by P. G. Glynn
“You aren’t alone in your gladness,” Marie assured her. “But we are still grappling with the fact that he wasn’t Mama’s son. Tell us about his mother.”
Proud of her pivotal role in this whole affair, Dora answered: “Her name was Gerda Vlasov. She was a scullery maid when I first came into service … bold-eyed, she was, and I never did get to grips with what the Master could have been thinking of. If,” she added wryly, “thinking came into it! Now that he’s gone beyond harming Otto I feel almost sorry for Ludwig. Perhaps it was shock on finding out his real mother’s lowly position that killed him. He was hot on position – and whatever he was, whatever he did, he loved Frau Antonin.”
That had common assent. Ludwig’s love for Mama, despite his allegiance to Hitler, was beyond question. “And Mama must have loved him,” Rudolf said. “Otherwise she wouldn’t have put up with his proclivities for five minutes. What a turn-up this all is!”
“Do you think he did himself in?” Hugo asked.
Marie answered: “We’ll probably never know for certain, but I expect he did. Ludwig was too proud ever to have lived with the knowledge that he was the product of his father’s lust, not Mama’s love … and that his true mother was a servant such as he tended to treat as beneath contempt. Added to which, imagine how hard it must have been for him to honour his debt and let your Papa live when he was so hell-bent on killing him!”
“Jesus Maria!” breathed Anna. “That would have been crippling.” Finding everybody’s eyes on her she then said: “But he had the satisfaction of knowing that Otto would, in a sense, be his henchman.”
Impressed by his wife’s insight, Rudolf smiled at her before asking Marie: “Did Herr Klammer give any indication of how much we are expected to pay?”
“He didn’t … and I’m against paying.”
“Against it?” Rudolf queried, disbelieving his ears. “You can’t be!”
“I can … and am. If we give money to the Nazis we’re as bad as they are.”
“But if we don’t give them money,” Hugo protested, “then they will kill Papa.”
“We have no proof that he isn’t dead already … and to my mind it’s better to be dead than committed to fighting for the enemy and letting Ludwig win. If your father has sworn allegiance to Hitler, even under pressure, he has gone back on everything he said he stood for and I’ve no time for a man who would do that. Can he have forgotten so soon who stole Austria, and who – even as we speak – is in the process of stealing the Sudeten Land?”
“It isn’t a question of forgetting anything,” Rudolf said. “It’s one of choosing whether to die or to live. Whatever would have been the point of Mama having written that letter if … ”
“ … her son had the courage of his convictions?” Marie butted in. “There’d still be a point in it. The letter needed to be written. It was right for Ludwig to be told of his origins. But it is wrong of Otto to retract on his beliefs for the sake of saving his skin. If he has joined Hitler’s army he doesn’t deserve our intervention, especially since this would involve us in going against our own creed.”
“I’d sooner go against it,” Rudolf said testily, “than stand by and let my brother die. What kind of a wife are you, not to feel as I do?”
“The kind Otto married … the kind who would choose death in preference to kowtowing to Ludwig’s Nazi masters … the kind who could never respect her husband again if he sold his soul to the Devil! Does that answer your question?”
“It does,” Rudolf said, “but don’t expect me to go along with your views. I’ll do whatever I have to do to save Otto.”
“That’s your prerogative.”
“You are right,” he agreed stiffly. “It is.”
+++++
Mama had meant what she said and Hugo still could not believe she had meant it. Nor could he believe that she now intended leaving Bohemia more or less immediately and going ‘home’ to Britain, yet she insisted she did. How could she be so hard on Papa, condemning him for choosing life above death and then walking out on him? That was what she was doing and Hugo didn’t think he could ever forgive her for doing it. She should be as relieved as he was that Papa was not dead. And she should be able to see that it was wrong to leave the country while Papa had need of his family. The trouble with Mama was that she was never wrong, even when she was.
In Papa’s shoes Hugo would have done as he did and chosen to live. Living was better than dying, even if going to heaven meant seeing Omama and Bobo again. Time enough to see them when there was no avoiding death. If it could be avoided, did it much matter how one avoided it?
Mama probably wasn’t as brave as she pretended. It was all very well saying things but very different doing them under duress. With Nazis like Onkel Ludwig breathing down her neck she might well have felt that it was better to swear loyalty to Hitler than be tortured to death. While swearing, Papa would have been looking ahead to when he could desert from the German army and return to his family. And while ‘serving’ he would be a saboteur. Never, ever, would Papa be a Nazi in his heart.
Hugo could not bear to think of Papa returning to Herrlichbach expecting a welcome from his wife and son, only to find that they had fled the country without waiting for him. Papa would surely conclude that they didn’t care about his homecoming … and the terrible thing was that Mama didn’t care about it. Her sole concern seemed to be that father and son should not fight each other on opposite sides, as would be the case if Hugo stayed to be conscripted and if the Nazis invaded. These days Mama seemed to be made of ice and it was not for want of trying that Hugo had failed to make her see she was wrong in wanting to leave Czechoslovakia in its and Papa’s hour of need.
He had not mentioned Helga to her. Some instinct told him that mentioning her would not help. If only he were not a minor! Then he could stay with Helga when Mama went. As things were, at seventeen he could at least ask her to wait for him … or even marry him quickly and go with him to Britain, if Mama would give her consent …
It was lucky that Ferdi was now in charge at the factory. He wouldn’t ask awkward questions and would release Helga from her loom if Hugo asked him to. Although Ferdi was foreman he still saw Hugo as his superior, which felt peculiar as a rule but could currently prove useful.
With no time to lose and no clear plan of action Hugo set off for the factory. Helga wouldn’t laugh at him, would she? No, she wouldn’t, because for once he must make her take him seriously. He must make her see what a good husband he would be. He would even think of advantages in flying to Britain for a bit, so that she would be willing to fly there with him.
As the tall chimneys came closer he suffered momentary panic. Supposing Helga did laugh … supposing she was cross with him for proposing marriage at her workplace instead of somewhere more romantic …
He remembered Omama saying that supposition often opposed action. So he would not suppose, but go to Helga and tell her all that had lain in his heart these past years.
+++++
“Nothing else has happened, has it?” Ferdi asked as Hugo reached his office.
“No. There’ve been enough things to be going on with.”
“There certainly have!” Ferdi agreed vehemently. “It’s hard to keep pace with them … and harder still to accept the changes. You aren’t leaving sooner than expected?”
“No. Unless I succeed in making Mama think again, we’re still leaving the day after tomorrow.”
“So … ?”
“Ah, you’re wondering why I’m here!” Hugo swallowed hard. It was now or never. “As well you might wonder, seeing how seldom I visit in working hours. The fact is, though, that I’m not visiting you – or not primarily. That is … I’ve really come to see … ”
“ … your friend, Helga Frauenfeld?” When Hugo nodded, Ferdi – wearing an odd expression – said: “I’ll send her to you. Feel free, obviously, to use my office for your farewell or … or whatever.”
This was all easier than Hugo had bel
ieved it would be. Fancy Ferdi guessing why he was here and making everything so easy!
Arriving and closing the door behind her, Helga scolded Hugo: “You’ve got a nerve, coming here and bossing the boss! What on earth do you want?”
She was still the girl she had been when he was five and she was six except that she had grown up a bit. And he was as tongue-tied in her presence as he had been back then. “That’s a funny greeting,” he said.
“Oh yes?” She thrust both hands into her overall pockets. “What did you expect?”
He didn’t know what he had expected, or what to say next. He eventually said: “Sit down, Helga. Let’s both sit down, so that we can talk properly.”
“That’s you all over, that is,” she commented, remaining standing.
“How do you mean?”
Grinning impishly she told him: “You were always one for talking properly, never improperly.”
“Is there something wrong with that?” he asked her, feeling inadequate.
“Nothing, except that it’s boring,” she answered with heavy emphasis and a dismissive shrug of her slim shoulders. “You’re so longwinded, Hugo, that by the time you get to where you’re going I’ve gone on ahead. Are you the same even in bed?”
He was so shocked by her question that he could not think how to answer it. He eventually answered with: “Yes. I mean … I’m no different in bed from anywhere else. That is … when I’m in bed I’m there by myself.”
“You’re never still a virgin?”
“Of course I am, and you are too … aren’t you?”
“Of course I am!” she mimicked, pursing her lips. Then, in her own voice, she said: “I lost my virginity at fifteen – gave it away, that is, as I didn’t want it. Why have you still got yours? Couldn’t you find anyone to get rid of it with?”
“I didn’t try to,” he whispered. “I was saving myself for you.”
“You fool – what a stupid thing to do! It isn’t even as if I’d asked you to. Grow up, Hugo!”
For as long as he could remember Helga had been telling him, one way or another, to grow up and be as clever as she was and he had never succeeded in matching either her maturity or her cleverness. Now, faced with this new setback, he felt as bewildered as he had on his fifth birthday when she told him about his mad uncle and wanted him to go with her to the forbidden wing. He also felt inept and could not stop himself saying: “You didn’t need to ask me. I did it because … because I love you.”
Instead of looking pleased, which was how he had always pictured the scene, she looked skywards as if despairing of him. “You might think you do, but you don’t,” she told him. “You don’t even know me.”
“Of course I do! I’ve known you all my life.”
“And I’ve known you most of mine, but only as children – and you’re still a child, Hugo, compared with me. Why, comparatively, you’re barely weaned!”
“Why do you have to be so nasty?”
“Because I always was, with you, for some reason. You bring out the worst in me yet you keep coming back for more of my nastiness. But that’s just a habit. Sooner or later you’ll learn to stop doing it.”
“I don’t want to stop. I want …”
“What about what I want?” she butted in. “Has it never occurred to you to think of me as a person instead of as a plaything? Have you ever wondered what makes me tick? No, you haven’t because it was always yourself you were thinking of. I’m a novelty because you know nobody else like me and because of my ability to shock. As for my likes and dislikes, my hopes and dreams – you know nothing of these for the very simple reason that you’ve never asked me. We live in different worlds, Hugo, and always did except that you couldn’t see it. You might own this factory, but you don’t own me any more than you own Ferdi.”
His world was crumbling. He could hardly think. But her last word stayed with him. “Ferdi?” he echoed.
“Knowing you,” she grinned, “you’re wondering why I don’t call him Ferdinand, or even Herr Petrof. I do, of course, on the factory floor … not when we’re alone, though.”
“When you’re alone?”
“Oh, you’re priceless – and always the last to know what everyone else knows! Some day I suppose your eyes will open and you’ll decide to look around you instead of walking blindly through life. Until then I’ll just have to spell things out for my kid brother the way I’ve always done.”
“I’m not your brother.”
“No, but I think of you as one.”
“I’ve never thought of you as my sister.”
“Just as I’ll bet you’ve never thought of Ferdi as your cousin.”
“My cousin?” Hugo, gaped, feeling like a half-wit. “He isn’t.”
“Oh, yes he is! The minute I clapped eyes on him I saw that he was the spitting image of your Onkel Rudolf and yet you still haven’t seen it.”
He was astounded. How obvious it should have been that Onkel Rudolf and Ferdi were father and son … and how horrible the conspiracy that had had Hugo believing differently! That was another family secret excluding him. Did nobody in the family think he was fit to be told things? “I must be as blind as a bat,” he said, experiencing incredible emptiness.
She took pity on him then. “When something is right under our nose,” she said, “it’s often less obvious than when it is not.”
“How you and he must have been laughing at me!”
“No,” she told him quickly, “we’ve never laughed at you, Hugo. We both know you as the kindest, tenderest boy there could ever be.”
“For all the good that that does me.”
“It will do you some good, in the long run,” Helga said gently. “There’s a sweet girl somewhere who’ll be right for you and who’ll make you as happy as I’ve just made you unhappy.”
“You’re the only girl I could love.”
“No, I’m not … and I wouldn’t want someone who kept gazing at me like a lovesick puppy. It’s very touching that you saved yourself for me, but I couldn’t live with that responsibility, besides which … ”
It hit him like a sledgehammer. “You’re in love with Ferdi! That’s it, isn’t it, Helga?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I can stand this.”
“You can stand it … and there’s no sense in my giving you a dishonest answer. You wouldn’t thank me for that, not if you then had to find out the truth for yourself. As you know, I’ve always been honest with you, Hugo.”
“So you and he are … lovers?”
“Yes, we are.”
Seeing her and Ferdi from a fresh perspective and feeling as if they had stabbed him, Hugo took a deep breath. “Then you are both as bad as each other. And I’m glad to be leaving Czechoslovakia. I’m gladder about that than I’ve ever been about anything and … and I hope that I never come back!”
--oo0oo--
PART III
44
France, 1943
He was in no hurry to leave the warmth and pleasures of Fabienne’s bed. One had to hand it to the French: they knew instinctively how to please and how to bring forgetfulness. There was much that he wanted to forget, much that he wished he had done differently. He also missed Marie immeasurably.
At times he believed he must merely have dreamed of her. Certainly their life together in Schloss Berger before this long and bloody war had the quality of a dream. Could that life eventually be resurrected or had Hitler extinguished it as if it had never been?
Freedom was such a precious thing. Why had he not valued it while it was his? He should have listened to Mama and to Marie and heeded their advice. Had he only done so, he might well have spared himself the worst of Ludwig and the trauma endured since his brother inflicted those inventive tortures. Perhaps most galling was the knowledge that he had not been true to himself.
In serving Hitler, albeit as a pretender, he had become a lesser man and one for whom he felt contempt. Surely better to have died for his beliefs than to
have sworn support for the tyrant who had subsequently occupied Prague, announcing the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from the Hradschin, and perpetrated some of the most heinous atrocities possible to imagine. Yes, better dead than having to live with the fact that as a German military policeman on reservist duty in Berlin he had been involved in Kristallnacht.
It was in November 1938 that Himmler made a secret speech to his SS generals, telling them that since the Jews would otherwise destroy Germany their kind must be driven from the Reich with unexampled ruthlessness. Following this chilling speech Otto’s orders had been to co-operate with the Party and SS leaders in organising demonstrations. He had kept his co-operation to the barest minimum needed to conceal his true loyalties and survive the night, but for the sake of survival had had to see Jews slaughtered in the streets while their homes, shops and synagogues were looted and burned. A child was slit in front of him, then tossed casually on to a pile of dead children. It had come to be called Crystal Night because of all the glass broken.
Perhaps the Jews killed quickly in the streets were better off than those sent to die slower deaths in gas chambers or on butchers’ hooks in the concentration camps that had become Nazi landmarks, but who was he to decide – he who should have died of the monstrous wounds inflicted by Ludwig but who had instead lived to see himself as yellow-bellied?
Otto knew that he must be strong physically to have survived Ludwig’s treatment but he now knew to his cost that he was weak mentally. What must Marie and Hugo think of him and his cowardice? He could well imagine Marie’s thoughts, since in joining Hitler’s army he had done something she would never have done. She was braver than he could ever be and, given the same choices, would unquestionably have died for her beliefs. Hugo, on the other hand, would understand – if only because he would want his father to survive this war.
