The Dancing Bear

by Frances Faviell

  “So,” she had said with satisfaction, “you know what bombing is like.” And when I had retorted that the Luftwaffe had done its best to show us, she had said coldly, “Our bombing of London was nothing to the Allies’ inexcusable attacks on Berlin.”

  Frau Altmann had looked at the photographs of the ruins of our home and marvelled that we had ever come out of it alive. When I told her that all our neighbours had been killed but that we had been spared, she said with conviction, “God saved you for His own good purpose—and your husband and your unborn son too—none of these things are accidental, they are all part of God’s plan.”

  I never ceased to marvel that after all she had suffered she still had an unshaken faith in God.

  Max was working very hard trying to finish his engineering exams so that he could take his degree. He had little free time, and although he was at home most evenings studying, Frau Altmann was lonely; I could tell that by the great welcome she always gave me on arrival. She was losing her pupils, as they were being moved out of Berlin. The air-lift was feeding 250,000 people, and every mouth able to find its food in the Zone helped. The Allies were moving out at great speed now, and this not only meant the loss of work and personal ties and help for many Germans, but it also brought increased fear that soon Berlin would be left to its fate.

  “One cannot expect this wonderful Luftbrücke to continue indefinitely,” said Frau Altmann. “It is costing millions, and your brave airmen are losing their lives feeding us. What will be the end of it all?”

  The hundredth day of the air-lift had passed. On this day the United States air-lift had brought in the record load of 1,104 tons of food, and the R.A.F. ran it close with over 1,000 tons.

  Goods were being flown out too, and thus trade with the outer world was made possible. We got all the details from Stampie, who was “in the know.” The planes, he told me, flew in with food and coal and other necessities, and went out laden with manufactured goods made in Berlin and bought by the West.

  “And they’re going to fly all the sick and undernourished kids out before it gets too cold,” he told us. “They’ll get a better chance where there’s more food and more warmth.”

  He was helping Max with various experiments he had to make, and with all kinds of problems connected with his studies. A small engineering school was now open, and although the fees were high Max was managing to pay them while he was working for the British. His one fear was that the branch where he worked would soon be moving out too. They were going as soon as a place in the Zone could be found. It was by no means easy to fit all these governmental departments into an overcrowded and underhoused Zone. The Control Commission officials were grumbling at the less luxurious and spacious accommodation they had to be content with in the Zone.

  “Makes you mad when you think of old Sokolovsky sitting there laughing his head off to think of all the trouble he’s causing us,” said Stampie. “And the joke is, that he can do it again just whenever he feels like it. That autobahn is just a mouse-run and he’s the cat sitting pretty waiting to spring.”

  I asked how his cat, Lenin, was. Apparently he was fine. Now that he drove a lorry the cat could accompany him everywhere. The Boss in the cloak-and-dagger set-up had objected to Lenin’s presence in the car.

  “Probably because his name was Lenin,” said Stampie with a grin. “Got no sense of humour, these chaps haven’t.”

  Lenin now accompanied his master everywhere, and scraps of food were saved for him at many places. He was getting quite fat and was very clever.

  “Understands everything I say to him,” declared his master.

  He sensed as I did that Frau Altmann was lonely, and with her pupils all leaving she was depressed and apprehensive of the future, although she gave no sign that she worried. I asked her if she was willing to help me with the distribution of some of the parcels, and if she would take on the weekly delivers, such as that for the child Krista, who depended on these vitamins and cod liver oil, etc. for their progress. She was delighted, and I arranged for her to do the families near her, as there was almost no transport and she looked too frail to walk far. Petrol had to be flown in, and its use was much curtailed. Coal had to be flown in too, so there were few railway and tram services. Frau Altmann was undaunted by all this; she had always been a great walker, and, like me, she loved it. I also arranged for her to get some teaching from one of the British schools, although this was rather far away for her.

  Ursula had written, not much but just to say that all was well and that she would write a long letter soon. She had also written to me.

  “The people are overwhelming with their welcome and kindness,” she had written, “and I wonder if they really mean it. Why should they show so much kindness to a German girl—a former enemy—when they would surely have rather their son had married an American girl?”

  I did not show this to her mother. Frau Altmann was the sort of woman who accepted a kindness on its face value and treasured it. She would have been upset at this rather suspicious and questioning attitude of her daughter.

  I did not tell her either that a letter had come from my friends in Leipzig, enclosing the announcement of a meeting of the Free German Youth Movement. There was a photograph of one of the leaders who was to speak at it. No comment was made on the cutting in the letter, but the reason for its inclusion was obvious. The man in the photograph had a small moustache, but I was positive that it was Fritz. He had an unusual face, the drawing of the cheekbones being particularly interesting. The eyes too were rather like Ursula’s, set at a slight slant and sloping up at the corners. One could not be mistaken over these things. I debated for some time whether or not to show it to her, and decided against it, for the flag under which he stood in the photograph was a similar one to the ill-fated red flag which had caused the Brandenburger Tor incident.

  When Frau Altmann had been shown Stampie’s piece in an elaborate frame she had said sharply that she was surprised that he should waste money on framing such an infamous thing, and that any political party which was against the Church was doomed to extinction—as the Nazi Party had been.

  “God,” she said, “is patient, but there are certain things which He cannot overlook, and one of them is surely the deliberate turning away of His people from the Church.”

  So stern and emphatic had been her voice that Stampie and Max had been silent, and the framed piece of material had been thrust back into Stampie’s pocket.

  How then could I show her this photograph of her beloved youngest born, not only standing under it but from his enthusiastic expression advocating adherence to it?

  SPRING

  1949

  IT was not until March that Frau Altmann became really ill. She must have struggled for months with pain before she finally went to her doctor. She had never been a coward, and there was no hiding the truth from her now. She had cancer of the lungs and she was too weak for an operation. Max, who was still with her, had written to me several times that she was not well, but although she was in constant touch with me she had never mentioned that she was ill. I had seen her just before Christmas and had been shocked at her thinness and transparent look. She had insisted that she was perfectly well.

  We were living in Westphalia now, my husband’s branch having been transferred from Berlin, but I went back there as often as possible. One could get out of Berlin easily enough in the empty planes which had brought in the food. Getting a seat in a plane to go there was not so easy. Official visits came first and others had to be wangled. The welfare parcels which were now being sent direct to me in Westphalia were taken on by the air-lift, and Dr Annemarie and Frau Altmann dealt with them at the other end. We used to take them out to the airport at Bückeburg and hand them to the pilots. Whenever they had space they took them and, what is more, they delivered them personally or found a colleague to do so. They never refused a parcel, and not one was lost or mislaid. John used to love watching the food being loaded from the lorries into the great
fleet of waiting planes.

  The air-lift had already begun transporting delicate and undernourished children and their mothers or escorts out of the city before winter set in. They also took a number of very ill patients who could not receive the treatment they needed in Berlin owing to the shortage of supplies. Between September and February the R.A.F. flew 12,333 of these children without mishap out of Berlin, and almost a thousand mothers and escorts.

  The Berliners were having a thin time, as their letters told me.

  It was a shock when I got a letter from Max in March telling me that Frau Altmann was very ill and in hospital. I wrote to the hospital, which was one I knew well. The professor in charge of her case replied at once, telling me that there was no hope whatsoever for her in Berlin, and he proposed to have her flown out to some hospital in the Zone where there would be facilities for radium and x-ray treatment. He suggested that she came to Hanover or Minden so that she would be near me. Her husband had been an old friend of his, and he would get in touch with the professors at whatever hospital would take her.

  A week later she was flown out to Bückeburg and an ambulance from the hospital met her. She had never flown in her life, and in spite of her pain and weakness she had enjoyed the experience, and insisted on thanking the pilot who came round to see how the old lady had stood her first flight. He was astonished at her perfect English, and charmed with her.

  “She’s a game one,” he said. “Is she very ill?” I told him what was wrong. He asked me which hospital she was going to. When she woke next day from the heavy drug they had given her, she found a mass of flowers by her bedside from this young pilot. Some of these young lads were wonderfully good to the children they transported, and saved all their chocolate and sweet rations to hand round on the trips. Nothing was too much trouble for them. They would take messages, telephone people, post parcels on arrival or deliver them if they could. They were beyond praise.

  Germans build their hospitals, whenever possible, high on a hill away from the dust and dirt of the town, so that the patients shall not only get fresher air, but also a lovely view. They build them with terraces so that the patients can lie out and have something beautiful to look at.

  The hospital where Frau Altmann now lay was high on a hill above the Weser. She was calm and in no way disturbed by the other patients round her. Indeed she liked their company. She begged me not to tell Ursula how ill she was. Ursula was expecting a baby in July and must not be worried. She was happy in her new home and her relatives were wonderfully kind, she said.

  Frau Altmann talked a great deal about the baby.

  “My first grandchild,” she said. “How Pappi would have loved to see Ursula’s child!” If it was a boy it was to be called Francis Joseph—Francis after Joe’s father—and if it was a girl it would be named Liliane after Lilli.

  “Is she really happy, do you think?” I asked her.

  She said thoughtfully, “I think she is as happy as she deserves to be.”

  The professor told me that Frau Altmann could not stand an operation. Her heart, he said, was in a very dangerous state, and the cancer in both lungs was far advanced. Treatment such as they could give with the limited means at their disposal was negligible.

  “We are far behind in medicine,” he explained to me. “We have been prevented from attending the international medical conferences for years now, and we don’t understand the use of all the wonderful new drugs, even if we could get them.”

  I told him I could get almost anything he needed for Frau Altmann from British or American doctor friends.

  He patted me on the shoulder and said sadly: “The one thing she needs, no one can give her.”

  I asked him if she would have much pain. He said, “I shall not let her suffer more than she can bear—but I think she is the kind who will not let us know how much she is suffering.”

  He was right. Whenever I asked Frau Altmann how she was, she invariably replied that she was very well and never said that she was in pain, but each time I saw her the havoc in her face told its own story.

  We used to talk about the children, for that she loved best. All about Kurt when he was a little boy, about how wilful and naughty Ursula always was, how sweet and biddable was Lilli. She showed me photographs of them all; they were the only things she had brought with her beyond her few toilet necessities. I think she knew when she set out on that first air journey that she would never come back, and would never need her clothes again.

  Max wrote regularly with all the news he could find. He had done as she wished and taken a lodger to share his room to make it cheaper for him. Her room was all ready for when she returned. He was digging the garden and planting potatoes for her. His friend was helping. They had cleared away mounds of rubble now, and were clearing the earth of stones. The primroses were out and the lilac in bud. It was already quite hot in Berlin. They were getting a new kind of dehydrated potato flown in; it was called “Pom” and tasted like warm flannel. Potatoes took up too much space, and dehydrated ones in packets were simpler. “But,” he wrote, “what wouldn’t we give for a good solid potato! That is why I am determined to grow them for you in case the air-lift is still on next year.”

  Hermann and his wife wrote too. They gave lurid details of their hardships, and it upset Frau Altmann when her trays of food came in.

  “If only I could send some of this to Luise and Hermann,” she would sigh.

  I felt sure that Hermann was not doing too badly. Stampie would see to that. He had come out twice to see us on trips which one of his R.A.F. friends had wangled for him.

  “Not but what I didn’t earn it, mind you,” he said. “I did five hours’ loading at each end.” He had achieved his ambition at last, and was on air-lift duties driving a food lorry.

  “Bit of all right here,” he had exclaimed when he had explored our new home and examined the dogs and John carefully. “But you’ll soon be back in Berlin. Old Joe Stalin is getting sick of the fuss over this air-lift—you’ll see.”

  I asked him about Hermann and Luise.

  “They’re no worse off than anyone else,” he assured me, “but I’m going scrounging round for my Mess while I’m here. We could do with a meal that isn’t out of a packet.”

  The farmers, he said, would give them anything in exchange for coffee, which they still could not get. He and his R.A.F. friend were going to make the rounds that evening before returning to Berlin, and hoped to take back some “solid” food.

  Apparently he was very successful, for the next letter from Luise said that they had had a wonderful feast after Mr Stamp’s visit to the West. They had actually had sausage and real eggs, “not the powder which tasted of fish.”

  Frau Altmann was interested in every one of my refugee families. She remembered their names, their children and their ailments, and asked for the latest news each time I saw her. She was so alert mentally that it was difficult to believe she was dying. But the professor told me that she was getting weaker and weaker.

  One lovely afternoon in May when I reached the hospital I found that she had been moved out of the ward into a small private annexe. There were large windows and a wonderful view over the hills down to the river. Her bed was near the window and had been raised up high so that she could look out.

  “Isn’t it lovely?” she asked me. “I believe this is the first class here.”

  It was. German hospitals have three classes according to the amount their patients can pay. Max, Stampie and I were paying for Frau Altmann. This hospital was an expensive one, and I asked the sister about the cost of this small private annexe.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “Frau Altmann has been put here by the professor’s special orders. There will not be any extra charge for Frau Altmann. We all admire her great courage, and the professor realizes what you are doing for the refugees here.”

  There was a wonderful view from her windows and I took my sketching things, and sitting there would work, and at the same time tell her abou
t everything I could see. She was getting too weak now to remain up on her pillows for long. She loved to watch me, and took an intense interest in the sketches and in all that went on down in the valley.

  She could hear the birds and the cows, and from the hospital gardens the scent of lilac and syringa came through her open windows.

  “It is so lovely here. How lucky I am to be in the country at such a time of year. The world is so beautiful, only the people in it are so ugly and wicked,” she would sigh.

  From the sketches I was making a landscape now, and this she watched enthralled.

  “You must be one of the happiest of women,” she said. “You can lose yourself so completely in your work—nothing else matters when you are painting, does it?”

  I said, yes, that it was a wonderful escape, but one seldom achieved what one wanted, that it had its drawbacks if one were married and a mother.

  “You wouldn’t be complete without them, and your work would lack some quality,” she insisted.

  I wondered. From some of the extraordinary daubs now being hung in the exhibitions, it would not have mattered whether the artists were never born, to say nothing of being complete.

  One afternoon when the painting was almost finished and the professor had been talking to us, she said, “What can I do to repay him for all his goodness to me? He is wonderful, and he knows that I have no money.”

  I said I would paint his portrait if he liked. He was a fine-looking old man and would make a very interesting portrait. She was delighted, but said that it would be me doing something for him and not her.

  “It’s all the same,” I told her. “I will get the pleasure of a good sitter—for all doctors are good sitters—and he will get the portrait, and you will be happy, nicht wahr?”

  We arranged it and the professor began the sittings at once.

  One day she asked me if I had ever heard anything of Fritz. We had been talking about John and she had been recounting some anecdotes of Fritz when he was a child. She asked the question out of the blue, and I was taken unawares and said yes, that I knew where he was. She listened in silence while I told her about the photograph.