Hugo Hamilton - The Last Shot

‘Bring back something to drink, if you can,’ she said.

Bertha blew him another passionate kiss as he walked away along the lane towards the house.

She placed her elbows on her knees and propped her chin in her hands to look at the lake. She thought she would never be as happy as she was now, and tried to fix that picture of the lake in her memory for ever. The lake looked far more blue from this height. She looked for a name to call the lake. Blue lake of homecoming. She hummed a little. The strong sun was behind her. She could have fallen asleep with the sound of birds, both near and far away. But then she heard a crack in the trees behind her on the other side of the road.

She ignored the noise.

She heard other noises, clear sounds of movement in the trees close by. She heard footsteps coming along the sandy lane, and at first thought it was Franz. She looked around, wincing against the sunlight, and found a man coming towards her. Perhaps he looked like Franz but less tall. Another man emerged quickly from the trees on the other side.

She stood up. Maybe they were local people, she thought. But there was something wrong. She was certain of that. There was no time to wait and ask. She made eye contact with one of the men. Then she was sure.

She shouted. ‘Franz… Franz…’

She decided to run. Her way to Franz was blocked, so she ran away. She ran down-hill, back down the hill she had just climbed. She heard them running after her. She was faster, she thought. She was getting away, travelling so fast she thought she was on the bike again. When she arrived down at the bottom of the hill, she ran into the trees, just short of the farm-house. She would be safe at the farm. Or maybe she could double back up again to Franz.

The mad notion crossed her mind that it was such a waste to run back down. It was the least of her concerns. She knew she was going to be attacked.

She hid behind a tree for a moment. She watched one of the men arriving on Franz’s bike. The other man was on foot, running hard. They didn’t seem organized. She knew her dress would give her away in the trees. Again, she thought of trying to make her way back up the hill towards Franz again. Where was he? On second thoughts, she knew her legs would never make it up the hill again.

She ran, knowing that her bright summer dress was shining in the woods. It was getting torn, too. At one point she was jerked back suddenly while running. She heard the fabric strain and rip. She stopped, went back to free herself, and then ran on. This was all wrong. This shouldn’t have happened. She wished she had stayed where she was at the top of the hill. Franz would come soon. As she ran away, she had a strange urge to look back and see if one of the men was really Franz. But that was impossible. Her fear was playing on her.

She heard the men shouting after her. The language was foreign to her. It made her run faster. She emerged from the trees into a small field of red poppies. She ran straight through them into a wide farmyard. She kept running across the yard towards the house. But she hadn’t gone far when she was set upon by a large brown dog. She couldn’t even see the dog’s eyes. All she could hear was the bark. She could see the teeth.

Bertha froze with her back against the wall of one of the wooden sheds. She felt all the power go out of her legs. She shook. It was a different kind of fear, she knew. She could do nothing; nothing but try and look invisible. She hardly trusted herself to move her head to look around the farm.

There were a number of things that came into her head right then, quite irrational thoughts. It occurred to her that all this was unleashed upon her life by the encounter with Franz. But she dismissed that. She wanted Franz to be with her now. He would beat off this dog, and the men who were following her.

She thought of more irrelevant things. Apple fritters. She was aware that there was sand in her right shoe and that she would like to have taken it off and shaken it out, standing on one leg for a moment. She was aware of sweat under her arms, a cool trickle running down along the side of her breast. She thought of the fountain in the market square in her home town, Kempen. She imagined that she had no legs, either that, or that she was standing up to her waist in water; floating. She was aware of a farm stench in the yard, something like burning fat in a pan. She was also aware of an increasing population of flies, around her, around the dog, around everything, treating everything as though nothing was happening.

The dog drew breath, pulled back, only to leap forward again with another ferocious stream of barking, coming so close to her that she could smell the stench of its breath. Now and again, she caught a glimpse of the dog’s eyes underneath the hair. She felt a cold rush along her back; hair standing up.

When the dog drew its next breath, she asked herself to produce one last act of defiance. Seeing the house at the top of the hill where Franz was, she gave the biggest shout of emergency she had ever heard herself give, almost leaping with it out of the yard and up the top of the hill.

‘Franz… Down here… Franz…’

At that moment, the two men came running into the yard. She saw their faces clearly. They saw her, calling up the hill. The dog saw the two men and abandoned her, to attack and bark with renewed ferocity at them. They stopped and walked backwards, pinned back towards outhouses, holding out their hands, concentrating like tight-rope walkers on the dog’s upper lip drawn back over its yellowed front teeth.

The men then became aggressive. They shouted at the dog, which only made it worse. It snapped at them. The dog was almost hoarse. And still no occupants came out of the house.

Bertha slipped away.

Where was Franz Kern?

There was no reply for a long time at the house he went to. The occupant there, an old man, had at first taken him for one of the marauding bands who had been drifting around the hills since the end of the war. They had already stolen everything from his house and from the house below in the valley.

Franz asked him for a small vessel full of water in order to repair the puncture. The man showed Franz the well outside and then brought him into the house for a moment to get a bucket. The old man was curious. He talked to Franz about the war. He was a little deaf. And while Franz was inside the house, the shouts from Bertha came up from the valley. The old man had heard nothing and registered great surprise when Franz dropped everything to run away.

Franz reached the road and found Bertha gone. He found his own bike gone too. He knew that something was wrong. He called her, and when he got no answer, he was certain she was in trouble.

He panicked. He had no idea where to run at first. Either ahead, along the road, or back down-hill. He saw the bright blue lake, calm as ever. He heard the dog barking below in the valley and made the choice to run down. It was only when he found his own bike hastily discarded in the trees halfway down that he was sure. It seemed as though somebody had stolen the bike and temporarily hidden it among the new trees.

He looked around. He looked up the hill. He called her quietly, thinking that she might be somewhere close by, hiding. He ran aimlessly into the wood. It was only when he heard her shouting again, this time quite clearly from below in the farmyard, that he knew where he was going. He heard the terror in her voice. And he knew so well it was her voice; he would never forget Bertha’s voice.

He kept running down through the trees until he came out short of the farm-house. The dog had stopped barking. Franz had to cross a small stream to get on to the path leading to the front of the farm-house. He realized he must have chosen the most difficult place to cross because he had to fight his way through shrubs and bramble. But at least nobody could see him.