Winter, p.55
Winter, page 55
Some of the windows had open blinds and he could see soldiers inside. The train was jammed full of men; grey-clad men were strewn everywhere, like broken soldiers thrown into a toybox.
Many of them were bandaged; most of them were sleeping. There was no movement anywhere. He walked along, staying away from the locomotive. The locomotive would have men who were on duty and awake. The next carriage was fitted with bunk beds for casualties who couldn’t walk. This was as crowded as the previous one, with soldiers packed together as close as possible. All the men were wrapped in grey blankets and crammed into the bunks together, looking curiously like tinned sardines.
The door of the third carriage was open, and the light spilled out. Two medical orderlies were seated on the steps, both smoking with the dedication that comes after lengthy denial. In the doorway behind the orderlies, Boris could see an open cupboard, its shelves filled with army blankets. He coveted one of those thick, warm blankets more than anything he could think of in the world.
He waited for a long time, the icy wind cutting through him like a thousand knives. Eventually the orderlies finished their cigarettes and went back into the train. He could see them through the windows, moving along the train. This was his chance, and he got up on the steps and tried the door. It was unlocked. He opened it carefully and stepped inside and up the steps. To his right was a toilet, and behind him the communicating doors to the next carriage. From here he could see right down into the train. He felt the warmth of the heating and heard the snoring, soft moans and restless movements of the injured men. No one was looking this way. He stepped into the soft yellow light and opened the cupboard. He pulled a blanket out slowly, holding the others back with his free hand. It fell out and opened. He dragged it back into the space provided by the doorway. But as he did so the train gave a jolt. From the floor nearby he heard the couplings clatter and there was a hiss of steam from the locomotive as the train jolted twice and started to move.
‘Orderly! Orderly! This man needs help! He’s bleeding again.’ It was a shrill voice, the frightened voice of a young man.
‘I’m coming, I’m coming!’ An orderly had opened the communicating door from the next carriage. He stood there for a moment, and Boris could recognize him as one of the men who’d been smoking outside. The train groaned and rolled forward, clattering over the steel rails of a junction. Boris stepped back into the shadow and pulled the blanket round him to completely cover his black suit, stinking now and soiled with vomit and excrement, his and other people’s. The orderly passed Boris with scarcely a glance at him. Even his disgusting smell attracted no attention here, amongst the sick and injured.
‘Bleeding?’ said the orderly when he got to the frightened young man. ‘Where is he bleeding?’ The train was picking up speed now. It would soon be going too fast for him to jump without the possibility of a damaged leg or foot. He looked out the window. They were passing another train: a troop train filled with soldiers. They stared at him, as they stared at all the wounded, wondering if this was the way they would come back.
Blood had come from the bunk above and made a spotty pattern on the young soldier’s face and the blanket. ‘That’s nothing,’ the medical orderly said. ‘I’ll change his dressing in the morning.’
‘I want to move,’ said the frightened boy.
‘If you can find a place, move,’ said the orderly. He smoothed the blankets in the fussy little movements that come automatically to trained nurses.
‘You’ve shit yourself again, haven’t you?’ said the orderly.
‘I couldn’t help it,’ said the frightened boy.
‘You’d better get yourself fresh pyjamas. But this is the last change you get, understand?’
‘Yes,’ said the boy.
The orderly came back past Boris, but before he opened the communicating door he paused to look at him. Boris met the orderly’s eyes and his stomach churned in fear. ‘I know your damned tricks,’ the orderly said angrily. ‘You’re not allowed to smoke there. Get back to your bed or your compartment or wherever you’re from. You know the regulations.’
Boris nodded.
The orderly slammed the heavy connecting door and disappeared into the next carriage.
Boris watched the boy getting out of the bunk to get fresh pyjamas. If Boris could get army pyjamas, and hide his black suit, perhaps they’d feed him along with the rest of them. If he could get something to eat, he’d be able to think more clearly.
He looked out the window. There was another army train waiting on a siding. This one consisted of tanks chained down upon flatbed wagons. His train rumbled past them slowly, hundreds of them. It was as if the whole world were nothing but tanks.
‘You’re the only real friend I’ve got, Lottie’
Pauli Winter could cheer people up. It was a magical gift. Now that he came to the Hennigs’ house two or three times a week to visit Lottie, she found life much more endurable. Pauli told her jokes, Pauli provided her with stories and gossip and scandal, and Pauli showed her silly magic tricks that made a coin disappear and then come out of his ear . . . or her ear! And it was Pauli who’d sent most of the books, especially the ones in English, which (unknown to Lottie) had been confiscated from their previous owners in police raids. And Pauli had sent the cushions and a red velvet armchair with a built-in footrest, two framed van Gogh prints, and some dance-music records and an old windup gramophone. These things had helped to transform Lottie’s two cramped garret rooms at the top of the Hennigs’ house into a reasonably comfortable little apartment.
When Pauli came, he liked to sit in the red armchair and put his feet up. The gramophone was playing ‘Jeepers Creepers’. Lottie was at the little electric ring making eggless pancakes to go with their ersatz coffee. She had become rather good at cooking in prison, where they had, for a spell, allowed her to work, and even to do some cooking, in the kitchens. Sometimes she had a meal with the Volkmanns, who occupied the adjoining rooms and shared her bathroom. And sometimes she was invited downstairs to eat with the Hennigs, but most of the time Lottie was alone. She liked to sit near the dormer window and stare across the crooked roofs and identify the spires and the shapes of the taller buildings on the Ku-damm. It gave her a lot of time to think. ‘I sometimes wonder if there are any other Americans here in the city,’ she said as she tipped the pancake onto a plate. The music stopped and she turned the record over, but she didn’t start it going again.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Pauli, although he knew from the ministry records that there were some. The chances were that they were foreign nationals classified as friendly by the Gestapo, or they were German emigrants who’d returned to Germany because of Hitler’s New Order, and they were not the sort of friends he wanted Lottie to make. He didn’t want her to start thinking about contacting any other people in the town. The Hennigs were sworn to secrecy, and the Volkmanns knew how to behave like fugitives. Even Mama saw Lottie only twice a month. It was better that way. No alert, much less a custody order, had been issued for her – there was that to be thankful for. But the identity card that Pauli had given her bore a big ‘J’ mark across the front and certainly wouldn’t bear up under the sort of close scrutiny that German policemen gave to cards with ‘J’ on them. Perhaps it didn’t matter that her first name was given as Martha instead of Charlotte Sarah, but her age was given as sixty instead of forty, and the photo was of a much older woman who bore no resemblance to her.
If she stayed inside she’d probably be safe, but if she went out walking there was always the danger of her being rounded up in the street and bundled off to a camp. The fate of the Jews had become a subject of argument and rivalry amongst the various SS factions, but the dispute was only over whether they should be done to death immediately in an extermination camp or worked to death in a labour camp.
By now Pauli’s ideas about the camps’ becoming self-financing had been extended so that the SS had become the owner of a great industrial empire that, in its concentration camps, used slave labour to manufacture everything from cheap furniture to forged foreign paper money. Prisoners quarried stone, made synthetic rubber and sewed army uniforms. The SS owned the Meissen porcelain company, and was on the way to monopolizing the manufacture of soda water, starting with the Apollinaris concern.
‘That’s what I thought,’ said Lottie. ‘Imagine if I was the only one here. Why, I could write a book, The Only American in Wartime Berlin – can you imagine that? I’d be famous.’
Pauli knew she was only joking, so he laughed. But he added, ‘I wouldn’t write anything down, Lottie. Not for the time being.’
From downstairs came the sound of the Hennigs’ child practising the piano. Erich said the boy was musically talented, but it was not easy to believe it when listening to his performance of ‘Für Elise’.
‘There hasn’t been another letter, I suppose?’
‘From Peter? No, nothing. But he’s safe in the U.S.A. The Americans won’t make him go into the army. He’s probably sitting in California with your mother, wondering what we’re doing.’
‘I suppose so. It seems so long since I saw him. And Helena will be seventeen in September. I can hardly believe it. She was only ten when I went to prison. I have missed all those years of watching her grow up. I wish I had a more recent photo of them both.’ She put the pancake and coffee at Pauli’s side and he thanked her warmly. ‘Seventeen. She was a beautiful little child.’
‘And now she’s a beautiful young woman,’ said Pauli.
‘Yes, I’m sure she must be, Pauli. She was always so perfect. She never cried the way some babies do. She was so . . . I don’t know . . . so adult, so mature.’
‘Yes,’ said Pauli. Lottie liked to talk, so he drank his coffee and let her talk. It must have been very boring for her, sitting here alone for so much of the time. And it amused him to hear her speak in fluent German that came complete with all the Berlin slang and underworld argot.
‘If I hadn’t got pregnant we would have gone to America,’ said Lottie. ‘Uncle Glenn advised against it, but Peter would have taken that job. Think of that – another year and Helena would have been born an American. I wish Dad could have seen her.’
‘Yes,’ said Pauli. He watched Lottie with some apprehension. On his last visit she’d asked Pauli to put some flowers on her father’s grave. She’d asked about the other Jewish cemeteries and he’d had to tell her that the Old Jewish Cemetery in Grosse-Hamburger-Strasse, that had been there since the seventeenth century, was now no more. Bodies had been dug up and disposed of, and the cemetery was declared judenrein, cleared of Jews. Lottie had been terribly distressed. Perhaps he shouldn’t have told her, but he’d been frightened that she might make an expedition there and be questioned. ‘It was lucky that Peter took her with him,’ said Pauli.
‘I think about that a lot. Could Peter have guessed?’
‘Guessed that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor and that the Führer would follow up by declaring war on the Americans? I don’t think anyone could have guessed that, Lottie.’
‘No, I suppose he couldn’t have.’
‘He took Helena with him so that Grandad, and your mother, could see her.’
‘And now she’ll be an American. I can just imagine her at her high-school dances. But what about Peter? What must it be like for him?’
Pauli drank some coffee. ‘Peter will be all right. I suppose people will treat him badly because he’s a German, but from what I read in the Foreign Ministry intelligence bulletins, there’s been no large-scale internment of Germans there.’
Lottie was scornful. ‘People won’t treat him badly simply because he’s a German. It’s only you Germans who have that deep-down fear and mistrust of foreigners that makes you treat strangers so badly. That’s how this whole Hitler business got started. It’s people like Hitler who hate foreigners, and too many Germans supported his hate programme. Americans like Europeans. The U.S. is a place where Europeans went to get away from pogroms and prejudice. My dad was never treated badly in the first war. I was a teenager then; I remember it well. We never had any problems.’ She stopped. How could she make dear Pauli the butt of her anger. Pauli had risked everything for her.
‘We had a Scottish nanny,’ said Pauli. He smiled. He took no offence at her scolding; he supposed it was justified. Most of the scolding he’d suffered throughout his life had been justified. ‘You remind me of her sometimes. “You Germans,” she used to say, “you think only of making wars.” She was a wonderful woman. She packed up and went home when the first war began. I never even said goodbye to her properly, but when I looked back afterwards I saw how much of her life she’d given up for us. I wonder what makes a woman sacrifice so much to look after other people’s children.’
‘Perhaps she couldn’t have children of her own,’ said Lottie, and then regretted saying it as she remembered how much Pauli and Inge had wanted children.
‘Perhaps,’ said Pauli. ‘Lisl told me that Mrs Volkmann is having a baby.’
‘Yes, the Volkmanns are very excited. It will give them something to live for again.’
‘So miracles happen,’ said Pauli. ‘How old is Dr Volkmann? He must be nearly fifty.’
‘Yes, I suppose so. But Lily is much younger than him. I do hope it all goes well for her.’
‘How will the Hennigs manage without her?’
‘The tea room, you mean? Yes, she makes most of the cakes and breads for the tea room. I will help out as best I can – I told Lisl that. It’s been a tremendous success. Lisl is so pleased that Erich plays the piano there now.’
‘Erich Hennig plays in the tea room?’ Pauli was surprised. Erich had been so scornful about Lisl’s new enterprise.
‘As of last month. Didn’t you know? They were paying the other pianist much too much money, and he wasn’t even reliable. Then Lisl fired him for arriving late, and they had no one for three weeks. But business fell off so much that Erich finally consented to play for the time being.’
‘I must drop in and have tea one afternoon.’
‘Erich says it’s just for the time being, but his arm has got worse. I don’t think he’ll ever give a recital again.’
‘He didn’t mention it to me,’ said Pauli.
‘He still doesn’t like the idea,’ said Lottie. ‘But they need the money, and Lisl loves running the place. She doesn’t open until noon and closes at six-thirty, so it’s not too much of a tie. Anyway, she doesn’t have to go out and visit people: all her old friends come here. And she goes table-hopping and exchanging all the latest gossip. Dr Volkmann says it’s one of the most fashionable places in Berlin.’
‘Here? The most fashionable place in Berlin?’ said Pauli. ‘Is that what he hears from the people he works with in the Weissensee cemetery?’
‘Don’t be awful, Pauli,’ said Lottie, laughing. ‘He’s exaggerating, of course. It’s not like the Kaiserhof or the Kempi, but Lisl has worked wonders. Oh, I just remembered, your mother sent some brownies for me. Would you like one?’
‘No thanks. I’m getting too fat.’
‘Even when I was in prison she sent them. Not real chocolate, of course, but it’s wonderful of her. A taste of the U.S.A., she calls them. I love your mother.’
‘She wanted to come and see you more often,’ said Pauli, ‘but I told her to make it no more than twice a month. For the time being I want you to be extra cautious.’
‘Whatever you say, Pauli.’ In prison she’d heard what happened to certain categories of prisoners when they’d finished serving their sentences. But instead of an SS man with a custody order, it was Pauli whom she found waiting in a car outside the prison in Barnimstrasse. He’d brought her straight here to the Hennigs’ house. She’d never asked him how he’d arranged things so that she wasn’t taken to a camp. She just did as he suggested and thanked God for the miracle.
‘Things are tightening up. The war is not going as well as was expected. The whole of the Sixth Army perished at Stalingrad: twenty-four German generals surrendered to the Reds. Some of the boys I knew at Lichterfelde were there. It must be the worst disaster in German history. Fritz Esser says that in the final days Hitler got the message that his nephew, Leo Raubal, was amongst the injured, but he refused to evacuate him by air. God knows what will happen to the man if the Russians discover who he is. Then, in May, a quarter of a million more German soldiers surrendered to the British and Americans in Tunisia. More friends gone, Lottie. Will I ever see them again, I wonder?’
‘But no invasion?’ said Lottie.
‘Of France? I don’t think that will ever happen. Think how many ships they’d need, and the whole coastline is heavily fortified. I saw the defences on the newsreel last week. But Dr Goebbels has decreed “Total War”, whatever that means, and everyone from sixteen to sixty-five has to register for service. Even poor old Hauser has to register. More registrations means more spot checks.’ Pauli finished his ersatz coffee and got up. He hoped the mention of the spot checks would be enough to keep Lottie inside. He knew from Lisl that she’d taken little Theo out shopping, and for walks in the Tiergarten. This reckless behaviour appalled Pauli, but he didn’t know how to persuade Lottie to stay indoors.
‘You’re not going already, Pauli?’
‘I’d better. I walk to work nowadays. I’m trying to cut my weight down, but it means I have to leave home earlier.’
‘Poor Inge. So she has to get up earlier, too.’
‘I’m on my own at present.’
‘Inge works too hard, Pauli.’
