Hand Me Down World (11 page)

When I was a child I saw a dog that had been run over by a car. I heard its bellowing bark and squealing from the house. There on the road it lay, its whole body shaking, its eyes very much alive, and aware. That was the thing that touched me, in fact has stayed with me ever since, its self-awareness. Its sides were split open, and as I stood there watching with horror but also with grim fascination I saw its vital organs seep out. It was a complicated moment. The blood and the gore horrified me and yet I could not move away. I had to look. My need to look was obviously greater than my revulsion. Now its owner came running out of a house. The driver of the vehicle had stopped. He walked quickly up to where the dog lay. Two strangers, yes, and the dog, and me. The two strangers looked at me as if I had seen everything, that I alone could apportion blame, but I had only seen the aftermath.

Now, before Otto's open wardrobe, Ralf and I, who had been more or less happily married for so many years, were about to turn into strangers. The photograph was of a ravine in the Ukraine. The ravine was filled with bodies, all of them naked, all of them women, some dead, some alive but soon to be dead. The photograph had been taken in a dull winter light. An unremarkable moment: this is what the day wishes the viewer to think. It was like so many photographs that we saw after the war. So. I was not shocked, not as shocked as the first time I saw such things, and possibly not as shocked as I had been to see that dog with its dark bristly fur split open to blood and rib. The shock came of finding this photograph in Otto's wardrobe.

We'd had that conversation that young couples did in those days. We were very interested—some of us, at least—to know how our respective families had been affected by the war. What part they had played, and so on. Ralf was still a boy when the war ended. His memories are confined to summers in Rügen. The beach beneath the white cliffs. The long absences of his father. He said his father had been conscripted and worked in communications. Mine was in the Luftwaffe. There was nothing about Otto's past, as we knew it, or as Ralf had told it, and no doubt had been told by his parents, that would point to that photograph hidden away in the wardrobe.

At first we gaped at it. We looked at it for a very long time, snatching it from one another, peering over each other's shoulders. Then we pondered how it could possibly have ended up in Otto's things. Ralf was determined to believe it was a mistake. That it had somehow found its way into his father's possessions the way a moth will turn up between the pages of an unopened book. He persisted with this line of thought or faith, which it really was, faith or hope, I expect, and I can understand Ralf's wishful thinking. Anyone can. In another folder we found the explanation. Otto had been a photographer assigned to the killing units employed to round up the Jews in the far east. There, I said, and I stabbed my finger at the irrefutable proof. It was stated in his papers. But why had the old man stowed it among his things? Had he forgotten it? Unlikely. He had only to open up that particular wardrobe in order to see his soldier's uniform and the folders. We wondered if Edith had known about it. Possibly…but it was unlikely she would do anything with it. I mean—destroy it. The horticulturalist? Ralf could have rung her to find out. That was my suggestion. But the moment he said ‘Yes, I should…' I knew he wouldn't.

Poor Ralf. I felt sorry for my husband and I felt sorry with him. He must have believed, as I did, that his country's past had not been able to reach out and stain him. So. One after another the mysteries were solved. All but one, I should say. Why would Otto have held onto this unpleasant and implicating evidence? Was it so his son would eventually know? Then why not sit him down and tell him while he had the chance to? Depending on which way you look at it, the matter of the photograph either reflects badly or well upon Otto. He could have chosen to burn it, in which case his involvement would have remained unsuspected. But he kept it, in the sure knowledge it would be found following his death in just the manner I have described. He wanted this to be known about himself but he did not want to have to face the self-righteous indignation and wrath of his son. This is my conclusion.

Now we had to decide what to do with it. I should say—Ralf had to. It had been his father's. Now it was his responsibility. We drove back to Berlin with it on the back seat of the car. What should be done with it? We discussed and argued. The photograph was still in its folder on the seat. We spoke about it as you would a living thing. It was more than a photograph, it was a record of a criminal event. Moreover it contained another capacity—to change my view of Otto, and even of our own lives and our relationship with the deceased, who, as I hope I have made clear, was a dear and gentle man. There was no easy answer. There was no handy program for stepping safely clear of history.

The photograph could not stay in the car. So now we discussed where to put it in the apartment. It was not something you would wish to leave lying around. We agreed on that; it made perfect sense. There. We were in agreement. So if we didn't leave it lying casually around to be discovered by our friends, where might we stow it? That raised another difficult question. Would we not be doing what Otto had done? By placing it out of view we would in effect be hiding it. The scene of that ravine is not something I would wish to see every day in the same way that we live with a vase of flowers or a fish tank. It was very very difficult to know what to do with it.

I suggested the cupboard in the kitchen—and immediately regretted it. I did not want dead bodies near food. My God—that sounds harsh, doesn't it? It's not quite what I meant. Ralf pointed out that a cupboard is no better than a wardrobe. So we wandered the apartment, from room to room, in search of an appropriate place. In the end, one was found. This is how I remember it. First, Ralf's jubilant voice. I found him standing in the door to his office. I didn't need to be told. I saw immediately the rightness of his desk. Its final resting place was even more considered. Ralf placed the photograph in its folder on top of correspondence and bills. It was a master stroke. It would not be hidden. Nor would it be seen or immediately acted upon. Instead it would join a pile of things to respond to in the near future. Perfect.

For a time afterwards we were able to forget about it, the photograph and Otto and the impending sense of mortality that the death of a parent brings forward, especially now that Ralf's blindness had accelerated. There is a window to the right of his desk. It looks out to a tall chestnut growing at the side of the building. One morning he called me from his office. I found him in a state of great agitation. He wanted to know what had happened to the tree. On whose authority had it been cut down? Why hadn't we been told of its fate in advance so we could do something about it? ‘My dear Ralf,' I said. ‘You are looking at the wall.' It is impossible to know how one will respond to such news. With anger? Astonishment? Followed by a quick decline into a depressed state? Anyone would be forgiven. Ralf chose laughter.

There were other incidents that we classified as ‘humour'. Tea was poured onto the floor. Sugar was sprinkled over the salad. I found him naked and wrestling with the doors of the linen cupboard. He was trying to get into the shower. He had been a few years retired from the university. His morale had to be carefully managed. So when we talked about the future it contained the same life we had known and took no account of his condition. To keep up appearances, for my sake, yes, I believe so, he would place things, clothes, books, objects, and measure their proximity so that he could move towards them with the same confidence as a seeing person. I would never describe Ralf as vain, yet it seemed at the time a strange kind of vanity had gotten hold of him.

One morning—wait, I can be more precise, it was April 23, the previous day I had walked through the city marvelling at all the new colour and scents in the air—well on the morning of April 23 I woke to find him sitting on the side of the bed. He heard me stir. He said he couldn't get to sleep. It must be in the middle of the night. He was desperate to get back to sleep. He was sorry if his restlessness had woken me. I told him it was morning. He lifted his head in the direction of the window. At least he managed that much on his own. I have not forgotten his look of grief. Then his pride got the better of him. He smiled— said he had been joking. And I too entered into this make-believe. I pretended it was still night. What is that saying? The blind leading the blind.

Well, after that his deterioration became a private matter. He was careful to avoid making declarations about the state of a world he could not see. His pride demanded more caution from him. And now, it really did become a case of the blind leading the blind. The blind issued orders. I had to bring him this, bring him that. Read this, deliver that. I became his factotum. My limbs and capabilities were turned to his ends. His blindness made me into a slave. I should have felt more sympathetic. Well, I like to think that I was for a while. But it didn't last. Ralf's neediness didn't court sympathy. He didn't allow me that response. Instead, I felt resentful. He claimed still to have a vague sense of the object or the presence of another. I think that might be true. I would catch him looking at his hands, at his face in the mirror. When I asked what he was doing he said he was committing his appearance to memory. This became an urgent task. Before blindness erased his world he was determined to draw up an inventory of things he wished to study, to furnish his blind world with. He was like a traveller packing for a long journey. He had to decide which memories and knowledge of things he wished to take into this new world he was headed for.

There were some sweet moments. For example, my husband looked at me as he had when we first met. He looked at me intently. He was surprised to discover that my eyes were green and not blue as he had once declared. I should have corrected him way back then. I thought perhaps he was colour blind. Then, much later on, I realised he was selective in his looking. Even when he appeared to be looking he might not have been. He was just presenting his eyes to the world. To me. While his thoughts were elsewhere. Now he combed my face with a jeweller's eye. He had to bring himself very close. It was a very intimate experience. It was nice, flattering I suppose, to know that I too was being packed away with his father's woodcuts, which he stood under, gazing at, and the books that he passed by with a finger trailing against their spines.

We went to places he had never shown any interest in before. The flower shop, for example. He wished to see a flower. He peeled back the petals and peered in. We visited places—Schloss Charlottenburg—that were in the film
Love in Berlin
. Ralf and I were filmed walking hand in hand. It didn't make the cut. Alexanderplatz. Tiergarten. We caught trains and trams into the old neighbourhoods in the east, Friedrichshain, Prenzlauer Berg. We visited art galleries, museums. I had to describe the city passing in the tram window. In the Bode I led him around his favourite sculptures. There were times when it felt like one big long farewell. But, as I say, it was quite the opposite. He was packing a lot away.

Which brings us back to the photograph. Although it was in his possession, in the apartment, it could legitimately slip into invisibility because he could no longer see the detail in it. Blindness offered a way out. The thought momentarily cheered him. But then he decided, rightly, I think, that this was a cop-out. And so the photograph was added to the list of things he needed to remember. Of course he could not see the photograph. He needed me. I had to describe it, be tour leader. And this could not be done over one session. There were several hundred bodies in that ravine. I had to look for distinguishing features because his goal was to try to remember them as individuals. He was determined to see the photograph differently from how Otto, the photographer, had intended. Of course, it meant that I had to walk among the dead in order to pass on to him what he couldn't see. It was a horrible experience, horrible many times over and in many ways, to throw oneself headlong into that ravine with its pile of bodies.

Then, I have to say, after days and weeks of wandering in that scene, it was horrible to acquire the kind of mind that I did, a statistical frame of mind. I wish I could state it differently, better, I think I must mean. I no longer saw the bodies for the individuals they were. I no longer wondered about their foreshortened lives. About the minutes and seconds preceding their tumble into the ravine. I even forgot the role of kind, even-tempered Otto in all of this. I had arrived at the same place and the same frame of mind that accommodates the dispassionate eye. The moment I recognised that pitiless place I withdrew. I refused to look at the photograph. I refused to have anything more to do with it. I told Ralf, I told him—no more. I will read to you, fetch things for you, prepare your meals, but this I will not do. He was furious. He called me names I had never heard from him before. Above all, he said, I was heartless. Why else would I deny him what he needed to see?
Needed
, he said. But what need is that exactly? What was he looking for that I had not already passed on to him? Further to that, as I saw it at that time, where might such a need lead? Pornography? Would I be required to pass on those sordid details as well? His needs, as he put it, were at loggerheads with my own dignity and self-respect. No, I told him. No more. I can't do it. Someone else will have to. I actually said this. In a split second Ralf's fury abated. I could almost see the idea bloom in his mind. It became attractive to him. New eyes would deliver new detail. He would get to see more—better.

So we began to advertise for home help. He wanted foreigners. Young women looking for somewhere to stay in exchange for guide-dog duties. That was our little joke. Possibly in poor taste. So these guide-dogs would visit on a trial basis. The zoo is nearby and that's where he would take them to test their observational skills. It made sense to Ralf. The zoo was an ideal place to test their abilities to tell him something new about those things that were already familiar to him. Anyway, they came and went. Some stayed a week. Later, of course, after I moved out, Ralf would call up with a long harangue about their shortcomings. They were stupid. They couldn't speak English or Deutsch. A Czech girl abandoned him in Tiergarten while she reconnoitered with her boyfriend, a French trick cyclist. A Polish girl smuggled her lover into the apartment. It was a week before he was discovered and Ralf hounded them both out. There were others.