An Elephant in the Garden Page 6

  “I do not blame you.” To our astonishment, the airman was speaking to Mutti in almost perfect German. “I saw the fire from the plane. I could not believe it. I did not expect it to be like that, that the whole city would burn like that. None of us did.”

  “Oh, really?” said Mutti. “So tell me, what did you think it would be like then, some kind of a carnival, a fireworks display perhaps?”

  “We thought it would be like the blitz on London, I suppose, when the Luftwaffe came.” The airman replied softly, not responding at all to Mutti’s fury. “I was there. And that was terrible enough. But last night it looked like the fires of hell. That’s what we’re doing in this war, all of us, on your side, on our side; we are making a hell on earth, and we do not seem to be able to know how to stop. I am sorry. I know that is not enough, but it is all I can say.”

  No one spoke for some time, until Karli piped up, breaking the silence between us. “Do you really fly a Spitfire?” he asked.

  “No, only a Lancaster, I’m afraid. And I didn’t fly it anyway. I’m not a pilot, I’m a navigator.” And when he smiled then, I remember thinking that he looked more like a boy than a man.

  “And you navigated your way to Dresden so you could drop your bombs on thousands of innocent people,” said Mutti. “Well, bravo you! How do people like you sleep at night? That is what I want to know.” Mutti was looking about her, suddenly nervous. “And the others? Where are the others of your crew? Are you alone?”

  “All dead,” the airman replied. “We were hit by flak over the city. Everyone in the plane was killed, except for Jimbo—he was the pilot—and me. Jimbo told me to get out right away, to jump. He said that he would hold the plane as steady as he could, and then follow me. But he never did. I saw the plane blow up as I was parachuting down. He saved my life. And that’s funny, you know, because Jimbo and me, we never got along not really. Bit of a joker, he was, thought it was all just one big game—the war, I mean. Him and me, we’d have big arguments. He turned out to be a pretty good buddy after all, didn’t he? They were all good buddies, and they’re all gone now.”

  “Don’t you dare expect me to feel sorry for them,” Mutti said, not so threatening towards him as she had been, but still angry at him. “Not after what they did, what you did. And how come you speak German anyway?”

  “I have a Swiss mother,” the airman told her, “and a Canadian father. So I grew up speaking German and English.”

  Karli was not concerned at all with any of this. He was full of his own questions. Mutti kept trying to stop him from speaking to the airman, but Karli ignored her. He wanted to know the man’s name.

  “Peter,” the airman said. “Peter Kamm.”

  Karli wanted to know how old he was.

  “Twenty-one,” came the reply.

  Then Karli took it upon himself to introduce everyone. “I am Karli, and I am nine years old. This elephant is named Marlene, and she is from the zoo in Dresden, and she is four years old, and I am the only one who is allowed to ride on her. And this is Elizabeth. She is sixteen, and is always telling me what to do. And Mutti is…well, she is Mutti. And I am hungry. Are you hungry, Peter?”

  Mutti took him by the arm and pulled him away then. But Karli could not stop looking at the young man, and the truth was, neither could I. I think I must have done nothing but stare at him the whole time. Now that he had a name, I found I was not looking so much at the uniform anymore. He was much taller than I expected when he got to his feet.

  Pitchfork in hand again, Mutti ushered him out through the barn door. We left Marlene shut in there, helping herself busily to the hay, and rumbling with pleasure.

  It was not difficult to break a window and let ourselves into the farmhouse. Mutti said she felt bad about having to do it, but that needs must. We could hardly stand out in the snow and wait, could we? She would explain it all later to Uncle Manfred and Aunt Lotti, when they came home, she said. They would understand. I was not so sure that they would. The stove was out, but it was still warm, so we thought they could not have been gone that long. Things were a mess too, as if they had left the place in a hurry. The more we looked around the more we were sure that, like so many others, they had left to join the great exodus westwards, taking with them what they could.

  Luckily for us, Uncle Manfred and Aunt Lotti must have left in too much of a rush to take all their food with them. There were some rounds of cheese—Uncle Manfred always made his own—and we found some fruit in jars, and pickles too, and some honey. But best of all, down in the cellar Mutti discovered a whole ham. I got the fire going in the stove. Karli fetched in the wood from the shed. And all the while, the airman sat at the kitchen table, forbidden to move by Mutti, who kept a fearsome eye on him—and she took the pitchfork with her, I noticed, wherever she went around the house.

  When he offered to help me with the fire, she snapped at him, and told him to sit where he was and be quiet. Karli and I were under strict instructions from her not to talk to him at all, even when we were sitting down with him to eat at the kitchen table, but that did not stop us from sneaking a look at him from time to time as he was eating—he was obviously as ravenous as we were. So we all ate in silence, not a word being spoken between us—until, that is, Mutti left the kitchen, telling us she was going to check on Marlene out in the barn. Before she went out, she handed me the pitchfork, and told me to use it if I had to.

  I hate silences between people, I think I always have. I was longing to say something to Peter while Mutti was out of the room, but I was too shy, and anyway I could not think of a thing to say.

  Karli was never shy though, never backward in coming forward. Before I knew it, he had gotten down from the table and was juggling with two large pine-cones he’d found on the windowsill.

  “Can you do this?” he cried.

  “My little brother likes to do tricks,” I explained to Peter. “He likes to play the fool. He is a bit of an actor, I suppose.”

  “I can see that,” Peter said. “He reminds me of me, when I was little. It is what I used to do back home in Canada. Acting, I mean. It was all I ever wanted to do, go on the stage, like my mother before me, and my father. I had just gotten started in Toronto, and then all this happened. Anyway, it will be over soon enough now, and when it is, I’m going right back there. I can’t wait.”

  I liked to listen to him talk. He was so full of spirit, so determined. The truth was that I was enjoying his company, even though, of course, I knew that I should not be. The thing was, you see, that I could tell he liked being with me, talking to me, looking at me. I think maybe that is why I felt at once so much at ease with him. When you are young, and you find for the first time that someone likes you like this, it is powerful. Very powerful.

  But Karli soon had Peter’s attention again, with his wretched juggling. Four pine cones now. He was getting ambitious. A few minutes later, when Mutti came back in again, she found Peter and Karli sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the stove, deep in conversation. Peter had something in his hand and was showing it to Karli, who was fascinated by it. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, or what it was, but I was busy at the sink by now, and not paying much attention. Mutti shouted at Karli to get up and come to her at once.

  “Look, Mutti!” he said, ignoring her completely. “Peter has a compass. He says it is like magic. He’s been telling me all about it. Do you know, he’s only got to point it in the right direction, and it will take him all the way home.”

  “He’s not going home, Karli,” Mutti said, taking Karli by the arm, and pulling him to his feet. “And I told you not to talk to him, didn’t I?”

  “It was my fault,” the airman said, holding up his hands. “Look, I am sorry…”

  “You are always sorry,” Mutti went on bitterly. “You are very good at being sorry. Well, you can be sorry in a prison camp. As soon as I can, I shall turn you over to the Abwehr, the police. They are bound to be out searching for you. They must have see
n the parachute come down. Sooner or later they will come looking, and I shall turn you in. Meanwhile, you will not ingratiate yourself with my children. You will not speak to them, and they will not speak to you. Do you hear me? And if you try to run away, you will either freeze to death out there, or the Abwehr will catch you. Either way, you are not going home.” She held out her hand for the compass. “And I will have that compass, please. Without it you are not going home, you are not going anywhere.”

  Peter took some time getting to his feet. He did not say a word. Towering over Mutti, he looked down at her, closed the compass and handed it to her.

  Two

  I remember standing there in Aunt Lotti’s kitchen watching this confrontation, and feeling very confused. I could not understand how Mutti could be like this. It seemed to me to be so hypocritical. All my life she had made herself out to be this ardent pacifist, always speaking out against the war—after all, there had been a huge rift in our family because of it—and now here she was full of unforgiving anger, and hateful, vengeful even, towards someone who may have been in the uniform of our enemy, but who was trying all he could to be kind and conciliatory and helpful. I wanted to tell her what I thought of her there and then, but I just did not feel I could do so in front of Peter. It was not the moment.

  And there was something else that was troubling me even more than this, something I was feeling and knew I should not be feeling, something I could not speak of, least of all to Mutti, and certainly not to Karli. I could tell no one because it was too terrible, because no one would understand. My mind was in turmoil. I had to get out. I ran out of the house, and went out across the farmyard to be with Marlene. It was as I was sitting there in the hay, watching her chomping away, that I told her the dreadful truth that I dared tell no one else.

  When I speak of it now, all these years later, I sound like a silly, romantic girl, and of course, that is just what I was. I sat there, and I cried my heart out, and I told an elephant, an elephant if you please, that I loved this man—this airman, this enemy, whom I had not known even for twenty-four hours—that I knew I would love him till the day I died. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but that was how I felt, and when you are sixteen you feel things very immediately, very strongly, very certainly.

  “How wicked is that, Marlene?” I said. “How wicked is that, to love someone who should be my enemy, who has just bombed my city, killed my friends? How wicked is that?” I looked up into her weepy eye.

  For an answer she wafted her ears gently at me, and groaned deep inside herself. It was enough to tell me that she had listened, and understood, and that she did not judge me. I learned something that day from Marlene, about friendship, and I have never forgotten it. To be a true friend, you have to be a good listener, and I discovered that day that Marlene was the truest of friends. For some time I stayed there out in Uncle Manfred’s hay barn. Marlene was the only being in the entire world that knew my secret, and I wanted to be with her and no one else. It was hard to bring myself to go back inside the house. I think it was only the cold that drove me back inside.

  Exhausted, I suppose, from our long walk through the snow, and still trying to get ourselves warm, we were upstairs in bed by the late afternoon, all three of us in the big bedroom above the kitchen—Aunt Lotti and Uncle Manfred’s room. We huddled there together under piles of blankets, leaving Peter downstairs sleeping in the chair by the stove. Mutti put a chair up against the bedroom door.

  “I do not trust that man,” she said, and I was far too tired to argue by then. We slept all through the rest of that day, and through the night.

  When I came downstairs into the kitchen the next morning, Peter was sitting at the table, a map open in front of him. He smiled when he saw me, and called me over at once. “I want to show you something, Elizabeth. I have been thinking about this all night,” he said. “You are traveling west, aren’t you, away from the Russians? I have seen the roads, they are full of refugees, all going west. That is where I have to go too. So, you are going where I’m going. I think the nearest Allied armies are about here, near Heidelberg. The American Army. They are about two hundred miles away, maybe more, I’m not sure. A long way, that’s all I know. But with my compass, we could do it, I think. I cannot go by the roads—they will be too dangerous for me in my uniform. We could go across country, travel a lot by night, lie up by day. I have to go, I cannot just wait here to be caught. You understand?”

  Mutti spoke up from behind me. I had not seen her come in. “We are going nowhere,” she said icily.

  “Then I shall have to go on my own,” Peter told her. “I have to get home. Surely you can understand that?”

  “So that you can come back to Germany and bomb us some more, I suppose,” Mutti replied. She shrugged, and walked past him towards the stove. “You go if you want. I do not care anymore. I cannot stop you, I know that now. It was foolish of me to think that I could. But we are staying here.” She turned to me then. “Marlene will be needing some water, Elizabeth,” she went on. “You could take her down to the stream. I noticed it was not iced up yesterday, it was still running…”

  “All I was thinking…all I was trying to say,” Peter interrupted, “was that I think we might all have a better chance if we stayed together, if we help one another. With my compass I can guide you to the Americans. And when we meet up with them, I could help.”

  “The children are too tired to move on,” said Mutti. She was adamant. She would not hear of it. “And anyway, we do not need your help. We have managed quite well on our own up until now. We shall wait for a few days, for the snow to clear, and then move on. We do not need you, we do not want you.”

  I could no longer contain myself. I really gave her a piece of my mind. I told her she was just being ridiculous, that we did need Peter’s help, and that she knew it. I stormed out then, went to the barn, and led Marlene down to the stream for a drink. She drank long and deep, enjoying every moment of it, filling her trunk again and again and then pouring the water down her throat. Once she had finished drinking, she began sloshing her trunk about, and splashing me with icy water, which I did not appreciate at all. After a while I tried to encourage her to come away, leading her by the trunk, by the ear, imitating Karli’s clicking noises, which I knew she responded to, trying to get her to move. But nothing I did or said would budge her from that stream. She wandered down into it now, ignoring me completely. I was wet, I told her, I was cold. I begged her to come out. But she was no longer in a listening mood. That was when I heard Mutti screaming, not from the house as I first thought it must be, but from the lakeside beyond.

  I left Marlene and ran. I could hear Karli shrieking too now. It was not until I was through the farmyard gate and out into the field that I could begin to understand what was happening. There was a hole in the ice, about halfway between the lakeside and the island. It was Karli. He had fallen through the ice. All I could see of him was a dark head, and flailing hands, as he struggled to grab ahold, as he tried to keep himself afloat. And Karli could not swim. Mutti was at the water’s edge, screaming and crying, and Peter was there beside her, holding her back, his arms fast around her. She was fighting him, struggling to break free.

  “You have to stay here,” he was telling her. “Stay here. It’s all right. I can reach him. Leave it to me.” Then he caught sight of me, and was shouting for me to go and fetch a rope.

  I remembered that it was in the shed next to Tomi’s stable that Uncle Manfred kept all his tools, all the harnesses, chains, ropes, everything. By the time I’d found a rope and run back with it down to the lakeside, I could see Peter was way out on the ice, down on his knees right by the hole, and reaching out for Karli, who kept disappearing under the water. Peter managed to grab hold of one of his hands and hang on. I tried to stop Mutti from going out onto the ice, but I wasn’t strong enough. There was no way she would be left behind any longer. We clung to one another, hardly able to keep our balance, as we made our way gingerly across the ice t
owards them.

  “That is far enough,” Peter called. “Do not come any closer. Just hang on to one end of the rope, Elizabeth, and let me have the other.”

  I looped it quickly, whirled it around and around my head, and then threw it out as best I could, but the end of it fell short. I gathered it in, and tried again. This time it was close enough for Peter to reach out and catch hold of it. He was talking to Karli all the while, trying to calm him. Somehow he managed to get the rope around him, under his arms. “I’ve got him!” he cried. “Now pull, but pull gently.”

  As Mutti and I took the strain on the rope, we could see Peter had grabbed Karli by the back of his coat and was trying to haul him out. Moments later, Karli was lying there limp on the ice. Peter dragged him away, then picked him up in his arms and came sliding and stumbling past us. Karli was gray in the face, and quite lifeless. Mutti was running alongside them, calling all the while for Karli to wake up.

  Once inside the house, Peter laid Karli down in front of the stove and, with Mutti, peeled off his wet clothes, rubbed him down vigorously and covered him with blankets. All I could do was stand there and watch, desperate for any sign of life in my little brother. There was none, no movement, no breathing. Mutti was beside herself with despair by now, weeping over Karli and trying to shake him awake. Peter helped her to her feet and turned to me.

  “Look after your mother, will you?” he said. So I put my arms around her, and just held her tight. All we could do was look on in horror and in hope, as Peter knelt over Karli, hands flat on Karli’s chest, pumping him, then lifting his chin and blowing deep into his mouth, then pumping again and again. Long minutes went by, the longest of my life, and still Karli did not respond. His lips were blue, and there was a stillness about him that I knew could only mean that it was over, that there was no point in going on, that nothing could be done now to bring him back to life.