Maybe I should start hiding this diary.
Several pages further she wrote:
Three days ago Charles and I were married. Finally! Different offices kept demanding different bits of paper from us. We had to prove that none of our great-grandparents, grandparents, or parents were Jewish (or Gypsy or some other things, like West Indian)! Luckily we managed to find baptismal or marriage records for everybody, but what about when the records are lost or were destroyed? The ceremony was odd, too. It was in English, but all the paperwork was in German. All that funny Gothic script. I have no idea what I signed—I’m not sure the clerk even knew. Well, it only took this long to get married because they had such a backlog handling all the new regulations. I guess we could have gone to the church to have a religious ceremony, but neither of us saw the point. My mother was disappointed, but I told her we were lucky to get the official clearance when we did and that we had better not complicate matters by trying to get a church service.
We’ve moved in with Charles’s mother—her flat is a bit larger and in better shape than Mum’s. Charles’s brother still lives here so it is a bit crowded, but he got orders yesterday to report for conscription on the Continent, so we’ll have a bit more space soon. There’s no indication of how long he’ll be gone, but I hope we have a place of our own before he comes back. God, we need space! Had to climb over a family sleeping in our doorway today—gave me the creeps! I wish the government would take care of these people and put them in a camp or something. I heard they put the Gypsies in special camps so that they’re not annoying people anymore. They ought to do that with all the homeless. It feels so unsafe having so many people just hanging around—they look jealous and angry. They scare me, I wish they’d go away.
Promised myself I’d learn German—there are so many signs and papers and things that are in that language, it seems the only sensible thing to do. There are classes being held at the school a few blocks away. They’re free and I heard that if you test well at the end, you get extra foodration coupons! I’d use mine to get some chocolate—I’m absolutely dying for some.
Peter smiled at that last line. His mother always had a passion for chocolate. He remembered his dad once surprising her with an entire box of chocolates for their anniversary. She was ecstatic and inundated them all with kisses.
Charles got a job at a government office! It’s really low level but there are possibilities! His knowledge of German really helped and he has been studying and taking courses, so he’s even better at it now. Oh this is great news—he’ll have priority for housing and we’ll get a better ration book. If things go well, we might even get permission to have a child soon. Lots of people are going ahead and having kids without permission, but I think that’s a mistake. They’re realizing it as they get dumped off the housing lists and find their rations cut. Sometimes the kids are even taken into custody if the parents are deemed to be so irresponsible that they are unfit parents. That seems a bit harsh. I know it’s irresponsible to flout the regulations, but still. Anyway, there are so many orphans that it hardly makes sense to make more. They’ve pretty much given up on trying to track the relatives of the foundlings—especially in the neighborhood of the nuclear zones. I guess they’ve just started giving the kids the names of cities. More and more keep turning up—you’d think with the cessation of hostilities that things would have settled down! Someone at work (did I mention I found a job in a packing plant!) mentioned that parents are abducted if they are suspected of political crimes and that’s where the orphans keep coming from, but I don’t believe that. I bet that their parents were just irresponsible and can’t afford to feed them so they just dump the baby near an orphanage. The cold-blooded monsters!
Or maybe their parents get arrested and they go foraging for garbage, Peter thought angrily. How could she have been so naive? Or was it simply that she was full of endless hope, always waiting for the brave new world that would never materialize? Just a kid weary of war and desperate to believe that the end of fighting was the same as peace. A page later she wrote:
Maggie said she was held up at knifepoint yesterday. There really should be something done about all the criminals. All they took was her groceries. She went to the police, but they said they could not issue her new ration coupons—so she and the kids will just have to do without! It’s so unfair. That horrible criminal! Absolutely hateful! He should be hanged!!!
The words grew unfocused. Peter blinked hard to try to bring them back, but instead all he could see were a series of faces, angry, afraid, contemptuous: theexpressions of his victims as he held them up at knifepoint. He had never hurt anyone, but in his desperation he had earned their hatred. Groceries were part of what he took during those dangerous days immediately after Allison’s murder. Money and jewelry, too. Anything that might buy him an identity. What would you have thought? he wondered to his mother’s ghost. After spending seven months scrabbling for crusts of sawdust-laden bread, would she have forgiven him his crimes against his own people?
His vision finally cleared and he read further:
Alice didn’t show up for work. I checked at her home after work and her mother said she went out last night and didn’t come back. She’s the one who told me about the political abductions. Nacht und Nebel, she said. Night and fog, I guess. ( I really must study more.) Isn’t that odd? She must have said it all to make her disappearance more dramatic. She’s probably run off to Scotland to get married and didn’t have the right paperwork or something. Still, I feel worried. I wish things would settle down. It has been so many years, yet still there are all the wartime regulations and so many soldiers and military police in the street. I know it’s difficult bringing order here when so many people are resisting, but it seems that nearly everything is illegal.
There were some arrests down the block. I don’t know what for, but I peeked through the curtains and it looked like they were just kids. This martial law is wearing on my nerves. I wonder when things will change for the better. I wonder when the rest of the POWs will be released. You can tell it worries Charles’s mother, she doesn’t say anything, but she’s always rereading his father’s old letters. They started requiring all the letters to be in German, I guess it’s easier for the censors that way, but it’s really hard on everyone. People are always running around looking for someone to translate the letter they’ve gotten from their husband or son or whomever. I’ve been told that if the censors don’t like the quality of the German used, they just throw away the letter. I guess they don’t know how important these letters are to the people back home. Charles has asked me again about asking my mother if I have any German blood. Maybe I should look into it.
Several pages later the mood changed:
Great news! We have a flat of our own. Charles said he knew his hard work and loyalty would pay off. We went to look at it this evening; it’s a mess and the building next to it has crumbled so there will be squatters everywhere, but it’s legal and it’s ours! A neighbor there said a young couple used to live in the flat but they were arrested for something. Poor sods, but their bad luck is our good fortune! Oh, a place to ourselves, this will make it easier to get a birth permit. I want a son—a boy who will grow up just like his dad.
Well, you got one, Peter thought grimly; that would be Erich, the bringer of your destruction. Peter felt thoroughly depressed; all the hopes he had held about his parents’ intentions were evaporating before his eyes. He closed the book and rested his eyes for a moment. They should leave, it was dangerous staying there so long. He picked up the third book and skipped to the middle. The entries were now in German and his heart sank, but then he read:
I don’t know what to do about Niklaus. I’m worried he won’t know what to do if something happens. I wish I could tell him, but Charles insists I don’t—at least not yet. Says he’s still too young. What am I to do?
Peter sat up and stared at the pages as if not believing the words written there. Tell him what?
“We sho
uld go,” Barbara said. “There are patrols in the streets and it’s getting late.”
“Yes, of course,” he replied quickly, scanning the rest of the page for further clues. There was nothing else though. It was pure folly, but he decided to take the books with him. He couldn’t let his past go now that he finally had it in his hands.
Barbara watched nervously as he tucked the diaries into his coat. “Do you think that’s wise?”
“No. But I can’t just leave them here. Do you mind?”
“No, of course not.” She smiled.“My father told me that at some points in our history all my people have had is our past. I wouldn’t want to deny you yours.”
They left then, the books carefully tucked into his clothes. They walked the route home in silence, Peter scanning for trouble, Barbara praying that they would not be searched. Their papers were checked twice, but the officers were polite in both cases and they had no trouble.
“Are you going to spend the night reading those?” Barbara asked, though it wasn’t really a question. She knew the answer well enough.
He smiled and nodded.
“You’ll be wanting these.” She went over to the shelf and retrieved his reading glasses. She brought them over and handed them to him.
“Thanks,” he replied sheepishly. They really did help, but he often forgot to use them. Barbara seemed to think it was a forgetfulness fueled by vanity.
“Would you like some tea?” she asked.
“I’d love some.” He settled onto the couch and opened the first book. He decided that he would start at the beginning and read through without skipping ahead. That way he would get a clear picture of what was going on as his mother wrote each entry, and if there were disappointments ahead, it would delay them. He didn’t want to jump ahead and find out that what his father believed he was too young to know was that he was embezzling or going to be promoted or had found some German relative so they could all be Volksdeutsch.
His fear was tangible. With her words his mother could destroy a lifetime of hopes. It was stupid of course; nothing would change what had happened and who he was, but still, stupid or not, he so wanted to have something in his past to be proud of—something other than greedy, collaborating parents. Something other than disappointment, betrayal, and abandonment.
The words swam in front of him. He could just throw the books away, burn them before it was too late. Then he would never know and he could maintain his hope. But he knew he would not do that: worse than any knowledge was the uncertainty. If they had believed everything they had foisted on him, well, he’d have to live with it. It would be only a minor perturbation on all the horrors that he had to live with. It was not like Joanna’s murder or Allison’s, or what had been done to him. It was just a point of view two people long ago had had—a point of view that had become irrelevant with their deaths.
He laughed aloud. No matter how rationally he debated with himself, he knew the truth deep down. It was important. They were his parents and it was his childhood. He could live with what he found out, he could hate or love them, forgive them or not, but he could not deny that it was important—as stupid as that might be. Odd, he thought, how things so long ago seem so much more significant. For all the terror of his later experiences, he had faced them as a man, a man with well-formed opinions of himself and the world. They could scar him, but they did not form him, not the way his experiences as a child had.
He heard the kettle whistle, and with renewed courage he began reading.
28
THE HOURS PASSED. Barbara refilled his cup, supplied him with a sandwich, turned on the lights as the room grew unbearably dim, but otherwise she stayed out of the way. He read as if possessed, and she watched as the shadows passed across his face. Eventually, she told him good-night, kissed him on the forehead, and went to bed. She awoke several times and realized he was still reading, but then she settled down and slept well.
Entry by entry Peter uncovered the thoughts of a girl and then a woman as she grew into maturity in a strange, new world. Satisfied with the birth of one son, she detailed the boy’s developments, the first words and phrases, his first attempts at drawings. There were notes on his size and weight as he grew, and she had scraps of paper inserted in the pages—crayon drawings Erich had made, little notes he had written. Despite the expense, there were photographs as well. Charles and Catherine proudly holding their young son, Erich. They looked happy and complete. A perfect little family coping with the brave new world around them.
Catherine seemed truly happy in her role as wife and mother, working her job, taking care of her husband and son. Great long happy passages were written, devoid of all comment on what was happening in the world around her, and great long equally happy silences occurred between the entries. They moved to a better flat, the one Peter would call home; Charles’s career progressed and he moved forward in the Party. Charles eventually found a job for his wife in a government office as a file clerk, and she wrote happily of the chance at last to get off her feet and work in a clean building, but eventually the peace was shattered as Catherine wrote:
Pregnant again. Haven’t done the paperwork in advance. All a bit of a surprise. Charles is furious with me, but as I pointed out, I didn’t manage it alone. He yelled about space and cost and his career. We’ve been screaming at each other for days. He told me I should get an abortion, and he arranged an appointment for me in a good clinic. I’m not so sure I want to do that, though. I’ll have to do some thinking in the next couple of days.
Peter looked at the date. For a moment he could not move, then he stood, went over to the bottle of gin, and poured himself a glass. He held the glass up and looked at the light through the clear fluid. Well, he thought, what would he have advised? Given the crowding, the poverty, and the government, his father’s actions were perfectly rational. Peter thought of his boyhood friends. Nearly every one had been an only child. Those that weren’t had seen their families dragged down into poverty by the extra, often-illegal burden, and the parents of those children had seemed particularly ill-tempered toward them. And there were all his friends later in life: the women with their countless abortions, the itinerant husbands and boyfriends who made it clear another child was not on the agenda. How many times had he accompanied a female friend to the clinic because the man responsible couldn’t be bothered or hadn’t even been informed?
No, there was nothing unusual in his father’s demands. What was unusual was that Peter was there to read the words years later. What, he wondered, had provoked his mother to keep the baby? He drank the gin down, poured himself another glass, and went back to the diary. The issue was not raised again until several weeks later when Catherine wrote:
I didn’t go to the appointment. I really want a little girl, and this is my chance to have one. Charles was furious, but after a while, he calmed down and said he’d see what he could arrange to expedite the paperwork so we won’t be blacklisted or lose our housing or Erich’s placement in school. He got the permit yesterday, and everything is sorted out now. It will be great having another baby. I’m going to name her Anna, after my grandmother. I think it’s a beautiful name. Charles says I should thinkabout picking out a boy’s name, just in case, but I’m sure it will be a girl. I so want a daughter and I want Erich to have a sister. He’s such a wonderful boy! Yesterday, I was feeling ill and he went and got me a glass of water all on his own! He’s so thoughtful. I’m so proud of him.
This was followed by an unending stream of anticipatory entries:
Got some baby clothes from my cousin Sandra. Pretty little dresses and some ribbons and even a lovely little hat! It’s going to be so wonderful when my daughter is born. I can already imagine her with her blue eyes and blond hair and delicate features. She’ll have a big brother to look out for her and we’ll be the perfect family, just like in the posters!
Peter sputtered his disdain at the reference to those grotesque posters of hardworking, brawny men, voluptuous but demure moth
ers, and their two happy children, always an elder boy and a younger girl. Nobody ever achieved the ideal: the Germans had as many children as the mother could tolerate, doubtless inspired by different posters, and the English rarely bothered to produce more than one offspring, inspired, for their part, by overcrowding and despair. The background was always incongruous as well: bountiful farmland with German-style farmhouses and villages as inspiration for the city dwellers living in their concrete wastelands. Maybe only in the villages were the posters full of gleaming cities and the wonders of modern technology.
He read on through the pages as Catherine chose a middle name for her daughter and even started eyeing toddlers who might one day be suitable husband material. The words were unrecognizable as the thoughts of the woman he had known. It was as though she were living in some dreamworld, brainwashed by propaganda and her own desire for peace and normalcy. Every now and then she expressed a worry that the child in her womb “felt like a boy,” but she dismissed these notions as superstitious nonsense just as readily as she embraced any omens that the baby was a girl.
Eventually, a note of trouble entered their lives as Catherine’s pregnancy became obvious.
Last week the big boss came through our office. He stopped to talk to one of the managers, and during that time I got up to file some papers. He stopped dead in his conversation and just stared at me. Then he asked the manager if I was pregnant. The manager sort of shrugged and said that he guessed so. Then the big boss asked if I was married. The manager said again that he thought so. “Fire her,” the big boss said. And just like that I was fired. He didn’t say one word to me, like I was too dumb to understand or like it was beneath his dignity to address me directly. It was so humiliating! I had to clean out my desk then and there. I guess they had apolicy against married women that I didn’t know about and which everyone else ignored.
The Children's War Page 133