Past the glass mosaic we go: past Germania reaching for her crown, past Barbarossa and his ravens. At the bottom of the spiral staircase we pause – we are not as young as we used to be – but the doors are open until half past six, and we have time, there is still time. We take it slowly, letting others by, resting and catching our breath. Up and up we climb, all 285 twisting steps, and when we emerge into the bright autumn day Berlin stretches out beneath us in all directions. The roads are rays and we are the heart of the star, and we blink and look up, and there she is, the figure we followed here, larger than we ever thought. She is the past melted down and recast; her gilded wings cup the light.
A young tourist asks Erich to take a picture of him and his girlfriend. ‘With the Reichstag in the background, if you can,’ he says, and they kiss for the camera.
I watch Erich and Sieglinde: the man I might have been, the woman I might have loved. Yes, we have time, there is still time. Little smudges, traces of light and shadow, breaths in and out. They feel like mine.
The sun is sinking now, and the trees in the Tiergarten are darkening.
Sieglinde says, ‘Sometimes it seems like yesterday.’
Erich nods. Beneath us the cars start to switch on their headlights. You and I on a frozen lake, in a swarm of bees. You and I in a buried cellar, in a room full of shrapnel.
She says, ‘There’s an ice-cream parlour where the theatre used to be. They give you tiny plastic spoons and let you sample the different flavours for free.’
You and I putting the rider on his horse, you and I putting the leaves on the tree.
‘I could never find it,’ he says. ‘The theatre. Nor your aunt’s building.’
‘That’s gone too,’ she says.
The shadow of the Soviet memorial lengthens. You and I sleeping and sleeping on an empty stage.
‘My daughters want to know who you are,’ he says. ‘They want to know what happened.’
‘Then tell them,’ she says. ‘Before you start to forget.’
You and I and our stitched-together lives, our haphazard selves. You and I, my rubble girl, my puzzle girl, my love.
I look out at the view. I see a spring, a site of ancient worship filled with the holy bones of birds. I see a warrior leading an army across the city long before the city is there, a man so terrible that no grass grows where his horse has trod. There is nothing to stop him: no mountains, no wide and perilous rivers; nothing but plains. We learn to build our own fortifications. Palisades on our river islands, monasteries on pagan land. With Jewish gravestones we bolster the citadel. We whitewash over the dance of death; white is the usurer, white the burgomaster. The queen hides her children in a field and weaves cornflower wreaths to keep them still. In the royal hunting ground the fox hangs from the hunter’s hand and all the trees are firewood. The stone boy and girl hold up the house long after the house has broken. We feel for the jewels in the seams of our clothes. I see searchlights weaving the sky into a bright net; I see werewolves and shadowmen, hanged men and starved men and men wearing twelve watches each; they cut the glass from our windows and the leather from our chairs. The Motherland weeps for her lost sons. We hide microphones in walls and trap human scents in jars and there is no God in the east of the city but that does not mean prayers go unheard. We mark out our death zones, say our goodbyes at the palace of tears. We bury Lenin in the forest, encase the stone sentinels in concrete. We have built on swamp and sand and we will tear down the glass palace, the ballast of the republic, extract its thousand windows.
Out and out I look, out to the Devil’s Mountain, out to the alchemist on the island who makes glass instead of gold; out to the dragon’s teeth and the foxholes and the wolf’s lair, and the camp that rises around the poet’s oak. I see blood and earth; I see night and fog. I see two women talking for years, and one is always right and the other never wrong. We tell our children to paint the Wolfsangel on the walls so other children will know whom to kill. The dead bells wait on the dock, nothing lasts, all things earthly fade away. The demon seed gives birth to a magical world. Look: the cathedrals of light reach to heaven. Look: the Führer’s face made of fireworks. The quarry I hunt is death.
Beneath the sunken fields, beneath the supermarkets and the car parks and the apartment blocks and the playgrounds, beneath the barley fields and the driveways and the glasshouses and the bus stops, beneath the cinemas and the schools, the bones are moving. They are taking slow shape; they are rearranging themselves into something vast and blind, turning in the rich German earth, rib slotting into socket, clavicle fusing to sacrum, vertebra and metacarpal clipping together like the tracks of toy trains.
Mama, I can still see you, Mama.
She and Papa are lying beneath their feather quilt, the goosedown settling over them as softly as new snow, and they know they have done the right thing, it is a blessing and a relief, and they put themselves to sleep with their tender agreements. And at the clinic the doctor from Berlin is taking my head in his hands. He is hooking his thumb beneath my chin, he is pressing at my throat. He shines a light into my eyes and says I am blind – but I see him, and I see the other doctors leaning in around him, nodding their heads, and I see the nurses making their preparations and doing their duty, over and over again.
Historical Note
The narrator of The Wish Child is based on a historical figure, generally referred to in the literature as Child K. The exact details of his short life are unclear; his name, date of birth and death, and even gender are disputed. It is believed, however, that he was a boy who was born blind and with severe disabilities in 1938 or 1939, and that his parents, who most likely lived on a farm near Leipzig, petitioned Adolf Hitler to grant them a mercy killing. Hitler’s physician, Karl Brandt, was sent to investigate; after he examined Child K, the infant was put to death, probably at the Leipzig University Children’s Clinic.
The murder of Child K marked the very beginning of the Nazis’ programme of organised euthanasia, which in turn led to the development of more efficient methods of killing, including the gassing of victims. It is argued, therefore, that the death of Child K was the impetus for the mass murders that were to follow in the camps.
Karl Brandt spoke of the case in his testimony at Nuremberg. He was hanged in 1948.
Note on Sources
The Wish Child is a work of fiction. It is informed by the years I spent living in Berlin during the mid-1990s, as well as by many books and websites that deal with the German experience of the Second World War. The following sources were particularly helpful.
Anonymous. A Woman in Berlin. Virago, 2005.
Axis History Forum: forum.axishistory.com
Beck, Earl R. Under the Bombs: The German Home Front 1942–1945. The University Press of Kentucky, 1986.
Beevor, Anthony. Berlin: The Downfall 1945. Penguin Books, 2003.
Bielenberg, Christabel. The Past Is Myself. Ward River Press, 1982.
The German Propaganda Archive (Professor Randall Bytwerk): research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive
Grunberger, Richard. A Social History of the Third Reich. Phoenix, 2005.
Kitchen, Martin. Nazi Germany at War. Longman, 1995.
Koehn, Ilse. Mischling, Second Degree: My Childhood in Nazi Germany. Hamish Hamilton, 1978.
Moorhouse, Roger. Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler’s Capital, 1939–45. The Bodley Head, 2010.
Schmidt, Ulf. Karl Brandt: The Nazi Doctor. Hambledon Continuum, 2007.
Schneider, Helga. The Bonfire of Berlin. Vintage, 2006.
Shirer, William. Berlin Diary. Hamish Hamilton, 1972.
Stargardt, Nicholas. Witnesses of War. Pimlico, 2006.
Vassiltchikov, Marie. The Berlin Diaries 1940–45. Chatto & Windus, 1985.
Whiting, Charles. The Home Front: Germany. Time-Life Books, 1982.
Readers will notice that some aspects of the novel bend the facts: Gottlieb’s censorship work, for instance, or Sieglinde’s factory trips. I take other smalle
r liberties with the historical record, too – which is to say, please regard any perceived errors as deliberate.
The novel is threaded through with quotes, some overt, some subliminal. These include German songs and poems, as well as the words of Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler, among others. The book that Brigitte is trying to read here is The Wish Child by Ina Seidel, a popular 1930s German novel. The ‘two possibilities’ piece here was a real document (published in 1945 in Rüstzeug für die Propaganda in der Ortsgruppe, Issue 2); this is my translation.
Excerpts from the following poems open Chapters 2–10, listed here in order. All translations are my own.
‘Hands’ by Henriette Hardenberg, © 1994 by Arche Verlag, Zürich-Hamburg
‘My Songs’ by Louise Otto
‘September’ by Hermann Hesse, Sämtliche Werke in 20 Bänden, Herausgegeben von Volker Michels. Band 10: Die Gedichte. © Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 2002. All rights with and controlled through Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin
‘On the Death of a Bird’ by Eduard Möricke
‘Perchance to Dream’ by Sophie Hoechstetter
‘The House is Bare’ by Friedrich Rückert
‘The Traveller’s Night Song I’ by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
‘Who Never Wept to Eat His Bread’ by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Untitled [‘O Lord, grant each of us our own death’], by Rainer Maria Rilke
Acknowledgements
I am grateful for the generous support of the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago; the Rathcoola Residency in County Cork, Ireland; the University of Waikato/Creative New Zealand Writers’ Residency, the University of Otago Wallace Residency at the Pah Homestead, Auckland; the NZSA Peter and Dianne Beatson Fellowship; the DAAD; and Creative New Zealand. Thank you to my publishers Fergus Barrowman and Juliet Brooke; my agent Caroline Dawnay; my Berlin friends Annie and Detlev Brandt, Susan Graunke, Hilary Irving and Kimberley Nelson; and my former German lecturers Hansgerd Delbrück, Peter Russell, Monika Smith and Margaret Sutherland. Thank you also to Tusiata Avia, Kate Camp, Tanya Carlson, Pat Chidgey, the Krumstroh family, Robyn Lynch, Kirsten McDougall, Kirstine Moffat, Keely O’Shannessy, Fiona Pardington, Sophie Scard, Sally-Ann Spencer, Cindy Towns and Ashleigh Young. Particular thanks to Bert Rosenthal (International Outreach, Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records/BStU) for his patient answering of my many questions; to Tracey Slaughter for her unwavering support and friendship; and especially to my little family, Alan Bekhuis and Alice Chidgey.
I did not want to risk identifying my narrator by including him on the dedication page at the start, so here at the end of the story I make my second dedication: to the memory of Child K.
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