a slightly respectful restraint about her movements and he no longer had to sleep in the damp cellar but was allowed to share an upstairs bedroom with the blue-eyed Leopold. In the evening, the Silver Knife’s trusted runners would meet up on the embankment.
Some brought cigarettes and were keen to offer him one. Mostly, they just wandered about and smoked and told each other tales about a war that none of them had experienced. They saw themselves as real deserters by now,
Schimmlern
, or even as
Politische
(those were the ones the police were supposed to be after) and Adrian might fall back on his father’s overused line about how
when Stalin and his boys come, I’ll join the partisans
and although he had repeated that one to death and the words were meaningless, everyone laughed to show how they appreciated it. When the weather was nice, they went along to Simmeringer Haide to sit on the grass and watch the teams of local boys playing football. Sometimes they divided up into teams and played each other. Further out on the heath, between the football pitches and the canal, the Nazis had set up a prisoner of war camp. This was what some of the footballers had found out. As one of them pointed, Adrian looked at the high walls, the enclosing barbed-wire fence and the guards that could be seen coming and going. Strangely enough, he didn’t feel threatened or afraid. It was as if it didn’t have anything to do with him and didn’t arouse any feelings. Many years later, Adrian could clearly remember the long evenings of summer dusk vibrating with full-throated birdsong, the air rich with the lightly acidic smell of wild flowers and newly mown grass, and how, in the gathering dark, everything dissolved except their faces and made them look like great big lumbering animals rooting around on the football pitch. In the end, only Jockerl was left running with his legs kicking out in every direction, white legs –
albino-white
, Adrian would say later – so white that someone might have deposited a layer of frost over his skin and made him freeze in the middle of the warm dusk, until someone formed their hands into a megaphone and
Jockerl! – fuck’s sake, give over,
and then
Jockerl! Jockerl!
and Jockerl finally veered to the sideline
and let his body slump on the grass and then sat with hanging head and his elbows resting on his knees while his white chest rose and fell like bellows, just as Otto Semmler’s had when he was close to death and lying in the bed next to Adrian’s in the gallery of pavilion 15: breaths far too heavy for so small a body. Adrian steeled himself and went to sit next to Jockerl. I’m really sorry about that thing with the cartridge, he wanted to say but perhaps he didn’t, perhaps he only heard himself say it inside his head. It could be that all he did was to hold out a packet of cigarettes towards Jockerl, pressed him a little to have one, as the others did when they wanted to confirm with a mate that there was an understanding or even a pact between them. And he wanted to say something about the fact that they were both
outside
now, meaning that what went on
in there
surely didn’t matter that much anymore. Perhaps it had also been best if Jockerl hadn’t said or done anything except being pale and exhausted, and just carried on breathing with his body hanging limply between his splayed knees, but he didn’t. He turned to Adrian and smiled, the same submissive, anxious, affectionate and despairing smile that had been on Jockerl’s face when Pototschnik was in a really mean mood and went for him, and
Jockerl!
Pototschnik’s voice was saying,
you sad sack, I’ll kill you!
All the time, Jockerl smiled and smiled. After a while, Jockerl packed up his smile and walked away, and Adrian, too, walked back to the room where he and Leopold slept. That night, it started to rain. At first, it sounded like small fingers tapping on the roof but, later, an ice-cold draught seeped in through the unsealed cracks around the window frame and the rain hammered against the walls and the roof, sounding as if someone with large, thumping fists wanted to get in at any cost. Within the noise of the rain, they heard a diesel engine coming close, car doors open and shut, and hoarse voices shouting loudly and urgently to each other. On the ground
floor, Karl Brenner was having words with someone and then came the sound of many hurrying feet in heavy boots coming upstairs. The smell of leather and wet uniform cloth that invaded the room when the door was opened told him this was the police. A torch beam swept the room. Karl Brenner’s upset, breathless voice rose from behind the cops, saying
I told you, it’s just my sons who’re sleeping in there
. The door slammed shut again, there were more heavy boots stamping on the stairs and then they were suddenly gone. He stayed still, burrowed into his mattress, feeling like a frog at the bottom of a well. His heart was beating, fit to break the well walls down. Finally, there were voices from outside the house again. They seemed to be laughing, loudly and on a single note, though it might just have sounded like that because of the rain. The car doors slammed shut and, after a while, the engine noise grew fainter and faded away.

The Last Run
   It rains all night. It has stopped by the morning but the air is close and humid, as if the rain hasn’t quite given up. The trees in the small wood they have to walk through every day to get to the tracks are striped with dripping moisture, under a sky as smooth and pale as an eggshell. As always, the Silver Knife is already at his post by the embankment. Somehow, his name seems more right than ever. The shadow cast by the brim of his hat seems to cut his face in two. His voice remains, but only just. Even though the Silver Knife doesn’t mention the police raid last night, they realise that this will be their last run. Perhaps that is why no one steps forward when the pointing finger starts to move around the ring of tense, dejected boys and:
you!
Silver Knife is just about to say when Adrian steps forward and says
Jockerl could be a runner!
It’s meant as a joke because everyone knows how useless Jockerl is when he runs. The boys laugh and the Silver Knife laughs most of all, and puts his arm around Adrian’s
shoulders and gives him a friendly squeeze. In that moment, all the laughing boys know that it is him, Adrian, who will be running tonight and he is taking it on to save everybody else but he will run so well that it won’t matter that this is the last time. Leopold, who himself used to run at least once a week, has taught Adrian the ropes. Start the exact moment as the first truck comes by and then keep a steady pace with the train or run faster if you can. The best thing is to put more power in at the start of the run because it’s when the engine driver enters the curve that he pays the least attention to what happens behind him. There’s a short ladder on the side of each truck. The bottom rung sticks out below the side of the truck. Try to grip the ladder as high up as you can, then swing the lower part of your body up and place your feet on the lowest rung. You’ve got to let go with one hand when you take hold higher up and then you can heave up and over using your body weight. Once you’ve steadied on your feet it’s just a matter of balance. When you’re there, standing upright and the train is racing ahead, the freedom you feel is like nothing else, Leopold had said and Adrian, lying on a mattress next to him in Mr Brenner’s house, often imagined that much-desired moment when he alone would be on the move and everything else left behind. But he knows it will be hard. His body is heavy, perhaps too heavy for his running speed. Still, if only he catches up with the truck he will have enough strength and stamina to hang on and climb up, whatever else happens. But once he is up there on the embankment, he has no time to think. The train is rushing towards him from the Ostbahnbrücke, as if shooting out from nowhere or as if it had been formed out of its own noise: the heavy, pulsating beats of iron against iron. A
body
of iron suddenly shatters the air with its howling whistle. Then, the shrieking noise of the wheels as the brakes slow them down: a sound like a huge iron ore crusher. By then he is already running, running
like the wind, as the tall trucks roll past him in a strong current of dusty, oil-laden, burning-hot air that hits his face. He hadn’t reckoned with this, nor that the wet and slippery ballast along the edge of the track would make it so hard to put one leg in front of the other. His right foot slips all the time, his back curves forward and his groin takes the strain. He reaches for the ladder but it is touch and go because it ends much higher up than he thought. Or is the ballast base settling or sinking underneath him? He stretches his arms as far as he can and grabs the bottom rung. Just then, he hears a cry behind him and sees Jockerl come after him at a run. The boy’s pale face is stripped bare with effort and he holds out one arm, as if trying to catch up with Adrian to tell him something. By then Adrian is only halfway up and hasn’t got a very good grip but he still reaches out his free hand to Jockerl. Despite his clumsy, uncoordinated arms and legs, Jockerl has managed the incredible feat of keeping pace with the truck and even hangs on to the bottom rung of the ladder, his legs beating like drumsticks under his swinging body. Adrian can’t stop himself, he has to reach out with his arm as if to support the runner or at least offer a helping hand. At that moment, the entire train shudders but, instead of slowing down a little more, it
increases
its speed. Adrian sees the ballast rush past faster and faster. A wave of panic washes over him. He leans half his body away from the side of the truck and there, behind him but not all that far behind, Jockerl lifts his head and looks up at him. This is the first time their eyes meet.
Hold on!
Adrian wants to scream.
Don’t let go!
But just as their hands are close, Jockerl turns his head away, his arm shoots straight up like an exclamation mark while the rest of his body hangs in the air like a white, flapping piece of cloth. Then the air current weakens and lets go of him. There is a short, horribly dull thud as his body hits the truck behind and what is left of Jockerl is tossed in a wide arc up
in the air and then disappears out of sight as abruptly as if the ground had opened to swallow him up. Adrian is already on top of the truck and is trying desperately to gain a foothold on the mass of loose, slipping chunks of coal. When he can finally turn to look, the train is taking a slight bend and he sees the other boys come running from all over the place to gather at one spot on the edge of the road that runs alongside the railway. Adrian stands there, helpless, on top of a mountain of meaningless coal. He knows he must jump, but
where?
The train is still gaining speed and around him the track is widening, one set of rails cut into another and the buildings grow denser. Already, he glimpses behind the next curve what must be the roof of the station house in Simmering. He knows that if he doesn’t jump now he will never get off this train. Flailing with his arms to keep his balance, he advances to the edge of the truck. Far down there is a chasm of shining rails. The beat of the wheels across the joints makes the side of the truck shake along its full length, and almost throws him off as he tries to climb over the edge. His feet are back on the ladder as the train gradually begins to slow down. At that moment, he sees in the distance an oncoming train. He stops hesitating and, with violent force, leaps away from the side of the truck. Instinctively, he curls up to make his contact area with the ground as small as possible but it doesn’t help much: he hits the sleepers with the left side of his body just below the curving border of the ribcage. For a few seconds, everything becomes flickering lights and a bleeding, pulsating sound. He thinks that he will lose consciousness and be run over by the other train. He hears its screaming brakes as if the sound were coming from somewhere inside him but somehow pulls himself out of the pain that presses him down and, with one hand against the side of his chest, crawls off the deadly track with only seconds to spare before the other train rushes past in a cloud of hot, oil-soaked
air laden with trackside dust. Hidden behind the seemingly endless freight train, dragging himself along with a slowly spreading, cramped stiffness along the side of his body, he starts the slow walk back to where he has just come from, one metre after the next, while shouting at himself: why go back? Don’t do it, there’s nothing there for you, get away while you have a chance! But he can’t rid himself of Jockerl’s face, now so close he feels he could reach out and touch it. Why was Jockerl allowed to run? Or had the Silver Knife sent him to tell Adrian to cancel the run? He knows that he will have no peace until he has found out. And so, once more, the gap between sky and ground grows narrower, a gap that for one dizzying moment had seemed truly to open up around him. He has a vision of walking towards his own mirror image that slowly but tirelessly advances along the track, as if he and it were pulled together by an invisible cord. Then the figure suddenly stops and starts waving with an object held in its hand, and Adrian realises that he isn’t watching his own reflection but that it is Leopold who has come to look for him. The thing in his hand is a spade. He lowers it to the ground and then starts running down the embankment. Adrian sets off at a run, too, and stumbles, slips and slides down the slope. Leopold’s face is flushed, as if he had been slapped or as if he is burning inside. Quickly, he says, we must get him away from here. He points at the road where a police car has stopped. Two officers climb out and set out towards the embankment. Leopold pulls Adrian towards the edge of the ditch. Jockerl lies there, half-hidden behind some shrubs. The contents of the top of his head have spilt, a sloppy grey mess coated with blood and gravel. The rest of his face is still perfectly recognisable, its features distinct as if painted on and its eyes staring as emptily and helplessly as ever. Leopold has left the wheelbarrow on the roadside and is now pulling at one of Jockerl’s legs and signalling to Adrian to take hold of the other
one. But Adrian can’t make himself do it, just stands as if paralysed, staring down at Jockerl’s strange miniature face. He can see the Silver Knife a little further down the road. He is turning round, a quarter-turn at a time. Like a weathervane: first a quarter-turn one way, then a quarter-turn in the opposite direction. Getting nowhere. Now the two cops have him in a firm hold with his arms twisted behind his back. Leopold lets go of Jockerl’s leg. Just then, a train goes by and envelops everything in a cloud of black dust and flakes of coal. Its insane howling noise thunders and crackles, forcing the two policemen to bend over until the last truck has passed and the train disappears up the bridge approach and then across the river.