Chapter 5
While Otto enjoyed running around with his cousins, he didn’t like Karl. It was partly to do with the way Karl flaunted his dagger and belt, the only ones in the village, but mostly because Karl ordered him about. Sometimes he ignored him, even if it meant being beaten up – which was how Karl kept his brother in line.
When there were no household tasks to be done, no school or youth group meeting to attend, they went hiking. They’d climb the hill to the church, drop into the forest and follow the path until it petered out, then continue through virgin woodland. They called it their survival game. When they moved south-east they bypassed Krattlau and Anchenthal, which were little more than clusters of houses at a crossroads. They avoided two lone houses at another crossroads and scouted through the forest to Ellerhaus, another hamlet, where they came out to knock on a door and ask for a drink of water.
A man named Volker was working in his field when the boys came into the village. He grinned when he saw them. ‘What are you up to?’
‘Hiking,’ Karl answered. ‘Otto here is still learning. He’s our cousin but he’s lived in the city all his life.’
‘How do you like Samland?’
‘It’s easy to get lost,’ Otto said.
‘Trust your senses.’
‘I’m not scared—’
‘None of us is scared of the woods,’ Volker said and winked. ‘Have you noticed that the houses in every village are built close together?’
The boys glanced around them.
‘Farms and fields surround the villages, but the houses are built in a cluster at the centre. It’s our way of protecting ourselves from people who pop out unexpectedly from behind the trees.’
‘Who would do that?’
‘The enemy.’
‘What enemy?’
‘Each generation has a different one.’
The boys were silent. ‘Have you two taught your cousin about the trees?’
‘I told him there are places where we have to be careful, but I haven’t taken him to the woods near Romehnen yet,’ Karl said.
‘Long ago all Samlanders were given a tree at birth,’ Volker told Otto. ‘For men it was usually an oak and for women a linden, the goddess of fate. Once you had your tree, it could never be cut down – if it was, its owner’s life would be cut short.’
‘Just like that?’ Otto asked.
‘You’d be surprised at the power of a tree. When I was a few years older than you boys I was taking a short cut back through the forest from Fischhausen when I heard someone scream. It was my brother’s voice. I tried to work out where he was and remembered a grove with an old oak in the middle. Our father had told us not to go there and I knew where those screams were coming from. I found my brother pinned under the trunk of a tree that had fallen. His pelvis was crushed and the ground round him was soaked with blood. Even with an axe and three men it would have taken too long to move the tree. He knew that, and so did I.
‘I went to the back of the tree where he couldn’t see me and tried to pull my knife out without him hearing, but I started to cry. I knew he heard because he fell quiet. We had made a vow to each other years earlier that if either of us was so badly hurt that there was no possibility of recovery, the other would help. I slid up over the fallen trunk, hoping he was looking out into the forest, but he was staring straight into my eyes. I could tell he knew that I was going to keep my vow. I sliced into his neck as fast and deep as I could, then fell on my knees and prayed.’
The boys shuddered and looked at each other without speaking.
Volker bowed his head and went on, ‘My father learned the following week that my brother’s birth tree, in the village where he had been born near Elbing, had been felled for firewood by a family who had moved there.’ Then he pointed at a tree near the edge of the field. ‘You see that one?’
The boys nodded.
‘That’s mine. I keep an eye on it to make sure no one goes near it.’
The boys were aghast.
‘Come with me for a moment,’ Volker said. The boys hesitated, then did as told. He led them to a grove, pointed to a juniper and a willow, then walked over to the latter and broke off three small switches. He handed one to each boy. ‘I don’t think you’ll need them, but they’ll protect you against evil,’ he said.
When they started for home, the woods seemed darker than they had earlier, even though the sun was high in the noon sky. Otto no longer minded that Karl was in front. He and Peter followed close behind, holding their willow switches. Their footsteps rustled leaves and snapped twigs, and for a long time those were the only sounds they could hear – until there was a sudden crack a short distance ahead. A wild boar appeared, glanced at them and ran in the opposite direction.
‘Maybe we should go on to the road,’ Peter said.
They turned right and pushed through the thick undergrowth until they found themselves on a track that ran through the forest to Germau. When they finally reached the square, they carefully leaned their switches against the iron railing that surrounded the linden and ran for the butcher’s.
After their trip to Ellerhaus the boys avoided the forest and instead hiked to their grandfather’s house at Sorgenau, going along the main road through wide pastures and tunnels of neatly planted lindens lining the road. Before, Karl and Peter had paid little attention to them, but now they wondered if spirits lived in those trees as well, even though they weren’t in the forest and didn’t form a natural grove. They avoided the lone oak in a field a little way from Sorgenau, which Karl and Peter had often climbed.
One day after lunch with their grandfather and his wife, they went to the beach to collect amber. Occasionally someone found a large nugget, but since almost everyone from the villages collected it, they usually found only a few shards, which they took home to Ida. She would take a piece of hardboard, paint a background, then carefully stick the amber to a thin layer of glue to make a sun or breakers crashing on to the beach – made of real sand – with tiny amber people standing on the shore.
On the way back to their grandfather’s house Karl had an idea. He would be the Kameradschaftsführer, the sergeant, of their miniature Hitler Youth unit, and told Peter and Otto to stand to attention. Near Sorgenau the cliff was similar to the one he had jumped off, but not so high. When he had persuaded them to play his game, he led them to the cliff. ‘You’ll probably be the only ones in your group who’ll have trained for the test of courage,’ he said. ‘You’ll thank me then.’
He called Otto forward first. His cousin raised his right arm and shouted ‘Heil Hitler’, as Karl had instructed.
‘You see that area over there? I want you to run as fast as you can and jump off without looking down.’
‘Can
