Maya’s dogs are racing across the fields, retrieving sticks, running, turning, somersaulting, meeting a multitude of other dogs, stopping, sniffing, wagging tails, racing again in patterns logical to them, bewildering to Anna, a cat owner, but dog friend also.
“It seems to me that we were farther west, over there, and closer to those woods,” she says, “but maybe we can find some remnants of those concrete foundations that used to house the FLAK. There would have been several just about here, away from the barracks.”
“I seem to remember stumbling on something like that a while back,” says Maya, “and wondering what it might be. I think it was farther over that way, though.” And they keep on walking, enjoying the spring sun.
“What do you hear from your sisters?” asks Maya.
“Nothing so far,” says Anna. “I’m not anxious to race back, though. They may well decide to all go home for the time being, and travel to Hannover at some appointed time for the interment.”
“Ah, right,” mumbles Maya, lobbing another stick. “THERE IT IS.” And she points. Concrete in the shape of a large canister, five-foot-deep excavation partially filled in with soil, a sturdy flowering bush right next to it, sniffed with great interest by both dogs, it sets Anna’s heart aflutter. Here is something real, something tangible, as though proof is needed that the distant past hadn’t just been a dream, a figment of the imagination, the stuff nightmares are made of.
“This isn’t necessarily part of the casemates,” she says, “but it might have been.”
“What could it be, out here in the middle of nowhere?” muses Maya. “I can’t think of anything else, frankly.”
“The barracks would have been over there then,” Anna points. “We had this kid, this fourteen-year-old, can’t think of his name now, from Pommerania, with short curly red hair. He could never stand still. Have you ever met anybody like that? Was always doing backflips, or flying handstands, or something. One moment you were talking to him, the next moment you were looking at his feet? I don’t know what suddenly reminded me of him.” She pauses. “He had this idea he would make his way to Dresden or Leipzig or wherever the circus was. Remember Circus Sarrasani?”
“Yes, of course, everybody remembers that Circus!” says Maya.
“He already was an acrobat, always spot-walking when he was supposed to stand still and salute the flag. He was separated from his folks, and then the SS grabbed him, didn’t believe he was just fourteen, and sent him to this Home Guards outfit. I wish I could believe he survived, hadn’t thought of him for so long,” says Anna.
“It’s been a lot of years,” says Maya.
“We live as long as other people think of us with fondness, my sister Nadja believes.”
“My medical training tells me otherwise,” says Maya severely, but then, “it’s a nice thought, worth repeating.”
“Mmmmm. I put an ad in the local paper,” says Anna, “that kind of newsletter they drop off at every house once a week, and I gave my name with Hilde’s phone number, asked for witnesses to get in touch.”
“I wonder what kind of reaction you’ll get. Most people don’t read the thing because it’s just full of ads, same old same old,” says Maya. “But occasionally they have an interesting feature, like a school reunion, or a fund raising bazaar for something, quite useful.”
“This dirt road over here looks like the one we used. It was on a slight angle, pointing left towards the woods, and back there would have been the air raid shelter, the zigzag trench, not far from the compound. It feels so strange, Maya, so very strange to be walking here. I can almost hear the boys talking, see them in front of me in their awkward get-up. Their long hair — oh, one day they got one of the Berlin kids, a barber’s apprentice, to do a gigantic marathon hair-cutting shift. First just the guys who wanted theirs cut, and then the Lieutenant decided it wasn’t dignified to fight a war with your locks falling around your collar, and so he ordered everybody to get it cut. But it never happened. There were just too many to go through, and so the junior barber had his moment in the limelight cut short. Pun intended.”
“How are your legs holding up? Getting tired?” asks Maya.
“I could walk for hours,” says Anna.
“Want to drive by your old house?”
“No, thanks, Maya. No need.”
And then they return to Maya’s place and eat lunch.
Anna doesn’t say anything. Poking about in her salad, she is thinking of the last time she had visited the old neighbourhood, been driven there with her two young children, by a friend.