Their minds had grown hazy. Radio gone, toilet unworkable, a single candle left, no water, no food.
There was a short and violent exchange of gunfire early in the third morning of the battle, and then great, unearthly silence. The quiet lasted for what seemed hours; no one could remember such silence for years.
The longer the stillness held, the more terrifying it became. The four of them, grimy, stinking, starved, sat in their stupor for over an hour without uttering a word. At last Frau Falkenstein creaked her large body from the cot and labored up on a stool to look through a window on the level of the street. She drew the boarding and blanket aside and squinted into an eternal grayness that revealed nothing.
“What shall we do, Bruno?”
“I don’t know,” he rasped.
“We must find food and water or we’ll all be dead.”
“I’ll go up and see if anyone is there,” Ernestine said. Her father protested, but she insisted she was better able to move around than the others. “Don’t come up looking for me and don’t leave here until I get back.”
“For God’s sake be careful, Ernestine.”
She climbed the steep stairs, shoved the trap door open, and glanced about the shambles in the hallway. Her body was slight and deft. She hoisted herself out carefully, dropped the trap door down, and as an afterthought dragged a carpet from the anteroom and covered the door.
The living room, shattered long before, was boarded up from the rest of the house. She pushed open a temporary door and peered outside. Not a sign of life in the streets. The scars of battle were much in evidence, the street smoldering from one end to the other.
She decided to try a dash straight across the way to their neighbors the Kaisers. She ran, moved even more swiftly by the sound of her own steps.
In the middle of the street her heel fell into a small mortar hole and she crashed to the pavement, twisting her ankle. She emitted a cry of disgust and pain, rolled over onto her hands and knees, and tried to lift herself. The foot gave way. She gritted her teeth and tried to drag herself, when she saw, out of the corner of her eye, someone moving.
Ernestine peered up slowly. A few yards away, at the intersection, two men with tommy guns over their backs stopped and watched her. They wore crossed bandoliers, bloomered brown trousers, short boots, and red stars on their caps. Russians! They moved at her cautiously, smiling.
Her ankle throbbed; she stifled the impulse to attempt to run. One of them now had his weapon pointed at her. Both of them seemed to be boys in their late teens; one was a blond and rather husky, the other dark with a shaggy growth of hair.
“Kumm frau,” the blond said, sneaking up to her. “Kumm frau.”
“Tick, tick, tick, tick,” the shaggy one said, pointing to her wrist. He leaned over, grabbed her arm, tore the wrist watch off, and put it to his ear and laughed. ‘Tick, tick, tick, tick.” His comrade listened, also amused.
She tried to crawl away while they played with the watch, but they walked behind her taunting, “Kumm frau!”
Ernestine sprang to her feet, tried to run, staggered blindly, limping on the pained ankle. The blond one snatched her long hair and flung her ruthlessly to the pavement again. “Kumm frau!” he repeated, looking about for some place to take her. As he reached down she saw the eyes of a wild man and heard the breathing of a dog in heat. She lashed at his face and tore it open with her fingernails. He wrestled her to her feet, banded his arms around her, and dragged her toward the garden plot in the Kaiser yard. She dared not scream for that would have brought others up into danger, but she kicked and squirmed in fury and her teeth found their way into the Russian’s hand. He bellowed in pain, and released her. The shaggy-haired one smashed his fist into her mouth.
Ernestine spun under the impact of the blow, landing hard in the dirt. It went into her mouth and nose and eyes. The world whirled crazily. She clawed at the wet ground to stop the spinning ... saw her own blood dripping, herself sinking into it ... and slowly pushed herself up to a sitting position, holding her head, groaning. Another punch from the shaggy one knocked her flat on her back. He grabbed her arms and pinned her down to the earth digging his knees into her wrist. The blond one knelt over her grunting, his trousers down.
An hour later Ernestine knocked almost soundlessly on the trap door. It creaked open. She dragged her body over the edge, spilled down the steps, and lay crumpled on the floor. Her dress was in shreds, both breasts bared, both eyes swollen shut. Blood gushed from her mouth. She gurgled a single long groan, and then blessed darkness rendered her unconscious.
Bruno Falkenstein reached under his pillow, snatched his luger pistol and lunged for the steps. His wife threw her arms around his legs. “No! Don’t go outside armed!”
“I’ll kill those bastards!”
“Bruno! Give me the gun and find Dr. Hahn! For God’s sake listen to me! She may be dying!”
The locating of Dr. Hahn became a monumental task. Falkenstein lost his watch to the first Russian, a second roughed him up for not having a watch, and a third beat him for the sport of it. Several times he was ordered to go back, forcing him to use round-about methods. When at last the doctor was found, he was treating a nine-year-old girl who had been raped by six Russians. The child was mutilated and in shock. He promised Falkenstein to come as soon as he could.
It was yet another long hour before Dr. Hahn was able to get to the Falkenstein cellar.
“The little girl?”
“Dead. They’re going crazy up there. There’s no end to it.”
The physician who had brought both Ernestine and Hilde into the world as well as their brother, Gerd, knelt alongside Ernestine’s cot. He rolled her over gently, forced her swollen eyelids apart, and flashed a light into her pupils. The blood from her mouth had caked dry; heart and pulse were weak but steady; there were massive cuts and bruises. He ministered to the wounds from his diminished supply of drugs, cleaned them with a solution, and then waved an ammonia stick under her nose. She groaned to a sort of consciousness.
“Ernestine. It is Dr. Hahn.”
She shook her head that she understood.
“I want to probe for breaks. You will tell me how badly it hurts.”
He probed about her body, then remained in utter frustration for a long moment. “She is not in shock and that is good. The ankle is not broken, only sprained, but I suspect a couple of ribs fractured and perhaps a concussion. Needless to say she is badly off from the beating and violations. I don’t know what we can do about either food or medicine ...”
Everyone froze simultaneously at the sound of feet shuffling overhead.
“Lord! We forgot to close the trap door,” Bruno whispered.
“Quiet!”
The sounds above became more pronounced ... laughter ... talk in a strange language ... something was kicked over and crashed. Frau Falkenstein grabbed Ernestine beneath the armpits and rolled her under one of the cots as the candle was doused.
Falkenstein wanted to go for his pistol, but the footsteps were just above them now! The ray of a flashlight probed through the trap-door opening, along the walls, and stopped as it found Hildegaard’s face. She shrieked!
A soldier dropped to the floor, whirled his submachine gun at them, called up to the others. Three more followed. They were Mongols, short and squat with yellow skin and long, drooping moustaches. They were ragged and foul-smelling from drink. The last of them carried a square canvas filled with loot: clocks, silverware, porcelain pieces, candlesticks.
The leader, swaggering and nearly senseless from alcohol, stepped up to them. ‘Tick, tick, tick, tick,” he said.