Frau Wimmer, who has small glinty eyes and a sharp nose set in a face that’s always pushing inquisitively forward, looks as disappointed as a weasel emerging from an empty rabbit burrow. She gives a baffled smile and starts to retreat.
‘Didn’t you want some matches?’ Gabi reminds her. For someone naturally deficient in the art of irony, she’s beginning to make real progress.
Not that she can hold a candle to Fräulein von Adler, who declares on her next visit, when the papers and wireless are still full of Adolf’s providential escape, that all Germany stands mourning by Hitler’s empty grave. She assumes a tone of such solemn piety when she says it that Gabi is at first as puzzled as I am, but Willibald’s no sloth when it comes to ironic uptake, and he rises at once and walks silently and with great dignity out of the room like the officer and gentleman he wishes he was, pursued by Fräulein von Adler’s relentless and sarcastic cackle.
‘If only we can last out the war,’ Gabi mutters to Fräulein von Adler, but I’ve hardly any notion what she means. What else is there but war? I don’t know what peace is. Does it mean we can go to school like everyone else and not sit by ourselves or get dumped when we reach sixteen? But I know what war means all right. Apart from those air-raids in Berlin, it means people disappearing. And now the disappearances are as many as the falling leaves in autumn, although we’ve only just reached August. What will it be like in October and November, I wonder. The answer is it will get worse and worse.
The bomb plot was planned by aristocratic army officers, and that meant lots of them are on the skids now that Providence has preserved The Führer to continue his fanatical struggle against The Jew. But of course The Jew must have been behind the plot, since The Jew’s behind everything bad, and so the few of them that are left will soon be on the skids as well, never mind if they’ve been ‘privileged’ up till now. Then there are all the trade unionists and social democrats, the members of the Confessional Church and anyone in short who’s got a conscience. They’ll be skidding soon too if they don’t watch out. Or if they do, for that matter.
And so the leaves keep falling in the gentle heat of summer.
First there’s Ulrich, my school friend in Berlin, if someone can be called your friend whose only social contact with you was to give you a wooden pencil with his name on it. Not that he disappears – at least, not as far as I know. But his father does, and so does his pencil. His father’s name is on the list of traitors that Willibald brings back in The People’s Observer one day, and there’s a blotchy picture of him in civvies at his trial (no uniform for treacherous serpents like him). He looks frail and beaten, which he probably is, and has to hold his beltless trousers up with his hands while standing rather bowed to hear his death sentence pronounced in the kangaroo People’s Court. ‘That must be Ulrich’s father,’ I tell Willibald with a mixture of pride and dismay, and go to fetch my pencil with Ulrich’s name printed on it. ‘Look, he gave me his pencil and I gave him mine.’
‘With your name on it?’ Willibald demands in consternation. ‘Suppose it’s traced? Why didn’t you think? Giving traitors your pencil! Why didn’t you think?’ Into the kitchen stove with my one and only treasured souvenir, and into the cellar with me, as punishment for thoughtless swapping. I think of Ulrich while I’m there, and wonder what it’s like to have your father’s picture in the paper, being sentenced to be hanged. It certainly takes my mind off the rats.
Nearer home (forty kilometres to be exact), it’s Ilse’s Plinden teachers that disappear next, those military widows whose husbands were offered to, or rather taken by, the Fatherland for omnivorous Adolf. Ilse’s well enough to go back to visit them for her lessons now, but one Monday morning at the end of August as she labours up the stairs to their shared apartment with her rucksack half full of books, she sees a policeman standing there outside their locked, sealed door.
She’s never been grateful before that she’s become so slow, but this time she is, because it gives her time to think. At which admittedly she’s also slow, but fear lends wings to flagging thought. She climbs laboriously on past the policeman, who watches her impassively, and rings the bell on the next landing.
When a plump but severe-looking woman answers, Ilse asks if Frau Schmidt lives there, choosing the name at random and hoping it is not this woman’s. ‘No,’ the woman answers, pointing to the nameplate on the door. She has the presence of a Leader of the League of German Girls, which isn’t surprising considering that’s exactly what she is. Ilse mutters that she must have got the wrong address, while the woman stands silently surveying her from top to toe and back again as if she knows full well what’s going on. She looks as if she’s half-inclined to interrogate Ilse and yet half-inclined not to. Fortunately it’s the second half that wins. She glances downstairs towards the policeman a moment, then closes the door.
Ilse turns and slowly, tremblingly, descends. Past the policeman, beside whose arm she glimpses Deutsches Reich stamped on the imposing seal upon the door. Along the landing, feeling the policeman’s gaze rest thoughtfully upon her rucksack. Down the stairs once more, telling herself she mustn’t run, and then recalling that she hasn’t run in years and couldn’t if she tried. Out into the bright and balmy August air, where skiffs are being rowed across the lake and yachts are being sailed, as though it always has been summer and always will be.
She never returns to Frau Professor Lambach’s and Frau Professor Zauner’s apartment. They’ve been being a little more socially disruptive than teaching half-Jewish Ilse. In fact they’ve been in imprudent correspondence with one of the minor plotters, and their letters have been found amongst his things. As ‘Politicals’ they spend some time in jail, where they do at least get fed, before being sent to Belsen Concentration Camp, where they don’t.
Willibald and Gabi spend a suspenseful week, during which they keep a truce with each other, waiting for the knock on the door which will signify that the net from Plinden has been cast over them as well. Perhaps Willibald has a few secret conversations with his Aryan lady friend as well, but if so he naturally doesn’t tell Gabi. Then, as nothing happens, they gradually relax, which allows their marriage truce to grow ragged and the sniping war to recommence.
Ilse grows still quieter and slower, and starts dragging her foot still more. Is her TB coming back, or is it something else and worse? Gabi’s sure it’s something else, but won’t say what. Whatever it is, her education has to continue, and now that Frau Professor Zauner and Frau Professor Lambach have gone, it’s timid Frau Professor Goldberg that must –
14
Take up the slack
At least until it’s time for her to disappear as well. She starts coming twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and coaches Sara into the bargain as well, since by now they’re at the same level, which means that Ilse’s level can’t be what it should be. Frau Professor Goldberg would prefer it if they came to her, as Martin still does come, but Ilse’s health is clearly on the downward path again, and so she bravely comes to us. She enters with the air of a small brown mouse with glistening wide brown eyes, peering anxiously about her for the slightest hint of cat. But there’s no cat here – we’re not allowed to have one – and Fräulein Hofer and Resi bid her ‘Gruess Gott’ on Saturday mornings quite as if she was a normal person, not a vicious and degenerate Jew with the yellow badge of shame emblazoned on her breast.
But vicious and degenerate Jew she is, and her name is on the list. Yes, although the Führer’s great counter-offensive is running out of steam in the West and his Vengeance One and Vengeance Two secret weapons haven’t pulverised the British cities after all; although the Russkies are grinding our boys down to bone dust in the East (not to mention the treacherous Italians swapping sides down in the south); although, that is, things are looking distinctly bleak for him, it’s the final extirpation of the European Jew that Adolf’s planning with his cronies now, not a repair job on the bleeding armies or a quick strategic fix. And it stands to methodical reaso
n that it’s the remaining Jews who aren’t ‘privileged’ like Gabi that have to be deracinated first. There are about a hundred thousand of them still in Hungary alone, not to speak of those still in the occupied West.
And there’s Frau Professor Goldberg in Bad Neusee.
The Hungarian Jews will have to be rounded up by the local police and the SS under the indefatigable Eichmann, because they’re undisciplined Hungarians who might try to escape, but the Jews of the Reich have been trained in the habits of obedience, so all it takes to get Frau Professor Goldberg where they want her is a notice instructing her to present herself at Gestapo Headquarters in Linz with one suitcase and a packed lunch for the journey. Journey to where? The notice doesn’t say, but Frau Professor Goldberg doesn’t expect to be coming back. She arrives at the Pfarrhaus on a November Wednesday as usual, but a little more subdued, and gives her lesson quite normally to Ilse and Sara. Then she shows Gabi and Willibald the summons she has just received. ‘I would like Ilse to have my gold brooch,’ she says detachedly. ‘Why should they get it? And Sara can have my diamond engagement ring.’ She doesn’t mention Martin.
‘Engagement ring?’ Gabi echoes in that irritating way she has of repeating in amazement what she’s understood but can’t believe. She glances down at Frau Professor Goldberg’s naked ring finger.
‘Oh, I never wear it now. My fiancé was killed in the last war.’ Frau Professor Goldberg gives a wry little smile. ‘Fighting for Germany.’ And suddenly it’s Gabi whose eyes are moist, not timid Frau Professor Goldberg’s. ‘I wasn’t meant to be a spinster, you know,’ she adds.
‘Terrible, terrible,’ Willibald is murmuring, while Gabi wraps the jewellery in her handkerchief and slips it into her apron pocket. ‘But perhaps it won’t be too bad in Linz? Perhaps they just want to …’ But he has no idea what they might just want to, or rather he has only too good an idea, and his words straggle off like a bunch of deserters who’ve just glimpsed the battlefield and feel they don’t belong there. Really he’s only glad it isn’t him that’s got to go to Linz. He might even be glad it’s not Gabi, though that’s not quite so clear. Above all though, he’s got that wonderful relieved It’s not me, I’m all right feeling. But that’s just where he’s partly wrong. Frau Professor Goldberg, timid yet courageous Frau Professor Goldberg, is about to put him on the spot.
‘Herr Pfarrer,’ she addresses him, ‘Would you mind going with me on the train? Only as far as Linz station,’ she quickly adds, seeing shock and terror transfiguring Willibald’s unhappy face. ‘Not to the Gestapo. It would be such a comfort if I didn’t have to go all the way alone, if someone was with me, I mean. Even only part of the way. I’ve always had to do everything alone, you see, and now this last time …’ she glances sideways at me.
‘Of course, Frau Professor,’ Gabi answers for Willibald. ‘I’ll come along too.’ She doesn’t see any danger in that. She still believes they do things by the book in Germany, so if her name’s not on the list yet, no one’s going to touch her. Perhaps she’s right, but Frau Professor Goldberg isn’t taking any chances.
‘No, no, no!’ she holds up her frail little hand, hardly bigger than a mouse’s claw. ‘It wouldn’t be safe for you, Frau Pfarrer. And if something happened to you, how could I … ? I couldn’t have that on my conscience. But an Aryan and a minister of religion …’ And she looks appealingly at Willibald again.
And though Willibald doesn’t have much courage, he numbly nods his head and instantly becomes a minor hero. Perhaps, as he said, it won’t be too bad. Not for him, anyway. And he certainly won’t go a step further than Platform Three in Linz Station.
Frau Professor Goldberg thinks she’d like to say goodbye to Ilse and Sara, but they’re working on their exercises in their separate rooms, and on second thoughts she decides that after all she’d rather not. The strain, she thinks, might be too much. So she says goodbye to me instead, and says I should say goodbye to them. I nod numbly too, and like Willibald tell myself it won’t be too bad in Linz. But I’ve seen that sinister beetle-like black car in Berlin, and something tells me that it will be.
Gabi and Willibald accompany Frau Professor Goldberg a few yards down the street, Willibald keeping a little distance from the two women as though he isn’t really promenading with a second Jewess. No sooner have they left than Sara comes downstairs.
‘She isn’t coming back, is she?’ she asks.
It’s warm today but I feel cold and I’ve crept beside the stove. ‘She said goodbye,’ I mutter. And pretend to be intently drawing invisible pictures with my finger on the oven tiles. ‘How did you know? She gave Mutti something for you.’
Sara doesn’t tell me how she knew. But it certainly wasn’t a flash in the pan. She’s going to know the next time too.
And Willibald plays his part to the very end. He sits in the train two days later beside yellow-starred Frau Professor Goldberg, who has to show the official warrant in order to be allowed onto it, and because she wears the yellow star, they have the whole compartment to themselves. Frau Professor Goldberg isn’t talkative on the journey, he tells us later, and it seems unlikely he’d have had a lot to say himself. But he does his job, he sees it through and even hands her suitcase down to her when the train arrives at Platform Three in Linz.
Frau Professor Goldberg thanks him dry-eyed for it and shakes his hand. Her fragile hand is trembling, Willibald thinks, but then it’s hard to tell because his bony one is too – he shouldn’t even have been travelling with Jews, let alone shaking Jewish hands. Then she picks up her correctly packed and labelled suitcase with her correctly packaged lunch, and walks slowly and lopsidedly, leaning away from it, down towards the station exit. There are people who look at her yellow star with sympathy and people who don’t notice it or don’t want to, and people who do and turn their heads away. Willibald watches nervously from behind an iron stanchion as she pauses undecidedly at the end of the platform, then turns to ask a tall SS officer of all people which way to go – but then presumably she reckons he certainly ought to know. She holds out her warrant. He takes and scrutinises it. He points out the way and hands the warrant back. She appears to thank him and he appears to curtly nod his head. And then she’s gone without a backward glance. For all the world just like a little old lady going on an autumn vacation.
‘Perhaps it’ll be all right,’ Willibald tells Gabi when he returns.‘Perhaps it’s only …’ But again his words desert him, and like Frau Professor Goldberg they do not come back.
Nor do other people who disappear for other reasons. Most of my teachers, for instance, called up for labour in the factories or for the decisive battle, which is always the one after the one we’ve just lost – except that our boys never lose battles, they just make strategic withdrawals and regroup. The principal who replaced the principal has himself been replaced and sent off to the Eastern Front, although he’s so short-sighted he could scarcely see the back of the class. He won’t be shooting many Ivans, but the reverse may well be the case. His successor’s a seventy-year-old spinster just like Frau Professor Goldberg except that she isn’t a degenerate Jew. She’s been dragged out of retirement and clearly wishes she hadn’t. She never remembers to say ‘Heil Hitler!’ and forgets most of her pupils’ names. And maternal Fräulein Meissner has gone as well, to do something with munitions, or possibly to get herself married and pregnant before she loses her present fiancé. (Fritzi Wimmer says she’s got a bun in her oven already, but Fritzi Wimmer would – he’s at that age.) Fräulein Meissner doesn’t say goodbye and I think I’ll never forgive her. Other teachers disappear from one day to the next, their places taken by refugees from Vienna who feel the Ivans are coming a mite too close and they’d be better off cosying up to the Amis. A retired opera-singer called Frau Trifallner is teaching us arithmetic, and Tante Helga is teaching every class geography despite her suspect political background and total blindness.
I half-expect operatic Frau Trifallner to sing her lessons, but apparently ari
thmetic’s not a musical subject and the only sign she was an opera singer is her enormous bosom, on which Fritzi says a piece of chalk could rest without rolling off, and a tireless voice that seems to shape each word with loving care before she launches it into the receptive air. It seems that opera singing’s no preparation for arithmetic however, because she often gets her sums wrong on the board and has to wipe them out and start again.
Tante Helga’s voice isn’t tireless, it often wheezes and squeaks. But she never makes mistakes. ‘Open your atlases,’ she commands, bulging over her chair like a chesty eiderdown as she rubs her forefinger and thumb together in anticipatory relish. ‘Open it at Great Britain. Now,’ she feels the edges of her own atlas with her fingertips, running them round and across the page in a sort of tactile triangulation. Her face is turned upwards in inward concentration, but she can hear the softest whisper at the back of the classroom and identify the whisperer. Her sightless eyes are almost sealed. How small they look, sunk, shrunken and petrified beneath their wrinkled lids. ‘How far north of London is Coventry?’ she demands. Perhaps she should have said ‘was’ – I know Erwin helped turn them both into rubble nearly four years ago. ‘How far east is Cardiff? How far south is Portsmouth?’ Perhaps Cardiff and Portsmouth should have been ‘was’ as well. I believe our boys have given them a pasting too. She knows all the answers, she could even draw a faultless map of the English Channel on the board. Erwin might still be alive if he’d taken her along as navigator. She never says ‘Heil Hitler!’ either, any more than Frau Trifallner does. In fact hardly any teacher does any more, and those that do don’t give the sacred words that solemn ring Fräulein Meissner used to give them before the perfidious Gaul mowed down her first heroic Aryan fiancé. On the contrary, their voices sound a little tired and hollow. I sense that things are breaking down.
The Kaminsky Cure Page 21