Restitution (7 page)

‘How d’you mean?’

Reuben ran a finger round one of the flowers on the rug. ‘A
Mischling.
A mixture. That’s enough.’ And there was a note in Reuben’s tone that told Gregor he’d
been accepted in a way he hadn’t been before.

A single postcard of girls in embroidered headdress came from Eva, with an address in Brest on the river Bug. Eva had written a brief message saying she hoped to travel on to
the countryside east of the city within the next week. She didn’t sign the card.

Rumours came of arrests and executions both sides of the new border. Mr Gronowski got out his map again. Mrs Gronowska packed cases. ‘We’re going to a farm near Zakopane where we
used to spend summers,’ she told Gregor. ‘Come with us. I promised your mother I’d look after you.’

Gregor watched her fingers flying through piles of woollens and shirts, sorting them into piles to be taken or left, just as his own mother had a month earlier. Mrs Gronowska’s once
perfectly manicured fingernails were bitten to the quick. She came from a rich family who’d made their money in the jewellery business. This large Marianska Street apartment, so tastefully
decorated with paintings and porcelain and formerly the venue for so many literary and artistic soirées, had been her childhood home. Now she was stuffing blankets and woollens into cases
and abandoning most of the family treasures.

‘Mama wanted me to try and get myself repatriated to Germany.’

‘She gave me the name of the official you need to see. I have it in the desk in my room.’

Reuben had come into the room and stood listening. ‘The more I think about it the more I think it’s a bad plan, Gregor,’ he said. ‘You can’t just waltz in and hand
yourself over. It’s too risky.’

‘Precisely. Besides, I don’t want to go back to Germany. I hate them. I want to go to my mother.’ He handed Mrs Gronowska a shirt.

‘Join Eva in the east? Is that wise, Gregor? You’ve heard about the Russians,’ she said.

Word had already reached them of the deportations from eastern Poland.

‘Perhaps we can still get to Hungary. From there – who knows?’

Mrs Gronowska stared at the pile of jumpers and socks. ‘Reuben and Jacob are heading off to a forest somewhere between here and the border,’ she said at last. ‘I’m not
supposed to know but I saw them looking at that map again. They’ll help you get to the Soviet sector.’

Gregor helped Mr and Mrs Gronowski and the two girls carry their bags to Warsaw Central. The station was crowded with passengers clutching bags and attaché cases and
trying not to make eye-contact with the Gestapo men at the ticket office.

Gregor lifted Lydia, the smallest Gronowska girl, into her mother’s arms, handed Mrs Gronowska her jewellery case and wished the family a safe journey. ‘Zakopane’s always
fun.’ Mr Gronowski was trying hard to inject enthusiasm into his tone. ‘We could do far worse. At least we’ll get some fresh air.’

‘It’s too early for skiing.’ Lydia wrinkled her nose. ‘It’ll be so boring. Lucky you, staying here, Gregor.’

‘Little town mouse.’ Her father ruffled her curls.

When the train had left, Gregor made his way back to the house. On the streets people walked with eyes fixed somewhere in the middle distance, ignoring the soldiers. There were still plenty of
well-dressed middle-class women. Women who looked as though they hadn’t noticed that they lived in a defeated city; who held themselves as though they were inhabitants of Paris or Rome or New
York. But perhaps it was more important now than ever to step out with lipstick perfectly applied and clothes pressed.

When he reached the house he found Reuben and Jacob pulling up the drawing-room floorboards. They removed a lumpy object wrapped in canvas. Reuben glanced at Gregor before cutting the string
with a pocketknife.

Gregor blinked at the sight of the guns.

‘We can find a third one if you want to join us.’ Reuben pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and polished the barrel of one of the guns. ‘We can’t hang around here
any longer. Haven’t got the fucking work cards. Even Vargá can’t get them for us. The Nazis will send us to Germany as slave labour.’

‘What are you going to do, Reuben?’

‘Help the Union of Armed Combat – that’s the Home Army’s proper name.’ Reuben sounded proud.

‘You’re going to fight?’ Reuben wasn’t yet sixteen, Jacob barely fifteen, hardly older than Gregor.

Reuben scratched his nose. ‘They won’t actually let us fight yet, some nonsense about being too young.’ He scowled. ‘But we can make ourselves useful carrying messages
and supplies.’

‘I need to find my mother.’

‘Your mother left you here because she thought you were better off without her. Now you’re doing just what she didn’t want you to do – following her.’

‘I have to find her. She can say what she wants, but it’s not right for her to be alone in times like these.’

‘Frankly, you’d be a spineless little bastard if you didn’t think like that.’ Reuben tucked the handkerchief back in his sleeve.

‘Pack your rucksack, Fischer. Travel light. No need to take the entire contents of the Brothers Jablkowski department store.’

Gregor managed a smile as pale as the autumn sunshine, remembering the trips they’d made to admire the stock when they’d first come to Warsaw.

‘And find that old touring map of Papa’s and learn the geography of Poland. Rivers, roads, forests, railway lines.’ Reuben stood, his face serious. ‘Your life may well
depend on knowing the country better than you know your own arse.’

The three of them left Warsaw together. À la Fourchette, Gregor’s favourite café, was still serving its famous open sandwiches and Reuben agreed to one last
visit on the way to the station.

‘Who knows?’ Jacob crammed bread filled with cold beef and cucumber into his mouth. ‘We may all be back here soon.’

‘Shame to let the German pigs eat everything.’ Reuben licked mayonnaise off his fingers. ‘Whoops, sorry Herr Fischer. Keep forgetting you’re one of the Master
Race.’

‘Easily done when he’s dribbling sour cream down his chin like that,’ said Jacob.

Reuben’s grin turned to a frown. ‘You’re such a kid, Fischer. How on earth are you going to manage?’

Gregor shrugged, scared to speak in case the cowardly thoughts in his head burst out and he begged them to take him with them.

They travelled with him as far east as they could, almost into Brest itself, sitting in a railway carriage populated by people with grey faces who clutched suitcases and
children to themselves, hardly talking and visibly stiffening when the Polish police boarded to check papers. The forged documents Vargá had supplied to Reuben and Jacob were examined
without comment. Gregor’s German passport caused raised eyebrows and muttered consultations. Finally they handed it back. Gregor tried to concentrate on the landscape through the window,
strips of field then forests, fields again, then forests stretching on and on. He fell into a near-reverie for the hours that passed, staring at the trees and hardly hearing the whispered
conversations or the wail of babies. He thought of Warsaw, now gone from his life like Berlin before it: the markets with the women in their brocade shawls and bodices, the streetside shrines where
tapers flickered before saints. And now he was travelling even further away from the city he still thought of as home, and even further away from his father. And from Alexandra. He wondered what
had brought her memory back to him. He’d hardly thought of Alix since the war had started. She was German, after all. Perhaps she thought the invasion justified. He felt ashamed. She
wouldn’t approve of the invasion; not with parents like hers.

It had all started back there. Someone back in that old Pomeranian house with its scent of spices and its gardens full of roses had said something, done something, which had drawn attention to
Eva. Not Peter, not Marie. There’d been another man at Alexanderhof that evening, a man he had despised and feared. Gregor shuddered, remembering him. There’d been a dinner party and a
storm and—

Reuben was nudging his arm and nodding towards the corridor. Jacob was already waiting outside for them.

‘The train will slow in a minute,’ Reuben muttered when he’d closed the door. ‘Grab your rucksack. As soon as we’ve crossed the river be ready to jump. Jacob and I
don’t want to end up in the town.’ The smooth chunter of the wheels turned to a hollow clatter as the train reached the bridge. Gregor did what he was told.

Gregor watched Reuben. The older boy seemed to be listening out for something. The engine was braking. Suddenly Reuben nodded and sprang up, opening the door and jumping out of the carriage.
Gregor hesitated a second before forcing himself to step out after him, feeling the rush of air on his face and the nothingness beneath him. He landed on his feet at the top of the escarpment like
a parachutist before losing his balance and rolling down the slope, coming to a halt at the bottom, winded but unhurt. A grunt behind him announced the arrival of Jacob.

‘Quick.’ Reuben pulled them to their feet and led them across a field, not letting them draw breath until they’d reached a clump of trees where they doubled over, gulping in
air. ‘Brest’s close.’ He pointed over the field towards its church spires and fortress. ‘Find your mother before they close the frontier. Bring her west to this
village.’ He stuffed a piece of paper into Gregor’s hand. ‘Leave a message for us if we’re not there. You can trust the baker.’

Gregor peered at the name on the scrap, thanking God for the hours he’d spent with Reuben before they’d left Warsaw, memorizing the touring map and the new boundaries.

‘It’s a long walk but just keep heading west. You’ll know you’re going the right way if you keep the railway on your right, but stay out of sight of the
carriages.’

Gregor folded the scrap and was about to stuff it into his pocket.

‘No.’ Reuben stopped him. ‘Memorize it. Nothing written down.’

Gregor tore the paper into tiny fragments, which the wind blew away. In turn Reuben and Jacob shook his hand. ‘If the Russians get you, remember to swear like we taught you,’ Jacob
told him. ‘Act rough, not like a good little boy who practises piano and knows his French irregular verbs.’

‘Sod off,
psia krew.’
He only knew the one Polish curse: dog’s blood. Lydia had taught it to him. She said she’d picked it up from the men who delivered the coal.
Gregor’d kept it up his sleeve for a suitable occasion.

Jacob turned and grinned. ‘Dog’s blood yourself.’

And they were gone. For a few minutes Gregor stood watching their retreating backs and swallowing hard. It took all his willpower not to run after them. At last he managed to turn himself round
and direct his feet towards the town.

Nobody stopped him or questioned him when he reached Brest after a short walk through fields and smallholdings. A solitary policeman on a street corner stared straight through
him. The town seemed empty. Most of the shops were boarded up. Stray dogs sniffed around garbage bins, eyeing Gregor with interest and approaching him on crouched legs, half pleading, half
calculating. Gregor tried not to think about how hungry these animals might be.

He found an old man sitting on steps outside an apartment block and showed him Eva’s address. The man sucked on toothless gums and muttered directions in an accent so thick Gregor could
barely understand a word. He thanked him and walked on, taking wrong turn after wrong turn, feeling the strangeness of this place. No street kiosks selling newspapers and tobacco. No markets with
their cackling geese. No Jewish urchins with their black pillbox hats and corkscrew curls.

Finally he found the street and walked along it, noting the shuttered windows and broken glass. He knocked on the peeling black-painted door that was his mother’s. No answer. Again he
rapped. This time he heard footsteps and the door opened a centimetre. Gregor’s nose crinkled at the tangy odour of a scared human being. She peered out at him.

‘There’s nobody here. All gone east.’

‘My mother, Eva Fischer . . .’ Gregor fumbled in his rucksack and found a photograph – Eva at a picnic at the von Matkes’, sitting on a plaid rug, head tossed back so her
long neck was exposed, dark hair falling like a curtain over her shoulders.

The woman took the picture between grubby fingers and stared at it, a grin forming on her face. ‘I remember her. She go east too.’ She handed back the photo.

‘Who took her?’

‘Who you think? Fairies?’ She cackled and the door slammed in his face.

Gregor walked very slowly back the way he’d come, feeling nothing, neither pain, nor grief nor fear. No time for that now.
Make plans.
His rucksack held bread, sausage and apples
and a bottle of water, along with a change of clothes. How long would these provisions last? He’d been banking on his mother having additional supplies they could take with them on the
journey to meet the Gronowski boys.

Two mongrels jumped out of a side-street, ears back, teeth bared. He kicked out at them and they moved away, growling. He walked on, ears straining for the sound of the dogs’ feet padding
up behind him.

He found he was standing beside an abandoned school. The dogs had vanished. He walked round to the back and broke a ground-floor window, managed to squeeze himself through like
a cat burglar and found himself in what had been the cloakroom, still smelling of damp clothes. A sign in Polish – which he could read well now – told him not to wear outdoor shoes in
the gymnasium.

Gregor brushed the shards of glass to one side and made himself a makeshift bed with his rucksack as a pillow and his overcoat wrapped round him. He daren’t try the light switch. If only
he weren’t so damn scared of the dark. But the dogs couldn’t get him in here; there was nothing to be frightened of.

As he lay there he caught sight of something red and metallic on the tiled floor beneath the benches. He reached out and picked it up. It felt cold as stone in his hand. A mouth organ. Some
schoolboy had dropped it here. Gregor was about to place it on the bench when he stopped himself. What chance was there its owner would ever come back? He slipped it into his coat pocket. Why
should the Russians have it?