Eva's Cousin

by Sibylle Knauss

  No answer.

  What do you want? I say.

  For a while nothing happens. It is as if neither of us knows what to do next. Then I hear a sound, and can make nothing of it at first. Heavy breathing, in and out, with a kind of trembling in it, a suppressed sobbing, and I realize that someone is weeping. I put the light on, and then I see him.

  It’s a boy. He can’t be more than fourteen years old. His head is bent, and he is half turned away from me. He is trying to cover his face with one arm, like a prisoner in the dock ashamed of his crime. His head is shaven, and he is indescribably dirty. You can hardly make out the badge sewn to his jacket through the dirt, but I see what it is. The oval sunflower garland, the badge of workers from the East.

  I know that badge, everyone knows it, and I also know at once what its position on the breast of his jacket means: It tells me he is a bad slave. If he were a good slave he would wear the badge sewn to the top of his left sleeve.

  At the time a single glance was enough to tell you who a person was: a member of the master race or a slave, a Party member or a foreigner. Or a Jew. When I see a badge on a breast pocket today, for instance the badges worn by the Eismann or McDonalds employees, I still feel an instant reaction of alarm. I still think: What plans do they have for these people? Then I remember that there are no slaves in the country now. It makes no difference whether the badge is on the breast or a sleeve, I tell myself. It means nothing. At the time, however, it showed whether someone was human or nonhuman. Only nonhumans wore their identity badges on the breast. Everyone else wore them on the sleeve.

  We Nazis were world champions at the invention of signs of rank and recognition. If we had not been halted in our tracks, no one would now step out of doors without an identity badge on his clothing. The Star of David was only a beginning, and an inspiration, too. We ourselves saw the Star of David disappear from our streets, but it had given us ideas. Shouldn’t one be able to tell at a glance how many children a woman has borne? Perhaps a badge consisting of the appropriate number of stripes on the upper sleeve, aping the signs of military rank? A childless woman’s badge, in contrast, to be sewn to the breast, denoting her shame. A small mortarboard sewn to a university graduate’s sleeve? An M for a millionaire? An S for a recipient of social security? And of course an A for Ausländer , foreigner, to be worn on the breast in the national colors of the foreigner’s land of origin?

  We were working on it. If we’d lasted a little longer, perhaps I’d have worn the stylized outline of the Kehlstein house on my jackets and coats as an emblem, as the badge of the Führer’s guests. On my upper arm, of course, where else?

  At that time, in Hitler’s Tea House, I look at the boy and I know where he belongs. He belongs in the hut encampment on the Antenberg. And I know what will happen to him if they find him. It is knowledge that I carry in my mind and accept as the most natural thing in the world: They shoot workers who try to escape. I have never been troubled by knowing that before. It is part of the system of rules in force. That’s how we live.

  But I had not known before that there were children among the slaves working for us. Later it turned out that he was in fact sixteen. But a sixteen-year-old who never gets enough to eat and has done forced labor for two years looks more like twelve than the fourteen I had taken him for.

  What are you doing here? I ask, in as friendly a tone as possible.

  My fear is slow to die away. I am still in a state of alarm. I take a couple of steps toward the boy. He suddenly lowers his arm and looks up at me. His face is distorted with terror, smeared with dirt, snot, and tears. He stares at me as no one has ever stared at me before. The sight of me has never struck mortal fear into anyone, and I realize that I am still holding the poker. I drop it. The noise with which it hits the tiles alarms us more than either of us can bear at this point. The boy jumps up. He is like an animal in a trap. I bar his way to the kitchen door. I see him taking stock. I see his glance move back and forth between the window and the door. He is looking for a way of escape. I sense that he is ready to rush me.

  I won’t hurt you, I say.

  I raise my hands and show him their upturned palms. I do it without even realizing that I am making this ancient gesture whereby strangers assure one another of their peaceful intentions.

  Sit down, I say. They’ll catch you outside there straightaway.

  I have no idea if he understands me. Perhaps he grasps the essentials, if only from the conclusions he draws. I see him beginning to weep again.

  Don’t cry, I say. Do you want something to eat?

  I have bread, a little butter, and milk in the fridge. Everything I need for breakfast. Only now do I see that a chair has fallen over. That must have been the noise I heard.

  We do not take our eyes off each other as I open the bread bin and put a plate of sliced bread on the table in front of him. He snatches it the way a hungry cat snaps at something you hold out to it, greedily, uncontrollably, used to the constant presence of others who will snatch it from him. He digs his teeth into it immediately, swallowing as much as he can.

  I pick the fallen chair up again and put the butter in front of him. He looks at me incredulously, as if he had seen me work a miracle. But before he can gulp the butter down, too, I draw it toward me again, take a knife, and butter a slice of bread. I hold it out to him. I feel that his suspicion and caution cannot hold out; I see his ferocity capitulate. What I am offering him is too miraculous. Slowly, in a manner now far removed from feline greed, he takes it, amazed, overwhelmed. He takes a bite, looks at me, takes another bite. Then he abandons himself entirely, without further reservations, to enjoyment of the bread and butter, while I butter another slice for him.

  What’s your name? I ask.

  He does not answer.

  I repeat the question. I hold a slice of bread and butter out to him and withdraw it when he is about to take it. Now I know how to make him do as I want.

  Mikhail, he says.

  I reward him.

  I’m Marlene, I say.

  Lene, he repeats.

  Mikhail, I ask, how did you get in here?

  He doesn’t seem to understand me, but perhaps he is only pretending not to understand. I take the bread and butter away again.

  How did you get in here? I repeat.

  Now he puts his hand in his pocket and puts a key on the table.

  I pick it up at once. I reach for it the way Mikhail reached for the bread, hastily, like an item of loot. This is the second time today someone with no right to it has proved to be in possession of a key to the Tea House.

  Where did you get this key? I say.

  But I see that he is no longer hungry enough for me to continue my interrogation. And I realize that he is my prisoner. I can question him as often as I want. He will belong to me. To me or the SS, who will kill him.

  That night I hid him in the cellar. He followed me without any will of his own, and I realized how exhausted he was. I gave him a mattress and all the blankets I could spare. I showed him a drain outlet in the floor for the call of nature. I told him he must keep very quiet, not put the light on, and come up only when I tell him it is all right. I hoped he had understood all this. Then I closed the cellar door, took the key with me, and went back to bed.

  By morning I had thought it all out in detail. I would hide him in the cellar and keep the cellar key on me at all times. There was no reason for the cleaning women to go down there. Toward morning, when the guards had made their first round, I would let him come up to use the bathroom. I would feed him on leftovers from the Berghof kitchens, if I could manage to get hold of them in secret. And I could ask the domestic staff for special rations, on the pretext that I sometimes felt hungry at night in the Tea House.

  If he were sensible, and understood the danger he was in, it would work. For how long? Until Hitler came back? Or until we had lost the war? Until the end of the world?

  I would have to stay here until then. I realized that as well by
morning. And stay I did. I stayed there until the end of the world of the Obersalzberg.

  HE WAS LIKE A WOLF who has fallen into a trap, a pit from which it can’t escape. He was apathetic, sullen, sly, dangerous, and sometimes as trustful and ingratiating as a child. He was all those things. He remained unpredictable to me. I never knew exactly what mood he would be in when I opened the door down to the cellar and called him up. And I succeeded in taming him only very slowly. A remnant of suspicion always remained in him, however, and a remnant of caution remained in me. And when I met him again at the end, a changed man, no longer the hunted but the hunter, I was not surprised.

  That first morning I tried to get him to take a bath. He stank to high heaven.

  There was a central hearth in Hitler’s Tea House with a fire that heated all the rooms through hot-air shafts. Once the whole house was warm it held the heat a long time. The fuel used was wood and briquettes, which I added when necessary. The stock of fuel was constantly replenished, and the ashes removed. I never had to bother about that, it was done by the two cleaning women who came in every afternoon, whether there was anything to clean or not. But if I wanted hot water for a bath I had to light a little stove in the bathroom itself. There was always wood ready in a basket.

  When the boy saw what I was doing, he approached and took the piece of wood I was going to put in the stove out of my hand.

  I gave him the matches. When I saw him crouching in front of the stove, blowing on the flame, he looked to me like a child from the early days of human history, a cave dweller who had strayed into the present, a paleoanthropological find. And for a moment it did cross my mind that I had only to tell the morning patrol, and I would be rid of him again.

  Here’s soap, I said. Do you know what to do with it?

  I still wasn’t sure how much he understood.

  We must wash your clothes, too, I said.

  He shook his head frantically.

  Later he came out of the bathroom with his dripping wet clothes on. I think he had got into the tub fully dressed in his filthy garments, and there was still more mud than water trickling out of them. Still, it was a start. By now I had put a few logs on the fire. It was hot as a sauna in Hitler’s tea salon. I gave him a blanket and said, Take those wet things off.

  Suddenly I heard the guards’ footsteps outside the house, and next moment there was a knock at the door.

  They never came in. They merely patrolled around the house. They respected the presence of a woman alone here. And indeed, they retreated politely when I opened the door.

  Everything all right? they asked.

  Of course, I said.

  We saw footsteps in the snow leading here, they said. Just wanted to ask if you had any reason to feel uneasy last night?

  No, I said. No, they must be my own footprints.

  Only now did I realize what I must look like: I was wearing a dirty dressing gown, my hair was uncombed, and I can hardly have given the impression of a woman who has just finished putting on her makeup.

  They looked at my feet and saw that I was barefoot.

  They looked at my face and saw the marks of a night that I had obviously not spent asleep.

  What they were thinking couldn’t have been clearer to read in their eyes.

  Sorry, they said. No offense meant. If you need us you know we’re here.

  From now on everything they said to me would have a double meaning. From now until the end. I was never to shake their assumptions off. I had aroused something sleeping in them, as if a piece of sweat-soaked clothing had been shown to the pack. The hounds were off the leash. They were on the wrong track, true, but they had picked up my scent. It was going to be dangerous for me, too, I realized at that moment.

  Next day I asked one of the maids at the Berghof to get me some louse insecticide.

  What? she said.

  I repeated my request, and gave her ten Reichsmarks.

  Good heavens, she said, and came a little closer to me, but not too close. You’re right. I can see them.

  And then I, too, suddenly felt my scalp itching.

  I gave her another ten Reichsmarks to keep her mouth shut.

  I remembered how ashamed my mother had been when I came home from school with lice. I was a disgrace. I had fouled the parental nest. It was the danger of infection with poverty and uncleanliness that she feared. The worst of the little insects was not the way they made you itch but their failure to observe the rules of the social game when they jumped from the heads of poor people’s children to the heads of the better-off. Fear of lice expressed a horrified distaste for the mingling of social classes, middle-class reservations about state schooling. I had sensed, without actually being able to explain it to myself, why my mother waged war with such fanatical zeal against the parasites on my head, why she showed no sympathy when she washed my hair with the stinging stuff and it got into my eyes, when she tortured me with a louse comb, its teeth sharp and jagged, which caught in my coarse curly hair and pulled it out in tufts until tears came into my eyes. She was merciless in her hunt for the last nits, their white eggs, the breeding-ground of everything you could catch if you played with the wrong sort of children.

  Perhaps I ought to have given the girl even more money. My standing at the Berghof was not high anyway. I couldn’t allow myself to risk representing the danger of catching something, who knew what.

  Above all, Eva mustn’t know about either the guest at the Tea House or the guests on my head. An escaped slave laborer might just possibly have appealed to her liking for the subversive, but she would never have tolerated nits. She would have sent her special pest controller to deal with my head lice.

  SOMETIMES, ALTHOUGH NOT OFTEN THESE DAYS, I take the book out. I know just where it stands on my bookshelves. It is different from all the other books because it is covered in wrapping paper.

  That was what you did when I was a child; schoolbooks and textbooks were covered in wrapping paper to protect them. On the first day back at school after the holidays mothers stood at their kitchen tables in the afternoon, covering the new textbooks in wrapping paper with practiced movements and inimitable accuracy. Nothing must be left sticking out. All the edges must be absolutely straight. Perfect symmetry was the first commandment. Later, as a student, I must have done the same thing myself. We still assumed that the books from which we drew our knowledge would accompany us through the rest of our lives. We could not imagine that the knowledge stored within them would have its own sell-by date. We believed in its durability, its reliable validity. We were convinced that it was right to preserve the books themselves, the material of which they were made, from deterioration.

  The bourgeois zeal with which I put a wrapping-paper cover on that book at the time touches me now. I feel as if some other woman did it. I am as strange to myself as if I were a Turkish woman in a headscarf.

  The wrapping paper has changed color several times over the years, from its original pale, almost white gray to a greasy darker gray hue, shiny and black where it was frequently touched. Under the influence of several decades of sunlight it then bleached out again, so that it now looks like greaseproof paper used and reused for wrapping sandwiches, marked with fat. Does such a thing still exist, I wonder: greaseproof paper that has absorbed so much fat that it is practically transparent? Where the paper was folded it is now velvety soft and roughened. It has torn several times at the folds, and indeed tears again every time I pick it up. One day it will disintegrate and reveal the cover of the book itself: Werner Heisenberg, The Physical Principles of Quantum Theory.

  I never parted with it. It is the one thing I retrieved from that other life. I carried it with me wherever I went, wandering or in flight. My war diary. My piece of evidence. My secret report from the front.

  “Experiments in physics and their results can be described in the same way as anything else in daily life: in the terms of the space-time world that surrounds us, and in the ordinary language appropriate to that space-tim
e world.”

  If Heisenberg was right, then couldn’t daily life, conversely, be described in terms of experiments in physics and their results? It was his opening sentence that gave me the idea.

  I wrote brief notes in the margins of the book, notes that were in fact diary entries. I recorded the date by underlining numbers in the equations on the page I was using, and wrote with a sharp pencil in tiny handwriting. Today I need a magnifying glass if I am to decipher my notes. I interspersed them with mathematical signs that had distinct meanings in my cipher. The pronoun I, for instance, was the infinity sign. I used xx for all forms of the verb to be, and yy for all forms of the verb to have. In my system, Eva was the root sign. The Berghof was “greater than.” Anyone opening the book would think at first sight that I had been making my own notes on Heisenberg’s Principles, and I relied on the fact that quantum physics would discourage rather than encourage further reading.

  Today I often can’t find my way around my own notes, fitted in as they are between equations and functions that I can no longer follow, in the margins of a text that once stood the world on its head and then put it back on its feet again:

  “It has been shown that one and the same mathematical array can be interpreted sometimes as a quantum theory of particle formation, sometimes as a quantum theory of wave formation.” And then:

  “Our enemies,” I wrote in cipher in the margin, barely legible like the rest of my notes, “our enemies must be our rescuers.”

  Sometimes, when I decipher this comment with difficulty today, it strikes me that the two were synonymous: something both hard to understand and clear enough when you think of it.

  11.5

  He still isn’t talking to me, but seems to understand everything I say. If I only knew where he got that key. If it’s the one the woman had when she came that morning—what has he done with her?

  11.9

  He’s coughing. I’m afraid it will give him away when the cleaning women are in the house or the guards are patrolling. I need cough mixture, so I pretended to have a cold myself, not easy. My tonsils let me down when I really needed their help. But Eva has called the pharmacist. He’ll send something up tomorrow. I hope he’s not going to be seriously ill. I can’t get a doctor to him. It’s too damp for him in the cellar. Perhaps I’ll let him come upstairs at night.