When We Fall Read online

  ‘You must not swim until you have shown your papers and paid for your session.’

  ‘Don’t you remember me, from yesterday?’

  ‘You must pay.’

  ‘Of course, I know that. But I stood by the desk, waiting and waiting and no one came. Is it a problem to pay on my way out?’

  ‘No, the rules say that you must pay before you swim.’

  ‘All right. Do you want me to come now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘As quick as I can?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well.’

  Ewa puts her toes over the edge of the platform. Through the water’s choppiness, she sees something red wobbling on the floor of the deep end. The bottom of the pool is a very long way down. But without pausing to think, she puts her hands together, prayer-like and points them at the lost locker key. Then she leans forward and lets herself fall.

  Posen, Greater German Reich

  Friday 8 October

  Broom handles are crossed over the toilet-block doorway but Lange is still trying to get in.

  Ewa’s father puts up both hands. ‘I’m sorry, Untersturmführer. Our hygiene service is in progress.’

  The straps of Lange’s braces already hang around his haunches. His face drops. ‘But where can I…?’

  ‘Use the old outhouse if you like. The water’s turned off but there’s a cinder pail…’

  Lange has already set off across the yard and is scraping open the outhouse door.

  Oskar Hartman goes back to mopping the linoleum and mutters under his breath. ‘We wouldn’t have to clean up in here so often if they were a bit more particular in their ways.’

  ‘Quite so.’

  Ewa squirts a puff of scouring powder at the tiles. The dried orange dribble beneath the powder is some distance from the urinal. When the occupiers came, her father took out a considerable loan in order to build this wooden sanitary block in the yard. The occupying authorities made it very plain that no officers would be billeted in the guest house unless modern, plumbed-in conveniences and a shower were installed. But the toilet chalet is already riddled with black mould. It has to be cleaned at least twice a day to keep the damp and the smells at bay.

  Ewa snaps off her rubber gloves and tosses the scrubbing brushes into the bucket. ‘There. I’ve done. And I will get out of the way so that you can let the desperate dears back in.’

  Ewa’s father chuckles and leans on his mop handle. ‘Going somewhere?’

  ‘Nowhere special.’

  ‘Or meeting someone?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘You’ve got your mother’s blouse on.’

  Ewa pushes a loop of the lilac bow back inside the collar of her sweater. ‘I couldn’t find anything else clean to put on.’

  There is more to it than that, of course. But her father will not remember that it was the silk blouse that Ewa had on when she first saw Stefan in the Aero Club bar. As she’d walked in, he had looked straight at her and his pale eyes would not then look away. Once he came over and started speaking to her, Ewa knew that, before long, his fingers would be undoing the silk-covered buttons.

  Oskar shakes his head. ‘That blouse cost me a fortune. Your mother had fallen in love with it and was determined. Said it would last her a lifetime. It did, I suppose.’

  ‘Papa…’

  ‘I’m sorry. Where are you going, Maus?’

  ‘Back to the woods, for more mushrooms.’

  ‘This late in the day?

  ‘I’ll get what I can. They’ll be fresh at least, for the Gauleiter’s soup tomorrow. And they’re free.’

  ‘Good, Maus. What would I do without you?’

  ‘You’d manage, Papa.’

  Her voice sounds thin and peevish. She does not mean it to but a tight band of muscle, like a surgical brace, has suddenly constricted her breath. How can she lie to her father about this of all things? She can well imagine the look of hollow sadness there would be in his eyes if she told him where she is really going this morning. She is going to her wedding, and he is not invited. He is not even to be told. The thought makes her want to retch. As she puts her face up to kiss her father’s whiskery cheek, Ewa hopes he will imagine that the tears in her eyes are for her mother.

  But even as she pedals past the Gestapo building on her way to the farm, Ewa still cannot believe that she is going to be Stefan Bergel’s wife. The idea is both magical and absurd. And it will complicate her life entirely. After tomorrow night, when Stefan has returned to the other side of Europe, she will, very likely, never see him again, and so she will return to the grey half-world of not knowing whether he is alive or dead. And yet she will never be able to marry anyone else.

  Ewa stands up on the pedals and speeds along smooth German concrete as she tries to make herself care about this fact. But she cannot. She wants Stefan to be hers, so that even if the Dakota he is travelling on disappears into the clouds forever, she will always be able to say: I am Stefan Bergel’s wife.

  Turning off the highway, Ewa raises her face to the weak sun. It is not far now. She pulls off the track by the beech copse and dismounts, leaning the handlebars against a smooth grey trunk. Then she makes for a clump of holly bushes and crouches behind them, shivering, to piss on the dead leaves.

  When she stands, Ewa peels off her sweater and the lilac blouse shimmers in the dull woodland. But as she looks down, she notices that one of the silk-covered cuff buttons has popped from its eyelet and fallen into the crumbled ground. She drops to her knees and scrabbles through crackling leaves as she looks for the button. There is no spare and without this one, the blouse will be ruined. A dank earth smell rises from beneath the leaf cover, but the button has gone.

  Ewa shakes her head, hot tears prickling. This is her wedding outfit, for God’s sake, because today, ridiculously, is her wedding day. When she was twelve, she would imagine the proceedings of this day over and over with her mother always asking the same questions:

  And your dress?

  White satin with a four-metre train.

  And the church?

  St Mary Magdalene, of course.

  And the flowers?

  Orange blossom around the door, lilies by the altar.

  Her mother never seemed to tire of this conversation until her last months when she tired of everything and no longer spoke. Ewa presses her hand to her mouth. She will not let herself cry. A new life is coming, she tells herself, a better life. She has had enough of being Eva, the blank-eyed blonde on her identity card. Neither does she want to go back to being a naïve, passionate girl called Ewa Hartman. It is time to become a grown woman – someone self-assured, clever, brave. And for that she needs a new name.

  Folding the sweater into the bicycle basket, she remounts and bumps the short way down the track towards the wood shed. Through the pale trees, she sees that someone has hung berry-covered rowan twigs and trailing woodbine around the shed’s plank door. Icy silk strokes Ewa’s arm as she pushes the door open.

  Inside, dirty light filters from a high window on to log-stacks and paint-peeled walls. A low table is covered with a white cloth and draped with dark leaves and red berries. Faces turn to her, smiling; Haller with his hair slicked flat, Robak’s neck pinched into a celluloid collar. Behind the low table, a man in working clothes picks up a length of cream fabric that is stiff with gold embroidery, and hangs it around his neck.

  Stefan steps from the shadows into the light. And as Ewa goes towards him, she sees only the searchlight blue of his eyes. He reaches for her hands, lifts them to his mouth, presses her cold knuckles to his warm lips. She cannot speak.

  The man with the embroidered stole has dark stubble and nervous eyes. He mutters words, familiar and meaningless: In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti… then he says her name: Ewa and makes the sign of the cross. He asks her a qu
estion she does not quite hear. But she says yes. Yes to anything, in any language.

  Stefan opens his hand. Inside are two plain copper bands, bent and soldered like something from a plumber’s tool bag. He takes Ewa’s right hand and slips on the ring. Their heads are touching and she feels the pull of his hair entwined with hers.

  The priest wraps the embroidered stole around their joined hands, gold thread crackling softly as it bends. Hidden in the folds, Stefan’s fingertips flutter inside Ewa’s palm. The priest again makes the sign of the cross. Ewa is now, miraculously, Mrs Bergel.

  Stefan’s kiss is hard and quick. Then he fishes in his jacket pocket and pulls out a folded rectangle of paper and an indelible pencil sharpened with a knife. Clearing a space amongst the trailing woodbine he opens the marriage certificate, flattening it with his hand. His signature loops along the dotted line. He holds out the pencil to Ewa.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘What shall I write?’

  ‘Your name, of course.’

  ‘Which one?’

  He smiles as if she is joking. But is it Ewa, or Eva; Hartman or Bergel? Each one speaks and acts like a different person.

  ‘The one you were born with.’

  She takes the pencil and writes Ewa Hartman. Stefan passes the pencil to the priest who signs illegibly. The embroidered stole is already hidden behind the bib of his dungarees. He seems to have said nothing to Ewa except in Latin.

  The pencil goes from Haller to Robak. She sees what they write: ZJ Haller and Tomasz Puźniak. Haller produces a bottle of pre-war vodka and thimble glasses.

  ‘Cheers!’

  Incredibly, Haller is also handing round tiny triangles of white bread topped with black pearls of caviar. Perhaps his unseen wife has prepared this as a wedding breakfast. Salt is then sprinkled on a few cuts of dry bread, tasted by them all then thrown on the ground. Ewa looks over her shoulder but the priest has already gone.

  A plump damp hand takes hold of hers and Ewa finds Robak, or Tomasz as she now thinks of him, squeezing her fingers to his lips. Robak, the worm, may have been his code name but it suited him.

  ‘I wish you happiness.’

  She laughs. Happiness seems as unlikely a prospect for her marriage as caviar at a wood-shed wedding. But she wants to believe him.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Tomasz’s dark eyes are still fixed on her and she has to pull her hand free.

  He gives a half-smile. ‘You should cry now, Mrs Bergel, should you not?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You know what they say: a bride must cry at her wedding or she will spend the rest of the marriage in tears.’

  ‘I don’t take any notice of those old Polish sayings.’

  ‘Don’t you? Let’s hope they are not right.’

  ‘How can they be?’

  Ewa is not as sure as she sounds and her heart is thudding. But she is glad that her voice seems steady. Because if she starts to cry now, she knows that she will not be able to stop.

  Lüssow, Greater German Reich

  Friday 8 October

  ‘And now for our honeymoon.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘Have faith in me, Mrs Bergel.’

  ‘Don’t, Stefan.’

  His fizz of good humour makes Ewa feel even more bereft.

  ‘Why not?’ He is wheeling her bike from the shade of the trees on to the open field beyond. ‘You see? A walk in the beautiful Polish countryside. Who could wish for a nicer honeymoon?’

  She tries to smile. White flowers unfurl in the short yellow grass and autumn sunshine makes a circle of silken heat on Ewa’s back, but it will not lift the heaviness inside her. Since leaving the wood-shed chapel, the seriousness of this step she has taken and the likelihood of it ending in grief have tightened into a hard lump at the top of her chest. Stefan’s lightness is becoming infuriating. But she knows how to put a stop to it.

  ‘I looked inside the suitcase.’

  ‘Did you?’ Stefan comes instantly to a stop. ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘Somewhere safe.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Can we sit down?’ Ewa throws her sweater on new-mown grass at the edge of a ditch. ‘All that stuff… it’s from Katyn, isn’t it?’

  Stefan lays the bike on the ground and sits next to her. ‘You can see, then, why it is important.’

  ‘To the families?’

  ‘That as well.’

  ‘As well? What do you mean?’

  ‘The evidence is too important to be returned to the families yet.’

  ‘What?’

  She turns to him aghast and his face darkens.

  ‘Each package holds the possessions of an identifiable Polish officer.’

  ‘So all the more reason to find the families…’

  ‘No.’ He looks at the sky. ‘A thorough examination of this evidence has already been carried out. There are many dated objects amongst the dead officers’ possessions. And no date is later than April 1940.’

  ‘What does that prove?’

  Stefan sits straighter. ‘It proves, conclusively, who are the murderers. You see, the Wehrmacht did not advance into that part of Russia until the summer of 1941. So even though the British are saying that this is Hitler’s crime, Germany could not have committed the massacre at Katyn. When the British see my evidence they will change their minds about who is responsible. And change their minds about their Soviet allies.’

  ‘You think that would be a good thing?’

  ‘Of course. It is the truth.’

  Ewa shakes her head. ‘I would lay a bet that the British already know the truth but it suits them not to believe it.’

  ‘But when the facts are presented to the world…’

  Ewa snorts. ‘It will make no difference. People will believe what they want to believe, regardless of inconvenient facts. Just ask the charming occupants of Guest House Hartman what they think they are fighting for.’

  He turns to look directly at her and his voice has a hard edge. ‘You saw the numbers marked on the envelopes. The numbering starts at one and goes up to more than four thousand. That’s how many bodies were excavated this summer.’

  ‘Who told you all this?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I will be taking this evidence with me, back to England on the Dakota.’ He looks away and picks at the short grass. ‘Is the suitcase at the guest house?’

  ‘No. The smell is too strong.’

  ‘Where then?’

  ‘Not far away.’

  ‘Why won’t you tell me where it is?’

  ‘I don’t want you going looking for it without me.’ Irritation needles through her. ‘Why did you not bring it here and hide it at the farm if you are so bothered about it?’

  ‘I collected the case in the city and it’s a hard thing to conceal, as you know. It is also best that Haller knows nothing about this plan until he absolutely has to.’ Stefan’s hand scatters the confetti of grass clippings. ‘It may not be clear where everyone’s loyalties really lie until they are tested.’

  Ewa wishes suddenly that there was no copper band on her finger to complicate her indignation. She sighs and sinks back on to the field, throwing her arms above her head. Balls of white cloud dot the pale blue sky.

  ‘Don’t go, Stefan.’

  ‘I’m right here.’

  ‘I mean on the Dakota.’

  ‘I have to, Ewa.’

  He fumbles in his pocket for cigarettes and a lighter as Ewa props herself up on one elbow. Above, not far off, an aircraft engine wheedles.

  ‘Are you going to fly the Dakota?’

  ‘No, no. I’m not trained for heavy transport types.’

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘The Dakota?’ His eyes narrow as he sucks on the cigar
ette. ‘It looks like the future.’

  She wonders what he means. ‘Big, then?’

  ‘Not too big to land on this field.’

  ‘Here?’

  He nods. She tries to picture this sunlit grassy expanse at night with the roar of a transport plane plunging down to land. But she cannot.

  Above them a reedy engine whines. Stefan glances up, and then flings his cigarette away. Before Ewa quite realises what is happening, he has fallen on to her, his heaviness pushing the air out of her ribcage, his face covering hers.

  ‘Lie still. Don’t show your face.’

  She can hardly speak for the weight of him. ‘Why? What is it?’

  Across his shoulder at the corner of her vision, something moves in the sky; long rounded wings, spindly bracing struts, toy-like wheels.

  He whispers. ‘A Storch.’

  ‘They’re not looking at us, surely?’

  ‘They look at everything. Photograph everything.’

  Both of them take quick shallow breaths. Ewa wonders if, from two hundred metres above, it must look as if they are making love even though it feels nothing like.

  Stefan’s eyes flicker. ‘Can you see it? Is it circling?’

  But when Ewa locates the outline in the sky, the plane is flying away. ‘No, it’s gone.’

  Stefan rolls over onto the grass. Without meaning to, Ewa lets out a thin cry as his weight on her is replaced by a swirl of air.

  He stares at the sky. ‘Come with me, Ewa. On the Dakota.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To England.’

  ‘That’s not funny.’

  He turns on his side to look at her and the grass gives off a smell like the start of a summer morning.

  ‘I’m not joking, Ewa. You just need to slip out of the guest house at the end of the Gauleiter’s dinner and come to find us in the milk truck. I will drive into the city with Tomasz.’

  ‘Jesus, Stefan.’

  ‘I have to come to town anyway. For the suitcase.’

  Ewa’s stomach tightens. ‘How can I go to England? My father…’

  ‘There is nothing in any of this that would implicate your father.’