Silence (8 page)

Chapter 15

April 22, 1998

To begin with, her short telephone conversation with Rita Albers had provoked Therese Mende to anger, but then this had turned into a kind of impassivity. It had become a vacuum in which her thoughts moved slowly and viscously. She picked up the silver-framed picture of her daughter from the sideboard. Beside it stood the picture, still bearing a black ribbon, of her husband, Tillmann. He would have known how to talk to Isabel. He would have found the right words. But she herself? How was she supposed to tell her grown-up daughter the thing she had kept secret all these years? Isabel was strong, of that there was no doubt. She would know how to handle it. But how would she behave toward her mother in the future? Could Therese bear it if her daughter turned against her, if she wouldn’t forgive the lies about her past?

Rita Albers, filled with blind journalistic zeal, was in the process of destroying her life.

She put the picture down. That woman would try to sell her story to the highest bidder. It was about money. Of course, it was always about money.

The realization was liberating, and it set her in motion. She spent more than an hour on the phone with her lawyer. Then she sat down on the terrace, beneath the eaves, and felt the tension dropping away. It would be a matter of the right price.

But for herself there was no escape. The time that had been kept secret was relentlessly demanding its rightful place, now that the first images had revealed themselves. Whenever she found herself at rest, it was like an undertow from which she could not pull free.

Christmas 1939

For the first half of December, Kranenburg was like a sketch in soft charcoal. Snow lay heaped on the roofs. The fields and meadows were laid out like huge bleached sheets on wash day. Avenues of poplars stood like smudged lines in the colorless silence. Toward the lake, hungry crows cawed from bare trees.

A damp, heavy chill forced people to hurry through the streets with their heads bowed.

Therese joined the League of German Girls, and her mother joined the National Socialist Women’s League. It was a family decision, whereby they hoped to escape general attention. And peace did in fact return to the Pohl household. A sensitive, concentrated peace, a kind of still watchfulness.

During the last few weeks, she had cycled to the lookout three times to drop off or pick up papers.

From time to time she met up with Wilhelm, who would now be seen publicly with her in places where she “belonged.” They went for walks, or went to the little café by the church. His pale blue eyes would light up in honest joy when he looked at her. Sometimes he would outline his plans. Across the table in the café he whispered that he wanted a big family; during a walk he told her he dreamed of leaving Kranenburg, moving to a big city, and taking on really big assignments. Then he would wait, and it seemed to Therese that he was hoping for a sign. A signal that would give him the courage to talk about his attraction again.

Shortly before Christmas, the beautiful whiteness everywhere disappeared, and the winter became unusually mild. When Alwine came home at the beginning of the Christmas holidays, it was raining. A narrow strip of slush at the edge of the street was the only reminder that it was winter.

Alwine, filled with excitement, talked about her boarding school and life in Düsseldorf. She modeled nail varnish and lipstick, wore elegant shoes with high heels, and showed off a tight blue suit like the ones the women in fashion magazines wore. She told stories about everyday life at school, with its roll call in front of the flag and its marching drill, and the punishment she could expect if she was caught with lipstick or pumps. Then she laughed her infectious laugh, and Therese realized how she had missed Alwine. She could listen to her for hours. The red plaits had disappeared; now she wore her hair loose, shoulder length. Over her forehead was a perfect quiff, held in place with little hair combs. She told them how she and her schoolmates would sneak into a pub where musicians played on weekends, and demonstrated swing dancing and the fox-trot. And again and again she asked after Wilhelm. How was he, had Therese seen him, and had he talked about her, Alwine?

That evening, as Therese rode along the narrow tracks between the water meadows and the fields, she was downcast. She had not had the courage to tell Alwine about Wilhelm’s declaration. Nor had she mentioned her father’s arrest.

Years later, Therese Mende would tell her second husband about this evening and say she felt guilty. Not because Wilhelm loved her and not Alwine, but because she did not love Wilhelm. Because she was taking something away from Alwine, only to reject it.

And then, the day before Christmas Eve, Jacob came home on leave, without Leonard.

She was waiting on the platform, alongside Hanna, Alwine, and Wilhelm, as Leonard’s father came out of the little station building and approached them along the platform. Kramer, the lawyer, was a short, plump man with earnest features and a stiffness that had made Therese shy when she was a child.

On this day he seemed relaxed. He was even smiling.

When the train came in and only Jacob stepped out, she saw him turn pale. For a moment it seemed that only the formal black wool coat, gray hat, and glistening leather shoes were standing on the platform—a motionless exhibit draped over a coat hanger.

Jacob had changed. The remnants of his youthfulness had disappeared. He seemed even taller in his uniform, and one could see the effect of physical work in fresh air.

“Leonard didn’t get leave,” he said, his eyes wandering evasively across the tracks.

From somewhere between the gray hat and the black coat, Therese heard Kramer’s voice.

“Why not?”

Jacob shook his head and said, with a bitterness that Therese had never heard in him before, “Because the fieldmaster felt like it.”

The hat and coat turned, and the leather shoes went back into the station. Jacob ran after him and grabbed him by the sleeve. He joined Kramer in the car, and they drove off.

The platform emptied. Some strolled off arm in arm, laughing and gesticulating, others in a hurry, hats pulled down over their faces. The train released its brakes with a hiss. The wheels hammered out their laborious, then gradually quickening, rhythm, and it echoed beneath the tin roof of the platform. To Therese, it was overwhelming. Jacob’s suitcase lay a few steps away from her. Left behind!

Therese waited. Slowly she paced along the edge of the platform, peering in the direction from which the train had arrived and willing it to arrive again.

Hanna stared at the Kramers’ car as it left, Jacob sitting inside it. Jacob, who had barely said hello to her.

Wilhelm was the first to collect himself. He picked up Jacob’s suitcase. They left the station in silence.

A squalling wind was driving rain across the forecourt. Until Jacob arrived, she had felt Christmassy anticipation, despite the weather. She had thought she would have all her friends around her again after a long time.

That evening, around seven, she was having supper by candlelight with her parents, behind blacked-out windows, when someone hammered on the door. This happened frequently, but ever since her father’s arrest, there was always an anxious pause in the Pohl household before one of them warily opened the curtain a crack and peered out.

It was Jacob. He had not gone home yet; he had spent the last few hours at the Kramers’.

Margarete Pohl pressed him down onto the kitchen bench and laid another plate. Jacob looked at Siegmund Pohl and said, “I’m sorry.” He leaned back and rubbed his face with his hands. “About your arrest, I mean. I heard about it from Kramer just now.”

Therese was amazed. Apart from Wilhelm, nobody in the town had mentioned it until now.

And then Jacob told them about Leonard.

There were twenty-five of them when they arrived at the camp. They had gotten to know some of their comrades on the train. Many, like Jacob and Leonard, had applied for officer training.

Leonard attracted Fieldmaster Köbe’s attention on the very first day. Köbe was standing in the quartermaster’s stores, feet apart, beside the men issuing work clothes and uniforms. Every new arrival had to unpack his suitcase on the counter in front of him. Like many others, Leonard had some books in his, among them volumes of poetry by Mörike, Goethe, and Rilke. Köbe grinned at him. “Well, look at this. We’re getting a real intellectual in our humble huts. Poetry!” He leaned over and said, “You’ll soon learn this isn’t a holiday camp. We’re going to make a man of you.” He took the volumes of poetry and placed them on a shelf. “When your time here is up, you can have them back. If you still want them by then.”

They spent the first few days in constant exercises. A spade stood in for their weapon. Fieldmaster Köbe’s favorite was making them crawl across the concrete parade ground, with its scattering of frozen puddles, in the early hours of the morning. At night he would whistle them out of bed; they had to muster in the yard in full work clothes. If their uniform was not absolutely perfect, he would make them stand at attention for hours, crawl under barbed wire on the practice field, or climb the wall on the obstacle course over and over again. Almost every day, it was Leonard who was singled out by Fieldmaster Köbe or Commander Grosse. “Civilian asshole,” they called him, or “pointless intellectual.” At first, Jacob, and some of their other comrades too, intervened. Then they were made to undergo “special training” themselves, along with Leonard. When they did not give up but kept protesting, Köbe changed tack. In return for every remark from the others, Leonard received further “physical strengthening exercises.”

They spent the day clearing a path through an area of forest, digging up tree stumps and root systems. When they returned to camp, exhausted, drill began. His voice dripping with sarcasm, Köbe called this “preparing the prospective gentleman officers for their future duties.” Leonard had already collapsed twice and been taken to the sick bay.

Jacob stared hollowly at the table, apparently drawing these images from the worn surface of the wood. Occasionally he looked around in distress, as if he himself could not believe what he was telling them. As if he were only now becoming aware of its monstrousness.

Then he wept like a child. “I don’t understand. We’re good National Socialists after all, faithfully supporting the Führer.”

Therese Mende would remember that evening again at the end of the 1970s. At the time, she was living in London, and an archaeologist friend was visiting. He told them he had once spent two days trapped underground after an accident during an excavation. He said, “The powers of human beings are beyond our belief. We can withstand the most incredible things, when there’s no way out. It’s not until we talk about them later, when we try to express them in words, that we cry. Because it’s not true until then.”

At that moment, in her mind’s eye, she had seen Jacob on the kitchen bench again. He was groping for words, looking up in disbelief at each phrase he found, as if he were listening to someone else’s story.

On the day after Christmas, Therese went to the Kalders’. The atmosphere was oppressive. Alwine was the only one attempting to spread a bit of cheer. She had been given a fur stole, and she pulled Therese into her room. Once inside, she twirled in front of the mirror, the stole pulled high around her throat or thrown loosely over her shoulders.

Therese distractedly congratulated her on her gift. For the first time, she found Alwine’s joie de vivre selfish and shallow.

“How can you make such a fuss over that stupid bit of fur?” she snapped. “Don’t you care about Leonard?”

Alwine burst into tears. The stole fell to the ground, unheeded, and she covered her face with her hands. She burst out, almost unintelligibly, “I can’t help it, Therese. Don’t you understand? I can’t help it!”

Feeling ashamed, she sat down on the bed beside Alwine.

Years later, Therese told her second husband how she realized for the first time that afternoon that Alwine’s lightheartedness was a kind of escape. “Alwine,” she said, “was a person on the run. Staying on the surface was the only way she could survive.”