Audrey Magee - The Undertaking

The men were fed – saltfish and water – and the train moved off again, a low hubbub in the carriage as their little surge of energy enabled them to consider what might happen next, even though they already knew.

He lost track of the days, of the number of portions of saltfish and water, knowing only that it got colder with each day and that he never seemed able to slake his thirst. And then it ended. He was ordered off the train. But he did not move, his body attached to the rhythm and routine because as long as he was travelling there was a chance of turning west, of going home. He remained motionless on the cow dung, as indifferent to the Russian guns and shouts as those already dead beside him.

‘You should get out. The journey is over.’

It was a man in Russian uniform, speaking German.

‘You’re German?’ said Faber.

‘Yes.’

‘Does that make you a traitor?’

‘And what are you? Get out.’

Faber followed the German to a cluster of long, low wooden huts surrounded by barbed wire. A huge sign loomed in front of him, over the entrance, its script incomprehensible, its meaning clear. He shoved the hair from his face and tried to straighten his twisted, frozen spine.

‘I am not a traitor,’ said Faber.

‘The sooner you lose that kind of sentimentality, the easier it is.’

‘You seem to be doing well enough.’

‘Better than you, anyway. My name is Schultz.’

Faber walked to a hut constructed out of sawn trees, the bark still on. He joined the end of the queue and waited, his right leg buckling intermittently. He struggled to climb the three steps and entered a room of desks and stifling heat. A log fire burned at each end of the hut, warming the men behind the desks, but suffocating Faber, unable to acclimatize to the heat. He bent over, coughing so hard that he retched, grateful that he had nothing to vomit. Schultz stood in front of the fire, his hands behind him, shouting the same thing, over and over.

‘Write your name, age, rank and unit. Hand over all documents.’

Faber went to a desk where a younger man watched as he took off several layers of gloves and material from his hands and began to write, slowly, his fingers cramping from the strain of the fine, forgotten movement. He dropped the pen. The Russian, slight with glasses, put out his hand. Faber picked up the pen and put it in the man’s hand. The man pushed it away and shouted. Faber repeated the action. The response was louder and angrier. Faber shook, unable to absorb the shock. Schultz yelled across the room, still by the fire.

‘Your papers. He wants your papers.’

Faber dug into his tunic, fingered the paybook in his inside pocket and pulled at it, harder than anticipated, scattering the photographs of Johannes and Katharina to the floor. He handed the paybook to the Russian and bent down to retrieve his wife and child. Katharina kept smiling as the Russian’s heavy black boot rose in the air and stamped on Faber’s hand. He howled and the guard laughed, as did Schultz, his hands still being warmed by the flames.

Faber was photographed, front and profile, and then ordered out into the camp, onto paths being cleared of snow and ice by men in shapeless black suits, vacant creatures bent low by the weight of their shovels and barrows. Matchstick men. He looked at the sky and inhaled.

He was directed to another hut, one more roughly built than the first. Inside were rows of tables each bearing a bucket, the water freshly poured but already icing over. Beside each bucket was a scrap of soap and a cloth, rough and dirty, already used. He decided against washing. A guard gesticulated at him, with his head, then with his gun. Faber began to undress, peeling off his blankets, his hats, his coats, the sodden material disintegrating as he tugged and dropped it to the floor in a filthy stinking heap, lice falling from the fabric.

He stood at a bucket, naked, and rested his hands on the bench, his eyes straight ahead, his body motionless. He didn’t want to look down. He could already smell himself, the thaw of his frozen stench. That was enough. He didn’t need to see as well.

He felt a hand across his head. A slap.

‘Wash, you stinking bastard.’

It was Schultz, walking up and down, stamping on the lice.

He wetted the cloth and rubbed it with soap, drawing it first along his arm, then under his armpit and over his chest, tears slipping from his eyes as he moved from the ridge of each rib to the next, folds of sagging skin hanging between each one. His stomach had disappeared so he moved onto his hips, running the cloth over the contours of the bone, covered by a layer of skin, but no flesh. His penis was covered in thick, white discharge; the inside of his legs with dry, itchy red skin; and four of his toes were gone, the smaller ones on each foot dead black sponge.

They shaved him then, scraping his body with a blunt blade, depriving the lice of their hiding places, but nicking him so often, drawing so much blood, that they remained anyway. His legs buckled beneath him. They wrenched him to his feet and continued shaving, his head, his legs, his arms, his pubic hair, exposing him entirely.

Katharina pushed open the door of the cake shop. It was quiet, without a queue, and smelled of sweet richness.

‘Good afternoon, Madam.’

The woman behind the counter had bowed slightly as she spoke, tipping her white cap towards Katharina. She dipped her head in acknowledgement, but said nothing.

‘Can I be of any help to you?’

‘I have come to collect my son’s birthday cake. Mrs Weinart placed my order.’

‘Ah, yes. Little Johannes.’

The woman disappeared into a back room and Katharina looked at herself in the mirror, at her straight back, her shining, healthy hair and her silk summer dress. She looked well. Better than she used to. She stopped looking when the woman returned, a large cake lying in the palms of her hands. Chocolate. Her son’s name perfectly formed in blue lettering.

‘It’s divine,’ she said.

She took her purse from her bag.

‘Mrs Weinart said to put it on her account,’ said the woman.

‘That’s very kind of her.’

She watched the woman wrap the cake in clean white cardboard, refusing to allow herself to chat as she used to. She had stopped bantering with ordinary people. She thanked the woman, took the box and walked back along the street, crossing into the shadows, for the sun was hot, and into the path of pale women and children carrying dirty cardboard signs scrawled with potted histories of bombed houses and missed meals. They wanted her money and sympathy. She hurried on, stepping around them and their mewling, suddenly fretting that she had a lot to do, although everything was already done. The apartment was clean, the food was ready and the clown was booked to arrive half an hour before the guests.

It would be the first time she had hosted Mrs Weinart and her children. Elizabeth and other women were coming too, but it was the Weinarts she worried over, fearing that they would be bored, cramped by the apartment’s small space, disappointed by the gifts she had bought for them to take home.

In the courtyard, she set down the cake and picked up a hoe to hack again at the weeds between the paving stones. The caretaker had fled to his mountain cousins. Her father had shouted after him, calling him a coward, a traitor, but he went anyway. Mr Spinell threw his possessions into the street, clearing the way for a new caretaker. But none came. The weeds grew flowers and the herbs bolted, all of it ignored unless there were visitors. She banged the hoe a couple of times more and retreated upstairs. She kissed her son on the head and checked on Natasha, making sure that she was dressed, as ordered, in a black skirt and white shirt.