by Unknown
Pure descent, my wife will be of pure descent, that’s all I mean. Wilhelm beamed. Don’t look so fierce, my treasure, who could have a purer, more spotless heart than this enchanting blonde woman opposite me?
Helene was amazed by this view of her. Perhaps it was because she had turned down his physical advances?
People are beginning to go away, leave Germany. Fanny’s friend Lucinde is going to England with her husband, said Helene.
Well, as for those who don’t love their forests and their Mother Earth in Germany, they’re welcome to turn their backs on their native land. Let them go, say I. Let them all go. We have work to do here, Helene. We will save the German nation, our fatherland and our mother tongue. Wilhelm rolled up his sleeves. We don’t deserve to perish. We’ll do it with these hands, do you see? No German may fold his hands in his lap these days. Indulging in despair and complaint is not our way. You will be my wife and I’ll give you my name.
Helene shook her head.
You hesitate? Don’t tell me you’d rather give up, Alice, don’t tell me that. He looked at her sternly, incredulously.
Wilhelm, I don’t deserve your love, I have nothing to give in return.
That will come, Alice, I’m sure of it. Wilhelm said this in a clear, frank voice, as if only her agreement were at stake, a decision that would unite them. Nothing in what she said seemed to hurt his feelings or shake his confidence in the slightest. His will would conquer, his will alone. Did she have no strong will of her own? Of course it takes a woman a certain time to get over a loss like yours, he said. You were going to get married, you and that boy. But it’s years ago; you must end your mourning some time, Alice.
Helene heard Wilhelm’s words, which seemed to her both stupid and bold. He was talking away at her. His air of superiority, the commanding tone of what he said, made her indignant. There were words that cancelled each other out. Helene felt that there was something suspect about his heroic courage, something fundamentally wrong. Next moment Helene was horrified by herself. Was she resentful? Wilhelm was cheerful, she’d be able to learn from him. Helene regretted her annoyance and her rejection of him. Wasn’t it just her grief for Carl, a woman’s mourning, as Wilhelm so kindly called it, that made her find it so hard to bear Wilhelm’s own cheerfulness and enjoyment of life?
What are you thinking of, Alice? The future’s at our feet, we won’t think just of ourselves, we’ll think of the common good, Alice, of the people, of our German land.
She wouldn’t be faint-hearted or bitter. It wasn’t life that had injured her feelings, there was no God wanting to make her atone. Wilhelm meant well by her and by himself, and she couldn’t grudge him that. How could she be so arrogant? After all, what he said was true, she had to come back to life, maybe nursing the sick didn’t help much there. But she lacked any real idea of what life should and could be. She would have to turn to someone else for that. And why not someone who meant well by her, who would be happy to hear her say yes, who wanted to rescue her? Wilhelm obviously knew what he wished for, what he preferred, and he was not just close to belief, he did believe. The word Germany was like a clarion call in his mouth. We. Who were we? We were someone, but exactly who were we? She was sure she could learn to kiss again, and above all to come to know and like someone else’s odour, to open her lips and feel his tongue in her mouth, perhaps that was what it was all about.
Wilhelm paid court to Helene assiduously. It seemed as if every rejection by her simply lent him new force. He felt born to great deeds, most of all he wanted to rescue people and the first thing he wanted was to win this woman, whom he saw as shy and charming, to live with him as his wife.
I have two tickets for the Kroll Opera, we owe them to my good connections. You’d like to see those first television pictures, wouldn’t you?
But Helene was not to be won over. She was on night duty almost the whole week and there was no getting around it.
When Martha brought the news that Mariechen had been unable to prevent an incident in which the police had picked up and taken away a woman in the Kornmarkt who was first weeping and then raving wildly, Helene felt anxious. Leontine telephoned Bautzen, first speaking to Mariechen, then to the hospital and finally to the health authority. She learned that Selma Würsich had been taken to Schloss Sonnenstein in Pirna, where they would try to find out just what was wrong with her and use new techniques to decide whether it was hereditary.
Helene packed her things and Wilhelm saw that his moment had come. He wouldn’t let her go on her own, he said, she needed him, she must know that.
In the train, Wilhelm sat opposite Helene. She noticed how confidently he looked at her. He had beautiful eyes, really beautiful. How long was it since she had last seen her mother, ten years, eleven? Helene was afraid she might not recognize her, wondered what she would look like and whether her mother in turn would recognize her. Wilhelm took her hand. She bowed her head and laid her face against his hand. How warm it was. She felt it was a gift that he was with her. She kissed his hand.
My brave Alice, he said. She heard the tenderness in his words, yet she didn’t feel as if they referred to her.
Brave? I’m not brave. She shook her head. I’m terribly frightened.
Now he put both hands on her shoulders and drew her head close to his chest, so that she almost slipped out of her seat. My sweet girl, I know, he said, and she felt his mouth on her forehead. But you don’t have to keep contradicting me. You’re going there and that’s brave.
Another daughter would have gone years ago, another daughter wouldn’t have left her mother in the first place.
There was nothing you could do for her. Wilhelm stroked Helene’s hair. He smelled not unpleasant, almost familiar. Helene guessed, knew, that his words were meant to be comforting. She pressed close to him. What was there in Wilhelm that she could like? Maybe the fact that someone would put up with her.
Only a special permit from the public health authority, for which Leontine had applied in Pirna by way of Bautzen, allowed Helene this visit to her mother.
The hospital grounds were extensive and, but for the high fences, you might have thought that centuries ago this was a royal palace where kings lived, enjoying the view. A delightful landscape stretched out before them at the place where the Wesenitz flowed into the Elbe from the north and the Gottleuba joined it from the south. There was something improbable about the bright sunshine and loud birdsong. Was this where her mother was in safe keeping as a mental patient?
A male nurse led Helene and Wilhelm up some stairs and down a long corridor. Barred doors were opened and locked again after them. The visitors’ room was at the far end of this wing.
Helene’s mother was sitting on the edge of a bench, wearing a nightdress. Her hair was completely silver now, but otherwise she looked as she always had, not a day older. When Helene came in she turned her head to her and said: I told you so, didn’t I? I said you’d be looking after me. But first get me out of here, those hands of theirs churn up my guts. Although there’s nothing grafted in me, no pears bred from an apple stock. Nothing mixed there. The doctor says I have children. I convinced him that he was wrong. Hatched out and flown the nest. One doesn’t have children like that. They should grow from the head, from here to there. Helene’s mother struck first her forehead and then the back of her head with the flat of her hand. Shaken out, as simple as that.
Helene went up to her mother and took one of her cool hands. Just skin and bone. The old skin felt soft, brittle on the outside but soft and smooth on the palms.
No physical contact. The male nurse standing at the door and keeping an eye on the visitors looked as if he was going to come closer.
Don’t you have any women nurses here? cried Helene, and took fright at the volume of her own voice.
Yes, there are women nurses too, but a little extra strength is needed to handle some patients, know what I mean?
It could be I’d scratch, it could be I’d bite, it could be I’d scra
tch them and bite them all night, chanted Helene’s mother in the voice of a young girl.
I’ve brought you something. Helene opened her bag. A hairbrush and a mirror.
Give those to me, please. The male nurse held out his hand. I’ll be happy to take them and keep them safe. For reasons of protection and security the patients may not have any possessions of their own here.
But Helene’s mother had already picked up the brush and was beginning to tidy her hair with it. Between the mountain and the vale, upon the grass so green, two hares hopped nimbly at their ease, the finest ever seen. She sang unerringly, warbling like the girl she had once been.
The male nurse stamped his foot angrily. This was too much for him.
God only knows where she gets all those songs from. He reached for the brush and snatched it from Helene’s mother’s hand. In the struggle, the mirror slipped off her lap and broke as it hit the ground. And that too, cried the nurse, picking up the mirror frame and the pieces of glass from the floor. No sooner had he snatched the brush and retrieved the mirror than Helene’s mother let herself slip off the bench to the floor. She was laughing, showing black gaps in her mouth. Helene was horrified to see the missing teeth. Her mother laughed until her laughter gurgled in her throat, and couldn’t calm down.
There’s no point in it, Fräulein, you can see that for yourself!
What do you mean, no point? Helene asked, without looking round at the male nurse. She bent down and put her hand on her mother’s head. The grey hair was dry and tangled. Her mother didn’t defend herself, she just laughed. My mother isn’t mad, not in the way you mean. She doesn’t belong in here. I want to take her away with me.
I’m sorry, we have our orders here and we stick to them. You can’t simply take this woman away with you – even if it were your own daughter, you couldn’t in a case like hers.
Come along, Mother. Helene took her mother under the arms and tried to pull her to her feet.
With a rapid stride, the nurse moved towards them and separated mother and daughter. Didn’t you hear me? Those are my orders.
I want to speak to the professor. What was his name – Nitsche?
The professor is in an important meeting.
Really? Then I’ll wait until the meeting is over.
I’m sorry, Fräulein, but he still won’t speak to you. You must ask him for an appointment in writing.
In writing? Helene searched her bag, found the black notebook that Wilhelm had given her a few days earlier and tore out a page. The smell of her mother came off her hands, her laughter, her fear, her unkempt hair and the sweat in her armpits. She wrote, in pencil: Dear Professor Nitsche.
Fräulein, please. Do you want us to keep you here too? I think the professor would take a certain interest in such a case – after all, he’s doing research into the heredity factor in illnesses like this. What was your name again?
A little respect, if you please, young man. Wilhelm’s moment had come; he intervened. You will let that young lady leave at once. She is my fiancée.
The nurse opened the door. Wilhelm offered Helene his arm. Coming, darling?
Helene knew there was no alternative. She took Wilhelm’s arm and went out. At the end of the corridor she heard a shrill screech behind her. It wasn’t clear whether it came from an animal or a human throat. Nor could she decide, if it was human, whose scream it was. It could have been her mother screaming. Another male nurse opened the door for them. Wilhelm and Helene went along the next corridor in silence. This place was uncannily quiet; there was something very final about it.
In the train to Berlin, Wilhelm and Helene still sat in silence. The train went through a tunnel. Helene felt that Wilhelm was waiting for her to thank him.
Please, she said, don’t call me darling any more.
But you are my darling. Wilhelm’s eyes were on Helene’s face. I have to go to Stettin again tomorrow, for a week. I don’t want to leave you alone in Berlin any longer than that.
I won’t be alone, why would I be alone? My patients are waiting for me, they need me.
Do you think there’d be no patients waiting for you in Stettin? You’ll find patients to nurse all over the world. But there’s only one of me. Alice, my sweet little girl, your abstinence is noble, but to tell you the truth it’s driving me crazy. We must bring it to an end. I need you.
Helene took his hand. You don’t have to persuade me of that, she said and kissed his hand. It was good to hear that she was needed. How was she to talk about it?
What documents do I need to marry you? She was whispering. I don’t have any, not a single one.
That can be dealt with, stated Wilhelm nonchalantly. Didn’t you once tell me you knew how to operate a printing press?
Helene shook her head. The paper, the right print, stamps and seals. Documents like that are very difficult to print.
Leave it all to me. Promise?
Helene nodded. It was good that he wanted to look after her. Wilhelm mentioned a brother in Gelbensande who had been farming since he married, but who knew about drawing up official documents.
For some time the hospital had been urging Helene to produce her papers at long last: her identity card, her birth certificate, her parents’ birth certificates, and if possible a book of family records going back beyond her parents; they wanted to see all that. Helene had claimed that she had no identity card, and whenever she was asked she pretended to be taken by surprise and said she had forgotten her papers. They had given her more time. But she must produce her papers by the end of the month, they had said recently, or she would lose her job.
Only when Helene took a slightly wrinkled apple out of the basket, polished it on her white skirt, found a knife, cut it up and cored it so that she could hand Wilhelm an apple quarter, did she see that she had a view over to the valley of the Oder and the hills around it, to the docks and the Dammscher See, then, rather closer, over the flower beds on the Hakenterrasse and down to the River Oder itself, where one of the white steamers was just putting in, inviting people with both sunshades and umbrellas aboard for an excursion. They had all made different decisions about the likely weather on this day early in May. And only then did it strike her that she had never imagined what her wedding might be like. That was herself all over, she supposed. Helene pulled the coat lying loosely over her bare shoulders together over her breast, because it was cool here. You could smell the sea in the air, you knew you were near the coast. When she licked her lips, she thought she could taste salt. This morning the registrar had referred to the wind in his speech of congratulations, saying marriage was a safe haven from storm winds and tempests, and a wife should make a safe and comfortable home for the man who protected her. Then he had laughed and advised them to have a schnapps on this early May day. A cool wind was blowing their way. Wilhelm munched the apple, he chewed it vigorously and Helene heard his teeth crushing it, juice coming through his teeth, his saliva, his lust, he leaned forward, scrutinized Helene, stroked the strands of hair wafting in the wind back from her face and kissed her forehead. He had a right to do that now, and more besides. A gull screeched. A young woman on the road just below was edging a pram forward with her hips, shove by shove; she held her baby close to her with both arms; it was crying; a shawl was fluttering round her; she was trying to wrap it round the baby, but the shawl kept flying out in the wind, and the baby cried as if it were hungry and in pain.
Incredible, don’t you think? Wilhelm was looking down too.
I expect the baby has colic.
I meant the traffic here. Apple quarter in hand, Wilhelm pointed to a long ship. Soon there’ll be tons of Mecklenburg carrots travelling this way along our autobahn; they’ll be loaded up and go off into the world. We’re going to break the 1913 record this year, our turnover of goods will reach its highest level ever, eight and a half million tons, that’s gigantic. It was only right when we rescinded the internationalization of our waterways. Versailles can’t dictate what we do with our own riv
er. Wilhelm stood up and pointed north-east with his outstretched arm. Look at that big building over there. They’ll be completing the second part of it in the next few weeks, the biggest granary in Europe. Wilhelm sat down again. Helene contorted her face and pressed her lips together, stifling a yawn only with difficulty. When Wilhelm was in full flight, it was difficult to interrupt his rejoicings over new technological achievements and buildings. See the mast on that ship over to the right? That’s its antenna, it can receive radio waves from transmitters and then we can send messages from that mast over there.
What for?
For better communications, Alice. And there’s the Rügen, two funnels, oh my word, a freighter of the Gribel Line won’t make it under that. Wilhelm lowered his arm and propped it on the grass to support himself. Now he was looking at Helene. She felt his eyes roaming over her and resting on her face.
The prospect of the wedding night to come made Helene feel embarrassed. She had been aware of the happy way he looked at her all day and had avoided his eyes. Now she had to narrow hers, because it was bright and windy up here on the heights. She looked back.
Won’t you give me a smile? Wilhelm lifted her chin with one finger.
Today he had seemed to her even taller than usual when he was standing up a moment ago, and even sitting down he towered above her. Helene tried hard to smile.
Wilhelm had let nothing deter him. When the law for the protection of Aryan blood was passed in September, he had not mentioned it once. His efforts to get papers for Helene had dragged on; she had had to stop working at the Bethany Hospital and they had asked her to leave the nurses’ hostel. Back in Fanny’s apartment, Helene had been glad to find that Erich had obviously left her aunt at last. Wilhelm came to see Helene as often as he could. He apologized for the length of time it was taking, and sometimes he gave her some money which, relieved to be more independent of Fanny, she put away in her purse. Once Wilhelm mentioned that a colleague of his had sued for divorce; he didn’t want to be accused of racial disgrace. Helene wondered whether he told her that to emphasize the risk he was running for her sake, or whether it was simply meant to show that her origins were beginning to seem immaterial to him. After all, he had mentioned the other man’s divorce as if he certainly didn’t see himself incurring racial disgrace. A little later they had met at the Lietzensee, near the embankment by the lake over which the road led. Plane leaves lay smooth and yellow on the ground. Well, here we are, said Wilhelm and he gave Helene an envelope. She sat down on a bench near the dappled tree trunk. Wilhelm sat beside her, put one arm round her and kissed her ear. She opened the envelope. It contained a certificate of nursing qualifications and a leaflet with a bronze-coloured cover certifying Aryan descent, a little shabby but almost new. It still had a certain smell. She leafed through it. Her name was Alice Schulze, her father was one Bertram Otto Schulze from Dresden, her mother was Auguste Clementine Hedwig Schulze, née Schröder.