Carry Me

by Peter Behrens

  I don’t remember anyone telling me the story while I was growing up, nor do I remember a time when I wasn’t aware that my mother had, once upon a time, been attacked by a man in the dark. I suppose I’d overheard my parents speaking of it. Perhaps they hadn’t realized how much would sink in. While I was growing up, the story, dim in its details, was already embedded in my consciousness. I did not query my parents, for I felt guilty even knowing so much as I did. I held that knowledge furtively, like something stolen, something I really had no right to possess.

  Except once, when I was nine years old—we were in Frankfurt, and I blurted out, “The man who hurt you, did you talk to him?”

  “I did,” she replied. “My mistake.”

  It was January 1919. Germany was in the last throes of her aborted revolution, and I’d just seen my first dead bodies on the street.

  “Is that why he hurt you?”

  “It was the devil in his own nature.”

  Almost sixty years later, Eilín did tell me exactly what happened. We were having tea at her cottage at Rosses Point in Sligo, reminiscing about sunny summers on the isle, when she unfurled the story. It was the last time I saw her alive—she died in her sleep a few weeks later.

  Sir Ernest Dalton was a rich manufacturer of some homely houseware—table silver? Alarm clocks? Plumbing fixtures? Whatever he made, it made him one of the richest men in England.

  Those island lanes were overgrown with fuchsia. He unlatched a metal gate and kept trying to push Eilín out into a field, one of the island’s ancient meadows—chalky soil, grass wiry and rough. She struggled and fought and shouted for help. She broke away and fled across the grass but tripped and went down hard. She was lithe and quick, but Sir Ernest Dalton was bigger and stronger and twenty or thirty years older, bulky and wheezy. Then he was on top of her.

  What I think of, because I don’t wish to imagine the rest of it, is her white dress being wrecked and ruined on the wiry brown grass by that pig of a man who raped her.

  He left her there and hurried back to Sanssouci, apparently.

  She made her way to the Crab Inn. I was asleep, and Miss Anne Hamilton, my nurse, was stretched out on top of my parents’ bed and asleep, too.

  The innkeeper sent for the village policeman, who refused to do anything until my father had been informed and consulted. A messenger rowed out to Hermione on her mooring, and Buck was awakened and given some sort of garbled account. He and the baron rowed ashore and raced in a pony trap to Shanklin, where they heard the story from my mother, who had been bathed and put to bed but couldn’t sleep.

  The baron went to Sanssouci, roused all his guests, and ordered them to leave immediately in a coach he’d hired. Sir Ernest Dalton had already slipped away, probably to catch the dawn ferry at Ryde Pier, which connected to the early train leaving Southampton for Waterloo. Meanwhile, at the inn, a police inspector summoned from Newport asked my father what action he wished to pursue.

  Buck wanted Sir Ernest Dalton prosecuted, convicted, and hanged. But my mother refused to be interviewed or provide any account to the authorities, even when a justice of the peace was summoned to her room. She had no interest in the processes of the law, perhaps because her father, an Irish barrister, had always been absorbed in law and politics to the exclusion of any real interest in the lives of his daughters. Eilín didn’t care about the system of justice; she didn’t care about the law’s majesty; she wanted vengeance. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Her attacker had been the baron’s guest, therefore punishment—vengeance—was the baron’s responsibility.

  I don’t know where she learned this ancient code. It sounds like something out of Beowulf. But she still believed in it, sixty years later.

  She had an interview with Hermann Weinbrenner in the library at Sanssouci the following day. The baron wept and told her he wanted to burn the house down to atone for the dishonor.

  “You can’t do that!” she said. “We’d have nowhere to live!”

  She told him it was his responsibility to punish her attacker. She did not want my father involved in any way, in case there were consequences. Blowback would be the term now.

  Karin’s father was short, energetic, vital. He was by no means bloodthirsty, but he was direct, efficient, used to getting things done. His grandfather had been an old-clothes peddler in Breslau. His father founded the dyeworks that under the baron’s leadership became Colora GmbH, which in the 1920s would merge with other chemical and pharmaceutical firms into the IG Farben cartel.

  Through business connections in the West Midlands, contact was made with a Birmingham criminal gang. They were called…the Peaky Blinders. That’s how my mother remembered the name, anyhow.

  The Blinders set on Sir Ernest Dalton exactly one month after my mother was assaulted. She said they located him on a golf course and beat him with his clubs.

  Then exactly one year to the day after the crime, the Peaky Blinders set upon Sir Ernest Dalton again. As soon as he recovered from the second assault he left England and went to live in Italy, where he died of cholera during the First World War.

  How did that violence affect me? However they shrouded it from me, I knew something bad had happened. Can I isolate its effects from other violence I knew of or witnessed while I was a boy? If I had nightmares I don’t remember them. Guilt? Yes. All my life I have felt guilty. Never protected my mother, you see.

  Stating this so baldly makes it seem ridiculous.

  You’d think she’d have been wary of the lanes, and hated the Isle of Wight, and wanted us to quit Sanssouci. But she didn’t. Sanssouci remained our home, ours alone for eleven and a half months of the year. And we were always in the lanes between our house and the village, and farther afield. My parents enjoyed long walks in all sorts of weather, and I was set astride a little gray donkey, Whiz. Whiz was gentle and cooperative and didn’t even need to be led. He just ambled along, and my father fed him lumps of sugar.

  But I never expected the world outside our household, our little family, to be safe. I always assumed there would be lions out there, and sure enough, there were.

  On the sunstruck Isle of Wight, the summer of 1914 was different than the others. By July, many yachtsmen could sniff the Balkan stew seething on the hob. Most of the foreign membership stayed home, in Berlin, Paris, St. Petersburg. Cowes Week remained on the RYS calendar, but the Weinbrenners stayed in Germany, where the baron had not spent a summer in twenty years.

  It meant my parents and I didn’t have to go into exile at the Crab Inn. That summer I had everything and everyone I wanted. Sunlight, seashells, and my parents. I was not much aware of time passing because there was no sense of anything changing, or being spoiled. The days flowed so smoothly they seem now, in memory, only one day, perfect, sunlit, calm. I used to hear my parents’ calm voices after I was put down for my afternoon nap, while I watched sheer curtains dance in the wafts of an onshore breeze. That summer was entirely ours; we did not have to share it with the bristling baron and his cigars, late suppers, and packs of horrid houseguests. Buck did not have to race Hermione nor spend days and nights at the boatyard getting her ready to race. Instead he and Eilín worked together in the garden while I sat on the lawn watching them. Then he carried me on his shoulders down a steep, crooked path to the pebbled shingle below the cliffs, to dabble my toes in the sea.

  Toward the end of July one of the elegant young men from the German embassy hurried down from London and took away Hermione’s logbook, which included ribald entries made by the kaiser, who had once or twice been a guest aboard her. Did the young diplomat warn my parents that they ought to clear out of England before the declaration of war?

  I don’t know.

  All accounts insist there was sunny weather all over England the day the war began. On fair days the English Channel was dark blue, and white manes of foam blew off the tips of the waves. Following my afternoon nap my mother instructed Hamilton to take me into the village and buy ices at the shop. This was a rare tre
at.

  Where was my father when Hamilton and I quit the house that afternoon? He might have been taking a nap himself or standing at the top of the cliff with his Leitz binoculars, looking out over the fair blue of the Channel. Cowes Week was on, but probably not so many yawls or racing schooners were out that afternoon, only battle-gray warships.

  While Hamilton and I were enjoying our ice-cream treat at the village shop, a pair of policemen—one in uniform, one in plainclothes—arrived at Sanssouci, arrested Buck, and took him away.

  I don’t remember if my mother tried to explain his absence or if I wept or sulked or how I otherwise behaved. And I have no memory at all of the hours and days that followed, when she went up to London trying to learn what had happened to him and was met by official blankness and scorn. In the aftermath of my father’s arrest as a German naval spy she must have been reeling, but I didn’t notice. Or don’t remember. It’s as though a light was switched off, leaving me in the dark, and nothing of those days left any impression that has lasted, not even the darkness.

  1938

  On the café terrace on Unter den Linden, Karin was bent forward in her chair so that her face almost pressed against her knees. She wore an overcoat, hat, and woolen scarf, and the sounds she made were muffled. A few patrons glanced in our direction, but most didn’t notice her weeping, or didn’t want to.

  The Saturday crowd streamed by on the sidewalk. It was Berlin as usual, pulsing, hectic, self-absorbed.

  She suddenly sat up straight and dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief she took from her purse.

  “I don’t know why this monstrous thing has chosen to happen now,” she said.

  I touched her arm, but she wouldn’t look at me, she faced the stream of passersby on Unter den Linden.

  “I would consider getting rid of the thing, Billy, the bloody world doesn’t need one more German. But then, my baby will be some sort of Jew, won’t he? There’s enough of Jews being kicked around, perhaps I’d better see him through. You’ll stick by me won’t you, Buffalo Billy?”

  “What do you think?”

  She smiled and went inside the café to wash her face.

  When she returned I told her about the job offer from Vancouver, and the Dutch ship and the five-day crossing to New York.

  “Vancouver, Canada. That’s where we’ll live. A city on the Pacific coast. We might get married in New York, buy a car, and drive across America. From the consulate in Köln we get tourist visas good for sixty days. I expect to pay about eight hundred marks for a reliable machine. We aim for California at first, then north for Canada.”

  Her eyes were shut, her face tilted to the bright, weak October sun. She was exhausted by her work, the dire responsibility of it.

  “We’ll drive south and west, toward the sun,” I promised. “We’ll cross el llano.”

  A river of citizens was flowing by. The typical Berlin mood of panic and rush with a salting of ruthlessness. The city always insisted on the now. Berlin couldn’t bear delay. Hurry, hurry. That city had no patience, none. Old people stuttered along, leaning on their sticks. Sleek young people darted like fish against the current. Elegant ladies marched with fur stoles draped around their necks; uniformed messenger boys pumped along on bicycles; countrified soldier recruits looked lost; babies shouted from their prams.

  “El Llano Estacado.”

  I said the words just to hear them. Many, perhaps most, of the patrons on the terrace would have recognized that phrase. Because for our generation it was really an incantation.

  El Llano Estacado, the Staked Plain, is an enormous mesa, a raised tableland flanked by red bluffs and sprawling over millions of acres from the Texas Panhandle into New Mexico. In Karl May’s Winnetou novels, which Karin introduced me to when we were children, El Llano Estacado is the mystical hunting ground of the Mescalero Apache.

  She shook her head. “My city won’t eat me. I know my Berlin, Billy. She’s a cross old bear, but I know her.”

  “You can’t know what will happen.”

  She wouldn’t look at me; she kept watching the passing crowd. She’d scarcely touched her venison. Patrons at the tables wore hats pulled low and scarves wrapped around their ears. The Berliners were unwilling to acknowledge the season for outdoor pleasure was nearly over. All the cafés would be drawing in their tables soon.

  “I’m cold,” she said at last. “Let’s walk. Pay the bloody waiter, Billy.”

  By the time we reached her flat in Charlottenburg it was dusk, not much light left in the sky.

  Blue air of those Berlin autumn Saturdays. Cool and musky. November scented.

  Oh, Christ.

  She owned a collection of small Max Beckmann oils. Those paintings were always on the floor, propped against the walls, never hung. She liked moving them about. Beckmann had been a medical orderly in the war; he’d served at the front. Everyone he painted, especially himself, looked as though they had been recently blown up by high explosives and hastily put back together.

  The flat had hardly any furniture. Her little Naumann-Erika portable typewriter on its Bauhaus table. Her platform bed.

  As was customary we went to bed immediately. White sheets, crisp and cool. We lay alongside each other, not touching at first. Then I took her hand. At first hand-holding, then kissing, then only gradually she let me touch her belly, shoulders, her small hard breasts. She moved my hand between her legs. Her cunt—if there is a better word, I don’t know it—had something ripe to it, a seam ready to burst. She was always wet when I found her. She smelled of apple seed. I went into her as gently as possible, wary of the baby inside her now, even if it wasn’t much more than a seed.

  We slept, and the afternoon spun and changed to evening. I awoke next to her body radiating heat between the sheets. Fortune seemed very fragile. Feelings of happiness and plentitude brushed very close to feelings of dread. If she would not agree to leave Hitlerite Germany, what should I do? I couldn’t bear the thought of our child born under the regime.

  The air was cool. Before lying down we had shoved the big windows open wide. Now it was dark out, and neon reflections dashed against the white walls. Across the street leaves shimmered under yellow streetlight. I could hear the trams, the Elektrische, clashing, zinging along the Kurfürstendamm. Soon we would get up, draw a bath, lounge together in the tub, sharing the newspaper, reading aloud, laughing at its lies. We’d get dressed and go out and find a meal. We’d go dancing.

  HAMILTON

  Holograph letter. Eilín McDermott Lange to Constance O. Lange, 4.8.1914, postmarked Ryde, I of W, 4 Aug. 1914. Lange Family Archive. C-08-1914. Special Collections, McGill Library, McGill University, Montreal.

  “SANSSOUCI”,

  Shanklin, I. of Wight

  4th August 1914

  MRS C. LANGE

  Wychwood

  Calry,

  Co. Sligo

  Ireland

  Dear Mother Lange,

  I do not know how or if this will reach you, all mails to the Continent are stopped perhaps Ireland as well. This afternoon they have taken away my husband, your son…Buck is arrested. 2 policemen—PC Goon from the village with great black boots, helmet, and red face. And a weasel-faced Special Branch detective in a mackintosh, a Londoner. Buck is held tonight at the Royal Naval College Osborne House and most likely to be brought up to London but they wouldn’t say when or where, I believe they didn’t know. ‘Sorry for your trouble, ma’am,’ PC Goon mumbled. ‘Order of the Home Secretary.’ His patchy English decency made me want to scream. If they were savages I could fight them but it was our only dull kindly village policeman horrified yet delighted by his new powers, and the silent Londoner. Brutality just underneath.

  Last week when we heard Germany and Russia were at war Buck said immediately—‘That will do it for us because now France must go in so England as well’ but we didn’t really know what it would mean. A young man from the embassy, Count von Mueller-Hippmann, came down from London quite unexpected and asked Buc
k for the log-book from Hermione and a guest-book in which the Kaiser had written some foolish things when he dined here long ago. Mueller-Hippmann smiled and said, ‘Our countries will soon be at war.’ I felt a chill and knew he was right, however his way of speaking was very mild and kind, and we all felt sad knowing war must mean the end of our life at Sanssouci. He said hundreds of young Germans called up for the army were leaving England. Scenes at Charing Cross were frantic but most of these were young men in London by themselves working in as waiters, clerks, barbers & etc.

  I told M-H it would go very hard on us to leave England and flee to Germany where we have never lived. Buck speaks German beautifully but he is really a stranger now to that country, this Island is where we have made our home. And Buck could hardly fight against England which he loves whilst his wife and son were living in England. M-H repeated the situation was a difficult one and that he was not qualified to give advice—then Buck took him in the trap to Ryde and the ferry.

  That evening Buck went to the Crab Inn to see if there was any news and village boys jeered at him on the road saying he was a filthy Hun and a spy, etc. He recognized some from families we knew and were friendly with, and was very shaken. The next morning came the news—war with the German Empire—and a last telegram from the Baron asking Buck to watch over this house and the yacht but no word as to where the money would come from for Buck’s salary, wages of the staff, or upkeep of the house and grounds, etc. As you know we live on Buck’s salary as captain & sailing master. The arrangement gives us this house to live in as our own except when the Baron will bring down a party in the summer.

  Then Lord Ormonde the Commodore rang up and said—as a fellow Irishman and sailor he was obliged to warn Buck he must expect to be arrested as a spy, Special Branch men would come to the house in a few hours, he must prepare himself, and it was preposterous because everyone knew he wasn’t a filthy spy, but it would all come right soon enough.