Times of War Collection (22 page)

Uncle Manfred’s clothes were a little on the small side for Peter, we discovered, and the trousers hung loose around his waist, but they were dry, and that was
all that mattered. He was soon sitting by the stove, with Karli still wrapped up in a blanket beside him, and Karli was telling him all about our tree house on the island, and how the two of us used to play pirates over there, pirates from
Treasure Island
– Papi’s favourite book when he was a boy – and how Karli was always Long John Silver because he was better at limping than I was, and because he was better at being bloodthirsty than I was too.

All this time Mutti was at the stove busying herself making potato soup. She had gone quite silent, I noticed. She seemed deep in thought. She had not said a word to Peter since Karli’s rescue, not even when he came downstairs dressed in Uncle Manfred’s clothes and clogs. Karli and I had laughed and laughed, but Mutti still looked stony-faced. There was a change though. She was no longer telling us not to speak to him, and the pitchfork was nowhere to be seen. We were sitting down at the table, enjoying the warmth of our soup, and Karli was still playing at being Long John Silver. It was “Yo ho ho!” after every
sip of soup, accompanied by his squawky parrot noises.

Peter and I looked at one another over our soup, and smiled. We were not only smiling at Karli’s antics, we were smiling into each other’s eyes.

I knew at once that it was the police at the door, the moment I heard the knocking. I saw the alarm in Peter’s eyes. No one knocks on a door like the police.

AY WE COME IN
?”

It wasn’t a request. It was a demand. There were three of them, and they were soldiers, not policemen. With their rifles, helmets and greatcoats they seemed to fill the room.

“You live here?” the soldier asked. One of them did the talking, while the others walked around the room as if they were searching for something, or someone.

“My sister does,” Mutti said, “with her husband. But they have gone away. We’re living here now, me, my daughter and my two sons. My husband is away fighting the Russians.”

“We are looking for a parachutist. There were reports of a parachute coming down not far from here. An enemy bomber was shot down, a Lancaster. British. It crashed only a few kilometres away. We found the wreckage. One of the bastards is here somewhere. So we are searching every house, every farm. Have you seen anyone?”

“No one,” Mutti replied. “We are alone here. We only came yesterday, from Dresden. We escaped from the city.”

“There is no city any more,” said the policeman. “There is no Dresden. There are so many dead. It is impossible to know how many. Bastards. Bastards. I tell you if we find this one, a prison camp is too good for him. We will shoot him first and ask questions later.”

Someone was shouting from outside. “Sergeant, Sergeant! You must come, come quickly!” Another soldier, this one much younger, appeared at the door, breathless with excitement. “You are not going to believe this, Sergeant. But there is an elephant, out there, in the barn.”

“An elephant?”

“Yes, Sergeant. We were searching the outbuildings like you said, and we went into the barn, and there he was.”

“She is a she,” said Mutti. “She is called Marlene. I work in the zoo, with the elephants, in Dresden. She was the only animal we managed to save. The rest had to be shot because of the bombing. I have brought her here to the family farm. I knew of nowhere else to go.”

The youngest of the soldiers was told to stay with us and guard us, while the others went out. Karli was about to say something, but Mutti frowned at him quickly and put a finger to her lips. The clock on the wall ticked loudly in the silence. I could not bear the tension. I felt for Peter’s hand under the table, and found it. We heard them coming back across the yard, their voices loud with excitement. Then they were back in the kitchen.

“This elephant, she is not dangerous?” the Sergeant asked.

Mutti shook her head. “I will look after her,” she told them. “I have known this elephant ever since she was born. She is as gentle as a kitten, I promise you.”

“And you have seen no airman, no parachutist?” he went on.

“No,” Mutti said. She spoke very coolly. “If I saw one, after all they have done in Dresden, I would shoot him myself.”

“Your papers?” he demanded. “I want to see your papers.”

“I’m sorry. We haven’t got them. They are all in Dresden, in our house,” said Mutti, shrugging her shoulders. “We were outside, out in the park, when we heard the air-raid sirens, and then the bombers. We just ran.”

“Names then,” said the sergeant, taking out his notebook. “I must have your names.”

Mutti gave our names, all of us, Peter’s last of all.

“And how old are you?” the Sergeant asked Peter. I sensed suspicion in his look. I could hear it in his voice.

“Twenty-one,” Peter told him.

“So why are you not in uniform, in the army?”

Peter hesitated. It was Karli who spoke up for him. “He gets asthma like me,” he said. “When he gets puffed out he gets asthma. Everyone at school says that when I grow up, I can’t be a soldier, and I want to be a—”

“That’s right,” Mutti interrupted. “My son has been excused military service, on medical grounds – asthma.”

I was not at all sure the sergeant believed what he was hearing. I felt certain that there would be more questions. But, amazingly, there were not.

When the sergeant saluted, I remember Karli gave him the
Hitlergruss,
the stiff arm Hitler salute we had all been taught at school, and said “Heil Hitler,” with great enthusiasm and conviction. He was playing his part perfectly. And then the soldiers were gone. I could feel my heart pounding in my neck as I listened to the last of their voices and their laughter drifting away outside. All they were chatting about as they left was the elephant in the barn, and the zoo in Dresden. One of them had been for a ride on an elephant in that zoo when he was little, he was saying. And then nothing more.

Mutti went to the window to make sure. “It is all right, they have gone,” she whispered.

She came over and sat down at the table with us, her face drained of all colour. For several moments Peter and Mutti did not speak, but sat there just looking at one another across the kitchen.

Mutti took a long breath and said, “You didn’t finish your soup, Peter. It will be getting cold. Eat, eat.” Then she fished in her pocket, took out the compass, and pushed it across the table towards him. “Yours, I think.”

“Thank you,” Peter said, as he took it. “And for what you did just then, thank you.”

“You and I, Peter, we must come to an understanding,” Mutti went on. “From now on, no more ‘sorry’s, and no more ‘thank you’s. What is done is done. The past is behind us. You are family now, one of us. And I have been thinking. You were right when you told Elizabeth we should stick together and help one another. We do all want to go west, away from the Russians, away from the bombing. So we shall go together, and across country, as you said. It will be safer for all of us. Can that compass thing really guide us to the Americans?”

Peter smiled. “Yes, all the way, if we can keep going, if we get lucky. But I have been thinking too, and I am not so sure now that it is such a good idea to stick together. I was not thinking straight when I said it. If they discover who I am…I mean, we got away with it once, we may not be so lucky next time. They will shoot you if they ever find out who I am. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Who is going to tell them?” Mutti replied. “I’m not going to tell them, am I? Nor will Elizabeth, nor will Karli. Like I said, we are family. You speak good German, and you even look quite German in Uncle Manfred’s clothes. We fooled them once, with a little help from Karli, didn’t we? We can fool them again.”

“Maybe you are right. I hope so. But – and I did not want to have to say this – I think there is another problem. The elephant, your Marlene.” I could see Peter was reluctant to go on. “Listen, if we take her with us, we are bound to attract attention to ourselves. It will be more dangerous. I think we should leave her here. There is plenty of hay in the barn, we could fill up buckets of water…”

“Where we go Marlene goes,” Mutti said firmly. “She is part of the family too. What does it say in that book –
The Three Musketeers
, wasn’t it? – ‘All for one and one for all’.”

I remember Mutti made us all join hands round the table then, for another ‘family moment’, as we had so often done back home. Even Karli knew better than to
interrupt this family ritual. Maybe he was praying as hard as I was. I was praying for Papi to come home, for us all to find the Americans, for us all to survive – and for Peter to go on holding my hand as tight as he was, and never let go. But in the end it was Karli, of course, who eventually decided this family moment had gone on quite long enough, and broke the silence.

“When are we going?” he asked. “How far is it? I want to ride up on Marlene all the way. I can, can’t I, Mutti? How long will it take until we get there?”

We spent all the rest of that day poring over Peter’s map, making plans, working out how far we could hope to travel each night. Peter thought we could do about eight to ten kilometres a night, depending on the weather, and if we kept up that pace, and the Americans kept advancing at their present rate, then he calculated we had a good chance of meeting up with them in four or five weeks or so. We packed up all the food we could find, all we could carry, and put on all the warm clothes we needed. We all had full rucksacks, and a rolled-up blanket strapped on top of
each of them. We had a last meal, the rest of the potato soup, and some cheese, left a note, which we all signed, to Uncle Manfred and Aunt Lotti, thanking them, and telling them where we were going.

Then we stepped out into the moonlit farmyard to fetch Marlene from the barn, the snow crisp and crunching under our feet. Marlene had to be enticed away from her hay – and that was not easy – but Karli managed it with a few tempting potatoes. Then once outside the barn, Peter hoisted Karli up on to her back, and we set off into the night, westwards, Mutti leading Marlene by the ear, Karli clicking at Marlene all the while, telling her to gee up. Peter and I walked on ahead together, Peter with compass in hand. We were on our way.”