The Children's War

by Monique Charlesworth

  Ilse tried to smile.

  “You’re such a good girl. Almost too good. Do you want anything? A present?”

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  It gave her a pang, that she had not thought to get him anything.

  Very early the next morning, Ilse stole out to buy a Christmas present for her father. She ran past the concierge, who waved something white. The letter was addressed to her in her mother’s writing. A sudden rush of blood to her head made her giddy; she steadied herself against the wall, ripped it open.

  Darling Ilse,

  I am enjoying the new job in Hamburg and the house is lovely, in a magnificent avenue lined with old trees and a view of the river. You will love it. Well, darling girl, it is nearly time to come home. What a pity you lost your papers, but don’t worry, the certified copies will be with you soon. Meanwhile enjoy Paris and be a good girl and give a big kiss to your uncle, who is so kind. All my love, darling,

  Mutti

  As Absender she had written her maiden name: Lore Lindemann, but no address.

  Ilse, folding the letter doubly safe inside her pocket, went to buy the warm scarf for Vati as planned. She returned home in an exalted mood, hid the present in the wardrobe and took the letter out. Her father slept on. Mutti had got the job, was earning money, there was a plan; that was the thing, even if the details were mystifying. Her mother’s plans were always excellent. Why did she say her papers were lost? The wonderful thing was the way she and Mutti had both had the same idea, about reverting to her maiden name, Willy’s name. Struck by the physical existence of the piece of paper that her mother had held, by the continuing reality of her mother, the dam of misery inside broke and she found herself sobbing, making a hard barking noise she could not subdue that shocked her father awake.

  “What’s happened?”

  She handed him the letter.

  “She’s not coming,” he said in a flat voice, almost immediately dropping the letter onto the bed.

  “But she must—”

  Ilse’s throat was so dry it came out a croak.

  “She’s betrayed me. She’s abandoned us.”

  “How could she? What do you mean?”

  “She’s played a double game. Making false excuses, delaying, needing more money—all along I suspected something.”

  He rose, with frenetic haste threw his clothes on.

  “What excuses?”

  Then she understood that things had been said in their communications, things he had kept from her.

  “Vati, tell me what she said. What excuses?”

  The door slammed. In an agony of anticipation she waited. After an hour he returned, still livid.

  “I’ve sent a message.”

  “Vati, what’s happened? Where have you been?”

  “We’ll soon find out. Your mother has evidently decided to stay in Germany.”

  He was stubbly and unshaven, with a wild look, his hands shaking with emotion as he lit a cigarette from the stub of its predecessor. His breath smelt bad.

  “Why would she want to?”

  “I don’t know why. I assume she doesn’t want to be a refugee. I assume she wants to celebrate the thousand-year Reich. She is enjoying Hamburg,” he said. “The opera house, the theatre, the gardens—”

  “Please, Vati, please, don’t—what does she mean about the copies and Willy, me coming home? What has she said? Are we going back to our proper house?”

  “Is that what you want?” he said savagely.

  Ilse said she did not know. Or rather, she knew that that was an impossible dream.

  It seemed that Ilse did not know any number of things.

  “Take your Toni. You think she’s wonderful, don’t you? Clever Toni, a woman who sold herself to the highest bidder.” Toni, he said, was a lecturer in psychology and not thirty but nearly forty. She had sent a photograph of herself to the Legionnaires’ Club requesting sponsorship (“all dolled up like a tart”) and Willy (“a hopeless romantic, what a fool”) had been an idiot to reply, gallantly offering his hand in marriage. He had thought it romantic to save her. “Willy’s a soft touch, like his sister. He fell in love with a pretty face.”

  Ilse hung her head, willing him to stop. But he would not.

  “Do you know why you had to come back on your own? Because the Red Cross wanted to charge too much. Toni got the bill. She wouldn’t let Willy waste the money a second time.”

  “It’s not true. The Red Cross is free.”

  “Rubbish. She wrote to your mother that you were very capable, more than most. You’d look after yourself all right. Anyway, you didn’t look Jewish. Nobody would think you were.”

  Ilse waited for him to finish. It wasn’t true. Even if it was, that was just the way Toni spoke, her manner. This had nothing to do with Toni, nor with her. This was just a new form of the eternal quarrel between her parents, which went on even here, in Paris.

  “Your mother was outraged. Couldn’t believe her precious Willy had let her down. So she summoned me. Told me it was time I got out of Germany. Sent me to meet you. With her false promises.” He was shouting now. “How we’d be together. A family, the three of us. I should have known. How she used to go on and on about getting out of Germany. All lies.”

  “It wasn’t lies.”

  “She made me go, knowing I didn’t want to, knowing my work, knowing it was more important than any individual. I’d sworn never to abandon the struggle and my comrades. She knew that.”

  “Why did you leave, then?”

  “She forced my hand. I told you. Claimed she was saving me. Saving you.”

  “She did save you. And me.”

  “She used me. Because of you. She doesn’t want me, or she’d be here, with us. But she wants you all right. My God. She actually thinks I’ll send you back. I can’t go back, she knows that. Madness. Madness—”

  “Why not?”

  “And abandon you?”

  “But it was Mutti I wanted—”

  The words burst out of her, the “not you” remaining unspoken. For a long time neither of them spoke. The words had been said and there was no taking them back. He lay on the bed with his face to the wall. In a while, there came a muffled noise, a dry kind of hoarse breathing. Ilse listened to the anguished sound of his sadness. She pretended not to hear. It was strange that her father should discover that he loved her mother so much. He had never shown signs of it when they were together.

  Late in the afternoon, he got up. She was reading her book. In the long silence, he started looking at her things lined up on the little bedside table, picking up and discarding them with jerky movements.

  “Haven’t you got something more intelligent to read?”

  “I like Winnetou.”

  They could not afford books. He knew that. Not being French, she couldn’t join a library.

  “Karl May never once went to America. All that sentimental stuff about Apaches and the Wild West. He made it all up.”

  “He can’t have done that.”

  “He never left Europe. And he was blind.”

  “Blind?” She was shocked.

  “So he couldn’t ride a horse, could he?”

  “That doesn’t matter.” She was getting angry.

  “Think of it. Trapped in a room all his life. Making things up, all pretence.”

  He took the book from her, flicked through it, then tossed it onto the bed.

  Ilse picked up her mending and stitched on. It was an art, to make the tiniest of stitches, so minute they were almost invisible. A person could not possibly look up while doing such fine work. She waited for him to go out, which he did soon enough, slamming the door. When very unhappy, he needed more space to pace. She had made him unhappy and he her. She put down the cloth and closed her eyes. Out of his darkness, she conjured forth the brilliant heat and light of the Moroccan sun. Her Indians, with their fierce, keen eyes and their noble spirits, could still ride there. Old Shatterhand, with his code of honour and all his tho
rough German skills, got on his horse and smiled at her. He was waving goodbye. He was gone. She opened her eyes. The sky outside was a leaden grey.

  On Christmas Eve Ilse put on her green velvet dress. When at midnight she gave him the scarf, he wept. She had assumed that he would have forgotten about Christmas, but he drew something out from under his bed. It was a complete edition of Albert’s works, signed and dedicated to her. When her father embraced her, she felt how thin he had become, each jutting bone clearly delineated. The next day Albert took them both to a private room in a fancy restaurant. His present to them was a radio. Her father drank fine wines instead of eating. He threw back glass after glass, with elaborate and ironic toasts. His unhappiness was almost palpable. When he was out of the room, she asked Albert what she should do about him.

  “It will pass. It’s not your fault he’s unhappy.”

  “He’s waiting to hear more from Mutti. He thinks she won’t come. She will, I know she will. She made another plan, but we can’t understand it. You see, she can’t write proper letters, because of the censor. I don’t know what she told him. They always quarrel. But it’s not just her. He’s unhappy because he left Germany and he can never go back. The awful thing is he did it for me,” she said. It struck her hard; this statement was actually true.

  Albert sighed. “No, my dear little donkey. It’s that he’s thought too much about ideas. In emotions, he’s just a baby. Don’t worry about him. It’s a father’s duty to be with his daughter. A father’s pleasure.” He sighed again. “I wish I was your father.” Part of her wished it too.

  Ilse thought about her mother all the time. The letter was code, it meant something which neither of them could fathom. Otto’s love for his wife, remaining locked up within him, seemed to Ilse to grow. From time to time an outburst of rage confirmed it. It was much better to be the product of this enduring passion than of no love at all. It seemed to her that just one level under the darkness that shrouded him there had to be a huge golden space, full of light. This space, which could not be seen from the outside, contained all the love he had for both of them but in these circumstances could not be expressed. When Mutti’s answering message came, these things would become clear.

  Her father lay in bed, eating when she forced him to. She played a game in her head that this was not her father who might be expected to look after her, but Otto, a good old man who for some reason could not speak. Sometimes she pretended to be a nurse, who would take his temperature and make him well, though he was not ill. With the volume turned low, Ilse listened to news of the Russian invasion of Finland on the radio, always choosing the French channel, which he could not understand, as news from Germany upset him. War would not come to France, the radio said, because their troops were so strong. Food rationing was introduced, but without proper papers they could not claim ration books. Without Albert, they might have starved; certainly, she would have gone crazy. Luckily, when Albert was not there she still possessed him. She read each volume twice, for they were all so different, sitting very quietly, turning the pages softly so as not to disturb her father, who just stared at the ceiling. She feared that her father was jealous of her. Perhaps that explained his silence. She could understand that. Had her mother not loved her she would have been heartbroken. She dared from time to time to ask Otto whether there was a message from Hamburg and would he please check. Always, he shook his head.

  On an icy February morning a stranger walked up the stairs, knocking on all the doors and asking for Lindemann. Ilse, chopping vegetables, heard the sounds ascending, the strong voice with its German accent getting louder. The concierge had sent him on up, without telling him which floor they were on. She went to the door and stood rigidly at attention in front of it, hearing the footfalls coming nearer and nearer. The young German clicked his heels when he saw her.

  “Guten Morgen,” she said.

  “Fräulein Lindemann?”

  Automatically, Ilse did a little girl’s bob and curtsy.

  He held out a little card. “This is something sent for you. From Germany.”

  The card had his name on it. Then he showed her a bigger envelope. There was a form she had to sign, with a big official crest on it from the embassy.

  “Now you have your papers, you have to get back home as quickly as you can, Fräulein. All German nationals must leave France. Especially a young lady all on her own. You must travel right away.”

  “I will,” she said. “Thank you very much.”

  She willed him to go before her father, asleep inside, made some noise. From the landing she watched the wide shoulders and the blond head disappear down the stairs, then exhaled her relief. The hair was exactly the same colour as Toni’s; she thought of how civilised and soppy Germans were until, of course, you gave them a knock.

  Back in the room she sat on the bed. Carefully Ilse opened the envelope. She looked at the official stamp, the double-headed eagle, that black bird, which Heine had hated so much. She admired the name Ilse Lindemann, which she thought well suited the girl in the picture with the long plaits who was just like somebody she had been once. There was no “J” for Jude stamp on this passport. She was an Aryan. She was en règle. Her father’s eyes were open.

  “Show me what she’s sent you. Well. First quality,” he said, tossing the documents onto the floor. Quickly she retrieved them.

  “There’s your message. Your mother wants you back in Germany.”

  “But why has she changed her mind about coming?”

  Abruptly Otto laughed, and went on laughing until the laugh turned into a cough and she had to get him water, then hold it for him because it slopped over. When he lay back, his face had a glassy look.

  “I wouldn’t have thought she had such cunning. Such subterfuges, such complexities, just to get rid of one poor old Jew.”

  Ilse shook her head, knowing this was not possible. “Vati, you know that’s not true. She wanted to save you.”

  “Are you going to tell me next that she loves me?”

  She could not meet his eye. It was a long while before she dared to speak again. “Vati? Should I go back?”

  “No. No Jew is safe in Germany. No half Jew. It’s madness.”

  Sick at heart, she knelt beside the bed, tentatively stroked his hand. “Are you so sure she’s not coming?”

  His look was full of pain.

  “Can you still believe it?” She could, but dared not say so.

  “Of course, if you want, I can take you back to Germany myself. My fatherland. I never wanted to leave it.”

  She knew what would happen to him in Germany.

  “Vati, can’t we go to Morocco?”

  He smiled a very twisted smile.

  “I can’t go anywhere by boat. No papers and no visa. I can only creep across borders by night. It’s France or Germany, nothing else. You can try to get a visa for Morocco, with these fine new papers. Who will look after you there? Toni won’t. Willy’s off to fight.”

  His eyes closed; he had such a defeated look.

  Ilse felt defeated too. “You’ll look after me, Vati. I’ve got good papers now. You can buy new papers. Mutti can join us there.”

  “I’m finished with false papers. Every set I’ve had, something went wrong. My face shouts Jew, a blind man could see it. Besides, we don’t have the money.”

  Ilse tiptoed away, knelt beside her bed, pulled out her suitcase, opened the brown box and unwrapped the jewellery roll. Piece by piece, she laid out the jewellery her father had bought for her mother so long ago on the edge of the coarse blanket.

  “Vati, we have these. Please look. We can sell them.”

  He turned over. Then he covered his face with one hand. For a long time he held the precious objects in his hand, turning and turning them over. There were tears in his eyes, which he wiped away.

  “Vati,” she whispered. “Shall I sell them?”

  “She’ll leave Germany for you. She saved these for you, when she had nothing. Ilse, you must writ
e. You tell her to come. Tell her properly.” He stood up, started to pace, his bare feet slapping the cold floor. “That’s the answer. Quick, do it now.”

  Ilse scribbled on a piece of paper. Dearest Mutti. How often she had wanted to write and not been permitted to. Now she could not think what to say.

  “Go on. She’ll listen to you.”

  “What about the censor?”

  “It’ll go through the underground.”

  Deep anger filled her that he had not permitted her to write before. While Otto paced and fidgeted, she scrawled a note, explaining that she could not return, that Vati said it was a bad idea, that they both so much wanted her to come to Paris and that she should please, please come as soon as she could. Otto snatched the paper up, read it before the ink was even dry. It was all much too fast. Pulling on trousers over his pyjama bottoms, thrusting bare feet into shoes, he was gone. She sat at the little table feeling sick and empty. Somehow, though she did not know how it had come about, or even how it was wrong, he had persuaded her into an act of betrayal. Somehow, she had taken his side.

  Surely, though, this was the right thing to do. Mutti had to come. She longed for her. They would buy papers for Vati, the three of them would go on together. She did not want to go back on her own. She could not, not when there was no guidebook in her head for this journey and no directions to be had from anyone. Mutti would read her letter and then she would come. In a moment Ilse got up, took the big envelope and slid it into her suitcase. Carefully, she put the jewellery away, sat staring at her hands, the wall, the cupboard, the scuffed toes of her brown shoes.

  Her father returned within an hour. When she said she did not want either of them to go back to Germany, he smiled. It was a victory for fear.

  The next day Otto rose and resumed his café visits, as though something had been settled, as though the way they spent their days was real life. The spring brought more and more air-raid alerts: in the shelter they dared not speak. On the street they had to be silent. Even in the room, silence spilled out over them. Every day the news on Albert’s radio worsened. The Germans pushed into Denmark and Norway. On Easter Sunday, a day of dull cloud and drizzle, God did not shine on Saint-Sulpice. Ilse stared through the gloom at the failure of her hopes. She prayed intensely for her mother to come very soon. The battles for Narvik were intensive; the German air force was strong. British cruisers were being destroyed. Hitler attacked at a speed of forty miles an hour. His planes all but destroyed the Allied forces on the ground.