Bryan Malessa - The Flight

‘There’re no mushrooms up there,’ his brother reminded him.

‘We’ll try the woods on the other side.’

This time they ignored the path. Karl and Peter knew that any mushrooms that grew beside it would have been picked already. None of the older women ventured far from the path: just a few decades earlier, wolves and bears had patrolled these woods. The boys knew that if they went a little way along the brook and pushed their way through a series of thickets, they would find mushrooms sprouting everywhere.

Soon they were picking furiously to see who could fill his basket first in an effort to forget what they had seen earlier. At first, Otto lagged behind the others, but when he forced himself to concentrate on what he was doing, and put the disturbing images out of his mind, he began to catch up. When he had filled his basket, his cousins were still loading theirs.

Karl didn’t like to be beaten, so when Otto appeared with a full basket he ignored him and went on piling mushrooms into his own.

Even though Otto had agreed that he would not mention to Ida what they had witnessed in the forest, he felt uneasy. He had seen people kissing in the Tiergarten and even a girl’s shirt unbuttoned, but nothing like what that man had been doing to Uta. He wondered for a moment if people were different in the country, then thought better of it: even Karl had seemed upset by what they had seen.

When they got back to the shop, Günter was sitting on the steps with Leyna in his arms. Otto had met his grandfather just three times before, twice when the old man had come to Berlin and once when Otto and Elsa had gone to Königsberg for his grandmother’s funeral. His grandfather was almost a stranger to him. Otto greeted him somewhat formally, then Günter asked after his daughter Elsa.

While Otto answered him, Karl glanced at the door to the shop to make sure his mother wasn’t within earshot. Then, when his cousin fell silent, he said, ‘Can we have a drink, Grandpa? It’s Otto’s first day after all.’

Günter laughed. ‘I put a little bottle of Bärenfang behind the turf stack,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t get drunk – and don’t tell your mother I gave it to you when you do!’

Chapter 4

In late spring, although all civilians had been ordered over the radio to remain at home, refugees occasionally arrived in the village – but sometimes a week went by without one appearing on the square, in search of the road to Pillau. Unfortunately, few civilian ships were sailing, so their best chance of moving west was to return to Königsberg and follow Reichsstrasse 1, which connected the city with Berlin.

Near midnight on 20 July, Ida sat alone in the living room, sewing as she listened to the radio. Suddenly the programme was interrupted by the Führer. That morning an army commander had placed a bomb in his meeting room, he said. It had exploded, killing a secretary, but he himself had escaped virtually unharmed.

By now, many officers who had once supported him no longer trusted his leadership: he had destroyed Germany’s much admired General Staff system by demanding to see almost every major order and strategic plan, then revising it before sending it on, without recourse to trained officers. Also, he placed his favourites in high-ranking posts they were ill equipped to fulfil. Now, although the army was still winning minor battles, it was losing ground. The officers who were conspiring to kill him had no intention of surrendering to the enemy when he had gone, but planned to reassert Germany’s military supremacy.

As Ida listened to the Führer’s angry voice, she realised for the first time that her own family might be in danger if the war did not soon turn back in Germany’s favour. She knew the history of the peninsula almost as well as her father did. No one had occupied it successfully since the French in June 1807 and it had been nearly fifty years before that when the Russians had carried out their only successful occupation of the peninsula during the Seven Years War.

Early the next morning when Karl came downstairs, he found his mother asleep on the davenport. On the radio a woman was singing about summer. He went to Ida, wondering if he should wake her, but before he reached her she opened her eyes.

‘Were you up all night?’ he asked.

‘Come here,’ she said, patting the seat beside her.

Karl sat down and she kissed him. ‘I must have fallen asleep while I was sewing. Why are you up so early?’

‘I heard the radio. I thought you were listening to the records Father brought from Paris.’

‘I haven’t put them on since he left.’

His father had bought the radiogram before the war when they had a contract to deliver meat to the nearby military base, Karl remembered. Before Paul’s departure for France, the neighbours had come to listen to it.

‘Would you like to play a record?’ Ida asked.

‘Now?’

‘Why not? Do you know how to put it on?’

Karl jumped up and grabbed his favourite from beneath the sofa, where the records were kept. Perfectly circular and flat, he loved its feel and solid, heavy weight. He knew it would shatter if dropped, so he carried it carefully across the room. Ida knew which one he had chosen. It was the only one he ever listened to – a Hot Club de France recording, with Django Reinhardt, the guitarist, and Stéphane Grappelli on violin. Ever since Paul had bought it, Karl had begged her for a guitar. She had told him that if he learned to play the piano well enough, she’d consider it after the war. The piece Karl liked best was ‘Nuages’, and now, as the unusual chord sequence that opened it filled the room, he came back to sit beside his mother. She held out her arms and Karl snuggled into her as Reinhardt played.

Chapter 5

While Otto enjoyed running around with his cousins, he didn’t like Karl. It was partly to do with the way Karl flaunted his dagger and belt, the only ones in the village, but mostly because Karl ordered him about. Sometimes he ignored him, even if it meant being beaten up – which was how Karl kept his brother in line.

When there were no household tasks to be done, no school or youth group meeting to attend, they went hiking. They’d climb the hill to the church, drop into the forest and follow the path until it petered out, then continue through virgin woodland. They called it their survival game. When they moved south-east they bypassed Krattlau and Anchenthal, which were little more than clusters of houses at a crossroads. They avoided two lone houses at another crossroads and scouted through the forest to Ellerhaus, another hamlet, where they came out to knock on a door and ask for a drink of water.

A man named Volker was working in his field when the boys came into the village. He grinned when he saw them. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Hiking,’ Karl answered. ‘Otto here is still learning. He’s our cousin but he’s lived in the city all his life.’

‘How do you like Samland?’

‘It’s easy to get lost,’ Otto said.

‘Trust your senses.’

‘I’m not scared—’

‘None of us is scared of the woods,’ Volker said and winked. ‘Have you noticed that the houses in every village are built close together?’

The boys glanced around them.

‘Farms and fields surround the villages, but the houses are built in a cluster at the centre. It’s our way of protecting ourselves from people who pop out unexpectedly from behind the trees.’

‘Who would do that?’

‘The enemy.’

‘What enemy?’

‘Each generation has a different one.’

The boys were silent. ‘Have you two taught your cousin about the trees?’

‘I told him there are places where we have to be careful, but I haven’t taken him to the woods near Romehnen yet,’ Karl said.