The Zookeeper's War

The air-raid sirens bayed. Searchlights probed the dark and Berlin’s outer flak ring opened fire, setting the birds in the aviary screeching and flapping. The zoo’s blackout was total. Weeks had passed since the last air raid, and Vera was shocked by her body’s quick recall, the lurching of her stomach and the trembling. As usual she felt the vulnerability of the animals. Always there were casualties.

Alongside her strode Axel, snow flicking off the boot of his good right leg. His limp was bad tonight. From the corner of one eye Vera sensed the swaying of his shoulders, then she turned and saw his barrel chest and felt oddly reassured, as if Axel were built of tougher matter than muscle and bone.

They passed the waterfowl lake, the kitchens and the administration, Vera longing to be back at the villa asleep. A flare lit the minarets of the primate house, and on the snowy hub of the roundabout she glimpsed Artur Winzens, the Head Keeper, a small straight-backed man. He was too elderly for the army, though Vera feared that soon even Herr Winzens would have to go - since Stalingrad the regime had called up youths and older men. The keeper’s breath was wreathed.

In the west the drone of bombers joined the rumbling of flak, and the searchbeams flailed like the legs of an upturned beetle. Axel greeted Herr Winzens in a jovial tone then paused to watch a flare tinge the aquarium green, and silently Vera gave thanks for her husband’s aplomb - a legacy, she supposed, of his service in the trenches half a lifetime ago, a gift to weigh against the shrapnel in his hip.

Cut into the soil at the centre of the roundabout was a staircase that led down to a steel-plated door. Herr Winzens drew the bolt and Vera followed him into the air-raid shelter, which stretched beneath the garden bed as far as the sculpted elephant gates at the front of the zoo. Cantilevered planks along each wall could seat two hundred people, but apart from nuisance attacks there had been few raids in daylight when visitors were about, and at night only she and Axel and Herr Winzens sheltered here. Locals used the two tower-bunkers in the Tiergarten, which together held thirty thousand people.

Herr Winzens lit a kerosene lamp and hung it from the ceiling, bolted the door and handed out blankets and electric torches. From a thermos Vera poured hot chicory into mugs, warming her gloves on the enamel. The droning of the bombers was louder than usual and she glanced at the concrete ceiling.

Axel tore newsprint into narrow strips, which they each dipped in a bucket and crammed into their ears just as the flak on the tower-bunkers opened up, shaking the earth. Vera straightened on the bench, her spine a spear, then leaned into Axel’s loose embrace.

Flak shrapnel clattered on the promenade, and overhead the bombers roared. The first explosions raised a wall of noise, beyond anything Vera had heard before. She seized the plank beneath her thighs and the explosions rolled nearer, a Bombenteppich - the carpet she had thought was a metaphor. It was vast this time. Axel let go of her and jabbed a finger at his throat, shocking her until she realised he was pointing at the cork tied around his neck. She tugged her own from inside her collar and bit down as a thousand-pounder hit, jolting her seat and punching the air, then a brace of bombs detonated in sequence, juddering the walls. Vera drove both hands to her ears but the din increased as explosions and the engines of the bombers merged, whole squadrons indistinguishable from one another. The flak towers barked. Vera pressed on her ears and felt her blood hammer.

Overhead she heard whistling that started high and sharp and deepened exponentially, making her think of mathematics, the brutality of numbers. As she lunged, the force of the blast snatched her up, drove her spine against concrete and emptied her in space. Idly she wondered if she was about to die, then a blow stunned her chest and she skidded and stopped. There was an oddly domestic tinkling of glass. She was lying face down in darkness, breathing dust. One of the men was writhing on her legs. She called Axel’s name but couldn’t hear her own voice, then a torch, Herr Winzens’, lit swirling dust and she turned and saw Axel’s face, a powdered mask, his mouth shaping her name. She tried to answer but coughed. The air stank of cordite, smoke and kerosene. Herr Winzens flashed the torch across her eyes, and she got to her knees. Axel was yelling, demanding to know if she was wounded. Just battered, she said. He raised a thumb. Herr Winzens was bleeding from a cut on the chin but claimed to be unhurt.

The blast-door was dangling and edged with glare, and through the gap came the crash of more bombs and flak. Axel got up and shouldered the door into its frame, leaving Vera to imagine what was happening on the surface.

Extract published courtesy of Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
© Steven Conte