§
The chestnut trees went first, tired, dusty green leaves turning to gold and bronze as the first frosts curled and severed them from the branches. And then the trees were felled for heating, fed into the boiler in the house on Eisenacher Strasse that still smelled of coal by a man who came to help them. The children came, and the children went. The house was always temporary, a transit station, Bette learned, to other children’s centres, where the lucky ones were plucked by family or sent to America or even Palestine. The little boy with the nervous tic, the girl who wanted a sister, and all the time Bette thought it should be her who was going and every time the UNRRA nurse shook her head, not now. Bette wondered if Fräulein Schneider wasn’t keeping her here on purpose as a helpmate. Still, Bette thought, at least it would be easier for Lieselotte to find her, or Oma and Großvater. Perhaps even her father, should he ever come back. If she was sent goodness knows where, like Bavaria, who would know?
At the end of October Fräulein Schneider gave her a pair of lisle stockings and a cloth coat shrunken and misshapen from washing. At the end of November she gave her a comb to tie her hair back, and summoned Bette to her office. Even with her stockings and her coat, the office was cold. The heating could only come on for a few hours in the evening. An army man sat there in khaki uniform, and the UNRRA nurse who had delivered her earlier.
‘This is Major Buchanan,’ the Fräulein said. ‘From the British army.’
The nurse leaned forward, said in faltering German, ‘We need to ask you a few questions.’
Bette looked at her, at the major, at the Fräulein, who shrugged her shoulders. I don’t know. Bette swallowed. Perhaps they’d found Lieselotte. She said she preferred the British, they didn’t haggle and the Tiergarten was in the British zone.
‘Please confirm your full name,’ the UNRRA nurse said.
‘Bette Ingeborg Fischer.’
‘Address?’
Bette paused. They weren’t going to trick her. She’d told them she didn’t know where she lived. ‘In Mitte,’ she said. ‘I can’t remember the street.’
The nurse translated and the major raised an eyebrow.
‘Your father’s name?’ the nurse said. ‘Date of birth? Place of birth?’ Question after question. Mutti, Lieselotte, Oma, Großvater, aunts, uncles, godparents, intimate details about her family, where they went on holiday, what they did, Father’s interests, Mother’s, on and on and on. Bette sat on her chair, tucking her skirt tight under her thighs, wrapping her coat around her, crossing her feet, uncrossing, cradling her hands, uncradling. She fiddled with the ring on her middle finger.
‘Where did you get the ring?’ the major said.
‘It was my mother’s,’ Bette said. A memory flashed past. ‘It has writing, inside. Mutti said my father’s ring has the same, only the opposite.’
‘May I see?’ the major said.
Bette pulled the ring off and handed it to him. He took it to the light, peering at the inscription. ‘25.12.23. Hermann Fischer. 3.5.25,’ he said. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s the dates of their engagement and wedding,’ the nurse said.
‘May I borrow this?’ the major said.
Bette shook her head, held out her hand. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I will never let this out of my sight. Please give it back to me.’ She said it as politely as she could. The major nodded, passed it over to her. She slipped it back on her finger.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I think we have all we need for the moment. We’ll be in touch again in a few days.’
‘Why did you ask me all those questions?’
The major smiled and the nurse translated. ‘I don’t want to get your hopes up, but we might be able to reunite you with a family member.’
‘Lieselotte?’
‘I can’t say for the moment.’
He stood up, collecting his cap, shaking the Fräulein’s hand. The UNRRA nurse smiled at her. Even the Fräulein was smiling. Bette’s heart was pounding and she knew her face was flushed, could feel the heat pumping around her body even though she could see her breath in the cold air.
§
The major returned a week later. It had snowed in the night, and a hard frost gave it a crust that crunched under foot. Bette heard him on the pavement, watched from the upstairs window, saw him step into the house. She skipped down the stairs, two at a time, knocked at the office door before the Fräulein had summoned her, stood in the lintel, her lisle stockings concertinaing round her ankles, the buttons on her coat open, revealing the dull brown dress beneath.
The nurse beckoned her. ‘Komm herein.’ Bette looked at the Fräulein. This was her domain but she nodded, smiled, as if she knew. ‘We have located your father,’ she said in German. ‘And you are to join him.’
‘In England,’ the major added. It needed no translation.
Her thoughts bounced and raced, dodgem cars in a circus ring, no reason to their journey, no destination.
‘Aren’t you happy?’ the nurse said.
Bette nodded, could stand no more, collapsed onto the floor, knees up to her chest, head banging the side of the desk as she sobbed.
Vati. She had no memory of his face, just the photograph of him and Mutti on their wedding day. Would he know her?
‘So you need to collect your things,’ the Fräulein was saying. ‘The major has your papers and you’re flying to England today.’
‘Flying?’ The words bounced off her forehead. ‘England?’
‘Lucky you.’ The Fräulein beamed. ‘An aeroplane.’
‘My father? Vati? And Lieselotte?’
The UNRRA nurse looked at the major, back to her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘We have no news of your sister. But come…’ She held out her hand and Bette took it. ‘Let’s go and pack your things. Where do you keep them?’
‘They’re in the laundry room,’ the Fräulein said.
‘Then lead the way, Bette.’
A rush of excitement, a thrill, a topsy-turvy ferment, froth on a wild, raging sea. Bette ran to the laundry room, sorted out her underwear, her nightdress, her spare dress, checked the name tags, all in order. The Fräulein had followed them in, and Bette could tell she didn’t trust the UNRRA nurse.
The dress with the net tutu was still on the rack, unclaimed.
‘And that one,’ Bette said, pointing, turning to the Fräulein, asserting herself with a new confidence. ‘I will wear that one.’
The UNRRA nurse nodded. ‘How pretty.’
She lifted it off the rack and gave it to Bette. The Fräulein scowled but said nothing. Bette unbuttoned the brown dress, pulling it over her head, discarding it on the floor and slipping on the tutu. No matter her vest showed through the straps and the cardigan covered the sequins.
‘Here,’ the nurse said, delving into her pocket, pulling out her lipstick. ‘Open your mouth.’ She dabbed on the lipstick. ‘Now smack your lips together. Like this.’ Like Mutti, Bette wanted to say. I know how to do this.
‘Don’t you look a treat. Your father will be so proud to see you.’
She could dance, too. She would be a dancer like Mutti and Lieselotte. For her father, smelling of Mutti’s lipstick.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Nuremberg: November 1945 – January 1946
He became that defendant smoking cigarettes, one after the other, holding them between languorous fingers, eyelids half closed. We were under attack, we had to dispose of the Jews. I did a good job and nobody thanked me. There in that booth, searching for the word, John was that man. And the others. Flick left, right. Life. Death. He was that Nazi, too, corralling the skeletal slaves, dropping gas into the chamber, shifting the dead like ballast.
His German wasn’t up to it, he’d told them. He needed time and a dictionary. Subsequent, yes. But simultaneous. That wasn’t possible, not for him. Not with these words, groping for their meaning, their accuracy.
They came in his dreams, memories storming the walls of oblivion. Words polka-stepping betwe
en the corpses, Dance with me, John, women with withered dugs, give me a smoke. Lieselotte sliding from a pack of cards, and the cards were bodies, stacked and shuffled. She smiled as she came towards him, became Anatoly with worms bursting from his pustules, and the boy with the mangled foot cried out that he was under orders, he had his orders. Don’t go near him. Otto Ohlendorf nodded, said we had to understand, I did a good job, don’t you agree?
John jerked awake, his leg stiff with cramp. He’d drunk too much last night. They all had. Drowned their sorrows in whisky and beer. Each to his own. A silent club of proxy victims, soaking up the pain of the survivors, the witnesses. The excuses of the henchmen, the quibbles of the murderers. The dry, forensic questions of the lawyers.
He pushed himself out of bed, washed himself and shaved. He’d only just started shaving when he’d been conscripted. Twice a week to start with, then every other day. Now he had to do it every morning, lather his face and scritch with the razor. He used to watch his father shave. These days his chin made the same noise, his lips twisted the same way, fingers pulled his cheeks like his father before him, scritch, scratch.
Did that make him a man? His father had never cracked, not even under enemy fire with shrapnel searing his leg.
‘Mustn’t mollycoddle the boy,’ he used to say. ‘Needs to toughen up. Too soft for his own good.’
Was he soft? A coward? He loved words over fists, languages over bayonets. He’d won an exhibition at Merton, Modern Languages, deferred it. He’d prove to his father he had the stomach for war too.
He made his way towards the Palace of Justice. The old town was in ruins and the air thick with dust. He coughed. They all coughed, the Nuremberg Cough, ha ha. A cough like no other, from the ashes and stench of death. John thought it was nerves, too, day in, day out cramped in the booth, twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off, tense as he struggled, lungs tight, tendons taut. Léon Dostert had given them all training in the new technique, in the microphones and headsets. He was an American, an army man, a lieutenant colonel, expected discipline.
‘My German isn’t good enough,’ John had said. ‘I’m not a native speaker.’ Not like the other men and women. He found it hard groping for the word when he didn’t want to say what he had to say.
‘Your superiors think otherwise,’ Lieutenant Colonel Dostert said. ‘You come with excellent reports. Give it a go. We can move you on to translation if necessary.’
John walked through the doors as the soldiers standing guard saluted him, and up the main staircase ahead. His legs dragged, as if he were ploughing through a quagmire of bloated forms with stippled fingers pulling him down. The dry, forensic posts planted to guide the way were beyond his reach.
He slipped in next to Sieg, almost as young as himself, sitting with the other translators in the side room as the lawyers opened the day’s proceedings, coffee and cigarettes for the taking. They listened on a loudspeaker to the deliberations, waiting for their shift. Russian speakers, German, French and English. John’s cup clattered back on its saucer and he righted it, fingers shaking. Sieg looked up, placed a hand over John’s to steady it, raised an eyebrow, smiled. They’d been drinking together last night.
‘You cannot feel and do your job,’ he said, voice hushed so the others didn’t hear. ‘Remember what we said? You must not feel.’
How can you do this? John had asked him last night. How can you listen?
John swallowed now, nodded, his mind stewed in misery, his muscles pulsing out of control. He could no sooner detach himself from the task than sever his own head.
‘It does not make you a monster,’ Sieg said. He’d escaped on the Kindertransport, had lost most of his family. Sieg spoke English with a Scottish lilt. ‘Or a sadist,’ he went on. ‘It doesn’t make you amoral. Any more than a ventriloquist becomes his dummy.’
Like Archie in the Navy Mixture on the wireless, John thought, except it wasn’t. He envied Sieg his calm, his detachment. The other translators too, with bruised, chequered histories. He dreaded making a mistake, dreaded his job. Why did it affect him so badly?
‘Five minutes to switchover,’ the monitor said. He was American, a lieutenant like himself. John began to sweat, coffee moiling in his gut. He wanted to vomit. He clasped a hand over his mouth and stood up abruptly, knocking his cup as the window spun to the side and the walls crashed towards him. He felt the furniture as he fell between it, the sharp wooden arm of the chair piercing and wrenching his side as he lost consciousness.
He came to in the first-aid room, an army nurse feeling his pulse.
‘The doctor will be here soon,’ she said. ‘You fainted. Nothing to worry about, though you have a nasty bump on your head and the makings of a fine bruise on your left side.’ She poured him some water. ‘Sit up.’ She hooked an arm behind his back, pushed him forward and stuffed pillows behind him.
‘I’m on duty,’ John said. ‘I have to go—’
‘You’re going nowhere,’ she said. She smiled. ‘Where are you from?’
He lifted the glass to his lips, dribbling the water down his chin as his side throbbed with pain.
‘Here.’ She took the glass, held it while he sipped.
‘Thank you.’ He leaned back on the pillows. ‘Surrey. And you?’
‘Northumberland,’ she said. ‘Can’t you tell?’ She laughed, a tinker bell of a sound.
‘It’s supposed to be beautiful,’ he said. ‘The North.’
‘Have you never been?’
He shook his head.
‘Aw, pet,’ she said. ‘You have a canny treat ahead then.’
He tried to laugh, but the pain in his side was vicious as a shark’s bite.
The doctor suspected a ruptured spleen. He was in his late fifties, John guessed, might even have served in the Great War, an old-fashioned doctor with a moustache and wire-rimmed glasses.
‘There’s no way of knowing for sure except to confine you to bed and monitor you,’ he said. ‘Wait and watch. And while we’re at it,’ he added, ‘we’ll find out why you fainted in the first place.’
John leaned back on the pillows and shut his eyes. He hadn’t slept properly for weeks. He’d drunk too much. He hadn’t eaten breakfast, tanked up on black coffee. It was obvious why he had fainted.
‘Though of equal concern,’ the doctor added, ‘is this palsy. Hold out your arms straight.’
John stuck his arms out, watched as they quivered.
‘How long has this been going on?’
John wanted to say, Since Private Nash’s death, since Lieselotte’s murder, since Anatoly. Since Nuremberg. Since now.
‘Doctor,’ John said, ‘I have to get back. I’m one of the translators, at the trial.’
‘They’ll have to get a replacement,’ the doctor said. ‘For the time being.’ He took John’s pulse. ‘I’m not a neurologist or a psychiatrist,’ he went on. ‘And don’t have much truck with them either. Dizziness. Tremors. How are you sleeping?’
‘I’m not,’ John said.
‘Chest pains?’
John nodded.
‘Could be some kind of war neurosis,’ the doctor said, sniffing and wiping his nostrils with the back of his hand. ‘Insufficient training, I’d wager. Though you’re too young to have seen much active service, if any.’ He pulled out a handkerchief, blew his nose, inspecting it for ash and soot. He shook his head, added, ‘The PIE system works well.’
‘War neurosis?’ John said. ‘PIE?’
‘Proximity. Immediacy. Expectation of recovery. Sends you back fighting fit. Can’t have square pegs in round holes, not in the army. But you’ll have a good rest anyway with this suspected rupture. That’ll probably do it.’ He nodded to the nurse, turned at the door and pointed at John. ‘Don’t think nervous exhaustion is an honourable escape route,’ he said. ‘I’ve always thought it a sign of social and emotional immaturity.’
John pushed his head back into the pillows, as if it was too weighty for his neck, misery pressing its savage palm ac
ross his face. He didn’t hear the nurse come back into the room.
‘Don’t mind him,’ she said. He opened his eyes. ‘And his so-called bedside manner.’ She leaned over, adjusted his pillows. ‘Get some rest. The ambulance will be here in due course.’
‘Where are they taking me?’
‘To the American army hospital in Munich,’ she said. ‘Then one of our field hospitals.’ Adding with a soft, low voice, ‘I’ve seen this before. Push for a rehabilitation hospital, like the one at Mill Hill. And a job back at base. Aw, pet. You’re awfully young. And what’s going on here…’ She tilted her head towards the door and the courtroom beyond it. ‘That’s too much for a lad. Too much for anyone.’
He pushed himself up on his elbow, fell back, yelping with pain.
§
Effort syndrome. That’s what the doctor diagnosed. Soldier’s Heart. War Neurosis. The Mill Hill Emergency Hospital had closed, so it had to be the Maudsley. It was his old CO, Major Buchanan, who stepped in.
‘Just had a chat with your father,’ he said. ‘Brigadier Harris, DCO.’ As if John needed to be reminded who his father was. He could imagine the conversation. Can’t let the boy have that stigma. Mental instability. Dog him all his life.
‘And the War Office,’ the major added. He pulled a chair close to John’s and leaned towards him.
‘You could spend the rest of your time in the army weaving baskets in the Maudsley,’ he said. ‘Or twiddling your thumbs in Düsseldorf. Either way, it’s a waste of your talents.’ He pulled out a packet of Senior Service and offered them to John.
‘Thank you, sir,’ John said, leaning forward to take the cigarette, wincing as his bruised flesh stretched. He took a deep breath, savouring the nicotine inside his lungs, filtering into his blood, coursing around his body. It was the first cigarette of the day, made him light-headed. He exhaled.
Major Buchanan twisted his nostril to one side. ‘Bally good interpreter, that’s what I said. Damned clever at translation and what have you.’
The Forgotten Page 27
