At the Wolf's Table

by Rosella Postorino

  I smiled at him, my chin trembling.

  “Want something to eat?” he said, despite the guard being there.

  Before I could reply, Ziegler walked in. They had called him in to solve the unpleasant situation: one of his food tasters had attempted to enter the innermost ring of the bunker city without authorization.

  Krümel respectfully greeted the lieutenant, said goodbye to me with a nod of his head. He didn’t wink at me like he had when, months and months before, he would gossip with me in the kitchen. Ziegler dismissed the guard and closed the door.

  Without sitting down, he told me they would take me home, but next time I wouldn’t get off so easily. “Would you mind telling me what it is you were trying to do?” He came over to the table. “Tomorrow I’m going to have to personally answer for what happened. I’ll be in trouble because of you. I’ll have to convince them you were only going for a walk, that it’s all just a misunderstanding, and it won’t be easy, you know. After what happened in July anyone could be a traitor, a spy, an infiltrator.…”

  “Like Elfriede?”

  Ziegler fell silent. Then he asked, “Was it her you were looking for?”

  “Where is she?”

  “We sent her away.”

  “Where?”

  “Where you can imagine.”

  He held out a slip of paper. “You can write to her,” he said. “I did what I could, believe me. She’s alive.”

  I stared at the hand holding the slip of paper. I didn’t take it.

  Ziegler crumpled it up, threw it onto the table, turned to leave. Maybe he thought my response was a final show of defiance, that if I was alone I would put the address in my pocket. I had no pockets, nor my leather satchel.

  “I don’t want to write to anyone else who isn’t going to write me back.”

  Ziegler stopped, looked at me with compassion. It was what I had been seeking, but it did nothing to console me.

  “They’re waiting for you outside.”

  I got up slowly, wearily. As I passed by him, he said, “I had no choice.”

  “Did you get a promotion? Or do they still see you as the poor underachiever that you are?”

  “Get out.” He pushed on the doorknob.

  In the hallway I felt like I was walking through water. Ziegler noticed, once again had the instinct to help me, but I pulled away. I would rather have fallen. My ankle didn’t buckle. I kept walking.

  “It’s not my fault,” I heard him say as I reached the SS guard waiting at the barracks entrance.

  “Yes, it is,” I replied without turning around. “It’s our fault.”

  40

  The loss of Elfriede left me catatonic. I couldn’t hate Leni, but I couldn’t forgive her either. As I saw it, her chagrin was the guilty conscience of a child who’s caused mischief—it wasn’t enough for me. You should have thought about it first, I wanted to tell her, but didn’t. I didn’t talk to anyone. In the lunchroom the voices were subdued. Though softened, the murmur was unbearable to me. Elfriede deserved a bit of respect, and I needed peace and quiet.

  My friends ate with their heads hung low and didn’t dare ask what I knew or why I had risen from my chair so quickly that Saturday. I felt their eyes on me, not only those of the Fanatics, who didn’t spare me their judgment. If Augustine hadn’t held me back one morning I would have slammed Theodora to the ground—Theodora, who during all those months had eaten right next to Elfriede yet wasn’t upset about what had happened to her. The Fanatics had seen Elfriede on a daily basis, had risked dying with her and with her had escaped death, but that wasn’t enough for them to feel compassion for her. How was it possible? I’ve asked myself that for years, decades, and I still don’t understand.

  Heike got sick—seriously, this time. She presented a doctor’s note with the word “indisposition” written on it and was absent for weeks. I don’t know if they paid her anyway for those days. Discretion kept Beate from going on again about her having children to raise. I hoped Heike would get well not sooner but later, just long enough for my anger to subside—maybe it never would subside. I felt like beating her, punishing her.

  How dare I? I was no better than she was. No new woman came to replace Elfriede. Her seat beside Leni remained empty, as did her bed beside mine. Maybe they did it on purpose, so we would remember what happened to those who didn’t toe the line. Or maybe the Führer had more important things to think about. Officers in his own army had tried to kill him, it wasn’t like he would be concerned about one fewer food taster.

  * * *

  ONE AFTERNOON WHEN I was off work because the Führer had left town again, as I was hanging out the laundry, Herta came over to me. The scent of the soap was blasphemy, as was the sun high in the sky, along with the cool sensation of the damp clothing against my fingers.

  Inside the house the radio was on, and through the open window came the voices and music of celebrations for the day of the German mother. That was where the Führer had gone, to award Crosses of Honor to prolific mothers. It was already August 12, I thought, hanging a tablecloth on the line—I had lost track of the days. August 12 would have been the Führer’s mother, Klara’s, birthday if she hadn’t died thirty-seven years earlier, when Adolf wasn’t yet a man grown—only a somewhat anxious son who had lost his mother.

  Herta stood there stock-still instead of helping me. She seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but said nothing, listened to the radio. The Führer would be awarding a gold Ehrenkreuz to the finest women, those who had managed to churn out at least eight healthy children, never mind if some of them died afterward of hunger or typhus well before they ever grew a beard, well before they ever wore a bra, and never mind if others would die in the war. The important thing was that there were new draftees to send to the front, new females to impregnate. Augustine said the Russians, who were getting close, would leave us all pregnant. Ulla replied, Better Ivan on your belly than an American over your head.

  I looked up at the sky. No plane, neither from the U.S. nor the USSR, had cut through it. It was shrouded by clouds of gauze, which the sun intermittently shone through. Herta had already explained to me that we would flee to the woods if bombings began, that we would bring food and water and blankets for the night. There weren’t any bomb shelters in Gross-Partsch, no bunkers had been built for the villagers, there were no tunnels in which to protect ourselves, and Herta would sleep more peacefully with her cheek resting on the roots of a tree than in the cellar. At the very thought of it she couldn’t breathe. Fine, I had told her, we’ll do what you want. I told her that whenever she raised the question, though I planned to stay home, amid the commotion, like my father, to plump my pillow and roll over to face the other way.

  The radio, on the other hand, belied our every concern: Why would you think such bad thoughts today, of all days? Today is a holiday, today we celebrate the children of the Reich. Germans, everyone knows, love children, don’t you? There were women who had made an effort but hadn’t had it in them. Laden with six children, they would receive only a silver cross. It was better off that way—the medal would encourage them to give it their all, so perhaps the following year they would make their way up the charts. One must never give up—that was what the Führer taught us. The other women would have to settle for a bronze cross. They had given birth just four times, could expect nothing more. My mother-in-law, for instance, despite herself, wouldn’t have won anything at all—only three pregnancies, two children having died at a tender age and the other one lost. Germans love children, even those who were buried, even those who were missing, and I hadn’t had even one.

  “How long has it been since your last period?”

  I dropped a damp dishcloth into the basin, gripped a clothespin in my fingers.

  “I don’t know.” I thought about it, couldn’t remember. I had lost track of the days, of all those days that had engulfed me. I picked up the dishcloth again, hung it on the line, only so I could steady myself on it. “Why?”r />
  “I see it’s been a while since you washed your pads. I haven’t seen them hanging out to dry.”

  “I hadn’t even noticed.”

  Herta rested her hand on my belly, felt it.

  “What are you doing?” I pulled back. Now detached from the clothesline, I was collapsing.

  “You. What are you doing? What have you done?”

  My lips quivered, my nostrils. Herta was in front of me, arms outstretched, almost as if to contain a big belly that wasn’t there, that might grow.

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  Was I pregnant with Ziegler’s child?

  “Why did you pull away from me, then?”

  I would have to get rid of the baby. Like Heike. But Elfriede was gone.

  “I haven’t done anything, Herta.”

  My mother-in-law didn’t reply. I had always wanted a baby, it was Gregor’s fault if things had turned out this way. Herta reached out her hand again. And what if I wanted to keep the child?

  “What are you asking me?” I shouted.

  A second later, Joseph was at the window. “What’s going on?” He had switched off the radio.

  I waited for his wife to answer, but she gestured for him to let it go. Since Elfriede had gone, I was depressed, had mood swings, didn’t he know that? I ran to my room, stayed there until morning, and spent the night awake.

  * * *

  DURING THE MONTHS when Ziegler had been there, I had observed my body as though it were something new. Sitting on the commode, I would inspect the fold of my groin, the flesh of my inner thigh, the skin on my sides, and wouldn’t recognize them, they didn’t belong to me, they were as intriguing to me as someone else’s body. While bathing in the washtub I would check the weight of my breasts, the framework of my bones, the adherence of my feet to the ground, and would sniff my scent, because it was the scent Ziegler smelled—he didn’t know it was so similar to my mother’s.

  We had been entwined all night, sheltered from our personal histories. We had denied all reality, believed we could suspend it. We had been fools. It had never occurred to me that he would make me pregnant. I wanted a child from Gregor. Gregor had vanished, and with him my chance to become a mother.

  My breasts were plump, tender. In the darkness I couldn’t study my areoles to see if they had changed shape or color, but I could feel my glands, which were hard clusters, knots in ropes. Up until the day before, my kidneys had never bothered me, but now I felt my lower back hot, as though from lashes.

  While the whole world was launching bombs and Hitler was building an ever more efficient extermination machine, in the barn Albert and I had clung to each other as though it were sleep, it was like sleeping, a place far from there, a parallel place. We had ended up together for no reason—there never is a reason to love each other. There is no possible reason to embrace a Nazi, not even having given birth to him.

  Then the summer of ’44 began to wither and I noticed I existed less since he no longer touched me. My body revealed its wretchedness, its unstoppable race toward decay. It had been designed with that end—all bodies are designed with that end. How is it possible to desire them, desire something destined to rot? It’s like loving the worms that are to come.

  Now, however, that same body began to exist again, and again it was because of Ziegler, though he was gone, though I didn’t miss him. I had a child. Why on earth shouldn’t I keep it? And if Gregor were to return? Well, then, maybe—God forgive me—maybe it was better if he didn’t return, maybe I would be better off bartering Gregor’s life—What are you saying?—for the life of my child. I have the right to want this child, the right to save it. Do you realize what you’ve just said?

  When I left the house to go to the barracks, Herta was taking down the laundry. We didn’t speak to each other, neither then nor when I returned home from my first shift that day. Then the bus came to pick me up again and Sunday was over. That night I would remain in Krausendorf, would return only on the following Friday.

  * * *

  LYING ON THE bed beside the wall, I kept one arm outstretched so it touched Elfriede’s mattress. It was empty and I felt my stomach lurch. Leni was sleeping, whereas I was searching for solutions, had searched for them all week long. Tell Ziegler, accept his help. He would find a doctor who could terminate the pregnancy, perhaps one from the headquarters. He would pay him off to keep it a secret, and the man would do what he needed to do in the barracks washroom. But what if I scream from the pain, if I bleed onto the tiles? It wasn’t the right place. Ziegler would put me in his jeep and sneak me into the Wolfsschanze, bundled in several layers of military blankets hidden in the trunk. The SS would smell my scent through the blankets—they were perfectly trained guard dogs, I would never get away with it. It would be better for the lieutenant to drive the doctor out to the woods, I would wait for them there, my hands on my belly. Like Heike, I would expel my child while clinging to a tree, but I would be alone, because the doctor would have been impatient to leave and Ziegler would have driven him back. I would dig a hole at the foot of a birch tree, would cover it with earth, carve a cross onto the bark, Without initials—my son has no name, what sense is there in naming him if he’s never born?

  Or, against all expectations, Ziegler would want to keep it. I’ve bought a house, he would announce, a house for us here in Gross-Partsch. But I don’t want to stay here in Gross-Partsch, I want to live in Berlin. Here are the keys, he would say, closing them in my palm, tonight we’ll sleep together. No, tonight I’ll sleep in the barracks, like yesterday, and the day before that, and tomorrow. Sooner or later the war will end, he would reply, and he would seem so foolish to me, with that hope of his. Maybe it was all a trick—he would force me to give birth to the baby and would then take it to Munich, would take it away from me, would have his wife look after it. No, he would never admit to his family, to the SS, that he had fathered a bastard. He would get rid of me. Deal with it yourself, who can guarantee it’s mine?

  I was alone. I couldn’t confess it to Herta, to Joseph, to the other women, and in any case no one could do anything about it. That was why I even dreamed of turning to Ziegler. I had lost my mind, felt I was losing my mind. If only Gregor were there, I so needed to talk to him. It’s nothing, he would say, holding me close, you were only dreaming.

  My punishment had finally arrived. It wasn’t poison, it wasn’t death—it was life. God is so sadistic, Father, that he punishes me with life. He understood my dream, and now He looks down from Heaven above and laughs at me.

  * * *

  WHEN I GOT back home on Friday, Herta and Joseph had already eaten dinner. They were about to go to bed. She had a cardigan over her shoulders, the air had grown chilly. She forced out a hello. He was kind, as always, and asked nothing about his wife’s coldness toward me.

  Lying in bed, I felt worse than usual. My kidneys were burning and a needle pierced my left nipple repeatedly, as if someone had decided to stitch it up, seal it off. You’re not going to breastfeed your son—steal milk from Krümel if you really want it to be born. My head, squeezed between the blades of forceps, was throbbing. I writhed with cramps until finally falling asleep.

  In the morning I got out of bed in a daze. Rubbing my eyes, I noticed a dark patch on the bedsheet. My nightgown was stained too.… A hemorrhage—I was losing the baby. I sank to my knees, buried my face in the mattress. Ziegler’s child, I had lost it. I hugged my belly to hold it back—Don’t go, don’t be like the others, stay with me. I stroked my breasts, they were soft, nothing was sore. Only a faint, barely perceptible ache below, something I had experienced so many other times before.

  I had never been pregnant with Ziegler’s child.

  It can happen, Elfriede would have said. I’m surprised at you, Berliner. Didn’t you know? All it takes is a major disappointment or a body weakened from stress and you skip your period. Hunger would also do it, but you’re not hungry, unlike me. I’ve skipped my period too, down here. We’ve synchronize
d, like Leni said.

  My cheek pressed against the mattress, I wept for Elfriede, sobbing, until the sheet was drenched, until I heard the horn blaring. I put on a sanitary pad, fastening it in place with a diaper pin, quickly got dressed, left the red stain on the cotton sheet uncovered so Herta could see it.

  On the bus, I rested my temple against the window and continued to weep. For the child I would never have.

  41

  Beate hadn’t been wrong. Things were going badly for the Führer. Not only had he been betrayed by some of his own men in July and risked being killed, but just over a month later he lost half a million men on the Western Front and found himself short on garrisons and cannons, while Paris was liberated. On the opposite front, Stalin had the upper hand; he had conquered Romania, made Finland capitulate, driven Bulgaria to officially withdraw from the war, and trapped fifty German divisions in the Baltic region. Stalin was drawing closer and closer—the generals did nothing but repeat it, and the leading heads of state caught hell for trying to convince him of it, but Hitler wouldn’t listen; his troops would continue the battle until the enemy was too tired to fight anymore, as Frederick the Great had said. He would wear them down, keep honor high, there wouldn’t be another 1918, not as long as he was still alive—and to seal his vow he would beat his chest with his right hand while his left hand, hidden behind his back, was at the mercy of the now-customary tremor that Morell hadn’t yet been able to diagnose. Enough with all the nonsense that Ivan is at the door, the Führer screamed, it’s a hoax.

  We didn’t know all this, not clearly. It was forbidden to listen to enemy radio, and though Joseph did manage to tune in to the English or French channels from time to time, we understood little to nothing. Nevertheless it was clear to us that, rather than admit it, Hitler was lying. He had lost control, was failing, was dragging us down with him. Many began to detest him at that point. My father had detested him right from the start. We had never been Nazis. No Nazis in my family, except me.