by Steven Uhly
“Mother, please! Don’t abandon me! Mother!”
But Frau Kramer had resolved to put an end to this drama. She used all her strength to brace herself against the door until finally it clicked shut. Then she stood there, exhausted, her back against the wall, things happening on her face that Lisa was unable to interpret.
Outside she could hear a sobbing which after a while became quieter and eventually stopped altogether. Now both Lisa and her grandmother were listening. They heard the other woman blow her nose, and Lisa imagined her opening the handbag with a well-rehearsed movement and taking out a silk handkerchief. But how could you blow your nose elegantly? That she could not imagine.
After a while she heard a clomping sound fading into the distance. The strange woman was going down the stairs.
Frau Kramer took a deep breath.
The first clear thought she was able to formulate was about Lisa. What am I going to tell the child? she wondered. Lisa was still standing where Frau Kramer had let go of her, staring at her grandmother. Frau Kramer closed her eyes and waited.
“Who was that woman, Grandma?” Lisa said.
Frau Kramer swallowed before shaking her head and saying, “Must be a madwoman. She probably lost her parents in the war.”
Lisa nodded. She thought it sounded plausible. “But how did she know that Mummy was called Maria?” she said.
Frau Kramer shrugged and Lisa was astonished, because this movement looked as if it had been rehearsed too, something she had never seen in her grandmother before.
“I don’t know, my darling. Maybe she asked the neighbors, or she knows someone who knew your mother.”
Frau Kramer shrugged again, her throat was as dry as a bone, she felt wretched. She closed her eyes and started to cry.
“Grandma! But you don’t have to cry!” Lisa exclaimed, hugging her.
“Oh, I’m only crying because I’m thinking about your mother,” Frau Kramer lied.
Lisa held tightly onto her hips, Frau Kramer stroked the girl’s hair, pleased to be crying as it conveniently masked the entire episode.
That afternoon Lisa paid a visit to Herr Weiss in his apartment. He had made tea, they sat at the round table in the sitting room and Lisa said, “You know what, Uncle Tobi, I’d love to be really free.”
Herr Weiss nodded and muttered something to himself. Lost in thought, Lisa stared out of the window. In the distance she could see a large sailing boat. Without taking her eyes off it she said, “But I don’t even know what it means to be free.” She sighed. “My friend Frieda would say that being free means you can do anything you want.” She shrugged and looked at Herr Weiss. “But I don’t have a clue what I want!” Her gaze returned to the window. “My classmates don’t think about these sorts of things.” She fell silent, carefully reached for the porcelain cup in front of her and took a sip of tea.
After a while Herr Weiss cleared his throat. He said, Well, erm, he said, Hmm, hmm. Then he said, “Do you know how I got out of the hospital with the nuns?”
Lisa shook her head. Herr Weiss nodded thoughtfully and said, “Hmm, well, one day a man came to the hospital, looking for his son Tobias. And this man, well, his name was Weiss, just like mine.” He smiled at Lisa.
“Was he your father?” she said.
Now Herr Weiss smiled mischievously and shook his head. “No, no, that Herr Weiss was not my father, I didn’t know him at all. He was looking for his son, and had been for ages.” He nodded sadly. “But he hadn’t found him. And when he saw me, so young and wrecked as I was, he said: That’s my son, Tobias.” Herr Weiss nodded. “Yes, that’s what happened.” He watched Lisa slowly take in what he had told her. She frowned and opened her eyes wide.
“But that means you’re not Uncle Tobi after all!” she cried. She hesitated, pausing to think. Then she shook her head and said. “But you are now, aren’t you?”
“Of course!” Herr Weiss said softly. “Now I am because I wanted to be Uncle Tobi.”
“And so now you’re free?” Lisa asked skeptically.
Herr Weiss rocked his head from side to side, said Hmm, looked out of the window and said, “What does it mean to be free? I don’t know either. But at least I didn’t have to go back to my family.”
Lisa nodded slowly. It was easy for her to understand Herr Weiss; all she had to do was invert her own feelings.
“I’d love to go back to my family. But I can’t,” she said wearily.
Herr Weiss looked at her sympathetically and decided he would buy her a nice present.
That evening Lisa lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. Beside her lay Frau Kramer, absolutely still, which surprised Lisa as her grandmother had a habit of breathing noisily. But Frau Kramer did not stir, her chest rose and fell regularly and her eyes were closed. I hope everything’s alright with her, Lisa thought. After this strange day.
She could not get the woman at the door out of her head. She had called herself Maria Kramer, which meant she must be Lisa’s mother. Perhaps she was, and the reason Grandma had been scared was that she was an angel. Lisa frowned. She had always imagined her mother differently.
What kept churning in her mind was the sense of theatricality about the encounter, but she could not get to the bottom of what it meant.
Lisa had no photographs of her parents. Everything had been lost in the war, her grandmother said. But the car accident had nothing to do with the war, as Lisa knew from her grandmother, and from her grandmother she also knew that the accident had occurred in Poland, where the Russians were now in charge. If only Daddy and Mummy hadn’t gone there, Lisa thought, they’d still be alive today. She tried to take a deep breath, she drew the air through her open mouth and raised her shoulders, but it did not work. It was as if there were a place in her lungs which could never be filled, no matter how hard she tried.
For a long while she lay in the dark with her eyes open. Just before falling asleep she thought how peculiar it was that the false Maria Kramer had looked so much like her grandmother. I’d definitely have been taken in by her if Grandma hadn’t come, she thought. What luck!
20
Anna lay on her back looking up at Josef Ranzner’s face. It was dark, the man above her panted and moaned softly. He thrust his penis rhythmically into Anna, she raised and lowered her pelvis, raised and lowered it, always to the rhythm of the man who was staring at Anna as if he had never seen her before. Anna stared back, for now his face changed, the hair turned blond, the nose became broader, the chin jutted out, the lips pouted, almost fleshy. Anna’s face assumed an expression of shock, as the first adjutant continued his rhythmical movements, panting a little more quickly perhaps, moaning a little more loudly, but still softly, careful not to disturb anybody. The camp was full of people too exhausted to stay awake at night, but you could never be sure, and now the second adjutant, the one with the broad nostrils, the bulging forehead and the small eyes, briefly bared his teeth, bent over Anna, gave her earlobe a gentle bite, whispered breathless words that Anna did not understand, it was Hebrew, he kissed Anna on the lips, his face now close to her eyes, a perfectly round face with a receding hairline and well-nourished cheeks, but chinless, and was the fourth adjutant and panted and moaned and spoke words of love and was Obersturmbannführer Josef Ranzner with his aquiline nose and thin lips and panting and moaning words of love and was all the adjutants one after the other and all jumbled about and they moaned words of love in a language Anna did not understand, it was Hebrew, Anna was silent, staring, shocked, Did I expect this? she wondered, not knowing the answer, she heard herself moan and pant, she was Anna, still the same Anna and yet not, and yet the other Anna, the one who surrendered herself, words of love from Ranzner’s mouth, words of love, moaned and panted in rhythm, his penis inside Anna, the first adjutant raised and lowered, the second raised and lowered, the third, the fourth, Why is none of them laughing? Anna thought, they were laughing, but Anna knows what is happening, Anna is not mad, Anna has a clear view of things, words of love
and moaned and panted, Anna, the Obersturmbannführer, the adjutants, in rhythm, words, words that Anna could not understand, it was Hebrew.
And then they all climaxed together, with Anna in attendance, staring, shocked, while the man on top of her was Peretz Sarfati who sank onto Anna’s body, exhausted, his head nestling beside hers, a sweat of film on their brows, the sounds of their breathing mingled, soon to quieten down, they lay there, a couple after the act of love, but they were much more than that, something which only Anna knew.
Anna wanted to understand. In the darkness of the wooden barrack her eyes sought a footing, they found the long cracks in the timbers, which glowed dimly, outside the light of the moon made for a bright night, it was warm and late. Anna wanted to understand why she had slept with Peretz Sarfati. And she understood that she had wanted it in the same way that he had. Anna frowned, nobody noticed, Peretz’s breathing was shallower, he had made himself comfortable on her slender body, but when Anna compared his weight to the oppressive crowding in the lorry, Peretz felt almost light. Had she become completely submissive, or did there exist, behind her will to want what Peretz wanted, a second will that was intent on achieving something quite different?
This was no mere suspicion, Anna was posing a rhetorical question to which the answer was already known; the question served another purpose, to assure Anna that she knew precisely what was happening, that she was in the picture about her true motives, that she was not losing track of herself just because things were happening deep inside her.
These events meant that Anna knew she had forgotten nothing, she had seen everything, every single facial feature, she had felt everything, every desire of desire, because it was life, the continuation of life, survival, she had looked and been astonished, and now Anna opened her special archive to house the new events in it.
It had to be. Anna knew that there was a secret connection between Peretz, Ranzner and the adjutants. The connection was her. She, Anna, was secret in a way that she only now realized, now that she would have been free to say No, but had not. Why did I sleep with Peretz? Anna asked herself again, closing her eyes, feeling his weight—it was no different from the weight of the other men.
She felt like a whore with six punters, she had just taken part in an orgy as the only woman, and all these men had climaxed inside her and now she was pumped full of sperm. She thought, I’ve fallen sick, my head is sick and yet at the same time I’m aware of this and I’m not sick. She thought, I have to know, she thought, Just so long as I know my sickness won’t make me sick. She thought, This is my way. She thought of Abba and closed her eyes and let Peretz’s weight press her into the hard straw mattress and enjoyed being aware of this feeling, just as it was.
21
Frau Kramer was not asleep. She lay next to Lisa, trying to regulate her breathing so that the girl would not realize the state her grandmother was in. Frau Kramer was exhausted by the day now coming to an end, but she found no peace. In the darkness she could no longer escape the memory she had kept at bay during the day. Whenever she had smiled at Lisa, in truth she had been laying a veil over the images taking up residence in her head. Now these images assaulted her mind, filling every last corner of her closed eyes.
She saw the woman in the doorway, who was still her daughter and always would be, she saw the despair in the face of her daughter, the worn clothes on her body, the door closing and locking her out, and she heard the sobbing before she left. It was so painful that on several occasions Frau Kramer struggled for air. She focused on her breathing, The only thing that’s going to help now, she thought, is discipline, no matter what happens in the world or here inside my heart. Only discipline can save us. I’m a soldier, she thought all of a sudden, seeing herself in her best dress parading with other women through the streets of Lübeck, all of them wearing white dresses with large red-and-brown flowery patterns, an army of women fighting day after day against the war, the war was over, but what it had engendered was not: poverty, shortages, hopelessness. And lies. Frau Kramer lay in an old eiderdown, which not long ago must have belonged to other people who may now be dead, and the furniture in the apartment had belonged to them too, Since when had it been like this? she thought, feeling the lies of all those women who acted as if they were blossoming from head to toe, and she acted along with them, even though she looked so withered. In truth, she thought, we don’t even believe spring anymore when it announces its arrival. In truth we’re fighting on the home front and the enemy is truth and our weapons are lies.
Frau Kramer had to breathe deeply, she knew that Lisa was still awake, she could hear the girl’s shallow breathing, she sensed that Lisa too was lying there seeing the woman in the doorway, her despair, her cries for a mother who pretended not to be there, and through Lisa’s eyes everything that Frau Kramer saw felt even more painful, for the girl’s ignorance was like a magnifying glass that presented everything far more clearly, far more closely and far more uncomfortably.
If you can’t get any further you have to go back to the beginning and start again. That is what her mother had once told her. So Frau Kramer went back to the beginning and saw herself holding a screaming baby. What was this baby screaming for? What did it want? The question repeated itself in her head, with these screams the puzzle began, the puzzle was called Maria and was her daughter, but she did not understand it, what was this child screaming for, one day it would talk, then she would understand it. She would be able to ask it, What are you screaming for, child, tell me so I can give it to you, I will do everything in my power, I am your mother, I love you, what is it? But Maria learned to talk and gave no answer, Maria learned to talk and yet kept screaming without being able to say what she was screaming for, and her mother was unable to ask the right question at the right time, with the right emphasis, the right caution, the right love. What do you want, what do you want? They were trapped in a labyrinth and knew neither where they had come from nor where they were heading to.
Frau Kramer’s thoughts had become entrenched, her mind entangled, she was tired, no, tired did not even begin to describe it, Frau Kramer was shattered, shattered to the point of sheer collapse, she felt as if she were still struggling through the deep Polish snow, a screaming baby in her arms, she felt as if the baby were Maria, she felt as if she were not the mother, she felt as if the mother were lying on the ground behind her, lifeless, frozen to death, but she herself had to go on, keep going on, even though she would have loved to lie down, just a little, just for a short while, but the baby stopped her from doing so, and she thought, Thank you, Maria, but now she was already asleep and simply kept dreaming from the same point.
She dreamed a cold dream. It was summer, her children, Karl, Maria, her husband Wilhelm and herself were living in a beautiful village in a beautiful little farmhouse, they were not rich and not poor, and when they went outside it was warm, so warm! But inside the house it was always cold, How strange, her husband said, I’ll knock holes in the walls to let the warmth in, Do that, Frau Kramer said, and he took an ax and cleft the wall, but all that happened was that firewood came tumbling in, and Maria screamed and Karl raised his rifle and shot a Jew and said thoughtfully, Heil Hitler! and shot another and said softly, Sieg Heil! and aimed the rifle at Maria, but she said, I’m not a Jew, my name’s Lisa, shoot at her, and she pointed at Maria standing next to her, and Karl shot at Maria, hitting her in the forehead, Maria fell backward with her eyes open. She lay on her back and spoke. She said, Now I’ve got another hole for the men, she wanted to say more but Frau Kramer slapped her and shouted, Hold your tongue! She wanted to shout more, but all of a sudden she woke up in a sweat, lying beside Lisa who was breathing heavily, perhaps because she was dreaming, perhaps of Maria.
She closed her eyes again, but this time did not fall asleep. Instead, the apartment they lived in opened out before the lids of her closed eyes, and she noted with astonishment that in one corner stood the grandfather clock, ticking away, five o’clock in the morning, she
frowned, How did that get here? she wondered, looking around behind her closed eyes. But then she stopped wondering, for now she saw the table, the sideboard, the door to the cellar, and if she went down those stairs she would find Margarita Ejzenstain lying in a hole in the earth beneath the planks and she had to get her out of there because the cold would kill her.
Frau Kramer opened her eyes, the arrival of day was imminent, the first rays had burst forth in the east, sending a particular brightness through the window and into the eyes of the woman now leaning against the head of the bed, looking down at her sleeping granddaughter. Lisa had barely stirred in the night, she lay on her back, her features completely relaxed, her mouth closed, she looked like an angel, Frau Kramer thought, utterly pure and serene. She thought about her daughter, she could still see the woman in the doorway, still hear her cries, still feel the pain.
She got up quietly and went out of the bedroom to make breakfast.
22
In late autumn 1955 a long goods train was traveling from east to west. Six hundred men were sitting or standing in the carriages. They wore inadequate clothing, they were freezing, they were hungry, but they were not complaining. Through small windows set high they were able to glimpse the white landscape. Some looked out, others looked away, all of them swearing never to come back here again.
After two days they reached the Urals. The train stopped at a village which was obliged to keep a double secret: its proximity to the capital and the train’s cargo. It was night time, the station was brightly lit by the yellow beams of floodlights, soldiers stood all about with large, black terriers who looked unfriendly in spite of their frizzy coats, the six hundred men thought, As if we were planning to stay here and their job was to prevent us from doing so. They were unaware that it was not them being guarded so closely but the surrounding area. They were unaware that the people whose country they were traveling through were opposed to their transit. They had no idea that the authorities feared the fury of the population if they got wind of this train too soon.