Hugo Hamilton - The Last Shot

‘You look like her,’ he said again, staring at me.

Germany was spectacular. The fields shone with new crops. The sun had become hotter and lifted the smells of the farms along the way. New-born calves leaped around their mothers on the green pastures.

After Bayreuth, Bertha and Franz cycled into a flatter landscape, where the avenues and roads were alive with flies and bees and midges. Whenever they stopped, which was quite frequently, they often had to keep beating them off with their hands. Once again, they had slowed down the pace of their journey.

In the villages, they were given small portions of food to help them on. Mostly bread. They bartered some of their jam. There was never enough because of the shortages everywhere. They were always hungry. Bertha had lost weight. But she was brown and glowing from the sun.

They cycled for days. The more they cycled, the more the war and what happened to them in the Fichtel mountains receded into the past. They could even talk about it, occasionally, because talking helps you to forget, they thought. Occasionally, there was regret. Bertha thought it was wrong to have left the bodies uncovered in the woods. Maybe they should have been buried. Maybe somebody should have said a prayer over them. But she agreed that it was impossible, that they had had to leave quickly. And Franz kept reminding her that it was no crime, that it was an accident. They would be counted among the millions who died needlessly in the war.

It couldn’t be helped. They agreed on that. And every time they agreed not to speak about it ever again. Let’s not talk about that any more. It’s over.

The weather grew warmer all the time, and balmy. Sometimes it was oppressive. Sometimes Bertha’s navy dress clung to her after the cycling. She wished she could wash or bathe somewhere. Her soap had almost run out. Only a thin wafer of it was left, the size of a host. There wasn’t a bar of soap to be found in the whole of Germany, she thought. They stayed out most nights. Once or twice, they were put up and allowed to sleep on the floor in the villages or the farm-houses along the way.

They were coming closer to Nuremberg all the time. There was no hurry now. Some of the days were so hot and clammy that it made travelling impossible. Without much food, proper sleep or any opportunity to wash, it was difficult to move much. And everywhere the air was still and thick. The country smells of cattle and grass and pigs and woodsmoke slowed things down even further. One morning a wind came up, a wonderful breeze swept across the fields, down from the Fichtel mountains which they had left far behind them.

They should have known. It was followed by a very sudden thunderstorm which caught them both out in the open, in the middle of Germany, without a house in sight, or even a tree to shelter under. They got soaked. They stopped along the road and Bertha made some attempts to cover them both with her russet coat. But they were already soaked. And the rain was ruthless.

It was a cool rain. They gave in to it and enjoyed the soaking. Bertha laughed. She hadn’t felt rain like this since she was a child. What they wanted to avoid became a luxury. Within twenty minutes, the sun was out again, raising the steam from the roads, drying everything almost as quickly as it had got wet.

They walked down a lane and stopped at a field, high with corn. Bertha had to change, or dry her clothes. She was left with no choice but to take her dress off to dry it. All her other dresses were too tight for cycling. She berated the fashion that made clothes impossible for walking and moving about in. But then, she was determined to keep her good dresses intact.

Franz found a secluded spot and flattened a square of young corn where Bertha could sit for a while under the sun and get dry. She sat in her underwear, in a white slip, her only good one left. The sun was so strong that her hair was dry within minutes; so dry that she had to loosen strands that had gone rigid.

She felt the luxury of taking off her shoes, feeling the ribbed stems of corn under the soles of her feet. It was great to sit on anything other than a saddle. By now she hated cycling. She sat with her knees up, her hands holding her slip up over her knees. From where Franz stood, the sun illuminated her thighs through the slip; he tried not to look, keeping his eyes towards the road, to make sure nobody came. But the land was empty.

‘Franz,’ she called.

He turned, holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. She was holding something towards him.

‘I want you to have this, Franz. For saving my life.’

‘Oh no. I couldn’t take that from you.’

‘No, you must. I insist. I want you to have it. I want you to carry it with you. I want you to know how grateful I am to you, no matter what happens to us now.’

‘But nothing will happen to us now.’

‘I insist. I want you to keep this.’

He took it. It would have offended her if he hadn’t. He sat beside her, thanked her, said there was nothing to thank him for because he would have done anything for her. She told him to put it away safely into his pocket and never to lose it. It was valuable. How much was impossible to say. The Reichmark was worth nothing. She said it was probably worth thousands of dollars. She was joking. They began to think in dollars as they kissed.

They kissed and laughed. After a while, Bertha sat up for a moment to tell Franz something serious.

‘I want you to know, Franz, that you were the only man with me, ever.’

She hesitated. She looked at the ground, at her feet on the straw stems of the corn.

‘I mean. There was nobody else…’

She had difficulty saying what she meant to say.

‘Franz,’ she said, gathering courage, ‘what I meant to say was that you are the only man who has been inside me. Those men in the forest, they didn’t succeed. You rescued me in time.’

Bertha blushed and looked away. Franz drew her towards him.

‘Bertha, don’t think about it. Bertha, mein Schatz. Let’s not say any more about it.’

Bertha pushed him over. He lay on his back and pulled her down on top of him. It was easy to forget with Franz. He dissolved memories, evaporated them like the rain-water on the roads.

‘I’m not cycling another metre today,’ she said. ‘I refuse. I’m on strike.’

Bertha giggled. She felt it was time to laugh again, and began to tickle him. She kept thinking what all this must look like from above. She had an aerial view of herself in the corner of a rectangular field, her blue pleated dress thrown over a hedge with arms stretched out like a sunbather. Her own bottom in the air, covered only by Franz’s strong, bronzed hands on her white skin.

She was afraid of nothing.

It was Jürgen who called me for the funeral. He spoke very evenly as usual; his doctor’s voice.

‘I thought you would like to know,’ he said. ‘Alexander died yesterday evening. Anke and I would like it very much if you could come to the funeral.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’m very sorry to hear it.’

I didn’t ask him any questions. I felt it wasn’t appropriate over the phone or at that time, unless Jürgen volunteered. He didn’t. I assumed he had gone through with his plan and was protecting me from any involvement.

‘He died peacefully?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ Jürgen answered briefly. It came like a full admission. He would say no more. He gave me the time of the funeral and said he looked forward to seeing me.

I was on the Intercity once more, early in the morning, looking like a businessman. I don’t know what it is about funerals that is like a business. What I felt about Alexander was not the tragedy of his death, but his release from his pain. Maybe I thought of death as something like a trophy. I was sad for Anke, and sad for Jürgen. They were left with nothing.