Traitor - Brossura

Pausewang, Gudrun

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1842703137 ISBN 13: 9781842703137

Casa editrice: Andersen Press Ltd, 2004

Riassunto

A bestseller about the final days of the Third Reich in its native Germany, now available in English for a new audience.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

Gudrun Pausewang was born in 1928, and had to flee Hitler's Germany at the age of 17. She has been a teacher and head mistress in Germany, and also in Chile and Venezuela, where she lived for many years. She is a celebrated author in Germany, having written over 70 children's books, many of which have been translated into other languages, and she is the wrinner of several literature prizes.

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When Anna finds an escaped Russian prisoner of warhiding in her grandmother's barn, she knows it's her duty to report him. Instead she provides him with food and clothing and finds him a safer place to hide in a disused bunker, hoping that he will try to escape over the Czech border. But each weekend when she returns from school, the prisoner is still there. Why doesn't he try to escape? And how long will it be before her younger brotheer Felix, a fanatical member of the Hitler Youth, becomes suspicious of Anna's visits to the bunker?

This gripping and moving novl is set in an isolated German village in the closing months of World War II.

Gudrun Pausewang is a prize-winning German novelist whose books for teenagers have been widely translated.

Translated by Rachel Ward

Estratto. © Ristampato con autorizzazione. Tutti i diritti riservati.

3

She rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling. So he was a Russian. A Russian prisoner of war, on the run. Someone who could no longer stand being held prisoner. One of the Russian Soldateska who attacked women, killed children, tortured old people to death, in short: someone with blood on his hands. She still had a very clear memory of the placard showing an angry man's snarling face, with a Russian military cap and a knife dripping with blood between his clenched teeth, instilling fear in the viewer. And it wasn't all that long since the photos of Nemmersdorf had been in the papers, the village in East Prussia, which the Russian army had overrun out of the blue, in a surprise attack. When the Germans had taken it back a short time afterwards, they discovered that almost all the inhabitants had been murdered: children, women, old people - with hideous injuries. They had been terrible photos that she would never forget. How can people do such things? She had asked herself that at the time, and was still asking.

And she had wanted to save the life of someone like that!

No, no way. She must speak to Mother at once, inform the police. He was an enemy and belonged in a prison camp. That conditions weren't exactly luxurious in there went without saying. He would just have to see it through. He just mustn't try to escape. Then he wouldn't get shot.

But something made her think again. She thought of the word Felix had used: bagged. She shuddered. That was unthinkable for her too: to treat a person like an animal. Even if it was a Russian.

And were all Russians really such brutes? The man up there didn't look like that at all. She thought about his moving way of thanking her, saw again the mortal fear in his eyes, his miserable condition. They had hunted him although he was half-starved. But they still hadn't been able to 'bag' him.

But to hide a Russian, that was treachery. So she would be a traitor if she didn't betray him at once.

But then - wouldn't she be his murderer?

Her heart was pounding. What should she do? If only Seff were here!

Seff! She had given Seff's things to a Russian. Could she justify helping a man whose comrades Seff might be killing at that very moment? She pressed her hands to her temples. If only she could talk to someone about it! But that would betray him straight away, then the decision would be out of her hands...And what if Seff was captured and, for whatever reason, tried to escape - wouldn't she wish for someone to hide him and give him food? But in any case, Seff was a German. And they didn't go round frenziedly killing unarmed people. Anna heard Mother's steps coming upstairs. She couldn't talk to her now! She lay still as the door opened quietly. Now Mother was listening. Then the door was closed carefully. Boards creaked.

Now they were eating their evening meal downstairs, unaware that there was a Russian in the barn. If they found him, it would come out that she, Anna, had helped him. They would recognise Seff's clothes, of course. Would they believe what she had thought about mentally disturbed people?

Anna's thoughts went round in circles, looking for ways out. She was hot. Had she got a temperature too?
A Russian. He had waded through the stream to throw off the dogs that might be following his trail. And his pursuers must be furious, now that they hadn't got their hands on him, the last of the eight Ivans. But they had been so close to him: four hundred metres! Human, inhuman...And her family were caught up in it too!

She got up and pushed the curtain aside. It had stopped snowing. The sky was cloudless again. Stars shimmered. The snow glistened on the barn roof.

There under the roof lay a Russian: a young man in enemy territory. He had smelled of sweat and dirt when she passed him the milk. No wonder after a flight like that! Did German soldiers on the run smell like that too?
His fate depended on her decision. Probably his life. Such a decision was appalling!

If she hadn't bothered about the footprints, if the man had crawled in somewhere else, if she had pushed down the compulsion to help him, she would not only have been spared all these fears but probably also the scandal that would taint not only her but also her family. After all, it couldn't be hidden for ever, that over there in the hay...

There was a knock on the door.

'Are you asleep?' whispered Felix.

Stupid question. 'Come in,' said Anna. 'And turn the light on.' They blinked at each other. He came in, quite the waiter, balancing a little tray with a cup of lime blossom tea and a plate of sweet dumplings and put it down on the bedside table.

'Are you feeling better?' he asked. 'Because you're supposed to come with us to the Lamb tomorrow.' She didn't answer. 'By the way, the people with the dogs have already left.'

'What?' She caught her breath. 'Why've they gone already?' she asked. 'They haven't caught the last one yet.' He shrugged his shoulders. 'They've searched through all the bunkers. What else should they do? If he hasn't managed to get to the Protectorate, then he's done for anyway. Because he'll either starve or freeze in the forest. And if he's hiding in some barn or other, then sooner or later he'll be found and reported.'

And reported. For Felix it was so obvious. He always just obeyed orders, never questioned what he was taught. For him there were no doubts, everything was good or evil, black or white.

He would be very good looking, you could see that already. At the moment he was still a beanpole, thin and gawky. But that would change. His face was no longer a child's. When she compared him with the pictures in the racial studies chapter in her biology book, his head was of the pure Nordic race. A blond curl bobbed on his forehead. He got that hair from Father. In comparison, Seff, his brother, was dark with straight hair, of medium height, but with wide shoulders. He took after Mother, a Hanisch through and through.

And she herself? Tall and thin like Father, but with dark curls. And Mother's grey eyes. Something from each of them. She glanced at the photo that hung over her bed: Felix Brünner, her father. Parted blond curls, a clean cut face, a narrow moustache, a melancholy smile.

'Nine women from the Ruhrgebiet are arriving tomorrow,' she heard Felix say. 'Mothers of the children in the evacuation centre. So the beds need to be made up. First thing in the morning. Because at half past ten it's the memorial for Schroller.'

She jumped up, shocked: 'For Schroller? The one I had in class four? What's happened to him?'

'Killed,' answered Felix. 'What else? In France. Didn't anyone tell you?'

The tears sprang up into her eyes. He had been her favourite teacher.

Felix gave her a sad look and disappeared.

A little later Mother came up again.

'He's sorry to have sprung the news on you like that,' she reported. 'He says, he never guessed that Herr Schroller's death would upset you like that. He never had him as a teacher himself.'

She bent over Anna. 'You look ill. Rings under your eyes. Sleep in tomorrow. I'll ask Grandmother to stand in for you at the Lamb. It'll just be leftovers for lunch though. It's rather tricky because of Hedi. All three children have got whooping cough and the youngest has pneumonia as well. So I can't very well say to her: You've got to come...!'

And she had gone again. Anna couldn't remember ever having seen her sitting on the edge of her bed.

She felt very alone. Mother: never any time; Seff: gone; Felix: too young; Grandmother: too old; Father: dead.

Father - what would he have said about this Russian business? She knew so little about him. Before Felix was even born he had taken his own life, without warning and without leaving a note. She hadn't even been two years old. Apparently he had always conjured sweets out of her nose, sweets from the Grünbaums' shop.

Felix Brünner, Conjuror. He had travelled through the whole of Europe with a circus. He had even been to Moscow several times. 'He often went into raptures about Russia,' Uncle Franz had told her. 'He said that the people there aren't ashamed to bare their souls.'

Anna was always amazed at the way her parents had found each other. Mother had worked as a waitress in Prague long before the beginning of the war. That was where she had met Felix the conjuror when she visited the circus.
'Then I knew: him or nobody!' she had often said. 'When I found out that he was still single, I didn't rest until I had him. That's the way I am. What I want, I get...'

Father left the circus and moved with Mother to Stiegnitz, where they married. Mother inherited the inn, but Father didn't become a landlord. He just conjured for the guests now and again, at Mother's request.

Uncle Franz had told her all that on her fourteenth birthday. Mother had asked him to.

Franz and Marie, brother and sister. They got on well. Uncle Franz said he had got on well with Felix Brünner too. Felix just hadn't fitted in to Stiegnitz because he had been so different and had previously lived in such a different world. Her father hadn't been happy in Stiegnitz.

'Why didn't Mother go with him back to the circus then?' Anna had asked her uncle in amazement.

'That would have killed her,' he had answered.

And so the inevitable happened.

'Your mother took Felix's death very hard, because she cared for him. So she insisted that the little one was named after him. Felix! What a name!'

Felix would get the Lamb one day, Uncle Franz's farm would go to Seff, and she herself would inherit the little farmstead on which they lived. That had all been arranged already.

Anna had learned once from Grandmother that her father had wanted to name her Eva. The whole Hanisch family had been against it however, because nobody in Stiegnitz or the surrounding villages was called Eva. So Mother had asserted herself with her family: the child was given Grandmother's name. Anna.

Uncle Franz had expressed himself very carefully to her so as not to hurt her: Her father 'hadn't fitted in to Stiegnitz', had been 'so different'. According to Aunt Agnes, the Hanisch clan had referred to him among themselves as The Eccentric and 'another sort of man'. Aunt Agnes was Uncle Franz's wife so she should know. She also knew that for the local people he had been the Circus guy, the Abracadabra, the crazy man, the lunatic. The one who took in tramps and fed them! Who played cards with gypsies!

Anna knew that it is difficult to be different from others. The people of Stiegnitz were like a flock of sheep. If you stepped out of their line, you didn't belong. If Felix Brünner had become a good landlord and spent the evenings telling the latest jokes over a beer, then he would still be alive. Then he would wear the Party badge like Mother and Uncle Franz, and the SA uniform at ceremonies. Or he would be a soldier. Probably on the Eastern Front.
The Eastern Front. So Father had got to know the Russians in their own country and still liked them. He had probably made real friendships there. And he would certainly have met Russian singers and dancers, been in Russian circuses, have got to know the Russian theatre.

How could he, who loved Russia, have shot at Russian soldiers? Probably he would rather have let himself be shot as a conscientious objector.

And he hadn't come to terms with the people of Stiegnitz. That was also a fact. That is, he hadn't acted in accordance with the usual principles. What is the done thing here? What will benefit my family and me? Judging by the stories that people told about him, he had, for the most part, spontaneously followed his feelings. Sympathy had played its part there. And tolerance to strangers. And outrage at injustice. He had never lacked the courage to act differently from the villagers when he felt it was necessary. That brought him hatred, damage and even punishment. Yes, he had once actually been locked up for three months because he had helped a Slovakian pedlar to escape from the village prison. The Slovakian had landed up there because he had tried to steal a loaf from the baker's.

The people of Stiegnitz had shaken their heads over Felix Brünner back then: To let himself get a criminal record just for the sake of a lousy Slovakian - incomprehensible! For them, gypsies, tramps, Slovakian pedlars were just riff-raff, to beware of.

Mother had loved Felix Brünner because he was the way he was. That mattered to her. But all the same, she hadn't managed to free herself from the security of the Stiegnitz herd. That was what had killed him.
Anna wasn't just a Hanisch. She was also a Brünner.

She clasped her arms behind her head and stared at the picture of her father. Would he, the lunatic, have betrayed the Russian in the barn? Never!

No, she couldn't do it either. To deliver up a terrified, half-starved man to be shot like an animal - how could she reconcile that with her conscience? She couldn't live with guilt like that, and she didn't want to!

The people with dogs had left the Lamb, left Stiegnitz. That was good. And she, Anna, would be quite alone in the house tomorrow morning. That was good too. The Russian had to get out of the barn - as soon as possible! He must go somewhere where he could recover in peace, and after a couple of days he could go on alone again.
If he and the seven others from Glatz had fled south-wards, then doubtless they had intended to reach the Protectorate and disappear among the Czechs.

Russians and Czechs were, so to speak, related, of Slavic origins, and they had something else in common too: Germany was their enemy.

It was about twenty kilometres from Stiegnitz to the border of the Protectorate. That was easy to cover on foot, through the forests. But only if you were healthy. So the Russian had to get back on his feet first. That meant he needed something to eat. Anna would supply him with food.

The stove was roaring. But despite that she was cold, so cold. She heard Felix disappear into the boys' room. Downstairs in Mother's and Grandmother's rooms the noises were stopping too. Now it was totally quiet in the house. She wondered how the Russian was getting on in the hay.

Where should she take him? Just into the forest? He'd freeze. Or someone would find him. Then he'd be sunk. Mother would be certain to know a safe place. It was rare for her not to have any advice, a pat solution. But this problem had greater dimensions than the little aches and pains of the village.

No one else from the family should be dragged into this. She, Anna, would have to make it right alone. But how?
She turned the light off and rolled up under the duvet. She couldn't get warm. By tomorrow morning she had to have thought of a hiding place for the man, somewhere halfway safe. Safe for him - and for her! By tomorrow morning, or she would have missed the chance and everything would be lost.

She tossed and turned, saw what she imagined a prison camp to look like before her eyes, saw police dogs, straining on their leashes, saw tracks in the snow, saw Seff with the lantern in his hands...

Suddenly she sat bolt upright. The bunker! The Moserwald Bunker! That was the answer. They wouldn't be able to find the man so easily in its labyrinth, unless they came with dogs. Inside the mountain it never got very cold either. She would take him there, straightaway in the early morning!

Anna turned the light on again, because suddenly she felt extremely hungry. She drank the tea, which had gone cold by then, and gobbled up five dumplings. And her feet were warm again.
Now she could sleep.

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Andersen Press Ltd
• Data di pubblicazione: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1842703137
• ISBN 13: 9781842703137
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 160
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile