Times of War Collection by Michael Morpurgo
“No one,” Mutti replied. “We are alone here. We only came yesterday, from Dresden. We escaped from the city.”
“There is no city any more,” said the policeman. “There is no Dresden. There are so many dead. It is impossible to know how many. Bastards. Bastards. I tell you if we find this one, a prison camp is too good for him. We will shoot him first and ask questions later.”
Someone was shouting from outside. “Sergeant, Sergeant! You must come, come quickly!” Another soldier, this one much younger, appeared at the door, breathless with excitement. “You are not going to believe this, Sergeant. But there is an elephant, out there, in the barn.”
“An elephant?”
“Yes, Sergeant. We were searching the outbuildings like you said, and we went into the barn, and there he was.”
“She is a she,” said Mutti. “She is called Marlene. I work in the zoo, with the elephants, in Dresden. She was the only animal we managed to save. The rest had to be shot because of the bombing. I have brought her here to the family farm. I knew of nowhere else to go.”
The youngest of the soldiers was told to stay with us and guard us, while the others went out. Karli was about to say something, but Mutti frowned at him quickly and put a finger to her lips. The clock on the wall ticked loudly in the silence. I could not bear the tension. I felt for Peter’s hand under the table, and found it. We heard them coming back across the yard, their voices loud with excitement. Then they were back in the kitchen.
“This elephant, she is not dangerous?” the Sergeant asked.
Mutti shook her head. “I will look after her,” she told them. “I have known this elephant ever since she was born. She is as gentle as a kitten, I promise you.”
“And you have seen no airman, no parachutist?” he went on.
“No,” Mutti said. She spoke very coolly. “If I saw one, after all they have done in Dresden, I would shoot him myself.”
“Your papers?” he demanded. “I want to see your papers.”
“I’m sorry. We haven’t got them. They are all in Dresden, in our house,” said Mutti, shrugging her shoulders. “We were outside, out in the park, when we heard the air-raid sirens, and then the bombers. We just ran.”
“Names then,” said the sergeant, taking out his notebook. “I must have your names.”
Mutti gave our names, all of us, Peter’s last of all.
“And how old are you?” the Sergeant asked Peter. I sensed suspicion in his look. I could hear it in his voice.
“Twenty-one,” Peter told him.
“So why are you not in uniform, in the army?”
Peter hesitated. It was Karli who spoke up for him. “He gets asthma like me,” he said. “When he gets puffed out he gets asthma. Everyone at school says that when I grow up, I can’t be a soldier, and I want to be a—”
“That’s right,” Mutti interrupted. “My son has been excused military service, on medical grounds – asthma.”
I was not at all sure the sergeant believed what he was hearing. I felt certain that there would be more questions. But, amazingly, there were not.
When the sergeant saluted, I remember Karli gave him the Hitlergruss, the stiff arm Hitler salute we had all been taught at school, and said “Heil Hitler,” with great enthusiasm and conviction. He was playing his part perfectly. And then the soldiers were gone. I could feel my heart pounding in my neck as I listened to the last of their voices and their laughter drifting away outside. All they were chatting about as they left was the elephant in the barn, and the zoo in Dresden. One of them had been for a ride on an elephant in that zoo when he was little, he was saying. And then nothing more.
Mutti went to the window to make sure. “It is all right, they have gone,” she whispered.
She came over and sat down at the table with us, her face drained of all colour. For several moments Peter and Mutti did not speak, but sat there just looking at one another across the kitchen.
Mutti took a long breath and said, “You didn’t finish your soup, Peter. It will be getting cold. Eat, eat.” Then she fished in her pocket, took out the compass, and pushed it across the table towards him. “Yours, I think.”
“Thank you,” Peter said, as he took it. “And for what you did just then, thank you.”
“You and I, Peter, we must come to an understanding,” Mutti went on. “From now on, no more ‘sorry’s, and no more ‘thank you’s. What is done is done. The past is behind us. You are family now, one of us. And I have been thinking. You were right when you told Elizabeth we should stick together and help one another. We do all want to go west, away from the Russians, away from the bombing. So we shall go together, and across country, as you said. It will be safer for all of us. Can that compass thing really guide us to the Americans?”
Peter smiled. “Yes, all the way, if we can keep going, if we get lucky. But I have been thinking too, and I am not so sure now that it is such a good idea to stick together. I was not thinking straight when I said it. If they discover who I am…I mean, we got away with it once, we may not be so lucky next time. They will shoot you if they ever find out who I am. You do know that, don’t you?”
“Who is going to tell them?” Mutti replied. “I’m not going to tell them, am I? Nor will Elizabeth, nor will Karli. Like I said, we are family. You speak good German, and you even look quite German in Uncle Manfred’s clothes. We fooled them once, with a little help from Karli, didn’t we? We can fool them again.”
“Maybe you are right. I hope so. But – and I did not want to have to say this – I think there is another problem. The elephant, your Marlene.” I could see Peter was reluctant to go on. “Listen, if we take her with us, we are bound to attract attention to ourselves. It will be more dangerous. I think we should leave her here. There is plenty of hay in the barn, we could fill up buckets of water…”
“Where we go Marlene goes,” Mutti said firmly. “She is part of the family too. What does it say in that book – The Three Musketeers, wasn’t it? – ‘All for one and one for all’.”
I remember Mutti made us all join hands round the table then, for another ‘family moment’, as we had so often done back home. Even Karli knew better than to interrupt this family ritual. Maybe he was praying as hard as I was. I was praying for Papi to come home, for us all to find the Americans, for us all to survive – and for Peter to go on holding my hand as tight as he was, and never let go. But in the end it was Karli, of course, who eventually decided this family moment had gone on quite long enough, and broke the silence.
“When are we going?” he asked. “How far is it? I want to ride up on Marlene all the way. I can, can’t I, Mutti? How long will it take until we get there?”
We spent all the rest of that day poring over Peter’s map, making plans, working out how far we could hope to travel each night. Peter thought we could do about eight to ten kilometres a night, depending on the weather, and if we kept up that pace, and the Americans kept advancing at their present rate, then he calculated we had a good chance of meeting up with them in four or five weeks or so. We packed up all the food we could find, all we could carry, and put on all the warm clothes we needed. We all had full rucksacks, and a rolled-up blanket strapped on top of each of them. We had a last meal, the rest of the potato soup, and some cheese, left a note, which we all signed, to Uncle Manfred and Aunt Lotti, thanking them, and telling them where we were going.
Then we stepped out into the moonlit farmyard to fetch Marlene from the barn, the snow crisp and crunching under our feet. Marlene had to be enticed away from her hay – and that was not easy – but Karli managed it with a few tempting potatoes. Then once outside the barn, Peter hoisted Karli up on to her back, and we set off into the night, westwards, Mutti leading Marlene by the ear, Karli clicking at Marlene all the while, telling her to gee up. Peter and I walked on ahead together, Peter with compass in hand. We were on our way.”
IZZIE PAUSED FOR A FEW MOMENTS THEN, AND RAISED HER hand. “Listen,” she said, gazing out
She turned to us then. “I am sorry my story has taken so long. It is getting dark outside already. I do go on, I know. Maybe you were right after all, maybe I should tell you the rest another day. It is good of you to have listened this long.”
“Listening, it’s what friends are for, remember?” I said.
“Did you escape?” Karl asked. “Did Peter get caught? What happened? I want to know what happened.”
“You see?” I said, with a smile.” We’re not going anywhere till you tell us the rest of the story. We’re staying right where we are, aren’t we, Karl?”
Lizzie patted my hand. “You are both very kind,” she said. “I will not keep you long now, I promise.” She stroked the glass face of the compass with the tips of her fingers, contemplated it for a while, and then went on with her story.
“Without this compass, and without Peter, I think we would never have made it. He was so right to keep us away from the roads. We were to learn that it was not the cold and the hunger that were the greatest threat to us, it was people, people who might be suspicious of us, who would ask questions, who would report us. Out in the countryside there were not many people. And if we had joined the thousands of people cramming the roads there would have been even greater dangers to face – the planes, the fighters. They told us all about it, some of the refugees we came across later, how the planes would come flying in low over the roads, bombing and strafing.
So many died that way, soldiers and refugees, side by side.
Peter and his compass kept us away from all that.
But I am sure it was also because we travelled always by night that we survived. I remember, Mutti was for ever worrying that we were moving too slowly, that the Russians were closing in behind us. It was true that we could often hear the distant rumble of their guns. We saw them lighting up the night sky all along the eastern horizon, and they did seem to be coming much closer all the time. After trekking through the night, Mutti must have been as exhausted as we all were, but she was reluctant to stop each morning. She always felt we could keep going a little while longer.
Thankfully, by the first glimmer of every dawn Peter had usually managed to find somewhere for us to hide up for the day, somewhere we could at least be dry and warm, and even light a fire if we were lucky. It might be some remote barn, or shepherd’s hut or forester’s shack – it didn’t matter. All the time we stayed away from any towns and villages, and kept as far as possible to the valleys and woods where we would be less likely to be seen. We soon discovered we were not the only ones tramping through the countryside on that long trek westwards, nor the only ones who had chosen to avoid the dangers of the roads.
So there were days, like it or not, when we would find ourselves having to share a barn or shed with other refugees, mostly families like us. But once or twice there were soldiers with us too, whole units of them. Those meetings were awkward at first. No one trusted anyone in those days, you see. You never could, not to begin with. It was having Marlene with us that helped break the ice, helped dispel suspicion. They would only have to see Marlene, and Mutti would only have to tell our story about the zoo, and how we had looked after Marlene at home in the garden, and soon they would be telling their own stories, of how they had escaped the bombing and the firestorm. All of us knew we were lucky to be alive. Strange to say, considering what we were all living through, there was often more laughter than tears, though I do remember there were many refugees who just sat there staring into nothing, rocking back and forth, and murmuring in their misery.
If there were other children there, then Karli loved it all the more. Not only did he have an audience for his juggling and all his party tricks, but he had Marlene to show off with as well. Somehow he had taught Marlene to kneel down and to lift her trunk at his command, and the children loved this. In front of them he always claimed absolute ownership of Marlene. He referred to her as ‘my elephant’ or ‘my Marlene’. He just loved play-acting, and he was good at it too.
He had slipped easily into the part of being a younger brother to Peter – mostly, I think, because he genuinely liked having an older brother of his own, a proper pal. He would tell everyone proudly that he was the only one that could handle the elephant, that his older brother could not manage her at all, and certainly not his sister. He played the clown wonderfully, and people laughed. I found that once we had laughed together for a while, we all began to feel there was a kind of refugee solidarity amongst us, a camaraderie, sometimes so much so that we did not just swap stories, but food and drink as well.
But on Mutti’s advice, Peter kept himself to himself, and did not talk too much when there were other people about, and that was just as well. The more we got to know him, the more we noticed that he did have a noticeable accent. Canadian or Swiss, it did not matter. All that mattered was that he spoke differently enough for other people to notice it, and if we noticed it, then they might too.
Time and again people would ask Mutti why her son was not in uniform like all the other young men. Mutti stuck always to the asthma story Karli had first made up in front of the policeman that day. It was a good cover story because, of course, she knew all the symptoms rather well. We all did, except for Peter himself that is, but at Mutti’s suggestion, Karli had made sure that Peter knew exactly what it felt like to suffer from asthma. He even taught Peter how to cough and wheeze the right way. Nonetheless, it still made me very nervous every time the subject came up. I was fearful too because, after living through the horror of the bombing of Dresden, everyone we came across was full of anger and bitterness against the Americans and the British. Until now, much of this hatred had been reserved more for the Russians. Not now, not any more. So Peter, if he were to be discovered, would be in real danger. And so would we.
Most of the other refugees we met were from Dresden, like us, though a few had come from further east. For them in particular, fear of the Russians still far outweighed any anger against the Americans and the British. There were many stories of dreadful atrocities committed by the Red Army on civilians as they advanced deeper and deeper into Germany. I did not know then, and I do not know now, what was true and what was not, but I do know that many of our fellow refugees were terrified of the Russians. I only know that there is always atrocity in war. We heard too that the Red Army was closer now than we had thought, only a few miles the other side of Dresden. So despite all the Allied bombing, everyone thought it was better to be at the mercy of the Americans and the British, rather than to wait for the Russians to arrive.
Whenever we found ourselves hiding away in the company of other refugees, Peter would make himself scarce, to avoid suspicious looks and searching questions, he told me. Sometimes he said he was off to look for food, but often he would excuse himself by saying that he had to see to Marlene. And whenever I could, I would go with him, not of course to help with Marlene at all, but just because I wanted to be with him. We wanted to be together now all we could, and alone too. The two of us would spend long hours sitting there beside Marlene, out in some barn or shed, as she munched her hay or straw – whatever we had found for her. Or we would be watching her from a river bank, drinking and sluicing herself down.
It was during these times together that Peter began to tell me about his home in Canada, in Toronto, of the parts he had played in the theatre, mostly walk-on parts: a spear-carrier, a servant, a poli
But we tried all we could not to talk about the war. We both of us knew it was the grim shadow that hung over us, that threatened to separate us, and we both wanted to live for a while away from all of that, in the warm sunlight of shared memories and hopes. We found we had so much in common - bicycling, boating and fishing. He was an only child, he told me, and had never been part of a large family, until now, that is. He knew he was only playing the part of the elder brother, but the longer he was with us the more he felt easy in the part, just one of the family, and he loved that, he said.
How we talked, but even in our silences I felt a togetherness with him that I had never felt with anyone else.
Then came the time – well, I suppose it had to happen, didn’t it? – that Karli came upon us one day and surprised us. I remember we were sitting there on the river bank, with Marlene wafting her trunk over our heads.
“You two, you are canoodling, aren’t you?” he said, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “I know you are. You are always going off together. I have been watching you.”
“None of your business,” I snapped. I was furious with him and embarrassed too. But Peter handled it much better. He sat him down between us and put his arm around him.
“We were just talking, Karli, getting to know one another. I am her brother, remember? Your brother too. You and me, we talk, don’t we? The thing is, that if I want to play a part right, I have to get right into it. That is why you told me all about your asthma attacks, remember? I need to know all there is to know about the new me, and my new family. I have to know the back-stories of everyone in the play. See what I’m saying? It is what actors do. You understand that, don’t you, Karli? I mean, people might ask me questions, about Papi, for instance, about where we lived in Dresden, about the zoo, about the farm, about Uncle Manfred and Aunt Lotti. I’ve got to know these things, right? Elizabeth, she is just telling me all she can, to help me.”