In the Full Light of the Sun

by Clare Clark

  ‘Because you’re her uncle. And there’s no one else.’

  ‘Not even Bettina’s mother? I thought you were so marvellously close?’

  Stefan looks at the table. ‘Bettina’s mother wants us to divorce. She thinks it’s wrong, that Bettina shouldn’t have anything to do with Jews.’

  ‘Christ,’ I say and he shrugs. ‘But surely the children, her own flesh and blood?’

  ‘Apparently they’re Jews too.’

  I am silent. I don’t know what Gerda will say. She never liked Stefan’s children. She thought Bettina spoiled them. Every little thing they did was applauded and admired. Gerda hated that. She thought praise was like money, children needed to learn its value. A used to copy out her poems and stories in her best handwriting to show to Gerda. When Gerda praised one, which she did rarely, the pride on A’s face was like a lamp coming on.

  ‘Of course I know you can’t agree to anything straight away,’ Stefan says. His eyes zigzag the room like a fly. ‘Not before you’ve discussed it with Gerda.’

  If Mina comes she will sleep in A’s room. It is not just the crates we will have to find somewhere else for but Philip the worn-out rabbit and the cup with the clown painted on it on her bedside table and her nightgown on the back of the door. The clothes in the wardrobe and in the chest of drawers. The room of a ten-year-old will, after three years and seven months, become the room of a girl on the cusp of being grown up.

  Tuesday 27 June

  Something terrible is happening in Köpenick. A Social Democrat shot two brownshirts and there have been reprisals. The papers take the party line, atrocity stories are lies and harshly punished, but we all know. Hundreds of political opponents of the Reich rounded up and tortured. Whips and chains, sulphuric acid, hot tar, heads smashed so hard the eyes pop out. They want us to know. They dump the bodies in the river, hang them from trees.

  Here, twelve miles away, we’re not sure what to believe but we all understand. The law is theirs now. We are completely in their hands. I take the key to the drawer of my night table off my ring and, lifting the mattress, hide it between the wooden slats of our bed. The key is tiny, you would never see it if you didn’t know it was there. It still wakes me whenever I turn over.

  Wednesday 28 June

  I have been putting it off but I cannot wait any longer. I ask Gerda about Mina. I tell her I know it is a lot to ask, that the burden will fall on her shoulders.

  ‘Think about it,’ I say but she shakes her head. She doesn’t need to think about it. There’s so little we can do but we can do this, she says, and she looks up at me and she smiles, or nearly, and her face is so dear to me it stops my heart.

  Thursday 29 June

  When I told Stefan that we would have Mina I heard the breath go out of him. He could not stop thanking me. I was glad, I wanted his gratitude, but the weight of it took me aback. He will bring her next week on the train. I am surprised—at sixteen she is surely old enough to travel alone—but I let it pass. She is not my daughter.

  My clerk’s trial starts today. There is a new presiding judge, a sandy-haired boy from the sticks who looks about fourteen. All day he interrupts proceedings to direct the bench on specific points relating to non-Aryans. He even makes an impromptu speech about the meaning of the law counting for more than the letter. It is the sort of tripe a student would be failed for trotting out, but the other two judges stare at their hands and say nothing. I storm back to the office in a furious rage. Urschel is sitting at his desk. When I demand to know when that rabid spew of bile Mein Kampf replaced the Criminal Code, he looks stunned, appalled, like I have pulled out my cock and then punched him in the face.

  ‘Outside,’ he says.

  By the time we reach the bottom of the stairs I am shaking. My recklessness frightens me. The caretaker has taken to loitering on landings and we’ve all heard the stories: intimidation, denouncements, groundless accusations that abruptly harden into fact. Only infants and the insane speak without thinking.

  In the courtyard Urschel glances around, then tells me quietly that the state plans to bring charges against individuals in the SA for murder and bodily harm. The Interior Minister is to give a speech, publicly condemning the violence in Kopenick. The government wants political stability, public order. Their plans for economic recovery depend upon the rule of law.

  ‘The madness is ending,’ he murmurs. ‘Don’t go mad before it does.’

  He goes back upstairs. I should be preparing for tomorrow but I need to be somewhere else, so I go home. Outside our building there is a removal van with SHANGHAI painted on its sides. A huge desk is being manhandled into the back of it. It reminds me of the monstrosity my father used to have, only this one’s even uglier. I can’t think why anyone would go to the trouble of shipping something so hideous halfway around the world. A brute like that must strain even the inscrutable politeness of the Chinese.

  Gerda is in A’s room. Her hair is tied up in a scarf. She has taken down the curtains and stripped the bed. The rag rug is missing.

  ‘Everything needs washing,’ she says. There is a smear of dust on her cheek.

  ‘You shouldn’t be moving things by yourself,’ I say and she makes a face at me and I am struck by the strength of her, this woman who has been worn down and worn down by grief until she shines with it. Behind her the drawers of the chest are pulled out. They’re all empty.

  ‘Where—?’ I say and she squeezes my arm.

  ‘In the suitcases,’ she says. ‘Just for now.’

  The suitcases live under our bed. It will be like the old days when we had guests, A in with us till we have the place back to ourselves.

  Friday 30 June

  The telephone is ringing when I reach the office. It’s Stefan. Bettina is in hospital. Puerperal convulsions, he says, as though I’ll know what that means. Bettina is out of danger, they delivered the baby safely, a little boy, but it is five weeks too soon, maybe more, no one knows yet if he will live. Stefan’s distress crackles down the wire. I think perhaps he is weeping. He says he is sorry and, when I ask him what for, he says he wanted to tell me but he didn’t know how.

  ‘I didn’t want to open old wounds,’ he says and I want to rage at him for his stupidity, his blindness, but what good would it do? If the worst happens he will know soon enough. For now let him think that the heart repairs itself like the body, that it goes back to being nearly the way it was before.

  Wednesday 5 July

  Mina arrives on Friday. She will come alone after all. Bettina remains in hospital and Stefan has his hands full with the new business and packing up the house, he simply cannot spare the time. They have the baby in an incubator. Bake until risen, Stefan says, with a shrill laugh. His hope is unendurable.

  Gerda has made up A’s bed with clean sheets but she cannot sweep the floor until the crates are gone. I promise I will get rid of them tomorrow, Friday at the latest. I have no idea where they can go. It is only in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, that I think of Böhm’s office, his plan chests and his watercolours and the marks on the walls where my boxes scuffed the paint.

  Friday 7 July

  The greengrocer Katzke agrees to loan me his cart and his sons for an hour when their deliveries are done. Gerda can’t wait for us to be gone. She fusses around us, brandishing her broom. The boys are scrawny-looking and clumsy, when they dump the tea chest on the bed half of the contents spill out, but they hoist the crates like they are nothing.

  When I asked Böhm he agreed straight away. I suppose he thinks he owes me a favour. The Katzke boys have almost finished when he comes back to his office. One of the crates blocks half the window. The tea chest is under the desk. Böhm glances at it, a tiny frown pinching his eyebrows, but he says nothing. I tell the boys to take it down to my office. I’ll find room for it there.

  ‘A week, two at the most,’ I promise Böhm. The crates have G RACHMANN printed across them in black letters. It occurs to me that I’ve never talked to Böhm abo
ut the Rachmann case. I want to linger, to say something, but I’m already late. I mumble something about my niece, the train. Already the office smells of raw wood.

  At the station the woman in the information kiosk sends me to the wrong platform. By the time I reach the right one the Hannover train is already disembarked. Mina is waiting at the gate, a small valise clutched in both hands. She is wearing a blue coat and a hat with a matching ribbon. I wave and she sees me but she does not smile. A porter is standing behind her with two enormous suitcases. I can’t imagine what she has brought with her or where it will go.

  ‘Mina, I’m so sorry, this place is a maze.’ I kiss her on the cheek. She pulls away.

  ‘Papa said you would be late,’ she says stiffly. She has grown tall. With her pale hair and blue eyes she is the double of her mother.

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘He says you’re always late for everything.’

  ‘Your father thinks everyone is always late for everything. As a boy he used to leave for school before our mother had even gone to bed.’

  She glances at me sideways. She does not want to be here. Who can blame her?

  ‘He ate his lunch before breakfast,’ I say. ‘And his supper before lunch. Still, it meant he got to Sunday a whole day before the rest of us,’ and she presses her lips together until she might almost be smiling. I take the valise.

  ‘Come on,’ I say, smiling back. ‘Let’s get you home.’

  Monday 10 July

  When I get home Gerda is chopping vegetables in the kitchen. I can tell from the bang of her knife that something is wrong. When I kiss her she frowns and asks why I’m so late. I am not late, but I tell her I am sorry anyway and she puts the knife down and leans against the table with her eyes closed. I put my arms around her and rest my cheek on the top of her head. I can feel the thump of her heart against the underside of my elbow. Her hair smells of onions. When she turns her head towards me I kiss the corner of her mouth.

  When I look up Mina is standing in the doorway. Mortification stretches her face. I smile at her and she makes a little choking noise and disappears.

  ‘Mina?’ I say. Immediately Gerda shakes free of me and, snatching up her knife, starts once again to chop. A door slams. It’s been another stifling day. I push the window wider.

  ‘Stefan telephoned,’ I say. ‘The baby’s doing well.’

  She puts down her knife, reaches past me for a pot. ‘That’s good.’

  ‘I should tell Mina.’

  ‘You should.’

  She turns away from me, turns on the tap. I can hear the water drumming in the pot as I squeeze past Mina’s suitcases to A’s room. I knock. There is a long pause. Then Mina opens the door. I stare past her. The faded green bedspread is gone. Instead there’s a shawl with a paisley pattern over the end of the bed and on the chest of drawers, arranged on an embroidered cloth, a photograph of Stefan and Bettina, a pair of silver hairbrushes, a flower-painted porcelain pot with a lid. The familiar books on the shelf have been replaced with books in jackets of blue waxed paper. Mina has even draped a scarf over the bedside lamp. I wonder dumbly if it might catch fire.

  ‘Aunt Gerda said it was all right,’ Mina says. ‘It looks nicer, doesn’t it?’

  She looks at me hopefully but I don’t answer. Even with all her things the room looks strangely bare, I can’t think why, and then I see that she has taken down the curtains, the ones Gerda washed and ironed specially for her. On the windowsill there is a framed photograph of Mina with her arm around another girl, who pouts at the camera like a young Ruth Weyher. I turn to look at A’s collage of magazine pictures but it’s gone, there’s nothing there but the nail in the wall.

  ‘Where is it, the picture, what have you done with it?’ I cry and I see Mina flinch but I can’t help it. Panic surges through me.

  ‘I put it away, that’s all,’ she says, opening the wardrobe. In the space beneath her hung-up dresses I see the green bedspread bundled up with the curtains. A’s collage is jammed behind them. I pull it out. Clara Bow is torn, her mouth severed from her nose. I want to weep.

  ‘I can put it back up if you want,’ Mina says in a small voice but I shake my head.

  ‘I’ll keep it,’ I say, holding it tight. ‘It can go back when you’re gone.’

  Friday 14 July

  The window is wide open but there’s nothing to breathe. I lie awake in the darkness, staring at the ceiling. Gerda is awake too but when I reach out for her she doesn’t move. She lies stiffly on her side, away from me, rigid with the effort of not hurting.

  On this day four years ago the fever came. A went to the lake with her class, a nature excursion, and when she came home she was sick. She told Gerda her legs hurt. The next day her temperature was 104° and she could not stand up. Dr Posen told us it was a summer cold and we believed him, or we tried to. When she could not hold a cup they took her to hospital. The man who strapped her to the stretcher wore rubber gloves, as though she was poisonous. We knew then. They put her in an isolation ward. We were not allowed to go in. There was a window on the side of the ward. They let us stand there on Sundays and look through. The nurses wore long white gowns and masks over their faces. They glided behind the glass like ghosts.

  When they moved her it was autumn. The new place was outside the city, it took an hour to get there on the train. Gerda went every day. She massaged A’s arms and legs, worked her unresponsive fingers around a toothbrush, a spoon, a pencil.

  ‘Nothing in the world you can’t do if you try,’ she said. It was Gerda’s unflinching faith that lifted A’s spirits, Gerda’s strength that kept her strong. And Gerda’s heart that was buried with A’s at Weissensee when it turned out she was wrong.

  Saturday 15 July

  At breakfast there are letters from Stefan, one to me and one to Mina. Two stamps, I am struck by the extravagance. I check the flaps of the envelopes reflexively. Mina brought an envelope like this from Stefan when she came. No letter, just money. I wanted to tell her to keep it, that we didn’t need it, but pride is one of the many luxuries I can’t presently afford. Mina puts her letter in her pocket and drinks her tea. I suppose she wants to read it later when she is alone.

  I remember Mina as a rather noisy and self-important little girl. She is not noisy now. She speaks only when spoken to and excuses herself after meals to spend time in her room. She does not want to read with us or listen to the wireless. I might forget she was here if it were not for the discarded cardigans and books she strews around the flat. When Gerda suggests coffee with Anna Büttel, who lives on the floor below and is almost her age, Mina shakes her head. She says she has homework to do, that she has to keep up or she will be behind when school starts again. Last night I asked Gerda if we should not find a school for her here in Berlin, but Gerda only looked at me strangely and told me that it’s the summer holidays.

  ‘Good news,’ I say. ‘Your mother’s going home.’

  Mina shakes her head, her eyes fixed on her plate. ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘Of course it is. Your father says the baby should be home soon too.’

  ‘How can they go home when we don’t have one?’

  ‘Mina—’ I say but she is already pushing back her chair, stumbling out of the room. When I try to follow her Gerda puts a hand on my arm.

  ‘Let her be,’ she says.

  I hear A’s door slam. I drink my coffee and read the rest of Stefan’s letter. They are feeding the infant with a dropper, like a baby bird. Stefan does not want to leave them but he can delay his departure no longer, he travels to Antwerp on Sunday. His reluctance is in every word.

  Sunday 16 July

  At last a little coolness. On the balcony, Gerda’s flowers nod in the breeze. There are other reasons to be cheerful. Urschel has a friend who may be able to give me a loan. And yesterday a new American ambassador arrived in Berlin with instructions to protest the treatment of Jews in Germany. They say the order comes directly from the President.

  A
walk, I suggest when breakfast is over, it’s high time Mina saw the city, but they both make excuses: Gerda has a pile of mending a foot high and Mina mutters something about algebra. Fine, I say, I’ll go alone. Half an hour later I bang on Mina’s door and push it open. She is lying on the bed. She fumbles something hurriedly under the pillow.

  ‘Come for a walk,’ I say. ‘Aunt Gerda says you haven’t been out all week.’

  Mina shrugs. I want to ask her what’s under the pillow. ‘A whole new city awaits you,’ I say instead. ‘Don’t you want to know what you’re missing?’

  ‘You think I don’t already know?’

  A low blow but not entirely unjustified. I make a face at her. ‘Come on, Mina. Just to the corner. Then you can come home.’

  Home. I watch Mina chew her lip, considering the word. Then slowly she uncurls her long legs and stands up.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ I say without thinking and instantly I want them back, the words that are A’s still, not mine to give away. Mina slides her feet into her sandals, then squats down on her haunches to buckle the straps. A used to do up her shoes the same way, her chin on the sharp juts of her knees as her fingers found the fastenings. A was gawky, all jolts and corners, but Mina has the easy grace of a cat.

  I grab my hat and together we go downstairs. We pass the shuttered butcher’s shop. A For Sale notice is pasted to the door. It’s no surprise, the Nazis banned kosher butchering months ago, but I can’t help thinking of the pick-up-sticks game A used to like, each one pulled out makes the pile that is left more precarious. I pause at the corner but Mina keeps walking, so I walk too. On Oranienburger Strasse she stares up at the buildings. The green and gold domes of the New Synagogue gleam in the sun and the tables outside the Weiss café are crowded with couples and families. Waiters in white aprons weave between the umbrellas.