Dissonance (37 page)

Pushing on. Across the foundations of a ruined cottage and up onto a ridge that was crowned with old rubble, lengths of wire, broken tools and a rusted-out boiler.

He stopped and turned a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees.

Nothing but moonlit forest, and the sound of an owl filling the natural amphitheatre below them.

‘Shit,' he whispered, straining to make out light, or structures, or people.

Then he thought, I've come up on the wrong side of the valley.

He quickly ran back down, skipping and jumping over logs and erosion gullies. Arriving in the valley, he started up the other side. He forced himself on, undoing his tunic and wiping sweat from his forehead, spreading it back across what was left of his hair.

Half an hour later he arrived at the top of the other side.

Nothing.

‘Shit!'

I'll be arrested for this, he thought. They'll be out looking for me. They'll say I deserted and I'll be shot.

And then he heard the sharp crack of a pistol. ‘Thank God,' he whispered, looking in the direction of the sound and recognising a gateway of trees he'd passed through.

Another shot. He ran back, slowly passing up and over a hidden ridge, appearing on the edge of the patchwork paddocks he'd seen from the lodge. He followed a fence line and a few minutes later saw the lights of the camp.

‘Thank Christ,' he said, doing up his tunic, and straightening his hair.

A few hours later, Erwin was sitting beneath a tree on the hill above the two bunkhouses. It stretched its lower branches out over the huts, and its roots were exposed where parts of the hill had been washed away.

He lit up one of the cigarettes Schaedel had given him. He took one long draw and almost a third of the cigarette had gone. Then he took a piece of paper, rested it on a field manual, and started to write:
Dear Professor, Here I am in Poland
 …

He told him everything; from the journey through the outskirts of Hamburg to the discovery of his secret spot on the hill.

So
, he said, eventually, realising he couldn't write what he couldn't write,
tomorrow we start our police duties …

And then he stopped. He heard a snatch of song and looked up to see a farmer, high in the hills, leading a few cows into a fresh paddock.

There, among the toadstools,

Sits a nervous little gnome …

Erwin half-recognised the melody; he hummed it and tried to remember.
Do you know this, Herr Professor?
He drew a staff on his letter and notated the melody. Then he added the words,
Wondering how he got there, and how he'll ever get home
.

I know this piece, Professor, I know it.

And then he remembered: an early piece his mother had set him, not long after he'd first started playing with two hands. He continued humming it, again and again, finally singing the words that tumbled onto his tongue, falling into unison with the distant, flat, droning farmer.

There, among the toadstools,

Sits a nervous little gnome …

He could hear his mother counting, and feel the air as it was split by the cane. Making a sort of suck, a desperate gasp for air, like the horsewhips they'd tried out on their arrival that afternoon. He could still smell his mother's body odour, and hear her breath through her hairy nose. And even at eight, he was learning to detest her as much as he loved her.

Well, Professor, we should've listened to you, and left. We should've packed our bags and gone. But Mum wasn't having any of that. It's not our war, she always said. Well, it seems like it is now, doesn't it?

Mum could never be told. Never.

And then he heard his father's voice, louder still, reminding him of a hot Saturday afternoon in 1930, as his little fingers wrestled with the keys, and Madge's dreams (drifting out of the partly opened window) started turning Hamburg-brown, smelling of wurst and sounding Barossa Deutsch.

So, there's no going back, is there, Professor? Now I have to see it through.

Erwin stopped writing. He closed his eyes and listened to the singing, letting thoughts tumble out of his head.

Early the next morning, Luise was woken by Frans giggling and then sobbing, laughing and then crying, squawking, loud enough to wake Madge in the other room (who called out, Luise, please, before turning over, covering her ears with her pillow and muttering curses).

Luise reached down and slipped the dummy into the boy's mouth, but he spat it out, gathered his breath and started again.

‘Frans, let me sleep,' she whispered.

And as though in reply, he gagged, turned his head to the side and vomited.

Luise jumped out of bed. ‘Madge, can you help,' she called, but whether Madge didn't hear, or chose to ignore her.

‘Madge.'

No reply.

‘Madge!'

‘What?'

‘He's sick.'

‘I have work in the morning.'

Madge didn't think she was being unreasonable. She'd often got up and it was always something small, manageable: colic, diarrhoea, even hunger. ‘Well, feed him,' she'd say.

‘I have.'

‘Feed him some more.'

‘With what?'

Looking at her incredulously. ‘What, you want me to try?'

But Luise saw it differently. In the few days since Erwin had gone things had changed. Madge had retreated into work, meals and the newspaper, sitting reading, saying, ‘Huh, rubbish,' looking at Luise (as she struggled with a nappy) and giving her opinions on Rommel, war movies and over-priced bread.

Luise went to the bathroom, wet a flannel and returned to Frans. She took off his pyjamas and singlet and wiped him down. She cleaned under his chin and around his neck, and over his fat, pink bosoms; she stopped to rub his balloon belly and, forgetting that he'd got her up at four thirty, sang to him and whispered I love you in his ear. Then she re-dressed him and took him out to the kitchen to start breakfast.

Madge didn't appear until seven o'clock. She filled the kettle, lit the gas and stood waiting for the water to boil. As she did she looked at Frans and said, ‘Did you wake Mummy up?'

Luise was sitting at the table, re-reading a two-week-old newspaper. ‘Three hours,' she said.

‘Couldn't you resettle him?'

‘No, I couldn't.'

Madge raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, there's no point us both getting up.'

Madge made herself and Luise a cup of tea. She said nothing as she poured, strained and sugared; there was just the sound of cheap china, slurping milk and sugar showering onto the bench top. Then the kettle stood cooling, its every atom contracting in the cold that raised goosebumps on Luise's arms.

Silently, Madge put the two cups on the table. Luise ­whispered something and Madge asked, ‘Pardon?'

‘Thank you,' Luise repeated.

Silence, again, for another two or three minutes, before Luise put down her paper and looked across at Madge. ‘Madge, what do you think about my idea, for the dress?' she asked.

Madge sipped her tea slowly, and thought. ‘You have plenty of dresses, don't you?'

‘My Mum's, but they're old fashioned.'

‘You can borrow mine.'

Luise wondered how to say it. ‘They wouldn't fit me.'

‘They can be altered.'

Luise sat forward. ‘I thought, if I could buy some material, it would be just as cheap.'

‘Buy buy buy!' Madge intoned. ‘There's a war on.'

‘I know where I can buy some cotton.'

Madge took the paper and opened it. ‘Why?'

‘You said you'd think about it.'

Madge glared at her. ‘I've done the sums. There's no money for dresses, for things we already have.'

Luise was silent. She watched the old girl read. ‘I earn money too,' she said.

Madge shook her head. ‘And if left to you …'

‘What?'

‘You've made a budget, planned?'

‘I could.'

‘Ha, I'd like to see that. We'd be eating grass.'

‘A few marks, Madge.'

‘No.' She stared at the girl. ‘I counted; you have seventeen dresses.'

‘Too small.'

‘Alter them.'

‘Eaten by moths.'

Luise wanted to say, there's money for what you want: parcels for Erwin, magazines, marzipan and coffee at the King Sulki Café.

‘Seventeen,' Madge muttered.

‘Well, then, I need an allowance,' Luise said.

‘You have everything you need,' Madge replied.

Luise had already had this out with her. How Madge had arranged for both wages to be paid directly to her; how she had no idea of how much she earned or where it went. She stood up, noisily pushing her chair back, storming into the toilet. She slammed the door, sat down on the edge of the bath and started to cry. She went to the sink and turned the tap on so the old bag couldn't hear.

You're not going to do this to me, she thought, although that was exactly what was happening. ‘I won't have it,' she called out.

Madge was standing at the door. ‘Come out now, Luise, this is childish.'

‘I won't have it.'

‘What?'

The fact was, there was no alternative to Madge, no one else, no one at all.

Madge was knocking on the door. ‘We have to get ready for work,' she said.

‘I'm not going,' Luise replied.

‘Why not?'

‘Frans is sick.'

‘No …'

‘I'm sick.'

Madge shook her head. ‘Suit yourself. See, there's less money again.'

‘So?'

‘You asked for a dress.'

‘So?'

Madge stopped. ‘I need to get ready,' she said.

Luise threw the door open and stormed into her bedroom. She slammed the door and sat on her bed.

‘Don't forget your son,' Madge called to her.

Twenty minutes later Luise heard the front door close. She came out of her room and checked Frans, who was asleep. Then she locked the front door and went into Madge's room. She looked through her bedside drawers, and then her dressing table; she lifted and carefully replaced her clothes from the tallboy, searched under the rugs, the mattress and inside the pillows.

Nothing. Not a cent. And yet she knew she must have it hidden somewhere. So she removed the drawers and looked under the runners; she looked on top of the wardrobe and searched through the pockets of her dresses, jackets and coats.

Nothing.

Except a letter from the Sülldorf Medical Clinic. ‘Dear MRS GERGET, You need further treatment at this clinic on JULY 18. This is the 3rd OF 7 treatments for SYPHILIS.'

She stopped reading. She looked at the word. Syphilis.

Christ!

Syphilis? From whom? Madge, with a man, she wondered.
Syphilis
. From Jo?

She refolded the letter, replaced it in the envelope and carefully returned it to the pocket. She then relocked the wardrobe door, checked nothing was left disturbed in the room and left.

She looked at Frans. She stopped to think.

Syphilis?

She went to the bathroom and spent ten minutes cleaning her hands and arms with soap. She put the towel in the wash basket, took out a fresh one and dried her hands. Then she returned to the sitting room, found a piece of paper and pen in the drawer and sat down to write.
Dearest Erwin, I think I know why she put Jo in the shed …

Chapter Three

Dear Luise and Mum,

We arrived at __ at four o'clock yesterday afternoon. We are on the outskirts of __, v. countrified, orchards, sheep (big shaggy things, no merinos), crops and c. Our spot is fenced in: two long barracks on the edge of a hill, looking out across a valley with dams and forests. The valley opens into a floodplain, covered with sedge, swampy ground and goats. So, this morning we got started. Herbert (the old man on the truck) and I were dropped in front of what (I think) is a factory. We walked around and around it this morning. No one arrived. The gates were locked. At one o'clock we stopped and ate lunch, and then walked around the factory again, another five, maybe six times.

But now we've given up. Herbert is asleep under what (I think) is an apple tree. Maybe later we'll walk around the factory again. Maybe not. Maybe someone will arrive and open up.

Maybe it's just night work. Maybe they make pianos, and I can volunteer to test them … Maybe not.

Later that afternoon they returned to camp. Erwin sat beside Herbert as they ate, and then they washed their bowls, and retreated to the relative calm of the bunkhouse.

Some time after eight, Erwin wandered from the camp again. This time he kept to a path that led up a hill to a main road. The path cut a ribbon through the forest, and there was a wall of trees on either side of him. The forest was warm, and it breathed on him – familiar jasmine, and pine oil, a lullaby of branches moving in the light wind.

Eventually he emerged at the main road: fresh, black bitumen, a sign in German and Polish: ‘BILGORAJ 2.5 KM', a bag of concrete that had fallen from a truck and split open, a fox with its head run over, yellow road markings and swathes of yellow, white and pink daisies growing up to and over the road's edge.

He walked on, and then struck left at an intersection, past a few farm cottages built close to the road, surrounded by chickens and geese. There was wood cut and stacked for winter, and washing that someone had forgotten to bring in.

Further along there was a small, stone church. He followed an overgrown path to the door, and tried it. It opened on one hinge and dragged. Then he walked in to the middle of the chapel, pulled a string and a single yellow globe lit up with a metallic clunk.

There were plain windows, of squares of coloured glass, and many of these were smashed. There were a dozen or so pews on each side and each of these had a kneeling rail and a Bible left in a small wooden slot. There was a marble altar, but there were no crosses or communion cups; just a pair of reading glasses someone had left behind.

‘Hello?' he said.

Just the creaking of timber, and a bird settling on the tiles outside.

Then he saw the harmonium. It was small, like Schaedel's, with keys too narrow for most fingers. The black and white keys were reversed. He tried them and some weren't working: loose, or frozen. Then he reached down and switched on a power point. There was a hum, louder than the sound of any music the machine might make.

He sat on the stool and played a few notes. Then he started playing the ‘Pie Jesu' he'd composed for Sara's funeral. He sang in a voice that strained to match the melody.

Pie Jesu Domine,

dona eis requiem …

He started, and turned, and there was a figure beside him – an eleven- or twelve-year-old boy, dark-eyed and sniffing, thin, all bone, his shirt hanging from his coat-hanger shoulders. Erwin stared at him and smiled.

‘Continue,' the boy managed, in German, waving his hand in the air to indicate his interest.

So Erwin began again, and the boy, who'd been listening from the back pew, memorising the melody, started singing.

Pie Jesu Domine,

dona eis requiem …

His voice was thin, but he was note perfect, and he'd memorised the entries and pauses, the inflections and where the voice was despairing, hopeful, ecstatic. He raised his head and closed his eyes and sang as though he'd known the song forever. Erwin watched his diaphragm lifting and dropping; he looked up and saw his vocal cords trembling, like taut, too thin fencing wire; he saw his small, red lips form perfectly shaped words, and even noticed his lightly freckled nostrils flare. Erwin's eyes moved over the architecture of the boy's face – his broad forehead, cut by a deep scar; his light, sandpapered eyebrows and his deep-brown eyes; the absence of cheek bones and a slight squareness to his jaw; his long, water-pipe neck, extended in song, his angular ­shoulders and arms hanging like broken branches.

Erwin stopped. He turned and looked at the boy. ‘Excellent,' he said.

The boy frowned, and asked, in a few words of broken German, ‘Who is it by?'

‘Me,' Erwin replied.

‘You? A German soldier?'

‘No,' Erwin apologised. ‘A music student, a pianist.' He played a few scales, to demonstrate.

‘I am a chorister, in Bilgoraj,' the boy explained.

‘I could tell you were trained,' Erwin beamed.

‘I have sung the Berlioz
Requiem
. You know it?'

‘Of course. It's very complicated.'

And the boy looked lost.

‘Complicated, difficult, hard,' Erwin explained.

The boy smiled. ‘Yes, very.' He extended his hand. ‘My name is Carol.'

‘Erwin,' the soldier-musician replied, shaking his hand.

‘Will you come here again?' the boy asked. ‘I live farm, next door.'

‘I can,' Erwin replied. ‘I will. Would you like that?'

‘Yes. You know more?'

‘Vocal? Not much. You know Schubert?'

Carol stopped to think. ‘No … perhaps,
Ave Maria
.'

‘Good.'

So there they were, both trying to remember, but failing, Erwin improvising chords, and Carol, words. Soon it was so bad they stopped, and laughed, and Erwin put his hand on the boy's shoulder and squeezed it.

Now he was the teacher, sitting at his harmonium, and for a brief moment he realised that all of those hours in Schaedel's apartment were about much more than music.

‘Sit down,' he said to the boy, moving over and patting his stool.

Carol sat beside him.

‘This is what I play, in concerts,' Erwin explained, starting on a Bach fugue with a clunk for every tenth or so note. ‘Bach.'

‘Yes, Bach,' the boy said, smiling.

Carol listened and after a few minutes, said, ‘Where did you take my friend?'

Erwin stopped. ‘Your friend?'

‘Yes, David … some soldiers marched him south.'

Erwin sighed. ‘Yes, they're going to live somewhere else.'

‘Where?'

‘A settlement.'

‘Close by?'

‘No, a long way.'

‘And they have to march, the whole way?'

‘Yes.'

Carol stopped to think. ‘They should be happy, all together. Here they have to live in old buildings.'

Erwin tried to sound convincing. ‘See, that wouldn't do, would it?'

‘No, my father says Germans are …' He tapped the side of his head.

‘Clever?'

‘That's why he made me learn German. Clever. New homes. That's clever.'

‘Yes.'

‘Although I'll be lonely.'

‘Maybe you could write to him?'

‘And visit?'

‘Yes, and visit.'

‘I just need a few minutes,' Luise said, standing with Frans on her hip, straining to see inside the apartment.

‘Wait,' a voice bellowed, from deep inside the dark, musty flat.

Luise waited, and waited, listening to Herman Glowka scream at his twelve-month-old, who started crying, and then crawled out of a room into the hallway, looking up at her with a puzzled frown.

‘Is your daddy there?' Luise asked the child.

‘I'm coming,' Mr Glowka shouted, upsetting some furniture and kicking it.

Then he appeared in the hallway, scooping up the child and almost throwing it back into the room. The sun was behind him, and all Luise could see was a silhouette that bulged around the middle.

‘Mrs Hennig,' he said, wiping his hands on a tea towel.

‘Hergert,' Luise corrected.

‘Of course. Sorry.' He took five or six steps towards her, gaining a face, clothes, colour and definition. ‘How have you been?' he asked.

‘Surviving,' Luise replied.

‘Which is something,' he said. ‘How long has it been since …?'

Luise sighed. She pushed the dummy back into Frans's mouth and said, ‘Three months.'

Herman Glowka shook his head. ‘Yes, a real shame. She was a lovely lady. She was the only tenant who'd ever invite me in for a coffee.'

Luise smiled. ‘What about Madge?'

He closed his mouth tightly. ‘The less said …'

Mr Glowka was the building superintendent. He'd replaced some tap washers for Madge and mortared a crack across her kitchen wall and in both cases she'd just gone into another room and ignored him.

‘Whereas Sara,' he said, ‘she could talk, couldn't she?'

‘Well, that's sort of why I'm here, Mr Glowka.'

He crossed his arms and his face turned serious, and interested. ‘Go on.'

‘I've decided I can't live with Madge any more.'

‘Really? Why?'

And she explained, a short history of their conflicts, Madge's meanness and stinginess, her lack of respect, or love, for anyone except Erwin. And finally, the last straw: arriving home the previous day to find a roster stuck up on her door. Monday through Saturday: washing, ironing, sweeping, mopping, shopping – and a row of small red ticks beside her name.

‘I asked her, when she got home,' Luise said to Mr Glowka, ‘why there were no ticks against her name, and do you know what she said?'

‘I can imagine.'

‘
I wasn't put on this earth to look after you.
Me? And what about Frans?'

They both looked at the boy. Glowka squeezed his cheek and then asked, ‘How long is Erwin gone for?'

She shrugged. ‘That's why I've decided,' she said.

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, if you're sure.'

‘I'm going to arrange to collect my own money,' she said. ‘Then we'll see how she manages.'

He shrugged again. ‘I'll get the key then.'

‘That would be good.'

He disappeared down the hallway, pushing the boy back into his room and calling, ‘Lilli, watch Gunther, I have to help Miss Hennig, Hergert, with something.'

Then they climbed the three sets of steps to the attic. As they went Glowka asked, ‘How is the singing coming along?'

‘It's not,' she replied.

‘No?'

‘Too much work, and picture-sticking. And if there is free time, she won't play for me.'

‘Well, maybe you'll be better off in here,' he said, unlocking and opening the door to the small attic room. He switched on a light and they walked inside.

It wasn't much of a room: long, and narrow, hugging the margins of the building, cramped by the diagonal slope of the roof, broken only by a pair of cracked skylights. There was a small kitchen, part of the same room, and a stove and sink. In the far corner there was a double bed and in the middle, a rug, covered by a long sofa with springs sticking out.

‘How much?' Luise asked, looking through the greyness, smelling the must and mouse piss.

‘Whatever you can afford.'

She smiled. ‘Well …'

‘Don't worry about it now. Move in, and when you have something to spare.'

‘Thanks,' she said, touching and quickly releasing his arm.

‘For the boy,' he replied, this time brushing his finger on Frans's cheek. ‘And you, and your mum. She didn't deserve that, eh?'

Frans was looking at the superintendent, who smiled and attempted some baby talk. ‘Did she, eh, Frans?'

He giggled.

‘The British should aim their bombs a bit better,' he said.

They returned to 2A and Glowka watched Frans as she packed. She was watching the clock. Madge would be home at one, perhaps five past, but never more than ten minutes late. She would be carrying a loaf of bread, a bag of mixed leeks, turnips and potatoes, a bottle of milk and her headache powder. She would fumble with the lock, and curse it, and then come in, greeting her with, ‘I thought, perhaps, you could have got the soup started.'

After twenty minutes she was ready. She placed a suitcase full of their clothes in the middle of the sitting room and Glowka said, ‘I'll take these up.'

When he was gone she gathered some plates and cutlery and packed them in a box. She searched for Frans's bottle, and some of her mum's crystal glasses and bone china tea cups. But she left most: vases and salad bowls, salt and pepper shakers and glass baskets that Sara used to fill with flowers she'd picked at the municipal park. So, if Madge did find her and complain about what she'd taken, she could always say, Well, shall I come and get
everything
that belonged to Mum?

She placed the box in the sitting room and Glowka returned, breathless, and took this too. Then she gathered all of Frans's toys in a shopping basket and left them at the door. She gathered Frans in her arms and took him to the bathroom; she turned the water up hot and washed his hands and forearms, lathering him into a frenzy of soap before rinsing him to the point of a first degree scald. ‘There,' she said, wiping him dry, ‘we're better off without her … germs.'

She held him on her hip, again, as she returned to her room to gather her few things: a brush and make-up case, a few notes and coins she'd been taking from Madge's purse, a brooch, a necklace, and the wedding ring that wouldn't squeeze onto her finger anymore. She put everything in the pocket of her apron and returned to the sitting room. Then she sat down, took a pen and paper, and wrote:

Dear Madge,

I have arranged for separate accommodation. I don't think I need explain why, do I?