DEATH COMES KNOCKING

Jana came to Oma and Opa’s house that evening, asking about Stefan, but I didn’t want to talk to her. There was no sign of my brother that day, or for the two days that followed. No one could sleep or eat properly, and all we talked about was Stefan. I kept thinking about how Lisa hadn’t seen her papa since he was arrested, and I was gripped by the fear that the same thing would happen to us. I felt as if I was living in a kind of nightmare. Everything had been turned upside down.

Opa and Mama made regular visits to Gestapo Headquarters but came back none the wiser each time. No one would tell them anything.

I helped Opa with his car sometimes – standing in a daze while I washed it or handed tools when he needed them. I even helped Oma and Mama in the kitchen. At first, I thought Mama might get sad again, and go back to bed. She looked tired and scared, but she was angry too, and that made her stronger and stronger. She didn’t have to wear the bandage for long, and the scar on her head wasn’t very big at all. I couldn’t believe how much blood had come from such a small cut.

The only thing that really happened during the first two days after Stefan’s arrest was the arrival of Frau Oster’s news. She received a death notice, just like we had, to inform her that her husband – the SS panzer driver – had been killed in Russia. Oma had never liked her very much, but even though we already had enough things to worry about, she and Mama got together with the other women from Escherstrasse and did what they could to make things easier for Frau Oster.

It seemed that as the days went on, the war found its way into everyone’s lives.

I sometimes walked to the shops with Mama, but other than that, I didn’t leave the house unless I was with Lisa. As soon as she was back from school, we cycled to our spot by the orchard and talked about our plan to get revenge on Wolff.

On the third night without Stefan, we finally decided to carry it out.

When I went upstairs that night, I stayed awake, watching from the window, waiting for Mama and Oma and Opa to go to bed.

They talked for hours and it seemed as if they were going to stay up all night. I put my ear to the floor. I could only catch snippets of the conversation, but mostly they were talking about where Stefan was and when he might come home.

Eventually, they began to quieten down, then they came upstairs, one by one, and I jumped between the sheets and pretended to be asleep. Mama came in and sat on the bed beside me for a long time. She stroked my head and told me she loved me.

It was hard for me to keep pretending. I couldn’t help opening my eyes and telling her I loved her too.

‘Everything’s going to be all right,’ she whispered.

‘I know,’ I replied.

‘Stefan will come home soon. You’ll see.’

‘Yeah.’

But we were both just trying to make each other feel better. Neither of us knew what was going to happen, and that was the worst thing of all.

Mama kissed my head and stayed a while longer, stroking my hair, and it was so comforting, I had to try really hard not to fall asleep. I couldn’t let myself fall asleep – I was supposed to meet Lisa and there was still something I had to get from the cellar. I wasn’t looking forward to going down there in the dead of night, but I wanted to do something to show Wolff he hadn’t beaten us completely. I had made an agreement with Lisa, and a promise is a promise.

*

It wasn’t easy getting downstairs without making any sound. Every floorboard seemed to creak at night, but I had managed it once before, so I knew I could do it again.

When I reached the bottom, I waited, listening. There was no sound from upstairs. No one coming to investigate noises in the night.

Satisfied that I had made it this far, I crept along the hallway and switched on my torch, shining it at the door to the cupboard under the stairs.

I swallowed and reached for the handle. When I pulled it open, and looked down at the cellar door, I tried not to think about the imaginary beasts that lurked in the darkness beyond it.

You can do this. I told myself. You’re as hard as Krupp’s steel.

I didn’t feel as hard as Krupp’s steel, but I still opened that door. I opened it because I had made a promise to Lisa. I was going to bring something up from the cellar and then I was going to leave the house and meet her. This was all part of the plan, and I didn’t want to let her down.

I was doing this for Stefan too. Wolff had taken my brother away and there wasn’t much I could do about it, but I could do this. I could carry on spreading the message he and the Edelweiss Pirates were risking so much for.

The blackness of the cellar yawned before me, swallowing the light from my torch. The beam barely reached the fourth step before it was smothered by the awful blackness down there.

I crouched and reached for the switch just under the lip of the entrance, putting my hand into the darkness to feel my way towards it.

When I flicked it on, the bulb sparked into life, casting a dull glow into the cellar. It wasn’t much better than complete darkness, but it was something, and now all I had to do was go down those steps, collect what I needed and—

Somewhere in the night, way off in the distance, a siren began to scream.

I froze with my foot on the step.

Another siren started up now, still a long way off, but closer this time.

They’re coming, I thought. The planes are coming.

I had to move.

Everyone would be awake soon and they would want to know why I was here, in the cellar, in the middle of the night. Fully dressed.

With a surge of adrenaline, I backed out of the cellar, flicking off the light and dropping the hatch into place. I bumped into the broom and mop as I hurried out of the cupboard, and they fell to one side with what sounded like a thunderous noise, but more sirens were starting up, all over the city in the distance and here in town – my noise would go unnoticed. It would be forgotten. All I had to do was get upstairs.

I had to hurry.

I rushed along the hallway and took the stairs two at a time. It was too dark to see them, but I had been up and down them so many times I knew exactly where they were and how many there were. I would be in my bedroom in seconds.

The sirens were sounding all across town now, the enemy planes were coming, and I was running the wrong way. I should have been racing to the safety of the cellar, but I was going to my room instead.

My foot slipped as I misjudged the top step, but I caught myself by putting out my hands, then scrambled into my bedroom, just as one of the other doors opened.

‘Karl?’ Mama called as she came across the landing. ‘Get up Karl!’ She came straight to my room and pushed open the door. ‘Hurry!’ she called into the darkness.

‘Here,’ I said, standing up. ‘I’m here.’

‘Downstairs,’ Opa said from just outside the door. ‘Everyone! Now!’

‘Oh, what’s the rush?’ Oma was there, too, somewhere in the darkness on the landing. ‘They’re probably just dropping leaflets again.’

‘Don’t be so sure,’ Opa replied. ‘You’ll be sorry if it’s bombs they’re dropping on your head.’

‘I can’t even see where I’m going,’ Oma complained, then the landing was flooded with light as the overhead bulb burst into life, blinding us all for a few seconds.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Opa said. ‘Turn the light off. You want them to know where we are?’

‘They already know where we are,’ she replied. ‘Otherwise why would they be making all that racket? And we’ve got blackout curtains haven’t we?’

‘Come on,’ Mama said, ushering Oma downstairs. ‘That’s enough of that.’

In the chaos, no one seemed to notice that I wasn’t in my pyjamas and I thought perhaps I’d got away with it. There was no time to change now.

The night was alive with the sound of the sirens, as if the whole world was filled with the rise and fall of their wailing, and when we closed the cellar door behind us, they didn’t seem as far away as they had the last time we’d been down here.

‘Sounds like every siren in the town is going off.’ Opa brought a bucket of water closer to the table so that it was to hand if there was a fire, and we sat watching each other, all of us terrified of what might be happing outside.

‘Cards?’ Opa asked, trying to take our minds off it. He began to shuffle a deck of cards that had been lying on the table.

We waited for him to deal them out, pretending not to hear the sirens raging above us.

‘When did you get dressed?’ Mama asked.

‘Hmm?’

‘You’re dressed,’ she said.

‘Oh. I … I was awake,’ I said, thinking quickly. ‘I heard the first siren and it sounded like it was miles away but … well, then others started so I quickly got dressed so that when we go outside afterwards …’ I shrugged.

‘Don’t want anyone to see you in your pyjamas?’ Mama asked.

‘More like he doesn’t want Lisa to see him in his pyjamas,’ Opa teased.

‘Leave him alone,’ Mama said. ‘He’s growing up. He wants to make an impression.’

I was relieved that she had believed my story, but the relief was short-lived because, outside, the eighty-eights began to fire.

Boom b-boom boom-boom. B-boom.

And then in the distance, we heard the steady drone of planes and the terrible faint whistle of falling bombs.

The first explosion wasn’t much, really. A dull, flat crump somewhere far away, but we all looked at one another, and Mama pulled me close to her.

That first bomb was followed by another.

And another.

And another.

They were raining down on the city. Thudding and thumping and shaking the ground.

‘They’re getting closer,’ Oma said.

The eighty-eights continued to fire back with their boom b-boom boom-boom.

I could only imagine what it must be like to be outside. It would be a nightmare of fire and explosions and death, as if the world was ending.

‘Will Stefan be all right?’ I asked, making the grownups look round at each other. ‘Will he be safe?’

‘He’s probably safer than we are,’ Opa said, forcing a smile. ‘Now, Karl can lead,’ he said, dealing from the pack. He was trying to take my mind off it, but all I could do was stare down at my cards without really seeing them. I was wondering how strong the roof of the house was. I was thinking about what would happen if a bomb landed right on top of us. Would we be blown into dust? Would the house crumble and collapse about us, crushing the breath out of us? Or would it simply destroy the house and leave us trapped down here in the cellar with a bucket of water and a deck of playing cards?

Panic crept over me, filling me up, and I wanted to be outside. I wanted to be in the orchard with Lisa. I wanted to be on my bike with the sun on my shoulders. I wanted to be anywhere but here.

‘It’s all right,’ Mama said, wrapping her arms around me. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

‘I am afraid.’ I dropped the cards on the table.

‘So am I,’ she said. ‘But it will be over soon.’

I looked over her shoulder at the shelf on the far side of the cellar and saw what I had been coming to claim before the sirens began. The plan Lisa and I had put together might have been ruined by the enemy planes – there was no chance of carrying it out tonight now – but looking at the shelf and thinking about Lisa made me feel calmer. I closed my eyes and pretended I wasn’t there in the cellar, but away in the orchard. Lisa was beside me and we had taken off our boots and socks to feel the grass between our toes. We were lying back and looking at the sky, watching the clouds and finding shapes in the wisps of white.

Explosions thumped and thudded on the outskirts of town as the bombing came closer and closer. The ground shook beneath us. Dust rained from the ceiling. Death was knocking on our door, but I ignored it. I stayed there in the orchard and ignored it until the last of the bombs fell and the planes finally thundered away and the night became silent once more.