The Kaminsky Cure

by New, Christopher;

  And now Fräulein Hofer’s sewing for us once more too, although she’s grown so much thinner and frail-looking that Gabi gives her an occasional tin of eggs and spam to buck her up. Resi doesn’t come with her now, she’s staying with her seven-fingered grandmother (I’m not counting the thumbs) who’s gone dotty because her son – Resi’s father – never came back from the war. The old woman’s started going to the ferry pier and waiting for him all day long until the last ferry in the evening, a ritual that will last as long as she does. Resi has to cook her meals and coax her back to eat them.

  I feel the lottery-winner’s guilt. Resi’s father didn’t return from Russia, whereas my mother did return from the grave. Why me? Why her? Whoever’s running this show, he isn’t very fair. But I’m relieved that Resi doesn’t come with Fräulein Hofer, all the same. I wouldn’t know what to say to her except ‘D’you want to play Skat?’ But suddenly we’re too old for the kind of Skat you play with cards and too young for the kind that Martin played with Eva. Sara’s right: things change.

  And change in other ways as well. Now that Summer’s sun’s come flooding through the windows, the CARE packages have stopped flowing through the door. The Episcopalian and Presbyterian ladies in Omaha and Idaho have found other causes to support, and God knows there are plenty of them. Our CARE cartons come in only a thin erratic trickle now, and for all Gabi’s efforts and Sara’s improved effusive English, that trickle’s slowly drying up. So in consequence is trade. The Good Shepherd Emporium’s stocks are running low, its profits dwindling.

  But Gabi’s expenses are increasing. Martin’s passed his examination and is off to Vienna to study engineering, where he expects to lay the foundations of a brilliant career. And with a bit of affirmative action, and to great surprise as well, Ilse’s passed her examination too. She took hers as a patient in the Neurological Hospital at Bad Neusee, and Willibald, in the guise of her father and spiritual adviser, was able to supply her surreptitiously with the answers to the Latin test. Apparently without a thorough knowledge of this ancient tongue you can’t go far in modern medicine – which, following Maria’s posthumous suggestion, it’s Ilse’s sad ambition to do. She wants to learn to heal herself, and maybe heal the pagans too.

  If Willibald ever does anything for any of his children, it’s always silent Ilse that he does it for first. They share the same fate, living too long too near a restless fire which scorches when it merely seeks to warm, and that has forged a bond. Besides, she’s the only one of his brood who takes religion seriously. She even goes along to church twice a day on Sundays, which sometimes gets the congregation into double figures. Willibald’s affirmative action took the form of leaving the answers to the Latin test behind the cistern in the bathroom, which Ilse naturally must drag herself to in the course of her three hour examination. So Ilse, who can never tell a lie, and her father, who can but isn’t supposed to, have managed to cheat, and now she’s been accepted to study medicine in Innsbruck, though how she’ll get through the course, nobody knows. Least of all her anxious, astonished and probably self-reproaching self.

  But all this is going to cost money, piles of it, far more than we have got. Ilse will have to go and live in Innsbruck, Martin in Vienna. They’ll need money for travel, food, rent and books. The CARE carton stream’s drying up and we’ve scarcely got enough to feed ourselves in Heimstatt as it is. How’s it to be done? For herself, Gabi lives only in the present, but when it comes to her children’s education, she sees the future clearly, and she sees it will not work.

  And that is when the parish in Vienna floats into tantalising view.

  A black Mercedes rolls through the whole length of the village one August afternoon, just like the one the Gestapo arrived in last year after Gabi disappeared. The car stops ominously outside the Pfarrhaus and with a quiet lurch in my stomach I half-expect to see the same two thugs get out. But when the chauffeur opens the door, it’s a brace of stiff clergymen that emerge, dressed undertaker-like in black trousers and tails. In fact I think they are undertakers at first, until I spot their white clerical collars. A reasonable assumption, since Willibald has conducted a funeral early this very morning.

  The two ravens stalk companionably towards the front door, which, since I’m there, I open for them. The strains of Bing Crosby’s gooey crooning on the US Forces network greet them from our returned wireless, which Martin repaired some time ago with a valve supplied by the obliging black US sergeant that Sara fell in a kind of love with. ‘Bishop Gutmann,’ the shorter and plumper raven announces, indicating the longer and thinner, and ‘Superintendent Schwartz,’ indicating himself. He concludes with an avuncular smile.

  Unused to ecclesiastical visitations, I gape up at them, while behind my back Bing Crosby gets abruptly throttled in mid-croon.

  ‘From Linz,’ Superintendent Schwartz explains, indicating himself this time. And then, indicating Bishop Gutmann, ‘From Vienna.’ As I’m still gaping, he continues, ‘Are you Pfarrer Brinkmann’s son?’

  I feel on surer ground here, although perhaps I shouldn’t, and nod dumbly.

  ‘We’ve come to see your father,’ Superintendent Schwartz remarks, with the air of an archangel dropping manna from heaven upon the children of Israel, which may very well be exactly how he feels. ‘Can you tell us where he is?’

  I can, but do not need to, because Gabi’s hand is now placed on my shoulder and I’m firmly steered aside.

  ‘Ah, Frau Pfarrer Brinkmann!’ the smiley duo now chirp together, and a moment later, ‘Ah, Brother Brinkmann!’ with even greater delight as Willibald appears with an ingratiatingly welcoming bow. He isn’t much used to ecclesiastical visitations either, and he gives a rather weak and foolish giggle. It’s lucky there was that funeral this morning, otherwise he might have had to greet them in his shorty nightshirt.

  The two ravens spend a few moments making courteous and even deferential motions towards Gabi, and say how glad they are to see her and how much they hope she’s well. (Considering how pleased they seem to see her now, it’s a bit surprising they forewent that pleasure through the long years of the war.) But it’s Brother Brinkmann they’ve really come to see, even though it’s only because of Gabi that they’ve come at all.

  Gabi prepares coffee and cakes, courtesy of dwindling CARE, and Sara helps her carry them into the study where the holy trinity are talking small. I drift in with them, and Gabi is about to ease us both out when the Bishop says ‘No, no, Frau Pfarrer,’ in a resonant voice. ‘Let them stay. Suffer the little children …’ although we’re hardly little children any more. He refrains from completing the quotation, either because he recognises this is so, or else for fear he might appear to be assuming his Master’s place as well as His voice, although to judge by the Superintendent’s swift lidded glance, that damage has already been done.

  Sara and I get a bit of cake and some weak coffee, and after the others have dabbed the crumbs off their lips and said how nice it was, the Bishop gets up, flaps the tails of his frock coat, sits down again and then stands up once more. I judge this means he’s about to broach the subject of his visit. The Superintendent meanwhile folds his hands over the gentle mound of his portly stomach and gazes expectantly up at his superior’s face.

  ‘Brother Brinkmann,’ the Bishop begins, ‘you may have guessed why we’ve come to see you?’ He pauses to give Brother Brinkmann the chance to acknowledge he has, but Brother Brinkmann only smiles bewilderedly as if the Bishop was speaking Serbo-Croat. ‘You suffered a great deal during the war, because of the er, on account of the policies regarding er, non-Aryans.’ He looks at Gabi now and nods discreetly. ‘Particularly you, Frau Pfarrer. Though not of course you alone.’

  Gabi looks faintly guilty, as if she’s been presuming on her victimhood, and drops her eyes.

  ‘But now we can repair the damage,’ the Bishop continues with an expansive smile. ‘What would you say to a parish in Vienna, Brother Brinkmann?’

  ‘Vienna?’ Brother Brinkmann rep
eats blankly as if he’s never heard of the place.

  ‘Yes, Vienna.’ The Bishop rolls the word round his tongue like a tasty morsel. ‘Vienna, Brother Brinkmann. Vienna.’ You can tell he likes the sound of his voice. And why not? It’s certainly a ringing one. I could imagine it filling a cathedral. Even Willibald at his best would have trouble matching that, and Willibald’s no slouch when he gets going either. ‘The parish has just become vacant owing to the retirement of Brother er, of Brother …?’ He glances appealingly at the Superintendent, who mouths a word he can’t quite get. ‘Yes. And the salary there would be three …?’ Again he sends a visual SOS to the Superintendent, who now smugly signals back with four outstretched podgy fingers. ‘Four times your present one here in Heimstatt. Four times, Brother Brinkmann! It’s a large parish with a professional congregation – doctors, teachers, lawyers and so on. It needs a good preacher such as yourself. And your children’s education, which was so sadly er, interrupted during the war – as were so many others’,’ he smartly adds with a cautionary glance at Gabi which causes her modestly to drop her eyes again – ‘that can be very well taken care of there, whereas here in Heimstatt – well, it’s really a single man’s parish, isn’t it? Not for someone with a large family. Now, Brother Brinkmann,’ he rubs his hands together as though he’s about to tuck in to another round of coffee and cakes, ‘what do you say?’

  What does Brother Brinkmann say?

  Nothing at first. That present cynosure of every eye still looks bewildered. We see his lips are trembling slightly with emotion, but it’s not the emotion we all think it is. The Bishop and the Superintendent are gazing at him like two genial uncles giving a birthday treat to their awkward spindly nephew. Gabi’s regarding him almost fondly again. Sara and I are thinking Vienna! We won’t have to get up at four every day to go to school! At the same time I’m watching the razor nick on Willibald’s Adam’s apple going up and down as he swallows. It has deposited a little crust of blood on his otherwise immaculate white collar, which, now that Jägerlein is back, no longer goes to Pels for laundering. What a pity Ilse isn’t here, I’m thinking. She’s still in the hospital in Bad Neusee, but expected to come out next week. And what a pity Martin isn’t either. He’s probably in another of the village blondes.

  No, they aren’t here for this historic moment. They’ll be sorry when they find out.

  The expectant silence stretches out until it seems it’s got to snap. ‘Oh I wouldn’t like to profit from a political change,’ Willibald says tremulously at last, looking anywhere except at Gabi. ‘I think I’d rather stay here with my Heimstatt people. I couldn’t desert them now, after all they’ve done for us …’

  Sara and I glance at each other in the ensuing astonished hush and see the same amazed inquiry reflected in each other’s irises. ‘What they have done for us’? We can’t think of more than two or three who’ve done anything at all, though that precious few have certainly done much. How could we know that Willibald’s thinking the political wind might change again, the Nazis might come back, and where would he be then? Or that he’s terrified of the Red Peril, the Bolshie Ivans in Vienna? Or that he’s worked out in a flash that his duties in Vienna could hardly extend to making parish visits to a once more plump ex-Nazi lady in Plinden? No, we know none of that. We go back to thinking dismally of that interminable ferry and train journey to school, both ways in the cold and dark.

  But our thoughts and the astonished hush are scattered by what sounds and looks like apoplexy from the region where Gabi sits perched on the edge of her chair, a coffee cup at first half-way to her mouth, then half-way to the floor. She’s managed to take a mouthful of steaming coffee in an attempt to stifle Kaminsky-wise the outraged scream that’s rising up her gorge, but now she’s caught between letting the coffee peel the skin off her throat and spitting it back into the cup. She chooses what she conceives to be the politer alternative, which is certainly the warmer one, and is now spluttering like a woman drowning in burning oil.

  Willibald is the only person who doesn’t notice, or rather affects not to notice, this. His foolish giggly simper has returned, revealing to those like Sara and me who know him well that he’s hugely embarrassed in front of the reverend duo and simultaneously both terrified of what he’ll have to face when they’re gone and indignant that he’ll have to face it. To divert attention from his wife’s gasping and coughing, he repeats what he’s just said.

  The Bishop and the Superintendent glance at each other in puzzled dismay. The uncles’ birthday treat has gone all wrong.

  ‘But Willibald, the children’s education!’ Gabi croaks piteously at last in a husky scalded whisper.

  Willibald’s giggly look grows stubborn now. ‘We don’t want to take advantage of a change in the political wind,’ he declares sternly to her, but so that all can hear once more. That’s the third time he’s said it, so presumably he really means it. Perhaps he wasn’t quite sure when he first gave his answer, perhaps he’d even have let himself be talked round. But now that Gabi’s shown her shock before the reverend duo, he feels humiliated, and digs his heels in with all the obstinacy of a weak man cornered.

  The Bishop asks nevertheless if that really is his final answer. Willibald’s giggly simper widens slowly to become a stubborn foolish grin, which the Bishop takes to indicate it is.

  Eventually the two ravens flap the wings of their frock coats in disappointment and make to leave. Gabi is still speechless, but she won’t be once they’re gone. Willibald conducts them to the car, where the driver, who’s been smoking a furtive fag, hides it in the cupped palm of his hand until he’s closed the door on them and can drop it safely on the ground. Willibald waves a brotherly goodbye for as long as he can, putting off the dreaded moment when he must face his injured and insulted wife.

  ‘Have you gone mad?!’ she demands hoarsely as soon as he’s stepped reluctantly back inside the door. ‘Have you no thought for your children? How are they going to go to university now?’

  Willibald gesticulates feebly and declares for the fourth time that he’s not going to take advantage of a change in the political wind. He should set that theme to music. They’ll manage somehow, he adds as he makes a dignified withdrawal to the study. And Gabi should economise more, he adds as she follows him in hot pursuit. She’s so extravagant, and always has been.

  ‘Extravagant? Me?!’

  ‘And if the worst comes to the worst, Martin and Ilse will just have to work for their living instead of going to university.’ That comes out a touch self-righteously, as though he’s been doing all the hard work so far, while they’ve been idly wasting his substance.

  ‘Not go to university?! You don’t want them to go to university?!’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  You can see Willibald’s hoping to get angry himself soon, but at the moment shame or guilt is keeping him in mild-protest mode, and it’s only when Gabi calls him a heartless selfish mockery of a father that he can begin to work himself up. Then his voice rises and his eyes flash.

  ‘Heartless?’ he shouts. ‘Selfish?’ And then loudest of all, ‘Father?!’

  It isn’t long before the thud of hurled books and the crash of falling pictures sounds and resounds from the study. Passing with some laundry to the kitchen, Jägerlein tranquilly remarks during a brief lull in the conflict that the Herr Pfarrer always does shout a lot when he gets upset.

  The battle ends only when Gabi suddenly screams a different scream, staggers out of the study gasping and clutching her side and collapses on a chair. Another gall bladder attack – the first, I realise, since she returned from the dead. ‘We can’t go on like this, we can’t,’ she groans through her agony. ‘We can’t!’

  Now Willibald emerges too, stares at us with wild and weepy eyes, silently mouths words he can’t or maybe dares not speak aloud, then clenches his fists and beats his head like a crazy drummer before retreating back into his sanctum.

  Sara and I no longer take cover behind the
kitchen stove on these occasions. That’s another phase of life that’s passed. But as she goes to boil the water for Gabi’s steaming poultices, she glances at me with a look of numb and dumb despair that seems to say that Gabi’s right, we can’t go on like this – but probably we will.

  ‘What about your homework?’ Gabi gasps at me now between her agonised and agonising moans. Even now education’s on her mind. ‘Have you done your Latin?’

  As I trudge slowly but obediently upstairs, I come across Sara’s exercise book where she must have dropped it when she went to Gabi’s aid. The black sergeant’s photo of her peeps out of it, and the wrapper I peeled off that chocolate bar she let me eat not long ago. I take the book with me to my bedroom and lay it on the desk beside Livy’s tedious Annals. But I do not open Livy. I open Sara’s exercise book instead where it enfolds her photo and begin to read. Have I reached the age when Sara’s dark imagination will speak to me at last?

  Once upon a time there was a mother and her daughter. ‘Listen,’ the girl’s mother said one day, ‘I’ll tell you a story, a very old story. You are old enough to hear it now. It’s a story, and yet it’s true. People tell it and then they forget it. And then they remember it again – but only when it’s too late.’

  The girl listened. And while she listened she began braiding her long black hair.

  ‘It started long ago,’ her mother began. ‘And yet not so very long ago at all. And it was far away, and yet not so very far. It was in another village, not like our village, and yet not so very different after all …’

  Her mother began to sound strange, and the girl felt uneasy. She let her hair fall loose. She stood up and touched her mother’s hand. It felt as cold as stone.

  Her mother stirred at her touch and went on speaking in a strange hoarse voice. ‘One day the church bells began pealing loudly, from one end of that village to the other, just as they are now in ours, and there was great excitement in every street. All the people stopped work and gathered in the market square. They had heard there was to be a festival that day, a wonderful festival, a time for renewing all that was good in their village and ridding it of what was bad.’