by Steven Uhly
Lisa said nothing in reply, she fixed her eyes on her grandmother.
The bus drove past the pond at Trems, with its weeping willows, frogs and ducks, childhood memories scurried through Lisa’s mind. The bus stopped, some passengers alighted. The bus continued on its way, to the left lay Bad Schwartau, to the right the Teerhof islands floated past them, once upon a time, when ships were made of wood, they used to be tarred here. Lisa had learned everything about the city of Lübeck’s glorious past, but only now did she fancy she understood why none of it had interested her.
“It’s not your fault, Grandma,” she said unexpectedly.
Frau Kramer gave her a look of surprise. Lisa smiled back.
“It’s not your fault that I never felt at home here,” she said. “For a long time I thought the only reason you came here was to wait for your husband, and I asked myself how I was ever going to be able to put down roots in Lübeck if the only relatives I had left didn’t want to be here themselves.”
“I’m so sorry, Lisa!”
“No, Grandma! It’s not your fault.”
“No?”
“Of course not! I just don’t belong here.” Raising her voice, she said out loud, “I don’t belong here because I’m a Jew.”
A few passengers turned around, but nobody said anything. Frau Kramer was so shocked that she wanted to give her granddaughter a good telling off, wanted to say, Are you trying to get everyone’s back up? But instead she said softly to Lisa, “Of course you belong here, you grew up here, you don’t know any different.”
Lisa did not reply. She peered through the wet window to where the old section of the Schwartau meandered in its deep bed through pastures and fields, she thought of Selma’s words, If I’d gone to Palestine then maybe I’d have had more sun in my life. But she had stayed out of love for Mosche, That’s a reason, Lisa thought.
The bus drove toward Dänischburg. She was not fond of this area, its countryside scarred by large industrial complexes. Warehouses, the power station, run-down boatyards, shipwrecks, the austere three- and five-story apartment blocks, which were ten years old at most, and amongst these the tiny old villages with their church spires, their narrow houses unleashing in her feelings of forlornness and bleakness. But today she had the impression that this corresponded with the truth, Why go on telling more lies, she thought, by opening my eyes only to beauty and shutting them to everything I don’t like? To the fact that I’m a forlorn entity myself, sitting in a random bus next to this random woman?
She paused, looked at her grandmother and sighed. She felt sympathy for the old woman, who had done something that very few had dared to do: save Jews, without ever having received acknowledgment of the fact. How far must I go, she wondered, to find something true within me?
By the time the bus stopped beside the church and the driver called out, “All change, please!” it had stopped raining. The two women got off. The Evangelical church soared above them, a rectangular brick tower with a pitched roof. “Now it’s your turn,” Lisa said to her grandmother.
Frau Kramer nodded and linked arms with her granddaughter. They went northward along the main road for a while, then turned to the west. After a few minutes they were at Waldhusener Weg, following it out of the village and into the forest. After a few hundred meters the road was no longer asphalt, just a woodland path. In the middle of the forest Frau Kramer stopped and pointed to a plantation of young spruces. “It was here,” she said.
Lisa looked at the young trees. Nothing remained of Pöppendorf D.P. camp. “I want you to tell me everything,” she said.
Frau Kramer took a deep breath. Grabbing Lisa’s hands, she said, “If you want to know how we got here then first I’ve got to tell you what happened after the Poles took us in on the day your mother died.”
Lisa nodded. The time between their first conversation in Travemünde and this forest now evaporated, and Lisa became aware that since then part of her had remained on that Polish farm and only today would be able to move on. Only now would time pass again for this part of Lisa Ejzenstain, and perhaps one day she and her grandmother would arrive in the present, if enough had been said.
Squeezing her granddaughter’s hands, Frau Kramer started to talk. She spoke of how the following morning the Russians had come in search of Germans, everyone had to assemble in the living room, she with Lisa on her arm, and when one of the soldiers stopped in front of her she sent a prayer heavenward, the soldier asked her something but all she could do was stare at him and pray silently, the soldier became furious, he repeated his question, only this time screaming it with his face close up to hers, and Frau Kramer prayed and stared at him. At that moment the Poles’ eldest daughter said something, the soldier’s head turned, then he looked at Frau Kramer again, but this time with a different expression, it was as if he had swapped places with his twin brother, and the twin brother had tears in his eyes and said something and stroked her cheek and said a long sentence before he and the other soldiers left. When they were gone the people stood motionless in the living room for a while, then the mother hugged the eldest daughter and kissed her cheek, then the father came up to Frau Kramer, who was holding tightly onto her tiny granddaughter as if someone was trying to snatch her away, and brought her over to a chair so she could sit down. They told her what had been said, She told him, the mother said, still hugging her brave child, that the lady with the baby had lost her entire family because of the Germans, And then, Frau Kramer now said, looking up at her granddaughter, who was walking beside her through the dripping Waldhusen forest, then I knew that this was the truth. She told Lisa what the Russian had said, He said, the mother said, letting go of her daughter, that he was from Byelorussia and half his relations had been murdered by the Germans. I was so ashamed of my people, Frau Kramer said. They continued walking.
“Where was the entrance?” Lisa asked.
Frau Kramer stopped, she looked back, forward, she shrugged and said, “I can’t say for sure. Somewhere here there was a gate.”
“Let’s go in!” Lisa said.
Frau Kramer did not fancy the idea, It’s all wet, she said, I haven’t got the right shoes on, she said, but it was of no use. She had come to open the floodgates to the truth, she had to leave the path, Lisa dragged Frau Kramer behind her, between the shining young trees, Maybe we’ll find something, she shouted out into the forest and Frau Kramer abandoned her resistance and started looking. But they found nothing, no screw, no scrap of material, no wooden slat. With wet shoes and wet clothes they stood in the plantation, imagining that a camp for people had once stood here, people who had nothing else. Lisa looked around, sighed and said, “Tell me more, Grandma!”
They walked back, they left the camp and Frau Kramer continued. She spoke of how they had stayed with the Poles for two days, two days during which she thought about Margarita still asleep in the snow. After two days I couldn’t bear it any longer, she said, and through the thick snowfall Lisa pictured a swathed, faceless figure, she heard the whistling of the icy wind tugging at her mother, she saw the hood, at any moment a strong gust would whip it off and she would see her, she thought, It’s the dead who cause us to take flight, she thought of the Russian soldier with tears in his eyes and thought, Perhaps each attack is nothing but a secret flight, perhaps he and my grandmother were fleeing to the west together and didn’t know it, but she did not articulate her thoughts, for Frau Kramer spoke of how the Polish family gave them warm clothing and provisions, how she bound Lisa to her chest again and then put the dress on top and the coat and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and strapped on a rucksack the Poles had given her, then went back out into the cold. They said, Go that way and along there and you’ll come to a small station, it’s on the line to Frankfurt an der Oder, if you’re lucky a train will come along, may God be with you.
The blanket of cloud above the Waldhusen forest tore open, now the path led through older clusters of trees, they had left the camp behind them, they would return t
o it when the time was right, for now Frau Kramer was trudging through the white landscape, noticing that many had already passed this way, suitcases lay in the snow, prams with frozen babies stood at the side of the path, Some were as small as you, she told Lisa and spoke of the station where thousands were standing in the cold, having survived this far, and now waited for a train, for a whole day, and then a miracle occurred, a Reichsbahn train arrived, an unbelievably long train, it passed through the station at walking pace, it was full of people, When’s it going to stop? someone beside Frau Kramer said, and then she realized the train was not stopping. There was screaming, running, doors were wrenched open, people tried to leap onto the moving train, the entire mass of refugees set in motion, but the train slithered past like a large animal unbothered by the flies pestering it, I ran, Frau Kramer said, after the train, and once more a helper emerged from nowhere, a hand that stretched out toward her, pulled her into the open door of the train, a man who nodded to her and disappeared again into the densely packed crowd filling the corridor of the carriage. One hundred kilometers, Frau Kramer said, as to the right of the path the forest came to an end by a field, It wasn’t any further than that, but it took us two days. Why? her granddaughter’s eyes asked, and Frau Kramer spoke of the deep drone of the bomber groups and the bee-like buzzing of the fighter aircraft, she spoke of how the train stopped and the people fled in droves into the snow, under the trees, to avoid being anywhere near when it happened. But it did not happen. When the train started moving again and the people hastily jumped back on, each one driven by the fear of being left behind, some were in fact left behind, these continued running for a while until overtaken by the inevitability of destiny, as the train got smaller and smaller. Frau Kramer shuddered at the memory of these poor people, Isn’t it strange? she said to her granddaughter, I see the train moving off as if I were one of them, but in reality I was watching these people get smaller and smaller.
Perhaps that’s love, Lisa thought, But perhaps it’s just fear. What if it’s both? What then? But she said nothing and listened, for now Frau Kramer spoke of their arrival in Frankfurt an der Oder, of S.S. men who met them at the station, Armed with submachine guns, she exclaimed as they passed the turn-off for Sereetz, where blocks of houses stood for refugees from the east, built since she was first here, but all in good time, now she is in Frankfurt an der Oder, trudging through the snow with many others, up in front a Hitler youth, still too young for the front, but big enough to take a bunch of filthy refugees to their emergency accommodation, It was already dark when we stumbled our way through the ruins, she said, recalling the unnatural darkness of a blacked-out city that lay there helplessly, waiting for the next strike from the air and unable to do anything but turn off the lights. On the way to the botanical gardens they encountered a group of people, Maybe refugees too, Frau Kramer thought, but it was just men passing by in silence, and the looks which met them were indecipherable. Forced laborers, the Hitler youth said when they had gone, On the way to their shift. That was quite an experience, Frau Kramer told Lisa, They were as homeless as we were, as reluctant as we were to be in Frankfurt an der Oder, as unhappy as we were, and yet there was nothing to connect us because we belonged to the people which had done that to them. For a while she said nothing, but the images would not be driven from her head, and so she continued. Large areas of the city had been evacuated, the Hitler youth told them, Soon you’ll have to move on, the Führer has declared Frankfurt an der Oder a fortress, they could hear the pride in the boy’s voice, in front of whose eyes the catastrophe was unfolding without his realizing it, That was probably his luck, Frau Kramer told Lisa. Then they arrived, bombed-out houses at the botanical gardens were their billet; although evacuated, the city was full of people dwelling in destroyed buildings, refugees all of them, hundreds of thousands. At night we lay closely huddled together so we wouldn’t freeze, she said, Luckily I had enough milk with me for you.
Once again it was just two days. Then came the order to decamp, another train, the endless journey westward along branch lines. And then, in one of those trains, I suddenly knew it had to be Lübeck if I ever wanted to see my husband again.
“And so we came to Lübeck,” Lisa concluded objectively, and Frau Kramer nodded and swallowed, because she was still a long way from having told the whole story.
“It’s not nice here anymore,” she said to Lisa as they hit Alte Travemünder Landstrasse. “Let’s go back and head for Sereetz. We can get something to eat and drink there.”
Lisa agreed. They turned around and went back into the forest.
54
Only gradually did V-9245 discover what a privilege he had been granted. For those colleagues closest to the head of Org, as the department was known internally, it was inconceivable that the director should receive him personally on his return from his imprisonment in Russia. Since then V-9245 had enjoyed a special status, which he eventually realized when the director informed him that he was to be the deputy head of the south German industrial asset liquidation company with immediate effect. This name was a front for the Munich bureau, of whose existence V-9245 had been completely ignorant until now. He had spent his first few years doing office work at headquarters. The fact that the director, who now went by the title of director general, was placing him in a leading position and thus sending him to the front, as it were, where espionage and counter-espionage were not only administered but also actually organized and implemented, seemed to V-9245 to be a twist of fate: it was time to become active again.
This is why, as he drove to his new workplace in Thalkirchen, he was in a better mood than he had been for ages. Yes, his family was a lovely and pleasing thing, the post at headquarters had been a good way of remaining invisible for a while. But V-9245 regarded himself as a soldier, in this respect nothing had changed in all these years, and the enemy was still the same, he was out there and must be fought.
55
There must have been a time when Sereetz had been beautiful. But now cranes stood everywhere, deep shafts had been sunk, in some places the shells of future rental blocks were already standing, and even a skyscraper was being built. In the middle of these construction sites lay old Sereetz, an accumulation of small medieval houses clustered around a squat church. It had a tavern where the local workers ate lunch, If it’s still there, Frau Kramer said, ushering her granddaughter through the narrow alleys dotted with the occasional puddle.
Sereetz was so small that after three streets they had reached the tavern, Frau Kramer stopped, astonished, the building’s appearance had changed so profoundly, the red brick had gone, replaced by brown clinker, the old windows had been exchanged for new, larger models, the wooden door had been replaced with a metal one with yellow frosted glass. The two women entered the tavern. It was much too hot inside, Lisa began to sweat almost instantly, all the tables were taken, the tangle of deep voices soon subsided when the mass of men’s faces turned to them—one woman too old, the other too young—before returning to their conversations.
A slim woman in an apron approached them, Lisa smiled at her in relief, but the woman was at work and translated the new guests into a simple equation, Two people equals two seats, Over there, she said with a surprisingly grown-up voice and without any alteration in her expression. Lisa and Frau Kramer followed her instruction and indeed, by the window, there was a table for two people, the seats were empty, on the table stood two coarse earthenware bowls containing the leftovers of pea soup, a large spoon in each, and beside these beer glasses drained to the last drop, shimmering dimly.
No sooner had the women taken off their coats than some of the men allowed themselves another going-over of the young one’s body, one or two of them perhaps thought, Maybe not too young after all, the women pretended not to notice anything, they sat down as the waitress came over purposefully, piled up the crockery, removed the white tablecloth and was practically on her way back to the kitchen when she said in her grown-up voice, We’ve got pea
soup with sausage and pea soup without sausage.
Without waiting for an answer, she snaked her way between the closely packed tables and chairs, followed by the eyes of some of the men, disappeared behind the counter, unloaded the dishes, reappeared holding a new tablecloth and cutlery, came back to Lisa and Frau Kramer, swiftly laid out the tablecloth, with rapid, skillful movements placed the cutlery in front of her customers at the correct spacing, stood up straight again and looked nowhere in particular with well-practiced anticipation. I’ll have it with sausage, Lisa said, Me too, Frau Kramer added. To drink? the waitress asked. Water, Lisa replied, Me too, Frau Kramer said. The waitress gave a slight nod, turned away and now the two women had come out on top.
Lisa looked around the room, glances slid away from her, as shy as deer the men sat at their tables, with broad legs, supporting elbows, some hunched over their soup bowls, it was nowhere near as loud as when they had come in, or was she just imagining it? All of a sudden she had the feeling of no longer being in a particular country at a particular time, but swimming in a state that was everywhere, in a rough, unconscious state of being, with reduced sensory perception both inwardly and outwardly.
The waitress soon returned with two full bowls, Lisa tried to guess her age, she stood completely upright, she looked almost too straight, there was an intimidating harshness in her face, although perhaps that was no surprise given the customers here, Lisa thought. But when the waitress put the soup bowls down in front of them, she was no longer so sure. Where is the truth? she wondered, On the surface or below it? Do I look like a Jew? Do these look like men who can’t think? Does she look like a woman who needs to fight back? Or is all of this me? She cast off these thoughts when the smell of the warm soup reached her nose, Let’s eat, Frau Kramer said, smiling at her granddaughter.
