75th World War II Commemoration: Seeing The Light at the End of the Day | EXTRACT

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II – one of the most, or perhaps the most tragic and destructive conflicts ever witnessed. While that may have been the last time mankind engaged in brutality on that scale, humanity still stands precarious in the world we inhabit today. This is why it’s important to take the time out to reflect on history, to gauge the devastating and lasting impact the past can have on the future.

Read this extract from Eleanor Wasserberg’s The Light at the End of the Day to find out how war scatters families, separates lovers, and what happens when they find each other again.

 

As the car pulled away, Alicia imagined the dogs scampering around the empty rooms, enjoying freedom, scratching the walls, sleeping in Papa’s bed, on the satin sheets. She imagined them greeting the soldiers as they came in with excited whines and yelps, and being shot between their watery brown eyes.

Karolina buried her elation as deep as she could. She knew it was indecent to be so happy. The war had decided things for them after waiting for so long. Within a month they could be married. She felt a surge of joy and squashed it by focusing on the familiar street, telling herself she might never see it again; she found she could not care.

Sun glinted on shop front windows. It was as though they were leaving for a late summer holiday in the mountains or to meet a train with a visitor from Berlin or Paris, Anna thought. As they continued onto the main roads out of the city, she saw lives carried in baskets and on backs, pushed in carts and prams.

Alicia saw a boy with a half-eaten apple, his mouth full, cheeks puffed out like a mouse, as though he must eat all of the food at once, before it was too late.

‘Papa,’ Alicia said, ‘we didn’t bring any food or anything to drink.’

A long silence, in which the crowd they crawled through called out to itself: Let me through, for God’s sake, let me through. Did you hear that? Their own panicked stupidity hung over the car, and Anna felt the terrible impulse to laugh again. ‘We’ll hold on until Lwów,’ Adam replied. ‘Your uncle will have a whole table of treats for us. You are going to have to learn,’ Adam said, raising his voice, ‘to be hungry and to be patient.’

His knuckles on the steering wheel were pushing against the skin, a ripple running through his hands. Alicia shifted, the hidden rug-diamonds pushing at her muscles.

An hour later they were still in the city. The roads were clogged. Waves of panic struck the crowd when rumours of planes began, though the sky was clear and silent. Some cowered next to the car, which shivered with the weight of their bodies pressed against it. A man gripped the door handle on Anna’s side, sheltering under his jacket. She shrieked, kicked out as though to shoo the man away.

‘Just drive, Adam,’ she pleaded. ‘They will move.’ But the carts and the throng and the horses made an impassable ocean. Adam nudged and blew the car horn and each time the car shuddered to a halt the mounds of beautiful things tottered. Little thuds in the earth, against the car, among the crowd, turned Karolina’s mind to her book, forgotten on her bed. The god Poseidon shaking his trident, whipping up the winds, the earth, the oceans. The thuds grew: a fight had broken out. Shouts of wordless rage. The crowd surged one way, then another. The car rocked and Karolina let out a squeal. Alicia clamped her hand over her own mouth as she saw the source of the disturbance: two German soldiers, their rifles gleaming, walked towards the car. They are here. The crowd parted around them as a shoal of fish.

Adam’s knuckles working, their grind and roll, was the only movement in the car. Breaths held, the family became a painting, locked in place. Alicia wanted to look at her mother but instead she saw only the bright white fur of her collar from the corner of her eye, the very tip of her mother’s chin, and the slow pace of the soldiers, one bending down, graceful as he touched the side of the car. He turned to his colleague and gave a low whistle of appreciation.

The first soldier rapped politely on Papa’s car window. Taptap- tap. Quick, businesslike. His companion shielded his eyes and peered into the car, nodding at Anna when he caught her eye, and at this courtesy Anna allowed her lungs to empty, slowly, without any kind of release, but it was something. The first soldier stood back, waiting.

‘Adam,’ Anna said. Adam opened the door and the soldier pulled him out, without malice, without any moment of eyeball-to-eyeball triumph, and he didn’t throw him to the ground, and there were no gunshots or heavy blows to Adam’s head, he was not pushed to his knees, nor his coat dragged from him, he was not spat at. All of the horrors of Adam’s humiliation, all of the imaginary moments of terror Alicia had dreamed awake for a long time: they did not happen. There was no blood. And yet Alicia screamed all the same, because her Papa was touched by a German soldier, and he was out of the car, and they were inside it.

‘Stop, Alicia,’ her mother whispered. The white panic of her eyes killed Alicia’s scream in her throat. Adam’s head was bowed, his fists clenched but his face turned to the floor like a servant. They were demanding something, and Adam opened his hands. He flicked his gaze to Anna, and as she met his eyes she saw urgent terror. Anna could only nod and show her husband a second of raw horror of her own, a look of love and apology and anger all at once. She threw open her passenger door, and rushed to the back of the car, pulling out first Alicia, and then Karolina, with skin-breaking force, dragging them over the piles of their possessions.

They tumbled out on a layer of detritus, instantly dusted and muddied by the fall, scrambled up and away from the car, away from Adam. The crowd swallowed them, hid them, Anna clutching her children to her hips. ‘Mama, our things,’ Alicia gasped. ‘All our things. Mama, my painting.’

 

To read more from this moving novel, pre-order your copy of The Light at the End of the Day today.