Punctuality had turned into a neglected virtue. No one expected anyone to arrive exactly on time any more, trains to run, buses to leave, stores to open. Or perhaps the old expectation was still there, but the population had become so accustomed to delays, one’s own and others’, that those who came late for anything were easily forgiven.
People were knocking on the door all afternoon. It had been decided two nights earlier that there was no better reason for a party than Nadja’s fourteenth birthday, and everybody came. Missing were her girlfriends, neighbours and classmates evacuated a year earlier, when the school finally closed. But here were the comrades of the hour, the other members of the emergency service crew, Emma, Fritze, Lilly, Picco, Eva and Klaus. Anna had baked two small rhubarb cakes, too wet, and the artificial sweetener not well disguised by the baking process, as Mother had predicted, but that was what they had to offer. Lilly had brought a box of homemade cookies and Picco produced a whole bottle of Cognac!
“Wait ‘til your Dad gets home…” said Fritze in a high-pitched voice, punching the air, and they laughed.
Emma unwrapped a misshapen parcel covered in newspaper, revealing four briquettes that were placed reverently in the empty wood box beside the Dutch oven, now cold.
Mother had agreed that Anna should use up all of the remaining black tea for this occasion, the last party of the war, except that she didn’t think of it that way. None of them did. Not at the time.
And they had peppermint tea as well, Lilly's favourite.
While just the seven of them, they sat properly on the big sofa and the three armchairs, with Anna pouring tea. Klaus joined Nadja in hers, putting a protective arm around her and whispering birthday wishes in her ear that made her blush. She had a crush on Klaus, and he in turn had a crush on Lilly, but today was Nadja’s birthday and he was going to refrain from teasing her, and be honest about his genuine affection for her. Tatyana peeked in the open door with a rare little smile.
Fritze manned another of the armchairs, keeping an eye on both girls he intended to marry: Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays he focused on Eva, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays it was Anna.
Picco was telling political jokes, with impeccable timing, so that the similarities, the predictable endings became fresh, were gratefully received.
At around six, Hilla and Hermann breezed in, she in her flowered pregnancy outfit, he in infantry uniform, his empty left sleeve neatly tied up. Picco stopped in mid-sentence, Hermann raised his good right arm to greet them with a resounding Heil Hitler, and Hilla hiccuped. Hers was the only birthday present truly intended for Nadja, a pink and purple soap box from before the war, the sculpted bar spreading a powerful perfume through the room even before Nadja lifted the dainty lid.
“Aaaah!”
Nadja hugged Hilla sideways, and Klaus got up to offer their chair for Hilla, but Fritze had already got her elbow and was leading her to his. He explained it was high time he began warming the Dutch oven with his body heat, in time for the evening’s entertainment.
Hermann and Hilla were now married seven days, she radiant, he a little less sarcastic than in the past. Aged twenty-two, they had been supervisors of night shifts when all those present had first served in air raid emergency service in a downtown bunker back in 1943. All except for Nadja.
Lilly was now handing over a little package with yellow baby booties, and was asking about things maternal like weight gain, night rest (giggles), swollen ankles, while Hilla waved away a cigarette, proffered by Picco. Hermann took it.
Emma soon had him engaged in conversation on troop movements, news from the front, her arms comfortably crossed in front of her chest.
Nadja sat, her smiling eyes going around and around the room: these admired friends, all older than herself, had come to celebrate her birthday, not Anna’s, not adorable little brother’s, not smart little sister’s, HERS! The middle girl’s.
Thirty minutes later, after a disciplined glance at his watch, Hermann collected his wife, swept his pistol and holster from on top of the grand piano, and they departed, Hilla enveloped in hugs and kisses, in his staff car.
As if on cue, Nadja hauled out the gramophone, wound it up and searched for her favourite records. They played music from recent films: Evelyn Künnecke sang, Ilse Werner whistled, Rosita Serrano trilled. The friends were so tempted to dance, strictly forbidden ever since total war had been declared.
“Public dancing isn’t allowed,” Eva could be heard, loud and clear. “I say what people do behind closed doors is their own business!” And she got up, hitched her skirt a little and began pushing the carpet to the wall with swift kicks.
“My cousin would rather see us dance, when he comes home from the front, than huddle in the basement, depressed, he said.”
Klaus bowed in front of Nadja, who wasn’t sure what to do with a foxtrot, but he did, and they looked lovely. Then, while she changed needles for the next record, Klaus asked Lilly, who said, smiling, “just this one.”
Anna and Tatyana stood in the kitchen, wielding two large frying pans, grating raw onion into the potato mess, eager to get the potato pancakes cooked while the gas supply was turned on.
There was no apple sauce, but more rhubarb, and it turned into a feast.
When she arrived in the door with the platter, blowing a strand of hair out of her eyes, Tatyana untying the towel from in front of Anna’s skirt, she saw Fritze dancing with Eva, her friend. The girls’ eyes met and for a long moment Anna held her glance: nothing would come between them, break up their friendship, nothing.
“Pancakes!” she sang out.
Picco was dancing with Lilly, Klaus with Emma, Nadja rummaging around for more music.
“Do you have a cork screw? I have to open this bottle,” said Picco, pointing. “Glasses?”
They sat and ate, nipped at the cognac, powerful, fragrant stuff, even Nadja for the first time ever, but shook her head, no more. Klaus reclaimed his place next to her just as soon as the plates were cleared away.
Anna reached behind the textbooks and pulled out a few records, hidden in a large brown envelope. Without a word, she put on ‘Mack the Knife’, and the room went quiet. Then a ‘Ship will Come’, with fifty cannon…
“What kind of music is that? That’s incredible stuff! Sensational,” said Fritze.
“Don’t you know? Sure you do,” said Picco. “That’s the Three Penny Opera. Where did you find that old record? A good thing Hermann’s keen ears are out of reach.”
“Which Hermann? I’ll bet the fat one has his own collection at home. Don’t you know?”
“What are you talking about? What’s all this?” called Emma, but Anna put on her favourite, Isa Vermehren.’Sechs Whisky und vier Koem’.
“Oh dear, cover Nadja’s ears,” said Klaus, anyone else under sixteen? Anna was, by a few days. She laughed. It was the first time she had dared to bring out the blacklisted music to share with anyone. Lilly leaned forward and smiled at her, one eyebrow raised. “From another time, right?” she said.
“Other words, other ideas,” said Anna.
“Let’s hear it. Read something,” Eva called and sat down expectantly.
“Yes, okay everybody?” That was Fritze. They nodded.
And so Anna reached back into the second row of books and read poems by Erich Kästner. “If Germany had won the war …” That was WWI, he was talking about. His predictions weren’t far off. They had come true though Germany most definitely did not win WWI.
“No wonder they didn’t want to listen to this guy,” said Emma. Heinrich Heine: “Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht, so bin ich um den Schlaf gebracht…” Written a lot earlier, in the mid-nineteenth century.
They listened with hot faces, listened and argued. All agreed with Emma that they were in this together, though.
Don’t let this evening end.
But it ended before the air raid, and there was love all through the house when the friends walked down the path to the garden gate.
“Ulli, do you want to get back directly, or can I show you something?”
“Oh sure. What is it?”
“A place. A beautiful place on the other side of the underpass. Ten minutes along this road maybe. I have this memory from when I was really little.”
“So you don’t live far from here then?”
“No. Not far at all. My Dad used to go riding in the old days. He was in the cavalry as a young man, in the World War, and he loves horses. He used to take me along to the stables, where he rode this horse and he would let me ride in front of him until we passed our house and he’d drop me off. One night we were walking along this promenade of old chestnut trees, all in bloom — I must have been four or five then — and we were talking, not paying attention, and then this huge bundle, this cloud of june bugs came out of the sky and landed in those trees, and clumps of beetles dropped through the leaves and on the ground and on our shoulders, making these buzzing beetle noises.”
“Oh God, that sounds very weird. Really icky. Were you scared or what?”
“Well, that’s just it. I remember exactly what happened next. I was just about to get really terrified, goose-bumped, you know, when my Dad said, ‘oh, how interesting, they must be in their seven year cycle,’ and then he picked up a handful from the ground, and he shuffled his feet along, so as not to mash too many, and we stopped under a lamp, and then he showed me the different types of bugs, the big black-shelled ones, and the ones that look like they’ve been dusted with flour, and so on. And he told me that they had been grubs, little round yellow fat grubs until just a few days ago, and we just kept walking, me shuffling like he did, to spare the bugs. And when he was finished we just walked out of the promenade and on the clean street, and I took a deep breath, I think. Much later I realized that he didn’t just want to tell me not to be afraid, you know, he helped me get through it. Keeping busy.”
“You know what? That sounds like my Dad! He would have thought of something like that.”
“Oh Ulli, you must miss him so much. I know I need my Dad, not right here, but somewhere in the world. Oh, there it is! Do you see those two rows of old chestnut trees? Aren’t they beautiful? They go away down to the end of a polo court. There used to be matches here, long before the war. But the horses aren’t there any more.”
“I must come back here some night,” said Ulli. “This is a beautiful place alright. But we should go.”
Later, as they entered the dark compound, Anna said, “I hope you’ll never stop writing, Ulli.”
Back in their barracks everyone pretended they hadn’t been missed.
In the morning, as the boys pushed the bikes past the galley to collect their lunch rations, Ulli slipped a folded piece of paper into Anna’s pocket, before heading up and out along the wood path after the others.
No sooner had the line of cyclists disappeared, than the Lieutenant came storming out of the office, jumped into the staff car and raced across the fields towards the city. A moment later the Serge appeared in the door, scratching his head, then returned to the office.
Anna went behind the galley and read Ulli’s poem. About men who, through the ages, destroyed hopes and illusions of women.
“For Anna, from Ulli.”
What about the Dads? Anna wondered. There are never enough of them. Lost in the wars, or orphaned themselves, not remembering what Dads would be like when their turn came to become one. According to the Serge, Ulli had reported, the next generation would be raised by exhausted working mothers, grandparents and siblings — in Germany and all the occupied countries that had fought back.
“What’s this I hear about the break-in down the road?” said Anna to Lotte, whose turn it was to rinse and to dry the cauldron.
“No one can figure that one out,” said Lotte. “I mean, there’s just nothing there. If some nut came in to sabotage the telephone system, or to plant smutty literature in the files, I would have said, here’s a bored customer, but to go to all the trouble of breaking in upstairs, through the SKYLIGHT, and deliberately leaving the ladder behind, and muddy boot prints! I would say — I don’t know what I would say. You?”
“No idea. You know, I haven’t been there for ages. Got my councilor’s laces in that place, two years ago, but Didn’t like meeting there with the girls. I took them out in the fresh air.”
“What did you do, sports?”
“No, sang with them, rounds, some Mozart stuff, they liked that. I noticed more girls showed up when we did more music, and less reading of the old slogans, just sitting around in the building. The head honchos liked my attendance figures, so they left us alone. Of course, it didn’t last. Soon after, they closed the schools and we were evacuated.”
“We all got our laces there, except Lilly. And Monika. They aspiring to join the dreaded lipstick-and-perm brigade?”
“And get transferred to the party, membership book, badge and all?”
“No, I don’t think so. They were both away from Berlin when the issue would have come up. Lilly they would have considered first-class leadership potential, don’t you think?”
“Yup, I do. But she doesn’t seem to care. So it’s Monika who broke in, rummaging around for a pair of those coveted red and white laces. Hey, you get to order around a gaggle of ten-year-olds, barely all their permanent teeth in—”
“Lotte, you’re wicked.”
“Getting better all the time.”