The Kaminsky Cure

by New, Christopher;

  After some time, Herr Ziegler lowers the report to inspect Martin’s face again, as though to check this half-Jew really isn’t going to try a smart-ass answer, raises it again, then puts it down with the others on the desk. ‘You seem all right at chemistry,’ he admits grudgingly. ‘There’s a vacancy in the testing section. You can start washing bottles and things at first. Then we’ll see if we can use you for anything else. One week’s trial. If you’re no good to us, you’re out. The only reason I’m taking you on is we’re very short-handed these days.’

  Gabi is so thankful she forgets to ask the salary. Martin’s more practical. But it’s irrelevant. Like it or not, he knows this is his only chance. He doesn’t even register the piddling amount Herr Ziegler mentions. Herr Ziegler calls in a plump blonde secretary, who looks through them as if they were just panes of glass, and dictates a note about Martin. Gabi gazes at the smoking chimneys through the barred window, telling herself it isn’t certain yet, it isn’t certain, something could still go wrong. She hears the secretary’s chair scrape back, but keeps her eyes on those chimneys as if they hold some magic power, and she must watch them till the door has closed.

  ‘Like crematoria, aren’t they, eh?’ Herr Ziegler’s voice grates behind her as the secretary leaves. ‘Our bricks go into them as well.’

  ‘Into crematoria?’ Gabi repeats in surprise, imagining a coffin full of bricks sliding into a furnace to the sound of soothing hymns.

  Herr Ziegler can spot naivete a mile away. ‘Into making them,’ he grates impatiently. ‘For the East,’ he adds with a grim little smile that Gabi tries not to interpret.

  Martin starts work the very next week. He leaves at five and returns at eight. He’s smart with test tubes, mixing this chemical with that, and soon he’s helping with experiments to improve the bricks’ heat-resistant quality. He’s good at that, too. Some of the other workers call him Herr Mixture, which neatly captures both his official racial status and his factory function. Others, like the plump secretary, merely look blankly through him. Twice a week, before he returns home, he’s off to Frau Professor Goldberg’s little apartment in Bad Neusee to learn more maths and physics. Then on Sundays he’s climbing the steps of Tante Helga’s chalet for a dose of geography from the blind map-reader. And after that a session with Father Schuster, deciphering the compressed enigmas of Tacitean Latin. Ilse goes separately to those teachers because, although she’s older, she can’t keep up with Martin.

  That’s how Gabi pushes her two eldest children through the curriculum the Nazis have decreed they should not follow. But what about the others? Sara and I need help too, although it isn’t exactly academic help we are in want of yet. No, apparently we need polish. I thought I was mixing with the elite in my Berlin school stuffed with officers’ and lawyers’ progeny, and I still have that parting gift of a pencil from Ulrich, the wounded colonel’s son, to prove it. But that’s nothing to what Fräulein von Kaminsky has in mind for us two youngest. We’re going to rub shoulders with the distant scions of the Royal Habsburgs.

  Rolf and Elisabeth, they’re called, and they live in a grand and ancient villa in acres of grounds outside Bad Neusee, far removed in class, if not in distance, from Frau Professor Goldberg’s modest apartment. Their father’s a count and about twenty-ninth-and-a-half in line for the Austrian throne, a distinction which, since there’s neither Austria nor a throne, is about as significant as being the thirteenth grandson of a Turkish pasha. However, it’s enough to render the whole family suspect to the parvenus Nazis, whom they in their turn look down upon with patrician scorn. So we have something in common, Fräulein von Kaminsky remarks to Gabi, and she counsels her to take Sara and me to pay court to the noble brood. ‘They’ll be pleased to meet you,’ she assures the diffident Gabi.

  ‘Meet a Jew?’ Gabi asks dubiously, considering the penalties they could incur and the still worse ones that she could. She doesn’t mind risking her own and other people’s necks to get her children some further education or a job. But just for a social visit and perhaps a lesson in good breeding?

  Fräulein von Kaminsky waves her doubts disdainfully away. ‘They are Habsburgs on the mother’s side,’ she majestically declares. ‘And it will do the children good.’ Gabi’s children, she means of course. You can’t do Habsburg children good unless you’re a Habsburg yourself. Or a von Kaminsky perhaps.

  Unfortunately I’m as usual not privy to these preliminaries, so all I know just now is that we’ve got to look our best because we’re going to visit the nobility. It’s the middle of August and half-a-sweating mile from the big wrought-iron gates to the villa itself when, togged in our best Berlin hand-me-downs, we make our first call. (At our final call the wrought-iron gates will be gone, commandeered like Willibald’s church bells, to be melted into cannon.) His Excellency Graf von Haltenstein isn’t there, but his Countess is, the unimposing mother of six other royal Haltensteins. She receives us with casual dignity and three bowls of sour milk topped with sugar and cinnamon, which are proffered to us by one of the half-dozen servants or so that seem to be floating about. I taste mine and nearly puke. So, I note, does Sara. Gabi though sends urgent messages to drink the vile stuff down, through a code of strenuous winks and grimaces, which the Countess, along with practically everyone else in the mansion except the chauffeur in the distant garage, notices, decodes and politely disregards. We manage to do as we’re bidden. If that’s what the imperial Habsburgs fed on, I surmise, it’s no wonder that they lost their throne.

  All the other Haltenstein progeny are either too old or too young for us, but Rolf is more or less Sara’s age and Elisabeth more or less mine (in each case it’s more more than less). Summoned to join us, they bow or curtsey to Gabi as gender dictates, shake hands graciously with us (my palm’s all sweaty, but Elisabeth doesn’t even flinch) and then tuck in to their very own bowls of sour milk, sugar and cinnamon, which they appear to swallow without the slightest repugnance, and even with a certain relish. I’m now inclined to revise my dietary explanation of the Habsburg decline – if they can take that, they can take anything. On the other hand, Rolf appears thin and drained when I take a second look, a bit like a pressed flower. They both have level pale blue eyes and the finest of fair hair, which makes me think they must be the intimidating quintessence of the Aryan race.

  While their sour milk goes delicately down, I listen to my mother making cultivated conversation with the Countess in tones she must have learnt years ago from the days of her youth when she had a governess. Tones I’ve never heard in all my life before, light and empty as the top notes of a piano. It’s astonishing how long these two adults can keep tinkling on about the weather, the local topography, the flora and fauna, with the utmost aplomb and manifest lack of interest. It isn’t till Rolf and Elisabeth are told to take us out into the grounds that I hear a natural sound from my mother and indeed actually catch a natural and unusual smile on her stretched face. The countess has added a quiet remark to her in French, which Sara tells me afterwards means something like ‘We can talk more freely when the children are out of the way.’ I don’t know much French, but that certainly seems about right for the countess’s inflection and sidelong glance at us as she spoke. I know that language all right.

  We stroll through the manicured grounds in the persistently attentive sunlight, first as an awkward quartet, then as two duos. Elisabeth is eleven-and-a-half while I’m only nine-and-three-quarters, which gives her an even greater advantage than being a Haltenstein does, and I curl my sweaty fingers up into nervous little fists as I try to play the conversational game her mother played with mine before she sent us out.

  ‘Where do you live?’ Elisabeth asks in a voice as clear as glacial water running over pebbles.

  ‘Heimstatt,’ I truthfully reply.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘It’s not like here,’ I assure her as the silence lengthens.

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  I’m afraid I might have given her the wrong idea, so ‘I
mean it’s nicer here,’ I explain.

  At first Elisabeth doesn’t answer this bit of exegesis, and for a moment I wonder if she’s taking a dose of the Kaminsky cure for intolerable conversations and carrying a gobful of unswallowed water in her mouth. After all, she is a sort of Habsburg, and that’s where the practice comes from. But then ‘Yes, I expect it is,’ she agrees coolly without the slightest sign of a sudden gulp.

  As, after glancing round the grounds as though to assure herself her endorsement was correct, she lets that topic drop, I try one of my own. ‘Where do you go to school?’

  ‘In Plinden. They’re mostly Nazis.’

  I’m not too sure how she regards the political affiliations of her schoolmates, so I keep quiet about that while my fingernails dig into my palms and I wish we could catch up with Sara and Rolf, who seem to be sauntering along in gawky but easy commerce, their heads leaning towards each other like a pair of tulips in love. Well, he’s sixteen, and she’s nearly fifteen. Of course it’s easy for them.

  ‘Your mother’s Jewish, isn’t she?’ Elisabeth asks, or rather declares, now, in a tone that I would classify as frigidly intimidating if I had the words to do so.

  I’m too ashamed to admit my mother’s Jewish and too timid to deny it. Just like Martin amongst the Hitler Youth. So, like him, I don’t say anything.

  ‘She shouldn’t be here, really, should she?’ Elisabeth continues severely, taking silence for assent. ‘With Aryans like us?’

  Not to speak of royalty. As if I didn’t know. Am I about to be ground through the same mincer that Martin was by the Hitler Youth?

  ‘Because of the Nazis,’ she needlessly explains. Then, while I’m thinking this politely chilling interrogation is worse than mixing it with ten of Fritzi Wimmer, and I’m sure my gouging fingernails must be drawing blood from my palms, ‘We don’t like them either,’ she delivers calmly.

  Like who? I wildly wonder. Jews or Nazis?

  After a few more delicately crunching steps along the level gravel path, she adds ‘My father says they’re frightful. But they wouldn’t dare touch us.’

  This is getting frightful too. Who is frightful in her father’s book? Who wouldn’t dare touch them? Everyone else says it’s the Jews. I shrink away a bit, to show her that a half-Jew wouldn’t either. Or could she possibly mean the Nazis? When will this agony end?

  ‘So you needn’t worry, we won’t tell anyone,’ she says at last with condescending grace. ‘Can you speak English?’

  No, I can’t speak English, I admit. And a good thing too. It’s bad enough trying to follow her in German. But at least I think I know how things stand now, and I feel as relieved as I would in school if Fritzi Wimmer had just turned a threatening scowl into a wintry grin.

  ‘We’ve got a private tutor for English. He comes twice a week. I don’t like him much.’ Then she says an English sentence, which she tells me means ‘The pilot has shot down the enemy plane.’ She might not like her tutor, but he clearly knows his stuff.

  Is Sara having an equally difficult time with Rolf? It doesn’t look like it, judging by the inclined proximity of those two tulip heads. And in fact she isn’t. Quite the contrary. She thinks she’s found a soul-mate, and so perhaps does he. ‘I’m anaemic,’ is the first thing he tells her, which sounds a lot more interesting than ‘Where d’you live?’ All the royal families of Europe are anaemic, he declares. ‘It’s because we’re all inbred. See how pale I am? I shan’t live long.’ He holds his blanched and bony hand out in front of her eyes as if it was transparent, which it very nearly is. ‘There’s a medicine in America, but of course we can’t get it here, so …’ He seems to contemplate his ineluctably approaching mortality with the same steady resigned fortitude with which I myself anticipate returning to school after the holidays. Disagreeable, but can’t be helped. And in any case it might not be so bad. ‘You probably won’t live long either, because you’re half-Jewish,’ he adds. ‘Nor will your mother, of course. The Nazis want to kill you all.’

  These observations, however candid and veracious, were not perhaps likely to enamour Sara all at once, but then they’re only ranging shots. The heavy salvoes fall all round her later, when Rolf tells her he’s an author too. Yes, he’s also writing stories. ‘What about?’ she asks. ‘Oh, you know,’ he responds offhandedly. ‘Love and death, that kind of thing.’ Then Sara timidly confides she’s an apprentice in that trade as well, and before long they’ve agreed to show each other what they’ve written. ‘I might be able to help you,’ Rolf remarks with lordly condescension. ‘Give you some hints.’

  At my age, I’m not interested in that kind of stuff, so I never bother with either Rolf’s or Sara’s literary efforts. But I do see her slip one of her notebooks into her bag the next time we go calling. She does it secretly of course, as she does everything, but I notice. And in any case I know where she hides all her stories. It used to be in the bottom of her wardrobe, but now they’re spread out under the mattress. I suppose she thinks that’s safer.

  Sara can’t bear to watch Rolf read her story, so she gives it shyly to him just as we’re leaving, and it isn’t till a week or two later that she gets his response, which consists of a slow but definite shake of the head as he hands it back to her. ‘Undisciplined,’ he comments. ‘Exaggerated. Overdone.’ You can tell his literature teacher is a purist.

  Rolf goes to the same gymnasium in Plinden that Martin attended till he got the boot, and he confides to Sara that he always thought her brother was a creep, although he’s sorry for him now. Well, Sara can take criticism of her brother, she probably agrees with it in fact. But literary criticism’s something else – that really cuts her to the bone. She feels like Douanier Rousseau being savaged by an academician in the Sunday paper, although since she’s never heard of Douanier Rousseau she’s no idea that’s how she feels.

  ‘See how I do it,’ Rolf offers with lofty generosity as he hands her his latest story. ‘That might give you some ideas.’

  I never discover what she thinks of Rolf’s stories about love and death and that kind of thing. She’s never going to say. I know she reads them in his presence – he isn’t one for false modesty and he never doubts they’ll knock her silly. He watches her with a calmly smiling and expectant face, as an emperor might regard a courtier summoned to give an opinion on his taste – but what she tells him about them afterwards she never says. I suspect she finds them as anaemic as their author, but I could be wrong. Not that it matters; Rolf is immune to criticism anyway. He’s not a Habsburg scion for nothing.

  Whatever she thinks of his stories though, she certainly takes his criticism of hers to heart. She’s silent all the way home, in the manner we thought that only Ilse could be silent. And though it’s high summer, she retreats behind the green-tiled oven in the kitchen, which is usually our refuge when Willibald’s throwing things, and doesn’t come out until Gabi has one of her gall bladder attacks.

  A week or two later she shows Rolf another story. This elicits the same patronising response that the first one did, and she never shows him any more. Or anyone else for that matter. But she goes on writing them all the same – she can’t help herself. Her stories, she believes, aren’t fit for public consumption, and quite possibly she doesn’t really want the public to consume them anyway. Perhaps they’re like a private diary that ought to stay unread.

  And unread is what Rolf is going to stay, although that’s certainly not at all what he intends. His anaemia turns out to be leukaemia, and by the end of the year he’s going to be dead. Rolf is probably Sara’s first friend, and in a sense her platonic lover, if you can say that about a boy-girl relationship. She’s going to wear a tiny bit of black mourning ribbon for him after he dies, but secretly, like every other expression of her feelings, so that you scarcely notice it. I’ll glimpse it though, on her worn black overcoat, just peeking out beneath the lapel.

  But Rolf is not the only one that’s sick. Ilse’s come down with tuberculosis now, and it’s thought b
etter for his delicate patrician health if we interrupt our visits for a time. It’s going to be quite a time as it turns out, but that’s neither their fault nor ours. It’s autumn already and –

  10

  Death is in the air

  Dr Koch, whom racial hygiene does not permit to treat my Jewish mother, does however visit the Pfarrhaus to sound the half-Jew Ilse’s chest, although he’s never to my knowledge been before. While he’s there, Gabi persuades him to give us all the once-over. All, that is, except Gabi herself – and he hesitantly pronounces us all clear, except for Ilse of course, who has a persistent fever and lassitude that Gabi doesn’t tell him has already been diagnosed by a specialist in Plinden who didn’t know her mother was Jewish, or didn’t want to know. Dr Koch considers Ilse may indeed have got TB and recommends sending her to the hospital in Bad Neusee where young Rolf von Haltenstein is shortly to expire, although he concedes there is some doubt whether they’ll accept half-Jews and what sort of treatment they’ll give her if they do. But Gabi means to nurse her daughter at home, and assures Dr Koch she can deliver treatment as well as any hospital. That way, moreover, though this she does not tell him, Ilse can continue with her private tuition – her teachers, or some of them at least, can be prevailed upon to come to the house.

  Ilse’s case seems mild, and Dr Koch acquiesces. He does a lot of acquiescing. His principal function as a doctor seems to be that of acquiescing – in his patients’ self-diagnoses, or, in the case of childbirth, in the midwife, Frau Kogler’s. Jägerlein says that’s because when he first arrived in Heimstatt thirty years before, he misdiagnosed a mortal case of diphtheria as a trivial case of tonsillitis, the patient dying two days later. Since then he’s had as little confidence as the villagers in his diagnostic powers. They prefer to use him only as a pharmacist and sounding-board for their own opinions.