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Authors: Sue Eckstein

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Interpreters (14 page)

BOOK: Interpreters
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The good die young, they say. My mother died in the winter of 1947. We never spoke of those weeks in the forest. I guessed what had happened to her but I couldn’t ask and she never told me. We shared a room in my grandparents’ house and she used to cry out in her sleep and wake up drenched in sweat. Night after night. And I’d know what she was dreaming about. I was having the same dream. There are some things you just can’t talk about.
You
think it makes it better, talking about things. But there are some things you can’t bear to even think about. And if you can’t even think of them, how can you begin to talk about them?

And your grandparents?

My grandfather did his best to make me feel welcome. Unlike my grandmother, he didn’t care what the neighbours thought about them harbouring an emaciated, shaven-headed German.

(LONG SILENCE)

Are you all right?

And then he died. About a year and a half after we moved in with them. He had become quite confused in those last months of his life, but he recognised me right up to the end. He’d lie in his bed, stroking my hand and calling me his little radish.

Have a tissue.

Thanks. My grandmother waited until my mother had died before she allowed herself the pleasure of informing me that my grandfather was actually no blood relative of mine.

What do you mean?

Just that. He wasn’t really my grandfather.

Who was he, then?

The best friend of a Jewish lawyer who got my grandmother pregnant and then wouldn’t marry her because she wasn’t a Jew. He did the decent thing, my grandfather. He married my grandmother and brought up my mother as his own child.

Do you think that was true?

What was true?

What your grandmother told you.

I refused to believe it at first. I thought it was just a malicious game. To punish me.

Punish you for what?

For being a German. And for having the audacity to believe that someone as good and kind as my grandfather could possibly have been related to me.

Perhaps she made it up.

She was very organised, my grandmother. She had all the evidence filed away for me. The adoption papers. And the obituary of my real grandfather. Anton Schenck. A successful lawyer and pillar of the community who died in Florida. She sat there smiling while I read through all the evidence. And don’t ask how that made me feel. I’m not going to talk about it. Not now. Maybe not ever.

And your father? What happened to him?

I didn’t see him again, but I heard that he survived the occupation of Berlin and lived on into his seventies. I like to think of him trying to scrape a living off the land, wearing second-hand clothes and dead men’s shoes, digging up his neat lawn with its perfect stripes to grow potatoes and cabbages, keeping rabbits and chickens for food, foraging for bits of coal along the railway tracks. He died in some woman’s bed. She wrote to tell me, but by the time the letter finally reached me he’d long been buried. So I never had the chance to dance on his grave, as I’d so often wished as a child.

And what happened after your mother died?

(LONG SILENCE)

This and that.

Do you want to be more specific?

The desk sergeant I used to report to was a friendly man. He let it slip that if I managed to find a job somewhere, he wouldn’t ask too many questions or bother with the paperwork. There were lots of jobs advertised at that time; so many housemaids had gone off to work for the Canadians. They lived just outside Amsterdam, the Gronewegs. He owned a textile factory. The wife was some kind of invalid – or at least she liked to take to her bed when the mood took her – and, as they entertained a lot, they needed help with the cooking and serving and looking after the children. ‘We don’t care where you’ve come from, or what you did in your last job, just so long as you don’t steal from us,’ she told me – Mrs Groneweg – when she gave me my uniform and showed me to my little room in the attic. It felt like a palace to me after the stifling atmosphere in my grandmother’s house.

How long were you there?

A year – no, nearly two. Then one evening, when I was serving at a cocktail party, one of the guests followed me into the kitchen. He was a bit drunk and I thought I’d have to humour him, let him try to kiss me – the guests often tipped very generously – and then get out of the kitchen fast before things went too far, but he just stood there asking me why I was working as a maid when I was so clearly very
well-educated
and capable of much more than domestic service. At first I thought this was some kind of chat-up line but then he went on to say that he’d tried to find out about me from his host, who had claimed to know absolutely nothing about me, not even where I came from. I told him that my studies had been interrupted. ‘So what are you good at?’ he asked. And, you know, I’d never really thought about it. Not for a long time, at least. I didn’t know what to say. Good at walking through forests at night, trying not to jump out of my skin every time a branch snapped. Good at hiding from Russians. At sleeping in pigsties. At biting. Hard. At grieving for my mother. At living with a mouth full of teeth that hurt and moved whenever I ate anything.

So what did you say?

I told him I was good at languages. That I spoke fluent German and English. He winced when I said German and I thought maybe I’d made a mistake to admit it. But then he said that might be my way out of domestic service. There was a lot of coming and going since the war, he told me. Interpreters were needed everywhere.

Didn’t you have to have some kind of qualification?

There was no shortage of people who could produce a certificate or diploma in exchange for some jars of lentils or a smoked ham, and I had the keys to the Gronewegs’ larder. They couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t accept my final week’s salary.

And then?

In Germany, they despised me as a cheese head. In Holland they hated me for being a German. I crossed the Channel to England in 1949 and overnight I became the nicest person in the world. And what had changed about me? Absolutely nothing. ‘Oh – you’re from Holland! How interesting! We love the Dutch. We went to the bulb fields once, before the war. What a wonderful sight! Rows and rows of yellow and red. What do you do? Oh, you’re an interpreter. How
very
useful!
Do
come for supper.’ 

I sit on a chair by the window, Angie’s copy of the magazine in my hand. I thumb through the pages until I reach the one I’m looking for. To the right of the introduction is a photograph of Max and Susanna playing violin and flute together. Susanna looks about twelve. Behind them, a couple of teenage boys and a large dog are sprawled on an ancient, sagging, sofa. A toddler is sitting at Max’s feet, clutching a piece of cloth to her face and sucking her thumb. I wonder who took the photograph and why the journalist chose this one. What he thinks it says about Max and Susanna. About childhood. About families. About me.

‘Since when have I wanted the details of my life splashed all over the papers?’ I said to Max on the phone the day the piece was published.

‘It’s one article. It’s not splashed anywhere.’

‘It’s in the colour supplement of a national newspaper. If that’s not splashed, I don’t know what is.’

‘You’ve spent your whole working life writing about other people’s lives, Julia. Listening in to other people’s conversations; sharing their most intimate moments. You’ve made a very successful career out of it.’

‘That’s not the same at all.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘Does Susanna know how upset you are?’

‘Of course she doesn’t. And don’t you tell her.’

‘So much for absolute truth and honesty. Have you revised your manifesto?’

‘Oh, hah bloody hah.’

‘I don’t understand what you are so unhappy about. The article is about something that worked out really well.’

‘Just look at it. It sounds like it’s about a mother who is so awful that her daughter would prefer to travel thousands of miles to live with her bloody uncle than stay with her.’

‘It doesn’t at all.’

‘Yes, it does.’

‘Have you even read the thing?’

‘Not beyond the first page, no. And I’m not going to.’

‘Well, it doesn’t say anything like that. Quite the opposite, in fact.’

‘So you say.’

‘You really should read the whole thing. I think you’d like it. I think you’d be pleased.’

‘Yeah, well –’

‘Come and see me, Julia. I miss you.’

‘No way!’

‘Mikey’s being released on licence and is coming to stay for a bit. He’s managed to track down Max-son-of-Max to an animal rescue place so they’ll both be here. I’m told he’s fully house-trained – Max-son-of-Max. Can’t vouch for Mikey, though.’

‘You really know how to show a girl a good time.’

‘Come on. Come and stay. It’s been ages.’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Say you’ll come.’

‘OK. Soon. But only if you promise not to get your violin out. Or mention the sodding article.’

I look out over the green then take a deep breath and turn the page.

 
< relatively
speaking

I used to visit my grandmother every year or so from when I was about seven. We’d wait for a postcard with her address on it and then my mum would take me to England and put me on a plane to wherever my grandmother was living. It was a lot easier seeing her once I moved to England. All she carries with her is one suitcase with a few clothes in it. And a wooden angel which she hangs on the wall wherever she lives. We used to have this game where I’d rush in and see how long it took me to find where she’d hung up her angel. Once she hung it above my bed and I was so pleased I literally couldn’t speak. We used to sew together, my grandmother and me. I’d bring cloth over from West Africa and we’d make it into dresses and shirts and skirts. I’m sure it’s from her I got my love of material and making things. And I’m sure that’s why I chose to study textiles. I loved those visits to my grandmother. I still do.

Max is about the kindest person you could meet. He fostered difficult kids for a long time – kids everyone else had given up on. And, though it didn’t always work out, he never became cynical or lost his belief that everyone is basically good. That everyone has the potential for goodness within them whatever has happened to them or whatever they’ve done. One of the boys he’d looked after from the age of about 13 to 17 went to prison – for some quite serious offence – but he always stayed in contact with Max. He even named his terrier after him. Max never really talks about families or communities but he has always lived as part of one. People don’t need to be related to him or tell him their darkest secrets to be part of his family. Max was brilliant to grow up with. I owe him so much. I can’t imagine not having him in my life. I think it’s a shame he never had any children of his own, but in a selfish way I’m really glad that he didn’t.

Max Rosenthal:

I remember Susanna visiting me in Dorset when she was about four or five. It was a really cold winter and I’m sure she’d never seen snow and ice but she was remarkably unfazed by it. She had this little child’s face and body and then she would suddenly come out with something so incredibly grown-up that it would take your breath away. I suppose it was because she spent so much time just with my sister, Julia. Susanna has always been unbelievably confident and sure of herself – so different from me and Julia when we were children 
– but never in a bad way. Susanna assumes that people will love her and so they do. It sounds very simple but I think it’s a gift.

I have felt extraordinarily connected to Susanna since the moment I first met her. Before, even. When Julia first told me she was pregnant, I remember feeling the baby kick and knowing I’d love it. There didn’t seem to be any way I couldn’t love my sister’s child when I loved my sister so much. I did have some misgivings. Julia was very young and was insistent that she was going to bring up her child alone in very rural parts of Africa, but she was absolutely determined and she did a great job.

I knew Susanna had taken up the flute when she was six or seven and was being taught by a Catholic missionary priest, but I’d no idea how good she was. The first time she played to me, I was literally dumbstruck. I’d played the violin as a child and been pretty good at the time, but I hadn’t played a note since I was about 17 or 18. I’d never had the slightest urge to even pick up an instrument, but when I heard Susanna play I borrowed a violin and, though it wasn’t quite like riding a bicycle, I found I could still play reasonably well and I rediscovered my love of music and the violin. This Steiner school has a really strong musical tradition and Susanna just got better and better. It takes arts and crafts very seriously as well, so she spent a lot of time making collages and clothes. I wasn’t surprised when she chose textiles over music. She could easily have studied languages too. I can’t think where she got that skill from. My grandmother Clara was German but she never spoke German to us, and Julia and I never got beyond O-level French. But when Susanna came to the Steiner school, it only took her a couple of months to catch up with her classmates who’d been learning German for five years.


Susanna assumes that people will love her and so they do
.”

I know that Julia was devastated when Susanna chose to come and live here with me. She saw it as a sign that she’d failed as a mother, when actually I think it was a sign that she’d succeeded and done a really good job. She’d produced a child who, at eleven, knew exactly what it was she needed and wasn’t afraid to demand it. Susanna didn’t worry that Julia would fall apart because she knew that Julia was incredibly strong, and it is Julia’s strength which has allowed Susanna to become the remarkable, independent young woman she is now.

BOOK: Interpreters
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