Audrey Magee - The Undertaking

‘No.’

‘I wonder how it might have been if you had married the doctor’s son?’

Katharina went back to her room. She closed the door and sat at the window, looking down at the street, at the woman draped across the kerb, her body beginning to bloat. The buildings opposite were gone, and the row of houses beyond them had been flattened too. Their side of the street, however, remained untouched.

She was still awake at four in the morning, smoking, drinking hot water, when her father returned.

‘I’ve got food,’ he said. ‘Wake your mother.’

They watched as he unwrapped the newspaper, showing off his four pieces of grey meat, long and narrow, each one about half the width of a chicken breast. Katharina poked at them with her finger.

‘What is it, Father?’

‘Meat.’

‘It’s rat, isn’t it?’

‘It’s food. Take it or leave it.’

The gas still worked in their house. He fried the meat and she ate.

‘Why did you come back, Father?’

‘I couldn’t cross.’

‘That’s a surprise.’

‘I’ll try again in a few hours.’

‘Does it matter? West or east, we’ve lost.’

‘The Russians are bastards, Katharina.’

‘And we’re not?’

In the morning, they moved into the cellar. The other neighbours were already there, Mrs Sachs among them. Katharina sat on the floor, a blanket over her legs, staring as Mrs Sachs poured coffee and handed a cupful to her husband with a chunk of still-warm bread. Katharina swallowed her saliva.

‘Where did you find that, Mrs Sachs?’

‘I have connections, Katharina. Ones more reliable than yours.’

‘So it seems.’

‘You’re better off without anyway, Katharina.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Help you lose a little weight. Those Russians like a bit of fat around the bottom, women used to cream cakes and chocolate. Like yourself, Katharina.’

She curled under a blanket to wait, to listen, although she was uncertain for what she was waiting or listening. She had seen the women arriving from the east, terrorized. They talked feverishly or not at all; their eyes staring straight ahead, looking at nothing, seeing everything.

‘It’ll be a relief, won’t it, Mother?’

‘What will be, Katharina?’

‘When they’re here and we can just get on with things again.’

‘We’re being invaded, Katharina.’

‘But at least it’ll soon be over. Waiting is worse.’

‘We’ll see.’

‘She has a point, Mrs Spinell,’ said Mrs Sachs. ‘Waiting is always the hardest part. It won’t be as bad as we think.’

‘Your communist friends will be here at last, Mrs Sachs,’ said Mr Spinell.

‘Where are your friends, Mr Spinell?’

They fell silent, cramped into the small cellar, its door under the stairs fortified by three chairs and a desk. Their toilet was in the darkest corner, a bucket tucked behind a scrap of curtain, its contents emptied during lulls in the shelling, piss, shit and crumpled newspaper scattered over the street.

They were there all of a sudden, as though a dam had broken, thousands of them hammering the streets with their feet. She looked at them through the tiny window. At their big, clumping, filthy boots. The tanks, grinding at the tarmacadam. Half-tanks and jeeps. Heavy guns pulled by horses, ponies and American trucks. Animal dung all over the pavements. She sat down again and buried her head under the blanket, pressing the wool against her ears. But she could still hear the triumphant rattle of the machine guns and the bellicose singing, the victorious, drunken swagger of them all. She had not expected so much aggression. She had expected soldiers like her husband and brother, gentle men carrying out their duties. But these men were angry and terrifying. And they wanted revenge. She stuffed the blanket into her mouth and screamed. She wanted her husband.

They barely moved for two days, sipping water and nibbling crackers, accepting Mrs Sachs’ offerings of dried sausage, her father’s gratitude muted. They heard them on the stairs, hard to tell how many, charging from one apartment to the next, smashing down doors, shouting at each other, running along hallways until they crashed through the cellar door, unperturbed by the barricade, torchlight swinging from one side of the room to the other. The soldiers staggered, laughing, looking first at Mrs Sachs, then at Katharina; their beams focused on her as she pressed into her mother. Mrs Spinell moved away from her daughter. Katharina leaned towards her father. He moved away too. The soldiers shouted at her and gestured with their torches towards the door. She was still. One of them hit her across the head with his torch, the beam careering across the room. She looked at her mother, at her father. They looked at their feet. She held onto her father’s sleeve but he jutted his chin towards the door.

‘Good girl, Katharina.’

She stood up and they slapped her bottom. She climbed the steps to the entrance hall where dark was settling. They knocked her to the floor, but she scrambled away from them, on her hands and knees to the bottom of the stairs. They grabbed her legs and flipped her over, a flat fish on the pan.

One of them slapped her face, ripped her knickers and pulled apart her legs. The first. Pushing at her. His fist in her face when she tried to stop him, to close herself down so he couldn’t enter. Then a searing, ripping pain. His weight on her chest, suffocating her, his cloying, acrid stench; drink, horse manure, campfire smoke and sweat. She turned her face away from him, towards the stairs, staring at the fraying linoleum, the wood worn smooth by her childhood feet running up and down the steps, to and from school, and later, when she was older, to and from work. And then Peter. His feet on those steps. She felt a final thrust. He fell on top of her, belched into her face. She closed her eyes. He pulled out and spat at her. At her face, her eyes. She rubbed his spit away and tried to sit up. The second pushed her back down and ripped her blouse, her bra. Reeking of cigarettes, he pinned her shoulders to the floor. And then she saw her son’s little feet, up and down. Crawling, then walking, his little hands gripping one bannister, then the next as he hauled his way up. The third. Rougher than the others. The fourth. More gentle, or was she so numbed? Then the first again. More hitting. More spitting. More of him when she wanted none of him. The second. Or was it the third? The smell of cigarettes. The fourth only once. The first insisting that he could go a third time, his fists against her face when he failed. He stood and pissed on her, the others laughing as they hauled up their trousers, picked up their guns and left, the hall door open so that she could see the street, the horse and human dung smeared one into the other by wheels and tracks, the city no longer hers, no longer German; the grocer’s shop shuttered, the shop empty – Mr Ewald had fled to the Black Forest. She was waiting for Peter. She had promised she would.

She reached out to pick at a fraying thread, but it was too far away. Her hand fell to the floor. Why had she bothered going up and down those stairs? What had been the point? Her son and brother were dead. Her husband might be dead too. Was she as good as dead? Would she ever be known as anything other than the woman given away by her father, by her mother? She whispered to Peter, begging him to be alive. He was all she had.

It was dark when she woke, blood crusted on her face, legs and clothes, their fluids mixed with hers. She pulled herself upright and, using the bannisters, dragged herself up the stairs. The door was open, the flat ransacked, but the bed was intact, the sheets still on. She crawled under the covers and went to sleep, waking to find Mrs Sachs beside her, a basin of water and cloths on her lap.