Times of War Collection (23 page)

IZZIE PAUSED FOR A FEW MOMENTS THEN
,
AND RAISED HER
hand. “Listen,” she said, gazing out of the window. “Bells, do you hear them?” I hadn’t, not until that moment. “I love the sound of church bells ringing,” she went on. “Every time I hear a ring of bells, it makes me think the same thing, that there is hope, that life goes on. Did you know that in Dresden every year on the anniversary of the day the bombers came, they ring all the church bells in the city? I have been back a few times now. It is not the old city, of course, but it is wonderful to see how they have built it up again, out of the ashes; and when the bells ring out
over the new city, they are a lot louder than this one, I promise you. But this one is beautiful. This is a gentle bell.”

She turned to us then. “I am sorry my story has taken so long. It is getting dark outside already. I do go on, I know. Maybe you were right after all, maybe I should tell you the rest another day. It is good of you to have listened this long.”

“Listening, it’s what friends are for, remember?” I said.

“Did you escape?” Karl asked. “Did Peter get caught? What happened? I want to know what happened.”

“You see?” I said, with a smile.” We’re not going anywhere till you tell us the rest of the story. We’re staying right where we are, aren’t we, Karl?”

Lizzie patted my hand. “You are both very kind,” she said. “I will not keep you long now, I promise.” She stroked the glass face of the compass with the tips of her fingers, contemplated it for a while, and then went on with her story.

“Without this compass, and without Peter, I think we would never have made it. He was so right to keep us away from the roads. We were to learn that it was not the cold and the hunger that were the greatest threat to us, it was people, people who might be suspicious of us, who would ask questions, who would report us. Out in the countryside there were not many people. And if we had joined the thousands of people cramming the roads there would have been even greater dangers to face – the planes, the fighters. They told us all about it, some of the refugees we came across later, how the planes would come flying in low over the roads, bombing and strafing.

So many died that way, soldiers and refugees, side by side.

Peter and his compass kept us away from all that.

But I am sure it was also because we travelled always by night that we survived. I remember, Mutti was for ever worrying that we were moving
too slowly, that the Russians were closing in behind us. It was true that we could often hear the distant rumble of their guns. We saw them lighting up the night sky all along the eastern horizon, and they did seem to be coming much closer all the time. After trekking through the night, Mutti must have been as exhausted as we all were, but she was reluctant to stop each
morning. She always felt we could keep going a little while longer.

Thankfully, by the first glimmer of every dawn Peter had usually managed to find somewhere for us to hide up for the day, somewhere we could at least be dry and warm, and even light a fire if we were lucky. It might be some remote barn, or shepherd’s hut or forester’s shack – it didn’t
matter. All the time we stayed away from any towns and villages, and kept as far as possible to the valleys and woods where we would be less likely to be seen. We soon discovered we were not the only ones tramping through the countryside on that long trek westwards, nor the only ones who had chosen to avoid the dangers of the roads.

So there were days, like it or not, when we would find ourselves having to share a barn or shed with other refugees, mostly families like us. But once or twice there were soldiers with us too, whole units of them. Those meetings were awkward at first. No one trusted anyone in those days, you see. You never could, not to begin with. It was having Marlene with us that helped break the ice, helped dispel suspicion. They would only have to see Marlene, and Mutti would only have to tell our story about the zoo, and how we had looked after Marlene at home in the garden, and soon they would be telling their own stories, of how they had escaped the bombing and the
firestorm. All of us knew we were lucky to be alive. Strange to say, considering what we were all living through, there was often more laughter than tears, though I do remember there were many refugees who just sat there staring into nothing, rocking back and forth, and murmuring in their misery.

If there were other children there, then Karli loved it all the more. Not only did he have an audience for his juggling and all his party tricks, but he had Marlene to show off with as well. Somehow he had taught Marlene to kneel down and to lift her trunk at his command, and the children loved this. In front of them he always claimed absolute ownership of Marlene. He referred to her as ‘my elephant’ or ‘my Marlene’. He just loved play-acting, and he was good at it too.

He had slipped easily into the part of being a younger brother to Peter – mostly, I think, because he genuinely liked having an older brother of his own, a proper pal. He would tell
everyone proudly that he was the only one that could handle the elephant, that his older brother could not manage her at all, and certainly not his sister. He played the clown wonderfully, and people laughed. I found that once we had laughed together for a while, we all began to feel there was a kind of refugee solidarity amongst us, a camaraderie, sometimes so much so that we did not just swap stories, but food and drink as well.

But on Mutti’s advice, Peter kept himself to himself, and did not talk too much when there were other people about, and that was just as well. The more we got to know him, the more we noticed that he did have a noticeable accent. Canadian or Swiss, it did not matter. All that mattered was that he spoke differently enough for other people to notice it, and if we noticed it, then they might too.

Time and again people would ask Mutti why her son was not in uniform like all the other young men. Mutti stuck always to the asthma
story Karli had first made up in front of the policeman that day. It was a good cover story because, of course, she knew all the symptoms rather well. We all did, except for Peter himself that is, but at Mutti’s suggestion, Karli had made sure that Peter knew exactly what it felt like to suffer from asthma. He even taught Peter how to cough and wheeze the right way. Nonetheless, it still made me very nervous every time the subject came up. I was fearful too because, after living through the horror of the bombing of Dresden, everyone we came across was full of anger and bitterness against the Americans and the British. Until now, much of this hatred had been reserved more for the Russians. Not now, not any more. So Peter, if he were to be discovered, would be in real danger. And so would we.

Most of the other refugees we met were from Dresden, like us, though a few had come from further east. For them in particular, fear of the Russians still far outweighed any anger against the
Americans and the British. There were many stories of dreadful atrocities committed by the Red Army on civilians as they advanced deeper and deeper into Germany. I did not know then, and I do not know now, what was true and what was not, but I do know that many of our fellow refugees were terrified of the Russians. I only know that there is always atrocity in war. We heard too that the Red Army was closer now than we had thought, only a few miles the other side of Dresden. So despite all the Allied bombing, everyone thought it was better to be at the mercy of the Americans and the British, rather than to wait for the Russians to arrive.

Whenever we found ourselves hiding away in the company of other refugees, Peter would make himself scarce, to avoid suspicious looks and searching questions, he told me. Sometimes he said he was off to look for food, but often he would excuse himself by saying that he had to see to Marlene. And whenever I could, I would go
with him, not of course to help with Marlene at all, but just because I wanted to be with him. We wanted to be together now all we could, and alone too. The two of us would spend long hours sitting there beside Marlene, out in some barn or shed, as she munched her hay or straw – whatever we had found for her. Or we would be watching her from a river bank, drinking and sluicing herself down.

It was during these times together that Peter began to tell me about his home in Canada, in Toronto, of the parts he had played in the theatre, mostly walk-on parts: a spear-carrier, a servant, a policeman, a butler. He would tell me about the cabin deep in the forest – he called it his ‘cottage’ – where he and his mother and father used to go for weekends all through his childhood, about the cycling and the canoeing they did, and the salmon fishing, and the moose and the black bears they saw. And I told him about Papi, about Uncle Manfred and Aunt Lotti, and all the good times we had had down on the farm, and about the
argument that had split the family.

But we tried all we could not to talk about the war. We both of us knew it was the grim shadow that hung over us, that threatened to separate us, and we both wanted to live for a while away from all of that, in the warm sunlight of shared memories and hopes. We found we had so much in common - bicycling, boating and fishing. He was an only child, he told me, and had never been part of a large family, until now, that is. He knew he was only playing the part of the elder brother, but the longer he was with us the more he felt easy in the part, just one of the family, and he loved that, he said.

How we talked, but even in our silences I felt a togetherness with him that I had never felt with anyone else.

Then came the time – well, I suppose it had to happen, didn’t it? – that Karli came upon us one day and surprised us. I remember we were sitting there on the river bank, with Marlene
wafting her trunk over our heads.

“You two, you are canoodling, aren’t you?” he said, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “I know you are. You are always going off together. I have been watching you.”

“None of your business,” I snapped. I was furious with him and embarrassed too. But Peter handled it much better. He sat him down between us and put his arm around him.

“We were just talking, Karli, getting to know one another. I am her brother, remember? Your brother too. You and me, we talk, don’t we? The thing is, that if I want to play a part right, I have to get right into it. That is why you told me all about your asthma attacks, remember? I need to know all there is to know about the new me, and my new family. I have to know the back-stories of everyone in the play. See what I’m saying? It is what actors do. You understand that, don’t you, Karli? I mean, people might ask me questions, about Papi, for instance, about where we lived in
Dresden, about the zoo, about the farm, about Uncle Manfred and Aunt Lotti. I’ve got to know these things, right? Elizabeth, she is just telling me all she can, to help me.”

Karli seemed happy enough with that, but there were many times after that when I could feel he was keeping an eye on us, and that worried me. I certainly did not want Mutti to have any idea how I really felt about Peter. Not because of what she might think about it, but because it was private, very personal, and I wanted to keep it that way.

The food we had brought with us from the farm lasted as long as we could make it, but in the end of course there was none left. After that, finding something to eat became our greatest problem. Not for Marlene. She would only have to brush the snow aside with her trunk or her foot, to be able to find something edible underneath. And once the snow had gone, Marlene simply grazed as she went. She was on a
constant scrounge, her trunk searching ahead of her. For much of our journey we kept to the valleys, so there was always plenty of water for us to drink, from the rivers and streams. And there were many days when Peter found us a hay-barn to hide in where Marlene could gorge herself all day long.