The Pieces from Berlin by Michael Pye Page B

took forever to climb up level by level through the press of people, who didn’t want to move from the doors, who still at that time of the war had the old animal instinct to stay close to the ground and the air. When the anti-aircraft guns fired, the earth shook under them.
    Later, Nicholas learned about air, how it masses together after bombs have fallen and comes through a city like a blind wave of force, throwing fire all around, taking down what the bombs themselves could not ruin. But at the time, he felt safe. He looked up at a man and a woman on the spiral stairs, curled around each other and playing with each other’s fingers, and he felt safe.
    On his bed at Sonnenberg, he dreamt of a man walking away: walking steadily, purposefully, and not stopping for a moment even when Nicholas was shouting, shouting, shouting. The man did not acknowledge him, not even by ignoring him.
    He always hated the moments in magic shows where there’s a flash, a puff of smoke, and someone disappears. The rest of the audience clapped, cheered, laughed. Nicholas wanted to cry.
    He was good at imagining things, but he was still lonely. He couldn’t, officially, go out after dark, and it was dark when school finished in wintertime. Lucia was often out. There weren’t many children in the building. He heard a baby sometimes.
    He wanted a cat.
    He thought his mother would never agree, not even discuss such a thing. He sensed that it would be one last thing too many. Besides, she was not a sentimental woman.
    He didn’t know where to look for a cat, whether there were shops for cats. He didn’t have money, anyway. He thought about leaving a saucer of milk by the door and leaving the door open at night, but the door had to be closed and locked.
    The second winter in Berlin was very cold. The radiators knocked and rattled, and still sometimes ice formed on the inside of windows. He tried leaving a window slightly open in case a cat wanted to come in, but a knife of cold cut into the room and he had to close it again.
    He had his own key when he turned eight. He had to have one, Lucia said, because he might need to go to the shelter before she came home, and she might have to spend the night out.
    He never told her that he went out, too.
    Those nights were like the dark in a movie house before the film starts, the same coughings and laughs from somewhere you couldn’t quite place, the same sense of being crowded and of strangers on the move, feeling their way, one foot ahead of another, shuffling.
    Cars went about with caution, with animal eyes: a slit of light through the felt that was fixed over their headlights.
    He didn’t want to be far away from home. He just wanted air, and the sight of other people. He watched the backs of the men going away, and sometimes he imagined he’d just missed his father.
    Then he didn’t know the way.
    This was not his city. He hardly knew it by daylight. He was not sure which way he should turn. He couldn’t call out because he knew it was always better not to be noticed.
    He knew people must be moving around him. He didn’t know who they were, or what they wanted. There were a very few torches, masked in red or blue, and people tap tapping along like the blind.
    He saw a woman’s legs: long, elegant, silky legs, just her legs, in the red light from a torch. He thought she might help him, so he tapped her on the back and she spun round, her torch catching faces in the black, and she said: “Well, kid?”
    “I wanted—”
    “Listen. I’m working.”
    And she gathered herself, and kept the light playing down on those long, silky legs.
    He put his back against a wall.
    Someone was shouting, not shouting but honking out loud so that people would know he was there.
    He didn’t know which uniform his father wore, so he didn’t know which uniform to trust.
    He heard a tram coming. That was good; there was a tramline in the street next to their street. He heard it rolling and shearing on its tracks,