Chapter Five #3
‘Grandfather, it’s time to eat.’ She gently prodded his shoulder to wake him.
He did not stir. ‘Grandfather?’ She touched his cheek.
‘You are freezing. You should have told me.’ She pulled his hat down a little more and carefully arranged it to cover more of his cheeks.
Uncharacteristically, her fussing did not ignite a response.
Her hands stilled. His silent, still lips bloomed a greyish-blue tinge.
‘No,’ she whispered. ‘No! Grandfather, wake up.’ She shook his shoulder.
He did not respond. She frantically attempted to sit him up, but his body, heavy and unyielding, made her attempt pitiful.
Aware Klara might be watching, she eased him back down, but his head still fell clumsily back onto his makeshift pillow.
The new angle of his arched neck allowed his glazed, pale eyes to peer out through barely closed lids.
For a moment Elsa could not drag her eyes away from his blind gaze.
There was no denying it now. Those lifeless eyes confirmed that his soul had left her many hours before.
And she had not realized. What sort of woman does not realize that her beloved grandfather is so cold?
She had failed to see his discomfort. She had failed to help.
She had failed to protect him. Her shock and disbelief were total.
She sat motionless, staring at him, unsure how to behave.
Should she cry? Should she scream? She did not feel she had the capacity, luxury or right to do any of those things.
Yet she felt guilty for not trying to force it.
She felt his death too physically: a visceral pain that seeped into her gut, her limbs and her brain, slowing everything down and draining every thought and strength from her.
Was she dying too? Tumbling into an abyss without a lifeline?
She must do something. She moved his lifeless hand for want of something to do.
The movement exposed a hole in his blanket.
The torn fibre, made by the entry of a bullet, had, until now, been successfully hidden by her grandfather’s large hand.
She thought she had watched him fall asleep, but instead, she had watched him die .
. . and she couldn’t help wondering if he knew it at the time.
* * *
‘You cannot leave us here!’ Elsa was shocked by Herr Fellhaber’s suggestion. She had always known him to be a calm, quiet and caring son. He was the only one who had offered her grandfather a lift, but now he wanted to discard him. She grabbed Herr Fellhaber’s arm, but he shook her off.
‘I’m not leaving you.’ He indicated the body he’d just dragged off the wagon. ‘I’m leaving him.’
‘This is not like you. You can’t!’
‘This is about life and death, Elsa. I have to think of my mother. I have to think of the living.’ His voice softened. ‘I’m not wasting precious time burying him. And nor should you. The ground is too hard.’ He climbed back onto the wagon.
‘But we can’t just leave him by the side of the road!’
Herr Fellhaber swept the horizon with his arm. ‘Look around, Elsa. The countryside is littered with frozen corpses. If we stay here, we will join them. I have my mother to think about. I have my horses to think about. And what about the child?’
‘I can’t leave him.’ She looked down at her grandfather lying at her feet.
Oddly, he no longer looked like the man she once knew, as if her mind was playing tricks on her and had replaced him with someone else.
His smile was gone, his body was too frail, and he was so silent.
She turned away, heavy with guilt that she was considering leaving him like this, in such an undignified way.
To do so would mean she was inhuman and had a stone for a heart.
Herr Fellhaber’s voice dragged her from her morbid thoughts. ‘Get on the wagon or I’ll leave without you. We’re already falling behind.’ The wagon creaked beneath his weight as he rearranged the blanket over his knees.
‘It will only take half an hour to bury him. The horses can rest.’
Herr Fellhaber’s patience snapped again. ‘In this weather? Don’t be ridiculous. We need shelter, not a stop.’ He looked over his shoulder at his mother. ‘You have an extra blanket now, Mother. Keep hold of it, the temperature is dropping.’
Elsa ran around the wagon and looked up at him. ‘I have to do something.’
‘My advice is to save your energy. You are going to need it.’
Elsa lifted her chin and shook her head. ‘This is not Christian.’
‘Then stay and pray for him.’ Herr Fellhaber picked up the reins. His eyes narrowed as he watched the refugee column receding into the horizon. ‘Say a prayer for yourself too. You are going to need it. And take the Jew.’
Elsa feigned confusion. ‘I don’t know what—’
‘Did you think you were the only one the pastor asked?’
He clicked his tongue and shouted at his horses to move forward.
His words shocked her. Hurriedly, she lifted the child off, along with a bag.
She held Klara’s hand and stoically watched the large wooden wheels roll away.
Then she looked down at Klara, who seemed so small and vulnerable next to her.
What had she done? The child would never survive.
She let go of Klara’s hand and hastily stumbled after the wagon.
‘Please, don’t go!’ She fell heavily in the rutted snow.
‘Herr Fellhaber!’ She stood up and stumbled after him again, but he did not turn around.
Only his mother seemed distressed to leave them behind.
She watched her losing ground from the back of the wagon, her thin-skinned, wrinkled eyes wide with horror, her wail muffled by the woollen-gloved hand thrust against her mouth.
And in her other hand she clutched Elsa’s purse, plucked from her bag and held aloft as if it were her own.
‘My money! You’ve got my money!’ Elsa shouted.
Herr Fellhaber continued on.
Elsa stopped running, shocked by the sudden turn of events, and watched, panting, as their transport and all the money she had receded into the distance.
She heard Klara approach. ‘I’m sorry, Klara.’
Klara’s small fingers slipped into her hand again as she stood up. Elsa swallowed. She had been reckless and did not deserve her forgiveness.
‘I promise to do better from now on.’
* * *
Herr Fellhaber had been right; the ground was frozen thanks to temperatures that had not been above freezing for weeks.
If Elsa had had a spade, which she did not, it would have made no difference, so she dragged her grandfather’s body away from the road with the intention of covering it in snow.
Perhaps, when the snow finally melted, he would be gone too.
She fell to her knees and began pushing the snow to cover him.
‘Look away, Klara,’ she snapped. ‘Keep moving so you don’t feel the cold.’ Elsa glanced up, aware of the silence from Klara. She had not moved. ‘I told you—’
Klara’s small, lonely figure stole the words from her.
What was she doing? This child was living and more important than her grandfather now.
None of this was Klara’s fault. None of it.
She pushed herself away from the snow, stumbled towards Klara and knelt down in front of her.
She took her gloved hands and looked into her eyes.
Klara’s sombre gaze held a maturity that no child should have and Elsa was inflicting even more pain on her.
She gently stroked the child’s cheek. ‘I’m sorry for snapping at you.’ Elsa let her hand fall to encase the small hands in hers. ‘Are you scared, Klara?’
The girl stiffly nodded.
‘Are you scared of me?’
The girl remained watchful.
‘You don’t have to be scared of me. Shall I let you into a secret? I get scared too, sometimes.’
Klara’s eyes widened a little.
‘It’s true, but I think it’s normal for people to feel scared sometimes.
And, sometimes, when we are scared, we shout at people.
’ Elsa tilted her head as she studied the girl.
‘And some people, like you, go very quiet. The important thing is that we don’t need to be scared of each other.
I have promised to look after you. In fact, if we are together, like our hands are now, we can feel braver — we know we have each other. Do you understand?’
The girl nodded.
Elsa remembered her grandfather and glanced over at him. This was no place for a child. She should lead her away. Yet her grandfather looked so . . . discarded.
Klara slipped her hands from between Elsa’s, turned her back on the body and began to walk on the spot to stay warm, her small boots soon crunching two small spots in the snow.
Elsa’s eyes brimmed with tears as she returned to her grandfather and began to heap snow over his frail body.
Two icy trails of tears formed on her cheeks as Klara began to sing a nursery rhyme that Elsa had not heard since she was a child.
Long-forgotten memories of the carefree childhood she had taken for granted stirred, in stark contrast to this surreal scene: a skipping child singing nursery rhymes with death so near.
There was no happiness here and no one to help them. They were on their own.
She grabbed a stone and used it to push the snow with trembling hands. It was not just the cold that made them tremble, but the fear she felt inside.
With nothing to mark the grave, she stood by the sorry mound of crystallizing snow and prayed for his safe passage.
The Allies had killed her brother, her father and now her frail, elderly grandfather, who did not care much for Hitler.
She decided to add another short prayer requesting that those who killed her family should suffer too.
She felt better for it. The Allies deserved her anger, if not God’s wrath.
She turned to find Klara looking at her.
Her cheeks burned despite the chill creeping into her bones.
She attempted a smile. ‘We had better start walking. It will be getting dark soon.’ She reached out her hand.
‘Thank you for doing as I asked so I could bury my grandfather.’ She stretched her fingers a little more and the child dared to slip her hand into Elsa’s again.
They were on their own now, in a landscape of snow and threatening blizzards, with little to eat and few people around.
‘Do you want to know where we are going?’
The child remained silent.
‘We are going to Bremen. My mother and sister should be there.’ She pulled up her collar, picked up her bag and started out on the long trek, silently following the ruts and footfalls left by the convoy that had gone ahead.
With each step the sun sank lower and quietly, surreptitiously, stole the light from the sky.