Kingdom of Twilight

by Steven Uhly

  Arriving at the house, Frau Kramer unlocked the door, climbed the stairs with heavy legs, but instead of stopping at the third floor to enter their apartment, she decided to carry on up to the fourth. There were three apartments on each floor and the doors were arranged in a semicircle around the spiral staircase. Herr Weiss lived on the right-hand side. Frau Kramer pressed the bell and waited.

  Herr Weiss took a while to open the door. He was short, not yet thirty, his hips were broader than his shoulders, thick spectacles were perched on his nose and he had thinning brown hair. He was wearing a gray cardigan and gray cloth trousers, both of which looked old and tatty, and had felt slippers on his feet. The smell of tobacco wafted into the stairwell. He smiled uncertainly.

  “We need to talk about Lisa,” Frau Kramer said.

  They talked about Lisa. They sat in Herr Weiss’s small living room, which had exactly the same dimensions as Frau Kramer’s. Reluctantly she registered that it was perfectly clean and tidy. The furniture was cheap and tasteless, garish pictures of hunting scenes hung on the walls, Heirlooms from my parents, Herr Weiss said, making it sound like an apology. An old piano stood against one wall, Frau Kramer already knew this, she heard him play sometimes. In places the black paint had chipped, and there were spots where the wood had discolored. The lid was open and a yellowed booklet rested on the music stand.

  Frau Kramer forbade Herr Weiss from telling Lisa stories about the war.

  “The war is over,” she said, giving him a stern look.

  Herr Weiss looked back at her timidly and moved his head slowly from side to side, but did not reply.

  “You told her,” Frau Kramer continued, “that in the war you collected the body parts of dead soldiers. Under covering fire! Herr Weiss!”

  Herr Weiss nodded and blinked at her.

  “Do you think that’s appropriate for a seven-year-old?”

  “Well,” Herr Weiss said. “Well,” he repeated, raising his shoulders. He muttered to himself, then said, “She loves listening to me.” There was a definite supplication in his voice. Frau Kramer shook her head. She tried to ignore the sympathy for this eccentric man brewing inside her.

  “Herr Weiss,” she said, “we all had a difficult time . . .” All of a sudden she could no longer speak. A lump had formed in her throat, her eyes became hot, she battled, but she had already lost.

  “There, there,” Herr Weiss said, clumsily rubbing Frau Kramer’s arm. She had thrust her face in her hands and was now sobbing in front of him. He raised an index finger and said quietly, “I know, I’ll make us some tea! That’s a good idea, I’ll put the water on right away!” He fled to the kitchen and pottered in there until the tea was ready.

  In the meantime Frau Kramer had pulled herself together. She dabbed her cheeks with a handkerchief that she had fished from her handbag. When Herr Weiss returned with a bulbous white teapot and two very delicate-looking porcelain cups she sat up straight and gave him a weak smile.

  “You’re a nice man,” she said.

  Herr Weiss rocked his head from side to side, muttering, “Hmm, well,” then said, “One does what one can.” He smiled at her, revealing two rows of crooked teeth that looked like tumbling skittles just hit by a ball. Noticing Frau Kramer’s look of horror, he pointed to his mouth and said, “A present from a Russian officer.”

  “How on earth did it happen?” Frau Kramer asked.

  Nodding to himself, Herr Weiss poured the tea and said, “Well, you see . . .” He sat down. “It was when I was a prisoner of war. Each of us had to go up to him, he was sitting behind a little desk, noting down our details—name, date of birth, place of birth, unit, stuff like that.”

  Rocking his head from side to side, he said, “Try the tea, I think it’s excellent.” Taking a sip himself and putting the cup back down, he went on, “I didn’t immediately understand what he wanted from me, and then he smashed me in the face with his pistol. Like this.” Holding up his cup, he drew it to his chin in slow motion. Oh well, he said with another shrug.

  “I simply didn’t understand him. But my jaw was broken and all I could eat was soup. Oh, and I couldn’t talk anymore.” He laughed briefly. “I didn’t learn how to do that again until I was with the nuns.”

  “With the nuns?” said Frau Kramer, who was drinking her tea, oblivious to the fact that she had become captivated by Herr Weiss’ story.

  Herr Weiss said, Yes, yes, then nodded, muttered something, said, “Yes, that was the first place I went when I was back in Germany. They sang with me. And yes, it was through the singing that I learned how to speak again.” He put down his cup and looked at Frau Kramer with gleaming eyes. “Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t it? Don’t you think?” He raised his hand and made a gesture indicating that some things are merely inexplicable. Frau Kramer nodded and poured herself another cup of tea.

  At the end of her visit she invited Herr Weiss to Lisa’s birthday, but Herr Weiss had a better idea. He wanted to hold the celebration in his apartment so that he could sing songs at the piano. Frau Kramer considered this for no more than a moment before agreeing and saying goodbye. She went down the stone spiral steps to the third floor, sat by the window in the living room and continued working on Lisa’s winter coat.

  While she sewed the hems her thoughts wandered back to Herr Weiss’s tale of his imprisonment. In her head their neighbor changed, metamorphosing into Herr Kramer, who was brought before a Russian officer, unable to understand what the latter wanted of him. She closed her eyes to expel the thought; it was hard enough living in this town she had headed to only because of a hope that, if he returned from the war, Herr Kramer would surely think that she had come here, because she thought he would think that she would think in this way. But although Herr Weiss had returned from Russian imprisonment, her husband had not. She knew that there were still many thousands of prisoners of war in Siberia, she knew that the government was negotiating with the Soviets. But Siberia! How long could a man of his age survive that? Frau Kramer sighed and went on with her sewing.

  16

  Anna sat in the car, staring out into the night. The headlights tore a dazzling hole into the darkness and this hole was following them. She was sitting beside Abba in a Soviet utility vehicle, We’ve borrowed it, Abba told her when they had left the town behind them, it sounded as if he meant: stolen.

  It was pure chance that he picked up Anna, The Soviets let me know, he said, They told me they had a Jewish girl and wondered what to do with her.

  You’re a citizen of Israel, he said when she had asked him what he was really doing, Bricha is gathering up the remnants of what the Nazis left, he said, The foundation of Israel is in danger. He quoted a figure, he said, That’s how many Jews there were in Europe before the war, he said, The Zionists know the precise figure, they counted the Jews and now, apart from the few that remain, they’re all gone, murdered by the Germans and their many helpers.

  Anna had given him a sideways glance of disbelief, she had repeated the figure in a whisper, with a question mark afterward that said, Are you sure? Isn’t that one or two zeroes too many?

  But there was no reaction from Abba, he was busy making sure the car did not slide into the bank, the road was rutted with the deep tracks of Soviet Army tanks and lorries, hot on the heels of the Germans, amongst whom were Obersturmbannführer Ranzner and his four adjutants, We’re going to Posen, Abba had said, and Anna glanced at him again and thought he looked like a bird of prey with his curved nose and slightly receding chin, sunken cheeks and those eyes that seemed to see more than normal ones. Posen? Anna had asked, Not exactly, came his answer and he told her about a Bricha house that the Soviets tolerated only because they had no idea what to do with the Jews they had liberated, and because in truth they wanted to be rid of them. Nobody wants us, he had said, and that’s a good thing, now it’s a good thing.

  Then he had talked about the doctrine of extermination, he said, The Nazis made no differentiation between Jews and Jews, they treated us
all the same. That’s what we’ve got to do now too. Then we’ll be a people, a nation. We’ll be in a position to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. And we will exact retribution. Retribution? Anna said, and Abba nodded without looking at her. He had talked about the armed struggle, about the need to kill large numbers of Germans so as to galvanize Jews throughout the world and to say: Nobody can murder us and go unpunished! He cited the figure again, staring grimly out into the cold night, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, he said, We shall poison the whole of Hamburg, Jewish blood will be avenged, and Anna thought, Is this what he’s really doing, killing Germans? and just for a second she was beset by that same feeling from her past, when she still had a home. It was no more than a memory and it passed again immediately, and she said, That’s no different, it’s exactly the same madness, but Abba refused to accept this.

  Following this conversation they had driven silently through the night. Later Anna would remember an endless avenue of birches. The white trees stood ghostlike to the left and right of the road, their slender branches hanging down like thinning hair.

  Anna had been hunched up in her seat with cold, her arms wrapped around her body, trying to imagine an unimaginable number of dead people. In her head a solid mass of corpses had appeared, stretching to the horizon, the mass had buckled upward, ever higher, turning into a tall, unscalable mountain. Where are they all now, she had wondered, thinking about reincarnation, in another life when she was still the Anna she knew, not the stranger sitting in this car beside a Jew intent on taking her to Palestine, because this was his business, beside a Jew intent on murdering as many Germans as the Germans had Jews, to restore the balance, Which balance, Anna wondered, on which scales?

  As they drove through a coniferous forest, the road narrowed, the trees coming right to its edge. Anna felt uneasy, as if the forest were waiting to swallow her up the moment they came to a halt. It was still snowing, the flakes were larger now, they stuck to the windshield and the wipers were no longer a match for them. From time to time Abba had to wind down his window and wipe with his gloved hand, allowing an icy gust of wind to shoot into the car, whirling snowflakes around. Abba sat hunched over the steering wheel, peering through the clear spot. He drove in silence, betraying no emotion, Anna thought, For him nothing is of any significance compared to the cause he’s fighting for: Israel, retribution. Are these two separate things, she wondered, or one and the same?

  Once out of the forest they could see the lights of a town in the distance. That’s Posen, Abba said without turning to look at her, but Tulce is closer. This was the name of the village where Bricha maintained its house, The guards are Russian Jews, Abba said, Red Army soldiers. We borrowed them from the army because if we want to survive we can’t trust anybody, a rule you’d better stick to. He looked at her, Anna stared into his dark eye sockets and did not know what she should feel positively or negatively about this man.

  The house was square with eight windows on each side, all dark, two stories high, the roof damaged, Aerial bombs, Abba said, But it’s warm and you’ll be safe there.

  Anna learned that during the war Polish forced laborers had sewn uniforms here for the German army. No one knows where they are now, Abba said.

  The main entrance was a door on the right flank of the building. Abba drove up, in the beam of the headlights Anna could see that the plot of land on which the house stood was also square, but larger and surrounded by dense scrub and low trees.

  Abba turned off the engine, the headlights went out, it was silent and dark at a stroke. They turned to each other, but neither could make out the other’s face, their movement was a habit which had become pointless without any light.

  “Go on in,” Abba said, “and tell them Abba sent you. Say the following: Ad Lo-Or.” Anna repeated it, Abba smiled.

  “Your first Hebrew lesson.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It’s a key to that door there. Behind it lies Israel. Best of luck!”

  “Thank you.”

  Anna got out, Abba started up the car, turned around and drove off to continue his fight for Israel and retribution. Watching him go, she had this sudden sense that she would miss him. He had felt like a breath of fresh air.

  She approached the entrance. The door opened, a glaring light shone into Anna’s face, a man’s voice asked something softly in Russian. Anna did not understand, she spoke her text. The torch went out and now Anna could identify a gigantic shadow gesturing to her to follow. At the end of the corridor they walked along, Anna could see a staircase leading up, but they only went as far as the second door on the left.

  The shadow opened the door, beyond which darkness stretched into a large room, Anna saw night through the windows, three times eight, breathing, wheezing and coughing sounded from myriad invisible mouths, the shadow moved slowly in front, Following closely like a blind woman, Anna stepped right into the middle of the breathing, wheezing and coughing, right into the middle of the stuffy warmth of many bodies, into the stench of countless odors of unwashed people. Israel flashed through her mind, and if she had not been so tired, feeling at that very moment all the uncertainty of her life so intensely, like a pain in her chest, a stabbing, tearing pain, then perhaps she would have laughed out loud.

  The shadow stopped, Anna bumped into him, he grabbed her by the forearm and pulled her down until her hand was touching rough material. Anna understood, this was her place, now she was another breathing and when she slept another wheezing, panting and coughing, a dreaming and a waking in this room which was Israel.

  17

  Anna did not count the days she spent in the house near the gates of Posen in the small village called Tulce, while Obersturmbannführer Josef Ranzner, his four adjutants and the rest of his troops, together with other S.S. units, Wehrmacht officer cadets, policemen, firemen and territorial army soldiers tried to defend Posen against the Red Army. The thunder of artillery was audible day and night, so close that at some point Anna barely noticed it and even caught herself relishing the fact that the noise insulated her from the others in the house.

  The cramped conditions bothered her. Unlike many Jews Anna had no experience of being kept like cattle. Or perhaps I was a different variety of cow, she thought, a variety which stands alone in its stable, a variety which isn’t exterminated en masse, but which is ridden from time to time. She dismissed the thought, it was not helping her come to terms with her new situation.

  The house in Tulce had two large rooms one above the other, full of people doing nothing but waiting. The camp beds were pushed together in pairs, with narrow gangways between the rows, scarcely wider than a person,. There were no gaps between the foot of one bed and the head of the next. To Anna’s left, on the other side of the gangway, was a woman with three children: a boy of ten, a girl who was six at most and an infant, another girl. The four of them shared two beds.

  Anna’s head was right by the feet of an old man who only got up from his bed if he absolutely had to. He wore a striped prisoner’s suit, over this a Waffen S.S. coat, and he gave off a rancid stench. It took Anna’s nose a while to be able to ignore him. She was too big for the camp bed; if she stretched out fully her feet touched the head of an elderly lady who appeared to be on her own.

  To her right, and so close it was as if the two of them belonged together, was a young girl, seventeen years old at most. My name’s Ruth, she said the night Anna arrived. You’re lucky, Ruth whispered, as Anna felt for the bed with her hands and carefully lay down on it. Your place only became free yesterday, she said. Anna lay on her back and her eyes would not close, her body did not yet wish to be here in this alien place, which was supposed to be a piece of their homeland, full of comrades sharing a common destiny, but to her this seemed a strange notion, Anna’s destiny had run a separate path from that of all the others, How can I be one of them if we have nothing in common, no experiences, not even a language? she asked herself. But Ruth spoke German, she came from Schwerin,
which was not so far from Anna’s village, and that night she whispered to Anna that the old man had been in a terrible state, Hardly a surprise, she said, I’m young and the camp took everything out of me. But him! It was a miracle he’d got this far. Then she sighed and said, but he’s had his time and you’ve got a bed.

  Anna fell asleep.

  When she awoke it was light.

  “Morning!” a voice beside her said. Anna turned to her right and saw Ruth. Ruth had barely any hair on her head. Ruth had large eyes and a small, shrunken face. Ruth had arms as thin as her bones, which protruded from beneath her skin. Ruth wore several striped prisoner’s suits on top of one another. Ruth smiled.

  “That’s enough sleep!” she said. “What’s your name?”

  “Anna.”

  “Where do you come from? What’s your story? Tell me!”

  Anna stared at Ruth. She did not know how she could keep quiet about what had happened to her, thus learning a great deal more about what had happened to her. She saw Abba open his mouth and utter the word “collaborator.” Ruth was not observing her like Abba, she lay beside Anna, supporting her head with her hand, waiting with the childish curiosity of one who trusts their peers.

  Only now did Anna understand that Abba must have seen through her, the only Jewish woman alive in a western Polish town occupied by the Germans, what must she have done? She realized that Abba had pardoned her, not for her sake, but for Israel. She wanted to say something, a half-truth, so Ruth would leave her in peace, I was a forced laborer for the S.S., but how does that sound? she thought, and remained silent.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Ruth said suddenly. “There are some people here who haven’t said a word yet. I’m not especially pretty, they were going to let me work until the effort of it finished me off.” She gave a crooked smile, her mouth was so large in her small face, Anna thought and found herself wishing, If only I’d been in a camp too, I’d be one of them now and could tell my story. Or I’d be dead, one of the countless many, and no one would ask me questions.