The Reunion

by Geoff Pridmore

  Heike’s father had been a US Army sergeant who had met and married her mother, Kirsten, in 1951. Heike had learnt English from the cradle and as a pupil of a US forces school.

  Cousin Manfred could also speak English because he lived and worked in New Zealand and had married a Canadian woman, Janine – who, like Sandy, was also attending her first Mauer reunion.

  There were other cousins who could speak English to a greater or lesser degree, and certainly the younger generation were nearly all bilingual.

  Hanne thought that Oma would not have recognised this reunion – this bilingual gathering. It didn’t take too much imagination to visualise the old matriarch sitting at the head of the long table with that dour expression of hers. It would have been nice to talk to her, find out what she thought of the proceedings and whether she was pleased or even proud of them. Concentrating as hard as she might amid the chatter and noise of dining, Hanne did her best to visualise her grandmother and communicate her feelings.

  She would tell Oma how her great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren might take the reunion well into the twenty-first century just as Hugo hoped they might, but the name Mauer would mean little to Emmi – now scooting around the floor on her bottom – as the family name diminished with a lack of male heirs. Marco’s daughters were English and, as young adults, felt no German ties, despite having been regularly brought to reunions as children.

  Yes, the irony of it, thought Hanne: a Mauer family reunion, but the only Mauer here by name was English born and bred – Marco.

  Dinner completed, outside in the sun various family photographers were marshalling the family into a group shot for posterity just prior to the walk that would take in the cemetery and Oma’s grave.

  It was while Sandy was taking his group photo that a distant, lonely figure caught Hanne’s attention. Glancing up she saw a teenage boy staring at the assembly through an upper window of the old schoolhouse; chin cupped in hand as if he was bored of the whole event and would sooner be elsewhere.

  First impressions were that he might be a young member of the family, especially as he looked most familiar to her. Perhaps he was too shy to come down and partake in the group photograph; but no, all the family were assembled here with no absenters. Everyone had elected to come out and enjoy the sun.

  Maybe, she wondered, he was the son of one of the catering staff who’d been looking after them that afternoon. Before she could turn to mention her concerns to someone – purely for clarification purposes – he’d disappeared.

  She mentioned it to Heike as they walked. No, Heike hadn’t noticed a face at the window but promised she would ask later when she saw the caterers. She would be seeing them to settle up and thank them for all their hard work.

  Heidemarie made a point of joining them and reminding them of that “summer of 1963” when they were so “young and carefree” that they wandered far and near with gay abandon.

  What about 1973? Remember me? Dummkopf? Hanne thought better of it; and besides, the German words she needed were eluding her. Her head was full of Spanish, Italian and French, all of which she’d learnt in recent years and could speak to a basic degree.

  ‘It seems like yesterday when Uncle Hugo and Aunt Rene would bring you and Marco to stay for the summer,’ remarked Heike, gripping her cousin’s arm as if to reinforce their bonds.

  ‘That summer was over forty-five years ago. My goodness, Fredrick is thirty-five and Christof is thirty-three!’

  ‘In your father’s book they’re just children in school uniform.’

  ‘He wrote that twenty-five years ago. He had a thousand copies printed and I’m still selling them on Amazon and at the local post office. We didn’t have room for all the boxes – they were taking up floor space everywhere!’

  ‘I have it on the bookshelf and one day I’m going to learn English and read it; but I just don’t have the time!’ said Heidemarie, keen as always not to be left out of the group.

  Hanne suspected that “Busybee Heidemarie” would never have the time, but that hardly mattered. ‘Believe me, you’re not missing out by not being able to read it.’

  ‘But he was our most accomplished relative. He wrote that book to bring people together. We’re all so proud of him here.’

  Heike agreed: ‘Yes, we are. A prisoner of war, who stayed in England, learned the language and became a millionaire and was even decorated by the Queen! How wonderful is that?’

  ‘My relationship with him wasn’t always easy, and there were things that both of us might have handled better. Who knows? All I know is that this reunion was important to him, even though he didn’t care for Oma. He thought that if we kept on having the reunion there would be no more wars in Europe.’

  Heike squeezed her cousin’s arm. ‘He was right. There hasn’t been another war in Europe.’

  ‘There was the Balkans,’ said Hanne, ‘but that had been brewing for a long time – long before Dad was born. And you know, I’m not naïve about my father. Had Hitler invaded Britain, my father would have pulled the trigger along with everyone else who put on that bloody uniform.

  ‘If a high-ranking officer had been killed by the resistance and if my father had been ordered to round up the local population and shoot them – all of them – entire communities of men, women, children, babies, dogs and cattle – he’d have done it. Because like all the rest of his generation he was held tight in the grip of Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and the rest of that stinking crowd.

  ‘They told Germans to jump and the Germans replied: “Of course! How high would you like us to jump? We can jump higher than anyone!”

  ‘My father didn’t refuse his service call-up. He didn’t question anything – not to my knowledge. He didn’t try to escape. He didn’t hide Jews or help Slavs, gypsies or gays to escape. His name was not von Trapp. It’s only when you lose and you become the captured rather than the captor. That’s why my father changed. He wasn’t innocent and he wasn’t anyone’s victim. He chose to follow his masters.’

  All of a sudden, the tone became too sombre. Heidemarie never questioned her father, Lennart. ‘They were boys, Hanne – kept in the dark. They didn’t know. It was the SS – the Waffen-SS. They were the ones who committed those awful things. And even if the regular boys were told to do horrible things, they would have been shot and their families imprisoned. They had to obey.’

  Hanne was not so sure. ‘I’d like to believe that, but I find it difficult.’ Her comment sparked a memory of a special Christmas when Hugo presented her with a wooden toy that he’d made just for her. How she loved that toy; how she cherished that memory of him beaming with pride on Christmas morning 1962.

  ‘Dad was different when I was younger… When I was older and his business was better established, I probably expected too much of him and I didn’t show him the gratitude he felt he deserved. And I think I reminded him too much of Oma.

  ‘At least he wrote about my mother in that book. She was a hero awarded the George Cross for rescuing an American airman from his burning bomber when it crashed into the field where she was working as a Land Army girl. That pilot became my godfather.

  ‘She met Dad later, after the war, but if it hadn’t been for the bombing in London and the factory being hit – the factory she worked in – then I wouldn’t be here today. Such is fate.’

  ‘I read that about your mother,’ said Heike. ‘Horrific! That man’s severed head falling into her lap! And when she shook and shook and they couldn’t cure her!’

  ‘Yes, the doctor diagnosed “shell shock”. So she was packed off to Cornwall as a Land Army girl. She was only nineteen.’

  At the gates of the cemetery the various family groups that had separated during the half-mile walk came together to stare through the gates at the large polished ornate stones and crosses set into the shady, wooded grove. Oma’s stone was quite central and easy to spot from the lan
e.

  Heidemarie pointed out that Hanne even shared her name with Oma.

  ‘Yes, Father always put great stock in gestures, and my name is a gesture to his mother, I suppose. It’s odd to see my name on a gravestone – gives me the shivers!’

  ‘I expect it won’t be long before they remove the stone and then—’ said Heike.

  ‘And then there will be nothing to commemorate she was ever here.’ Hanne thought it an odd thing to remove gravestones and reuse the plot. ‘It’s tradition, isn’t it?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, but not in England?’

  ‘Not in England, which makes it good if you’re researching your family tree. The old stones remain forever. Or at least, that used to be the way.’

  Strange to think of Oma being removed from history – the history of the village. Just as her memorial stone seemed so central in the cemetery, in life she had occupied a very central place in Oberwinkel. Geographically her farm was centrally situated, and in the hierarchy of the parish the Mauers were neither the poorest nor were they the richest.

  In the eyes of her granddaughters, Oma Hanna Mauer had been such an historic presence, like some deep-rooted oak tree that had stood for a thousand years. Now, standing there on a bright, cool autumn afternoon, along with all the other grandchildren and great-grandchildren, it was hard to feel any emotion. Hanne had tried to connect to the old matriarch all those years ago in 1963 and again in 1973, but it wasn’t to be.

  Today it might be different; today they would be contemporaries.

  ‘I don’t think Oma approved of me – not when I was a young woman,’ said Hanne. ‘Do you remember when I worked over here for a time – in the hotel? Oma thought I was outrageous!’

  It was the memory of Oma’s expression at catching her “outrageous” English granddaughter standing admiring herself before the long mirror, vainly flattering her physique. The granddaughter who didn’t go to church; the granddaughter who wasn’t even Catholic; the granddaughter whose German language ability wasn’t an ability at all. There she was, nineteen and not even able to speak her father’s native tongue. What had Hugo been thinking?

  Today, it would have been so very different. Today they’d have spoken in German and compared notes on all manner of things; they would have been friends for sure.

  Heidemarie knew the story, as Heidemarie had never been anywhere else in her life and Oma must have confided her thoughts to those closest to her; if not to her personally, then to Lennart, who must surely have told Heidemarie or discussed it at the dinner table. No wonder Heidemarie thought Hanne such a “dummkopf!” All these years later the thought was enough to make Hanne shudder.

  This afternoon, Heidemarie was more concerned with memories of 1963.

  ‘Tomorrow, let us walk back up to the old border post – the three of us – like we did all those years ago when it was new.’

  In need of a distraction, Hanne readily agreed. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Just us three. The men can amuse themselves.’

  The idea of a walk always appealed to Hanne, but in reality she always found it a struggle – especially the hills; and there were plenty of hills surrounding Oberwinkel. Hanne preferred talking, and so mixing the two was difficult, though it did help to take her mind off the inclines. It had all seemed so effortless aged ten in that summer of 1963. She’d forgotten much of the route over the fields and meadows and that wasn’t surprising, yet it was all very familiar territory. The memories cascading through her head were very clear, though Hanne wondered whether she needed them. Returning to see an old border post didn’t really seem so significant except that it was a bonding exercise for her and the cousins. She was happy in the knowledge that they were all clearly related and that they’d probably grown more alike as the years had passed. They could have been sisters, a thought shared between the three of them.

  Heidemarie was not at all slowed by the passage of the years. She was the most excited that morning, as excited as she’d been as a nine-year-old, even now racing ahead to look over the next brow as Hanne and Heike chatted in English, both in agreement that Heidemarie was always the organiser and motivator, whether it was the reunion or a place to visit like this. But then she always exacted a price – a small price, but a price nonetheless.

  ‘How old is Heidemarie?’

  ‘A bit younger than you, a bit older than me.’

  ‘Only she runs ahead like some manic rabbit. Where does she get her energy from, for goodness sake?’

  ‘She lives here, Hanne. She walks these hills all the time.’

  Had Heike not stopped to point out the border post on the next ridge, Hanne might well have continued walking never having noticed the remnants: the bare, concrete posts; the rusted remains of twisted wire, chain link, bolts; and the tower. She’d have walked on with her eyes to the ground simply talking of all manner of things.

  ‘Is that it?’ she asked incredulously.

  ‘The remains, yes.’

  But Hanne could only remember that summer’s day, when it was so still; that warm, deep blue sky; the dog panting, drooling for chocolate.

  This was a very different place altogether.

  If Hanne wanted to talk in confidence to Heike, then she would speak in English. It didn’t seem so rude as Heidemarie – now well out of their orbit – had already reached the post hundreds of metres ahead of them, ferreting around as if looking to find something that would connect her with the past; something someone might have dropped and mislaid all those years ago.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d want to come up here,’ said Hanne.

  ‘I didn’t – particularly. Heidemarie doesn’t understand; I suppose because Bruno’s still alive she thinks no permanent harm was done. But she doesn’t understand what it was like living in East Berlin.’

  ‘What happened exactly? Your letters stopped. Last we heard he’d been in some sort of accident, but we were never quite sure what had happened.’

  ‘He was a boy playing a silly game – not unlike his father and uncle.’

  Heike turned her gaze toward a distant bluff; she seemed reluctant to say any more and Hanne wondered that it might be too painful, but she was curious about the photos Heike had sent her not long after settling in East Berlin.

  ‘Those photos of you and Roland when you were first married…’ asked Hanne, her voice trailing off, fearing that she was maybe probing a little too deep.

  Heike, always polite, reassured her, ‘I was so naive – so idealistic then.’

  ‘There was a photo of you standing in front of your car – in the street? I think it was a Trabant or something like that?’

  ‘A blue Trabant with a white roof. Me leaning against the bonnet dressed in black, with sunglasses that I’d brought with me from home – here in Bavaria. How cool was that?’ She looked away into the distance as if avoiding Hanne’s scrutiny. ‘I thought… I don’t know what I thought!’

  Heike’s demeanour reflected a distinct change in tone. Hanne silently cursed herself for being too inquisitive. Best to lay off for a moment, but a door was beginning to open.

  The brief silence between them prompted Heike to continue as if she were answering her own questions as much as those of Hanne: ‘Stupid little girl from the West who believed she could be a communist, too. Communism was better. Yes? The opposite to fascism – that awful history on our shoulders. I couldn’t bear it! Remember what I thought? I was suspicious that everyone was a fascist. Remember?’ But Hanne didn’t remember; this was all a revelation.

  ‘Then I met my man – Roland the great writer, the great journalist. The hero in a post-Stalinist, post-fascist state! He was the son of a hero – a man who had rescued his mother-to-be and fled Berlin, with the Russians hot on their heels. That’s what we thought we were, or could be – some sort of folk heroes who would change something. You know, things were good when that photo was taken.
Roland had been promoted and Bruno was a happy boy at school.’

  Hanne smiled, desperately trying to recapture a lighter mood. ‘It was a lovely photo – the sun shining, the street looking lovely with the trees in the background. And you looked like a film star!’

  ‘We’d only just got that car – for Roland’s work. It was a good time: we had our apartment – flat, as you call it in England – and that funny little car…’

  ‘Do you miss it?’

  ‘The car?!’

  ‘No! The life you led?’

  ‘Yes, always I miss it. That was Bruno’s home. That was the street he grew up on. It was a nice street. One day I might go back to live… Who knows?’

  ‘You sent a picture of the apartment block and of Roland working at his typewriter.’

  ‘They must have checked it – checked those photos I sent you. The censor checked everything.’

  ‘It’s not like they were photos of the Wall or soldiers or policemen or Stasi headquarters.’

  ‘They watched us all the time, Hanne. That’s what this place was all about – watching, listening, making copious notes. We liked taking photos. I’d have sent you more, but…’

  They would have talked more, but they’d reached the old fence and Heidemarie was eager to see their faces. She could barely contain her excitement.

  ‘Do you remember it, Hanne? Do you remember when we came here all those years ago when we were children?’

  ‘I remember it clearly.’

  ‘Now you see it is a monument preserved for future generations. There is a signboard telling you the history. I brought my children here and I will bring my grandchildren. We were part of that history, Hanne.’

  ‘I remember the guard coming out. He was very friendly. Do you remember the shot that rang out as we were walking away?’

  ‘Ah! They were always doing that – testing their weapons. You surely didn’t think they were shooting at us?’

  ‘I wasn’t so sure at the time.’ Hanne exchanged glances with Heike, who was keeping a discreet distance from Heidemarie’s enthusiasm.