Chapter 25 The First Day
THE FIRST DAY
“Where to first?” Sebastian asked, when we were in the car.
The three in the back were slightly squashed, I’m afraid—Ashleigh wasn’t large, but she was another person.
She was also filming me, I was sure, as she’d chosen her seat solely for that purpose.
Perhaps I should have done the tooth whitening and spider eyelashes after all, if I were going to be filmed as much as this.
I reminded myself that if Queen Elizabeth had staunchly remained her somewhat dowdy self to the end, who was I to put on airs?
Also, an old lady with those eyelashes? I nearly laughed aloud at the image of the others’ faces if I’d come downstairs like that.
Oh. Sebastian. I said, “To the airport, please. I believe it’s still in the same place.”
Sebastian entered it into his telephone—how much less nerve-wracking than attempting to find one’s way around a foreign city with a paper map! Modern life is really quite amazing—and said, “The airport. Right. Here we go.”
Nothing—nothing—was the same. Oh, the streets and sidewalks were still cobbled for the first block or two, until we reached the bridge across the river and left the old city behind, and there were still tram lines, too.
The Elbe still flowed, dark and quiet as always, but after that?
Grass and trees for a bit, then a freeway with sound walls on either side, along which Sebastian drove at great speed, as did everybody else.
We would cover the distance in, what? Ten minutes? Fifteen?
Nothing like the same.
By the time we ventured through the tunnel and out of the church again, back on that day in 1945, and stood blinking like moles in the smoky gray daylight, it was nearly noon.
First, Dr. Becker and I had eaten, finishing the remaining scraps of bread and cheese and Wurst with the help of the children.
Then he’d said, “We should sleep a bit before leaving. Who knows how far we’ll have to walk after this?
” And although I’d suspected that he was, like me, delaying the moment when we’d be out there, homeless and unprotected by anything but our wits, I was glad enough to acquiesce.
When we finally emerged from the church, I got a shock. Turning to ask Dr. Becker which way he thought we should go, I realized that the outline of the star could clearly be seen on his much-faded coat. I gasped, “Back inside! Quickly!”
He looked confused, but followed me, and when I explained, said, “I must have a coat, though. It’s snowing again.”
I blinked in the dimness. “It is? I thought it was more ash.”
“No,” he said. “I felt the cold on my cheek. It’s snow.”
We’d gone possibly five steps, and already, things looked hopeless. They’re not hopeless, I told myself as fiercely as I could manage, and repeated the Robert Louis Stevenson line in my head. Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others. I asked myself, What would Father do?
“Give me your coat,” I said.
“What?”
“Give me your coat,” I repeated. “We’ll exchange.
” I crouched amidst the rubble and pathetic discarded belongings, removed my rucksack, and pulled out a silk scarf.
It was my mother’s and had been in her own rucksack, and was done in shades of gold and pale blue, depicting a fanciful scene of rainbows and hot-air balloons.
I’d taken it to remember her by, and also to cover my hair if necessary, as my pale blondness was perhaps too recognizable, especially amidst the dark Beckers.
It would serve a different purpose now. “I can cover the outline of the star with this,” I said. “It’s very large.”
“It will put you in great danger,” Dr. Becker said, “if anybody sees.”
“Of course it won’t,” I said. “Come. Exchange.”
He did so, but reluctantly, and I tied the scarf around my neck, then pulled the knot around to the back so that the folds of the scarf covered me halfway to my waist. The luxury of Hermès looked rather silly worn over Dr. Becker’s threadbare brown coat, but what did that matter?
I would be a stylish refugee. I finished adjusting it and said, “I’ve just realized that I must be your niece and not your daughter. I’m too fair to be believed otherwise.”
“And if the star is seen?” Dr. Becker was wearing my coat now, but he still looked unhappy about it.
“Then I took it from an old Jew,” I said, “who was trying to run for it by illegally taking off the star.”
“Well, that’s true enough.” Dr. Becker was actually smiling a little. “Although now you’ve become a thief.”
“No. He was arrested, and I asked the Gestapo’s permission to take the coat, as I’d lost my own.
They granted it, of course, because what did they care about his possessions?
Also, look at me! I’m as fair as Frau Goebbels herself, and I have a few freckles on my nose.
How could I appear anything but Aryan to these people? ”
“The parure, though,” Dr. Becker said.
“As if I think you’d steal it,” I said. “Now come. We need to go.”
The exchange had stiffened my spine somehow.
It was easier, it seemed, to be a determined plotter than a rootless victim, so I’d keep on being a dangerous lawbreaker.
When we emerged from the church again, I said, “We’ll go around to the right, by Brühl’s Terrace.
Look, the others are moving that way, too. We’ll follow the crowd.”
There was indeed a steady stream of pedestrians on the streets.
Some had pushcarts or wheelbarrows. Those, probably, would be the refugees.
They were the lucky ones now—they had a way to carry their possessions and even their children.
Everything was covered with a layer of gray ash, and even now it fell, mixing with the hard little pellets of snow.
We saw officials, too—the regular police and the Army both.
Many were carrying bodies, which they laid in a row in front of the church.
“So they can be identified,” Dr. Becker said, and again, the sight was less distressing to me than it should have been.
All my senses seemed oddly dulled. Across the river, on the grassy meadows where Father and I had seen people congregating last night, men were moving in the same way: gathering corpses and carrying them off.
I wondered for a moment about the circus horses and hoped they’d survived.
Also the elephants. I couldn’t stop thinking about the elephants, caged and helpless.
Andrea uttered a sound of distress, and I realized that I’d grown somewhat accustomed to these terrible sights—how quickly one adjusts to a new reality!—and she hadn’t. I said, “Come, take my hand. You’re my cousin now, after all, and you must call me Daisy.”
“But your name is Princess Marguerite,” Gerhardt objected. Dr. Becker was holding his hand. How much safety there is in a hand.
“No,” I said, “not anymore. Now, I’m merely Daisy. Daisy …” I thought a minute. “Daisy Glücksburg.” It was one of my mother’s titles and would be easy to remember. “Or ‘Cousin Daisy.’ Even better, and your Father will be my Uncle—"
“Uncle Kurt,” Dr. Becker said.
“No,” I said. “You have a new Kennkarte, and you’re Herr Fritz Kolbe now. My Uncle Fritz. We must all memorize our new names. If we keep calling each other by them, it will be easier to answer correctly under pressure.”
We kept hurrying along the terrace. Everybody else was going this way—maybe they’d heard there was help there! And did we have any better plan?
The humming drone came out of the clouds and smoke. I recognized it instantly this time. It was the sound of hundreds of bombers.
My first thought was, Wait. There were no sirens! Followed instantly by No electricity to power them. Neither of which was any help to me.
“Quickly,” I shouted. “Back to the church!”
Too late. The whistles and shrieking of the falling bombs were all around us now, and then there was a blast that hurt my ears and a shock wave that knocked me off my feet. Black smoke billowed, and the unearthly music of the bombs filled the air.
I didn’t know which direction I was facing anymore. A geyser of water shot up, and I realized: the river. I crawled that way, panting, my eyes streaming, my face stinging oddly, until I hit something solid.
The wall. I knew it didn’t mean safety, but where would safety be? I clung to the gritty sandstone and turned my face against it like a child. If I can’t see you, you can’t see me.
It was a few minutes, I suppose, until I sensed that the explosions were farther away.
The droning hum of the bombers seemed less, but my ears were ringing so much that it was hard to tell.
I couldn’t see well anymore, either—my eyes were stinging badly now, my vision blurred, and there was something wet on my cheek.
I wiped it and looked at my hand. Blood.
I stayed where I was for minutes more, afraid to move, until I heard footsteps, then a voice asking, “Fr?ulein, are you all right?”
I pushed myself to sitting. It wasn’t easy; my arms were trembling. “Y-yes,” I said. “I think so.” The wetness was running down my neck now. I was, as always, bleeding too much, and how to stop it?
“We must get you to help,” the person said.
It was a young man, I realized through my blurred vision, practically a boy.
Wearing a Hitler Youth uniform, and perhaps sixteen?
Seventeen? I had an impression, no more.
My face was practically pressed into his shoulder as he reached for me, and I saw the insignia on it.
An Oberscharführer, a senior squad leader.
I flinched and felt frantically for the scarf.
It was still there, and I struggled to my feet and, with my arm around my companion’s waist, staggered along with him on unsteady legs.
Ahead of me, I saw a sprawl of arms and legs, a redness on the stones of the terrace, and turned my face away, a coward.
We went through a door and down some stairs.
The young man was practically carrying me now.
Other hands took hold of me then, and a woman said, “Oh, that’s a nasty cut on your forehead, isn’t it?
Never mind, we’ll get you sorted out.” She walked me over and sat me on a sort of ledge.
I saw others lying on the floor, some of them groaning pitifully, and one of them, nearest me, making a dreadful rasping noise.
Eventually, the rasping breathing stopped, and I knew why but didn’t want to look.
Somebody came and quickly stitched and dressed my wound.
Another man told me to tip my head back and removed debris from my eyes with a paper, then put stinging drops in both of them, and that made things a bit better, though my vision still hadn’t cleared.
I thought, Where are the others? Are they remembering to be careful?
Will I be able to find them again? From the movement around me, I knew I was in a large space, but I didn’t know where.
It wasn’t the church, or I’d have recognized something.
It was a cellar, but which cellar? And where were the others?
Oh, no. Were they even alive? Had I failed them so soon? I’d crawled to safety, and I’d never even thought about them!
I’d lost my pillowcase, too, which had held our food, but mostly—where were the others?
I stood up, but I wobbled and had to sit down again.
“Water,” one of the supine figures moaned. It was a woman. I couldn’t tell how old, for she had blood on her face. “Water.”
“There’s no water yet,” a hurrying figure told her.
“Perhaps later.” I’m ashamed to say that I immediately realized how thirsty I was.
I told myself that I’d had a drink of cold, clear water from the cistern just before we’d left, but my mouth was so dry that my lips were stuck together, and my throat burned.
I don’t know how long I stayed there. I just remember the terrible thirst, and wanting to lie down. Eventually, a woman came through and handed me a sandwich in a packet. I took it, but I couldn’t eat. I was too thirsty.
That was when I heard, “Mar— Daisy?”
It was Dr. Becker, and the children were with him.
I dissolved in tears.
Alix said, “Oma. Wow. I wasn’t expecting that twist.”
We’d reached the airport. Sebastian pulled into the parking lot and slotted the car into a space, but we didn’t get out. There was no point. It was just an airport.
Sebastian asked, “Were they all right?”
“Yes,” I said. “They weren’t injured. We were in the cellar of the Albertinium—the sculpture museum. It hadn’t been damaged as badly as the other buildings around, somehow. It was very—very random, the pattern of destruction.”
“Why did they even bomb you again, though?” Ben asked. “If you’d been bombed twice already, and everything was, like, wrecked?”
“Ask Hamburg,” I said. “Ask Berlin. They hadn’t hit the marshaling yards the night before, I heard later, but they wouldn’t have known that.
They didn’t destroy them this time either, but they demolished more of the suburbs.
The entire central city lay in ruins, but on the outskirts, it wasn’t as bad as in other places.
I do believe one reason for all the bombing was to encourage the population to push for surrender, but as I’ve said, that wasn’t feasible.
Hitler was ensconced in the Führerbunker by then, deep below the Reichstag building in Berlin, and the rest of the Nazi top leadership was equally well protected. What could ordinary people do?”
“So where did you go?” Ben asked. “Afterwards?”
“We waited for a long time,” I said. “We sat, and we waited, and we heard others tell their stories. A man had watched those around him be sucked into the fire the night before, just plucked up as if by a tornado and pulled into the flames. One woman clung to a lamppost for hours, afraid to move for fear of burning. People’s shoes stuck to the asphalt and melted away, and they couldn’t get out and died where they stood.
And so much more. Terrible stories. Once again, I realized, I’d been lucky.
Finally, they said it was our turn, and we climbed onto the back of a truck.
The badly wounded lay on stretchers on the floor, the rest of us stood and held onto the sides, and we came here, to the airport.
The ride was very rough, full of stops and starts, and there was fire everywhere at first. Nothing around us but fire and ruin.
When we got there, they gave us noodle soup, which was good, and tea, which wasn’t—how spoiled I had been!
—and there were cots to sleep on. And that was the first day. ”