The Winter Garden (2014)

by Thynne, Jane

  Erich was ready and waiting when she rang at the apartment. He ducked quickly out of the door, anxious to be away from his grandmother’s nagging. Clara was touched how pleased Erich was to see her. She had feared, once he became a teenager, that his dogged, boyish affection would mutate into something more gruff and withdrawn. That a certain embarrassment and reserve would appear, along with the stubble and the broadening shoulders. And that might have been the case, if it hadn’t been for his accident.

  Aged twelve, away at summer camp with the Pimpf, the junior section of the Hitler Youth, it was as his mother had feared. Erich, who was short for his age, had attempted to make up for his lack of stature with an excess of ambition by scaling an almost vertical rock face. The fall badly fractured a femur and when he was brought back to Berlin to endure three months with his leg in plaster, Clara had spent many hours at the apartment reading aloud passages from some of her favourite books. They started with German novels like Emil and the Detectives and progressed to English works. This was partly to help Erich learn English but also because Clara had discovered there was no better way of bonding with him than over an absorbing passage of literature. He loved Sherlock Holmes and The Thirty-Nine Steps. Kidnapped was possible, but slow. Dickens and P. G. Wodehouse left him baffled. Clara’s experiments with English literature had another point. She didn’t want to talk to Erich about politics or risk him absorbing any anti-Nazi views from her, in case he should repeat them at school and be punished. So she contented herself with talking about books and history. And of course, above all, film.

  That day, as usual, they were going to see a movie after their meal. They made their way through to the U-Bahn, past the towering Karstadt department store, whose roof garden restaurant was a regular haunt of theirs. She loved taking Erich to places he would never normally go, treating him like an adult. Ordering anything he wanted from the menu. Besides, though he might be small for his age, he was the same height as her now, so it was all too easy to forget that he was still so young. That day, however, Clara was on edge and mildly irked. She decided it was because Erich was wearing his new Hitler Youth uniform. He had a freshly ironed brown shirt, gleaming belt and a swastika armband – an outfit for which Clara had paid a breathtaking hundred and thirty-five marks.

  ‘Why have you got that on?’

  ‘I’ve been collecting this morning.’

  ‘Winter Relief?’

  ‘Nope. You’ll never guess what.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Bones. We have to go to households and collect bones from their kitchens. You can’t imagine the stink of them.’

  ‘Poor you. What on earth do they need bones for?’

  ‘They grind them down for industrial use. Our leader says they turn bones into lipstick. Do you reckon that’s true, Clara?’

  She shuddered. ‘If it is, that’s the last time I wear it.’

  ‘I have my proper induction ceremony next week. As soon as I turn fourteen.’

  ‘Fourteen, eh? Quite grown-up.’

  He gave a wry smile. He knew she was teasing. He had a watchful look which she sympathized with because she recognized it in herself. She knew Erich had been bullied at school, yet he took it as his due. An orphan was a dangerous thing to be. The only thing worse than having no mother or father was having a parent who turned out to be the wrong kind.

  ‘So you’ll come?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Erich. I don’t think I can make it.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he shrugged.

  The truth was, she didn’t want to make it. Beside the Hitler Youth boys, with their ardent Aryan faces and their wide blue stare, Erich just didn’t fit in. Erich had Helga’s own dark eyes. The eyes that Clara had last seen begging her wordlessly to care for her son, as she lay broken and dying on Rykestrasse, a halo of blood lacquering around her head.

  Their first meetings after Helga’s death had been awkward affairs. Erich stared at his knees, his lip bitten, and barely spoke. He sat through whatever outing Clara devised – a walk, the movies, or the café – with the same, immutable expression. The only other boy Clara had ever known well was her brother Kenneth, who was the sunniest, least troubled person imaginable. Kenneth had come through the trauma of their mother’s death entirely unscathed, and the worst he would do in a mutinous mood was go and kick a ball, or walk his dog, Flashman. Erich was different from Kenneth, quicker and more intelligent, but more troubled too. Clara had originally seen herself in a godmotherly role to Erich, but any thoughts she had of occasional trips to the theatre and the bestowing of improving gifts had gradually vanished. Now Erich was more like a son to her. At least what she imagined a son would be.

  They came up out of the U-Bahn at Potsdamer Platz and made their way across the square to the Haus Vaterland. Kempinski’s Haus Vaterland was a fantasy destination, a gigantic pavilion full of themed restaurants fitted out with astonishing detail. There was the Bavarian beer garden, which seated a thousand people, the Viennese Grinzing café, a Spanish bodega, a Hungarian eatery, Italian, Turkish and Japanese. Erich’s favourite was the Wild West bar on the fourth floor. They passed through the saloon doors to find straw bales hung from the ceiling, rams’ horns adorning the walls and wooden tables lit by tin lanterns. A cowboy in a ten-gallon hat showed them to a table beneath a poster proclaiming that Law And Order’s Rough And Ready In A Lawless Land. That was the kind of slogan you saw scrawled on the walls in Neukölln. Clearly the restaurant owner had a well-developed sense of humour.

  They ordered lemonade and Erich’s favourite: braised pork knuckle with noodles. Clara loved indulging him. And he ate so much more now. She noticed the muscles bunching on his arms as he ate, the thickening neck, the stockiness which was gradually filling out his slender frame. Her eyes dwelt on him fondly as he tackled his plate, then she remembered an important piece of guardianship.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to say, Erich. Your grandmother tells me the HJ leaders are rude to her. They undermine her authority.’

  ‘That’s not true. Oma’s too sensitive. She’s always interfering. She’s got to understand I’m grown-up now. I’m not a child any more.’

  Clara sympathized with Erich’s grandmother. Everyone complained that the Hitler Jugend encouraged children to be contemptuous of their parents. For Erich, with his desperation to fit in, that tendency was likely to be worse. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘she won’t see so much of me. I’m going to be away much more now. I’ll be busy with the HJ.’

  Clara knew how the Hitler Youth operated. Meetings every week and two hours of political instruction and sport every Saturday afternoon. Fifty-mile hikes at weekends. Camping in the holidays. The idea was that the boys should never have any peace and quiet. No time to escape the propaganda and reflect. It wasn’t just the HJ, of course. The National Socialists had a group for every stage of life. The joke went that with a husband in the SA, a wife in the National Socialist Women’s Movement, a son in the HJ and a daughter in the BDM, the only place a family could actually meet would be at the Nuremberg rally.

  ‘Well, try to be more respectful to your grandmother, eh? She’s an old lady now. She loves you.’

  The English boys she knew of Erich’s age had respect drummed into them, along with please and thank you and standing up when an adult came in the room. But in Hitler’s Germany, things were different. The power lay with the youth, and they knew it.

  ‘Yeah. I will.’ He ate hungrily. ‘I can’t wait for next summer camp. We’re going out to an island on the lake. I’m glad you taught me to swim because if you say you can’t swim, they throw you in the water so you learn quickly.’

  Sometimes, Clara thought, the less she knew about what went on in the Hitler Youth, the better.

  ‘And how is school?’

  ‘OK. Apart from Herr Klug. I hate that teacher. He has a Backpfeifengesicht.’ It was a German word which didn’t exist in English. It meant a face badly in need of a fist.

  ‘Why do you hate him?’

  Erich’s face was a h
ostile muddle of emotion, as he sought to define the precise reason he disliked the man.

  ‘He asks the boys what they had for Sunday lunch.’

  ‘Why on earth would he ask that?’

  ‘He’s waiting to see who never says pork. You know, if they’re Jews.’

  Clara was surprised at this. She had seen the race charts in Erich’s books full of photographs of children showing the difference between the Jew and the Aryan. The theme didn’t just emerge in Rassenkunde, race science, but every subject. Even maths. ‘Compare the percentage of Jews in different positions with their share of the total population.’

  ‘He’s always trying to catch out Karl Meyer. Karl does fine at school. He gets top marks in maths and science. They don’t let him join in the songs and all that, but everyone likes him. Anyway, Herr Klug makes Karl stand up for the whole lesson. And when Karl won the hundred metres Herr Klug said he wasn’t allowed a medal.’

  Clara wondered how it was that Erich could not see the connection between the odious teacher and the methods of the HJ. The anti-Semitism that made him bristle at school was openly taught in the Hitler Youth. How was it possible that he did not connect the two?

  ‘I’m sure Herr Klug already knows who’s Jewish. The Jewish boys don’t Heil Hitler, after all. So what subject do you like best?’

  ‘Still history. He’s good, Herr Schnaubel, though we can’t make him out. There are all kinds of questions about German history, or our future, that he just won’t answer. He simply says, “We do not discuss what the Führer tells us”.’

  ‘He’s right.’ Clara realized Herr Schnaubel was playing a dangerous game. Most probably he hated giving the Nazi view of German history. Yet if a master was suspected of being anti-Nazi, he would be pursued by the bigger boys. Avoiding discussion was the safest tactic.

  Erich finished his noodles and started to glance at the menu again, selecting, as always, Black Forest cake, sandwiched with whipped cream, topped with cherries and grated chocolate.

  ‘I don’t mind you missing my induction ceremony, Clara, but next year, if I’m lucky, I’ll get to march at the Party rally and then you’ll have to come and watch me.’

  ‘I will. I promise. Now . . . I know what you want for your birthday, and I’ll give it to you next time I see you. Meanwhile, I got you this.’

  Across the table she slid an envelope containing the signed postcard of Ernst Udet. Erich’s eyes lit up, as she knew they would. He whistled.

  ‘You’ve actually met Ernst Udet?’

  ‘I’m married to him. In the film, at least. And yes, I’ve been to a party at his house.’

  Erich’s eyes swivelled from the card to Clara. He had quite forgotten his dessert.

  ‘Do you think . . .? Is there any chance that I could meet him?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  He studied the picture, eyes shining.

  ‘Perhaps they’ll make a card of you soon. Like they did with Mutti.’

  The promotional card of Helga Schmidt, which showed her flimsily clad and leaning coquettishly towards the camera blowing a kiss, might not have been the most appropriate image for a son to treasure, yet it was the most precious of Erich’s paltry possessions. There had been a dreadful day when his schoolfriends discovered the picture, snuggled between the leaves of Mein Kampf, and waved it in the air with hoots of glee, taking it first for a girlfriend, and then, when they discovered the truth, with howls of cruel laughter and taunts of whore, and Mutti’s boy. It was a miracle he had managed to recapture it.

  ‘I suppose they will,’ said Clara. ‘I’ll be on the poster, certainly.’

  ‘I’m going to be a glider. Goering says Germany is to be a nation of aviators. I’ve signed up for training this summer. I can join when I’m seventeen.’

  Clara wondered what would happen by the time Erich was seventeen. It might not be just gliding that awaited him. It might be war.

  After dinner they went to the Ufa cinema in the base of the building. The first feature was a documentary about Mussolini’s recent visit to Germany. There were shots of SS guards crouching on rooftops as Hitler and Mussolini rolled past side by side in an open-topped Mercedes, the Duce’s darting black eyes surveying the massed storm troopers with a scowl. Fountains of coloured water had been installed in the Pariser Platz, in the red and green of the Italian flag, and white stands held aloft golden eagles on Unter den Linden. The newsreel was followed by a war film. As Erich relaxed beside her, Clara allowed herself a quick glimpse at his face. She adored him. Love had seized her with unexpected force, and Erich was not even her son. What must it be like to have a child of your own?

  The film, however, was dreadful. It was one of the worst kind of war films, full of horror and violence. Yet again Clara wondered how Erich could like things like this? She supposed it was just a stage, like making model aeroplanes, that all boys went through. Perhaps even sensitive boys needed to find cruelty in themselves, to harden themselves like young African tribesmen, for what life had in store. To watch violence and death so they would know how to face it when it came for real.

  Chapter Fourteen

  In one way, deciding what to wear on an evening out should have been no problem for Clara. When Hitler established the Reich Fashion Bureau – which had originally been headed by Magda Goebbels – he decreed that German actresses were allowed to wear only clothes which had been made by German designers, of Aryan race, and made of pure German fabric. The result of this stricture was that German designers fell over themselves to persuade the top actresses to wear their creations. And even though Clara was far from a major star, she still received occasional dresses and jackets, and had been given a stunning violet evening gown from the House of Horn to wear at a recent premiere.

  The problem was that the other part of her work involved attracting as little attention as possible. Distinctive clothes and perfume made a woman stand out. Her favourite scent, Bourjois’ Evening In Paris, had been reluctantly consigned to the back of a drawer. Her looks made her the kind of woman that people noticed, yet she needed to be the kind that people stopped noticing.

  In the end she selected a dress of soft moss green, with a sweetheart neckline and puffed sleeves. A single strand of pearls round her neck and diamond clips in her ears. Her nails were freshly lacquered, but covered by soft leather gloves. Attractive anonymity was the best she could hope for.

  The prospect of a drink with Ralph Sommers unsettled her on several levels. She felt the predictable twists in her stomach, which always accompanied anxiety. She couldn’t make him out. Had he followed her all that way through Berlin? If not, how had he known where she lived? What was his motive in asking her for a drink? Could it be purely the spark that had passed between them at the Goebbels’ home? That teasing smile, as though they had shared some private joke. As she relived that moment she felt a jolt of sexual energy pass through her, but instantly reproved herself. Sommers was an attractive man, but not only was he a good ten years older than her, more importantly she could never have the slightest romantic interest in any fellow traveller of Oswald Mosley. This evening would most certainly be business, not pleasure.

  Once dressed, she drew on her warm, fur-collared coat and looked for a hat. She had several to choose between: a purple velvet cloche with a white band, her soft and flattering brown cloche or her new, tip-tilted pillbox hat, draped with a fashionable few inches of veil. Veils were increasing popular just then. That was the genius of fashion, the way it suited itself to the times. Nothing could be more frivolous than the little scrap of netting that made a hat’s veil, yet nothing could be more profoundly useful at a time when keeping one’s eyes covered was a significant part of daily existence.

  The Einstein Café on Kurfürstenstrasse, just a few blocks south of the Tiergarten, was a Berlin institution. Since the nineteenth century it had been the favoured spot for writers and artists, its walls hung with photographs of the great and celebrated, lit by great globe lights hanging from
a ceiling of gilt and pistachio green. The villa itself belonged to the actress Henny Porten, a star of the silent era, whose career had taken a sharp downwards curve when she refused to divorce her Jewish husband. Clara had seen her around the studios a few times, in the early days, a mournful figure with silver-white skin and inky hair, but since Goebbels had banished her from the screen she spent the days upstairs, haunting the villa like a beautiful, brooding ghost.

  Eyes swivelled towards Clara as she made her way through the marble-topped tables to where Ralph Sommers was sitting on a leather banquette with his back to the wall and a good view of the room. He wore a tweed jacket with a crimson silk handkerchief tucked in the top pocket. He stood up and smiled playfully.

  ‘I was half wondering if you would turn up after that little dance you led me last night.’

  ‘Well, I’m here.’

  ‘I’m not used to beautiful women evading me with quite such ease.’

  ‘Do beautiful women often try to evade you?’

  He laughed. ‘It’s not a frequent occurrence, no. But I think you could tell I was following you. Where did you learn that?’

  ‘I might ask you the same thing.’

  ‘I asked you first.’

  ‘I didn’t learn anything. Maybe you’re just more obtrusive than you think.’

  ‘In that case, why didn’t you stop and ask me what I wanted?’

  ‘Perhaps I wondered how you knew where I lived.’

  ‘Ah. That’s simple. Our hostess, Magda, kindly gave me your address.’

  Furnished by Goebbels himself, no doubt.

  ‘I took the liberty of ordering some wine.’

  As he thanked the waiter in flawless German, Clara stared into the mirrored walls behind him. The mirrors here were angled so that an infinitely receding image was reflected, folding in on itself, offering a thousand versions of herself and Ralph Sommers. Yet she still had no idea which image was the right one. Who was he? Had he been sent by Goebbels to keep an eye on her? She remembered what he had said about Magda showing him hospitality. He must be close to the Goebbels then. He may even know her father.