The Dynamite Room Read online

  In early March the division had returned to Berlin and, for four weeks, he found himself stationed just west of the city, at Dallgow-Döberitz. He welcomed being so close to the institute and Eva, particularly as before long he’d be heading up to Wesermünde to board the destroyer Wilhelm Heidkamp. Word had already gotten out. They’re sending us to Norway.

  Eva had been granted some time off from the institute to see him, and they spent the day together. Lunch at Hertie’s department store had been a disappointment—the menu rather more limited than he had remembered—and for the first hour together neither of them had quite known what to say. They whiled away the afternoon in the Tiergarten, navigating their way around the puddles and sharing a pretzel, and they had stopped at their special bridge to have their customary photograph taken, only for Heiden to realize that he had left his camera back in the barracks.

  Oh, never mind. It doesn’t matter, she had said, but he could tell that it did.

  They watched a group from the League of German Girls being taught how to tend the allotments. The great park had been largely turned over to vegetables; the metal fencing and iron railings were gone too, and as they walked they could see a group of uniformed Brownshirts pulling down the iron lampposts from along the paths and replacing them with wooden ones.

  Everything is being uprooted. Even the park lampposts, she said.

  As she spoke, the iron post being dismantled in front of them fell heavily across their path with a thunderous clang, causing Eva, Heiden, and several others to leap back out of its way.

  Careful, shouted one of the Brownshirts, and he laughed.

  You could have killed someone, Eva shouted.

  Well, we’ll try harder next time then, he replied, laughing again.

  To Heiden’s utter surprise, Eva suddenly launched herself at the boy, seemingly intent on hitting him and shouting, You pig, you’re all ignorant pigs! as they laughed and jeered at her.

  It took all of Heiden’s strength to pull her back and haul her down the path away from them, her arms still thrashing. Calm down. For God’s sake, Eva. What the hell are you doing? Around them, people had stopped to watch.

  It’s all being torn down, she sobbed into his coat as he managed to walk her away. I can’t bear this any longer.

  I know, he said. I know.

  Later they strolled alongside the lime trees between the two carriages on Unter den Linden and sat for a few minutes on the steps outside the Neue Wache memorial, counting steeples. In the evening, they visited their favorite little picture house just off Potsdamer Platz to watch It Was A Gay Ballnight with Zarah Leander and Marika Rökk, which Eva—seemingly forgetting the afternoon’s drama—had immensely enjoyed, but which made Heiden inexplicably sad. Afterwards they rode the tram home along the darkened Berlin streets through the rain. She had snuggled into the wraps of his uniform. Don’t come back to me dead, she said. You are the only reason I am living.

  She had been out of sorts all day; and, of course, there had been the incident in the park. When he asked her what was on her mind, she finally said that it was the institute and the job. There were twice as many beds as there had been when they’d first looked around. He would hardly recognize the place. Getting from one end of a ward to another was an assault course, she told him. We’re not allowed to send any clothes to the laundry until we’ve at least tried to scrub the dirt from them, and if you attempt to smuggle in some that Nurse Hartmann thinks you could have cleaned yourself, she unleashes hellfire and fury. She flies at us over the slightest thing. They’d had two resignations that month already—with no hope of them being replaced. You wouldn’t believe the deals I’ve had to make with that wretched woman just to get this time off.

  Dr. Kesselring had made a remark to one of the nurses that suggested that the institute might be turned into a public hospital as part of the war effort to look after wounded soldiers. He’d said nothing about where the current inmates would go. They barely had enough to feed the patients anything other than root vegetables, and there were numerous cost-cutting initiatives in place, although, despite that, the dispensary had been stocked up. Eva and Käthe had been told to put up new shelves to hold all the extra bottles of morphine and barbiturates.

  And there had been the questionnaires from the Reich Ministry of the Interior. It had taken Nurse Hartmann the better part of three days to complete one for each of the patients, and that had put her in the most vile mood. When Eva had asked her what they were for, Nurse Hartmann had told her not to question. It was better not to know.

  Just a few weeks back, Eva told him, four military trucks had pulled up at the institute. They were under the surveillance of the SS and all the windows were painted gray so you couldn’t see in. They had come to deport some of the male patients elsewhere. No one at the hospital knew where they were going. Nurse Hartmann welcomed the transport nurses into her office and gave them tea and pastries, as if they had been expected; after that, she had gathered the nurses in the main hall and read out a list of patients—seventy-five in total. They had just twenty minutes to gather the men together and lead them out to the trucks. And they just went, Eva said.

  Heiden wanted her to resign and not to get involved, but she refused. She had made too many attachments; she couldn’t just leave.

  Anyway, she said, I don’t suppose we will hear any more of it. And, for a while at least, we’ve a few less patients to worry about, and maybe we won’t get any more. They’re not curing them anyway. I don’t think they’re even trying.

  And so the tram rattled on through the darkness, shining its murky blue light along the steely tracks, and they spoke no more of the institute. They got off at their stop and ran across the street through the torrential rain and up the flights of steps to the garret room. Eva said the blackout frames made her feel like she’d been boxed up and put away somewhere, so they spent what was left of the night with no lights on.

  From the bed he could barely see her as she played her violin. Just the thin threads of moonlight slipping up and down the strings of her bow; just the smoky shape of her swaying around the room. He tapped out the piano’s accompaniment with his fingers against the metal frame of the bed. He could take that image now, that slow-moving silhouette, and transpose it onto the darkened wall of this sitting room. He could dream her into the house called Greyfriars and hear her playing for him.

  He had woken to sudden laughter and the sound of sparks.

  Look, said Gruber.

  Yes, look, said Bürckel. But you better stay well back.

  Heiden stretched his legs out and tried to shake the cold and cramp from them. His buttocks were completely numb.

  He watched as Gruber plucked a match from the box he was holding and struck it, and then tossed it into the empty corner. As it hit the ground, there were instantly tiny sparks and crackles as if the dust around it was suddenly popping.

  Fuck, said Heiden. What is it?

  Neither Gruber nor Bürckel knew.

  Gruber lit another match though and dropped it into the corner; and again there came the sparks and crackles, glittering on the floor.

  It’s debris from some sort of explosive, said the man called Harris, hauling himself up into a sitting position. He had barely said a word since they had arrived, and when he spoke his voice croaked, his breath heavy and labored. Heiden had been unaware that he and the man called Pendell were watching from the far side of the room; he had assumed they were still asleep. It’s in the air. Some sort of explosive dust. Highly sensitive by the look of it.

  What’s he saying? said Gruber.

  Heiden translated. It must be there on the floor.

  It’s a dynamite store, said the man called Harris.

  Without dynamite? said Heiden.

  All gone. Must belong to the railway line. Been empty some time, I’d say. They blast away landslides in the summer, I ’spect. Ice and snow in the thaw. They must have kept it in this room. There were a couple of empty crates when we arrived. The
y were something to sit on for a while, but in the end we had to break them up and burn them.

  There must have been a spillage of whatever it is in that corner, where it’s dry, said the man called Pendell.

  Yes, said Harris. I wouldn’t light a fire near there if I were you.

  Heiden translated and said they should move the fire to the opposite corner and sweep the floor as well as they could. Otherwise the whole place might go up.

  Together with Bürckel he used a couple of scarves, brushing as much of the debris and dust away as possible, and then set to rebuilding the fire.

  Occasionally, for fun, Gruber would toss another lit match into the corner and there would be fizzling and sparks. He and Bürckel laughed.

  Enough now, said Heiden. We don’t want to waste the matches.

  You’re heading for Norddal Bridge, aren’t you? said Harris. They’ve blasted it. The bridge, you know.

  The Norwegians, added Pendell.

  Then we shall fix it, Heiden told them.

  The mountains are littered with snow sheds and places like this, Pendell said. Especially near the railway line.

  And how do you know?

  That map you took from us. That’s a Norwegian map, said Pendell. Harris here stole it. It had symbols on it that we didn’t understand but now we know.

  Show me, said Heiden.

  He retrieved the map from his kit bag and handed it to Pendell, who unfolded it out on the floor. They gathered around it.

  See? said the English officer.

  He showed Heiden, pointing out various symbols.

  Bürckel leaned in to get a closer look. What is it? What’s he saying?

  The little black squares are snow sheds, Pendell explained. The green ones, like this…that’s a dynamite store.

  Then we are here? Heiden put his fingertip next to Pendell’s.

  I don’t know. Not for sure, said Pendell. But, yes. Perhaps.

  Bürckel glanced at Heiden and Gruber and pulled a face. They scanned the map, hunting out signs of civilization.

  Christ, mumbled Gruber after a while, I hope none of you boys are in a hurry to get home.

  Shingle Street was only half a mile away. If she closed her eyes she could almost hear the soft lap of the waves, the water being hauled back over the shingle, the tiny stones being dragged back with it, the soft shushing sound of the tide foaming along its edges. The flat landscape was always windy, so that seagulls would struggle in the sky and voices were blown about, taken off and lost in the surf, words snatched away. The shoreline was constantly moving, the shingle shifting while the raised grassy ridge of the railway line marked the perimeter between the shore and the mudflat.

  All along the beach now were coils of wire, pillboxes, dragon’s teeth, and concrete blocks; all the clobber, Mr. Morton said, of England under siege. Before the beaches had become out of bounds, her memories were of brightly painted fishing boats lined up along the shore, while out to sea ships were on their way to Felixstowe. Yes, a war was going on then too, but it was being fought out on the horizon by people she didn’t know. The weather that day—in her memory—had been mixed. A dark cloud smudged with rain seeping across the sky. She sat in the shingle, hiding among the tall tufts of grass that formed their own waves as the wind washed through them. And when she walked along the beach with Alfie he had pointed out the various plants, giving them names that she had now forgotten. Plants with little purple flowers nestled among the shingle. Plants that looked like cauliflowers with thick rubbery leaves and green buds like berries. Crinkly bits of seaweed that crackled as you stood on them. They’d seen a dried bit of bush blowing across the beach, down the slope to the shore, doing cartwheels all the way. Often boys prowled there, throwing handfuls of shingle over each other’s heads, or hiding on the other side of the slope, lying in wait. Alfie stood on the top of the slope sometimes, in his shorts, long socks, and cloth cap, with his arms folded to the wind and his expression imperious.

  There was a white-painted bungalow half-buried on the beach. Alfie and Eddie always wanted to break into it, as the house had been abandoned for years, but they never had the guts. One day the whole place would be consumed, Alfie said. Every room in the house filled to the ceiling with shingle, and, maybe in many, many years, when someone managed to open the door and all the shingle flooded out, they’d find the remains of a family, their mouths open and full, their bodies stuffed with stones.

  Instead they looked for bullets, rusted tin mugs, tangled netting, or bits of amber or carnelian that were the color of toffee. And hiding among the grasses, she would run her hands through them, drawing them up the stems and hearing the wind, the soft whispers of the shore, or an occasional gunshot in the distance that set her heart a-jitter. Then off she’d go, scrunching through the shingle. You couldn’t run. The shingle wouldn’t let you. Uphill it pulled at the backs of her calves and, as she slid down the other side of the slopes, her heels would sink in, avalanches cascading down ahead of her and giving her a strange lurching feeling. She remembered Alfie waving and waiting, the silhouette of him against the sky.

  He rapped on the shutters with the end of a garden cane: “Will you help?”

  She lifted herself out of the depths of her father’s chair. “I don’t want to.”

  “Well, I need you,” he said. “Come into the garden, please.”

  She wanted to say that she was busy but he’d already seen that she wasn’t. It was probably his attempt at saying sorry for slapping her and breaking their wireless. He disappeared, and she sat there for a little while longer before she went out into the garden anyway.

  The soil had become so dry that some of the cane wigwams had pulled free of the earth and fallen over, scattering the peas and beans. “If we’re going to stay here much longer we need to do something with this,” he said. “We have got to save as many of these plants as we can. When the other men come, they will all need feeding. We don’t know how long we are going to be here.”

  She stood for a moment on the edge of the lawn, curling her toes around the warm, dry grass and holding her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. It was such a relief to be outside, even if it was still hot. He bent down and pulled two canes out from the jumble of pea plants and glanced over his shoulder at her.

  “Come on then. You need to get some shoes on. What are you waiting for?”

  Together they managed to get the wooden canes back into the soil and pushed them in deep. The plants were already parched and withering, so dried out that some of the pods had cracked open and the peas inside were as hard as marbles.

  “I don’t think we’ll get much from them,” he told her.

  He walked along the line of plants, checking that the other canes were pushed in deep. Then he looked out across the rest of the garden. “Now,” he said, “what next?”

  “You mustn’t change anything,” she said, suddenly worried that he might ruin it all. Her father had spent ages planning the garden. He had sketched it all out on boards and roughly colored the flowers with her old crayons.

  “I am not going to change anything,” he said. “I am just trying to save what is here. Or would you rather we starved?”

  She frowned. She could feel the sun burning her skin, and sweat was forming in her hair and in the palms of her hands. He began hoeing around the drooping onions and bolting broccoli, and she walked behind with her mother’s cane flower basket, picking out from the dirt the weeds that he pulled up. Clouds of earthy dust rose up around them and stuck to her damp skin and got into her eyes. The garden seemed to be choking. Even the soldier coughed.

  “You have to be resourceful if you’re going to survive,” he told her. “It is important to get a good education, but learning about knights and kings and castles won’t feed you or keep you warm.” He pulled up a disheveled carrot plant and flung it onto the lawn. “Unless you become a teacher, of course,” he added. “Do you want to be a teacher?”

  She hadn’t decided so she shook her hea
d.

  “Then we’d better teach you something useful,” he said. He started to list things as he hoed up and down the row. His shoulder still seemed to be giving him trouble. “Firstly, you should never go anywhere without matches, and always keep them dry. If you’re trying to catch fish with your bare hands don’t make sudden movements; the vibrations will scare them. And put your hand just in front of them because water bends light, so objects and things like fish always appear further away than they are. Another thing is, you can eat dandelion leaves or sour grass, but never eat real grass—that will make you sick. And if you’re lighting a fire make sure you only put dry stones around it.”

  “Why?” said Lydia.

  “Why? Because wet stones can explode.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “My training,” he said, stopping for a moment and resting on the hoe.

  She had never heard of stones exploding.

  “And from my grandfather. He taught me how to hunt when I used to visit him in Bavaria. We need to be prepared.”

  “Prepared?”

  “This is a war. What if I wasn’t here?” he said. “What would you do? What would you eat when there was nothing left in the kitchen? How would you survive?”

  She looked back at the house. She hadn’t thought about it before. What if he had never come? She couldn’t imagine being here on her own now. How quickly she had got used to him.

  “You need to be resourceful when you’re on a mission,” he said. “Know how to survive in the wilds, what you can eat from the land and what you can’t, how to keep yourself alive, how to protect yourself.”

  He tossed the hoe onto the grass then bent down to study the giant fan leaves of a courgette plant. It was half-eaten and covered in a white dust. He broke off the leaf and then circled the plant, breaking off the other leaves that were plagued or turning yellow.