The frail woman stood hunched before them bore little resemblance to the carefree individual they remembered going about her business in the village. Such a happy lady, Frau Gruber; she wore her happiness in the way other women might wear a pretty frock. Why, she defied Earth’s gravity and danced when she walked and sang when she spoke. Every other woman in the district was insanely jealous because really Gruber was nothing but “a strumpet” in their collective opinion, bending and curving all over the place as soon as she saw a man.
They had seen with their own eyes how once, in the presence of a man she hardly knew, she sucked provocatively on a boiled sweet until it was small enough to remove and then placed it into her child’s mouth of all things! Right in front of his gaze! She would even invite men to dance with her and kiss them on the mouth when it was over!
She had come to Oberwinkel to work as a piano teacher and to marry her beloved Otto – a local boy. They’d met in Frankfurt just as the First War ended and fell in love dancing to Satie’s ‘Je te veux’ – a live performance. Abandoning her ambition to be a composer she left the city to marry her “country soldier boy” as she called him. The women of Oberwinkel considered this to be her biggest mistake.
Despite always having a good word for everybody, despite always being friendly, this joie de vivre of hers was never likely to endear her to those of her own gender. The village women were of peasant stock, broad backs, heavy breasts and hands like shovels. She was nothing like them and, worst of all, she was of no discernible standing whatsoever.
‘Look at that hussy. Nose in the air!’
‘She should have stayed in the city – that’s her place. The elevated princess dancing with us common folk and laughing in our faces? How dare she!’
That’s what Hugo remembered people saying as his mother went about her business whilst making sure he was in tow; but he well remembered how the children of the village loved Frau Gruber and she, in turn, adored them. ‘The village children might all become musicians one day,’ said headmaster Herr Fischl so admiringly of Frau Gruber’s remarkable teaching abilities.
Far less was known of Otto. The son of a reclusive wood carver, Otto was rarely seen in the village and was viewed like his father as something of an outsider, living in his late parents’ cottage high in the south hills. Whatever he thought of his pretty wife’s ventures into the village no one really knew. He seldom accompanied her, and the view was that she insisted on going alone to teach piano, shopping and entertaining herself in the village. Some claimed that he was homosexual and that his marriage was nothing more than a sham that left his pretty bride constantly in search of fulfilment.
One thing that people were absolutely sure about the couple was that “Gruber” was not Otto’s family name – it was hers. She referred to herself always as Frau Gruber not Henning, which should have been her name on marriage into Otto’s family.
Other rumours persisted that she was a Jewess, and that belief made perfect sense to the villagers because she had Jewess written all over her smug elfin face. She was never to be seen in church.
She was everything they weren’t, in dress, deportment and demeanour – ability, too; and any amount of friendly greetings from her were never going to change such entrenched opinions.
Clearly, now, her fortunes had taken a disastrous turn. Otto was dead and Frau Gruber was not only bereft, she was completely unable to care for herself and her only child, Claude. Had she been a peasant of the village, they might have come to her aid as they had done with Hugo’s mother when his father had died, and others, too.
In answer to her question, the baker replied: ‘Yes, fräulein, it would help if you could grow your own wheat. These are difficult times for everyone, don’t you know.’
‘How can I grow corn with just my boy for help?’ she pleaded, lifting the child’s bony hand. ‘His father is dead – killed eventually by that dreadful war. I have no other family here!’
‘Your husband was gassed on the Somme, wasn’t he?’ asked the baker.
‘Yes,’ she replied timidly.
‘Was he awarded a medal?’
‘Yes – no! I don’t know.’
‘A medal would be worth more than this IOU. I know someone who could melt it down.’
‘But we need bread now!’
The baker was adamant. ‘If I gave you a loaf, every villager in the district would be banging at my door. I’m sorry.’
The briefest of smiles in acknowledgement to the baker was the sign of Frau Gruber’s resignation to fate. The once effervescent young woman who had skipped through life as if it were a game was now teetering on broken heels. The baker gestured to the boys to get a chair – quickly – but instead Hugo came forward with a better proposal.
‘I can give you a loaf, Frau Gruber.’
*
The bread under his nose had been warm – straight out of the oven. Now it was stone cold, but it didn’t matter. Warm bread was a luxury.
‘That loaf I lost – I gave it to the widow Gruber. She needed it – I didn’t lose it – I’m sorry. I lied.’
The very same expression of incredulity that he had seen all those years ago on Frau Gruber’s pale, gaunt face was now etched on the leather-skinned, craggy face of his mother.
*
Saturday 2nd December 1944, 4:53 pm
An English beach on the east coast
The hell of crossing the sea in a flat-keeled landing ship had seemed eternal. If the Allies had intended to torture their enemy and exact reparation then this was definitely the most effective method.
The sensation of the ship’s pitching remained long after disembarkation on the beach. Those who could stand and walk looked – to those gathered on the quayside to gawp – like drunks staggering after a drinks binge, whilst others less fortunate were carried off on stretchers.
In respect of fortune, good or otherwise, Hugo envied the British Tommies assigned to guard their new charges. No bullets flying past the heads of these boys, no ordnance to blow their limbs off. No entrails burbling out of stomachs split open by hot metal. No. These lucky lads appeared to be soldiers in every respect except that real experience of war that he, Karl and Thomaz had come through.
They might be prisoners now, but that experience of battle had changed them – changed their spirits so fundamentally. They hadn’t fought for Hitler or some ideal; they’d fought for one another, for their brotherhood and their own survival. Nothing to come in the years ahead would ever scare them or affect them as that battle had done. They had been children when they had first donned their ill-fitting uniforms – clueless and arrogant – willing puppets of an unbalanced dictator. Here on some English beach, the uniforms were still in place, but they covered the shoulders of men who had not only broadened physically, they’d actually survived hunger, sickness, slaughter, capture and confinement. Their friends were gone forever, buried in foreign soil, their eternal souls trapped in purgatory.
A broad slipway led from the beach onto a promenade. Herded onto a quayside it seemed as if they would then await another boat. Very little was said or even whispered among the new arrivals. Perhaps it was resignation, but the Nazis had been most adept at disciplining all Germans to such a degree and for so long that individual whispers had long been subdued.
Hugo thought the guards looked like characters from history dressed in their leather jerkins, especially those with broad-rimmed helmets. They reminded him of the illustrations he’d seen of English soldiers – longbowmen and pikemen who fought the French at Agincourt. He’d learned of the famous Hundred Years War between France and England only a few years before at school in Oberwinkel. The teacher who had replaced Herr Fischl had emphasised that the English and French were sworn enemies who would always be on opposing sides, and how the English had so regretted taking the side of the French in the Kaiser’s war that the Germans and English were kindred natio
ns of superior stock whose bloodlines were one and the same.
The scene was reminiscent of the time they were captured by the Americans. Every time they feared being rough handed, such fears were unfounded. The guards were not being nasty or rough with their charges, but perhaps that was because the proverbial photographer was on hand to record the scene with his camera and tripod. There was a cine cameraman shooting film, too.
English was such an unfamiliar language and here it was all around them. He’d got used to French and even knew a few words. Maybe he could try them on the guards. All around him Tommies chatting and laughing about God knows what, as if they’d been here on the quayside all their lives, gutting fish and processing prisoners of war. It was a strangely formal yet also informal procedure in that the guards chattered quite freely amongst all the commands.
Hugo didn’t understand the commands – few of them did. The lance corporal with the beret and spectacles and armed only with a brass spray gun offered a simple procedure communicated by repetitive gesture: ‘Open your jackets and get sprayed like tomatoes with fruit fly. Tonight you’ll have a chance for a bath and get some fresh clothes.’ He said this to everyone. No one thanked him.
From the quayside waiting lorries ferried them to an enclosure some miles away. Gone were the civvy-like “leather jerkin guards”; the men here were a much tougher looking bunch armed with machine guns and sidearms.
Crouching awkwardly on his haunches, a peak-capped RSM – stocky, middle-aged and clearly experienced in this specific role – was searching a prisoner’s trouser pockets while the man held his coat open. To Hugo, the RSM looked like a schoolmaster who’d been seconded back into uniform for this very purpose; all those years spent confiscating catapults from the pockets of naughty boys. Perhaps he’d earned his stripes in the First War? Now, stiff in the joints, portly and world-weary but with an understanding of the predicament of his captives. Maybe he’d been a prisoner once?
Eventually – Hugo’s turn.‘So, your name is Mauer?’ the RSM asked as he went through Hugo’s meagre belongings. Not quite pronounced right. Hugo nodded.
‘My name is Mower,’ said the RSM.
Hugo understood enough to reply: ‘Hugo Mauer.’
‘Alfred – Alfred Ronald Mower,’ he mumbled, knowing that really he was speaking to himself and that it was his way of keeping some sanity in an endless line of duty. He barely looked up at Hugo’s face: ‘Stupid, isn’t it – fighting? Still, almost done now – soon be over.’
Raising himself up to look at Hugo for the first time, he apologised: ‘I’m sorry I can’t speak your language. Maybe one day, eh?’
Aware that he too was under the scrutiny of other guards, the RSM nodded to Hugo and beckoned him to enter the compound in the manner of a bored manager welcoming a hotel guest.
*
Freitag 28th Juni 1963, 10.10 am
Oberwinkel
Hugo had promised Hanne that he would go walking with her that morning and, true to his word, after breakfast he reached for his late father’s walking stick and beckoned his daughter to join him.
They would start off by walking up into the meadow to the west of the village and to the edge of the wood. Hanne was already familiar with the meadow and the wood as she’d discovered it on only her second day in Oberwinkel – it was the place with the deer lookout and it commanded a splendid view over the village.
Hanne hated any gradient; she expressed her concern that some farmer might own the land and be angry with them for trespassing, or that the border guards might be patrolling and tell them to return to the safety of the village as war was surely imminent. Otherwise why would the American president be in Berlin?
She, of course, had already trodden this path. That was different: she could not be trespassing as she was a child and therefore invisible. Farmers and landowners would not see children stomping across open ground, but an adult of well over 6 feet in height and weighing in at… ooh, had to be 15 stone… was a prime target for a telling off. Big feet could do a lot of damage and leave a marked trail for anyone to follow.
Hugo reassured her that he had been playing and working in these fields since he was much younger than Hanne was now, and that providing they were respectful to the countryside no one would mind. This only confirmed her conviction that children were invisible. They stopped to catch their breath at the foot of the deer lookout ladder.
‘You like it up here, nah?’
‘I watch the deer from the lookout, and when I’m not doing that I’m collecting wild flowers.’
‘When I was a boy, I came here every moment I had.’
Hanne was thrilled to realise that she had gravitated naturally to the place her father had loved when he was a child. Clearly, it was a hereditary thing.
‘Look, I will show you something.’ Hugo beckoned her to come and see a particular tree – an ancient sycamore that he believed stood guard over the village, sentient and unchanging.
‘This tree is very important to the village. It protects us and watches us as we go about our business. People used to say that the spirits of all those who ever lived in the village migrate to the tree and watch over us. Look at this.’ He points to the faded initials H.M. carved into the bark.
‘These are my initials carved when I was a boy – not much older than you are. Carved into the bark forever, nah?’
Hanne bent forward to touch the grooves left by her father’s historic handiwork.
‘Posterity,’ she said, taking care to pronounce it with particular emphasis on the first syllable. (Another word learned and noted earlier that year.)
‘Boys had tree houses in the woods, nah? We build them high, nah? Nobody was allowed, that is how special it was.’
Hanne wondered just who was not allowed to do what but kept the question to herself, lifting her head to the sky, not to look for the remains of a tree house but at the patches of warm light filtering down through the branches and bathing them in luminescence like two actors caught in the broad spotlights of a stage play.
The canopy of trees afforded some welcome shade from the rising temperature. ‘It’s so hot here in the summer. How does Oma sleep at night? The blankets are really heavy and hot.’
‘Federbett – not blankets. Different, nah? In the winter it is very cold – much colder than Cornwall.’
Hanne couldn’t imagine just how cold – she thought Cornwall was plenty cold enough, especially their draughty old farmhouse, which she hated. For a rare moment, she was quiet and still, thinking about that chilly house and its ghosts awaiting their return. In the momentary pause that had overcome Hanne, Hugo stole an opportunity for her attention.
‘This family reunion is very important for you and Marco, nah? It will be a tradition that you must keep long after I have gone. You can bring your children and your children’s children – it will be good for them. You must keep the ties you make here, Hanne – with your cousins. Willst – Will you do that for me?’
Hanne nodded and carefully considered the very meaning of “tradition” and what it entailed. She knew it would mean many more visits to Oberwinkel in the coming years and she was more than happy with that. She just couldn’t imagine that there might ever come a time when her father wouldn’t be with her.
Hugo was already on the move. There was something else to show her.
Their next stop was a wooden bridge spanning a narrow, but clearly deep, brook. The old footbridge was somehow different. Hugo ran his palm along the handrail just to be sure. It felt new, and why shouldn’t it? The old one that he had known must have been replaced at some time – maybe washed away in a storm? Or rotted enough to make it unsafe? Or perhaps it had been deliberately destroyed during the war?
This was a sturdy and strong replacement whereas the old one had been rickety, but then he and his mates had thrilled to its dangerous condition, believing themselves to be adventure
rs crossing a great ravine.
The river meant a lot to Hugo. It wasn’t much to look at now through adult eyes; sedate, narrow and unassuming. Back then it was a wild border crossing filled with all sorts of dangers, including crocodiles and flesh-eating fish. To fall in was to die. No one got out alive.
Further downstream was different. Friendly waters were to be had there. It was wider, the current was not so fast nor so deep or dark or swirling, and in the summer it was ideal for swimming. There were fish too, for catching. Nice, friendly fish, but this particular spot was different. Here there were monsters and demons to drag the unwary below.
This was the very spot where Anton and friends had saved his life. Now he could pass on his story – just this story, nothing else – because this was purely a children’s story and Hanne might identify with it or certainly learn something from it. How he and other children had been skating on the frozen river sometime after Christmas that year and all had been fine until the ice gave way and he dropped into the freezing water.
‘Winter can be hard, nah?’
Hanne, still uncharacteristically quiet, nodded while watching a maple leaf swirl around like a rudderless boat before disappearing under the narrow bridge.
‘When I was young, the winters were so cold the water here would freeze to ice so hard you could skate on it.’
‘Did you skate on it?’
‘Yes, yes. I was a good skater, nah.’
‘I knew you would be.’
‘Yes, but very foolish.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I did not know to stop. I thought the ice good and hard. Good for a skater like me. But it broke. The weather warmed and the ice gave way under my feet.’
‘Did you drown?’
‘I might have. My friends pulled me out.’
‘Did they have to revive you with artificial respiration?’
The Reunion Page 11