Nothing But Fear (7 page)

Nykøbing was a tourist trap. The roads were one-way and each was a cul-de-sac. Once in, it was impossible to get out. The Germans had lost their way. With a bellow of
‘Himmikruzifixherrgottsakrament!'
, the commanding officer snatched the map from the hands of a despairing adjutant, but it was no good. The invasion would have ended before it began, if it hadn't been for Father, who raised his hand.

‘Entschuldigen Sie bitte,'
he said, finding a use for his German at last.
‘Kann ich Ihnen behilflich sein?'

People stared at him as though he had gone crazy and would be shot on the spot. But Father went carefully across to the officers, greeting them politely and pointing at the map. They were to turn right at the Bjørnebrønd and Zaren's house and go past Holland's farm and down Slotsgade to Gåbensevej. They should not take the turning to Kraghave but continue down the road to Systofte and Tingsted and then continue along the A2 through Eskilstrup,
Nørre Alslev and Gåbense to the Storstrøm Bridge. From there the road went straight to Copenhagen, and Father wished them ‘
Gute Reise
'. They all waved from the Market Square and, when the last German soldier disappeared over the horizon, they could hear from the song of the blackbird how quiet things had become, how everything breathed out peace.

The Germans covered the 40 kilometres from Gedser to Masnedsund without a hitch and without the garrisons in Vordingborg and Næstved being alerted. Anyone would think that the Storstrøm Bridge had been built for them three years earlier. No one would have dreamt of blowing it up. There were two marines, both on national service, at the fort in Masnedø. They knew nothing about its artillery, so the German parachute troops had taken the bridge without a fight. Telegraph operators at railway stations in Nykøbing and later in Vordingborg, aware of the German advance, rang head office in Copenhagen to ask if they ought to report it to the military authorities. They were told to mind their own business and that's what they did – and that was also what my father planned to do, and the rest of Nykøbing with him.

The Second World War passed straight through the town and out the other side like a bullet that hit nothing and did no damage because it met with no resistance – and it was left to others to show the courage and the strength required to stand in the way. This was right up my father's street, and he was able to resume his daily duties at the office, to go on his excursions with the choir and to attend lodge meetings
on Wednesdays as if nothing had happened. He breathed a sigh of relief and turned to Ib.

‘Well, how about getting to work?' he said.

But Ib was gone.

I
t was summer and the hedges were chirping, blue tits leapfrogged in the air, and Mother and Father and I sat eating lunch on the terrace. A lawnmower droned in the distance, and out on the road the girls jumped in hula hoops and skipped and peed their pants. Susanne had forget-menot eyes and fair hair and freckles and all the children in kindergarten sang
Under the arches
and knew I was in love.

When I started at school, I would sit and write letters to her – will you? won't you? do you? don't you? – and fold the paper into envelopes that I never gave her. I hoped that she would say yes anyway, and at the party at the end of the first year we held hands and walked round and round the kiss that was waiting for me like a bee in a blackberry bush.

I cycled out to the beach, taking the main road that went up hill and down dale, heading straight out to where the larks would be singing above the sea-wall. There was the scent of pine and heather and salt water, and I lay there all day long thinking of Susanne and listening to the grasshoppers quivering and jigsawing their way through the stillness until Marielyst erupted in my ears and made my spine shiver with sheer delight.

S
ex was the mysterious X and had no place in our family. I never saw my parents undressed – not once – and if it was ever mentioned on the radio when we were driving, they would immediately switch to another programme and pretend it hadn't happened. It was a no-go zone riddled with guilt and shame; just to mention it would be enough to get your hands chopped off at the table, and I'd be keeping well clear.

It was not just that it was unmentionable. It was also unthinkable, and I could not really form an idea of what it was. It was just round the corner, hiding under the bed and out in the dark, waiting for me, crouching, ready to attack me at any moment. I couldn't get it out of my head. Something was missing. There was an enigma, dangerous and forbidden, and when I was alone at home I went exploring without ever knowing what I was looking for.

We were visiting Grandmother in Frankfurt, and I took the chance to creep across to the bookshelves in the living room. They were massive and made of dark mahogany with cut glass in the doors, and they were full of books – Papa Schneider collected them. I started with the largest volume I could find that had pictures, leafing through Greek temples and Roman ruins and a world of flora and fauna – the flowers all coloured by hand – and then I started out on the encyclopaedia,
Der Groβe Brockhaus
. These were heavy books bound in black, dark-blue and gold, and they contained everything.
‘Jeden Tag ich Brockhaus preiss, denn er
weiss, was ich nicht weiss,'
Mother said – and I was sure this was it when I came to the letter ‘M' for ‘man' and looked up ‘
Der Mensch
'.

There was an illustration of a naked woman. She was pink and there was not a hair on her body, not even on her head – she was bald – and you could unfold her to full length to include her legs and feet. She had breasts that you could open like doors in an advent calendar and showed what was concealed under the skin, her guts and her veins. Her flesh was as red as raw steak. I unfolded her stomach – it was just like opening the 24th December – and opened her up layer by layer and gazed at liver, intestines, heart. It was scary, and I quickly put the book back on the shelf – my conscience black as pitch – and could hardly wait until next time.

This gave me a taste for reading and I started going to the library in Nykøbing – a chalk-white building with a wide stairway. It was the most peaceful place on earth, it was on Rosenvænget and I left the town, the other children, everything behind me when I stepped in through the door. I ploughed my way through the rows of books in the children's section and, when I had emerged at the other end and shut the last book, I was old enough to set about the real task towering above me in the lofty room – the adult library.

The shelves went on forever, and for the first couple of years I could only reach the topmost ones with the aid of a stool. I followed my inclination, consulting the card index, looking for interesting titles, hunting among the
bookshelves – and, even though I fought the temptation, slowly and surely I read my way in to the dangerous books, knowing full well where to find them: the
Sengeheste
series, Soya's novels,
Lady Chatterley
. I did not dare take them down. Simply skimming a passage or two demanded a steady nerve, a firm grip on my hammering heart. I was terrified of being caught. At long last I gave in, hid
Hvordan, mor?
under my sweater and read its revelations on the toilet. So there I sat cultivating the forbidden knowledge whenever I could – and felt so much at home out there that I stayed for hours and fell asleep.

It was inevitable. One day I overslept and, when I emerged from the toilet, it was long past closing time. The library was empty and dark as the grave. It was locked. I couldn't get out and was grabbed by panic, my pulse hammering in my throat. I was alone, a prisoner of the dark, and whatever would Mother and Father be thinking? They would be at their wits' end wondering where I had got to! I fumbled my way round the library as I remembered it – rows A, B, C – and my memory kept playing tricks on me, and I got more and more lost in the labyrinth of my own thoughts until I no longer knew where I was. I had walked into the trap – there was no way out, for the books went on forever – so I sat down and prayed that someone would find me before it was too late. The fluorescent lights flickered and caught. And there were Mother and Father walking in with the librarian. I leapt up and rushed to them, and it was a long while before I went out to the toilet again.

Autumn had arrived. I was on my way home from
school, walking under the bridge by the station and looking forward to the holidays. Torn pieces of paper were strewn like confetti across the pavement, shining in thousands of colours like leaves from the Garden of Eden, and I couldn't resist taking a look and peeling them off the slabs. They were easy to find because they glittered – more lay under the bushes and in the gutter – and I put them all in my school bag. When I arrived home, something stopped me in my tracks, and instead I turned my bike and rode out to Vesterskoven where, with the rooks screaming from the treetops, I dug a hole and buried the fragments of paper to save them for later.

It was an age before I could get down from the table and say ‘thank you for the food' and ride back to the wood. I dug up the pieces of paper and then I put two and two together in pairs and started to assemble the jigsaw puzzle with a small roll of Sellotape. As it grew, so did my arousal, and slowly a picture took shape of what I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams. And I hadn't a clue where I was supposed to put it or what I was supposed to do with my secret once the last piece was taped into place and I found myself holding a dirty magazine in my hands:
Colour Climax, 1973
.

M
other was not to go and live with them in Kleinwanzleben until after the marriage had been consummated – as it was put – and Grandmother had given birth
to a daughter with Papa Schneider. They hugged each other now and Grandmother wept, but they were miles apart, and from now on she would be the daughter of a previous marriage and come in second place after her stepsister, Eva. There was nothing to be done about it, so Mother patted the dog that was leaping about her – it was called Bello – and took her place in the Prussian upper-class like a guest moving into the others' lives.

Papa Schneider owned most of the district – the land, the people, the villages – and he walked around in riding boots and had the most magnificent motorcar, a Daimler-Benz. There were horses in the stables and servants. Mother was given her own room with a dressing-mirror and a wardrobe and a wide soft bed all to herself. She would never forget that first Christmas. There was the dinner, a tree full of candles, and she had been given everything – sledge, skis, dresses and picture-books. It was as if she had gone to heaven, Mother said, and she planned to keep her place there no matter what.

There was a daily drill, and times were as precise as the crack of a whip. At six o'clock in the morning: riding lessons. She was given the most skittish horse and rode around with a stick up her back and a book on her head, and God help you if it fell off. Then came French and English and piano until one o'clock, when Papa Schneider sat down at table. It would have been unthinkable to arrive late or for lunch not to be ready – it was sent up in the dumb waiter – ding! – and served as the hour struck. Nothing was said during the meal – or about the meal. You ate to live and did not live to
eat! Afterwards Papa Schneider listened to the stock market report on the radio. The entire house held its breath and heaved a sigh of relief when it was over and he put on his coat and left, and Mother struggled through the remainder of the day, fighting to retain her place.

It was made clear from the start that she was illegitimate, that she was not a blood relative – ‘
blutsverwandt
' – as her sister was, and that she was to conduct herself accordingly. It wouldn't require many false moves to see her on her way. What was true for others was doubly true for Mother, and she did her homework and kissed Papa Schneider on the cheek – the left cheek with the scars – and made conversation in French and read English novels. She played the piano for Grandmother and her guests and performed the
Moonlight
sonata, her right foot pressing the sustain pedal to the floor. And Papa Schneider would watch as she rode at a gallop, taking the ditches as though she were on a hunt, though it was she who was the hunted quarry.

Mother played tennis, shrieked when she served and won tournaments – and the trophies on the shelf stood for one loss after the other. She wanted a hug from her mother and was given a coat. She wanted a father, and all she got was discipline of the old school, and she had to take what she could get and make the best of it. On his holidays Papa Schneider went fly-fishing in the Harz mountains, and Mother got up at half-past three in the morning and tagged along carrying his kit. If he forgot his hat after lunch, she ran after him, handing it to him with a
‘Hier, Vati!'
The closest she got to him was when he stroked her hair and popped his hat
on her head as a joke saying
‘Kleiner Frechsack!'
and pinched her cheek so hard that she got a bruise, and Mother said that she was his and only his, and worked her way into him one smile at a time. She managed to carve out a place for herself – if not in his heart, at least in the car. And on Sundays they drove out into the blue yonder and folded down the hood and sang
Wochenend und Sonnenschein
. It felt almost like having a family, and she pressed herself against his side. Then they drove straight into the car in front and Mother went clean through the windscreen.

She sat there with blood streaming from a face that was cut to shreds – just like his – and in reality maybe this was why Papa Schneider accepted her after the accident. She was given the best treatment money could buy at the university clinic in Vienna, and the cuts healed without leaving scars – except around her one eye, Mother always pointed out, and I nodded even though I could see nothing – and he took her under his wing, put her photograph in his wallet and became a different person. Mother was allowed to do almost anything – and did. She had boyfriends and made trouble and, when she came home with Stichling, who was ten years older than her, she even got away with that. Papa Schneider forgave her everything. She was the only person who could sweeten him when he lost his temper. She could talk him into anything, and, if she had spent too much money, he would laugh and say,
‘Motto Hilde: Immer druf!'
And maybe that was Mother's motto:
Don't stop there!