Anyway, what makes you think you’re such a great looking dude, Bozo? Bad mouthing me in the hotel. Pompous Pilate, aren’t you? You won’t always get away with betraying me.
Konrad was the first of his family born in Australia to German migrant parents who had named him as they would have if he were born in the Fatherland. A strict couple with narrow, beady eyes who lived by pointless, sterile rules and expected their children to follow suit. Either of them could easily give you a look that would shrivel you in your tracks, should they so choose.
At school he had been ribbed and teased until a teacher with a kind streak took pity on him and anglicized his name to Conrad. Soon after, the other children began to call him Con and he felt more at ease with his German background although he never invited other children to his home.
Thankfully, Conrad and Con had stuck and saved him from standing out in the crowd. Combined with the surname, Himmlar, he could even so pass more easily as an Australian during the time he was growing up and losing his heavy German accent. This was no doubt brought about by living with parents who spoke only German in the home.
He wore his hair cut short in a severe crew cut style, bristling a muddy brown color against his ruddy hairline. A bad bout of acne during his teens and early twenties had left him with a seriously pock-marked face and neck. Although in his late twenties by this time, he was already beginning to show signs of the portliness that would catch up with him in a few years when he no longer had to work so hard physically. By then his body would cry out, his knees giving in thoroughly and early, causing him to seek sympathy from any who would give it.
Annie, troubled as she was by what changes were going on inside her body, was intensely nervous, inclined to cry pitifully at the insults and slurs he flung at her in his rages. This reaction, as it always had over the years, angered him even more, causing him to threaten to have her committed to an asylum for the insane where her children would never be brought to visit her under any circumstances. While he, once having signed her in, would never sign her out, he reminded her constantly.
Such were the games he indulged in, as was his custom with unrelenting regularity. Mind games which he usually won just as Annie lost them by default. She knew he was trying to eliminate her individuality by forcing her to obey him mindlessly—or trying to but never quite succeeding to his satisfaction.
Nothing can touch my inner self, Annie reminded herself at the worst times when she was sobbing uncontrollably.
Annie had heard her women friends say that all marriages are the same, that couples grow closer the older they get, that anyone of them could say they had cause to leave their husbands if they were frivolous enough to want a separation or a divorce. She knew this was true on one level. Everyone had cause to think their husband bad-tempered or rude on occasion. Whispers of adulterous behavior were not new, just as there was cause to think certain men may be alcoholics.
Annie closed her eyes and rolled them towards Heaven. These women had no idea of what she was living with day in day out. Nor would repeating the horror help them to understand. They simply could not conceive of what went on at 2 Bergen Street, Belsen.
Conrad’s abuse was on another level, a deeper, more shameful level. Somehow he managed to make all the quarrels and problems about himself—as the victim, of course. Everything possible had been said and done to bring her down by this time in the marriage. He had all but chewed her up and spat out the pieces of her. She often thought that his anger and fury were without any known source, nor were they directed at any object in particular except her. They simply were and he would fall into a blind, damaging rage simply to let off steam. Anger and fury were always there just beneath the surface, ready to burst into flame at any moment or for any cause.
‘All about you, Conrad. It’s always all about you,’ Annie often told him in distress when she could not cope with his complaints.
He assured her in his cockiness that should she leave him he would gain custody of the children and she would never see them—much the same outcome as if he had committed her to the lunatic asylum. He was also adamant that if she should go he would blacken her name all around the town so that she would never be able to hold her head up in the district again.
All these threats worried Annie severely from time to time. Usually she gave in to his threats and her own fears, staying as docile as he wanted her to be. She may be seething inside while outwardly doing her best as wife and mother, driving hundreds of miles in the heat without air-conditioning to deliver parts and working men for the business. Her young children rode in the rear seat of the stationwagon, perhaps suffering from travel-sickness and being over- tired, the girls having to front up to school when they arrived back in Belsen at school time.
A couple of years prior to the new pregnancy, there came a morning when she had to drive 120 miles out to Blackwood with a young working man who was hired to drive the heavy machinery. They left as soon as the little girls had been taken to school and the stationwagon had been packed with spare parts for the machinery as well as the young man’s gear.
She shook her head in exasperation, aware that she would be pushing her luck in trying to get back to collect the girls from school at 3pm. Her parents were away on holidays, all the neighbors were working women and she could not think of anyone to call on to collect the girls, therefore she would have to be very careful to return in time.
David was two years old and people drove with their small children standing on the bench seat, as there was no such thing as child restraints or even seat belts. Annie drove to the speed limit, chatting with the young man, Robert Roper, and little David who was very interested in the cows and sheep they passed.
On arriving at the Blackwood property they were met by a seething Conrad, steam practically pouring from his ears. He gave a rictus smile to Robert but did not greet Annie, waiting until Robert had taken his working gear and gone to the men’s quarters to unload his gear and set his camp up.
‘Where the bloody hell have you been?’ he exploded at Annie. ‘What took you so long? Did you stop and have a root on the way?’ Further descriptions and accusations followed in his savage know-it-all tone.
Meanwhile, whenever the employees or the boss of the property approached him, he would be all smiles, kowtowing to the boss and using his oiliest charm on the men, for that space of time being perfectly civil and sincere towards her.
She squeezed her eyelids shut to staunch the tears. Annie felt her face burn right up to the hairline. She knew her husband was two different men. He had proved that over and over times without number. She wondered in her ignorance if that was what was meant by a ‘split personality’. He wore one face, angry, bitter and virulent for her and the children most of the time and a totally different one, affable, helpful and genial for the rest of the world.
Annie was mystified and floored. Suddenly she was gasping for air, her brain in shock as she struggled to make the connection between what had been happening all morning as she battled to get to the property with the working man and the machinery parts and what her husband was accusing her of. She started to defend herself but couldn’t breathe properly so as to get the words out through her choked up throat.
She knew, at the same time, that this was only a prelude to what she would be accused of when he returned home to confront her after a week or so of working on the property. He was a force to be reckoned with and a row was never over and done with, usually being prolonged for days and wakeful nights until his anger reached its apex and he lashed out, usually at her but sometimes at the children.
All morning she had been rushing to get everything ready to take to him, to get the girls to school and tend to little David. Just simply doing her best to play her part in the running of the business and being the best wife and mother she knew how to be. Something inside her died at the unfairness, the vulgarity, the crudity of this man. He had reached a new low in her estimation and she knew she would never recover from the sense of utter disgust she
felt at that moment. She looked into his sun-squint eyes, and felt her cheeks turn hot with indignation as he retuned her gaze with a leery grin.
Finally she managed to tell him, ‘That’s the last time I’ll ever deliver a thing for you, you foul-mouthed creature. No matter how much it costs to hire an extra driver to deliver your workmen and your machinery parts. Never again will I drive a mile for you. How could you even begin to think a thing like that? There’s our two year old son sitting on the seat between Robert and me. Whatever would you imagine we would do about him? Take your filthy mind and your filthy tongue and keep them to yourself. I want nothing more to do with any of this.’
‘You’re a bloody partner. You have to do as you’re told.’ He saw someone approaching and began to sing, as he moved the machinery around, craning his neck in and out like a demented chicken displaying how happy go lucky he was, such a great guy full of personality.
‘He’s got the whole world in his hands,
‘The whole wide world in his hands.’
‘Just you watch me, you little Hitler. Just you watch me never drive another mile for you and your rotten partnership,’ Annie told him between set teeth. ‘Are you sure you aren’t mad?’
‘You’re the one that’s bloody mad,’ he finished with a bellow, beyond caring what his working men thought of his display.
A great loneliness overcame her as she looked at her watch and figured out the time when she would arrive back in Belsen to collect her daughters.
Conrad turned to greet Robert who was returning from the shearers’ quarters where the men were camped. Again he had settled into his gung-ho style, dragging out the public persona he kept for his customers, his workers and other sportsmen, telling Robert where to go and what to do with the new machinery parts.
He was obviously feeling better now he had vented his spleen on Annie. Annie was accustomed to this, as he could trot out a dazzling charisma when it so suited him, making him appear to be the world’s most genial guy. It never lasted, as he could never keep up the pretense with his workers who were supposed to be able to read his mind and when they failed to do so, copped a blast, as they were next in line to suffer abuse after his wife and family. He never held on to any workmen for long as people would not work in those conditions in this day and age.
She reached into the vehicle to get ready for the return journey, hiding her face in the station wagon so that no one would see her tears, pretending to get ready for the return drive in time to collect the girls from school.
After feeding her little boy the sandwiches and Milo drink she had brought for him, she took him to the toilet and turned the vehicle around to go back to the house which she hardly considered to be a home anymore.
Full of smothered rage, she drove swiftly over the intervening miles, incredulous that her husband should so accuse her under the circumstances. Her little boy slept soundly on the seat beside her while her little girls were finishing their afternoon in Grades Two and Three back at the Belsen Primary School. Small details like these were not factored into his orders for her.
Conrad had reached a new low in her estimation, a matter she would never have conceived as existing after all the insults and accusations, but finally the camel’s back was broken, although she still did not know what to do about it. Nor would he ever concede to the idiocy of what he had accused her of as she rushed to deliver Robert and please him, Conrad, while dragging her little boy hundreds of miles while the young and vulnerable girls were at school.
Had the station wagon broken down or if she had been involved in an accident, there was a distinct possibility she could not have made it to the school in time to collect her daughters. They would be left to straggle home as best they could, only to find themselves locked out of the house. She shuddered at the prospect, grateful that the station wagon was new and solid and therefore considered reliable. Hopefully it would not let her down on that particular day.
Conrad never took these matters into consideration when he flung his vile accusations at her for little or no reason. In treating her the way he was, he was striping any of the few surviving fragments of equilibrium from her psyche and these gaping holes that were left in their place were filled with scorn and icy resentment.
These little knobs of disgust and fear metastasized and spread through her like a cancer, eating into the core of her being, even as he made her shudder and cower before him.
This was simply another marker in the breakdown of their family, another slice peeled off Annie’s soul to be thrown to the dogs. She smothered her pent-up grief as best she could reaching the school just in time to collect the girls and take them home without their realizing the traumatic day she had already been through.
Meanwhile, the gulf between them grew even wider according to Conrad’s diminished capacity to see reason where his wife was concerned. The train wreck was approaching, the final crash postponed but remaining inevitable.
Tired to the bone, she burrowed further and further inside herself, living in a state of anxiety and keeping more and more to herself, although occasionally confiding in other sympathetic women. There may be a temporary reprieve of a day or two here and there when Conrad was away or, as rarely happened, when things were going well for him in the business and he could pass himself pleasantly. The peaceful times never lasted and were only a means of regrouping herself before the next onslaught.
With some other women, she continued to find that explaining her circumstances could not be made clear to them. Nor could she mix socially without feeling the heavy difference in the lives of other young women, at least, most of those in her acquaintance. These more fortunate young women could not fathom that Conrad’s unacceptable cruelty and abuse was any worse than their husbands occasional grumpiness and irritability. She listened to their triteness, admired the ordinariness of their unions while she watched her marriage hopes dwindling before her, powerless to rise above her pain.
She was aware that a few others in her peer group lived under the same or similar pressure, having noted the occasional black eye scored by ‘walking into a door’, or other signs of being the walking wounded amongst women in the neighborhood. But women did not share their real concerns of brutality in the home, seeing it only as par for the course if they could possibly put up with it.
‘These things happen in a marriage,’ a woman confided complacently one day, unaware of having any rights at all to dignity and protection. She tapped her finger to the side of her nose in the ancient gesture of ‘keeping mum.’
Besides, Conrad was growing more and more determined to cut her off from any friends she made through mothers’ groups at school or kindergarten. Instead, he ordered her to get down and scrub and polish the floor on her hands and knees each week, twice through the whole house, if possible. As well, she had to change all bed linen twice weekly, mow the lawn and keep the garden tidy and tend three children suffering with bouts of measles, coughs and colds and the usual childhood ailments that could consume a whole day merely tending to one sick child.
By the time she shopped for food, took the children to the doctor and the dentist and sundry other chores, there was little time left except to watch a little television in the evenings while she knitted or sewed for her children or herself. Every minute of every day was accounted for. Every cent, also. A list of purchases had to be produced after each shopping expedition, the expenditure on each item scrutinized and the amount of change from the outing displayed for review.
She ran an ongoing account at the chemist’s shop, unable to pay outright for her purchases of medicines and toiletries purchased there. The chemist was a member of her church and allowed her to pay a nominal amount on the account each month.
Her instinct for self-protection had really kicked in and she was loathe to begin any kind of conversation with her husband, never knowing how far it would go or where it would end. The simplest of subject matter could lead to a volatile row in the blink of an eye. So she kept her accessibili
ty as low as possible, always trying to be in a different room for as much of the time as possible. This could be difficult as the house was small and cramped but she did her best to keep herself and her children out of harm’s way as much as possible.
Conrad objected strongly to her taking the children to the dentist, which he classed as a luxury even though the girls had lost their milk teeth and their permanent teeth had come in. Nor did he believe in extra curricular activities such as swimming lessons, music lessons, dancing lessons or school excursions. He had never been fortunate enough to have any of these items on his agenda, so did not want them for his children.
He could see no benefit in either the short or long term for participating in extra curricular activities and was bitterly opposed to the girls being part of groups such as Brownies, the junior version of Girl Guides. No doubt he wanted to keep his daughters down the way he intended to keep his wife down, not allowing them to mix with others to whom they might confide about their home life.
Annie held her breath and waited for him to arrive inside the kitchen on that particular evening when she had been trying to work up the courage to tell him that she thought she was pregnant again.
‘What a bloody terrible day I’ve had,’ he remarked savagely, then gathered his mouth into a strangely small arrangement with a point a little like a beak, or even more like a chicken’s behind, she thought, barely able to smother an inappropriate giggle. ‘And you’ve been here sitting on your backside all day and swanning around like Lady Muck while I’ve been slaving my guts out.’
Again, his mouth was drawn together over his teeth as though he was disgusted with the world at large and his customers in particular, but even more so, with her. He threw his broad-shouldered body onto a chair and started to remove his boots. He looked up and gave her a cold look that silenced her for a time.
Eventually, shifting from leg to leg, she braced herself to speak out. She felt bound and determined to try to defend herself during this crazy, ritualized game in which they participated most nights. His hard, cold eyes looked at her as though she had little right to be breathing the rarefied air of his presence.
Eloquent Silence Page 7
