The Boy at the Top of the Mountain (6 page)

The man shook his head. ‘Madam, the train is full,’ he said politely. ‘And here is an empty seat.’

‘No, I’m sorry,’ she snapped, ‘but this just won’t do.’

And with that she stood up and left the carriage, marching down the corridor while Pierrot looked around in surprise, wondering how she could possibly object to someone sitting with them when there was a place available. The man looked out of the window for a moment and sighed deeply, but didn’t put his case on the rack above, even though it was taking up a lot of space between them.

‘Would you like some help with that?’ asked Pierrot. ‘I can put it up there if you like.’

The man smiled and shook his head. ‘I think you would be wasting your time,’ he said. ‘But you’re very kind to offer.’

The woman now returned with the conductor, who looked around the carriage and pointed towards the old man. ‘Come on, you,’ he said. ‘Out. You can stand in the corridor.’

‘But the seat is empty,’ said Pierrot, who assumed the conductor thought that his mother or father was travelling with him and that the old man had taken their seat. ‘I’m alone.’

‘Out. Now,’ insisted the conductor, ignoring Pierrot. ‘On your feet, old man, or there’ll be trouble.’

The man said nothing and stood up, planting his cane carefully on the ground as he picked up his suitcase and, with great dignity, navigated his way slowly through the door.

‘I’m sorry about that, madam,’ said the conductor, turning to the lady when the man was gone.

‘You should be watching out for them,’ she snapped. ‘I have my son with me. He shouldn’t be exposed to people like that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated, and the woman snorted in disgust, as if the entire world was conspiring to frustrate her.

Pierrot wanted to ask her why she had made the man leave, but he found her a frightening presence and thought that if he said anything, he might have to go too, so instead he turned away and looked out of the window, closing his eyes once again, and started to doze.

When he awoke, the compartment door was being opened and the woman and the boy were taking down their bags.

‘Where are we?’ he asked.

‘Germany,’ she said, smiling for the first time. ‘Finally away from all those awful French people!’ She pointed towards a sign that, like Pierrot’s lapel, said
Mannheim
. ‘This is where you get off, I think,’ she added, nodding towards his jacket, and he jumped up, gathered his belongings and made his way out to the platform.

Standing in the centre of the station concourse, Pierrot felt anxious and alone. Everywhere he looked, men and women were hurrying along, brushing past him, desperate to get to wherever they were going. And soldiers too. Lots and lots of soldiers.

The first thing he noticed, however, was how the language had changed. They had crossed the border, and everyone was now talking in German instead of French, and as he listened carefully, trying to understand what people were saying, he was glad that Papa had insisted on him learning the language as a child. He tore the
Mannheim
label off his jacket, threw it in the nearest wastepaper basket and looked down to read what the next one said:

Munich.

An enormous clock hung over the arrivals and departures board; he ran towards it, crashing into a man walking towards him, and fell backwards onto the ground. Looking up, his eyes took in the man’s earth-grey uniform and the heavy black belt he wore across his waist, the calf-high black jackboots and the patch on his left sleeve that showed an eagle with its wings outstretched over a hooked cross.

‘I’m sorry,’ Pierrot said breathlessly, looking up with a mixture of fear and awe.

The man looked down, and rather than helping him up, curled his lip in contempt as he raised the tip of one boot slightly, pressing it down on top of Pierrot’s fingers.

‘You’re hurting me,’ he cried as the man pushed down harder, and now he could feel his fingers begin to throb beneath the pressure. He had never seen someone take so much pleasure from inflicting pain before, and even though the passing commuters could see what was happening, no one stepped in to help.

‘There you are, Ralf,’ said a woman, approaching him now, carrying a little boy in her arms as a girl of about five years old followed behind. ‘I’m so sorry, but Bruno wanted to see the steam trains and we almost lost you. Oh, what’s happened here?’ she asked as the man smiled, lifted his boot and reached down to help Pierrot up.

‘A child running along and not watching where he was going,’ he said with a shrug. ‘He almost knocked me over.’

‘His clothes are so old,’ said the girl, looking Pierrot up and down distastefully.

‘Gretel, I’ve told you before about making such remarks,’ said the girl’s mother, frowning.

‘They smell too.’

‘Gretel!’

‘Shall we go?’ asked the man, glancing at his watch, and his wife nodded.

They marched away and Pierrot watched their retreating backs, massaging the fingers of one hand with the fingers of the other. As he did so, the little boy turned around in his mother’s arms, raised a hand to wave goodbye, and their eyes met. Despite the pain in his knuckles, Pierrot couldn’t help but smile and he waved back. As they disappeared into the crowd, the whistles blew all around the station, and Pierrot realized that he needed to find the right train quickly or he might end up stuck in Mannheim.

The board showed that his train was shortly to depart from platform three and he ran towards it, jumping aboard just as the conductor started to slam the doors. The next journey, he knew, would take three hours, and by now the excitement of being on a train had well and truly worn off.

The train shuddered as it left the station in a cloud of steam and noise, and he watched from the open window as a woman wearing a headscarf and dragging a suitcase behind her ran towards it, calling to the driver to wait. Three soldiers, huddled together on the platform, started laughing at her; Pierrot watched as she put her bag down and began to argue with them, but was shocked when one reached out, grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back. He only had time to watch the expression on the woman’s face change from fury to agony before a hand tapped him on the shoulder and he spun round.

‘What are you doing out here?’ said the conductor. ‘Do you have a ticket?’

Pierrot reached into his pocket and took out all the documents that the Durand sisters had given him before leaving the orphanage. The man flicked through them roughly, and Pierrot watched as his ink-stained fingers ran across the lines, his lips mouthing each word to himself under his breath. He stank of cigar smoke, and Pierrot felt his stomach lunge a little with the combination of the bad smell and the movement of the train.

‘All right then,’ the conductor said, thrusting the tickets back into Pierrot’s jacket pocket and peering at the place names on his lapel. ‘You’re travelling alone, are you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘No parents?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Well, you can’t stand out here while the train is in motion. It’s dangerous. You could fall out and be turned into mincemeat under the wheels. Don’t think it hasn’t happened before. A boy your size wouldn’t stand a chance.’

Pierrot felt these words like a knife going through his heart – for this, after all, was how Papa had died.

‘Come along then,’ said the man, grabbing him roughly by the shoulders and dragging him past a row of compartments as Pierrot carried his suitcase and sandwiches with him. ‘Full,’ muttered the conductor, looking into one, before moving on quickly. ‘Full,’ he said again when he saw the next one. ‘Full. Full. Full.’ He glanced down at Pierrot. ‘There might not be a seat,’ he said. ‘The train is packed today so you might not be able to sit. But you can’t stand all the way to Munich either. It’s a safety concern.’

Pierrot said nothing. He didn’t know what this meant. If he couldn’t sit and he couldn’t stand, then that didn’t leave him a lot of alternatives. It wasn’t as if he could float.

‘Ah,’ said the man finally, opening a door and looking inside; a buzz of laughter and conversation spilled out into the corridor. ‘There’s room for a small one in here. You don’t mind, boys, do you? We have a child travelling on his own to Munich. I’ll leave him in here for you to look after.’

The conductor stepped out of the way and Pierrot felt his anxiety grow even more. Five boys, all aged around fourteen or fifteen, well-built, blond-haired and clear-skinned, turned to look at him silently, as if they were a pack of hungry wolves unexpectedly alerted to fresh prey.

‘Come in, little man,’ said one, the tallest of the group, indicating the empty seat between the two boys opposite him. ‘We won’t bite.’ He held his hand out and beckoned him forward slowly; there was something about the movement that made Pierrot feel very uncomfortable. But, having no choice, he sat down, and within a few minutes the boys had started talking to each other again and ignoring him. Pierrot felt very small seated among them.

For a long time he stared at his shoes, but after a while, when his confidence grew, he raised his eyes from the floor and pretended to look out of the window, when in reality he was staring at just one boy, who was snoozing with his head pressed against the glass. All the boys were dressed alike in uniforms of brown shirts, black short trousers, black ties, white knee socks and diamond-shaped armbands, coloured red at the upper and lower sections and white at the left and right. In the centre was the same hooked cross that the man who had stood on his fingers at Mannheim station had worn on his sleeve patch. Pierrot couldn’t help but be impressed, and wished he had a uniform like theirs instead of the secondhand clothes the Durand sisters had given him back at the orphanage. If he was dressed like these boys, then strange girls in train stations wouldn’t be able to pass remarks about how old his clothes were.

‘My father was a soldier,’ he said suddenly, surprising himself with how loudly the words emerged from his mouth. The boys stopped talking to each other and stared at him, while the boy by the window woke up and blinked a few times, looking around and asking whether they’d arrived at Munich yet.

‘What was that you said, little man?’ asked the first boy, the obvious leader of their group.

‘I said that my father was a soldier,’ repeated Pierrot, already regretting having said anything at all.

‘And when was this?’

‘During the war.’

‘Your accent,’ said the boy, leaning forward. ‘Your language skills are good but you’re not a native German, are you?’

Pierrot shook his head.

‘Let me guess.’ A smile crossed his face as he pointed a finger at Pierrot’s heart. ‘Swiss. No, French! I’m right, amn’t I?’

Pierrot nodded.

The boy raised an eyebrow and then sniffed the air a few times as if he was trying to identify an unpleasant smell. ‘And how old are you. Six?’

‘I’m seven,’ said Pierrot, sitting up straight, mortally offended.

‘You’re too small to be seven.’

‘I know,’ said Pierrot. ‘But some day I’ll be bigger.’

‘Perhaps, if you live that long. And where are you going?’

‘To meet my aunt,’ said Pierrot.

‘And is she French too?’

‘No, she’s German.’

The boy considered this and offered him an unsettling smile. ‘Do you know how I feel right now, little man?’ he asked.

‘No,’ said Pierrot.

‘Hungry.’

‘Didn’t you have any breakfast today?’ he asked, which led to uproarious laughter from two of the other boys, who stopped laughing almost immediately when their leader glared at them.

‘Yes, I had breakfast,’ he replied calmly. ‘I had a delicious breakfast, actually. And I had lunch. I even had a little snack at Mannheim station. But I’m still hungry.’

Pierrot glanced down at the pack of sandwiches sitting on the seat next to him and he regretted not having put them in his suitcase with the gift that Simone had given him. He’d been planning on eating two here and saving the last one for the final train.

‘Maybe there’s a shop on board,’ he said.

‘But I have no money,’ said the boy, smiling and extending his arms. ‘I’m just a young man in the service of the Fatherland. A mere Rottenführer, the son of a literature professor – although, yes, I am superior to these lowly and wretched members of the Hitlerjugend you see beside me. Is your father wealthy?’

‘My father is dead.’

‘Did he die during the war?’

‘No. Afterwards.’

The boy considered this. ‘I bet your mother is very pretty,’ he said, reaching out for a moment and touching Pierrot’s face.

‘My mother is dead too,’ Pierrot replied, pulling away.

‘What a pity. I assume she was also French?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then it doesn’t matter so much.’

‘Come on, Kurt,’ said the boy by the window. ‘Leave him alone, he’s just a kid.’

‘Do you have something to say, Schlenheim?’ he snapped, turning his head in one quick movement and staring at his friend. ‘And did you forget your etiquette while you were snoring like a pig over there?’

Schlenheim swallowed nervously and shook his head. ‘I apologize, Rottenführer Kotler,’ he said quietly, his face turning red. ‘I spoke out of turn.’

‘Then I repeat,’ said Kotler, looking back at Pierrot. ‘I’m hungry. If only there was something to eat. But wait! What’s this?’ He smiled, showing an even set of sparkling white teeth. ‘Are those sandwiches?’ He reached across and picked up Pierrot’s parcel and sniffed the packet. ‘I believe they are. Someone must have left them behind.’

‘They’re mine,’ said Pierrot.

‘Is your name written on them?’

‘You can’t write your name on bread,’ said Pierrot.

‘In that case, we can’t be sure that they are yours. And having found them, I claim them as my prize.’ And with that Kotler opened the packet, took the first sandwich out and devoured it in three quick bites before starting on the second. ‘Delicious,’ he said, offering the last one to Schlenheim, who shook his head. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’ he asked.

‘No, Rottenführer Kotler.’

‘I’m sure I can hear your stomach grumbling. Eat one.’

Schlenheim reached out to take the sandwich, his hands trembling a little as he did so.