The Dynamite Room Read online

  She looked again at the clipboard, lifting the various sheets of paper.

  I’m very much looking forward to starting, said Eva.

  Nurse Hartmann put the clipboard back and frowned at the man in his bed. Your education is excellent. You are polite and professional, I can see that. Most of the nurses at the institute, she told them, had done little more than domestic help before they were taken on. People think “psychiatric nursing” isn’t real nursing, she said. You will not be surprised to hear that I disagree. We are here to bring joy and life and relief to these patients. You will see for yourself when you start.

  They made their way further down the ward. He looked at every passing face. They were of all ages, some younger than he was. One of the patients, a middle-aged man with cropped dark hair, was fastened into his bed with leather straps.

  You will have to keep your wits about you, Fräulein Winkler. If there is any possibility of disruption, our policy is to sedate them.

  Like animals? Heiden said.

  Nurse Hartmann gave him a stern look. I appreciate your opinion—Lance Corporal, she said, looking at the rank insignia on his uniform, but you have no understanding of what we are dealing with here. God made us all animals. Some are wilder than others. These patients are not fully human. They need to be put right. It is, as I am sure you can imagine, a long and costly journey. We—all of us—are doing the best that we can.

  By this point they had passed through the door and were back out in the corridor. In the ward at the opposite end of the hallway a woman in a white hospital gown was shouting. Through the partially open door they could see two female nurses struggling to contain her and get her into bed. Nurse Hartmann, however, was keen to turn to the paperwork.

  Fräulein Winkler, you are of course a member of the DAF?

  Eva said that she was not and Nurse Hartmann tutted.

  Well, that is the first thing we need to see to, then, get you joined to the Labour Front. She turned to Heiden. And you, Lance Corporal, I’m sure would enjoy some air in the garden. I challenge you to find our strawberry patches. They are not where you might expect them.

  And indeed they were not, for he never did find them.

  She was trying to sew the coins back into the cuff of her cardigan, but she was all fingers and thumbs. The end of the cuff wouldn’t stay folded over and the coins kept falling out. Her mother had sewn them in with hundreds of tiny stitches and Lydia didn’t have the patience for that. Even when she had managed to sew the hem down it was all puckered, but she kept at it anyway. Her mother would never come back if she unpicked everything.

  For the third time the thread escaped out of the needle, and in her fury she threw it across the floor. She pushed the heels of her hands into her eyes so that she could block everything out. She would hide every bit of this away; the man downstairs, the German advance, the house like a buried box around her, the heat and the suffocation. She would push it all away into the darkness so that everything was gone.

  Earlier she had stood out on the landing, shouting “Mother! Mother!” on the off chance that it was all a trick being played on her or just a silly dream, but it was the man who called up from the bottom of the stairs, “What are you doing?” And she didn’t know. She told him she wasn’t doing anything. She was just hoping. That was all.

  If she could take her father’s old watch from its drawer and wind it back and back, taking back one after the other the hours and days and weeks they had lost, she would. She would bring them all back one by one. Her mother first, and then Button, and then her father and Alfie. She would pop the bullet back out of Alfie’s chest and bring him back to life.

  She got up and left the room, walking along the corridor to the door at the end, Alfie’s door. She had no urge to go in. She wanted to press the side of her face to the wood, to feel its warmth—a warmth that was his. She wanted to hear its creaking in her ear as if the wood, the door, the room itself were breathing his breath.

  It was only when Eddie was there that Alfie wouldn’t let her in.

  She’d hear them laughing and fooling about, and knock on the door and open it, and then Alfie’s face would be there, grinning.

  Can I come in?

  No, we’re busy.

  Come on, Alfie! Please!

  No, you’re too young, Lyds. Go away.

  And she’d try to force the door, but with a slam he’d push it firmly shut.

  She’d hear Eddie saying: Shove a chair under the handle or something.

  And then Alfie would be doing just that and all the time she’d hear them both laughing.

  I hate you! she would yell.

  They were British naval officers; he recognized the uniform and the insignia on the cuffs of the man who was standing. The second man was huddled in the corner, wrapped in coats and a blanket; his skin was pale and his face craggy and pitted, with wisps of white in his hair. He looked at them with wild eyes, red raw in their sockets. Both men’s faces were thick with stubble and their smart navy trousers were muddied and sodden. Against the wall lay the third man, slumped dead where Gruber had shot him—not much more than a boy, Heiden noted, and certainly no older than Bürckel. His eyes were open and glassy, the blood still trickling from the two holes in his chest. The air was still laced with smoke from the hurriedly stamped-out fire in the middle of the floor, some of the twigs still faintly glowing.

  What are you doing here? Heiden said to them in English.

  The standing man said nothing and Heiden repeated the question, poking the air between them with his gun. I said, what are you doing here?

  We ran aground, answered the man.

  What? said Gruber. What’s he saying?

  Heiden translated.

  They had been on a British naval ship—the HMS Hardy, the man explained. It had been hit in the cross fire in the harbor at Narvik and had beached at a place called Vidrek, a small village to the west. The three men had been on the run ever since, the rest of the crew scattered by German soldiers, he told them. They had been trying to find another village where they could get help but the weather—

  Heiden laughed.

  You are lucky you found this place, he said. You would be dead otherwise.

  Gruber dumped his kit bag down and peeled off his gloves, flexing his frozen fingers. We should throw them out into the snow and settle in for the night, or just shoot them, he said. I’m not sharing with Tommies.

  Heiden bent down next to the older Englishman. He looked sick. He was crouched with his knees up and staring at them from behind the wrap of his arm, shivering and breathless. He already had a confused look in his eyes; lips almost translucent, eyelids pink and puffy. They’d been particularly diligent on the prevention of hypothermia in their training with Dietl’s division, and Heiden had seen the symptoms before on exercises in the Austrian Alps. As he leaned in closer, the man tried to push himself deeper into the corner.

  I only want to see, Heiden told him. Please.

  In the end, the man lifted his mittened hands out from his armpits and offered them to Heiden as if he wanted them taken from him. Heiden peeled one of the mittens off. The man’s hand was blue and covered in white and yellow patches. The fingertips were black and waxy and hardened, and there were purplish blisters filled with blood. He put the mitten back on the man’s hand and turned to Gruber and Bürckel. We need to relight this fire, he said. This man mustn’t get any colder.

  We shoot them, said Gruber. He’s going to die anyway.

  No. They are prisoners of war now. We’re not shooting them, said Heiden.

  Oh? And who put you in charge?

  I said, we are not shooting them.

  Gruber held his stare. If you keep them alive you are putting our lives at risk, the campaign at risk, the whole fucked-up war. You hear?

  Heiden said nothing.

  I won’t be held responsible for them, Gruber said. If either one of them so much as sniffs I’m putting a bullet through both of their heads, and if either
you, or you, he said, pointing at Bürckel, have a problem with that I’ll put a bullet through you as well.

  This was how the days would pan out: the operation reduced to school-yard bickering. The war in itself had become irrelevant. Trapped in the middle of nowhere, with the rages of a blizzard outside, all Heiden was concerned about was surviving the day and then the next one and perhaps, if he was lucky, the next. He could feel the odds stacking up against him.

  He struggled out of his rucksack and motioned with his gun for the English officer to sit. He asked them what their names were.

  Pendell, said the man. British navy.

  Rank?

  Lieutenant Commander. That’s Harris, he said, pointing at the sick man huddled on the floor. And that boy you’ve killed—

  We don’t need to know, said Heiden.

  His name was Lewis, the man said anyway.

  Even in the dark of the shed Gruber had shot into the boy’s chest with alarming accuracy. The blood soaking into his sweater and running down his front had stopped and would more than likely already be cold.

  Heiden told Bürckel to let some light in, and the storm blew in as the young soldier hauled the door open, snowflakes blasting into the shed and across the floor in a flurry. Bürckel pulled the door shut behind him and began knocking the snow from the outside of the shutters and opening them up so that a pale gray light washed against the window and pushed through the grime.

  They hauled the body of the dead English boy out into the cold and dumped it among the birch trees down the slope from the shed. Then they remade the fire, Bürckel and Heiden scraping up twigs and leaves from around the floor to act as fresh kindling while Gruber kept his eye and his pistol on the two Englishmen. Everything was damp and it took a dozen or so attempts and as many matches before the flames finally caught. He sat back against the wall away from the thick smoke drifting up from the twigs. Bürckel squatted next to him, shivering, while Gruber crouched beneath the window, occasionally tossing another stick onto the fire or stoking it with his flick knife. Heiden stuck his finger down the back of his boot and tried to relieve the pressure against his sore blisters. He could feel nothing in his toes.

  I’m hungry, Gruber said. Have they got food?

  Have you got food? Heiden said to the officers.

  A little, said the man called Pendell.

  Heiden took the man’s pack from the corner and emptied it out onto the floor as the man watched. Gruber did the same with the bags belonging to the two others. Spare clothes and a few items of food fell out, tins tumbling and rolling through the dirt. There was a torn and dirty map too, which Heiden was quick to confiscate.

  Gruber picked up one of the tins and showed it to him.

  Peaches, Heiden said.

  I’ll take that, said Gruber, taking the tin back from him. What have you got?

  A tin of chopped ham, a tin of dried egg, two tins of peaches, three or four small packets of biscuits, water purification tablets, and cigarettes, six whole packets. It wasn’t much between them but it would keep them going for a day or two.

  We share everything, said Heiden. And them too. He nodded at the Englishmen.

  Gruber’s eyes locked on him.

  Them too, said Heiden.

  They consumed a tin of cooked ham, then melted snow in an upturned steel helmet and poured it into Bürckel’s canteen, which they passed around, sipping from the hot water and feeling the steam that lifted from it soaking into their faces. The three Germans drew lots as to who would take the first watch.

  Ach, shit, said Gruber as he pulled the shortest twig.

  The storm blew hard against the window, rattling the glass in its frame. With the fire now giving a tinge of warmth to the room, the man called Harris was already struggling to keep his eyes open. As the minutes and then the hours slowly passed Heiden felt his own exhaustion overcoming him. It seemed to disintegrate every muscle in him, turn every bone to lead. He jerked as his eyelids fell, and for a moment he seemed to lose consciousness—as if it were just a single connection in his head that was keeping him awake or even alive and it would only take a moment’s lapse, a moment’s disconnection, and then suddenly he would be gone.

  She had been listening and waiting, and now that he had gone upstairs and closed the bathroom door, she crept into the sitting room. The wireless was still there on the floor where he had left it, and she knelt down beside it, huddling over her knees. She wiped her sweaty hands on her dress and slowly turned the dial until it clicked and the set buzzed and crackled. She flicked the volume as low as it would go and then edged the dial back round until it was just loud enough for her to hear if she held her ear close.

  There were snatches of sound through the waves of static, and then eventually—yes!—a news broadcast in English, words rattling out through the static like short bursts of gunfire.

  “French colonies…Africa have been…enemy territory.” More crackling. “Ports…under naval blockade, following reports…” The broadcast slipped away through the fuzz, and then broke free again from the buzzing. “In London it was reported—”

  A heavy palm slammed down on the set, and she was hauled backwards across the floor. His hand slapped across her face and then his boot kicked the wireless over. “No!” she cried, as his heel smashed down through its casing.

  He wrenched his foot free of the wrecked shell and the burst of tubes and wires and pulled her up to her feet. “You mustn’t. It’s too dangerous.”

  “They were English. I could hear them!”

  “German! A German broadcast delivered in English.”

  “No. It wasn’t.”

  “It was. Now get to your room.”

  “No.”

  “I want peace and quiet.”

  “You’re lying to me!”

  The hand slapped her a second time, this time harder, knocking her into the table next to her, and he shouted something but she couldn’t hear it through the ringing in her ears. The sting flared across her cheek and she stumbled out of the room.

  He stood listening to her pounding up the stairs, followed by the slam of her bedroom door. It was going to hell; he saw that now in the mangled carcass of the wireless, felt it in the sting of his fingers where he’d struck her. He slumped heavily on the floor and stared at the mess, then pulled at the broken tubes, the crushed and bent amplifier. They had shown him how radios like this worked but the wires made no sense to him now. He was losing himself, everything draining away. He fiddled helplessly with the radio for a few moments and then gathered up all the parts into the shell and furiously shoved it away across the floor.

  He shouldn’t have reacted like that. He should have taken a component out of the radio, as he had been trained to do, so that she couldn’t work it but he still could. Now he was without a radio. Idiot. Never trust anyone, they had said: women, Jews, gypsies, and children—especially children. And now that he had hurt her there was no knowing what she might do.

  He rubbed at his eyes. His head ached. He was sick of feeling this hot. Even the floorboards he sat on were sweating. He almost wished for Norway. Here he felt so tired all the time, so heavy. And now he would need to find another house and another radio. He would have to summon up the energy to venture out, and all because of one stupid outburst, a moment’s loss of control.

  He glanced at the piles of books he’d taken from the study, books on English history, the English countryside, English poets…He shuffled across the floor and sat beneath the window. He had no mind for reading now. He took his pistol and pulled out the magazine, counting the bullets lined up in it, and then he clicked it back into place. He turned his head and, with a sense of relief, felt the coolness of the wall seeping into his cheek, into his bones, and slowly numbing him.

  After a while he could hear a dull thumping transmitting itself through the walls of the house; it sent a splintering through his skull. He lifted his head away but the noise remained. He wondered if he was imagining it. In the secret world of the
house he had started to see and hear things that he knew weren’t real. The previous night, he had sat up, sure that he could hear the sound of small wheels trundling across the floor above him; and when he had opened the door of the cupboard under the stairs he had been quite convinced that he would find children hiding there, just as he had done in Poland.

  Thump. Thump. Thump, came the noise.

  War tipped everything on its head: ethics, existence, common sense. That was surely why in a farmhouse in Poland he had shot three children dead; why in Narvik he had watched his men rape a woman and had thought nothing of it.

  He needed to sleep now. God, he needed to sleep. But there were already too many images in his head, and it was in his dreams that they grew strongest, muscling their way in when he was trying so hard to forget. Gruber in the snow, stripping the clothes from a dead naval officer. Two nurses at the hospital doors. Children’s faces in the dark. Or Eva in the park, her eyes bright as she leaned forward and kissed him. The touch of her lips. The struggle in the water. The thrash of limbs as they coiled and wrestled. The jerk of an arm, a slashing knife. Blood-red clouds in the water before waking and gasping with a sudden race for air.

  He got up and walked out of the room, following the thumping into the hall and up the stairs. She was there in the corridor, frowning and throwing a ball against the wall as hard as she could and catching it, her face still wet from crying. He stood with his hands on his hips and patiently waited for her to stop, which she eventually did, but not until she’d thrown the ball extra hard one more time—thump—just to prove her point.

  He watched the swing of the metronome’s arc on the floor beside him, slow and steady. In his head he could hear music. Schubert’s “Ave Maria!” He was lying on the bed in the Berlin garret room and Eva was playing to him in the dark. In his head he could hear the full orchestra accompanying her.