“Emily? Did I wake you up? Listen dear, I’m changing my flight. I’m going to Berlin for a week or so.”
“Oh? Are you burying Oma in Berlin after all?”
“No, no. She’ll be in Hannover, remember? In the family plot. No, it’s not that. I just found some papers and I need to go see some friends, look up some people.”
“Oh, are you sure you’re alright, Mom? You sound, you know, wrung out, and that’s certainly understandable. But, would you like some help after all?”
“Thanks, dear. I don’t really think so. We’re coping. It’s just more difficult than we expected. We just want to get it over with. None of us thought we’d be waiting for a funeral home to dig for fifty year old divorce papers in a Berlin court.”
“Is that what you are going to Berlin for?”
“No. I’ll tell you about it when I come home. I may call you from Berlin. Call Anthony and Julia, okay? Take care of yourself. Love you.”
“Love you too. Bye, Mom.”
The sisters look at Anna. Slumped in arm chairs, shoes off.
“Things alright in Toronto?”
“Seems so, yes.”
“Is this a good idea, Anna? What if the papers suddenly come through and we get the go-ahead. Foffie only has a window of three days next week, he says.”
“Where’s he going? Can’t he stay?”
“No. He’s going to Kiev for a conference, with no room for movement,” says Nadja.
“Well, listen. If it happens, it happens. You go and bury her without me. I feel that I’ve said goodbye, you know, the Requiem service and the get-together, and then the brief chapel service at the cemetery, that was so important,” says Anna.
Nadja has a list on her lap.
“Any more people to add to this? We have enough cards.”
“No, I’m sure we have them all. When you grow ninety-four years old, the friends have all died. It’s just family, and the neighbours.”
“—and nurses, social workers, cleaners,” says Korinna.
“Yes, all the angels.”
Hilde and Maya, at Tegel airport, waving through the glass partition, pushed towards the exit to help Anna with bags and to hug.
Maya drives too fast, Hilde pacifying the bull terrier on the back seat next to her.
“You know how lucky you all were to have had your mothers for all these years?” said Maya, turning on the windshield wipers. “When I got your email, I did a double-take for a moment. You know I buried my parents forty years ago?”
“Yes,” said Hilde quickly, “it does help a little, when you can tell yourself, ‘they have had a long life’, and all that, but you still miss them terribly, don’t you?”
“I called her every week,” said Anna, “no matter where I was. She always asked, “where are you, my big daughter?” and when I told her, she always replied in the same way: “you sound like you’re calling from next door.” But two months ago she couldn’t talk to me any more. So I just called and talked to her, told her little things. I heard her breathing. Then the nurse told me she was too weak to hold the receiver, and so I called and asked them to give her my love. Last Thursday they said urgently she was doing VERY VERY POORLY. I suddenly realized, my God, she is dying. This time she really is. How am I going to get there in time? I was out at the cottage, and I didn’t have a car there. The train had already left, so I took a taxi for the two-and-a-half-hour drive to the airport, and got there just in time for the flight. Thank God, I had my passport with me, a total coincidence. Forgot to pack a nightgown, and I have no clothes really. Cottage stuff, you’ve been there, Maya—”
“Yes, I have twenty rolls of film.”
“All containing images of moose and Ontario fall colours. Yours are so much better than ours. It takes a visitor’s dedication, I think, and a very good camera, I recall.”
“When was the funeral? It’s in Hannover, isn’t it?” said Hilde.
“It will be. A nightmare of red tape. Don’t get me started. I’m just so glad I got there in time, she was in a coma but she turned her head towards me when she heard my voice, and moved her lips. I had asked the nurses to tell her I was coming — and she, she seems to have waited for me. She died eight hours later.”
Hilde reaches to the front and squeezes Anna’s shoulder. The dog coughs.
“You must excuse the mess,” says Maya, “I’m having the upstairs rooms renovated. I’m finally renting part of the house. Too big and expensive for me. I can’t carry the bills.”
They go upstairs and admire the fabulous wallpapers and designer tiles in the bathroom and new kitchen. And then they sit down for one of Maya’s elegant brunches, with a glorious view of flowering bushes outside.
“Why did you come to Berlin now?” asks Hilde, “I didn’t expect you till the fall really?”
“That was the plan. But I found some papers in Mother’s files, and it triggered a whole complicated heap of things. Do you remember Emma? She didn’t come to our class reunion seventeen years ago, remember? We couldn’t find her. We found Herta in Bogota, Columbia, and Gisela in New York, but not Emma. I need to talk to her. Remember Lilly? She died so many years ago, but she always knew where everybody was. Wrote birthday cards and Christmas letters to reams and reams of people. She was a veritable clearing house. Whenever I came to Germany, she would drive hundreds of miles to see me. She remembered everyone and everything from the last days of the war here in Berlin. Lilly was there. Only we couldn’t talk about it anymore. She just couldn’t take it. Maya, do you still take your dogs running out there on the Stolpe Fields? Do you still drive out there with them?”
“Yes, of course,” says Maya. “I do and so does every other dog owner from these parts. It’s a convention.”
“Are there any remnants of the old FLAK station, any barracks, anything at all, near the woods?” asks Anna.
“I don’t think so. They’ve built a golf course out there on part of the land, but why don’t you come along tomorrow? Would you like to go for a walk?”
Fritze and Inge Breuer are listed in the phone book. Fritze doesn’t seem the least surprised to hear from Anna. They had last seen each other when the Berlin Wall went up, when Anna and her toddler were visiting her mother, then in Berlin, in 1961.
“I’m in the slammer,” he had said, and he still seems to be holding up half of the world. He had been promoted to director of social services and family liaison, in a suburban jail.
“Lucky inmates,” Anna had said. “Occasionally, the bureaucrats get something right. Found and hired the best guy for the job.”
Ten years earlier Anna had received one of those black rimmed announcements, when Fritze’s father had died of a stroke.
She had called then, same phone number, and the same small, richly cozy apartment, she discovers this time around.
“Oooooh, I’m okay, you know, a by-pass, a little trouble with the right leg, nothing serious. It’s Inge. She lives with constant back pain, day and night. They can’t help her. We’ve seen everybody.”
Inge pours coffee, impeccably groomed, framed photographs of the grandchildren behind her, three adorable boys who speak Greek and German and who sing and play several instruments each.
Inge doesn’t want to talk about the pain. Inge wants to drive Anna around the city to show her what’s happening “on the East side”, take her to a concert? The opera? But Anna, though she is grateful, doesn’t want to be entertained just now.
They talk about Inge’s forthcoming retirement.
“I’m counting the days,” she says. “I can’t work in this condition.”
“What are you taking for the pain?” Anna wants to know, but Inge shakes her head.
Anna tries Inge’s delicious home-made coffee cake.
“Inge, this is absolutely divine. Do you share recipes? We eat too much sugar in North America.”
“I made a copy for my daughter-in-law,” says Inge. “It’s yours.”
She goes looking for it in her desk.
Inge answers the phone in the kitchen, then stands in the door with car keys. “A little emergency, I have to go, nothing serious. Should be back in an hour.”
“Inge? Really nothing serious? Do you—” Fritze looks just mildly concerned. “It’s okay. It really is. I’ll be back in an hour.” Anna and Fritze pause, each pre-occupied, and comfortable with the silence. Then—
“When was the last time we saw each other?” says Anna.
“When you came to Berlin with your little kid, remember? 1961, the wall — I was, for a week I felt roughed up like a garbage can,” says Fritze.
“Yes, I remember,” says Anna. “The whole city depressed as—”
“—as hell. But everybody was just as surprised when it was over. Hey, you phoned! You called us, said you had seen people dancing on top of the wall, on the news in Toronto.”
“Of course. I completely forgot. I wanted to get on the next flight to Berlin. We were all on a gigantic high then.”
“A few notches lower now, but that’s another story,” says Fritze. “What brings you to the site of your youthful sins this time?”
“Well, for one I wish I could find Emma,” says Anna. “I want to write down the story of the kids in Stolpe Field. I told you about it way back when. Do you remember Emma? She was with us, down in the bunker, 1944. And later she came out and spent the last month of the war with us in Stolpe.”
“Anna, there were thirty of us kids in that place. The girls… was she that, that smart little horse, you know — the one with the boy’s haircut?”
“Hey, compared to you we were all ‘little’, but Emma was really sort of short, with reddish curly hair, freckles, cheerful, a buddy.”
“Oh right! Great kid.”
“Yes, they all were. You know that. But we’re looking for Emma. She’s the last of the girls who were in Stolpe. Lilly died so long ago. You remember Lilly, don’t you?”
“Absolutely, the best. She died?”
“Yes. I miss her terribly, terribly. She was one of my closest friends.”
“A great girl. Everybody liked her, I remember.”
“Yes. But now I’m hoping if I find Emma, that she might remember at least some of the names. We had four instructors out there, who all cleared out overnight, one after the other. A Sergeant, whose name I can’t recall, was the only one everybody respected. All the boys trusted him.”
“Lucky guys, to even have someone in charge. Us they simply scattered through the neighbourhood with our bazookas, around the FLAK bunker.”
“I remember that. You told me. Yes, we were lucky, I suppose. The Serge had been desperately working on a scheme to save at least the youngest boys, but he ran out of time. He didn’t leave us in the lurch as we thought, but in the end, the only way he could see to shock us into considering our situation, really thinking about it, was to model his own exit. He KNEW he was highly respected, and he hoped a lot of us would just up and go too. He explained it to one of the boys, hoping he would pass on the word, but Ulli was in ‘follow-in-Dad’s-footsteps’-mode. His father had been killed in France. Weighed heavily on him later, I imagine, not telling. I just hope the Serge made it safely home to his wife and boy. Can’t remember where he was from,” says Anna. “A single dead German soldier was found near the underpass, when they cleaned up the area after the train blew up, you know, with all the ammunition. About a month after Berlin surrendered.”
“Oh, oh. You mean they had a whole train with ammo sitting on the tracks?”
“A train-load. Box cars full of the stuff. Blew the trackage to smithereens and blew out windows all around and destroyed a farm, nearby. Someone was killed by a flying piece of a box car, I heard. A long way off.”
“I’ll be darned. The old guys were inundated with automatic weapons, all kinds of sophisticated equipment and no ammo whatsoever! That’s the way to win wars. In my neighbourhood they sent some home without firing a shot.”
“But you were fighting around the Humboldthain bunker in the city. Did you get properly supplied?”
“We had bazookas and a few hand grenades. That’s it,” says Fritze.
“Our Sergeant. I always thought he hated presiding over a program of starving a bunch of kids for a month, then feeding them to the ‘without regard for casualties’ project. Hated himself for being in it. We had a Lieutenant who was a non-starter. A man by the name of Schmitt whose first name nobody remembers!”
“I hear there were no documents kept about the last-ditch conscription of the Volkssturm, neither the kids nor the old guys,” says Fritze. “Real chaos.”
“This gets a tad heavy, Fritze, but how do you feel about all that today? Do you believe in conscription? Canada Doesn’t have it, you know. Government has to pass a law in the event of war, before they can mobilize. They believe people should have a choice whether or not to fight. Canada accepted a lot of American conscientious objectors during the Vietnam War. ‘Draft dodgers’, they were called. Really despised by many people in their country at the time. But I met quite a few of them and they were terrific, lonely, homesick kids with a lot of integrity. I’m glad and many other Canadians were glad that the government let them in. I guess I’ve just said how I feel about it myself. You?”
“I’m impressed,” says Fritze, “that’s remarkable. In the country of your origin they shot people who said they were conscientious objectors, or put them in penitentiary or concentration camps.”
“Yeah, I had heard that. But it shouldn’t be such a taboo. I’ll never forget this — in California, in the early seventies, I think, a mother sued the United States government for conscripting her eighteen-year-old son into the army, to fight in Vietnam. She stated that she had not raised her kids to grow up and be killers. Claimed it was against the constitution. Can you imagine such courage? And can you imagine the situation the boy found himself in?”
“What happened?”
“She lost eventually, I hate to say. But think of the example she set. She got the whole country debating the issue.”
“The older I get, the more convinced I am that this is a tradition that needs to be revised. Germany’s army is not allowed to cross the borders. But you probably know that,” says Fritze.
“Yes. I approve. A good first step. But I most definitely don’t want to see a generation of eighteen-year-olds shipped off to defend my real estate, my lifestyle, my interests or my freedom, dammit. I have no right to expect that.”
“Well, looking at history, I notice that countries with a bigger stick have always had a nasty habit of invading their smaller neighbours. The hell with moral justification. Witness the history of this century.—”
“I have a rather uncharitable idea. Uncharitable to certain people with a lot of money. In the future, if it looks as though a government is making ready to invade any country, neighbour or otherwise, it should be mandatory that all of the media publish a list of investments of those in key government positions as well as holdings of their family members. Sounds like an invasion of privacy, but it’s better than an invasion, and it might make many parents think twice about their sons’ patriotic duty to help protect their country’s interests.”
“What if your country gets invaded? How do you defend yourself? Do you rely on big brother to do it for you?”
“Absolutely not. I guess I could live with a sort of citizens’ militia, on a voluntary basis. Mostly what’s needed urgently is the strengthening of the United Nations. Give this body more teeth. I still think it’s the best bet for a more peaceful world. But ultimately, you know, ultimately I believe that it’s up to individual strength. It takes education, early education. We’ll have harmony when human beings can shed this terrible indifference to the pain of others, when we’re prepared to listen to all the stories, really listen. I just think war will begin to disappear.”
“What did Lilly die of?” Fritze asks. “Did she have kids?”
“Breast cancer. She had beaten it once, but then it came back. I was in Germany at the time, was going to visit. She died the next day. She had married a pastor, you know.
“So much older than Lilly, retired already — the kids all grown up, a daughter looking after him. There wasn’t a wake, but they served a lunch. People sat at a long table, reams of older people, all telling stories about her. How she had held up the whole community, made peace in the family, sent loving notes to lonely people and all that. So I thought of a story from the time we were six, and her legendary Grandma was visiting just this once, from Königsberg.” Anna peeks at Fritze, but he looks interested, so she continues.
“Lilly wore a gorgeous velvet dress with a lace collar and had an immense looped bow on top of her curly head. But the Grandma was decked out like the Queen Mother, festooned with cascades of pearls, never moving from this immense armchair. So we girls had been invited to this tea party and were admitted to this big living room together, Lilly leading the way. And she went and curtsied in front of her Grandma and KISSED HER HAND. Needless to say, we were a little stunned, but not to be outdone, we all strolled over and kissed the Grandma’s hand too. The old lady never moved a muscle. AND, GET THIS, FOR THE NEXT MONTH OR SO, we all went around kissing startled elderly ladies’ hands…”
“So how did that one go over at the funeral?”
“They all laughed, and I began to bawl and bawl.” Anna stops. Fritze takes a deep breath.
“Do you tell your Peter stories about your childhood, and the war years, have you ever tried?”
“No. You?”
“Look. You remember when you came just a few weeks after the war ended, after the collapse? We sat up on the rear balcony and talked and talked. But you didn’t tell me how it was when you were hit in the leg, how long you were lying there, bleeding, and in agony, before someone found you.”
“My mother,” Fritze reminds her. “She came out looking for me when no one was shooting or bombing for five minutes.”
“Fritze! I had completely forgotten. She—”
“She came running out waving a white towel and called ‘Fritze! Fritze!’ and I was just about to black out from the bleeding, but I put up my arm, and then I passed out. She yelled and cursed at some Russians to come over and carry me, CARRY ME, back to the house! And they DID IT. And then one of their field medics put in some first aid. I woke up from one hell of a racket, a tank cannon, at the corner. But here I am.”
“Here you are. I met her only once, but she should have been a general. I can’t imagine anyone saying ‘no’ to HER. So resolute. You are one lucky Fritze.”
“Agreed. I always thought so.”
“When you told me that time you visited us, you made it sound so funny. Hysterical, in fact. You always tried to make everything sound funny, you had a knack for making a joke of the most hideous stuff we were facing back then. None of us could handle it, the reality, but we didn’t have your gift. One of the reasons why you were so popular. I notice you haven’t lost the touch.”
“I haven’t? Listen, I’m a Berliner. I owe it to us or they retrieve my membership card. But do you remember up on that balcony, it smelled like our hamster cage.” Fritze grins. “My sister used to have a hamster, which we put out on the stairwell overnight. The sweet pet stank like hell, the cage did.”
“Oh my goodness, the rabbits!” says Anna. “I’ll start at the very beginning.”
“I would be most grateful. It’s always easier to follow a story along.”
“Okay then. One day someone brought us a white bunny rabbit, the kind with red eyes. At first our parents weren’t enamored with the idea because they didn’t know how we would look after it during the war. But then they decided it was valuable for us, paedagogically speaking, so a carpenter arrived and built a nice, sturdy stable behind the house, at eye level. We were not particularly crazy about her. This bunny was entirely minus traits. Do you know what I mean?” Fritze nods vigorously. “Then one day our lawnmower broke and couldn’t be fixed, and so the washing lady brought a movable pen, open at the bottom, with chicken wire all over the top. So we put Mucki on the lawn and she ate every blade of grass, and the pen was moved around at regular intervals. One night we all forgot to put her back into her stable. In the morning she sat there looking insulted, but most puzzling, we discovered a fairly large hole in the lawn, at the edge of the pen. We wondered if she was even weirder than we had always assumed. After all, to first dig an escape route and then change your mind and stay put, that seemed pretty strange.” Fritze nods and grins. “But six weeks later, you had an answer, right?”
“How did you know? Six weeks later five brown and white flecked bunnies sat in the stable with her. All of a sudden, we were far more engaged and went all over the neighbourhood, morning and afternoon, to pick dandelions for them.
“When they grew bigger, the carpenter returned and built two more sturdy stalls. Bigger stalls. Our mother divided the bunnies by the principle: ‘this one’s cute, that’s a girl. Left stall. That one’s a rascal, that’s a boy. Right stall.” Moving right along, a year later we owned thirty-six rabbits. Fortunately, we were able to give eleven of them away. The carpenter had long been drafted into the army, so the new bunnies were placed in high wood crates, and though a couple had run away, it was a challenge of biblical proportions.”
“And then you ate them all,” Fritze says hopefully, “in May/June 1945. Garnished with dandelions.”
“Nono. Hold it. At the end of the war we took them upstairs to the little balcony to keep them safe. But when Foffie got thinner and thinner and we realized that WE had to eat the dandelions, we carried Mucki to the butcher, with tears running down our cheeks, and got two pounds of other meat in exchange.”
“Thank the Lord,” Fritze says with feeling.
“Yes, well. Sorry as we were that Foffie was always coming into the kitchen to look if anything was cooking on the stove, we simply couldn’t eat the others. So one night we put them in boxes and carried them off to the woods, and they scampered away. Next day we told Foffie and he was overjoyed for them.” Fritze scratches his head.
“Thank you for not laughing,” says Anna.
“Tell me,” asks Fritze, “do Anthony and Emily have a sense of what your childhood was like? You know, all the goosebumpy details?”
“Don’t think so. Just a sense of family in general, when they come visiting and aunts and uncles and cousins feel so close to them. And they have seen photographs, of course.”
“But do you never say anything about your childhood at all? Never?”
“Of course, I do. Not long ago we looked at some black and white photos from the thirties, Foffie wasn’t born yet. We were all standing in the street in front of the house looking at the sky, and my kids wondered if we were watching birds, Anthony being a passionate bird watcher, and all. And I said no, it was Sunday, and we were waiting to see if the chocolate plane would show up that afternoon. It was one of those little single propeller planes that pull an advertising slogan behind it, a banner or whatever. This one was for Trumpf chocolates, and it would show up on summer Sundays and drop wee little shiny packets of chocolate squares bound together and suspended from a pretty parachute. And they would sparkle in the sun and dance down slowly, so we could see them coming and run to catch them. We would always catch enough to give some to the little kids and then we would save the coloured foil and the parachutes and invent games with them. Did you ever see that plane? I know it dropped packets in large parks, like the Humboldthain as well.”
“Yes, I heard of it, but they wouldn’t have been allowed to simply drop the stuff in the city because the kids would’ve been endangered in traffic, even on Sundays.”
“Oh, of course.”
“So you told that story.”
“I did, but to my granddaughter, with the kids in the room. They looked bemused. Maybe I should tell them about that time when Goebbels yelled at us all at the Sportpalast —”
“Oh boy. Where you there, Anna? I hadn’t realized. What a show. What a SHOW! All those uniforms, seated in formation. Remember? Our entire neighbourhood unit was marched down there. ‘Dienst’. Were there any people in just plain civvies? Just people?”
“You mean, like, families? I don’t know, can’t recall seeing any either, but I was just sooo upset about all the screaming and yelling, and his furious face. When he hollered, ‘Do you want the total war?’ and EVERYBODY responded, ‘JAAAAA!’ I burst into tears. Couldn’t calm down. I think it was Canada who took me out the nearest exit, me and another girl who was crying, and rubbed our backs, brought us home. You never met Canada. She was older and they moved away later.”
“I don’t know how I would have approached that to tell my Peter. And I mean, what for? Why depress the kids?”
“Yes, exactly, Fritze.”
“He’s heard about it, of course. The schools showered our kids with endless stuff about the Nazi past, and the media did, of course. But he didn’t hear about this from me.”
The key turns in the lock and Inge walks in suggesting they go out for a traditional Berlin dinner. Would Anna like that?
Would she! Would she ever. And yes, everyone was perfectly alright. Crisis managed.