The Woman from Bratislava

by Leif Davidsen

  I did not stop to consider. Although normally I always did. I tried to keep everyone happy, to be the good girl who did not call too much attention to herself. I tried to be like all the others, and never betray the fact that my family had a secret; that I knew there was a secret, although my parents had never really said anything to me, not even now that I was older.

  Nonetheless, I stupidly put up my hand and said:

  ‘But Mr Hansen, I don’t understand. If that’s true, then how come the Danish government called the resistance people criminals for so many years? And why were they arrested by the police?’

  His face blanched, he grabbed me by the ear, slapped my face and hissed at me not to be so impertinent, asking the sort of questions that could only come from one quarter. I should think myself lucky that I lived in a free country where even the likes of me were allowed to go to school along with decent Danish children!

  I felt my eyes fill with tears, but I refused to cry. My cheek stung from the slap, the first I had ever received at school. Fritz, like other boys, had had plenty, of course. But I did not cry, and I never told my parents what had happened in school that day. They had enough to worry about.

  The cheery tinkle of the shop bell sounded less and less often to announce a customer. At the start of the new year, Dad dismissed Mrs Sørensen, who helped out in the shop on Sundays and often in the afternoons too. Mum could easily keep house, look after us kids and serve the bakery’s dwindling clientele. The only person who did not really seem to have grasped that our life had changed was little Teddy, who was as petted and pampered as ever. But then he was only five, and used to toddling about the house at Mum’s heels, sitting on a little chair in the corner of the shop, running over to Dad or playing with Lene from next door. All of which he continued to do. Several of my friends and Fritz’s chums stopped coming to see us or playing with us, having been forbidden to do so, but they did not act any differently towards Teddy. Even so, I think he must have sensed that something was wrong. He lost weight and was even more readily given to tears than before. He also became more clingy, hanging onto Mum’s apron like a little baby.

  I eventually figured out that the villain of the piece was the grand visitor from Copenhagen. Referred to by my parents when they thought I was not listening simply as the Jew. As if in their minds, this term covered everything and everyone that was against them, everything they hated. But the idea that they were not only anti-Zionist – that being, after all, a sound political persuasion – but positively regarded the Jewish race as a plague on the earth – this I find very hard to accept. Like us they were, however, a product of the society in which they had grown up and in which they lived. A product of circumstances and the capitalistic chaos which prevailed (and prevails) in the world. They grew up seeing the world as an unjust, exploitative place, but unfortunately they did not have genuine insight or the schooling necessary for them to make the right choices. Instead, choices were made for them by powers beyond their ken. Sadly, they were not sufficiently enlightened as to the class system which shaped their lives and their thoughts. And so they called everyone who hurt our family Jews, although the honoured guest from Copenhagen was every bit as Danish as we were.

  I’m sorry, sister. I promised not to rant on about politics.

  Slowly I pieced together the story and formed a picture of that lunch – one which, years later, my mother reluctantly confirmed.

  The Jew had been ushered in to the laden lunch table and the gentlemen sitting around it, their faces rosy from the warmth and the schnapps; quite a few of them had already undone the top button of their trousers to accommodate all the plump herring, the excellent brawn, the liver pâté and salami, the warm roast pork, home-made rolled-lamb sausage, game terrines and the host of other rich delicacies which the Count served up at his famous shooting-party lunches. My father had been allocated a very prestigious place at the long table, only two seats down from the Count’s own place at the head of the table and next to the managing director of the engine works. The gentlemen were looking forward to the cheese, another little glass of schnapps, coffee and cigars before returning to the field, well fired-up. The keepers were not looking forward to that. The afternoon shoot was always a dicier affair than the morning shoot.

  The Jew inclined his head to the assembled company as the Count introduced him and led him up to the empty place on his right-hand side. With an air of great self-importance he nodded affably to the other guests. His lateness was a mark of his high standing: he was a member of so many important committees. He viewed his work as a moral calling. It was his duty to see to it that traitors received their just deserts, in the press if nothing else, and that heroes were not forgotten. He was forced, much against his will, to associate with politicians, now back in power, who endeavoured to make out that their collaboration with the Germans during the early years of the war had been purely accidental, or at any rate merely a pragmatic and very Danish ploy which had spared the country a great deal of misery.

  The Jew shook hands with a couple of men whom he knew and was just about to take his seat at the place reserved for him when he caught sight of my father and my father caught sight of him. Their eyes were like blades clashing in the smoke-filled air between them. Dad’s face turned white. The Jew’s face turned red and the hand which he had out of habit and politeness extended to greet those of the Count’s guests closest to him checked in mid-air and hovered there as if it did not know what to do with itself. The Jew took a step forward and said loudly and clearly, in a voice that cut through the room and made everyone look up at him and Dad:

  ‘One is not in the habit of sitting at table with Nazis and Jew killers. One has no desire to eat with men who donned enemy uniform. One is quite prepared to leave. If you gentlemen would rather break Danish bread with the SS.’

  There is a saying in Danish. I don’t know whether you have a similar expression in German. We say: an angel passed through the room. It is used to describe a moment when time stands still and everyone knows that something significant has just occurred, but no one yet knows exactly what. That statement was the angel in the room. It hung in the air and could not be called back. The lunch guests were discomfited by this turn of events. Just when they had been having such a nice, convivial time of it, with no women or children around. But such a statement was not to be ignored. This was a serious accusation; it gave rise to some unease among certain people at the table, a fear that attention might also be directed at them and their own sympathies back in the days when one faithfully followed the government’s recommendations until one deemed it wise to retreat from those positions as the tide of war began to turn at the front.

  Hardly any time elapsed between the words being uttered and their effect being seen, but it felt like an age. Dad had risen from his chair and put out his hand. It dropped to his side again and he had to steady himself against the table, as if he were drunk, or had had a momentary dizzy turn. The Count stood at the head of the table with his hand on the back of the chair which he had been about to pull out in order to sit down and merrily resume this most agreeable lunch. He looked from the Jew to my father and back again. Then his eyes flicked back and forth again. Clearly he, like the other men, was waiting for a response from my father or further clarification from the Jew. The two men squared up to one another like a couple of he-dogs, but Dad was the one with his tail between his legs. The Jew overpowered him with his gaze. Dad said nothing. That may have been a mistake, but it would have been unlikely to change anything. The Count, as host, felt bound to resolve the situation. With his first words he made it quite plain where he stood. He did not refute the Jew’s accusation, instead he simply said:

  ‘Perhaps you owe us an explanation, Mr Pedersen …’

  Dad stared at him. He was still white as a sheet. But, shaken and mortified though he was, he was also seething with rage. What angered him most was the fact that the Count, their host, could permit someone who had just walked in to insult one o
f his guests. A respectable citizen and substantial pillar of the local community, a man who always paid his dues.

  So: ‘I don’t owe anyone anything,’ my father said in a voice not much above a whisper, or like the hiss of a snake, the words uttered with so much venom and defiance. The Jew said nothing, only stared at Dad as if recognising the man before him from pictures in the files he pored over every day for the government, intent on digging up the weeds and keeping the torch of freedom burning, as he had written in the resistance movement’s newspaper, Information. He took a pace to the right, a tiny, imperceptible turn of the head indicating that he was all set to return to Copenhagen, when the Count said:

  ‘Perhaps it would be best if you were to leave my house, Mr Pedersen.’

  Dad gazed at him as if not really understanding what he had said. Did not understand that he was being banished from the table and from the local community because of some stranger from Copenhagen who had suddenly shown up armed with accusations from a past which everyone at that table had tacitly agreed to put behind them, now that new times were so obviously on the way.

  And it was after that, of course, that I had seen him come out, looking as though he had just set eyes on the Devil himself, and maybe he had.

  By the early spring the patience of my father’s creditors had run out and on a day in March a removal van came to pick up the few bits and pieces of furniture and household utensils which we had been allowed to keep in order to pursue a modest, if very meagre existence. The car, most of the furniture, the paintings, Dad’s shotguns, his trophies, most of our books, the Royal Copenhagen porcelain figurines and everything else that had formed the framework of our lives was left behind to be sold at auction. I did not want to look back and see the white house retreating into the distance. I looked straight ahead. Oddly enough, I do not remember the removal man, only that he had a wooden figure of a naked African woman hanging from his rear-view mirror. It was a dull day with rain in the air and a stiff west wind blowing. Fritz sat stony-faced next to me on the front seat of the removal van. He did not look to right or left. There was only just enough room for the two of us in the new lorry. Dad and Mum had to take the bus to Odense with Teddy and the train from there to our new home in Jutland. The last I heard of them was Teddy’s howls and Dad’s deep voice rebuking him for being such a cry-baby.

  Fritz and I had received a hug from Mum and a handshake from Dad. My father’s face was pale, but his eyes were red and bloodshot. I did not want to say goodbye to the house. Nor did I want to cry. I was not going to give those hateful people that satisfaction. While Fritz made a round of the half-empty rooms I sat on the steps, gazing across at the vicar’s enormous beech tree. The curtains were drawn over there and the village was deserted. Strangest of all, no sound emanated from the bakehouse, and no smell. The fragrant odour of sugar and flour, and the distinctive clunk made by the biggest of the mixers as it kneaded the dough for the rye bread and a slight bump in the rotor shaft knocked against the bowl at every turn. The creditors had had a padlock put on the bakehouse door. A man known as the ‘Royal Bailiff ’ had taken care of this matter. What a fitting name for a person representing the nameless denizens of a pseudo-democracy who wield power for international capitalism.

  No neighbours came out to say goodbye to us. I did not realise that this was the last time I would see the father I knew, and that not until years later would I see his ghost when, thanks to you, we held hands across the decades, before death took him for good and all.

  18

  SOME DAYS HAVE PASSED. They keep asking me questions about my life and my contacts. But they have nothing. They may think that Stasi’s Edelweiss and I are one and the same person. But they do not know for sure. It is hard to believe that they would waste so much money and manpower on a past which died along with Soviet communism. What does any of that matter today? And yet it is like something straight out of Kafka: they cannot prove my guilt, so it’s up to me to prove my innocence. They are interviewing everyone I have ever known. The prospect of punishment does not worry me. By delving into my life and revealing its most intimate details to friends, family and colleagues they have already punished me. They have branded me, and that mark will never wash off. In this they have been ably supported by the conservative press, which swallows police statements raw. But that’s not hard to understand, is it? You and I know that the conservative press is as easily bought as a Hamburg whore.

  They keep going back to an incident in the Baltic states. A case which, since it dates from 1987, they feel is still recent enough to be prosecuted. Possibly even so serious that the statute of limitations has never run out on it. Because it involved the loss of lives, in some of the Soviet Union’s last executions for treason. The victims had apparently been denounced by a Western spy. It’s insane, really. As if that could be of interest to anyone today. But that is just how it is. The one side’s spies are the other side’s traitors. And the final verdict rests always with the victors. That is how it has always been. And that is how it was for my father.

  I tell them I don’t know what they are talking about. That I do not know who Edelweiss is. They’ve got the wrong person. I am a scholar and a woman and I have never had access to confidential information. That is their weak spot. They can find no link between what I’m supposed to have done and my work as an academic and exposer of late capitalism’s oppression of women. They keep harking back to the fact that for two years in the mid-sixties I had a student job with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Good God! That’s such a long time ago! Such an awfully long time ago – I was only a young girl, photocopying freely available information for men who thought themselves very important. That is not enough. Even one of capitalism’s own judges would not agree to me being imprisoned for something that happened so many years ago. Then they say that I might have recruited others back then. And I have to laugh. They have no proof of that either. But they keep going on about that time because it is the only period in my life during which I have had access to anything other than public information. They’re getting desperate, because my remand warrant is about to run out and I know that they know they’ll have a hard job getting yet another extension. My lawyer says the same. He is full of contempt for them. They have no case. And yet they go through the masquerade because they feel compelled to come up with a scapegoat, with the right wing now baying for blood in the conservative press – which, in Denmark today, means the media as a whole.

  They weren’t all that interested ten years ago, when the Wall came down. Well, why would they be? I look around me in this country: all of my old friends and allies, my comrades from the meetings, groups, collectives, consciousness-raising groups, party schools and pioneer camps are now firmly in control of government, business and the media. They have put the past behind them. It is time to move on. It was all just an innocent bit of fun. I am not like them. Mistakes were made, but no amount of trendy make-up can disguise the evils of capitalism. Look over the welfare walls of Europe and America and the poverty and misery will hurt your eyes. The objective course of history will not be denied. Scholars of the future will look back on the time around the turn of the century as a somewhat inexplicable setback before the peoples of the Third World set out to take back what imperialism had stolen from them.

  So maybe I will soon be released from this inhuman solitary confinement, in which I have actually got to the point of looking forward to seeing my tormentors at those interminable interrogations. That is what happens to people when they are cut off from their fellow human beings. They become attached to their persecutors, driven mad as they are by loneliness and the lack of social contact. Even such a thorn in the side as that witless stud Toftlund is welcome. He has just shown up again, can barely move for testosterone, struts around as if he were God’s gift to women. But rather this atavistic macho man than that searing solitude in which time stands still and every day is the same. I have regular talks with my lawyer, but always on a strictly professional foo
ting. Usually he is also with me when I am questioned, but not always. Sometimes I agree to being interviewed without my lawyer being present.

  The fact is, you see, that occasionally I am surprised to find these sessions intellectually stimulating. It is like sitting an exam, and I have a lifetime’s experience of exams, whether sitting or setting them. During the interrogation sessions, as in the examination room, assertions are made and one tries to make sense of the argumentation, dissect the hypotheses, find the weak points and expose the examinee’s ignorance or the gaps in the examiner’s own fund of knowledge by analysing the substance of the questions.

  Toftlund does not know anything either. Like an angler he casts his line haphazardly. Thinks he is digging up bait from old yellowing files from Berlin. I cannot help but smile at their naivety. They believe that the Stasi files contain an objective truth. As if they were historical documents which would be of use to serious scholars. But Stasi did not write the truth. Stasi wrote what is, still, a work of fiction in which agents and informers, spies and controllers, guilty and innocent, were all – wittingly or unwittingly – figures in a bizarre serial. It was not about reporting the truth. It was about making oneself seem important and impressing one’s superiors. An innocent exchange of opinions over lunch would, in a report, become a revealing conversation concerning the strategic considerations of the other side. An article in a newspaper on a forthcoming defence agreement became a classified summary of NATO’s plans for the Baltic region. No one ever expected these reports to be read. No one imagined there would ever come a time when these exaggerations, distortions, half-truths and downright lies would be studied for the purposes of research. No historian would ever do that. A historian deals in historical facts, not interpretations. But the intelligence service is not interested in the objective truth. It is only interested in finding a scapegoat. And I am it.