The Other Me

by Saskia Sarginson

  We stand inside the silent crowd, watching as people climb quietly onto the train in their best clothes. A baby cries.

  A face moves towards us, bloodless lips closed under vacant eyes. Mrs. Baumann. I have a sudden moment of vertigo, as if my foot has stepped off a cliff. I catch my breath, hardly knowing what I’m doing as I push to the front, shoving elbows and arms out of the way. Sarah and Daniel are there too, walking on either side of their mother.

  I open my mouth to call Sarah’s name, but Otto’s callused skin stops the sound, his palm clamped over my face. I struggle, my heart thundering.

  “Shut up, you fool,” Otto hisses in my ear. “Don’t say a word. Do you want to go with them?”

  When he releases me, I lunge forwards. But he’s already caught hold of my arm, dragging me back, his nails scissoring into my muscle. I try and wrench away, but he is stronger. I’m caught by the wrist, and my skin burns as I twist and pull. Fear makes me weak, and all my flailing is ineffectual. A childish sob escapes. Mr. Meyer growls at us to stop. Other people are turning to stare too, including the nearest SS soldier. I go limp just as the Baumanns pass. Daniel is carrying Sarah’s case, his face expressionless. I can’t tell if Sarah knows I’m here. She looks in front of her, a slight smile on her lips, as if she’s walking in a different world.

  “Sarah!”

  The word comes from deep inside; the sound I’d make if I were drowning. A last cry. But Otto has his fingers across my mouth again. And the noise that came from my lips wasn’t the one I heard bursting out of my heart, thundering through my throat. It was more a pitiful wail, a cat being strangled.

  “It’s for the survival of Germany.”

  One of his hands binds my lips; the other is curled around my bicep. I’m filled with the meaty stink of him. I roll back my lips and bite, tearing into him. He lets go with a yelp, and I’m running, running after her. Everything feels weightless and insubstantial like a dream. And Sarah floats out of reach, a blue shadow. A soldier steps in front of me, his gun lowered.

  “Go back.” He nods towards the throng behind me.

  My feet are suddenly heavy. My whole body sets hard, immovable as a house. The noises of the watching crowd, the shuffling feet of the Jews, little mews of children and whispered conversations roar through my head. And behind it I hear the drip, drip of condensation from the train onto the track. I can’t understand why Sarah isn’t turning. Why doesn’t she turn? A sob breaks in my throat. The line of passengers keeps shuffling by, giving me frightened sideways glances. A mother quiets her child. “No, darling. You can’t take your toys. We’ll send for them…”

  I gaze past the soldier, towards the back of Sarah’s dark head. Watching her and Daniel as they move farther away. The soldier stiffens his shoulders and his fingers tighten around the barrel.

  Otto is by my side. He says something to the soldier and they laugh. All strength has left my body. I want to be sick. My stomach has turned to water. I feel my bowels loosen. Otto doesn’t put his hand over my mouth again. He knows I’m done, that my dry tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth, gluing my words fast. I would fall to my knees if it weren’t for him holding me up. His pinching fingers are the only reality, his hot breath on my neck.

  Mutely I watch Daniel help Sarah onto the train, handing up her case. I see her fear now, the trembling of her hands. She puts her arm around her mother’s hunched back. I stare at the flash of blue that is the hem of her coat. It’s all I can see of her. I remember holding the worn rub of wool between my fingers as she pulled the thin folds of it around me, so that we were pressed together inside its small blue tent. We’d fallen onto the forest floor and I’d felt my way beneath her clothes. The soft give of her lips as she’d opened them to me. The last time we were together. Others clamber up. Stumbling people, clutching at each other, bodies crammed in together. Dear God. How many can fit into one car? My eyes hurt with staring, but the patch of blue has disappeared.

  SS walk up and down the platform, shoving people inside, sliding doors shut. There are no windows, just little slits in the doors, high up. I see fingers at the openings, eyes staring out. The train pulls away with a shriek of metal. Otto releases his grip and I stagger, hands flailing as I catch my stride. I’m running behind the train, chest out; my fist hits the side of the last car, my feet sliding at the edge of the platform, and I teeter on the brink, wanting to plunge onto the tracks, to fall into darkness.

  The rumbling wheels fade into the distance, swallowed by ordinary sounds: the soughing wind in the trees, music of birds and a dog barking. The crowd disperses, talking in low voices. A soldier spits as I pass. The wet sticks and slides across my neck.

  In the cart on the way back, our feet dangling over the edge, Otto sucks the side of his hand, and says quietly, “If you give yourself away again, I won’t be able to protect you. You’re lucky. I never said anything. Nobody knew.”

  I hardly hear him. I’m thinking of Sarah and Daniel and their mother. I can’t imagine what it’s like in that train, shut inside darkness, standing like animals. I set my jaw, and turn my head away, staring at a row of poplar trees, pigs in a field. A castle rises above a distant copse, tall and elegant.

  “Your little Jewish bitch,” he says. “She would have destroyed you in the end.”

  * * *

  The cottage looks as it always has from the outside: a dank ruin surrounded by brambles. But at the back, the door that we never used has been smashed open; it gapes on broken hinges; splintered wood flares like knives. Inside there’s the remains of a fire in the grate, torn, blackened pages curling in the ashes. The books and cards have all been burned. The cups shattered. Shards of china and scraps of paper have been kicked about the rooms; singed blankets and clothes twisted among them. A candle rolls under my feet. Death To Jews crawls in large red letters over the parlor wall. Dribbles of red paint on the floor like blood. I kneel in the ashes, my face in my hands, and sob. And the thought is there in my head and it won’t go away. They think it was me. They think I betrayed them.

  1941, Ukraine

  We’ve been marching for days. My ankles and toes are rubbed raw. And the weather is turning bitter. I smell snow in the air, see it in the flat gray sky. The Ukraine is dreary. The long horizons don’t change however hard we march. And there are the same ragged pine forests we saw in Poland. The same poor farms. As we file through villages, they seem empty. And then I notice movement behind half-open doors and windows. People staring at us from the shadows, faces gaunt with hunger.

  “Bloody Stalin,” Damaske says. “We’re lucky to be born German.”

  I disagree with him. But I say nothing. I like Damaske. He is uncomplaining. A natural optimist. He has an open, ruddy face and green eyes. He’s built like a pack animal—short and sturdy with broad shoulders. He is always quick to share his cigarettes.

  The road is almost impassable: rain turned it to mud and then the army trekked along it, convoys of tanks, horses and marching men churning it up. Now the wind has dried it into steep, hardened ruts. There are potholes big enough to half swallow a man. We see lines of Russian prisoners shuffling along in their tattered brown uniforms. The enemy. At first I’d stared at them, at these exhausted boys. They didn’t look so fierce. Some of them have straw stuffed inside their jackets and hats. Some wear huge wooden clogs instead of boots. We pass a burnt-out tank on its side, charred metal twisted into lumps. One of ours. There’s the stink of burning.

  In a town we halt near a Red Cross tent and are given the order to stand down. Nurses draw cold coffee from a horse-drawn field kitchen and ladle it into our canteen cups. Three Messerschmitts go over with a roar, the black swastikas on the under-wings visible. We let out a cheer. The Russians have nothing to compete with the Luftwaffe. Damaske and I wander over to the ruin of a house and lean against a crumbling wall to sip our coffee and have a smoke. There is even a trickle of sunlight breaking through the gray.

  A crowd of German soldiers and civilians have gathered
farther down the road. We amble over to see what’s going on. Some SS stand in a half circle watching while the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police herd a group of women onto a truck. One of the women is heavily pregnant and carrying a toddler on her hip. As she struggles to get into the truck her foot slips, overbalancing her; the child grabs at its mother’s hair in fright. A policeman curses and gives her a hard shove and she stumbles again, staggering on loose stones. Undone by her belly and the weight of her child, she falls: straight down like a tree, one hand out to break her fall, the other clasped around her screaming child.

  They sprawl in the road together, the child’s face contorted in a wail. I see the bare skin of the woman’s legs exposed, a torn stocking around her ankle. An SS soldier steps forward and takes hold of the child by its arm; with one casual movement he flings it into the truck, limbs splayed, body arching. There is a muffled thump, like the slap of meat on a counter. The mother cries out and grabs the soldier by the ankle. He looks down, a fleeting expression of surprise on his face. He raises the butt of his rifle and brings it down on her head.

  I lurch forward before I can think, my hands out to help the woman. Her face turns to me and I see the blood running into her eye and the gaping circle of her silent mouth. I think of Mrs. Baumann. Sarah. My legs are shaking.

  The soldier places himself between her and me. He smiles. “Get back to your duties. Nothing to be concerned about here.”

  “But, what … what had she done?”

  “Just a Pole going to a work detail.” His voice is polite. Final.

  Damaske is waiting for me. He shakes his head. “Come on. Nothing to do with us.” He takes a deep drag on the stub of his cigarette and throws it on the road. “I don’t know how those SS sleep at night.”

  I don’t look back at the truck. The milky coffee in my belly is curdling, bile rising into my mouth, and I swallow hard.

  KLAUDIA

  1996, London

  I’VE BEEN TRYING TO IMAGINE what it must have been like for my father in that submarine as it rolled towards the bottom of the ocean, with his short life flashing before him. No wonder he found Jesus after that. I think of how young my mother was when she met him: a child still. And him the older boy, tall and handsome, surly and brooding as a blond Heathcliff, transported to her Welsh mountains.

  It’s too hot to sleep again. I twist from one side of my narrow mattress to the other, trying to get comfortable, kicking away my covers. I feel uneasy; something is out of kilter. Not right. Not just the things that worry me every day: Meg and Cosmo; my lies. Something else. Something hidden. I concentrate, willing it to come up out of the darkness. I sense it shouldering its way through the shadows into my memory. And then I have it, suddenly. The medals. I press my fist against my teeth. How could I have forgotten?

  * * *

  I wake to the distant whining of a small engine below. A thump and bang. The vacuum cleaner is on downstairs. I sit up, yawning, and swing my legs over the side.

  I stagger along the hall, pulling on my dressing gown. Pushing open my father’s door, I enter quietly. I can hear the roar of the machine through the floor. I open my mother’s drawer. Her cardigans are folded in neat piles. I push my fingers to the back. There is no silky scarf bundled around metal objects. I frown. It was years ago that I found them.

  I close the drawer and search the others, rooting through fabrics, sifting through scarves and belts, checking Mum’s jewelry box. I get down on my knees to look under the bed. I pull open the wardrobe and my father’s drawers. He has few clothes and it doesn’t take long to see that there are no medals behind or underneath them. I look through his bedside cabinet, finding a pair of spare reading glasses; earplugs; a pen; a jar of Vicks; and a small heap of loose coins. I sit on the bed and put my hands over my eyes, pressing hard until sparks flare. Did I misremember? Did I imagine them? I was only a child, and I was confused and scared about who my father might be. I had no information and so I made things up. Perhaps I made the medals up too. But I weighed them in my hands, saw the details of raised emblems, frayed ribbon and those etched swastikas.

  My father is vacuuming in the living room, wearing one of my mother’s aprons. Up close, the noise makes me wince. My head is sore, as if I’ve spent a night drinking. He doesn’t hear me as he stalks around the room, pushing furniture out of the way and thrusting the nozzle into corners, chasing up dust and cobwebs. The plastic end clashes with a wooden skirting board. He switches off the machine and picks up a can of polish.

  “Klaudia.” He nods, waving the can towards the kitchen. “I’ve left some breakfast on the stove for you. Then come and help. The house is a mess. Your mother wouldn’t like it.”

  I blink stupidly. My father has made me breakfast? Such an ordinary, domestic gesture, but it feels monumental. He has a pair of reading glasses propped, forgotten, on his head. He sprays a burst of polish onto the portmanteau and begins to rub fiercely.

  The stench of fried meat overpowers the smell of polish and I follow the trail into the kitchen. I uncover the dish and prod burnt sausages with a fork. Liquid grease bursts out, trickling in thin streams. I put one of the least charred onto a plate with a piece of toast, pouring on a generous dollop of ketchup to disguise the taste.

  As I am chewing slowly, between large gulps of hot tea, my father comes into the kitchen, hands on his hips. I feel my throat closing. I have a sudden urge to retch. But he is watching me. With a concentrated effort, I force the food down.

  Satisfied, he picks up a duster and leaves the room. I push the plate away and put my head in my hands. Everything he told me makes sense. How else could he have ended up in a remote Welsh farm straight after the war? He was locked away from all the fighting, hauling hay bales, not pointing a gun. The medals I found might have belonged to a friend. It doesn’t matter. Anyone can buy war memorabilia.

  And the photograph? It had to be someone else. The name was a coincidence. But I remember the familiar profile in grainy print and bite my lip. I get up and follow my father into the living room. He’s clutching one of the wooden disciples, a yellow cloth in his other hand.

  “So you mean you were never at the Eastern Front?” I ask from the doorway. “You never went to Russia?”

  He looks surprised. “No. I told you. I was in a U-boat. And then I was captured.”

  He flicks the bottom of the ornament with the duster and replaces it carefully. “It’s my brother, Ernst, who was at the Front. He was the one that went into the Wehrmacht.”

  * * *

  The club is busy. “Three Cool Cats” is playing. I move from one customer to another, handing over drinks, scooping change out of the register. Between the shapes of people I catch glimpses of the mural, remembering the mermaid, and her face that was my own. The way she’d swum towards me, her eyes steady and hopeful. Cosmo’s absence is a bruise. I’ve been trying not to prod the spot, not to think of him. But everything is different now. I feel taller, lighter. Knowing that my father wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger, knowing that he wasn’t involved in the horrors in the Ukraine and Russia and Poland, it’s as if a rope has been taken from my wrists, a gag from my mouth.

  I need to find out from Josh or Scarlett exactly where Cosmo is in Rome. I’m going to take a weekend off work, get on a plane and find him. The thought of it makes my palms sweaty. But I have to do it.

  Josh is leaning across the bar. He looks worried and he’s beckoning to me. I hurry over, concerned, because Josh never loses his cool. He’s shouting over the music. I can’t hear. I put my hand up to my ear and he tries again. I feel his breath, words vibrating against my cheek, the buzz of his voice a ticklish sensation.

  “Scarlett’s just phoned,” he repeats, even louder. “She’s ill. Food poisoning. She said you could do it.”

  Stunned, I shake my head.

  He beckons again and I follow him into his office. The noise of the club retreats behind the swing of velvet.

  “I can’t let the crowd down, Eliza.” He
paces around his desk. “Not at such short notice.” He opens his palms, appealing to me. “Look, I trust Scarlett. If she says you can do it, then you can.”

  My pulse is jumping at my throat. “No. You don’t understand…”

  “Please.” He ruffles his fingers through his shock of curly hair. “Pick a costume. Just walk about on the stage and smile. You don’t have to take anything off.”

  I put my hand to my mouth. I hear Scarlett’s voice. Your body knows what to do. We’ve practiced different routines. We’ve discussed costumes. Talked as if I will be stepping onto that stage and performing. But it was always a date in the future—something just out of reach.

  Josh is staring at me with a desperate look. He fiddles with the neck of his shirt, smoothing the collar, and I notice his bitten nails. I can’t let him down.

  “OK.”

  He lets out a huge sigh and grabs me, kisses my nose. His lips are damp. “Thank you. Thank you.”

  “But tell them I’m just the cover,” I tell him quickly. “Don’t let them have any expectations…”

  The curtain has already fallen behind him.

  Josh’s cramped office is empty. The telephone silent. Beyond the red fabric comes a muffled mutter and hum and the crooning of Peggy Lee. I taste the bile of fear in my mouth. The thought of walking out there and standing on stage is making me want to retch.

  I need to find a costume. Scarlett’s crammed clothes rail is squeezed between the filing cabinet and the doorway. I touch the lace on a corset. The fabric is rigid with bone, speckled with sparkling sequins. As I slip it from the hanger, the brittle edges rub against my hands like the scales of an exotic reptile. It’s a struggle to do up on my own. Then I roll on white fishnet stockings, and drape a sheer white scarf around my neck. Scarlett’s feet are bigger than mine. I will go barefoot. I don’t intend to take anything off except the scarf; I’m never going to be the kind of girl who’s happy to appear in public in nipple tassels.

  Outside in the smoky, crowded room, I stumble when someone steps in front of me.