by Eric Dupont
“Magda! What are you doing here?”
“I’m keeping an eye on them.”
It was obvious: he hadn’t expected us to make it, the bastard.
“We’re trying to get on the Gustloff. Your wife and children are ill. We need tickets. Do you have any? I’ll bring them to Papa in Berlin.”
He looked around, then dragged me inside by the collar. It was a big room with desks and telephones. Four or five men were in conversation, SS, as far as I could tell, but there were also Wehrmacht soldiers, too. Along with a marine auxiliary. I’m quite sure of it. She looked at me, then at Wolfi. There are some things you can tell from a single glance. She seemed to want to know. She opened her mouth, but didn’t say a word. I hadn’t slept properly in six days. I stank. Those people were looking at me the way you might look at a dead rat, which I imagine was what I looked and smelled like.
He pulled me into his office.
“How did you get here?”
“Like everyone else! We walked across the frozen lagoon.”
“What do you want?”
“What do I want? I want tickets for the Gustloff for Clara and the children, and for me.”
“You’re asking a lot, Magda. I don’t know who you think you are. You show up from Berlin, set up home in my house, lay down the law, act like you’re a governess . . . You certainly don’t let modesty get in your way, Magda.”
“You asked me to keep an eye on them. That’s what I’m doing.”
“What condition is Clara in?”
“She’s delirious. Fit to be locked up.”
“And the children?”
“Funny you should ask, all of a sudden.”
He slapped me with his gloved hand.
“Be civil with me, Magda.”
“I’m sorry.”
“As you can see, you’ve caught me unawares.”
He grabbed a sheet of paper and put it in a typewriter. He typed for a long time, asked me how to spell Papa’s name and our address in Berlin—the poor fool couldn’t even spell Alfred Berg let alone Schiller—then handed me the letter. It was a safe conduct, a letter explaining to people on the Gustloff who we were, that they were to let us board and not give us any trouble. The SS stamp and everything.
“Get out of my sight. You stink, Magda. Get out of here, you and your crazy aunt.”
“You’re not taking the Gustloff?”
I still had enough nerve to ask questions.
“No, I’m not taking the Gustloff. I’m staying here. Don’t you see all these people? They need to be evacuated.”
“Why didn’t you send for us earlier?”
“There was no way to, Magda.”
“You didn’t want to see us here. You were sure we were going to be stuck there with the children, isn’t that it?”
Onkel Wolfgang had turned his back to me while he looked about in a large armoire for an envelope to put the letter into. He kept on looking for a long time, even though the envelopes were right under his nose.
“Tell me, Magda. Clara confessed to me over Christmas that she lost a child in September. You didn’t know your aunt was pregnant, did you?”
“No,” I lied.
He knew.
“You were the only one who knew where I hid the quinine, weren’t you?”
“Perhaps.”
“I can only hope you brought the rest of it with you. The Reich is running short on just about everything. And quinine can come in very handy. Isn’t that right, Magda? Clara had never lost a child before. Ever. She told me the day she miscarried she suddenly felt very ill, as though she’d taken quinine.”
For kilometers all around us, there was nothing but fear, fire, and bloodshed, and all he wanted to talk about was the child I’d spared from being born and dying in this hell. That’s Nazi logic for you, Kapriel.
He’d left his weapon on the table. My wilder side ran over all the ways I could get my revenge. His war was lost anyway. Who would have missed the boor? Once we were safely in Berlin, I thought foolishly, he’d track us down and try to separate me from Clara and the children. I wouldn’t even have needed to shoot—I wouldn’t have known how—just hit him over the head with the rifle butt, and keep hitting and hitting until he stopped moving. I must have considered it for two seconds too long. That’s my sole regret, Kapriel. You can tell anyone you like. I bitterly regret not killing my uncle that January day in 1945, for not having made a Tosca of myself. If I were Catholic, I’d be consumed with a desire to seek forgiveness. But that’s not the case, thank God.
Without insinuating anything else, without saying a word, he turned around, handed me the envelope, slapped me two or three times, told me that I was ugly, that no one would ever want to sleep with me, that I was an idiot, then grabbed me by the ear and, in front of everyone in the other room, dragged me outside.
“Don’t hang around, you little bitch,” he hissed. “They leave at noon.”
I was shaken. Once again, I had to beat a path through the crowd to the bottom of the gangway. There I found Clara and the children. Clara was sitting on the only suitcase we still had, clutching the children. What I had feared was about to happen.
“Magda, I’m freezing cold. It’s starting up again.”
The malaria was taking hold of her. Hans and Hannelore helped me pull her to her feet. A dense crowd of refugees blocked our path on the gangway; there was no way up. I had to push my way through, bite my way through.
“I have the Obersturmführer’s permission!” I shouted to the soldier. He began to laugh.
Since I still had the imprint of Wolfgang’s hand stamped across both cheeks, my words must have seemed even more ridiculous. I looked more like I’d just popped straight out of the second act of Tosca.
“And I have the Führer’s mustache in my pocket! That’s my safe conduct!” Everyone on the gangway burst out laughing. That’s where the Germans were at. I had to push and shove my way through to him. You should have seen his face when he saw the SS stamp and the signature! He carried the suitcase himself, then took the children in his arms. We were saved.
Aboard the Gustloff, we were shown to a cabin on one of the upper decks that were already full of Wehrmacht, only men.
“Unless you’d rather go down to the lower decks. You could ask the auxiliaries to let you into the pool.”
“The pool? Is this really the time to go for a swim?”
“There’s a pool down there, but it’s been emptied to make more room.”
“We’ll stay here, thanks.”
They were kind enough to find a berth for Clara, who was already shaking with fever. She was still delirious: the same old song about the pope with the mustache or some madness about sugar.
“As much sugar as you can find, Magdalena. You need the purest sugar, his favorite kind. You’ll give the oven a good clean later . . .”
It doesn’t matter anymore. The past is in the past. It didn’t make any sense then; I don’t know why I’m trying to make sense out of it almost fifty-five years later. Then she ran her fingers over invisible piano keys. We went out before the children could see.
“Please, keep an eye on her. I need to go with the children. They’re hungry.”
The Gustloff normally held around two thousand passengers. There must have been ten thousand of us on board. Even today, no one is sure precisely how many. In other words, the ship had bathrooms for two thousand people, not ten thousand! The smell invaded every gangway, lounge, and staircase: people had relieved themselves wherever they could. A terrible stench. Some were seriously ill; you could smell it. Old men, children, women, and Wehrmacht officers. I found a place with the children that didn’t stink too much of shit. I felt so relieved. First, to know that I was saved. We were going back to Berlin, far from the war, far from Ivan! The auxiliaries daubed the children’s chapped cheeks with some sort of ointment. Men on the wharf were casting off. We’d only just made it. Women were throwing their children into the arms of strangers, Kapriel;
I swear it. Children’s bodies that had missed the deck lay in the water between the Gustloff and the wharf.
Hundreds of people were still trying to board. There were shouts and screams, but soon the engines revved and, a little after noon, I think, the Gustloff pulled clear of the wharf. The children waved to those left behind, those poor, desperate prisoners of hell.
He was there, on the wharf, with her. The auxiliary I’d seen outside his office. His hand on her shoulder. Behind every man, Kapriel . . . Always look for the blonde.
I was also elated to be heading out to sea that day because the Gustloff was taking me back to Papa, and I hadn’t seen him since leaving Berlin. It was, after all, a KdF ship he’d traveled on himself. But the trip meant even more to me than that: Papa had also told me that one of our ancestors had taken to the Baltic Sea one day, never to return. Here I was, taking to the sea, to go back to my Papa in Berlin.
Clara had fallen asleep in the cabin where I left her. I wanted to show the children around the ship. They’d never seen anything so luxurious! Mama had told me that the Führer had his own cabin, the only one to be so lavishly furnished. Because there was no first class aboard the Gustloff. All the cabins were the same; there was no hierarchy. Everyone had the right to the same luxury. That was another of Onkel Adolf’s ideas: every German should have the same odds, even on a cruise! But apparently the Führer had his own cabin on board, finer than all the rest. It was, it seems, never occupied. The sheets were never dirtied; for years it was dusted in the hopes of a visit that never came. But there was no way of showing that to the children: there were too many people on board. Mattresses lined up side by side in the ballrooms, where the sick lay, and those, like us, who’d trudged for days and weeks through the ice and snow. And now we were going back to the West, far from the war, far from the Russians.
We were sitting in a grand room with paneled walls that must have been a lounge or smoking room in better times. There were people everywhere. Every time you moved, you’d bump into an old man or step on a child. People were sitting on the lounge floor. They’d been through hell. Saved at last. “We’re going to Kiel!” someone shouted. And in no time at all German hearts were gladdened and people began to sing. Bottles of schnapps appeared out of nowhere. From the end of the gangway, snatches of an East Prussian song reached us. I forget how it went . . . Someone within earshot was telling dirty jokes. We could smell bread being baked in the galley. There would be food! An auxiliary, a girl from Memel, I think, had become fond of the children. She told them stories since she could see I was just about to keel over. Hours passed. At some stage, a few strapping young men who had been hiding who knows where began belting out the hunters’ chorus from the Freischütz. Hans and Hannelore recognized it right away. I was pleased to see I’d awakened an interest in music in them. And, amazingly, even after days of fleeing through the snow, even after nights without sleep, that song from the Freischütz brought them back to the night they’d held my hand at the outdoor opera. Hannelore even asked if I thought they’d find the three arrows one day! She was still thinking about those damned arrows, even as we were aboard the Gustloff!
We could hear a radio playing a speech by the Führer: “Today marks the twelfth year of our reign . . .” And only then, Kapriel, did I realize it was January 30. It had been six days since we’d left Königsberg. For six days, we’d stumbled through ice and snow, been attacked by fighter planes, we’d lost Helga, eaten bark, and fought off death, the Erlkönig. I sat down on the lovely hardwood floor. The overture of The Magic Flute kept running through my head. The children sat down too. Hans to my right, Hannelore to my left, Heinrich between my legs. We settled ourselves on a spongy bed of life jackets that had been handed out just in case. We fell asleep to the sound of the Führer’s voice.
“You’re twenty-five, Magda! Happy birthday!”
Those were the last words Hannelore said before she fell asleep. (It was at that moment, Michel, that Magda lost her temper. I had just asked her how long it had taken the Gustloff to get to Kiel. Because that’s where it was headed. Magda slammed down her glass and stared hard at me. She pinched the bridge of her nose as if she’d never heard anything so stupid. She tsked loudly. It must have been getting late, after eight o’clock. She said she was very tired and asked if we could go on the day after tomorrow. So I left. She seemed exhausted. As well she might be. I cried into my pillow. Poor little Helga; how sad.)
* * *
Berlin, November 25, 1999
Dear Michel,
Today’s Thursday. I haven’t heard from Magda since Tuesday. I knocked last night after work but she wasn’t in. You’ll have to wait to hear the end of the story. I wonder if Wolfgang’s still alive. What a nasty piece of work! Speaking of which . . . Today I got a strange card in the mail from Bavaria. The fourth Terese Bleibtreu, do you remember? The one I was holding out least hope for? Well, wait till you hear this. She sent me a postcard:
“Dear Sir, Come by whenever you like, but don’t wait too long. You never know at my age. Terese.”
She’d picked out a postcard of the Alps. Very Heidi. I have to go! I don’t dare ask my boss for time off, and that leaves me only Sunday and Monday. But Terese lives in a village called Feldafing, southwest of Munich. The asshole of nowhere, as Magda would say. The train ticket will cost me a fortune, but I’m dying to meet her. The longer I wait, the more complicated the trip will be. Anyway. I’ll try Magda again tomorrow and maybe leave Saturday afternoon after work. So exciting—spannend, as they say!
Gabriel
* * *
Munich–Berlin train, November 28, 1999
Dear Michel,
It’s absolutely unbelievable. I thought I’d seen it all at Holy Canadian Martyrs with that Thanatopoulos woman, I thought relationships didn’t get any stranger than the one between Suzuki and Maman, and here I am discovering all kinds of even weirder goings-on in Germany. I’ve just passed Nuremberg. The Bavarian night is just on the other side of the window. They’ve hung little Christmas lights around the bar in the restaurant car, where I’ve come for a well-deserved beer. As you must have guessed by now, I decided to take the quick trip to Bavaria in the hopes of finding Terese Bleibtreu, older sister to Ludwig, the childhood sweetheart of my ninth-floor neighbor, Magda. I haven’t seen her since she told me the terrible story about fleeing Königsberg. Well, I think I might have spotted her on the tram on Frankfurter Allee, but I couldn’t swear to it. It might have been just another old East German woman. I left her a message and she must have read it: it’s no longer in her mailbox. Thank God I didn’t mention Terese Bleibtreu. You’ll see why. What a funny country Germany is. You think you have all the pieces to the puzzle, and then it all gets mixed up again. Everything goes to hell. There’s nothing for it but to pull yourself back together.
And start over.
On the other hand, dear brother of mine, my German is really coming along. I’m still taking classes, but now they’re at the Humboldt. Deutsch für Ausländer. I took the train to Munich in the early afternoon, just after my shift at the SEZ, and read the wonderful Die Zeit newspaper from front to back. We don’t have any quality newspapers like that back home; I think they’re only in Germany. It took me some time, and I’d only just finished the last article when we pulled into the station. What can I say about Munich, other than it is to Berlin what Toronto is to Montreal. Richer, shinier, cleaner, more moralizing, more religious, more . . . Bavarian. I got a room in a not-too-expensive hotel beside the Marienplatz, Die Deutsche Eiche. The German Oak—the name inspired confidence. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a gay sauna and an equally gay restaurant attached to the hotel. The guy at the front desk told me I could use the steam bath for free since I was staying the night. Very German. I wandered around the old city for hours. Munich is the Germany of second-language textbooks: beer and sausages, old women with grey chignons in loden coats, four-hundred-mark shoes on a crappy bike, S-Bahn trains with floors you could eat your dinner
off, the sparkliest of Christmas markets, City Hall and its glockenspiel. It’s all so charming. It’s the clockwork Germany: wind it up and it’ll do a little dance. Ein Prosit, ein Prosit, der Gemütlichkeit . . . At the hotel restaurant, the owners heard my accent and put me down as a Quebecer right away. They have friends in Quebec City and go there regularly, they love it, etc., etc. You know the type.
They even know Villa Waldberta, where Terese lives. Don’t worry, I’m getting to her. Well, I will just as soon as I manage to sort out everything she told me. It’s complicated. Not from a language point of view; I understood every word. But I can’t get my head around the whole story.
The guys at the restaurant told me how to get to Feldafing.
“Leave early. It could well start snowing and the S-Bahn can get stuck for ages. It’ll take a good hour. I think it’s two or three stations after Starnberg. Yeah, Starnberg, Possenhofen, then Feldafing after that. Once you’re there, you’ll need to walk to the top of the ridge that overlooks the village and the lake.”
They know the spot since the villa was apparently a residence for artists up until 1995. After that, it had been turned into a hospice for the elderly. I couldn’t wait to see it. This morning I was on the S-Bahn platform at the Marienplatz waiting for my little red train to Tutzing when a train for Dachau passed by. My heart skipped a beat. It’s as though a train heading for Auschwitz had just pulled into the station or, I don’t know, a train to some other terrible place you don’t want to go. Inside, perfectly normal-looking people were off to spend their Sunday morning in Dachau. But Dachau was there before the Nazis and it’ll be there long after we’re gone. Words take on such importance, and what for?
After Pasing and Westkreuz in the suburbs, you reach the little town of Starnberg, where you can catch a glimpse of the lake that shares its name. At the end of the lake, the snow-covered Alps stretch out in the mid-morning sunshine. I’m telling you, Bavaria has got some picture-postcard scenery! At Feldafing, I was the only one to leave the train, which pulled away from the station in a blizzard of snow. The hill was steep—just as well I was wearing waterproof ankle boots with sheepskin liners and nonslip rubber soles. The village of Feldafing is a discreet community. You can’t even see it from the S-Bahn. Since it was Sunday, everything was closed, and I had to walk to the old church to ask the way. I was very early. Terese was expecting me at noon and it was still only eleven. I had an hour to kill in a dead village. I walked around once or twice. There was a luxury hotel—the Kaiserin Elisabeth (it’s Sissi, Empress of Austria . . . she came from this part of Bavaria!)—and a bakery. On the main road, to the left, there was a golf course, or at least what looked like one, beneath the snow. Pretty homes. You would have laughed—there was someone playing the piano in one of them. A good-looking young woman, who seemed to be practicing a Christmas piece. Bach, I think. You’d know. Then I came across an old lady and asked her for directions. She was very nice. She was affable in the way that people from the country are, like the nuns in Rivière-du-Loup. She showed me a staircase leading up to the ridge that looked down over the lake.
