Chapter 41
The candle was flickering in the hearth, the glasses were ready to be filled. Cora uncorked the bottle and showed Elisavet the label. ‘It’s a Riesling,’ she said. ‘From the Rhine. It seems appropriate, doesn’t it?’
As she poured it, Elisavet picked up the notebook and held it out in front of her as if she was about to swear an oath on it.
The gospel according to Frank, Cora thought.
Elisavet put the notebook on her lap and said thoughtfully, ‘Gwyn is like his father, do you think?’
‘Oh, definitely, yes,’ Cora said, pleased.
‘Kind.’ Kindness was underrated, in her view.
It had slipped down the league of favourable characteristics, below confidence and wit and style.
‘Kind is one of those peculiarly British words like “nice” and “mild” that you don’t set much store by, but you appreciate it when you see it. ’
Elisavet’s dark eyes held hers and gave little away, but she nodded.
Cora wasn’t used to silences between people, because around here, everyone had an opinion on everything and was keen to share the knowledge.
Still, you could communicate in other ways, it didn’t always take words, she was beginning to realise that.
You just had to recognise the communication for what it was.
Elisavet coming here on a regular basis to translate the book of her own volition, that was kindness, she thought.
‘So,’ Elisavet said, ‘we shall start.’
Otto was looking through the window of Hut 9, his hands clasped behind his back as I reached the vertical section of the tunnel where my roommates helped me climb out.
I was not sure what had just happened. My thoughts went back to the curving black hills and the wide, fading sky and the woman, Cora, huddled in her coat, and what she’d said to me. Go back inside.
‘How was it down there?’
‘Suffocating. I thought I was going to die.’
‘The guards were taking great interest in the drawings of the girls,’ Steffan said apologetically.
‘I thought it would be that. I’m going to get cleaned up.’ I grabbed my clothes and hurried to the showers before the guards saw me. Under the feeble flow of water I scraped the clay off my skin, kicking the dirty water to encourage it to flow down the plug hole.
I wiped down the shower stall as best I could, dried off, dressed and went back to the bunk. My roommates were already asleep, and I knelt next to the bed where the tunnel’s architect, Otto, lay. ‘Listen, we’re through,’ I told him. ‘I wanted you to be the first to know.’
Otto reached for his spectacles and he sat up eagerly, smoothing his moustache. ‘Where did it come out?’
‘In the farmer’s field.’
‘Hah!’ Otto smiled. ‘I knew it.’
‘You know what this means? We’re going home!’
Next morning I was cleaning my boots, thinking about the escape.
The preparations were well underway. We had forged identity papers and would line the tunnel with rags to keep our clothes clean as we made our way out from underground.
We were saving portions of our rations to take with us.
We had fashioned compasses out of magnetised razor blades and my railway map had been copied onto shirt tails and handkerchiefs.
We had a good chance of making it to freedom. Steffan had seen planes flying low in the distance after take-off and heard them coming in to land, so he knew there were airfields not too far away. All we had to do was make our way to one of these airfields and steal a plane. Get back home.
I thought of finding Cora with the green hair to say goodbye. I would hold her close for a few precious moments, hold her warm, eager face in my hands and thank her for giving me hope for these past weeks, for giving me faith in the goodness of human nature.
Otto moved from the window and cast his shadow over me.
I looked up. It was hard to see the older man’s expression. Against the brightness of the day he looked ink black.
‘I’ve been thinking about it. I have changed my mind. I want to come with you when you leave, Frank,’ Otto said softly.
‘You do?’ I said, placing my boots on the floor side by side.
We owed Otto everything. It was his engineering expertise that had made the tunnel safe with the use of pit props, it was he who had thought of the practical ventilation system using condensed milk cans, he who had rewired the electricity so we could see what we were doing, and improvised the trolley system for moving the clay.
We had to give the man credit for that. Besides, I liked Otto, that was the problem.
Without him we would still be planning to pole vault out of there and the tunnel would have caved in weeks ago. He’d made it all possible.
At the same time my spirits sank at the idea of being responsible for him.
Otto wasn’t in the best of health, he wasn’t fit, he would slow us down, it was easier for one man to hide than two.
The picture I dreamed of, the swift return home, wasn’t looking the same at all now. Of course, Otto was a gentleman and he would politely understand but it wasn’t the point, it wasn’t what I had envisaged. ‘What has made you change your mind?’ I asked curiously.
‘Something bad is going to happen. I can feel it,’ Otto said. ‘What do you think they’ll do to us when it’s over?’ His eyes were watery. ‘I want to go home. I need to see my wife and children again. I don’t believe for a moment we are winning the war, no matter how many times they tell us we are.’
‘We mustn’t lose hope.’
I thought of the mural that Otto had spent some time painting, pine forests and mountains and blue skies. He’d lost himself for hours in the recreation of his homeland and he’d always looked dazed and disappointed to come back to the hut and face the reality of an uncertain future.
‘It’s over. The Nazis are finished, Frank,’ Otto said, polishing his spectacles with his handkerchief. ‘It’s all coming to an end but they don’t realise it. They want to believe, even now, that Hitler is a genius with a vision.’
‘And you don’t?’ I asked, startled.
‘He’s a delusional madman.’
‘Hush, Otto!’ I quickly glanced towards the door and waved a warning. ‘Be careful what you say. You make me nervous when you talk like that.’
Otto shook his head. ‘Don’t mind me. I’m getting old.
I’ve seen too much,’ he said, sitting heavily on the chair.
‘Don’t worry, I’m safe. The SS won’t kill me until the tunnel’s complete and I’d like to see the back of this place.
If the British and their allies win this war, we’ll be sent to the death camps.
Or if we’re lucky they’ll bomb the camp, get rid of us in one, easy move. ’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Why wouldn’t they? It’s what we’ve done to them, isn’t it? Tit for tat.’
‘Still, as long as it’s not Siberia, isn’t that so?
’ I tried to jolly him out of his dark mood.
They were coming more frequently these days, the depression of captivity, a sense of hopelessness.
I had enjoyed listening to Otto’s stories about his capture on the Eastern Front during the last war, and about his long and arduous adventures on the journey home during the Russian Revolution; it was the stuff that heroes were made of.
But he’d stopped talking about them lately, which was a shame.
Maybe he felt he didn’t need to prove himself any longer, that his past spoke for him.
And the tunnel was almost finished. It was better in the circumstances to remain as anonymous and invisible as possible and hope for the best.
‘Not that bad, no,’ Otto said, rallying. ‘It’s as cold as Siberia though.’
‘Here, have a cigarette, cheer yourself up.’
‘Cheer myself up?’ Otto laughed. ‘I’ll do my best.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ I said.