ANOTHER TRAIN JOURNEY. This one to the south-eastern reaches of the Reichsgau of Upper Silesia – to home.
The first train, when it arrived, was full. Brandt’s heart sank when he saw the passengers’ bodies pressed flat against the windows and the flushed faces of those already crammed into the carriage. He wasn’t sure if he was strong enough to push his way on. Nor whether he had the endurance to stand for the six hours this stage of the journey would take. But when the passengers saw him – with his empty sleeve and his still raw, torn, patched-together face – a seat was found for him. It was done quietly, without fuss – and without reference to him.
The strange thing about the whole business was that no one looked at him and no one spoke to him. What discussion could there have been, anyway? You fought, you were broken and now you have returned. So what? At least he got a seat out of it. And when the guard forced her way through, looking for tickets, it turned out he needn’t have bought one. Not that he had. The army had been kind enough to send him home, at least.
§
He must have fallen asleep at some point. There wasn’t much air in the carriage, it was warm and the rhythm of the train had lulled him. He remembered how his head had become heavy and his eyes had closed of their own accord.
He hadn’t dreamed about the woman from the cafe for months – not since they’d stopped giving him morphine, and possibly even before that. Yet here she was, sitting opposite him – in the same train, except it was now empty but for the two of them. She wore a tweed skirt, beneath which her legs were crossed. He could see the shape of her ankle above her shoe, remembered his lips kissing her there – just there. Remembered how she’d laughed and twisted, claiming she was ticklish there – just there.
He raised his eyes to meet hers. Grey, amused. Her lips, fuller than he remembered, were shaped by a small, secret smile – as if she knew something that he did not. She tilted her head backwards, an appraising angle – her nose raised as if to sniff him out.
He opened his mouth to speak to her – to ask where she had been, what had happened to her. To tell her that there was still a part of him that—. She raised a long finger to her lips to stop his words.
She looked out of the window, at the countryside they passed through. It was different now, he saw. There were bodies in each ploughed furrow – hundreds of naked corpses cluttering the fields.
She turned back to him, shaking her head – a tear rolling down her cheek. He could smell burning flesh.
He awoke with a start. Someone was pushing at his knee. He looked around him, disorientated by all the people who had suddenly appeared in the carriage, by the empty yellow fields the train passed through. He was shivering.
The other passengers looked at him sideways from round eyes and he wondered what he might have said.
§
Germany had seen better days, that much was clear. The cities had been flattened and what was left standing looked as though it stood out of stubbornness alone. The train stations were broken and scarred, the rubble pushed into mounds wherever there was space for it, bricks stacked in incongruously neat piles. Yet, somehow, everything was still carrying on – he couldn’t imagine how. No one looked as though they’d slept and only those with Party badges as if they’d eaten recently – and even they didn’t look as though it had been more than once or twice. Everyone’s clothes seemed to have been handed down from a larger sibling and no one appeared to have the energy to wash any more. But still they stood and still they moved.
At least Dresden was untouched. He spent the time until the next train arrived walking through its narrow streets, overhung by teetering medieval houses and history itself. He found himself in a bar with a mug of weak beer in front of him – no charge for the returning hero – and looked around him – at the other customers, at the people who passed by in the street outside. He wondered if they knew that all of this must come to an end. It didn’t seem so. The radio was still spewing out the same rubbish from behind the bar and the newspaper that had been left on the counter for the customers was nonsense from front to back. So no one had told them that the war was lost – that all they were doing in the east was delaying the end. But everyone knew, didn’t they? They must know by now.
Back at the station, the train was filled with refugees – mothers and children making their way to the eastern Reichgaus, far away from the Allied bombers – and soldiers with a destination still further east. He wondered if the women knew any safety would only be temporary. The soldiers knew it. He could see it in their blank gazes and the way their mouths pinched tight around their cigarettes. The way they avoided looking at the crippled soldier they shared the carriage with.
Brandt sat back and thought about the village. He hadn’t lived there for a long time – and he had changed, of course. But the village had changed as well. For a start it was German now, whereas it had been Polish when he’d left it and Austrian when he’d been born – although that was a different story. When his father had written to him, he’d dropped hints as to what kind of changes had come to pass:
The Glintzmanns have moved away.
He’d an idea what that meant – and it wasn’t good news for the Glintzmanns. How many Jews had been living in the village and its surroundings before the war? Brandt could think of six families off the top of his head and he was sure there would have been more. When the peace came, there would be a settling of accounts – of that he was certain. And not just for what had been done to the Jews.
Pavel has come to work for me.
Pavel, his father’s old friend, had owned one of the largest farms in the valley. His son, Hubert, had been Brandt’s childhood playmate and, more than that, Hubert had been engaged to Brandt’s sister before the war. But Pavel and Hubert were Polish and the valley was now part of Germany. Their land must have been given to ethnic Germans from the Balkans or further east – the Volksdeutsche. Otherwise why would Pavel Lensky have come to work for Brandt’s father? And what, Brandt wondered, had become of Hubert?
The thing was, he might never have a chance to visit his home again, if he didn’t go now. He’d stay for a week or two. Maybe a month. He’d make his peace with his father. He’d visit his mother’s grave. He’d see people he hadn’t seen for a long time – old friends, relatives.
But the Glintzmanns would be gone, of course. He wouldn’t be seeing the Glintzmanns on his visit.