Chapter 33 Joe #2
What I did next was foolhardy, I know, but I’ve always been beset by a strong curiosity. “Like the Elephant’s Child,” Nanny had scolded, when she’d caught me taking a pistol from the armaments collection to see how it worked, “with your ’satiable curiosity, and you know what happened to him!”
“No, Nanny,” I’d said—teasing, for I knew very well, but I loved the story—“what happened to him?”
“He went to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, to ask what the Crocodile has for dinner. And when he got there and found a Crocodile, the Crocodile told him that today, he would begin with the Elephant’s Child!”
“And then what happened?” I edged closer to her, for Nanny was a very cozy sort of person, all soft and rounded, and could never stay cross for long.
“Then,” she said, “the Crocodile pulled, and the Elephant’s Child set his four legs and pulled, and they both pulled and pulled until the Elephant’s Child’s nose was stretched out like a garden-hose, and the Crocodile fell back into the water with a Plop! and released him.”
“And then,” I said joyfully, “the Elephant’s Child frisked and whisked his wonderful new trunk all the way home across Africa, and he pulled grass from the ground to eat, and he swished flies from his back with a whisk made of branches, and he snorted up mud and made a cool, slushy-squshy mud-cap whenever the sun was hot!
And when he got home, he spanked all his dear family and friends with his trunk as they had once spanked him, and he pulled out his Aunt Ostrich’s tail-feathers, and he blew bubbles at his broad aunt, the Hippopotamus!
And all his dear family saw how lovely it was to have a long nose, so they went off to the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and got new noses from the Crocodile, and all elephants have them still today.
So you see, Nanny dear, I think it’s a very good thing to have a ’satiable curiosity. ”
She shook her head. “Oh, there’s no telling you what to do. Mark my words, you’ll come to a bad end if you don’t take care.”
“Or,” I said, “I’ll get a lovely new trunk myself, and frisk and whisk it all the way across Africa.”
So you see how I was the last person who could hide under the bed while a battle raged in the street!
I crept to the outer room, got down on my hands and knees in case of a stray bullet through the glass—I wasn’t quite as foolish as Nanny had thought me—and crawled to the display window to look out between the slats.
I couldn’t see much at first. A stealthy figure, that was all, creeping along across the street, hugging the wall of the house.
I thought at first that he was a Wehrmacht soldier, but his uniform was more green than gray, his jacket was hung about with all sorts of straps and bulges, and his helmet was much too round.
I realized with a thrill of—fear? excitement?
—that he must be with the U.S. Army. He carried a rifle, and things bobbed at his side.
Rounded things that I couldn’t identify.
On he crept—I had my whole face pressed to the glass to see—and then there were some bursts of shooting and things became quieter. Fewer explosions? What? I couldn’t see the soldier anymore, and didn’t know what he was doing.
I kept watching—I don’t know why—and saw a boy come out of a door across the street.
It was the building where I’d seen the muzzle flash, and he was holding a pistol.
He looked barely older than Gerhardt, though, and certainly younger than Andrea.
What was his mother thinking, allowing him out like this during a battle?
Movement to the left, and I pressed closer, then stood for a better angle and saw the American soldier again, raising his rifle, aiming away from me, down the street.
I held my breath, and then there was movement across the road.
The boy fired three times, the pistol jerking with each shot, and the American jumped and dropped his rifle.
He ran, then, in a zigzag pattern, but as he went, he threw something, and a few seconds later, I heard a blast.
A grenade? Was that it? The machine-gun chatter stopped, and the soldier was running back in my direction, still weaving as he went.
The next thing happened very quickly. He was directly in front of my window when there was another shot, and he fell back against the wooden slats.
I saw the boy across the street, the one with the pistol.
He was holding it in front of him, his hand shaking, and the soldier reached with his left hand, groping for something.
Groping for a grenade.
I don’t know why I did it. I don’t quite remember how I did it. All I know is, I was flinging the door open, running outside, and grabbing the soldier. Grabbing him, and dragging him back.
He was heavy and I was small, but full of—what?—Resolve? Adrenaline? I dragged him over the threshold as he scrabbled with his feet, helping me, and slammed the door even as two more bullets hit the wood. I shot the bolt home, then dropped to the floor, panting.
The man made a sound. Not a groan, just a sound.
I crawled over to him, and only realized there were wet smears on the near-black slate floor when I put my hand there and it came away red with blood.
His eyes were open, he was panting, and there was a hole in his uniform jacket.
Just a little hole, on the right side, nearly at the top. Nearly at his neck.
I sat over him and wondered what to do now.
He was lying on his rucksack and staring up at me.
Just staring. I said in English, “You’ll be all right.
You’re safe here. Wait. I’ll get … I’ll get towels.
” That was right, wasn’t it? I ran to the kitchen and grabbed a handful of clean white towels from the drawer—how fortunate that this had happened in a bakery! —then ran back.
He had his elbow on the ground, was trying to sit up, but with the weight of his pack, it was beyond him. I dropped to my knees and said, “Here. Let me take your helmet off,” but couldn’t figure out the secret of it. He tried to raise his right hand, cried out, and fell back.
My father’s voice in my head. “When you feel yourself panicking and hurrying, stop and take a breath, then proceed with deliberation. Haste kills.” I took a breath, and then my hands found the buckle and I pulled the helmet away.
He was a man now. Just a man. A thin face, a beaky nose, and spectacles. His hair was thick, though it was buzzed off as all soldiers’ hair was. Brown hair, brown eyes. I registered that even as I tried to figure out how to get his pack off, and then his jacket. I said, “Try to lift up.”
He still hadn’t said anything. His breath was hissing now—pain, I thought, not fear—but he got his left elbow under him and pushed up on it, and I pulled the pack off him, then took various items from him as gently as I could manage it.
I took great care with the two grenades, for those were the round things I’d seen at his side as he ran along.
I thought, The boys. They’ll think this is playing soldier, and wished I could throw the things into the street, but that wasn’t possible.
At last, his coat was off—he had patches with stripes on his shoulders, which probably meant something, but I didn’t know what—and he was in a shirt of khaki cotton. Khaki cotton stained with blood. I realized there was a hole in back, too. That meant the bullet had gone through, right?
Put pressure on it. We’d had first-aid training in the BDM—this was certainly the first time I’d been grateful for anything I’d learned in the BDM!—and I grabbed my clean dishtowels, then realized there was a problem.
“Can you roll to the side?” I asked him. He grunted, but obliged. He was sweating now, great beads standing out on his forehead and upper lip. I pressed one towel to the front of him and one behind, and shouted as loudly as I could.
“Dr. Becker!”
“I remember that,” Matti—I knew I should call him Matthias, but to me, he was still dear Matti—told me in the Biergarten, full of sunshine and flowers and cheerfulness. “I remember the soldier on the floor. The American soldier. It was very exciting.”
“Oma,” Alix said. “You pulled him off the street? With people shooting?”
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I did. Your grandfather.”
“Why, though?” Ben asked. “He was the enemy!”
“Frau Adelberg asked the same thing,” I said. “She wailed it. ‘What have you done?’ She was sure that an avenging party of Wehrmacht soldiers would break down the door at any moment and shoot us all, but really, they had enough to keep them busy.”
“But why?” Ben asked again.
“Why?” I said. “Because of the boy, I think. It was a reflex, really, but I think it was the boy. He was only ten or eleven. Axel, his name was, though I only discovered that later. If he shot again, he was likely to kill the soldier, and I didn’t want him to.
For his sake, I didn’t want it. Joe was reaching for a grenade, too, and it would certainly have been a bad thing for him to kill the boy.
That’s half the reason. The other half? Maybe I’d seen too many dead people by then, and I couldn’t bear to see another one right there outside my door.
Not when I could do something about it, I couldn’t. So I did something.”
“But—” Alix didn’t seem to know how to go on. Ashleigh, of course, was filming.
“Thank goodness for Dr. Becker,” I said.
“He knew what to do. He cut off Joe’s shirt with scissors and examined the wound, then went upstairs again and came down with a bottle—a pint bottle with no label, with clear liquid inside.
I thought at first it was water, but when he came back from washing his hands, he told the soldier—Joe, of course, though I didn’t know his name then—'I’m going to lay you down flat and pour this on the wound, and then you’ll need to turn so I can pour it on the back.
It will sting. Are you ready?’ I translated, and Joe said, ‘Yes,’ and Dr. Becker did it.
Joe jerked and set his teeth, but he didn’t cry out.
Then Dr. Becker cleaned the wound in back in the same way and said, ‘That will sterilize part of the wound, at least, and the bullet’s gone clear through, which is good.
You’d better have a drink, because I need to set your collarbone.
’ That hurt a great deal, I could tell, and when it was over, Dr. Becker fashioned a sling for him, stitched his wounds, and bandaged him up, all with strips torn from a clean sheet.
Joe sat against the wall, then, his face white and beaded with sweat, breathing hard with the pain.
“After that,” I said, “Dr. Becker stood and said, ‘Bring some glasses, if you would, Frau Adelberg. Four, I think.’ Oh, he was calm. Frau Adelberg poured Schnapps—for that, of course, was what it was, Apfelschnapps from Herr Langbein’s special store, a parting gift—into four glasses, and we all had a drink and felt much better for it.
How warm it was, going down! It was really very good Schnapps. ”
“I remember that, too,” Matti said. “All of you drinking. I was cross because I didn’t get a drink. And then you and Dr. Becker helped the man upstairs. It was rather dull afterwards, as he lay on the bed only. The noises outside were more exciting, and Gerhardt and I made our soldiers fight.”
“So what happened then?” Alix asked. “Did Grandpa swear his undying love for you? He should have, after all that.”
“No,” I said. “Mostly, he sweated and tried not to cry out, and slept in between, for a night and a day, and only sometimes talked a bit with me. To distract himself from the pain, I think. And I put cold compresses on his head and fed him sips of water and soup and wondered what on earth to do now.”