In the yard, a door bangs and Ewa’s heart jumps. Could that be the new lodger? She was not telling her father the entire truth about the officers. Most of them, if not polite, at least keep their hands to themselves. But a few do not. An aloof officer in the oak-room would be a godsend. She peers through the net curtain into the yard. But it is just Scharführer Feldman pulling his braces over his vest as he comes out of the guest house’s toilet block.
‘I know, Papa. I shall go and clear the breakfast things. They have all finished now, I think.’
And when Ewa gets to the dining room with her tray, she sees that the officers have indeed all left, apart from one. His back is to her. It is the same grey-green jacket that they all wear but she knows instantly that she has not seen this one before.
She has learnt to speak first. ‘Heil Hitler!’
He turns. His hair, dark blond, is slicked back as though wet through. He smiles and Ewa sees that he is quite extraordinarily good-looking.
‘Good morning, Fräulein Hartman.’ He stubs out his cigarette and stands, giving only a quick nod of the head. ‘SS-Obersturmführer Beck. Delighted to meet you.’
It is good of him to spare her the full Heil Hitler rigmarole.
‘Thank you, Obersturmführer. You are our new guest, I take it?’
‘I am.’
‘So sorry I have kept you waiting. You should have rung the bell for me or for my father.’
‘The front door was open and I did not like to trouble you in the kitchen.’
His smile is friendly and he does not seem to have the striding confidence that oozes from most of the others. Ewa always has to fight her instinct to be cool and sullen towards the occupiers because she knows that friendliness is the insurgent’s best disguise. And she tries not to actually like any of them. But she can see that with this one that could be hard.
‘Thank you, Obersturmführer, you are very kind. Would you like breakfast now? I have not quite finished preparing your room.’
‘Just a coffee, if you please.’
‘Certainly. I have made a fresh pot.’
In fact, the dregs from the coffee pot have been stewing on the stove for a good while but Ewa pours them into one of the best Rosenthal cups. She blinks as she remembers Beck greeting her by her name. How did he know that she wasn’t just a girl who had come in to help with the breakfasts? And the way he had slipped straight into the dining room from the street seemed, if not fishy, then at least a little surprising. But if he has been sent here with a purpose, to watch her, he would surely have been more careful with his instant greeting. Perhaps he simply recognised her from descriptions given him by the other lodgers.
Ewa puts the cup with its pale pink roses and muddy coffee on the tablecloth in front of Beck. He has unbuttoned his jacket. The beige shirt beneath seems to cling to his skin as if damp. Ewa tries not to look as she clears the other tables. Some of the checked napkins are already tightly rolled inside their individual rings and stacked beneath the mirror on the side-board. Other linen squares have been left crumpled on the tables with a high-handed assumption that Ewa will know to which officer’s ring each belongs. She certainly knows the rudest officers by the way that they leave their napkins.
Obersturmführer Beck sips from the porcelain cup. ‘Thank you for this, Fräulein. Such an improvement on barracks’ coffee.’
Ewa keeps a clear smile even though she knows he is lying. ‘You have been staying at the Castle?’
‘Yes. And I’m delighted that my request to move here has been approved.’
‘You requested us specially?’
‘Oh yes, everyone says that this is the most superior guest house in the city.’
Now he is definitely lying but Ewa’s smile broadens. ‘You flatter us, Obersturmführer.’
‘So please forgive me for arriving at breakfast-time, but after rising early for my swim, I could not quite face crossing town again to go back to the bunk-room.’
Ewa stacks the remaining rolled napkins on the side-board. A swimmer. That would account for his wet hair, and perhaps, his muscled shoulders.
‘You like to swim, Obersturmführer?’
‘Indeed.’
‘At the new pool?’
‘You know it? An excellent amenity for the city. Have you swum there yourself?’
Her smile does not waver as she shakes her head. ‘Not yet, but I hear it is very fine.’
In fact, the thought of swimming at the indoor pool turns her stomach. For although the pool is new, the building that houses it is not. Who is to say that St Adalbert’s might not be next to go the same way? A church could be turned into a gymnasium as easily as the city’s grand synagogue has become an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
Beck clinks cup to saucer. ‘It is such a modern sports facility. The water is kept at a perfect temperature for athletic swimming but the air is always warm. If you wish, I could arrange for you to swim there privately, after public hours.’
His finger strokes the delicate handle of the cup as he looks at her and warmth rises in Ewa’s neck. For once, the heat does not come from the effort of suppressing her resentment to the occupiers.
‘That would be delightful, Obersturmführer, as soon as I have some time to spare. Do you swim often?’
‘Every day, if I can. The pool is so convenient for the library.’
‘The library?’
‘Indeed. That is where I am working.’ He pauses and runs a hand over his wet hair, smiling at her confusion. He taps a yellow packet on the tablecloth. ‘Do you mind?’
Ewa indicates for him to go ahead and smoke. Then he holds the cigarette pack out and her heart skips. Mokri Extra Strength – the same type that Stefan always had in his pocket.
Beck gestures to the chair beside him at the table. ‘Do you have time now, for a smoke?’
‘All right. Thank you.’ She makes herself smile as she goes forward to take a cigarette. Why not be friendly to this new one? At least, at first.
Beck clicks his lighter and holds the tall flame to her face.
Ewa sucks on the smoke and hitches up her skirt a little as she sits. ‘So, you are a scholar, Obersturmführer?’
He sits back and rests an elbow on the table, a curl of smoke rising from the cigarette in his hand.
‘Ah, before the war that was my dream. But at least my linguistics work now has a practical application.’
Ewa blows out a plume of nicotine fumes and tries not to seem over-interested. ‘How so?’
‘I have been placed in charge of the re-naming project.’
She smiles and puts her head to one side. ‘Changing the street names, do you mean?’
‘Not just streets: I have been charged with finding the proper German name for every place on the map of the whole of the Warthe region, even down to the lowliest hamlets and narrowest alleyways.’
‘Goodness! That sounds like a big job.’
‘It is. I could spend every night in the library and still not get through all of the research that should be done.’
The cigarette hovers close to Ewa’s lips. She fixes a steady gaze on his light grey eyes. ‘It can’t be easy to find the old German name for every place.’
‘As long as I have sufficient time with the antique maps and land documents I shall do it. Although not all of the old names are appropriate.’
‘Really?’
‘The street that leads to the new swimming pool, for example.’
Zydowka Street, he means.
Ewa taps the cigarette against the ash tray. ‘I am too young to remember what it was called when our city was part of Prussia.’
‘Indeed! But the name was the same. Jüden Strasse. So we couldn’t have that name back, could we?’
‘No. I should think not!’
She laughs and tries not to sound awkward.
He smiles. ‘I think that the new name, Becken Strasse, suggests the proximity of an engineered water feature. A pure coincidence that my own name will form part of the new street sign.’
He winks but seems to poke fun at himself and Ewa laughs without having to fake it.
‘What a fascinating and important job!’
He pulls out his chair at an angle from the table and stretches out his legs, one ankle crossed over the other.
‘Oh, it can sometimes be tedious. I have only been working here for a month but already there are disagreements between the army and the Post Office about maps and addresses.’
Ewa takes a long drag on her cigarette and tries to place his origins from his voice but his German is accentless. She realises, as she listens to him talk, how gentle and melodious the language can sound.
‘Where are you from, Obersturmführer?’
‘Where do you think?’
‘Somewhere with a very pure dialect.’ She shrugs. ‘Hanover, perhaps?’
‘Good try.’ He nods, grinning. ‘Do you want to guess again?’
‘Erm… Dortmund?’
‘Let us not end the game too quickly. Why not have one guess on each day that I am here in your lovely guest house? But I doubt that you will get it right.’
Ewa’s foot bounces as she crosses her legs. ‘I might surprise you!’
With a jolt, she realises that her guard has fallen. For a few moments she has been talking to Beck without any thought to his uniform, or to the threat he might pose.
‘Well, Obersturmführer, I look forward to my daily quiz, and to providing you with Hartman hospitality.’
She stands and goes to the side-board for the spare napkin rings from the drawer then places them on the table in front of Beck. Golden hairs bristle on the back of his neck above his jacket’s velvety green collar.
‘Would you like to choose one? We launder the napkins weekly so each officer keeps his own in a personal ring.’
There are three distinctive designs; one made from horn and carved with stags’ heads, one painted with mountain flowers, the other an unadorned pewter band. Beck surprises her by picking the plainest.
‘Good choice, Obersturmführer.’
‘Plain as a wedding band.’
He smiles and holds Ewa’s gaze as she rolls a pink linen napkin. Only the pat of her heartbeat tells her that she is holding her breath.
As she turns away to replace the unused rings in the drawer, Ewa composes her face. On a few occasions, she has had to make an effort of will not to take a fancy to one of the officers billeted in the guest house. Her friendly, sometimes flirty, act must not become real feeling or her cover could be compromised entirely. Besides, although she may not dislike every officer who stays under her roof, she detests what they stand for.
But her instincts have never before been tested quite like this. Because at this moment, Ewa can think of nothing she would like better than to be inside the former synagogue on Becken Strasse watching Obersturmführer Beck climb, dripping, out of the pool.
She sets her face into a tight smile before she turns. ‘Could I get you another coffee whilst I prepare your room?’
‘No, thank you. And please do not go to any great trouble.’
‘Oh, it is no trouble, just a little dusting and fresh sheets.’
She nods, as brisk and airy as she can manage then leaves the room.
But as she creaks up the stairs, a dull, familiar wash of guilt tugs at each step. She passes the door to the oak-bedroom and continues to the next flight of stairs up to her low-ceilinged bedroom amongst the eaves. She locks the door behind her then sinks down on to the rug.
It is not fair. Why can she not admire a good-looking man without the pleasant sensation of lust being doused by guilt? Saints in heaven, it has been three years since she last heard from Stefan. Three of her best years, wasted. It would be better if she knew for sure that he is definitely dead. Because, as it is, the whole of the rest of her life might have to be lived in the shadow of a Stefan-shaped question mark.
Is the rest of her youth to slip by without any sort of love? She cannot save herself for a ghost. If things had been the other way around, Stefan would have found himself another lover by now. For all Ewa knows, he maybe already has. She sits unmoving on the floor, willing herself to imagine Stefan with an imaginary girl in another country. But tears prickle her sinuses. She shakes her head. Three years is long enough, damn it. Somehow, she must rid him from her heart.
Ewa sniffs and then pushes herself softly on to the glossy, uneven floorboards. With her face pressed against the wardrobe, she reaches both hands beneath it until she can feel the two clips. Bracing her arms to catch the weight, she swivels the clips and lowers out a square tray a little bigger than a shoe box. Soundlessly, she carries the secret drawer to her bed and places it on the eiderdown.
The few bits of old underwear on the top would fool no one but she cannot bring herself to leave the contents entirely undisguised. She lifts the noiseless typewriter on to the bed along with the sheaf of closely typed papers – numbers, words, dots and dashes that she has copied from the agents’ scribbled notes and blurry photographs without a clear understanding of what any of it means. The sheaf is growing. She must let the liaison girl know that she needs to make a drop.
Beneath the typing is a little pile of opened brown envelopes. The sight of his handwriting always makes her catch her breath, as if Stefan himself has been hiding beneath the wardrobe. She does not really need to conceal his letters so closely. Even in the Reich, it is not a crime to have had a fiancé who served in the armed forces of the extinct Republic of Poland. It is just that until now, Ewa has not been able to bear the thought of anyone else reading Stefan’s words of love.
But the words are fading. And although Ewa can recall her emotions from the time when the letters arrived, she no longer feels them very much. She pulls the letter from the bottom of the pile. It is the one that came just before the first Christmas of the war when she had not seen nor heard from Stefan since the sultry summer morning on which he had boarded a Warsaw train crammed with troops in brown uniforms. Their last kiss had been so fierce that it left a bruise inside her lip.
And so, the first sight of an envelope with her name written in his hand threw Ewa into a swirl of emotions. As she tore it open, joy washed through her. Stefan was alive, and entirely himself; his words proved that. ‘I have to admit,’ he wrote, ‘that the Karas crashed on our very first sortie against the Soviets, and it was brought down embarrassingly, not by an enemy bullet but by a slight mechanical malfunction. Then, I and my co-pilot walked in so completely the wrong direction that we soon bumped into a charming Red Army captain who seemed rather embarrassed to lock us up.’ Even now, Ewa hears his voice in the words and cannot help but smile.
Stefan made the prisoner of war camp sound bearable, impressive, even. The ancient monastery citadel where he was kept is so vivid in Ewa’s mind that she sometimes forgets that she has never actually seen the towering perimeter walls or the bunks piled six high inside the magnificent domed church. Stefan told her that he slept in the best spot at the very top of the bunk-stack with a clear view of the coloured frescoes of the saints. This position also spared him, as he says: ‘…the unpleasantness endured by those on the lower bunks who are dampened by a constant trickle down the walls of moisture from the breath of hundreds of men (as well as the moisture created by those men unwilling to climb down to the bucket during the night!).’
Perhaps Stefan knew that after her initial relief, Ewa would be terrified about what lay in store for him during the Russian winter and he was trying to reassure her. But the details he related had the ring of truth – that his breakfast porridge stayed warm in a wooden bowl, that the prisoners were provided with chess pieces and harmonicas, that there was a cinema hut in the camp and entertainment from the wireles
s: ‘…we have constant enjoyment of Radio Moscow played through loudspeakers in every part of the walled compound, even the latrines.’ The censor must not have noticed Stefan’s sarcasm. Even the address provided for her reply, ‘Gorki Rest Home, Moscow, PO Box 12’, helped to soothe Ewa’s anxiety. She imagined the prisoners receiving therapeutic massages from stout Russians in white coats.
Ewa’s eyes move, warily, down the page to the most affecting part of that first letter. ‘My darling Ewa… your photograph stays inside the flap of my jerkin pressed against my heart… and when I remember the curve of your shoulder or the smell of your hair I find myself in a daze…’ She finds, annoyingly, that her nose still prickles as she reads.
But what follows is, most definitely, beginning to annoy her. How could Stefan have been naïve enough, in December 1939, to imagine that he would soon be released? His letters from Russia continued through that first winter, one every few weeks or so, until the spring of 1940. And then nothing. But the words in Ewa’s hands are adamant, not only will Stefan soon be free, but he and Ewa will soon be married. ‘The vision of our spring wedding keeps me warm,’ he writes. ‘Do not scoff, Ewa, for I see you clearly sometimes, standing in front of a photographer, radiant in the sunshine with a garland of cherry blossom in your hair.’
Dry-eyed, Ewa folds the letter back into the box. How wrong he was. This is the fourth spring since he wrote those words, and still the only ring on Ewa’s finger is the paste stone that Stefan had bought hastily on Zydowka Street when his deployment orders arrived.
With each passing season, Stefan’s once endearing faith in the future reads more like arrogance. Yes, arrogant. That’s what Stefan Bergel was. And he is no more. Ewa grips the silky eiderdown with both fists as irritation with her absent lover sharpens. And this time, her vexation is almost fierce enough to set her free.
White Waltham, England
Sunday 11 April
Cold air gusts in with each slam of the door but the corridor still reeks of overcooked bacon. Vee leans a shoulder to the wall as Marjorie Hyde-Barker and Freddie Dunne pass by, chits in hand and voices raised: What’s yours?… Hurricane to Hullavington… Jammy!
When We Fall Page 3