The Kaminsky Cure

by New, Christopher;

  In the afternoon Gabi makes another announcement to Frau Professor Hoffmann. Now she means to go and see Cousin Lotte and Solomon, and sloppy once jolly Aunt Hedwig ‘while we still have the chance.’

  Frau Professor Hoffmann blanches. ‘I don’t think … I mean, I don’t know where they are now,’ she hints, glancing askance at me and then hard at Gabi.

  ‘I’ve got their address here,’ Gabi says obliviously, rummaging in her large black handbag. For someone who sends out her own ocular signals like a mastful of flags on the battle cruiser Bismarck, she really is slow to spot the signals others hoist. Frau Professor Hoffmann regards her with an incredulous and pityingly anxious look as Gabi unfolds Great Aunt Hedwig’s address. You don’t know? it says. My God, how am I going to tell you?

  ‘But they’ve moved,’ Frau Professor Hoffmann repeats, glancing askance at me again, and then appealingly at Martin. ‘They’ve … they’ve gone away …’

  ‘Gone away? Where?’ Gabi considers Frau Professor Hoffmann wide-eyed with amazement, but then comprehension begins to gleam at last like winter sunlight in a leaden sky.

  ‘Didn’t anyone tell you?’ (Of course not – Maria was too busy preparing to die and no one else thought of writing to Heimstatt.) ‘They were … evacuated last month.’

  ‘Evacuated?’ Gabi repeats in a voice that has somehow suddenly been hollowed out, lost all its marrow. Since she heard of Onkel Moritz’s evacuation she understands at last that evacuation means deportation. Before, she might have visualised some pastoral retreat, complete with log chalets, fir trees and gallons of free milk. Stranger thoughts did sometimes use to wander through her head in the early morning hours, when the world was remade according to the blueprint of her naive optimism. But not any longer. ‘So it’s too late, then?’ she asks, sitting heavily down and gripping the table edge as though she felt unsteady. ‘Evacuated.’

  ‘Concentration camp,’ Martin growls with his customary brutal accuracy. And Frau Professor Hoffmann, who took Maria’s death so calmly, now has tears starting in the corners of her eyes.

  As usual that makes me want to cry too, cry for that shabby trio we met outside the Botanical Garden last spring. I dream that night of Great Aunt Hedwig turning back towards me in her threadbare clothes with her yellow star, her face two sizes too small for its haggard envelope of skin. I see her hands reaching out towards mine, see her fixing me with her teary eyes, imploring me in her teary voice. ‘Remember us!’ I hear her calling. ‘Remember us!’

  And I do.

  Next morning, the day of our return to Heimstatt, Gabi takes it into her obstinate head to go and see Great Aunt Hedwig’s and her cousins’ place at least before we leave. Does she somehow hope to find them still there after all, although she knows full well they won’t be, and ought to know they probably aren’t anywhere by now? Or is it rather that she wants to see with her own eyes if there’s some scrap or remnant of her cousins or her favourite aunt lingering somewhere in the Jews’ house where they were removed to in Berlin? A letter perhaps? An old hat? A worn and empty purse?

  Frau Professor Hoffmann clasps her hands as though in prayer, or perhaps indeed in prayer, and protests to no avail again. ‘The Gestapo may be hanging about there,’ she warns Gabi. ‘What will you do if they stop you? It isn’t safe.’ But Gabi, who’s blessed or cursed with an optimistic as well as a stubborn and naive cast of mind, answers that she’s got a permit to be in Berlin and she’s ‘privileged’ as well. She still trusts in the rule-following orderliness of the Germans, and believes that the same punctiliousness which keeps the cattle trucks rolling to the East on time will also keep her from being on one herself without a properly issued and duly validated ticket. And in a way she’s right. The liquidation of the Jews is a massacre all right, but it isn’t a riot.

  Martin thinks no better of this scheme than Frau Professor Hoffmann does. The last thing he wants after his posturing at Erwin’s memorial service is to be caught hanging round a Jews’ house and be taken for a Jew. So he’s left behind to keep Frau Professor Hoffmann company, which he doesn’t seem to think much more of. Well, she’s certainly no substitute for the lissom Eva, the last female he was alone with in Berlin.

  Gabi used to know the city, and I thought I knew my way round a bit too, but somehow everything is different, now that so much has been bombed since each of us was last here, and it’s an hour and a half before we locate Great Aunt Hedwig’s final Berlin address out in Prenzlauer Berg. ‘That’s where your grandfather used to live,’ Gabi tells me, pointing to a narrow plot of rubble where only weeds live now. And a little later, ‘That’s where Josef had his clinic.’ I glance at her in surprise. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard her call the mysterious Dr Stern simply Josef. It’s always been Dr Stern or Onkel Josef before. If I was old enough to think such thoughts, perhaps I’d think she’s got some special reason for wanting me to see his clinic now and hear him called Josef in that mellowed melancholic tone. But all I do is gaze unimpressed at an ugly bomb-damaged building with boarded up windows like an old blind bandaged face.

  And then, not far away, we do find Great Aunt Hedwig’s house at last. It’s down a dreary side-street off the main road, along which we hear a solitary tram forlornly clanking. This house is undamaged, but so run-down you’d think the best thing that could happen to it now would be a direct hit from another Allied bomb. As we’re walking towards it on the other side of the street, a humpish and noisy black car draws up. Two men get out, wearing long shiny raincoats and trilby hats. They ring a bell impatiently several times, then, as we approach start hammering on the door.

  Suddenly I’m feeling scared, more scared than in any air raid and more scared even than when Fritzi Wimmer accosted me in the playground. And I know Gabi’s feeling scared too, because she’s grabbed my arm as if she wants to crush it. The two men step back and look up, craning their necks, then go back to ringing and hammering on the door. At last the door is opened by a shabby middle-aged man, who begins apologising for the delay, and has his face slapped as he does so. The two men shove him inside, and the door swings lazily shut behind them as though it’s seen all this a hundred times before and is quite frankly bored with the whole business.

  Why is it that Gabi can’t move? Why does she have to stand there gripping my arm and watching, when all she really wants to do, I can tell by her trembling, is run away? Has she recognised the middle-aged man? Can this be someone else she knows? Or is it just the need to know beforehand, to see how one day it may be with her? I’ll never know, I’ll never ask.

  Then the driver of the car, who’s been gazing vacantly down the street like a horse waiting for its master to return, winds down his window, leans his head out and calls quietly but urgently across the road, ‘Get out of here! Get out!’

  I’m not sure if that’s an order or a recommendation, but it certainly galvanises Gabi and she finds she can move after all. She lets my arm go, clutches my hand instead and turns away without a word to the driver, whose head is now back where it belongs, lolling patiently inside the car. And we walk on quickly down the road, but not so quickly it might look as if we’re running away, on towards we don’t know where. For all I know this may be a cul-de-sac, but we’re going to go on walking along it till we slam into the wall. Walking and trembling.

  We’ve hardly gone thirty paces though when we hear the men come out and the door swing shut again. Both of us risk a glance back – we can’t help it. The middle-aged man is stepping submissively into the car, removing an old black Homburg hat as he does so. There’s no slapping or shoving now, no violence or abuse. There isn’t any need. You’d almost think he was going of his own accord, it’s all so quiet and calm. As though they’re just taking him out to lunch. One of the men gets in beside him, the other in the front beside the driver. The doors clunk shut, and away rolls the car with a peculiar clattery growl that will prevent me from ever buying a Volkswagen Beetle in the whole of my later life.

  And the s
trangest thing about all this is that I don’t ask Gabi what was going on and she doesn’t tell me. In fact we don’t even mention it to Frau Professsor Hoffmann or Martin when we get back. We never mention it to anyone, ever. We just each know what we’ve seen, and know, when we sometimes catch each other’s eye, that the other knows as well.

  We keep our secrets, even from ourselves.

  Martin is waiting in the hall with the suitcases when we get back to Frau Professor Hoffmann’s and we’re only just in time to catch our train. It’s a silent journey for the first few hours. Martin munches more than his share of the sandwiches Frau Professor Hoffmann has thoughtfully provided, but I’m not hungry, and nor is Gabi – although she never is in any case when Martin’s around. I keep wondering what will happen if we’re asked to produce our papers. So far on this trip we haven’t been, but that only makes it all the more likely that we will be now. And lacking Gabi’s trust in Teutonic orderliness or Franzi Wimmer’s rustic authority, I keep imagining us being booted off the train and stuffed into a sinisterly humped black car like that one in Berlin.

  But the train gets shunted into sidings several times during the night, to let some SS boys go through to get at the Russkies – or so the harassed ticket-inspector says when he appears to punch our tickets – and nobody is interested in checking who we are. ‘They need every able-bodied soldier they can get on the Eastern Front,’ he brusquely tells Gabi when she respectfully asks him if she should keep our papers handy for inspection or put them safely away. ‘They’ve got no time for any of that now.’ And he slides the door shut with the irritated air of one who’s being bothered while he’s doing his significant bit to get those able-bodied soldiers where they ought to be while they’re still able-bodied.

  After that at last I fall asleep, and dream of Tante Maria and Erwin whom we’ll never see again. And of Great Aunt Hedwig and Gabi’s Cousin Lotte with her husband Solomon, and the middle-aged man from that house in Prenzlauer Berg as well. All of whom we’ll –

  12

  Never see again

  But it isn’t only our relations that are disappearing. Millions of other people’s are too, although we won’t know about them till later. But I do know our boys on the Eastern and Italian Fronts are disappearing. They’ve been giving ground and blood then disappearing for months now, though according to the papers which Willibald still sometimes brings home into our semi-Jewish household, every city lost is in fact a battle won. Fräulein von Adler pulls on her stubby black-stemmed pipe, which she fills with tea leaves when she can’t get tobacco, and declares sardonically that in that case they ought to lose Berlin tomorrow and win the war at once. I’ve got a feeling she’ll be disappearing too if she doesn’t watch out. That episode outside that shabby house in Berlin has really brought things home to me.

  And to Gabi too I judge, because she’s been subdued and withdrawn ever since we came back. As though she realises her own time may soon be coming and she’d better be prepared. I come across her in the kitchen with Sara one afternoon, when Willibald’s away on one of his longer pastoral visits. At least that’s what he calls them, but it’s a plump and sympathetic Aryan lady in Plinden that he’s mainly doing furtive good to, and she perhaps to him. Gabi is reading aged and discoloured letters to herself, then dropping them one by one into the stove, while Sara watches her like some acolyte at a sacrificial rite, which is probably just what she is. Gabi is shaking her head and wiping her drooping eye on the corner of her apron as she watches the sheets of paper blacken at the edges, curl up and burn like ancient fragile bodies in a crematorium. ‘What do you want?’ she demands, slamming the grate irritably shut when she sees me. I wanted to get warm by the stove, but I’m not so sure about that now, so I merely shrug my shoulders guiltily, although what I’m guilty of I’m also not so sure. But then she seems to forget me altogether and sits down by Sara, gazing at the oven with far-focussed eyes. It’s as if she’s still reading all those letters whose ashes were now eddying like delicate black butterflies up the chimney.

  It’s not the best time for Ortsgruppenleiter Franzi Wimmer to come calling at the Pfarrhaus, but that’s exactly what he does, disturbing Gabi’s melancholic reverie. He’s doing the rounds collecting money to buy warm clothes for our boys on the Eastern Front who are saving Europe from the International Jewish-Capitalist-Bolshevik hordes. He’d like a contribution from the Herr Pfarrer, he tells her meaningly – that is, not from her – and holds his position on the second step as steadfastly as our boys are holding theirs on the Russian steppe – those that haven’t disappeared yet. Or are they already back in Poland now?

  Gabi’s eyes are still abstracted. ‘He’s out.’

  ‘Every house makes a contribution,’ he insists, peering blearily but warily past her for some half-Aryan he can dun. Or perhaps he’s doing a bit of counter-intelligence himself instead of Lisl, whose heart may well not be in it any more, if ever it was. Does he expect to find a stack of yellow anti-Nazi leaflets full of plutocratic communistic poisonous Jewish lies?

  Gabi opens the door wider, silently if coolly inviting him in. He shakes his head in embarrassment, either at the suggestion that an Ortsgruppenleiter might accept an invitation to a semi-Jewish house, or at the imputation that he’d stoop to snooping on the Pfarrer’s wife. Or perhaps at both, since his mind’s already such a generous host to contradiction and confusion. But then his stertorous exhalations even at that distance are definitely beery and he’s swaying a bit too. Perhaps it’s just he doesn’t want to risk tripping on the next step or the doormat.

  Now Gabi deliberately takes a Reichsmark out of her purse and before you can say ‘Heil Adolf’ has dropped it smack into the Ortsgruppenleiter’s swastika-decorated collection box.

  Jewish aid to fight the international Jewish conspiracy? You can see the quandary poor Franzi’s in. ‘Sign here,’ he mutters after a moment’s brow-furrowed cogitation, pointing to the list he’s holding out. ‘Brinkmann will do.’

  But after entering the amount, Gabi writes Gabriella Sara Brinkmann in her largest and most distinct handwriting, fixing the paradox securely in Franzi’s official records with a neat underlining of the Sara. ‘I’m legally obliged to sign like that,’ she politely explains.

  Who should know that but Franzi? ‘Yes, well,’ he mutters uneasily and trudges off unsteadily across the crunchy glittering snow, remembering just in time not to say ‘Heil Hitler!’ It’s probably one of those days he wishes he hadn’t taken on the job of Ortsgruppenleiter. If so, it won’t be the last.

  We have no more photos in our album now, as we have no more entries in our Visitors’ Book. That’s because Franzi Wimmer confiscated our old Leica some time ago, as he would have our typewriter if Willibald hadn’t claimed he needed it for his official pastoral duties. The Leica wasn’t needed for the war effort as Willibald’s church bells were, gone about the same time from the steeple, and the von Haltensteins’ iron gates, gone from their villa. The bells and gates went into cannons for our boys on the front, but the camera went because you cannot trust a Jew – Gabi might have used it to take secret photos of our military installations, for instance, and sent them off to the enemy.

  Willibald meekly protested that the camera was his, not his wife’s, but that cut no ice with Ortsgruppenleiter Franzi Wimmer. If Willibald could let a Jew get her hands on his prick, the official thinking seemed to be, wouldn’t he let her get them on his camera as well? As Gabi hadn’t handled either instrument for years, and never fathomed how to operate the photographic one anyway – she usually closed the eye she should be aiming with and cut off people’s feet or heads – those fears were groundless. Besides there are no military installations anywhere near us, unless you count the Ortsgruppenleiter’s office, which contains three World War One rifles and one tin box of ammunition. But rules are rules in Germany, even in the Third Reich, and the Leica’s gone. Mark you, there’s an official receipt for it. You can’t say Franzi Wimmer’s slack about the regulations.
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br />   It’s not just the gates that have gone from the von Haltensteins’ villa in Bad Neusee, by the way, it’s the von Haltensteins as well – Rolf the leukaemic budding author gone to heaven, and the rest we don’t know where. Fräulein von Kaminsky sent a letter from Vienna not long ago, saying they wouldn’t be back for some time. The death of young Rolf was hard for the Count and Countess to bear, she explained (as it was for Sara – she’s still wearing that scrap of black ribbon on her coat). And besides, she opaquely hinted, they might be having ‘some difficulties’. What sort of difficulties? Gabi wondered. Surely not the same as ours? As for myself – ‘But they wouldn’t dare touch us,’ I recalled Elisabeth saying, with that scornful tilt of her regal little chin. I couldn’t help wondering if she was right. It’s amazing the effect two men and a sinister car can have on your views. Not to speak of all those disappearances, Tante Hedwig’s and the others’.

  But all those disappearances, bad as they were, are nothing to me, compared with those that are about to happen.

  It’s April again, and the sun is quite definitely over the mountain tops for spring. The last snow has melted in the village, the days are chilly-bright and the alarms of war and disappearances are lulled to sleep by the plash of oars on the placid vernal lake. It’s the Führer’s birthday once more and we’ve celebrated it as usual in school with arms outstretched like symbolic phalli to the Great Prick on the wall. I’m in the top class now, and missing Fräulein Meissner, whose frustrated motherly instincts are finding surrogates in the children of and from the lower classes, who I’m sure do not appreciate them half as much as I would. She hardly ever smiles at me any more either. Perhaps it’s because I’ve taken my turn like Sara before me as a paradigm of the half-Jew in the elementary racial science lesson, and she realises more clearly now that I am quite beyond the pale. Or is it that she’s distracted, having become engaged to another soldier, this time on the Russian Front – which sounds to me like throwing good money after bad?