St Kilda Blues (Charlie Berlin #3)(65)
An order was coming down the line, passed from one guard to the next. Berlin could hear the word ‘Juden’ repeated. The guard for their section began pushing men to the side of the road with his Mauser rifle held horizontally at chest height. The POWs protested, groaned, resisted, preferring the ankle-deep slush of the roadway to the knee-deep snow of the drifts.
A thin, dark line appeared over the crest of the hill ahead, moving slowly towards them. As the figures drew closer they separated into two groups and Berlin heard an angry murmur from the POWs in front. On the right was a shuffling, stumbling line of people dressed in ragged striped tunics and pants, and in the middle of the road, out of the worst of the muck, was a smaller, more widely spaced group dressed in black uniforms.
‘Those bastards look like the f*cking SS.’ It was a shivering airman standing behind Berlin who spoke. He spat into the snow for emphasis. ‘And them others, I think they’re bloody four-be-twos.’
The German guards kept their backs to the column of Jews and SS men. To Berlin it appeared that they were more concerned with looking away from what was happening on the road than keeping control of their POW charges. Most of the SS men Berlin had seen since his capture had been neatly turned out in tailored black uniforms, but this group looked tired and angry, their clothes crushed and dirty. They carried rifles and holstered pistols or MP40 machine pistols, and several had whips or clubs.
Berlin was shocked at the condition of the shuffling, silent Jewish prisoners. Some wore battered shoes or wooden clogs but many were barefoot or simply had rags bound around their feet. Their clothing was threadbare – thin, tattered trousers and a shirt or tunic, some open to the wind and showing gaunt, skeletal torsos. Their hair was close-cropped or shaven, their vacant eyes sunk deep into sockets above protruding cheekbones. Berlin realised with a jolt many of these walking scarecrows were women.
More shouting from somewhere near the front of the POW column and Berlin could make out a figure beside the road, someone who had fallen out of the line of Jewish prisoners. The man was on his knees, head bent forward. An SS soldier lifted his rifle, firing a single shot from about a foot away into the back of the man’s head. The body jerked sideways and went limp, a red smear appearing on the snow. The POWs were yelling now, screaming in anger at the SS while the camp guards tried to hold them back and calm them down.
A figure in the silently shuffling column opposite Berlin stopped and stared across at the POWs. It was a woman. She looked like she had just woken from a deep sleep and her eyes locked onto Berlin’s. He found he couldn’t look away. She must have been very beautiful once. She still was, despite the filthy striped tunic, cropped hair and drawn face, her lips blue from hunger and cold. How old was she? he wondered. A Jewess. The word ‘Jewess’ had intrigued him since he had first found it in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe in the Essendon Public Library when he was ten. A real Jewess, his first, here among the filthy slush and detritus of war on a lonely Polish back road.
They continued to stare at each other, the Jewess standing quietly as the column of Jews moved slowly past her. A young SS officer, not more than twenty, was suddenly at her side, screaming. Berlin had enough Kriegie Deutsch, prison camp German, to understand the words: ‘Move your arse, you filthy Jew cunt.’ The SS officer took his pistol from its holster, pulled the slide to chamber a shell and placed it against the woman’s temple.
Please, oh, please keep moving, Berlin begged her silently. Behind her, in the distance, he could see a raven circling. Closer, in painful detail, he could also see the silver death’s-head insignia on the soldier’s cap, the silver SS flashes on his jacket collar. The third finger on the soldier’s right hand, the hand holding the pistol, was missing above the second knuckle.
Berlin was willing her to move with every ounce of strength he had. But the Jewess just smiled at him, a wondrous smile, deep and serene, and in his mind he heard her say, ‘I chose my time. Remember me. You are my witness.’
Berlin saw the soldier’s finger tighten on the trigger, the slide move back and the empty brass shell casing eject, tumbling end over end away from the gun. There was no sound, just a puff of smoke from the muzzle whisked away by the wind, and then the girl was gone. He continued to stare at the place where her face had been. All around him the POWs were screaming at the SS officer, but to Berlin their mouths worked silently. He studied the steely grey sky and felt the wind and watched the raven circling overhead.
***
The breeze rattled the venetian blind again and he realised the circling crows were just the shadow of the swaying bedroom light fitting moving across the ceiling. It was Wednesday morning and Gudrun Scheiner was starting her fourth day of captivity, if she was still alive. He could hear Rebecca in the kitchen. ‘Tea’s made, Charlie. Do you fancy braised steak and onions on toast for breakfast?’
Berlin always fancied braised steak and onions and there were usually a couple of tins of his favourite brand, Tom Piper, in the cupboard. Rebecca sometimes jokingly described the thick, salty stew as Daddy’s Goulash. He had told the kids when they were younger that it was made of horsemeat, which of course meant he had it all to himself.
While he waited for the shower to run hot he weighed himself on the bathroom scales. Twelve stone. Age was catching up with him. He should walk more, like he had when he’d come home from the war. He’d walked miles then, not for the exercise but just to be alone and just because he could go wherever he wanted. In the camp there was a circuit to walk and it was the same thing every day. Always on his right was the warning wire, a single strand set at ground level a dozen yards from the barbed wire perimeter fence. Between the warning wire and the fence was death, from a camp guard’s Mauser rifle or the machine guns in the watchtowers.