The Rose Gardener

by Charlotte Link

  “If only I could find these pills somewhere,” Helene would say to Beatrice again and again. “I used to hate it when he took the things. Now I’d most like to pump him full of them myself. If only it was possible to even him out a little!”

  Beatrice was sixteen years old and mature for her age, and she understood that Erich presented a ticking time bomb. As long as he did not get his medication, he would continue to be completely unpredictable. She had a feeling that things were moving towards a crux point, and that something horrible would happen in the end.

  Erich always needed a victim in order to work off his frustration, his unease, and his mounting panic. He often yelled at Will, who would have to run errands for him every now and then and could never get hold of what Erich wanted. Helene frequently served as an outlet; he attacked her for never opening her mouth, for making a face like a spooked turkey or for staring blankly ahead of her like the famed cow in a thunderstorm. Helene took to sneaking around the house and made an effort to be noticed as little as possible. She developed an amazingly thorough ability to make herself invisible, to move without a sound and to blend in with her surroundings in a mysterious way. Sometimes Erich would look for her and actually not be able to find her for hours at a time, even though she was at home. She seemed outfitted with a complex seismographic sense that made it possible for her to know in advance if Erich was about to enter a room. She could almost always leave that room in the nick of time. Erich’s humming nervousness naturally got more intense when his victim eluded him for hours, and he looked around for another whipping boy. Pierre, the French prisoner, was least capable of avoiding him. He was still charged with taking care of the property, even though it seemed absurd in light of the catastrophic supply situation to still look after the roses or to take the care to have tidily edged garden paths or neatly cut grass. Pierre hadn’t the slightest facility for gardening, so he didn’t know how he could have used the flower beds and greenhouses for growing vegetables, which could at least have provided them all with some lettuce or a few tomatoes every now and then. When he was in a bad mood, Erich became terribly incensed at this.

  “We’ve got a huge property!” he yelled. “We’ve got beautiful brown soil and no end of plots! We have two greenhouses! I’d like to know why you’re incapable of doing anything intelligent with all of it! Why don’t we have any lettuce? No cauliflower? Why don’t we have absolutely anything edible?”

  Pierre, emaciated as they all were, a sunken-cheeked, pale skeleton, turned his hat in his hands. He had to work hard and was always on the verge of collapse.

  “It’s because I have no training as a gardener, Herr Oberstleutnant,” he said. “I haven’t been taught anything about it. Back in France I’d begun studying literature and history. I don’t have the faintest idea how you grow vegetables. I grew up in the middle of Paris. My family never had a garden. Not even a balcony.”

  Erich looked at him through narrowed eyes. “How long have you been here? Do you have any idea, or are you as overwhelmed at the prospect of answering this question as you are with everything else?”

  “No, Herr Oberstleutnant. I’ve been here for almost five years.”

  “Five years — well, well.” Erich’s eyes were inhumanly cold. “Wouldn’t you agree with me that five years is a rather long time?”

  For Pierre, the past five years could have been an eternity. “It is a long time,” he said quietly. “A very long time, Herr Oberstleutnant.”

  “Time enough to acquire some amount of knowledge, no?”

  “Well, I …”

  “Just answer my question. Don’t you think that five years would have to be sufficient time to acquire all that’s worth knowing about a field one knew little about beforehand?”

  “Herr Oberstleutnant, that’s correct, if …”

  “You wouldn’t have gotten more time for your studies either. Or would you have wanted to be a student forever, always living on your parents’ dime? I’m inclined to believe that you’re just that kind of person. Someone who can’t accomplish anything. Who cheats his way through life and eats his fill at the cost of others.”

  “I think I lacked direction,” said Pierre with admirable courage, since it must have been clear to him that Erich had no interest in doing him justice, nor in objectively analyzing the circumstances. The only thing he was concerned with was letting out his aggression, and every attempt Pierre made to justify himself would only stoke his fury.

  Erich slowly shook his head. “You lacked direction? That is an interesting claim, a very interesting claim. You thought that your time on Guernsey was a kind of training course? An apprenticeship? You seriously thought you could receive a free apprenticeship here? Where free in this case would mean: at the expense of the German people?”

  “No, Herr Oberstleutnant, I was only saying that …”

  “You expected that the German people would finance an apprenticeship for you, a washed up Frenchman? Hard-working German hands have nothing better to do than to busy themselves for you and your damned apprenticeship? You thought you had a claim on that?”

  Pierre was silent now. He had realized that the debate was pointless. He kept his head down and let Erich’s angry yelling roar past him, which finally ended in his announcement that from then on stronger measures would be taken, and Pierre would be kept on a much shorter leash, because obviously things were too good for him; he had too little work and too much to eat, and it was high time to change all that. In his, Erich’s, experience, people quickly come to their senses when they have enough to do and no opportunity to stuff their bellies.

  Pierre’s daily ration of food almost couldn’t be cut back any further, but Erich managed to reduce it still more and to hold Pierre to a minimum that he would only be able to survive on if he never got sick at all and if he didn’t wind up in a situation any more extreme than his current one. Soon he looked even more ill and even more wretched. As usual, Helene was too afraid to set aside her husband’s commands, but Beatrice slipped Pierre something to eat every now and again. This was getting increasingly harder for her as well, however: there was practically nothing left. During all of March and April, occupied, occupiers, and war prisoners alike all lived with the fear of starving together on the islands.

  On April 30th, Adolf Hitler shot himself in the Reich’s capital, large parts of which were already under Russian command. On May 1st, the situation escalated in the occupied house of the Feldmanns.

  Naturally, they knew nothing of the Führer’s death. The news sources had not announced it yet; it was possible they didn’t know yet even in contested Berlin, or at least they weren’t in a position to confirm if there was truth to the rumor. The radio announced that morning that street after street in Berlin was being taken by Russian troops, and that German soldiers, despite the hopelessness of the situation, were offering brave resistance. No one dared utter the word surrender, but Beatrice thought it sounded like the end of the war lay immediately before of them. What more had to happen to make Germany give up? The final collapse could only be a question of days.

  Erich had woken up very early that morning; Beatrice had heard him wandering around the house at five o’clock. He was obviously hunting for his pills again, Beatrice listened as he pulled open drawers, opened cabinet doors and finally even began to push sofas and small dressers away from the wall. Around six o’clock he started to yell for Helene.

  “Helene! Damn it, where are you? Come down here and help me!”

  In the hallway there was the soft tapping of bare feet, then Helene stuck her head into Beatrice’s room.

  “Are you awake?” she whispered.

  Erich had been shouting so loudly that no one could have failed to hear him, so Beatrice resisted her first impulse to feign sleep and leave Helene alone with her problems.

  “What is it?” she asked reservedly.

  “
Can you come downstairs with me?” Helene whispered. “I think Erich’s in a horrible mood. I’m afraid of him. I don’t want to go to him alone.”

  “But he called for you,” Beatrice wanted it to be clear. “He’s obviously not concerned with seeing me.”

  Helene looked pale and haggard and her eyes flickered with fright. “Please, Beatrice. He’s looking for his pills, and he won’t find any, we both know that. He’ll turn all his anger towards me!”

  Beatrice would most have liked to explain to her that she was, after all, the one who had married Erich, and so coming to terms with his character was her own affair — but she let it go. It was useless. It wasn’t the moment to have a discussion with Helene about her relationship with Erich.

  Both women went downstairs, huddled in their dressing gowns. Erich was standing in the dining room next to the heavy sideboard made of dark wood. His face had splotches of red, he was sweating profusely, and an unpleasant smell was pouring off of him. His hands were shaking.

  “Ah, good, you’re both here! We have to move the sideboard. I think one of my pill packets fell behind there once. It should still be lying under there.”

  “There’s no chance there’s anything back there,” said Beatrice. “And I hardly believe we can move that heavy thing.”

  “We’ll manage it if we all put our backs into it,” Erich claimed. “You two get on one side, I’ll get on the other. Ok, let’s go now!”

  Beatrice couldn’t remember if the sideboard had ever been moved an inch from its spot. It didn’t budge now either, even though all three put their combined strength into tugging and pulling at it.

  “This is pointless,” Beatrice panted finally. “We can’t do it!”

  Sweat was pouring down Erich’s face in streams. “Of course not, because the thing is all jammed full of dishes. We’ve got to take everything out.”

  “Oh, God,” Helene whined. “There must be mountains of them!”

  Erich was already pulling open all the doors and drawers and beginning to take out the contents of the sideboard. He moved frantically. Tablecloths and napkins flew into the middle of the room. Flatware followed. In just a short time the room had descended into chaos. Erich was careful with the dishes at first, but as his impatience grew he became more indifferent as to whether the china broke or not. He threw plates and cups behind him with the same carelessness as he had the tablecloths.

  Beatrice tried to save what could be saved. As quickly as she could she put her mother’s precious glasses aside, followed by the holiday dishes which Deborah had always watched like a hawk. She worked quickly but she couldn’t keep up with Erich’s pace. A large soup dish shattered with a crash against a table leg.

  Erich cursed loudly. “Goddamn crap! Who was it that had the brainless idea to stuff so much excess shit in here! I mean, it’s unbelievable! We should have reorganized it a long time ago!”

  Eventually the sideboard was empty and the room looked like a rubble heap. Now the three of them did in fact manage to move the heavy fixture from the wall. A lot of dust was kicked up, and the outline of the sideboard was dark against the wallpaper.

  Erich immediately squeezed himself between the wall and the sideboard and dug around in the filth like his life depended on it. He coughed and panted. His began to sweat even more; the stink came off him in waves.

  “We’ve got to push it farther out,” he said, wiping the sweat off his forehead. “The packet probably isn’t right against the wall.”

  “It won’t go any farther,” Helene’s voice sounded close to tears. “The rug’s there. We couldn’t move it more if we tried.”

  “Then the rug will have to be rolled back,” came Erich’s decision.

  “The table is on the rug,” Beatrice threw out for consideration. She had a bad suspicion that Erich wouldn’t give them any peace unless they cleared out the whole room. “And plus these piles of dishes are lying all over it!”

  There was an unnatural glint in Erich’s eyes; he looked feverish. “It’s all got to be cleared,” he decided. “Let’s go, get to it! Where’s that Frenchman, anyway, for God’s sake? Whenever you need the lazy rat, he isn’t there!”

  “Pierre is brought at seven o’clock,” said Helene in a creaking voice, “and now it’s just quarter till seven.”

  “That’s got to change!” Erich roared. “Seven o’clock! Seven o’clock! What are we a clinic or something?”

  They hauled the table and chairs out into the hall and began carrying the dishes out there as well. During this time, the guard and Pierre appeared and were at once ordered to join in on the work. Pierre hadn’t had any breakfast yet and looked like he might collapse at any time. It must have been clear to the guard that their task was pointless as well as strength-sapping, but naturally he would never have dared to say something about it. He avoided looking at Helene or Beatrice and acted as if the madness they were up to was completely normal.

  Finally the carpet was rolled up and carried out, and Erich, Pierre, and the guard pulled and shoved the sideboard into the middle of the room. They kicked up even more dust and brought more masses of filth to light, but a pill packet wasn’t anywhere to be found. Erich crawled around on the floor, cursing; he had been convinced that he would find something, and his need had become immeasurable. He looked ready to kill for an anti-depressant, and, Beatrice thought, he probably was, too.

  “No one leaves the room,” he yelled, finally. “No one, not until the pills turn up!”

  They all stood around embarrassed, Helene was fighting back tears, and it was already clear that she would lose that fight. Pierre was white as the wall; for weeks he’d been living at the edge of starvation, and he was clearly at the limit of his strength. Erich looked around, his eyes wild. “Did any of you steal it?” he asked and stared at Helene. “It’s got to be somewhere, do you understand? If it’s not lying around here somewhere, then one of you stole it!”

  “No one could have managed to move the sideboard,” said Beatrice. “Not without you noticing. As you can see, we had to empty the whole room to do it!”

  Erich seemed to be thinking this over.

  “Maybe somebody grabbed it really quick, then,” he speculated. “Some time when I wasn’t paying attention. Well? Can that be? Helene?”

  Helene jumped. “Why me?” she whispered. “Why would you single me out?”

  He was breathing heavily. In his gaze was a hatred that made Beatrice shudder. He wishes the devil on her, she thought with apprehension.

  “Why single you out?” He walked closer to her. Helene took a step back. “Why single you out? Because you bring nothing but disaster, Helene, because all your life you’ve done nothing but cause problems for me. From the godforsaken day that I met you onwards, there was nothing but difficulties with you. Should I tell you something?” He stepped even closer to her. Helene stood with her back to the wall, she couldn’t step back any further, although she would most certainly have liked to. “I wish I’d never met you. Things would be so much better for me if I could spend my life without you. You should just see yourself for once. As a young girl at least you looked halfway appealing, but now that’s gone too. You’re not even pretty anymore, do you understand? Go upstairs and look in the mirror. But be careful, you’re sure to be horrified.”

  Helene burst into tears. His reproaches were unfair, and she probably knew it too, but it shook her nevertheless to hear the harsh words from his mouth. She turned and ran out of the room. They heard her stumble up the stairs and slam her bedroom door.

  Erich paced back and forth, pounded his balled fist over and over into his palm. He seemed to be thinking hard about something. At last he stood still.

  “Get dressed!” he said to Beatrice. “We’re going to the Wyatts’.”

  “To the Wyatts’?” Beatrice repeated, although she had understood him perfectly.
Thoughts flew through her head. She searched desperately for any reason that could make him change his plans. Julien was at the Wyatts’, and it was extremely dangerous to allow Erich to go there.

  “Yes,” he said impatiently, “to the Wyatts’. I’m sure the good doctor has a nice little stockpile of pills, and I’m sure he’ll be happy to give me some.”

  “I don’t think he has anything left. The doctors receive just as few supplies as everybody else. He probably doesn’t have a pill left at his practice even for headaches.”

  Erich, however, was quite obviously no longer capable of making a rational assessment and seeing how senseless his plan was. “He’s still got something,” he insisted with the same obstinacy with which he’d earlier announced that there was a forgotten packet behind the sideboard. “Get dressed already. Hurry up.”

  She went upstairs as slowly as she could manage. She would have liked to call the Wyatts, but the phone was downstairs in the hall, right next to the open door to the dining room. No chance that Erich wouldn’t overhear. Could she convince him to call and let them know he was coming? It would at least give the Wyatts the opportunity to get Julien out of the house, though they could never manage to get rid of every trace in the attic in such a hurry. Anybody would have to realize that a human being was dwelling up there.

  But Erich wouldn’t hear of making the call anyway. “No, damn it, what for?” he spat back aggressively. “Are you finally done? Let’s go, come on, we’re going!”