Madame Renée wagged her finger negatively, making a clucking noise. She took Otto’s pyjamas, then stooped with the same graceful sway to pick up his other clothes, holding them at arm’s length. She took all the clothes with her, leaving clean towels on the table.
“We can pay,” Ilse called as she retreated. Madame Renée, already at the far end of the corridor, shrugged massive shoulders without looking round. Ilse tiptoed around the room. There was the bed and a chair and a table, a rug on the oil-waxed floor; a wardrobe, a cupboard. She opened a door. From top to bottom the entire depth was layered with fine linen: tablecloths and antimacassars and sheets, all very stiff as though still brand-new. She pulled one piece a few centimetres forward in the tightly configured pile. It was a perfectly folded linen sheet with an embroidered border. The room was extremely clean and smelt of polish. She sat for a moment on the chair. She must have nodded off. There was a scratching noise. She went to the door, opened it: a tray stood there with a big bowl of hot broth. She brought it in to her father, but could not get him to open his eyes. He was making a heavy, honking sound. The soup smelt wonderful. Water rushed to her mouth and, unable to make herself stop, she drank down every drop herself.
Otto slept on and on. Ilse went and looked in the bathroom. There was a packet of razor blades on a little shelf with a shaving brush and cake of soap. When she got back, Otto was still sleeping but restless and muttering and very hot. She took the little towel, wrung it in cold water and placed it on his head. Then she took the bigger towel and went to the bathroom. There was a big, deep bath. When she turned the tap on, hot water spurted out. She lay in the bath for a long time. The dirt did not come off at once. Her body was skinny, weightless, smeared, her belly distended from the soup. She was never going to grow breasts. She was never going to grow up. When the water was cold, she got out of the bath, let all the water out and ran another one. This time she scrubbed harder. It was impossible to get the tangles out of her hair. Clean, she let the bad hand lie submerged, adding hot water. When her skin was very soft and wrinkled she set to work. It was very awkward, because it was the right hand and she was right-handed. She held the injured hand carefully against the metal side of the bath so it would not move and, holding the razor blade tight, cut the red flesh into strips, then held the hand under water, squeezing hard. The long clean cuts pleased her. So much blood came out; she was surprised. It stained the whole bath but hardly hurt at all. The thorn came out, long and curved, and she placed it on the rim of the bath and looked at it for a time. She got out of the bath. The walls ducked and swirled. Giddily, she held on to the rim and watched the red water gurgle round until it was all gone. A stream of blood flowed down and down the side of the bath. Then she wrapped the hand in her dirty dress and with the other hand tried to clean the bath. Holding the towel round her, she went back along the corridor to the room, bumping the soft hand against the wall, feeling her way to the curtains. She found the door. She turned the knob and lay down beside her father.
EIGHT
Hamburg, June 1940
Weaving adroitly to one side each time an army truck tore out of the barracks and thundered by, churning up a cloud of dust, Nicolai coasted along the Alster, in and out of sun, shade, the dappled freshness of the limes. He kept well behind the pale blue dress, the pram, the child in red starting to wail. Sabine did not care to be pushed in a pram; that was beneath the dignity of her three years. But his sister soon tired of walking and held up her arms and fussed. Fräulein Lore stopped, lifted her up. Sabine was too heavy to be carried so far; it was much too hot. The little couple vanished into the portico of a white stone building. Long red flags hung limp in the heat.
He waited, leaning on his bicycle. That Tuesday, she had visited the French embassy, had stood a long time at the gate in a crowd of people without gaining entrance. The next day she had spent over an hour and a half in the town hall. She was worried sick about her daughter, still in France, of whom there was no news. He longed to help, if only she would let him. He got the camera out of the saddlebag, slipped off the lens cap, focused on the dazzling brass nameplate. The sun was directly on it. Nicolai moved to one side, looked again: Central Institute, Hamburg branch. He had no idea what that might signify. He moved closer. They had arranged to meet in front of the Alsterhaus: Fräulein Lore had said that she was doing some shopping for his mother. Why did she not trust him?
“Ni-co! Ni-co!”
He swung the baby up into his arms. Looking very white, the Fräulein leant back against the plate-glass window full of women’s straw hats, with some kind of tape stuck over to protect it.
“Are you all right?”
“It’s just that we didn’t find what we were looking for,” she said, unable to smile.
Worry made Nicolai grow breezy. “Shopping is tiring, isn’t it? Groϐmama won’t mind if we’re late. What if I buy you coffee and cake here, on the Alster, now? Sabine, you’d like ice cream, wouldn’t you?” Holding his jubilant sister on the seat of the bicycle, he steered them across the Lombardsbrücke towards the Hotel Atlantik, the nearest place for tea. All along the bridge, victory flags were strung out. As they walked into the lobby, the smell of perfume was overpowering. Trays of cakes and drinks were being carried across, and the big hall and salon beyond were full of men in uniform with Iron Crosses prominent, women in silk dresses and high heels. Draped casually over the backs of their chairs were furs from Norway, despite the heat. The band struck up the current favourite: “Denn wir fahren, denn wir fahren gegen Engelland.”40 Fräulein Lore shrank back; he too felt a kind of revulsion. He remembered that this was one of his mother’s favourite places.
“Are you all right to go a bit farther?” She nodded. He hoped she would manage the extra distance, reassured himself that his grandmother would know what to do.
The flat in the Rothenbaumchaussee was delightfully cool. Groϐmama was overjoyed to see them. Clucking and tutting that they had walked so far on such a warm day, she fetched a glass of water for Fräulein Lore. They sat in the vast drawing room full of heavy Biedermeier furniture. Käthchen, her elderly maid, slowly spread an undercloth on the polished dining-room table and then unfolded a heavy damask cloth, its hundred shades of white smoothing into one. She shuffled back and forth with the best Meissen china cups and saucers. The rattle was her extracting silver cake forks from drawers lined with green baize. Watercolours of the shipyard hung in the corridor leading to the kitchen, photographs of Groϐpapa and various dignitaries launching ships stood on the piano. Above the drawing-room fireplace was a full-length portrait of Groϐpapa when he was president of the Hamburg Yacht Club, wearing his badge of office. He wandered around, waiting for his grandmother to make tea in her special silver samovar, looking at the oil portraits of his mother as a young woman. To make her eyes sparkle, the painter had put a white dot on each eye. They hung alongside the delicate charcoal sketches his father had drawn of his children. He remembered how Sabine, still tiny, had wriggled and squirmed, and his father, giving up, had taken the charcoal twigs and laid them on the rejected sketch, had brushed on blobs of Coccoina glue to hold them fast, snipping at the thick, creamy paper. He had magicked a beautiful little paper cottage into existence, cutting windows and a door that opened and drawing on shutters, the art paper held up by its twig structure. Remembering the delicious almond smell the glue paste gave off, Nicolai suddenly understood that it was because of this that he loved marzipan so. The paper had long since curled up at the corners to reveal its delicate undertracery, but the little house existed. He would find it, would give it a position of honour on his desk.
“Tea is ready, my darlings.”
Käthchen brought the cake platter, served them and withdrew. Groϐmama kissed and tickled Sabine and chattered on. Her hair, which must have been blond once, like his mother’s, was pure white now, but her eyes were very sharp and did not miss a thing. Sabine, on her knee, devoured forkfuls of strawberry tart, leaning forward, mouth open in perpetual r
eadiness.
“I was cross today,” Groϐmama said, and she nodded at Nicolai. “One of your ‘little Hitlers’ stopped me from going into Finkelstein’s department store.”
“They’re not mine,” he said.
“You wear the uniform every day, my boy. You’re wearing it now.”
“But they force you to,” he said. However, his grandmother, embarking on a story, was not to be deflected.
“ ‘Must you buy from a Jew?’ he asked me. A boy, perhaps fifteen. I shook my stick at him. ‘Young man,’ I said, ‘you get out of my way. I will buy where I always do.’ We’ve always had English tea, pure Assam. From Fortnum and Mason’s, imported by Finkelstein’s and it’s the finest, war or no war. But my dear, there was not a soul apart from me in the store. I fear they will go out of business, or worse.” She lowered her voice. “Our good Jewish doctor in the clinic here, who was ordered not to lay a hand on an Aryan child—can you imagine? He emigrated two years ago to Holland. His wife wrote to tell me that he committed suicide when the invasion came. I remember when he came and told me he was leaving. Twenty years I was his patient. And there is nothing one can do. Nothing at all.”
Fräulein Lore leant forward and for a moment her hand hovered above that of his grandmother. “May I ask for your advice on a serious matter?”
“What is it? What has happened?”
“About my daughter.”
“Who lost her papers? Hilde has told me all about the poor dear child.”
Nicolai blinked, thinking how annoyed his mother had been.
Fräulein Lore edged her chair a little closer; her voice sank lower. “I don’t know where she is.”
Groϐmama looked startled and glanced at Nicolai, who made big eyes and shrugged at the strangeness of the disclosure, though the story was now so familiar to him.
“The invasion—she was in Paris. She was leaving to travel to me. Then she sent word that I must go to her—and now she’s lost.”
Groϐmama put down her cup and deliberated. “Do not be alarmed, Fräulein. Who will harm a little girl? Civilians will not be touched. When everything settles down a little, her uncle will return her.”
Sabine had had enough cake. She wriggled down, ran off down the corridor.
“Nico my love, will you keep an eye on the baby?”
“Of course.” He stood and followed Sabine out. Käthchen was amusing her in the kitchen. He moved soundlessly through into the drawing room; from here, he could hear the two women talking quietly in the dining room.
“The population of Paris fled. She’s not with her uncle. She could be anywhere—” She drew breath, made an effort to be calm. “Today I spoke to a senior officer in Maschinelles Berichtwesen.41 It’s a new office, part of the Statistical Institute, which registers the entire population in each country. They have a special system of cards, they can find people. They require the birth certificate and travel document. If she is registered anywhere in France, they say they will find her.”
“Why do you think she will not return to Paris, when people do? My dear, forgive me, but perhaps you are being overdramatic.”
“Circumstances change,” Fräulein Lore said. “Sometimes people don’t do what they have promised to do. I have come to believe that she will not be returned to me.”
“Why ever not? I don’t understand you.”
“Forgive me—it’s complicated—for all these reasons I see that I must go to France myself. I have enquired. To travel to France requires a special reason, a further permit beyond the usual ones, then one needs the same set of papers twice over. Without them, I’ll be sent back. I don’t have the connections.” Fräulein Lore’s voice started shaking. “My reason is apparently not good enough. It is hopeless. Perhaps—I wondered—you are so kind, perhaps you might know someone? At the visa office.”
“In the Gestapo, to issue a visa?” His grandmother made this sound very unlikely.
“Sometimes rules can be bent, even in a war.”
“But all this makes no sense. You must wait, Fräulein, first of all. What if she came and you were gone? If no news comes then you can go back to this office you went to, this Berichtwesen, with her papers.”
“I have no papers. Her travel documents were sent to Paris.”
“But the state and local archives keep everything. Give them your birth certificate, pay the fee, then they can find your marriage records and divorce papers and all the other records for the child and issue certified copies.”
“I can’t. Please advise me—you spoke so sympathetically just now.”
“My dear, I simply don’t understand you.”
In the long silence, Nicolai inched closer, determined not to miss a word.
“My birth certificate is no good,” she said wearily. “It leads to the wedding certificate, the grandparents, the family tree. There is a requirement for a certificate of Aryan purity. She doesn’t have it. I need to find someone prepared to waive all those requirements. Or someone who will give me a permit to leave and won’t ask questions.”
“I see.”
This silence seemed to go on and on. Nicolai waited in acute anxiety.
“On the father’s side I assume?” Groϐmama sounded very stiff.
“Yes. What do I do?”
He strained to hear.
“I think that it might be better to leave the child where she is. You must hope for the best, Fräulein. You were very wise to send her away.”
Then neither of them said anything.
At ten o’clock Nicolai crept down through the silent house. His bicycle stood ready near the garden gate. He carried the thick black cloth from his darkroom rolled up neatly under his arm; with that over his head as a hood, he would be able to train his torch on the map and find out where he was without violating the blackout. The Elbchaussee was quiet; when traffic came along, he ducked under the trees. It took three separate attempts before he found the narrow alleyway winding through St. Pauli, not far from the docks. The building, six storeys high, was dirty and rough-looking. Strange people hung around, girls who might be prostitutes. Not liking to leave his bicycle in that dark hallway where anyone might take it, he struggled with it, sweating profusely, up five flights of stairs.
He half fell against the door of 55G; Klaus opened it almost immediately. They stared at each other, both surprised. Klaus wore trousers so wide they nearly concealed his shoes, a navy-blue tailored jacket, starched collar, a homburg, a white silk scarf.
“Look who it is.” He hauled Nicolai through the door. “What do you think? All black market stuff,” and, revolving in a slow circle, he waited to be admired. He looked a real spiv, but a classy one.
“Where are you going?”
“Jazz club. Funny time to visit. What’re you doing out, slumming?”
“I wondered how you were,” he said lamely.
“I’m working. Finished with school.”
“What’s your job?” Nicolai thought of his beautiful writing, then of the ignoramuses at school, stupid boys who could box or run fast and so came top of the year.
“I’d hoped for a top shipyard. Blohm & Voϐ or Deutsche Werft—no chance. Not enough influence, see. But I’ve landed an apprenticeship all right. As a fitter at a boiler works. It’s not bad. Dirty place, but not bad. I like welding. I’m going to be good at it. There’s a lot of my sort there, you know. People with the right ideas. It’s only my first week but I reckon I’ve landed on my feet.”
Nicolai was uneasily aware that he had never told Klaus that his mother’s family owned a substantial shipyard. Perhaps he could have obtained an apprenticeship for him. A real friend would have done that. He opened his mouth; closed it again.
Klaus looked quizzical. “Well? And you?”
He did not know how to edge up to the numerous reasons for his visit. “Nothing much. You know, school, the usual.”
“Sit down.”
Nicolai looked: there was a stool, one rickety-looking wooden chair, a table covered
with newspaper, a bed in the corner. They had so little, not even a kitchen. He was not sure where to put himself. Klaus, looking at him steadily, seemed to read his thoughts.
Reddening a little, he stood his ground. “I came because I need something,” he said. “Papers. Documents for a woman who wants to leave Germany and can’t do it legally. I thought you might know how to get them.”
Klaus whistled softly, sucked his teeth. “So you thought of me.”
“Thought you must be good for something.” Klaus smiled ironically. “I’d not have come without this. That’s the truth of it.”
“It’s all right. I’d not have come your way either, would I?”
He laughed; everything eased.
“Nice bike. And it even climbs stairs.”
They shared a beer, kept on the windowsill because his father said it cooled better, at night. Klaus did not know how to help him, had no contacts for a venture so dangerous and ill-advised.
“She’ll have to sleep with somebody important in the Gestapo,” he said.
“Typical suggestion from you. Very practical.”
They both laughed.
“Look, I’m going, or I’ll miss the first set.”
“Can I come with you?” Nicolai asked.
“You might get yourself into trouble,” said Klaus.
“I’m not scared.”
Klaus punched his arm in a friendly way; they clattered down the stairs mock-fighting, carrying the bike between them. He could feel something shifting, as though his future could take a different shape. He had spent too long in a world of women, he wanted something hard and male, something real.
“You can’t wear that stupid getup.” Klaus gestured at his uniform. “Come back in civvies and I’ll get you in.”
“All right.”
Nicolai watched from the corner of the street as people trickled into the Café König. The man at the door belonged to the Party, he wore his badge prominently displayed on his collar, not pinned underneath it the way most members did. That was intimidating. He was scrutinising identity cards; he refused entry to quite a lot of people. Nobody under eighteen was allowed in a nightclub; but then jazz was banned altogether and a good Party member would know that. Nicolai could not work it out at all. Klaus claimed that he was always let in; he was a shrimp, mind, and Nicolai was a good head taller. He turned up the collar of his father’s raincoat. That wouldn’t hide his face. He turned it down again. He probably looked a fool as it was.
The Children's War Page 19