The German House

by Annette Hess

  And pull this cap o’er ears and eyes.

  The guests stood in a circle around the couple and clapped with blurred hands, their faces gleaming white, some merrily cockeyed. Eva’s parents alone appeared sober and clear, as though cutouts, in a firm embrace and looking into each other’s eyes.

  “HE’S GETTING OLD.” Annegret stood in the doorway in her dressing gown, a glass of milk in her hand, and pointed at Purzel, whose tongue was lolling out. “Definitely has heart problems.”

  “Nonsense,” Eva responded, although she had thought the same for some time. She pet Purzel’s head, and he snapped at her hand.

  “Annie, do you remember the time we spent on Juist?”

  “Sure, but not exactly—”

  “Why do we have so few photographs? And none that were taken during the war?”

  “People tended to have concerns other than taking pictures in those days.”

  “Did we ever swim in the ocean?” Eva didn’t want to let Annegret go, but she turned in the door and muttered, “I had a terrible night.” She left. Eva closed the album and returned it to the cupboard. Finally, she took out a manila folder wedged in to the right of the albums. It was where their parents kept some of their childhood drawings. Eva opened the folder. Right on top was a drawing of the smaller house next door to the main defendant’s house. It had a pointed roof, crooked door, and disproportionately large windows. Next to the house were two girls—both had braids sticking out of their heads, a big girl and little girl holding hands. Two yellowish-red stripes had been colored in thick behind the house, soaring into the sky. One might have thought they were the product of a child’s imagination. But Eva knew what they were meant to represent. She leaned back against the cupboard that had once been her castle.

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON Eva went to the public prosecutor’s office. She was hoping that most of the staff would have left for the weekend, so that no one would catch her in the act. There was a list of names of officers who had served at the camp. It included more than eight thousand names and was kept in two hefty ring binders Eva had often seen when the chief judge was cross-referencing witness testimony. Had this or that officer been working at the camp at the time of a given event? This incorruptible list had often proven statements wrong. It was a demoralizing moment for the witnesses every time. They stood before the court as liars simply because they could no longer recall the month or season their suffering had taken place. Eva had grown to fear these two binders. The idea that her own life could be tied to this list, however, would never have occurred to her. She walked to the end of the deserted, infinite-seeming hallway, where the file room was located. She paused outside the door and thought of the many forbidden doors in fairy tales, which Stefan had been losing interest in for some time. She entered the room and closed the door behind her. She oriented herself in the windowless space, walked among the racks, and discovered the two gray binders more quickly than she would have liked. She pulled out the one labeled “Personnel SS/Camp, A–N” and carried it cautiously, as though it might explode in her hands at any moment, to one of the tables that had been pushed together in the middle of the room. Then she set it down. It was still quiet outside the door to the file room. Eva wondered whether it wouldn’t be better to simply put the binder back as carefully as she’d taken it out, leave the room, go home, have a bath, and get dressed up to go see The Treasure of Silver Lake at the movies with Jürgen. Muffled laughter came through the wall. There was a kitchenette next door. Fräulein Lehmkuhl, one of the secretaries, was probably in there flirting with David Miller or another one of the clerks. Eva listened—more laughter. It was Fräulein Lehmkuhl, a rosy, carefree woman who had already earned a bad reputation. The office girls certainly did talk. . . . Eva opened the binder. She scanned the index with her forefinger, starting at the letters B–Br. She turned the pages and read through the names. From top to bottom: Brose. Brossmann. Brosthaus. Brücke. Brucker. Bruckner. Brückner. Brüggemann. Brügger. Bruhns.

  The door burst open and two people stumbled in, pushing and pulling at each other, kissing loudly. David Miller fumbled with the buttons on Fräulein Lehmkuhl’s blouse, and she laughed again, this time loud and clear. David pushed her onto the table—and discovered Eva. She stood frozen on the other side, a ring binder open in front of her, a look of pure horror on her face. David slowly righted himself, pulled Fräulein Lehmkuhl up, and grinned sheepishly.

  “Sorry, the kitchenette was too cramped.”

  “We were just coming to get a file—” Fräulein Lehmkuhl lied poorly.

  Eva closed the binder. “I was on my way out,” she said softly. She returned it to its spot on the shelf, and David followed her with his eyes.

  “But you’re not going to tell anyone, are you, Eva?” Fräulein Lehmkuhl nervously called after her. “It was just a bit of fun . . .”

  Eva left without responding and closed the door behind her. Fräulein Lehmkuhl shrugged and looked at David. “Now, where were we?”

  But David turned away from her. He strode over to the shelf and pulled out the binder, whose contents had so rattled Eva.

  MONDAY WAS THE BRUHNSES’ DAY OFF. That meant the family ate dinner together. Even Annegret attempted to schedule her shifts at the hospital so that she was free Monday evenings. The Bruhns family ate at six thirty in the kitchen. They had bread with sausage and cheese. Sometimes canned fish. Their mother would open a jar of Stefan’s favorite, mustard pickles, and their father prepared a large bowl of his famous egg salad with mayonnaise and capers, which was also on the menu at German House. It was only for his family that Ludwig used fresh dill, however, “whatever the cost.” That evening, they had opened the window to the back courtyard, because the weather was unusually mild for early May. The song of a lone blackbird floated in. They were all gathered at the table. Only Stefan’s spot was empty. Edith called, “Stefan, dinner!” Annegret spooned egg salad onto her plate and told her father about a doctor at the hospital, an older surgeon, who for years had suffered the same back problems as Ludwig, and who’d been saved by a corset. He was practically pain-free now. Her father joked about how hard it would be for him, as a man, to wear a corset, but he thanked her for the new information. Maybe one of those things would help him beat his pain, and allow him to start lunch service again. Edith, who was eating just two pieces of crisp bread, since she’d been putting on weight, smiled and said she would lace him up every morning and unlace him at night. As a young girl, she’d had to help her grandmother on with her corset. She was sure she’d still know how to do it. “The things you learn as a young girl, you never forget. Although I never would’ve dreamed I’d have reason to do that again.” Everyone laughed but Eva, who mutely observed the amusement her parents and sister found in picturing Ludwig in a corset.

  Her father had not looked at Eva once today. Her mother, on the other hand, occasionally gave her a quick, concerned glance. She reached over now and stroked her hair. “It’s the Italian mettwurst you like so much.” Eva jerked back her head like a petulant child and felt annoyed with herself. What should she say to them? What should she ask? She was sitting with her family in the kitchen, the most familiar place on earth, and couldn’t express a single clear thought.

  “Mummy.” Stefan appeared in the doorway. He looked different than usual, his face blotchy and eyes open wide in horror. “Mummy,” he said again, miserably. All four instantly saw that something bad must have happened. They rose, one after the other, as if in slow motion. Stefan said, “He won’t get up.”

  Moments later, they all stood among the soldiers on the carpet in Stefan’s room, gazing at the dead dog by the bed. Stefan was crying and attempting to tell them what had happened, between sobs. “He went number two on the floor, and I yelled at him and hit him a little, and then he fell over and was kind of shaking all funny, and then . . . and then . . .” The rest was drowned out by his bawling, impossible to be understood. Ludwig pulled Stefan toward him, and Stefan pressed his face into his father
’s comforting belly. His cries sounded quieter, but no less frantic. Edith left the room. Annegret crouched down beside Purzel with a grunt and examined his black, furry little body, as she was accustomed to doing. Breathing, pulse, reflexes. She got back up.

  “It was probably his heart.”

  Stefan wailed, and Eva stroked the top of his head. “Purzel is in dog heaven now. There’s a big meadow there just for dogs . . .”

  “Where he can play all day long with other dogs. . . .” her father added. Annegret rolled her eyes but kept quiet. Edith returned to the room with a piece of newspaper, which she used to clean up Purzel’s final little pile.

  After wrapping Purzel in an old blanket, they laid him to rest in a biggish box Ludwig had fetched, with the words “Pronto Thickener—For Clump-Free Gravies and Sauces” printed on the side. The family placed an array of “grave goods” in the box: their mother contributed a slice of Italian mettwurst, while Annegret donated a handful of fruit candies—the green ones she didn’t like, and had therefore picked out. Eva dug out Purzel’s favorite toy, a gnawed-up tennis ball, from under the sofa in the living room. Stefan deliberated for a long time, still hiccupping and whimpering, whether to put his wind-up tank in the box, but then decided on ten of his best soldiers to protect Purzel—just in case there were bad dogs in dog heaven too. Stefan then got to choose who he wanted to sleep in his room that night. “Everyone,” he said. The family discussed, and ultimately Eva lay down beside Stefan. She held the little boy’s body tight, as he sniffled and cried himself to sleep. The tied-up box sat by the bed. In dark blue colored pencil, Edith had written “Purzel—1953 to 1964” on top. Eva buried her nose in Stefan’s hair; he smelled of grass. She closed her eyes and saw the list before her, the ring binder lying open in the windowless room. Following “Anton Brügger,” the next name had been “Ludwig Bruhns, SS Noncommissioned Officer, Cook, Served in Auschwitz 9/14/1940–1/15/1945.”

  In the bathroom, Edith brushed her teeth at the sink. She kept her eyes closed to her face in the mirror. The foam she spit out was bloody. At the same time, Ludwig sat in the living room, in his corner on the sofa, with the television on. The crocheted coverlet had been folded back. A talent show highlighting strange acts and hobbies was on, but Ludwig wasn’t watching as a man, who had filled his basement from floor to ceiling with all sorts of fake owls, was introduced onscreen. Ludwig was thinking about his daughter Eva, who had sat at the table that evening like a stranger.

  Early the next morning, before even the lonesome blackbird had woken, they buried Purzel under the black fir tree in the courtyard. Ludwig dug a hole and had to fight a few roots, which he severed with forceful blows of the spade. He paused a few times to clutch his back. Stefan didn’t want to let go of the box, but with gentle force, Eva managed to wrest it from him. Their father quietly struck up a tune. “Now take this little doggy, who was so true and good.” The others hummed along, although they didn’t recognize the melody Ludwig had chosen. As they walked back into the house, Edith put her arm around Stefan’s shoulder and said he would get a new dog. Stefan replied earnestly that he would never want a dog other than Purzel. Eva hung back and was the last to go inside. She didn’t want anyone in her family to see how hard she was crying about the dog’s death, a dog that had lived such a thoroughly satisfactory life. A dog that had been forgiven everything.

  AN ORDINARY FACE. He sat between the Beast and the medical orderly but never spoke to anyone. It looked like he had slipped down, deep into his dark suit—Defendant Number Six was the least conspicuous of all the men seated at the defendants’ tables. On the seventy-eighth day of the trial, the day after Purzel’s passing, the focus turned to his function at the camp. He removed his horn-rimmed glasses and wiped them lazily with a white handkerchief while Eva translated the testimony from a Polish witness named Andrzej Wilk, a man in his late forties with an ashen face and who smelled of liquor. They sat at right angles to each other, the two water glasses and carafe set before them, along with Eva’s dictionaries and notepad. Wilk reported on how the defendant had killed prisoners in the so-called medical building. The prisoners were led into an examination room. They had to sit down on a stool. They had to lift their left arm and cover their mouth with their hand, both to muffle the anticipated scream and give the defendant access to his victims’ hearts with the syringe. The witness said, in German, “‘Abspritzen,’ that’s what we called it.” Then he switched back to Polish and Eva continued translating, “I worked first as an orderly, then I moved corpses. That is, it was my duty to dispose of the murdered bodies. We carried the dead from the room where they were killed, across the hallway to the washroom in the cellar. In the evening, we then loaded them onto the truck and took them to the crematorium.”

  The chief judge leaned forward. “Herr Wilk, were you present in the same room in which the defendant performed these injections?”

  “Yes, I stood about a half meter or meter away from him.”

  “Who else was in the room, besides you and the defendant?”

  “The other prisoner who helped carry the bodies.”

  “How many people were killed in your presence, in this manner?”

  “I never counted, but it could be anywhere between seven hundred and a thousand. They sometimes did it daily, Monday through Saturday, sometimes three times a week, sometimes twice.”

  “Where did the people come from, who were killed there?”

  “They were from Block Twenty-eight at the camp. And one time, seventy-five children were brought. They were from somewhere in Poland, between eight and fourteen years old.”

  “And who killed the children?”

  “The defendant right there. Together with Defendant Number Eighteen. The children were given a ball beforehand, and they played with it in the courtyard between Blocks Eleven and Twelve.”

  A pause followed; everyone involuntarily listened for noise coming from the schoolyard behind the municipal building. The children were in class at this hour, though. The shadow of a tree swaying gently was all that moved beyond the glass panes. The accused had put his polished glasses back on. The lenses reflected the glare of the floodlights. Andrzej Wilk sat there very quietly. Eva waited for the next question from the judge, who was paging through a folder. A young associate judge pointed out something in one of the documents. Eva noticed that she was starting to sweat. It was always stifling in the auditorium, but today she had the feeling the oxygen had been depleted once and for all. She took a sip of water from the glass on the table, which somehow made her mouth feel even drier. The chief judge was now formulating his next question and turned his kind, moonish face toward Eva.

  “Was your father at the camp too?”

  Eva stared at the judge and felt the blood drain from her face. The witness beside her understood the question and responded, in German, “Yes. That he was.” Eva took another sip of water, which she barely got down. The figure of the chief judge grew hazy before her eyes, as though he were disappearing behind the wall of glass. She blinked.

  “And how did your father fare?”

  The witness responded in Polish. “The defendant murdered him before my eyes. It was September twenty-ninth, 1942. They were giving injections daily at that point.” Wilk spoke on, while Eva stared at his mouth and attempted to understand the words. But then his mouth dissolved as well and the words poured out.

  “I was in the examination room . . . defendants, we waited . . . the door . . . my father . . . Take a seat. You’ll be getting a shot . . . against typhus . . .”

  Eva laid a hand on Andrzej Wilk’s arm, as if she were trying to hang on to him. “Could you please repeat what you just said?” she asked quietly. The witness said something. But it wasn’t Polish. Eva had never heard this language, and she turned to the chief judge, who had by now completely evaporated. “I don’t understand him. Your Honor, I don’t understand him . . .” Eva stood up and the hall began to spin around her, hundreds of faces circling, and in the same flash,
she saw the linoleum floor racing up toward her. Then everything went black.

  When Eva opened her eyes again, she was lying on a small couch in the room behind the auditorium, the dim green room with its illuminated mirrors. Someone had opened the top buttons on her blouse. Fräulein Schenke placed a wet cloth on her forehead. She hadn’t squeezed it out enough, and water seeped into Eva’s eyes. Fräulein Lehmkuhl stood beside Eva, fanning her face with a folder. “The air in there is just hellish,” she said. David leaned in the open door and looked truly concerned. Eva sat up and said she was already feeling better. David gestured for her to stay seated. “The witness will continue his testimony in German. He speaks it well enough,” he told her. A hall attendant appeared in the door and told them that the recess had ended. Fräulein Schenke and Fräulein Lehmkuhl both nodded encouragingly at Eva and scurried out. Eva tried to get up and follow them, but her knees buckled, as if she had the joints of a child attempting to carry an adult. She took a deep breath. David came into the room and took the last open-faced ham sandwich from one of the plates set out by the mirrors.

  “Ludwig Bruhns. That’s your father, isn’t it?” Eva thought she had misheard, but David continued. “He worked as a cook in the officers’ mess at the camp. How old were you then?”

  Eva was silent. She’d been found out. She searched for the right response. Then she gave up and spoke the words heard so often in the courtroom: “I didn’t know.” She continued, “I had no memory of it. How else could I have taken on this job? I didn’t even know my father was in the SS.”

  David chewed stoically. Eva looked at him and detected a sense of satisfaction. She felt a rush of anger and stood up. “You feel vindicated, don’t you, Herr Miller?! You’ve always said that every last one of us in this country had something to do with it. Except maybe your colleagues in the prosecution—”

  “Yes, I do believe that,” David interrupted. “That so-called Reich could never have functioned so seamlessly had the large majority of people not been involved.”