Silesian Station

Ruins

In the last week of September Russell took the early morning train from Silesian Station to Breslau. The fighting in Poland seemed almost over, the British and French were managing little more than rude gestures across the western frontier, and the Reichsbahn was running almost normally. As he travelled up the autumnal Oder valley, it seemed to Russell that for a nation at war, Germany seemed strangely at peace.

There had been no news of Sarah Grostein, which was probably good news. She might have been killed crossing the border, or she might have made good her escape - he would obviously have preferred the latter, but either would have rendered him safe. It was the third possibility - her capture and continuing interrogation - which sometimes sent a chill up his spine. He was learning to live with that and other uncertainties, but it wasn't easy.

Her lover's body was still feeding whatever fish there were in the oily Land-wehrkanal. Russell had found no official mention of his disappearance - a bureaucratic oversight perhaps, or just one of those loopholes that a war tended to open. If someone missed him now, they would probably search in vain.

Three of the young women rescued from 403 Eisenacher Strasse were on the mend, or at least gave that impression. Ursel, Inge and Rachel ate, talked and slept like ordinary people, and even laughed on occasion. If they still seemed prone to flinching in close proximity to men, then no one was very surprised. During the previous week all three had visited the Aliyah offices on Meinekstrasse to enquire about emigration to Palestine.

Miriam, though, was still mute. A week or so after the rescue she had been seized by a violent fit, and others had followed. It looked like epilepsy, but the local Jewish doctors had ruled that out. What it actually was, they couldn't say. Russell had hoped to be taking her home by this time, but there was no way he could expose her to a journey like this, particularly when their reception in Wartha was so uncertain. Her parents had never replied to his letter.

His train reached Breslau in mid-afternoon, too late for a return trip to Wartha. He booked in once more at the Monopol, and then walked over to the Petersdorff store, intent on keeping his promise to Torsten Resch. The manager told him that the boy had been called up a couple of weeks earlier, and was probably in Poland.

Russell thought about contacting Josef Mohlmann, but decided it would be a mistake. He had often wondered whether Shchepkin - or someone like him - had honey-tongued the Reichsbahn man into working for the Soviet Union. Probably not, he guessed. There hadn't been time before the signing of the Pact, and Stalin's gloating opportunism wouldn't have appealed to a man like Mohlmann.

Russell hadn't heard from the Soviets himself, which, while not surprising, was still something of a relief. He had expected to hear from the Abwehr by this time, but they hadn't made contact either. Too busy mopping up in Poland, Russell guessed. He could cope with the wait.

He dined alone in one of the Ring's restaurants, and walked back to the hotel to ring Effi . Sounding both tired and wide awake, she treated him to a long and funny account of her day on set. He carried her voice up to bed with him, and quickly fell asleep.

The sky was overcast on the following morning, and a long hospital train rumbled through the station as he waited for the Glatz local. He imagined Thomas's son Joachim laid out on a pallet in one of the rattling boxcars, and wondered how Thomas and all the other parents - German and Polish - were getting through each day.

His own train finally departed, steaming south under a steadily-darkening sky. There was no transport for hire in Wartha's station yard, and again he set out on foot. The countryside seemed emptier than before, and as he turned up the dirt lane which led to the Rosenfeld farm a thin rain began to fall, blurring the line of the distant mountains.

There was smoke drifting up from the chimney of the neighbouring Resch farm, but no other sign of life. He walked on, rehearsing what he meant to say about Miriam, and was nearing the final bend in the lane when he realized that the field on his left was a sea of rotting crops. And that no column of smoke was rising above the screen of trees.

He quickened his pace, hoping against hope.

The stone walls and chimney were still standing, but that was all. The glass was gone from the windows, and a few blackened stumps were all that remained of the roof. The barn beyond had been burnt to the ground.

He walked to the open doorway and looked in. Scorched tiles lay half-buried in a slough of cinders and ashes. Everything was black.

It had happened a while ago, several weeks by the look of it.

There were no bodies in the house. He walked across to where the barn had stood and examined the blackened ground. He circled the ruins, and found no signs of digging in the overgrown kitchen garden or the copse of trees. He suddenly remembered the horse and cow - stolen, no doubt. But where were Leon and Esther Rosenfeld?

Perhaps they had been arrested. Dragged away to some unknown destination while the local thugs looted and burnt their home.

Or perhaps their blacksmith friend had warned them, and they had headed up into the mountains that Leon's grandfather had provided for such an eventuality. Russell stood in the lightly falling rain, gazing at the faint line of crests which marked the old border with Czechoslovakia. There were Nazis on both sides now.

Wherever they were, they wouldn't be back.

Ruins and more ruins, he thought. Of a farm and a family. Of the country he had known and once loved.