Berlin: A Novel (16 page)

'Yes, sure, there's Bredewitz in Gross Moorbach. I'll tell the others. And if you need any other help, I'm always here. Isn't that right. Lisa?' The child was crouching in a corner, and didn't reply.

On her second Saturday. Helga had the afternoon and evening off. She took some things to the laundry and ran the vacuum cleaner over her room. She finished around five. She put her warm, lined boots on, and her thick loden coat. The cold November air in the park cleared her head. She had a lot to think about: her new job and the responsibility for her little charges that went with it: Karl and herself. How long would she have to stick it out with him here?

'Some day these horrors will be over - the Party, the Brownshirts ... she remembered Eugen's words. She longed for that day, and at the same time she felt like a traitor because it meant wishing for the Fiihrer's fall from power. Then he'd probably have to go into retirement in Braunau.

She almost fell into a freshly dug pit behind some luxuriant rhododendrons. She remembered that Nurse Meta, who worked in the kitchen, had said it was difficult getting rid of the garbage. The garbage disposal truck hadn't been allotted enough fuel. 'We bury our own rubbish,' the nurse had said, in her strong Saxon accent.

Helga walked as far as the small, barred and locked gate in the park wall. A little stream bordered with reeds, a branch of the river, rippled along outside the gate and then was lost in the dense woodland. A pair of ducks came down and swam towards the bank, quacking. It soon grew dark, and she set off back to the house. The warmth of her room enveloped her pleasantly. She pulled her dress off over her head, put on her dressing gown, and was about to take her boots off when there was a knock at the door.

'Yes?' she called, surprised.

It was Dr Urban. Well, she had been expecting him to turn up sometime, and was even prepared to sleep with him. A boss with his vanity wounded by rejection could be dangerous to her and little Karl. Worse things happen, she'd thought, shrugging.

He had brought flowers and champagne. 'My personal welcome.'

'That's very kind of you, sir. You must excuse my dressing gown. If I'd known you were coming. . .'

'Oh, never mind that.' He dismissed her apology. He kept staring at her boots. 'You've settled in nicely, and you have your ward well under control. My compliments, Nurse Helga.' He still hadn't taken his eyes off those boots.

She remembered what Nurse Doris had said, and it dawned on her that she might not have to sleep with him at all. 'Go and get champagne glasses,' she ordered. He returned with two ordinary wine glasses. 'No, I said champagne glasses, the shallow ones,' she instructed him.

Without demur, he went off a second time but came back empty handed. 'I couldn't find any proper champagne glasses.'

To make quite sure, she took the game a step further. 'Because you didn't look properly. Go off again at once.'

Any other man would have refused. He eagerly obeyed. She was almost certain of it now: he was one of those men who found satisfaction only in submitting to a dominant woman. She had learnt about it in a seminar on sexuality given to the nurses.

'I'll let it pass this time,' she said sternly when he came back without champagne glasses again. 'Open the bottle and then sit down.' She arranged herself so that her dressing gown fell slightly apart, exposing one knee above the top of her boot. He looked at it avidly.

Gradually they fell into conversation. He told her about his wife and daughter, who lived in Berlin. 'The air here doesn't suit Gertraud, and Gisela's at school at the Luisenstift in Dahlem. So I'm alone in the villa.' Helga had seen the former estate manager's house in the park. It was as ugly as the old manor house. 'Would you visit me there sometimes?' It sounded almost pleading.

'We'll see,' she told him coolly.

'May I touch your boots?' he asked as he left.

Her instinct had not let her down. 'Next time.' It gave her a curious satisfaction to make him wait.

'Cuckoo, cuckoo!' Karl had hidden behind a stout oak, and the other children were looking for him. The grounds of the hospital rang with their shouts and laughter. Karl ran out of his hiding place and over to the bramble bushes. 'Cuckoo!' Little Hans was the first to find him. He puffed with excitement, let go of Helga's hand and ran towards Karl, clinging to him and crowing with delight. Only two weeks earlier she wouldn't have dared let him out of bed - he had laid into her with his fists and banged his head against the wall when she'd first tried it. But her cheerful storytelling, with the children gathered round her, interested him so much that he hadn't noticed when she untied him a second time. Even when he became aware that he could move, he went on listening calmly. A new life was opening up for this severely disturbed child; at best he had been ignored in the past, and more often he was restrained and punished. Now the others helped by including him in their games.

Lisa in particular had a calming effect on him. She persuaded him to join in, as Helga patiently practised with the others for days on end, until the nursery rhyme about 'Little Hans' echoed through the children's ward. Helga was proud of this and many other small successes, and felt happy with the children. No one noticed that she paid a little extra attention to Karl, because no one paid any attention to her and her ward anyway.

In practice, she was mistress of her own domain. Dr Urban let her do as she liked. Now and then he called to ask if everything was all right in the children's ward. She visited him sometimes at the villa, reluctantly acting the part of stern dominatrix in words and gestures.

Gotze the orderly was not much help. He spent most of his time in the former coach house where Helga kept her bicycle, tinkering away at a green truck. For the boss,' he explained, sounding self-important.

On this particular morning, as so often, he was lying under the vehicle, an Opel Blitz, busy with a spanner. The children watched with curiosity. Little Hans was all excited, because Gotze let him hand him a pair of pliers.

The telephone on the wall rang. Giitze scrambled to his feet. 'Yes, sir, I'm through with it. The flange on the exhaust needs replacing; I'll get a new one tomorrow. I'll bring the vehicle round right away.' He hung up and took the ignition key off the nail beside the telephone.

Helga clapped her hands. 'Come along, children, we're going to visit Papa Zastrow.' She picked little Hans up and led the group away. The children sang 'Little Hans' as they walked right across the park to the porter's lodge. Zastrow had opened the wrought-iron gates. 'Big car!' cried Karl in excitement. An open Horch rolled past them with two officers in the back. They had a great deal of silver braid on the black collars that stood out from the pale grey fabric of their uniforms.

The porter closed the gates again. 'Visitors for the boss,' he grunted. 'I've a feeling this bodes no good.'

Helga patted Jule, the German shepherd, who had turned out to be a harmless elderly lady. 'You do? Why?'

'Because these death's-head fellows never do bode any good. Bunch of crooks, that's what they are.'

Are you out of your mind, Zastrow? Stupid talk like that could cost you your life.'

The porter grinned. 'Not if you don't pass it on, Nurse Helga. What's more, your concern for me shows you're not so sure of the purity of the firm of Greater Germany Limited yourself.'

Helga wasn't falling into that trap. And you really have no idea what's up?'

'They say there's a few patients going to be transferred. Only the boss knows where. Daresay I'll soon find out.'

The children were getting impatient. Karl was pulling at her coat and little Hans tugging her arm. It was time for lunch. 'Bon appetit, Papa Zastrow.' Helga led the children back to the house. The green Opel Blitz was standing on the gravel of the forecourt, with the medical director and the two uniformed visitors beside it. They were listening to Gotze's explanation, which he accompanied with many gestures. Dr Urban waved to the children, and the children waved back.

Helga came across the green Opel Blitz again two weeks later, on her afternoon off. It was standing behind the main building, near the tradesmen's entrance. The head orderly, Grabbe, and two assistants were putting a dozen patients into the load area of the truck. They were severe cases, mostly old men and women, not an attractive sight. Gotze, meanwhile, was checking something at the back of the vehicle. He bolted the back door and climbed into the driver's cab. The truck drove off, engine roaring. 'Where are the patients being taken?' Helga asked the head orderly.

'You'll have to ask the boss.' Grabbe jerked his head upwards. Dr Urban was watching the truck from his study window.

She set off on her usual walk through the park, wondering whether to order him to walk barefoot through the snow to fetch her leather gloves this evening. Then she would put the gloves on, very slowly, and he would watch, fascinated. He kept asking her to be really strict with him. She ignored his longing glances at the dog whip on the mantelpiece. and this excited him even more. Instead, she ordered him to spend all evening on his knees in front of her, or humiliated him with a few well-chosen words. She hated this game, but she knew that it gave her power over him. Power that she used to demand privileges for the children. That way they got toys, books to read and painting materials, and the kitchen was told to send desserts and cakes to the children's ward more often. Helga asked for nothing for herself.

In 'normal' moments, he was an interesting conversationalist. It was during one of their discussions that she mentioned the subject of mongolism. 'Take little Karl, for instance. The boy is twelve and very independent. He'd be all right in his parents' care, and that would give us room for a more severe case.'

'Children like him don't belong in a healthy community,' he told her.

The sound of an engine brought her back from her thoughts. It must have been a good half-hour since she'd begun. The green truck was approaching from the depths of the park and driving towards the wall. Curious, she made her way through the undergrowth, and saw the vehicle reversing towards the pit she'd almost stumbled into, two weeks before. Gotze got out in a leisurely fashion, climbed up on the step behind the truck and peered through the peephole. Then he unbolted the door and got back into the cab.

The engine roared, raising the load area. The back doors fell open. Human bodies with mouths wide open and limbs akimbo slid off the sloping floor of the truck into the pit. Helga's cries of horror were drowned by the noise of the engine. The load area was lowered again. Gotze jumped out of the driver's cab, spat on his hands and picked up a shovel. Clods of earth thudded down on the dead men and women. Later, she couldn't remember how she had made it back to the house.

Helga had to watch twice more as the orderlies loaded helpless patients into the green Opel Blitz. By now she knew that the poisonous exhaust gases from the engine were funnelled through a hosepipe straight into the air-tight load area, while Gotze drove his cargo of human beings twitching in their death agonies around the park for half an hour, before tipping them into the mass grave.

'Running like clockwork, sir,' she heard him report on the coach-house telephone after one of these drives. She was overcome by a feeling of impotent rage. She was an accessory to an unspeakable crime, and there was nothing she could do about it. Or was there? Perhaps she could send word to the Fiihrer about this monstrous thing? Only how was she to get a message through to him? And ought she to expose herself anyway? If the perpetrators of this crime found out what she was planning to do, and anything happened to her, it would be the end for Karl too.

One morning just before Christmas she found that she could no longer avoid a decision. She was explaining a simple sum to Karl. Lisa was brushing little Hans's hair. Her other charges were busy painting, getting into a colourful mess with spots of bright paint everywhere. They were all enjoying themselves. Helga felt happy in the bustling activity of this selfcontained little world, and suppressed thoughts of what was going on outside.

Evi, the young student nurse, came hurrying in. Helga had sent her to the storeroom to find some pairs of woolly socks for the children. Evi was in a state of great excitement. The stores manager says we can't have any more new things. The whole children's ward is going to be moved in the New Year.' Everything went round in circles before Helga's eyes. Evi chattered on. 'Do you know where to, Nurse Helga? Hartheim would be nice. They say it's a modern, open asylum for the less serious cases. I expect we'll both be going too.'

Summoning up all her strength of will, Helga managed to appear calm and cheerful. 'I've no idea where to, Evi. We'll find out in due course. You take the children to lunch. There's something I have to do.'

She put on her loden coat. It was wet and cold outside: the snow had melted. She left the building, walking the long way round through the park so as to reach the porter's lodge unseen. Papa Zastrow was sitting by the roaring iron stove with Jule. 'Whatever's the matter, Nurse Helga? You look terrible.'

She ventured everything on a single throw. 'They're going to kill the children.'

The old man nodded. 'In Gotze's gas-powered truck, like the others. They call it "elimination of worthless life", those murderers do. Urban's the worst. He's a member of the Racial Hygiene Research Institute staff. An SS institution "for preserving the purity of the Germanic race".'