Chapter Three #2
His smile had gone and his pale blue-eyed gaze, which used to sparkle with energy, now held urgent desperation.
His grip tightened and the hairs on the back of her neck rose .
. . yet she felt compelled to nod that she would.
He let go of her hand and she turned away as he bid her farewell and shut the door.
She had a sense that her final visit to say goodbye meant far more to him than she was worthy of and her unease did not leave her until she reached home.
The house was filled with strangers: another new family, fleeing from the Baltic states ahead of the Red Army, had arrived. They did not intend to stay long, a weary matriarch reassured her as she navigated her way to the kitchen.
Elsa offered a kindly smile. ‘Don’t worry. You are all welcome. It is the least we can do.’
‘The man across the street brought them. His rooms are full,’ said her mother as Elsa entered the kitchen. She looked into the basket. ‘You have brought us a feast!’ she lied, her smile trembling. ‘We’d better eat it before the Russians get here.’ Her attempt at a joke was edged with fear.
Elsa began emptying the contents of the basket, glancing up at Frieda, who set about peeling the potatoes and discarding the diseased parts.
Frieda was barely fourteen and had her brother’s dreamy imagination, her father’s positive outlook on life and her mother’s good looks.
‘Perhaps they will stop the advance soon,’ Frieda said.
‘It would take a miracle to stop the Red Army,’ replied her mother, dropping the saucepan of water rather too heavily down on the table so that water sloshed over the sides. ‘They hate us. We need a miracle.’
‘We need to leave,’ said Elsa as she unwrapped the two scrawny chicken legs, wondering how she could share them out between five people. ‘The Red Army won’t stop.’
‘Shh. Klaus is here. No more talk of leaving.’
* * *
‘What a feast!’ declared Klaus, her grandfather’s friend, as Elsa set his plate of cabbage, potatoes and a sliver of chicken in front of him.
Everyone smiled humourlessly in agreement.
Elsa fetched the last two servings and set them down in front of her mother and her own chair, before taking her seat.
She looked at the faces around the table as they began eating.
The sound of the refugees quietly talking and moving in the spare rooms filtered down to them through the floorboards, casting a veil of tension over the room.
Her brother’s chair was empty, her father’s taken up by their visitor.
Elsa picked up her knife and fork to pretend all was well, but her thoughts must have showed on her face as her mother gave her a knowing look and glanced at Klaus.
It was a subtle reminder to be careful: Klaus still had a poster of Hitler on his living room wall at home. Elsa nodded and began her meal.
‘We try our best,’ replied her mother, as if there had been no pause in conversation at all. ‘Food is in such short supply these days.’ She delicately stabbed her cabbage with her fork. ‘It is a surprise to see you here, Klaus,’ she added as she sliced the green leaves as if they were steak.
Klaus ignored Gretchen and turned to Elsa’s grandfather. ‘It has been a while since I saw you, Gustav, and thought I would find out how you all are.’ He pointed in the vague direction of their spare rooms. ‘How can you give over your house to such cowards?’
Her mother’s jaw tightened and her neckline reddened but Gustav remained calm. ‘They are women and children. How could we turn them away?’
Klaus was not convinced. ‘The Führer wants us to stay and fight. Not run like pigs.’
‘As I said,’ Gustav replied soothingly, ‘they are women and children. The chicken is good, Elsa.’
Elsa agreed, although in truth she had gone without as there was not enough to share among them.
Gustav turned to Klaus. ‘Don’t you think it tastes good, Klaus?’
‘If we don’t fight, we are done for. Hitler needs our support and our loyalty. Those pi—’
‘I will have no more name-calling in this house,’ interrupted Gretchen. ‘Frieda is only fourteen.’
Klaus understood. ‘I’m sorry, Gretchen, but the Russians must be stopped and—’
Gretchen abruptly stood. ‘Must we talk about the war every bloody mealtime!’ Forks froze in mid-air on their way to open mouths. A heavy silence followed and she rushed from the room.
Elsa made to go after her mother, but her grandfather stopped her with the touch of his hand. ‘Two minutes. Give her two minutes.’
‘We are on the defensive, but we can still stop them,’ argued Klaus. ‘The German Army has prisoners of war digging defence trenches on the outskirts of the town as we speak.’
‘Do you really trust the prisoners to do a good job?’ asked Gustav incredulously. ‘The Russian Army is their salvation.’
Klaus slammed the table with a frail hand. ‘Exactly! We will be idiots to wait for the Russian Army to come. We must fight them or they will liberate every prisoner our sons and grandsons have sacrificed their lives to capture. Do you know how many prisoner-of-war camps there are in the Reich?’
Grandfather wearily shook his head.
Klaus was triumphant in his knowledge. ‘A lot! And every one will be ready to fight along with the Russians who liberated them. They will have a new army ready to kill us all.’
Elsa craned her neck to look through the kitchen door beyond her mother’s chair. She could see Gretchen walking to and fro dabbing her cheeks with a tea towel. She wanted to go to her, but her grandfather’s hand returned to hers.
‘Two minutes,’ he whispered again.
Klaus was in full swing, helped by a belly quickly filling with cabbage and potato. ‘If we all pull together, we can beat them. They are not trained as well as us.’
Her grandfather sat back in his chair. ‘Klaus, my dear man, we have known each other for years. We are friends, are we not?’
Klaus nodded uncertainly.
‘You know I’m loyal to my country.’
Klaus’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are you going to say?’
‘I’m going to say it is time you faced the truth.
We are no match for the Russians.’ He raised his hand to stop Klaus interrupting.
‘They have one thing that we do not. They have many, many men of fighting age. They will sweep our army away like a flood.’ He waved his hand in the air to demonstrate his meaning.
‘They are sweeping our army away like a flood. The Red Army are no underdogs, Klaus. They are brave, determined and have an unwavering commitment to their motherland. We found that out in the Great War.’
‘Our soldiers have commitment to their motherland.’
‘But the Russians hate us, Klaus, and want revenge. Our ordinary German soldier has loyalty, but he doesn’t have hate or revenge in his heart, like theirs.’
Klaus’s nod of agreement sent an icy chill through Elsa’s spine. Her grandfather’s light touch woke her from her shock.
‘Now you can go to your mother, Elsa,’ he said quietly. ‘And Frieda, you can go to your room.’
As soon as Elsa entered the kitchen, her mother rushed to shut the door behind her. ‘We are leaving.’
‘Leaving?’ Elsa had been trying to persuade her mother to join the road westward for days, if not weeks, and now suddenly she had agreed to go. The about-turn shocked her.
‘Yes.’ Her mother began to pace the room again. ‘Tomorrow, with the family upstairs.’
Elsa’s mind raced. ‘I will have to tell them at work—’
‘Your classrooms are emptier by the day. They will not miss you.’
Elsa nodded. Perhaps it was best to give no warning that they were planning to disobey the Führer. She thought of all the refugees arriving already, using any means of transport they could find. By wagon or train, even walking, prams piled high with all the belongings they could gather.
It was the news Elsa had hoped for, but now the enormity of it hit her and made her reticent. They would be leaving their home and most of their possessions for ever, hoping to build a new life in a city where they had nothing.
‘Grandfather will never make it. He can hardly walk.’
‘Our leaving has already been agreed, so don’t change your mind now. Frieda is packing.’
‘You have already discussed this without me?’
‘We are always discussing it!’ her mother snapped back in a whisper. She relented with a sigh. ‘But I’ve only just agreed to go while you were out. The tales about what the Red Army is doing to women and children are too awful to think about.’
Tales of looting and burning had been circulating for a while, but horrific accounts of rape and murder of civilians had also begun in recent days, along with growing numbers of victims and eyewitnesses.
‘The family who arrived today . . .’ Her mother wiped her tears away. ‘What they saw. It is too awful. I can’t speak of it.’
‘I must talk to Grandfather about this.’
Gretchen grasped Elsa’s arm. ‘Not a word in front of Klaus.’
Elsa frowned. ‘Klaus would not report us. I know he is still loyal to Hitler, but he is Grandfather’s friend.’
‘Friend? Pah! Who do you think reported your grandfather for not displaying a Nazi banner outside his house?’
Elsa recoiled. ‘That can’t be true. He wouldn’t do that.’
‘It is! I bet he’s heard we have started giving shelter to refugees and has come here today to find out where our sympathies lie.’
Elsa heard the ring of truth in her mother’s words and fell silent.
‘Besides, he has made it clear that he wants to fight.’ She jerked her chin towards the door of the room where Klaus sat eating their food.
‘Well, let him fight. We are leaving.’ Gretchen released Elsa’s arm and began to wring her hands as she paced.
‘I have some jewellery. There’s my wedding ring, my mother’s brooch . . . a few other trinkets.’
Elsa watched her mother walking back and forth. ‘You have no trinkets, Mother, you have treasured heirlooms.’
‘They are worthless to me if my daughters are raped and murdered in their beds. Staying alive is more important.’ Her mother jerked her head towards the ceiling.
‘That family barely escaped with their lives. One of the women . . . It is too awful.’ She took a deep breath.
‘I can no longer keep denying what is happening, Elsa. Germany is losing the war and the Russians are going to make us pay.’
‘What about some dessert, Gretchen, my dear?’ her grandfather called from the other room.
Her mother rolled her eyes. ‘He’s warning us Klaus is wondering where we are.’ She shouted back, ‘There is no dessert tonight. We are washing up.’ She began to take the pots to the sink. ‘Leave the dishes to me and pack a bag.’
Elsa reluctantly nodded, then hesitated. ‘Shall I pack a bag for Grandfather?’
Her mother’s gaze dropped to the plates she was carrying. ‘He’s not coming,’ she mumbled.
Elsa frowned and walked towards her. ‘Why not?’
‘You said yourself that he can’t walk very far without the need to sit down. He would never make it even if he wanted to come.’
‘Have you told him?’
Her mother scrubbed the dishes furiously in the sink. ‘He was the one who suggested it.’
‘Then you should have told him we won’t leave him.’
‘Don’t be petulant,’ Gretchen snapped. ‘You weren’t here.’ Her body suddenly sagged against the sink and Elsa rushed to support her. ‘I’m sorry, Elsa. I shouldn’t take it out on you.’
Elsa wrapped her in her arms. ‘It’s all right. I understand.’
‘He won’t leave, you see.’ Her mother’s voice was barely a whisper.
‘He is afraid he will slow us down. He says he’ll die fighting.
The old fool thinks he can shoot them with the old rifle in the attic.
’ She eased herself away from her daughter’s embrace and sniffed loudly, dabbing her face with the edge of her apron.
‘Sorry. I’m being silly. It’s the guilt of leaving him behind.
’ She looked up, her eyes glistening. ‘I have to think of Frieda. You can take care of yourself, Elsa, but Frieda is young and like Otto — she’s a dreamer and no match for the enemy. ’
Elsa had never witnessed her mother so distressed. All her life she had been so capable and strong-minded. She was the boss of the family, even when their father had been alive. The weight of responsibility was now too much, Elsa could see.
‘Then you must go. Don’t worry about Grandfather, I will stay to persuade him to leave too. We will follow on later.’
‘Do you think you can change his mind?’
Elsa began drying the plates stacked by the sink.
‘I think I have as good a chance as anyone else,’ she replied confidently.
‘I will persuade someone to take him in their cart.’ She met Gretchen’s doubtful gaze with her brightest smile.
Her mother reached for her hand and covered it with her own. Elsa stared at the weathered hand.
‘I love you, Elsa. Don’t wait too long. If you can’t change his mind, you must leave him. I could not bear the loss of a second child.’
‘It won’t take me long. We will follow within the week.’
Her mother smiled sadly. They both knew that her show of confidence was a lie.