The woman who hurried past the house had called to mother that there was a line-up at the butcher shop. A horse. A Russian horse had been put down after an injury the day before.
Her hair hidden under a grey scarf, and little brother by the hand for protection, Anna arrived at the busy corner teeming with military traffic, trucks, personnel carriers crammed full of bald, singing, shouting, cheering soldiers in their enemy-brown uniform, horse-drawn carts, all heading downtown, feeling victorious already.
“Where are they going?” Foffie asked.
“Into the city. All downtown.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s where there’s still some more fighting.”
“When can they go home again?”
“Well, according to Uncle Heyn, they’ll leave when you’re all grown up.”
“Anna? ANNA!”
She looked in the direction from which the voice had come. Slowly, three figures approached on the bicycle path leading from the woods to the north. Heavily bandaged heads, shoulders, one on crutches, they leaned against the retaining wall now, at the old ARAL gas station.
Anna and Foffie ran over to them. Tired eyes peered out from between layers of bandage strips.
“Eddie?” Anna guessed, looking at the tallest.
“Nno, no more Eddie,” said Motz, “It’s me. In disguise. They got my leg, though. Or these two buddies would be home already.”
The low-lidded eyes looked down at the other two.
“You know Gus. He’s coming home with me. And —”
“Of course, Gus!” She took a step forward. He gave her his good hand, the left, and mumbled something. Then, “What are YOU doing here? Can this be happening?”
“I live here, just down the street. Who’s this?”
Well, Ulli —” said Motz.
“ULLI! Are you alright? How?”
Red-rimmed eyes were peering at her intently. But there was no response.
“Ulli here won’t talk for a while.”
“Oh Ulli.” Anna embraced very gingerly the stiff, resisting figure.
“He won’t talk for a while. Head injury, you know. But he hears everything,” Motz said, stroking Foffie’s head. Foffie had been clutching him around the hips.
“Normally I would let you play with my crutches, Piccolino, but I need them, so as not to tip over,” he said.
Anna looked across the street.
“We’re going to line up at the butcher shop. You know what? You should try and get some meat too. No ration coupons. Just say you live at 294 Ehlert. Can you make it?”
“I suggest the male heir stay here and keep Ulli company, and Gus and I obtain some grub, alright?”
“We have no money,” said Gus.
“I have enough,” said Anna. “It’s worthless anyway. They’ll replace it soon. But are you up to crossing here?”
Motz nodded.
The soldier directing traffic went out into the road after she saw them waiting, her face impassive as she stopped the Red Army for them, her left arm in a blood-smeared sling. Smaller cars had been passing earlier, containing mini-soldiers in Soviet Army uniform, children no older than ten or eleven. What on earth have we done to these people, Anna thought, struck at the sight of a wounded female enemy. We have invaded their land without provocation, brought death and destruction to them, and changed their lives forever. How can I begin to make it up to them? Who can ever hope to do enough?
Anna wondered why Motz hadn’t stayed behind with Ulli as she watched him painfully making progress across the street. Gus stayed abreast, Anna anxiously eyeing the queue outside the shop, a long line of pushing people. The soldier guarding the door kept an imposing rifle over his shoulder.
“One pound per family,” a man said, suspiciously eyeing Gus and Motz, “there’s enough for everybody and plenty for the butcher.” But the line was rapidly growing behind them as they took their place.
“Motz, I’m sorry to do this, but what happened with Eddie? I need to know, I promised to mail something for him.”
Motz looked up at the trees without speaking, shook his head.
“Not coming back,” said Gus finally, “and neither are any of the others, I’m pretty sure. We are IT.”
Anna dropped her jute shopping bag and covered her face with her hands. People behind them abruptly fell silent. A hand came around her shoulder. The voice of an older man, “How about letting these wounded guys go to the head of the line? This one’s on crutches?” No one moved.
One woman turned, snarled, “I can hardly stand on my feet myself…”
Then, from the front of the line: “If it hadn’t been for these kids playing hero the war would’ve been over much earlier.” Someone, a woman, slapped the speaker across the face, hard, then offered her place in line to Gus and Motz, who mumbled their thanks and shuffled forward. Anna’s face was very red. Where had these terrible people come from? There was no further reaction in the bedraggled line-up.
“How did it go for you, girl?” asked Motz, in a low voice.
“Alright mostly.”
“Mostly.”
“Um, I can’t talk about it now, okay? A lot better than for other women, anyway.”
Through the back door of the butcher shop they could see part of the horse’s head. Anna’s stomach lurched.
“Cook just like beef —” the butcher was repeating over and over, the wife distractedly making change.
“Have you heard from Lilly and Emma or Lotte?” Gus asked.
“She came to our house while the tanks were rumbling by outside, Emma did.” Anna hesitated. “No, she’s not alright, I don’t know. The tanks stopped right there at the road we just crossed, and were stuck and all of a sudden all these soldiers swarmed into all the houses.”
“Oh God,” said Gus. “We blew up four of those tanks between us.”
“You DID? You blew up FOUR TANKS?!” Anna’s voice could be heard right to the end of the line-up.
“Yes,” said Motz in a low voice, “Eddie ‘n Ulli and Gus here and I got four of them, and now I feel better about that.” He adjusted his crutches.
“And Axel another one, we’re pretty sure. We would have got more,” said Gus, “except we never made it to our trenches. They had overrun them already, were waiting for us in the dark, picked most of the guys right off their bikes on the approach path. We could hear them. I was at the back of the line and jumped off, found a little hole with bushes all around. Axel caught a hit in the shoulder right off the bat. He came running back and ducked behind a kind of ridge to the left of us. And Chris rolled in as well. Ivan kept firing away with their automatic stuff. Then when they thought they had us all — yes, number 20 Ehlert, please. Four people in my family.” And Gus held out some money, then Motz and Anna. “Just cook like beef. It’s real lean, unfortunately,” repeated the butcher. They made room for Motz and his crutches and pushed out of the store with their small packages.
“I gotta sit down,” said Motz, “my leg’s yelling at me.”
They pushed past waiting trucks named ‘Dodge’ and sat on the old bench at the bus stop.
“Ringside seats for the victory show,” said Motz, moving uncomfortably, sucking air through his teeth.
“I need to get this limb to a German hospital right away or I might lose it.”
“That army doctor spoke excellent German,” said Gus, “and they did their best for us, after they looked after their own guys.”
“Yeah,” said Motz, “their chums blow us to kingdom come, and then—”
“Well, we blew a few holes in their tanks. We did a lot of damage. They brought a lot of guys out of the woods, theirs, ours, more dead than alive,” said Gus. He looked at Anna and Motz.
“I’ll try to go across now, see how Ulli’s doing with your sister.”
“Brother. Leave the meat here. I’ll bring it.” She put her hand on Motz’s arm. “I’m so very sad about Eddie, so sad. He and you—”
“We were best buddies. We played in the sandbox at the park together. Let’s leave it for another time, Anna.” She waited.
“I can’t get over this, this miracle. You guys spotting us at the corner there. Two minutes later, we would have never seen each other again — wouldn’t have heard.”
“You girls didn’t EXPECT to ever see us again, isn’t that right?”
“Oh no, I mean we couldn’t stand thinking about it, but — you’re right. We didn’t. Didn’t DARE hope, we wanted to, but no—”
“I know. Thing is, when we got out there and everything fell apart right away — the strategy they’d drilled into us and that — we didn’t know what to do, didn’t have an emergency move ready, no alternate plan, and useless weapons. We should’ve had hand grenades, machine guns, something! Those woods were lousy with infantry and us, do you know how close you have to be to the underbelly of a tank? To have any chance with a bazooka? They taught us to fire at about 25 to 30 meters. We couldn’t see that working. I mean, all those trees. So we let them come much closer. But then, if you get lucky you have one hell of a lot of hardware flying around. And there’s always another one and another one. Slow, but they keep coming. First, you know, we lost the others. We had trouble with Eddie’s bike chain.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, we got to the fork in the woods, where the others turned left. Where we ALWAYS TURNED LEFT to get to the trenches.
“Well, we couldn’t hear or see the guys, but just then all hell broke loose, and then Eddie yelled, ‘let’s turn right. See that big tree came down.’ It was a good idea because we were the only ones they didn’t ambush, didn’t see us, but when we got to the tree, there, to the left of us, machine guns, and they weren’t making movies. So we hit the ground and crawled into the branches with all those leaves, Eddie in front of me, a little to the right, Ulli behind us in the root hole. We knew we’d have to lie real low. You couldn’t see much, but we were close to the dirt road, the fork, you know.”
Motz was moving his good leg when suddenly there was a lot of shouting, Russian shouting, a man was shoved into a truck, followed by a soldier, and the Red Army drove on into the city of Berlin, the shelling not over. They couldn’t see where Gus and Ulli were resting at the old gas station, but for moments between moving trucks they spotted a very animated blond little boy waving his arms in the air.
“When the tanks came along the dirt road — they know how bazookas work. Nobody in their right mind would lie plumb in the middle of the road and aim one at the underbelly, so I guess that’s why they stayed pretty clear of the underbrush that’s good cover. But I don’t know why one of them, the second, kind of turned sideways a little, so as to be in perfect position for Eddie. I was looking for little guys with long guns, couldn’t see any.
“’Go for it,’ I whispered to Eddie. And he fired like he heard me. And WHAMMMMM! Awesome. Of course, if you make noise you get a lot of attention, and two of them came grinding out of nowhere. I crawled to the side a little, this big bus came nosing around, realized we were in the tree — I don’t know if their first blast got a piece of Ulli right then. We were partly covered by the smoking wreck. Then one of them edged around and I wiggled Eddie’s foot and said, ‘this one’s for me,’ and let go, and WHAMMMMM! For a second I thought they would scramble out the top, a sort of open and close, smoking.” Motz moved the bad leg. “He was a goner, though. And all of a sudden we heard some of our buddies in the distance — WHAMMMM. WHAMMMM. Gus says Axel got at least one twenty metres left of him. I got really excited when I heard that noise and I reached forward and wiggled Eddie’s boot, and he wiggled back. And then I looked up and there was another tank coming through the little clearing at the fork heading straight for our tree. He was maybe twenty meters away. I moved my second bazooka into position and was just about to pull when all hell broke loose. Ulli had beat me to it by a couple of seconds, but this time the turret moved, the cannon pointed straight at us, then — nothing. To be honest, I didn’t think Ulli could pull the trigger to hit a clay pigeon. I called to Eddie but he didn’t answer me.” Motz stopped.
Neither of them spoke. Anna reached over and held his arm.
“Motz, you know, you’re taking home the guy who may write a poem or poems about what happened. He’s so—”
“He’s badly hurt. And he’s not coming home with me. Gus is. Ulli has an address, a teacher or something. For now.”
“Tell me, where are you hurt on your head?”
“Nowhere,” said Motz, “it’s a disguise. The German Medic wrapped it on.”
Anna was impressed.
“Will you all come to my house and get some water, a proper rest?”
“No, Anna, we have to keep going. We figure it’ll be about six hours to get to my place. We can’t count on a ride.”
“Should we find a doctor out here? Try Hansi’s clinic?”
“It’s just too uncertain. I think I know who’ll fix up this leg and the other guys, IF the hospital is still standing.”
“There’s the curfew at 10.00. Let’s cross the road. Do you have any water?”
“Gus does. We’re okay.”
Once more the Red Armist parted the sea for them, doing a job. They did hug then, gently, Anna caressing bandages, touching Ulli’s face, squeezing hands and she and Foffie waved for a long time, Motz shaking one of his crutches in a comical gesture towards heaven.
“It’s been wildly bucolic out here,” he had said. “I look forward to a breath of downtown air, some honest ruins, smoke. Ciao…”
Then Motz stopped and waved at her. Anna ran after them.
“It’s time to disclose the secret,” he said. “My proper name is Maurice,” and he looked ashamed.
“I like that, like it very much,” said Anna. “Who named you? It doesn’t matter really.”
“My uncle felt they should choose something dignified. Oh well.”
“But ‘Motz’ suits you best,” said Anna, and walked back, smiling to herself. And with this they disappeared from each other’s lives forever.
“What are ruins, Anna?” Foffie had wanted to know.
And she had explained. But she was thinking of Ulli, of Ulli’s eyes. It was as though he had retreated inside them.