by Naomi Wood
‘Sometimes I think that’s how I should paint myself,’ he says, ‘since I can’t see much further either. I tried one of these too. Mine also didn’t work.’
We drink our tea as Jenö makes respectful noises about some of my more familiar pieces; the tart bright blocks of colour. ‘You’ve become famous, Paul.’
‘Well; hardly.’
‘Come on. You’ve done very well. Irmi said you’re rich enough to pay her back. She said to tell you that: “A message for Paul.”’
Now it’s my turn to smile. ‘I’ve sent her cheques. She’s never cashed them.’
Jenö gives me a questioning look.
‘Irmi paid for my train ticket to Amsterdam.’
I assumed he would have known the story of my exile. But there’s no reason he would know any more of me than I knew of him. ‘What happened?’ he asks. ‘To you?’
‘I was taken in by the Gestapo after the raid. Twice. Irmi persuaded me that the third time they wouldn’t just question me. I left in ’34.’
‘A year after me.’
I cannot help my voice cracking: ‘How could I? How could I have just left her?’
‘You forget. I also left. I too saved myself.’
Neither of us knows what to do. We’ve never had much natural affinity, and now we are uneasy as crows. We know we have to have the conversation about Charlotte, about how she ended up in the camp, but it feels as abject as it is guessable, and I wonder if either of us will be able to do this. Who can steer the other? Who can be the stronger? But not to speak would dishonour her, to disavow – again – what happened to her.
This does not mean I know where to begin.
Jenö finally looks at the yellow weave. ‘What happened to her after the raid?’
‘She was tried. You know that?’
‘Yes.’
‘She was found guilty. An “enemy of the state”. Then they sent her to Plötzensee for four years.’
Jenö nods.
‘When she got out, Kaspar and Irmi tried to get her to Amsterdam. But she said she wanted to go home.’
‘She always hated Prague.’
‘I don’t understand that part either.’ I smile.
‘Did you hear from her again?’
I shake my head. ‘She was angry at me. Angry I’d gone. Angry I’d persuaded her not to go in the first place. Did you?’
‘Hear from her? No. No, I didn’t.’
‘Neither did Irmi or Kaspar. I think she wanted to leave her Berlin life far behind.’
‘And after that?’
‘Arrested in Prague. Brought to Buchenwald on a female transport.’
‘I wondered if you knew anything I didn’t.’
‘That’s it.’
‘Is there any work?’ he asks. ‘From Prague?’
‘If there is, it’s all behind the Curtain. I can’t remember where the Bauhaus stands, with them.’
The case is waiting. The air is tight.
‘Franz said there’s some of her work inside, that it’s from the camp.’
‘Yes. Do you want me to open it?’
Perhaps he’ll go without forcing me to see inside.
‘I haven’t been able to do it on my own. Pathetic, isn’t it?’
‘No, not really; I’ve been rather dreading this too.’
I put the case on the table between us. I look at him, he nods, and I click the hinges. There are papers inside, yellow with age. I put them on the floorboards: there’s a river in charcoal, maybe the Ilm. There are the Dessau balconies. An unknown parkland. A beach and cliffs; possibly Rügen. The last picture is of our Buchenwald, I am sure: line upon line of beech, almost completely abstracted.
All landscapes. A genre Charlotte had never been interested in. The world as last balm, I suppose. There aren’t any of him. There aren’t any of me. I look at Jenö, and despite ourselves, we both smile.
‘They’re beautiful,’ he says.
‘Aren’t they? I didn’t expect this.’
‘Neither did I.’
We sit quietly as we look at them, spread out around us.
‘How did Walter get them?’
Jenö looks at me, his eyes frank. ‘Walter gave her the paper.’
I sense what is coming. That’s why Jenö gave me that look before. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Walter tried to free her. He did what he could with Steiner, then with the guards. But no money or favours could spring her. All Franz and Walter could manage were food parcels. Clothes. Paper. Pencils. Small things.’
And now I see the paper for what it is: it is Walter’s last gift. ‘Why did he not tell me?’
‘Did you ask him?’
‘He sent me letters. I didn’t respond. I blamed him for not getting her out.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Jenö says. ‘So did I. Franz told me at the funeral. No one knew.’
‘And me,’ I say, ‘did you blame me?’
‘Yes. But then I blamed everyone I could. Myself, the most. I just left, came to England, got on with life.’ He blinks at me; his voice astonished. ‘I just saved myself.’
Jenö does not stay much longer. We talk of the others: what happened to the Director, the Alberses, Franz, who has become a town planner, funnily enough, in Dresden. I ask him if I might keep one of Charlotte’s drawings, and he leaves me the one I ask for.
I wonder if he’ll give me one of those unexpected hugs as he says goodbye, but he doesn’t. As he gets in his taxi, I wonder if I’ll ever see him again. Probably not.
Not knowing what else to do, I go to the cliffs. There aren’t too many people around; the children have gone; the families are in their cottages. The tide is out, and I must walk some way down to the thin surf. My eyes: they sting. The world is blurred. I have been blind.
I always thought that Charlotte would be finally elaborated; that I would then be able to say I understood her. I don’t know if I ever did. But I put that to one side, now. I realise now my story has always been about Walter rather than Charlotte. It has been the quality of Walter’s morality that has obsessed me; he has troubled me more than spectral Charlotte ever has, who has only ever occupied the high arcs of lit memory. Morally, Walter was the problem. Morally, now, so am I.
The beach empties until there’s no one left but me.
What will I do with Walter’s letters? Burn them? Keep them? I wish I had replied to them. I could have asked him about Charlotte and the camp, then he might have offered a defence. He was never a monster. I should not have thought that.
I walk home. Jenö has been; the house has survived, and so have I.
In the studio I take Charlotte’s drawing and switch on the lamp. It is the picture of the beech trees. Though it’s nothing more than charcoal lines, it transports me quite completely: back to the forest’s scent, with the sunshine lavish, and the sky generous, and I see my friends on our bikes between the zipping beech and the fat bars of light – Kaspar and Irmi, Jenö and Walter, me and Charlotte – shouting out to each other, and laughing, and wondering how we might best reach transcendence. And now, as if for the first time, I am at last listening; to the trees, the trees, the trees!
Thank you:
As always, to my friend and agent Cathryn Summerhayes at Curtis Brown. My superb editors Kris Doyle and Francesca Main and the whole team at Picador; but especially Paul Baggaley, Gillian Fitzgerald-Kelly and Alice Dewing. Melissa Pimentel, Luke Speed, and Irene Magrelli at Curtis Brown. Katharina Hierling and Claudia Feldmann at Hoffmann und Campe. Thank you to ‘Madame Bauhaus’, Magdalena Droste. Thank you to the staff at the Weimar, Dessau and Berlin Bauhaus libraries and archives, who never failed to help this Bauhaus baby. Thank you to Claudia Ballard, from WME, who encouraged me with this idea in the beginning.
Thank you to my parents, Pamela and Michael, and my sister, Katherine. To Ed and the Harknesses: Philippa and William; Fran and Henry, Gabi and Letitia. To Hannah Nixon, Alaina Wong, Eve Williams, Nicola Richmond, Nicky Blewett, Tori Flower, Jonathan Calascio
ne, Bridget Dalton, Eleni Lawrence, Sarah Hall, Toby Oddy, Jack Underwood, Masha Mileeva, and Mel and Ali Claxton. Thanks especially to Jonathan Beckman, Fraser McKay and Ben Pester who gave me their shrewd comments on early manuscripts.
Thank you to the Literary Encyclopaedia which funded a research trip to Germany; to Goldsmiths College, University of London, for a term of leave to write the first draft; and to all of my colleagues at the University of East Anglia, but specifically Andrew Cowan, who gave me invaluable edits.
The Bauhaus, which celebrates its hundredth birthday in 2019, was an art school of immeasurable productivity, creativity, and joy. Even with its final closure by the Nazis it lived on: in Chicago; in North Carolina’s Black Mountain College; in Tel Aviv. Twenty-first century Bauhäuslers will know there were actually three different ‘Directors’ in Weimar, Dessau and Berlin: Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer and Mies van der Rohe. For narrative purposes, I have combined their role into one. Paul’s speech to his class on p177 is in part adapted from Werner David Feist’s memoir ‘My Years at the Bauhaus’ (Meine Jahre am Bauhaus) (Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin, 2012).
To find out more about the real-life inspiration for this novel, go to my website at www.naomiwood.com to find photographs of this period and the extraordinary people – Johannes Itten, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Anni and Josef Albers, Franz Ehrlich, and Otti Berger – who populate these pages.
Everyone else is a work of my imagination.
Naomi Wood is the bestselling author of The Godless Boys and the award-winning Mrs. Hemingway, which won the British Library Writer’s Award and the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Award. It was shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize and selected for the Richard and Judy Book Club.
Naomi Wood’s work is available in sixteen languages. She teaches at the University of East Anglia and lives in Norwich with her family. The Hiding Game is her third novel.
Also by Naomi Wood
The Godless Boys
Mrs. Hemingway
First published 2019 by Picador
This electronic edition first published 2019 by Picador
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ISBN 978-1-5098-9281-5
Copyright © Naomi Wood 2019
Cover photograph: © Roger-Viollet/TopFoto
Author photograph: © Barney Poole
Background photograph: © Alamy
Cover design: Katie Tooke, Picador Art Department
The right of Naomi Wood to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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