‘Yes, that’s better! That’s it, that’s it! Keep going…Yes! Yes! Don’t stop!’
There were no more whispers. Just the mattress springs squeaking, louder and louder, the floorboards creaking. Then the required ‘Oh, Ohh! Ah, Ah!…Ah! Ah! Ah!!!’ Same old end to it.
So, although they had trouble getting going, at least they were quick about following through. At a rough guess—I don’t have a watch to check, no German now has a watch—I’d say that intercourse between Lukas and Ute lasted five minutes at the most.
Once they finish their business, they join us in the kitchen. Lukas complains because Manfred and I have eaten almost everything, but Ute rummages around in the cupboards and finds more cans of meat, milk, tins of sauerkraut, porridge, oatmeal. A feast. We stuff ourselves.
The following days are identical: night-time in the cellar, daytime in the apartment. Repeat intercourse between Lukas and Ute, longer and longer, louder and louder. They’re really getting a taste for it. Then a meal together. Since the apartment is the same every morning, we deduce that the Ruskis are not using it. So we take a risk and stay the night. Everything goes well. No one kicks us out, probably because our apartment has an advantage we weren’t aware of: it’s on the fifth floor. According to word of mouth, Ruskis don’t like climbing stairs. Most of them are peasants and prefer contact with the earth, so they prefer to stay on the ground level. They feel lonely up high and, if they have to retreat, it takes longer.
Manfred has taken to his domestic activities with enthusiasm and made us a cosy nest. Ute should be helping, since she’s a girl, but she has refused point-blank. Stuck up bitch! Now that she doesn’t have Frau Oberham on her back, and especially now that she’s sleeping with Lukas, the little madam behaves like a princess. Anyway, it turns out that Frau Oberham was not her mother, but a teacher at the Nazi school she attended. When panic erupted, Ute fled with Frau Oberham, whom she is very glad to be rid of now.
On the first few nights, for safety’s sake, she sleeps in the crawlspace above the kitchen, then Lukas has the bright idea of disguising her as a man, in an old suit he found in an abandoned case somewhere.
It’s Manfred’s job to cut her hair. So now she hangs round with us twenty-four seven, and they have sex night and day regardless.
Okay, if Lukas doesn’t care that the Ruskis think he’s a faggot—if they ever make it to the fifth floor—that’s his problem.
So now there are four of us to organise.
Lukas ransacks the houses where the Ruskis have spent the night and brings back their leftovers, which are often considerable.
Lukas has changed again. Eating better and screwing like a rabbit has made him into a man. He’s handsome again. Manfred cut his hair—very short hair suits Lukas. It highlights his eyes and makes them seem bigger. His voice has lowered an octave. When he speaks, you can see that big ball go up and down at the base of his throat—the Adam’s apple, it’s called. From walking all over Berlin, climbing staircases in buildings, looking for food, the muscles he developed in the Napola are once again visible under his clothes, which makes them a bit tight now. Broad shoulders, narrow waist, thick legs, a real Jungmann, like he used to be. His personality has mellowed; he is more relaxed, less aggressive. Especially with me.
From time to time, when there’s a glimmer of sunshine and fewer explosions in the street, we go outside. Just the two of us. We sit in the courtyard of the building and smoke a cigarette. One morning, just as we’re about to light up, we see a woman with her skirt hoisted, doing her business right in the middle of the courtyard. After a moment of shock, staring at the woman shitting in full view of everyone, we burst out laughing.
‘So much for Nazi pride; it’s long gone, isn’t it, Max?’ Since the blonde woman’s death, he calls me Max. I don’t mind. It’s better than Skullface. Anyway, it sounds good when he says it.
I glance at the crouching woman. She’s dishevelled, dirty, barefoot. There are many women like her wandering around Berlin, barefoot and distraught. I think of the nurses at Steinhöring, the Brown Sisters at Poznan, the warden at the Kalish—all impeccable in their uniforms. I have to admit that the Nazi pride is well and truly gone.
I take the cigarette when Lukas offers it and indulge in this privileged moment, just the two of us, to ask him a question that has been at the back of my mind for a while. ‘Why don’t you tell the Ruskis that you’re Polish?’
Lukas takes the cigarette back, has a long drag on it and shrugs. ‘I’ve almost told them a few times, but…I don’t know…it doesn’t feel right. You know, when they invaded Poland with the Krauts, the Russians didn’t treat us very well either.’
That’s true: the Ruskis were our allies at the beginning of the war. I’d completely forgotten about that.
‘I’m wary. The Russians also have a long tradition of anti-Semitism,’ adds Lukas. ‘And anyway, I don’t want them to send me back to Poland after the war. I’ve got no family there anymore. I’d prefer to wait for the Americans. Things might change with them. Listen, Max,’ he says, suddenly animated, ‘as soon as the fighting is over, as soon as we can leave Berlin, we have to work out how we can go to the West and throw ourselves on the mercy of the Americans.’
Still preoccupied, he takes drag after drag of the cigarette, without passing it to me.
‘They’ve liberated the camps, did you know? Apparently there are a few survivors. Very few. I don’t know if my mother is one of them. I’d better prepare myself for the worst…’
He stops to contemplate the swirls of smoke drifting off. Because he’s thinking about his mother, for a few minutes I’m afraid he’ll flip out again, like he did at the Napola. But he continues calmly. ‘If they inform me that my mother is dead, then I’ll be an orphan like you, Max. And we won’t be the only ones. The country will be teeming with orphans of all sorts of nationalities. There’s not enough room here for everyone. I’m sure the Americans will get us out of this shithole and send us somewhere else, faraway, to their country, or…How would you like to go off to Canada, for example, or Australia?’
I try to think about it, but I don’t have a clue where Canada is, let alone Australia. ‘I don’t know. Germany is my country.’
‘Not anymore, Max. Look at your country! What sort of a place is Germany now, hey?’
He gestures with his chin at the turd left by the woman on the courtyard stones. We can smell the foul odour from here. A bit further away, some soldiers are sitting on the edge of the footpath. They look exhausted, filthy, disgusting. Some have bloodied bandages on their heads, and withered or amputated limbs.
‘What do you reckon will happen to you here? You’ll end up in an orphanage, at best, or an adoptive family. Is that what you want?’
I shake my head. No adoption. Absolutely not. I haven’t changed my mind on that issue.
‘But…but if you found out your mother’s alive, and if you manage to find her, wouldn’t you go back to Poland?’
‘No! We’d get out of here, off to Canada or Australia. And we’d take you with us. It’s your turn now, buddy!’ he adds, without letting me reply. ‘I had to live with the Nazis for years, so you’ll get used to the Yids, right?’
I don’t say anything, just return his smile. ‘Wouldn’t Ute and Manfred come with us, too?’ I ask after a pause.
‘No, it’s different for them. Their parents are here. They’ll probably find them.’
I’m trying to grasp the idea. ‘But what will we do in Canada or Australia?’
‘I have no idea. We’ll have to see!’
These precious moments are rare.
Even though I know Ute has a lot to do with Lukas’s transformation (sex must have a calming effect, and reduce aggression, anger), I don’t like her. Since she’s barged into our lives, Lukas spends less time with me. Without her around, the two of us would probably have already left for the West. She’s really annoying the way she carries on like a princess. And just because Manfred and I are younger than he
r, she gives herself the right to order us around.
You know what we look like, sometimes? A family. A sweet little family with Daddy, Mummy and two kids. Manfred has got used to it; it makes him feel safe, and he likes to be mothered and told what to do. But I don’t.
I hate families. I always have.
So one morning, while Lukas is out foraging for food, I say to Ute, as I bite into a piece of bread, which is miraculously covered in a good layer of margarine, ‘As soon as the war is over, Lukas and I are leaving for Canada. Just the two of us.’
Ute rolls her eyes, then smiles complicitly at Manfred, as if to say: ‘Don’t listen to him, he’s talking rubbish!’ and, without bothering to reply to me, she butters herself a slice of bread.
I decide to continue with my assault, this time with the heavy artillery. ‘Lukas is Jewish.’
Now Manfred puts his oar in. ‘Don’t listen to him, Ute. Konrad is forever cracking that joke. He’s obsessed.’
‘Shut up, you! I didn’t ask you to chime in! Lukas is Jewish,’ I repeat, staring down Ute, my blue eyes meeting her equally blue eyes.
To cheer him up, Ute pats Manfred’s hair. He’s got that hangdog expression because I’ve yelled at him.
‘You’ve run out of things to make up, haven’t you? You dirty little brat!’ she finally comes out with. ‘Well, for your information, it’s impossible for Lukas to be Jewish. There’s a secret something that proves you’re lying,’ she simpers.
Thinking that is the end of it, she admires her nails—black with dirt, broken—with as much satisfaction as if she was just leaving the manicurist. Then she takes a big bite out of her bread.
‘You want to discuss his uncircumcised dick? That’s the little secret? I fell for that too in the beginning, but it doesn’t prove anything. That doesn’t prevent Lukas from being Jewish.’
So I spill the beans and tell them the whole story: how we met at Kalish, his forced Germanisation, what Lukas told me about his parents, our time in the infirmary, the death of his father and brother, his mother’s deportation to Treblinka, then our time at the Napola, and the murders of the Jungmannen.
By the time I’ve finished my story, Ute and Manfred have dropped their pieces of bread on the table. I’ve made them lose their appetite. I’m quite happy eating calmly, savouring both the taste of the margarine on the bread and their bafflement.
‘Gosh!’ exclaims Manfred, the first to react. ‘I never believed you before…Lukas is Polish? A Jew? Impossible! He is…’
I can tell that, for once, he’s remembering his Biology classes from the Napola. Perhaps he even recalls the drawing he did for me back then, of the pot-bellied Jew sitting on a globe of the world labelled Money. I finish his sentence for him.
‘He is blond with blue eyes, I know. He’s tall, slim and not short and stocky. He doesn’t have either a big nose or fingers like claws, and yet, he’s certainly Jewish.’
Silence again. Not easy information to digest at breakfast.
‘So you’re not brothers then?’ asks Manfred.
I shake my head and turn back to Ute, who still hasn’t opened her mouth. At the Nazi school, she would have also heard a fair bit about Jews.
‘Will you still have sex with him?’
She says nothing.
‘What will you do with your baby?’ I ask, just to ram my point home a bit more.
‘What baby?’
‘The one in your belly. The one you’ve made with Lukas.’
‘But…I’m not pregnant!’ she asserts, her voice rising.
A glimmer of panic crosses her eyes and she instinctively puts her hands over her belly, as if she were capable of detecting the presence of the baby.
‘You could give it to the new leader of Germany, when we find out who that will be.’
Yes, a new leader.
Because Hitler is dead.
He died yesterday. It was the 30th of April, 1945. We went back down to the cellar briefly so Ute could get her belongings. Frau Betstein’s radio was working for once, broadcasting a funeral march by Wagner, while Dönitz’s voice made the sad announcement. And then there was a power failure and the radio cut out.
Nobody reacted. Nobody cares. Including me.
‘Hitler, finished. Gœbbels, finished. Go Stalin!’
That’s what the Ruskis are shouting in the street. (It turns out Gœbbels committed suicide, too.)
Perhaps Ute will give her baby to Stalin?
Unlike the bombing raids, which have slowed down, the cellar gossip is running at full capacity—it’s a good way for us to learn how the Ruskis operate and how we need to behave with them. It’s how we heard a very enlightening story that was doing the rounds, about a German woman living in Berlinstrasse.
One night two drunk Russians burst into her apartment. Despite her neighbours’ warnings, she had refused to go down to the cellar. After kicking and smashing her door with their rifle butts, the Russians grabbed her, shoved her against a wall and ripped off her clothes, thrilled that, as luck would have it, they had a choice victim: she was pretty, young and well groomed. Just as they were about to rape her, they caught sight of a baby and a child, asleep in a little bed in the corner. They stopped in their tracks, helped the young woman to get dressed and apologised profusely.
‘Your children?’ asked one of them, named Andreï, in gibberish German.
He went over to the bed.
‘Beautiful, such beautiful babies. Cute!’ he added.
He took off his jacket and gently placed it over the children, who were without bedclothes. Then both soldiers crept out on tiptoes. The next day, Andreï returned with a warm blanket for the woman, as well as milk and chocolate. He came back several times with extra supplies. One day he showed the woman a photo of his children, whom he hadn’t seen since 1941. (Russian soldiers don’t get leave like ours do.) He burst into tears.
‘The war is almost over, you must stay strong, you’ll see your children again very soon,’ comforted the woman.
Andreï replied through the interpreter he’d brought with him, ‘I’m not crying about my children. I’m crying for all the children killed by the Germans.’ He stopped for a second to get his sobbing under control. ‘In my village, the German army knifed the children. Some grabbed them by the feet and smashed their skulls against a wall. I saw it with my own eyes. Several times.’
‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ was Lukas’s defence when he began his series of murders at the Napola. It would seem that the Russians apply that proverb when it comes to women, who were also raped by our soldiers, but not when it comes to children.
So, although we hide young girls in kitchen crawlspaces, under piles of clothes, or pretend they have typhoid fever, conversely, we put our children on show so the Russians feel pity for them.
In our little makeshift family that has emerged since Ute moved into the apartment, Manfred plays the role of the child. Although he’s the same age as me, he’s a head shorter, and puny; people think he’s only six or seven. So he’s the ideal candidate to turn up to the Russian mobile kitchens. And it never fails: feeling sorry for this pale, frightened little kid, the Russians often give him hot soup, chocolate, dried sausage—things that Lukas can’t get among the leftovers in the apartments he searches at dawn.
Sometimes Manfred begs me to go with him. He carries on, whingeing that he’s frightened, that the kitchens are a long way away, that he has to walk several city blocks. I refuse.
‘Can’t you make an effort, for once?’ says that bimbo Ute, who does nothing all day, except for you know what.
‘Come on, Max, be nice, off you go!’ says Lukas.
When Lukas asks me, I go, but unwillingly. I hate the Ruskis putting me on their knees and curling my blond locks in their fingers. Even though I’m tall for my age and nothing about my tough manner arouses tenderness, somehow I often have more success with them than Manfred.
‘Milyi! Milyi!’ They say ‘cute’ whenever they see me. Th
ey fall for my platinum hair and my bright, blue eyes every time. Just goes to show that my angel face always works a trick, even on the Ruskis.
That day, I’d got out of bed on the wrong side. I was in a foul mood. I refused to go with Manfred. No one could make me, not even Lukas. I’d give anything to turn back the clock. But there’s no way; it’s over and done with now.
So Manfred sets off as usual, his little basket on his arm. An hour later, he comes back, puts the full basket on the table, and something’s different: inside is a whole, huge ham. A present from the Ruskis.
‘Oh, Manfred! My darling! You are truly briilliaant!’ squeals Ute in her horrible snobby accent.
‘Bravo, well done!’ says Lukas.
I don’t say a word. I’m annoyed that idiot little Manfred has managed to do so well. Anyway, even if I’d wanted to, I wouldn’t have had time to open my mouth, because—while ham in the basket is an unusual event—suddenly we hear footsteps on the stairs. Heavy, clumsy footsteps, tripping, missing one step, hurtling up two at a time, stopping, starting up again, but making it to the fifth floor. To our door. We never bothered to barricade it with planks of wood, or to shove furniture up against it, so it gives way with the first kick. The outline of a man fills the doorframe. It’s a Ruski. A Ruski swaying on legs as thick as tree trunks. A Ruski who reeks of alcohol.
A Ruski who, unlike his comrades, isn’t sleeping off his hangover at this hour of the day, as he should be. Who knows what got into him to follow Manfred?
I feel bad. If I had gone with Manfred, I would have been more vigilant and this Ruski wouldn’t have followed us. Or at least I would have been able to shake him off.
But now he’s here.
Why did he follow Manfred? Wasn’t he happy about handing over the whole ham? Has he come to get it back? No problem: we’ll give him back his damn ham. Right now. And he can take the rest of the food too.
But the Ruski has no interest in the ham.