Island Operation (Part III)

The sentry Vania was right, the doors to the barrack were cracked open. I went inside. Murk and stale air overwhelmed the place. Even the smallest movement yielded large clouds of dust. Small windows with horribly dirty panes let in a minimum of light. 

The last time I was here was two or three years ago. I bought then a drawing table I had, from another Vania, but on the same principle. Much had changed here since then. All that remained was declared junk. 

Just under the assembled ceiling stood here, one on top of the other, most often in disrepair, tables, shelves, chairs, credenzas, beds, commodes, night stands, sofas and everything that once served as furniture. In addition there were also strewn here thousands of German books, some official German papers, broken dishes and many other items of indeterminate identity. Since the end of the war the Soviets shipped and stored here the bounties of war from the entire region, which were systematically, train by train, sent back to the Soviet Union. That which still remained here was just not worth transporting. It was simply left behind. 

I took a look around. The boxes that interested me stood stacked, as if pushed by a bulldozer. There were lots of them, well over a hundred, painted in the camouflage color feldgrau, and on their lids, stenciled, was a black eagle with a swastika, which thoroughly scared everyone away. I picked one up. It was disproportionately light in relation to its rather hefty dimensions, some forty by forty by eighty centimeters. The lid was on hinges, the bottom and each of the sides were seven to eight centimeters thick. 

From the exterior it looked like monolithic wood, but in the interior there were on the corners and in the middle almost invisible, tiny screws. Each of the four long walls, including the top and the bottom, had six screws, and the two ends had four. Together, by my quick calculations, there were thirty two screws to undo. I looked at my watch, it was almost two. 

I searched for a medium sized kitchen table, which I placed under one of the countless windows. I also moved one of the more than three hundred cabinets, such that no one who stood at the door would be able to see me. Right at two I said my prayers, took out the most appropriate of my three screwdrivers and began to undo the screws. 

It was like this sometimes, that, for example while fixing something, you had to unscrew a certain amount of screws and at first everything goes quickly, but then at the very end one of the screws, as if out of spite, does not allow itself to be unscrewed and makes a mess of the whole plan. Of this I was most afraid, but fortunately all the screws, as if smeared in soap or oil, lent themselves to ideal unscrewing. 

I put them aside with precision into a giant aluminum ashtray with the symbol of the Luftwaffe and in relief the visage of the Stuka JU-87 with a spinning propeller attached to it. When all the screws were already in the ashtray, again I checked the time. This took me exactly fourteen minutes. 

Then I took the largest of the screwdrivers and breaking the wall open slightly, I began nimbly to dig out a thin sheet of plywood, which a moment ago was still screwed in. Every pane of plywood, also in the color feldgrau, revealed a clean, bright, appropriately thick, regular sheet of the best grade and highest quality cork, which padded the entire interior, hidden just behind the thin plywood wall. 

The Germans used these boxes to transport hot food to the front lines. Each of the boxes had also been filled out with a hundred liter aluminum container. Eintopf or soup stored there, even after many hours, was still hot, and after many more, still warm. The aluminum containers were so immeasurably useful for so many producers of moonshine that they had already a long time ago been looted. Only the boxes were left, because no one could imagine what value they held. 

When all six slabs of cork stood leaning against the wall, twenty one minutes had passed. Now quickly and haphazardly I re-installed and screwed in the plywood walls. With one hand, like a shot putter, I threw the just gutted box far, past the largest pile of furniture, of no use for anything anymore. I turned the table back on its side, covering my tracks. It was two twenty five when everything was finished. Not bad for the first time. 

Now I began to look for an appropriate window. As it were in a barracks, the windows were singular and barred. It would be impossible for one of those girls held here to be able to squeeze herself through. These windows could not be opened, only at the top part every second or third had at its entire length something like, opening to the outside, a thin horizontal oberluft. 

One of the farther windows I noticed was broken. I squeezed through the heaps of old furniture with my cork and within a few seconds I lowered them all through the window into the channel. Now everything depended on working very quickly. Almost at a runner’s pace I moved in the direction of the doors. 

When I was at the door, I did not even have to whistle to Vania, he noticed me and gave me a signal that I could go. I was ready to do this, when suddenly I remembered that after all I had come here for a chair, so I backed up and grabbed the first better chair which lay closest. 

In a second I ascertained that nothing was missing. Hauling it, squeezing through the junked automobiles and then jumping over the broken bidets, I ran in Vania’s direction. 

“Oczeń, oczeń, spasiba,” I gave him the rest of the pack of Chesterfields, pulling one out for myself first. 

Vania gave me fire from a lighter made from the shell casing of a Mauser rifle. 

“Can I come the day after tomorrow?” 

“Definitely, the day after tomorrow I will stand from twelve to four, like today.”