Silesian Station (2008) by David Downing Page B

into Paul's street. 'Will you tell Mama?' the boy asked.
    'If you want me to.'
    'Yes, please,' Paul said.
    The moment they were inside, he rushed off up the stairs.
    Russell explained what they'd seen to Ilse.
    'Oh God,' she said, looking up the stairs. 'Is he all right?'
    Russell shrugged. 'I don't know. It was a shock.'
    'And he's always loved going to the Funkturm.' Ilse glanced upward again. 'I'd better make sure he's all right.'
    Back in his car, Russell felt a wholly unreasonable anger. Why couldn't the man have jumped off some other high building - the Shellhaus or the Borsig Locomotive Works? Why did he have to spoil the one place Russell shared with his son?
    Returning to Effi's flat, Russell was greeted by the rare smell of cooking. 'I thought we could stay in this evening, and you could test me on the script,' she called out from the kitchen. 'It's only macaroni and ham.' She seemed in good spirits - almost too good. He decided against telling her about his and Paul's afternoon.
    The food was better than he expected, and so was the evening. Effi's mastery of the atrocious script proved near-perfect, so they set about improving it. There was a lot of unintentional comedy in the original, and the storyline seemed made for farce. Their new version featured a squad of storm troopers who mistakenly beat themselves up in an air raid rehearsal black-out, and ended with the two war-bound brothers fighting over a grenade and blowing each other up in the process. At one point Effi was laughing so much that tears were running down her cheeks.
    Russell found himself wondering whether Hitler ever gave himself up to a giggling fit.
    'Where are we going for our talk tomorrow?' Effi asked as they got ready for bed.
    'I don't know. How about the Harz Mountains?' Russell had begun to think that she'd abandoned the idea, and felt mixed emotions at finding she had not. He didn't know how she would react to the things he had to tell her.
    'That's a long way,' she said.
    'A couple of hours in the car. If we leave early we can be there by eleven.'
    'All right,' she said. 'The mountains it is.'
    They got up late, and Russell rang the house in Grunewald while Effi was in the bath. Paul seemed fine, according to Ilse: no nightmares, and he was out in the garden with his football. She was keeping an eye on him, though.
    The drive to the mountains took almost three hours, and it was past noon when Russell and Effi reached the summer resort of Ilfeld. It was another hot day, and hikers were queuing to fill their water-bottles at the inn's out-door tap. While Effi stood in line Russell researched their options. The most popular ascent was that of the Burgberg, which boasted a picturesque ruined castle, but already seemed crowded with groups of Hitlerjugend and Bund Deutscher Madel. Of the other four suggested climbs, the Eichenberg seemed the least strenuous and least frequented.
    They encountered two descending pairs of elderly hikers in the first ten minutes, then had the hill to themselves. The path wound upwards through the pines, offering increasingly dramatic vistas of the plain below. It was around one-thirty when they reached an ideal spot for lunch - a hillside clearing with a single picnic table overlooking the valley below. Effi unwrapped their chicken rolls, while Russell opened the bottle of Mosel and poured a couple of inches into each of the tin mugs. 'To us,' he said, clunking his mug against hers. 'To us,' she agreed.
    They ate their rolls in silent harmony, staring out at the view. There was a good breeze this far up the mountain, and the heat was not oppressive.
    'When they came to arrest me,' Effi said matter-of-factly, as if they were continuing a conversation already started, 'they rapped on the door really softly. I thought I'd imagined it until they did it again. But when I opened the door they just pushed me backwards into the room and closed it behind them. I thought they were going to rape me.
    'But they didn't. They