by Tessa de Loo
The wives of the Baltic Sea adventure were all there. They enjoyed each day, each night that had been given to them, with fatalistic eagerness – except for one of them who confided to Anna in a desperate fit of crying that her parents had forbidden her to become pregnant by someone who might soon be dead. ‘Every night I have to turn my back on him,’ she sniffed. Anna, still fervently on the lookout for signs of pregnancy, gave her heart: ‘If he were to die, it would still be a tremendous comfort if you had a child of his at least … but what are we talking about, the war really is almost over! Then they’ll come home and we’ll live together under one roof and …’ she raised a finger laughingly, ‘then it really will be war, Liebchen.’
Martin’s concern for her welfare sometimes took grotesque forms. One morning the women met in the swimming pool. One of them came rushing over while Anna was floating on her back. ‘Get out, get out, a column of officers is coming.’ They heaved their wet bodies hastily into the dry and fled to the lockers. Anna looked round with astonishment and drifted on, relaxed, without paying attention to the distant singing that was fast getting louder. Only when the officers were on the point of diving in did she sense that perhaps her presence in the water might be unwelcome. She swam to the side with languid strokes. In a decent black swimsuit that definitely covered her ample figure but did not conceal it, she walked between the officers to the lockers. As she passed she saw the pursed lips and furious expression on Martin’s face. That afternoon he erupted. How did she happen to be the only woman in a swimsuit on show to all those men. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Simple. I was swimming.’ He shook his head, deeply offended. ‘My wife … among all those chaps.’ ‘But the swimming pool is for everyone,’ she laughed innocently. ‘My wife doesn’t do such a thing.’ ‘Seemingly she does.’ Their ideas about decency were irreconcilable. ‘I won’t have them making jokes about you, I know them.’ She was oppressed by it. ‘If you go on like that I’ll leave you,’ she blurted out to shut him up. He was so badly shocked and in such an endearing way that she flew to his neck, from regret and empathy. It was stupid to squabble about inanities. Time was pressing.
She awoke shaky and teeth chattering on the last night. Martin, who responded to her utterances in his sleep too, opened his eyes and held her. ‘You’re frightened …’ His voice was dark from sleep. She laid her head on his chest. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter.’ He pulled her tightly to him. ‘We must talk about it,’ he said calmly, ‘I think this is the moment. Listen. Millions are dying in this rotten war, up to now I have had a lucky escape. Who can guarantee that will work until the end? Why, so many have died, why not me? For me it will not be bad to die, it happens very quickly, don’t you worry. The only thing that will be bad for me is that then I won’t be able to help you any more. I know what will happen to you, I know exactly. You are as delicate as porcelain, but no one knows it. You always play the strong one and the sturdy one, but in reality you are emotional and vulnerable and you need me. But you must live even if I am not there. Promise me one thing: don’t put an end to it. I won’t look at you any more if you commit suicide! I won’t salute you any more!’
There was silence in the room apart from the beating of his heart in her ear. It was out of the question that the beating could stop from one moment to the next – that a connection could exist between the things he alluded to and the precious beating of this heart and this warm breathing body which belonged not only to the army but to her and him too. The well-being of that body was so closely tied to that of her own that she did not want to hear what he was saying and yet it was engraved on her memory, word by word.
‘Nor do I want you to stay in sackcloth and ashes for the rest of your life. Even if I am dead I want to have a beautiful wife. Will you promise me that? I’ll tell you what you should do. You will only bear it by helping others who are worse off than yourself. Go and work in a military hospital or something like that, only then will you survive, I know you …’ Instead of seeking comfort and courage from her for the possibility that he would die just before the peace, he was giving her a manual for the rest of her life, with serenity. Defence replaced her anxiety and eventually an immense calm – he had spun a cocoon of safety and invulnerability around her where there was a peaceful, reliable tranquillity – where life and death flowed naturally into each other. They fell asleep entwined; entwined they woke in the morning.
It was brilliant weather. Martin had never looked so well. Tanned, alert, full of good spirits. Anna leaned out of the window of the train that was about to move. He ran alongside the train and waved. ‘Auf Wiedersehen until Vienna, this bloody hell will soon end anyway!’ he cried cheerfully. She stiffened – such a tone of optimism was unforgivable from the mouth of an SS officer. And it resonated along the platform too! Anna narrowed her eyes, anxiously expecting that they would pick him up. But he was still standing there and waving and no one bothered him.
Vienna was not that safe. In order to cut off the German troops’ retreat from the Balkans the Americans were dropping a wide swathe of bombs that ran right through Vienna. Because they did not dare fly over the Alps at night, they only flew during the day. The windows of the new apartment were shattered. Anna fixed them with cardboard. The alarm sounded. She ran to the nearest shelter. On the way she saw an old woman hiding in a porch. ‘What are you doing here?’ Anna yelled, dragging her along with one arm. ‘Come, hurry into the shelter.’ It was a crush inside. ‘Get up,’ she said to a boy, ‘I’ve got an old lady here.’ The warden of the block, responsible for citizen’s safety during attacks, rushed over to her, ‘What possessed you?’ ‘How do you mean?’ asked Anna, ‘what have I done?’ ‘Do you know who you’ve got with you?’ She looked at the woman who was sitting huddled up, like a bird in winter. ‘It makes no difference to me, obviously, an old woman.’ ‘A half-Jew!’ he barked. ‘Well and …’ she shrugged her shoulders, ‘there’s a dog over there, can’t a poor old woman be allowed in?’ She was stared at with anxious eyes from all around; what recklessness to challenge the warden of the block. He tensed his jaw muscles. She looked at him defiantly. He lowered his eyes and slunk off to another corner of the shelter, as though his presence were urgently required there.
The whole month she waited in vain for a letter from Martin. She wrote to him at the beginning of October. ‘I am sitting here with a pen in my hand but I have the feeling I am talking into the void.’ She bought a bunch of asters to comfort herself. She was climbing the stairs to her apartment with the flowers in hand when she met the neighbour half-way who usually greeted her noisily with a rolling Viennese ‘r’, but now he shyly quickened his pace. She opened the door. To her surprise her father-in-law was waiting for her in the living-room. ‘No post again,’ she sighed with a glance at the empty table. ‘Yes,’ he said, pointing to the sideboard with his head, ‘there is post.’
A parcel. She leaned over it and read: Nachlass-sache – estate matters. Wildly she tore it open. On top there was an envelope, she ripped the letter out. ‘Dear Frau Grosalie … As Company Commander it is my duty to inform you of the heroic death of your husband …’ Feverishly she read on. ‘… In the Eifel … grenade explosion …’ The letter ended with, ‘In the belief that there will be ultimate victory and that this war is justified, I remain … Heil Hitler! SS-Hauptsturmführer, Company Commander …’ The asters fell to the ground. ‘It’s not true,’ she contradicted the contents of the letter in a quiet voice. She began to walk about, round the table, around her father-in-law, faster and more rebelliously, calling out ‘not true, not true …’ as though a ritualistic denial of reality could undo the facts. Catatonically she kept repeating the same words until her father-in-law managed to force her onto the sofa. Above hung a framed portrait of Martin; she lifted it off the wall. With the photograph in her lap she rocked back and forth. What a tasteless paradox – the unbearable would have to be borne in some way or other. She glided about the apartment, wanted to put on something dark, saw a repellent stra
nger in the mirror – the curls of her perm had disappeared instantly. Look at that, her hair was already dying, the rest would from now on.
She hadn’t promised him that she would eat! For days she did not eat, drink, sleep or cry. At night she wandered about among the shattered apartment blocks as though she were looking for something among them. All she wanted was to be there where he was, nothing else. Her restrained father-in-law, who was staying at the apartment with her on his wife’s instructions, tried to see her behaviour as a normal phase in the mourning process. He brought her a long widow’s veil for the requiem mass at the Karlskirche. Where she had advanced down the aisle in a long white veil two years before she now walked vacantly in a black one. ‘The German woman doesn’t shed a tear …’ she heard being whispered in the pews. She allowed the sounds of the requiem to come over her like a deaf mute.
After a week her father-in-law gave up his chaperoning. Because he alone had not been able to end the hunger strike he made her promise to come over to his home that Sunday, in the hope that his wife could persuade her to eat something. Hesitantly she went outside. The world was unmoved by his death; there was no shadow of him even in his own city. She was alone, in a strange city, it was war – those were the facts. In that constellation there was no place for her, just as there was no place for the facts in her life. She sleepwalked into the centre, along the Ring, the glittering Ring, past the theatre, the Hofburg, the opera. She followed her own footsteps towards the Karlskirche in a vague need for religious support, but mainly in the desperate hope that He would give her a sign, an affirmation of His ubiquity – a proof of His existence. She could barely push the heavy door open. The Sunday mass had just started. The voice of the pastor reverberated in the dome. The baroque gold trembled with it. At first she was in no state to let the content mean anything to her. Weakened by the fast, she slid down somewhere in a pew. Eventually, within the walls of the mother church, trusted since her youth, she was threatening to doze off, a result of the persistent lack of sleep. But suddenly she jerked out of her slumber. ‘Every death at the front …’ warned the voice, ‘and every devastated home here is a punishment for our sins …’ A punishment? How did he get that into his head, the idiot! This was the most insincere, the cruellest message she had ever received from the church. In protest she stood up. She managed to walk past the rows to the back. Despite her weakness she had just enough strength to close the heavy door with an ostentatious bang. Still shaking with rage she descended the steps. In a reflex she looked round: on either side there was still an angel, each carrying its own cross and staring ignorantly ahead over the world.
And further she went. The Hitler Youth was marching enthusiastically across the Ring with brand-new flags. Anna was shuffling past in her black veil. One of the boys barred her way. ‘Heil Hitler!’ She stared ahead silently. ‘Can’t you salute the flag?’ he snarled. He was at least a head taller than her, she tapped him on his chest. ‘I’ll say one thing to you. My husband has just died for that very same flag.’ She brushed him aside and continued on her way. Exhausting himself with apologies he came after her. Anna did not look up or round; she had reached a state of collapse that made her immune to someone else’s shame.
She did not know how she got to her parents-in-law’s house. As the door opened she slumped onto the threshold. All that time she had been on the point of fainting but her organism had waited decently for a suitable moment. They laid her on the divan. In her muzzy twilight state she could hear arguing in the room next door. ‘You haven’t taken enough care of her …’ sounded her mother-in-law’s voice. ‘You promised Martin you would take care of her and now she collapses in our hands.’ Anna threatened to faint again. A pot of strong coffee was made. A cup with real coffee made from coffee beans was moved back and forth under her nose. Anna herself did not react. It was primitive life spirits that forced her to open her mouth and take a swallow, provoked by the irresistible stimulus. Similarly she ate a piece of cake mechanically. In this way the suicidal idea was driven away very prosaically with coffee and cake, in order to make room for being merely unhappy. That she still knew; she had been familiar with it for years.
Then the second part of the promise had to be kept. A black Mercedes with the SS emblem on it drew up in front of the cardboard-patched apartment where she continued her marriage on her own. The SS took good care of its people. The Head of the SS and Chief of Police in the Danube region welfare board came to give the widow his condolences. He was friendly, knew faultlessly how to find the right words of comfort for which she had gone to the Karlskirche in vain, asked if there was anything he could do. ‘I would very much like to work in a military hospital,’ said Anna in a flat tone of voice, ‘I promised him. But in my employment papers it says “Housekeeper” so I’ll never be able to get a nursing position.’ ‘Come to the office and we’ll give you an official testimonial,’ he promised, shaking her hand sympathetically.
After the visit by the high-up, which had been observed by all those living around Anna, she was no longer ‘that German’ but ‘the SS aunt’. The more the bombing increased in severity and Hitler lost further ground, the more openly she was stigmatized. That’s how it is, she consoled herself, as long as it’s going well they cry Hosanna, when it goes the other way: crucify him. She reported to the employment office. The necessary document was already waiting for her. ‘Frau Grosalie is an orphan and childless and now that her husband has been killed she would like to be taken on as a sister in the Red Cross. I request you to issue a dispensation and to put nothing in the way of her commencing work with the German Red Cross. Oberscharführer Fleitmann.’
At the Chalet du Parc, where they had walked from the Thermal Institute, a woman made of stone stood ringed by soldiers, trying to fend off a bayonet. There was no inscription, not even a list of names. Anna and Lotte stopped, each sheltering inside their upturned collars.
‘Where was … Martin buried in fact?’
‘In Gerolstein in a military cemetery. But first in …’
‘But didn’t they bring him home?’
‘Are you crazy? He was ripped to pieces by an artillery grenade in the Eifel. They gathered him up and put him in the ground. Did you think they brought the dead home in 1944? There were far too many of them! In Russia, France, the Ardennes, they lay all over the place, the torsos here, the legs there. Come off it, it’s a wonder they even mentioned where he was.’
Lotte was hurt and silent. Anna adopted a tone towards her as though she were stupid, as though she, Anna, had exclusive rights over the war because her husband had been killed.
‘He had seen it all coming,’ said Anna thoughtfully, ‘that night in Nuremberg. Instead of being frightened of death, because he was the one that was going to die – he was concerned about me. A boy of twenty-six, so mature and well balanced, as though he had achieved the inner development of a whole life at an accelerated pace. He knew it all, that night.’
9
The younger children, a risk factor, had been well tutored; as well as the four times table they had learned never to speak about it under any circumstances whatsoever. If they brought a school friend home unexpectedly then they called out from the wood: ‘Mum, isn’t it nice, Pete is with me!’ In other words: get them all upstairs. The war had made them suspicious and inventive. Bart had been accosted in the wood by the gardener’s wife from the next-door property. ‘Tell me, who is that woman at your place who sits at the sewing machine?’ He understood immediately that she must have seen Mrs Meyer who did sewing and mending from time to time. ‘I went to borrow sugar from your mother but there was no one there, only that woman in the dining-room.’ ‘Oh,’ he improvised casually, ‘that is one of my aunts, a sister of my mother, who sometimes does some sewing for us.’
Lotte’s mother was back in charge. She baked potato cakes and enormous loaves. The people in hiding took it in turns to grind grain in the coffee mill. Meanwhile she rushed upstairs to settle a dispute that had arisen about
whist. Her husband, who played it fanatically, was not a good loser. Mrs Meyer cheated if she was driven to it. The Frinkels were immersed in an English correspondence course in preparation for their emigration to America as soon as the war was over. As soon as the war was over! A lofty phrase, a toast, a hopeful expectation, now that the Allies were in France and no one any longer looked up at the English bombers daily flying east in formation – everyone was agreed that the peace, alas, could only be achieved by means of destruction. Meanwhile two more people arrived to come into hiding. A saboteur who worked at the post office and read all the letters for the Security Service had discovered that Sammy Goldschmidt and his wife’s address in hiding had been betrayed. They had to be taken somewhere else at once. Without wasting words, two beds were added and everyone shoved up a bit.
Two large brooms were slowly coming closer, one from the east, one from the south. Brooms with long bristles that were sweeping the Germans up into a heap, like dust. It was awaited impatiently all round. On Monday evening, 4 September, Radio Orange reported: ‘According to Dutch government sources the Allied armies have reached Breda.’ The people in hiding hugged each other, laughing and crying; the master of the house fetched a bottle of gin out of his war supplies. But some days later the report was already being weakened. The Allies had only liberated a vulnerable corridor crossing through Brabant. They were marching north through this groove. A number of bridges over the rivers had been taken in a lightning raid, but at the bridge over the Rhine outside Arnhem it had failed. The onward march had been brought to a standstill. Lotte’s father had to withdraw a couple of premature flags.