The Last Daughter of Prussia by Marina Gottlieb Sarles

Author:Marina Gottlieb Sarles
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780983918820
Publisher: Wild River Books
Published: 2013-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

For three days, they traveled over heavily congested roads from Guja to Dönhofstädt and on to the village of Klein Leunenburg. At Schippenbeil, they joined a line of refugees snaking from village to village and town to town like a forsaken many-limbed beast, littering the snowy landscape with their waste and their baggage and their dead.

Manya and her family stopped only for short periods, either to eat or to relieve themselves. There was no time to give her muscles, sore from so many hours in the saddle, a chance to recover.

On the second morning, they had broken briefly from the column, stopping at an estate in the hope of finding a cup of coffee. When no one answered their knock, they had entered the house. Six or seven people were rummaging through the kitchen, taking what little remained in the well-looted cabinets. One of them held up an egg before cracking it on the edge of a table and pouring the raw yolk into his mouth.

The rest of the house had been alarmingly quiet. Sensing that something was amiss, Manya and Lillian moved through the living room and into the hallway, where they dared to open a bedroom door. In the semi-darkness they found a woman, a man, and three young children, lying side by side in a four-poster bed, white as alabaster.

Manya stared at the bodies and asked herself whether suicide was a kinder fate than facing the enemy, and right there and then, she had thought that perhaps it was.

Stepping to the side of the bed, she had closed the father’s eyelids while Lillian drew the quilt over the children’s tender faces. On the dead man’s nightstand, she’d found a tiny silver pillbox containing two cyanide tablets.

“Let’s take them with us,” urged Lillian, following Manya’s gaze. “I would have gladly swallowed one when Max was killed.”

Nodding sadly, Manya had slipped the pillbox into her coat pocket. Lillian locked eyes with her.

“Make sure your mother doesn’t see those,” she said.

“I know,” Manya sighed.

Now, on the fourth morning, they were stopped outside the town of Schippenbeil, at the edge of the Alle River. The bridge that led into the town had been closed to civilian wagons—only Jagdpanzers—German tanks—and military vehicles could pass.

Manya shivered, shifting anxiously in her saddle, her nerves worn thin by the delay. The air, sharp and icy, stung her eyes. Behind her, the shrieks of Soviet rocket launchers were growing louder. With each explosion, screams erupted from the column of refugees. Next to her, a husband and wife, each carrying a child, abandoned their cart and fled into the woods bordering the river.

Jagdpanzers rumbled past with broken gun turrets and cracked windshields. They’re allowed to flee and we must wait, she thought with rage as another, louder blast shook the earth.

This time Aztec recoiled. Helling hopped out of the wagon to steady Topsie and Shambhala. He looked to Manya, fear etched in his face.

“By the sound of things, the Russians are less than a mile away!” he called.

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