Page 59 of Hell to Pay
She said, “The little boy looks peaky. Let me fetch a bit of milk.”
She brought not one, but four cups, and I drank gratefully,though I had not before enjoyed the taste of milk. Dr. Becker asked, “Where can one still get a train, do you know? We’re trying to get to Chemnitz.”
“Oh, it’s very bad there,” she said. “There won’t be anything for you there.”
My heart sank, but I said, “We have to go somewhere, and I don’t know where would be better.”
“Oh, nowhere is any better,” she said. “Not now.”
“Are any of the trains running?” I asked.
“The ones to the east will be running first, you can count on that. To the west? From Freiberg, yes, that part of the line is still running, at least today.”
“How far is that?” I asked. “To Freiberg?”
She sucked her teeth. “On the paths? Ten or twelve miles at least. By road? Sixteen. And it’s a steep climb, the road to Freiberg.”
I looked at Dr. Becker in dismay. She said, “The milk cart will be going to the station early tomorrow, as always. You can ride with the cans if you like, with Hans. He’s a bit simple, but an amiable fellow. I’ll tell him to take you.”
“Yes,” I said. “Please. Is there anyplace to find a bed? Would we speak to the mayor, perhaps?” Every move, I’d learned in these past few days, had to be cleared with the authorities.
“With the mayor, certainly,” she said. “If he can’t find you a place, you can sleep in the barn.”
We did sleep in the barn, along with seven other refugees. That was what we were now—refugees like all the others. The woman, Frau Meier, gave us supper, too: potatoes and red cabbage fried with a bit of fat bacon, and ersatz coffee to drink. It tasted heavenly—well, not the coffee, but the rest. And at seven the next morning, a parting slice of bread in hand, we rode to the station amidst the milk cans. I climbed up first and said, “Oh, how wonderful to be riding instead of walking! Look, Gerhardt, it’s an adventure!”
He just looked at me, then politely said, “Yes, Cousin Daisy.” So much for being jolly. I’d have to settle for not actively whining. Fortunately, my parents had taught me well.
“So did you catch the train?” Ben asked. We were in the outskirts of Chemnitz, which looked modern and not in the least ruined. How amazed I would have been if I could have looked ahead and seen myself today, so old and so well fed!
“Eventually,” I said. “It was hours late and so full of soldiers and civilians, we had to stand in the corridor. Some of the soldiers complained about ‘all these people traveling for pleasure, taking up all the room,’ which was at least a bit amusing. It wasn’t so amusing when the train suddenly began to reverse. They had word of an air-raid, you see, and were trying to back into the woods again before it arrived, so the train would be hidden. We crouched on the floor, as little help as that would be, as we heard the explosions and expected death at any moment. As it happened, the track wasn’t even destroyed. There were craters all around us as we proceeded, but the bombers’ aim had fortunately been bad. As a result of all the delay, though, we didn’t reach Chemnitz until six that evening, when it was already dark. Oh, how hungry we were! Frau Meier had given us a bit of bread and cheese for breakfast, and had even pressed on us a few very wrinkled apples, but I wasn’t used then to going without meals. The others took it as a matter of course. How humbled I was, those first few weeks!”
Sebastian pulled to a stop outside theHauptbahnhof,the main train station, and asked, “Does it look the same?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “It looks old, certainly, though Chemnitz was bombed as badly as Dresden just a few weeks after we’d passed through. Who knows, if we’d been allowedto stay, whether we’d have lived through it? I don’t know the answer to your question, though, because I never saw it from outside.”
Had I ever known before, I wondered on that night, how uppermost food and drink were in one’s mind when one didn’t have them? It was such an obvious thing to realize, and yet I never had.
The train station was as crowded with both soldiers and civilians as the train had been. We headed to the entrance, but an official asked, “Do you have a place to stay?”
“No,” Dr. Becker said, “but we’re hoping to find one.”
He shook his head. “Nothing to be had. Go back there.” And pointed.
It was much worse than the airport: an enormous room without windows, in which the welfare organization had set up scores of bunk beds. The air was hot and smelled unpleasantly of diapers, a forest of which were hung around a wood stove and steaming gently. Babies cried; children whined; mothers exhorted their children loudly and called to each other. We were given bread and jam, along with tea that was slightly less weedy than at the airport, and were glad enough of it, but afterwards, I found myself fighting a strange sort of panic. The room was too hot, too noisy, too smelly. It was all too much, and weak as I knew it made me, I had to fight to keep from crying. Or, perhaps, screaming. I got up from my bunk and told Dr. Becker, who was lying on the bed across from me, “I’m going to sit in the waiting room. Gerhardt is already asleep, I see. Well, he’s had a long day.”
Dr. Becker sat up himself—he had to hunch, for the space wasn’t enough for a man to sit upright—and said, “Be careful.”
I didn’t know what he meant. Be careful of my safety?Personal danger seemed unlikely in a place as crowded as this, and with a populace too frightened to step out of line. Be careful not to give us away? How could he imagine I would? I merely nodded, though, and wound my way through the bags and bundles to the waiting room.
It was much cooler here, although full of soldiers talking and playing cards. I hitched myself up to sit on the baggage counter, folded the top of Dr. Becker’s coat to make a sort of pillow, and lay down.
Below me, the soldiers bickered and joked as young men anywhere will do. They didn’t talk about the war, about Hitler, about their own chances of survival. They just played cards. And I didn’t think about the war, about Hitler, or about my own chances of survival, either. I just went to sleep and was grateful for the escape of it.
“Where to next?” Sebastian asked.
“Oh, back to Dresden,” I said. “Although we could have lunch first, I suppose.”
“Really, Oma?” Alix asked. “I thought you wanted to take us around the places you went.”
