Audrey Magee - The Undertaking

‘I can’t do that, Katharina. I am too honest a man.’

‘So who are you saving it for, Dr Weinart? The Führer doesn’t have any children.’

‘At this stage, all my paediatric medicines are for the children of senior party members.’

‘Like Joachim?’

‘Yes, like Joachim.’

She stroked her child’s hand. His cheek.

‘And the women with the blue crosses?’

‘In all likelihood, yes.’

‘But I don’t qualify?’

‘No, Katharina, you do not.’

‘What more should I have done?’

‘There’s no point in going into that now, Katharina.’

‘Now seems as good a time as any other.’

Mrs Weinart put a hand on Katharina’s shoulder.

‘You’re upset, Katharina,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should go home.’

Katharina nodded and began to dress her son in his sweater and coat.

‘I remember that coat,’ said Mrs Weinart. ‘It’s adorable on him.’

Katharina picked up her bag and stood up.

‘So what happens to my son, Dr Weinart?’

‘He’ll go into a coma, Katharina, and not come out of it.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Was my brother not enough for you, Dr Weinart?’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Faber?’

‘Not enough of a sacrifice?’

He screwed the cap back onto his pen.

‘I think you should leave now, Mrs Faber.’

‘First my brother, now my son. Possibly my husband too. For the great cause.’

‘You’re upset, Katharina.’

‘I am, Mrs Weinart. I am upset.’

‘It’s understandable.’

‘When is it your turn, Dr Weinart? Your turn to sacrifice? Your wife, first? One of your children?’

‘You should go now, Mrs Faber.’

He took her arm and steered her through his study door to the hall.

‘One day you will see that this is better for your son, Mrs Faber.’

‘Better?’

‘His father failed his country. It is hard for a child to live with that legacy.’

He led Katharina to the front door.

‘And these things can have a genetic component, Katharina.’

‘What things? Meningitis?’

‘No, no. Bravery, courage.’

She stared at him, her child against her chest.

‘Choose more carefully next time, Katharina.’

She went to a hospital to show them her son. They sympathized, but had nothing. Nor did the next hospital. He had a seizure in the third hospital. Still they had nothing.

She returned home at dawn and crawled into their sheets, their child cradled in her arms. She took off his hat and kissed him on the forehead, on the lips and cheeks, over and over. She brushed back his hair and sang to him, a lullaby, soothing him, holding him, rocking him, as though he were asleep.

He saw them at the head of the queue. Three of them, laughing. One of them holding a knife. He tucked his bowl into his chest and looked down, pretending not to see them, focusing on a small yellow flower shutting down for the day. The end of the first day of April.

He could see them moving down the line, their guards’ boots stopping intermittently. They stopped at him. They were drunk and shouting in broken German. One of them shoved him. He remained upright. They moved on and stopped at the next German. They pushed him. He fell and they yanked him from the line, to a place where everybody could see. They kicked him in the head, the back, the belly, and stamped on him, snapping bones, all the time shouting victory to Russia. And then there was the knife, stabbed in and out of flesh, blood spurting. Screams. Shouts. Russia would fuck Germany’s women. Faber stared at the flower, its yellow almost hidden by green sepals.

He moved up the queue, collected soup and bread and sat down. They gathered around him, jackets wet with blood. He was the only German left. They had shot Schultz, and the others had died, leaving him with a handful of Austrians, Romanians and Hungarians. The other prisoners were Russian, sent north for theft, murder and dissent.

He carried on eating, pretending everything was normal. Just another moment to be endured. The soup tasted of nothing. Of worse than nothing. Of spit. Of urine. Of their hatred. Of all the things to be avenged now that Germany had lost. The other prisoners were staring at him, their spoons suspended, their bodies leaning away. He tipped the soup into his mouth. A man can survive anything when his wife is faithful to him. That’s what the Russians say. He dipped the spoon back into the bowl and lifted it towards his mouth. They seized him, dragged him from the bench, splinters digging into the underside of his emaciated thighs, and pulled him across the yard, past the dead German, to the box. A space too low to stand up in, too narrow to lie down in. They closed the door and bolted it. No bench. No pot. The only light and air from gaps in the slats of wood. He buried his face in his hands. His bowl would be gone. His spoon too. He’d never get them back.

He touched the wood, its coarse planks and rusting nails. He had probably built it himself, one of dozens of watch-towers, sheds and huts thrown together over the years as they moved from one camp to the next, remaining only long enough to cut down all the trees within a ten-mile radius. He tried to stretch his legs, to get comfortable, but it was impossible. He sat on his heels, a bird perched in a small cage.

He heard the other prisoners at evening chores, their feet shuffling over dried mud as they swept paths, filled in holes and chopped wood, their breath heavy and laboured, their matchsitck bodies throwing shadows as they passed the box.

It was strange to be apart from the other prisoners and the guards. He had not been on his own since Stalingrad. It was pleasant in a way, to escape the tedium of chores, the stench of the shed packed with wooden slatted cots piled on top of each other, layer upon layer of filth, grime and disease. He was always on a bottom bunk, always vulnerable to the drip of men pissing in their sleep, too exhausted or sick to visit the pot. He leaned his head against the side of the hut. He should rest. Sleep. He had been through worse. He had slept in smaller, tighter foxholes. He’d be fine.

He woke when it was dark. He needed to urinate. He unfastened his trousers and projected as far as he could, but it splashed him anyway, wetting his feet, his knees. He stretched a leg, lost his balance, unfolded the other, toppled again and returned to his initial position, his only possible position. He started to shiver. It was cold.

In the morning, he listened as the men lined up for breakfast, his ears straining for conversation. He heard nothing but intermittent coughing, the near silence broken by the guards’ shouts, the barrage of orders and commands that would last the whole day. He had thought that only he had withdrawn from conversation. But all the prisoners had, silence being easier to bear than contact with men who would die or disappear in the night. He had had no energy anyway. No energy to do anything but breathe and work.

They opened the door and shoved a bowl of gruel at him. Water too. But no spoon. He scooped it up with his hand and swallowed. It would keep him alive but it wouldn’t repair his stripped muscles, frostbitten toes, dry skin and loose hair. He had no vitamins, no nutrients, none of the good things he had told his pupils of in their lessons. The importance of fruit. An apple. It would hurt now to eat one. To bite into one with his red, damaged gums.

He tried to stretch his limbs, his back, but it was hopeless. He listened to the morning roll call. His name was left out. Gone from its usual position between two Russian names. He knew neither of them. He knew nobody. He didn’t want to know anybody. His bowl and spoon were gone. So now he had nothing. The photographs of Katharina and Johannes were gone too. Sold to somebody who had no wife or child, or just lost or shredded. Was that what they meant by communism? Owning nothing? Every man equal in deprivation?