At the Aral Station they walk north and head for the bicycle path, walking two abreast.
“We’ll go to Birkenwerder,” says Lilly. “I have friends there. They’re bombed out, but they have a nice wood shack near the Havel river. They’ll hide us, I’m sure.”
Birkenwerder seems like an impossible goal to reach on foot, but they struggle on, holding on to things wobbling high on the carriage.
Next to the path the ditch is overflowing with all sorts of debris, boxes, a typewriter, clothing, small carpets, dishes, a dead dog.
Foffie turns his head and looks at it for a long time. He asks no questions for once.
Beside them, the road is still impassable — the rear guard of the Red Army continues its long trek into the city. Trucks, armored personnel carriers, small horse-drawn supply carts, an ambulance, all heading in the opposite direction. The open air seems the safe place to be. Out in the street no one bothers them, the traffic moving, moving, thank goodness.
In the ditch in front of them a discarded suitcase, overflowing with Reichsmark in bundles. Someone has broken into a bank, then thought better of it. Anna is heading over to pick up a couple of bills, but Lilly stops her.
“Leave it. It’ll be worthless next week. They’ll print new currency, you’ll see.”
Anna turns back, but Korinna, the skeptical, picks up a single fifty-mark bill that has drifted to the bicycle path and pops it under the hood of the carriage.
“Lilly!” says Anna. “I haven’t told you — Foffie and I ran into some of the boys, back there at the corner, today!”
“Tell me later,” says Lilly shakily. “No, now. Who was it? Was Axel?”
And Anna tells her about the encounter, but omits the part where the boys said they thought Axel was badly injured right away. Also the part where they had said they thought they might be the only survivors. Lilly can’t take it in now, can’t focus on the information. Just beams briefly at the thought that these three have made it through so far.
Mother has slowed down soon after they turned up and onto the bicycle path, but pushes on with a haunted expression in her eyes.
“Don’t walk ahead,” she cautions, “lets all stay close together,” and they do.
The ditch beside them keeps revealing the extent of the looting. The most astonishing things turn up, discarded for something more precious. Window curtains, kitchen gadgets, tools, cameras, papers, lots of papers, paintings in expensive frames, a motorcycle wheel, toys, carpets and mountains of clothes and shoes are piled up, wet and soiled. Most unsettling among these is odd looking matter you couldn’t identify.
A lot of debris has been pushed out of the roadway and onto their narrow path. So they are forced occasionally to step down into the oncoming traffic to get around tree stumps, damaged cars and vans and other obstacles, gathered together a few days ago to form tank barriers, only to be pushed aside in minutes by the enemy.
“It will take the Red Army an hour to overcome each tank barrier,” the Berliners had joked, “fifty-eight minutes killing themselves laughing, and two minutes to push the stuff out of the way.” As it turned out, the prediction wasn’t far off.
As the group approaches the first village north of Berlin, a long line of small open horse-drawn carts appears, each steered by a single soldier and running along at a fierce clip. These small wagons are laden with many more items like those found in the ditches, and presumably more food stuffs for the troops. They shout at the girls, but no one stops and no one bothers them.
As they walk on the sandy sidewalk now, trying to make their way through this village as fast as possible, there are Polish soldiers on horseback patrolling the cobblestoned streets. They are drunk, shout at the few civilians seen outside, and one of their horses mounts the sidewalk and frightens Foffie. Anna takes him piggyback and Lilly promises to carry him later. Nadja and Korinna keep piling slipped belongings back on the baby carriage. Mother looks straight ahead.
“Keep going,” she whispers, “just keep going, let’s get out of here.” And they do. A soldier on horseback comes charging up to them, swaying back and forth, a pistol in his right hand.
“Germans?” he shouts.
“No, Dutch,” Lilly tells him, and in her case it isn’t entirely wrong, as her paternal grandfather hailed from the Netherlands many years before.
The cavalry man rides on, firing into the air.
Mother’s face is white.
Just north of the village they see a woman beckon to them, from a door just open wide enough to show her hand, and they quickly turn into the front yard, and slip inside the house.
“What are you doing out on the street?” the woman asks, wiping her forehead with her apron. “They’re shooting at anyone without provocation. They have been drunk for two days. Come into the kitchen and sit down for a while.” She pours them home made apple cider in cheerful looking cups.
Her husband appears from the rear building and covers the baby carriage out front with a spotty throw sheet. Foffie curls up in a chair in the ‘good room’, clutching a piece of bread, and falls fast asleep.
“What time is it?” Anna wants to know. “We’re trying to make it to Birkenwerder before nightfall. There’s a place where we hope to shelter for a while. So we shouldn’t stay too long.”
“It’s past seven o’clock,” says the husband. “You won’t make it all the way. Who knows where you’ll be stuck? And you won’t know it’s curfew. Better stay here overnight. You can sleep in the basement storage room. They won’t find you there. We’ll hide the door.”
For a moment, a split second, Mother and Lilly look at each other, “does it sound safe to you?” says the look, and then they pronounce that, yes, this is probably what should be done. And thank this kind, generous couple, who have begun to cook a meal-in-a-pot, a winter soup, on an ancient tiled range in the kitchen. Foffie wakes up from the delicious smell and receives more bread and a glass of milk to tide him over.
The carriage and its contents have been moved around to the backyard and covered again.
“You should go downstairs soon,” their hosts warn. “We never know when they start looking for women. They’ve been drinking all day.” And so, after the wonderful meal, a quick wash, they climb down into their hiding space and fall into a deep sleep.
They wake up briefly later that night, when a child’s voice can be heard out in the main room, and those of two young women. They fall asleep again.
At first, the screams and shouts seem to be coming from right outside their hiding place. Anna feels for Foffie on the floor. His breath comes long and evenly, one arm lies across his chest. On his other side Mother is staring straight at the beams just above their head, her body shaking. Lilly, with Nadja and Korinna, is kneeling on the floor, both hands pressed over her ears, mumbling.
“Pray, girls,” she is saying, and they pray.
“It’s in the house next to this one, or one over,” Anna whispers to Mother. She strokes her shoulder. “Not this one.” It’s no consolation, of course. Women are being attacked, girls their own age and younger are being raped, and the men are powerless to prevent it. If they try, they are shot on the spot, or tied up and made to watch. It appears as though the crime is committed to drive home the point that German men have lost every aspect of sovereignty in their land, over their homes, all control over events, there being no authority left to whom to turn in order to uphold the law and restore order.
Anna listens to the rising tide of screams, shots and slamming doors, the loud banging of metal, as one would do to drive away a wild animal, and feels as though an abyss has opened below them all to swallow an entire population. This symphony from hell continues for several hours and only subsides when a rooster is heard from a yard a block away, an improbable shrill counter point of peace, announcing the dawn.
For a short while all is quiet. The girls badly wish to go and sneak into the outdoor toilet, but they stay put.
The husband comes down to the basement, coughing. His face is grey and stubbled. He brings a bottle of milk.
“Go quickly,” he says. “Walk along this back street, out this door, for as long as it will go, before you double back to the auto route. They’re still sleeping off the night of barbarism, but they’re totally unpredictable right now. Better go.” He tousles Foffie’s hair.
“It’s a bad time, God bless you.”
Mother and the girls mumble their profound thanks, send greetings and good wishes for the wife who is nowhere to be seen.
The back street is deserted. Soldiers can be heard snoring in carts, others are leading horses along in the distance.
When the sun is high in the sky, Mother decides it’s a good idea to stop right in front of all the moving traffic, in a reasonably clean and dry spot beyond the ditch, and get out some bread and water and take a rest. A good idea, as it turns out, because they are ignored, except for a stray German shepherd in search of food.
When they get closer to Birkenwerder the sound of machine guns is unmistakable. It is coming from the direction of the Havel river fields, the very area Lilly had thought would be fairly safe by now, the refuge of her friends, but they can’t be sure exactly where the fighting is going on. Isn’t this where those tanks came through that eventually met the boys in the woods south of here? Hasn’t the front moved away beyond this point? What is happening? Where will they go? What to do now? They decide to continue along the auto route, and ignore the noise off in the distance.
“Should we look for shelter in the church?” says Mother, pointing to a friendly steeple in the nearby village just ahead.
“A bad idea,” says Lilly with authority. “They will all know that’s where all the girls are, and just walk in. Who’s going to stop them, the priest?”
On they walk. They have picked a blanket from the baby carriage, discarded a cooking pot, adding debris of their own to the riches by the road, and placed Foffie in the carriage, legs and feet hanging out the end. He is dozing.
Lilly has expressed a vague idea that this must be close to where they are to turn left, then walk along a dirt road towards the Havel river. Hidden behind some flowering bushes should be a small wood barrack, with her friends hopefully safe and sound. Her face lights up as she describes the couple, in their fifties, pottery makers, artists, the wife a weaver also. Family friends for many years, childless, and Lilly's voice drops discreetly as she says, “Mother thinks they are not really legally married.”
“It doesn’t matter, does it,” says Korinna, who overheard. No. Doesn’t.
A Red Army traffic controller has stopped traffic at a small intersection. He does let them cross to the other side, but then shouts that they aren’t allowed to go on over there, in halting German, “just along the street, not into the fields. Still shooting, fighting, boomboom.” They can hear for themselves.
But this is as far as they will go. Their bodies aching, the energy spent, they stumble onto a dirty green space, push the carriage against a tree, and drop to the ground. Foffie wakes up.
“What’s that, that flag over there?” he wants to know.
“It’s a ‘tricolore’, a French flag,” says Anna. “It means there is a French person living in that house.”
“Is it a holiday, a French holiday?” Foffie asks.
“No, it’s more like a surrender, a kind of making peace,” says Anna.
“I’ll get some water,” says Foffie and is off like a terrier. Korinna runs after him, Mother covering her mouth with both hands.
“Let’s leave them, it’s not far,” says Lilly. “I mean we’ve seen where they’ve gone.” And they stare at the house.
In a moment Korinna comes running back.
“They want us to come in,” she breathes. “They’re very nice people. I think we should.”
The lady stands in the door.
“Please come inside,” she says. “You will want to wash up a little. Your daughter says…” She stares at Mother. “You look very unwell. Come in. Come in.”
In half an hour Foffie is sitting on a back porch playing checkers with a skinny, gentle young man. Mother has been given some hot broth and is lying down.
The girls sit in the back yard, hidden by a hedge, their heads together, too exhausted to talk, just holding hands.
If and when the shooting stops out there, it has been decided, they will sneak out into the meadow and look for the friends’ place. For now, this is an island of peace in the intolerable turmoil, the story here difficult to guess.
So at dusk they set out, against the protests of the friendly strangers, and begin making their way across the open field, the guns now quiet. They come through some trees, lift the carriage over exposed roots and there, in front of them, on his back, with open eyes, lies a fallen Polish soldier, a rosary in his stiff hands. There is no evidence of a wound. They stand in a circle around this unfortunate young man, and burst into tears. Foffie joins them, his women, the last guardians of his safe little world, explainers and nurturers, suppliers of dandelions and stories and songs, seeing them so utterly disconsolate, coming apart at the seams. He doesn’t cry, he howls in terror. And they kneel down with him, dry his tears, hug him and carry him along like a baby, suppressing their sobs, thinking of what to say when he asks his next questions.
“I want my Daddy,” Foffie says. “I want him back. I want us to go with him. Where is my Daddy?”
This is not a good moment to reply that Daddy has gone to fight the enemy.
“He’ll be back soon,” says Lilly, “as soon as he’s able, he’ll be back.”
They find the barrack, in one piece, the door unlocked, the friends’ belongings in place, small artifacts in the windows, wildflowers in a vase even. But there is no one here.
They eat bread and ersatz honey, Foffie drinks his milk and they sit and look out the back towards the river Havel, just a few meters away. Deceptively peaceful it seems, and just as they have decided to lie down for the night, Mother gets terribly agitated. No, she declares, this is far from a safe spot, it is a trap. Where can they hide, if soldiers come looking for them here?
She is so upset, quite unwilling to listen, and finally Lilly is infected with the uneasiness. They decide to leave at once, along the Havel fields, leaving the carriage and contents behind.
They hurry along, staying away from the streets and houses, through the fields, orchards, in the direction from which they had come earlier in the day. But where will they sleep now, where rest this time? They have taken a single blanket for Foffie, because the nights have turned cold again. They have stumbled along for more than an hour, and it is almost completely dark, when they come upon a large building in a park-like setting, a wrought iron fence and gate intact. As they stop to look at it, a Nun is opening one of the windows and spots them outside.
“Oh dear,” she calls, “you cannot be caught outside. Don’t you know there’s a curfew? Wait, I’ll come down.”
They walk through the park towards the portal, knowing that somewhere in that building awaits safety, a spot for them all to sleep, and a chance to gather their strength for what lies ahead.
Early the next day Anna returns once more to the barrack near the Havel to try to retrieve the baby carriage. She runs the last twenty meters across the open field to the back door. Ducking in the kitchen, as she approaches, is a young woman who whispers through the open window.
“Are you alone? Is anyone following you?” The woman unlocks the door and pulls her inside.
“I’m just coming to collect our carriage outside,” says Anna pointing. “I can’t stay. We didn’t see you yesterday evening—”
“No. We saw the buggy when we slipped in here late last night. We didn’t know if anyone lived here anymore. But we couldn’t sleep here. The soldiers came, and when we heard them coming, we ran down to the river and hid in the water for over an hour.”
“You went into the Havel? In the night?” The woman nods.
“We held on to bushes and weeds by the bank,” she says. “My friend is sleeping now. We’ll take turns. I’m afraid I borrowed some of your clothes. Mine are drying.”
“Not ours,” says Anna. “We didn’t live here. Don’t worry. I have to go now. Good luck.” They look each other in the eye, and wave a small wave. Anna grabs the baby carriage and furiously pushes along the rough path and the side streets, not looking back. Why would these women stay? Weren’t they in for another night like the last?
When she returns to the orphanage, the nuns find room in the cellar to store the carriage. Anna goes upstairs to the others, and decides not to tell what she found at the barrack. And no one has followed her here.
Today Foffie turns five, but no one remembers, and he doesn’t know.
Lilly will not live to see the day in the nineteen nineties when an international tribunal officially declared rape by a conquering army a war crime. Mother will be alive at that time, but will be unable to bear to be reminded of anything that happened to her or her family at the end of the war.