Gerald Seymour - The Contract

Up to his waist in cold, filthy water, and perhaps a small sewer emptied into the river. He stank when they were over, and there was no time to dry himself properly. He had tried to wipe himself down with a handkerchief that became a sodden mess, he had dropped his trousers to his ankles and wrung them, he had chafed his legs for warmth. The Doctor and Erica had watched him in exhausted silence.

And then they had gone on, headed west with the Aller forded.

By hugging the woods, avoiding the roads, skirting the warning signs that forbade entry without the precious permit paper, going on tip-toe past a pair of Border Guards who smoked and talked, Johnny led Otto Guttmann and Erica into the Restricted Zone.

Where once the trees had been felled, where there now grew dense and sprouting undergrowth, he called a stop. All of their nerves twisted by the long and escalating risk of discovery. Time for a halt, time for the bivouac: No blankets, no food, no drink. Nothing but the chance for rest.

Under the canopy of the forest the evening came quickly, slanting the shadows, tricking the eyes.

They sagged down onto the ground. Erica tended her father, mopped the damp from his forehead, loosened his collar, eased off his shoes. The old man was white faced, frighteningly so, his breathing was ragged and the failing light played at the cavities of his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks.

Food, Johnny, the poor beggar needs food. And only Johnny could make the decision as to whether to forage for Otto Guttmann. He shouild never have brought them with him… but Johnny had made a promise, and a promise was as binding as a contract…

The sound of the voices swept the thought from his mind.

Furtive voices. Those of a boy and a girl. There was the crack of a broken branch, there was the snapping of a broken frond. Johnny's finger went to his mouth, the urgent plea for total quiet. Who else would come to this bloody, forbidden place at this time? Johnny eased the Stechkin from his trouser waist, checked that it was cocked, saw the lie of the safety catch. Who else would come to the bloody killing zone?

Johnny gestured to Erica that she should stay still. With the sureness of a stalking cat he was gone from her sight.

To Ulf and Jutte the forest was a dangerous and alien place. There was no safety here, no gratitude from them for the dark, cloaking cover of the trees and thickets. They huddled close to each other, his arm on her shoulder and her face rested on his cheek. They talked in low, guarded voices, in fragmented sentences that often were stifled as they listened to the night sounds around them.

'When we are across, Ulf, what happens to us, where do we go?'

'To the first farm, the first house…'

'How will they welcome us?'

'… they will give us something to eat, they will call the authorities.'

'The police will come to see us?'

'They will take us to a place called Giesen… north of Frankfurt… they will give us money there…'

' Is the money a reward for what we have done?'

' It is just to help us begin our lives.'

' I want to live in Hamburg, where my uncle is…'

'Then we will tell them, Jutte, we will give them his name.'

'My uncle has a big factory there, he is the owner of the factory, all of it belongs to him. My uncle is a rich man

'Perhaps he will help us when we are ready to leave Giesen.'

'My uncle will give me a room.'

'Perhaps he will not want to have the two of us living there»

'He said he would be kind to me.'

'We have to think of the future, Jutte.'

Her head moved angrily away from his face. 'I'm not exchanging one prison for another. In Berlin you could have had a little flat and some cheap furniture. I am not going to Hamburg just to become a housewife

… I am going there to live…'

'Yes, Jutte, we are going there to live together.'

'… of course, Ulf, of course.'

She leaned her head back to his shoulder and he felt the cool, paper-smooth skin, and he knew that he loved her, that he could not believe that he would ever love another girl. And the price that he must pay for her love was high, as high as the close mesh fence, as high as the crack of the automatic guns, as high as the cry of the Hinterland sirens.

'Did you hear something…?'Jutte was rigid, alert.

'Nothing.'

'Something moved… close to us…'

She pointed with her hand into the inky darkness, a wasted gesture. He sensed her fear, the panting of her breath.

' I heard nothing.'

'There was a movement…'

'Perhaps it was a pig, there are many here.' He remembered once, patrolling in the Spellersieck woods near where the Soviets had their observation bunker, how he had startled a pig. She had had all her young with her, seven or eight of them. He remembered the crash of their rushing flight, his own terror.

'Nobody would come here?'

'Not this close to the border. Not in curfew. There would only be the guards. You'd hear them,' Ulf said viciously. 'You'd hear their blundering feet.'

'Would the pig hurt us?'

'Nothing will hurt you, I would not allow it…'

They laughed sweetly, privately, together and his arm tightened on her shoulder. He wondered if the moon would come, whether the patrols had changed their night routine, whether there had been a variation since he had left the Walbeck garrison.

From the fold in the ground where he lay, Johnny could sometimes see the boy and the girl. Momentarily the moon's brightness would light on the flash of the boy's teeth, a glimpse of the white collar of the girl's blouse. Otherwise two indistinct, merged shapes. Only their voices were clear. Johnny had come silently with the stealth of the expert. He had moved once, at the bite of an insect at his stomach. A quick, stifled action.

Johnny lay still and listened.

'… Are you going to love me, before we go…?' The tease from the girl now that the fear of wild pigs was passed.

'Not now… not here.'

'Why not?'

'Because… because we have to run tonight.'

'Won't you have the strength?'

'Later…'

Johnny like an old man in a dirty raincoat who hides his hands and slinks close to teenagers at night.

First he had come, holding his breath and his nerves screaming, the Stechkin targeting on the voices, and as he had absorbed the talk of young people he could let the spring unwind. He put the safety catch on.

Same as you, Johnny… but fantastic. Fantastic that in the thousands of square miles of woodland along the frontier, under the same bloody trees, facing the same bloody sector, there should be another group…

Fantastic… He had heard the girl goading the boy, the boy's gentle answers, and he had been relaxed by the tempo of their talk. He imagined the hands of the girl sliding under the shirt of the boy and he pushing her away, and her mouth nibbling at his ear and him twisting his face…

The enormity of what he knew sledge-hammered Johnny.

Going tonight, weren't they? Going over during these hours of darkness.

Footsteps across the ploughed strip, and the follow-up of lights and searches and dogs. New patrols to follow, intensified activity as the Border Guards tried to claw away from their failure. If these two went over then every man in the Walbeck company would be out at night for a week. That was the procedure, that was what he had been told. They seal it tight once there's a breakout, never the same place twice.

If they go over then you're broken, Johnny.

If they go over, Johnny has to up sticks and head on down the fence to where it's quieter, to where the panic button's been left unpushed. Otto Guttmann could not withstand another cross-country hike. A forced march and a day without food, that's the final limit. What to do, Johnny?