The truck swerved dangerously as they pulled away. It was as if the driver held the women personally responsible for lengthening the journey and was determined to make the rest of it as uncomfortable as possible. Martha asked Delphine if she had any idea how long it might take to get to Munich.
“I can’t even guess,” Delphine replied. “They say the roads in Germany are ruptured. We’ll be lucky if we make it before morning.”
“Have you ever been to Germany?” Martha asked. “Before the war, I mean.”
Delphine shook her head.
The truck took a sharp bend. A shaft of moonlight shot through the tarpaulin flaps, momentarily lighting up the Frenchwoman’s face. Kitty saw that her eyes were glassy with tears. Had her husband died fighting the Germans? She looked a little too old for that to be the case, Kitty thought. She wondered what images were running through Delphine’s mind. Would it be appropriate to reach out, to take the woman’s hand? Would that help? Or would it seem too familiar an action, given that they barely knew one another? Batting these questions around her head, Kitty knew that whatever the answer, she couldn’t do it. Touching another person—other than for a handshake—was something quite alien to her. There had been Fred, of course. But that was different. Touching, hugging—to give comfort or to show the kind of love that came from family ties—that had stopped the day she boarded the train out of Vienna.
The sun had been up for hours by the time they reached Munich. The driver had stopped somewhere to take a nap, and when they’d set off again, dawn had revealed rolling farmland and quaint villages—not at all what Martha had expected. The houses were like something from a book of fairy tales. There was even a castle, its towers and turrets glinting coral in the sunrise. It was a landscape that seemed untouched by war—until they neared the city.
Munich was a horror of destruction. Whole streets lay in ruins. Glimpses of lives smashed to pieces by falling bombs could be seen inside the skeletons of houses: the charred remains of a double bed, with a smoke-streaked crucifix hanging askew on what was left of the wall behind it; rose-patterned curtains flapping at shattered windows; an armchair, the springs poking through the torn leather upholstery, resting on the splintered boards of what had once been a floor; a child’s doll, naked and missing an arm, lying on a heap of broken glass.
The truck came to a stop a short distance from UNRRA’s headquarters—a small, squat building in a sea of rubble. The only cheering sight for the women as they picked their way across shattered cobblestones was what appeared to be a doughnut stand, run by the Red Cross.
Martha shaded her eyes against the sunshine, wondering if she might be hallucinating. The smell told her that her eyes were not deceiving her. Kitty and Delphine were already there, holding out money. Standing together, the contrast between the two women was stark: Kitty so young, and almost a foot taller than Delphine, who looked old enough to be the girl’s grandmother. The only common feature was their slimness—which, in Delphine’s case, was extreme. No wonder they were going wild for doughnuts. They looked as if a strong breeze would fell them like bowling pins.
Martha looked around for the driver, but he had disappeared. Probably he’d gone in search of cigarettes, which he’d complained of having run out of during the night.
“Come and eat!” Delphine waved Martha over to the stall.
When they’d sucked the last crumbs of sugar from their fingers, they stood outside the door of the UNRRA office, waiting for the driver and watching people crossing the square in front of them. A couple of months ago, these people had been the enemy. It gave Martha a frisson of shock to see that they looked so normal. There were women in dresses and hats, some carrying shopping baskets; men in business suits; children in school uniforms. Everyone looked tidy and clean, in sharp contrast to their surroundings. What were you expecting? her inner voice reprimanded her. Ogres wielding hand grenades?
“I don’t think he’s coming back.” Delphine was peering at her watch. “He was really mad about having to make that detour. I thought he was going to abandon us at the border. I don’t think he realized how bad it was going to be.”
“How will we get to the camp?” Kitty pushed back a lock of hair that had worked its way free of her braid.
“We’d better go and ask.” Martha pressed the button at the side of the pockmarked door. There was no sound—no bell or buzzer. She tried the handle. It wasn’t locked. She led the others down a dingy corridor. The smell of new, damp plaster hung in the air, giving the impression that the office had been hastily fashioned from a partially damaged building—probably one of the few still standing in this part of the city. There was a light at the end of the corridor. Martha could see someone sitting in a room, behind a desk.