Iron Gustav (21 page)

‘They'll be cheap that way and if only they were as cheap to buy, since they're so small, Governor …'

‘Small! Now you're talking just like my wife! I don't understand you, Rabause. How could they be cheap when there aren't any horses to be had? It's impossible for them to be cheap. You just think a moment …'

‘No, they can't be cheap, Governor, I can see that.'

‘They're dear! So dear I nearly turned tail and came away without buying. But I changed my mind. If I didn't buy them someone else would.'

‘You're right there.'

‘Between you and me, Rabause, but don't tell my wife, I had to pay Eggebrecht more for those seventeen than I received for my twenty-seven good horses.'

‘Herr Hackendahl!'

‘Don't let's talk about it. Remember, you know nothing. But I shan't think about the cost when my twenty cabs roll out of the yard again. I'll just be glad. I'll be thinking – now people are going to stare! Twenty cabs! And they'll say: “Yes, old Gustav's made of iron. You can't get him down, any more than you can get Hindenburg down. He's made of iron.” And that'll cheer me up …'

In the night Gertrud Gudde, the dressmaker, was suddenly awakened by the winter wind, merciless towards all those who were insufficiently nourished and inadequately warmed. She shuddered, then snuggled down closer into her bed.

But immediately she started up again and struck a light. Had she not been awakened by a cry from Gustäving? Jumping out into the icy cold, she went across to him. He was sleeping quietly, lying on his side, one bony shoulder – blue with the cold – peeping out of his shirt. Gently she covered him up. The child's nose was too sharp; his little arms were as thin as sticks, looking as if there was hardly an ounce of flesh on them. She sighed. With a feeling of impotent resignation she once again tucked the blanket round the little body and returned to the warmth of her own bed.

Trying to go to sleep again, for it was only two o'clock in the morning, she lay listening to the howl of the wind as it shook the windows – she might be living not on the fifth floor of a tenement in the great stone city of Berlin but far out on the plains where houses are exposed to the full fury of the storm. Vividly she remembered how the blustering wind would shake her parents' house on Hiddensee, and how as children they would be in bed listening to the sound of the waves breaking on the shore, and how they could never forget that their father was out in his boat catching the herring off Arkona or flounders in the shallow waters. She remembered how they would whisper together about the all-absorbing little happenings in their lives, of the geese they tended or the amber they found; never a word was spoken of the father away fishing. A deep-rooted superstition forbade that. Nevertheless they thought of him all the time,
and this seemed to give the storm a personal quality, as though it were an enemy who must not be informed where he was.

The way had been long from that poor fisherman's house to the crowded tenement in the East End of Berlin; from the timid child to the dressmaker who, hardly knowing fear, was utterly resigned to all that God sent her. An immense transformation. And yet, lying awake at two o'clock in the morning and listening to the wind, Gertrud Gudde experienced once again something of that early superstitious fear. She wished to go to sleep, not to think or to tell her fear to the storm. But sleep would not visit a heart so sorrowful, and the gloom of the cold night was within as well as without her.

The wind outside her window, was it not the same that was now blowing over France? Did not the storm rage there also? As in the old days, so now – a man of hers was out in the darkness and cold; not her father this time but her lover, the father of her child.

As it was, is now, and ever shall be! She buried her head in the pillows; she did not want to think. Thought meant anxiety – Otto hadn't written for a fortnight. And she called to mind the times when a fishing boat was late, and wife and children – the whole village – waited for news of it. Boats could on occasion be driven from their course as far as Finland and a long time must elapse before word arrived. And often the villagers hoped and waited for those who had long been dead. Otto hadn't written for a fortnight. And here she recollected that it was not Gustäving's voice that had woken her. Another voice had called …

In her sleep she had picked up a newspaper. Anxiously she had scanned it, page by page, and on every page she had seen only the innumerable black-bordered notices which, headed by the cross of the fallen, filled all the press – Killed in Action. Suddenly she realized that she had really been seeking the announcement – In loving memory of Otto Hackendahl, who made the supreme sacrifice … Terror-stricken she told herself: I couldn't be looking for that. Otto is alive. He has just written that he's been promoted to corporal … I won't look at the names.

But she read the names all the quicker. It was as if she were hungry for the name Otto Hackendahl – to find relief at last, a final decision
after the endless, anxious wait lasting now already two years. The heavy black print of the papers confused her. The black crosses of the fallen seemed to jostle against one another. The wind howled outside the window … The boat is on the high seas, her father is on the high seas, and mother and children are alone in the house …

What did the fisherfolk on Hiddensee believe? If a drowning man called to his wife, that cry would travel all the way to her and reach her even in the deepest sleep. To the living woman the dying man said: till we meet again.

And now a cry had penetrated to a woman asleep, a cry had awakened her. At first she had thought it must come from the child. But it had come from him.

And weep she could not. This fear had been too long with her. Nor did it help to know that it was the same for all other women. None who did not dream night after night of a man fallen, a husband, a brother, a son. It could not be otherwise, she told herself. What was in the mind all day came out in dreams at night. No special significance attached therefore to such dreams. She had experienced something similar a hundred times, yet she had always heard from him afterwards.

Nothing availed her, though. And she knew that nothing would. It was the same for her as for all other women, sisters, mothers. This endless suspense must be borne until the postman once again delivered a letter from the trenches. Then, after a minute of relief, there would return those five hundred, five thousand, fifty thousand anxious minutes, the long torment.

No, there was no help – she bore it as did other women. She cried aloud that it was unendurable and must end one way or the other, but there came no end and she continued to endure, continued because she had a child to care for and the acquisition of the barest necessities of life imposed ever-increasing duties on her; endured because she had letters to write to the Front, letters which must never seem lacking in courage; endured because only unceasing work enabled her to send him parcels …

Each day confronted her first thing in the morning with a peremptory ‘You Must!' – unable for one moment to relax or give way to her sorrow.

Eventually
Gertrud Gudde did go to sleep again, just as she did in the end with her worries almost every night. Twice more she was awoken by her dreams, and stared into the night with her usual anxiety, listening to the storm. The first time she had lain awkwardly, putting her weaker breast under painful pressure, and had then dreamed her most horrible dream, which she sometimes did, until it had suddenly become clear to her what the widely trumpeted expression ‘Suspected dead in a mass grave' actually meant.

She had lain with Otto under the others – alive under the dead, and had tried to crawl out … But how could people torture one another! And how could anyone with a heart say such a thing! She stared breathlessly into the dark and tried to push such horrible images out of her head.

However, her third dream had almost been happy. She had sat next to Otto in a wood, green with spring, and he had taken a long flute from the pocket of his field-grey coat and said, I've carved this – now I will play you something.

He had begun to play when birds hopped out from every finger hole of the instrument. And they remained sitting on the flute and began to twitter and sing in time to his playing. It sounded unbelievably beautiful. She leaned ever closer to him, and in the end embraced him. Then he said: ‘But you mustn't hold me too close. You know very well, don't you, Tutti, that I'm dead and only dust and ashes?'

And she did know, but only held him harder. And he disappeared in her arms, like a light mist passing from a wood in springtime. Far away, she could still hear his flute and the twittering and singing of the birds.

Then she was awoken. Outside the windows, the storm was abating somewhat. The alarm clock showed half past four – time to get up.

Freezing, Gertrud Gudde stood in an icy room looking longingly at the stove; if she lit it now she would have to freeze the rest of the day. No more briquettes were obtainable till the following week – she had used up too many already.

Taking
a newspaper, she crumpled it into a ball and thrust it in the stove. It did her good to see the flames produce their illusion of warmth. Then, when there was nothing but black paper left, she washed, slipped on her clothes and went to Gustäving's bed. The child was sound asleep now but before she returned hunger would wake him. Taking a loaf of bread from the cupboard, she cut a slice with much thought as to its size; though it was so small it was still too large. This she tied with a piece of string to the bedrail.

She smiled to think how pleased Gustäving would be with his gift. He was like his father; he would eat the bread with deliberation, chewing it thoroughly, although it was not the palatable and nutritious bread of peacetime but was made from potato flour, and some even maintained that sawdust and sand were to be found in it also. No need to believe that, however – war bread was bad enough as it was.

Locking the cupboard, she pocketed the key. Gustäving was very young but hunger made the smallest children ingenious. One morning not so long ago, he had got the cupboard open somehow. Terrible days had followed. She was used to being hungry herself but – deny her child the commonest necessities of life? ‘I can't let him go hungry for four days,' she had pleaded at the Rationing Bureau. ‘He would starve to death.'

‘They've all got some tale or other,' the clerk had replied, shrugging his shoulders. ‘This one's cards have been burnt, someone else has had them stolen, another's lost them, and now your child's eaten up all your bread. You should look after him better. No, you won't get any more here.'

In the end her sister-in-law Eva had come to her aid.

She shook the cupboard door gently once more: the cupboard was closed. Once again she looked at Gustäving. He was asleep. She switched off the light and went onto the landing. It had just turned five o'clock, high time to start.

The stairway was dark, but footsteps were soon descending, and heavier feet were coming up. A door opened on the first floor, a man came out, and Gertrud saw him kiss his wife goodbye in the twilight of the corridor. Then he felt his way downstairs next to her and suddenly grabbed her and whispered, ‘Well, my sweetie? Out of bed already, too?'

She
pushed her hands against his chest. She knew it was the foreman from the munitions factory. He was incorrigible! He'd been a perfectly decent man, but he'd been spoiled by the war, which had emptied Berlin of men. There were enough women now to run after every pair of trousers. So he thought every woman fair game.

‘Leave me alone, Herr Tiede!' she shouted, fiercely defending herself against him in the dark. ‘I'm only the cripple from the fifth floor.'

‘Gudde? That's something different.' And, pressing her hard, he whispered: ‘Be nice to me, little one! You're just what I want. I'll give you half a pound of butter if you're a good girl. Word of honour!'

She succeeded in freeing herself from him, and ran across both courtyards as if being hunted. She breathed again when she reached the street. By the light of a gas lamp she inspected the coat he had torn. Thank goodness, it wasn't so bad and could be repaired so that it would hardly be noticed.

She hurried to a butcher's shop in a small side street, but she was a bit late there, despite her rush and early rising. There was already quite a queue outside the door.

‘That makes nineteen,' said the woman in front.

‘Then I'll doubtless get something after all,' said Gertrud hopefully.

‘No one knows how many pigs he has been allotted. But they haven't forbidden us to hope yet.' The woman's voice was incredibly bitter. Gertrud Gudde – it was not only the icy wind that made her shudder – thrust her hands into her coat pockets and stood on tiptoe. In this way one's feet didn't freeze so much. And she would have to wait a long time because the shop didn't open before eight.

For a while she stood there, freezing. The tiredness she'd just managed to overcome came back. But it didn't bring sleep, only depressing, dark thoughts. She was wondering what she would get – whether a nice piece of the head or only a few bones; it was all a matter of luck, and mostly she had little or no luck. People were prejudiced against a hunchback. But, miserably inadequate though it might be, one had to take what one could get of this unrationed meat – bones and offal that the butcher could not otherwise use. Anyhow, it gave a flavour to the swedes.

‘What's
the time?' enquired the woman in front.

‘Twenty-five to six,' replied Gertrud Gudde.

‘And my feet are like ice already. I shan't be able to stick it till eight o'clock. Keep an eye on my place, will you? I'm number eighteen.'

Gertrud agreed, and the other negotiated also with the woman in front. It was heartbreaking to lose a place after getting up so early and freezing for so long, and one had to make certain of one's neighbours in the queue. The woman, who was wearing clogs, ran clattering up and down the street, sometimes stopping to beat her arms against her body. But nobody joked about it. ‘If you only have the strength to keep it up, you get quite warm in time,' said someone thoughtfully. No one else spoke.