Читать книгу The Flight - Bryan Malessa - Страница 5

Chapter 1

On 15 June 1940 a celebration took place on the small Platz, the square, in Germau in front of Karl’s parents’ shop. The previous evening’s radio broadcast had carried news of victory in Paris. The villagers nervously set up their goods to sell, hopeful that victory would quickly translate to peace. Early that morning Ida had asked her father, Günter, who had walked over from his village, to slaughter one of the few remaining pigs for the party. He wasn’t much good at butchering, but she couldn’t worry about that today: she was preoccupied with thoughts of her absent husband.

She knew Paul was safe on the outskirts of Paris where he had been sent to ensure a steady supply of food for the troops. When he had received his call-up papers he had closed their butchery because Ida hadn’t the strength or the skill to run the slaughterhouse, and the children – Karl, Peter and Leyna – were too young to train. No one in the village, including Paul, had thought it a matter for concern; everyone was certain that the war would be short and the soldiers would return as heroes. The decisive victory in Paris seemed to confirm that Paul would soon be home, she thought, as she sat on the front steps of the shop, which was also their home. Adults had gathered round the linden tree, encircled by an ornate iron railing that stood in the centre of the village square. A group of children were playing hide and seek near the trees surrounding the village, oblivious to their parents’ worries.

Suddenly Karl, her oldest, appeared from the group, sprinting towards her. He came through the gate that separated the shop from the square and sat down, panting, beside her. When he could speak, it was to ask again the question he had repeated since last evening’s broadcast: ‘When is Father coming home?’

At first she looked at him without speaking; then she said, ‘Come here.’ She wiped a smudge of dirt from his cheek with her apron. ‘I told you to stop asking.’

‘But Werner says he’s dead.’

Ida looked out at her neighbour’s son chasing Leyna through the trees. She could hear them giggling. ‘Tell Werner I’ll spank him myself if he says that again.’

‘When do we eat?’

‘Soon. Go and look after your little sister.’

Karl jumped up and ran back through the gate. As he crossed the square he stumbled on a loose cobble, then continued, darting through a group of adults. He ignored his sister and ran up the path to the church that stood at the top of a hill to see if he could spot Peter, his younger brother.

The village where Ida’s father lived, Sorgenau, was a few kilometres west of Germau, close to the amber town of Palmnicken. Günter had moved there with his Lithuanian bride shortly after Ida’s mother had died of cancer two years earlier. The roads that led to Germau dated from as far back as the Bronze Age, when the indigenous Balt-Prussians had traded their only precious resource, amber, with the outside world in exchange for metal to use in jewellery, tools and weapons. For centuries the region had remained so remote that although Tacitus and Ptolemy had mentioned it in their writings, Pliny the Elder referred mistakenly to the Samland peninsula as an island: Amber Island. Like the shards of amber that washed up daily on the local beaches, there were other bits and pieces of rarely mentioned history that marked the region: on conquering Samland seven centuries earlier the Teutonic Knights had stolen the non-Germanic tribe’s name and used it to christen their own empire. Prussia rose as one of the most militant and chauvinistic of all German states, despite the fact that many of the assimilated Baltic Prussians, including Ida’s clan, silently traced their names and lineage to a pre-Germanic past. But on that summer afternoon in 1940, no one was thinking about the village’s history as they gathered on the Platz to sing, laugh, drink, dance and make merry in honour of the news they had heard on the radio.

Ida, though, wasn’t quite ready to join the party and remained apart, nervously fingering her bracelet as she watched Karl reach the ancient church the Knights had built above the village.

‘Have you seen the sharpening stone?’ a voice called behind her.

She turned. Her father had come out of the slaughterhouse, cleaning a knife on a piece of cloth. When he saw her face he said, ‘I told you, you’ve nothing to worry about.’ He hobbled over to her and sat down beside her – always a struggle with his wooden leg. He’d lost his own defending East Prussia from the Russians in 1914 at the battle of Tannenberg. ‘Paul will be fine. The army’s in control. It will be over soon.’

Ida knew he wasn’t telling her what she wanted to hear. ‘It’s in the kitchen,’ she said, ‘in the drawer to the right of the sink.’

Günter grabbed the iron railing and pulled himself up again.

‘I’ll tell one of the children to clean the slaughterhouse,’ she said. ‘Go and join the men when you’ve finished. I must start cooking.’

‘We’ll do it together, over the fire pit. It’s you who should join the party. Come on! Up!’ He spoke to her as if she were still a child, but she stood up and straightened her dress, forced herself to smile and went out on to the square.

‘Ida!’

Romy, Werner’s mother, was coming towards her. Günter rolled his eyes and turned away.

‘Mr Badura was just telling me you managed to buy some cloth when you went to Königsberg last week. I was wondering if you had any left over – I’m trying to finish a blanket for my cousin. She’s expecting next month.’

‘I think there’s a little. I’ll have a look later.’

‘I don’t suppose you’d do it now? I wanted to finish it tonight and we might miss each other this evening.’

Ida went into her home and located the rest of the cloth with which she had made Leyna a new dress.

‘Can I give you something for it?’ Romy asked when Ida handed it to her.

‘There’s no need. My best wishes to your cousin. Now I must help my father with the pig.’

‘Would you like my help?’

‘The slaughterhouse is too small for a crowd,’ Ida said. ‘We’ll catch up later, after we’ve eaten.’

When Romy had gone Ida started to close the door but saw Leyna running through the gate, so she opened it again. ‘Mutti, Werner’s teasing me! When are we going to eat?’

‘I wish you and Karl would stop asking that.’

They walked through the house and out of the back door where they found Günter smoking and gazing into the pasture.

‘You call that work?’ Ida joked.

He dropped the cigarette, grabbed Leyna and flung her into the air as she shrieked with delight, ‘Put me down, Grandpa!’

Soon a side of pork was roasting over the open pit beside the slaughterhouse where a group of men had gathered. Each generation had its favourite songs and as the afternoon wore on the villagers began to sing. Even the boys on the square stopped playing and started to sing a Hitler Youth song they had learned from the older boys at school:

We march for Hitler through the night.

Suffering with the flag for freedom and bread.

Our flag means more to us than death…

The old men, all veterans of the last war, laughed bitterly. ‘What do they know about death?’ one muttered.

Another called, ‘Go and get us some of the bread you’re singing about. We haven’t finished eating yet.’

The children were silent – until they realised that the men were laughing at them. Then they sang even louder:

We march for Hitler through the night.

Suffering with the flag for freedom…