Winter of the World

by Ken Follett

  They played with him for an hour or so. He liked toy trains and cars, and books with highly colored pictures. Then the time for his afternoon nap drew near, and Ada sang to him until he went to sleep.

  On their way out a nurse spoke to Ada. "Frau Hempel, please come with me to the office of Herr Professor Doctor Willrich. He would like to speak to you."

  Willrich was director of the home. Carla had never met him and she was not sure Ada had either.

  Ada said nervously: "Is there some problem?"

  The nurse said: "I'm sure the director just wants to talk to you about Kurt's progress."

  Ada said: "Fraulein von Ulrich will come with me."

  The nurse did not like that idea. "Professor Willrich asked only for you."

  But Ada could be stubborn when necessary. "Fraulein von Ulrich will come with me," she repeated firmly.

  The nurse shrugged and said curtly: "Follow me."

  They were shown into a pleasant office. This room had not been subdivided. A coal fire burned in the grate, and a bay window gave a view of the Wannsee lake. Someone was sailing, Carla saw, slicing through the wavelets before a stiff breeze. Willrich sat behind a leather-topped desk. He had a jar of tobacco and a rack of different-shaped pipes. He was about fifty, tall and heavily built. All his features seemed large: big nose, square jaw, huge ears, and a domed bald head. He looked at Ada and said: "Frau Hempel, I presume?" Ada nodded. Willrich turned to Carla. "And you are Fraulein . . . ?"

  "Carla von Ulrich, Professor. I'm Kurt's godmother."

  He raised his eyebrows. "A little young to be a godmother, surely?"

  Ada said indignantly: "She delivered Kurt! She was only eleven, but she was better than the doctor, because he wasn't there!"

  Willrich ignored that. Still looking at Carla, he said disdainfully: "And hoping to become a nurse, I see."

  Carla wore a beginner's uniform, but she considered herself to be more than just hopeful. "I am a trainee nurse," she said. She did not like Willrich.

  "Please sit." He opened a thin file. "Kurt is eight years old, but has reached the developmental stage of only two years."

  He paused. Neither woman said anything.

  "This is unsatisfactory," he said.

  Ada looked at Carla. Carla did not know what he was getting at, and indicated as much with a shrug.

  "There is a new treatment available for cases of this type. However, it will necessitate moving Kurt to another hospital." Willrich closed the file. He looked at Ada, and for the first time, he smiled. "I'm sure you would like Kurt to undergo a therapy that might improve his condition."

  Carla did not like his smile: it seemed creepy. She said: "Could you tell us more about the treatment, Professor?"

  "I'm afraid it would be beyond your understanding," he said. "Even though you are a trainee nurse."

  Carla was not going to let him get away with that. "I'm sure Frau Hempel would like to know whether it would involve surgery, or drugs, or electricity, for example."

  "Drugs," he said with evident reluctance.

  Ada said: "Where would he have to go?"

  "The hospital is in Akelberg, in Bavaria."

  Ada's geography was weak, and Carla knew she had no sense of how far that was. "It's two hundred miles," she said.

  "Oh, no!" said Ada. "How would I visit him?"

  "By train," said Willrich impatiently.

  Carla said: "It would take four or five hours. She would probably have to stay overnight. And what about the cost of the fare?"

  "I cannot concern myself with such things!" said Willrich angrily. "I am a doctor, not a travel agent!"

  Ada was close to tears. "If it means Kurt will get better, and learn to say a few words, and not to soil himself . . . one day we might perhaps bring him home."

  "Exactly," said Willrich. "I felt sure you would not wish to deny him the chance of getting better just for your own selfish reasons."

  "Is that what you're telling us?" said Carla. "That Kurt might be able to live a normal life?"

  "Medicine offers no guarantees," he said. "Even a trainee nurse should know that."

  Carla had learned, from her parents, to be impatient with prevarication. "I don't ask you for a guarantee," she said crisply. "I ask you for a prognosis. You must have one, otherwise you would not be proposing the treatment."

  He reddened. "The treatment is new. We hope it will improve Kurt's condition. That is what I am telling you."

  "Is it experimental?"

  "All medicine is experimental. All therapies work on some patients but not on others. You must listen to what I tell you: medicine offers no guarantees."

  Carla wanted to oppose him just because he was so arrogant, but she realized that was not the basis on which to make a judgment. Besides, she was not sure Ada really had a choice. Doctors could go against the wishes of parents if the child's health was at risk: in effect they could do what they liked. Willrich was not asking Ada's permission--he had no real need of it. He was speaking to her only in order to avoid a fuss.

  Carla said: "Can you tell Frau Hempel how long it might be before Kurt returns from Akelberg to Berlin?"

  "Quite soon," said Willrich.

  It was no answer at all, but Carla felt that if she pressed him he would become angry again.

  Ada was looking helpless. Carla sympathized; she herself found it difficult to know what to say. They had not been given enough information. Doctors were often like this, Carla had noticed: they seemed to want to hug their knowledge to themselves. They preferred to fob patients off with platitudes, and became defensive when questioned.

  Ada had tears in her eyes. "Well, if there's a chance he could get better . . ."

  "That's the attitude," Willrich said.

  But Ada had not finished. "What do you think, Carla?"

  Willrich looked outraged at this appeal to the opinion of a mere nurse.

  Carla said: "I agree with you, Ada. This opportunity must be seized, for Kurt's sake, even though it will be hard for you."

  "Very sensible," said Willrich, and he got to his feet. "Thank you for coming to see me." He went to the door and opened it. Carla felt he could not get rid of them quickly enough.

  They left the home and walked back to the station. As their nearly empty train pulled away, Carla picked up a leaflet that had been left on the seat. It was headed HOW TO OPPOSE THE NAZIS, and it listed ten things people could do to hasten the end of the regime, starting with slowing down their rate of work.

  Carla had seen such flyers before, though not often. They were placed by some underground resistance movement.

  Ada snatched it from her, crumpled it, and threw it out of the window. "You can be arrested for reading such things!" she said. She had been Carla's nanny, and sometimes she behaved as though Carla had not grown up. Carla did not mind her occasional bossiness, for she knew it came from love.

  However, in this case Ada was not overreacting. People could be imprisoned not just for reading such things but even for failing to report that they had found one. Ada could be in trouble merely for throwing it out of the window. Fortunately there was no one else in the carriage to see what she had done.

  Ada was still troubled by what she had been told at the home. "Do you think we did the right thing?" she said to Carla.

  "I don't really know," Carla said candidly. "I think so."

  "You're a nurse, you understand these things better than I do."

  Carla was enjoying nursing, though she still felt frustrated that she had not been allowed to train as a doctor. Now, with so many young men in the army, the attitude toward female medical students had changed, and more women were going to medical school. Carla could have applied again for a scholarship--except that her family was so desperately poor that they depended on her meager wages. Her father had no work at all, her mother gave piano lessons, and Erik sent home as much as he could afford out of his army pay. The family had not paid Ada for years.

  Ada was a naturally stoical person,
and by the time they got home she was getting over her upset. She went into the kitchen, put on her apron, and began to prepare dinner for the family, and the comfortable routine seemed to console her.

  Carla was not having dinner. She had plans for the evening. She felt she was abandoning Ada to her sadness, and she was a bit guilty, but not guilty enough to sacrifice her night out.

  She put on a knee-length tennis dress she had made herself by shortening the frayed hem of an old frock of her mother's. She was not going to play tennis, she was going to dance, and her aim was to look American. She put on lipstick and face powder, and combed out her hair in defiance of the government's preference for braids.

  The mirror showed her a modern girl with a pretty face and a bold air. She knew that her confidence and self-possession put a lot of boys off her. Sometimes she wished she could be seductive as well as capable, a trick her mother had always been able to pull off; but it was not in her nature. She had long ago given up trying to be winsome: it just made her feel silly. Boys had to accept her as she was.

  Some boys were scared of her, but others were attracted, and at parties she often ended up with a small cluster of admirers. She in turn liked boys, especially when they forgot about trying to impress people and started to talk normally. Her favorites were the ones who made her laugh. So far she had not had a serious boyfriend, though she had kissed quite a few.

  To complete her outfit she put on a striped blazer she had bought from a secondhand clothing cart. She knew her parents would disapprove of her appearance, and try to make her change, saying it was dangerous to defy the Nazis' prejudices. So she needed to get out of the house without seeing them. It should be easy enough. Mother was giving a piano lesson: Carla could hear the painfully hesitant playing of her pupil. Father would be reading the newspaper in the same room, for they could not afford to heat more than one room of the house. Erik was away with the army, though he was now stationed near Berlin and due home on leave shortly.

  She covered up with a conventional raincoat and put her white shoes in her pocket.

  She went down to the hall, opened the front door, shouted: "Good-bye, back soon!" and hurried out.

  She met Frieda at the Friedrich Strasse station. She was dressed similarly with a stripy dress under a plain tan coat, her hair hanging loose--the main difference being that Frieda's clothes were new and expensive. On the platform, two boys in Hitler Youth outfits stared at them with a mixture of disapproval and desire.

  They got off the train in the northern suburb of Wedding, a working-class district that had once been a left-wing stronghold. They headed for the Pharus Hall, where in the past Communists had held their conferences. Now there was no political activity at all, of course. Nevertheless the building had become the center of the movement called Swing Kids.

  Kids between fifteen and twenty-five were already gathering in the streets around the hall. Swing boys wore check jackets and carried an umbrella, to look English. They let their hair grow long to show their contempt for the military. Swing girls had heavy makeup and American sports clothes. They all thought the Hitler Youth were stupid and boring, with their folk music and community dances.

  Carla thought it was ironic. When she was little she had been teased by the other kids and called a foreigner because her mother was English; now the same children, a little older, thought English was the fashionable thing to be.

  Carla and Frieda went into the hall. There was a conventional, innocent youth club there, with girls in pleated skirts and boys in short trousers playing table tennis and drinking sticky orange cordial. But the action was in the side rooms.

  Frieda quickly led Carla to a large storeroom with stacked chairs around the walls. There her brother, Werner, had plugged in a record player. Fifty or sixty boys and girls were dancing the jitterbug jive. Carla recognized the tune that was playing: "Ma, He's Making Eyes at Me." She and Frieda started to dance.

  Jazz records were banned because most of the best musicians were Negroes. The Nazis had to denigrate anything that was done well by non-Aryans; it threatened their theories of superiority. Unfortunately for them, Germans loved jazz just as much as everyone else. People who visited other countries brought records home, and you could buy them from American sailors in Hamburg. There was a lively black market.

  Werner had lots of discs, of course. He had everything: a car, modern clothes, cigarettes, money. He was still Carla's dream boy, though he always went for girls older than she--women, really. Everyone assumed he went to bed with them. Carla was a virgin.

  Werner's earnest friend Heinrich von Kessel immediately came up to them and started to dance with Frieda. He wore a black jacket and waistcoat, which looked dramatic with his longish dark hair. He was devoted to Frieda. She liked him--she enjoyed talking to clever men--but she would not go out with him because he was too old, twenty-five or twenty-six.

  Soon a boy Carla did not know came and danced with her, and the evening was off to a good start.

  She abandoned herself to the music: the irresistible sexual drumbeat, the suggestively crooned lyrics, the exhilarating trumpet solos, the joyous flight of the clarinet. She whirled and kicked, let her skirt flare outrageously high, fell into the arms of her partner and sprang out again.

  When they had danced for an hour or so Werner put on a slow tune. Frieda and Heinrich began dancing cheek to cheek. There was no one available whom Carla liked enough for slow dancing, so she left the room and went to get a Coke. Germany was not at war with America so Coca-Cola syrup was imported and bottled in Germany.

  To her surprise Werner followed her out, leaving someone else to put on records for a while. She was flattered that the most attractive man in the room wanted to talk to her.

  She told him about Kurt being moved to Akelberg, and Werner said the same thing had happened to his brother, Axel, who was fifteen. Axel had been born with spina bifida. "Could the same treatment work for both of them?" he said with a frown.

  "I doubt it, but I don't really know," Carla said.

  "Why is it that medical men never explain what they're doing?" Werner said irritably.

  She laughed humorlessly. "They think that if ordinary people understand medicine they won't hero-worship doctors any longer."

  "Same principle as a conjurer: it's more impressive if you don't know how it's done," said Werner. "Doctors are as egocentric as anyone else."

  "More so," said Carla. "As a nurse, I know."

  She told him about the leaflet she had read on the train. Werner said: "How did you feel about it?"

  Carla hesitated. It was dangerous to speak honestly about such things. But she had known Werner all her life, he had always been left-wing, and he was a Swing Kid. She could trust him. She said: "I'm pleased someone is opposing the Nazis. It shows that not all Germans are paralyzed by fear."

  "There are lots of things you can do against the Nazis," he said quietly. "Not just wearing lipstick."

  She assumed he meant she could distribute such leaflets. Could he be involved in such activity? No, he was too much of a playboy. Heinrich might be different: he was very intense.

  "No, thanks," she said. "I'm too scared."

  They finished their Cokes and returned to the storeroom. It was packed now, with hardly room enough to dance.

  To Carla's surprise, Werner asked her for the last dance. He put on Bing Crosby singing "Only Forever." Carla was thrilled. He held her close and they swayed, rather than danced, to the slow ballad.

  At the end, by tradition, someone turned off the light for a minute, so that couples could kiss. Carla was embarrassed: she had known Werner since they were children. But she had always been attracted to him, and now she turned her face up eagerly. As she had expected, he kissed her expertly, and she returned the kiss with enthusiasm. To her delight she felt his hand gently grasp her breast. She encouraged him by opening her mouth. Then the light came on and it was all over.

  "Well," she said breathlessly, "that was a surprise."


  He gave his most charming smile. "Perhaps I can surprise you again sometime."

  ii

  Carla was passing through the hall, on her way to the kitchen for breakfast, when the phone rang. She picked up the handset. "Carla von Ulrich."

  She heard Frieda's voice. "Oh, Carla, my little brother's dead!"

  "What?" Carla could hardly believe it. "Frieda, I'm so sorry! Where did it happen?"

  "In that hospital." Frieda was sobbing.

  Carla recalled Werner telling her that Axel had been sent to the same Akelberg hospital as Kurt. "How did he die?"

  "Appendicitis."

  "That's terrible." Carla was sad for her friend, but also suspicious. She had had a bad feeling when Professor Willrich spoke to them a month ago about the new treatment for Kurt. Had it been more experimental than he had let on? Could it have actually been dangerous? "Do you know any more?"

  "We just got a short letter. My father is enraged. He phoned the hospital but he wasn't able to speak to the senior people."

  "I'll come round to your house. I'll be there in a few minutes."

  "Thanks."

  Carla hung up and went into the kitchen. "Axel Franck has died at that hospital in Akelberg," she said.

  Her father, Walter, was looking at the morning post. "Oh!" he said. "Poor Monika." Carla recalled that Axel's mother, Monika Franck, had once been in love with Walter, according to family legend. The look of concern on Walter's face was so pained that Carla wondered if he had had a slight tendresse for Monika, despite being in love with Maud. How complicated love was.

  Carla's mother, who was now Monika's best friend, said: "She must be devastated."

  Walter looked down at the post again and said in a tone of surprise: "Here's a letter for Ada."

  The room went quiet.

  Carla stared at the white envelope as Ada took it from Walter.

  Ada did not receive many letters.

  Erik was home--it was the last day of his short leave--so there were four people watching as Ada opened the envelope.

  Carla held her breath.

  Ada drew out a typed letter on headed paper. She read the message quickly, gasped, then screamed.

  "No!" said Carla. "It can't be!"