When We Fall Read online

  His fist crashes onto the table. Papers flutter. Behind her, the guard takes a step closer. One flake, two flakes, three…

  The Sturmbannführer sits back in his chair. ‘And then you were promoted, given a noiseless typewriter and possibly a microfilm camera. Did you have a camera?’

  Four flakes, five… His voice drifts underwater.

  ‘Can I sit down?’

  ‘No.’

  He puts his elbows on the table and rests his chin on clasped hands. ‘Not unless you stop this waitress crap. Stop denying things that we already know to be true.’

  Somebody, obviously, has talked. Marek? But he disappeared months ago. Denial seems futile. They seem to know everything already. But if she confesses, will it make things better or worse? If only she could sit down she might be able to decide.

  ‘So, tell me, were you given a microfilm camera?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you had a noiseless typewriter?’

  ‘No.’

  She does not see where the blow comes from, does not even feel it at first. Then pain drills into her body with such force that she cannot even cry out. Her teeth are clamped together, grinding. The guard steps away, thudding a short rubber truncheon against his palm. Then the ache bursts into the side of Ewa’s head and water blurs her eyes. Her knees soften. She fastens her eyes on a black scuff mark on the white wall. Stand, don’t fall.

  The Sturmbannführer rolls his eyes. ‘If you’re pretending that you’re about to faint it won’t work. All of our methods have been scientifically tested. A sharp blow behind the ear delivers extreme pain without ever resulting in unconsciousness.’

  Ewa tries to keep all of her weight in her feet, like one of those toys that always comes upright after being knocked over.

  ‘So, I’ll ask you again, and remember – we know the answer. Did you have a noiseless typewriter?’

  Ewa licks her lips. The pain on the side of her head is easing. She can take it.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What was that?’

  The Sturmbannführer scrapes back his chair and walks around the desk. His eyes are level with hers.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘No. I am just a waitress.’

  Her voice is a whisper, but he hears it.

  ‘This stubbornness will have serious consequences. Not just for yourself but for others also. You should know that your father is here awaiting interrogation.’

  She rocks, one foot jerking back to steady herself, as dread descends. Her father. If she yells he knows nothing! that would only admit that there is something to know. And, in truth, Ewa has no idea what her father might already have guessed about the reasons for her comings and goings with a basket over her arm when there was no shopping to be done. Anything he suspects might be tortured out of him. Perhaps they will kill him. And it will be Ewa’s fault.

  The Sturmbannführer’s fishy breath is in her face. He is close enough for each fleck of dandruff to take on its own distinctive shape.

  ‘Tell me then, Fräulein Hartman, exactly what it was you were doing in a farmer’s field at one in the morning without a coat?’

  ‘Meeting my lover.’

  Has she said it too quick? Does it sound too rehearsed?

  ‘Your lover? You surprise me. I thought you were a girl with very high morals.’ He steps backwards to perch on the desk. ‘And who is he, your lover?’

  ‘Jerzy.’

  ‘Jerzy who?’

  ‘I… I’m not sure of his second name.’

  The Sturmbannführer looks genuinely shocked. ‘You really do surprise me.’

  ‘I… we hadn’t known each other long.’

  ‘But long enough to fuck him in a field?’ He shakes his head and picks a half-smoked cigarette out of the ashtray. ‘Why that field?’

  ‘That’s where we used to meet. He lives nearby with his brother.’

  ‘And your coat, or rather the lack of one?’

  Good question. She blinks and remembers Stefan’s jacket amongst the leaf-shreds.

  ‘I laid it on the ground for us.’

  ‘For you… to copulate on?’

  She nods and gulps down a retch in her throat. Stefan. Stefan. She wonders if she even says his name. But if Stefan had not dragged her from the yard, she might not even be here.

  ‘Let me get this clear. You spend Saturday in the kitchen, working hard all day to prepare an admittedly decent meal for the Gauleiter. Then you wait on us all, more or less attentively. But before the dessert is fully served you become so consumed by an itch between your legs that you cycle fifteen kilometres through the night to fuck some Polish peasant in a field.’ His eye twitches. ‘Like a yelping bitch on heat.’

  If she nods or speaks or even catches his eye she will throw up.

  He lights the dead cigarette and sucks hard to revive it. ‘And you and your lover just happened to be fornicating in the same field that had been prepared as a landing strip for the arrival of a Douglas Dakota C-47 that very same night.’

  Slowly, with her hair falling over her eyes, she nods.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  For a few seconds she is aware of his eyes searching her face. She keeps her own eyes open and focuses on his left shoulder. Suddenly, her arms are dragged behind her and wire cuts into her wrists. Her fists and eyes clench shut as she waits for the pain.

  But the impact, when it comes, is no more than the light tap of a finger against her forehead. Through a squint, she sees the Sturmbannführer’s knuckles hovering in front of her face. Again, he taps her brow.

  ‘Hallo! Anybody at home?’ He laughs and throws a wink at the guard. Then the Sturmbannführer’s leer evaporates.

  ‘Take her to the white room.’

  Gestapo HQ Posen, Greater German Reich

  Sunday 10 October

  Hard hands grip Ewa’s arms and pull her, stumbling, along a well-lit corridor. She tries to weep, to scream. At each door she wants to cry out Papa! but her voice is gone. His poor broken body could be slumped behind any one of them. And yet it is just as likely that Oskar, at this very moment, is standing in the kitchen at the guest house wondering where Ewa has got to and what to cook the officers for their Sunday lunch.

  The guard opens a steel-bound door and pushes Ewa forward. Wire bites into her wrists. Then the door slams shut. For a few seconds, the air thickens into blackness, and then the light is switched on. Ewa winces. The blaze is so bright that she cannot fully open her eyes. Every surface in the tiny room is white. No chair, no mattress; nothing but the blinding glare.

  She flops on to the white tile floor, crouching forward, hands still wired behind her. Without warning, a prayer mumbles from her lips: Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu… The words flow like ointment through her brain. And if anything about her life is ever to be right again, she will need a miracle.

  The cell’s dazzle is magnified by a silver reflector around the floodlight. Her eyes cannot adjust to the light. There is a faint smell of burning. Ewa knows that if she had kept the cyanide sweet, this would be the time to take it, although, even now, she would be too cowardly. Stefan has perhaps already bitten into his own chocolate-covered glass phial. Unless, of course, the ambush, the arrests and the shootings were all part of Stefan’s own plan…

  Ewa tries to roll over then cries out with the pain from her bent and bound arm. There seem no edges to the room; ceiling, floor, walls meld into one. It is possible that everything Stefan has said and done this week has been a sham; the declarations of love, the wedding, the entreaty to board the Dakota, the sex. Because all he seemed to care about in the end was the suitcase. And Beck.

  Ewa’s eyelids screw into a tight black dazzle as she thinks of Beck’s soft tongue in her mouth. She has to hope that beating from Haller was enough,
or the crossfire. But whichever way, please God, let him be dead. And then, for all of the Sturmbannführer’s bluster, Ewa might still be in the clear. Only Beck saw what really happened and so, if he is alive, her own life is done for as surely as if she had bitten on a capsule of cyanide.

  Ewa’s shoulders throb and her wrists smart under the wire cuffs. Hydrogen-white light buzzes in the bulb and the brightness closes over her like chlorine-filled water. Even when she closes her eyes, white spots penetrate her retina.

  She tries to fill her mind with a reason to live and recites without speaking, the oath she took in the back room of a bottle factory: ‘… I pledge allegiance to the Republic of Poland. I promise to guard her honour and fight for her liberation with all of my strength, even sacrificing my life…’

  Perhaps they are all dead, not just Beck but Stefan and Tomasz too. About Haller there is no doubt. She saw him die in front of her before the real shooting started. The bullet that floored him seemed to come from the trees behind her; the trees where Tomasz had been standing with his rifle raised, and Stefan too, with a revolver…

  Ave Maria… gratia plena… The prayer comes back, twirling through her mind in a simple intensifying plea. Let time rewind. Let everything be as it was yesterday. And then she would know not to be alone with Beck, not to have anything to do with him. Because if she had not kissed him… Ave Maria… gratia plena…

  Time stretches and unspools. There is no night, no hunger, no sleep. Just whiteness.

  Then the cell door opens. The guard’s features are lost in a black blur. Fear quells pain as he grabs Ewa and drags her limply along corridors, down stairs, to a stark room. No windows, no desk. Just a metal chair and a ceiling light with a grille across it that throws black bars on to grey tiles. In the corner, oddly, there’s a bathtub. Ewa has no idea whether it is night or day.

  I am a waitress, I am German.

  The guard takes off the wire cuffs and points at the chair. The act of flexing her arms and sitting down brings such relief that Ewa almost weeps. Perhaps they will be reasonable this time; listen to her story, believe her. But her story, she knows, is laughable. She puts her hands flat on her thighs. The scrapes on her wrists are flecked with blood; her nails are rimmed with black earth.

  Behind her the door clicks. Footsteps circle. She keeps her eyes on her hands. I am a waitress, I am German. And then her chin is clamped by a hand, her head wrenched up.

  ‘Hello again.’

  The face in hers is not the Sturmbannführer but another she remembers from the dinner; the short man in the checked suit who sat next to Greiser. No suit now, just his shirtsleeves rolled up, and a black shiny apron covering his clothes. A waterproof apron. Why? Her gut is hollow with dread. His fingers press into her cheeks.

  ‘Now then. You’re not going to give me any of that I’m a waitress shit, are you? Because things will get much worse for you if you do. Just start telling me about the past three years – the work you have done for the AK, which of their thugs you know. And what was going to be loaded last night on to the Dakota. ’

  Checked-suit man lets go of her face. But she cannot speak, even if she wanted to. Her shoulders are shaking too hard. She opens her mouth.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I… am… a…’

  ‘Hmmm.’ He takes a step back then smiles and folds his arms. ‘All right. We won’t mess around. I’ll tell you what it is that really interests me. You won’t be surprised. I want to know more about an undercover British agent, Stefan Bergel, code name Anatol.’

  At the sound of his name her heart drops in her chest. But, despite the terror, hope leaps. Does this mean that Stefan really is a British agent; that he is not working for Beck or for the Gestapo; that he did not betray the AK? That he is alive?

  ‘I don’t know anyone called…’

  ‘Come on. Really? You don’t know the name of your own husband?’

  Blood ebbs from her head. ‘I don’t know anyone called Stefan…’

  As he stares at her, she knows that she is going to faint. It’s coming. There is lightness in her head, speckling at the edges of her vision. A nod passes from her interrogator to the guard then he adjusts the roll of his sleeves.

  ‘I’ll ask nicely one more time. But if that doesn’t work we will have to try some other methods which, I’m afraid to say, are rather more brutal than those used by the Sturmbannführer.’

  Sweet Jesus. What does that mean? Teeth ripped out, electrical shocks to her genitals? She clenches her jaw but her teeth will not stop chattering.

  Then the door clicks as it closes and a grey uniform goes past her; the jacket draped over one shoulder, a sleeve dangling loose. She looks up and knows it is him before he turns to face her. Any strength she has left evaporates.

  ‘Hello, Ewa.’

  The wrong name in Beck’s mouth hits her like a punch. He coughs gently, trying not to move his chest.

  ‘I’m sorry it has come to this.’

  His speech is slurred, his bottom lip bloated and stapled together with a thick black stitch.

  He coughs again. ‘Would you like a cigarette?’

  She cannot move except to shiver. Nausea rises and then falls inside her stomach.

  Wincing, Beck raises the white sling inside his open jacket and pulls out a yellow packet. He wedges a cigarette in his mouth and flicks the lighter with his good hand.

  ‘Please don’t lie any more. It will only result in distress.’ The lit cigarette is wedged awkwardly between two fingers. ‘But you will be pleased to know, I am sure, that Stefan is alive. We’d just like to know a little more about his activities in recent weeks.’

  She looks down at her shaking hands. Vomit bites the back of her throat and the hot taste of it seeps into her mouth. ‘I don’t know… anyone called Stefan.’

  Beck closes his good eye briefly. The other is sunk into a fold of puffy skin. He places the cigarette carefully on his lip next to the fissure sealed with black suture.

  ‘It will be so much better if you tell us everything without delay.’

  Ewa keeps her eyes down and her face blank as sick rises and falls in her throat. Oh God. If only she had the chocolate in its dull red foil. How eagerly she would put it into her mouth, right now, and crunch through glass into oblivion.

  The man in the waterproof apron comes forward.

  ‘Tell us what was going to be put on the Dakota. Stolen equipment? Escaped prisoners?’

  His interest seems real. Maybe Stefan is alive, and is being interrogated in the room next to this one. Or perhaps he has escaped and is on the run. Perhaps he will even make it to England again. Yes. That is what will happen. Ewa feels it in her bones. Stefan will go back to his foreign lover. The English girl pilot will be the one to keep him in the end.

  Ewa’s fingernails dig into her leg. Self-inflicted pain is the only possible distraction. ‘I… don’t know… anyone… called Stefan.’

  Beck groans. ‘Come, Ewa. Or may I still call you Eva? It sounds so much nicer.’ His voice is shaky. ‘You have no reason to be loyal to him. Your husband did nothing to protect you last night when you came under attack.’

  He winces and takes a drag on the cigarette. ‘And shall I tell you a little more about your husband? Some things that you may not know?’ He pauses. ‘What if I tell you that, despite his military service for the Republic of Poland, and the Royal Air Force, and his activities with the AK, Stefan Bergel is a patriotic German? A certain incident in Russia when he was a prisoner of the Soviets has confirmed his loyalty to the Fatherland ever since.’

  Don’t listen, just breathe. One breath in, one breath out. But Ewa cannot ignore what Beck has said. An incident in Russia? What does he mean?

  ‘That is why he has been so helpful.’ Beck coughs and makes his voice louder. ‘That is why he told us about the Dakota.’

  Don’t look up.
Don’t listen. He’s lying.

  ‘So you see, Eva, how little reason you have to help Stefan. You must instead help yourself and tell us what we want to know.’

  Bile comes suddenly into her throat. As Ewa sits on the metal chair, hot salty vomit streams out of her mouth into her lap. The lumpy brown puddle begins seeping through her butter-yellow skirt on to her thighs. She hangs her head, retching and spitting the last foul particles from her mouth.

  ‘Very well.’ The man in the apron exhales. ‘I suppose that’s an answer of a sort.’

  Ewa’s mouth is raw with the aftertaste of stomach acid. Air swirls around her bare arms. Metal clunks against metal. There is a gush of water from a tap turned on at full blast. What are they going to do? Then the aproned man’s face is in hers. She clamps her eyes shut but feels the waft of his sour breath and his spit on her cheek.

  ‘Not very fragrant now, dear, are you? Do you want a bath?’

  He lays his hands on Ewa’s upper arms and pulls. All of the blood in her body seems to drop to her feet. She opens her mouth. Yes sir, you’re right, everything you said was right, I’ll tell you all I know. But she finds that she isn’t saying anything, just gulping on air.

  There’s a clack and flip of rubber; a sound so unnerving that she can keep her eyes closed no longer. The aproned man is pulling on a pair of black rubber gloves. Something hot runs down the inside of her leg. Hands are on her, yanking, grasping, thrusting her towards the bath. Numbness paralyses Ewa’s body but she understands, as if from a great distance, that she is about to be drowned in a bath of freezing water. For this, she is grateful. Her life no longer matters. And once submerged, no one will notice the piss and vomit trickling down her shins on to the slimy mess of her bare feet.

  1945

  Cirrus

  Delicate high cloud formed of falling ice crystals. The milky formations appear stationary but they are in fact moving at great speed.

  White Waltham, England

  Thursday 5 July