The Watcher

by Monika Jephcott Thomas

  There in the centre of the room was the open coffin, which seemed to be glowing, so white it was against the surrounding gloom. Netta stood for a while just staring at it. Staring at her baby sister’s face, looking so peaceful, so healthy. Netta wasn’t afraid, even here in the dark. After all, she had spent mile after terrible mile lying on top of that coffin with all sorts of horrible imaginings clattering around her mind. So she approached the table and put her hand on Emmy’s hands. They were cold. She touched her sister’s forehead, just as Mama did to them both when she thought they were ill, just as Mama had done to Netta that morning when she thought Netta was sleeping as they had approached the checkpoint. Netta remembered the smell of smoke from the soldier’s breath who’d leaned right over her. She could see right up his nose when she peeked out of her scrunched up eyes to see where that stink was coming from. Emmy’s forehead and cheeks and lips were cold too. But she looked so alive. Netta knew it was just a matter of warming her up again and her little sister would come back to life. And then the smog of sadness that filled the house would fade away. She pulled the coffin a little closer to the edge of the table so it was easier to reach, then Netta gathered the baby up in her arms. It was hard to do. She still had to stand on tip-toe to get a good grip, but when she had a safe hold of her she went and sat on one of the armchairs and, holding her close to her body so that Emmy would feel the warmth of her big sister, Netta began to rock gently. Ever so quietly, so as not to wake the adults, she sang the song she and her mother used to sing at bedtime to her papa who had been taken away by the Russians.

  ‘If I were a little bird and had wings

  I would fly to you,

  But because it cannot be

  We are waiting here for you.’

  And then she added a new line to the song:

  ‘Come back, Emmy, come back, come back,

  Come back, Emmy, come back, come back.’

  She sat and rocked her little sister all night. She desperately wanted to fall asleep herself, but she knew she had to keep going, keep holding her tight and keep her moving so she would warm up and wake up again.

  The rising sun made the living room glow red and blue just like the Tiffany window did in the attic room at all times of the day. When Netta noticed this, she knew it was time to stop, unless she wanted to be found by one of the adults, who would surely get the wrong idea, just like they always did about anything she tried to do or say. Her bottom lip began to tremble with exhaustion and a sense of failure. She shuffled off the armchair and on numb legs carried her sister back to the table, giving her a kiss on the forehead before she lifted her back into the coffin.

  ‘Don’t cry,’ she whispered, noticing the tear on Emmy’s cheek and wiping it off gently. ‘Papa said we’ll see you again soon.’

  Netta rubbed at her own watery eyes, the real source of Emmy’s tear, and hurried to the door, pulling it open and immediately bumping into the legs of the person lurking out in the hallway.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, little lady?’

  Netta gasped at the twisted red lips that swooped down at her from the shadows.

  ‘What kind of child are you? Messing with a dead baby’s body!’

  ‘I—I—I was just trying to—’

  ‘You were just playing with it,’ Jenny spat, ‘like it was a bloody doll or something, but that’s not a doll, is it?’ She grabbed Netta by the arm and shook her. ‘That’s your little sister, you foolish little girl. Your parents are in mourning, for God’s sake, what do you think they would say if they heard you were messing around with their precious baby’s body like that?’

  ‘Please don’t tell them, I—’

  ‘Don’t tell them?’ she cackled, dragging Netta back into the living room as floorboards creaked and the mumbling of waking voices was heard overhead. ‘Don’t you think they would notice their little baby has been meddled with? Look at the state of her now! Her hands have been moved, the coffin’s been moved, the dress is all ruffled. Do you think I’m going to let your mother blame me for that? Coz she’d love that, she would. And so would you, I bet. No, I’m going to tell them all right and you’re going to be locked in the basement until I do.’

  ‘No!’ Netta tried to resist. The stinking dark basement petrified her, but Jenny yanked her down the corridor and pushed her so hard into it that Netta even heard the housekeeper blurt out something in sympathy for the way she crashed down the small staircase to the mildewed floor.

  ‘Let me out! Let me out!’ Netta howled over and over until she heard voices above in the kitchen, then she listened. Oma and Opa. And Jenny filling their heads with lies, thought Netta. She waited for one of her grandparents to come and let her out as she snivelled, nursing the grazed hands which broke her fall.

  They did not come.

  Something shifted in the blackness behind her and she began to cry uncontrollably. ‘When can I come out? How long do I have to stay in here? How long? How long?’

  Max’s dream world turned to bubbles which roared in his ears as he broke the surface of sleep. His eyes snapped open. Then in the long slow heart beat between dreaming and waking he felt the sheets around his fingers and realised it was not the unforgiving canvas of a military cot he was sleeping on, not the limbs from a soldier dismembered by a grenade which lay next to him, but the intact body of his sleeping wife. And just as he began to exhale with relief, the air stuck in his throat as his equally mournful reality came rushing into him like mustard gas.

  Emmy was dead.

  He sat up. He thought about lying down again, wondered if his body could be bothered to go through the motions of living today, but the distant commotion reaching his ears from way below in the kitchen compelled him to stand up, pull on his dressing gown and slump downstairs, groggy as if with a hangover.

  He had to go through the living room to get to the kitchen and the sight of the coffin there on the table was an icy slap to his face. He’d almost forgotten that it was there; that she was there; his baby. He stared at the body in the little coffin, began to register the changes in her posture, her dress, the position of the coffin on the edge of the table, but his attention was drawn to the raised voices in the kitchen and the muffled wailing of a girl beyond.

  ‘I want to come out. How long do I have to stay here? Please, let me out! I can’t stand it in here.’

  He took a step towards the kitchen and heard his mother. ‘Well, I suppose it won’t hurt her to stay in there a little bit longer.’

  He heard Jenny. ‘She needs to know she can’t get away with things like that. I mean, that’s just awful, isn’t it? And it’s not the first time she’s done something really silly. She’s always disobeying us.’

  He heard his father. ‘Well, perhaps they have been a bit remiss when it comes to disciplining her, but we must remember they have both had a lot on their plates what with Max being away for so long and…’

  He heard Netta. ‘Let me out! Please! Mama, Mama! How long? How long do I have to stay in here? How long? How long?’

  He heard Sergeant Volkov. ‘Get in! Solitary confinement. That was the punishment stated for sloppy medical practice, was it not?’

  He heard himself. ‘Look, let’s just go back to the hospital and I can show you the figures, you can count the patients for yourself if you like. I am sure that there are less than nine percent sick.’

  He heard Volkov again, felt the jabbing of a gun in his back. ‘Get in! And if I have to tell you again you’ll be shot.’

  He felt the damp floor of his two-metre-square cell. He heard himself. ‘How long? How long do I have to stay in here? How long? How long?’

  He heard his mother. ‘Well I suppose it won’t hurt her to stay in there a little bit longer.’

  But it will! He ground the thought between his teeth. It will hurt her to stay in there a bit longer! He felt the need to stretch, to unfurl himself in the way that cell back in Gegesha had stopped him from doing. He looked at his daughter in the coffin.
He heard his daughter in the basement. He barged into the kitchen, making the three guards there jump, slammed back the bolt on the basement door calling out into the darkness below, ‘Come on, Emmy, come on, darling. It’s OK, you can come out now.’

  His daughter scampered up the stairs and grabbed the hand he held out for her with her own stinging mucky one. He led her out of the kitchen glaring at Karl and Martha and Jenny as he went. Martha was about to say something, perhaps about the fact that he had just called Netta Emmy, but Karl’s hand on her arm silenced her. Max led Netta through to the living room, but the sight of Emmy in the coffin stopped him in his tracks – as if he had forgotten she was there again.

  He stood holding Netta’s hand for a moment; a moment which felt stretched, as in a nightmare, to both of them. Then without taking his eyes from the corpse he muttered, ‘Go on. Go and get cleaned up. Go and get dressed.’

  Netta gratefully did as she was told.

  He moved falteringly to the coffin and with the fingers of an old man began to straighten Emmy’s dress and rearrange her hands.

  Karl went to work as usual. He tried to stay home but the others wouldn’t have it. They could close the surgery for a few days – there was always the hospital or the other GPs in the area for patients to go to if it was an emergency. But all those children missing out on their education if Karl didn’t open the school, Erika and Max wouldn’t hear of it. And if Karl was honest with himself, he was glad to get out of the house and occupy himself with something other than the sight of his grandchild lying in that coffin on the living room table.

  The primary school was relatively small and his few colleagues offered their condolences, which he smiled politely at before deftly changing the subject to the new term’s timetable or asking Herr Ritter the caretaker about the progress of repairs on the roof.

  He sat in his office and marked some books, but his mind kept wandering bizarrely, he thought at first, to the motorbike in the shed next door. But, he soon realised, it was fixing up this motorbike with Max that had given him a way to connect with the stranger who had returned from the Siberian labour camp. They had enjoyed this time together just as they used to enjoy playing the piano together when Max was a boy, or listening to the crystal radio set – the first such set in the whole street – tuned in to the Landenberg station. Back then Karl would help both his sons, Max and Sepp, build the carts they would then hitch to the horses on their grandmother’s farm and gallop along the fields with them at breakneck speeds. Martha would frown at this dangerous sport, just like she did at the motorbike, but that only told Karl he was doing the right manly things with his boys. And then in ’43, at the age of eighteen, his boy barely a man, Sepp was killed on the Russian front only days after arriving there. Max had lost his brother and Karl had lost a child. He shook out his aching wrist and went back to his marking, shaking his head too at the irony – the only thing he could truly say he understood about the man who came back from Gegesha now was what he was feeling today at the loss of his child.

  ‘That old war wound playing up again, is it, Herr Portner?’

  Karl looked up at the doorway where Officer Hummel leaned, arms folded, as if he thought he was an American film star or something, Karl scoffed inwardly.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Karl said with barely concealed irritation.

  ‘The wrist.’ Hummel nodded at Karl’s disability and sauntered into the room.

  ‘Oh, yes. Nothing to worry about though.’ Karl gave a brief smile and turned back to his books to give the uninvited guest a hint that he was too busy for a chat.

  ‘Remind me how you got that injury again?’ Hummel had seemed to have missed the hint and sat himself down on the other side of Karl’s desk.

  Karl let his pen fall on the page in front of him with a slap, sat back and after eyeing the intruder for a moment said slowly and deliberately, ‘I shot myself in the arm.’

  Hummel sucked at the air in sympathy, ‘Ooh, nasty. An accident you said?’

  Karl studied Hummel and resented the way it felt as if Hummel was the headmaster and he was a child on the other side of the desk being told off for some naïve misdemeanour. No one outside the family knew he shot himself to avoid military service. It was too dangerous when he did it to let anyone know that his hatred of Imperial policies drove him to it. And yet here was Hummel interrogating him as if he already knew the truth. And so what if he told the truth now? The Empire was long gone, the Nazis were long gone, he didn’t need to live in fear anymore. And if Hummel did somehow know the truth, Karl lying about it would just make Hummel more suspicious of him generally. But he was sure Hummel couldn’t know. Martha and Max would never have said anything. And even Erika… he knew they were not the best of friends since her indiscretion with the carpenter, but… And then there was the fact that Hummel, being Hummel, was probably a National Socialist in his time. Knowledge of the strength of Karl’s political leanings would probably make this policeman more suspicious of him than lying about his injury would. And so Karl opened his mouth and heard himself growl:

  ‘How can I help you today, Officer?’

  Hummel sniffed smugly and replied, ‘Well, I just came to pay my respects really. I heard about your granddaughter. Terrible, terrible.’

  Karl reddened with anger. Hummel’s tone was so devoid of sincerity and Karl despised him for it.

  ‘You must feel cursed or something in that house,’ he continued with astounding insensitivity. ‘First Fraulein Kranz and now little Emmy?’ He waited for an answer, as if anyone would dignify such a question with one. ‘I really wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I were you.’

  ‘Well, that’s just it, isn’t it?’ Karl said eventually, trying desperately to contain his wrath. ‘You really don’t know what to do, do you?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘It’s been a year.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘A year since Karin was killed. And still the culprit has not been found. Don’t you think perhaps it’s time to draft in a detective from outside Mengede, you know, someone with more expertise in these matters? Someone who actually knows what they’re doing? Someone who can get the job done?’

  Karl saw Hummel shrink from the swipe and picked up his pen to resume his marking, his position as headmaster regained. The scolded child on the other side of the desk got up quietly and shuffled sheepishly back to school.

  Karl and Max secured the lid and everyone sat around the room looking furtively at each other, hoping someone else would know how this worked, what to do and when to do it.

  Netta sat with her legs dangling from the armchair, just as she did a few nights ago, the memory of the weight of Emmy in her arms and on her lap pressing on her black dress. Bertel in the wing-back chair looked resplendent in a dress trimmed with black lace, a string of pearls around her neck and a black bonnet over her long silver hair. Erika, despite the late summer weather, was buttoned up tightly in a long black coat as if she were trying to hide as much of herself from the world as possible. Jenny stood by the mantelpiece trying discreetly to check her make-up and hair in the mirror. She and Isabel had gone shopping especially to buy new outfits for the occasion and Jenny was determined to look like the actress Linda Christian at the funeral of Ivor Novello, which she’d seen on the news at the cinema a few months before.

  Karl and Martha were painfully aware of how this worked, what to do and when to do it, and, as Martha straightened his tie, Karl grimaced as if she were strangling him and said, ‘Are you ready, son?’

  Max nodded and turned to Erika. ‘Are you sure you’re up to this?’

  ‘No,’ she said, her eyes focused on nothing. ‘Are you?’

  Karl helped Max carry the coffin out to the street, where Edgar, Karl’s lawyer friend Jäger, Herr Ritter, his wife, and their three sons including Netta’s friend Josef waited uncomfortably in the hazy sunshine. In her trembling hands Erika took one end of the coffin from Karl. The weight of it seemed to press the tears fro
m her. Edgar stretched out a long arm and squeezed Max’s shoulder in an eloquent silence which seemed to wring the tears from him too. And then the quietly weeping couple started the longest walk of their lives through the town to the cemetery, an entourage of mourners behind whose legs, apart from Bertel’s, were aching to walk faster, whose minds were aching with thoughts of their own mortality.

  As they passed down the street, other friends and acquaintances left their houses and joined the troop. Isabel trotted over to Jenny bursting with gossip, which would have to be contained for now as her employer Frau Beltz hobbled beside them.

  Outside the church two British soldiers doffed their berets respectfully. Inside even more people were waiting and Erika didn’t know whether to feel proud of such a turnout or ashamed that all these people were gawping at her grief.

  ‘Both doctors,’ she thought she heard whispered from somewhere in the congregation, ‘and still she died.’

  ‘First the housekeeper and now this,’ she thought she heard mumbled from behind a book of psalms. ‘Who’s next, I wonder?’

  After the service Father Egger led the mourners out to the cemetery where other onlookers waited – those who wanted to pay their respects but didn’t feel quite part of the family and its circle of friends enough to invite themselves into the church. The large figure of Rodrick skulking by the trees was unmistakable to Erika, and a stern-faced woman clutching an infant stirred a memory in her which she couldn’t quite pin down in the maelstrom of her despair. Hummel loitering by the gates, his nose in the air, added to her nausea.

  As much as he wanted to take in every last image of his daughter’s coffin before it was lowered out of sight forever, Max’s attention was diverted by the sight of the altar boys in their bright white cassocks. He saw himself and Horst in the very same costumes in this very same cemetery, twenty years before, attending funerals with a younger Father Egger. He winced at the way the grief of the mourners then meant so little to him, his young mind occupied with just how he and Horst could use the crucifix as a ladder after the burial to climb the wall of the priest’s garden and plunder the sweet fruit from the cherry trees there. He examined the boys’ cassocks for signs of red stains, the kind of stains he and Horst had made as they carelessly munched on their bounty, the kind of stains that had earned him and Horst a wallop from Father Egger. His innards smiled at the memory of Horst, red stains on white cassocks. The image morphed into blood stains on a doctor’s coat and he jumped noticeably as if someone had fired a rifle close to his head. He blinked away the image and found his eyes resting on Horst’s wife, Eva, the stern-faced woman clutching the infant. And as Father Egger asked the mourners to pray, all Max could recite was the letter she had written to Horst while they were rotting in Gegesha.