BRYAN MALESSA

The Flight

for my family

Contents

Title Page Dedication Book I: Samland Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Book II: A Childhood Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Book III: The Circular Path Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Book IV: Journey To The Empire’s Centre Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Book V: Towards The New World Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Acknowledgements About the Author Copyright About the Publisher

BOOK I

Samland

Chapter 1

On 15 June 1940 a celebration took place on the small Platz, the square, in Germau in front of Karl’s parents’ shop. The previous evening’s radio broadcast had carried news of victory in Paris. The villagers nervously set up their goods to sell, hopeful that victory would quickly translate to peace. Early that morning Ida had asked her father, Günter, who had walked over from his village, to slaughter one of the few remaining pigs for the party. He wasn’t much good at butchering, but she couldn’t worry about that today: she was preoccupied with thoughts of her absent husband.

She knew Paul was safe on the outskirts of Paris where he had been sent to ensure a steady supply of food for the troops. When he had received his call-up papers he had closed their butchery because Ida hadn’t the strength or the skill to run the slaughterhouse, and the children – Karl, Peter and Leyna – were too young to train. No one in the village, including Paul, had thought it a matter for concern; everyone was certain that the war would be short and the soldiers would return as heroes. The decisive victory in Paris seemed to confirm that Paul would soon be home, she thought, as she sat on the front steps of the shop, which was also their home. Adults had gathered round the linden tree, encircled by an ornate iron railing that stood in the centre of the village square. A group of children were playing hide and seek near the trees surrounding the village, oblivious to their parents’ worries.

Suddenly Karl, her oldest, appeared from the group, sprinting towards her. He came through the gate that separated the shop from the square and sat down, panting, beside her. When he could speak, it was to ask again the question he had repeated since last evening’s broadcast: ‘When is Father coming home?’

At first she looked at him without speaking; then she said, ‘Come here.’ She wiped a smudge of dirt from his cheek with her apron. ‘I told you to stop asking.’

‘But Werner says he’s dead.’

Ida looked out at her neighbour’s son chasing Leyna through the trees. She could hear them giggling. ‘Tell Werner I’ll spank him myself if he says that again.’

‘When do we eat?’

‘Soon. Go and look after your little sister.’

Karl jumped up and ran back through the gate. As he crossed the square he stumbled on a loose cobble, then continued, darting through a group of adults. He ignored his sister and ran up the path to the church that stood at the top of a hill to see if he could spot Peter, his younger brother.

The village where Ida’s father lived, Sorgenau, was a few kilometres west of Germau, close to the amber town of Palmnicken. Günter had moved there with his Lithuanian bride shortly after Ida’s mother had died of cancer two years earlier. The roads that led to Germau dated from as far back as the Bronze Age, when the indigenous Balt-Prussians had traded their only precious resource, amber, with the outside world in exchange for metal to use in jewellery, tools and weapons. For centuries the region had remained so remote that although Tacitus and Ptolemy had mentioned it in their writings, Pliny the Elder referred mistakenly to the Samland peninsula as an island: Amber Island. Like the shards of amber that washed up daily on the local beaches, there were other bits and pieces of rarely mentioned history that marked the region: on conquering Samland seven centuries earlier the Teutonic Knights had stolen the non-Germanic tribe’s name and used it to christen their own empire. Prussia rose as one of the most militant and chauvinistic of all German states, despite the fact that many of the assimilated Baltic Prussians, including Ida’s clan, silently traced their names and lineage to a pre-Germanic past. But on that summer afternoon in 1940, no one was thinking about the village’s history as they gathered on the Platz to sing, laugh, drink, dance and make merry in honour of the news they had heard on the radio.

Ida, though, wasn’t quite ready to join the party and remained apart, nervously fingering her bracelet as she watched Karl reach the ancient church the Knights had built above the village.

‘Have you seen the sharpening stone?’ a voice called behind her.

She turned. Her father had come out of the slaughterhouse, cleaning a knife on a piece of cloth. When he saw her face he said, ‘I told you, you’ve nothing to worry about.’ He hobbled over to her and sat down beside her – always a struggle with his wooden leg. He’d lost his own defending East Prussia from the Russians in 1914 at the battle of Tannenberg. ‘Paul will be fine. The army’s in control. It will be over soon.’

Ida knew he wasn’t telling her what she wanted to hear. ‘It’s in the kitchen,’ she said, ‘in the drawer to the right of the sink.’

Günter grabbed the iron railing and pulled himself up again.

‘I’ll tell one of the children to clean the slaughterhouse,’ she said. ‘Go and join the men when you’ve finished. I must start cooking.’

‘We’ll do it together, over the fire pit. It’s you who should join the party. Come on! Up!’ He spoke to her as if she were still a child, but she stood up and straightened her dress, forced herself to smile and went out on to the square.

‘Ida!’

Romy, Werner’s mother, was coming towards her. Günter rolled his eyes and turned away.

‘Mr Badura was just telling me you managed to buy some cloth when you went to Königsberg last week. I was wondering if you had any left over – I’m trying to finish a blanket for my cousin. She’s expecting next month.’

‘I think there’s a little. I’ll have a look later.’

‘I don’t suppose you’d do it now? I wanted to finish it tonight and we might miss each other this evening.’

Ida went into her home and located the rest of the cloth with which she had made Leyna a new dress.

‘Can I give you something for it?’ Romy asked when Ida handed it to her.

‘There’s no need. My best wishes to your cousin. Now I must help my father with the pig.’

‘Would you like my help?’

‘The slaughterhouse is too small for a crowd,’ Ida said. ‘We’ll catch up later, after we’ve eaten.’

When Romy had gone Ida started to close the door but saw Leyna running through the gate, so she opened it again. ‘Mutti, Werner’s teasing me! When are we going to eat?’

‘I wish you and Karl would stop asking that.’

They walked through the house and out of the back door where they found Günter smoking and gazing into the pasture.

‘You call that work?’ Ida joked.

He dropped the cigarette, grabbed Leyna and flung her into the air as she shrieked with delight, ‘Put me down, Grandpa!’

Soon a side of pork was roasting over the open pit beside the slaughterhouse where a group of men had gathered. Each generation had its favourite songs and as the afternoon wore on the villagers began to sing. Even the boys on the square stopped playing and started to sing a Hitler Youth song they had learned from the older boys at school:

We march for Hitler through the night.

Suffering with the flag for freedom and bread.

Our flag means more to us than death…

The old men, all veterans of the last war, laughed bitterly. ‘What do they know about death?’ one muttered.

Another called, ‘Go and get us some of the bread you’re singing about. We haven’t finished eating yet.’

The children were silent – until they realised that the men were laughing at them. Then they sang even louder:

We march for Hitler through the night.

Suffering with the flag for freedom…

Chapter 2

That autumn, each Thursday after lunch, Karl, Peter and Leyna waited on the hill outside the village beside the road that led to Fischhausen. From there they could see nearly two kilometres down the long straight road as they looked for the postman, trying to guess when he would appear. The younger two had to rely on their brother’s word because he wouldn’t let them see the watch their grandfather had given him.

Once they were certain the postman was on his way, they sprinted into the woods, along the path and down the hill, across a glade and back up the opposite hill to the church. When they reached the cemetery they stopped to catch their breath, then ran down into the square just before the truck arrived.

They wanted to be ready in case their father had sent them a parcel. They were the only children in Germau who received sweets in the post each month, but they waited for the postman each week in case he had sent an extra one. Ida made them open it at home – otherwise, she knew, they’d eat it all at once. Each evening, after they had done their piano practice, she would give them a little until everything had been eaten. The children took their daily ration outside to where the others waited.

When a picture appeared in the newspaper of soldiers marching along the Champs Élysées towards the Arc de Triomphe, Karl cut it out and, in the field beside the church, showed it to the other village children, saying that his father was among the soldiers at the rear. Peter supported him although both knew that Paul hadn’t marched into the city with the troops. Karl refused to share his sweets with two boys who didn’t believe him. ‘Who else would have sent us chocolate from Paris?’ Karl asked.

The boys considered this and agreed it must have been his father. He rewarded them with a nibble that seemed more delicious than anything German.

‘Maybe my father will go to Italy,’ one said, ‘and send us something even better.’

‘Italy’s already on our side, stupid. They’ll probably send him to Africa where they don’t have sweets.’

By now they’d eaten what Ida had given them.

‘See if your mother will give you more,’ one boy said.

‘She won’t. She said it’s almost gone.’

‘Let’s go and look for the secret tunnel, then.’

Immediately the children forgot about Paris and ran off. Mr Wolff had once told Karl about a tunnel that, long ago, monks had dug beneath the church. It opened somewhere in the woods and offered a last means of escape to those besieged in the building. It had rarely been used, however, since the time of the Teutonic Knights who had trained with arms and studied military strategy with the same devotion they showed to the Virgin Mary. Mr Wolff, the local coffin maker, enjoyed sharing his knowledge of their home with the children. ‘Everyone should know their history,’ he would say.

One afternoon when Karl and Peter had stood near the doorway to his shop, listening to his stories, Mr Wolff had pulled a stone from his coat pocket. Karl had recognised it as amber – Bernstein. ‘The church was once used as the headquarters where amber disputes were settled,’ Mr Wolff told them. ‘Most of the world’s amber comes from around here.’

‘Then why aren’t we rich?’ Karl asked.

‘You’re richer than many people. You need not worry about what others think of you.’

‘What do you mean?’ Karl asked.

Mr Wolff ignored his question. Instead he told the boys that long before the church had been designated the Amber Palace, a Jewish trader had been the second person in recorded history to mention the Prussian tribe living on the Baltic coast. Ibrâhim ibn-Ya’qub had travelled to the region from Spain and recorded his findings in Arabic.

With the baker, Mr Schultze, whose shop stood opposite the butcher’s, Mr Wolff was the only other Jewish person remaining in the village. Of the two, only Mr Schultze had married – a Protestant woman from the capital. In the years after Hitler had been elected to power, the four other Jewish families in Germau had followed the example of those in Königsberg and fled to safer countries. Karl had once overheard his father asking Mr Wolff whether it was wise for him to remain in Germany.

‘This is home. Where else would I go?’ Mr Wolff had replied.

The villagers came to him occasionally as the arbiter in their never-ending disputes over obscure historical events. Since leaving home in his early twenties, Mr Wolff had distanced himself from his religion and focused on the study of history, convinced that intellectual and spiritual pursuits led to a similar end: self-knowledge and inner peace. In his early thirties he had reconsidered his rejection of formal religion after studying the Reformation. Instead of returning to Judaism, though, he had become interested in Protestantism. He didn’t formally convert, but he attended services occasionally and had even led Christians in prayer – for the first time when a family had requested he deliver a coffin to their farm. When he arrived, the widow asked if he would say a few words for her deceased husband, before helping them bury him in the family plot. He had been honoured by her request.

On the afternoon that Paul had asked him whether it was wise to remain in Germany, he had also asked Mr Wolff who he expected would help him if trouble came. The coffin maker had frowned and made no answer. As time passed, he noticed that the villagers who had once expressed independent views now accepted each new policy without question. It had begun back in 1934 with the banning of Jewish holidays from German calendars. In 1935 Mr Wolff had been excluded from the Armed Forces and forbidden to fly the German flag – which had hurt: he had always been among the first in Germau to raise it on national holidays. Then his citizenship was revoked, in line with the Nuremberg Laws, and in 1936 his assets were taxed an additional twenty-five per cent – all because of his religious heritage.

The villagers’ acceptance of each new law through the years was unsettling enough, but then, in the months following Paul’s blunt and unsettling question, Mr Wolff had noticed that friends with whom he had always been on good terms slowly began to distance themselves. The days Mr Wolff had once spent busy with work and the evenings once occupied visiting friends were soon replaced by long idle hours alone, the social life he had once cherished slowly withering away to nothing. Although Mr Wolff enjoyed spending time alone during the weekdays working and at weekends studying, he found the prospect of forced solitude disquieting. As he searched deeper and deeper within himself, his forced introspection eventually led back to memories of his childhood. With those memories came the prayers his parents had taught him and images of the temple in which his family had worshipped. As he meditated day after day, he felt himself being pulled towards the very subject for which he was being ostracised, pulled for the first time since leaving his parents’ home back to the sanctity of Judaism.

Chapter 3

Early one morning after a heavy snowfall, Mr Wolff left his shop to spend an hour or two studying in the church. He was so isolated from the community now that he no longer cared what anyone thought of his continued historical research in the archives or delving into the peninsula’s Jewish history. He crossed the square and noticed Karl near the foot of the hill. The boy looked up, saw him and ran to him. ‘Where are you going?’ Karl asked.

‘To talk to God.’

Karl looked up at the church. It was Saturday morning. ‘What about?’

‘Come with me, if you like, but you’d better ask your mother first.’

Karl glanced at the shop to see if she was near the window. ‘Will you wait for me?’

‘I’ll be in the vestry if you come.’ Mr Wolff set off up the hill.

Karl watched him for a moment, then ran home. Ida told him to carry in the day’s turf for the fire and he could go after that. When he reached the church he saw that the front door was ajar. He had never been into it alone before. He stood near the back pews and listened, then called Mr Wolff. His voice echoed round the walls, but the response was silence. Karl went back outside and looked around. Mr Wolff ’s footprints in the snow led into the building, but there were none to indicate that he had left. Karl went back inside and looked across the sanctuary to the vestry door. Through it, he could see the edge of a table. He walked up the aisle, glancing at the stained-glass window high above, went to the door and pushed it wide open. Mr Wolff was sitting at the table gazing at him.

‘What are you doing?’ Karl asked.

‘I told you earlier.’

‘Why aren’t you out there?’ Karl pointed to the pews where the villagers sat when they came up to the church alone to pray.

‘I like it here. It’s quieter.’ He motioned for Karl to sit down at the other side of the table.

Karl glanced at the bookshelves lining the walls. He was impressed by Mr Wolff ’s knowledge of history and literature, and wanted to go to the most prestigious school, but only a small percentage of children were admitted to the Adolf Hitler Schools. He daydreamed of being the first in the village to be selected. To him, Mr Wolff was a model of academic excellence, and Mr Wolff knew of his ambition. He had likewise taken an interest in Karl, partly because his inquisitive nature reminded him of himself as a child.

Karl asked him more about the Knights who had built the church in which they now sat. ‘Is it true that they fought a battle on this hill?’

‘It’s true,’ he answered. ‘This hill used to be a lookout for the ancient Prussians. After that battle the German Knights claimed the village for good. But even the ones who died conquering the village didn’t much care.’

Mr Wolff explained that the highest goal a Knight could attain was not victory in battle, but death at the enemy’s hands. ‘They believed that by defending the Virgin Mary’s honour, they defended her son and in defending her son, they defended God.’ Mr Wolff sometimes recited literary works for Karl; he said that they sometimes called themselves Mary’s Knights or the cult of Mary and that in the fourteenth century they had created a vast body of Mary-verse, which they chanted in private among themselves:

In the name of God’s mother, the Virgin,

Virtue’s vessel and shedder of piercing tears,

for the sake of avenging her only son, our Saviour,

the renowned and numerous Knights of Mary

chose death as their destiny and reward,

and riddled with deep wounds

kept open through fearlessness and Faith,

they stood among smashed spears and shields,

among godless corpses and limbs and heads

to bleed and redeem with blood

their rapturous hearts, their singing souls,

in battles brutal as the Virgin is beautiful.

Around a month later Karl glanced out of his bedroom window and saw Mr Wolff walking up the path to the church again. When he had finished tidying his room, he left the house and followed him. He went in and crept round the wall until he reached the vestry door. There he stopped, certain that Mr Wolff was unaware of his presence. Then he scraped the heel of his boot on the floor. At first, Mr Wolff ignored it, but eventually he stood up to investigate.

When Mr Wolff pushed open the door to look out into the church, Karl hid behind it. He waited until Mr Wolff turned to go back, then jumped out and shouted, ‘Achtung!’

Mr Wolff whirled round in fright and Karl laughed until his sides ached.

When Mr Wolff had recovered he said, ‘Come sit with me for a little while.’

They talked briefly about Karl’s studies, then the coffin maker asked if Karl wanted to play a game.

‘What kind of game?’

‘You can pretend you’re the Führer.’

At first Karl thought Mr Wolff was joking, but then he realised he was serious.

There was a moment’s silence, before Mr Wolff asked, ‘My dear Führer, how do you propose to run the country when the war is over?’

Without hesitating – he knew the Führer wouldn’t hesitate – Karl said, ‘We must continue helping our people – especially those living far away. We must make sure everyone is safe.’

‘Everyone?’

Karl didn’t understand the question, but answered confidently, as he knew a leader must, ‘Yes, of course.’

They continued their dialogue, until Mr Wolff ended it by telling him he would make a fine leader. Karl swelled with pride. Unlike many people he knew, Mr Wolff never paid a compliment unless he meant it.

That meeting made a deep impression on Karl. Even though he and the coffin maker had spent only a short time together, he knew the old man had taught him something important even if he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was. When he left the church, he decided he wanted to be alone to think about their conversation. Instead of continuing towards the square, he went down the hill into the forest where the hidden tunnel was rumoured to open.

Chapter 4

In the months that followed, Karl was so busy at school that he hardly saw Mr Wolff – until one afternoon, when he glanced out his bedroom window: strangers were talking to him outside his shop and examining his identity card. He had shown it to Karl one morning when they met on the road that led from the railway station. Mr Wolff had been to the capital. Karl had studied the card, which bore a large ‘J’ imprinted in the middle.

‘They want me to change my name to Israel now,’ Mr Wolff had said. ‘Israel and Sara.’

After the men had left, Mr Wolff remained outside his shop for a long time, staring across the square. When he finally turned to go in, he saw Karl and paused, briefly, before disappearing back inside. Karl felt uneasy about having spied on him in such an uncomfortable situation.

But he felt far worse when, on his return from school a few weeks later, he discovered that Mr Wolff had gone. When Karl asked his mother what had happened she didn’t answer. A few hours later he asked her again. She told him to mind his own business. Later still, when she found him in his room, looking out of the window at Mr Wolff ’s shop, she relented. He knew something was wrong because she avoided his eyes.

‘They took Mr Schultze, too,’ she said.

‘Where did they go?’

‘I don’t know. They put them in a truck.’

‘Are they coming back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about his shop?’

‘I told you, I don’t know!’

He knew he should not ask any more. They stared out of the window without speaking. Ida slid her hand along Karl’s arm and clasped his hand in hers. He continued to look out of the window, first at the linden tree in the centre of the square, then at the church where he and Mr Wolff had sat together. Eventually, Karl asked if he could go outside.

‘I want you to stay in,’ his mother said softly. ‘They might come back to do something to his shop.’

In the months after Mr Wolff ’s disappearance, the children ran up the hill to the churchyard each day when their parents let them out to play. Once, Karl led the others into the church and up the stone stairs to the turret. Halfway up they came to a door that had been sealed with bricks. Karl placed his palms on the bricks, as Mr Wolff once had, and said, ‘The secret tunnel is in here.’ He explained that behind the bricks another stairway led down into the earth. ‘The tunnel may have caved in by now,’ he added and told them that the other end had also been sealed. No one in the village was sure any longer exactly where it came out.

When they left the church the children stopped and turned back to look at where they imagined the hidden stairs led down into the earth. A noise from the rooftop distracted them. They looked up and saw balanced carefully on the peak a stork’s nest made from twigs with a large bird in it. Atop the ridgeline of each house in the village ran a single strand of taut wire affixed to two boards secured at opposite ends of the roof to prevent the heavy birds from landing and keeping the home owners awake at night as they created a racket building nests. Suddenly the stork took flight and swooped down towards them. The children scattered in all directions.

Chapter 5

In the early spring of 1941, while the last of the snow still lay on the ground, Karl, Peter and Leyna were building a snowman when they saw someone walking towards the village on the road leading from Fischhausen. The children stopped to watch the stranger approach. He was carrying a parcel under his arm. Leyna waved. Karl pushed her hand down: ‘Don’t wave at strangers, stupid.’

A moment later Karl recognised the man. He paused to make sure he wasn’t wrong and took off towards him, Peter and Leyna following.

‘Father!’ Karl grabbed his hand.

‘You’re too old to behave like a child,’ his father said, with no trace of a smile.

Karl paused before asking, ‘Did you bring some chocolate?’

By then all three children were standing in front of their father. When Leyna held out her arms, he smiled for the first time, bent down and picked her up. ‘Have you boys been helping your mother?’ he asked and kissed Leyna’s cheek.

‘We do everything,’ Karl said.

‘We even tidy our rooms,’ Peter added.

Their father’s face didn’t reflect their own excitement, but Karl and Peter could hardly contain themselves. Both ran for home, wanting to be the first to tell their mother that their father was here.

Ida was in the kitchen preparing a goose for delivery to a family in Bersnicken, the next village north of Germau – they were expecting their son home from Berlin: he had been sent to the capital after his promotion to Scharführer of his Hitler Youth unit. Although the shop was closed, Ida continued to make a little money dressing poultry. When she heard the boys come in noisily and run for the kitchen without taking off their boots, she marched to the kitchen door and yelled, ‘Go back and take—’ She broke off as she saw Paul through the living-room window with Leyna in his arms.

She went back to the sink, dropped the knife, rinsed her hands under the tap and began to cry. Her husband came in for the first time in almost two years.

Once she had controlled herself she turned round. Paul walked to the middle of the kitchen, but did not reach her. She stepped forward and put out her arms to embrace him. He stepped back before she was able to slide her arms round him.

For a few seconds she stood in front of her husband. Although there was only half a metre between them, it was as though she were utterly alone, as she had been since his departure for Paris. Tears filled her eyes again and at last seemed to provide Paul with an unspoken cue, for he relented. He moved forward, took her in his arms and held her tightly.

Throughout the morning, as word spread, people called at the shop to welcome him home. After Mr Laufer had insisted on a celebratory drink, Ida pulled Paul into the kitchen. ‘Please, not today. I haven’t seen you for so long. We must spend at least a day alone as a family.’

‘It’s only a toast. Surely you don’t want me to offend him?’

They heard another knock.

‘More drinks?’

‘What do you expect me to do? Tell them to go home? Some are customers. The war will end soon and we’ll need them to come back to us.’

‘Then let’s go to the coast. We can celebrate when we get back. We’ll have two or three days alone. Tell your friends to organise a party here at the shop.’

It was soon settled. Someone offered to lend his horse and wagon for their trip. ‘Could you take us to the station instead?’ Paul asked.

It was nearly dusk when they reached Sarkau. There was only one inn. A sign informed travellers that it was closed. Paul knocked anyway. A woman opened the door and pointed to the sign. ‘Can’t you read?’

‘I’m here with my family. We have nowhere else to go.’

‘We’re closed.’ She began to shut the door.

‘I’ve just returned from Paris,’ Paul said. ‘We need a room for two nights.’ He knew she wouldn’t refuse a soldier.

‘Very well. We’re expecting family at the end of the week.’ She opened the door and pointed up the stairs. ‘The two rooms at the top on the right.’

The following morning the family followed a snowy pathway through the pine forest towards the sea. Halfway there they climbed a small rise and a series of dunes came into view. Covered with snow, they looked like giant cumulus clouds turned upside-down and tethered to the ground. Beyond, waves lapped the shore. Karl ran ahead, climbing to the top of the highest dune, Peter behind him, trying to keep up with his brother. Surrounded by dunes, with the water stretching as far as he could see, Karl felt as though he had reached the end of the earth.

Later, as they walked back through the forest to the inn, Paul asked Ida why she had been so quiet all afternoon: ‘You hardly said a word on the train.’

‘I don’t like the games you’re playing.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You come home and can’t bring yourself to kiss me.’

‘You’re not the only one who’s hurting.’

‘I’m scared,’ she said.

‘Of what?’

‘I don’t know… of what’s going to happen. It doesn’t seem like the war will lead to anything great.’

‘It won’t last for ever. I’ll be home for good soon.’

‘That’s what you said when you went to Paris.’

‘Well, you don’t seem to want me here anyway.’

Ida didn’t answer. Paul slid his hand round her waist. This time it was Ida who pulled away, but when he persisted she laid her hand on his and their fingers interlocked.

On the morning of their departure for Germau the family walked silently to the road to flag down a vehicle going to Cranz to catch the train home. Ever since Paul could remember, the spit protruding from the northern shore of the peninsula had been a national park, closed to traffic, but while he had been in Paris a new road had been built through the middle for the heavy military traffic that went back and forth to Memel. Three trucks passed them without stopping. When the fourth approached, Paul stepped into the road. The driver and he exchanged a few words, then they all climbed into the cramped cab. Inside the air was stuffy and too warm. Ida rolled down the window a crack.

The driver was young, a boy almost, from Hesse. He soon became talkative, attempting to impress the higher-ranked Paul. He spoke with an accent Ida and the children found odd, but his words were clear enough.

‘It’s my first time in East Prussia. I never realised how far from home it is.’

‘Were you in France?’ Paul asked.

‘No, I was sent straight here.’

Karl and Peter sat quietly between the driver and their parents. Paul held Leyna on his lap. Ida watched the military trucks going north through the pine forest, which had been planted on the wide sandy spit in the late nineteenth century to prevent it from being washed away by the sea.

The family returned home for the party in Paul’s honour. Talk focused on everyone’s plans for after the war. The mood was subdued. Most of the older men seemed certain the war would soon be over, but Paul wouldn’t be drawn.

On the morning of his departure the children followed him and Ida as they walked to the station. The next day Paul was due at a base in Poland. He didn’t know when or if he would be permitted another leave. On the platform, he kissed Ida and the children. He was preoccupied, as if his military duties were more important now than his family, but he had always been like that when he was thinking about work. Now, though, he wasn’t just going to work in the shop behind their home, he was leaving for a month, a year, two years? No one knew.

His father’s indifference that morning stuck in Karl’s mind. The train pulled away, clanking along the tracks. Ida and the children were left alone on the platform to watch it disappear from view. They remained staring down the narrowing tracks long after the train vanished, as an uncanny calmness similar to the silence that follows the first heavy snow each year enveloped the family. Leyna tugged at her mother’s hand. Their sister’s movement caused the boys to glance up at their mother. ‘I want to go home,’ she said.

They walked down the steps from the platform, across the steel tracks slick with ice and to the path in the field. There, they fell into single file. A light snow began to fall. Karl, at the back, stopped to look up. The uniform sky provided nothing against which to distinguish itself as a sheet of ashen grey slowly descended over them. He tried to separate a single cloud from the mass so he could imagine the snow falling from that particular place, but the sky offered no depth of field, refusing to cooperate with Karl’s wish for something to recognise. The snowfall grew heavier, causing even the backdrop of the pallid sky to disappear in a white flurry.

Ida stopped to adjust her hat, leaned down and picked up Leyna.

When they reached the road, the cobbles were buried under a thin layer of fresh snow, which highlighted the imperfections in the road’s surface.

Tirskone, an elderly man from Powayen, the village nearest the station, often walked along the road with a shovel and a bucket of sand with which he smoothed the ground beneath an uneven cobble or poured sand into an empty hole before he inserted a new one. He kept stacks of stones in the brush at intervals along the roadside. Each year a government truck came from Königsberg and left a pile that Tirskone would move, five at a time, to his hiding places. Once Karl had crouched in the bushes to watch him.

Tirskone, like Paul, rarely spoke. When he did it was to make a request, delivered as an order, for a drink of water while he repaired the cobbles in the square. Now Karl glanced up and down the road, expecting to see the old man’s footprints: light snow rarely kept Tirskone indoors.

‘Let’s take the road this time. I don’t want to walk back through the forest while it’s snowing,’ Ida said.

Karl’s eyes were on the low hill that led into Germau less than a kilometre away. ‘Can I take the path?’ he asked.

‘Don’t be long.’

Ida glanced at Peter, shivering beside her. ‘You can come with me,’ she said. ‘You can play with your brother later.’

Karl followed the path into the forest to the brook below the church, imagining what the ancient Balt-Prussian tribe would do if they saw the Teutonic Knights escaping from their secret tunnel. He imagined some clan members pulling out their swords as they whispered among themselves in the undergrowth. Karl kicked up branches in the snow, until he found one that fitted his hands, so he could join the tribe slaying the invaders. He swung it to get a feel for its weight before sticking its tip into the snow beside him while glancing up the hill at the large church and caught his breath.

He decided to sneak up behind the church – it would be easier to surprise the enemy if he went that way. Crouching, he stalked through the woods. As the hill steepened, he picked up speed. When he reached a point from which he could approach the church directly, he broke into a run, crested the summit and darted out past the cemetery. At the corner, he raised his sword, jumped out in front of the church and swung wildly at a group of Knights. He thrust, parried and turned about until his arms ached, then plopped down into the snow, dizzy.

The clearing was empty. Nobody had walked up the hill that morning so the snow lay undisturbed. He could have killed a couple more, he thought, if he had come up the opposite side. He didn’t like playing this game with the other village children: they were younger and he could run faster so it was too easy to kill them. He remembered the youth group he would soon join – maybe he could play it with them. Most of the boys already in the group were from other villages and he knew they’d want to see the entrance to the secret tunnel in his church.

He stood up and walked across the field to a low wall a short distance above the square and looked away from the village towards Willkau, then looked back at the houses below. His mother stepped out of the shop door and called him.

‘Coming,’ he shouted.

She looked up at the wall. ‘I told you not to be long. Come here – you haven’t finished the jobs I asked you to do,’ she shouted.

He ran down the path, hoping she wasn’t angry. Even when she was, though, she was not like his father could be. While he would never admit it to her, he was relieved his father had gone again – even to the dangers of war.

Chapter 6

At the beginning of June, Ida received a short letter from Paul to say that he had been transferred east of Warsaw. He had included a photograph of himself sitting on the motorcycle that he rode to check the food supplies for the hospital he was supervising. ‘I’m not sure when you’ll hear from me again. There’s hardly enough time to sleep, much less to write letters,’ he concluded.

On the twenty-second, Ida was in the kitchen getting breakfast for the children with the radio on. As she leaned down to take a tray out of the oven, an announcer interrupted the music to introduce Joseph Goebbels, who said he had an urgent message from the Führer: ‘Weighed down with emotion, condemned to months of silence, I can finally speak freely to you, the German people. At this moment a march is taking place that, in its extent, compares with the greatest the world has ever seen. I have decided again today to place the fate and future of the empire and our people in the hands of our soldiers. May God help us …’ Before sunrise, Goebbels said, the army had launched an attack on Russia.

Ida thought of Paul on his motorcycle moving slowly alongside a column. The image frightened her, so instead she imagined him in a jeep behind the front line, and then at his desk in the office at the hospital. It was safer there, she told herself. She reminded herself of his arrival in Paris the day after it fell: he had avoided combat then, so why not now? Their love had cooled, but Ida wanted her children’s father to live. She tried to convince herself that when he finally returned for good he would be kinder to her and the children.

When Karl came downstairs half an hour later, she tried to think of a way to explain what had happened, but she didn’t understand why Germany was attacking Russia. She had understood the offensive against the French – during her childhood her father had talked incessantly about the injustices of the Treaty of Versailles – but she could think of no reason to justify their attack on Russia, especially since Russia in the Non-Aggression Pact had agreed not to attack Germany.

At breakfast, Karl noticed his mother distressed and anxious, but she said nothing and he didn’t ask; he had to meet a boy from a neighbouring village to go to a youth group meeting. When they arrived, he soon learned what had upset his mother: the attack was on everybody’s lips. One boy said his father was killing Russians at that very moment.

‘I thought he was an army cook. The only way he’ll ever kill someone is with food poisoning.’

A boy from Warschken, another village nearby, turned to Karl and said, ‘Maybe your father will send sweets from Moscow.’

‘Maybe he won’t go there,’ Karl replied.

‘Of course he will. The whole army’s going.’

They were convinced that the German army would beat the Russians, and anyone whose father or grandfather had fought at the battle of Tannenberg compared it with what was happening now. No one had grasped that the present offensive, three or four hundred kilometres to the east, was not just a battle but the start of a new war: the Soviet-German War.

Three million German soldiers were pitted against the same number of Russians, whose opposing army would soon grow to six million. The largest military invasion ever was under way. Across eastern Europe the boys’ fathers were behind thousands of heavy guns, pounding Russian positions. Soon the front would extend over four thousand kilometres, from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, the entire land mass of eastern Europe sealed behind a wall of German soldiers and guns.

One boy announced that Hitler himself was in East Prussia, unaware that the Führer had constructed new headquarters there from which to direct the offensive. The Wolfsschanze – Wolf ’s Lair – was buried deep in the forests south-east of Samland.

Before the offensive had begun, the Prussian army commanders – a constant source of irritation to Hitler – were far from united behind the decision to invade Russia. Some had agreed that if they had to go ahead, now was the best time to surprise the enemy because Stalin had murdered his best commanders during the Great Purge of 1936 to 1938. Others, though, would have preferred to abide by the Non-Aggression Pact: the steppes were too vast and the war was being fought on too many other fronts. Hitler himself had once written that an attack on Russia, as well as a western theatre, would spell the end of Germany.

BOOK II

A Childhood

Chapter 1

Once the war with Russia was under way Germau remained oddly calm. For a time photographs were published in Königsberg newspapers showing Latvians, Lithuanians and Ukrainians welcoming German soldiers as liberators freeing them from Stalin’s tyranny. Ida’s sister, in Berlin, rarely mentioned the war in her letters.

That spring, shortly before the Führer’s birthday, a Hitler Youth representative had come to the village to talk to Ida about a ceremony that Karl was to attend. Ida was reluctant to let him go, but she had no choice. Karl by contrast was more excited than she had ever seen him. He had gone with the man and a large group of boys from the peninsula by train to Pillau where they crossed the Bay of Danzig on a Strength Through Joy cruise liner.

Two older boys had stolen some photographs of Jewish prisoners, which they wanted to get rid of now – they knew they would get into trouble if the theft was discovered. They had concealed the evidence among the younger boys’ belongings. When Karl found three photos in his clothes, he became frightened and pushed them to the bottom of his bag. He would throw them away when he got home.

From Danzig, the younger boys went on to Marienburg, the ancient headquarters of the Teutonic Knights with the largest castle Karl had ever seen. They arrived at dusk and joined thousands of others. Karl’s group entered a huge chamber illuminated by torchlight. They stood to attention for nearly two hours as they sang Hitler Youth songs and listened to a long speech: the Reichsjugendführer, the highest-ranking official in the league, talked endlessly about commitment, discipline and personal strength. Later, each new recruit took an oath under the flickering torches: ‘I promise that, in the Hitler Youth, I will always do my duty, with love and faithfulness, and help the Führer, so help me God.’

Afterwards the hall reverberated to the boom of drums, the boys’ faces glowing orange in the torchlight. Soon they were singing again – a thousand boys in harmony – ‘Forward, forward …’ The sounds echoed in Karl’s mind long after he had returned to Germau.

In July he went camping with his group to Palmnicken where they pitched tents on a plateau above the Baltic. On the first night after the leader had told everyone to go to sleep, Karl felt the hand of the boy to his left slide across his belly and downwards. Startled, he pretended to be asleep. Soon he felt a new and pleasant sensation, one he’d never experienced before, between his legs. He turned over – and the boy on his right kissed him on his mouth. Karl tensed, and the first boy whispered that he would report him if he didn’t join in with their game.

The next morning, the three behaved as if nothing had happened. Karl climbed out of the tent and walked over to where the ground fell away to the sea below and watched two men in a pit carrying a burlap sack filled with amber. When he turned back to see the other boys coming out of their tents, he wondered if they were harbouring a similar secret.

That afternoon the leader took the boys through the woods and across a field, beyond which the blue-green waters of the Baltic stretched to the horizon. At points along the western edge of the peninsula, steep sandy cliffs fell as much as ten metres to the beach below. The leader announced that to earn a dagger, each boy must run at top speed to the edge of the cliff and jump out as far as he could.

‘What if we’re killed?’ a boy asked.

‘I’ll give the knife to your mother.’

Laughter erupted.

‘It’s only sand, idiot,’ a boy near the back yelled.

‘But my cousin broke his leg falling from the cliff in Rauschen.’

The leader told them that each boy would run and jump, then get up, move out of the way and remain on the beach with the assistant, who was already down there. ‘If you do break your leg don’t scream. You don’t want to be captured by the Russians, do you?’

He pointed at a terrified-looking boy. ‘You first. Run on the count of three.’

‘But—’

‘One. Two—’

The boy started running.

‘I said on the count of three!’ shouted the leader. ‘Faster!’

The boy’s pace increased and the group held their breath when he neared the edge of the cliff, expecting him to stop. But he didn’t hesitate. He ran forward, his eyes on the horizon, until the ground fell from beneath his feet and he disappeared. They heard him scream, and the distant roar of breakers.

The sixteen-year-old leader walked back to them grinning. ‘Let’s hope he’s not dead.’

This time nobody laughed.

‘Anyone scared?’

The group were mute.

‘I’m going to stand here and watch until every one of you has jumped off the cliff. Anyone who slows down before he jumps doesn’t get his dagger.’

As Karl waited, he looked over the tall grass to the cliff’s edge, feeling as if he had been called to a duty greater than himself. That spring the leader had come to his village only for him: no other local children had gone to the castle at Marienburg. He felt an epiphany of quietness as he prepared for his jump – and dismissed the fleeting thought that last night’s illicit adventure might have contributed to today’s confidence. He pictured himself walking into Germau with his shoulder strap across his chest and his new dagger on his belt.

When the leader signalled to him, he started to run and felt himself stride, with a sense of supreme confidence. As he neared the edge of the cliff, his eyes rose above the horizon – he leapt as high as possible, aware that his body sailing into the sky towards the sea created a silhouette seen by the leader and boys who still waited their turn. Airborne, he squeezed his eyes shut. He wanted to remember for ever how it felt to float over the earth, the air above coalescing with the water below, whose merging currents buoyed him as he floated outwards into its transmuting body.

Chapter 2

When he got home two days later, Karl didn’t tell his mother what had happened in the tent, but he showed her his new knife. She wasn’t very interested; he decided she hadn’t grasped its significance. However, he would always have been the first in his village to join the youth group, which no one in Germau would forget. The children were already asking him about his adventures.

Ida took the dagger from him and read the inscription, ‘Blood and Honour’, then handed it back. ‘We have enough knives. I wish they’d given you something useful.’

‘It is useful.’

Ida didn’t argue. ‘It’s time for your piano practice.’

‘But I told everyone I’d go back out after I’d shown you the knife.’

‘All right then, just for a little while. But I want you to practise before supper.’

When Karl opened the front door the children had gathered round the tree at the centre of the square, waiting for him.

‘Can I hold it?’ Werner asked.

‘In a minute.’

The children followed Karl up past the church to the field beside the cemetery, where he pulled the dagger from its sheath and sat down in the grass. ‘Don’t cut yourself,’ he said, as he held it out to Werner. The knife went round the circle. Even the girls were fascinated.

‘Did they make you kill anyone?’ Werner asked.

Karl looked at him with contempt. ‘You’re such an idiot. Why would we kill anyone?’

‘I’m just asking.’

‘They made us jump off a cliff, though.’

‘Did anyone die?’

Karl ignored him. After he had put the dagger back into its sheath, he suggested they play Search and Destroy. They stood up and milled about for a while, deciding on the names of the units they would pretend to be in. Karl told them the best was called Das Reich. ‘You can do anything you want in it,’ he said. ‘Not even the regular army can tell you what to do.’ He had heard that the élite SS unit couldn’t get into trouble for anything – even killing people.

Paula, who would be ten next spring, said, ‘The Jungmädel is better than Das Reich.’

The boys laughed: the girls’ youth group better than Das Reich? Ridiculous!

Karl tried to imagine Paula riding on a tank as he chose sides for the game. Suddenly the girls realised he was only picking the boys.

‘We’re playing, too,’ Paula demanded.

‘Fetch us some food if you want to join in,’ one of the boys shouted.

‘And don’t forget to wash the dishes,’ Peter added.

Any semblance of order broke down as the girls ran at the boys, who raced off in all directions across the field. When Peter caught a girl at the far end of the field near the woods he said, ‘Pull your pants down and maybe we’ll let you play.’

‘You first,’ she said.

‘The leader doesn’t go first.’

‘Then I shan’t.’

For no apparent reason, Peter threw up his arm and shouted, ‘Sieg Heil!’

The boys on the other side of the field stopped and looked at him and the girl.

‘Don’t waste it on a girl!’ Karl screamed.

Over the following year the children carried on playing new games, imitating the stories that the older youth group members shared. The games acquired a distinctly militaristic element, the children both inventive and dogmatic. But no matter how disciplined they pretended to be, the games always broke down by the time the play day ended, order giving way to chaos, discipline disintegrating into confusion.

Karl and Peter did not hear from their father for six months. When a note did finally arrive in December 1942, he told them he was in Russia, but didn’t say where. ‘We’re busy,’ he wrote. ‘Always busy.’ Something in the tone, or perhaps the note’s brevity, made him sound even more distant.

Ida tried not to worry about the lack of communication between herself and her husband. He was so far away and, after all, the country was at war: she shouldn’t expect any more. She tried to forget that an acquaintance received a letter every month from her husband in Russia. Ida had stopped visiting her: the only thing the woman talked about was her latest letter from her husband.

Rumours were spreading that the troops in Stalingrad were failing against the Russians, but Ida had heard no such news over the radio. Hitler continued to broadcast to German women, desperate to hold their loyalty. Many, like Ida’s sister, felt a strong bond with him that had developed from the broadcasts and were sure that he would tell them if the situation changed. Ida worried that the radio news neither confirmed nor denied what they all heard from injured soldiers returning home.

Karl continued attending school in Pillau near the military base that sprawled through much of the port town. He had been top of the class in the three Latin tests that year. His teacher had told him that he would recommend him for the Adolf Hitler School. Karl knew that if he won a place, he had a strong chance of one day reaching a high position in the government. Early in 1943 Hitler Youth received the annual slogan. It hung above the blackboard in the mathematics room: ‘War Service for German Youth’.

That winter the only thing he didn’t like about going to school in Pillau was coming home by train after dark, especially during a new moon. He dreaded the moment when the train dropped him off on the empty platform two kilometres from his house. The forest was so dark when he walked alone back to the village and he always felt as if something or someone were watching him among the trees. He would walk in the middle of the road so that nothing could reach him from the edge, feeling his way through the darkness between tree cover and the clouds, the lack of light sometimes making him feel as though he had been locked inside a giant room from which he had to find his way out. Whenever his feet touched the dirt at the edge of the road, he would sprint back to the middle. Over time he developed the ability to steer down the middle as he slowly became accustomed to his temporary blindness. When he reached the rise that led over the small climb before dropping into Germau, he increased his pace. Every night was the same: he never felt safe until he reached the top of the small hill and saw the shimmering lights below surrounding the square.

Chapter 3

By the autumn of 1943 little of the news that filtered into the peninsula villages was good. During the summer the Russians had started a counter-offensive and wounded soldiers occasionally came home on leave. A young man from Sacherau had lost his hand, but planned to return to the front as soon as the wound healed. He told the children how retreating German troops destroyed everything they came across. He was part of an SS demolition squad and had blown off his hand as his regiment pulled back across the Ukraine towards Poland. He said they had set entire villages ablaze and used flame-throwers to scorch wheatfields so that the Russian divisions had no shelter or food as they pushed across the steppes towards Germany. He was confident that they would be stopped by the time they reached Poland and he wanted to be there for the celebration when the Russians had been defeated.

In Berlin the constant bombing had forced Ida’s sister Elsa to send her son to his aunt: on the peninsula there was still little sign of war, except for a rare troop transport passing through the square on its way between Memel and Pillau. Elsa remained in Berlin: she had secured a coveted job at the Chancellery.

Ida felt certain that Karl and Peter especially would be delighted to see Otto and sent them down to Pillau to pick him up. She thought they’d find it easier to get to know each other without her presence. As soon as they had gone, she began to prepare the evening meal – she had invited her father and stepmother, too. The boys returned earlier than she had expected, so after she had kissed Otto she gave them each a basket and dispatched them to the forest for mushrooms.

As always, Karl took it upon himself to act as their leader. An only child, Otto wasn’t used to taking orders from someone of around his own age, but he soon realised that he would have to if he didn’t want to get lost. Like the children in the village, Otto was fascinated by Karl’s knife. He knew many boys in Berlin who had joined the Hitler Youth, but none had offered to let him examine theirs. Karl told him about the camping trips and his leap from the cliff. Peter then suggested they show Otto the photographs. When Karl had returned from Marienburg he hadn’t thrown them away. Instead, he had told his brother to hide them in an abandoned shed near a local farm. Now he thought again for a moment, then told Otto he could look at them, provided he didn’t tell anyone.

When they reached the shed, Peter went in, pulled up a decaying floorboard and got them out of the box he had hidden beneath it.

The first showed a group of men huddled together for warmth. In the second photograph four women were standing in what looked like dormitories. One of the women didn’t have a shirt on, her breasts fully exposed to the camera. The last was of a girl with a boy, perhaps her older brother, and a woman who appeared to be their mother. Whenever Peter came to the shed alone, this was the one he looked at most often.

‘Jews?’ Otto asked.

His question unsettled the brothers. They had been staring at the girl, who seemed to stare back.

‘Who else?’ Karl snapped.

In an attempt to absolve himself, Karl explained how some older boys had stolen them and hidden them among his possessions.

‘Does everyone have photos like these?’ Otto asked.

‘Of course not! Why do you think they had to get rid of them? No one knows I’ve got them except you and Peter, and if you tell anyone about them I’ll say you brought them from Berlin.’

‘I said I wouldn’t tell.’

Peter returned the photos to their hiding place and the boys went back to the main road, making sure nobody saw them as they emerged from the bushes. The woodland where Ida and the children found mushrooms was a few kilometres further on. Karl and Peter knew all the varieties, including the poisonous ones. Amanitas grew everywhere on the peninsula and Ida had warned them that a single cap could kill an entire family. The first time Karl saw one his mother had said, ‘Nature made them bright red so you’ll notice them and eat one. Then your body will fertilise the ground so that more can grow.’ She then had picked a few caps, which she placed in a separate cloth to take home. That afternoon, she filled an old pan with water and boiled them, let the liquid cool, then placed it inside the door of the slaughterhouse where it enticed flies to land, drink and die. ‘It’s nature’s way of controlling pests too,’ she had added.

Along the road to the forest, Karl told Otto not to touch the bright-red mushrooms with white spots: ‘They’ll kill you.’

Otto wondered about these woods: the only woods he had ever been in were in the Tiergarten near the centre of Berlin, and Grunewald, at the edge of the city, where he had always felt safe, because other people were invariably around. Germau seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.

When they reached the edge of the forest, Karl pointed out the path. ‘Follow us and you won’t get lost, but if you get separated just yell. We won’t be far.’

As soon as they were among the trees Karl and Peter were finding and picking mushrooms. Otto stayed with them, but instead of looking for mushrooms he was remembering the stories his mother had read to him about children leaving peas or breadcrumbs along their path so that they could find their way out. Once in a while he would hear a rustle and rush to tell his cousins, but they laughed at his fears. Karl led them off the path into a darker area where the trees grew so close together that almost no light reached the forest floor. ‘Mushrooms grow better in the dark,’ he said. ‘We’ll find plenty here.’

Suddenly the ground had become too wet to walk across, so Karl set off in a wide arc round the bog. Then, as they were pushing through a thicket, they heard a shrill scream. They stopped in their tracks. The sound faded, then came again.

‘Is it an animal?’ Otto whispered.

‘Maybe something’s stuck in a trap,’ Peter suggested.

‘It’s coming from the direction of Lengniethen,’ Karl decided.

It was a lonely place, but the local trapper, Ludwig Schneider, lived there with his family. The boys followed the sound until they came to a little glade. Karl held up a hand to stop the others, as Peter saw something move on the other side of the clearing. He stepped close to his brother and pointed silently.

The boys crept forward, then stopped again. Through the brush on the other side of the clearing they glimpsed a man, but they were still too far away to discern who he was and what was going on. They fell to the ground and crawled nearer.

It was Ludwig, Karl realised. He was with Uta – she had gone to primary school in Germau until Ludwig had hired her to help his wife. Now she was leaning against a tree and Ludwig had pulled up her dress as if he were about to spank her. But he was standing too close to her for that and moving in a peculiar way. Then the boys heard that sound again. Was Uta crying? When Ludwig grabbed her hair she stopped.

Terror gripped the boys. They didn’t know whether to run into the field so that Ludwig would see them and be distracted, or race home and tell their mother what was going on. Karl and Peter knew they had to be careful – Ludwig was said to have killed a man for hunting in his territory. It was best to say nothing, Karl decided, and began to inch backwards. He gestured to the others that they should follow and laid a finger over his lips. Once they were back among the trees, each boy grabbed his basket and fled. They didn’t stop for more mushrooms but hurried on until they reached the road. Back in the open, they walked quickly towards the village and agreed not to tell anyone what they had seen.

When they went into the kitchen Ida saw straight away that something was wrong: only a thin layer of mushrooms covered the bottom of the baskets. ‘Have you boys been in trouble?’

‘Otto wanted to come home and see if Grandpa had arrived.’

Ida looked at her elder son sceptically. ‘I told you he’d be here at suppertime. Go back and find some more mushrooms.’

‘But there aren’t any more.’

‘Nonsense! There are so many you couldn’t carry them all. It’ll be cold in a few weeks and then there won’t be any. Don’t come back again until those baskets are full.’

The boys turned to go.

‘Leave the ones you’ve already got and I’ll clean them.’

The boys did as they were told, but before they went out, Karl saw Leyna sitting on the floor in the living room, playing with her teddy bear. He went in and kicked it out of her hands and across the room. It came to rest under the piano stool and Leyna began to cry. He ran to retrieve it and shoved it back into her hands.

‘What’s going on?’ Ida called from the kitchen.

‘Nothing,’ Karl shouted.

‘Leave Leyna alone.’

They slipped out of the front door before Ida had had time to investigate.

‘Let’s go up past the church,’ Karl suggested.

‘There’re no mushrooms up there,’ his brother reminded him.

‘We’ll try the woods on the other side.’

This time they ignored the path. Karl and Peter knew that any mushrooms that grew beside it would have been picked already. None of the older women ventured far from the path: just a few decades earlier, wolves and bears had patrolled these woods. The boys knew that if they went a little way along the brook and pushed their way through a series of thickets, they would find mushrooms sprouting everywhere.

Soon they were picking furiously to see who could fill his basket first in an effort to forget what they had seen earlier. At first, Otto lagged behind the others, but when he forced himself to concentrate on what he was doing, and put the disturbing images out of his mind, he began to catch up. When he had filled his basket, his cousins were still loading theirs.

Karl didn’t like to be beaten, so when Otto appeared with a full basket he ignored him and went on piling mushrooms into his own.

Even though Otto had agreed that he would not mention to Ida what they had witnessed in the forest, he felt uneasy. He had seen people kissing in the Tiergarten and even a girl’s shirt unbuttoned, but nothing like what that man had been doing to Uta. He wondered for a moment if people were different in the country, then thought better of it: even Karl had seemed upset by what they had seen.

When they got back to the shop, Günter was sitting on the steps with Leyna in his arms. Otto had met his grandfather just three times before, twice when the old man had come to Berlin and once when Otto and Elsa had gone to Königsberg for his grandmother’s funeral. His grandfather was almost a stranger to him. Otto greeted him somewhat formally, then Günter asked after his daughter Elsa.

While Otto answered him, Karl glanced at the door to the shop to make sure his mother wasn’t within earshot. Then, when his cousin fell silent, he said, ‘Can we have a drink, Grandpa? It’s Otto’s first day after all.’

Günter laughed. ‘I put a little bottle of Bärenfang behind the turf stack,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t get drunk – and don’t tell your mother I gave it to you when you do!’

Chapter 4

In late spring, although all civilians had been ordered over the radio to remain at home, refugees occasionally arrived in the village – but sometimes a week went by without one appearing on the square, in search of the road to Pillau. Unfortunately, few civilian ships were sailing, so their best chance of moving west was to return to Königsberg and follow Reichsstrasse 1, which connected the city with Berlin.

Near midnight on 20 July, Ida sat alone in the living room, sewing as she listened to the radio. Suddenly the programme was interrupted by the Führer. That morning an army commander had placed a bomb in his meeting room, he said. It had exploded, killing a secretary, but he himself had escaped virtually unharmed.

By now, many officers who had once supported him no longer trusted his leadership: he had destroyed Germany’s much admired General Staff system by demanding to see almost every major order and strategic plan, then revising it before sending it on, without recourse to trained officers. Also, he placed his favourites in high-ranking posts they were ill equipped to fulfil. Now, although the army was still winning minor battles, it was losing ground. The officers who were conspiring to kill him had no intention of surrendering to the enemy when he had gone, but planned to reassert Germany’s military supremacy.

As Ida listened to the Führer’s angry voice, she realised for the first time that her own family might be in danger if the war did not soon turn back in Germany’s favour. She knew the history of the peninsula almost as well as her father did. No one had occupied it successfully since the French in June 1807 and it had been nearly fifty years before that when the Russians had carried out their only successful occupation of the peninsula during the Seven Years War.

Early the next morning when Karl came downstairs, he found his mother asleep on the davenport. On the radio a woman was singing about summer. He went to Ida, wondering if he should wake her, but before he reached her she opened her eyes.

‘Were you up all night?’ he asked.

‘Come here,’ she said, patting the seat beside her.

Karl sat down and she kissed him. ‘I must have fallen asleep while I was sewing. Why are you up so early?’

‘I heard the radio. I thought you were listening to the records Father brought from Paris.’

‘I haven’t put them on since he left.’

His father had bought the radiogram before the war when they had a contract to deliver meat to the nearby military base, Karl remembered. Before Paul’s departure for France, the neighbours had come to listen to it.

‘Would you like to play a record?’ Ida asked.

‘Now?’

‘Why not? Do you know how to put it on?’

Karl jumped up and grabbed his favourite from beneath the sofa, where the records were kept. Perfectly circular and flat, he loved its feel and solid, heavy weight. He knew it would shatter if dropped, so he carried it carefully across the room. Ida knew which one he had chosen. It was the only one he ever listened to – a Hot Club de France recording, with Django Reinhardt, the guitarist, and Stéphane Grappelli on violin. Ever since Paul had bought it, Karl had begged her for a guitar. She had told him that if he learned to play the piano well enough, she’d consider it after the war. The piece Karl liked best was ‘Nuages’, and now, as the unusual chord sequence that opened it filled the room, he came back to sit beside his mother. She held out her arms and Karl snuggled into her as Reinhardt played.

Chapter 5

While Otto enjoyed running around with his cousins, he didn’t like Karl. It was partly to do with the way Karl flaunted his dagger and belt, the only ones in the village, but mostly because Karl ordered him about. Sometimes he ignored him, even if it meant being beaten up – which was how Karl kept his brother in line.

When there were no household tasks to be done, no school or youth group meeting to attend, they went hiking. They’d climb the hill to the church, drop into the forest and follow the path until it petered out, then continue through virgin woodland. They called it their survival game. When they moved south-east they bypassed Krattlau and Anchenthal, which were little more than clusters of houses at a crossroads. They avoided two lone houses at another crossroads and scouted through the forest to Ellerhaus, another hamlet, where they came out to knock on a door and ask for a drink of water.

A man named Volker was working in his field when the boys came into the village. He grinned when he saw them. ‘What are you up to?’

‘Hiking,’ Karl answered. ‘Otto here is still learning. He’s our cousin but he’s lived in the city all his life.’

‘How do you like Samland?’

‘It’s easy to get lost,’ Otto said.

‘Trust your senses.’

‘I’m not scared—’

‘None of us is scared of the woods,’ Volker said and winked. ‘Have you noticed that the houses in every village are built close together?’

The boys glanced around them.

‘Farms and fields surround the villages, but the houses are built in a cluster at the centre. It’s our way of protecting ourselves from people who pop out unexpectedly from behind the trees.’

‘Who would do that?’

‘The enemy.’

‘What enemy?’

‘Each generation has a different one.’

The boys were silent. ‘Have you two taught your cousin about the trees?’

‘I told him there are places where we have to be careful, but I haven’t taken him to the woods near Romehnen yet,’ Karl said.

‘Long ago all Samlanders were given a tree at birth,’ Volker told Otto. ‘For men it was usually an oak and for women a linden, the goddess of fate. Once you had your tree, it could never be cut down – if it was, its owner’s life would be cut short.’

‘Just like that?’ Otto asked.

‘You’d be surprised at the power of a tree. When I was a few years older than you boys I was taking a short cut back through the forest from Fischhausen when I heard someone scream. It was my brother’s voice. I tried to work out where he was and remembered a grove with an old oak in the middle. Our father had told us not to go there and I knew where those screams were coming from. I found my brother pinned under the trunk of a tree that had fallen. His pelvis was crushed and the ground round him was soaked with blood. Even with an axe and three men it would have taken too long to move the tree. He knew that, and so did I.

‘I went to the back of the tree where he couldn’t see me and tried to pull my knife out without him hearing, but I started to cry. I knew he heard because he fell quiet. We had made a vow to each other years earlier that if either of us was so badly hurt that there was no possibility of recovery, the other would help. I slid up over the fallen trunk, hoping he was looking out into the forest, but he was staring straight into my eyes. I could tell he knew that I was going to keep my vow. I sliced into his neck as fast and deep as I could, then fell on my knees and prayed.’

The boys shuddered and looked at each other without speaking.

Volker bowed his head and went on, ‘My father learned the following week that my brother’s birth tree, in the village where he had been born near Elbing, had been felled for firewood by a family who had moved there.’ Then he pointed at a tree near the edge of the field. ‘You see that one?’

The boys nodded.

‘That’s mine. I keep an eye on it to make sure no one goes near it.’

The boys were aghast.

‘Come with me for a moment,’ Volker said. The boys hesitated, then did as told. He led them to a grove, pointed to a juniper and a willow, then walked over to the latter and broke off three small switches. He handed one to each boy. ‘I don’t think you’ll need them, but they’ll protect you against evil,’ he said.

When they started for home, the woods seemed darker than they had earlier, even though the sun was high in the noon sky. Otto no longer minded that Karl was in front. He and Peter followed close behind, holding their willow switches. Their footsteps rustled leaves and snapped twigs, and for a long time those were the only sounds they could hear – until there was a sudden crack a short distance ahead. A wild boar appeared, glanced at them and ran in the opposite direction.

‘Maybe we should go on to the road,’ Peter said.

They turned right and pushed through the thick undergrowth until they found themselves on a track that ran through the forest to Germau. When they finally reached the square, they carefully leaned their switches against the iron railing that surrounded the linden and ran for the butcher’s.

Chapter 6

After their trip to Ellerhaus the boys avoided the forest and instead hiked to their grandfather’s house at Sorgenau, going along the main road through wide pastures and tunnels of neatly planted lindens lining the road. Before, Karl and Peter had paid little attention to them, but now they wondered if spirits lived in those trees as well, even though they weren’t in the forest and didn’t form a natural grove. They avoided the lone oak in a field a little way from Sorgenau, which Karl and Peter had often climbed.

One day after lunch with their grandfather and his wife, they went to the beach to collect amber. Occasionally someone found a large nugget, but since almost everyone from the villages collected it, they usually found only a few shards, which they took home to Ida. She would take a piece of hardboard, paint a background, then carefully stick the amber to a thin layer of glue to make a sun or breakers crashing on to the beach – made of real sand – with tiny amber people standing on the shore.

On the way back to their grandfather’s house Karl had an idea. He would be the Kameradschaftsführer, the sergeant, of their miniature Hitler Youth unit, and told Peter and Otto to stand to attention. Near Sorgenau the cliff was similar to the one he had jumped off, but not so high. When he had persuaded them to play his game, he led them to the cliff. ‘You’ll probably be the only ones in your group who’ll have trained for the test of courage,’ he said. ‘You’ll thank me then.’

He called Otto forward first. His cousin raised his right arm and shouted ‘Heil Hitler’, as Karl had instructed.

‘You see that area over there? I want you to run as fast as you can and jump off without looking down.’

‘Can I look first?’

‘If you do, what’s the point in jumping?’

‘But what if I land on the rocks?’

Karl called his brother forward.

‘Heil Hitler,’ Peter shouted, arm in the air.

‘I’ll let you keep my knife for the rest of the day if you run across the field and jump without looking.’

‘That’s not fair!’ Otto complained. ‘You didn’t say that to me.’

‘I was going to, but you wouldn’t jump. You lost your chance.’

‘What if I go after Peter?’

‘Here’s a better idea. You run together. The first to jump off the cliff keeps it for the rest of today and the other can have it tomorrow.’

Peter and Otto took off.

‘Hey! You didn’t wait for my order!’

They didn’t look back, just continued to race across the field. Peter disappeared over the cliff, then Otto.

Karl stood alone in the field, absorbed in the view across the grass to the sea. His eyes were trained on a ship near the horizon – was it real or a mirage? Then he saw something move near the lip of the cliff. It was Peter, climbing into the field. Then Otto appeared and a moment later they were running towards him. When he realised they were coming for his knife, he turned and raced for the road to their grandfather’s house.

‘You cheat!’ he heard Otto yell. ‘We’re going to tell Grandpa.’

Chapter 7

By the time autumn 1944 arrived, the atmosphere around the village had changed. Throughout the day countless army trucks loaded with soldiers sped through the place. The boys no longer played on the square since Peter had almost been run over by a truck. The refugees who had occasionally straggled through the village prior to now, now came in a stream – families, older men and women, mothers and young children carrying satchels bound with rope. Almost all were from further east and had left their homes before the war had reached them, even though leaving was seen as disloyalty to the Führer. With no evacuation order forthcoming, many had fled under cover of darkness.

Karl continued to go to school in Pillau, but the two younger boys were at school closer to home. By now they had overcome the fear of the forest that had developed after their experience in Ellerhaus that summer and were hiking once more through the trees. Recently they had found thin strips of aluminium scattered throughout the woods, even in places far off the trail, and had begun to collect it. One day, in the forest near Trulick, four young soldiers confronted them.

‘What are you doing?’ one asked.

The boys held up the scraps of metal they had picked up.

‘Put it back where you found it – and tell everyone else we’ll shoot them if we catch them stealing it.’

The other three soldiers laughed. None looked more than sixteen, but the three boys were scared. Each had a large rifle slung over his shoulder.

When one lunged forward, the three boys screamed and the soldiers laughed even more. When they had all calmed down, one of them explained that the aluminium was intended to disrupt enemy radio transmissions: the soldiers had been ordered to scatter it in case the conflict moved into the area.

‘But there’s no enemy here,’ Karl said.

‘We’re just following orders.’

‘How will the aluminium work?’ Karl asked.

‘How should I know? Maybe the engineers thought the idea up to keep themselves off the battlefield.’ The soldier noticed Karl’s knife and asked to see it. Karl slid it out of its sheath and handed it to him. After looking for a moment at the handle, he passed it to the one standing beside him. ‘Those were the days,’ he said.

The third soldier pocketed it. Karl stared at him in disbelief, then realised there was nothing he could do. He started to speak but his voice cracked and he trailed off before bursting into tears.

‘You’ve got a lot to learn if you’re going to cry about something like that,’ the soldier said, thrusting the knife, handle first, into Karl’s chest.

Karl jumped back in fright.

‘Take it and get the fuck out of here before I stab you with it. We see you picking up aluminium again, you won’t be asking any more questions about the enemy.’

When they got home, Ida asked why they looked so frightened. Peter told her they had bumped into some soldiers.

‘I want you to help me move some food from the pantry to the slaughterhouse attic,’ she said.

‘Why?’ Karl asked.

‘Don’t ask questions.’ She told Peter to run over to the Laufers and ask if they had any spare eggs, then said to the other two, ‘Come on, we’ll make a start.’

Peter left the house and took the road to the Laufers’ farm. As he passed the trail that led to the abandoned shed, he thought of the photographs. He had sneaked out to look at them alone ever since Karl brought them back from his trip. He thought again of the girl with her older brother and mother. He had come to admire her – it was as if the blankness of her face masked bravery, defiance of the camera’s intrusion. The photo Karl most often looked at was the one of the half-naked woman – perhaps partly because he knew he shouldn’t. It was the only picture that either of them had ever seen of a woman’s breasts and they knew they wouldn’t come across any others in their village.

Knowing that he wouldn’t be able to come to the shed during the winter, especially with soldiers about, Peter decided to risk a last visit. He pushed his way through the undergrowth, stopping every few seconds to make sure no one was around.

Inside the shed, he got out the photographs and took them out into the light. He smiled when his eyes rested on the girl, then flipped to the picture with the woman’s breasts, and turned finally to the last one of the men huddling together. Then, instead of returning the photographs to their hiding place, he looked around again to make sure no one was watching and took them into the undergrowth. He searched until he found a large, pointed rock, which he used as a shovel to dig a small hole. He had a final glance at the pictures, squeezed his eyes shut to hold the girl in his mind and let them go. They fell into the hole, the flat, thin prints fluttering on top of one another as they entered their final place of rest. He filled it in, patting the dirt firmly into place, then stood up and listened to make sure once more that he was still alone.

The trip to the shed had taken only five minutes, but he knew that now he must run as fast as he could to the Laufers’ place or his mother and brother would be wondering where he was. As he raced back to the main road he was gripped by an unexpected sadness he had never felt before when he was looking at the photographs, but instead of slowing and contemplating it and feeling sadder still, he increased his pace until the only thing he was able to concentrate on was maintaining his speed as he sprinted the rest of the way to the road, then on to the farm for the eggs his mother had requested.

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