Clara

by Kurt Palka

  Albert called to her. He waved urgently and he turned and spoke to the driver. In the house he waited until she had put Willa on the couch. She turned to him. She was shaking.

  He held her and explained that his unit was entraining. By nightfall he had left, and by midnight his battalion was already rolling north and east toward the Polish border.

  The date was August 28, 1939.

  TWENTY-ONE

  LATER HE NEVER talked about the war because the war changed him, but right after Poland he still did. He described to her how they could see nothing but fire at either side to the horizon, fire and explosions as the tanks roared forward, firing 50mm and heavy machine guns on the run. They stopped only to aim and fire the main turret gun. The Polish tanks were no match, he said. And most Polish field cannons were still mounted on horse-drawn limbers and slow to move. Polish soldiers in proud uniforms rode the wheel horses and stood in the stirrups to fire cavalry pistols at tanks. Horses reared and flailed and tried to crawl away on shattered legs. Horses everywhere screaming, with blue coils of intestines trailing, other horses tripping over them. He had never imagined they’d still be relying so heavily on horses.

  It was terrible, he said, and she sat listening with her eyes wide and her hands clamped over her mouth, sat in the darkened living room at the cottage because for a week or more afterwards he never wanted to turn on the lights and by daytime he told Anna to close the curtains and keep out the sun.

  From above, he said, they could hear Stukas howling and diving and dropping bombs a hundred metres in front of the tanks, they could hear the Messerschmitt fighters. A fearsome push forward with maximum fire power, he said. They drove the Polish forces relentlessly on a wide front toward Russia, which by then was invading from the east to occupy the rest of the country. Pens of barbwire full of prisoners dotted their route.

  Two days into the attack, on September 3, France and Britain had kept their pledge to Poland and declared war. It had come to her world on the radio and in the newspapers. “WAR!” the headlines shouted, and in the village it was the one word on everyone’s lips.

  In her notes for the Poland file she later added that war then had been not about bodycount but about territorial gain. This might be hard to grasp now, fifty or more years on, she wrote, but at the time the colonial spirit was not completely dead, and essentially that was what colonialism had been: the theft of entire countries simply by invading them and planting flags.

  ONE MONTH INTO THE Polish campaign, SS Obersturmführer Bönninghaus, the political officer attached to Landshut Black, came to the cottage and knocked on the door. Anna was on her knees in the kitchen garden, harvesting peas, and she turned and looked at him between the vines over her shoulder. Even without his armband she knew who he was; everyone did. She watched him knock and wait. She watched his broad back, his cap at a rakish angle. She could tell him that Clara had gone to the store, but she did not. Only when he simply pushed open the door and walked in did she get up heavily off her knees and come after him.

  “They’re not in,” she said.

  “Where are they?” He had progressed as far as the living room already, was standing by the radio listening. He clicked it off and turned around. He was a heavy man with a strong face and a scar through one of his eyebrows. He was dressed in tunic, breeches, and boots, and in the dim light from the window half covered by ivy he stood with one hand still on the radio knob and with the other slapping his grey deerskin gloves idly against his thigh.

  “Shopping,” Anna said.

  “In town, on the bicycle?”

  “Yes.”

  “So they’ll be back soon,” he said. “I’ll wait. Go back outside. Go!” He waved her away.

  When Clara returned with Willa, Anna was sitting on a low stool by the front door shelling peas. She looked up at Clara and put her finger to her lips. She beckoned. “The obersturmführer is inside waiting for you,” she whispered.

  “What does he want? Did you let him in?”

  Anna shook her head.

  She entered with Willa in one arm and the shopping bag in the other. He was not in the kitchen and not in the living room. He was in the bedroom, standing well inside the open door. He turned when she said, “What are you doing? Who said you could just walk in?”

  “I thought I’d wait for you. You weren’t gone very long.” He took another look at the bedroom, turned, and came her way through the hallway. “Let me help you with this.” He reached for Willa.

  “No, don’t. I don’t need help.” She put the shopping bag on the floor and carried Willa to the playpen in the living room.

  “Obersturmführer, I don’t want you just walking in here,” she said. “You could have come back. What do you want?”

  “I have something for you.” He followed her into the kitchen, where she stood setting groceries on the table. “This,” he said and held out his hand in a loose fist.

  “What is it?”

  “Take it.”

  “Put it on the counter.”

  “Take it.” He laughed. “It’s not a frog or anything.”

  She held out her hand and he dropped a shiny metallic ornament into it. She turned it in the light. “I don’t want it,” she said without thinking. She held it out again for him to take back.

  He did not move. “The Gold Party Pin,” he said. “You have been awarded a high honour, and you refuse it?”

  “It’s nothing personal. I never applied. It’s a misunderstanding.”

  She put the pin on the counter, gold-rimmed in a wreath of oak leaves, the words National-Sozialistische DAP around the swastika in a white field.

  “I never applied,” she said again. “I’m honoured, but it’s a mistake. Tell them I don’t deserve it.”

  “And you may not,” he said. “But it can’t be taken back. You must have applied, and because of the Blood Order in your family you were found worthy.”

  “Worthy. Obersturmführer, I am not political. I’m honoured but I’m so unworthy.” She listened to the sound of that and found it nearly funny. She tried a smile. “Take it away, please.”

  A strange light came into his eyes then. A sense of triumph, she would realize later. A victory. “This will go into your file,” he said. “I advise you to accept it and to say no more and be thankful.”

  “I am thankful. But it must be a mistake.”

  He reached into his tunic pocket and took out a folded piece of paper. “Here is the document to go with it,” he said. He put the paper on the counter next to the pin. He reached and unfolded it, glanced at it and put it back. “We have you as Doctor Phil. Clara Herzog Leonhardt, is that correct? Two last names?”

  “Yes.”

  “You are married, are you not?”

  “I am. We are. For academic reasons I like using my maiden name as well. Please take those things away. Someone made a mistake.”

  He stepped back. “Mrs. Leonhardt,” he said. “You would be wise to consult with your husband first. With the lieutenant colonel when he comes back. If he comes back. Heil Hitler.”

  His boot heels echoed in the hall. He stopped, and she heard him call, “Mrs. Leonhardt! You have a great deal of room here, for one small family.”

  She held her breath, listening.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “I did.”

  “And something else. Your radio is tuned to an illegal station. The radio itself is illegal.”

  “I did not know that.”

  “You did not know that. Get a Volksempfänger. It receives only the approved station.”

  The floorboards in the hall squeaked. But he said nothing more, and after a few seconds she heard his footsteps moving away. The door opened and fell closed.

  She hid the party pin and document in a kitchen drawer, left Anna in charge of the house, packed up Willa, and took the train to Vienna.

  What she did on the train was to reason with her fears, try to look at them calmly and to stop her mind from racing. She sat with her
eyes closed and with Willa on her lap, and she searched for solace in what she had learned and what she believed; she imagined herself being calm and in control inside the house that was the structure of her mind. In control, even as the outside world was breaking more than her windows. This was the real test, she knew, and it was so much more than words and ideas.

  THAT AFTERNOON, Mitzi and Cecilia had gone to the forger once again. He had moved to a garage-type workshop, they said when they described the encounter. A place with a bed-sitting room behind a curtain at the rear. They sat primly on metal chairs next to a small printing press. The room was dirty, with various kinds of equipment and desks, and with lightshades hanging from patched wiring.

  “It is finished,” the forger said to Mitzi. He wore a pilled sweater that day and old corduroy trousers. His fingers were stained and on his forehead he wore a green shade. “It’s done. Come and look,” he said. He switched on a desklamp and stood back.

  There it was, the document Mitzi would need under the new rules to be able to apply for a Trade Pass, and anyone practising a trade now needed such a pass. They were closing in, closing the loopholes at all levels and all walks of life; every week there were more regulations and forms required.

  But here was her salvation now, in her new name; the short Aryan Certificate of Racial Origin, the Kleine Ahnenpass; patronizing, demeaning.

  Printed front and back on the proper green-and-white document stock, six fields with lines for names and detailed vital statistics going back to the grandparents on both sides. Six fields, forty-eight lines, and every one an insult.

  Result of Examination, it said about her, about Anna Susanne Toplitz: ARYAN. There, halfway across the watermark of the eagle’s talons.

  The forger stood close, watching her, judging her hunger. “You can have it as soon as you bring me the money,” he said.

  “But so much,” said Mitzi. “Ten thousand. Can’t you make an exception? And all the money I’ve been giving you. I need this. I’ll give you free haircuts for as long as you live.”

  He thought she was joking, and he cracked a smile. He said he did not have enough hair left for that. What hair he had, he could snip off himself, in a mirror.

  He waved a hand at Cecilia, who had not spoken one word, had sat upright with her hand folded in her lap, touching as little as possible in this filthy place.

  “Perhaps Madame can help out,” he said. “If she does, then perhaps I’ll give her back the document we created for the estate. Horses, I think. Certain customs forms. Yes?”

  “It happened only twice,” said Cecilia. “And only because the government was inventing a new tax every day. In any case, we no longer have anything to do with the estate.”

  “Oh, but the authorities,” he said. “They’ll use any excuse for revenge against the privileged.”

  “You little man,” said Cecilia. She stood up.

  “And I seem to remember something else,” said the forger. “Your son. I still have the file. A military man who needed a neutral passport. How is he? I might give you back his file too.”

  AT THE APARTMENT that evening it was the only topic of conversation. Mitzi was so upset by it she had heart flutters. She was lying on the couch, pale, with a cold compress on her forehead. The other women sat nearby in the living room, with Willa propped in a corner of the stuffed chair. Maximilian was shuffling back and forth serving glasses of cold tea.

  “But why would he go to the Gestapo?” said Clara. “Think about it. He’d lose the income from the people he is blackmailing and I’m sure Mitzi is not the only one. So why would he do it?”

  “For immunity,” said Erika. “Or maybe he is getting scared and wants to stop. He can probably offer them the files of a few hundred people.”

  “Let’s hope he won’t do it as long as there’s a chance to get money from anyone,” she said. “What did you tell him?”

  “I said, I’d try,” said Mitzi from the couch. “But I need that piece of paper, and I need a Trade Pass. If anybody checks and I don’t have them, I’ll never work again. If I’m lucky.”

  They sat contemplating this in silence.

  “How much can we raise if we all chip in?” Clara said then. “Even just a few thousand may be enough for him to wait and hope for the rest.”

  They took a count and came up with enough money between them to buy three thousand, five hundred Swiss francs. Two days later all four of them, Cecilia, Erika, Mitzi, and Clara with Willa in her lap, drove there in Mitzi’s little car. They gave the forger the money and promised there would be more.

  In the half-light in his garage he stood sucking his teeth. He looked from one to the other, not sure what to make of this united front. He looked at the child.

  They wanted the document, they said, but the forger shook his head. He said he needed the rest of the money first.

  “How long can you wait?” said Cecilia.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Bring me the money.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  LATE IN OCTOBER, before Albert was back from Poland, she knew she was pregnant again. Because she did not like the army doctor at the base, she packed up little Willa and took the train west into the mountains to St. Töllden. Dr. Mannheim examined her. She was worried, she told him, because she had been spotting.

  Anxiety could do that, he said. He told her to rest as much as possible, to keep calm and to take no medication and no alcohol whatsoever.

  “How about …” she said and blushed. “My husband may be coming home soon. I hope he will.”

  “Ah,” said Dr. Mannheim. “Gentle sexual intercourse should be no problem. Unless the situation gets worse.”

  She stayed at home for several days and relished her parents’ loving attention and their help with Willa while she slept and rested and enjoyed her mother’s cooking. She had forgotten what it was like to feel safe. The bleeding did not recur.

  By then both her brothers had been drafted and sent east. All within four days, her mother said. Called up and dispatched; Peter as an infantry lieutenant, and Bernhard as a mere rifleman with the support company attached to an artillery unit.

  “Peter said he’d never go to war for the corporal. In those words,” she said. “He suggested he’d rather shoot himself.”

  Her mother waved a hand. “They closed the League of Nations office and took his passport, but you knew that. He said he might have a hard time finding work. Go and talk to Daniela sometime. She is going to be lonely. And Mitzi and Erika, how are they?”

  “Fine. Erika is still working on her degree. Mitzi is having problems getting gasoline, even on the black market. Albert thought he might be able to help out with requisition slips, but he can’t. Maybe she can work from the apartment, but she’ll lose clients.”

  They had this conversation in her bedroom, she in a flannel nightgown sitting up against the pillows, her mother in her quilted housecoat in the chair next to the bed. Willa was asleep in the white crib that had once been hers. Only the small lamp on the night table was on. Its light came yellow through the straw shade and fell weakly on everything; on the bookshelves and the bed, and on her mother with her hair in curlers under a silk scarf.

  “Clara,” said her mother. “Forgive me, but I need to ask. Are you happy in your marriage? Do you really love Albert?”

  “With all my heart,” she said without hesitation. “All my heart. It swells when I think of him. Do you know the feeling?”

  Her mother looked startled for a moment. “Oh yes,” she said. “I’m glad for you.”

  “Most of the time I am very happy.”

  “Even though he is away so much?”

  “Yes. And he won’t always be. Someday this war will be over. Until then I can take care of things.”

  “Good.”

  “Mama, I fell in love with him more than any other time on that trip when he was looking for work. Something happened that day, I saw something that – I won’t try to describe it. But I did, and I haven’t doubted him
since. Not really. I love Willa, and I’ll love the new baby too. And someday, when all this is over, I will have an interesting career, teaching and writing. I look forward to that. I’ll have a profession, Mama.”

  “A profession!”

  “Yes. I’m sure of it.”

  For a while they sat in silence, then her mother said, “But your Albert. Him, they didn’t even need to draft. He volunteered for this.”

  “No. Not for this. You know he didn’t. But he took the job, yes. It was exactly what he wanted to do. He saw it as an honour. You’re going to ask me how I feel about that now.”

  “How do you?”

  “Unsure. But it’s only hindsight that makes it complicated. It obviously makes no difference any more. Look at Peter and Bernhard.”

  Her mother sat back in the dim light with her eyes red and tired. “Well,” she said. “You can’t help but wonder. If we’d all refused, if we’d all stood up and refused, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “If we’d all refused. The entire nation?”

  “Something like that.”

  Nothing was said for a while. They heard Willa stirring in the crib that would soon be too small for her.

  “It helps me to think of it as some sort of natural disaster,” she said then. “An earthquake, and all you can do is hold on until it’s over.”

  In the hall they heard her father’s footsteps.

  “They cleared out the museum and it’s some kind of party office now,” her mother whispered. “Your father is very unhappy. They loaded everything on trucks, the Roman artifacts. The breastplates, remember? They took them all away. The bronze horse harness.”

  “Where to?”

  Her mother shrugged. The door opened and he stood looking in. “There you are,” he said. “Let the girls sleep now, Mama. Come to bed.”

  Her mother stood up and moved the chair back against the wall. Her father stood holding out his hand to her.