The Words I Never Wrote

by Jane Thynne

  Fellow travelers. The label that Irene would almost certainly acquire.

  A waitress in black uniform with an apron and white cotton gloves passed with a tray on her way to the kitchen. A tower of liverwurst sandwiches, only partly demolished.

  “Sure you can’t manage any more?” Chuck asked Cordelia. “Shame to let them go to waste.”

  “Wasted?”

  “Rules say, all this food has to be burned.”

  “That’s insane! These people are starving!”

  “American personnel regulations. All leftovers must be destroyed. The Germans need to get used to their rations. Besides, it would be cruel. Their stomachs can’t take it. Here.” He stopped the girl carrying the tray. “Wrap those up and bring them back for the Brits.” He turned to Cordelia, grinning. “Don’t want a pretty girl like you getting any skinnier. Wanna lift home?”

  She did, and as they left she noticed waiters grubbing through the gravel for cigarette stubs, tossed by the partygoers as they climbed into their jeeps.

  * * *

  —

  CORDELIA TOOK THE FOOD to the Villa Weissmuller the next day. German women were allocated rations according to their economic status, and as a Hausfrau, Irene had been given card number five, commonly called the Friedhofskarte or “cemetery card” for its starvation quantities of bread, milk, and sugar. In the kitchen Irene fell ravenously on the sandwiches.

  “Come and see my new painting,” she said.

  Irene was painting obsessively now. It was her chief occupation, after the basic task of staying warm and alive. Canvases were everywhere in the denuded house, stacked on top of each other unframed and their edges fraying, some blank, others painted. Irene’s style had developed from her days at the Slade. It had become starker and more Impressionistic, the brushstrokes impatient and directional, as though she had decided she had no more time to lose. On the kitchen dresser a small still life of overripe fruit, lit by thick golden light, was tilted alongside another view of the lake, dramatically somber beneath menacing, encroaching trees. Next to them tubes of paint, almost empty, were scattered, and brushes soaking in a jar.

  The newest work, propped up to dry in the drawing room, was a portrait of Gloire de Dijon roses in a red vase set on a checked blue cloth. The blaze of golden flowers against the hot red and cool blue seemed to burst from the canvas. Cordelia felt a stab of envy that from the ashes of her life her sister could create something so vital and alive.

  “It’s gorgeous.”

  “Can’t imagine I’ll ever sell any, but they brighten up the place.”

  It was true. Although the room’s former grandeur was badly faded, its rugs stained and torn, the mantelpiece bare of decoration, and most of the furniture burned, the bright oils of Irene’s paintings covered every inch of the peeling walls.

  Cordelia curled her legs beneath her on the sofa. “I thought we could talk some more.”

  When Irene had turned to her on that terrible morning in the interrogation cell, Cordelia assumed her sister would reveal the whole story of her time in Berlin, but instead, she had related only the bare bones of her experience—Ernst’s death, the hiding of an artist called Oskar Blum, his discovery by the Russians. She provided a factual outline of her life, but nothing of how it had felt to undergo that experience. Time and again Cordelia found herself using the journalist’s most hackneyed query—how did it feel?—to flesh out the story. Coaxing her sister like a shy horse, and using every trick in her training to eke out more details. Yet still Irene resisted. Although she was not another Persil White, insisting she knew nothing, she was evasive. She had confided her rape, but the nature of what really moved her, the deep fabric of her existence, remained entirely out of her sister’s reach.

  It was as though she had one last secret to protect.

  The frustration maddened Cordelia. Irene had always been guarded, from earliest childhood, and years of living a double life had ingrained that instinct ever more deeply. But why now, when there was surely no reason anymore for discretion, must the details of her life be dragged from her, as if the story was too entangled and difficult to tell?

  That day, after they had eaten sandwiches and drunk fake coffee, Irene folded her arms across her chest and said, “I’m sorry, Dee, but I’ve decided. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I don’t even want to think about it. I’ve had enough of the past.”

  “But I still have so many questions.”

  “Use your imagination. You’re the one who wants to be a novelist.”

  Cordelia bit her lip. The anger that had flared between them in the interrogation cell was gone, but her frustration at her sister had not dissipated. It felt impossible to penetrate that deep blue, inscrutable stare.

  “I still don’t properly comprehend why you…”

  “Aren’t novelists supposed to understand motivation?”

  “In that case I’d better forget writing novels. Because I can’t begin to understand you.”

  “Did you ever?”

  Irene gazed out at the lake before turning peaceably back to Cordelia, and smiling.

  “So forget novels. How about journalism? You loved that, didn’t you? Have you thought about taking it up again?”

  “Not much call for fashion notes from Berlin right now.”

  “It doesn’t have to be fashion, does it? There must be more than enough going on here to write about.”

  “Journalists need accreditation. Besides, to do the kind of stuff I’d like, you need to be a proper foreign correspondent, and I have no track record.”

  “Isn’t everything different now? The world’s been upended, Dee. I’ve always thought you could be anything you wanted. If you like the idea of being a foreign correspondent, now’s surely the time to reinvent yourself.”

  As she sat there, in Irene’s ravaged drawing room, the prospect struck Cordelia with unexpected force. Reinvent yourself. Not like those wretched people sitting in front of her day after day, rewriting their pasts, but like the ruined cities of Europe, building themselves indomitably up again brick by brick after the devastating blows of war. Like the ordinary citizens of Berlin, adjusting to what the world had dubbed Stunde Null, or Zero Hour, the point at which everything that had gone before was consigned to the past and history was started afresh.

  She couldn’t change the fact that Torin was dead, but surely she could make something out of her own Zero Hour?

  She reached for the plate and almost took another sandwich before staying her hand—there was enough food to last Irene another day at least, and she of all people would need it.

  “What about you?”

  Irene shifted slightly in her chair and rested one hand on her abdomen. She was wearing an ancient purple dress of moiré silk that fell in convenient pleats over her rounding belly, and she looked absurdly glamorous. She had passed the early stage of feeling washed out and sick, and now the bloom of pregnancy warmed her cheeks and conferred an aura of contentment.

  “What with this and my painting, I imagine I’ll have enough to keep me occupied, don’t you?”

  When Cordelia left they embraced, and as they pressed together she felt the child quicken and kick, separated from her only by the tight wall of Irene’s flesh.

  * * *

  —

  IT WAS GETTING DARK by the time Cordelia came out of the S-Bahn. As dusk fell the rubble clearers were replaced by a different type of woman, girls with faded dresses and combs in their hair who perched on stools in the bars around the Kurfürstendamm, arms slung around British soldiers, laughing and sipping beer. Officially, sexual relations with the Allies were prohibited, yet it was hard to begrudge these women’s efforts at happiness, even if the authorities did their best to dampen the mood by draping every bar with lurid posters proclaiming VD LURKS IN THE STREETS! and DON’T TAKE CHANCES WITH PICKUPS!

&n
bsp; With no streetlamps, the roads—or at least the maze of paths between piles of rubble that served as roads—were plunged into darkness. As Cordelia stepped carefully down a gloomy side street in the Bayerisches Viertel, she came across a small girl scrubbing a shirt under a fire hydrant, the washing basket beside her stacked with dirty clothes. At Cordelia’s approach, the child froze like a startled animal.

  “Hello.”

  The girl stayed silent, eyes gleaming in a sharp, feral face.

  A plaintive cry issued from a bundle of rags in the washing basket. Looking down, Cordelia glimpsed a baby, tucked up amid the soiled linen, but as she crouched alongside, the little girl pulled the basket away defensively.

  “Nein! Das ist meine kleine Schwester!”

  Her eyes narrowed in a fierce, five-year-old scowl as Cordelia reached a hand to the baby’s cheek.

  “Wie schön sie ist.”

  The little face that looked up at her broke out in smiles and, ignoring the sour stench, Cordelia lifted the baby up in her arms. As it nestled against her breast, she felt an ache so powerful and unexpected it was almost a blow. What must it be like to grow up in the Zero Hour? What chance would these little girls have, scavenging for scraps and scratching for food in this blackened landscape? People talked about the Zero Hour as a fresh start, but most people were too exhausted and busy with staying alive to bother about new beginnings.

  Suddenly, a pair of boys darted out from behind a pile of rubble and yanked at the girl’s arm.

  “Komm, Frau!”

  Cordelia had heard about this game. The boys were pretend Russians, jumping on girls and trying to tear their clothes off. Here, no children played separated princesses or lost kingdoms or any of the games that had so enchanted her and Irene in their Birnham Park nursery. Here, children played battle and killing and rape.

  The little girl struggled as the boys tried to drag her along the rubble-strewn ground before, giggling, they heeded Cordelia’s shouts and sprinted off.

  Tucking the baby up again, Cordelia dug in her pocket for money, but found nothing more than a Max Factor compact and a packet of Gold Flakes. She held them out anyway. Quick as a fox the little girl snatched and bundled them away, then, scooping up her basket, she darted off into the ruins of a nearby house.

  * * *

  —

  LATER THAT EVENING, BACK in her room, Cordelia pulled out the Underwood and reeled in a carbon and two sheets of paper.

  LIFE IN STUNDE NULL, ZERO HOUR

  A report from Berlin by Cordelia Capel.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  BERLIN, 2016

  “You have to hear this!”

  Juno looked up from her laptop to find Matthias’s normally unruffled composure had evaporated. He was speaking before he had even closed the door.

  “This morning I got a call from the Museum of Jewish History next to the Neue Synagoge. They’re planning to stage an exhibition of artists of the 1930s—Max Liebermann, Lesser Ury, Leonid Pasternak, people like that—and Kristen Schlegel, she’s the curator, was trying to trace a small Liebermann portrait of a couple on the beach that was bought by Ernst Weissmuller. I remember it, as a matter of fact. It used to hang in the drawing room of this house.”

  “And where is it now?”

  “Unfortunately not here. I have asked the agency to see if there’s any way of tracking the owner down. But anyhow, as we were talking, Kristen mentioned that they are also displaying the work of one of Liebermann’s protégés, a painter called Oskar Blum. She was raving about how Blum was on the brink of rediscovery, that he had been an important artist on the cusp of Postimpressionism and Expressionism, his painting was full of bold, energetic movement and so on. So I said we have a portrait by Blum right here, and I think it may be possible for the Synagoge to borrow it.”

  “How fantastic! I’m so glad he’s been properly recognized.”

  “Yes. But that’s not all.” Matthias’s eyes were sparking with enthusiasm. “I had assumed Blum died in the war, but it appears not. According to Kristen, he survived until 1945, when the Russians declared him a Victim of National Socialism and issued him with identity papers. He emigrated to America. New York, actually.”

  Juno gasped. “You mean he’s living in my home city?”

  “Not anymore.”

  Her heart sank. “Of course. He’d be dead by now.”

  “Actually, he left America after German reunification. He came back to Europe. He returned to his roots here, in Berlin. And, Juno—he’s still alive.”

  * * *

  —

  TWICE IN ITS HISTORY the magnificent dome and towers of the Neue Synagoge on Oranienburgerstrasse had been left in ruins. Once in 1938 on the Night of Broken Glass, when storm troopers set fire to Germany’s biggest synagogue and charged a mark for people to trample its Torah in the street. Then again, in the midst of the war, when the hall that held three thousand worshippers was badly bombed, and only its ruined frontage remained. Yet now, the ornate dome was once again laced with gold, the façade of terra cotta and color-glazed bricks immaculately repaired. The synagogue had been reborn as a place of worship and remembrance.

  As Juno passed through the fretted brickwork entrance, into the exhibition room, an explosion of beauty and color greeted her. Glowing portraits and landscapes, vivid swirls of oils and vibrant gouaches. Oranges, greens, violets, yellows, ultramarines, and indigos covered every wall, and in their midst hung the portrait of Irene Weissmuller in her Hilda Romatzki gown, the light glancing off her bare shoulders, delicate as the glint of a butterfly’s wing.

  Alongside the curator stood an elderly man, dark coat buttoned tight, cane in one hand. He turned as Juno entered, rheumy eyes gleaming.

  “So she’s here. The American!”

  “Mr. Blum has been looking forward to meeting you,” said Kristen Schlegel, as Juno stepped forward and held out a hand.

  “Thank you so much for agreeing to see me.”

  Oskar Blum’s skin was concertinaed with creases. The figure that must once have been wiry was now stick thin, barely fleshing out his clothes. A tide was going out in the faded brown eyes, washing all the color and life away, but his grip was firm, and his smile wry, almost boyish.

  “He wants to walk,” the curator cautioned, “but he has a bad leg, so please make sure you stop now and then.”

  “Enough, Fräulein Schlegel. You’ll scare the poor girl away. I can manage. There’s a park at the end of the street. Shall we go, Miss Lambert?”

  Once an epicenter of Jewish community life, the broad street, flanked by lush linden trees, was now a hub of artistic activity. Sidewalk cafés gave way to modish boutiques, showrooms, and Turkish restaurants. Outside one gallery a piece of abstract art stood, an upturned triangle of sheet metal streaked with rust like a sutured wound.

  They progressed at a gentle pace, Oskar leaning heavily on his cane, until they reached the manicured greenery of a small park and a seating area flanked by beds of roses and hydrangeas. Nearing a bench, he sat with a grunt and stared ahead of him.

  “Ask away. Anything. I don’t mind.”

  Juno sat beside him, her thoughts in tumult. So many questions had arisen since Matthias’s announcement that Oskar Blum was alive she barely knew where to start. She wished she had brought a notebook or a tape recorder, even her camera with her, but she was determined to do nothing that might inhibit him. God forbid that age, or failing memory, or fatigue, should cut their interview short.

  “As I explained in my letter, I’m here in Germany because I’m researching a journalist called Cordelia Capel. I wanted to find out more about her sister, Irene. That portrait you made of her is wonderful.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’ve looked at it a lot, yet she still seems enigmatic.”

  “Irene was certainly that.”

  �
��You knew her well, of course.”

  “I’m not sure how well anyone knew Irene. When I painted that picture, in 1937, I’d just met her. It was only right at the end of the war that I came to understand what she was really like.”

  Juno frowned, puzzled. She had assumed that Blum had escaped from Nazi Germany. How else had he survived?

  “Where exactly were you at the end of the war, Herr Blum?”

  “In the Villa Weissmuller. Irene hid me there.”

  “The shelter!” Juno gasped. So this was the person who had occupied that tiny, claustrophobic cell. Who had huddled in that pitch-dark space, entrusting his entire life to Irene’s hands. “I’ve seen it. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to hide there.”

  “It was fine.” He sniffed. “At least, it was fine until that damn SS man came.”

  Shifting his cane, Oskar reached into his pocket. He withdrew a pack of Marlboros and a box of matches.

  “Could you light this bloody thing for me?” His hand was shaking.

  Juno lit the match, shielding the flame with her palm.

  “Want one?”

  She demurred, terrified that any further distraction might cause him to lose his train of thought.

  “His name was Hoffman. Axel Hoffman. He was a Jew hunter. He came to the house because spies had told him Irene might be sheltering an illegal, but once he had met her, he couldn’t stay away. Night after night I listened to them. One evening they even danced, right there in the library. Waltzed, would you believe.” He shook his head with its luxuriant shock of white hair. “To begin with, Irene was just trying to distract him. She talked to him to stop him finding me. It made no difference, of course. The bastard found me in the end.”

  “So he arrested you?”

  “Arrested?” He paused, worrying at the bristles on his chin. “No.”

  His eyes fixed on the street, where a tour guide, ringed by a cluster of American teenagers, had stopped in front of the synagogue and was reincarnating the past with the help of an animated delivery and a black-and-white photograph. The elderly man beside her, however, was not seeing them.