The German House

by Annette Hess

  “Wait a minute.” Jürgen had not once interrupted Eva, but now he lifted his hand. “Why don’t you believe your parents?”

  “Jürgen, what other explanation can there be for this man’s behavior? They know each other from the past!”

  Jürgen got up and went over to the wall, where a long line of draft catalog pages hung from a panel of clips. “Fine, but they clearly don’t want to talk about it.”

  “And I should just leave it at that?”

  Jürgen pulled down one of the pages. There were white boxes pictured on it. He had clearly taken Edith’s advice and added washing machines to their selection.

  “Maybe they experienced something similar to my father and don’t want to be reminded of their pain.”

  “But my parents weren’t Communists.”

  “Maybe they were in the resistance?”

  Eva almost laughed at the notion. “Not a chance, Jürgen!”

  Jürgen clipped the page to a different open spot along the panel. “If they don’t talk about it, how can you be sure?”

  “Because they always say, ‘Leave politics to the powers that be, and we’ll just suffer the consequences.’ I know my parents!”

  Jürgen went back behind his desk. “The Fourth Commandment states, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.’”

  “Why would you say that right now?!”

  Jürgen didn’t answer. He sat down. When he heard the Ten Commandments for the first time as a young boy, listening as his mother read to him from the Bible, he pictured how he would honor his parents: adorning them with wreaths of flowers, kneeling before them, and giving them all the chocolate he had gotten from Aunt Anni. He’d thought it a bit much, but if God said so? Eva stood up and came over to him. She looked furious. And he could understand why.

  “What does this have to do with the Ten Commandments? I want to know what happened between this person and my parents! Can’t you understand that?”

  Eva didn’t wait for him to respond, but continued, “No. How could you? You don’t know the first thing about what I know, what I’ve heard, the unthinkable things that happened. The crimes these men committed!”

  “I can imagine it.” Jürgen’s face hardened. He glowered at Eva and turned away. For a moment, she thought, That’s what he’ll look like when he’s old. She despised him.

  “It’s not something you can imagine! Not once have you come, not once have you listened. And not once have you asked me what these people experienced. Do you think they want to be reminded of their pain? Yet they still come! And they get up and stand there, in that room that’s always too hot, under the glare of those floodlights. And they’ve got those pigs breathing down the back of their neck, sitting there in their suits with their legs splayed, and they laugh and turn away and say, ‘You’re lying! That’s not true! It’s all slander!’ Or, worst of all”—Eva stood up tall and mimicked the main defendant’s icy tone—“‘That is beyond my knowledge.’ And despite all of that, the witnesses, they stand there and describe how they were treated like animals, like cattle for the slaughter, like the scum of the earth. They suffered pain like you can’t imagine, and neither can I. Doctors did experiments on prisoners, medical experiments—”

  Jürgen stood. “Eva, I think that’s enough now! I’m not as ignorant as you think, but this isn’t the time or place, and now I have a—”

  But Eva could not be contained. “You listen to me, Jürgen! Even though they were tortured! And there was nothing to eat! Even though everything in the camp was full of shit—”

  Jürgen waved off Eva’s outburst and tried to adopt a scornful tone. “And now you’re forgetting your manners too. Would you mind toning it down. . . .” He gestured toward the door, his secretary on the other side.

  But Eva continued, “Even though there were dead bodies everywhere and the stench and the shit, the people still wanted to live!” Eva rubbed her face with both hands and let out something resembling a wail. She had flown into a rage unlike one she had ever known. She stood in the middle of Jürgen’s huge office on the pale woolen carpet, breathing heavily.

  Jürgen took a step toward her. “I knew that this would happen. Your nerves can’t handle it.”

  Eva recoiled. She looked at him and tried to speak quietly. It was difficult, though. Nerves. What a ridiculous word! “The day before yesterday, there was a woman from Krakow who described a Gypsy camp that was going to be broken up. The prisoners found out about it and made themselves weapons out of sheet metal. They sharpened pieces of metal into knife blades. They gathered sticks and boards. That’s what they used to defend themselves when the SS men came. Women, old and young, men, and children all fought for their lives with all their might. Because they knew they were bound for the gas chambers. They were all shot dead with machine guns.”

  In the office outside the padded door, Fräulein Junghänel—a plain, gray-haired woman nearing her twentieth work anniversary, who had performed many years of good service for Jürgen’s father—sat at her desk, typing a personal letter. She was writing to her landlord, informing him that the young man who had recently moved into the first-floor apartment of her building could no longer be tolerated. He tossed his rubbish in the courtyard and urinated in the front garden. Loud music could be heard from his open windows until late at night. The smell was atrocious. He had once tried luring a child into his apartment. She was writing on behalf of all of the tenants in the building and wished to remain anonymous, for fear of possible retaliation by the man. Fräulein Junghänel pulled the sheet out of the typewriter and scanned it one last time. Besides having twice heard some quiet music coming from the first-floor apartment, nothing she had written was true. But the man, whose language she didn’t understand, scared her. She had to pass by his apartment several times a day. She didn’t want him in her building anymore. As Fräulein Junghänel folded the letter, she thought she heard a scream coming from her employer’s office. She paused. Surely that wasn’t possible, what with the thick door padding? Fräulein Junghänel stood and stepped up close to the door. She listened, her mouth open slightly, but heard nothing. She must have imagined it. She returned to her desk and slid the letter into an envelope on which she had already typed her landlord’s address. She had almost made the mistake of addressing it by hand. In her own writing. She placed the letter in her purse. She would stamp it that evening at home—she would never steal a stamp from her boss—and then, once it was dark, toss it in the mailbox two streets over.

  It was silent in Jürgen’s office. Eva sat hunched over in the visitor chair. She had broken into a crying fit, and Jürgen had slapped her across the face twice. It had helped. Jürgen had turned to the window. They did not speak. Then Eva asked quietly, “Why won’t you even listen?”

  “Because that’s where evil lurks.” Jürgen said it soberly, without any recognizable emotion. He gazed over the city; his office was on the eleventh floor, and beyond the high-rises, he could make out the rippled green band of the Taunus hills along the horizon. Eva dried her face with the handkerchief Jürgen had handed her, wiped her nose, and got up. She retrieved her purse, which she had set on the leather sofa beside the door when she arrived. She draped her coat over her arm. She swallowed the phlegm that had formed, and the final salty tears that passed through her nose ran into the back of her throat and burned. She approached Jürgen by the window and said, “That isn’t true, Jürgen. That’s not where evil lurks. Or some devil. It’s just humans. And that’s what’s so horrible.” Eva turned to go. She left the door open, nodded to Fräulein Junghänel, who eyed her with curiosity, and exited the front office. Jürgen remained where he stood by the window. He looked down at the front courtyard, where people moved about like flies. He waited to catch sight of Eva in her bright red coat. She appeared and crossed quickly to the left, toward the streetcar. He had expected her to appear much smaller. She looked tall, though, upright. Fräulein Junghänel appe
ared in the door and reminded him of his meeting with the head of the fashion department. He was already five minutes late. Jürgen replied that she should say he wasn’t coming at all. She stared uncomprehendingly at his back and waited. He corrected himself: “In twenty minutes.” Fräulein Junghänel closed the door. Jürgen went to his desk and opened a drawer. He pulled out a heavy black book, the back cover of which was stamped in gold with his name and the date of his First Communion. Jürgen simply held the Bible in his hand. He did not flip through it. He thought of Jesus in the desert, and how thrice he was led into temptation and how thrice he resisted. He thought of the fact that he hadn’t managed the same, that he’d been too weak. That something alien had taken control over him. He had smelled it on himself as he stood there in the middle of the field and looked into the eyes of the dying man: cloying sulfur and the acrid smell of burning. His hands had become claws. Jürgen smiled in exasperation. Of course that was a childish image of the devil. Not that that made it any less real. After all, that experience had inspired him to become a priest, close to God and out of harm’s way.

  THAT MORNING, LUDWIG BRUHNS was in an office at Henninger Brewery, busy negotiating keg prices for the upcoming season, as he did every year at about this time. Seated across from him was Klaus Belcher, whose name no one dared mock. They’d known each other for years, always reached an agreement, and polished off a fair amount of schnapps during their ritual haggling. At a certain point, Herr Belcher’s mood would turn gloomy and he’d bemoan the city’s ban, years ago, on horse-drawn conveyances—“Boy, those were the days, and were those handsome steeds, or what!” Today, however, Ludwig turned down the very first schnapps. Herr Belcher was genuinely shocked. Was Ludwig seriously ill? What on earth was wrong? Everything all right with the family? Ludwig nodded vaguely and blamed his gut, which had been acting up recently.

  Meanwhile, Edith lay in a dental chair with her mouth open wide for Doctor Kasper, an ageless, austere man. He was inspecting Edith’s teeth with a mirror and poked her gums here and there with a small hook. Then he inserted his thumb and index finger into her mouth and wiggled each tooth, one after the other. The room was silent, except for a hose gurgling somewhere. When Doctor Kasper finished, he leaned back a little on his stool. “Frau Bruhns, you have periodontitis,” he told her gravely.

  “And what is that?”

  “Inflammation of the gums, hence the bleeding when you brush. Several candidates are already loose.”

  “Candidates?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  Edith sat up. “But how can that be? I always brush. Do I need vitamins? I eat plenty of fruit.”

  “It’s your age. Menopause.” Edith stared at Doctor Kasper. Her family doctor, Doctor Gorf, had used the word before too. When he said it, though, it sounded like little more than a passing cold without lasting consequences. Coming from Doctor Kasper’s mouth, by contrast, it reverberated like a death sentence.

  “Is there nothing I can do, Doctor?”

  “Rinse with antiseptic mouthwash. And at some point they’ll need to come out.”

  Edith leaned back into the chair and gazed at the ceiling. “The candidates.”

  “Yes. But there are really decent replacements these days. Nothing like the old chattering teeth from before the war. The only place you’ll find those is in the haunted house ride at the fair. . . . Now, Frau Bruhns, there really is no reason to lose your composure.”

  Edith couldn’t help it. Though she felt ashamed and covered her face with her hands, she began to weep piteously.

  In the apartment above German House, Eva knocked carefully on Annegret’s door and then peeked into the room. Annegret was asleep in the dim light the yellowish blinds let through, as always rolled up on her side like an embryo. It smelled like beer and potatoes in there. Eva didn’t want to know why and slowly closed the door. She went into the living room, Purzel prancing about her feet, and walked up to the heavy, tall cupboard. As a child she had often pretended she was a princess, the cupboard her castle, complete with parapets, windows, and turrets. Now, opening its doors and drawers, one after the other, she was met with the familiar smell of dry cigars, sweet liqueur, and dust. Every last white tablecloth and cloth napkin was familiar to her, the half-burned red Christmas tree candles in a box, the case containing the silver-plated cutlery that both her parents proudly thought “fit for a king” and therefore never used. Eva dropped to her knees. Her parents stored documents and albums in one of the lower compartments. Eva paged through a ring binder containing bills and warranty certificates. The oldest receipt was from December 8, 1949, shortly after her parents had opened German House. It was the proof of purchase and warranty for an appliance from Schneider Electrics on Wiesbadener Strasse. A dish heater. Eva recalled how it hung above the bathtub. Whenever she went to the bathroom, she would pull the chain to turn on the heater. As she sat there and took care of her business, she watched in fascination as the thick gray filaments inside the metal dish slowly turned pink, then began to glow bright red. At a certain point the heater disappeared from the wall. Eva never addressed its absence, because she was convinced she had broken the appliance by turning it on too often. There were also five photo albums in the compartment. Three were from recent years, with pale, patterned cloth covers, whereas the other two were made of black and dark green cardboard. Eva pulled out one of the older two albums, the dark green one. It contained photographs of a group trip her father had taken as a youth. Heligoland in 1925. Her father had freckles and a huge smile on his face. It was his first time away from home. In one picture, he stood outside by a fire and stirred a pot hung over the flames. The steam from the pot obscured his face, but one could tell it was Ludwig by the shorts and undershirt he was wearing in the other photos as well. Ludwig loved telling the story about how for ten days he had cooked for thirty boys. At the end, they’d awarded him a medal made of tinfoil, naming him “Master Chef of Heligoland.” The rosette was also in the photo album, flattened and dulled with time, the writing barely legible. Eva sat on the carpet, Purzel lying beside her, and opened the black album. On the first page, in painstakingly ornamental script, her mother had written, “Ludwig and Edith, 24 April 1935,” with a white pencil on the black cardboard. Their wedding picture was pasted on the following page. Eva’s parents stood before velvet drapes, a low pillar beside them, out of which flowers appeared to be cascading. Her mother had linked arms with her father and both were smiling, Ludwig incredulously, Edith in relief. She was wearing a flowy white dress that did not quite conceal her little belly. Annegret had pointed out this part of the photograph so many times in the past, that the photo paper around Edith’s midsection had been rubbed off. “And that’s me!” Eva turned the pages, mechanically stroking the dog at her side, and studied the familiar, silent images. The reception had taken place in a restaurant in Hamburg. It was easy to distinguish Edith’s family of refined city folk from the ruddy island dwellers on the Bruhns side. Edith’s parents had not agreed with their daughter’s choice in partner. Nevertheless, the young couple occupied two rooms in their apartment in Rahlstedt after the wedding. Ludwig found seasonal employment, working summers by the sea, winters in the mountains. He was earning good money, but struggled to find a permanent position. The couple would be separated for months at a time, which neither liked. Shortly after Eva was born in the spring of 1939—arriving within twenty minutes on her grandparents’ most valuable carpet—they finally got the chance to lease a restaurant near Cuxhaven and live there as a family. Ludwig was nearly thirty years old, Edith in her mid-twenties. “But then war broke out and everything changed.” It was a line Eva had often heard repeated by both parents. Ludwig was conscripted for the field kitchen shortly after the war began, serving first in Poland and later in France. He was lucky, because he was never sent to the front line; sometimes pots went flying by his head, but he was never seriously injured. Edith initially stayed with the girls at her parents’ in Hamburg. They managed fine, had enough
to eat. When the English began bombarding the city, though, Edith sent her daughters—ages eight and four—to relatives on Juist, Aunt Ellen and Grandpa Sea Lion. That was what little Eva had called him. She didn’t remember it. The only memory she had of her grandfather with the walrus mustache was from the wedding photos. He looked like he was crying in every picture. Eva had nearly reached the end of the album. The final photos were of Edith and Ludwig dancing. Her mother’s veil had been traded for a nightcap, and her father was now wearing a long, pointed nightcap as well, an old tradition, as her mother had explained: at midnight, the bride’s veil was removed, the couple was given nightcaps, and a poem was read aloud. The poem was printed on a sheet that lay folded up in the album:

  Hear the bells toll far away,

  that mark the end of this wedding day.

  But tomorrow the sun once more shall rise

  on you, the happy groom and bride.

  Beautiful bride, allow me this,

  at this hour, at this place:

  remove your veil, that splendid treasure,

  that all day long has brought such pleasure.

  Take this cap, this humble crown,

  Beneath whose many frills are found

  Contentedness and gaiety

  from now to all eternity.

  To you as well, the new husband,

  I do not come with empty hands.

  I present you with this here chapeau,

  That you might remain a faithful beau,

  Who shows no tendency to carouse,

  But instead heads to his house.

  From now on, avoid the sirens’ cries,