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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 (#uabdd5c80-f896-5e1f-8427-2e869cd17448)
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 (#uabdd5c80-f896-5e1f-8427-2e869cd17448)
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 (#uabdd5c80-f896-5e1f-8427-2e869cd17448)
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 (#uabdd5c80-f896-5e1f-8427-2e869cd17448)
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.
