by Steven Uhly
Maria thought of her child and of the cold, which it did not know, and she was overcome by a new fear, this time for a being who could do nothing, who was completely at the mercy of everything and everyone. She wrapped her child in thick layers, layer after layer until Frau Kramer told her to stop. She said, “The baby must be next to your body. It’ll freeze otherwise.” Maria unwrapped the child and bound it to her bare skin, its head between her breasts. Then she put so many clothes on top that Lisa was no longer visible.
The thunder of cannon was now so loud that it sounded as if the Russians had arrived in the forest that ran over the hill behind the house and then down to the river—five kilometers away at most—which flowed toward the town.
Maria sat on the cart and Frau Kramer plodded alongside, holding the cow by a rope. They did not look back as the farmhouse behind them got ever smaller. They would never know that the stove would continue throwing out heat for hours before it went cold and with it the air. And they were spared the sight of a Russian tank driving straight through the rear wall ten hours later, burying the Kramers’ bed beneath it, pulling down the roof and walls of the rooms, crunching the parlor with the chunky wooden table beneath its tracks, as well as the rest of the farmhouse furniture that did not belong to the Kramers but to the Polish family who had once lived here, not so long ago.
As the Soviet Army’s tank division advanced westward, a house no longer stood in the place where Lisa Kramer had been born.
14
Anna was intent on forgetting nothing. She had set up an archive in her head which she would always access when alone to check that everything was in its place, every memory. But in this archive there was a very particular place whose true significance only became evident later. It was the memory of how she had survived after Obersturmbannführer Ranzner left without settling his bequest, of which Anna was a part.
The events that occurred meant that, later, Anna did not know who the father of her child was.
When it was all over and she was still alive, when Ranzner’s S.S. men had taken the things he wanted to keep and defend in Posen until the last drop of blood had been shed—the Arcimboldo copies, plundered furniture from the past three centuries, his illusions about himself and this war—when the noise of the withdrawing troops in the square outside had faded away, Anna got dressed, went to her room and put on her winter coat with the yellow star on the left breast, in the center of which the word “Jew” was written in Hebrew-like letters. She had nothing to keep her head warm, no gloves and no winter boots.
She spent a while wandering round the old town hall, looking in all the rooms, recalling the furniture and pictures that Ranzner had dispatched. Once again Anna stood in the place where Ranzner had said farewell to Sturmbannführer Treitz, once again she thought of the conversation about the reincarnation of Nazis, which had opened her eyes to Ranzner’s fear.
At some point Anna pushed open one of the double doors of the grand entrance and left the town hall. Tiny snowflakes were falling, they burned her eyes. She went down the steps and crossed the square. The endless imprints of boots, wheels and tracks had already lost their sharp profile, soon they would be nothing but vague indentations, and by the next day an untouched white cover would lie here, like a clean cloth put on a table for the next meal.
Anna meandered aimlessly through the streets and alleys of this small town, she enjoyed the sensation of walking, she enjoyed the gathering cold in her limbs. She enjoyed the emptiness in her head, void of thought.
At some point she found herself standing by the church. To the left a short, narrow alley led further into the old town, and from it the tang of fresh bread wafted to her nose. She was not hungry. Entering the church, she sat on a pew in the front row, gazed at the altar, the candlesticks without candles, the cross in the background to which a man was nailed, his head hanging.
Anna fell asleep, but was abruptly woken by a new noise. People were pouring into the church, old and young women with children. The noise of engines droned outside, men shouted orders. The people flooding in paid no attention to Anna, they looked frightened, some kneeled to pray, the tension written across their faces, children screamed or took refuge in sleep, the old women kept quiet, sitting or standing, wearing headscarves, the most their wrinkles revealed was how they had spent their lives, not how they felt at that moment.
The church became fuller, the laments ever louder.
Anna saw the fear in people’s eyes, she understood every feeling that penetrated their senses, and every word. But she was not one of them. She observed the Germans as if she were not in the same room, as if a membrane existed between her and the others, as if the fact that her mother tongue was also theirs had lost all meaning.
Anna stood and wandered down the broad aisle between the rows of pews to the door. The star on her breast made people flinch when she stepped through the throng without looking at them. What’s she doing here, one of the women said. Anna pried open the heavy church portal, an icy gust of wind blew in, the brightness blinded her.
Then Anna was outside in the snow. The square had changed. Tanks, lorries and howitzers were everywhere, the tire, track and boot prints of the Germans were now the tire, track and boot prints of the Red Army, come to liberate the abandoned town.
Two Red Army soldiers rushed toward Anna, their weapons at the ready. When they saw the yellow star on her coat, their grim expressions changed; they had been in Lublin and in Łódź, they knew what the Germans had done. They sent her across to the other side of the square before storming the church, where it went deathly quiet.
Walking amongst the Soviet soldiers rushing here and there, Anna came to a tracked vehicle, a large van, parked beside the town hall. The building was acquiring a new tenant, the commander of this tank division, whose furniture had already been taken up the large steps and inside.
The vehicle looked like a dark-green tortoise. On the bonnet, the sides and the roof, red crosses were marked in white circles. Anna’s lips had turned blue, she no longer felt the cold in her hands and feet, and her face was as stiff as a mask. At the back of the vehicle she knocked on a metal door. It was opened by a small, round woman with chubby cheeks and a button nose. Anna made gestures to signify that she was supposed to come here, the woman helped her climb up, with her frozen hands Anna could not hold on anymore.
It was cramped inside. There were two bunks to the left and right, and a narrow passage between them. On one of the bunks lay a soldier who neither moved nor said a word. His head was bandaged, the bandage was bloody. It smelled of camphor. A second nurse, a small, slim woman with a high forehead and clear blue eyes, sat beside him on a stool. Now she stood to attend to Anna.
The two women treated her with the dispassion of those who had done nothing but witness terrible things and prevent even worse whenever they were able. They sat Anna in a corner of the ambulance right behind the driver’s cab, by the head of the bunk on which the soldier lay. They gave her a vodka and wrapped her in warm blankets. From time to time the injured man groaned as if dreaming.
Anna dozed, her limbs warmed up and started to itch. After a while the rear door opened, a man shouted loudly and the two nurses leaped up to take something from him. Enamel bowls with steaming potato soup, Anna was given one. She ate and fell asleep once more.
Somebody was shaking her arm. She opened her eyes, it took a while for her to establish where she was. In front of her stood a slight man in a winter coat that was far too big for him. His cheeks were sunken, he had dark, frizzy hair, his eyes were set deep in their sockets; he looked as if he had not slept in days. Pulling off his black leather gloves, finger by finger, he said in Yiddish, “I’m from the Jewish Antifascist Committee of the Soviet government.” He stuffed his gloves into his coat pocket and took a form from the slim briefcase he was carrying. His face was full of curves, the forehead was not only high, but broad, the chin was narrow and round, the arcs of the cheekbones sat just beneath the eyes, the nose was lon
g and bent. A strange face with strange eyes that made Anna feel uneasy. She said, “I only speak German.”
He turned to the nurses and said something in Russian. The women nodded as if they did not know what to say. Then he took a stool from the opposite corner and sat in front of Anna. He gave her a fleeting smile, for a brief moment his deathly tired face changed, and Anna could see a different man with a different life and different feelings, for himself, for the world, for Anna. Then it was gone, as if it had never existed, and he said, “I told them you were an abducted Jew. We’ve got to be a bit careful.” He glanced at the nurses again, who were looking over, and gave them a reassuring smile; the women smiled back, which to Anna felt like a kind of agreement, Just let me get on with it, Fine. Turning to Anna he said, “Otherwise they’ll think you’re a collaborator and you’re certainly not one of those, are you?” He smiled at Anna, but now his eyes were prowling. Anna looked at him and saw his timidity and his wildness and heard again the word “collaborator” and knew that both “Yes” and “No” would be lies. She said, “Will you believe me?”
Rocking his head on his thin neck, he said, “Depends how you say it.”
“How I say it?” Anna raised her eyebrows. She tried to understand what he meant by that, she read his face, she saw his uncertainty and his dangerousness.
“No,” she said, “It doesn’t depend on that and you know it.”
He inclined his head slightly. “You’re right, we humans are better encrypted than any secret message. But you’ve convinced me all the same.”
“Of what?” Anna asked.
He looked at her in surprise, frowning as if he had to think about it. Then he nodded slowly and said, “That you’re worth it, no matter what you’ve done.”
Anna suspected that this sentence was a lure, that this man was lying in wait for her again, and now he seemed like a hunter, the best-camouflaged hunter ever; with his slight body, his thin neck and his sunken cheeks he looked like the easiest prey, one just had to knock him down. Maybe even Anna was capable of that.
But his eyes betrayed the camouflage. Anna said, “The Nazis talked about people’s worth too.”
Shrugging, he retreated behind his smile and said, “I trust my knowledge of human nature.”
All of a sudden Anna saw this scene from outside; she and the stranger were two gamblers playing invisible roulette, the stake was Anna’s life. The game was new, but Anna was well acquainted with the rules, they were ancient. Josef Ranzner had instructed her, and this man sitting before her, keeping a close watch on her, taught her that these rules applied everywhere.
Without warning he terminated the game. He held out a slender hand, conjured a new smile on his face, an open and friendly smile, as if there were no mistrust in the world, and said, “I’m Abba.”
Anna took his hand hesitantly, it felt soft and tender. Anna was rattled; she had just seen through him and already he had slipped away from her again.
Abba’s gaze returned to the two nurses, who were chatting in hushed tones. Then he turned his attention again to Anna.
“I assume you don’t want to go back to Germany?”
Anna shook her head. He nodded.
“Good.” He paused briefly to think before continuing. “I’m going to tell you something and then I want you to have a good think about it. The situation of the Jews in the Soviet Union is better: we’re not killed, we’re fighting on the Russians’ side against the Germans, some of us get medals for bravery. We raise money abroad for the Soviet Army.” He stopped and looked searchingly at Anna. Lowering his voice, he said, “But no one knows what’s going to happen once this war is over.” He paused again. He scrutinized Anna as if trying to read her thoughts; Anna stared back and waited.
“There’s an organization that can help you leave Europe and make for . . .” he hesitated, glancing at the two nurses, then looking Anna in the eye again. “For Palestine. Are you interested?”
Anna nodded without thinking. In Abba’s eyes she had seen that by asking this question he was putting himself in danger. This reassured her, for the first time in ages it gave her the feeling that she had something in common with another person.
Abba gave a cursory smile and said quietly, “Excellent. Now I’m going to tell the nurses that I’m taking you to a holding camp for liberated Jews. Until that point everything is legal. Once there you’ll wait with others who want to emigrate until we find an opportunity to get you over the border into Romania.”
He fished a pen from his coat pocket and filled out the form. Anna had to give her full name, date and place of birth and educational qualifications. Numbers and words sketching an entire life and which now felt oddly abstract, as if they represented a particular position in a system of coordinates, no more. No meadow and no child in it. All meadows looked the same, all childhood was over.
15
“My name is not Lisa Kramer,” Lisa said at breakfast one morning, glaring at the horrified face of her grandmother. “And I’m not a girl, either,” she added. Now reassured, her grandmother smiled and asked, “What are you then?”
“A soldier,” Lisa replied, watching with delight as a frown appeared on her grandmother’s forehead. “A soldier,” she reiterated, “like Uncle Tobi upstairs.” Frau Kramer shook her head and took a sip from her coffee cup.
“Why do you spend time with that queer fish?”
“He’s nice and he tells me wonderful stories,” Lisa said casually.
“Wonderful stories about the war, I bet,” Frau Kramer said, exhaling through pursed lips as a sign of her disapproval. Lisa ignored her. Dangling her legs, she ate up her bread and assumed an expression of boredom.
“What have you got at school today?” Frau Kramer asked, to change the subject.
“Just stupid lessons,” Lisa said with a shrug.
Frau Kramer sighed and looked out of the window. “Would you try to go to school on your own today?”
Lisa shook her head and Frau Kramer gave in. How can I bring you up, she thought, if I indulge your every whim? But as this crossed her mind the answer was already there: she was not bringing up Lisa; Lisa was bringing herself up. She was armed with a knowledge of the world that astonished Frau Kramer, and sometimes the old woman wondered how much the girl had taken in of all the things that had happened to her.
They got ready to leave. One wooden toothbrush sat by the sink, its bristles splayed in all directions. They shared it between them, first Lisa, then Frau Kramer. Coat, shoes, the dark-green satchel made of lacquered linen, practically empty now that some books were banned again, textbooks too, and no new ones coming until next year, but the headmaster had said exactly the same thing last year on Lisa’s first day at school.
They descended the narrow spiral staircase to the street and slowly walked the three blocks to school along the cobbled path. There was a light drizzle, as was often the case here; the sea was so close that the air was almost permanently damp, and in winter the cold seeped into everything, even though the temperatures never fell as low as in Poland. In the five years she had been living here, Frau Kramer had only ever known it to be minus twenty degrees once, as it had been when they fled. While Lisa skipped alongside with her satchel, Frau Kramer looked at the tall, narrow, redbrick houses of Lübeck old town, which even now felt alien and inhospitable. Five years in a waiting room, she mused, before banishing this thought and turning to Lisa, who bounced through the streets of her home town without a care in the world, apart from making sure she landed on the next cobblestone she had eyed up.
Lisa’s primary school was a redbrick building too, with pointed gables. When they arrived at the entrance, Lisa held up her arms to Frau Kramer, Frau Kramer bent down to Lisa, Lisa pushed up her head and gave her a kiss. “See you later!” she said. Frau Kramer waved and watched her disappear into the building.
Then she slowly went back the way they had come. She was going to sit in the small living room and sew her birthday present for Lisa, a winter co
at she had tailored from her own coats. In the kitchen was a table oven made of sheet iron and clay, which they used for heating in winter. There were still a few bits of wood and pine cones in the cubbyhole; these would have to suffice for the fire. Regulating the temperature of the oven was a tricky business, but Frau Kramer would bake a cake for Lisa nonetheless. She would smile and be cheerful, all day long if necessary. As if this were a happy day and not the opposite as well. I owe that to the child, she thought.
Frau Kramer knew that the coming months were going to be difficult for them. She was afraid of winter, which brought out all the pain, all the emotions, all the loss. In her mind’s eye she saw Margarita, a pregnant Margarita in the cellar, Margarita screaming in agony at Lisa’s birth. The sound of the front door when her husband left without saying goodbye. Margarita with tiny Lisa in her arms. Margarita beside her in bed, where her husband had once slept. Margarita wrapped in thick blankets on the cart. Margarita on foot when the Russians had confiscated everything from them. Margarita with no strength left. Margarita utterly silent, large white snowflakes dancing all about her, no warmth in her body, no baby at her breast, for Frau Kramer had taken care of the child, her tears freezing virtually the moment they appeared in her eyes. Margarita all alone in the snow, as Frau Kramer pressed on with nothing left in this world apart from Lisa. The recollection had been set in motion and could not be stopped. Frau Kramer turned into her street without taking it in, seeing instead their nighttime arrival in Lübeck, feeling the endless final march to their temporary home, entering the damp, stuffy barn where she had survived a whole winter with other ethnic Germans from the east. She saw the British soldiers who had brought them to the holding camp just north of Lübeck, only to send them away again a few months later because the camp was needed for new refugees, for Jews. She felt the hunger raging in her belly like a wild animal, in her arms she held Lisa who was getting ever thinner and ever closer to death. She felt the fear of losing her final child as well.
