Bone and Blood

by Margo Gorman

  Aisling struggled to picture this group in the woods, ‘So how many of you escaped?’

  ‘Well there were lots of groups who had done the same as us. At first, there were about thirty of us still together. Irma’s clogs cut her feet and mine were in shreds but now we could stop and pad them with moss or leaves from time to time and wash our feet in the lake. When it came towards night on the third day more and more small groups split off, looking for somewhere to shelter. It was hard to sleep on the cold earth even though we were exhausted. We were left in a group of seven. Five of the Jehovah Zeugen, Irma and myself.’

  Aisling twisted her hair around her fingers. She was listening but it was hypnotic, this slow unfolding of the action. Her mind wandered a little. Was it time to have her hair cut off short when she went back? Some way of marking the change of plan for her life.

  Brigitte shivered, ‘I can feel the special chill air of those nights in my bones even now. It was April but cold in the open air when we were wet through. Without Irma even then I could have lain down and died. I would have been happy with the freedom to die there under the open sky with no guards to kick us to death. But it took the Bratkartoffeln to make us cry.’

  ‘Fried potatoes made you cry?’

  ‘One evening we came to the edge of a small village. There was a small house with barns attached. Irma suggested Hannelore, one of the Bifos knock the door and ask for shelter. Irma was clever; Hannelore was a country woman and German too. The rest of us waited in the trees. Hannelore came back to tell us that an old woman came to the door who was even more terrified than we were. She could hear children whispering somewhere inside. The old woman said we could sleep the night in the barn. Later we learnt that there was an old man there too. Their son was killed on the Eastern Front and their daughter worked on the railway. They were openly relieved most of the group were not foreigners and seemed surprised to meet people not unlike themselves who spoke German. In the evening we smelt the potatoes and onions frying. Our mouths were watering as we talked about whether we dared ask them for something to eat. Then the old woman came with two large pans of fried potato and onions and put them down for us on a bale of straw. They even gave us a jug of milk. We all cried then. At first the old woman couldn’t understand. ‘Tut mir leid, tut mir leid,’ she kept saying but whatever she was sorry for, we never really knew. She smiled when Hannelore kissed her hand and said prayers of thanks. Laughing it off with, ‘Tears are good because we are short of salt.’ She brought the old man – her husband – out to sit on the bale of straw. They wanted to know if Drewin had been bombed in the great explosion. They had some relations there.

  ‘Irma was able to tell them about the munitions dump and as far as we knew there were no civilians killed. The old couple were more afraid of the Russians than prisoners or German guards and were keen for us to stay although it meant they had to share their store of potatoes. When their daughter, Dorothea, came home, she took us into the house and allowed us to sleep in their loft. I could have stayed longer but Irma was keen to move on. Dorothea was able to tell us about the railway. Many trains had stopped running but the connection to Neustrelitz had been working fine all through the war.’

  Aisling flicked her hair back. She enjoyed the new sensation in her stomach. The need to get this story out, to get it to work as it was unfolding in her head. She would experiment with a long strip – mixing styles with and the sharper German graphic of “Der Erste Frühling” blended all into her the unique montage of memory. She wanted to pin down this reality.

  ‘Can you show me on a map where you were?’ she asked.

  ‘Maps! Maps indeed,’ Brigitte sent out a snort of smoke. ‘Katharina has maps. She wanted to go there to walk in the woods. She wanted me show her on the map where we walked but what do I know of maps? She went anyway. She got her pass to cross the border even before the wall came down. I followed her to the crossing point at Friedrichstraße to watch her queue there. It was the first time I spotted the Jules. I wanted to watch her leave me because I thought she might never come back. When she came back she made it sound so easy. ‘We took a train to Fürstenberg,’ she told me. ‘We?’ I asked – ‘who’s we?’ ‘My friend, Monika,’ she said it as if she had told me but she hadn’t. ‘We had a beautiful Spring day in the woods,’ she said. ‘But it was eerie too. Like a graveyard.’ I told her I had seen enough of those woods when we were marched out of that place. They didn’t make it to Wesenberg – it took longer than they planned and they had to get back across the border.’

  ‘So what was at Wesenberg?’

  ‘Wesenberg is where Irma led us after our stay with the old people. We couldn’t impose on them anymore and Irma was impatient for news. Seven more mouths to feed were too many. Before we left we helped them plant a field of potatoes and laughed with them about the day we would come back again for the best Bratkartoffeln ever when the crop would be ready. The village where they lived had only a few houses. Below something it was called. Katharina could tell you. Neustrelitz was north from it and Wesenberg west. Dorothea told us Hitler had committed suicide on the last day of April but the Nazis were still in control of Wesenberg even then. Many of the people of Wesenberg had left their homes and fled in those days because they knew that the Red Army was very close.’

  Aisling sketched more images in her head – the Red Army was a good ambiguous image, ‘So how long did the Germans let you stay with them?’

  ‘Irma was our scout and went out alone every day to find out what she could. She kept her prisoner dress on but with a coat over it – just in case there were some SS guards also hiding in the woods. One day she spotted some Red Army soldiers with a horse and wagon searching the woods. It was proof that the Red Army had reached Wesenberg. Irma convinced us that it was safe to go there – even for the Bifos. So we walked there – it was already 2nd May and summer was in the air. We had dry clothes and nights were getting warm. We were in high spirits and joined with the Bifos singing hymns while we were still in the woods.’

  Aisling grinned as she made more sketches. How to get the image of these half-starved women – a Catholic, a communist and some Jehovah’s Witnesses singing in the woods?

  ‘So you made it to Wesenberg?’

  ‘At first Wesenberg looked a bit like a ghost town except for the Red Army of course. A group of soldiers in a jeep challenged us but we explained we were prisoners and Irma showed them her red triangle. They directed us to an empty house where we could stay. We waited there while Irma went with them to the Commandant. On her way to speak to the Commandant Irma found out many houses were taken over by women from the first column. Some women whispered of how the soldiers were crazy for women. Irma advised us to wear our prison dresses and hide our hair for protection. We were pitiful enough looking but that alone might not be enough. We heard stories telling us nothing was a protection in the first days, so we were lucky we had stayed in the woods. Maybe Irma being a Communist protected us. Who knows?

  They gave her a small haversack filled with bread, sausage, potatoes and even a bottle of wine. We made our own feast and exchanged stories with some of our neighbours from the Lager. A strange reunion. Were we prisoners again or free? We didn’t really know. I thought we would be trapped again. The Red Army Commandant had been impressed by Irma’s knowledge of Russian and insisted that she work with them as interpreter. She couldn’t say no. So much for freedom I thought. But they rewarded her well with food for all of us in return and Irma said it was too soon yet to go to Berlin. There was still fighting there. We stayed two weeks in Wesenberg.’

  ‘And have you ever been back in Wesenberg since then?’ Aisling asked.

  ‘Never,’ Brigitte was emphatic, ‘and I have no desire to go there. One of the best things about the GDR was the wall they put between me and those memories. After 1989, Katharina would ask me every summer if I would go there with her: “Monika can take us in her car, Mama, you don’t have to go hiking.” Monika and her car indeed! I never und
erstood why she wanted to take me with her.’

  Aisling shrugged in sympathy to the dead Katharina, ‘It’s part of your history and hers too. She probably wanted to understand you better.’

  Brigitte looked at her, ‘I’m her mother: what more does she need to know than that? She wasn’t even born then.’

  ‘There you are. She wasn’t born but she was there..’Aisling searched for an old-fashioned way to finish saying what she meant, ‘She was on her way, wasn’t she?’ No wonder Katharina got frustrated. Brigitte could be so stubborn and secretive.

  ‘I didn’t know. No-one in the Lager had their monthly bleeding.’

  ‘You didn’t know then so now you try to hang on to secrets that are no secret any more. Makes a lot of sense that does.’

  ‘Irma wouldn’t say if we were free or not when I pestered her. I knew that Irma didn’t tell her Red Army boss we were leaving but I said nothing. Now it was just the two of us. No need for anyone else to know. It was too difficult anyway to say goodbye. We left by bicycle very early in the morning for Neustrelitz. Irma had claimed the bicycles from behind the hotel used as Red Army headquarters. She still insisted we wear our prison dresses – now clean and crisp and headscarves too. They might still offer protection and we would save the civilian clothes that we had ‘borrowed’ from our absent hosts in Wesenburg. We went straight to Neustrelitz station. There was no timetable and we had no idea how many trains there were so we sat in the sun and had some bread from our Red Army rations and waited. It took a lot of waiting and two changes to reach Berlin but we made it.’

  Brigitte paused and within minutes her head sank onto her chest. Aisling left her to it – the last thing she wanted was to help to put her to bed.

  Chapter Nineteen – Post War Letters

  Berlin 18th September 1945

  Dear Mary,

  My mother wrote and told me you had your first child, a boy. I’m sorry not to have celebrated your wedding or the birth. The last few months I have been too tired to write. My congratulations and good wishes. I am a mother now too, the mother of a baby girl. I hope you had an easier time in childbirth.

  Katharina was born on 8th September at 9 o’ clock. When e child was coming I felt it like the flesh was being torn from my bones for hour after hour. Then it was past – the sweet relief when you knew you could do nothing more and nothing else. I could cradle her so small, so healthy, and so beautiful. The memory makes me cry still. I wasn’t ready for the head of black hair and the old woman’s face with the dark eyes. Mine and only mine from my own flesh. A tiny bloody bundle. Her little face screams past the images of war. She has marched through my flesh and replaced the procession of death.

  Down there hurts badly too but it is strange to feel a pain which doesn’t make me miserable. I feel happy sitting here in a clean bed with the child lying sleeping beside me. I have a good neighbour, Adelheid, who found a big old drawer for the baby to sleep in. I met her when we stacked bricks together. I already slept to-day so I am not tired. Another day of rest and then I go to work for the Americans but I want to write to you first.

  I baptised Katharina myself while Adelheid was seeing the old woman off with her bottle of brandy – the last remnant of the booty from the apartment that cost us so much energy to drag through the ruins of Berlin. The apartment was a safer hiding place than the cellar after all. No-one dared climb what was left of the stairs – not even the Russians. People say that the Russians didn’t like going into apartments that were too high up anyway. It was the women in cellars or in the first floor apartments who suffered most in those first days of the Russians. Thank God to have been saved that fate.

  We learnt in school baptism can be carried out in emergencies, didn’t we? During the war, it was hard at times to keep any faith. Katharina is a name I heard and liked the sound of. I should call her Adelheid because of the kindness my friend has shown me. She was there the whole time better than any family. She found an old woman from somewhere to help her. A mid-wife? I didn’t ask. I didn’t want a doctor and they were too hard to find anyway. I focussed on the meaning behind Adelheid’s German words to distract me from that pain. ‘I’ve done it three times and it doesn’t get easier I tell you but you forget the pain after, I promise you – until the next time!’ I welcomed the pain. It fuelled my defiance of all and everyone who would deny me Katharina. I don’t give a fig for what the family or neighbours in Ireland would think because she had no father. Katharina’s father is already married so I will not tell him.

  While in labour, I cursed all the armies that marched through Berlin in foul language I didn’t even know I knew. Adelheid and the old woman cheered me on. They knew that I was cursing even if they didn’t understand the words. I haven’t told my mother about Katharina yet. I will keep this letter until I write to her.

  Many will think the worst of me, but Katharina is my joy. Please tell no-one else, it would hurt my parents. I will never bring Katharina to Ireland to shame them. The shame is only mine. Katharina will never miss her father. I will be father and mother to her.

  I have a new job working for the Americans. Speaking English is a big advantage. God forgive me for telling them I speak German. I know only a little but more than they do.

  Your friend, Biddy

  *

  1st November 1945

  Dear Mary,

  The feast of all Saints or is it all Souls, I’ve forgotten which is which but the memory of winter nights at the chapel clings to me like damp autumn mist – going outside to pray, then inside the chapel, going out again. Each visit earning grace for the souls in purgatory – naming the names of my grandparents, aunts, uncles, my little cousin who died of pneumonia. It’s a far cry from my life here, where I rarely see the inside of any church.

  I haven’t had the heart to post my letters to you yet. It is not fair to burden you with my secrets. I will write until the paper runs out. When I have time. Caring for my Katharina and working for the Americans leaves me little time for writing letters or for thinking of the past. I wasn’t ready for the rush of love that lifts my step every day when I pick her up from Adelheid’s. I am sure no mother ever had such love as I have. It feels sinful to take such pleasure in her. My love is stronger than any feeling that I ever had before. I could have my pick of the American soldiers but I run from them – home to Katharina.

  I rarely leave her in my free time but to-day I made an exception. I went back to visit the bookseller. I haven’t been there since Katharina was born but I asked Adelheid to keep her this afternoon. Katharina cried all night last night as if she was testing my love for her. Even so I left her with Adelheid. To-day I have a free afternoon. I will go alone to a bookshop I know. I tell myself it is for a book on German grammar but I know I will look at the photographs of Hamburg the bookseller keeps hidden in a drawer. He takes them out only for those who question him in such a way that he can recognise that you too have a part of your memory that is like a bit of charred wood. Each time I go I swear I will never go back but my feet lead me back in spite of myself. Like a drunk going back to his hidden bottle of whiskey. Maybe it is a way of burying my secrets and my memories – putting them back in the drawer with those photographs.

  It helps to look at German people who suffered much more than I did. Even though it was a couple of months since I was last there, the bookseller didn’t ask what I wanted. After he has passed the time of day and said something about the weather, he passes me the envelope. I feel somehow dirty in spite of the compassion in his eyes. It takes one to know one. We both know that his mind is burnt by the firebombs that took his home, his wife and his two boys. Such a mind cannot make the connection between memories of life before and life after. You have to split your mind and start again as if such memories come only from fantasy – some crazy story that is too impossible to be true. If you don’t do that, you can go crazy yourself. I am thankful for the bombs and fires in Berlin which burnt many holes in my memory. Such images do not belong in th
e light of day in the time before or after.

  I say ‘their’ and ‘they’ for those days. I cannot say ‘our’ homes and neighbours. Memories and questions that stayed in some dark hole while I was in the camp creep back now in the shadows of the evening light in our apartment. Sweetmeats that were offered sometimes in that place. From where did they come? Anna refused them always even as a gift. The old man who came one day to whisper to the butcher – and then came no more. Before he left to look for work or food in Brandenburg, he told his wife that he had left enough bear meat with the butcher to last until he came back. But he never came back and some said it was not bear meat that he left – it was too tough. I am not sorry we can afford very little meat. Even the sausage that I put in the lentil soup brings the smell of darkness and the wet wool of an overcoat. Sometimes I see another face on Katharina’s.

  It is a comfort to write to you. I doubt I will ever tell another living soul. Perhaps one day.

  Your good friend, Biddy

  Aisling fingered the rest of the pages – all left blank. So what happened to the friend Mary in Ireland? Did they ever meet again? Were there other letters posted? She felt let down now. Questions with no answers. Now Aisling would have to burn it for her – or bury it. She felt a rush of pity for the old woman. The baby that she had suffered for and probably sacrificed a lot for was dead. No wonder she wanted to put the pages in the coffin with her. Sixty years’ worth of Katharina gone as if she never existed. Left only with memories and ghosts.