Nothing But Fear (18 page)

I was sure that I was on the track of a tremendous secret, went creeping round the house exploring as they did in
The Famous Five
and
Emil and the Detectives
. I investigated, tapping on walls in the hallway and listening to discover the
secret door that had to be there and sounded hollow. The most frightening place was the boiler room – the sounds of the boiler came up through the floor of my bedroom – and I peopled it with hanged men and black cats playing cards and all the worst scenes from Grimm's fairy tales. Many years were to pass before I dared go down there. I opened the door and fumbled for the light switch – you never knew what might jump at you out of the dark – but it was just a warm, grey room with the boiler chuntering away in the corner. There was nothing to be afraid of – a lathe, garden chairs, cardboard boxes full of shoes, newspapers and odds and ends that Father had tidied up and put away – you never knew when things might come in handy – and behind the curtain an ancient trunk.

It was the sort that people used to travel to America with – black and battered and big enough to sit inside – and on the lid a pair of initials written in gothic script:
It was Papa Schneider's trunk. I was dying to know what was inside and knocked – there was a moment when I was afraid he would open it and stick his head out – but it was locked. It must have been filled with treasure. Perhaps Papa Schneider had been a big game hunter? I saw him before me in white topee out on the savannah. Or else he'd be standing on deck in evening dress on board an ocean liner. The trunk had ended up in our cellar for one reason and one reason only – to fetch me and ferry me across the Atlantic.

I only had to find the key, and I knew where to look but did not dare pursue the thought to its conclusion. The bureau. It stood in the living room and was for cut glass,
important documents and valuables. A bronze clock had been placed on top of it and there were porcelain figures on the writing flap that could fall off. I wasn't allowed to open the drawers or the door – I was sure it had a secret compartment. In it was the answer to all mysteries. I was frightened of being caught in the act and put it off so long that in the end I could not stop myself, and it happened all by itself.

As soon as Mother had gone to grocer Olsen's to do the shopping, I got going. I was like a burglar – everything felt different, alien – and I had to move fast. What I had to do was move the figures in order to get at the drawers and then put them back precisely as they had stood before so that no one could see they had been moved. I listened. Was there anyone at the door? Footsteps on the cellar stairs? The bronze clock ticked louder and louder. I leafed through old passports, certificates of baptism, family trees and papers stamped in blue, black, red, some of them with the German eagle. There was a jewellery box. There were the gold coins I had been given by Dr Jaschinski for my birthday, photos of Farmor and Grandfather in front of the bus and of the family in Kleinwanzleben. I didn't look like Grandfather and turned to Karen. So there she was. She looked serious. And not daring to breathe for fear of discovery, I opened the little door in the bureau.

A brown envelope lay there, with the words ‘
Erinnerungen von Hildchen
' written in Mother's hand. I opened it carefully. It was full of photographs of her mother and her father, Heinrich Voll, school reports, sports diploma – tennis, swimming, riding – her pass from the
Arbeitsdienst
–
‘
Arbeit für dein Volk adelt dich selbst
' – and a questionnaire for the denazification of Hannover. I didn't have time to look at them properly but continued my search and found a folded letter. It was from Horst Heilmann. It was dated Berlin 20.8.42, and at the top in block capitals he had written ‘
Geheim/Vernichten
'.
Secret/Destroy
. The rest was in a sloping hand, and I couldn't read it, but it was not for my eyes anyway. Then there was a wish list for Mother's first Christmas at Papa Schneider's:

Liebes Christkind! Ich bin das Hildchen Voll und wohne in Kleinwanzleben. Ich wünsche mir ein Puppenwagen und Nüsse, Äpfel und Pfefferkuchen aber auch ein Weihnachtsbaum wo wir zu Weihnachten herum stehen und singen o, du fröhliche es wird ganz herrlich werden. Aber ich weiss ja gar nicht wo ich meine Schularbeiten machen soll dann wünsche ich mir noch ein Schreibpult. Aber zum kneten auch noch ein Kasten Knetgummi. Mein Vorleger vors Bettchen ist ganz zerissen könnte ich nicht einen neuen haben? Und zum Kochen einen kleinen Weckapparat. Zum Lesen ein Buch. Und einen neuen Roller
.
⁶

It had a red stamp on which a cherub was singing and printed on it the words
Gloria in excelsis deo, 5 Pfennig
. It
was strange to think that Mother had been so small. I was thinking about Hildchen Voll as I picked up the box that lay right at the back, lifted the lid and was struck by a thunderbolt. There it was, the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow, the buried treasure – and it was death. The Iron Cross. The black cast-iron cross was inlaid with silver with crossed swords and a swastika in the centre. It was Mother's – and then I heard the key turn in the front door.

F
or years I thought they were right, that Mother was a Nazi, and I was ashamed and defended her. But it wasn't true. Mother had been decorated by General Raegener – this was after the war – and she was given it for rescuing hundreds of German soldiers from Russian deportation. It was Uncle Helmut who told me. When I finally plucked up the courage to ask Mother, she said that she had wound the head of the sector for the Red Cross round her little finger – a Mr Plaiter – and he got himself drunk on gin, declared his undying love and promoted her to ‘Chief clerk' for the ambulance service, as she had asked him to. Then she organized the escape, using the ambulances to smuggle soldiers from the hospital over the Elbe and into the West. She had not been able to save Horstchen but she had managed to ferry as many others to safety as possible – and it was deadly dangerous, for they could have rumbled her at any moment. When the military police came for her, Mother nodded and fetched her coat. But they were only
asking her to report to the American high command. She was not arrested. They didn't say what it was all about, and Mother took a gamble and went. It was General Raegener who had sent for her. He was a prisoner of war, and there was something he wished to talk to her about. He walked into the visiting room with his wooden leg, shook hands and said thank you – and then he took out a box and handed her the Iron Cross Second Class.

It was hidden away in a box with the black-white-and red ribbon of the order. She never took it out or discussed it with anyone. I had only seen her wear it once and that was in 1967. It was the World Fair in Montreal. Mother and Father were on their grand tour to Canada and saw Niagara Falls and visited the Lions Club in Chicago on the way back. Shortly after this they were excluded from the local branch in Nykøbing – it was not ‘international' enough to be able to accept a Nazi, as they put it – and Mother hit the roof when they returned in the evening from the Baltic Hotel. She went across to the bureau, took out the box and pinned on the Iron Cross. Then she left the house, Father standing in the hall in the light falling from the living room – and I tried to prevent her, to get her to leave it be and to stop. But it wasn't her anymore. She couldn't hear a word anyone said but walked up Grønsundsvej to Højbroen, over the bridge and all the way through the town wearing the Iron Cross and singing ‘Das Preuβenlied' all the way:

‘Ich bin ein Preuβe, kennt ihr meine Farben?

Die Fahne schwebt mir weiβ und Schwarz voran!

Daβ für die Freiheit meine Väter starben,

Das deuten, merkt es, meine Farben an
.

Nie werd' ich bang verzagen,

Wie jene will ich's wagen:

Sei's trüber Tag, sei's heitrer Sonnenschein,

Ich bin ein Preuβe, will ein Preuβe sein!
⁷

Father was at a loss as to what to say or how to explain it. At dinner not a word was said about it, and Mother served us
Maccaroniauflauf
. She could fall to pieces at any moment. I walked on eggshells, supported her as best I could, nodding and playing along. That was quite right, and yes, of course. Whenever I wanted to go out, Mother would ask
‘Wo gehst du hin?'
and I would have to say where and promise to be back before long and, if I was late, she would be beside herself – where had I been? I hurried home and shouted ‘Hi!' on my way up the stairs from the cellar, hoping she was in a good mood. Her voice was full of reproaches, she was worried, and even the most ordinary things became artificial, felt awkward, sounded like lines rehearsed. She transformed everything around her into a tragedy, and we took up our roles and appeared in her performance, while the dining room, the table, the paintings were all just props. If one of us had spoken out of character and told the truth, hell would have been let loose. We were possessed by an evil
spirit, and Father sat at the dining table and asked for the salt and in desperation tried to think of an insurance scheme that would make it go away by itself.

But it wouldn't. Mother dreamed of settling accounts and had once seen the camp leader from
Arbeitsdienst
walking along by a railway station. She pretended she hadn't noticed her. What was she to do? Hit her? Spit at her? There was no such thing as justice. Mother did not believe in God. She hated him and drank extra strong lager and smoked cheroots and quoted Trakl. In silence above the site of the skull open God's golden eyes.

‘Schweigsam über der Schädelstätte öffnen sich Gottes goldene Augen.'

And she would blow smoke at the ceiling and tell me how he had been acquitted after the war – Manfred Roeder, the state prosecutor who had murdered them all! He had personally ensured that those ‘milksop' prison sentences for the women had been transmuted to the death sentence – for not having reported what was going on to the police. Even for Liane, and she was only nineteen. After the execution he rang Horst Heilmann's father to inform him – with contempt – that his son had been annihilated.

‘Ihr Sohn ist ausgelöscht.'

And they sent a bill: 300 Reichsmark. Roeder had been doing his duty, the state prosecutor maintained and dismissed the case in 1951. The hangman was able to retire to his villa in Hessen and continue working as a solicitor, even becoming the chairman of the local parish council.

Rote Kapelle
had never existed, said Mother, and she
could have taken the next train to Glashütten and slit his throat. It was the Gestapo who had invented the Communist spy ring in order to rid themselves of opponents of the regime. Roeder extended the web that was spun around the story and got the tribunal to believe that they had been agents and traitors to their country and deserved the death penalty. They had nothing whatsoever to do with the Soviet intelligence service. The radio transmitter didn't even work.

‘Ach!'
Mother sighed and stubbed out her cheroot.

And Schulze-Boysen had only sent one solitary message to Moscow, a blanket greeting to all friends.
‘Tausend Grüβe allen Freunden'
.

O
nce the season got under way, the smoke billowed out of the chimney of the sugar factory The air smelt sweet and the snow fell to earth in sugared drops that tasted of boiled red sweets called ‘Kings of Denmark'. I went around with my tongue stuck out, loving the snow and hating it. Fear rose inside me as softly as the snow that floated down and transformed the town into a great white battleground, where there was a good chance I would be attacked and clobbered. My head, my ears, my trousers would be filled with snow, I would eat snow in the breaks – and on the way home from school they would be lying in wait.

Tractors drove through the town with mountains of sugar beets. The children ran after them, waiting for some
to fall off so that they could play with them – or sell them for a couple of crowns if there were enough. They would grow like mountains in front of the factory, and people would walk with their nose in the air, saying, ‘It smells of money.' When they had parties, they became drunk on Blue Nykøbing lager and sang ‘I come from Falster, where the wurzels grow, and they grow, and they grow and they grow! They grow and they grow – and they grow and they grow – and they grow and they grow and they grow!' It was nothing but wurzels from dawn till dusk.

One day Mother and I were shopping at grocer Olsen's. He was standing behind the counter and suddenly clutched his head and said, ‘Oh, me wurzel hurts.' It suddenly struck me that they had wurzels instead of heads, too, and maybe this was just something that no one had told me.

I had a good look when I was at the baker's on Solvej, but Susanne smiled the same as always, and when we were out buying cheroots at the kiosk, I couldn't see anything unusual about the thin lady in front of me. And so I spent the rest of the day studying heads and looking for clues that might give them away – roots, traces of stalk. A lot of them did resemble wurzels when you took a closer look, and I grew more and more sure that I was right and felt queasy when the tractors drove past me on the street. I imagined that they were heads loaded on the trailers, and out on the fields they stood in earth up to their necks and they grew and they grew and they grew until they were harvested.