by Judith Kerr
“I’ll ring you after six,” he said. “Look after yourself.”
She waved and watched him drive off.
It was not the first time she had been back to this part of Berlin. Two years before, she had walked here with Richard and Mama. She had pointed out to Richard all the places she remembered, and Mama had explained various changes which had happened since. They had chatted all the way – it had been a lovely day, she remembered – and she had been so happy that Richard and Mama were getting on so well that she had little time for any other emotions. Now, as she stood alone in the gusty wind, it felt quite different.
Konrad had dropped her at the end of the street where she had lived as a child. How ordinary it looked. She had to check the nameplate at the corner to make sure it was the right one.
When she was small, the street had always seemed to her very dark. The pavements were lined with trees planted at short intervals, and when Mama and Papa had told her that they were going to live there instead of their old flat in a perfectly good light street with no trees at all, she had thought, they’re mad, and had wondered dispassionately whatever foolishness they would get up to next. That had been in the summer – she must have been four or five – when the leaves had made a kind of awning right across the road. Now most of the leaves were on the ground, swept into piles in the gutter, and the wind blew through bare branches.
She had expected the house to be quite a long way down, but she reached it almost at once. It was hardly recognisable – she knew it wouldn’t be from her previous visit. Instead of their small family villa, it had been extended into a building containing three expensive looking flats. The gabled roof had been flattened and even the windows looked different.
Only the garden still sloped down to the fence as it had done in the past, and so did the little paved drive where Max had taught her to ride his bicycle. (“Isn’t there an easier way to learn?” she had asked him when, unable to brake or reach the ground with her feet, she had repeatedly crashed into the gate at the bottom. But he had told her there wasn’t, and she had believed him as always.)
Then she noticed that something else was unchanged. The steps leading up to the front door – now the entrance to one of the flats – were exactly as she remembered them. The steepness, the colour of the stone, the slightly crumbly surface of the balustrade, even the rhododendron bush wedged against its side – all this was exactly as it had been more than twenty years before.
She stared at it, remembering how, after school, she had raced up there, pulling at the bell, and, as soon as the door was opened, shouting, “Is Mama home?”
For a moment, as she looked at it, she remembered exactly what it had felt like to do this. It was as though, for a fraction of a second, she had half-seen, half-become the small, fierce, vulnerable person she had once been, with her lace-up boots and socks held up by elastic bands, her fear of volcanoes and of dying in the night, her belief that rust caused blood poisoning, liquorice was made of horses’ blood, and there would never be another war, and her unshakeable conviction that there was no problem in the world that Mama could not easily solve.
The small person did not say, “Is Mama home?” She said, “Ist Mami da?” and did not speak a word of English, and for a moment Anna felt shaken by her sudden emergence.
She walked a few steps along the fence and tried to peer round the side of the house. There had been some currant bushes there once, and beyond them – she thought she could still see the beginning of it – a kind of wooden stairway leading to the terrace outside the dining room.
In the hot weather she, or the small person she had once been, had sat on that terrace to draw. She had had a round tin filled with crayons of different lengths, old pencil shavings and other odds and ends, and when you opened it, these had emitted a particular, delightful smell.
Once, during her religious period, she had decided to sacrifice one of her drawings to God. First she had thought of tearing it up, but then that had seemed a pity – after all, for all she knew, God might not even want it. So she had closed her eyes and thrown it up into the air, saying – in German, of course – “Here you are, God. This is for You.” After allowing plenty of time for God to help himself, if He were so minded, she had opened her eyes again to find the drawing on the floor, and had put it calmly back into her drawing book.
Afterwards – or it might have been some other time altogether – she had walked through the French windows into the dining room, to find Mama standing there in a big white hat. As her eyes adjusted to the indoor darkness and the colours returned to the curtains, the tablecloth and the pictures on the walls, she had thought how beautiful it all was, especially Mama. She had looked at Mama’s face in surprise because she had never thought about her in that way before.
Beyond the terrace, out of sight at the back of the house, was the rest of the garden, probably neatly planted now, but in those days a grassless waste which Mama had sensibly handed over to Max and herself. There they had played football (herself in goal, vague about where the goalposts were supposed to be, uninterested in stopping the ball), they had wrestled and built snowmen and dug holes in the ground, hoping to reach the centre of the earth.
Once in the summer she had sat in the shade of the pear tree with Heimpi and had watched her embroider new eyes on her favourite stuffed Pink Rabbit in place of the glass ones which had fallen out.
When they had fled from the Nazis, Pink Rabbit had been left behind, embroidered eyes and all, with all their other possessions, and so had Heimpi whom they could no longer afford to pay. She wondered what had happened to them both.
The wind sang in the branches above her head and she walked on, past the place where she used to retrieve her tortoise as it tried to escape from the garden, past the place where a man had exposed himself to her on a bicycle (“On a bicycle?” Papa had said in amazement, but Mama had said – she could not remember what Mama had said, but whatever it was, it had made it all right, and she had not been worried about it).
At the corner of the street, where she and Max’s gang had always met to play after school, she stopped in surprise.
“Wo ist denn die Sandkiste?”
She was not sure whether it was she who had said it or the small person in boots who seemed, suddenly, very close. The sandbox, containing municipal sand to be scattered on snowy roads in winter, had been the centre of all their games. It had marked the dividing line between cops and robbers, the starting point of hide-and-seek, the place where the net would have been when they played tennis with a rubber ball and home-made wooden bats. How could anyone have taken it away? She and the small person in boots could not get over it.
But the rowan trees were still there. Vogelbeeren, they were called in German, and once Mama, seeing the red berries ripening, had cried regretfully, “Already.” When Anna had asked her why, Mama had said that it meant the end of summer.
A car passed, trailing petrol fumes, and the street seemed suddenly empty and dull. She walked back slowly towards the main road.
There was the paper shop where she had bought her drawing books and crayons, her exercise books and the special blue paper with which they had to be covered. She had gone inside it with Mama on her previous visit, but it was under different management and no one had remembered her. The greengrocer next door had gone, but the kiosk at the old tram stop was still there and still sold burnt sugared almonds in tiny cardboard boxes, even though there were no more trams, only buses.
Next came the café and, round the corner, the general shop, still two steps down from the pavement, where Heimpi had sometimes sent her on errands. Bitte ein Brot von gestern. Why had Heimpi always insisted on yesterday’s bread? Perhaps because it was easier to cut. The numbers of the trams were 76, 176 and 78. There was something unreliable about the 78, it did not always stop long enough. Once, as it passed him Max had put his gym shoes on the step – Turnschuhe, they were called – and had not got them back for two days.
Hagen Pla
tz. Fontane Strasse. Königsallee.
This was where she had turned off to go to school. She had walked with her best friend Marianne who was older and could draw ears front view. “Quatsch!” she had shouted when they had disagreed, and Marianne had called her ein blödes Schaf, which was a silly sheep.
A flurry of leaves – Herbstblätter – blew along the pavement, and she felt suddenly disorientated. What am I doing here? she thought in German. Was tue ich eigentlich hier? Die Mami wartet doch auf mich. But where was Mama waiting? At home, beyond the door at the top of the worn stone steps, waiting to hear what had happened at school today? Or groaning and struggling under the covers of her hospital bed?
Something seemed about to overwhelm her. The clouds, piled huge and grey in the sky, seemed to press down on her head. (Die Wolken, she thought in slow motion, as in a dream.) The pavement and the leaves rose treacherously under her feet. There was a wall behind her. She leaned against it. Surely I’m never going to faint, she thought. And then, out of the shifting sky, an unmistakable voice addressed her.
“My dear, you look as pale as cheese,” it said, and a face surrounded by frizzy hair blocked out the rest of the world. She recognized the kindness before she remembered the name. Hildy Goldblatt, from the previous night. Of course, she thought, they live near here. A hand supported her arm. Another slipped round her shoulder. Then pavements and trees were swimming past and Hildy’s voice, like God’s, came out of nowhere. “What you need is a cup of tea,” she said. “Not, of course that they can make it properly here.” There was a sudden rush of warmth with the opening of a door, and then Anna found herself settled behind a table in the café with some hot tea before her.
“Now then,” said Hildy, “I hope you’re feeling better.”
She drank the tea and nodded.
Had she once sat at this table, eating cakes with Mama? But the whole place, flooded in yellow neon light, had changed too much for her to remember.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s all been a bit overwhelming.”
“Of course.” Hildy patted her hand. “And worrying about your poor Mama. Mothers worrying about their children, that’s nothing, they’re used to it. But the other way round is always bad.” There was some cake on a plate before her and Anna watched her put some in her mouth. “Are you going to the hospital later?”
“Just for a moment.” She was afraid that Hildy would want to come with her, but Hildy only nodded.
“Good,” she said. “You will have your tea, and perhaps a cake – No? Are you sure? – And I will try not to talk like a chatterbox as Erwin always tells me, and then, when you are feeling better, I will put you in a taxi. All right?”
Anna nodded gratefully.
Behind Hildy, through the café window, she could see the pavement of the Königsallee. She and Max had passed that way each day on their way to school. Funny, she thought, you’d think it would have left some kind of a mark. All those times. On their own… with Mama and Papa… with Heimpi…
The waitress hovered. Hildy filled up her cup. “Ach ja, bitte noch ein Stückchen Kuchen,” and there was another piece of cake, apple this time, and Hildy was eating it.
“I saw your mother only two weeks ago,” said Hildy. “She showed me some pictures of her summer holidays,” and suddenly they were at the seaside, she was quite small and Mama’s face was above her, huge and smiling against the summer sky.
“Mami, Mami, Mami!” she squealed.
There was sand between her toes, and her woollen bathing suit clung to her wet legs and to her sandy body where Mama was holding her.
“Hoch, Mami! Hoch!”
She flew up into the sky. The sea was like a great wall at the end of the beach, and Mama’s face, suddenly beneath her, laughed up from the shining sand.
“She always enjoys everything so much,” said Hildy.
“Yes,” said Anna.
She could still see Mama, the brilliant blue eyes, the open, laughing mouth, and the blazing beach behind her. Like a vision, she thought. And then it faded, and there was Hildy at the other side of the table, looking concerned.
“I don’t want Mama to die,” she said childishly, as though Hildy could arrange it.
“Well, of course you don’t.” Hildy refilled her cup and stirred more sugar into it. “Drink,” she said.
Anna drank.
“I think your mother won’t die,” said Hildy. “After all, however it may seem just now, she still has very much to live for.”
“Do you think so?” The hot, sweet tea had warmed her and she was beginning to feel better.
“Of course. She has two nice children, a grandchild already, perhaps more to come. She has a job and a flat and friends.”
Anna nodded. ‘It’s just – she had a bad time for so many years.”
“Listen!” Hildy peered at her across the tea-cups. “My Erwin worked at Nuremberg. I know what happened to the Jews who stayed behind. They had a bad time.” And as Anna looked at her in surprise, “When you’ve finished your tea, you go to the hospital, and I hope your mother – I hope the pneumonia will be not so bad. And if she can hear you, you tell her it’s time she got better.”
“All right.” For the first time she found herself laughing, because Hildy made it all sound so simple.
“That’s right.” Hildy finished the last crumbs on her plate. “People,” she said, without explaining exactly whom she meant by them, “people shouldn’t give up so easy.”
At the hospital she was received by the nurse who had been on duty that morning. “Your mother is calmer now,” she said in German, and led Anna up the familiar corridors and stairs. For a moment, after her vision of Mama on the beach, it was surprising to see her grey-haired and middle-aged. She was lying quietly under the covers, her breathing almost normal, so that she might have been asleep. Only once in a while her head turned restlessly on the pillow and the untethered hand twitched.
Anna sat down on the bed and looked at her. She’s fifty-six, she thought. Mama’s eyes were tightly closed. There were deep frown lines between them, and two further lines ran to the pulled-down corners of her mouth. The chin had lost some of its firmness, it was pudgy now rather than round. The hair straggled on the pillow. But in the middle of it all was the nose, tiny, snub and incongruously childish, sticking up hopefully from the ageing face.
When I was small, thought Anna, I used to have a nose like that. Everyone had told her that her nose was just like Mama’s. But then, some time during her adolescence, her nose had grown and now – though it certainly wasn’t a Jewish nose, Mama had said – it was straight and of normal length. Somehow Anna always felt that she had grown up past Mama along with her nose. Hers was a more serious nose, an adult nose, a nose with a sense of reality. Anyone with a nose like Mama’s, she thought, was bound to need looking after.
Mama stirred. The head came a little way off the pillow and dropped back again, the closed eyes facing towards her.
“Mama,” said Anna. “Hullo, Mama.”
Something like a sigh escaped from the mouth, and for a moment she imagined that it had been in reply to her voice, but then Mama turned her head the other way and she realized that she had been mistaken.
She put her hand on Mama’s bare shoulder, and Mama must have felt that, for she twitched away very slightly.
“Mama,” she said again.
Mama lay motionless and unresponsive.
She was about to call her again when, deep inside Mama, a sound began to form. It seemed to rise up slowly through her chest and her throat and finally emerged roughly and indistinctly from her half-open lips.
“Ich will” said mama. “Ich will.”
She knew at once what it was that Mama wanted to do. Mama wanted to die.
“Du darfst nicht!” she shouted. She would not allow it. She was so determined not to allow it that it took her a moment to realize that Mama had actually spoken. She stared down at her, amazed and with a kind of anger. Mama tried to turn h
er head away, and the strange sound rose up in her again.
“Ich will,” she said.
“Nein!”
Why should she remember, now of all times, about the pencil sharpener that Mama had stolen from Harrods? It was a double one in a little pig-skin case, and mama had given it to her for her fourteenth or fifteenth birthday. She had known at once, of course, that Mama could not possibly have paid for it. “You might have been caught,” she had cried. “They might have sent for the police.” But Mama had said, “I just wanted you to have it.”
How could anyone be so hopelessly, so helplessly wrong-headed, stealing pencil sharpeners and now wanting to die?
“Mama, we need you!” (Was it remotely true? It didn’t seem to matter.) “You must not die! Mama!” Her eyes and cheeks were wet and she thought, bloody Dr Kildare. “Du darfst nicht sterben! Ich will es nicht! Du musst zurück kommen!”
Nothing. The face twitched a little, that was all.
“Mami!” she shouted. “Mami! Mami! Mami!”
Then Mama made a little sound in her throat. It was absurd to imagine that there could be any expression in the toneless voice that came from inside her, but to Anna it sounded matter of fact, like someone deciding to get on with a job that needed to be done.
“Ja, gut,” said Mama.
Then she sighed and turned her face away.
She left the landing in a state of confused elation. It was all right. Mama was going to live. Your little brother will play the violin again, she thought, and felt surprised again at the corniness of it all.
“I spoke to my mother and she answered me,” she told the nurse. “She’s going to get better.”
The nurse pursed her lips and talked about the Herr Doktor’s opinion, but Anna did not care. She knew she was right.
Even Konrad was cautious.
“It’s obviously an improvement,” he said on the telephone. “I expect we’ll know more tomorrow.” He had heard from Hildy Goldblatt about her moment of faintness in the Königsallee and was anxious to know if she were all right. “I’ll come and pick you up for supper,” he said, but she did not want to see him and told him that she was too tired.