Someday We'll Tell Each Other Everything (6 page)

They're going to stay in Frieda's part of the house, where there are six rooms: two for Alfred, the remaining four for Frieda. Plenty of space. For me this visit couldn't have come at a better time. It helps me hide my secret. That evening there's a violent storm; I sit at the window and look over at Henner's farm. It's pitch-black over there.

7

The following morning the air is cooler and fresher than it's been for weeks, giving me every reason to wear the scarf around my neck. Johannes disappears into his darkroom straight after breakfast and doesn't even emerge for lunch. He's displaying an obsessiveness that makes us all wonder, especially Marianne. He's hung pictures of the farm beside those of the dead children. Johannes has photographed everything: Alfred mucking out the barn; Marianne feeding the chickens; Siegfried in the sawmill; the cattle on the pasture; the sheep; the geese; the chickens; Frieda down by the river, looking at the water; Frieda at the gate, looking along the road. And me, over and over again.

We hardly talk anymore, all I hear now is: “The light is perfect, sit over there. No, no, no, not like that. Look to the right. No, Maria, with your eyes, not your head!” In fact Johannes doesn't see me anymore, all he sees are pictures.

Until a few days ago I would have done anything to win back his attention. I'd have talked, charmed, ranted, whatever you do when your loved one turns his back on you. But I behave calmly; with apparent generosity I allow him to indulge in the magic of his new passion. I'm quite indifferent. My only real interest lies in the man on the neighboring farm.

I wander through the yard, the note in my right hand. Alfred shuffles past me into the barn. There's a twinkle in his tiny eyes; his cheeks are sunken as he barely has any teeth. When he's gone I read the message. This time there's no envelope. It's the same piece of paper with the sentence: “He lay awake at night, desiring her, and he had her.” Underneath he's written, “Tomorrow I'll come get you!”

Tomorrow—that's today. My calm evaporates.

Marianne and Gisela are in the shop. They seem to be getting to know each other; they talk about their children and Hartmut's twenty years without his family, which nobody can ever give back to him. I leave them be. There are some things that are so difficult to say, every word is a struggle; I'd only be disturbing them.

I can see Hartmut outside. He's wearing one of Siegfried's blue boiler suits and heading for the sawmill. The children are skipping along behind him. What an adventure this must be for them.

Frieda is in the kitchen with Volker. She's summoned him from town because Hartmut wanted to see his other brother, too. But the feeling is not mutual. Volker has hardly been able to look Hartmut in the eye, and for years he's been giving Siegfried a wide berth. He doesn't seem to notice that I'm there. His dull expression only seems to come to life when drink is put on the table. I can definitely see the
similarities between Volker and Alfred. Volker's so different from his two brothers. There's something shifty about him, something that makes me distrust him. Acrid alcoholic fumes are polluting the entire kitchen. All that's missing is Alfred. From day one I sensed that Alfred didn't like me; I seem to disturb him somehow. Maybe he had become used to the fixed set of people in the family. And then I came along.

If Henner really does come for me I'd like to give him a cake, so I stay in the kitchen and bake my first cake without any help. Volker and Frieda move to the parlor. Six eggs, three hundred and sixty grams of sugar, the same amount of butter and flour. No baking powder. The grated zest of one lemon, the juice of four lemons, some vanilla, a pinch of salt. Bake for sixty minutes: forty minutes at 350 degrees, twenty at 400 degrees, checking that it doesn't brown too quickly on top—this is what Frieda's always told me.

I feel very grown up here in the kitchen. The windows that face the yard are open. Alfred glances inside, snuffles, nods and smiles inscrutably. The others are scattered all over the farm. Then everything happens as if by magic. The cake comes out of the oven, golden brown and smelling fantastic, and I can hear his voice in the shop and the women laughing. I bet he's flirting with them. I'm instantly envious of Gisela. She's wearing a dress today, too, and her blond hair falls in fragrant waves across her white shoulders. She smells fantastic. We couldn't work out what it was. Some mixture of rose and sandalwood, but we're too embarrassed to ask. She must think we're peasants, Marianne and me.

I can't make out what he's saying, but now Marianne is calling my name. “Come over here, Maria!” she says. “Henner's got his horses with him.” I've already cut the cake and wrapped it in sandwich paper. I put the package in my bag, as well as the note and a pencil.

When I enter the shop I'm reassured, for the moment at least. He may be joking with the women, but he only has eyes for me. Softly,
almost casually, he says, “There you are, Maria. I've brought the mare along; you wanted to go riding today, didn't you?”

“Yes,” I say. “I'm coming.”

Then he helps me up into Jella's saddle; on the stallion there is just a horse blanket. “Bring her back safe and sound, Henner!” Marianne calls out behind us. He gives a short nod, and I feel horribly deceitful.

We trot once along the woodland path by the railway tracks and then go straight back to his farmhouse. He takes the horses to the stables and shuts the main gate. I can't be sure, but I think I saw Alfred at the end of the path.

In the kitchen he makes coffee and I unwrap the cake. It's still warm and smells so lemony. Henner takes a piece and has a bite. “Did Frieda bake this?” he asks.

I shake my head. “No, I did.”

He grins, no doubt astonished by my efforts. “It tastes wonderful, Maria,” he says. “It's a long time since anybody baked me a cake.” Then his face darkens and he gives me a peculiar look. I stand up and go close to him. He pulls me onto his knees.

Then he lays me down on the kitchen table and takes me. The dogs are lying by the door, their beefy heads resting on their paws, quietly watching us.

Afterward we drink cold coffee and smoke. There's a volume of poetry on the table. My head was on it when Henner stood behind me and lifted my skirt. One stanza is underlined, beside it are some illegible words. A woman's handwriting, I reckon; Henner didn't write that. I like the verse, even though it makes me feel melancholic:

“My mother's,” he says. “All the books were hers.” He stares at me. “She wasn't cut out for farm work either. Like you.” And then he talks to me for ages about his mother; all I'd heard about her was that she was a drinker and a bit of an oddball.

Henner's mother—Helene Henner, née Mannsfeld, then Bechert in her first marriage—was thirty-five when she had him. She was born in 1915 into a middle-class family in Berlin. She was an only child. Her father died in the war, in a military hospital following the amputation of both his arms. Things got more and more difficult for the family. The mother's money lasted a few years more, but by the beginning of the 1930s it was all gone. She never married again, Helene's mother.

Helene went to a good school; she was well educated and had fine manners, just no money. She was eighteen when she met the lawyer Ernst Bechert, and she married him immediately, despite her lack of funds. Ernst built up his career and became a member of the Nazi Party. They had no children. In 1940, he was conscripted and returned in February 1945 with a serious head injury and only one eye. But when the Russians came he hanged himself in the kitchen of their apartment. Helene couldn't get away in time. The streets were already teeming with Russian soldiers, and it was hard to disguise her beauty even beneath a dirty headscarf. They got her in the cellar. She didn't know how many there were, but it must have been dozens. One injured her so badly that the others, who'd been waiting their turn, no longer wanted this half-dead woman. She must have bled like a slaughtered animal, and it went on like that for weeks. She confessed all this to her second husband on his deathbed, and it was only then that he understood everything.

In the summer of 1945 she dragged her battered body out of the city. No one knows for sure how she made it to Thuringia and our village. She was given work and a little room at the Henners' farm, and a year later she married Franz, the youngest son, who had survived
the war in spite of a few frostbitten toes and large amounts of shrapnel. He was twenty-nine, she, thirty-one. The two other brothers at the farm had died in the war.

Henner was born in 1950. Nobody had imagined they would ever have a child. During her pregnancy, Helene acquired a great number of books and, to the consternation of the Henner family, spent her days reading. Later she disappeared completely into her books and her schnapps, and never surfaced again.

Henner lays his head in my lap with a sigh, and I cover it with my dress. Then he starts to cry. Yes, he cries, and his tears wet my bare legs, which are still trembling. It was the only time I ever saw him like this, and never again. Love made him soft.

8

Back home at the Brendels' farm, Marianne is there to meet me. “That was a long ride,” she says. As I walk past her she suddenly leans into me and takes a sniff. I'll never forget how her nose practically brushes my neck. When she looks up at me I hold my breath, regretting not having washed off Henner's scent. Suddenly she smiles and says, “You smell like a stable! Go and have a quick shower before supper.” I nod silently. This time I've gotten away with it.

Hartmut's definitely taken some color. He got up early with Siegfried and helped him with the day's work. His cheeks are red and he swallows down his food greedily. Gisela keeps glancing over at him, but doesn't say anything. The children are winding Lukas up
and talking incessantly. We're not used to such chitter-chatter at the table. Alfred's eyes scan the room grumpily, then his gaze rests on me. I stare into my wineglass, sweating.

Out of the blue, Hartmut asks whether we are going to take a look at our Stasi files when the time comes, if they haven't all been destroyed by then. Siegfried laughs and says he doesn't need to; he already knows what's in his and who supplied the information. Then he turns to me and says, “The only one around this table who has an unblemished record—if she has one at all—is Maria.” That comment made me want to fling my supper in his face. I mean, I was at the first demonstration in P., chanting “We are the people!” along with the rest of them. Okay, I admit we weren't there just because of the demonstration; our plan was to go to the ice cream parlor afterward, my friend Katja and I. But Siegfried doesn't stop his teasing. “Maria,” he says with a grave expression, his arms crossed, “went to Pioneer Camp. Top marks for your file, that. It's where they groomed our future elite. Isn't that right, Maria?” I'm close to tears. What does he know about Pioneer Camp? Gisela looks nonplussed, so I have to explain, keeping an eye on Siegfried the whole time. He does actually shut up, and by the end he's even turned a little pale.

I was twelve, top of the class, and deputy chair of the friendship council at Erich Weinert Secondary School in R. One day Mom and I were called in to see the headmistress. She told us that I had been chosen from our district to go to the Wilhelm Pieck Pioneer Camp. For six weeks. In schooltime. It was an honor you didn't turn down. And so, in February 1986, I went by train to Berlin with lots of other children from various districts and a group of Pioneer leaders. From there we were bused to the camp on the shore of Lake Werbellin. The first day was a disaster. I didn't have a Pioneer's cap, I used a Scout's knot to tie the red neckerchief rather than a Pioneer one, and I didn't have a badge on the arm of my white blouse. I'd never had a blouse with the badge. My mother always let me wear cardigans on top and
nobody had minded. At the first major flag parade I had to stand at one end of the back row, then in the middle of the square formation, where I was reprimanded for showing insufficient respect for the Pioneer organization, and by extension the German Democratic Republic. Later I was called into the office of the duty Pioneer leader. A message was sent to my mother via the council offices in our village. That same day she sent a package with the items I was missing. And three days later I looked like all the other girls: dark blue skirt, white Pioneer blouse, neckerchief tied with the proper knot, and a blue cap on my head.

There was no end to the rules and regulations: how you were supposed to arrange your clothes over the chair every evening when you undressed, the neckerchief always on top; how to make your bed with military precision; when you had to get up for early morning exercises, barked at by loudspeakers, which were in every block and throughout the camp grounds. A marching song accompanied our exercises; I can only remember the chorus:

This was followed by a long day in the classroom, including extra Russian tuition and citizenship lessons. We ate our meals in a large hall where cockroaches scuttled under the tables. I'd never seen a cockroach before and thought they were really disgusting. We had flag parade three times a day, and each one began with the announcement “Thälmann Pioneers, be prepared!” and ended with the answer “Always prepared!” In the evenings we watched the news bulletin and sometimes Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler's political propaganda program. On one of them they featured a West German fruit and
vegetable stall with beautiful shiny produce. But then the reporter turned over a few pieces of fruit and pointed to brown spots and mold. We shuddered. “As you can see, all that glistens is not gold,” the Pioneer leader said triumphantly. In the next scene we saw a homeless man holding out a dirty hand, begging. We were shocked.

We all wrote diaries; they told us to, and it wasn't long before we discovered why. One morning a supervisor came and collected all the diaries. The following day our entries were displayed for all to see in the foyers of the dormitory blocks. Our thoughts became public property. Here nothing belonged to any one individual, or, to put it another way, everything belonged to everybody.

Objects or toys that clearly came from foreign, imperialist countries were confiscated. Among my belongings were a pencil case with a small British flag and a nightie printed with an American cartoon character. I'd been sent the occasional parcel of secondhand clothes from one of Mom's distant relatives in the West.

My dormitory comrades had no offensive items in their possession.

The letters I sent home were returned to me opened, and then I was summoned to the Pioneer leaders' office. There were three people sitting there, and one of them read out my letters. After the first I already had trouble concentrating, and I tried to work out whether the person walking along the path outside was Silke, the only friend I'd made up till then. It was hard to tell, she was wearing the same as the rest of us. At that point they ordered me to listen, but I knew the words by heart—they were always the same: “Dear Mama, the camp is like a prison. Please come take me home. I can't stay here. I'm so unhappy and I cry all the time, especially at night. Love, Maria.” They told me that if I wrote anything like that again there'd be serious trouble for me and my parents, more serious than I could possibly imagine.

After that I wasn't frightened anymore. It couldn't get any worse, I thought. And in fact, it didn't. My mother never got the letters, and
nobody came to take me home. But halfway through the six weeks I no longer wanted to leave. There had been a torchlight procession. All of us, hundreds of children, had marched through a sea of fire that surged left and right, singing “The Little Trumpeter” and “Peat Bog Soldiers.” The torches showed us the way across the camp to a large parade square, where the procession stopped. To finish we sang the last verse of “Peat Bog Soldiers.”

That was my turning point, something snapped inside me, my resistance dissolved. I felt at one with the others, strong and invincible. It was an uplifting moment, indescribable, and at the same time one of the most unsettling aspects of my entire stay.

When Gisela asks to hear the song again and I launch into “Peat Bog Soldiers”—with a certain frisson of excitement—it's not long before Siegfried, Hartmut, Marianne, Alfred, and Frieda join in, in that very order.

Marianne hums the tune in her clear voice, because she doesn't know the words, and when we get to the final verse—“But for us there is no complaining, / Winter will in time be past. / One day we shall cry rejoicing, ‘Homeland dear you're mine at last!'”—there's no stopping Siegfried. He belts out the words so loudly that the rest of us fall silent, and Gisela grips her chair with both hands. None of us says a word and I feel a bit embarrassed for Siegfried. We're all thinking our own thoughts, and when the silence goes on for too long I embark on the conclusion to my story. When, after six weeks, I came
home and sang Russian war songs at the dinner table, my mother, in tears, asked me, “What on earth have they done to you?” I cried and missed my friends. It took me a while to get used to being at home again, and my yearning for camp life eventually turned into a rejection of everything collective.

Siegfried had no idea that it had been like that. Now he looks at me rather sympathetically. Gisela finds it all “barbaric,” like under the Nazis; Hartmut agrees with her, even though he's been singing along heartily, too. “Bastards!” he says repeatedly. “Miserable bastards! They broke children in those camps.” Then Frieda brings in the dessert. Tiramisu. We've never had it before. Even the name sounds exciting. Gisela made it; she brought the ingredients with her. I wonder whether Hartmut is right, whether they really broke me, but on balance I think he's exaggerating.

None of us noticed Johannes taking photographs of us while we were singing. Tonight, when he develops them, I'll be able to see how Alfred was looking at me. We go to bed late, very late, and Johannes holds me gently in his arms.

In the other room is my bag and another note from Henner. I'm saving it for tomorrow.