The Undertaking Page 16

  ‘It’s hard because all the tanks have gone north. The horses too. It would be hard on our own. It’s easier if they come for us.’

  They drew heavily on their cigarettes.

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Clear a passage out for us. Hold back the Russians until we’re through.’

  Kraus fell asleep.

  ‘He looks awful,’ said Faustmann.

  ‘We should go and tell Kraft,’ said Faber.

  They found Kraft humming and still dusting.

  ‘Gentlemen, I shall make coffee.’

  His lips and skin were dry. Flaking.

  ‘Are you eating, Kraft?’ said Faber. ‘Drinking?’

  ‘I’ll do it now. Sometimes I forget.’

  They drank his coffee. There was no chocolate.

  ‘We’re surrounded, Kraft,’ said Faustmann.

  ‘We are?’

  ‘You can’t really be here on your own any more.’

  ‘Why not? What’s the difference?’

  ‘We need you with us,’ said Faustmann. ‘For when the break-out comes. We won’t have time to come and get you.’

  ‘Where are you sleeping? You both stink.’

  ‘In a bunker,’ said Faber. ‘Near the tractor factory.’

  ‘I’m not going back there.’

  ‘But it’s dangerous for you to be here,’ said Faustmann. ‘On your own.’

  ‘I’ll take my chances.’

  Faber ran his hands through his hair.

  ‘Will you at least bloody look after yourself, Kraft? Eat and drink properly.’

  ‘You don’t exactly look a picture of health, Faber. Or you, Faustmann.’

  They shook his hand. Faber pressed him to his chest.

  ‘Mind yourself.’

  ‘You too. Both of you.’

  They climbed again through the hatch, their exit hidden by a mound of soil and concrete. They scuttled east, back towards their bunker. Kraus woke as they barrelled in.

  ‘You look like shit, Kraus,’ said Faustmann.

  ‘I feel like shit.’

  After soup and coffee in the trench, Kraus went to the rear with Stockhoff, to the medics. Faber and Faustmann went back to the bunker. To wait.

  40

  Katharina dressed for the food queue. The Russian usually went but Katharina had heard the rumours. Her father was silent. Her mother knew nothing. She walked onto the street. There was snow on the ground, but her feet were warm in fur-lined boots with a slight heel. And she finally had a mink coat that fastened across her chest. Her own.

  She joined the queue outside the baker’s, behind a woman whose thin-soled shoes slapped against the icy ground each time she stepped forward. It was an irritating noise.

  The women in front and behind her were deep in conversation. Hushed and fevered. She tried to join in, repeating their words, asking questions, but she was shut out, the women’s eyes on each other, away from her with her fur coat and well-fed hips. She stared ahead. They were skinny women anyway, in ragged clothing. She would find out some other way.

  She headed further into the city, towards the east where she knew Mrs Sachs shopped. She waited outside a butcher. Mrs Sachs came out of the shop, a light weight at the bottom of her bag. She looked gaunt. Strained.

  ‘You look well, Katharina. How is your mother?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘I never see her out.’

  ‘She enjoys being at home.’

  ‘I was sorry to hear about your brother.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Sachs.’

  ‘You’ve heard the news? Your husband’s there, isn’t he?’

  ‘It can’t be true, though, Mrs Sachs. The Russians don’t have the capacity.’

  ‘So we were told.’

  ‘Do you believe it? There’s nothing about it in the newspaper.’

  Mrs Sachs snorted.

  ‘It must be nice up there in your new apartment, Katharina.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she said, but Mrs Sachs had already gone along the road to join the queue for vegetables. Katharina waited, stamping her feet like the other women, although she was not cold. Then she gave up. She didn’t even need meat.

  She went home and fed Johannes, scooping the food prepared by the Russian into his mouth. She put him to bed and sat on the sofa, waiting for her father to wake. A door opened, but it was her mother, still in her nightgown. She nodded at Katharina, and disappeared into the bathroom. Katharina picked up a magazine and turned its pages, crumpling them, irritated by the relentlessness of her mother’s grief, by the possibility that she was already a widow without ever having been a wife.

  Her mother shut her bedroom door and her father emerged from his. Her brother’s old room.

  ‘Good morning, Katharina. How is my beautiful daughter today?’

  ‘It’s nearly afternoon, Father.’

  ‘Then I slept well.’

  ‘Was it a late night?’

  ‘More of an early morning.’

  He sat beside her on the sofa, yawning and scratching his chest.

  ‘How is young Johannes?’

  ‘Fine. No air raid, so he slept through.’

  ‘I think they’re running out of bombs.’

  ‘What’s happening in Stalingrad, Father?’

  ‘Nothing our men can’t handle.’

  ‘Have they been surrounded?’

  ‘There’s talk of it, but it’s nothing serious. A few days more and they’ll have broken out of it.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘They’re German soldiers, Katharina.’

  ‘Am I going to be a widow?’

  ‘Your husband will be fine.’

  ‘That’s what you said about Johannes. About Mother. And look at them.’

  He peered at her.

  ‘You’re beginning to sound more like your mother, Katharina. Trust me. Peter will be fine. They’re working on plans right at this moment.’

  She put her head on his shoulder.

  ‘I’m just so worried about him. About Mother.’

  ‘She could stop if she wanted to, Katharina.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The hiding. The not eating.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘She’s trying to make me feel guilty, that’s what it’s about.’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Feel guilty, Father?’

  ‘He had to go back, Katharina. We had no choice.’

  ‘I feel guilty. All the time. I see him sometimes, alone on that train, no idea where he was going. Was it really necessary, Father?’

  ‘Wars cannot be won without sacrifices, Katharina.’

  ‘She has no interest in Johannes. She doesn’t even look at him, never holds him. Her own grandson.’

  ‘Grief is the morose indulgence of the idle.’

  ‘That sounds very pompous, Father.’

  ‘Dr Weinart said it. Now, let me see what Natasha can do for me. I’m hungry. Peter will be all right. They’ll all be all right.’

  41

  Faber and Faustmann sat in the early morning against a west-facing wall to stare at the sky, its clear, bright blueness and wisps of light cloud undisturbed by wind.

  ‘They’ll come today,’ said Faber.

  ‘They’d better,’ said Faustmann.

  Faber lit a cigarette and inhaled, deeply to blur his hunger, to warm his lungs.

  ‘The weather is perfect,’ he said.

  ‘It was perfect yesterday.’

  He inhaled a second time, still deeper, and held his breath, waiting for the nicotine rush. It didn’t come. Nothing but the swirl of acid in his stomach.

  ‘I wonder why they didn’t come yesterday,’ said Faber.

  ‘They’d better come today.’

  Wrapped in coats, blankets and scarves, the two men pressed against each other. Not for warmth. There was none.

  ‘This will test your theory, Faustmann.’

  ‘Which one? I have m
any.’

  ‘That we’re cannon fodder.’

  ‘Are we, Faber?’

  ‘There’s been almost nothing. No supplies, no men, no food. It’s as though they’re not interested. They don’t care.’

  ‘They’re telling us to wait, Faber. That’s all. To hold on.’

  ‘And you believe them?’

  ‘Do I have any choice?’

  42

  She squealed when she saw them. The white envelopes with gold trimming. One for her parents. One for her. She opened it, still in the hall. An invitation to the dinner. The Weinarts’ dinner. She hugged herself and ran upstairs to tell her mother.

  43

  Gunkel led a chestnut horse into the shell of an apartment block and shot it. He sharpened his knives and set to work, his wrists moving habitually. Stockhoff stood at his side.

  ‘Find something else to do, gentlemen,’ said Stockhoff. ‘This will be served later.’

  They drifted off, back to the bunker. Kraus was asleep.

  ‘We should see how Kraft is,’ said Faustmann.

  They moved through the snow, a shroud over the dead, over the flies and their maggots. Faber was glad of it.

  The cellar stank of shit; there were large mounds in the corner under the stairs, amid scatterings of torn newspaper. Kraft sat on a chair, combing his hair and humming, the table set for food.

  ‘Jesus, Kraft. It’s disgusting in here.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘You shit under the stairs.’

  ‘There’s no bathroom, Faber.’

  ‘Go outside, you bastard.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What do you mean, no?’

  ‘I’m not going out there. It’s too noisy. I don’t like it.’

  Faber looked at him, at his cracked, bleeding lips and papery skin.

  ‘Are you all right, Kraft?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Have you eaten? Drunk anything?’

  ‘I had a little water. My stomach hurts, though. It keeps cramping.’

  ‘I’ll clean up.’

  Faber opened up his shovel, wrapped his scarf over his mouth and scooped up the excrement, his face turned away, his eyes half closed, his stomach curdling. He climbed the stairs, opened the hatch and hurled it as far as he could, then scraped his shovel across the snow. He went back down the stairs, but left the hatch open.

  ‘The bombs will come in,’ said Kraft. ‘They’ll find us.’

  ‘We’ll be dead anyway if we have to inhale that smell. Next time, shit outside.’

  ‘It’s terrifying out there, Faber.’

  ‘It’s terrifying in here.’

  Faustmann took the dusting sock, rinsed it in water from his can and began to clean Kraft’s face and hands.

  ‘You stink, Kraft. You need to eat, drink and build a fire. It’s freezing in here.’

  ‘Is it? Let me make some coffee.’

  He pushed the chair away from the table and stood up. Shit stains ran the length of his trousers, both legs. Faber retched. There was nothing in his stomach to vomit.

  ‘I’m sorry. How forgetful of me. I have no coffee.’

  He picked up the photograph of his mother and stared at it.

  ‘You’re so lucky to have your wife and child waiting for you, Faber. So fortunate.’

  ‘You should sleep,’ said Faber.

  ‘I’m not tired.’

  ‘You are. You’re exhausted.’

  ‘Stop telling me what I am, Faber. I’m not exhausted.’

  ‘What are you then?’

  ‘I’m nothing. A nothing with nobody.’

  ‘You’ve got us.’

  ‘You’ll all move on once this is over. Back to your homes. Your families. I’ll go back to an empty house, a big empty house to be on my own.’

  ‘You’ll find someone. The women will be queuing up to live with you, to be lady of the manor.’

  ‘That was my mother, Faber. Nobody else can be my mother.’

  ‘Just get some sleep, Kraft. You’ll feel better.’

  ‘I’ll never feel better. It’ll always be like this.’

  ‘Wars end, Kraft.’

  ‘Its ending won’t bring back my mother, Faber.’

  ‘But at least you’ll be able to go home.’

  ‘I have no home. Not any more.’

  ‘You should sleep.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’

  Kraft bent over.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Faber.

  ‘I need to shit.’

  ‘Not in here. Go outside.’

  Kraft climbed the staircase, shit seeping down his leg, his arm across his stomach. He went through the open hatch. They heard him sigh as he released his bowel at the top of the staircase.

  ‘I need paper,’ he said.

  Faber passed up a Russian newspaper.

  ‘What are they saying about us, anyway?’ said Faber.

  ‘Who?’ said Faustmann.

  ‘The Russians. In the paper.’

  ‘Oh, that we’re fucked. That they’ll blow us to oblivion.’

  ‘They probably will,’ said Faber.

  ‘Probably.’

  They listened as Kraft tore and crumpled the newspaper.

  ‘Clean yourself properly,’ shouted Faber.

  They heard him buckle his belt, but not his footstep on the staircase.

  ‘What’s he doing now?’ said Faber.

  He climbed a few steps, enough to see Kraft’s shit, but not Kraft himself. He climbed further and saw the man scrambling up the snowbank.

  ‘What are you doing, Kraft?’

  The bullet hit him in the neck, his larynx, so that he was silent as he fell backwards, blood bubbling and spurting from the freshly made hole. Faber fell back down the stairs, away from Kraft, tumbling into Faustmann.

  ‘The bastard, the mad bloody bastard,’ said Faber.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘They shot him. He let them shoot him.’

  Faustmann pulled the hatch shut. Artillery fire followed, tracking the sniper’s victory over Kraft.

  ‘The bloody idiot has given us away. We’re stuck here till night-fall.’

  ‘We’ll miss the horsemeat,’ said Faber.

  They waited until dusk and crawled out on their stomachs, through Kraft’s faeces and over his body. They reached the trench in time, their smell no different to anybody else’s.

  ‘Where were you?’ said Kraus.

  ‘Looking for food,’ said Faustmann.

  ‘Find any?’

  ‘No.’

  Stockhoff had distributed the horsemeat through vats of turnip soup. He gave them each two portions and four pieces of bread.

  ‘Rations are being cut tomorrow, lads.’

  ‘It’s too cold, Stockhoff,’ said Kraus. ‘The men need more food, not less.’

  ‘Nothing to be done. Nothing’s coming through.’

  ‘The planes?’ said Faustmann.

  ‘We’ve seen canisters fall,’ said Faber.

  ‘Almost none of it is food,’ said Stockhoff. ‘Or it has fallen behind Russian lines.’

  ‘By how much?’ said Kraus.

  ‘What?’ said Stockhoff.

  ‘Cut by how much?’

  ‘By more than half.’

  ‘How much more than half?’

  ‘By almost two thirds.’

  Faber buried his head in his hands.

  ‘But I’ll do what I can for you, lads. Gunkel and I will find a way.’

  They shook the hands of the cook and butcher, thanking them for their effort, their commitment to them. Faber, Faustmann and Kraus went back to their bunker and stoked the fire.

  ‘How are you feeling, Kraus?’ said Faber.

  ‘Better.’

  Kraus lit a cigarette.

  ‘We’ll go back out again tomorrow, lads.’

  ‘Is there any point, Sergeant?’ said Faber.

  ‘It’ll give us something to do,’ said Kraus. ‘I can’t look at the sky any lon
ger.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we keep back our ammunition for the break-out?’ said Faber.

  ‘If there is one,’ said Faustmann.

  ‘What do you think, Kraus?’ said Faber.

  Kraus drew on his cigarette.

  ‘Do you think they’re coming, Kraus?’

  ‘I don’t know, Faber.’

  They fell asleep, but Faber woke in the middle of the night. He was hungry. He put his hand under his tunic and touched his ribs. He could feel each one. And his stomach was hollow. He found some crackers in Kraus’ pack, ate them and went back to sleep.

  In the morning, Faustmann and Kraus prepared to return to the tractor factory.

  ‘Come with us, Faber,’ said Kraus.

  ‘There’s no point, Sergeant. Another dead Russian will do nothing for us.’

  ‘I could report you.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘Not today.’

  They left and he stoked the fire, throwing on scraps of wood from an old table and staring at the flames. He was glad not to have to look at the two men, at their hunger.

  He took out his pictures of Katharina and Johannes and attached them to rusty nails sticking out of the bunker wall, next to where he slept. He ran his fingers over the pictures and kissed his wife on the lips. She smiled at him. At his flaking skin and thinning legs. Three and a half weeks.

  He tried not to think about it. Three and a half weeks and nobody had come. The planes that flew in always left with a heavier load, captains, first lieutenants, majors, their faces coloured yellow as though they had jaundice. But he saw that their eyes were white, and healthy.

  He stabbed at the fire, stirring sparks. He wasn’t going to fight any more, to risk his life for officers too cowardly to stay, expose his belly to the Russian rockets now bouncing off the icy ground, fragmenting and gouging ever bigger holes in German bodies. No. He would keep himself safe, so that he could be a father to his son.

  He lay down by the fire, curled up in a ball and closed his eyes. He liked the snow. It muffled the sound of battle so that he could no longer hear the men to the north of the city fighting to hold back the Russians. He appreciated their effort, but didn’t want to listen to it. He fell asleep, woke and read until the others returned. Kraus had a small cut on his hand.

  ‘Probably from a knife,’ he said. ‘Maybe even my own.’

  They went to the trench and ate horse sausage. Stockhoff told them to prepare for the break-out.

  ‘They’re coming for us from the south,’ he said.