In the Shadow of Wolves Read online

  The soldiers rushed towards them, materialising from the blinding snow. They were all shouting something, laughing; it seemed they were egging one another on, speaking German now: ‘Ladies, don’t be afraid, we’re very gentle.’ Then laughter.

  Martha broke free from another attacker and someone grabbed Eva by her leg. One of the other soldiers had fallen down, but even on the ground he was hungry for a woman.

  Finally, they both managed to escape. They ran as fast as they could, but their attackers were not about to give up so easily. They gave chase and someone fired a shot into the air. Eva pressed the food she was carrying for the children to her breast; she simply wasn’t going to give up her treasure. The women turned off the path, diving into the darkness between the buildings – they knew, or had once known, everything, every inch of this small town. They raced past the school, then the burnt-out shell of the police station, the yards, the gardens. The most important thing was to lose the attackers, to lead them astray in the snowstorm, otherwise they might follow them home; after all, they weren’t going to be stopped by the woodshed’s flimsy locks. Eva’s family were living in their old woodshed, where the new arrivals – a concussed officer and his woman – had moved them as soon as they’d taken over their house. The woodshed was their home now.

  Eva didn’t have enough energy to run any more; she found shelter behind the wall of a building, crouched down and squeezed into a corner, and waited. Where was Martha? Where could she have disappeared to? They had been running together, they had both managed to defend themselves, to break away from their drunken attackers, but where was she now? Suddenly Eva heard screams, and a couple of shots being fired. Oh Lord, protect me and my friend Martha, protect her family, her children and my children, lead us out of this valley of death, return our lives to us.

  Eva tried to walk on, but was caught on a branch.

  No, it wasn’t a branch. It was an arm.

  It was a frozen corpse. The roads were lined with them, and people were saying that wolves had grown used to eating human flesh. But why all this talk about wolves when the people themselves had become wolves?

  Eva wasn’t surprised, she wasn’t shocked by this dead being, only a little startled.

  She listened to the night and the wind, made sure that there was no one around and sensed her way home. Her figure vanished into the night.

  The corpse stayed behind, its hand outstretched, imploring.

  It no longer felt the cold.

  THE COLD. IT found its way through every gap, especially in a woodshed unfit for human habitation. The sound of the raging, moaning snowstorm penetrated the thin walls. There was a paraffin candle on a box that served as a table, which had burnt down almost to a stub. Luckily Auntie Lotte had managed to collect enough of them. She had never believed in victory, or in crowds of people with raised hands, screaming in ecstasy, waiting for their beloved Führer, stamping the ground to the rhythm of stirring marches – do you remember how, in Berlin, we were all entranced, shouting: ‘Deutschland! Deutschland! Deutschland!’? How both the old and the young women were ready to open their wombs to the leader’s seed? But not Auntie Lotte – no, she was a writer, and once upon a time she had written books. Where were those books now? Who needed them now, who needed them when the only things that existed were the wind and the cold, death and starvation? The candle’s flame fluttered in the wind. The storm was howling, licking the wooden walls of their living quarters. Inside it was always cold, only the metal stove helped a little; you had to keep it going all the time, the firewood had to be brought in from outside, collected in the town. It was the children’s job to do this, but they were all so weak from hunger that every trip into town was now a challenge. Even more so because of the soldiers, and the new colonists there – mostly injured, traumatised, shell-shocked officers who had been left behind. They’d been allotted houses, they’d been told to take what they wanted, without a thought being given to those already living in them. Every building, every house, every yard had an owner. Take everything, that’s your right, those are the spoils of war. An officer and his bawling wife were now living in their house. The man had trouble using his right arm, but still managed to beat his wife. The first time they’d heard the screams of that plump woman who wore Eva’s nightgown as a dress, everyone was scared. It sounded like he was going to kill her. Although death was all around them, it was a horrible thought. A man beating his own wife was quite a strange thing, especially when you were six years old, like Renate, or five, like Helmut. But he didn’t kill her then, or any of the other times. In the beginning they were scared whenever they heard the unusual, loud lament that continued through the night, seemingly coming from the most unhappy person in the world, or perhaps some wild animal. But after a while it was no longer alarming – to them, it became a kind of love song.

  When the first Russian soldiers appeared, people prayed. They were afraid, but they believed that the descendants of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky would not be cruel and savage conquerors. A neighbour would come into their yard to smoke a pipe, and would say to their grandfather that the Russians were educated people, there was nothing to be afraid of, they were human beings like everyone else. But then the Russians showed up, and some were quite short, the rifles slung over their shoulders, banging against their heels, and it was difficult to see how their feet didn’t get tangled up in their long greatcoats. The neighbour soon became convinced that these lads, on whose faces the war had left its mark, had never read Tolstoy, that they had read something else, had experienced something else. That for them, hardened as they were by several of the most brutal years of war, one more death was of no great importance, and besides, they were consumed by their desire for revenge. The neighbour, who could mumble the odd word of Russian, tried to speak to them, but soon he was hanging from a branch of the apple tree in his own yard, his feet unable to reach the ground. Their grandfather protested against the fact that his family was being turned out of their house, out of their beloved farmstead, and left only with the woodshed in the yard, in which he and his son’s five children, his daughter and his daughter-in-law would have to find shelter. He went off to look for justice from the victors’ leaders, and never came back. Auntie Lotte, his daughter, had told him: ‘Papa, don’t go, you won’t change anything, you won’t—’ But he, despite being old and ill, was a veteran of the First World War, and proud. He put his tobacco pouch in his pocket, and took some expensive items – gold and silver spoons, a cigar case with an eagle on it, and some other small things that might be able to save their family, their house, their home. After all, their children needed warmth, and beds to sleep in. ‘We’ll give away everything if it can save our home,’ said Grandfather, but never returned. And so the woodshed became their home.

  True, they weren’t turned out immediately.

  The first conquerors had seemed better. Eva liked playing music. She had even studied at the conservatoire, but hadn’t graduated because she had fallen in love with a tall, constantly smiling, freckled farmer by the name of Rudolph. He took her back to his farm in East Prussia. At first it was hard for this young lady from Berlin, but love conquers all – child after child was born. Rudolph bought her a wonderful upright piano. She had wanted a grand, but that would have been too expensive for a farmer’s family. Then the war began, and Rudolph said his goodbyes. Eva played Mozart and Rachmaninov, and sang those folk songs the children liked. Oh, that was a blessed, happy time, something that had probably never existed, something that she had probably only dreamt about in the cold woodshed, sleeping the sleep of the hungry.

  The first arrivals were more cultured. When a Russian captain found out there was a piano in their house, he would come round, make his apologies, ask Eva’s permission and sit down at the instrument. He played wonderfully; most probably he had been a musician before the war. His name was Andrei.

  He usually played Beethoven. He liked the ‘Moonlight Sonata’ most of all, with its very dramatic ending, and to Eva i
t seemed that it wasn’t her piano being played, but a fine concert grand. One day, Captain Andrei opened some sheet music of her mother’s that was lying next to it. The pieces were unfamiliar to him; they were compositions by Erik Satie. Eva didn’t tell him where she’d got it from. Rudolph had served in occupied Paris and sent it to her. The music, seemingly so simple, yet captivating, was Eva’s favourite. It wasn’t clear whether it was Satie she loved, or the fact that her beloved Rudolph himself had sent it to her. Perhaps both. Andrei began to play Satie too, and particularly liked Gnossienne No. 5. Little Renate also adored it, and would dance to it in the kitchen as the Russian captain played.

  Then the captain left, and others came who had no need of the piano, nor of Satie and Beethoven. They confiscated everything, drove out the household pets, and banished the family to the woodshed. Grandfather never returned. No one tried to talk about him any more. He had left, and that was a fact.

  There was no piano in the woodshed; there was almost nothing there, only the metal stove they had managed to get by some miracle and which they relied on every day, the candles obtained by Auntie Lotte from who knows where, and the few things they had managed to carry out of the house: some clothes, bedding and Grandfather’s sheepskin coat. Instead of a bed they had planks, on which Renate, Monika, Brigitte and Helmut were now lying covered with everything they had, or almost everything. Auntie Lotte was sitting next to them, stoking the stove and giving them a fairy tale instead of food. Pinned to the walls were the photographs they’d managed to save in which a camera had frozen happy moments from the past. The whole family was pictured: Grandfather, their father Rudolph, a smiling Heinz and their smiling mother Eva, and everyone, everyone was smiling, laughing, full of happiness and contentment. Lotte’s glance slid along the walls like an X-ray, scanning the smiles in the photographs. She sighed and threw some scraps of wood into the stove. It would have been better if the children had fallen asleep, but they were awake. They were waiting for Auntie Lotte to continue the tale. She was always telling them stories, unsuccessfully trying to distract them from their hunger and the cold. The cold was everywhere, it was in the blood. Hunger was gnawing at them from the inside like an icy fire that could not be assuaged; it was smouldering – it would probably never die out. The children could no longer remember a time when they hadn’t been hungry. And whatever fairy tale they were being told, there was always some mention of bread, of meat, of turnips, of delicious food.

  Eva still hadn’t come back. A snowstorm was howling and whistling outside, interspersed with gunshots. Somewhere, dogs were tearing into each other.

  ‘When’s Mama coming home?’ asked Renate.

  ‘She’s coming, she’s coming.’

  In the night, Hansel secretly got up and crept outside so his stepmother wouldn’t hear him. The moon was high, its light playing on the road, the stones shining like buttons. Hansel decided to fill his pockets with those moon buttons. He filled his pockets with the shining stones and went back to bed. When dawn broke, the stepmother came in to wake the children: ‘Get up, lazybones, we’re going to cut down some trees, we’ve run out of firewood.’

  ‘When’s Mama coming home?’ asked Helmut.

  ‘She’ll be home, she’ll be home soon…be patient.’

  And they all went into the forest. Gretel was walking along, silently crying, thinking about what was going to happen next – Stepmother will set us on the wrong path through the forest – but Hansel was striding out boldly; he seemed cheerful and happy. Every few steps he dropped some of the stones he’d collected in the night. The father told the children to gather twigs and build a bonfire. The children built the bonfire and their father lit it. ‘Now,’ said their stepmother, ‘you rest by the fire. Your father and I will go and cut some firewood. But,’ she said, ‘don’t move away from the bonfire, because the forest animals may tear you to pieces.’

  ‘When’s Mama coming home?’ asked Monika.

  ‘She’s coming, Monika dear, she’s coming.’

  The stepmother and father left the children by the bonfire and went deeper into the forest. They hadn’t gone to cut firewood. All they had done was tie a log to a tree: the log swayed in the wind, and when it hit the tree it sounded like the blows from an axe. The children were very hungry. They hadn’t had so much as a crumb of bread to eat for a long time, but they knew that sleep could conquer hunger – you fell asleep, and you no longer wanted to eat. And so they fell asleep and they slept peacefully by the fire that kept them warm, right until midnight.

  ‘I want to eat… I want to eat,’ Helmut began to sob.

  ‘Mama’s going to be back soon, she’ll bring something, just be patient.’

  ‘I want to eat.’

  ‘Listen to the fairy tale until Mama brings back something to eat. Get some sleep.’

  ‘I don’t want the fairy tale, I want some bread!’

  Brigitte, his older sister, couldn’t stand Helmut’s constant moaning any more:

  ‘Go to sleep, stop snivelling! You think it’s worse for you than for us? You think you’re hungrier than we are? Helmut, we all want to eat, but you have to be patient. Tomorrow we’re all going to go and look for bread and we’ll find some, we will find some. And perhaps your brother Heinz will come back from Lithuania and bring back all kinds of things. Sleep now, sleep, my little child.’

  ‘And what if a wolf’s eaten Heinz in the forest?’

  Lotte poured some boiled water from the teapot into a cup, and gave it to Helmut. There hadn’t been any wolves around for a long time; these days they existed only in fairy tales. People were like wolves now.

  ‘Drink the hot water, it’ll warm you up, you’ll sleep better if your tummy is warm.’

  Helmut drank.

  The other children also asked for some hot water.

  DURING THE WINTER it was dark, but never completely dark, the snow driving back the coming night with its whiteness. Eva was hurrying. She slipped, fell, got up, stopped, and listened to see if anyone was following her, if she could hear any shouting or gunshots. The snowstorm and the night’s dim light made it difficult to get her bearings, but she knew that the strip of light above the rooftops marked where the Russian army headquarters were, in the former school building. It meant that she now had to turn left. Between the houses there would be a narrow passage, and Eva would then find herself in the town’s main street; she only had to cross it and would be almost home.

  The swirling snow was making her eyelids stick together. Eva clasped the linen sack with the potato peels to her breast – she needed to be at home, to get home as quickly as possible. She turned a corner and happened on some Russian soldiers, smoking. For a moment Eva didn’t know what to do, but then she started running, diving into the darkness, running as fast as she could, catching her breath between the houses. The soldiers had noticed her, and she turned right so that her footprints would lead them in the wrong direction. They were shouting something in Russian, whistling, perhaps swearing, perhaps they were simply surprised: ‘Look, a woman – a German, not at all bad – where are you running, you bitch – where’re you running to? – we’re not going to do anything bad to you – you’ll see how much you’re going to like it – hey, woman, stop, stop!’

  Eva was already very close to her yard, very close to her children. She was standing with her back to the barn, listening, but her heart was beating so loudly, thumping so loudly that she couldn’t hear anything. Eva was terrified, she was cold, despair slowly began to overwhelm her. How long would she be able to stand here? How long would she be able to hide, when the raging wind was going right through her from all directions, and her cheeks, which had already lost all feeling, were now frozen after she’d spent so long being lost in the night, running from her persecutors?

  Auntie Lotte was telling the tale of Hansel and Gretel, she was telling them about how Hansel dropped breadcrumbs on the path so they wouldn’t get lost.

  ‘I wouldn’t drop any breadcrumbs,’ said Helmut
, ‘I’d eat them. Grandfather used to spread honey on a large slice of bread, but I didn’t want to eat it, and Grandfather said the day would come when, after a shit, I’d want to eat but there’d be nothing to eat.’

  ‘Don’t use words like that,’ said Auntie Lotte.

  ‘How did he know?’ asked Helmut. ‘How did he know, Auntie Lotte, the day would come when we’d be as hungry as we are now and want to eat?’

  ‘Shut your mouth!’ shouted Brigitte. ‘Shut your mouth! We all want to eat, why are you the only one whining and whinging, why are you the only one who can’t calm down? You’ve been told Mama will come home, she’ll bring something. Go to sleep, otherwise I won’t be able to stop myself, I’ll pull your ear off, you’ll see how angry I’ll be!’

  ‘Children, children, don’t fight, don’t quarrel, shh! Try to sleep. We can’t be angry with each other now, we have to be nice to each other, we have to help each other, it’s the only way. It’s the only way we’ll survive, only by helping each other.’

  ‘Shh! Can you hear that?’ asked Renate. Everyone listened.

  Yes, there were footsteps, quick steps, the crunching of snow, yes, it couldn’t be a mistake, it was Mama, she’d come back! Auntie Lotte went to the door and asked: ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Lotte, it’s me,’ Eva’s muffled voice could be heard from the other side. Lotte opened the door. Eva came inside, bringing with her a gust of snow. Lotte quickly closed the door. Eva collapsed by the iron stove. She said: ‘Lotte, I’ve brought something.’

  ‘What is it, what happened to you, Eva?’ Lotte quietly asked her.

  ‘I was being chased, they were chasing me, I don’t know if I managed to get away from them. Soldiers were chasing us, Martha and I became separated.’