Just remnants of twisted metal sticking up like claws from the charred soil. There are no other tracks we can divert to, the porter explains. No other way to backtrack and join up with a new line. All the tracks in this stretch of land have been demolished. So there is nothing to do but deboard, all of us, and walk ten kilometers to the next usable station.
We stumble off the train, onto a bedraggled barley field. I’m surprised to see clusters of people waiting for us. Mostly girls, my age or a few years younger, wearing farm dresses. Some hold baskets of food for sale—wrinkled plums, underripe apples—but others have no food. They stand by skinny horses hooked up to carts.
“Welcome committee?” jokes my older friend as we stand in puffs of steam and dust.
It soon becomes clear what the girls are really doing. For a fee, they’ll take us in their carts to where the tracks pick up again. They approach the soldiers first, the men in uniform who they know must have spending money. They negotiate prices with flirting smiles, but those disappear as soon as the transaction is finalized and the coins are tucked into their apron pockets.
One of them, a wiry girl of sixteen or seventeen, avoids the competition over near the soldiers and comes to me instead.
“Ride?” she asks me in German.
“I can walk.”
I’m worried about walking, though. Ten kilometers is a long distance with my bad foot, with the pain that still shoots up my calf. But I’m worried more about unnecessary expenses; this entire trip, I’ve been buying only the cheapest rolls.
The girl jerks her head toward the old man. “He probably can’t walk. But my wagon has a cushion for him. And if you don’t ride with me, you might not get to the next train in time to have a seat. He’ll have to stand the whole way.”
“I will pay,” the old man offers chivalrously. “If you don’t mind being my seatmate a little longer.”
The cushion is lumpy, the wagon is high, and the girl doesn’t bother to help either of us into it. She keeps her eyes straight ahead as I hoist myself into the back and pull the old man after me.
We’ve barely settled before she clucks the horse forward.
I’ve been to Germany only once before of my own free will. My father took me on business to Berlin. He said it was the capital of modern civilization: The clothes we saw women wear there would be what we would make for Polish women in five years. These girls now, though, the ones driving the wagons or selling fruit, don’t look fashionable. They just look tired.
We pass a man painting a sign: We’re still a long distance from Munich. But the notice is not only in German, it’s also in Russian, French, and English.
“They divided up the country,” the girl says when she notices me reading the sign. “Four Allies, four corners. All of them get a piece of Germany. Where are you going?”
“Munich.”
“Americans are in charge of Munich,” she says.
“Who’s in control here?”
“Nobody,” she says cryptically. “Nobody controls himself here. Everything is a mess. They’re still finding bodies.”
“Bodies?” I ask.
“From the Allied bombs. Buried under the rubble. As long as they still find bodies, no one will pay attention to the other things happening.”
She turns back to her horse, and then she doesn’t say anything until we’re almost at the spot where the tracks pick back up. The new “station” isn’t an official building. It’s a rusted boxcar, nestled in the grass. Someone has painted a word on the side, the name of the closest town, I presume.
Clusters of soldiers already wait there. They’re bawdier than when they got off the train an hour ago, enlivened by fresh air or girls.
Our driver sets her mouth in a firm line, her jaw working as if she’s deciding whether to say something. Only when she’s stopped the cart and I’m beginning to climb down does she reach out and clamp my wrist with her skinny fingers.
“British or Americans, but not Russians, okay?”
“What?” I ask.
She keeps her eyes straight ahead. “Soldiers can help get things, and that’s useful. But ask British or American soldiers, not Russians. The Russians have ideas of what you owe them. And they’ll take it if you don’t give it willingly.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t care if you believe me, but I’m not the only German girl who will tell you that.”
“A Russian soldier saved my