‘No,’ he said, with a kindly smile. ‘Go on.’ He stayed back to give her time to get to her feet, then said, ‘You sure you’re all right?’
She nodded. ‘I’m sorry, yes, I’m fine, thank you. It’s these . . . these inflight movies, they send me to sleep and I have . . .’
‘You get nightmares, eh?’ He laughed and held out an arm for support as she stepped into the aisle. ‘I know exactly what you mean. Come on, love.’
CHAPTER TEN
Susannah waited inside Hamburg airport for her luggage to arrive, waited some more, then found a nearby bench where she could keep an eye on the carousel in a little more comfort. She glanced around her.
This was the first time she’d been back to Germany since ‘then’. If her children had had their way she wouldn’t even be here now. And the urge inside her was to book the first plane back to the States – or to anywhere, in fact.
But she’d spent a lifetime suppressing urges – that particular skill was as useful now as it always had been.
She took a few deep breaths of the horrid plastic air and looked around the interior of the airport once more, making mental notes on anything and everything her eyes fell on. Her attention flicked swiftly from porter to passenger, from burger kiosk to clock to glassy granite floor tiles, all glaring and shiny from the throw of lighting that was as artificial as the air.
And then those bad thoughts were gone.
Now it all looked so normal. Perhaps the interiors of German airports looked pretty much like those of every other airport in the whole world; it certainly seemed that way.
She peered across to the carousel, but no, no luggage yet. So she looked around once more.
Her eye caught the word ‘Berlin’ on one of the destination displays. Sure, she’d seen the word a hundred times before, at airports around the world from Tokyo to New York. Somehow this time it was different, because this time she wasn’t viewing the words from the safety of a different country.
Anything more than dull memories of the first eleven years of her life were hidden in the corners of her mind, but now that she was back in the same country – hearing the accents and seeing everything written in her native language – more details started to force their way through.
The thoughts started to come back.
Susannah remembered a very happy early childhood. Those dull memories were mostly the things that could have happened in any child’s world: playing in the playground of her first school with skipping ropes or games chalked on the yard; a few close friends – names long forgotten – plaiting each other’s hair on a Sunday evening to be smart for school the next day; a few vacations to the sea, where it was usually much too cold to swim; playing – and too often fighting – with her younger brother, Jacob.
She spent the first eleven years of her life in the same tenement apartment in the Jewish quarter of Berlin. Quoting the names of streets was beyond her, but she definitely remembered the three large stone steps leading to the front door, steps she struggled to climb as a very young child. Her father was an engineer at a local factory, and Susannah remembered him coming home every night in his smart suit and changing into his old creased suit – the one with patched elbows – to play with her and Jacob either in the apartment or at the nearby park. She couldn’t remember the official name of the park, but everybody called it Rose Park on account of the floral displays throughout early summer. And that explained why for the rest of her days, whenever she smelt a sweet sherbet rose, the little girl in her started running through Rose Park again.
Like the rest of the community the family celebrated Passover and Hanukkah and ate lots of matzo balls and hamantashen. Even the plain old chicken soup had a Jewish feel to it. On Fridays at sundown, surrounded by blessed candles and good conversation, they ate a Shabbat meal, which was usually egg bread followed by gefilte fish. On every Saturday and holy day Mother and Father took the family to the local synagogue, and Susannah always knew when they were about to go because Mother put on her best dress and Father wore his kippah. Susannah got the impression it was about tradition, and was an excuse to meet people and share collective ideas for a fulfilling life as much as it was about the worship itself.
Susannah didn’t give much thought to the idea of being Jewish in the early years, only really becoming conscious of it when she had to change to an all-Jewish school even though she was perfectly happy where she was, and then having to make sure she sat only on the yellow benches whenever she went in Rose Park, which wasn’t such a big deal even though she didn’t see how using the other benches should cause a problem.
Uncle Paul and Aunt Helena, together with their son, Reuben, lived just a short walk away, and would visit every weekend. Uncle Paul was her favourite relative; she was attracted by the way he resembled her father, albeit a little taller and slimmer, with silver-threaded hair that had started to thin. But the most striking similarity was the way his jaw took on a square shape whenever he smiled, again just like Father, which meant he was a friend.
Whenever they came around Paul would greet her by tweaking her ears and tickling the sides of her belly until her legs collapsed underneath her, whereupon he would pick her up and pretend to throw her away. At some point the two Zuckerman families would split into their accustomed groups. If it was dry Susannah would play with Reuben and Jacob in the park across the road, otherwise they would play inside, usually pretending to run a sweet shop. Aunt Helena and Mother would retire to the kitchen to talk or cook or make curtains, and Father and Uncle Paul would do little more than sit in the living room and talk.
It was all happy, and only in hindsight did Susannah realize her parents must have shielded her from what was happening in the country at the time. But she knew something serious was happening because of the arguments Uncle Paul and Father used to have. Sometimes Susannah would come into the room at the wrong time, and the two men would look at each other and huff a little, and would always manage to say that it was nothing whenever she asked what they’d been talking about. But as time went on they stopped making excuses and simply carried on arguing in front of the rest of the family. And everybody got the general idea. Uncle Paul always seemed to be complaining; it was always: The Socialists are doing this, or The Socialists are planning that, or Soon it will be illegal for us to step outside of our homes. Father always seemed to dismiss the concerns; he used clever words like ‘unreasonable’ or ‘paranoid’, and kept saying that it wasn’t so bad, that there were many strong-minded, intelligent Germans. He said that the government was only trying to make Germany a stronger country, and that sooner or later they would come to their senses and realize that Jewish people could help with that. He kept talking about having faith in the German people. And whenever he did say these things, that was when Uncle Paul would get really upset and use more words Susannah didn’t understand, like ‘deluded’ and ‘persecution’, and would have to cough and rub his face to try to disguise how angry he was.
But, in time, all of those heated discussions would be put to one side and the two families would eat together and play cards and talk before parting.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Susannah’s memories of her childhood years in Berlin were of mainly blissful times, but those heated discussions between Father and Uncle Paul on the politics of the day weren’t the only dark stains on the social tablecloth.
Three specific events from those years stuck particularly firmly in Susannah’s mind in spite of the passing of almost seventy years.
The first was when the two Zuckerman families were spending the day together, and Uncle Paul and Father had been talking all afternoon while Mother and Aunt Helena took Susannah, Jacob and Reuben to the park. They returned to find the two brothers in the middle of a particularly bitter argument. They could hear the shouts through the door, but the exchange stopped as soon as they entered.
For once Uncle Paul didn’t give Susannah that square-jawed smile or tweak her ears or give her a playful tickle. In fact, hi
s face looked a little scary, like she’d never seen it before. He looked almost weary, with sweat beading on his ruddy brow as if he’d been chopping wood.
‘I hope you all kept to the yellow benches,’ he said, the stress in his voice evident even to a child. Reuben looked to his mother and started welling up; his father’s fear had been conveyed to the boy’s mind in an instant.
‘Leave the children out of it,’ Susannah’s father bellowed. He marched over and stood in front of Susannah and Jacob.
‘Open your eyes, for God’s sake,’ Uncle Paul replied, matching the anger in his brother’s voice. ‘What sort of country do you want your children to grow up in? I tell you, we should all—’
‘We’re not going anywhere,’ Father shouted across. ‘We live here. It’s our country as much as anyone else’s.’
Then Susannah felt the firm touch of her mother’s hand on her shoulder, and all three children were shepherded into the kitchen, where they stayed with Mother and Aunt Helena, listening for a few seconds as the argument raged on next door.
‘Milk,’ Mother said, forcing a smile and opening a cupboard. ‘And some biscuits, yes?’
The two mothers talked and drew pained, sickly smiles on their faces, and kept asking whether the children had enjoyed playing in the park. Susannah didn’t feel like speaking, and evidently neither did Jacob or Reuben.
And just as it all went quiet in the next room and Mother’s shoulders started to relax, the door was flung open and Uncle Paul stepped into the room. He looked to his wife and nodded to the door. They both had frowns that aged them and a sad redness around the eyes. Soon they were hugging Susannah and Jacob, and Mother and Father were hugging Reuben.
Then Susannah’s aunt, uncle and cousin were gone. They never came back to the house in Berlin again, and Susannah knew better than to ask what had happened to them.
The second event happened late in 1938. Susannah had had difficulty getting to sleep, with noises outside that Mother and Father just told her to ignore. But eventually she slept, only to be woken up with a start in the dead of night by a hammering noise at the front door that sounded like people running along wooden boards.
Soon she saw light streaming into the bedroom from the hallway, and heard her father swear, which was very unusual for him. Then she saw his shadow break the light and heard the front door creak open. She pulled her bedclothes higher against the cold November air that crawled into the bedroom, and listened.
‘What is it?’ Father said. ‘What the . . . ?’
‘You need to come and see, Mr Zuckerman. The synagogue . . . our businesses . . .’
Then there was a silence. There was also a hint of smoke in the air that stilled Susannah’s breathing and made her heart race.
Father cursed again, then said, ‘I’ve been hearing things happening all night.’ He spat the words out in anger. ‘I never thought they would go through with it.’
‘You heard the talk?’
‘Of course I did!’ Then he apologized for shouting at the man and said, ‘I . . . I just . . . didn’t want to accept it.’
A few more terse exchanges were whispered before the light went out and the door closed.
In the strangely silent darkness Susannah sensed something else in the air. But this wasn’t something she could describe, like a sound or a smell; for the first time in her young life she knew real and life-changing fear.
Father hardly spoke for days after that night, and more importantly he didn’t go back to work. He spent his time simply sitting in the corner of the living room, his face looking more like a well-worn glove every day, his fists clenching and unclenching with resentment. Only when Susannah was alone with him and asked whether he was feeling well did he relax a little and paint a sad smile on his face – just for a moment – before sighing and fixing his gaze on the far wall.
It was then that she took the chance to confront that fear she’d had days before. She knelt down next to him as he was deep in thought. ‘Father,’ she said softly. ‘When are you going back to the office?’
He glanced to her, then quickly pulled his eyes away and back to the wall. ‘Something happened to the office. I won’t be working there for a while.’
‘But—’
‘Susannah,’ he said. ‘It is better that you don’t ask.’ Then he glanced down to his fingers, fingers he was rubbing together like two fire sticks, and looked at Susannah again. Then he called Mother and Jacob into the room from the kitchen.
‘Listen, all of you,’ he said in a slow deliberate tone that held a threat. ‘You’re not to go outside alone.’ He looked to Mother.
‘You must do as your father says,’ she said. ‘Just for a while.’
‘Yes,’ Father said. ‘Just until things . . .’
‘Improve?’ Susannah said.
Father’s lips stayed sealed, and he simply blinked a few times.
‘Yes,’ Mother said. ‘We’ll see what the New Year brings.’
As it transpired, the New Year brought the third significant event Susannah could remember from those Berlin years.
The strongest memory she had of her time there – the kind of memory where she could distinctly remember the emotion on people’s faces and her own grim awareness that this was no game of hide-and-seek or a scold for spilling a drink – was when Mother and Father sat her and Jacob down and asked them whether they would like to see their Uncle Paul, Aunt Helena and cousin Reuben again.
Susannah had reached that age of awakening, but knew Jacob was too young to understand and wasn’t going to answer, so she said that yes, of course she would like to see them again. Only then did Jacob nod agreement. So Father told them that they could do that, but it might mean them not seeing their school friends for some time.
Susannah remembered saying she would miss all of her friends (although now, almost seventy years later, she couldn’t even remember their names) but in truth she missed Uncle Paul and would have agreed to anything just to see him again. Her parents told her it wouldn’t be for ever and promised they would all return home one day. They could even think of it as a long vacation to the place where Paul, Helena and Reuben now lived – a place called Amsterdam, which was near the sea in the Netherlands. Mother also told them they would all be safer there, that she and Jacob could play again with Reuben outside, and – even better – that they would make many new friends and play in new and exciting places, that they would explain to them when they were older what it was all about, and that they were not to get upset or cry or ask questions because life was difficult enough as it was.
So Susannah didn’t ask.
She just kept repeating in her mind those words of her parents: the promise that they would all ‘return one day’ to Berlin.
Susannah, still sitting on the bench at the airport, and still gazing at the hypnotic luggage carousel, allowed herself a reflective smile at her thoughts – wondering whether her luggage would ‘return one day’ to her.
And then, as if on cue, her eyes fell on the large wheeled case as it made its appearance, and she eased her stiff frame off the seat and made her way towards it.
The kind couple who had been telling her all about their European trip helped to retrieve her luggage and set up the wheels and the long pulling handle. She thanked them and left to look for a cab.
CHAPTER TWELVE
So this is Hamburg,’ Susannah said as her cab set off for the hotel.
The driver took the bait and struck up a one-way conversation in perfect, if clipped, English, telling her about some of the usual tourist attractions. She didn’t have the heart to tell him she wasn’t really interested in how many museums, theatres, art galleries and restaurants he could recommend. She hadn’t come for those. Apart from inserting the occasional ‘yes’ or ‘I see’ between his words, she occupied her mind taking in some of the city scenery. And thinking. She mainly thought about how the city resembled any modern US city more than it did a 1940s German city, what with the cars, the architectu
re, the clothes, the advertising hoardings for McDonald’s, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Mercedes and many more. Then again, the world had changed so much since she’d last been to Germany, so what else did she expect?
Indeed, what was she expecting? Why was she wasting her time – that precious time evaporating like water from a frock in the summer sun – visiting old ghosts here, even torturing herself?
It occurred to her that perhaps she’d made the most monumental mistake of her long life. She looked up to the street signs, and even the sounds of the words on them seemed harsh and brutal as she spoke them in her head. It was then, waiting at a set of traffic lights, that she heard the sharp snapping of dogs barking, and for a few seconds her heartbeat felt stronger than it had for years. She cleared her throat, gasping for air as if the hauntings of the past had stolen the breath from her lungs, and tapped the driver on the shoulder.
‘Excuse me?’ she said, almost shrieking the words.
The driver turned to her, and in a few seconds she ran through the scenario in her head. She would ask to turn back, he would ask why, she would say she’d forgotten something at the airport, he would tut and huff, but she would have to sound angry and insist. Then he would turn back.
‘Are you okay?’ he said with a softness that startled her and brought her mind back to reality.
The lights changed. They looked at each other for a moment.
Then a horn sounded from behind them and Susannah glanced over her shoulder. ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Let’s carry on.’
‘You look ill,’ the driver said. ‘I mean, if you don’t mind me saying. Are you sure you’re all right?’
There seemed genuine concern in the man’s eyes – two almonds that seemed to understand.
‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘It’s the jet lag. I just need to get to my hotel and have a lie down.’ And after he’d turned and driven on for thirty seconds she said, ‘But thank you for asking.’ It only seemed right.
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