***
It must have been mid-afternoon, for the shadow of the Bvlgaris' tree invaded our back yard, forcing me to keep moving my chair every few minutes. Pimmichen tottered out of the house, her fingers set about her mouth in that pensive way that meant her teeth were newly set in and precarious. A soldier was following her. I couldn't make out a word he was saying — no wonder: he was speaking French. Gesticulating broadly and prissily with cigarette in hand, the way the French do, he looked ludicrous, and with reason — God knows why but he had on an American uniform, and, what was more, one twice his size. The cuffs hid his hands, the seams of the armpits came down to his elbows, and his trouser bottoms had been rolled up thickly.
My grandmother conversed through ever-pensive fingers set like a goatee, she repeating, 'You promise to be kind to him? Vous promettez d'être gentil? Vous promettez?' and he, 'Oui, ça va, ça va,' the irritation in his voice accumulating. She said I had to go with him, it was a normal procedure for everyone my age.
The soldier led me to a French base where many French soldiers and officers were wearing American uniforms. From what I learned, the Americans had donated uniforms to the French army, but as there was a difference in size between your average American and your average Frenchman, the French weren't looking too smart for all the American generosity. If that wasn't enough to confuse me, I sat there wondering why the French had given their French uniforms away to all the black people who were present — to me, Moroccans were black. I assumed it was out of decency, because they didn't want them to remain naked, as they had probably found them in Africa. Only later I learned that Morocco was a French colony and its citizens were thus part of the French army. The Moroccan troops, sent to the front lines, weren't victims of shortages as far as uniforms were concerned. With all those who fell under fire in the front line, one could even consider uniforms a surplus.
I couldn't understand much outside the odd phrases I'd picked up from Pimmichen, who liked to show off her knowledge of French. I listened to the Moroccans speaking Arabic, found the intonations harsh and barbaric. To my relief, I wasn't the only Austrian; far from it — a few hundred were waiting before me. It would've been a Babel Tower if not for the Alsatians, who spoke German and French and were there to translate. Still, they weren't numerous and the interrogations, forms — and smokers — unfortunately were.
It was here I learned the details of Adolf Hitler's death, which was probably old news, but I'd closed myself off to information concerning events far and near. I was in a state of shock. I couldn't bring myself to believe such a supreme figure had behaved in such an un ideal way. If that wasn't enough for one day, when my turn came to deal with the formalities I found out about the contradicting reports concerning my father. Some witnesses had reported he'd escaped from Mauthausen, others that two men had escaped but my father had been caught, and yet another that two men had made an escape attempt for which my father had been accused of masterminding the plan. Officially, my father was neither dead nor alive. He was missing.
Before I was allowed to leave, I was given a chapter to read out of an American book. Hitler had changed the foreign language to be studied in Austrian schools from French to English, so I could handle a basic level — I am, you are, oh my, it is raining cats and dogs — but not more. Neither could anyone else. We were all given the same book,
which proved inefficient, despite the American goodwill in meeting the printing costs. I remember it was called Handbook for Military Government in Austria. With pick and axe, Nazi emblems were hacked from buildings and sculptures across the city. Civic employees were being fired, from police officers to the mayor. The roles had reversed; now it was the members of the Gestapo who were being hunted down. Hermann Goering, who'd spoken on the wireless, and others like him were arrested and brought to trial, as was Baldur von Schirach, Governor of Vienna and leader of our Hitler Youth, now declared a criminal organisation.
Despite these goings on, the French put up signs everywhere with the words Pays ami, which meant our country was their friend. It was their policy to dissociate Germany and Austria, weaken any chance of a recombined force. Having 'liberated us' from the Germans, the occupiers were now 'protecting us' from them. Charles de Gaulle defined his country's intellectual mission as the three Ds: disintoxication, dénazification, désannexion1.
I was made to go to the American section, along with others like me who'd belonged to the Hitler Youth. After a march, the American soldiers forced us to line up at a train track. I thought they were going to send us off to prison and was in a state of panic, as under no circumstances could I abandon Elsa and Pimmichen. Every time I tried to distance myself, an American soldier moved his gun in such a way as to indicate I'd better move back.
A train crawled up painstakingly on its stomach, bringing with it a stench to empty ours. My memory may have distorted some of what I'm about to say, because as I close my eyes I have doubts as to whether it was exactly what I saw when the box cars were opened one by one, or the essence of what I saw, or only a fraction of what I was unable to forget.
From the bottom to top, bodies like skeletons to which only the skin and eyes had been added were stacked on top of one another. It was a glimpse of hell, an orgy of corpses. Limbs entangled indifferently with other limbs, heads thrown forward and back, genitals long expired in the aftermath; here and there a child could be made out, the shrunken fruit of a numb ecstasy. I was caught in a nightmare — the only way out was to wake up.
I blinked at my familiar bedroom, saw each concrete object as it had always been. The trouble was, I hadn't been sleeping when the nightmare occurred, so by willing myself to wake up, I had put myself to sleep in my woken state, fabricating a daydream that I would never be able to separate from life.
xii
Pimmichen pulled me along by my belt to my mother's desk, implying that she was in possession of some of the answers we needed concerning my father. She sat down resolutely, opened the drawer containing an elephant tusk Pimbo had brought back from the Congo way back when — or just a part of one, actually, the length of a good scimitar. I supposed she was rubbing it to procrastinate, and that the notice or whatever she'd come for was underneath. The longer she took, the more my legs grew weak and I knew the news must be bad. Then she dimmed the light and set the tusk upon the desk with a sigh. Shutting her eyes to concentrate (I assumed) on contending with the bitter facts, she all of a sudden, out of the blue, put the question (to God knows who or what) in a loud, trembling voice: 'Is Wilhelm Betzler still among us?'
My stupefaction was absolute. 'Pimmi! For heaven's sake!'
'Shh!' She rotated the tusk several times before bringing it to a halt, opened her eyes to examine its curve, which 'smiled at her' apparently, meaning the answer was yes.
My reaction failed to check her and she continued in the same vein. 'Is he well?'
I watched her fingers turn it round and round, feeling which end was which. She was unaware that it was pushing my mother's Bible away with each successive turn.
I mocked her without restraint. 'Keep on turning! The poor old thing is frowning . . . Oh, what a sourpuss!'
'You're acting like a heathen! Hush up.'
'You think you're being Christian to consult the overgrowth of a dead elephant's tooth?'
'I'm asking God, Johannes. And God will answer me. This is just a tool — it could have been a staff, a snake. Now you just witness what truth we are given.'
She cleared her throat to start again. 'Will he be home soon?'
I saw the Bible balancing precariously on the edge of the desk. Before I could do anything it fell with a bang, making Pimmichen jolt so that she scratched the back of her hand against the tip of the tusk. Blood trickled down her wrinkled skin and continued its course across the smooth ivory.
'The Lord never lies. Blood has been shed,' she declared in a monotonous, dismal voice.
'Yes, yours!' I retorted, rolling my eyes as I went to get some disinfectant.
In the minute it took for me to get back she was making a mess with her bleeding hand, trying to light candles in front of my father's picture, one taken in a photographer's studio when he was my age and had whiskers in the mode of Kaiser Franz-Josef. The haze of artificial light made his traits softer than I'd known them to be. His eyes were fixed on some point in mid-air, probably the little wooden birdie photographers used to wave about on a stick in the early days of photography. She bid me pray with her until the last flame 'drowned in the tears of its own doing'. In doing so, she said we'd be helping my father out of purgatory, where she knew he was trapped. I didn't make an issue of it. I was free to say my own prayers in my mind. The last flame was subdued at dawn, but not without having given its murderous tears a good fight.
Our change of circumstances moved me to set down new rules for Elsa. I told her the guest room was now hers to use — the bed, desk, books. She could make herself at home. We'd have a code. When it was me coming up, I'd whistle. If she heard anyone besides me she had to get back to her old place without making a sound. I'd give her drills to see if she could do it fast enough from any point in the room, which wasn't big, especially with the sloped walls — four strides got you from one to the other. The blind was to be kept lowered at all times. She was forbidden to look out the window. Whenever I wasn't with her, I'd lock her door. This would give her more time in case . . . Did she understand?
'Not all.'
'What?'
'It's just that . . . No, I don't know.'
'Come on.'
'Only, you see . . .'
'Spit it out.'
She crossed her legs one way, then the other, unable to find the right position on the edge of the bed. 'You never say anything to me. If I had your father to talk to, he'd clear up so many of my confusions. Why isn't he home if the war really is over?'
Caught off guard, I paced back and forth to buy time. Then, without knowing why or even having intended to, I uttered, to my own dismay, 'He's dead.'
'Dead?' Her hands cupped her nose, tears welled in her eyes. 'Ach, Du Lieber Gott — because of me? That night?'
'One thing led to another, and then . . .' I stammered into silence, my lie actually inciting me to feel that what I had put forward was true.
'Because of me, you have no more family.'
'I still have Pimmichen, don't I? And I . . .' I ventured timidly, 'have . . . you . . .'
She hung her head in shame. I didn't know whether her eventual sobs were for me or for herself for she made no attempt to make a kind gesture or even look at me, just sat there with her chin sunk in her knees, her arms hugging her legs, in her own small world. To me what was happening was true. I mean, I was witnessing exactly how she really would've reacted, had it been true.
'The war, Johannes,' she said. 'You never told me anything . . .'
'What's there to know? We won.'
'We?'
'The Russian, Brit, even the mighty Yankee military forces are kaput. Our land extends from Russia's ex-territory down to North Africa.'
She lifted her face to behold mine fiercely. 'You told me the Americans were only minimally involved.'
I was taken aback by my blunder. I did what I could to convert my nervousness into indignation. 'They were till the end. Japan bombed Pearl Harbor early on, but it took them a long time to send a fleet over. We invented a bomb so powerful, dropped from above it could cause waves high enough to overturn every ship within a circumference of a hundred kilometres. They stood no chance.'
'How . . . that's terrible! So they got the Wunderwaffe first.'
'I'm sorry you feel that way. Maybe you would've preferred it if we lost? You wouldn't have minded if they killed my grandmother and me? Flattened this whole damn house? As long as you saved your own selfish little skin — that's all that counts, isn't it?'
'I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way.'
'Anything else you care to know?'
She took time before meekly asking, 'And the Jews?'
By the Jews, I was convinced she meant only Nathan. Jealousy shot through my veins.
'They've all been sent away.'
'Where?'
'To Madagascar.' This was actually what I'd heard years back at survival camp; it was the rumour that had gone around.
She shook her head. 'Come on, Johannes.'
'It's true.'
'Every single one?'
'Besides you.'
'To bask happily in the sun?'
'I suppose. I don't know what people in Madagascar do with their days.'
'They've been sent to Siberia, in the freezing cold. Who else would go there but forced labour? Coal, minerals, isn't that it?'
'I told you, Madagascar, and I won't tell you again. If you don't believe what I say, don't ask!'
She was ungrateful, self-centred, and I hated her utterly, yet I wished she'd say something to help banish the unhappiness I was feeling. I wanted nothing more than to love her — a simple gesture was all it would take. But instead of coming to me for solace she stepped past me to press herself against the books on the shelf. That was the last straw, I was gone.
Five minutes later, I couldn't stand it. I threw open the door and, imitating her voice, whined, 'Thank you, Johannes!' She was curled up in my grandfather's armchair, but not reading, as I'd half-suspected, or she would've had a piece of my mind. She made an effort to overcome her blank stare and answer, more sincerely than I was expecting, 'Thank you, Johannes.'
For a while I was afraid I'd given Elsa too much liberty. Surely she'd be tempted to peek out, just to catch a quick sight of the neighbourhood, but enough for a neighbour to catch a quick sight of her? I had this crazy idea of her not being able to contain herself; had visions of her running about the house wildly, shrieking with laughter, throwing up her arms. Pimmichen would think there was a madwoman in the house. I think Elsa had no idea how jittery I was. I took Pimmichen's sleeping pills to calm me down in plain day.
What a jolt I experienced the first time I found an empty room. I thought she'd jumped out the window. Of all places, I found her in the last place I would've looked (and did) — back behind the wall. She did this to me more than once; each time she scared me to death. She claimed she felt better there, safer, that she felt lost in too much empty space. 'What good does it do me to be out,' she asked, 'when the whole time I concentrate on being ready to jump back in?'
It took months before she'd venture out all day, but to sleep she still preferred to close herself in. Well after she'd taken to sleeping in the twin bed, I'd catch her taking naps on the floor, one arm in the nook. As much as she'd hated it, it must have been like an old friend.
It would be wrong to say I was hurting Elsa when, in my mind, I was protecting her. First of all, I didn't imagine her parents were alive, or Nathan at that, or someone would have come around to claim her. She had no one else but me. The images of what could've happened to her, had she not been closed up, never left me. Besides, it seemed to me a reasonable, balanced, fair decision. She had no parents and, until proven otherwise, neither had I, but we both had each other. I felt the responsibility we'd taken for her gave me some right to continue having that responsibility. Besides, I loved her more than anyone else ever would, so that was that.
***
I forgot to mention my being notified that I had to go back to school. Not only me, but everyone my age and others older than us. It was decided that none of us had received a proper education. We were considered ignorant; it was humiliating. This would mean a good part of the week away from home, and just the idea of stepping outdoors was repellent to me, as was contact with outsiders.
I remember exaggerating my grandmother's ill-health to a social worker in the hope that it would exempt me. I explained the life-and-death necessity of my staying by her bedside. The woman suggested having a nurse watch over her. I said something to the effect that she had a difficult personality, would never tolerate a stranger in her house. The woman was right to be con
fused. Just seconds before I'd described her as an unconscious nonagenarian. I added, 'I mean, in those rare moments she comes to.'
'That's not a problem,' she chuckled. 'We're used to it. Give me an extra key — I can have someone check on her from time to time.'
'It's really not necessary to involve someone outside the family. She's not that sick.' I contradicted every point I'd just made. She told me she had two nurses available. I babbled a series of incoherent excuses, stepping out backwards. A smile spread over her face. 'The first day's always the worst. You'll make friends!'
The middle school was a good fifty-minute walk from home, near St Aegid Church. I knew my way around Vienna eyes closed but played it safe with Pimmichen's old map, for familiar buildings were no longer standing, street names were long gone. I was trying to work out where I was, my forearm fighting to keep the page open in the wind (and to keep the page sticking to the binding), when a group of dolled-up Frenchwomen walked by, stopping their chatter to look me over. I read it in their eyes — 'vanquished', 'conquered one', 'one of the idiots who followed the idiot'. Outside, I was all these things. I had no walls, no roof to defend me.
I passed Schönbrunn Palace, where hundreds of craters scarred the grounds. Ugly as it was, nature was to provide her remedy as grass sprouted without prejudice, making it look like a golf course within three weeks. An old man with a beard as long as an aviator's scarf was preaching, since no damage had been done to the 1400 rooms. One hole only had been blown in the roof, had brought destruction to a ceiling fresco entitled what? Glorification of War! A sign from God that the end of the world was near! We must all stop what we were doing and fall to the ground to repent! Stephansdom, dedicated centuries ago to St Stephan, the patron saint of Vienna, had been hit. Another sign! The old man was getting a few British listeners, none of whom was actually falling to the ground. The palace had become the British headquarters after being taken away from the Russians, who would have liked to keep it as theirs, figuratively and literally. I had to give the British credit: they were restoring whatever was entrusted to them without making a show of it — brass, banners and all. Unlike the Russians, who made a hullabaloo each time a slab of cement dried or the rail of a bridge was screwed back on.
Caging Skies Page 14