The American Fiancee

by Eric Dupont

  The cleaning lady—the Dienstmädchen we called her—was also from Poland. Anja was her name. Like Marion, she wore a black P on a yellow background every time she left the house, which only happened when she went to do the shopping. Shy. Efficient. Kept a low profile. You couldn’t get a word out of her. At any rate, with all the work she had to do . . . She and Marion would sometimes mumble to each other in Polish, or perhaps it was Masurian, a dialect spoken in East Prussia, I’m not sure. Occasionally I’d catch them in the garden or in the kitchen, talking quietly in their slippery, warbling language. They’d stop talking as soon as they saw me, or switch to German mid-sentence. I realized why the day after I arrived.

  Anja showed me my room. I slept a little while, then went downstairs to look around the grand house. Wonders everywhere! Paintings, the finest furniture, gilded crockery, and even, on the ground floor, a music room with a piano. Tante Clara had been a music teacher, after all! A score from one of Schubert’s Impromptus lay open. I don’t know which one, but one of Schubert’s nostalgic, monotonous pieces. What’s that you say? All of Schubert is nostalgic and monotonous? No, some of his pieces are romantic and maudlin. And sometimes, all that at once. The sun was setting. A new scene awaited me in the dining room. Three young children were standing beside the table set for dinner. As I came in, the oldest, a little boy, politely said hello. Hans. The second was a little girl: Hannelore. The third could barely stand, and was clinging to his older brother.

  “His name is Heinrich,” said Hans, helping the little boy into a high chair. A place had been set for me and for another as-yet-unseen guest. “Madam is on her way,” Anja murmured.

  Anja was doing her best to spoon-feed little Heinrich, but he kept spitting up his purée. The other two ate more or less on their own. I had to cut Hannelore’s fish for her.

  “Are you the cousin from Berlin?”

  Little Hans, I was about to discover, was a real chatterbox.

  “Yes, I just arrived from Charlottenburg. But I’m from here, like you.”

  I was almost in tears as I listened to the children speak with their Prussian accents. Imagine, Kapriel, that you were cloned at age six, frozen solid, then introduced to your unsuspecting self fourteen years later. That’s what it felt like.

  The children spoke the way I used to before I left East Prussia, with the same accent, the accent I’d had before Berlin, the same one I’d heard at the station when I got off the train. These children were me, I thought to myself. Then Tante Clara came in. She fell into my arms without saying a word. How can I best describe her? White blouse, green skirt, low heels. Do you know the Swedish rock group BABA? No, wait . . . ABBA? That’s the one! Picture the singer. No, the blond one. With the bangs. That’s what Tante Clara looked like. Very Scandinavian. You prefer the brunette? Who cares, Kapriel! She apologized for being late. Anja disappeared off into the kitchen and Tante Clara took over feeding Heinrich.

  “My, how you’ve changed. I’m so glad you’re here. You will be a great help, especially with my fevers. Wolfgang is in Poland most of the time. I’m all alone with the three children, but they’re sweet, you’ll see. And look (she pointed to her belly), this one will be here in time for Christmas.”

  “Why do all their names begin with H?”

  She stopped what she was doing. She set down the spoon, still full of purée, grabbed me by the wrists, and looked me straight in the eye.

  “What a strange question, Magda. From you of all people—you’ve just come from the capital! I’m following Magda Goebbels’s example! Her children all have names beginning with H, too. H for Hitler!”

  Magda Goebbels. So she admired her, just like I did. I didn’t dare tell her about the earring, in case she thought badly of me or flat out didn’t believe me.

  “I met her during the Olympic Games, thanks to Papa!”

  She almost fainted.

  “You . . . I mean . . . She spoke to you?”

  “Yes. She shook my hand and said I had a pretty name.”

  “Which hand?”

  “Uh, the right hand, of course. I didn’t give her my left!”

  She stared at my hand like a nun contemplating a piece of the actual cross. “How lucky you are . . . Wolfgang has promised, when I get better, to take me to Berlin soon. Once the child is born. Tell me about her! What’s the house like? The garden at Schwanenwerder? And her children? Did you meet little Helga? I want to know everything! Tell me, Magda!”

  I told her all about the Schwanenwerder party, leaving out the earring incident, of course. I also didn’t mention the people in the bushes who were . . . Well, you remember, don’t you, Kapriel? She listened to me with wide eyes that reminded me of Mama’s. But there was something unsteady about her gaze. You know, like the people who rave in the street that the end of the world is nigh? That St. Michael is getting ready to weigh our souls? Her eyes were like that. After supper, she put the children to bed.

  “How about a little music, Magda?”

  Mama had told her I sang. She took out a collection of Schubert pieces, and we began singing the Lieder that I knew. Even Ständchen. She played the piano beautifully and caught me every time I stumbled. She smiled at me after each piece.

  “I think the two of us are going to get along famously, Magda. I’m almost happy we’re at war. Otherwise, God knows if I would ever have seen you again! You sing so beautifully! Waldtraut told me you sing The Flute? Is that so?”

  I was almost happy too. Tante Clara was sweetness personified. Like Mama, before she’d fallen ill. We sang until midnight . . . or I sang, at least. Her voice wasn’t especially good. But we could have held recitals together, she played the piano so well. At midnight, she closed the piano without warning and went up to bed without saying a word. I did the same. I was a little in love, of course. As much as you can be in love with your aunt. You’re smiling? Before I fell asleep, I remember thanking Churchill for bombing Berlin! The shame of it! But I was worn out from all the traveling . . .

  The children woke me the following morning. Little Heinrich still clinging to Hans. They’d been waiting beside my bed for me to wake up. The little girl had picked a flower from the garden for me.

  “Mama has a fever again. Will you bring us to the zoo?”

  Anja explained when I went downstairs. “Madam still fever. Maybe down today, later. She play too much music. Too late.” I wasn’t brazen enough to tell her to mind her own business. Had we kept her awake? I couldn’t believe how insolent she was.

  The zoo was a hop, skip, and a jump from the house. We just had to walk around the back to get to the main entrance. We would sometimes hear the elephant trumpeting from our garden. Heinrich was asleep in his baby carriage; Hans and Hannelore bombarded me with questions. “Are you married?”, “Who’s your papa?”, “Why do you always speak so funny?” It must be said, Kapriel, that I’d lost a little of my East Prussian accent in Berlin.

  At the zoo, I found the zebras of my childhood in the same enclosure, in the same spot, still munching on cabbage leaves. How long does a zebra live? The zookeeper confirmed that some of them were actually the same ones I’d seen in 1934. Old friends. And, all around me, everyone talked the way I’d talked as a child. The sun was shining. The war had made me so happy!

  A surprise was waiting for me when I got back. Wolfgang had returned from Poland. Special permission—surprise! Wolfgang was SS, or at least that’s what Mama told me. And she was right. Onkel Wolfi was charming, but cold. At first anyway. He was coming down the staircase as I walked through the door. A tall, handsome man with grey eyes and a ready smile. The children started clamoring “Papa, Papa!” and presto! I’d lost them. Once the introductions were over, he sent the children in to see Anja in the dining room, where they were to ask for a piece of the Streuselkuchen he’d brought back. It didn’t take long for me to learn, just like Pavlov’s dogs, to associate Streuselkuchen with Onkel Wolfi. He often brought some back with him. I haven’t eaten it again since the war. With the li
ttle ones off, he looked closely at me, the way you look at a child to try to see how they resemble their parents.

  “You look like your father in photos. Twenty, are you? What a fine age! About time you got here! Clara and the Pole had their hands full with the children.”

  It was true. I’d always looked like Papa. So Onkel Wolfi considered me to be a sort of nanny. A question scalded my lips.

  “What’s wrong with Tante Clara?”

  “Your Mama didn’t tell you? Clara has paludic fever.”

  Paludic fever? That was all I needed! You don’t know what it is? Malaria, plain and simple. Don’t look at me like that.

  Malaria was raging in Europe right up until the Second World War. Around the Mediterranean especially. In Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, where the mosquitos live. But let’s just say it was rather rare in Königsberg. Wolfi explained that Tante Clara had a disease of the soul. That in 1932 she’d been placed in an institution in East Prussia, where she’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Back then, insanity was commonly treated by injecting patients with malaria, particularly mental disorders that arose from syphilis. It was fighting fire with fire. Every hospital in Europe had a malaria strain to inject its psychotic patients with. You don’t believe me? But it’s true! No, no, it has nothing to do with concentration camps. You’re a simpleton, Kapriel! It was an Austrian, Dr. Wagner-Jauregg, who discovered the virtues of malarial fever in treating mental disorders. He even won the Nobel Prize for his discovery, in 1926 or 1928, I can’t remember which. Of course he lost a few patients to the treatment, but up until 1945 malaria inoculation was used to treat insanity. I don’t know what they were thinking. Perhaps that the fevers weakened patients to the point that madness became an extravagance they could no longer keep up. And there’s something else you must understand. Diagnosing someone with schizophrenia in 1932 was something of a grey area. Back then, you could still have your wife locked up because she was being a pain in the ass. Oh yes you could! So a doctor at the hospital in Königsberg decided to give malaria therapy a try. It seems—and Clara later told me this herself—that she was delirious at the time, imagining that she was being pursued by monsters.

  “Strangers, men with long beards. By popes, mustachioed popes!”

  She was convinced she was being persecuted, that she wouldn’t survive the dreams. She stopped eating, let herself waste away. Would sometimes doze off only to wake up screaming for help. The attacks left her very weak.

  “I would hear voices. Deep, menacing voices announcing the worst.”

  In January 1933, the day Adolf Hitler came to power, she was injected with malaria. The effects didn’t take long to manifest themselves. Two weeks later, she was bedridden with fevers of volcanic proportions. The first attacks were the worst. Then things settled down. They almost lost her. But when she came around, she was almost back to normal. She even played the piano a little in the hospital. That’s where she met her husband. In the hospital. I never did find out what he was doing there. If he was visiting, a patient himself, or working there. And I was too shy to ask him a question like that.

  “Now, fever can be treated with quinine. She was lucky: none of her children got it. We must be very careful. And her attacks are rarer, you’ll see. You need to keep an eye on her. See that she takes her quinine, but never when she’s pregnant: that would mean she’d lose the baby. Will you promise me you’ll keep an eye on her?”

  “Yes, Onkel Wolfi.”

  I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. Strangely enough, the whole thing made me happy. At last I had a role to play. I was someone in a world that resembled me: East Prussia. Uncle Wolfgang’s true nature wasn’t revealed until he came back from the Ukraine. We went into the dining room, where the children were stuffing their faces with Streuselkuchen. Anja had just said something to Hannelore in Polish. Wolfi turned bright red and gave her two monumental slaps.

  “Auf Deutsch! My children speak German!”

  Anja ran out while the children swallowed their cake in silence. Don’t be angry with me, Kapriel, but I thought he was right. And she never spoke Polish in front of us again.

  Tante Clara had quartan fever, which is to say that her attacks were separated by two days of respite. You can read malaria like sheet music, Kapriel.

  “It’s worse when I’m pregnant.”

  Wolfgang only stayed for three days. Then he left again for Poland. We didn’t see him again for another two months. I quickly settled into a home that was missing the head of the household. Most of the men had been called up, you understand. The only ones left were women, children, and old men. Two weeks later and I was calling the shots: what we’d eat, where we’d go, what we’d sing, when employees would take time off, if a tree should be cut down because it was diseased. I was captain of that particular ship. Onkel Wolfi even called me his little colonel.

  At Christmas, Clara gave birth to a little girl. She decided to call her Helga, after Joseph and Magda Goebbels’s eldest daughter. The child was healthy: thanks to the doctors, Clara hadn’t passed on her malaria. In winter 1941, Clara’s condition began to improve. They say that malaria makes pregnancy worse, and vice versa. She came back to life. She reminded me very much of Mama, before she fell ill. By then, Mama would only write now and then, complaining about the air raids over Berlin. Ludwig was off at the front somewhere, I didn’t know where. I think he must have been angry with me because I hadn’t told him I’d gone to Königsberg. He must have gone back to Berlin on leave and not found me there. But I’d stopped thinking about it. The truth is, Kapriel, the only thing I missed in Königsberg was Tosca. There was a smaller theater that would put on Puccini-Wagner-Verdi in an endless loop, but no Tosca. They seemed to be obsessed with Madame Butterfly. It’s true that perhaps Butterfly spoke to all those women waiting for their man to come back from the front, but it’s not my cup of tea at all! Ha! Tea! Do you get it? An apology for slavery, that’s what it is. Why the face, Kapriel? I’ve already told you? Am I repeating myself? Forgive me! No, I still prefer Tosca. There’s much more pluck in a character like her.

  In June 1941, it was decided Tante Clara was up to a little trip. The home belonging to my father’s parents in Cranz, on the Baltic Sea, had remained empty. It was only thirty minutes by train from Königsberg. I decided to take Clara and the children, after asking Papa’s permission, of course! Ach! Cranz! I hadn’t seen the Baltic Sea since 1934. It was a little Scandinavian-style wooden villa close to the beach, not far from the Cranz Hotel and the seaside promenade. From our yard, we could see the sun setting over the sea. One day I’ll have to tell you all about those sunsets over the Baltic. They have to be seen to be believed. There were only two bedrooms. One for the children, and one for me and Tante Clara, along with little Helga, naturally. We spent the whole summer there.

  Onkel Wolfi came to join us. He was unhappy because Hitler had declared war on the Soviet Union and that meant he had to leave for the Ukraine, where he would be further away from us. I was quite fond of him, but when he was around, I turned back into the twenty-year-old Berlin girl who had run away to the provinces to escape the bombs. As soon as he left, Tante Clara would become something approaching my wife. I was the family’s father figure.

  “Listen, my little colonel. I’m being sent to the Ukraine. You’ll look after my little brood for me, won’t you?”

  I tried my best to look sad. But that evening, I silently thanked the Führer one hundred times. Wolfi trusted me so much that he taught me how to drive the car! An Opel Wanderer. In the whole Reich, there must have been no more than ten or twelve women who could drive, and I was one of them! But since we needed to move around and there was still gas available . . . In the summer of 1941, while the Wehrmacht tore the Ukraine apart, I was taking Clara, Hans, Hannelore, Heinrich, and Helga to visit the Curonian Spit, where immense dunes were whipped up by the wind. How many days did we spend playing in those pine forests? In the village of Neu-Pillkoppen, Clara fainted at the sight of peas
ants decapitating birds, whooping cranes they’d caught in late summer, I believe. They bit the heads clean off! Absolutely disgusting. In the evenings, we would go to the Cranz Hotel. Anja would look after the children. There we danced and listened to music. We had a great time. You would never have thought we were living in a country on the brink. Not for one minute. We were dancing on the volcano.

  We went back to Königsberg in the fall: little Hans had started school. Clara was feeling better and better. Onkel Wolfi had forbidden her to write any more letters to Magda Goebbels, who she continued to idolize. Sometimes she would dress up for dinner as Magda Goebbels. There was still a little craziness inside her, all right. Her malaria hadn’t completely healed her . . . I played along and bought her a pair of earrings that were identical to the ones I’d stolen at Schwanenwerder in 1936. Do you know what she told me?

  “Why Magda! How pretty they are! They’re identical to the ones Frau Goebbels used to wear. You don’t see photos of her wearing the little pearl ones anymore. Maybe she lost them.”

  “Or maybe she happens to be wearing other earrings when someone takes a photo.”

  Clara dreamed of receiving the Cross of Honor of the German Mother from the hands of Magda Goebbels. Women were supposed to have children; it was one of Hitler’s obsessions. The Nazis came up with a reward system to encourage them. They gave medals to these Reichsmütter. When little Helga was born around Christmas 1940, Wolfi had ordered the bronze Cross of Honor of the German Mother. Clara wore it over the holidays.

  “Two more children and you’ll have the silver cross!”

  Women who brought eight or more children into the world were awarded the gold cross. Honestly, those Nazis had completely lost the plot! Can you imagine? One woman, eight children? They’d spend their whole lives pregnant!