“But what is going on, Colonel? Is there a riot? Do you have a black market gang pinned down? There are so many criminals. It is so brave of you and your men.”
She gave him her most dazzling smile and I could see him almost bursting to tell her just how brave he was.
“It is nothing. Some Jewish agitators, we are told.” He stepped closer and lowered his voice. “Between you and me, the Germans were on the right track, you know. These Jews are still up to their old tricks.” He all but winked at her.
She screwed her face up sympathetically. He stood back, and saluted.
“Good day, Fraulein.” He nodded to me and turned and ran his men back to the side of the truck to see what was going on.
Eve’s cheeks were red points. Her eyes were ablaze. “You see?”
“All I see is we need to get the hell out of here and come back later. Let’s go.” I took her arm, this time without encountering resistance, and marched her off down the street, bitter tears coursing down her face.
We holed up in my room. The guard at the door barely lifted his head from his paper. He was used to afternoon dalliances. For a while she sat on one of the chairs in the sitting room. I made tea and we drank it in silence, looking out the net curtains as the day faded. For that little while I was almost at ease.
Just being able to turn my head and see her there. To make fresh tea and get her smile of thanks. I knew the world was revving up outside and was like enough to crash through the door at any time. But for an hour or two we were out of it.
As the light turned yellow she stood up and walked through to the bedroom. I sat still.
“Danny?” Her voice was soft. I stood up and walked to the door. It was dark and I waited till I could see. She’d drawn the curtains and was lying under the covers in the bed. Her clothes were piled neatly on the chair. It was a flashback.
I walked over to where her face lay on the pillow. “Is this what you want?”
“Silly man, get in.”
I took my clothes off slowly, not wanting to rush anything, and padded over to her, feeling the rough carpet and then the cool linoleum. Her face was away from me when I pulled up the cover and slid in behind her. Her body was hot and naked, and I buried my face in her soft neck. I stroked her shorn hair and realised how little I’d known of her ears. I ran my hand down to her breast. She turned to me and we lay looking into each other’s eyes. I wondered if she saw a stranger too?
Our lovemaking started slowly and finished in a flurry of limbs and tossed sheets, and we lay cradled in each other’s arms till the skin cooled. I got up, went through to the sitting room and brought back two lit fags. We lay smoking and wondering who was going to talk first. I wished no one would.
She said, “When it’s dark, we will go back and see, OK?”
“Why not stay here? I could sneak some food in and we could hole up for days.”
She pinched my nipple. “You know we can’t. They have been brothers to me. We must find out.”
“It might not have been them they were after.”
“Hah. We should have shot the Nazi swine we evicted from my parents’ home. They sold us out. Ariel was right.”
“What if they’re dead?”
She lay quiet for a while. “I hope they are dead. If the Russians took them alive, they will wish for death.”
“And then? Will you come back with me? To London. Or Glasgow. I could show you my home. It’s different up there. Quieter. Except Saturday nights. We could be away from all this.”
She rolled over and sat up. I watched her bare back, counted the knobs on her spine, reached out, touched her hip. She flinched.
“I can never go back. There are others here I need to contact. I promised.”
“Promised what?”
She twisted round so she could see my face. She shook her head. I studied the hollows and curves of her body, the velvet skin of her breasts and sheen of fine hair over her limbs like a sleek seal. I got up, and walked round to her side of the bed and held out my arms. She stood up into them and I held her body close to me as though for the last time, and we kissed. As we dressed we talked and I won the argument. I would go to her parents’ flat and find out what had happened. She would wait for me nearby.
It was a wonderful evening, soft and warm. We walked hand in hand, the picture of young love, she in her pretty frock and beret and me tie-less and jacket unbuttoned. I would have left it behind but I needed somewhere to carry my papers and to cover the handle of the Luger jutting from my waistband at the back. We separated at a bar just before the Russian sector. An enterprising barkeeper had rescued some tables and chairs from the rubble of a hotel and made a little pavement cafй among the ruins. I left her nursing a beer and holding a spare key to my room in case I wasn’t back before curfew.
The alley was deserted when I peered down it. No trucks, no soldiers. I could almost have imagined it. And yet, and yet… as my feet crunched through the rubbish and the debris, I noticed small things: a pool of glistening oil, empty shell cases, fresh half-truck caterpillar tracks. I saw no one. All the curtains were drawn and the windows closed, except one: it was Eve’s flat. A curtain flapped and the remnants of the window frame dangled from the remaining hinge.
The front door lay on its side, splintered and smashed. I peered into the dark stairwell and saw bullet holes on the wall. A long series of dark marks streaked the floor. I didn’t remember them. I bent down and studied them. They were dark brown. I put a finger out and touched. Dry.
The tang of spent ammunition and explosives hung in the air. I pressed on up the stairs. I noted the odd bullet hole and more of the smudge marks, as though something had been dragged down.
Ahead was Eve’s flat. The front door was still on its hinges but it was badly holed. I walked through. Straight ahead was the lower floor which had been used by local Germans. Up the stairs was the attic room where Eve and the men had taken me. I listened and thought I heard a sound ahead of me. Nothing. I took out my gun, undid the safety and cocked it. I began to climb the stairs. I got to the top and stepped over the threshold.
The room was torn to bits. The walls and ceiling were splattered with bullet and shrapnel holes. The window frame had been blown out. Shards of glass lay across the floor. The beds were wrecked and their covers shredded. The table and chairs were smashed against the wall. A bullet-riddled mattress lay across the debris.
I could see the three of them making their last stand behind the upturned table and mattress. Against machine guns and grenades, it wouldn’t have taken long.
A pair of crushed spectacles lay by the mattress. The dark smears here were thicker and led to two pools close to one another. This time so much had been spilled, it hadn’t completely set. I bent and touched. My finger came away red, and I smeared it on a corner of a curtain.
I started back downstairs, then heard it again. From the room below. I crept along the short corridor. My gun led the way. I got to the opened door. I jumped forward holding my pistol in both hands.
“Hande hoch!” I shouted. A familiar enough term to me, but never before used by me. It was the favourite sport of one of the camp sergeants. He would line up outside the hut and make us stretch our arms in the air. It was a way of testing how fit we were and whether it was worth feeding us. He would pace up and down the line of faces twisted in pain and fear. He was a master of the game. He would wait till our shoulders were burning and our arms trembling like branches in a gale, then he’d start to count down from fifty. Slowly. Anyone who couldn’t keep his arms above his head before the final nul was marched off, never to return. You could try to practise, but with too little food it might simply expend precious energy.
I heard the sob. It came from behind the couch. I called again and the sob became two, then three, then ran into a litany of weeping. A head appeared. An old face with a scarf holding grey hair in place.
“Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me.” She edged out on her hands and knees and got to her feet. She wore a shabby dress and a pinny. Her face was streaked with dirt and tears. I lowered my gun.
“What happened here?”
“Don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.”
“Just tell me what happened. What happened to the men who lived upstairs?”
“The Russians came. Are you Russian?” The panic dissolved her face again. There were red-haired Cossacks, I’d heard.
