by Celia Rees
“I don’t know.” Luka’s fair brows puckered. “Maybe. But there are many here. East Prussia very big place.”
“I know that, but incomers keep together, don’t they? This lady is from Muhlhausen, near Elbing. Her name is Elisabeth von Stavenow. Can you remember that?”
He nodded.
“Will you help me find her?”
Luka looked up at her, head on one side, considering. He liked Edith. She’d been kind, she’d helped him, and that counted with Luka; she’d fought Frau Holstein and won.
“I do my best,” he said.
Luka handed over Edith’s case at the gate. Frau Schmidt was glaring from the front-room window.
“She don’t like me. Nazi bitch. Same as the one in the school.” Luka scowled at Stephan leaning on his shovel. Stephan scowled back. “He’s worse.” Luka spat. “You watch out for them,” he added. “Worse than no-good DPs.”
“That boy again!” Frau Schmidt said as she opened the door. “Don’t be taken in, Frau Graham. They are all thieves and liars.”
17
CCG Billet, Lübeck, Travemünde
10th February 1946
Billet Sunday Breakfast
Cornflakes or Shredded Wheat
Sausages, bacon, fried potatoes, scrambled eggs
Toast & jam
Tea
Even though breakfasts are very British, there are subtle differences in the texture of the sausages, the cure and cut of the bacon. Only the cereals from their packets are consumed without comment or complaint.
There was no coffee. It never seemed to last the week. Perhaps it would now Lorna was billet monitor, but there were none of the usual grumbles about that, or alien sausages, fatty bacon, greasy fried potatoes, scrambled eggs made from powder. A billet outing was planned to Travemünde. It was even colder. Joe Stalin’s weather. The Baltic finally freezing over. It was a clear, bright day and Edith wouldn’t have minded going with them, but she had other business.
The German girls made packed lunches: cheese and corned beef sandwiches, cake, flasks of tea. The truck arrived at ten. Edith waved her housemates off, pleading the onset of a migraine, needing a quiet day. Before they left, she made sure that Lorna handed her the house keys. As soon as the truck disappeared, she told the German girls they could go. She wanted the house to herself.
Miss Slater had roared off on the back of her boyfriend Val’s motorbike, in leather helmet, goggles, and flying jacket. Very Amelia Earhart. The Schmidts had disappeared early, off to cousins in the country, accompanied by Frau Kaufmann. A chap came to collect them in a cart with thick rubber-tired wheels made from some cannibalized motor vehicle and pulled by a miserable-looking pony. They took a bulging suitcase. It would come back with entirely different contents. They were not the only ones. Half of Lübeck would be out roaming the country, trading whatever they had for a handful of potatoes. It is what the Germans did on Sunday. They called it hamstering.
Once she was sure that everyone had left, Edith went down to the basement. The house was built on a slope, the front higher than the back. The kitchen window looked out over the garden. A flight of steps led down to the lower basement where the Schmidts lived. Edith flicked though the keys, looking for the one for their door. Every room was supposed to be accessible. The British Billet Monitor was supposed to have keys to every door and cupboard. They were all clearly marked: Kitchen, Lower Basement. That was the one. Except it didn’t fit.
“Botheration!”
None of the other keys fit either. Her plan was about to fail at the first hurdle. She could almost hear Frau Schmidt laughing. Well, she was damned if that was going to stop her. Edith had never mastered lock picking, but she knew someone who probably had, and she would be glad of his company. She didn’t intend to confine her investigations to the house.
She called Jack, put the kettle on, and waited for the familiar rat-a-tat-tat on the door.
“Two sugars, ta. Now, what’s this all about?”
“Down here. Quick.”
Jack followed her to the basement.
He studied the door for a moment. “Her’s changed the lock. Cheeky old bat! Don’t worry, I’ve got just the thing.” He produced a ring of skeleton keys from his inside pocket. “Won’t be a jiffy. There y’are!”
The lock turned at first try.
“Phew!” He followed her in, waving his hand under his nose. “Bit niffy down here!”
The room was hot. The large stove in the corner had been well banked up. It was stuffy and overcrowded, smelling of damp and something else: sweetish and human, perspiration and unwashed clothes. The basement was not meant for human habitation. There was little natural light or ventilation. Edith felt a flicker of pity for the woman exiled from the house upstairs.
“What’re you looking for?” Jack threaded his way through the heavy furnishings and mounds of clothing.
“I’m not sure . . .”
“Know it when you see it?”
“Something like that.”
“She’s got a right hocking shop.” He put a hand on a pile of furs. “Look at this clobber! Clever. You got to hand it to her. Safer here than in the warehouses by the river. Coppers are on to that. A big raid, and the lot’s gone. That’s if the Balts ain’t already filched it. Let’s have a look-see at what she keeps in here.” He used his keys to open a hulking armoire. “Blimey! No wonder she changed the locks. Take a squint at this!”
The portrait of Hitler that had hung upstairs was inside the door, along with Goering, Goebbels, and more of the Führer in different attitudes and poses. Pride of place was given to a smaller photograph of him shaking hands with a younger Stephan in SS black.
“What’s this?” Jack used a small pick to unlock a battered metal trunk. Inside, neatly folded, were a SS uniform and cap, campaign medals, dagger, and Totenkopf ring. Jack moved them carefully. Toward the bottom was a luger.
“Why would they keep all this?” Edith asked.
“Can’t bear to give it up, I s’pose.” Jack sat back on his heels. “But if anyone found the gun, they’d swing. You’ve got ’em both by the short and curlies, I’d reckon.” He put everything back as he’d found it and relocked the chest. “What’s that?”
“Photograph album.” Edith turned the pages. “More Stephan in uniform. With some other woman, not Frau Schmidt. Hitler. Rallies. Marches. There’s a whole lot missing. Pages and pages.” She turned the book for him to see the empty corner mountings, the slightly darker squares on the dark-blue construction paper. “What could be more incriminating than Stephan in full rig?” Jack shrugged. “Do you know anything about SS uniforms? Would it be possible to tell his rank, his unit?”
“I reckon. Don’t know enough about it.” Jack stood, dusting off his hands. “All done? This place is giving me the heebie-jeebies.”
Back up in the kitchen, Edith made tea.
“Now for the garden.”
Jack went to the window. “What’s down there?”
“Not sure.” Edith stood on tiptoes to see past the frozen shrubs and brambles. “Stephan’s the only one who goes down there. That’s what I want to look at next.”
Jack squinted against the glare to a crooked line of steps trodden into the snow. “Bin traipsing there and back a fair bit. A hut, you think?”
“Maybe. To store things, gardening tools, and so on?”
“Gardening in this weather?”
“That’s what I thought. Could be keeping a pig. Wouldn’t put it past them.”
“Get your coat and boots. Let’s take a look. If you’ve got a gun, bring it. Pig might be the two-legged kind.”
Outside, the sun on the snow was blinding, the foliage on the bushes and trees outlined and furred with frost. They stayed on the path, careful to keep to the frozen footsteps.
The hut was fairly substantial. The wood was silvered with age, but it showed signs of being patched here and there with newer pine. Fresh tarpaulin had been tacked to the roof, and broken windows bloc
ked up.
“Give us that gun and wait here.”
Jack approached the door cautiously and went inside, gun gripped in both hands.
“No one home.” He waved her forward.
No tools, wood, or lawnmowers. The hut smelled of tar and stale cigarette smoke. A potbellied stove squatted in the corner, its crooked pipe zigzagging up to a hole in the roof. The sunlight found chinks in the rough planking. There had been an effort to stop up the gaps with cardboard and rags. A kind of cot heaped with blankets stood against the far wall. In the center of the room was an old chair and a rickety table studded with candle stubs. A blackened and battered canister lid spilled ash and butts smoked down to the last quarter inch. Crushed cigarette packets and empty bottles littered the floor. Jack laughed.
“First pig I seen smokes Players and drinks schnapps. Could be friend Stephan comes down here for a drink and a smoke when the old bat throws him out.” He stepped over to the stove. The chimney was still warm. “Or . . .”
“Or could be he’s not using it at all.”
“Great minds.” Jack looked around. “And whoever is might have just gone out for a piss, or to get wood, or summat. Let’s go.”
“Wait. There’s something in there.”
Edith pushed back the little door on the stove. Whoever was using the hut had been burning something. She took out a wad of half-charred photographs.
“Got ’em?”
She nodded, tucking them inside her coat.
Jack stirred up the remaining ashes with the gun barrel. “Make it look like they all burned up. Don’t want them knowing we’ve been poking about.”
They left the cabin cautiously, but there was no sign of anybody as they walked back up the garden.
“Looks like we got away with it.” Jack grinned.
“That we did.” Edith grinned back, feeling slightly giddy with relief and exhilaration.
“Let’s have a look at them snaps,” Jack said when they were safely back in the kitchen.
The prints were poor quality, either badly developed, or overexposed, burned at the sides and brittle from heat. Edith studied them one at a time before placing them on the table in rough sequence. Three men stood in the foreground, comrades posing for the camera. The man in the center was wearing SS field gray, an officer’s cap with eagle and totenkopf insignia, jodhpurs, and boots. He stood square, smirking into the lens, his hand on the butt of a holstered pistol. The other two men wore forage caps, blouson jackets cinched at the waist with thick leather belts. Their hands rested on submachine guns slung across their chests. The faces were slightly blurred, but the SS man was definitely Stephan. The chap on the right was young, good-looking, grinning, arms folded. The one on the left was looking to the side, a bottle dangled from his hand.
The remaining photographs were taken from farther away and a different angle, the focus on something going on behind. Edith leaned closer. The print was bleached, blurred, and grainy. The terrain a pale, almost featureless expanse; undulations broken by clumps of coarse grass. Bleak, cold, it put Edith in mind of a snowy field. In the middle distance ran a crooked crevasse, a wide fissure, the base filled with what looked like lengths of timber, as if a pile of logs had tumbled down there.
“Who’s these jokers with old Stephan?” Jack pointed. “They look pretty pleased with themselves. Celebrating something?” He glanced across the sequence. “Where are they? Why are they posing like that?”
“I’ve got a magnifying glass upstairs,” Edith said. “I’ll fetch it.”
“Not snow,” Jack said after more careful scrutiny. “More like sand. Desert, mebbe? Although those ain’t desert uniforms, and them two ain’t even Nazis. Them’s German weapons, MP40s, but they look like some kind of auxiliaries.”
Edith took the glass. What was going on in the background? Were those little figures standing at the side of the crevasse? She moved the glass back and forth, but the print was too blurred . . .
“It’s impossible to see what’s happening,” she said at last.
“Whatever it is, they don’t want no one knowing. What you going to do?”
“Don’t know yet.” Edith gathered the prints. “Keep them safe. Until I decide.”
“It’s still a lovely day. Shame to waste it. D’you fancy going somewhere?”
Edith glanced out of the window, toward the hut. There was no sign of movement, but she didn’t want to be here alone.
“I’d love to, Jack.”
At Travemünde, the pale sand was crusted and frozen, crunching under foot. They walked along a sea’s edge lacy and brittle with spindrift; farther out arrested waves gleamed gray and green, as though sculpted from travertine. Edith took photos. They’d never believe this at home. It was like Das Eismeer by Caspar David Friedrich. In the Hamburger Kunsthalle, wasn’t it? Was it still there now? Had the museum survived? Was the collection intact?
Jack was staring inland.
“Sand dunes,” he said. “It’s sand dunes in the photographs.”
They walked to the Strandpromenade and bought paper cups of glühwein spiced with clove and cinnamon. There was little or no warmth in the sun. A bitter east wind blew in off the sea.
“Here, put a drop of this in it,” Jack produced a flask. They sat down at one of the rickety tables. Jack lit a cigarette. “Ain’t that your Miss Slater over there?”
She was draping herself over a motorbike while a young man took her photograph. They reversed roles. He posed by the bike, grinning, arms folded.
“Give us your camera a mo’.”
Jack strolled off to take photographs of the frozen sea. At the last moment, he turned, snapped the pair of them.
“Got him!” He handed Edith the camera. “If that ain’t the same bloke as the smiler in that photo, then my name ain’t Jack Hunter.”
18
CCG Billet, Lübeck
10th February 1946
Latvian Supper Dish: Nāc rītā atkal (slightly adapted)
In German, Komm Morgen Wieder, translates as Come Back Tomorrow.
3 eggs (2tbsp water to one of egg powder)
1 pinch salt
4-5oz Flour (for stiff batter)
Half pt milk
3oz diced onion
7oz corned beef (for filling)
Another species of stuffed pancake. The filling is traditionally leftover roast meat, but corned beef makes an acceptable substitute. Simplicity itself to make and an excellent use for the dreaded powdered egg.
Prepare pancake batter. Make up the equivalent of eggs, add to flour, mix in milk and salt. Let stand. Fry the minced meat (or CB) with onion until browned, add bouillon (OXO), add sour cream (if available), if not, a grate or two of cheddar would do.
The house was silent except for the ticking of the hall clock that was screwed to the wall. Probably the reason it was still there. Edith unwound her scarves, hung up her hat and coat, kicked off her boots, put on her “indoor” shoes. It really was like being at school. There was a noise from the basement. The Schmidts back? Hardly. They returned late from country excursions.
“Hello? Anyone there?”
“It’s me, Agnese.” The Latvian girl’s blond head appeared. “Frau Schmidt asked me to come in. Prepare supper.”
Edith went down into the kitchen. The girl looked near to tears.
“Did she say what she wanted prepared?”
The girl shook her head. “I don’t know what to cook.”
“Let’s see.” Edith opened and shut cupboards. It was going to have to be pretty basic. “I know, let’s have something Latvian, shall we?” The girl brightened a little. Everyone liked to cook something from home. “Know any recipes? What would you have on Sunday nights, for example, before . . .”
Before everything. Before your homeland was invaded, first by the Russians, then the Germans, before you had to flee and leave it all behind.
Agnese nodded. She understood “before.”
“At grandparents’ house, we would have N
a-c rı-ta- atkal. In German—Komm Morgen Wieder.”
Come Back Tomorrow. Edith tried not to reflect on the irony.
Agnese explained the dish, and Edith collected ingredients, making substitutions: OXO for bouillon, corned beef for leftover roast, sour cream—optional anyway. The recipe required a lot of eggs for the batter, but the dried variety wasn’t so bad in pancakes.
“We’ll start with the pancakes, shall we? Batter needs to stand.”
Agnese measured flour out in cups. She was missing half her little finger, and the nails on the remaining digits were bitten to the quick. Edith carefully reconstituted the dried eggs. It was tempting to be overgenerous with the powder, but the result would be rubbery pancakes. The same with the dried milk. The secret was to sprinkle the powder a little at a time, whisking all the while.
She kept up a running commentary as a way of gaining Agnese’s trust. She was like some shy, wild creature who could bolt at any second. She said she was twenty but looked quite a bit younger. There was a wary, frightened look to her pale-blue eyes, but as they worked together, she began to relax. Her German was heavily accented, her answers halting in response to Edith’s gentle prompting. She tried not to ask too many questions. It was best just to let Agnese talk. She’d lived in Riga with her parents. Valdis—Molly’s boyfriend—was not her brother. He was her cousin. His parents were dead, killed by the Russians. He’d come to live with her family. Life had been hard, first under the Russians and then the Germans. Which was worse? A shrug. Both the same. Life was hard everywhere. It was war. Her father was not strong. He had a bad heart. Valdis had looked after the family. She didn’t say how.
When the Russians were advancing, they’d had to leave. Why? Another shrug. Wasn’t it obvious? It was cold. So cold. They had got as far as Gdynia, the Germans call it Gotenhafen. They had found a ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff, to take them to Kiel and safety. Edith frowned. The name rang a bell, a feeling the story would not end well. There were only a few places, so they decided that her parents should take priority. The ship was hit by a Russian torpedo. It was winter. Her parents either drowned or died of exposure out among the Baltic ice floes, along with most people on board, nearly ten thousand souls. She and Valdis had gotten passage on another ship bound for Lübeck. So crowded, they’d had to stay on deck. The ice was thick, coating everything. She held up her mutilated little finger. Lost it to frostbite. Somehow, they’d run the gauntlet of Russian mines and submarines. They were fortunate to be here, to have survived.