The end of it, p.1
The End of It, page 1
ALSO BY BRUCE FELLOWS
That Quiet Earth
The Best One There
First published in Great Britain in 2024 by
The Book Guild Ltd
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Copyright © 2024 Bruce Fellows
The right of Bruce Fellows to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN 978 1835740 408
For Sue
Contents
Chopsticks
Schwarze Orchideen
Una Furtiva Lagrima
Pathetique
Farewell
J’attendrai
Raindrop Prelude
The Tempest
Souvenirs de Mon Pays
Sentimental Journey
About the Author
1
Chopsticks
A shot rings out.
Heinecke staggers back clutching his stomach before he falls to the deck and curls up, groaning. Jochen takes the gun from Gerda’s hand and steps over to Heinecke. From three or four centimetres, he fires into Heinecke’s forehead and the groaning stops.
Jochen opens his eyes. A woman is at the window, looking out. Standing there, she blocks the sun and is little more than a silhouette.
‘Was that shooting, nurse?’ he calls.
‘Jochen.’ The figure’s turned.
‘Lotte!’
‘I dropped my lipstick, that’s all.’ She sits on the bed and takes his hand. ‘You must have been dreaming. You’ve slept so long, darling. I didn’t want to wake you.’
‘What are you doing here? What about your children?’
She stands to take off her coat. She lays it over the bed rail at his feet and turns back. On her breast, her little badge with the swastika, the League of Nazi Women Teachers or whatever it’s called, catches the light.
‘The headmaster’s teaching them.’
‘Oh.’ He sighs. ‘Leave me, Lotte.’
‘Do you want to sleep?’
‘I mean, I release you. Find someone who can dance.’ He waves his hand towards his legs encased in plaster from feet to thighs. ‘You can’t stay with a cripple.’
She laughs. ‘A few months and you’ll be as good as new.’
From somewhere in the building comes the sound of a piano. Chopsticks!
‘There he goes again! If you want to be useful, find that piano and slam the lid on the guy’s fingers!’
She laughs again and leans over and kisses his lips. ‘Is that better?’
‘Yes, fully recovered now.’
Her face crumples. ‘I don’t think you’re pleased to see me, are you?’
No! Is she going to cry? ‘Lotte! It’s just… oh, look at me!’
‘I have been. You’re a wonderful sight.’
With his legs like this, he can’t roll over away from her, so he turns his face to the wall but that immediately makes his head spin, so he turns it back. Whoever it is is still murdering Chopsticks.
‘You’re miserable. I understand, stuck in bed. But just think how lucky you are to be alive. From what Major Winter wrote to your mother, it seemed like a miracle.’
‘I came to in time to open the parachute, if that’s a miracle. How long are you staying in Munich?’
‘I’ll need to go back late tomorrow.’
Another whole day! She’s good to look at, though. That smile, the hair. He notices something.
‘That badge wasn’t silver before, was it?’
‘I’m regional organiser now. Have you got any messages for your mother?’
He sighs. ‘Tell her I’m fine. Tell her not to worry.’
‘She will though.’
‘I know. But what can I do? Tell her it wasn’t my fault.’
‘Of course, it wasn’t.’ She smiles. ‘You’re the best one there.’
Her teasing doesn’t entertain him. He closes his eyes. Can he pretend to fall asleep? Feign a headache? Though with a fractured skull he doesn’t really need to feign one. He sends her out to rustle up tea.
Silence. For an instant. Chopsticks lingers on though, always close to death but always fighting back. He wants to scream. What can he do about Lotte? He’s got months of recovery to go. Learning to walk again. It’ll be physical hell and, if she’s always around, mental hell, too. And every time he goes to sleep the man that he and Gerda killed turns up. He’s killed so many, why does only Heinecke return? Of course, the others were just machines he was killing, aiming at engines, hoping for smoke and flames and a man under a silk canopy high above the desert. But he held that pistol almost against Heinecke’s head, heard him groaning, fighting for life as hard as Chopsticks is now, heard the groaning cease as he heard the shot. Anyone would think he’s sorry he shot him, the Nazi shit!
Chopsticks stops. He waits for it to start again, waits and waits and then it does, but this time properly. Once straight through and then silence, apart from the normal hospital sounds: footsteps in the corridor, a laugh, low voices, the squeak of a trolley wheel. Heaven.
He was thinking something. What was it?
He wakes. Lotte’s by the window again.
‘It’s a long way to come to stare out of a window.’
She turns.
‘You found the piano?’
She nods. ‘I played it through for him and then asked him to stop. He said he wouldn’t disturb you for the world. The fruits of fame!’
‘Huh.’
The librarian leaves a book from her trolley while he sleeps: Goethe, the Collected Works. Goebbels would love a picture of him reading it: the scholar warrior. It’s heavy; heavy enough. Flat on his back in bed, he raises it vertically from his shoulder. Fifteen times he manages with the right hand. Fifteen more with the left. His biceps are aching. He’s pleased; flying a 109 is a physical business, he’ll need his strong arms back. He starts on his stomach muscles, sitting up and only slightly pushing his hands down on the bed. It’s a strain but that’s good, too. It barely affects his head, just a little dizziness that he’s able to deal with and it goes away when he lies back. He does five repetitions of five sit ups and relaxes, exhausted.
There’s another letter from Lotte on his bedside table. One a week since her visit. It’s unopened. He’s not ready for it yet. While it’s unread, he can keep her shut away.
There’s one from Bubi, too, torn open and read immediately. It brought his good fortune to the front of his mind. He’s as lucky as Lotte said he was. He should be dead. Seven lives German cats have, and that was his seventh he escaped with. Perhaps he’s really an English cat and has nine lives. He’s worked out what happened. As he fell from the cockpit of his burning Gustav, the fin struck his head and knocked him cold. Naturally. But he was high enough to have a long fall building up to a horrifying speed until his eyes finally opened and he saw the desert hurtling up at him. He had just enough sense to yank the cord. He remembers seeming to stop dead in the air and the chute pulling him right way up but leaving him swinging so his legs smashed against the rocky ground almost instantaneously at such a speed that they each shattered in several places, and he collapsed helpless and unconscious again. It was the pain of being dragged by the wind in his chute across the rough and rocky terrain that brought him round again. By then, he’s learnt, Bubi had found a spot to put his Gustav down, wheels up, and was running after him to collapse the chute and keep him safe until the doc got out to him. He really should be dead and would be, even after all his good fortune, but for Bubi.
The unit’s back in Germany, Bubi says. That means Rommel won’t be in Africa much longer. Why would they bring his best fighter unit home otherwise?
Fresh from his regular morning tour of the hospital, the guy whose bed is opposite Jochen’s swings in on his crutches. He stops at the end of Jochen’s bed.
‘Paulus has surrendered.’
‘Surrendered? The Sixth Army?’
‘Yeah.’
The guy sits on the side of his bed and swings his legs up. He puts his hands behind his head and stares up at the ceiling. He mutters, ‘Jesus! My God!’ And keeps repeating it.
He says nothing else. But what else is there to say? Stalingrad’s gone! After all that fighting! After a year or more!
So, a German army can surrender. It’s not just the French or the British. Hitler will be raging. And what about Goering? It’s late morning, he’ll be starting a gigantic early lunch. And surrendered to the Russians! Was the Sixth Army still in its summer uniforms? His father said there were no plans for winter kit. But that was eighteen months or more ago. They must have it by now, mustn’t they?
They cut off his casts. The shears crunch down the length of his le gs. He keeps up a chirpy commentary all through the procedure until the dreadful sight of his scarred, white and wasted legs confronts him and he’s shocked into silence.
‘Not too bad,’ the doc says. ‘They did a good job back in Africa.’
He’s never been a great physical specimen, but… ‘They’re so thin,’ he says.
‘Bound to be. You haven’t stirred for months. It’ll all come back. Exercise. Physio. You’ll be busy the next few weeks.’
It can’t make things any worse, so he reads Lotte’s letter. Family news. Her father’s doing some new research. Her sister’s nearly qualified. She saw his mother; very well. She thinks they should set a date if his recovery is progressing! Oh, God! It’s downhill from there, degenerating into lovey-doveyness that might once have been exciting but is now just nauseating.
He writes back. He’s matter of fact, gives information on his progress, exaggerates his headaches, the state of his legs, how weak he is generally, how far he’s got to go. He despises himself as he skirts his feelings, dodges the main issue of how entirely he’s changed in the way he thinks of her, and when he’s turned over the page, manages to reach the bottom with space for nothing more than Love, Jochen. How can he tell her? He simply can’t yet. He needs to be back on his feet, have some control over his life again. He seals the letter and lies back in despair.
A nurse massages his legs three times a day. She’s quite violent. He grits his teeth. They issue him with crutches. He collapses a couple of times but soon joins Carl, the guy opposite, on his morning tour.
He finds the piano and plays for half an hour. People pop their heads in and smile. A leutnant with a burnt face limps in and sits.
‘I’m sorry,’ the guy says when Jochen stops. ‘I’m the one who was playing Chopsticks. I can see how irritating that must have been.’
‘No, I’m sorry,’ Jochen says. ‘I was being a grouch.’
‘I had to stop when your fiancée asked me to. She’s very beautiful.’
‘Yes,’ Jochen says and puts out his hand. ‘Jochen Murville.’
‘I know,’ the guy says, and takes the hand. ‘Oskar Schmitt.’
Perhaps he could bring them together, Oskar and Lotte. The Schmitts.
Jochen plays him Chopsticks and then sits Oskar down next to him and starts teaching him. As Oskar’s playing improves, Jochen’s legs get stronger.
Spring. The air is fresher, windows are opened wider. In the gardens the daffodils blow about and he can meander slowly over the grass and limp along the paths. Oskar has a girl, and when she brings along a friend, Jochen joins them on an outing for beer and sausages.
The beer is forbidden, so they can’t have too much. Many in the street look away when they see Oskar’s burnt face but the girls look straight at him when they talk to him and Jochen likes them for it.
Winter, his CO, arrives with cigarettes and brandy. He’s about to join the staff of General des Fliegers Galland. He’s left the Geschwader. How can that be? Winter is the Geschwader. He knows everyone, he knows everything. He’s universally respected. He’s also the eternal referee between Jochen and Jonny Beck. And Jonny’s in charge now.
‘That’s a mistake, boss,’ he says.
‘He’s the next up. You know how it works, Jochen.’
‘He’s a Nazi.’
‘Well, that’s good. For some.’
‘I’ll request another unit.’
‘He’ll want you back. You make commanding officers look good.’
‘I’d kill him.’
‘You didn’t manage it before.’
‘Christof stopped me. Christof!’
Christof, the black British POW who arrived in camp one day, became Jochen’s servant and friend, and who tackled him to the ground as Jochen ran at Jonny waving his pistol after Dietrich died.
‘We couldn’t bring him back with us. We’d never have managed to keep him safe here in Germany. Can you imagine it? A black British soldier attached to the Luftwaffe!’
‘And?’
‘I found a prison camp and handed him over. Not the one he came from. Said we’d found him wandering with sunstroke one day and got him back to normal.’
‘And they bought it?’
‘They weren’t interested. Too many other worries. They were expecting orders any day to surrender to the British. Probably sent back home by now.’
‘Gone.’
Winter laughs. ‘The look on your face!’ He pulls a slip of paper from a pocket and passes it over. ‘His sister’s address. That will always reach him eventually,’ he says.
He remembers life in the desert: early mornings, the cold stinging a cheek, winding up the motor of his Emil to get warm, laughing with the lads.
‘How are Hans and Jurg? Still doing their double act? Keeping some other poor sod in order?’
But Winter isn’t smiling.
‘What?’
‘Jurg’s fine.’
‘Oh. Is Hans dead?’
‘When we pulled out for Sicily. They tossed for it. Jurg went in the transport.’
‘And Hans was in the back of a Gustav?’
Winter nods.
‘Who was it?’
‘Their new guy. Hoeppner. He was OK. Not you, obviously, but he was OK. Good pilot. Fitted in. Everyone liked him.’
‘Was it his fault?’
Winter shrugs. ‘We never saw them after they took off. Maybe he got bounced or got lost. We left before light for safety.’
Hans, jammed behind the pilot into the fuselage of the 109, half squatting, half lying, little light, little air, no way out except crawling over the pilot’s seat, no parachute anyway, bullets through him if they were attacked, otherwise down in the drink and no way Hoeppner could get him out. Drowning in the dark in the metal fuselage, joining all the corpses in the Med.
‘He was married.’
‘I wrote. The office has got the address.’
‘I feel ill,’ Jochen says. He pulls the brandy out of his locker, levers the cork out and takes a swig. He offers it to Winter who shakes his head.
‘Eighteen months Hans and Jurg kept me alive! The hours they worked!’
2
Schwarze Orchideen
Berlin has become cosmopolitan. Foreign languages seem to be the norm on the streets; so many that Jochen can’t recognise them all. French and Italian and Spanish are easy and Polish he’s heard before, too, but a couple of tall, blond-haired men he’s behind for a while, who look so German – although if they were, they’d be in uniform – gabble away nineteen to the dozen and he doesn’t understand a word. Danish? Norwegian? There’s no Russian, of course, though once he could swear he’s heard English and swings round as a very smart-looking couple pass him. It’s just the music of English he can hear, though, if you can say music about English; the words aren’t English, and he can’t actually understand anything. Dutch?
Is this what London’s like, with people from all over their Empire thronging the streets, jabbering away? Is Germany on its way to imitating Britain with its own sort of Empire, an Empire of newly conquered nations, with all those nations’ go getters turning up at the centre of things in order to get on? Probably. And probably to get on by filling the positions vacated by Jews – becoming professors, lawyers, artists – occupying their houses, taking the Jews’ places on trams, in restaurants, in cinemas, while the Jews themselves rock and sway together in trains en route to those camps to undergo the final solution, as those two officers called it, in the conversation he overheard at that party. If what the officers said can really be believed.
His legs are aching now. He stops on a terrace to rest them and orders coffee and a glass of water. He won’t be returning to Africa. Rommel’s back in Germany and his army has surrendered, Jochen’s heard, three months ago; 120,000 men. The allies are in Sicily so he won’t be going there, either. Maybe Italy. But how much longer will the Eyeties hang on? They’ve been completely useless all the way through, and now they’re back in Italy they’ll probably just slope off home to mama, every one of them.
