I put the pistol to my head, curl my finger.
I close my eyes and see Eline.
Her trembling arms.
‘It was nothing, darling …’
My head, struck by a crowbar.
Thunk.
_ _ _
‘Here I am …’
Blistering pain, my head rings. I get to my feet, dazed and unsteady.
‘Hello?’
There is no one here. There is nothing here. Only rugged landscape.
I hear the babble of a stream, the hum of the moor. A bit further on there is a thicket of hazel, a fat, croaking wilderness of summer, the trampled ribbon of an animal track.
I blink.
‘Is anyone there?’
‘Over here. Come.’
My blood runs cold, the powder burn from the shot searing my skin.
The bullet must have brushed my temple and whistled on.
I smell of residue, the smouldering wound.
‘Where?’
‘You didn’t think you’d get off that lightly, did you?’
The voice is Zarah Leander’s.
She is very close, I can hear her breathing, but I cannot see her.
I stand and listen, but there is no one there.
But there is.
A glimpse of hair over by the twiggy hazel bushes, hidden by the tree.
‘Fear not …’
‘Fear not?’
I pick up my bundle and am there in a few strides, a tangle of little paths, moist and dark. I hear only the sound of running water.
‘Here …’
I stumble in the direction of the voice.
‘Here …’
But she is not there either. Where is she? A shudder of leaves, I thrust myself sideways through the undergrowth, branches flick back in my face. I emerge, and again she is gone, but I am in the light. In front of me, the steep slope of a gully disrupts the horizon.
She is standing with her back to me, some ten metres ahead.
Now I’ve got you.
As she turns her head I stumble.
I pick myself up and she has vanished. I claw my way up the slope.
_ _ _
When I get to the top I see the railway, the sweeping curve left across the moor and the gullies. A hundred metres on, the line is broken by a gaping void, tracks jutting into thin air, a pounding of heavy pistons.
I run along the line and now I can see crumpled goods wagons in a haze of stone dust, ragged holes torn in their sides by the artillery guns, yawning craters, the engine flat on its side after the air strike.
‘Come on …’
She is there again. Somewhere up ahead.
Her voice at once coquettish.
‘ … little man …’
I slide down the other side of the slope and get to my feet among thistles.
I walk among the dead.
Those blasted to pieces, and those who seem almost unharmed. Half-naked, clothing ripped away.
I go through the wreckage, crouch down beside a body, the curiously real appearance.
The waxlike face, the pleasing curve of the mouth, the expensive dentures.
Her head is shaven.
‘Don’t look at them … The dead … are … no fun …’
I straighten up. I look around, but cannot see her. I go on.
‘Here …’
I stop in front of a wagon that as if by miracle has remained upright. There is no sound from inside.
‘What do you mean, here?’
‘Here I am …’
I pull on the door, it is bolted and padlocked. Barbed wire at the ventilation openings, barbed wire on the roof.
I grip the handle with both hands and put all my weight into it.
Release, pause, pant.
‘Come on! I thought you were … strong … little man …’
‘I can’t … it’s locked!’
‘No, it’s not. Come on …’
‘Look,’ I say, and heave once more. The door opens like a breath of wind.
They are piled in a heap at the far end, entangled in the dark, in their furs, they smell already. Stiffened jaws. So many mouths.
‘What?’
‘Come …’
I clamber inside, stand for a moment in the dust and the stench, trying to get my bearings in the dim light.
A hum of flies. No one is alive here.
‘Hold me …’
I turn. She is standing with her back to me at the other end of the wagon.
She is in a long coat, her hair tied up.
I step towards her, put my hand on her shoulder.
She turns her head slowly towards me.
The darkness of her eyes.
‘Will life be wonderful, do you think?’
_ _ _
I am struck hard on the head. I black out. Pistol shots. Someone grabs my feet. I see stars. My mouth is bleeding. Sound returns. The engine, still turning over. People.
‘He’s stolen a uniform …’
‘What the hell happened to his face?’
A kick to the head.
A young lad, his face close to mine.
He prods at the side of me that is numb, the roughened skin at the temple.
‘Get a look at this …’
The crouching figure speaks again, there must be someone else in the wagon, someone he is talking to.
‘He looks like he melted … Heinz, I think he fucking shot himself in the head!’
He pats me down, his hands travelling down my legs, searching me.
In a moment he will discover Manfred’s head.
He is Wehrmacht, hardly more than a boy. They swarm on the slope.
Kübelwagen, trucks.
‘All dead … I reckon,’ another voice says, a voice barely broken by puberty. ‘Do you want me to give them a round to make sure?’
‘What?’ says the one at my side, and turns his head away from me for a second. ‘Yeah, give them a—’
His voice is disconnected by the elbow I thrust into his larynx. He is stunned, sways a moment on trembling knees like a top, a preposterous snake who gapes at me open-mouthed. I slap him in the face, twice in quick succession to stop him passing out, already on my feet with his Mauser in my hand. I flick the safety catch, slam the butt hard against his cheekbone, blood spurts from his nose and eyebrow, and still he has yet to grasp what has happened.
He is a child now, he snivels and looks up at me.
Blood runs from his nostrils, a figure eleven traced dark red on his lip.
‘I want the woman,’ I say without raising my voice.
The other man emerges into the light, his pistol is pointing at me.
‘What woman …?’ he says
