The Kaminsky Cure

by New, Christopher;

What about Sara, though? She’s going to be kicked out of school herself next. In another three years, unless the Nazis change the laws and make it sooner – which they very likely will, the way they’re beavering away at the details of their ethnic cleansing. What’s to be done about her? Well, Sara’s all right where she is just now. Say what you like about Catholic nuns, and Willibald often says quite a lot when he’s in his High Lutheran mood, but they are giving Sara a good education. Besides, she is only a girl, after all, and, well, education isn’t such a big deal for them, is it? But most important of all, someone has to be there for Gabi to confide in, and she certainly isn’t going to confide in Willibald or Ilse. That leaves Sara stuck in her by now accustomed role. So –

  8

  Here we are at Salzburg Station

  A couple of half-Jews, if not worse, headed for the sacred citadel of the master race. We don’t know it yet, but we’ve chosen to go to Berlin on the eve of the very day that SS Obergruppenführer ‘Bubi’ Heydrich is going to open a meeting there which will work out the logistics of the liquidation of my mother’s and possibly my race. As our train draws in to the Berlin station, Government, Party and SS officials will be stepping out of their limousines at a charming villa on Lake Wannsee, along whose shore Willibald and Gabi often used to stroll before they were married. And they’ll be getting down to business before we’ve even started our breakfast.

  Gabi couldn’t have chosen a better, or a worse, date, if only she knew. But luckily she doesn’t know, and there we are pacing up and down in blissful ignorance outside the Salzburg Station Restaurant, which all of us can enter except my mother (at least I think we can – this half-Jew business isn’t clear), so we all stay out. Not that Willibald isn’t tempted to go in by himself and snatch a sizzling wurst, but there are several SS men at one table, and SS men always give Willibald the jitters. All the more so at that moment of brazen racial audacity when Gabi is vicariously bearding the lion in his den. Besides, it’s too expensive anyway. So he contents himself with window-eating, giving the menu displayed behind the glass a famished critical once-over. We stand like an ill-assorted flock of hungry sheep around his bony figure, which is as thin as a shepherd’s crook, and just about as curved at the top. He pushes his glasses up onto his forehead, cranes his neck to read, shakes his head and chuckles aloud at the effrontery of the prices, worrying inwardly all the time what will happen to him if Gabi’s scheme is rumbled by the Nazis. It’s lucky she’s pushed her scheme through now, by the way. She wouldn’t be able to see us off in a poignant platform farewell in a few months’ time. Railway stations as well as restaurants are going to be out of bounds even to ‘privileged’ Jews then, not to speak of buses and streetcars. Except if they’ve got more than five kilometres to go to their forced labour, in which case they can travel standing on the platform at the back.

  I have a little brown suitcase and a little brown rucksack. Martin has a large black suitcase and a giant green rucksack. Recently he’s been trying to straighten his hair, to give himself a more Aryan look. It’s a wonder he hasn’t tried dyeing it blond as well. But all that brushing and crimping and gluing has only strengthened the kinky tendency, so at last he’s given up. There have to be some curly-haired Aryan heroes, and he’s looking about him at the soldiers and policemen, hoping to spot one now. Failing to do so, he throws back his shoulders anyway and struts up and down by himself, trying to look the part of a Hitler Youth Leader which only ill luck and his unlucky genes have so far denied him.

  ‘Make sure you get out at Berlin Anhalter Station, not Berlin Zoo,’ Gabi anxiously interrupts his promenade. What would we get out at the zoo for, I wonder, though the idea does appeal to me. I think of elephants and lions wandering past the carriage windows. But apparently Gabi means the station, not the menagerie itself, and Martin looks long-sufferingly up at the heavens, or rather where the heavens would be if the station roof didn’t block his view, and continues his almost manly progress.

  ‘And keep hold of your brother’s hand,’ she calls out after him.

  Will she never learn?

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Martin explodes theatrically, glancing round to assess the effect of his Führer-like impatience on the watching masses. But the masses don’t seem to be watching. Only Gabi. She looks crestfallen and blinks her non-drooping eyelid. I suspect Martin will want to take that out on me when we’re safely on the train. Not for the first time I feel I’m not going to enjoy travelling to Berlin with Martin, and I’m pretty sure he feels the same about travelling there with me.

  I turn my eyes back to the restaurant again. A large wurst and potato salad stands on top of the glass case on the counter, and on the wall behind it hangs an even larger picture of Adolf, looking resolutely confident. (Well, it’s only just 1942 and the bad news has barely started trickling in yet.) For some reason that juxtaposition in my visual field sticks in my mind, and whenever I think of the Führer again, I’m always going to see him presiding over a creamy potato salad on which a fat brown glistening wurst nestles snugly like a fresh St Bernard’s turd (I haven’t forgotten Brutus).

  The train leaves on time (what else are Führers for?) and I sit by the window facing forwards until Martin, who’s been doing the departing hero act, standing at the window and nonchalantly waving goodbye, turns and pitches me out of it. Now I’m facing backwards in the middle seat, between a fat woman who doesn’t smile at me, and an SS trooper who’s just come in and does. Three featureless middle-aged men who might be anything or nothing sit opposite me in featureless clothes.

  ‘How old are you, laddie?’ the SS trooper asks, and drops his cap over my head. Only my ears prevent it from covering my eyes, and everyone except Martin gives some sort of grin. Even the fat woman’s tightened lips twitch into an indulgent smile, unless it’s a hastily suppressed belch. Martin on the other hand merely scowls resolutely out of the window in an imitation of the Adolf portrait that decorated the Station Restaurant wall.

  I can see he’s a bit uneasy about this SS trooper. They’re supposed to be the elite, the stern and purposeful defenders of the Reich, guardians of its honour, purity, glory and the knives and forks – so what’s this one doing, playing games with an insignificant little runt like me? And a not quite pure runt too, I can see Martin inconveniently thinking. His glance strays over the man’s uniform; he notes there’s no decoration on his tunic yet and I see him concluding this is just a young recruit, lacking the august dignity that Martin would have in his place. Martin gazes sternly away again, the perfect exemplar of Aryan determination and discipline.

  Meanwhile the SS man disconcertingly removes his cap from my unworthy head, flings it with a casual flick of his wrist onto the baggage rack (where it flops like a dead crow onto the fat lady’s case), loosens his collar, huddles in his corner seat and closes his eyes to snooze.

  The light is dimmed, the blackout blinds are drawn, and I sit in the artificial gloaming watching Martin’s Aryan stare and the others’ shadowed faces. Something’s bothering me, but I don’t quite know what yet. Something that I’m waiting for, and it’s keeping me awake. Maybe it’s what’s keeping Martin awake too, not just his vigilant-Aryan urge. The fat lady nods and bulges beside me, the SS trooper sleeps the sleep of the brave, and the three nondescripts opposite fold their arms, lean back and doze, their heads lolling and jerking like broken puppets. Only Martin and I are awake, as if we’re restless with some fever. I’m not sure what the trouble is – and yet of course something in me knows all along – until the ticket-inspector slides the door open.

  Then I realise. It isn’t him, though. It’s the voice I hear behind him in the corridor. ‘Identity cards please!’ Now I see Martin’s eyes glance back that way too, then meet mine with a wary and complicit look. That’s what we’ve both been waiting for and dreading – the moment when they inspect our all-revealing papers, and our racial taint’s officially exposed. After the ticket-collector’s gone, two soldiers appear at the open door, flashing their
torches over the passengers’ faces. And while one inspects their identity cards, the other peers over his shoulder, to make sure there isn’t any monkey-business.

  I watch Martin take both our cards out of his pocket and see my own anxiety upon his face. Are we going to be booted out into the corridor or the luggage van, thrown off the train at the next station – or even right away – or merely sneered at as half-Jews? What will the genial SS trooper, whose Aryan leg is now pressing obliviously against mine, think when he finds out what I am? I move my own leg stealthily away in deference to his coming change of heart. Out go the others’ cards, one after the other, in outreached but unworried hands. The fat lady stretches her lips over her teeth and regards them in the dully illumined mirror, testing her faint but definite lipstick. She leaves her hand out negligently for the return of her papers, which with a muttered thank-you duly occurs. The three nondescripts opposite are not so casual. They turn their faces politely towards the flashlight as the policemen check them against their photos, and murmur thank-yous themselves as they are given back their cards and briefly thanked. The SS trooper doesn’t even wake, and the policemen shrug and leave the hero sleeping.

  Now they take Martin’s and my papers. They play their torches thoughtfully over them and us, frown, glance at each other and briefly confer. One of them’s older and has a pinched tired face, as if he’s sucking his cheeks in or has left his false teeth out. He’s the one who peers over the other’s shoulder, sniffing out the monkey-business, and I sense it’s him who’s going to decide. I try to look at him pleadingly, and when that has no effect, try to look away all unconcerned instead. Eventually he shrugs again, as he did for the SS trooper, though certainly not on the same grounds, and nods. They give us each a hard look as they hand the papers back, but the only mark of disapproval is that there’s no thank-you for us as they slide the door shut behind them.

  I see Martin’s face relax as mine must have done when Fritzi Wimmer didn’t taunt me but just left me alone. He takes out one of the sandwiches Gabi made that morning and begins to munch it slowly, his lower lip pushed out like Mussolini’s. I get one too, after nodding meaningly and tapping his knee. He regards me with the faintest suggestion of a smile, something I don’t recall him ever offering me before. He must be feeling as if he’s been accepted into the Hitler Youth after all. I even get my proper share of the sandwiches. Maybe Berlin won’t be so bad, I think before I drift off to sleep. My leg touches the SS man’s again, and I feel contentedly that now I can let it be. Even when my head occasionally lolls against his broad Aryan shoulder, I do not flinch. Who knows? I might actually be going to enjoy being in the heart of the heart of the Nazis.

  And Tante Maria and Frau Professor Hoffmann, as I’ve been advised to call them, seem to think so too. Tante Maria is plump and undulating with unfulfilled matronly curves, Frau Professor Hoffmann thin and straight from the feet up, with two prominences at her head, one a beaky nose, the other a large bun of spinsterly grey hair resting on the nape of her neck. The rest of her’s as smooth and straight as a weathered beanpole. While Martin starts his private tuition straight away with Tante Maria, Frau Professor Hoffmann arranges matters for my own education. She takes me to the local school, which in this case is rather classy, where there’s the usual form to fill in with the usual box about my Aryan descent or lack of it. Frau Professor Hoffmann has a whispered word with the secretary and what if anything gets written in that box I never see.

  Lo and behold, I’m registered in the school, and Frau Professor Hoffmann says no one knows my mother’s Jewish. ‘And don’t you tell anyone she is,’ she adds. I wonder if there are any more crypto-half-Jews like me in the school. ‘Never you mind,’ Frau Professor Hoffmann replies on the way back to Tante Maria’s home. ‘Remember you’re just the same as everyone else.’ One thing I do know: if they pull my pants down to find out, they’ll certainly think I am. My Christianised mother never considered such a mutilation and as for Willibald – you need every bit of it you’ve got, is the tenor of his Gentile thinking. It’s one of the few things they’ve always agreed upon. That, and Ilse’s slowness.

  The school is in the Steglitz district, where Tante Maria and her father live, and nearly all the kids are officers’ children, or lawyers’ or doctors’. And as Maria predicted to Gabi, I find I’m far behind them, except in reciting the morning salute to Adolf, which, depending on the teacher, they often do in a perfunctory manner, and sometimes even miss out altogether. That’s a far cry from the well-drilled practice of the loyal village school I’m used to. Although I’m word perfect at it, neither Frau Professor Hoffmann nor Tante Maria seem impressed by my prowess in that department, nor by my ability to recite the soldier’s oath, which Willibald has a habit of intoning under his breath when he’s feeling nostalgic for the heroic soldier’s life: I swear this holy oath by God to give unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Leader of the German State and People, and Supreme Commander of the Army. I further swear that I am prepared to lay down my life at any time in fulfilment of this oath. In fact they stop me half-way through when I try this out on them one lunch-time and I sense that even a Jägerlein poem might go down better, if only I could remember one.

  Soon after that I too start getting private tuition from them, in maths and German where it seems I’m most deficient. They assume that since I’m a pastor’s son, I must be well up in the religious department. Lucky they don’t put that to the test. I’ve hardly ever been to church and when I have, I’ve usually been day-dreaming. And Willibald is far too busy writing plays to teach his own children in the home what he’s not allowed to teach others’ children in the schools. Consequently, I scarcely know Saul from Paul, or John the Baptist from Ditto the Evangelist, although I’ve got Grace as word perfect as the Soldier’s Oath, or, come to that, the prayer for Führer, People and Army (Bless above all our Leader and Supreme Commander in all the tasks he undertakes), which is another of Willbald’s favourites.

  Frau Professor Hoffmann appeals to me because she’s got one false eye tooth which she sometimes puts in and sometimes leaves out. I can’t discover the principle behind these dental epiphanies, but trying to do so certainly sets my brain cells humming. I like Tante Maria too, because she smells of powder and eau de cologne and turns her head aside when she coughs, which she often does, and neither sniffs wads of the stuff back down her throat nor noisily evacuates it in full view onto her handkerchief as Willibald tends to do. She says she hopes I don’t believe everything I hear on the wireless at home. When I tell her our wireless went with the dog and the rabbits, she first shakes her head, then shrugs. ‘Better nothing than lies.’

  I’m not sure how much I like Tante Maria’s father, though. He reeks of nicotine and something indefinable that I associate with age (Martin says it’s stale piss), and there are usually egg or coffee stains upon his shaggy white beard. Besides, he’s unpredictable. Sometimes he’s full of chesty good humour, when he shows me pictures of people he says are Kaiser Willi and Marshal von Hindenburg, whose belly’s so enormous I wonder if he’d be taller lying down than standing up (and he’s no dwarf when he’s upright). At other times Onkel Karl, as I’ve been told to call him, seems gruff and irritable, and I keep out of his way. But that’s nothing to the tantrums and scenes I’ve been used to in Heimstatt, and all in all I think it’s pretty serene here. In fact, a new thought is beginning to dawn in my mind (I’m at that age when thoughts do dawn). It is that life here is more or less normal, whereas life in Heimstatt, which up till now is all I’ve ever known, is not. That’s quite disturbing, like finding out you’re on the wrong path when it’s too late to turn back. What have I missed? What am I going to miss? The query dawns on me, then gets obscured by all the clouds of daily life. But every now and then the clouds thin and dissipate, and then the query dawns again.

  One night I’m woken by a curdling wailing noise I’ve never heard before, and then the Crrump! Crrump! of what at first I think is thunder. But this thund
er’s louder than even that summer storm on the mountain two years ago, and there’s no Heinrich Schmidt here now to make me feel all right. Instead there’s Martin, who tells me it’s anti-aircraft guns and the Tommies are coming. That doesn’t make me feel all right at all. Then Tante Maria appears in her dressing gown and curlers, and down into the shelter we go.

  Through the curtained but unlit windows in the hall I see a jazzy lattice of searchlights and blooming fireworks far away. Martin pauses to look despite Tante Maria’s urging, and says ‘Lancasters,’ which makes no sense to me, and then ‘Damned Tommies!’ in a defiant Aryan voice, which does a bit, but not entirely. I know the Tommies are supposed to be our enemies, but who ‘we’ are is still obscure, since my mother isn’t kosher German, although she isn’t kosher Jewish either, and it’s only kosher Germans that the Tommies are fighting. So I leave the question of who’s the enemy and who is not to another time – it’s just a philosophical problem, after all. Think of all the trouble Fritzi Wimmer gave me over the self-same question.

  ‘Get a move on!’ Onkel Karl growls suddenly beside me, carrying a torch, candle and for some reason umbrella, and on I move. In the shelter are all sorts of people in all sorts of sleeping clothes, all very quiet and listening. Some have hats on, some carry mugs of coffee and thermos jars as though they’re off on a picnic, and some are clasping their heads in their hands as if they expect the roof to fall. Onkel Karl opens his umbrella and holds it up above his head. ‘Dripping!’ he declares, nodding at the roof in answer to my mute inquiry. ‘Dripping!’ All that fascinates me until rebellious Martin arrives and announces that an enemy plane is going down in flames. His voice is exultant, but curiously no one else seems pleased at all. Maria even shakes her head and coughing murmurs ‘Poor young men’.

  Which is what she murmurs, also coughing – she certainly can cough – when cousin Erwin comes to visit us a week or so later with his fiancée Lerke, and his younger brother Robert who’s just joined the Wehrmacht, none of whom I’ve ever seen before. Erwin, with his iron cross and oak leaf, looks how Luftwaffe aces are supposed to look, except he isn’t quite as Aryan blond as I thought he’d be – light brown you’d call it really. But he’s an ace all right, and all heel-clicking courtesy, as well. So is Robert (heel-clicking courtesy, I mean), although he’s only a lowly Wehrmacht recruit. Still, you can see your face in his polished boots. As for Lerke, she’s a strawberry blonde and smiles sweetly at Martin and me with her deep blue eyes while Erwin asks after all the family, and even mentions Tante Gabi by name as though the Nuremburg laws had never even been thought of, never mind passed. Is it Erwin’s charm, or the brownish colour of his hair, not so very many shades lighter than his own, that induces Martin to forsake Panzers for aircraft on the spot and set his sights on becoming a Luftwaffe pilot?