‘Are you all right? You’re a little later than I thought you’d come; you didn’t get lost, did you?’
There were so few people gathered there, Markus had spotted her almost at once.
Karen shook her head and hugged Liese closer. ‘Where is everyone?’
She could see a huddle of figures grouped round the bottom of a flight of steps which marched up to a classically colonnaded building. Other than that, the vast space, with what looked like a pair of identical churches placed one at each end, was deserted.
‘I thought this was a ceremony. I imagined it would be busier, more on the scale of what’s planned for tonight.’
‘No. Tonight is about something starting, a joining together that people want to bear witness to and be part of. What you see here is the opposite.’
Markus took her hand and led her towards the steps.
‘This is the diehards of the East coming to mourn. Everyone else has already turned their faces to the West.’
His tone was measured, but there was a tightness in his face Karen hadn’t seen there before. She wanted to ask him how he felt, what this goodbye meant to him, but he was already steering her towards Michael, who was fixed in position at the side of the building. He was watching them come, standing ramrod-straight and dressed in a black overcoat with a cluster of medal ribbons above the breast pocket. There were a handful of other spectators arranged round him. None of them looked younger than forty. The flight of steps he was standing next to was wider than she had first realised – there was space along them for a hundred people or more to stand without feeling crowded. There were only four figures there, uniformed men in officers’ peaked caps, who clustered at the bottom looking oddly small and out of place. There was no one waiting to join them, none of the foreign dignitaries or Heads of State Karen knew had flocked to Berlin to witness the reunification ceremony planned for midnight at the Brandenburg Gate.
‘Thank you. For attending this.’
Karen shook the hand Michael stiffly held out.
‘Andrew raised no objections to Markus taking you away?’
‘No, of course not. We visited the Reichstag this morning and the Gate before it got busy. He was glad to go back to the hotel and—’
The rest of her too-quick response was lost as a band marched into the square and came to a halt beneath the flagpole, where the DDR’s hammer-and-compass-adorned flag was still flying. The tune they struck up took Karen’s breath away, its melody was so haunting.
‘“Auferstanden aus Ruinen” – “Rising from the Ruins”. It is the DDR’s national anthem. This is the last time I imagine that we will hear it played.’
Michael’s voice choked and fell silent. Markus took his hand and held it while the music swelled. Karen watched the two men standing as one as the ceremony began, joined by a love and respect that overran their differences, and had to rub her eyes.
Everyone around them was staring ahead and mouthing the anthem’s words. No one was actually singing.
The two ranks of soldiers who had followed the band stood stiffly to attention behind a standard-bearer. Some saluted; some kept their arms down and looked awkward; some blinked away tears. As the music stopped and silence fell, one of the officers hunched on the steps walked stiffly forward and gave a short, muted speech in which the words ‘comradeship’ and ‘loyalty’ featured heavily. No one clapped when he finished. The standard-bearer marched his gaudily fringed banner away, its head pointing down. The red and black and gold flag was pulled from its pole in one smooth movement and folded inside out so its colours no longer showed. The band launched into ‘Das Deutschlandlied’, the tune that would now represent the whole of Germany. No one clapped that either. When it was done, the band and the soldiers marched away and the spectators melted silently after them. Less than ten minutes had passed and a country that had stood and birthed generations who had known nothing else but the DDR for forty years was gone. It was one of the saddest things Karen had ever seen.
‘This must seem very foolish to you. My need to say farewell to a regime most people will be delighted is over.’
Michael was staring away into the distance, his face set in hard lines.
Karen wasn’t sure how to answer. ‘You don’t need to apologise …’
He turned on her so fast, she jumped.
‘I am not apologising. Why would I? I am proud of what this country was. I came out of the war with nothing: no family, no home. Nothing but my beliefs in a fairer society, and the DDR nurtured those and nurtured me. I wasn’t on the outside here: the tolerant, equal way of life I wanted for the future was what everyone wanted. We had ideals; we cared for each other. We weren’t easily bought by trifles the way the West was. Why should I regret being a part of something so pure?’
He sounded so angry, but it was grief; Karen could feel it pouring from him. Her German was strong enough now to understand what Michael said, but she waved Markus back in case her nerve, or her words, failed her. If she had any chance of winning Michael’s respect, she had to stand up to him and speak from the heart.
‘You shouldn’t. And you have misunderstood me. I was actually thinking that this ceremony didn’t feel like enough. This is an ending, a funeral, I suppose. Surely it deserved more marking than this lonely spectacle, whatever your view of the DDR’s politics. More than something that felt, I don’t know, embarrassed?’
Michael’s face softened. He finally smiled. Not for the first time that day, Karen felt the prick of tears.
‘It seems I owe you a different apology. It appears I have misjudged you.’ He paused while the soldiers exited the square. ‘An embarrassment. That, I am sad to say, is a well-chosen word. That is what the DDR will be in this newly united world. It will pass into history as a relic, a museum piece only remembered as real while its old men and women are still standing.’
‘Except for the damage done to so many lives in its name.’ Markus was also watching the last soldier go. ‘Those will be raked over and last, no doubt, far longer than the country ever did.’
The two men stared at each other. Karen knew there was a question Markus needed to ask but couldn’t quite get to. She slipped her hand in his.
‘Do you think that would be a bad thing? That the sins are remembered?’
She was relieved for his son when Michael answered.
‘No, Karen, I don’t. I think there are men who must be held to account for what following our ideals too rigidly led to. And I think there are people in great need of answers. Who deserve every assistance to find them. No matter what you might think of me after our last meeting, or since you learned what your father and I did, you have taught me the value of that.’
He crooked his elbow and held it out to her. ‘And now this part of the past has been lain to rest, shall we make a start on our own?’
Karen hesitated before taking his arm. ‘My father is afraid that you blame him for Liese’s suicide.’
Michael nodded as they began to make their way across the square. ‘Maybe, until I see his face and hear his side of the story, that is true.’
The drive to Karen and Andrew’s hotel was a subdued one, each of them lost in their own concerns about the forthcoming reunion.
Karen had hoped to have a few moments alone with her father to explain what Michael had just witnessed and how saddened it had left him, but Andrew was already waiting in the sofa-stuffed lounge. He was dressed in his tweed suit and had a pot of tea on one side of him and a newspaper folded to the crossword on the other. He had never looked more impossibly English.
The introductions and reintroductions were awkward. Hands knocked into each other; stilted greetings became overlaid and muddled as Karen and Markus rushed in to soften them. Although Karen knew he had been practising and he was clearer than she expected, Andrew’s German was hesitant from lack of use. Michael refused to understand it as well as he could and made a show of turning to Markus, until Markus threw up his hands and refused to translate what did not need transla
ting. Andrew ordered tea for everyone; Michael insisted on coffee. Karen was beginning to despair of finding any safe or common ground, and then they sat down and the men’s similarities almost overwhelmed her.
It wasn’t just their appearances, but their manner that meshed. Both were tall, broad-shouldered and strong-featured, and grey hair and age’s sharpening and softening had rendered them more of a match than they were in the wedding photograph. Their voices, too, were an echo of each other, the tone in each deep and thoughtful and better tuned to serious conversation than light-hearted amusement. And they both caught the same look in their eye when Liese was mentioned: warm and wistful and sad.
‘You never kept in touch?’
As Karen intended, the question cut through the start of a potentially awkward silence and took both men by surprise.
‘No.’ It was her father who answered. ‘We never had any understanding that we would. Beyond one letter to say that we had safely arrived in England, I don’t think I ever considered it.’
He paused. Karen watched him choosing his words, picking his way through a language he hadn’t spoken properly in years but was determined not to be defeated by.
‘With hindsight, I would say that was deliberate, wouldn’t you, Michael? Neither of us wanting to play any more part in the other’s life than we already had.’
Michael nodded. ‘With you, yes. I did, however, write to Liese, although not as regularly as I would have liked. It wasn’t easy, especially when Western intransigence forced Russia to blockade Berlin in 1948 and cut it off from the rest of the world. But once that was lifted, I did my best to stay in touch. Did she show you my letters, or tell you about them?’
Andrew shook his head. Michael sighed. It sounded as if he was letting go of a long-held hope.
‘Then it is as I feared: my letters meant nothing to her. She never wrote back to any of them. I convinced myself at first that, because I moved around so much in the first years after you left, her replies didn’t reach me. Then there was no answer to the card I sent in 1953 with a permanent address and I couldn’t fool myself any longer that she cared. I stopped writing after that.’
Andrew refilled his cup. ‘I may have had a hand in her silence. I encouraged her to leave her life in Germany behind. I didn’t necessarily include you in that but—’
‘You’re not sorry if that’s how she took it.’
Andrew shrugged. ‘It’s not as if remembering did her any good, so, no, I’m not sorry at all.’
Karen watched with increasing unease as the two men circled each other. They were both so stubborn; both so determined to prove that they had cared for Liese the best. She didn’t want the meeting to fall apart before she outlined her plan for the rest of the trip, but she had a nasty feeling that’s where it was heading. She glanced over at Markus, who nodded and interrupted in time to stop Michael from snapping back.
‘It might not have been your influence, Mr Cartwright, that stopped her writing. It could have been guilt, or fear.’
Michael’s tightly contained anger shifted from Andrew to his son. ‘What are you talking about?’
Markus turned to his father, speaking slowly enough so that Andrew could keep up, waiting if Karen needed to help him, and continued as if he hadn’t registered Michael’s sharpening tone.
‘Karen has told me about the problems Liese was having in the last years of her life. We haven’t had time to discuss those yet, but I understand a fear of being caught runs through the scrapbook she kept, as well as guilt for a number of things she saw herself as responsible for. Some of her “crimes” make more sense than others, but the events surrounding the guard’s death were chief among them. Perhaps she felt she had left you in too much danger. You were, after all, the one on the ground if anything came to light. Perhaps staying in contact was simply too much for her.’
‘Markus might be right.’
To Karen’s relief, her father’s voice had lost its combative edge. He rubbed his eyes and coughed, and his tone grew softer.
‘She missed you, Michael. If she got your letters, they would have meant a good deal to her. She used to mention you sometimes, after Karen was born, and wonder if you were all right. It occurred to me then that I should try to find you, but I didn’t know how. I knew nothing about the postcard until Karen uncovered it. Liese could easily have forgotten she had it.’
He stopped suddenly and then sat up straighter. ‘I’m sorry, Michael. I owed you more. The truth is, I was afraid. That one day, despite what she decided when the body was found, that she would leave me and choose you. I was afraid of that my whole marriage.’
He slumped back as he finished, as if the confession had winded him.
Michael stumbled as he started to speak. Karen gripped Markus’s hand to stop him trying to find Michael’s words for him. When he recovered himself, Michael’s voice was as soft as Andrew’s.
‘You are so wrong. She wouldn’t have. She never could have. You heard her say it: when Liese looked at me, all she saw was Lottie’s shadow. It hurt beyond words to hear that, but I had no doubt she meant it. She chose you, and that was the right thing. The only chance of happiness, the only chance of safety Liese had lay in marrying you.’
Andrew was already shaking his head.
Karen repeated Michael’s words in English in case Andrew hadn’t fully followed them but it was clear that wasn’t the problem: he understood what Michael had said, but he wouldn’t accept it. Karen couldn’t bear to see them both trapped in a loop of guilt and denial. She turned to Markus. ‘Tell them what you know.’
He jumped straight in on her cue with the facts. ‘There was an investigation into the murder.’
His directness snapped Andrew and Michael out of the fog that was circling them exactly as Karen had hoped. Their heads shot up as if they were pulled by the same string. Markus turned to his father.
‘The original article that you kept about the body being recovered was from the Berliner Morgenpost. I went to their offices and had a dig in their archives. There were more reports filed than the one you kept. You never saw any of them?’
‘No.’
It was clear from the shock on Michael’s face that he was telling the truth.
‘Once Liese left, I threw myself into my work. I was writing then, and I was more and more in the Russian sector of Berlin, more immersed in the doctrines that eventually split the East off from the West in 1949. A newspaper like that would have quickly slipped off my radar. And the papers I did read wouldn’t have mentioned the death of a Nazi, unless there was a specific link to Russia or the communist struggle.’ He shrugged. ‘I have lived my life in a narrow world, Markus. I am too old to apologise for it.’
‘I don’t need you to. All that matters is that you both know the truth now.’
‘They identified the guard then? I assume it was from the scar on her hand?’
Her father sounded so tired; Karen slipped her fingers through his and squeezed them.
Markus nodded. ‘Yes. From what I could gather, it took almost six weeks in the end to get the post-mortem done and marry up the body with the missing persons’ report. Her name was Hilda Grieff; she was thirty-four. She had lived her whole life in Fürstenberg. There was nothing special about her, except where she chose to work and half the town, if the paper is to be believed, found employment in the camp the same as her. At first, her husband raised the roof and demanded her killer be found and brought to justice. Then he went quiet and that’s when the Morgenpost got interested. It didn’t take them long to discover she had been a guard, especially as the Ravensbrück trial was still ongoing. They managed to unearth a picture of her in her uniform. It jogged memories. Someone remembered Lottie.’
‘Then the thing we were most afraid of happened.’
Karen wasn’t sure which man said it.
Markus corrected himself quickly. ‘Yes, but it wasn’t as clear-cut as I made it sound. Someone remembered a child being murdered by the lake, but no one r
emembered the name and the dates were hazy. But the paper ran the story packed full of outrage, and if Liese had been in Berlin and seen it…’
‘She might have panicked and confessed.’
Michael was poised on the edge of his seat, staring at Andrew. ‘We did the right thing getting her away – you realise this proves it? Whatever the outcome, our— no, your instincts were correct.’
Karen and Markus sat back as Andrew nodded.
‘Thank God. Thank God. I was never sure. I was always worried it was only my own interests I was serving.’
The mood between the two men shifted. Michael reached out his hand; Andrew grasped it. They sat in silence, heads down, hands clasped, as still as if they were carved from stone.
When Markus continued talking, his voice was thick. ‘After that disclosure, the investigation into Grieff’s killing seems to have faded away. The last report I could find simply said there were no leads. I doubt anyone had the appetite for it: justice had, after all, been served and against the right person. The trail ended there.’
‘Thank you.’
They loosened their hands and separated back out into Andrew and Michael.
Markus nodded to Karen, who struggled to steady her voice. ‘So now you know. You helped her as much as you could. You saved her, and yourselves, which I imagine is what Liese intended. That’s what I want to hold on to, not where it led. It’s what we all need to hold on to. And so we thought, Markus and I, that perhaps it was time for Liese and Lottie’s story to have an ending, for us at least. We thought, if it’s something you both feel up to, that we would like to visit the camp.’
She left a pause for them to voice their objections, but neither man took it.
‘The site is in quite a state apparently and the Russian authorities who took it over after Germany’s partition are reluctant to let anyone in. They’re afraid of attracting fascist sympathisers, I suppose, for want of a better word, and they still have soldiers based there. But Markus, well, he used your name, Michael, and managed to get permission for us to have some degree of access. And he’s found a woman, an ex-inmate, who will meet us there and act as our guide. We could all go together, the day after tomorrow, and say our goodbyes. If you thought that might be helpful.’
What Only We Know: A heart-wrenching and unforgettable World War 2 historical novel Page 33
