Goodbye, Mr Hitler Page 6

  Frau Schmidt woke. She had been sleeping, Johannes realised with relief, not unconscious as he had been. But one side of her lips was purple and swollen, and a dribble of blood ran from the corner of her mouth. Helga crawled over to her, took a damp rag and wiped away the blood. Frau Schmidt blinked at her.

  ‘See,’ Hannes said clearly. ‘Mutti, here is Helga.’

  ‘Helga?’ said Frau Schmidt. Then she nodded. ‘Yes, Helga. We . . . we are so blessed that Helga is here for us.’

  It was . . . odd. But this was the world of odd.

  ‘Soldiers stopped the train . . .’ Frau Schmidt did not say if they were German or Russian. They all knew that in this world soldiers took what they wanted.

  ‘We ran,’ explained Hannes, ‘and Helga saw you, curled up under a bush. She said you were ill and needed help. She and I carried you here.’ Hannes’s voice was proud.

  Johannes tried to think. He had a vague memory — or was it a dream? The women in the train had thought he was ill. He was ill. But they thought it might be an illness that would infect them too, like typhus or scarlet fever. There had been arguing, rough hands, yelling, a woman crying. Children crying, whimpering, which this world was full of, except here in the sanctuary of the barn, where the only noise was the far-off thunder.

  Not thunder. War.

  He must have staggered a little from where the villagers had dumped him, out of the train.

  Helga said, ‘We have some food. Can you eat now?’

  He sat up, supported by the hay. Yes, he could eat.

  ‘Helga found a cheese,’ said Hannes proudly. ‘The house was wrecked, but Helga crept in, just like a mouse.’

  A mouse ran by behind him, then stopped, its nose quivering as if it had heard the word ‘cheese’.

  Johannes laughed, then stopped. How could he laugh here?

  ‘What’s funny?’ asked the boy, Hannes.

  He pointed. Helga turned to look too. She smiled at the mouse, so small, so hopeful. Hannes laughed too. Even Frau Schmidt smiled.

  Helga burrowed under the hay. There was the cheese, wrapped in layers of cloth to keep the mice from it. There were other packages too, and three jars of what looked like jam. Helga opened one of the jars. She handed him the spoon and then the jar. It was plum, he thought, from its colour.

  ‘I can’t eat all your jam,’ he said awkwardly.

  ‘Eat a third of it. Hannes can have the rest and Frau — and Mutti.’

  ‘Helga.’ Frau Schmidt said her daughter’s name as carefully as Helga had said ‘Mutti’. ‘You must eat too.’

  ‘Helga won’t eat,’ said Hannes.

  ‘I don’t need food as much as you do.’ It was evident she had said it many times before. ‘See?’ She held up her well-fleshed wrist. Her coat was good, Johannes noticed, not faded and worn thin like every garment he had seen in these last years of war. Its pockets bulged.

  His hand trembled as he spooned the jam. Cherry jam, not plum. It tasted like home. Helga, Hannes and Frau Schmidt pretended not to see his tears.

  He could have eaten twenty jars. Instead he carefully stopped when he had eaten a quarter of it. Helga took the jar and handed it to Hannes.

  ‘No,’ said Hannes stubbornly. ‘You eat.’

  ‘No . . . I . . .’ Helga stopped, shrugged, took the jam. She dipped in the spoon and raised it to her mouth, though the level of the jam did not get any lower. After a while she passed it to Hannes.

  Johannes thought Hannes hadn’t noticed. He ate ravenously, but stopped too, to hand the last of the jam to his mother.

  ‘And now the cheese,’ said Helga. She used the spoon as a knife, ten spoonsful for each of them. Johannes watched her hesitate, then eat four spoonsful herself. Did she know exactly how little she could eat, and still look after them?

  The cheese was wonderful. It was just cheese, real cheese. No maggots, no bitterness, no mould, buttery and rich.

  ‘Sleep,’ said Helga to Johannes and Frau Schmidt. She peered out the door at the growing dusk. ‘I’ll go and get some water. The well is just over there. Hannes, you keep watch.’

  ‘Be careful,’ said Frau Schmidt fretfully. ‘Remember how they hurt Helga.’

  ‘Mutti, this is Helga,’ said Hannes loudly.

  Frau Schmidt blinked. ‘I am sorry,’ she whispered to Johannes. ‘I . . . I am confused. It has been a . . . a hard time.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Johannes. ‘It’s been hard.’

  Chapter 18

  JOHANNES

  GERMANY, LATE JANUARY 1945

  It was quiet and dark when Helga returned, limping slightly, a bucket in one hand, another cloth-wrapped parcel in the other, something bulky strapped onto her back. Hannes slept, cuddled next to Frau Schmidt.

  ‘I told Hannes to sleep,’ whispered Johannes. ‘I have slept enough.’

  ‘You’re sick. You need to sleep more. But I think we can stay here for a few days till you are stronger, and Frau — and Mutti also. If any soldiers come, we can cover ourselves with hay, but this village has been bombed so badly it’s deserted. I don’t think soldiers will bother with it. Look!’ She held up four blankets, then tenderly covered Hannes and Frau Schmidt with two of them and handed one to Johannes. She wrapped herself in the other, like a shawl, then offered him water from the bucket.

  He drank. It was pure and fresh, the best water he had ever drunk. Helga handed him a shrivelled apple. He ate that too. At last she asked, ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I don’t know. To find Mutti and Vati.’

  ‘Where are they?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know.’ The world suddenly seemed very large. ‘Hitler took them to work, because they are doctors, because the soldiers wanted our hospital. Maybe . . . maybe they are going home.’

  ‘Where is home?’

  He told her. She shook her head. ‘That is in Poland. The Russians are there.’

  ‘That is good, isn’t it? That means the Germans have gone. Vati can have his hospital back again and we will have our house.’

  Helga looked thoughtful. ‘I think you should stay with us. Not go near the Russians.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they are very angry,’ said Helga simply. ‘Because our soldiers, the Germans, killed their soldiers even after they surrendered. Because German soldiers did terrible things to Russian people, so the Russians do the same to us.’

  How did she know these things? But she seemed very sure. ‘Hate is like a bacterium,’ said Johannes. ‘It spreads. Nurse Stöhlich told me that,’ he added. ‘She worked with my mother at the camp.’

  ‘The camp?’ He saw the horrified pity on Helga’s face. ‘You are . . . jüdisch?’

  ‘No. I think . . . I think the Germans just wanted Vati’s hospital. And people to work for them and an easy way to steal their jewellery and valuables. There were Juden in the camp, but not many when I was there. Most had already been killed.’ He hesitated, thinking of the boy who had helped him when he first came to the camp. Had he been jüdisch? ‘You don’t like Juden?’

  ‘I don’t think I have ever met any,’ said Helga softly. ‘But I knew a woman who knew a jüdische family. They were good people, she said. Wonderful people. And yet she and all the others let the soldiers take them to the camp, and the people who had sheltered them as well. I used to think that maybe if any jüdische people escaped, I would help them. But they never came.’

  He could think of nothing to say. But he was glad Helga had wanted to help the Juden.

  Days turned into weeks, and even months. Johannes had lost track of dates much earlier, in that first journey into the ogre’s belly in the cattle car, and the Schmidts had lost count too.

  Soon Johannes was strong enough to go looking for food with Helga, but she refused to let him. ‘You need to stay warm.’ She shrugged. ‘I have a warm coat and woollen stockings; you don’t. Rest.’

  At least he had proper clothes, not the rag of a nightgown from the camp. He felt guilty for resting, for being almost warm an
d almost fed, when Mutti and Vati might be . . . But he would not think of ‘might be’.

  For now there was the barn, the hay, Frau Schmidt getting stronger every day too, and Hannes. He even found himself telling Frau Schmidt and Hannes the story of the cow that sat on the farmer’s wife’s lap, and then some of Sister Columba’s stories. Helga smiled at him when he made them laugh.

  At night he tried to pray for Sister Columba, for Mutti, for Vati, for Oma and Opa, for the Schmidts and himself and the whole world, except for Hitler and all who followed him. And the Russians.

  But he couldn’t pray at all. The words wouldn’t come. Maybe he was infected with hate too, like the soldiers, and the guards at the camps.

  Every day Helga scavenged among the ruins. She still limped, but it seemed it wasn’t an injury from the Russians who had hurt her mother. Once she cut herself badly in the debris, but the cut healed cleanly. Every day she found more food, knowing instinctively where there were cellars or the ruins of attics where onions might be drying, or an old plum crop shrivelling into prunes. They ate the onions raw and the swedes she found too, for they did not dare light a fire, not that they had matches. Smoke or a flickering light might bring strangers — not just soldiers, but others who were homeless and desperate. Even those who did not want to hurt them, or steal their food, might want to share their shed — and more people would make it harder for them to hide.

  Everyone was an enemy now.

  Helga found another cheese and two giant sausages, hidden in a collapsing chimney where they had been smoking; and half a ham, in yet another chimney, which the owners must have been hacking back slice by slice, and which the rats had gnawed too, but only a little. She found turnips, and a whole box full of apples, which she carried back bucketful by bucketful in case the rats ate them before she could go back for them the next day.

  There were no more blankets, but she found a sewing kit and sheets, which Frau Schmidt carefully folded so she could make summer shirts for Hannes and Johannes, and blouses for Helga, if summer ever came again.

  Helga found books too, one of poetry, which they took turns reading aloud, ‘Röslein, Röslein, Röslein rot . . .’ for the song of the words and because the poems were from another world, where there were roses and roast potatoes and fresh bread.

  Each day they heard people on the road beyond the village, sometimes many, marching by for hours, sometimes a car and once what sounded like a convoy of trucks. But this village must have been away from the highways, for hours passed with no one even on that main road at all. It was as if they had been shifted sideways from the world of war, into a time of almost-peace. Only each day seemed real, as if the past and future were burned away.

  Apart from Helga, they left the barn only to use the privy behind what had been a cottage. It was almost funny, how in the whole village the only structures standing were the privy, entirely untouched, still with the moon shape cut out of its door, and the hay shed, which must have been half falling down even before the bombs destroyed the house near it. Around them the world was black and white; white snow, and black where the cottages had burned after the bombs had fallen, staining even the stonework.

  Johannes could breathe easily now, after these weeks of rest and food. At last Helga let him join her in her hunt through the ruins, while Hannes stayed to watch over Frau Schmidt, who still slept a great deal, fitfully, moaning in pain and nightmare.

  It was fun, in a strange way. A true treasure hunt, where even a withered carrot was valuable. Within half an hour on the first night Johannes had a half-rotted marrow in his arms and three odd socks tied about his arm, as a way to carry them. Helga carried a leaky bucket they might use for washing, and a bag of barley that had probably been kept for seed, but which might still be eaten, if they could find a safe way to light a fire to cook it. It would be wonderful to have cooked food again.

  ‘Do you think we could light a fire in one of the chimneys at night? No one would see the smoke then,’ he asked as they walked back to the barn, the dawn sitting pink on the shattered horizon.

  Helga considered. ‘That’s a good idea. We could try to catch the pigeons that roost in the barn to make soup. Pigeon soup is strengthening.’

  ‘What about getting their feathers off? And their insides out?’ Lottie had done that at home, so he knew it wasn’t easy.

  ‘I know how to.’

  ‘How do you know so many things? Like plucking pigeons and where to find food?’

  Helga shrugged. ‘I lived on a farm for a while. Frau Leib, a farmer’s wife, was our housekeeper. She showed me how to dry fruit and vegetables in the attic, roots in the cellar, hams in the chimney, how to cover cheese with wax. She could pluck and gut a pigeon in three minutes.’ Helga smiled. ‘She was very proud of that.’

  ‘I thought you lived in Berlin?’

  Helga hesitated. ‘It was a holiday on the farm.’

  Something was wrong. But he couldn’t think what it might be. He said instead, ‘I have no identity papers.’ All his life he’d had to show papers to travel anywhere. ‘Do you have yours?’

  Helga nodded. ‘Mutti has them.’

  ‘Hannes said you had a special pass that let you on the train.’ It was just an idle comment, to pass the time. But she flinched, as if he had hit her.

  ‘I found it. It must have belonged to a Nazi official’s family.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘I tore it up after we left the train.’

  ‘Why?’ It sounded too useful to discard.

  ‘I might have got into trouble if anyone found I had it.’

  It sounded like the truth, but something more too. Again there were questions he didn’t know how to frame. Instead he said what was deepest in his heart: ‘Do you think I will find Mutti again? And Vati?’

  Helga considered. He liked that she did not just reassure him and say, ‘Of course,’ or shrug and say, ‘Who can tell?’ or even, ‘No — you escaped, but the others will have been killed.’

  At last she said, ‘I think you will. There’s a good chance anyway.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you escaped.’ She saw he didn’t understand. ‘You are clever. Strong. Even when you were sick, you hid. You found a way out of the camp. And you are nice.’ She said it without smiling, as if being nice was just like being short or tall. ‘People like to help nice people. That is why those people helped you, even if they put you off the train later.’

  ‘Is that why you helped me? But you couldn’t know I was nice then.’ He was glad she thought he was a nice person.

  ‘I helped you because . . .’ Her face twisted in anguish. ‘Because I must,’ she said eventually. ‘I . . . I can’t say more. But I have to help people. I must.’

  ‘Why does my being nice mean Mutti and Vati might be alive?’

  She relaxed. ‘Because you must be like your parents. They will be clever and brave and nice too. They must be nice, if they are both doctors. People who help people. You are lucky, to have parents like that.’

  ‘Aren’t your parents nice?’ Frau Schmidt was ill and confused, but when she made sense, she seemed gentle and kind.

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘You really think Mutti and Vati might escape?’

  ‘I really do. And people might help them, as they will help other people. That gives them a better chance of survival.’

  ‘I see.’ For the first time he almost felt hope, among the hate.

  A siren screamed a long way off, a wail that ripped the air even at this distance. Hannes peered out of the barn and waved frantically at them when he saw they were coming back. ‘Bombers!’ he cried.

  And then they heard them: a vast eruption of the air. Johannes looked up, wonderingly, as half the sky turned grey with planes.

  Helga grabbed his arm. ‘We have to get to a cellar,’ she said desperately as Frau Schmidt looked out of the barn door, frightened, then tried to smile reassuringly at Hannes.

  ‘The planes won’t waste th
eir bombs on this village.’ Johannes hoped that was true. ‘It’s been bombed already. They’ll be looking for barracks, factories, soldiers. We are as safe here as anywhere. Come on!’

  He dived back into the barn as Helga said, ‘I think —’

  The world exploded. The barn shook. The air shivered, shimmered. Impossible to hear, or even stand. Johannes crawled into the straw and covered his ears.

  The noise went on and on until at last he managed to distinguish many smaller sounds: the dull thuds when bombs hit, the earthquake of sound and vibration of explosions, the rattle of machine-gun fire. Instinctively, they drew together, Frau Schmidt’s arms around Hannes and Helga, Helga’s around Frau Schmidt and Johannes. On and on and on . . .

  And then the noise was sliced away.

  Almost. Guns still rattled. Vague booms burped like a vast cow with indigestion. But at least the air and ground were still.

  ‘We are alive,’ said Frau Schmidt softly.

  Johannes nodded. But still they stayed there, not moving, till darkness came, and then they slept, the blankets over them all, in a huddle of comfort that was almost warm.

  Chapter 19

  JOHANNES

  GERMANY, MARCH? APRIL? 1945

  The jeeps came the next day.

  Helga had crept out, in the pre-dawn light, to fetch water. Johannes listened when he heard the first engine on the road, hoping she had hidden in time. But she came running back, the bucket forgotten. ‘English! There were jeeps on the road with people speaking English!’

  ‘You speak English?’ He had never met anyone else his own age who spoke English.

  ‘Yes,’ said Helga as Hannes and Frau Schmidt shook their heads. ‘But don’t you see?’ she cried. ‘They must be American or English. We can ask them which way to go, to keep away from the Russians.’

  ‘Maybe the war is over,’ said Frau Schmidt hopefully.

  Helga nodded. ‘I’ll wait by the road. Don’t worry — I’ll hide if it is a Russian vehicle, or German.’

  Johannes did not know how she knew one side’s vehicles from another’s. All children were taught at school which were enemy planes, and which were German, but now the enemies had changed places.