“Why should I leave my farm? The Russians will need bread and potatoes, too. They’ll have to treat the farmers with respect. Otherwise they’re going to starve to death.”
The two men continued to talk about general gossip for a while. Eventually, the farmer told him where to hide in the barn and told his wife to get an extra blanket as a mattress. “You won’t need it to cover up, it’s going to be a warm day, but the floor is quite hard, so use it to sleep on.”
The farmer was right. The day turned out to mark the end of the cool weather, and it became quite hot in the afternoon, which made it difficult for Dieter to sleep.
He began to think of his situation. It was a good thing the farmer had warned him about the village to the northwest. He would try his luck where the farmer had suggested, further south. This farmer must have met quite a lot of people who were on their way west, people like himself who were hoping to find better conditions in the American zone now that the Russians had taken over Thuringia, probably not only ex-soldiers, but also refugees, some even from the east, from East Prussia and Poland.
He realised that once he was across and safe he would still have to go a long way. If he wanted to start a new life in the west, he would have to walk as far as Frankfurt or Wiesbaden, where he was hoping to find a new start if his old great-aunt and his distant cousin were ready to take him in.
The Frankfurt area was full of Americans, he knew. He might try to get a job doing some translation work for them. His English was quite good. They might be happy to employ him. At least it would be a beginning. At least he could try.
When dusk had fallen, the farmer’s wife appeared with a bottle of beer and a small pack of cold food for him to take on his journey west. He thanked her, but there was no reply from her. He felt uneasy with her. He wondered if she could see through him. She had such a witch-like manner. Could she guess what he had been? Could she sense what he had seen, what he had done?
He set off in the dark. It was so dark he found it difficult to follow the narrow road. After a long bend to the left he suddenly saw a military patrol vehicle, hardly more than fifty metres ahead. Without hesitation, he jumped into the undergrowth on the slope to his right and tried to suppress his breathing. If they found him, it would be the end of him.
The vehicle stopped. Some of the men got out to continue their patrol on foot. One remained in the car. He revved up the engine, made some awful crunching noises with the gearbox and turned the vehicle round. Those on foot began to walk in the direction of the undergrowth.
They approached slowly. There were four men. They were carrying rifles, chatting in Russian and smoking. He could see the red glow when they drew smoke from their cigarettes.
What would they do if they caught him? Would they shoot him point-blank? Would they take him prisoner and send him to one of their death camps in Siberia? What if they found his tattoo?
Dieter Wolff thought of positive things to fight his mounting fear, of his first kiss, of beautiful Latin poetry, of his mother’s warmth... but he didn’t manage to avoid a violent twitching in his left shoulder.
They were only a few metres from him when they burst out laughing.
Part Two
Six
Nora was searching through her narrow cupboard. There were lots of old toys, dolls with and without clothes, cheap plastic jewellery, fragments of an old doll’s house, board games with rubbed-off edges, a dirty hairbrush and elements of toy kitchen equipment with tin plates, tin teacups and an array of twisted aluminium-like teaspoons. At the bottom, she found several girls’ books, some Enid Blyton titles, two by Louisa May Alcott, one by Jacob Abbot, one by Samuel Griswold Goodrich, also L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, a poor copy of Eleanor Porter’s Pollyanna and several Mark Twain books. There was a musty smell.
She didn’t even remember she had those old things in her cupboard. She hadn’t looked at them for years. They had always been covered by clothes she had just thrown in there when they wouldn’t fit in her larger wardrobe, which stood on the opposite side of her room, next to the window overlooking the backyard of their home in this leafy suburb.
“Nora dear! Will you be much longer with your things?” her mother’s voice came up from the hallway.
“Nearly done, Mummy,” she shouted back.
“When you’re ready I’ll need your help down here.”
“Okay, Mummy, I’ll be down shortly.”
She was always polite towards her parents. Even though she found it a bit troublesome to help her mother with her packing, she wouldn’t give vent to her moderate anger. Father could do his own packing. So could Margaret. Then why couldn’t her mother?
The family was busy packing for their big move to England. Nora had never been outside the States. She’d been to California, to New York to see the Empire State Building, to Mount Rushmore, to the Grand Canyon, and she’d seen the battlefield at Gettysburg, which was important because they had studied Lincoln’s Address at school, so it was quite eerie to see the place where it had actually been delivered. So she had seen something of the world. But overseas? This was going to be a great new adventure.
She didn’t know if she should be happy or sad about it. Her parents had told her they were going to live in England from now on. She didn’t mind losing her friends so much. Most of them weren’t really friends, but just people she happened to know. Still, it was strange to imagine she might never see Chicago again: the lake, the lakeshore, the el-train and all those familiar buildings. She might also miss her sports club. And then there was the question of language. She had heard British people speak on TV and sometimes in films. She remembered the British Prime Minister, Edward Heath, speaking to President Nixon at some international conference, and the contrast was mind-boggling. Heath sounded as if he had his mouth full of horse-chestnuts. And how could the British speak with such a clipped accent and in such staccato voices? She truly wondered if she would understand her new friends or even people in general in England, and if they would understand her. Or would they just laugh at her?
At thirteen, Nora was too young to be interested in politics, although she loved history, but from her father she had heard what his boss, Paddy Malone, had said about the English and how they were murdering lots of Irish in Northern Ireland. That may or may not be true, she thought. What had been troubling her more over the past few months - apart from her worries about the strange accent - was what they had learnt in their maths lessons about British money: twelve pence in one shilling and twenty shillings in one pound. The teacher had shown them English coins, and they could see that these coins didn’t even give the real value but only some fancy names like “Half Crown” or “Florin”. And to top it all, the teacher had explained that there were shops that didn’t accept payment in pounds, but in Guineas, just to make things as complicated as possible, probably to confuse American tourists. But how would she ever be able to calculate simple sums of money?
Two weeks ago, however, it had come on TV that the British had now changed and simplified their money. At last, they could no longer ignore the logics of a decimal system. What a relief! But then her father had told her that they were still driving on the wrong side of the road. How would she be safe when she was going to cross the street?
She also remembered some of the things their civics education teacher had told them about the British deficit in democratic rights, but she had forgotten the details. She wondered what she would learn about that aspect of British culture once she was going to her new school in England. The English people might not even be aware of their inferior political system and their lack of civil rights.
Her mother’s voice pulled her out of her thoughts. “Are you coming down?”
“Yes, coming!”
She decided to leave things as they were. She had packed everything she would need in England, and those old books and toys could very w
ell stay behind. She would get new things over there.
She went down the stairs and joined her mother.
“Ah, here you are,” her mother sighed. “You can help me pack those tablecloths.” Mother was very nervous. Nora felt that she was worried about the whole adventure of moving from one continent to another.
“Mummy, am I going to have my own room in England?” Nora wondered.
“Well, Daddy said they were keeping an apartment in readiness for our arrival. But once we’re settled we can find our own house. Then you’ll certainly have your own room. Promise!” Nora didn’t believe what Mummy said when she added, “Promise,” because it was usually a sign of insecurity. Her mother merely wanted her to stop asking anymore questions.
Mother and daughter spent the next three hours packing all manner of household stuff. While they were folding things, closing boxes and labelling them, they kept up a conversation about what awaited them in England. Father had been given the directorship of his company’s UK Headquarters in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. It was a company producing a range of chemical substances, mostly detergents, but also chemical products for industrial purposes. He was going to be paid very big money, and he was going to have a lot of responsibility in England. Mummy and Nora were to fly out on the next day, whereas Daddy was to follow one day later with Margaret, Nora’s older sister. They were going to meet up at a big hotel in London before travelling north to Newcastle two or three days later. It was early spring, so it would still be quite cold up there, more or less as cold as it was in Chicago, only a lot more humid, raining almost every day.
Margaret was staying with one of Mummy’s aunts in Connecticut. She had already done all her packing before her short holiday on the East Coast. Nora envied her because she didn’t have to help Mummy with the packing of household stuff. She decided to remind her parents of this inequality once they were in England and it came to the task of unpacking everything in their new home. Margaret would have to do more then.
Daddy had already left for the East Coast. He said he had things to do in Boston before he was going to fetch his older daughter for their journey across the Atlantic Ocean. So Nora and Mummy were left to their own devices until their family reunion in London.
In the evening, when everything was packed and ready for the removal men, mother and daughter went to have their last American meal in a small restaurant about two miles from what was still their home. There was no more food in the house, and the kitchen was empty. The restaurant was what people called a diner. The outside looked like a railway carriage in shiny metal stripes, while inside the tables were all fixed in a row along the window front. There were ketchup bottles on all the tables, and the menu looked a lot more elegant than the atmosphere of the whole place suggested. The diner offered a large selection of healthy dishes with salads and vegetables, apart from the regulation hamburgers and hot dogs. Mummy said this was because the owner was Italian. When they arrived by taxi - their family car having been sold already - they found the diner half empty. They were directed to one of the tables, took off their anoraks and sat down.
“What’s my new school in England going to be like?” Nora asked, when they had given their orders and the waitress was waddling back to the kitchen.
“We don’t know yet. Daddy said he was going to look into it once we’re there. As it appears, there’ll be a choice of several schools. He’s negotiating with the head office over here. He thinks they should pay for private schools for you and your sister. The English call them public schools, but they’re not public but private. That’s the English for you!”
“Yes, I know. They do everything upside down or the wrong way round.”
“We’ll all have a lot to get accustomed, Nora dear.”
“What if I don’t want to go to one of their public schools?”
“Daddy says they’re a lot better than the ordinary state schools. You see, it’s all a question of social class over there. So naturally we only want the very best for our girls.”
“But I don’t want to become an arrogant bitch. I’ve seen some pretty awful girls in private schools in films. That’s what you become when you mix with people who think they’re better than everybody else.”
“Well, don’t worry. There’s plenty of time to make up our minds. Daddy will know what to do when we’re there. And I’ll make sure you’ll have your say, too.”
Back at their home for the last time, Nora said good night to her mother and immediately retired to her room. Standing in front of her bed, she slowly looked around and examined every detail. So, this was the end of her childhood, she felt. She knew she was really too young to actually believe that, but she was overwhelmed by such a feeling when she told herself that she would never be back in this room. She looked in the long mirror on the wall where she could inspect her own person. Was she still a child? Or was she already a young woman? She had her period; so technically, biologically she was a grown woman who could bear children. And yet, looking at herself in the mirror tonight, she tried to see herself in this new role. She saw her size, hardly more than five foot four, her shiny brown hair falling down to her shoulders, her slim face with that small mole near her left eye, a birthmark she had often felt embarrassed about - an embarrassment she had left behind long ago - and with those thin eyebrows which her school-friends said gave her a very adult look. Her green eyes seemed rather large. Her glance travelled lower and took in her undetermined figure, a straight girl’s figure with small breasts and only a hint of a woman’s hips. She still couldn’t believe that a boy could ever find her attractive, but her intellect told her that this might very probably be the case one day in the distant future. Only, she couldn’t imagine it at this stage in her life. What must it be like to be really close to a boy? What would a boy say to her? What would he do? What would she do? Yes, it was a fact she knew from her mother’s explanations and from biology books that a man and a woman would eventually lie naked in bed together and he would put his thing inside her, an act she simply couldn’t imagine.
She touched her cheeks, then she shifted her palms down to her neck, and eventually she ran them down the length of her jumper down to her jeans. What if she had no clothes on? How would she feel if these were a boy’s hands? She shivered. Unimaginable! Impossible! How could a girl ever allow such a thing? And yet, there was a strange feeling running through her entire being, a feeling she had never known before. Was it awful or was it somehow pleasurable? How irritating!
For the first time in her young life, Nora realized a discrepancy between herself as the person she’d always believed she was and her biological role as a childbearing woman, which the future held in store for her. How would she cope with this discrepancy in future? Would she undergo more changes than hitherto? She was quite satisfied with who she was, but she admitted to herself that she wouldn’t mind if her figure became a little womanlier. She wasn’t like her friend Karen, who had confided to her that she never ever wanted to grow up physically. Karen stepped on the scales several times a day to check she hadn’t put on a single ounce, and she was extremely worried about every single new layer of fat on her body. Nora could still hear Karen’s protestations, “I hate women’s breasts, and I hate big hips. They make a woman look so ugly. I’d get rid of such protuberances if they ever grew on my body, I tell you!” They had argued over this, but eventually Nora kept her own thoughts to herself. Now, in front of her mirror, she didn’t have a problem with her figure, rather with the present moment in her life.
For a moment, she was going to undress in front of the mirror, to see herself better, to discover her numerous imperfections in more detail and to be able to assess her figure more accurately. But she changed her mind. The next time she would see herself like that, with her clothes off, it would be in her new life, no longer a child, in England.
* * *
When their taxi was taking them from Heathrow to th
eir hotel in London, Nora looked at the strange new world that presented itself to her. On the motorway it wasn’t so much the fact that they were driving on the wrong side of the road, it was more obviously the smallness of the cars and the dirty but quaint aspect of the houses that took her by surprise. It was a rainy day, and everything looked awfully grotty. When she looked out of the side window, she could observe the people in the other cars. The drivers had very grim faces, they didn’t look relaxed like American motorists. Even though most men wore collars and ties they still looked unkempt and greasy. Many of them had longish hair that was in need of a haircut. Nora wondered if they didn’t have good hairdressers in England. The cars were as dirty and rusty as they were in Chicago, but they were driven at higher speeds. Some of the manoeuvres she observed were quite dangerous.
In London itself, the streets were very narrow, and traffic was quite chaotic. Nora was glad when they could at last get out of their taxi in front of a big hotel with an extremely posh entrance. Brass handrails, red carpets and a lot of bevelled glass all round.
Once they had checked in and made it to their room, Nora felt better than outside in the taxi. Being in a hotel room abroad, alone with her mother, gave her a sense of adventure. She had never been alone with her mother like this. There had been intimate moments between them before, but never like this. They were two Americans in a strange country, while everyone else around them was foreign. Nora felt that her mother was more like a friend than a parent. Somehow, she had the impression that her mother was in a similar mood. The father was absent, the sister was absent, it was a new atmosphere of togetherness, like a secret pact, a new bond between mother and daughter.
“Shall we go down for lunch?” Nora asked, sitting in the deep armchair near the window and looking out onto the wet roofs of the surrounding buildings.
“That’s a nice idea,” her mother replied. “Let me just put away these last few items.” She was still busy folding their clothes and placing them in the large chest of drawers. “We could have left everything in our suitcases, but I’m not sure how long Daddy wants to stay here before heading north to Newcastle, so it’s better to settle in properly and keep our things nice and tidy.”
White Lies Page 10
