The Woman from Bratislava

by Leif Davidsen

  The three gentlemen and the lady disappeared into the big house, the white double doors were closed behind them and we went back for a last piece of rye bread, a last drink of lemonade and the tea that had now been poured for us. The Count took pride in always doing well by his servants and his beaters. There was to be no scrimping on the first big shoot of the year, as he said. We finished eating. We girls were chattering and larking about and the boys, desperate to show off, had just started playing freedom fighters and Germans in the big barn, when I saw Dad come down the steps from the house. His face was white as a sheet and his hands were shaking. He marched straight into the barn, grabbed me roughly by the arm and, in a cold and distant voice, asked me where Fritz was.

  ‘He’s playing, Dad,’ I said.

  ‘Get him!’

  ‘What is it, Dad?’

  ‘Just get him.’

  ‘You’re squeezing my arm. It hurts, Dad,’ I said.

  He let go of my arm. For a moment I saw a strange look of confusion in his eyes, then his face became a pallid grey mask again. I raced off to the far end of the barn, where Fritz, armed with a stick for a Sten gun, was fighting a bunch of Germans into submission. The boys were making rat-a-tat-tat machine-gun noises and yelling at their adversaries that they were dead and ought to fall down. The Germans were dug in behind the combine harvester, which was doing duty as a bunker like the ones we had seen on the west coast of Jutland.

  ‘Fritz, come here.’

  He made some shooting noises, threw an imaginary hand grenade at the Germans, then emitted a nasal whistle to imitate the swoosh of the grenade’s flight, followed by a boom.

  I grabbed hold of him.

  ‘Dad says you’ve got to come!’

  ‘But I’m playing.’

  ‘Right now, he said!’

  He could tell from my expression that I was upset. He lowered his stick and slouched after me. Dad was standing at the barn door, paying no heed to the other men or the other children. His mind seemed to be somewhere else. Most of the kids noticed nothing, but I could see the keepers giving him looks. What was one of the gentlemen doing in the barn in the middle of the shooting party lunch? That was not the done thing at all. And why was he so pale? It was a pallor against which the black stubble of his beard stood out sharp and clear, despite the fact that he had given himself an extra close shave that morning before we left. I knew, because I had been allowed to whip up his shaving foam in the little bowl he kept for this purpose, before he scraped the bristles off his face, using a brand-new razor in honour of the occasion.

  ‘Come on,’ was all he said when I came back with Fritz in tow. He walked off ahead of us, taking such long, quick strides that Fritz and I had to half run to keep up with him as he headed towards the bread van. We climbed in beside him. He reversed and drove away. I could see now that Fritz was as shaken up as I was. We knew that grown-ups could often be unpredictable and that they were liable to sudden swings in mood, but we were not used to seeing a father with such a blank, white face and trembling hands. He drew hard on his cigarette and drove far too fast down the narrow roads, and I felt the tears welling up.

  ‘What’s the matter, Dad?’ I asked in a small voice.

  ‘Nothing. Now shut up!’ he shouted, and my tears began to fall.

  ‘Stop that snivelling!’ he snapped, so roughly that Fritz began to cry too because he, like me, had no idea what was going on. One minute we were part of the gang, with food and lemonade in our stomachs, while Dad was having a rare old time with the shooting party. The next we had been dragged away without any explanation. Dad had gone into lunch windswept and rosy-cheeked, with a wink at us and a remark that made the other gentlemen laugh. He had emerged again white as a sheet, his hands shaking.

  ‘Stop that snivelling, both of you!’ he shouted again, with real anger in his voice. The anger we knew from the rows he gave us if we did something wrong, or didn’t do as we were told, or were driving Mum up the wall with our rough-and-tumble games. He had never hit us, but we were scared of his wrath, which could be so icy and fierce once he was provoked. So Fritz and I fought back the tears. As well as we could. We wiped the tears from our eyes and the snot from our noses and tried not to sniff any more than we could help, but he didn’t even seem to be aware of us any more, as long we stayed quiet. He just kept driving, with his white, stony face, smoking one cigarette after another. He smelled of beer and schnapps and very faintly of shaving lotion, but he was not drunk. He was simply in another world. When we pulled up outside the bakery Mum came out of the house with Teddy by the hand. They stood at the top of the broad flight of steps leading up to the front door. It was lovely to sit on those steps in the summer with my dolls when the sun was blazing down on the bakery and the village. At first Mum merely stared at Dad in surprise, but then she too turned pale.

  ‘What is it, Jørgen? Has something happened to the children?’ Mum asked.

  But then she caught sight of us and breathed more easily. She noticed our red eyes, though, and I could tell that she was relieved and yet troubled.

  ‘Go up to your rooms!’ Dad said. ‘And take Teddy with you.’

  ‘Jørgen …’ my mother said. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Do as I say, dammit!’

  I took Fritz by one hand and a howling Teddy, who did not want to let go of Mum, by the other and dashed up the stairs and into my room on the first floor, with a huge lump in my throat. I plonked my little brother on the bed, found a book and proceeded to read aloud to him. Teddy’s sobs soon subsided: he was quick to cry, but just as quick to smile again. Even though I was reading out loud I could still hear my parents’ voices down in the living room. First quiet, then louder, then shouting angrily and, eventually, my mother’s weeping and my father’s voice, sounding both angry and confused. As if he could have cried too, but that was not what men did. I don’t think I have ever – before or since – been so afraid. I was convinced that one of my parents was about to die. I have no idea why. But that is what I thought. I read and read, oblivious to the words and their content. The reading kept the tears at bay. Not the fear, though. Deep in the pit of my stomach it gnawed away at me like a poisonous parasite.

  After a while my mother appeared. We could see that she had been crying, but she had put on more make-up in an attempt to conceal this. Her eyes were swollen. She looked at us for a moment from the doorway and I stopped reading. We were huddled together on the bed, all three. Fritz and I were still in our beaters’ clothes, thick jumpers and all, but we were not sweating. If anything I was freezing. The only things we had taken off, automatically in the hall, were our boots. Wordlessly my mother came over and put her arms around us. She gave way to tears again, they streamed quietly down her cheeks. This prompted Teddy to utter a loud wail and at long last Fritz and I could let go and cry on Mum’s shoulder and into her nice apron, clinging tightly to her.

  ‘What’s wrong with Dad?’ I hiccupped after some time.

  ‘Later, Irma dear. Later!’

  ‘But what is it?’

  ‘Later. Everything’s going to be alright, Irma pet,’ she said in a strangely watery voice. At that my weeping subsided. I was well aware that to the grown-ups I was still just a silly little girl who did not have eyes in her head. But I felt let down: neither my mother nor my father thought it necessary to tell me why our lives should suddenly be turned upside down. Not until years later did I hear the whole story from Mum. But in the days following the shoot, what with the veiled remarks made by my mother and father and the changes at the bakery I was able to piece together most of the puzzle and gain a pretty clear picture of what had happened before we moved.

  17

  THE NEXT DAY it was as if nothing had happened, and for a brief moment I hoped it had all been just a dream. I woke up, as usual, at the sound of Dad’s step on the stairs. He always rose very early and went down to start baking the rolls and French loaves. But that morning after the shoot something was different. I could tell ri
ght away. He wasn’t whistling. Dad always whistled on his way down the stairs, just after I heard him pull the chain in the bathroom, which was right next to my room. I usually dropped off again after I heard his whistle, but that morning I could not go back to sleep. I lay in bed with my heart pounding so hard I was afraid it was about to leap right out of my chest. But I did not want to worry my mother, so I stayed in bed until she came in at seven, as usual, to get me up for school. I lay with my eyes shut, listening to her footsteps in the hall and opened them only when she said, as she normally did: ‘Morning, dear. Did you sleep well? Time to get up.’ Her voice was almost the same as always, but only almost. It had a cut-glass quality to it, a brittleness that had not been there before.

  And it soon became clear to me, and to Fritz, that something was up. It may not have happened from one day to the next, but gradually the customers stopped coming to the shop and I noticed that when the driver loaded up the bread van for his daily rounds he was sliding fewer and fewer trays of French loaves, rye loaves, cakes and pastries onto the racks in the back. He did not whistle either, as he usually did, when he drove out of the yard. The word round about was that it was better to steer clear of Pedersen’s bakery. Not that anybody actually said that, of course. Danes are not given to saying things straight out. Not when it is a matter of something unpleasant. But there was a lot of whispering in corners in the little community, on the farms, in tradesmen’s homes and labourers’ cottages. The implicit understanding was that decent people did not shop there. Because it appeared that he had fought on the wrong side. Well, he was not alone in that, but if the attention was on the baker then it was not being directed at anyone else. And if perhaps one had not realised until it was too late that the new Europe was not going to come to anything, after all, then there was even more reason to give Pedersen’s shop a wide berth and frequent one of the bakers in town instead – for the time being at least. Some customers did, however, stay loyal, mainly the well-to-do or folk who did not listen to, or were not interested in, rumours and possibly had not heard about the incident at the Count’s shooting party: people who lost no sleep over the past. Because no matter what anybody said, there was no better bread baked in all the area than that which Pedersen took from his oven. Let bygones be bygones. So said those who could not have cared less what folk said or thought about this, that or the other. But, as always, only the minority dared to go against the stream.

  Things were not helped by the fact that the law was quick to put in an appearance. Not Karlsen, the local constable, but two police officers all the way from Odense. Although they wore plain clothes and were friendly and polite, they still helped to fan the rumours. I do not know what they and Dad spoke about, but they drove off again after an hour. Later Mum told me that they said they had had to come and have a word with him. Someone had reported him. But although his name was on file and he was known to have fought on the Eastern Front, he had committed no criminal act on Danish soil. His breach with society was a closed chapter. His comrades had been jailed for a couple of years, but had all long since been released. Those who had not been found guilty of breaking the law in Denmark. And as far as that went they had nothing on Dad. So the CID men had left, saying that it was a pretty old case and times had changed since ’45. And anyway, a lot of people had been on the wrong side. As a child I did not understand much of all this. Grown-ups were always so mysterious.

  Both my father and my mother grew thinner that winter. The November was exceptionally warm and the weather over Christmas was very odd indeed, with rain and temperatures in December rising as high as fifteen degrees celsius. Christmas was normally a busy time for us, but that year only one goose, four ducks and six loins of pork went into the big bakery oven. And of those one duck and one pork loin were for ourselves. Because Christmas would be celebrated, no matter what, Mum said. The shop had hardly any customers. Both the bakers had been sacked. Dad could manage everything on his own with just the apprentice, whose name was Kurt and who was thick as two short planks and had no clue about anything. Besides, Fritz had started helping out in the bakery, and I also lent a hand whenever I could, although it was more or less understood that it was more important for me to stick in at school. Of the two of us I was definitely the more academic and this my parents simply accepted. Mum and Dad did not say much to one another during the day, but in the evenings I would often slip out of bed and sit at the top of the stairs, listening to their serious voices down below in the living room. I could not make out what they said, but sometimes Mum would burst into tears and once I heard her shouting that they couldn’t go on like this, that the bills just kept on piling up and soon there would be no more deliveries of flour, sugar and butter.

  My father had always had a kind welcome for the gentlemen of the road who came to the door, begging for a bit of stale bread, or maybe a beer or a dram, and sometimes even permission to bed down for the night in the flour store. It was as if he had always understood their longing to be on the move, their pain and their restlessness. The tramps had special signs that they carved into our front gate to tell other vagabonds that this was a hospitable house. A shifting succession of knife-grinders were also allowed to sharpen knives and scissors for a few coins, even though we had a big hand-driven whetstone in the backyard. But now he had taken to hanging out behind the bakehouse in the more or less empty flour store, drinking beer and schnapps with these raggedy, bearded characters who stank of pee and tobacco. I would hear Mum going on at him about it, but it made no difference. All Dad wanted to do was to stand out back, bleary-eyed, chewing the fat with these dirty, smelly men. Fritz and I were scared of them, while baby brother Teddy, in all his usual innocent naivety, loved their cheery banter and the boiled sweets they always slipped him.

  Soon there was trouble at school too. Not so much for me as for Fritz, who had to stand up for himself, me and Dad when Peter and some of the others called him a Nazi brat or said that Dad had been involved in killing freedom fighters and murdering millions of Jews and Russians. He regularly came home with a bloody nose or a black eye, but always refused to tell Mum what the other kids were saying. Although she knew, of course. Dad either said nothing or came out with stupid tough-guy remarks about boys having to be able to defend themselves, it was all part of growing up. He did not really seem to care that much, though, as long as he could hang around out back, drinking beer with his friends the tramps.

  The teachers pretended not to notice, but I could tell that they felt more and more sorry for me. They knew it was not my fault. Besides which, I was a good student who learned my lessons and was never any trouble.

  One day in history class we were reading about the occupation and the teacher, Mr Hansen, was waxing lyrical about Kaj Munk, the vicar and dramatist who was murdered by the Nazis. Munk was a good Christian Dane who had bravely spoken out against the occupying power. He had looked his enemies straight in the eye and had not hidden his face. He should stand as a shining example to us of how a healthy Christian spirit and a patriotic heart would carry us through the trials and tribulations of life straightbacked and undaunted. Mr Hansen spoke about the resistance movement and how the Danish people had shown their worth by standing shoulder to shoulder against the German oppression throughout those five accursed years. The people of Denmark had fought for their freedom; that was why we put lit candles in our windows on May 4th, he said. It was a fine custom and one which we should pass on to our own children when we had them, to ensure that the memory of the fallen and the regaining of our liberty would never die, but testify always to the strength of the Danish nation and Danish values.

  My parents put candles in the windows too. It was grotesque, really, but they did their best not to stand out from the crowd. From all of those Danish opportunists, every one of whom now had a resistance armband tucked away in a drawer as a treasured memento. Mr Hansen said that we, the rising generation, could learn from the fight which the Danes had put up. Kæmp for alt, hvad du har kært. Dø om s
å det gælder as we had sung so beautifully at assembly that morning: Fight for all that you hold dear. Die if die you must. Words which we should take with us when we went out into the world.