The Puppet Boy of Warsaw (26 page)

His loss struck Max and Anton to the very core, but they could not afford to stay still. They covered him with branches and moved on. Three days later, Anton, who by now was not only quiet but had gone completely mute, suddenly announced he wasn’t feeling well and needed to lie down.

‘Not yet, Anton. Please, we can rest later. We just need to keep going a little longer,
na, komm schon
.’

‘Just one minute, Max, please.’

Then, just as Hans had done, Anton let himself fall into the snow.

Max tried to pull him up but Anton simply smiled at him and closed his eyes. And just like that, Max lost both of his companions.

Soon it was Anton’s turn to be covered with branches, but not before Max had rummaged through his pockets to see whether he was carrying anything useful.

‘Look at that, the quietest one and yet he managed to swipe a knife. My apologies, Anton, I am very sad to be leaving you here, but that’s a welcome gift.’

Max put the knife deep in his pocket and a short while later he moved on, now wrapped in three blankets, his cap pulled down over his face. To distract himself, he started counting his steps, beginning all over again the moment he lost count: ‘
einhundertdrei, einhundertvier, einhundertfünf . . .
’ – he never got very far.

That’s when Max began talking to the prince again, in an endless stream of thoughts.

‘
Mein kleiner Kerl
, I tell you Anton and Hans chose the easy way out. I wish I could lie down or hibernate until spring, but I’ve got to go on. But why, why? You tell me. My feet are killing me and I’m so hungry I could eat my own hand.’

His dreams were filled with Nuremberger sausages, sauerkraut and apple cakes.

He struggled on for days through the forest but then, suddenly, a glaring wide space opened up in front him. He stopped and pulled out his map.

‘So, we’ve finally reached the tundra. Easier now to find which way is west, we’ll see the sun all day and the stars at night.’

But there was also no shelter and he could easily be spotted from miles away.

‘I need some snowshoes, my friend. Otherwise how am I going to cross this white desert?’ He pulled out the knife and looked for some branches. A while later he held out two oval shapes.

‘Look at these beauties.’

He bound them to his boots and, equipped with two long sticks, he marched out into the open, but not before he’d tied a piece of cloth in front of his face, leaving two slits for his eyes. ‘Don’t want to go snow-blind, that would be the end of me.’

There was no shelter in this ice desert so each evening he dug himself a hole in the snow, or if the snow had hardened too much, he cut it with his knife into awkward slabs, building a simple igloo. The clear night sky and the Northern Star helped Max, but brought little solace otherwise, as starry nights meant plummeting temperatures.

‘Please let me wake up again tomorrow,’ he prayed each night, ‘for Erna, for Karl. For my comrades at the camp.’ He got up again as soon as the sun rose, willing his half-frozen limbs to march on like a puppet, reminding himself that he was his own puppet master and without determination and a strong will he would simply collapse just as Anton and Hans had done.

Late one afternoon a wave of excitement surged through him.

‘Hey,
Kamerade
, look, there’s something sticking out there on the horizon: it might be a farm or a house, somewhere we could spend the night.’

He marched more quickly than he had for days. The object turned out to be a wooden barn, leaning precariously to one side, gaping holes between its boards, but a shelter nevertheless.

‘I need to rest, my feet are all swollen and a bloody mess. I can’t go on,’ Max said aloud.

Hope and fear stirred in his chest. Where there was a barn, there might be a village close by. Food and shelter maybe. But he couldn’t be sure. And what if a bounty had been placed on his head or it was a kolkhoz, one of Stalin’s cooperatives, crawling with party officials?

‘We’ll check out the village tomorrow,’ Max mumbled before collapsing on a pile of straw, burying himself under it, wrapped in his torn blankets.

That night his body gave up, crumbled like the hard black bread they dished out in the camp. He curled up and fell into a deep sleep. The barn stood quiet as the grave except for the wind that howled around it like a restless ghost.

The fever started an hour later. Max burned like the sun in Siberia’s short summers, and sweat poured down his aching body. He moaned, thrashed his arms left and right as if he were fighting mosquitoes or an invisible giant. After an hour, his arms went limp. Then nothing.

W
ith the first light of dawn a miracle occurred. Max lay unconscious, delirious beneath the straw, and oblivious to the creaking barn door, the heavy footsteps and deep voices. Strong hands reached into the straw and lifted his body, carrying him out into the icy morning air and placing him on a sleigh. He would later recall a vague sensation, as if he’d been lifted by celestial beings, angels in fur coats. The men wrapped Max in thick furs before rushing through the empty snowscape on reindeer-drawn sleighs.

After a short ride, the men pulled into a small settlement of tents. They carried their human load into one of the tents and placed him on a low bed of furs. The tent was dim, illuminated only by a wood stove that threw flickering shadows across the canvas. A group of women wrapped Max in blankets, whispering to each other as they smoothed the covers and dabbed his sweaty forehead with a sponge. After minutes the news had spread, and the tent filled with curious men, women and children, all wanting to gaze at the half-dead man. Shortly afterwards a broad, tall man with long black hair and a plaited beard entered. A pointed felt hat sat atop his red face and a cloak, stitched from colourful rags and adorned with numerous bells and shining metal plates, jingled with his every move. The shaman had arrived.

The crowd’s murmuring stopped and an expectant silence filled the tent. The shaman put his large round drum to one side, then kneeled down next to Max and let his hand move over the stranger’s body, hovering without touching, as if he were feeling the heat over a fire. He reached into Max’s pocket and pulled out a small bundle. He unwrapped it swiftly and a broad smile spread over his face as the puppet tumbled into his lap – the prince. He took the puppet in both hands, threw it high up into the air, then caught it again and clutched it to his chest. Then he peeled away the layers of blankets and reached under Max’s clothes. With a great flourish he pulled out the crocodile, Kasperl and the girl before gently laying the puppets on Max’s chest. The crowd stirred, trying to get a glimpse of the small creatures.

The shaman now took a bundle of herbs from his leather pouch and placed them in the fire. Strong aromatic smoke filled the tent. Then he picked up his drum, painted with pictures of animals and small people, with long strips of fabric and leather attached and a mask-like face sitting next to the handle. He beat it right above Max’s chest: boom, boom, boom, as fast as a heart in flight . . .

Max lay stiff as a log, hardly breathing. Then the shaman’s chanting began – rhythmic and low, not a melody exactly but a hypnotic repetition of simple words and notes. A few men and women moved closer around the shaman and his patient, joining in. With a loud shout the shaman suddenly jumped up and broke into a wild dance, beating his drum furiously, stamping his feet, his eyes closed, his head falling back.

Then, as suddenly as it had started, everything stopped. Silence filled the tent and the air was thick with anticipation. The shaman’s expression morphed into a grimace and finger by finger his hand rolled up into a giant fist. He kneeled and with a loud thump pounded his fist down on Max’s chest, just above his heart, again and again. Then, with a loud slurp, he sucked something out of Max’s chest, spitting the invisible substance into a small wooden box, snapping the lid shut. A sigh rippled though the audience. The shaman placed the prince, the crocodile and the girl on different spots on Max’s body – the prince over his heart, the crocodile on his stomach and the girl across Max’s throat.

Suddenly Max’s hand stirred, feeling for the prince on his heart. A murmur of relief ran through the tent and the crowd moved even closer around him. The shaman put his hand lightly on Max’s forehead and smiled, then whispered some instructions to one of the older women and left the tent.

Max stayed for weeks in the villagers’ cosy tent and slowly he recovered. The villagers were nomads who had been forced to settle there as part of Stalin’s plan, accountable to a kolkhoz, a collective farm several miles away. Every once in a while the men would kill one of their reindeer, which fed the whole village for several days. Men, women and even children came to feed Max with nourishing morsels of reindeer meat and warm, smelly potions. In the prison camp Max could easily have counted his ribs, but after some weeks in the tent, he put on weight and slowly grew stronger. One morning he took out the prince. A big smile spread across his face.

‘Hey, little fellow, glad you’re still with me. Weren’t we lucky? I can’t remember much after I collapsed in that barn. Do you think they know I’ve been a prisoner? That I’m German? Do they even care? Or maybe the war didn’t touch people here?’

As time passed more and more village children gathered around Max’s bed as if he were a sideshow. They would sit giggling by his side, pointing at his features, his bright blue eyes, carefully stroking his dark blond hair, his ragged clothes. On such occasions Max would take out all the puppets – the prince, the girl, the crocodile and the Kasperl – and line them up next to each other, then play with his little visitors. Their eyes followed the puppets eagerly and they burst out laughing at the puppets’ funny antics.

‘I feel so much better,’ Max confessed one night to the puppets after the children had left.

‘All this good food is bringing me back to life. And of course that strange doctor with his shaggy beard and strange coat. . . . Wonder what he thought of you?’ Max stretched and yawned, then lay back on the comfortable bed of thick furs the reindeer people had set up for him. But as more weeks passed, Max grew restless.

‘My prince, these people have been so good to us, but we can’t stay here for ever. I didn’t risk everything to spend my time in a cosy tent and grow fat like a bear. I have to see Erna and Karl again. I’ve lost enough time already.’

That night, one of the elders joined Max as he sat poring over his map. The man took a brief look at the crumpled piece of paper and started to laugh, pointing at one of the rivers that Heinrich had drawn. He pulled out a small branch from the fire and with the blackened end drew a few lines. Within minutes the map showed a very different landscape: the thin snake of the river had grown as if it had swallowed a big beast and the mountain range had moved much farther south. The elder pointed to Max, himself and the tent, then plunged the pencil right into the middle of the map.

‘We’re only here? How can this be?’ Max cried, realising he hadn’t reached the tundra at all, but the old man gave him a pat on the back.

‘
Sibir. Bolshoi
.’ The elder used his outstretched arms to indicate a large circle.

‘Siberia is big?’

‘
Da
.’ The man nodded, then his face darkened and he made a cutting gesture at his throat.

‘
Sibir plohaya
.’ Whatever the phrase meant, Max knew it wasn’t good. Then the scowl vanished and the man smiled again and touched Max’s chest at his heart.

‘
Sibir karsivaya
.’

‘
Schön.
Beautiful?’ Max asked. The old man nodded and the two shook hands.

As a goodbye present Max put on a puppet show. At the end he thanked everyone with a deep bow and held up the crocodile, Kasperl and the girl. Then, with a smile, he handed them to the children closest to him. Their smiles warmed his heart, even though Max felt sad to leave behind the puppets that had been created amid the hardship of the camp. The next morning the elders gave him a pair of boots made from reindeer skin and a jacket. It was nearly February now and the snow was deep. Max strode out into the endless white expanse, not looking back.

T
he long journey home from the depths of Siberia to Nuremberg was treacherous and it took Max almost three years and a lot of luck.

With the bitter winter somewhat alleviated by his stay with the reindeer people, Max managed to get as far as Yakutsk in the first year. But in the second winter, no one took him in and except for a few days spent resting in barns and abandoned houses, he kept on trudging through the taiga, exposed to the unrelenting cold. His whole being ached from the endless walking and his breath froze into ice crystals that gathered underneath his nose and in his beard. He sheltered at night under trees or curled up in shallow hollows, covering himself with fir branches. When no village was in sight, he lit a small fire to warm at least some of his body and to melt snow to quench his thirst.

Late one evening he was chewing on a piece of dried reindeer meat, his stiff legs stretched out in front of him. As he held his hands out towards the crackling fire he sensed a presence: a slight change in the air, a pungent whiff of something wild and dangerous. He looked up, trying to see into the dark forest, grabbing his staff. The howling started the moment he got to his feet: high-pitched, drawn out and very close, answered by three or four cries deeper in the forest. Max held his breath. As a branch cracked he saw a wolf’s eyes: slits of amber, glistening in the firelight. His heart raced. The wolf drew closer, growling; Max could see its thick grey pelt and sharp teeth. He gripped his stick and smashed it into the fire, sending fragments of burning branches and embers towards the animal. The wolf jumped back a few metres, yapping.

Within seconds Max had decided to run. His trick with the fire had bought him time, but he would have no chance against a pack of hungry wolves. He grabbed the knapsack the reindeer people had given him and scrambled through the forest, frantically looking for a tree to climb. In the pale moonlight between the fir trees he spotted the white bark of a birch tree and instinctively his arms reached for a branch, then another, his feet pushing into the tree as he clambered up as high as he could. The wolves quickly picked up his scent and soon a group of five surrounded the tree, howling and snarling, jumping as high as they could reach, snapping at the air. Max was just high enough to be out of reach and he clung to the tree for dear life, aware that with one wrong move a pack of wolves would be feasting on his body.