The Undertaking Page 19

  When morning came, he was surprised that he was still alive. Frozen and stiff, too numb even to shiver, but alive. The guards opened the pen and he joined a line that led to bread and sausage, silent and orderly. He ate and slipped again into the queue, pleased when they gave him more. And grateful.

  They herded the men together, shot some of them and marched the rest further east, away from Stalingrad, their ignominy captured by a newspaper man with a camera perched in the snow, its bulb flashing.

  49

  She didn’t need food, but she went anyway, joining the early morning queue, dressed, like the other women, in black, her eyes, like theirs, red and swollen, her hair, unlike theirs, fashionably styled and her face freshly made-up.

  They didn’t talk to her, and she no longer expected them to. She just wanted to be among them, ordinary women with ordinary sons and husbands, the women of the infantry. Elizabeth, Mrs Weinart and all her new friends were married to officers, their husbands either still in Berlin or in places safer than Stalingrad.

  The women in the queue whispered to each other, and passed around sheets of folded newspaper that carried thousands and thousands of names and black crosses. They pointed out the names of their loved ones, quietly sobbing, muffling their grief as they were supposed to be proud of the men’s sacrifice.

  Katharina had already pored over every newspaper until her hands were black with ink, but had found no trace of him. Nothing. His mother had replied, a short letter, to say that she too had heard nothing. He had disappeared.

  She bought sausage and went home.

  Her father was on the sofa, holding Johannes, tickling his toes. Katharina put the sausage in the fridge and told Natasha to make coffee. She sat down beside them.

  ‘Any news, Father?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Stalingrad, Father. Is there anything else?’

  ‘It’s over, Katharina. Time to move on.’

  She took her son from him.

  ‘As you did with Johannes, Father. You moved on quickly. From your own son.’

  ‘I get enough of that from your mother, Katharina.’

  Natasha placed the coffee on the table in front of them. Katharina poured.

  ‘Your husband is a hero, Katharina.’

  ‘How can you be a hero when you lose? They lost, Father. We lost.’

  ‘They sacrificed themselves for the greater good. That is heroism.’

  ‘Where’s the greater good in losing?’

  ‘It has given us time to regroup, Katharina. To take Moscow.’

  ‘And then what? They encircle us there too?’

  ‘That’s defeatist talk, Katharina.’

  ‘How much do we have to give, Father? First my brother, then my husband.’

  ‘Germany is bigger than you, Katharina. Bigger than all of us.’

  ‘A monster that we feed with our men? Is that what it is, Father, this Germany of yours?’

  ‘That’s dangerous talk, Katharina. Talk that will land you into trouble. Are you quite well?’

  ‘I’m fine, Father.’

  ‘You have to get over Peter. Accept that he’s not coming back.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re a mother.’

  ‘And a wife. And a sister.’

  ‘We need good, sensible mothers, Katharina. For our future.’

  ‘A future that has obliterated its past. Its present.’

  ‘It’ll be worth it, you’ll see. For Johannes.’

  ‘Growing up without a father. It’ll be worth that?’

  ‘We will be the most powerful country in the world.’

  ‘Filled with children without fathers. Wives without husbands. Is that it? The great plan?’

  ‘Just wait. It’ll work out.’

  ‘No, no, it won’t. It already hasn’t.’

  Faber would not look at the Russians standing on the banks of snow on the edge of the road. They spat at him and scanned the prisoners for the weakest soldier, the one next to fall, the one whose boots, blanket and coat, whose tin cup and bowl might atone for his presence there. Faber pulled his scarves further up his face, and stared down at his feet shuffling through the snow, his lips mumbling that they would never get him. That he had done no wrong.

  He walked until dusk, stepping around the dying, stumbling over the dead, muttering, cursing, swearing, weeping, his head so cold that he was uncertain as night came whether he was even alive, whether the breath in and out of his scarf was real or remembered. They corralled him into a huge barn with wooden doors that shut out the wind, enveloping him in the sweet, musky smell of stored wheat. He fell to the floor and scrambled for kernels, but the shed was empty, swept clean by rats. He slept where he had fallen, kicked awake by men surging forward for soup, meatless and watery but littered with chunks of potato that he could scoop up with his fingers and shovel into his mouth. He got two portions.

  The following day there was no food, the day after that only bread and sausage, but still his wiry frame persisted. They reached the railway track that had no beginning and no end, no station, no platform, nothing to mark why they should be standing at that particular spot. He felt the sun’s warmth on his face for seconds, minutes or hours; he again lost any sense of time until a rifle butt pushed him towards a train that he had neither seen nor heard arriving. He hauled himself into a carriage, panting from the effort, his head spinning, and lay exhausted on the loose-fitting wooden slats smeared in cow dung. The dung was frozen until the space was packed with emaciated men, the little heat they produced thawing it to release a suffocating stench that lasted until the train moved off, until the wind cut through the gaps and refroze the dung.

  Faber found a place against a wall that backed onto the carriage in front, sheltering him from the worst of the wind and giving him a full view of the other men, their hollowed eyes and cheeks, their filth and feebleness. He shut his eyes and rested his head against the wood, relieved to be sitting, to be out of the snow, to be moving somewhere, anywhere, away from Stalingrad. He began to shiver, his teeth, arms and legs jerking in a confusion of cold and relief.

  Katharina folded the newspaper, her hands again covered in ink.

  ‘Still nothing, Father. Maybe he surrendered.’

  ‘Let’s hope not.’

  ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘He’s better off, Katharina, to have died as a hero than surrendered as a coward.’

  ‘As a hero, he’s dead. Surrendered, he might still be alive.’

  ‘Not in his soul, Katharina.’

  Natasha brought them coffee and cake, the sponge lighter than it used to be, her improvement in baking a source of pleasure to the Spinells. Katharina gave some cake to Johannes. The boy smacked his lips and waved his hands for more.

  ‘You’re better off without that kind of husband, Katharina.’

  ‘What kind of husband should I have, Father?’

  ‘A brave one. One who can look after you.’

  ‘I had that.’

  ‘If he surrendered, he wasn’t brave. Not the man you thought.’

  ‘He is the man I think he is, Father. The man I want him to be.’

  ‘You need to build a new life for yourself and your son, Katharina. Find a new husband.’

  ‘I can’t do that. I can’t think like that.’

  ‘You have to, I’m afraid.’

  ‘But the generals surrendered and are still alive. Peter might be among them.’

  ‘Then he is as cowardly as they are and unworthy of you.’

  Her father stood up, walked once around the sofa and sat down again beside his daughter, his arm on hers.

  ‘Listen to me, Katharina. Stop all this talk of surrender. Act as though he is dead, as he most likely is, even if he surrendered. They’re up to their necks in snow.’

  ‘He’s stronger than he looks.’

  ‘If he has surrendered and is alive, there will be no pension.’

  ‘I don’t want a pension. I want Peter.’<
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  ‘Your mother was right. You should have married the doctor’s son. You wouldn’t care whether he was dead or alive.’

  ‘That’s unfair.’

  ‘You have a child. You have to take care of him. You need that pension. That was your deal with Peter, remember. His death. His pension.’

  She lifted Johannes, burying her nose in his hair, breathing in his softness.

  ‘But what if he’s alive?’

  ‘He’s not, Katharina. He can’t be.’

  The train stopped, the door was dragged open and they were ordered off. Faber got down, slowly, clumsily, to stand in the middle of nowhere – nothing to see but a train on a track surrounded by snow. He stuck close to the carriage, suddenly attached to its squalor, and watched as the Russians climbed in and kicked at the men still inside, their legs bent at the knee, frozen grasshoppers. They picked up the bodies and threw them off the train, the bones cracking in the winter air. Faber decided not to urinate with the other men. He was frightened of frostbite and anyway enjoyed the momentary warmth of piss running down his leg.

  The men were fed – saltfish and water – and the train moved off again, a low hubbub in the carriage as their little surge of energy enabled them to consider what might happen next, even though they already knew.

  He lost track of the days, of the number of portions of saltfish and water, knowing only that it got colder with each day and that he never seemed able to slake his thirst. And then it ended. He was ordered off the train. But he did not move, his body attached to the rhythm and routine because as long as he was travelling there was a chance of turning west, of going home. He remained motionless on the cow dung, as indifferent to the Russian guns and shouts as those already dead beside him.

  ‘You should get out. The journey is over.’

  It was a man in Russian uniform, speaking German.

  ‘You’re German?’ said Faber.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does that make you a traitor?’

  ‘And what are you? Get out.’

  Faber followed the German to a cluster of long, low wooden huts surrounded by barbed wire. A huge sign loomed in front of him, over the entrance, its script incomprehensible, its meaning clear. He shoved the hair from his face and tried to straighten his twisted, frozen spine.

  ‘I am not a traitor,’ said Faber.

  ‘The sooner you lose that kind of sentimentality, the easier it is.’

  ‘You seem to be doing well enough.’

  ‘Better than you, anyway. My name is Schultz.’

  Faber walked to a hut constructed out of sawn trees, the bark still on. He joined the end of the queue and waited, his right leg buckling intermittently. He struggled to climb the three steps and entered a room of desks and stifling heat. A log fire burned at each end of the hut, warming the men behind the desks, but suffocating Faber, unable to acclimatize to the heat. He bent over, coughing so hard that he retched, grateful that he had nothing to vomit. Schultz stood in front of the fire, his hands behind him, shouting the same thing, over and over.

  ‘Write your name, age, rank and unit. Hand over all documents.’

  Faber went to a desk where a younger man watched as he took off several layers of gloves and material from his hands and began to write, slowly, his fingers cramping from the strain of the fine, forgotten movement. He dropped the pen. The Russian, slight with glasses, put out his hand. Faber picked up the pen and put it in the man’s hand. The man pushed it away and shouted. Faber repeated the action. The response was louder and angrier. Faber shook, unable to absorb the shock. Schultz yelled across the room, still by the fire.

  ‘Your papers. He wants your papers.’

  Faber dug into his tunic, fingered the paybook in his inside pocket and pulled at it, harder than anticipated, scattering the photographs of Johannes and Katharina to the floor. He handed the paybook to the Russian and bent down to retrieve his wife and child. Katharina kept smiling as the Russian’s heavy black boot rose in the air and stamped on Faber’s hand. He howled and the guard laughed, as did Schultz, his hands still being warmed by the flames.

  Faber was photographed, front and profile, and then ordered out into the camp, onto paths being cleared of snow and ice by men in shapeless black suits, vacant creatures bent low by the weight of their shovels and barrows. Matchstick men. He looked at the sky and inhaled.

  He was directed to another hut, one more roughly built than the first. Inside were rows of tables each bearing a bucket, the water freshly poured but already icing over. Beside each bucket was a scrap of soap and a cloth, rough and dirty, already used. He decided against washing. A guard gesticulated at him, with his head, then with his gun. Faber began to undress, peeling off his blankets, his hats, his coats, the sodden material disintegrating as he tugged and dropped it to the floor in a filthy stinking heap, lice falling from the fabric.

  He stood at a bucket, naked, and rested his hands on the bench, his eyes straight ahead, his body motionless. He didn’t want to look down. He could already smell himself, the thaw of his frozen stench. That was enough. He didn’t need to see as well.

  He felt a hand across his head. A slap.

  ‘Wash, you stinking bastard.’

  It was Schultz, walking up and down, stamping on the lice.

  He wetted the cloth and rubbed it with soap, drawing it first along his arm, then under his armpit and over his chest, tears slipping from his eyes as he moved from the ridge of each rib to the next, folds of sagging skin hanging between each one. His stomach had disappeared so he moved onto his hips, running the cloth over the contours of the bone, covered by a layer of skin, but no flesh. His penis was covered in thick, white discharge; the inside of his legs with dry, itchy red skin; and four of his toes were gone, the smaller ones on each foot dead black sponge.

  They shaved him then, scraping his body with a blunt blade, depriving the lice of their hiding places, but nicking him so often, drawing so much blood, that they remained anyway. His legs buckled beneath him. They wrenched him to his feet and continued shaving, his head, his legs, his arms, his pubic hair, exposing him entirely.

  50

  Katharina pushed open the door of the cake shop. It was quiet, without a queue, and smelled of sweet richness.

  ‘Good afternoon, Madam.’

  The woman behind the counter had bowed slightly as she spoke, tipping her white cap towards Katharina. She dipped her head in acknowledgement, but said nothing.

  ‘Can I be of any help to you?’

  ‘I have come to collect my son’s birthday cake. Mrs Weinart placed my order.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Little Johannes.’

  The woman disappeared into a back room and Katharina looked at herself in the mirror, at her straight back, her shining, healthy hair and her silk summer dress. She looked well. Better than she used to. She stopped looking when the woman returned, a large cake lying in the palms of her hands. Chocolate. Her son’s name perfectly formed in blue lettering.

  ‘It’s divine,’ she said.

  She took her purse from her bag.

  ‘Mrs Weinart said to put it on her account,’ said the woman.

  ‘That’s very kind of her.’

  She watched the woman wrap the cake in clean white cardboard, refusing to allow herself to chat as she used to. She had stopped bantering with ordinary people. She thanked the woman, took the box and walked back along the street, crossing into the shadows, for the sun was hot, and into the path of pale women and children carrying dirty cardboard signs scrawled with potted histories of bombed houses and missed meals. They wanted her money and sympathy. She hurried on, stepping around them and their mewling, suddenly fretting that she had a lot to do, although everything was already done. The apartment was clean, the food was ready and the clown was booked to arrive half an hour before the guests.

  It would be the first time she had hosted Mrs Weinart and her children. Elizabeth and other women were coming too, but it was the Weinarts she worried over, fearing that t
hey would be bored, cramped by the apartment’s small space, disappointed by the gifts she had bought for them to take home.

  In the courtyard, she set down the cake and picked up a hoe to hack again at the weeds between the paving stones. The caretaker had fled to his mountain cousins. Her father had shouted after him, calling him a coward, a traitor, but he went anyway. Mr Spinell threw his possessions into the street, clearing the way for a new caretaker. But none came. The weeds grew flowers and the herbs bolted, all of it ignored unless there were visitors. She banged the hoe a couple of times more and retreated upstairs. She kissed her son on the head and checked on Natasha, making sure that she was dressed, as ordered, in a black skirt and white shirt.

  Her mother’s room was in darkness, the shutters and curtains still closed; a tiny intermittent glow of orange came from the bed where she lay, her head and shoulders propped up against pillows, just high enough for her to draw on her cigarette. It was already after noon.

  ‘Are you coming to the party?’

  ‘I don’t know. Am I?’

  ‘It would be nice if you did.’

  Katharina turned and pulled the door behind her, holding it firmly until she was sure it was tightly shut.

  Her room was hot despite the breeze through the open window, but calm and clean, restful without the child in his cot. She closed her eyes, but the bright summer light filtered through her bronze-powdered lids, failing to shut her into the darkness she craved. She hovered in refracted light, in a space where everything was broken – fragments of white, yellow, of her brother’s face and her husband’s smile floating and drifting in front of her. Tears fell down her face. She knew that she was no longer a sister, but needed somebody to tell her whether she was a widow or a wife, somebody to end the uncertainty of floating through a fragmented world. She got up and started to dress. She put on a belted navy dress, its sobriety quietly undermined by flashes of white material hidden under the skirt’s pleats. She had navy and white shoes to match, and a navy outfit for her son: shoes, shorts and a jacket laid out on the dining table, ready for him to wear just before the guests arrived.