Read by Sarah Barlex (5th story in podcast, at 1hXXmin, here)
It was Christmas in Berlin. Lise had come alone on the train from London because there was no one who might have come with her. Everywhere in the streets the smell of burning, mingled with the sickly sweet odour of death. Piles of ash appeared solid as mountains but dissolved at the touch of a hand, collapsed in upon themselves, then scattered white wraiths of cloud upon the wind. In place of buildings were towers of broken rubble from which the wreckage of life protruded – a picture of an alpine landscape upon a half-burnt wall, a bathtub, white and glistening, swaying like an exotic fruit upon a stem of twisted lead piping, somebody’s leg still wearing half a pair of military trousers: further down the street, a pair of calcified boots. Lise was in Berlin, looking for Matti. The streets were nearly empty of people, the few she passed like evil ghosts swathed in black rags; thin and shivering, they stared after her with dull eyes.
Lise climbed the stairs to the third floor. She stood on the broad landing, listening to the wind howling through the streets below, howling through those smashed and frozen canyons like a hungry dog. The stillness of death was all around her. The door on the left should be Matti’s – it was firmly locked. She knocked at the door on the right. For a long time there was no answer. She knocked again, and then again. She tried the door and found it locked. No sooner had she withdrawn her hand from the door than it was opened suddenly from the inside. A man stood there in a dingy undershirt. A thin man, horribly thin, and holding a piece of broken wood up like a weapon, he looked at her with terrible eyes.
‘What do you want?’ said the man, in thick Berlinisch.
‘I’m looking for my sister. She used to live here. Matti. Mathilde da Torre ... she was a nurse at the hospital. She used to live here ...’ Her voice trailed off as the man continued his furious stare. At last he grunted something that might have been ‘Wait!’ and slammed the door. In a moment he reappeared with a key.
‘Dead! All dead! Do you understand?’ he said, giving her the key. ‘So you’re the little sister?’ Suddenly he grinned horribly at her, and she saw that his mouth was full of black and broken teeth. With that he slammed the door again, and this time she heard him lock it.
She unlocked the door to the flat opposite and stepped inside, pushing tentatively at the door, stepping over a small pile of books that had slid onto the floor. She stooped to look at them and began to tremble – yes, they were Matti’s books. Here was the old Struwwelpeter they used to read together, Lise acting out all the parts and throwing herself onto her big sister. Matti would pretend to be terrified and beg her not to cut off her thumbs, hiding her face in the bed pillows.
Weh! Jetzt geht es klipp und klapp
Mit der Scher’ die Daumen ab!
‘I’ll get you this time!’ Lise would shriek and launch herself at Matti like a bomb. I’ll get you this time. A Schoolgirl’s Treasury of German Poetry. Effi Briest and Crime and Punishment, Goethe’s Faust, given as a school prize ‘For Outstanding Achievement’. The Man without a Shadow.
The kitchen was knee-deep in dust and ash. A blue china cup with a design of pink roses stood upside down beside the sink. Suspended from a peg, a tea towel stiff with dust. She went into the bedroom. The outside wall had been torn away right down to the floor; opposite was a broken wall to which a bit of shrivelled, blood-red ivy still clung. The snow had laid a pristine carpet on the floor, and drawn a spotless cover over the small bed in the corner.
She went to the gap in the wall and looked down into a small courtyard. A linden tree stood there, naked but still whole, its thin arms lightly clad in snow, shivering in the wind.
She looked back at the trail of her own footprints: now the dark green carpet showed like patches of moss through the snow. She went to the wardrobe and prised it open; it was empty save for a pair of wooden clothes hangers. She brushed the snow from the bed: it was neatly made up with a dark green woollen blanket. Beside it on a small table were a small porcelain angel in white with blue wings, and a framed photograph of two young girls dressed in identical dirndls, sitting in an alpine meadow, somewhere in Germany.
Lise sat down suddenly on the bed, her head spinning. Matti must be dead, she would never have left the photograph. Then she remembered that Matti wasn’t Matti any more – she had new papers, a new name, she ought to have asked the man not for Matti but for Anna Schirmer. Oh, Matti was so clever! And so very beautiful – people did things for Matti they wouldn’t do for anyone else; men, especially, did things for Matti. A Nazi officer had risked his life to get her those papers and now she was Matti no longer … but where was she? But Matti would not have left the photograph … Would Anna?
Lise was shaking with cold; she was not crying, it was only the cold, she was sure of it. Outside in the street someone was playing a barrel organ, a Christmas song about peace and love, the jagged tune oddly distorted by the jerking of the machine.
She put the photograph into her bag, then as many of the books as she could as well. She stood in the hall and thought of knocking once more at the door opposite. Behind the door a man was shouting, something crashed, a woman screamed. She ran down the stairs but halfway down she stumbled over broken glass and fell, cutting her hands. Blood was dripping everywhere. She pushed open the heavy door to the street and stood there, dazed, in the brilliant purple twilight, watching her blood drip onto the falling snow. The man with the barrel organ caught sight of her and began to play faster and faster.
Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht …
The old man stood barefoot in the snow. He wore a battered bowler hat and no coat, only a ragged shirt and an absurd bright red waistcoat. His once round face had sunk in upon itself, fleshless and lifeless, and his lips were black. He left off playing and held out his hat, shuffling towards her with desperate determination. She felt how strange was her wholeness, her good coat and good shoes, her healthy body and round, well-fed face. The old man didn’t say a word, only looked at her and held out the battered hat with pleading eyes, starving eyes.
Lise put her hand into her bag, looking for money, and all Matti’s things tumbled out into the snow. As she knelt to retrieve them she smeared them with blood; her hands were shaking so she kept dropping the things again and again. A small crowd was gathering, most of them ragged children. A boy of about twelve grabbed her purse and ran off with it. She tried to shout but no sound came out of her mouth. With bleeding hands she clutched the things, the precious things. Where was Matti? Matti would never have left the photograph …
The boy ran as fast as he could, head down, not looking where he was going, and he had not run far before before he ran right into an American soldier.
‘Whoa, hold on a minute, young fella!’ said the soldier. He held the boy by the shoulders, but the child twisted free and ran off, leaving the purse behind him in the snow. The soldier picked it up, brushing the snow from it carefully – he could see it was a good purse, a real lady’s purse, of smooth, glossy black leather, it shut with a delicate gold clasp. He wondered where the lady was, and guessed she wouldn’t be far off. He set off in the direction from which the boy had come.
He had only gone two streets when he found Lise sitting crumpled in the snow, surrounded by a pack of ragged boys who were circling her like wolves. The boys fell back as he approached, melting away into the forest of ruins. He held up the purse and smiled brightly.
‘This yours, Miss?’ She was a lady all right. She wore a fur-trimmed overcoat and a little fur hat, and on her feet a pair of elegant buckled shoes, all wrong for the snow. He wondered why she was sitting there. She didn’t answer, but turned on him a pair of enormous, deep blue eyes, twilight eyes, brimming over with unspeakable tragedy. It was a look he’d grown used to since he’d come to Berlin.
‘Let me help you up, Miss,’ he said softly, offering her his arm. Almost to his surprise, she took it. He led her to the checkpoint in a nearby street and into the officers’ canteen, gave her hot coffee, watched her pale hands tremble even in that overheated, noisy room. Still she didn’t speak, only sat staring with those twilight eyes at a Christmas tree that stood jammed in a corner, draped in crooked tinsel.
‘Let me see you to your hotel, Miss,’ he said. ‘It’s dangerous out there for a lady. Where are you staying?’ He was so kind, Lise thought, looking at his black eyes, his black hair, his strong white teeth when he smiled.
She told him she was staying at a pension in the Bleibtreustraße. He drove her there in the jeep; it was night now and the streets were black, frozen, empty. When they got to the door of the hotel she pulled at his sleeve, her eyes again grew dim and strange.
‘Don’t go,’ she said, ‘Please, don’t go …’
So he spent the night in her room, sleeping as best he could in the brown velvet armchair. He put her to bed and piled the blankets on: it was cold, very cold, they didn’t seem to have any coal for the oven at the hotel. What the hell, she was only a kid, seventeen it said on her passport ─ he’d looked while she was in the bathroom. Something awful had happened to her, something awful had happened to just about everybody, he wasn’t a man to take advantage of a kid like that.
She thought he was her uncle somebody ─ the kid was a bit off her head, it happened like that to a lot of people, she’d be all right in a bit, she was young, she’d be all right.
(c) Grace Andreacchi, 2023
Grace Andreacchi writes novels, plays, short stories & poetry. Her work has been published by Serpent’s Tail, the Permanent Press, & in many fine journals, as well as her own imprint, Andromache Books. She lives in London with her little cat, Mimì.
Sarah Barlex is a 21-year-old film maker living in South London with her family. She works part time as a waitress & spends her free time making short films; she hopes to pursue this as a career in her future.
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