Miss Graham's Cold War Cookbook

by Celia Rees

Elisabeth rapped on the partition. “Lise? Can you bring Elfriede in to me?”

  A girl sidled into the room, shy, her eyes cast down. She held a baby in the crook of her arm. A little dark head showed over the edge of the enveloping shawl. Edith didn’t know much about babies, but this one looked very young.

  “Why,” she said as she moved closer. “She’s tiny!”

  “She was born in the summer.”

  “So you were pregnant when you left?”

  “Yes, or she would never have survived. It was cold on the journey here. Twenty degrees below zero, more. Infants died in nappies frozen to solid blocks of ice. Inside me was the safest place.” She stated that as an everyday fact, as if it was something people knew. People like her. Germans. Edith sensed the gap between them, the conquerers and the conquered. “I was sick after she was born, very sick,” she went on. “I couldn’t feed her or look after. Lise took over. She had just lost a baby.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Edith said to the girl in German.

  “It was war, Edith.” Elisabeth spoke for Lise. “You have no idea how hard it was. Lise became pregnant because a Russian soldier raped her. It is probably good the child is dead.”

  The baby woke, stirring in Lise’s arms. Edith approached carefully.

  “May I see?”

  Lise lowered the edge of the shawl. The baby yawned, showing two tiny teeth. Edith leaned closer. The yawn widened into a smile, and her eyes opened wide.

  “What a dear little thing! Such big, brown eyes.”

  Edith looked up. Elisabeth was blue eyed, so was Kurt. This child had dark hair and dark eyes.

  “She’s not Kurt’s,” Elisabeth said. “If that’s the question you were wanting to ask. Thank you, Lise, you may take her away now,” she said in German, dismissing the girl. She turned back to Edith. “It’s a long story. There’s so much to tell.”

  She put her hands together, almost in an attitude of prayer, and began her story.

  We’d been planning to go for months. We were under no illusion as to what would happen if we stayed. The Eastern Front was collapsing. Refugees had been pouring west since summer, set in motion like herds that smell fire on the wind. By the Autumn, the Nazis circulated what the Russian had done at Nemmersdorf. Children slaughtered, women, old, young, raped and murdered, their bodies dumped on dung heaps, nailed to barn doors. We assumed that it was the usual lies, propaganda, faked somehow; we didn’t believe anything we were told anymore. Then refugees began to come in from the Goldap and Gumbinnen. It was all true. That was what we could expect.

  We prepared in secret. Right to the last, the Nazis kept saying that the Russians would be defeated by some miracle weapon, that an army would appear from nowhere. It was a matter of will. Anyone the slightest bit “defeatist” would be hanged. Every man, able-bodied or not, old men and young boys scarcely more than children, were made to join the Volkssturm. And they were taking horses—I could not allow that. I would not let the army take them or leave them for those Russian savages to work to death or slaughter for meat. I had to save as many as possible. I had to preserve the breed. The old men and the boys saddled up with Kaspar, my Master of Horse, and drove the herd west. Organizing my people was not so easy. Some were reluctant. They had lived there for countless generations. Others were afraid. Then, from one day to the next, everything changed. On January 21st there was an order to evacuate the area. I rode to town to find that the Nazis had already left, party offices empty, files discarded, burned papers blowing like black snow.

  It was time. I sent word to be ready. We would leave that night. I ordered everyone to take the bare minimum. Most came laden, but how could I blame them? When you pack your life onto the back of a cart, what do you leave? What do you take? The choices are too difficult to make. I restricted myself to the barest of necessities: change of clothing, a few photos, family papers, toiletries, bandages, valuables that were easily carried, pistol, rifle, shotgun, ammunition.

  That last evening, we had a feast. We ate boar and drank Margaux, chateau-bottled Haut-Brion, Chateau d’Yquem—all the great vintages from my father’s cellar. There was no point in keeping them now. When the time came, my mother ordered us to leave her. Brice was stayed; he’d served the family from a young boy and was devoted to die alte Gräfin. Now they are together forever. My mother had a grave dug in the cellar for when the time came. Brice was to do the honors with my father’s service pistol. I assume there was room for him, too. We left the keys on the hall table, closed the great doors, and left them inside. Entombed. Sometimes I wished I’d gone down with her to the cellar, to be interred there. Never to leave.

  I saddled my chestnut mare, Andreas rode the bay stallion, so we would have a breeding pair wherever we finally fetched up. We set off in a convoy, the majority in carts and wagons pulled by horses. Tractors were useless. Even if there was fuel to be had, it would freeze.

  It was bitterly cold, the horses slipping on the icy roads. We were not the only ones on the move. They were coming in from every side. It took hours to get to the nearest town, more hours to get through it. The road west was clogged with wagons, tractors, handcarts, prams, people pulling suitcases on planks of wood. A solid column of misery extended in both directions as far as the eye could see, all going at the pace of the slowest with frequent stoppages for broken axles, collapsed horses, troops moving in the opposite direction. How long did it go on like this? For hundreds of miles, a thousand? By nightfall we had hardly moved. Some of my people decided to turn back, take their chances with the Russians. I don’t blame them. They thought that they could carry on as they had done before but under new masters. Irenka was one of them, and her daughter, she wouldn’t leave her old mother, who was really too frail to survive the long journey. Our lands are in Poland now. For them it was a journey postponed, and who knows what they suffered when the conquerors swept through.

  To go on, go back, or strike north for the sea? No one knew what to do. Danzig was still open but for how long? The only way to it was across the frozen Haff, but at least the ships were still evacuating refugees. That way was not for us. The ships would never take the horses, and it had its own perils. On the ice, there was no cover. Columns were strafed, dive-bombed by the Russians. The ice stained red. Horses and wagons fell through the broken ice, whole families lost. Even for those who reached the port and got a passage out, it was hardly salvation. The ships were easy pickings for Russian torpedoes.

  We rode west, cutting across country, using back roads. Andreas leading, the rest strung out behind like a line of cavalry. We had maps, but the weather was against us with freezing temperatures and strong winds blowing the snow so the horses sank up to their bellies in drifts. Across the fields, we could see the dark figures moving like a column of ghosts through the white veiling snow, always at the same slow pace, like a scene from history, from the Thirty Years’ War, maybe. We were forced back onto the highway. We began to see bodies at the sides of the road. Mostly the old, but also the very young. Children. No one could stop to bury them. The ground was hard as stones. They were just left by the wayside for animals to find. After the first shock, we barely gave these huddled forms a second glance. Like everyone else, we were intent on our own survival, finding food for ourselves and the horses, shelter for the night, some warmth. We were well armed. A horse was worth a fortune, but ours were beyond price.

  We went across country if we could, trying to avoid the roaming, clashing armies. We knew where the armies had passed. We learned to avoid the villages where crows robed the trees. We rode west, always west, into the setting sun. When we reached Pomerania, the people were living in the same state of uncertainty that we had endured, told that they were safe, that the Russians would never reach them, that one last heroic campaign would save them. None of them believed it for a minute, but they had been ordered not to leave. Every town, every village, still had its zealots.

  By the time we reached Stettin, we could see the flash of artillery, hear gunfire,
the hideous whine of Stalinorgel rockets streaking up in quick succession. The Russians were near. We struck north, across the frozen Boddengewässer to Usedom. From there we went west, heading for my cousin’s estate outside Schwerin, but when we got there, we discovered that she had moved to Lübeck, thinking it might be safer in the city. The Russians were over the Oder, and no one knew where they would stop. When I found the great door locked, the house all shut up, I confess, I sat on the steps and wept. We got to our feet again to travel to Lübeck. But now I see her leaving, forcing us onward, as a stroke of fortune. Schwerin is in the Russian Zone, and here we are in the British Zone. The Russians were so intent on taking Berlin that the British reached here before they could. For that I am forever grateful.

  Elisabeth leaned back in her chair, exhausted by her long telling. At first, Edith had wanted to ask questions: What had happened to the aged aunts, for example? But her questions lay scattered by the epic sweep of Elisabeth’s story. Leo had been right when he’d said she would stay in her corner of Prussia, looking after her estates and her people, distant in every way from the Nazi regime. What greater proof could there be than this? What Elisabeth had done was heroic in the word’s oldest, truest meaning. True to herself and her caste, she’d shown all the aristocratic virtues: courage, honor, obligation, and responsibility, the other side of the golden coin of rank and privilege.

  “What do you want from me, Edith?”

  “I—I’m not sure what you mean . . .” Edith asked, shocked at this abrupt transition.

  Elisabeth lit another cigarette. “That boy, the Polish one.”

  “Luka?”

  “That’s him. He’s smart. All the kids here love him. He’s a hero to them.” She stood up and began pacing. “He holds you in high regard, but he’s a survivor, no moral sense whatsoever, and he’s given to boasting.” She turned to Edith. “He said you’d been looking all over Lübeck but he was the one who’d found me.” She stopped her pacing and looked down at Edith. “I knew someone was looking. The girl who works in your billet, Magda, told me that someone from the Control Commission had been asking questions. At first, I was alarmed, but when she said it was a woman and gave a description, I knew it was you.”

  “Why didn’t you make contact? Send a message. Something . . .”

  Elisabeth shrugged. “I didn’t know why you were searching. It doesn’t do to draw attention, to be noticed. It was so under the Nazis, and it’s not very different now. You don’t understand. We are your playthings. You can do what you want with us. Like that odious little man with his truck and his soldiers. You have all the power.” She turned, looking down at Edith. “So, why were you searching?”

  “I was concerned. I wanted to know what had happened to you.” Edith spread her open hands toward Elisabeth. “I thought you might be here, so many are from East Prussia. I knew you had a cousin who lived near, so there might be a chance . . .”

  “I see.” Elisabeth looked off toward the window, hand cupped under her elbow, cigarette poised. “Is it me you want. Or Kurt?”

  “Kurt?”

  “You have not asked about him.”

  “So much has happened. There’s been so much to say.” Edith found herself prevaricating. “So much catching up to do.”

  She was aware how weak that sounded. Elisabeth was clever. Intuitive. Much sharper than Kurt. She had the brains. She was seeing another side of Elisabeth now.

  “So much that you do not ask about your former lover?” Elisabeth’s eyed narrowed. “The British are looking for him, aren’t they?”

  “They well might be,” Edith said vaguely.

  “Oh, come on, Edith. You know they are. You’ve probably been sent to find out what you can. Isn’t that the truth of it?”

  Edith had no answer. Elisabeth had seen through.

  “Well, yes.” She sighed. “I won’t deny it . . .” She paused to find what to say. “But it’s not all about finding Kurt. That’s what Leo wants but I—I wanted to find you, too. To know that you were alive, that you’d survived.”

  “The reason doesn’t matter.” Elisabeth gave one of her rare smiles. “I felt the same gladness at seeing you.” She stubbed her cigarette out and lit another. “And I’m looking for Kurt, too. You do not ask what happened to Wolfgang, either. So, I will tell you.”

  23

  44 Möllnstrasse, Lübeck

  25th February 1946

  B-Kost Diet: Eglfing--Haar

  Minute quantities of vegetables

  Fatless liquid

  A diet devised to kill slowly. A recipe for the most obscene cruelty.

  “Life unworthy of life, was the term they used,” Elisabeth started. “Lebensunwertes Leben. The handicapped, the retarded, the mentally ill to be eliminated and discarded as Leeren Menschenhülsen, empty human shells, menschliche—ballast—no use to anyone. Useless mouths consuming resources needed by soldiers and workers to keep the nation strong. They started with the children. Did you know that? Starving them, killing them by lethal injection, then the adults. Thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands. Asylums and mental hospitals, institutions built and designed for their treatment turned into killing factories, charnel houses with crematoria burning night and day.”

  Edith had heard much of this from Leo, but to hear it expressed this way, in a voice hollow with weary resignation at the ruthless, inhuman bureaucracy, that was something else again.

  “Such a way of thinking is infinitely corrupting. Once it begins, where will it end? Who is exempted? The terminally sick, those injured in air raids, the elderly, the infirm made homeless, taking up hospital beds and scarce resources that could be used by the army? Soldiers suffering from war neurosis? What do you call it? Shell shock. No longer able to fight, so no longer useful. It is easier, quicker, to kill than to cure.

  “All this was going on, and we knew it. It was just another thing, among so many things, that one tried to ignore, to turn a blind eye. What could one do? Nothing. That’s what we told ourselves. There weren’t that many Jews in our area. When they disappeared, moved to the east to work, we half believed it. The Gypsies? They just didn’t come any more. It is easy to compound a lie by lying to oneself. Easy to ignore the truth, until it arrives at your door.

  “Kurt lied to me, and I believed him. Or, rather, I didn’t. I refused to see what was right in front of me. I just saw what I wanted to see; believed what I wanted to believe. The acceptable version of things. I lied to myself about that, about him, as well as everything else. I make no excuses. There can be no excuses. I was like the whole nation—blinded, led toward the abyss by a bunch of vicious madmen—and Kurt was one of them.”

  “When we came to visit you, at Steinhof,” Edith interrupted. “He was in the Party then?”

  “He joined long before that. When he was a student.” She laughed. “When you knew him. If you hadn’t been so blinded by love, you’d have realized. But then, why would you? He was good at hiding what he didn’t want people to know.”

  “But you, you knew?”

  “Of course. Kurt was very ambitious. Everything he did fell into a pattern. It was necessary to be in the Party. His early membership helped him get into the SS, a place at the Institute in Heidelberg, a position in Berlin. He didn’t discuss the nature of his work, and I didn’t question him too closely. I had only the vaguest idea what he actually did. I was at Steinhof. I had the estate, my horses, and my child.”

  She walked to the window, gazing out as though still able to see her own lands, the formal grounds and the hills beyond, instead of the weed-choked garden in the ruins of a surburban street in a town she didn’t know.

  “Wolfgang grew normally, to start with, anyway, strong limbed, sturdy, tall for his age, blue eyed, fair haired, just like his father. The spitting image, isn’t that what you say? Then he stopped talking. He seemed to go backward, cutting himself off from the world, behaving like a much younger child. Kurt became increasingly concerned. He was disappointed. He wanted his so
n to be perfect. I just wanted him to be happy. Kurt talked about seeking treatment. I began to make inquiries. I knew Wolfgang was intelligent. He was good at puzzles. He could do a jigsaw faster than anyone. He liked to draw. Especially birds. He would watch them for hours, keeping perfectly still, so that they did not notice him, from his window, or in the garden, or down by the lake. The girls called him kleine Katze, he could stay as still as that. I’d heard of a doctor in Vienna who specialized in these kinds of children. A Dr. Lehmann. Perhaps he could help Wolfie. When I told Kurt the name, he laughed. He won’t be there any more, he said. He was Jewish.

  “The war had started by then. Kurt was all the time in Berlin. He was involved in a new initiative that had come directly from the Führer himself. He wanted me with him. Wives should be with their husbands. It was expected. He knew of a specialist unit, where Wolfie would get the best of care, freeing me to go to Berlin. It would be better for everyone, he said.

  “Katja and Irenka begged me not to let Wolfie go. They had heard rumors. About people being taken away and not coming back. But Kurt assured me that euthanasia was a mercy and anyway it applied only to the most hopeless cases, those with terribly painful, incurable diseases or who were dreadfully handicapped. It was done at the request of the relatives because in those circumstances, it was better for everyone, especially the individual who was suffering so badly. Even then, several doctors had to agree and it was very rarely done. That is what he told me. None of that applied to my Wolfie. He was fit, healthy, handsome, well formed. He wasn’t quite like other children, but neither was he mentally deficient. He was just—different.” She gave a shuddering sigh and stood, head bowed, lost in thought, prayer, or memory. “So I agreed.” She turned back to Edith, her eyes very bright. “I’m sure you will I say I was wrong in this. Wrong and . . . and stupid.”

  Edith shook her head no. She refused to judge. Hindsight made it too easy. She had learned to hold back her condemnation. She often found herself asking how we might have fared in a dark, distorting-mirror world, ruled by fear and false ideas, where carers became killers, husbands betrayed wives, wives their husbands, children their parents, neighbors each other. She knew plenty who would have joined in without question, more who would have done nothing. She knew of very few who would have dared to do anything when faced with the threat of the Gestapo and the concentration camp.