The Dynamite Room (18 page)

He rubbed at his eyes. His head ached. He was sick of feeling this hot. Even the floorboards he sat on were sweating. He almost wished for Norway. Here he felt so tired all the time, so heavy. And now he would need to find another house and another radio. He would have to summon up the energy to venture out, and all because of one stupid outburst, a moment's loss of control.

He glanced at the piles of books he'd taken from the study, books on English history, the English countryside, English poets…He shuffled across the floor and sat beneath the window. He had no mind for reading now. He took his pistol and pulled out the magazine, counting the bullets lined up in it, and then he clicked it back into place. He turned his head and, with a sense of relief, felt the coolness of the wall seeping into his cheek, into his bones, and slowly numbing him.

After a while he could hear a dull
thumping
transmitting itself through the walls of the house; it sent a splintering through his skull. He lifted his head away but the noise remained. He wondered if he was imagining it. In the secret world of the house he had started to see and hear things that he knew weren't real. The previous night, he had sat up, sure that he could hear the sound of small wheels trundling across the floor above him; and when he had opened the door of the cupboard under the stairs he had been quite convinced that he would find children hiding there, just as he had done in Poland.

Thump. Thump. Thump,
came the noise.

War tipped everything on its head: ethics, existence, common sense. That was surely why in a farmhouse in Poland he had shot three children dead; why in Narvik he had watched his men rape a woman and had thought nothing of it.

He needed to sleep now. God, he needed to sleep. But there were already too many images in his head, and it was in his dreams that they grew strongest, muscling their way in when he was trying so hard to forget. Gruber in the snow, stripping the clothes from a dead naval officer. Two nurses at the hospital doors. Children's faces in the dark. Or Eva in the park, her eyes bright as she leaned forward and kissed him. The touch of her lips. The struggle in the water. The thrash of limbs as they coiled and wrestled. The jerk of an arm, a slashing knife. Blood-red clouds in the water before waking and gasping with a sudden race for air.

He got up and walked out of the room, following the
thumping
into the hall and up the stairs. She was there in the corridor, frowning and throwing a ball against the wall as hard as she could and catching it, her face still wet from crying. He stood with his hands on his hips and patiently waited for her to stop, which she eventually did, but not until she'd thrown the ball extra hard one more time—
thump
—just to prove her point.

He watched the swing of the metronome's arc on the floor beside him, slow and steady. In his head he could hear music. Schubert's “Ave Maria!” He was lying on the bed in the Berlin garret room and Eva was playing to him in the dark. In his head he could hear the full orchestra accompanying her.

In early March the division had returned to Berlin and, for four weeks, he found himself stationed just west of the city, at Dallgow-Döberitz. He welcomed being so close to the institute and Eva, particularly as before long he'd be heading up to Wesermünde to board the destroyer
Wilhelm Heidkamp.
Word had already gotten out.
They're sending us to Norway.

Eva had been granted some time off from the institute to see him, and they spent the day together. Lunch at Hertie's department store had been a disappointment—the menu rather more limited than he had remembered—and for the first hour together neither of them had quite known what to say. They whiled away the afternoon in the Tiergarten, navigating their way around the puddles and sharing a pretzel, and they had stopped at their special bridge to have their customary photograph taken, only for Heiden to realize that he had left his camera back in the barracks.

Oh, never mind. It doesn't matter,
she had said, but he could tell that it did.

They watched a group from the League of German Girls being taught how to tend the allotments. The great park had been largely turned over to vegetables; the metal fencing and iron railings were gone too, and as they walked they could see a group of uniformed Brownshirts pulling down the iron lampposts from along the paths and replacing them with wooden ones.

Everything is being uprooted. Even the park lampposts,
she said.

As she spoke, the iron post being dismantled in front of them fell heavily across their path with a thunderous clang, causing Eva, Heiden, and several others to leap back out of its way.

Careful,
shouted one of the Brownshirts, and he laughed.

You could have killed someone,
Eva shouted.

Well, we'll try harder next time then,
he replied, laughing again.

To Heiden's utter surprise, Eva suddenly launched herself at the boy, seemingly intent on hitting him and shouting,
You pig, you're all ignorant pigs!
as they laughed and jeered at her.

It took all of Heiden's strength to pull her back and haul her down the path away from them, her arms still thrashing.
Calm down. For God's sake, Eva. What the hell are you doing?
Around them, people had stopped to watch.

It's all being torn down,
she sobbed into his coat as he managed to walk her away.
I can't bear this any longer.

I know,
he said.
I know.

Later they strolled alongside the lime trees between the two carriages on Unter den Linden and sat for a few minutes on the steps outside the Neue Wache memorial, counting steeples. In the evening, they visited their favorite little picture house just off Potsdamer Platz to watch
It Was A Gay Ballnight
with Zarah Leander and Marika Rökk, which Eva—seemingly forgetting the afternoon's drama—had immensely enjoyed, but which made Heiden inexplicably sad. Afterwards they rode the tram home along the darkened Berlin streets through the rain. She had snuggled into the wraps of his uniform.
Don't come back to me dead,
she said.
You are the only reason I am living.

She had been out of sorts all day; and, of course, there had been the incident in the park. When he asked her what was on her mind, she finally said that it was the institute and the job. There were twice as many beds as there had been when they'd first looked around. He would hardly recognize the place. Getting from one end of a ward to another was an assault course, she told him.
We're not allowed to send any clothes to the laundry until we've at least tried to scrub the dirt from them, and if you attempt to smuggle in some that Nurse Hartmann thinks you could have cleaned yourself, she unleashes hellfire and fury.
She flies at us over the slightest thing.
They'd had two resignations that month already—with no hope of them being replaced.
You wouldn't believe the deals I've had to make with that wretched woman just to get this time off.

Dr. Kesselring had made a remark to one of the nurses that suggested that the institute might be turned into a public hospital as part of the war effort to look after wounded soldiers. He'd said nothing about where the current inmates would go. They barely had enough to feed the patients anything other than root vegetables, and there were numerous cost-cutting initiatives in place, although, despite that, the dispensary had been stocked up. Eva and Käthe had been told to put up new shelves to hold all the extra bottles of morphine and barbiturates.

And there had been the questionnaires from the Reich Ministry of the Interior. It had taken Nurse Hartmann the better part of three days to complete one for each of the patients, and that had put her in the most vile mood. When Eva had asked her what they were for, Nurse Hartmann had told her not to question. It was better not to know.

Just a few weeks back, Eva told him, four military trucks had pulled up at the institute. They were under the surveillance of the SS and all the windows were painted gray so you couldn't see in. They had come to deport some of the male patients elsewhere. No one at the hospital knew where they were going. Nurse Hartmann welcomed the transport nurses into her office and gave them tea and pastries, as if they had been expected; after that, she had gathered the nurses in the main hall and read out a list of patients—seventy-five in total. They had just twenty minutes to gather the men together and lead them out to the trucks.
And they just went,
Eva said.

Heiden wanted her to resign and not to get involved, but she refused. She had made too many attachments; she couldn't just leave.

Anyway,
she said,
I don't suppose we will hear any more of it. And, for a while at least, we've a few less patients to worry about, and maybe we won't get any more. They're not curing them anyway. I don't think they're even trying.

And so the tram rattled on through the darkness, shining its murky blue light along the steely tracks, and they spoke no more of the institute. They got off at their stop and ran across the street through the torrential rain and up the flights of steps to the garret room. Eva said the blackout frames made her feel like she'd been boxed up and put away somewhere, so they spent what was left of the night with no lights on.

From the bed he could barely see her as she played her violin. Just the thin threads of moonlight slipping up and down the strings of her bow; just the smoky shape of her swaying around the room. He tapped out the piano's accompaniment with his fingers against the metal frame of the bed. He could take that image now, that slow-moving silhouette, and transpose it onto the darkened wall of this sitting room. He could dream her into the house called Greyfriars and hear her playing for him.

He had woken to sudden laughter and the sound of sparks.

Look,
said Gruber.

Yes, look,
said Bürckel.
But you better stay well back.

Heiden stretched his legs out and tried to shake the cold and cramp from them. His buttocks were completely numb.

He watched as Gruber plucked a match from the box he was holding and struck it, and then tossed it into the empty corner. As it hit the ground, there were instantly tiny sparks and crackles as if the dust around it was suddenly popping.

Fuck,
said Heiden.
What is it?

Neither Gruber nor Bürckel knew.

Gruber lit another match though and dropped it into the corner; and again there came the sparks and crackles, glittering on the floor.

It's debris from some sort of explosive,
said the man called Harris, hauling himself up into a sitting position. He had barely said a word since they had arrived, and when he spoke his voice croaked, his breath heavy and labored. Heiden had been unaware that he and the man called Pendell were watching from the far side of the room; he had assumed they were still asleep.
It's in the air. Some sort of explosive dust. Highly sensitive by the look of it.

What's he saying?
said Gruber.

Heiden translated.
It must be there on the floor.

It's a dynamite store,
said the man called Harris.

Without dynamite?
said Heiden.

All gone. Must belong to the railway line. Been empty some time, I'd say. They blast away landslides in the summer, I 'spect. Ice and snow in the thaw. They must have kept it in this room. There were a couple of empty crates when we arrived. They were something to sit on for a while, but in the end we had to break them up and burn them.

There must have been a spillage of whatever it is in that corner, where it's dry,
said the man called Pendell.

Yes,
said Harris.
I wouldn't light a fire near there if I were you.

Heiden translated and said they should move the fire to the opposite corner and sweep the floor as well as they could.
Otherwise the whole place might go up.

Together with Bürckel he used a couple of scarves, brushing as much of the debris and dust away as possible, and then set to rebuilding the fire.

Occasionally, for fun, Gruber would toss another lit match into the corner and there would be fizzling and sparks. He and Bürckel laughed.

Enough now,
said Heiden.
We don't want to waste the matches.

You're heading for Norddal Bridge, aren't you?
said Harris.
They've blasted it. The bridge, you know.

The Norwegians,
added Pendell.

Then we shall fix it,
Heiden told them.

The mountains are littered with snow sheds and places like this,
Pendell said.
Especially near the railway line.

And how do you know?

That map you took from us. That's a Norwegian map,
said Pendell.
Harris here stole it. It had symbols on it that we didn't understand but now we know.

Show me,
said Heiden.

He retrieved the map from his kit bag and handed it to Pendell, who unfolded it out on the floor. They gathered around it.

See?
said the English officer.

He showed Heiden, pointing out various symbols.

Bürckel leaned in to get a closer look.
What is it? What's he saying?

The little black squares are snow sheds,
Pendell explained.
The green ones, like this…that's a dynamite store.

Then we are here?
Heiden put his fingertip next to Pendell's.

I don't know. Not for sure,
said Pendell.
But, yes. Perhaps.

Bürckel glanced at Heiden and Gruber and pulled a face. They scanned the map, hunting out signs of civilization.

Christ,
mumbled Gruber after a while,
I hope none of you boys are in a hurry to get home.

Shingle Street was only half a mile away. If she closed her eyes she could almost hear the soft lap of the waves, the water being hauled back over the shingle, the tiny stones being dragged back with it, the soft shushing sound of the tide foaming along its edges. The flat landscape was always windy, so that seagulls would struggle in the sky and voices were blown about, taken off and lost in the surf, words snatched away. The shoreline was constantly moving, the shingle shifting while the raised grassy ridge of the railway line marked the perimeter between the shore and the mudflat.