The seven competitors were shoulder to shoulder on the line. There wouldn’t be room for everyone on the path as it entered the trees. Beyond, roots sprung from the ground to trip the unwary, the track barely visible where bushes had encroached on last year’s footsteps. A fast start on the flat ground was a must, especially for a city girl.
Sarah closed her eyes. She pictured a long, smooth running track in an empty stadium. She let the cheering and clapping fade away.
“Achtung…”
Sarah crouched.
“Fertig…”
She felt her feet compressing the cinders of the track as she tensed.
“Los!”
Eyes snapping open, she exploded out of herself, legs like pistons, hard but light. She kept her body as low as possible and as the taller girls on either side began to close in, Sarah drifted between and under them, into the clear air.
Three metres from the trees, Kohlmeyer outpaced Sarah, moving in front from the flanks, and was first through the gap.
Sarah followed, the noise of the other girls loud in her ears. The first pace was uphill, pitching her forward, and as her feet slid sideways in the damp earth, she heard two girls collide with a scream behind her. She received the merest shove, which carried her over the mound, allowing her to speed on between the branches.
She looked up to see Kohlmeyer release a branch she’d held out of the way. It swung back across the path and even though Sarah had time to turn her head, it caught her across her cheek with a slap.
Sarah stumbled into a bush, but her momentum pushed her through. She kept her legs going and bundled down the bank to the river’s edge. She slowed herself on the crumbling verge and as she did so, she saw it: there, right on the bank, was a narrow second track, trodden flat by the summer’s fishermen. It wound off into the distance and around the next bend in the river. Not a shortcut but a clear path, slippery with frost but firm underfoot. She hit the track, skidded, regained her balance and sped away, feeling rather than hearing her footsteps and breathing over the roar of the river.
She upped her pace, going as fast as she could over the good ground. She needed to break away from the pack for what she had in mind – even if she found what she was looking for.
The river was wide, deep and fast, littered with sharp rocks. She grabbed a twig as she ran and tossed into the torrent. It vanished in the spray and didn’t reappear. To try and swim across was probably suicide.
After the Novemberpogrome, when the Nazis had run riot through the Jewish communities across Germany, arresting, destroying and killing, it was impossible to walk the streets of Vienna. Sarah’s blonde hair was too noticeable around the neighborhood and the prowling gangs of thugs simply couldn’t resist harassing her. Anyway, she couldn’t stand to see the shopkeepers forced to vandalize their own shopfronts, or to watch the old men being made to scrub the pavements, hands bleeding and backs red from horsewhips. The last few had been given buckets of acid to use instead of water, at least that was what people said. Those men had been taken away afterwards, so no one got to ask them for sure.
However, their tiny, stinking, top-floor apartment turned out to have one positive feature: the kitchen window opened onto the roof. Sarah had started off clambering out just to escape the smell. Then she began scrambling up onto the ridge to watch the sunsets over the city, the pinkish-red tiled roofs glowing in the vanishing light. She soon realized that she could move from building to building across the ridges and valleys of the old town’s crowded roofs. Leaping the small gaps and riding the fragile dormers was treacherous, but for someone with Sarah’s training, quick feet, good balance and strong fingertips, it was almost safer than running the gauntlet of the stormtroopers in the streets. Compared to the balance beam or the horse, this red-tiled landscape was a playground, a playground that became a secret passage and, finally, an escape route.
There was just a three-metre gap that could take Sarah out of the poor Leopoldstadt quarter and into a district of apartment blocks with unguarded windows, wealthy owners and easily sold valuables. When Sarah stood on the ridge of the roof, planning her raids and choosing her route, she had felt truly free. Untied, unfettered, unencumbered. The dirty Jew, the grubby child, the hungry daughter of a bedridden mother – all this was gone. She charged helter-skelter over the dormers, swinging on the pipework and striding over the guttering, for all the world like a child running rings through a sunlit park, trailing her tiny hands and dress ribbons behind her.
Accelerating across the tiles on the final roof, she revelled in the control. Knowing how dangerous it all was, how far she had to fall, even how forbidden her presence was, only demonstrated the hold she had over her own destiny. All those years of gymnastics, practised at home when banned from her classes, gave her a perfection in her footwork, in her judgement and in her power. All this was hers, uncontrollable and untouchable under an open sky…and to fly, to truly leave the earth behind and sail across the final space, with the tiny oppressed animals and their demonic drivers so distant below and blurred by her speed? That was freedom. It was a fire that lit in her stomach and spread to her limbs and brain with a crackle and joyful hooting.
The landing was difficult, painful on every occasion, but she didn’t care one bit. The hurt was hers and no one else’s. She could fly. The sky belonged to her. She was a bird.
She was a bird and she would fly across the river.
Sarah slowly rose to a standing position on the wide branch, panting. Back towards the river, a lattice of leafless branches was spread before her, a weave of possibilities and dangers.
She had been nearly halfway to the bridge when she had found what she was looking for: a spot where the trees on either bank reached out to each other and almost touched in the centre. It hadn’t been perfect, but she might not find a better option and the clock was ticking.
It had also taken an age to find a suitable tree to climb. The trunks that lined the river were tall and smooth, their lowest branches hanging tantalizingly out of reach. She had headed inland through the useless beeches, wishing for a rippled elm or old oak tree, all the while panicking that she had gone too far, wasted too much time, that no shortcut would be short enough to beat the muscled and well-fed competition. The wide tree with deep furrowed bark and clefts for small feet was a gift, but it was too long in coming.
How long since she’d left the river? Four minutes? If so, Kohlmeyer and the others would be approaching the bridge and the halfway mark. She had to move.
Look how high you are!
No.
Sarah closed her eyes and waited for the moment to pass.
Trust yourself, dumme Schlampe. You’ve done this a thousand times. Think wood beam. Think tiles and bricks, gutters and chimney stacks. Better still, don’t think at all.
Commit to the move.
Sarah loped along the branch to its end and, as it began to bend, leaped into the next tree, landing cleanly on a wide upward-travelling branch, feeling the heavy permanence under her feet. The balance beam, the vault, Viennese roof ridges or tree branches: they were the same, she told herself over and over. She went on and jumped again. The limb of the third tree gave a little but held, so Sarah sped up and skipped onto the next. Tiles and bricks. Gutters and chimney stacks. Powdered canvas. She could hear the river grow louder as she ran, but she ignored it. The water was just a street polished bloody by old Jewish men. Nothing to do with her.
She stepped lightly. Quickly. The branches were moist where the night’s frost had thawed, but they weren’t slippery like wet tile. Sarah noticed the limbs growing thinner as she approached the river, so she chose the biggest for her final three pathways to the other side.
Three.
Sarah passed the bank far below, arms outstretched to counter the slight twist in the branch. She skipped. Commit to the move.
Two.
She landed awkwardly as the penultimate limb sagged under her weight. She readjusted her balance by sweeping both arms to the left. She was over the water, the rush of the spray filling her ears. The third branch was just above hers, so she needed to leap and bring both feet up together to keep her momentum. Commit.
One.
She faltered as she landed but pushed herself upright with her hands before the branch grew too narrow. She looked up to see it dwindle to nothing ahead, but there, maybe just two metres away, was the beginnings of a new tree. Its slender twigs were the keystone of the bridge, behind them branches that could take her weight. How far behind them Sarah couldn’t tell, but she was committed now.
Imagine you’ve an armful of bratwurst and an empty stomach. Imagine there are angry Viennese Hausfrauen in pursuit.
She sprinted the last two metres and with the limb bending precariously beneath her, she exploded off the end, arms stretching out in front of her.
Flying.
Falling.
Sarah crashed into the spindly parallel branches that snapped instantly under her and tore at her shirt. Her arms wrapped around the largest survivor, her shoulders screaming at her. One hand slipped from the other and was dragged away by her weight. The other tore at the bark…and held.
She swayed forward and then back, suspended by her fingertips and a shoulder on fire. Sarah looked down and watched the torrent of water spitting and broiling among the rocks. Her feet grew wet with the spray, but the river couldn’t touch her. Sarah grinned in mirthless triumph.
Though now she found her other arm was numb and slow, so she had to heave at the good arm until the weaker limb could wrap itself around the branch. The effort made her cry out loud, a high piercing noise that scared her. Sarah realized that she didn’t have much energy left to finish her crossing.
Last lap, dumme Schlampe.
She swung herself back and forth to get her legs up and curled them around the limb. Then, after an agonizing scramble of arms and feet, she climbed onto it. Her fingernails were torn and bloody, her arms wet with tiny scratches.
But she was okay. She’d made it. The way through to the other bank was easier, with thicker limbs and fewer jumps. She slowly climbed to her feet, taking the extra seconds to stretch out her muscles for the last effort. She was safely back on her apartment roof, with a dinner of bratwurst to come. Better than that, she was Trudi Meyer smiling with her gold medal.
She trotted along the branch and skipped over to a wider limb just a metre away. She landed with a hollow clunk—
She hadn’t managed to move before the rotten wood split in two and tumbled down into the river, taking Sarah with it.