Tadek doubted that he would but made his way up the stairs and into the sanctuary of a white-marble hall, feeling himself to be a veritable intruder. A chorus of voices resonated along the walls, different American accents mixing together into their usual loud, cheerful banter. Morris headed straight in that direction and Tadek had nothing else to do but follow him. He still threw cautious glances around him. He still couldn’t shake off the feeling of being constantly watched, of being in constant danger. The fear in him still transcended all logic and even in the presence of allied troops, he couldn’t rid himself of it.
“Nice going, starting the lunch without your CO.” Morris stopped suddenly and Tadek nearly bumped into his wide back.
The clattering of the spoons stopped at once. Legs of several chairs scraped along the hardwood floor at the same time. Cautiously, Tadek peered into a spacious dining room, in the center of which a long table stood, which could easily seat forty people – according to Tadek’s quick calculations.
Several voices broke the silence at once and once again, Tadek couldn’t help but marvel at the more-than-lax discipline, for which the SS loved mocking American troops to no end.
“We thought you would return in the evening only, sir…”
“We assumed they’d feed you at the school…”
“You’re back earlier than we expected…”
“We’ll fetch you something from the kitchen, right this instant—”
“I’ll fetch it myself.” Morris waved at his men to be seated, turned to take his leave but then suddenly turned on his heel and quickly counted the men present. “Why are you all here? Who’s watching the girl?”
“Frau Hanke is with her in the kitchen.”
“Frau Hanke is their former employee!” Morris retorted back, clearly annoyed.
“Well, she ain’t gonna run, even if the maid helps her,” one of the Americans drawled, in a broad accent. “I mean, where to? There are Reds all over the city. Hardly she’ll prefer their company to ours, no matter what she says.”
“Why take chances?” Morris was already heading to the door at the other end of the room. In front of it, he suddenly stopped as if remembering something and pointed at Tadek. “Tadeusz – my men. Men, this is Tadeusz. He’ll be living with us now. He’ll be helping with Neumann.”
Curious glances quickly turned into compliant nods. It seemed the OSS agents held their commander in high esteem if only his word, without any explanations, was enough to satisfy them.
In the kitchen, at the small island which was ordinarily reserved for the additional cook to prepare the food whenever a big dinner was being given, a young girl sat with a steaming plate in front of her, her back unnaturally straight. She ignored both men entirely and only when Morris stopped next to her and bowed his head theatrically – “How do you do today, Miss Neumann?” – did she deign to throw him an ice-laced glare.
“I’m doing just fine, thank you for asking. How do you do, Mr. Morris? A fine day outside, is it not?”
Tadek couldn’t help but note her cut-glass, refined British accent. He wondered if some impoverished English aristocrat taught her how to speak so well, on Neumann’s orders.
“Indeed, it is, Miss Neumann.” Morris cocked his head to one side; it appeared to Tadek that he was surprised to get a reply at all.
“It is unfortunate that I can’t enjoy it because you lot lock me in here, like some rat in a cellar.”
Morris laughed, as though such a response was something more like it.
“We have discussed your privileges already, Miss Neumann. You tell us what we want to know – we let you outside, with an escort of course. We’ll allow you back into the library, into the dining room and we’ll even allow you to resume your studies when the time comes. Until then, I’m afraid, you’ll have to make do with being confined to your bedroom.”
“And what am I supposed to do there without books or even a notepad to write or draw anything? Bore myself into consumption?”
“How you choose to entertain yourself, Miss Neumann is not my problem,” Morris countered calmly before turning his back to the girl altogether. “What’s for lunch, Frau Hanke?” he asked the severe-looking woman in her late forties, this time in German.
Much like her young mistress, the housekeeper didn’t even look at the American, choosing to stir some brew in a tremendous aluminum pot. “Cabbage soup. Spam and mashed potatoes for the main course. Ersatz coffee and apple strudel for dessert.”
“Spam?”
“Do you have chickens for me to cook?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then Spam it is.”
The logic was irrefutable. Morris turned to Tadek; the latter saw the American’s barely concealed grin and caught himself smiling too. One couldn’t successfully argue with it, American secret service or not.
“Then fix us two plates, if you please, Frau Hanke.”
“You’re late for lunch, so you’ll have to wait for me to finish with this first. Then I’ll fix your lunch, separately. I can’t just drop everything to serve you two.”
“By all means, take your time.” Morris raised both hands in the air in mock surrender.
The housekeeper still wasn’t satisfied. “This is not America. We don’t eat here just when the mood takes us. There are certain times for taking food and that is how it’s going to be in this house, while I’m in charge of it.”
“You’ve made your point, Greta. Drop it already.”
Tadek didn’t expect such a severe, commanding tone from the Neumann girl. Even more surprising, he found, the effect it had produced. The housekeeper bowed her head humbly and apologized at once, her arrogant attitude gone as though by magic.
“Tough luck you weren’t born a boy, Miss Neumann,” Morris remarked with a grin. “You would have made a fine officer.”
“Tough luck indeed,” she conceded easily. “I would have joined my brothers on the battlefield and in death, along with the other fallen heroes.”
“Would you really rather be dead, Miss Neumann?”
“Than being locked up here with you? Yes.”
“Why didn’t you do away with yourself then, like your mother? She left you a capsule, with cyanide, from what I understand.”
“It’s cowardly.”
“And running away with a fake passport and abandoning one’s only surviving child is not?”
Morris’s words must have struck a nerve. The girl’s blue eyes shone with hatred Tadek never thought possible to exist in someone so young. However, she was a Neumann, her father’s daughter after all and Morris had told Tadek far too much about the man himself, for Tadek to have any sort of illusions concerning this entire family. They were Nazis through and through. There wasn’t an ounce of remorse they would show his kind and therefore, he shouldn’t feel any to her either, according to the same Morris.
“He had to do what he thought to be best. Running with me would have raised far too many suspicions. Escaping alone, without burdening himself with caring for me, is much more sensible. It was a sacrifice my father had to make and I understand it. He has a lot of work to do. He needs to organize the new movement along with the others and then they will return and obliterate you all. Our revenge will be such that people of the entire world won’t forget it for centuries to come. The Führer may be dead but the Third Reich is not. It’s alive in our hearts and while they’re beating, we will fight for our great cause.”
“Impressive. One of Goebbels’s speeches that you learned by heart?”
The girl turned her proud head away from him, once again concentrating all her attention on her soup. Tadek almost jumped when she suddenly barked out, “who’s the bum you dragged into my house?” She meant him, no doubt.
“That’s Tadeusz. Your new tenant.”
“I don’t remember placing an advertisement for a room for rent.”
“Tadek, this is Gruppenführer Neumann’s daughter, Gerlinde.”
Gerlinde ignored Morris’s
attempt at the introduction. “What is he, Polish?”
“You can talk to him directly, Miss Neumann. He understands both English and German.”
Gerlinde just glared at Tadek, measuring him icily from head to toe. Tadek pulled on the sleeve of his shirt, given to him by the Russians in exchange for his uniform and service. He was dressed alright considering; the Soviets had liberated enough goods from the Berliners and were more than generous while distributing them among each other. Even his hair wasn’t shaven but recently washed and neatly parted on one side. Yet, under Gerlinde’s disdainful glare he once again felt himself something less than a human. The SS men regarded them the same way in the camp, with the mocking half-a-sneer sitting on their faces, much like the one that this pretty, blonde girl had on her face now.
“I am Polish, yes,” he managed to utter after all, hating the tremor in his voice. He was older than her, so much stronger; he fought on the frontline and killed without any lingering remorse… Was he really afraid of this almost-child’s reaction now, just because she was an SS General’s daughter? Yes, he was. Just like they all in the Sonderkommando were afraid of one very vulnerable SS man Voss who even slept in his crematorium quarters not too far from them and didn’t bother to lock the door for the night. They held some power over them, the real Nazis, not that pitiful and reluctant Wehrmacht lot. Even this little Nazi still did.
“Where will you be taking your lunch?”
Tadek was almost grateful for Frau Hanke’s gruff voice and for Morris’s reply, “in the dining room,” for he swore he couldn’t stand to spend one more minute in Gerlinde Neumann’s company.
3
The monotone ticking of the clock – the only sound she could hear in her bedroom on the third floor – had long transformed into a torture of its own. Gerlinde stared at it with hatred, considering throwing the clock out of the window. She had no sentimental attachment to it of any sort. Her mother had given it to her on her twelfth birthday, as always, completely oblivious to her daughter’s tastes and inclinations. It was some pastoral-themed atrocity, cumbersome and ridiculous with those traditionally-dressed boys and girls dancing around it, their little, ugly faces frozen into permanent masks of utterly unnatural joy. Dolls and everything doll-related was all that Gerlinde remembered ever getting from her mother, no matter the occasion. First, they were to play with, later – to practice for the future. The fact that Gerlinde could have had some other ambition than being a mother didn’t seem to interest anyone at all. She was a girl, after all, Mathilde sighed each time an occasion presented itself, which meant almost daily. She was meant to have future soldiers for the Reich. Otherwise, she was useless.
Mathilde Neumann never concealed her disappointment at bearing a daughter for her husband, instead of a son. As a child, Gerlinde suffered terribly from such outright maternal neglect but later learned how to be indifferent to it. When the Ivans were still standing on the Oder, Gerlinde began to entertain the idea of her mother’s death. Horrible as it sounds, she was, for some reason, certain that Mathilde Neumann wouldn’t survive the war. Gerlinde pictured her buried under the rubble or shot by a stray bullet but at the same time laughed secretly at such implausible scenarios. Unlike her fearless daughter, Mathilde Neumann positively refused to leave the house ever since her husband had left the city. She died like a coward too, from a cyanide capsule crushed between her teeth.
Having discovered the body, Gerlinde stood over it for a long time, hoping to squeeze at least an ounce of sorrow out of herself. Instead, all she felt was exhaustion after a sixteen-hour shift at the Charité Hospital and a desire to close her eyes at least for a few hours before a new shift would begin. And so, she buried Frau Neumann with her own two hands and went to take a quick nap. Frau Hanke, who had returned from one newly pillaged store or the other with stolen goods and woke her up, froze in stunned silence after Gerlinde had announced the news. Gerlinde gave her a moment to regain her senses and then calmly informed her that she would like to take her supper in the dining room at seven, as usual.
With a sigh, Gerlinde let herself fall back onto the bedcovers to stare at the ceiling until the damned clock struck eleven and the damned Amis would show up to take her downstairs for yet another interrogation. Why they even bothered, she had not the faintest idea. She was not going to start talking and besides, even if she wanted to, she had absolutely nothing of value to tell them. That leader of theirs, Morris (the only decent fellow among the lot, if she were entirely honest with herself) had taken it into his head that she knew of her father’s whereabouts when this was very much not the case.
In fact, when Gruppenführer Neumann wanted to tell her where exactly he was heading, she stopped him at once and, in her rational manner, explained that it was safer for her not to have such dangerous information, for the SMERSH agents were infamous for their third-degree interrogation techniques and even though she was undoubtedly very strong, she didn’t wish to run the chance of accidentally blurting something out under torture. The tears shone in Gruppenführer Neumann’s eyes. Dressed in civilian clothes, he cupped his daughter’s cheek for the last time, kissed her on her forehead with infinite tenderness and promised her that he’d be back, that he’d definitely be back for her as soon as it was safe, or that he’d send one of his loyal men but they would get her out of here eventually…
Flipping onto her stomach, Gerlinde clenched her jaw with stubborn determination and swallowed back tears. Her nimble fingers searched under the mattress until they caught the handle of her father’s SS sword that he had left to her for safeguarding – her, his daughter, and not her brother Götz who was still alive back then and still fighting somewhere near Berlin, outliving their eldest sibling Georg only by a few months. She clasped the cool metal firmly in her small fist. Just like she managed to protect it from the Amis, who “liberated” just about anything for souvenirs, she would protect its owner, with her own life. She would!
The Americans locked themselves up in Gruppenführer Neumann’s study to discuss their secret affairs behind closed doors. Left to his own devices, Tadek wandered around the house, peering into rooms but not quite entering yet. His hands were also held firmly in his pockets. He didn’t touch the heavy velvet curtains held by ornate tassels and neither did he approach the black, grand-piano which stood, seductive and beckoning, in the corner of what the English would call a drawing-room. It was in front of that piano that he stood the longest, caressing the onyx perfection with his gaze full of longing. How marvelous it would be to open its lid and touch the keys ever so gently once again, to let music soak him through like that rain outside, to surrender himself to its healing power…
Tadek had ogled it ravenously ever since his arrival here; wandered around its great, polished-to-mirror-perfection body, winding tighter and tighter circles until he closed onto it and finally gathered enough resolve to caress the lid with the tips of his fingers. It was thrilling and liberating and almost sinfully good, lifting the lid as though pulling the dress off a beautiful woman. His fingers hovered with uncertainty above the keys. Inside his chest, his heart was pounding with such force, he could hear his own blood beating in his ears.
“Don’t you dare touch it!”
He swung round at the shout and pressed himself into the piano – sheer camp habit, pressing oneself into just about anything at such German screams. From behind his back, half-a-scream, half-a-moan of protest of the keys. Before him, Gerlinde Neumann, Gruppenführer Neumann’s daughter, wrathful and full of cold fury. A Wagner’s Valkyrie, no less, ready to strike the pitiful human down.
Tadek forced himself to steady the breath that had caught in his throat and to step away from the piano.
He was a free man now.
He had nothing to fear from this child.
Much too late. She didn’t buy the act; he could tell by the mocking expression of her piercing, blue eyes.
“I know how to play it, if that’s what—”
“I don’t care one
way or the other.” In a few steps, she crossed the room and slammed the lid of the piano with force. Once again, Tadek jumped. Once again, she regarded him scornfully. She despised weakness, that much was obvious. “It’s my father’s piano. It gets violated enough by those Amis who play their jazz on it but I won’t have you pawing at it, on top of everything else.”
She stood so close to him he could smell the faint scent of soap radiating from her simple white blouse. Frau Hanke did laundry twice a week and dried the clothes – her own, her young mistress’s, and the Americans’ – on several long clotheslines stretched in-between two cherry trees in the orchard. Not once had he seen Gerlinde help her.
Tadek tried holding her gaze but couldn’t and lowered his eyes to her breast pocket instead. In it, two distinct holes were still visible – most certainly from the badge which she wasn’t allowed to wear any longer.
He could have told her to push off and play anyway, just to spite her.
He could have physically pushed her; could have slapped her hard across her arrogant, noble face like he dreamed he would so many times before, in the camp, looking away from his superiors’ faces. Their gazes, he also couldn’t hold. The war had long ended but the invisible barrier, just like that invisible badge of hers, was still in place. And so, Tadek did what he knew how to do best – he lowered his head and apologized, loathing his own weakness and cursing her inwardly but apologized nevertheless.
“It’s a German piano.” She stepped even closer. “German music is meant to be played on it. Keep your hands away from it.” Her voice was no more than a snake’s poisonous hissing now. “And if I see you near it ever again, I’ll come to your room and chop your hands off with a butcher knife. See how fast I do it and see how the Amis won’t even punish me for it. There are far too many of you wandering around. There’s only one me.”
The Road to Liberation: Trials and Triumphs of WWII Page 17