Page 68 of Besieger
The train was running late, and the platform was overflowing with bodies, personal articles, and furniture. They had been waiting for hours; the sun was just peeking above the horizon. Some of the uniformed men were yelling, pointing their fingers at the large trunks and gesturing for their owners to dump them.Leave them behind, take only the clothes on their back, throw away all other belongings.
Victor huffed; his breath formed a pale cloud above the collar of his coat. When the train arrived at last, the metal wheels screeched horridly into the grey light of the morning, and he was glad to see the mass of bodies finally begin to move.
The prisoners—for this was what they were escorting—climbed into the carriages, some of them clutching what little the soldiers had allowed them to keep. Victor’s gaze moved down the platform and noticed his comrades doing the strangest thing.
They were nailing the doors of one of the carriages shut.
The men leaned their weight against the timber, hammering at the doors that would not close properly. It might serve as a practical solution to an unexpected problem now, but Victor knew it would cause a commotion when the train stopped at other stations and passengers were unable to come and go as they pleased. Perhaps this was why the train had been delayed: the soldiers at the previous station had to nail the doors there as well.
When the train departed, it left them amid the abandoned possessions of the prisoners. Victor asked the commanding officer what time he was to report back.
“Report back?” The man glanced up from an open trunk of clothes at his feet and eyed the insignia on Victor’s collar.
“To escort the prisoners back to the station, sir.” Victor said, and when the officer kept staring at him, he added, “After their shift at the labour camp, sir. When do we expect them back?”
The officer laughed, visibly amused. Some of the other soldiers turned to look at them, annoyed by the disturbance. They were rifling through the boxes and trunks, jumbling them further. Railway workers from the station were coming their way, perhaps to help, or join the looting.
The officer patted Victor on the shoulder and moved past him. “They are not coming back, boy.”
Whatever reason had remained was thrown into the nothingness when the bombing began.
Victor found himself sleeping in his uniform, becoming one with its field-grey colour. He kicked off his boots and lay on his back, sometimes too tired to shrug off the heavy greatcoat. Other times he flung it to the ground and slept in his shirt and trousers; the muscles on his back pressed against the holster of his pistol and the dagger at his hip. If a bomb hit their house and the roofburied him, he would die dressed like a true German, theSoldbuch[20] folded neatly in his pocket, with honour. His father and grandfather would be proud. The hysteria of the thought made him shake with laughter, the radio in the dining room barely drowning the sound.
Even in his sleep, Victor could not imagine what ‘peace’ might look like; bombs shrouded his homeland, the streets of Berlin where he had played as a child now gone or pocked with craters like an alien moon. The Gestapo raided restaurants and cinemas in one last, desperate attempt to restore the peace, to find someone to blame for the colossal collapse of order.
Sometimes the dreams took him back to his infantry training: the weeks spent with his comrades learning to strip, clean, and load rifles, wrestling with machine guns and heavy weapons. Like his brother Tobias, Victor excelled physically, proving a better fighter in close combat rather than as a marksman. At school he had done boxing, bringing home medals and ribbons from championships, and the occasional broken nose. During the training he learned map-reading and undertook fieldcraft and tactics, never aspiring to go beyond the station ofScharführer[21]. His brother had been the ambitious one, the one destined for a military career. Victor was meant to be the second best, following him closely. A reserve in the Schwarzschild family line.
It was Tobias who failed to make it fast enough to the shelter when the sirens sounded, the crutch slowing him down. The first time it happened, Victor was out, staying late at the offices of the SD, in expectation of another night spent on his feet. He heard the sirens, but instead of going to the designated shelter, made for home. The streets were empty, Berlin was plunged in frigid darkness, the whole city waiting for the sky above to split and burst into flame.
When he stepped through the entrance hall and into the dining room, he was startled to find a man sitting at the table, busy with something in the dark. The clank and scrape of metal and porcelain was so loud in the silence, it made Victor flinch. The man appeared to be eating. He worked the knife and fork, cutting pieces of meat and lifting them blindly to his mouth. He reached out for a glass and spilled some of its contents when he tried to refill it from a pitcher.
“Tobias?”
The man inclined his head towards Victor’s voice. He pulled the chair beside him from under the table, and offered Victor a seat.
“Muttisaid to leave you some of the dinner,” Tobias said between mouthfuls.
“Why are you here? Didn’t the sirens go off?” Victor asked, suddenly unsure. He recalled everyone at the office evacuating, while the radio was barking instructions to go and find shelter. Any minute now, the lights were going to come back on and the city would brim with voices full of relief.
He walked towards the table, unbuttoned his greatcoat and tossed his cap on a chair.
“I couldn’t sleep,” his brother said and patted his good leg.
Victor huffed in agreement and sat next to Tobias. He did not need to see his brother’s face to find the same signs of exhaustion and restlessness which marked his own. The nights were split between running errands and running from the bombs. The sirens and alarms were so frequent they became almost indistinguishable from all other sounds. Maybe that was why Victor could not remember; days and nights had melted into one. Every day the siren sounded, every day they ran to the shelter, and hours later crawled out of the earth, back to their posts. Life and war carried on.
“A few years back there was a fire, remember?” Tobias asked.
There had been many fires, then and now, too numerous to count. So Victor merely nodded.
He reached down and pulled a packet of cigarettes from his coat. His grandfather despised smoking, he did not tolerate it inside the house, called itdirty. But his grandfather was not here now, and Victor lit a match and let the tiny flame warm and illuminate the space between his palms.
“—all over Berlin. Heine said the shop up the street had also caught fire.” His brother went on, staring at the cutlery in his hands. “We couldn’t move past the crowd. You kept getting frustrated, you were going to be late for something.”
“Probably school,” Victor offered, exhaling smoke.
A private smile curled his lips. It felt good to sit here, in the dark with his brother, and smoke. His body felt light, like he could instantly drift in a dreamless sleep if he leaned back in the chair.
“No, school was cancelled. Work, too. I rememberMuttibeing upset over that.” Victor could hear his brother frown as he talked, as though he were forcing the memory out of himself. “The synagogue was burning, and they told us to go and watch with the other kids. It was November and it was cold, and people were standing there, watching as the building burned. Watched it for hours until it collapsed into a blackened wreck. Do you remember any firemen there?”
