Treason if You Lose

by Peter Rimmer

  “I am now. Calm has returned, as they say. For the time being.”

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I have absolutely no idea. Does it matter? Maybe I can help Father supervise the farming. In England they have land girls after the men went to war. That’s it, Mama. I’m going to be a land girl. To hell with bashing a typewriter. I’ve got to do something to pay for my supper at my age.”

  “That I’ve got to see,” came floating in from the piano room with the notes of music. Her sister had been playing and listening.

  “You can help me, Gabby.”

  “You’ve just got to be kidding.”

  “You can help me darn some socks,” said her mother. “I never thought my embroidery would come down to darning people’s socks. You can’t buy socks for love nor money. The wool goes to make clothes for our soldiers on the Russian Front. Your father says many froze to death in the winter. These grey socks were your father’s in the last war.”

  “Give me a pair. These are not Father’s.”

  “Strauss doesn’t have a wife anymore.”

  “Strauss!”

  Her mother gave her a sharp look. Melina had never before darned a pair of woollen socks.

  “Whose are these?” There was a wicker basket full of clothing ready to be darned.

  “Erwin’s. He left them with me on his last leave. On Wednesday you can help me with the pool… Gabby, please don’t stop. I’m so enjoying the music.”

  The piano played again, music Melina had not heard before.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Her own. Gabby’s composing her own music. That one is Opus Number 6, I understand. Sounds very grand. It soothes my nerves. On Wednesdays the village people and the tenants bicycle to the house bringing clothes they don’t wear anymore. Mostly children’s clothes the children have grown out of. Gabby and I sort through what they bring, label everything with a price and the name of the seller which we keep in a book. The previous week’s clothes and what’s left over are displayed on the dining room table. It’s better than swapping. My decision on price is final or they can take the clothes they brought away. We’ve kept our tenants and many from Ravensburg clothed during the hard winter. Nothing goes to waste. It’s the fairest way of exchanging clothes.”

  “Only clothes?”

  “It’s not a jumble sale. I take the money, enter the sale in the book and give the seller their money. Mostly the money goes back in the system to buy someone else’s clothes.”

  “I’m impressed, Mama.”

  “It’s made a lot of friends. We give them tea. People talk to each other round the fire in winter. In the garden at this time of year if the weather’s fine. Lifts everyone’s spirits, including mine. We all get to know each other from all walks of life. It will be the one part I will miss after the war. People are very nice. I hear all sorts of things you would never believe. They confide in me so I won’t divulge one word.” With her glasses perched on the end of her nose Bergit finished darning the grey sock.

  Having found the right needle and threaded the wool, Melina spread the sock over her fist to display the hole and started to darn.

  “Do it across and then across the other way, Melina. You’ll get the hang of it.”

  Surprised her father had not mentioned Erwin coming home on leave, Melina concentrated on her darning.

  By the time her father came back from the fields Melina had comfortably dropped back into the life of her family. Despite there being no men to flirt with, Melina was content.

  On the Wednesday, when the clothes were pooled on the antique dining room table, there were only women milling around in the room. Tea was served on the lawn among the long grass and the dandelions with the pigeons calling from the surrounding trees. With so many people, the dogs behaved, to Melina’s surprise.

  When, at the end of June Erwin came home for the second time on leave, Melina was hopeful she had heard the last of Henning von Lieberman and the Nazi Party Intelligence Service. No one had come anywhere near them since she walked home from the railway station.

  Her father had driven the horse and trap to the Ravensburg railway station to collect Erwin. Expecting to only see her brother, Melina was surprised to find Jürgen Mann sitting on the wooden bench behind her father. Jürgen was dressed in civilian clothes. The sleeve that would have covered his left arm was pinned to his shoulder. Erwin was in uniform with faded insignia on his shoulders. The last time Melina saw Jürgen she had seduced him, losing her virginity in the process.

  They were all smiles. Jürgen’s look suggested to Melina she should not mention his disability. The missing arm was likely the reason he was not in uniform. Flying aircraft in combat with one arm was difficult if not impossible, Melina supposed.

  They all went inside. Strauss took the horse by the head and led it away towards the stables. The dogs barked happily, Jürgen bending down to pat the dogs in turn with his one hand. Her brother saluted her. When Gabby ran out of the house she was surprised by a second salute. Having made the right impression, Erwin hugged the two of them in turn. Then he saw his mother standing in the doorway of the big house smiling down and ran up the steps.

  Melina was left standing next to Jürgen and the dogs. All the dogs were wagging their tails.

  “How are you, Melina?” said Jürgen with a wry smile.

  “So nice to see you.”

  Melina found it hard not to giggle. After her stay in Berlin and what went on with the men in the Party, she was sure Jürgen had also been a virgin. Very quietly he slipped his hand into hers, walking just behind her father up the stairs into the house.

  “How long are you staying?” asked Melina.

  “As long as you’ll have me. I’m out of the air force. Mother is still running the family estate. Papa hasn’t improved. His mind is never with us. I told them if I could no longer fly an aeroplane I’d be a farmer. The Reich needs food so they let me go.”

  “Why didn’t you contact me in Berlin?”

  “Silly. You were working for the Party. Erwin warned me about your cousin. What happened?”

  “He slapped my face. Twice. Hard. I made him give me the rail pass home. Since then, not a word.”

  “How long?” Behind Jürgen’s smile Melina could see the disquiet at referring to the Nazi Party.

  “A month ago. How long’s Erwin’s leave?”

  “Two days. They’ve put him in fighters. Short of fighter pilots.”

  “It’s a lovely day. Why don’t we take a picnic basket to the lake? Like last time you were here.”

  “Hans Bengler was killed when I crashlanded. He was my navigator. You remember Hans?”

  “Of course I do. He came on the picnic.”

  “I was lucky. With a little more luck I’ll survive the war. Erwin wishes he’d also lost his left arm. Fighting a losing war is no fun. This is only the beginning of the end. Your brother’s been posted to the Russian Front. Why they gave him two days’ leave. It’s bad on the Russian Front. He’ll come through. You’ll see. Experienced pilots survive.”

  With the cloud of war once again hanging over the von Lieberman estate, they all tried to make the conversation as normal as possible. Jürgen had a limp that went with his missing left arm. The twenty–year-old Melina had first met three years earlier looked like a man with a heavy weight on his shoulders. There were lines on his face, an intermittent twitch under his right eye. His eyes had the distant stare Erwin had talked about, a stare that afflicted most of the pilots after a while. To Melina it looked as if both men had lost their youth ten years earlier than they should have done.

  “You youngsters go off to the lake and enjoy yourself,” said Bergit wiping her tears. “I want to make sure tonight’s supper is perfect. We’ll eat in the dining room.”

  “What about the second-hand clothes?”

  “They can be moved, Melina. This is a celebration. For the first time in a long time I have all my children under one roof. I’ll make
you some sandwiches to take to the lake. Take the dogs and let the horse take you at his own pace. The pull from Ravensburg was a long haul for that old horse. The young stallions are used to pulling the ploughs through the fields. Without petrol we’ve dropped back half a century. It’s rather nice. I much prefer the neighing of a horse than the angry sound of a tractor’s engine. The tractors have a nagging, intrusive sound that never goes away.”

  Everything was done in a hurry, as if to pack as much into two days as possible for Erwin. For all of them, the words ‘Russian Front’ were hanging over them, a cloud of dark, unspoken menace just above their heads.

  By the lake it was no better. The conversation turned to the war. The beauty of the distant Alps, the call of the water birds, her mother’s egg and homemade mayonnaise sandwiches could not stop Erwin talking about what was uppermost in his mind. When Melina thought of stopping him, trying to change the subject, Jürgen lifted his hand in a gesture that said it was best to let him go on. Erwin wanted to talk. When he talked it was as if he was talking to the faraway mountains in the neutral country of Switzerland where the citizens did not have a war to worry about.

  “We should have won the war in 1940. Before we had to fight the Russians and the Americans. September 1940. Field Marshal Goering wanted to go on hitting RAF Fighter Command. Shoot the RAF out of the sky. The airfields and radar stations were our targets. For political reasons, after the RAF bombed Berlin, we attacked London with our bombers. Knocking down buildings rather than shooting down their fighting aircraft. We know now the RAF had run out of reserves. Another month and the Blitzkrieg that had conquered continental Europe would have crossed the Channel. Without air cover the Royal Navy would have been naked against our dive-bombers. The Stukas are deadly provided the enemy can’t attack them from the air with their fighters. Now we have to suffer British and American bombing on our industry night and day. Our armies are fighting the Russians in the east and the Americans in Italy and the British in North Africa. We can’t win anymore. It had to be one at a time. Not all together. The Japanese are only concerned with Asia so they won’t help us in Europe. The Americans and the British are going to invade France any time soon and there is little we in the Luftwaffe can do about it. The Americans will soon be pouring men and equipment into Europe. If it isn’t too late to make some kind of peace, we are finished.”

  “What about the secret bomb?” said Melina.

  “We don’t have it yet. The Americans are also trying to make an atomic bomb.”

  “So what do we do?” said Gabby.

  “Pray to God.”

  “Will he listen?”

  No one answered.

  “I want to go for a row on the lake before it’s all too late,” said Erwin.

  “Will he give up?”

  “The Führer? Of course not. They are fanatics. You should know that, Melina.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  “I grew up. It all sounded so glorious at the age of seventeen. The Third Reich ruling a world without war. With order. With industry for the benefit of the people. Each with their own small car. Their own small house. Always enough food. Medicine for everyone. New medicine to conquer disease. A world where man’s energy is properly put to work for the benefit of mankind.”

  “That’s what they told you and me,” said Melina. “I thought it was all for the benefit of Germany. It wasn’t. It was all for the benefit of the Party. The ruling junta of the Party. The perfect dictatorship if they got away with it. In history the longest periods of peace have been under dictatorship… The Greeks liked a benevolent dictatorship without everyone bickering over power. Democracy has its problems.”

  “It’s easy to believe when you wish to believe. When you are seventeen. You don’t know enough to question.” Erwin was looking at his sister. They both knew the dream was turning into a nightmare. Again, no one said a word, hoping the conversation would go away from something they could do nothing about.

  “I can man the tiller,” said Jürgen. “Let’s go out on the lake.”

  “Better to get to the bigger lake,” said Melina bitterly. “Lake Constance as the Swiss call it. Cross into Switzerland. All of us alive.”

  “Mama and Papa? The people on the estate? My fellow pilots? There’s no way out, Melina. We can all just hope we survive. That the peace won’t be worse than the last one when the French tried to starve us to death. Will you play for me tonight, Gabby?”

  “Of course I will. I wrote something especially for this weekend. A sonata. So far, I’ve only finished what I like to call the first movement.”

  “Lovely. First a row on the lake. To hell with war. For two days I’m going to enjoy myself.”

  Letting the old horse out of the shaft to graze on the summer grass on a long rein, they walked down to the boatshed on the jetty. The wooden jetty pushed out thirty yards into the small lake. At the disturbance, the ducks swam away trailed by little rows of ducklings behind their mothers. There was a smell of wood smoke drifting down to shore from a house half hidden among the trees.

  “Mrs Gottlieb baking I would guess,” said Erwin, lightening the mood. “We’ll call in on Mrs Gottlieb when we come back from our row. I’ll do the rowing.”

  “What’s wrong with us?” said Gabby. “I want an oar: Melina can row the other side.”

  “In unison!”

  “Let’s try.”

  For half an hour squeals and laughter drifted over the water as the girls tried to dip their oars in the water to pull back at the same time. The old clinker-built wooden boat had gone out in a zig-zag for the first hundred yards. In the middle they shipped oars and drifted in the light breeze. Melina had felt Jürgen watching her as she rowed. Once she turned and smiled at him, sitting pensively at the tiller.

  “You have to pull the boat straight or we’ll go round in a circle,” he had said.

  Everyone was trying to be gay. Trying to forget the harsh dissertation from Erwin. They could see the horse, head down, grazing the lush grass. The picture was beautiful.

  When they came ashore Mrs Gottlieb was waiting.

  “Can we buy some of what you’ve been baking?” said Erwin who, like Jürgen, was now dressed in civilian clothes. The small conversation with Mrs Gottlieb made no mention of war.

  The horse played up before Erwin put it back in the shaft. The basket that had brought the sandwiches was now full of Mrs Gottlieb’s small cakes.

  “You gave her far too much money, Jürgen,” said Melina.

  “Does it matter? Are there any fish in the lake?”

  “Never caught one. There’s a river nearer the Swiss border,” said Erwin. “There you can fish. Melina will show you when I’m gone.”

  “That’s the day after tomorrow,” said Gabby. “Far, far away. She’s a lovely old lady. She only had girls. Lucky. None of the girls are married! Old Mr Gottlieb works for Dad in the fields. They’ve lived in that house all their lives. Like his father. And his father before him. Such a pretty house. I’d like a house like that with a piano and never let my children out of my sight.”

  “Doesn’t work like that,” said Melina.

  “It did for Mrs Gottlieb. What a lovely day. Why do horses only eat grass? You’d think they wouldn’t get enough nourishment.”

  “They eat oats,” said Jürgen.

  “That’s grass seed. Well, a sort of grass. If he goes any slower he’s going to stop.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Gabby. “Dinner’s only at eight o’clock. Mama wants us all to dress for dinner. I like dressing up. If you don’t have evening clothes, Jürgen, you can borrow from Erwin. After dinner I’m going to give a little concert. Isn’t this all fun? In the old days the big house was full of young people. Papa says before the last war they had weekend parties every weekend. With every bedroom in the house full of guests. That must have been fun. Can you imagine? All those people having a good time together. Papa says they sometimes had a very small orchestra to play for them sent
down from Berlin. Before the family ran out of money and had to borrow from that Jew in New York. Papa still says he’s going to pay Sir Jacob Rosenzweig back one day. I hope he does. It’s not right to borrow money and not pay it back. Mama says you always have to do the right thing in life. I’d like to go to New York when the war’s over.”

  Bergit had found some paper hats from before she was married to Klaus. They were in the cupboard with the Christmas decorations she packed away carefully every year. They had been bought by old Mrs von Lieberman before she drowned herself in the lake when they told her about her husband. Klaus had said his father was far too old to have gone to war. His death had started the von Lieberman slide towards bankruptcy. When his mother walked into the lake and sank below the surface, never to come up again alive, her children were away. The girls were married, the boys fighting in the war. Except for Klaus, who inherited the estate, none of the children came home to live after the war. Except for her funeral, none of them visited the estate again. They had been a happy family. Their mother was the glue that held them together. After her funeral none of them could face their memories. Bergit hoped she would be able to face her own memories if they came to say Erwin was dead. Which was why she dug out the paper hats. To remind herself that whatever happened, life went on. That she should be thankful for what she had had in her life.

  She had cooked a leg of lamb to be served with a mint sauce from the herb garden. Fresh peas and new potatoes. Sauerkraut as a side dish. Clear fish soup to start with. The lamb followed by an apple strudel cooked with cloves she found at the back of the kitchen cupboard. The cloves were as old as the paper hats. Cloves came from the East. Impossible to buy in Germany.

  They all tried their best. Had it been a funeral nothing would have felt any different. They were all preoccupied despite the laughter and the talk. Her children looked grand in their evening clothes. Happily Jürgen had fitted into a suit of her husband’s. Old-fashioned but somehow appropriate. She remembered Klaus wearing the same evening dress when they came home after their honeymoon in Africa when they had stayed on the Brigandshaw farm in Rhodesia.