The Luck of the Weissensteiners (The Three Nations Trilogy) (37 page)

“We need to take that risk. I'll get everything ready,” Edith stated and walked towards the fiacre.

As Greta turned around the corner she saw Ernst talking animatedly with Lisbeth and Margot and her heart sank. Had they left it too late already? She stormed to the scene to find out.

“Someone stole one of our bags,” Lisbeth explained to her. “We left our neighbour in the camp in charge of our stuff while taking a stroll but now one suitcase is missing. Grandfather will be furious with us.”

“Do you know what was in it?” asked Greta.

“I don't. He will be so angry, I should never have disobeyed his orders,” she sobbed, falling into her also tearful sister's arms. “We let him down again. We let him down.”

“Can you be there when we tell him?” asked Margot now. “Maybe he won't get so mad with us if you are there.”

“I would love to but we decided to be on our way now. Your grandfather won't be angry. He will be happy that nothing has happened to you. The camp is a dangerous place. He should never have left you two alone without protection. Tell him that from me when you see him,” she told the young girls in distress and left them to their own devices, not without feeling guilt for abandoning them.

If only she had a choice in the matter, she would have looked out for these two as well but it was just too risky now. Who could tell if they were friends or enemies? As soon as Lisbeth and Margot had gone, the fiacre and the telega were on their way towards Pilsen. Getting through the narrow path that the dwellers had left on the field took some time and many of the ones they had to pass shouted abuse at them, asking them why they had to leave now and disturb everyone.

“I shouldn't be saying this but we were lucky the girls have been robbed. They forgot all about us and our names,” observed Edith.

“I hope there was nothing important in the bag,” said Greta. “I don't think they would have reported us.”

“Greta you are still so lovely and naïve!”
said the Countess, entering the discussion. “You always have to stay a little suspicious of the ones who appear to be nice. Quite often they turn out to be a wolf in sheepskin. You need to see behind the exterior and always remember that everyone on the road here has lost everything and is desperate for anything that can better their own fortune. Selling us to the Gestapo might bring them another meal, praise from their grandfather or a piece of bread.”

“I guess you are right,” admitted Greta with a sad tone in her voice.

The horses were slow, just as the Countess had predicted, and they didn't make it very far from Budweis. Defeated by the facts Edith suggested that they stop for the night.

“As long as we are far enough from the main road we will be safe. No one is going to look for us in the dark,” she assured everyone.

Their luck continued for the next few days, the grandfather and his teenage girls never caught up with them and the women made steady progress towards Carlsbad. Ernst had been a little subdued because he worried that he had endangered their group but Greta kept reassuring him that everything was fine and thanks to Esther's habit of singing with him and playing children's games, such as ‘I spy with my little eye’, he soon forgot all about it.

A few days later their party arrived at
Carlsbad. During their journey they had learned some horrific news from other travellers. According to these rumours the front line was not coming any closer at all. The Allies seemed to have refocused their attention to the north and the south of the country. Instead of pushing east into Bohemia and Moravia they had turned south towards Bavaria and Austria. North of the Protectorate the troops continued to advance towards Berlin without coming any further towards Prague or Carlsbad. Ironically, the army they were chasing was running away from them.

To avoid further slip ups from
Ernst and to make sure that they would not run into the old man and his granddaughters, they decided to stay away from their fellow refugees in Carlsbad as much as they could. After some searching they found a farmer who agreed to let them stay. Greta and Wilma offered to help with the cows but he said that he had enough help and would rather have their money.

The Czechs were increasingly confident and cocky with the German civilians and this farmer was no exception. He had agreed to take them for purely commercial reasons, not out of the goodness of his hea
rt or out of compassion. The German refugees were part of the nation that had brought suffering to his people, the Jews and the rest of Europe. Now that the German star was falling it was possible to show his hate openly without fear of punishment.

Not every German of course had committed
crimes but few Czechs had the patience to differentiate, too great were their pain and anger.

Greta did not blame them. She had seen and e
xperienced enough first hand to understand these sentiments and couldn't wait for the moment when she could tell everyone that she was not a German, not an oppressor or a murderer, but as much as a victim of the Nazis as the Czechs.

For now of course they had to continue playing their roles until the Ges
tapo was disarmed and powerless, which was far from being the case. Instead of supporting the troops at the front, armed officers still performed random checks of the refugees, searched houses and killed Jews who were in hiding. Their efforts were no longer as organised and thorough as they once were but it was enough to assure the population that the end of the war was not here yet.

A
Ukrainian woman who worked on the farm told Esther that she had seen some people coming back from the west where they had tried to get behind the enemies lines towards peace. Gestapo officers had stopped these refugees from escaping and had shot those 'traitors' without ever even knowing if they were Germans, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians or Jews.

The border was shut and according to this woman Esther and her comrades would have to bide their time here until either the Americans or the Russians came. The local industry was considered important enough to attract air raids, so the waiting was anything from comfortable. Bombers seemed to miss their target most of the time. The farm was situated considerably far from the industrial areas, yet it had seen some minor bombing in the area.

Esther developed quite a close friendship with Ilina, the Ukrainian woman. Ilina was isolated amongst the workforce as the only non-Polish worker. For some reason the Poles had not let her into their circle of trust and treated her with contempt or ignorance, leaving her to fight for herself. The arrivals on the farm were a welcome relief from the loneliness she had been suffering, especially as some of these guests were able to speak to her in Russian.

The farmer and Ilina had an unspoken understanding by which he would come to her bed when he felt the urge to do so and
, in turn, he would give her extra rations or let her listen to the enemy radio with him in the loft. As a result of this, one day she informed Esther that Nuremberg had fallen into the hands of the Allies, as had been rumoured amongst the refugees. Yet once again the American army was now heading slightly south towards Regensburg and not towards the Czech regions as had been hoped.

Edith and the Countess had made the occasional excursion into
Carlsbad, where they had heard similar reports about the state of the war from other refugees. Parts of the local population were fearful of excessive air raids and bombings whereas others were furious with the Allies for 'not bothering' with the liberation of Czechoslovakia anymore and leaving them under the dictatorship of the Germans unnecessarily. The resulting impatience and fear did not make the life of the refugees any easier. Ilina even told Esther she had heard that it was planned to put all Germans into concentration camps the minute the war was over. Edith dismissed such rumours as ridiculous, refusing to believe that revenge on the Germans would be this harsh and cruel. The Countess was less sure of this.

“You
, Wilma and Ernst should try and get across the border. Maybe the Gestapo won't bother so much with two women and a child,” she suggested. “If you are caught by Czechs with German papers you could be sent to a camp with the lot of them and pay for their crimes against you and your people. Can you imagine?”

“I won't risk being shot by the border,” Greta insisted. “I am sure there will be a way for us to prove we are not meant to be in a concentration camp. Wilma and Ernst are easily believable as Jews and a concentration camp run by the Americans can never be as bad. I want to survive, your Highness. I won't run.”

A week later Regensburg had fallen and American troops had pushed towards the border of Czechoslovakia but stopped there. By now it had become transparent that the Allies were not interested in the Czechs and an escape into American occupied territory was even more dangerous according to the few brave ones who had attempted suc
h a mission, had failed but were still alive to tell the tale.

The desperation of the remaining Germans
who were losing ground very quickly, expressed itself in ever harder and more irrational killings and punishment of traitors and collaborators. Instead of letting go of the reigns to incite some goodwill amongst the Czechs, which might be needed in the future when the tables were turned, they followed their orders from above with precision, determined to take everything and everyone down with them.

The Countess wasted entire days tormenting herself for the choices she had made that had led them into this worrisome situation, creating one theory after another about how they would be safe now
if they had gone to Vienna, Linz, Passau or even Budapest. Edith did her best to distract her Highness from these unproductive thoughts but it seemed a hard habit to break.

Wilma
’s sedation had proven very helpful through the noise of bombing and the strange and sometimes hostile atmosphere on the farm. It seemed the time in hiding on the estate in Bratislava had affected her in a way that being out in the open was all she cared about. She hated the dark and the only time she appeared slightly hysterical was when she woke up at night and could not immediately recognise her surroundings and her room partners. Once this pattern had transpired Greta took to sleeping with her sister in the barn outside, while little Ernst was allowed to share the free room with Esther.

The relationship between Esther and Edith had become a little strained of late but not for the reasons everyone had been expecting. Esther was oblivious to Edith's crush on Greta and
, even if she had been aware of it, she fortunately wasn't the jealous type and would never have felt seriously threatened by it. The tension between them came from Edith, who herself could not explain why she felt so increasingly irritated by her lover. She too had no sense of rivalry in the relationship and had no problem with the fact that Esther was spending so much time with Ilina or Ernst. On the contrary, such contacts pleased her and she was happy for Esther to have a meaningful and rewarding social life and an occupation to take her mind off the war. What Edith really started to get tired off was that she alone always had to be in charge, that it was her who had to make the important decisions continuously without her lover’s input.

Esther had become so passive and naïve. Instead of taking part in any discussion about the future she obviously preferred to stick her head in the sand and wait for any difficulty to be sorted out by someone else. Yet, Edith could not explain why this ch
aracter trait had come to annoy her now, when it had been present right from the beginning of their romance.

She had probably encouraged this in the past, proud to be in control and to take on the role of the provider. Now it was wearing her down and her frustration was becoming an additional burden around her neck.

Almost every day the Countess wondered out loud if they should leave and try a different escape route rather than waiting in the unknown, with no idea which army would eventually bother to liberate the remains of the Czech territories.

There had been persistent rumours that the American army would wait by the borders and leave the country entirely to the Soviets. Many people believed that the Allies had drawn up a map of the future Europe already and that Czechoslovakia – just like the Ukraine and the Baltic states before the
war – would become part of the Soviet Union. There were also rumours that a whole tank division of the Germans had surrendered to the Americans and still they were not entering Czech territories.

Discussions
about the best course of action went around and around in circles. Greta wanted to stay for Wilma's sake but the Countess was eager to press on. Edith would have preferred if her partner had some thoughts on the matter as well but to no avail. Edith sided with Greta because she felt unable to refuse her anything but she was not sure if her affection was blinding her or whether her trust in the pretty Jewess was deserved. Staying might be just as dangerous as leaving. The days here were spent in search of food and in waiting for any news that would announce the final days of the war but no one could predict what would happen next.

Finally
, the Americans crossed the border and were reported to be coming towards Carlsbad. The Czechs in Pilsen staged an uprising in the city but were unsuccessful in disarming the occupying forces, while in turn the Germans could not bring down the Czechs either. Greta and her travel companions were lucky to be away from the fighting and in the relatively peaceful city of Carlsbad. Worries over what would happen to everyone once the fighting was over were still frightening. The Americans finally arrived in Carlsbad and a day later the German soldiers in Pilsen surrendered to them as well. The Czech people greeted their liberators with enormous enthusiasm.