When We Fall Page 12

  Ewa ignores his teasing. ‘I thought we could put him into the balcony room.’

  ‘When is he coming?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. But soon. Before Wednesday.’

  ‘I meant to tell you that they want us to keep our best room free this week for some Berlin big-wig who might or might not appear.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Beck could go in the gable room.’

  Ewa blinks. The room next to hers. Only a thin wall and a tiny landing between them. ‘He could, I suppose…’

  ‘Good. Then that would be a full house, on paper at least. Which is becoming something of a rarity. Will you get the beds ready?’

  Ewa nods. She does not quite know what she feels about Beck’s return but the knot of tension in her chest that started with her thought about the Gauleiter’s dinner, feels suddenly heavier. She stuffs the envelope in her skirt pocket.

  ‘But I must do the Resettlement Office’s work first. There’s no telling how long that will take.’

  She follows her father into the kitchen to collect her basket from the top of the dresser and wonders if his eyes narrow as she carries it upstairs. Should he ask why she needs to take the basket to her room, she will say that the Führer’s framed photograph is up there as well as a few knick-knacks for the settlers. But when she comes back down, and the basket is packed not just with the photograph of Hitler but also with a hidden scroll of typed addresses, her father says nothing.

  Ewa stands at the kitchen table to cover the photo frame with cloths then pile the basket with brushes and a tube of scouring powder as well as potatoes, onions and a joint of mutton neck for the settlers’ stew.

  Her father drains his coffee cup and wipes his moustache. ‘Have you decided on a menu for Saturday?’

  ‘Mushroom soup. Veal Schnitzel. Apple strudel.’

  He nods. ‘There will be thirty of them you know.’

  ‘I know. Will you speak to the butcher, Papa? If I do it, he will feel at liberty to throw saucy remarks at me in exchange for that much meat.’

  ‘Yes, Maus, I will. And you must tell me if he ever does that to you. I know a good way to get our own back.’

  Ewa looks sideways at her father and hopes that getting their own back does not involve calling in favours from the lodgers, although she knows that it probably does.

  ‘See you later, Papa.’

  ‘Take good care of yourself.’

  As Ewa closes the back door behind her, she wonders if he meant something by that last, odd turn of phrase. He could not, surely, know about the roll of underground intelligence hidden in her basket. Maybe the fizz of energy that she always gets before making a drop has made her alert to danger signals that are not really there.

  Outside, the clutter of cobbled streets and painted houses are washed in yellow light. Ewa wears her headscarf knotted on top of her head in readiness to clean the apartment. They are always left in a disgusting state after evictions. She braces her arm through the handle of the heavy basket and lets the sagging sleeve of her old cardigan cover the place where the roll of typed paper is stashed.

  The streets are busier than normal, even for a Monday. A vast black Maybach with a Berlin number plate is edging down the street, clearly lost. Ewa has to move away from the kerb as it goes by. The fat man driving it glances up at her expectantly as if he is considering winding down the window to ask directions. Ewa catches his eye but the man turns away and the car purrs onwards. He must think from the way she is dressed that she is a Pole.

  Sunlight stabs as Ewa turns the corner on to Sapieha Square and she puts up her free hand against the glare. For a moment, she is disorientated. All of the covered stalls on the market place look identical in the bleached light, and none that she can see are selling flowers. But once she walks into the maze of stalls and finds shade, she remembers the location of Wanda’s kiosk and weaves her way towards it.

  Wanda is not her real name, of course, and the girl does not spend much time working on the flower stall. But she has been there the last few times that Ewa visited and she makes a perfect costermonger with her ruddy cheeks and neckerchief.

  ‘Asters! Dahlias! Phlox!’

  Wanda has a lusty voice but her German is badly accented. She throws a side-glance Ewa’s way as she shouts. Ewa stops and pushes at the wet stems of some garish, ball-headed dahlias in a metal bucket.

  ‘How much are these?’

  There is a note of condescension that inflects her voice whenever she speaks Polish nowadays. Wanda comes over pulling her hands in their fingerless gloves out of her apron pocket.

  ‘I can do you six, assorted colours, for one Reichsmark fifty.’

  ‘That’s more than they cost last time!’

  Wanda shrugs. ‘All the hotels are full this week. And they all want flowers on the tables.’

  ‘One twenty-five.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Ewa sniffs and throws up a narrowed glance but Wanda’s face is blank.

  ‘All right then.’

  Wanda picks out the dripping flowers, pink, red, orange, yellow and rolls them in a triangle of newspaper. She rolls her eyes at the two coins on Ewa’s palm and makes a show of raking through the change in her pouch.

  Ewa sniffs. ‘I don’t want all your little Reichspfennige clogging up my purse.’

  ‘All right. If you come this way, there’s a fifty in my bag.’

  Ewa follows her behind the flower buckets and under the awning, placing the heavy basket on the ground as Wanda opens a knapsack. And then, so swiftly that Ewa hardly sees how it is done, the dahlias are slid into the basket as Wanda removes the typed paper scrolls and transfers them to her knapsack.

  Coins are exchanged as well as glances. Ewa is doing her best to keep her face neutral. But euphoria rushes through her as she turns away from the stall and strides off with nothing more incriminating in her basket than a bunch of ugly dahlias.

  She cannot help smiling. Really, it doesn’t seem risky at all. There are only women in the market today, and most of them seem Polish anyway. All of the Gestapo are preening themselves for the goings-on at the Castle. This morning turns out to have been an excellent opportunity to make the drop.

  Ewa winds through the stalls and then back on to the street, heading up the hill. It looks as though a brand-new red and black banner has been put up on the post office. As she walks towards it, she cannot help but admire the striking effect of the colours against the pale stone façade.

  And then, she feels a hand on her elbow.

  ‘Fräulein.’

  Her insides freeze. One word is enough to know that the man is German.

  She should turn now, wrench her arm from his grip and say How dare you? in her best Berliner accent. But she can’t speak, can hardly stand. The only sensation in her whole body is the pressure of that hand on her elbow steering her up towards the post office. From the corner of her eye, Ewa sees the man’s shoes and trousers; mud on his toecaps, dark grey flannel rippling as he walks. A wide-brimmed hat is pulled down over his face.

  ‘Keep walking. Don’t speak.’

  For some reason the man is speaking Polish now. And the voice sounds familiar. It sounds like his voice. His voice. Mother of God, she has gone mad. That is the only explanation. Living a double life so long has made her insane.

  The man is walking next to her now, the grip on her elbow still firm, gliding her across the flagstones. And then she looks, just for a second, at his face and straight into his pale blue eyes.

  Only his hold on her elbow stops her from buckling and falling over right there on the street. It is his face. His. And then she says his name but her throat makes almost no sound.

  ‘Stefan.’

  Posen, Greater German Reich

  Monday 4 October

  ‘Stefan…’

  He pulls at the bri
m of his hat and steers Ewa away from the well-dressed couple about to enter the revolving door of the post office.

  ‘Stefan… I can’t breathe.’

  She closes her eyes and the swastika from the red and black banner is imprinted inside her eyelids. The clanking of a tram is muffled as if underwater.

  He grips her elbow harder. ‘Come, let’s cross over.’

  His voice. It is still his voice. She tries to reply but cannot speak. He guides her across the cobbles and the grooved tramlines on to the landscaped centre of the boulevard. A man smoking a pipe is sitting on one of the park benches but the others, each with a neatly painted Nur für Deutsche sign, are empty.

  Ewa sinks on to the seat beside a red-leafed maple bush. Blood drains from her brain. Jesus. Stefan is back. Blackness rims her vision and she leans her head forward on to her knees. There is a light hand on her back. Stefan’s hand. This cannot be and yet it is. She turns her head and Stefan is still there, smiling.

  ‘Ewa.’

  Warily, she sits up. ‘You are not dead?’

  He shrugs as if the fact baffles him too.

  Her hand goes to her mouth. ‘But I saw your lizard-skin pen…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘… in the soil. Beside the hollow bodies.’

  And she can still see those heads from the cinema screen, round and blank like airless footballs except for the gaping black shadows of the faces they used to wear. She starts to shake and Stefan rubs her back a little harder,

  ‘There now, Ewa.’

  Saliva slimes her fingers. ‘You were there, in Russia… how… how…?’

  ‘Here, have this.’ Stefan puts a cigarette between her lips. His voice is quiet and he is still speaking Polish. ‘Just smoke until you feel all right.’

  On the other side of the ornamental shrubs, the man with the pipe has folded his newspaper and is walking towards them. Stefan brings his face close to Ewa’s and flicks the lighter until it catches. His face is fuller than it used to be, the skin smooth and tanned – a grown man’s face.

  The pipe-smoker passes them, and walks away without looking back. The cigarette shakes in Ewa’s hand but her breathing is slowing. Stefan smiles again and looks more relaxed, but more uncertain.

  ‘So, aren’t you pleased to see me?’

  She sucks hard on the cheap cigarette, a wave of warmth loosening her limbs. ‘Stefan… I…’

  Suddenly his face drops. ‘If there is someone else, I wouldn’t presume…’

  Furiously she shakes her head and, for the first time, looks at him properly. The gaze locks them together.

  ‘No. There is no one.’

  On the bench, Stefan’s little finger edges on to hers and a spark quickens in Ewa’s stomach like the first strike of a lighter.

  ‘Is there somewhere, Ewa, somewhere we can go?’

  She knows what he means. She feels the meaning in her fingertips, in her gut, in the roots of her hair.

  She nods. ‘It’s not far, near Wall Strasse.’

  He frowns. ‘You mean Wały…’

  ‘Yes.’

  The name of the street has the same meaning in both languages. She realises that he cannot have been in the city long if the new name puzzles him.

  ‘Will you go first? Can you stand up all right, Ewa?’

  She runs a knuckle along her lower eyelash and whispers. ‘Even if no one can hear you should call me Eva.’

  His eyes narrow but he nods.

  She takes a final drag on the cigarette before standing and stamping it under her shoe. ‘Don’t follow too closely.’

  It would not do to be seen with him, whatever his story might be. It would not do at all. And she is glad to have a few minutes to gather herself from the shock, and to think. As she stops to cross Friedrich Strasse, she throws a look behind. Stefan is still there on the park bench. Stefan. Not a prison letter re-read a thousand times, nor a cheap ring, nor a ghost, but the man himself. And, saints in heaven, he looks good. His body is less boyish than it was – broader and more muscular. He looks well fed. He looks German.

  She tries not to rush. Her breathing is still not right. And this is a moment to savour, one that she has tried to conjure into reality for the past four years. At first she never stopped imagining his return, hoping that if she thought of it often enough whilst awake, it would at least seep into her dreams. But it never did. Instead, nightmares infected her waking hours. As she was scrubbing the sink or brushing the yard, she would see Stefan collapsing on to a frozen railway track. Once, so lost was she in this imagining, that she thought a pile of rubbish sacks against the toilet block was his corpse. Day and night, her mind told her that he was dead. And yet today her eyes and her fingers and her gut are telling her that he is alive.

  Walking up Garnison Strasse she senses his footsteps behind her but dare not look. The basket weighs on her arm, gaudy flowers wobbling. Each step clicks through her brain and triggers a question. Where has he been? How did he get back? What has he been doing? Any young man anywhere in what used to be Poland has already been drafted for labour duties. Stefan, in his smart suit and fedora, does not look as if he has been slaving in a munitions factory or a coal mine. But if he has not been in Poland, where has he been? And more pressingly, what will he, and what will she do now?

  Her legs almost float her past the ochre and cream plasterwork of number thirty-two. She crosses the street, feels for the keys in her pocket and slips the larger one into the metal grille. Iron foliage quivers as the gate clanks open. A sideways look down the street brings a thump of her heart. Stefan is coming. Another key lets her through the main door to the apartment block. She leaves both gate and door ajar.

  Inside, arched windows flood the entrance hall with light. On one of the landings above, a door closes and there are footsteps. Ewa’s heart skips as the front door pushes open and Stefan appears. She puts a finger to her lips then points upwards where there is a man’s gloved hand on the banister.

  But Stefan’s voice is loud and jovial, echoing up the stairwell. ‘Oh, don’t trouble yourself about that, Fräulein.’

  He has put on a slight Bavarian accent. She goes to him and stands on her toes, whispering. There is a small white crust of shaving soap on his ear lobe.

  ‘Someone from the eviction party might still be here.’

  He shrugs and leans against the wall with one hand in his trouser pocket. The footsteps become louder on the stairs and then an elderly man in a Homburg hat appears alongside a woman with a fur stole. There is a tear stain across her cheek. Terror fills their eyes.

  Ewa smiles and thrusts her right arm into the air. ‘Heil Hitler.’

  The man on the stairs hurriedly raises his arm too but seems unable to speak. Stefan pulls at the brim of his hat and lightly raps his heels as the couple pass. They cannot bear to look at him.

  As the door slams behind them, Ewa whispers. ‘They think you’re Gestapo.’

  ‘How do you know I’m not?’

  Lightly, Ewa punches his waist and he seems to cave in, laughing. Her pulse quickens. She knows almost nothing about him any more and the thought charges her with excitement.

  They start up the stairs. Stefan comes closer as they climb. By the third-floor landing, his breath is in her hair. He presses against her as she tries to turn the key in the apartment door. The lock is stiff. Rattling echoes down the stairwell.

  ‘Let me.’

  He reaches out, wrapping arms around her then yanks at the handle and twists as he turns the key. The door springs open.

  Inside, Ewa goes to put the basket down but Stefan is already pulling her to him. The basket falls on its side as he pushes Ewa back and up against the closed apartment door, covering her mouth with his. Cardigan and headscarf fall on to the dirty linoleum. Then Stefan’s hand is inside her blouse. With a gasp, Ewa remembers how this all used to go
. Her hands reach under his jacket, loosening belt and buttons, feeling how ready he is.

  Then his hand is under her skirt, lifting up her leg, keeping his arm under her thigh. She opens her mouth and throws back her head. She is trying to be quiet but a groan slips from her throat as she lowers herself on to him. He pushes into her. Slow hard thrusts, with his head buried in her neck. She moves her hands across the bare skin of his back. Then she finds his head, lifting it until his face is level with hers. His eyes seem far away.

  ‘Look at me.’ She tightens her fingers into his hair. ‘Look at me, Stefan.’

  And he does.

  His shudder crumples on to her and his head falls back on to her shoulder.

  Ewa stares into the dark hallway, breathing hard on a reek of pipe tobacco and damp. Awkwardly, she lifts herself off Stefan. The elastic in her knickers has snapped and they hang limp around her ankle. She slips them off and wipes herself, marvelling at the unlikeliness of what has just happened, and how different the world seems to how it was when she dressed herself this morning.

  Stefan buttons himself as he follows her into the sunlit salon and picks up a chair from the floor. He sits down, breathing hard and looks around the wrecked room. For a moment he meets Ewa’s gaze and they stare, each trying to comprehend the change in the other. Stefan is first to look away.

  ‘Who lives here?’

  The sound of his Polish makes her wince and she answers in German. ‘No one, for now. The expulsion was this morning.’ She goes to the window and tucks up the torn net curtain. ‘But it won’t be long until the new people come.’

  ‘It’s a pigsty.’

  He has switched to German as if he hardly notices the difference.

  ‘You think this is bad?’ She collects the tipped basket and brings it to the table. ‘We don’t have long, Stefan.’ Her eyes stay on him as she unpacks flowers, cleaning cloths and potatoes. ‘I have to clean the whole apartment, spruce it up, make a meal for the settlers. They probably won’t arrive till late this afternoon but it may be earlier and you must be long gone by then.’