‘Four days ago,’ the man answered. He had returned to his work.
‘And you have not handed him over to the Russians?’
He paused with a forkful of potatoes. ‘No, we do not hand him to the Russians. You have to thank my wife for that. Our daughter is in Berlin. She live in the French Sector with her husband who work on the railways there. But for the, she would be like us — she would be under the Russians.’
I mumbled my thanks. My head kept nodding. It was very warm and comfortable there in the straw. ‘Is he badly hurt?’
‘Ja. He is not so good. Several ribs are broken and his arm and he has concussion. But he is conscious. You can speak with him.’
‘He should have a doctor.’ My voice sounded very far away. I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
‘You do not have to worry. Our doctor is coming here to see him every day. He is a good doctor and he do not love the Russians because they take him to the East for a year to work with our prisoners. Once he meet my son. My son, Hans, is a prisoner of the Russians since 1945..Before that he is in North Africa and Italy and then on the Eastern front. I do not see him now for almost six years. But soon I hope he will come home. We have had two letters …’
His voice droned pleasantly and my eyelids closed. I dreamt I was back in Stalag Luft I, but the guards all wore right-necked brown tunics and black knee-length boots, and there was always snow and no hope of release or escape — only the hope of death. They kept on interrogating me, trying to get me to admit that I’d killed Tubby — there were intensely bright lights and they kept on shaking me … I woke to find the farmer bending over me, shaking my shoulder. ‘Wake up, Herr
Fraser.’ He pronounced the V sharply and not as a ‘z’. ‘It is seven o’clock. We will have some food now and then you can talk with your friend.’
‘You know my name?’ I murmured sleepily. And then I felt in my breast pocket. My papers were still there. He must have put them back after examining them. I clambered stiffly to my feet. I was cold and very tired.
‘I think perhaps we put your flying clothes under the straw, eh? I do not wish my men to know I have a British flier here. By talking, one of them might be given my farm. That is something they learn from the Nazis.’ He said the word ‘Nazis’ unemotionally as one might talk of an avalanche or some other act of God.
When I had hidden my flying suit he took me across the farmyard to the house. It was a cold, bleak dawn, heavy with leaden cloud that promised more snow. Overhead I heard the drone of the planes flying in to Berlin, but I couldn’t see them, for the ceiling was not much more than a thousand.
My memory of the Kleffmanns’ house is vague; a memory of warmth and the smell of bacon, of a big kitchen with a great, clumsy, glowing stove and a bright-eyed, friendly little woman with wisps of greying hair and the slow, sure movements of one who lives close to the earth and whose routine never changes. I also remember the little bedroom high up under the roof where Tubby lay, his fat cheeks strangely hollow, his face flushed with fever and his eyes unnaturally bright. The ugly, patterned wallpaper with butterflies flying up vertical strips was littered with photographs of Hans Kleffmann who would some day come back from Russia and meet his mother and father again for the first time in six years. There were photographs of him as a baby, as a boy at the school in Hollmind, in the uniform of the Nazi Youth Organisation and finally in the uniform of the Wehrmacht — against the background of the Hradcany Palace in Prague, in a Polish village, with the Eiffel Tower behind him, in the desert leaning on a tank, in Rome with St. Peter’s Dome over his left shoulder. And there were a few less formal snaps — Hans in bathing shorts on the Italian Riviera, Hans with a dark-haired girl in Naples, Hans skiing in the Dolomites. Hans filled that room with the nostalgia of a boy’s life leading inevitably, irrevocably to the Russian prison camp. They showed me a letter. It was four lines long — I am well and the Russians treat me very kindly. The food is good and I am happy. Love, Hans. Tubby, lying in that small, neatly austere bed, was an intruder.
He was asleep when I went in. The Kleffmanns left me sitting by his bed whilst they got on with the business of the farm. Tubby’s breath came jerkily and painfully but he slept on and I had a long time in which to become familiar with Hans. It’s almost as though I had met him, I got to know him so well from those faded photographs — arrogant and fanatical in victory, hard-faced and bitter in defeat. There in that room I was face to face with the Germany of the future, the Germany that was being hammered out on the vulcan forge of British, American and Soviet policy. I found my eyes turning back repeatedly to the grim, relentless face in the photograph taken at Lwow in the autumn of 1944 and comparing it with the smiling carefree kid in knickerbockers taken outside the Hollmind school.
Then Tubby opened his eyes and stared at me. At first I thought he wasn’t going to recognise me. We stared at each other for a moment and then he smiled. He smiled at me with his eyes, his lips a tight line constricted by pain. ‘Neil! How did you get here?’
I told him, and when I’d finished he said, ‘You came back. That was kind of you.’ He had difficulty in speaking and his voice was very weak.
‘Are they looking after you all right?’ I asked awkwardly.
He nodded slowly. The old woman is very kind. She treats me as though I were her son. And the doctor does his best.’
‘You ought to be in hospital,’ I said.
He nodded again. ‘But it’s better than being in the hands of the Russians.’
‘Thank God you’re alive anyway,’ I said. ‘I thought-’ I hesitated and then said, ‘I was afraid I’d killed you. You were unconscious when you went out through the door. I didn’t mean it, Tubby. Please believe that.’
‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘I understand. It was good of you to come back.’ He winced as he took a breath. ‘Did you take the plane back to Saeton?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s got our engines in now and Saeton’s at Wunstorf. They ordered him over immediately to replace Harcourt’s Tudor.’
His mouth opened to the beginning of a laugh and then he jerked rigid at the pain it caused him.
‘You ought to be in hospital,’ I said again. ‘Listen,’ I added. ‘Do you think you could stand another journey in that cart, up to Hollmind airfield?’
I saw him clench his teeth at the memory.
‘Could you stand it if you knew at the end there would be a hospital and everything in the way of treatment you need?’
The sweat shone on his forehead. ‘Yes,’ he breathed, so quietly that I could hardly hear him. ‘Yes, I’d face it again if I knew that. Maybe the doc here would fix me up with a shot of morphia. But they’ve so little in the way of drugs. They’ve been very kind, but they’re Germans, and they haven’t the facilities for…’ His voice trailed away.
I was afraid he was going to fade into unconsciousness and I said quickly, ‘I’m going now, Tubby. Tonight I’ll start out for Berlin. I’ll make it just as quickly as I can. Then, within a few hours, I’ll be back with a plane and we’ll evacuate you from Hollmind. Okay?’
He nodded.
‘Goodbye then for the moment. I’ll get through somehow and then we’ll get you to a hospital. Hold on to that. You’ll be all right.’
The corners of his lips twitched in a tight smile. ‘Good luck!’ he whispered. And then as I rose from the bed, his hand came out from beneath the sheets and closed on mine. ‘Neil!’ I had to bend down to hear him. ‘I want you to know — I won’t say anything. I’ll leave things as I find them. The plane crashed. Engine failure — ignition.’ His voice died away and his eyes closed.
Bending close to him I could hear the sob of his breathing. I reached under his pillow for his handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The handkerchief was dark with blood. I knew then that his lung was punctured. I wiped his forehead with my own handkerchief and then went quietly out of Hans’s little bedroom and down the dark stairs to the kitchen.