One Last Summer (2007) (26 page)
I had a letter from Claus this morning. It was headed ‘somewhere in Poland’. He is pleased that I am pregnant, and suggested that if the child is a boy he should be named Peter after his brother. I wondered if he remembered that Erich’s second name is Peter. If it is a boy, I would like to christen him Wilhelm Paul, but I know Claus wouldn’t allow it because it could be seen as condoning Wilhelm’s complicity in the July plot.
But what does Claus have to do with this baby? One of the hardest things that I have ever done was to allow him to touch me again on his last leave. The feel of his naked body against mine was sickening after Sascha’s lovemaking. With Claus away it is so easy for me to pretend that Sascha is my husband, but pretend is all it is and perhaps all it ever will be. No, I cannot believe that. I won’t!
The nights are growing colder. Sascha and I spend as much time as we dare in the tack room. We desperately try to forget the war, but both of us know that things are about to change. With the Russians continuing to mass on our eastern borders there is talk of moving the Russian prisoners west. I hope they won’t. I can’t imagine having to live without Sascha.
WEDNESDAY, 8 NOVEMBER 1944
The Russians crossed into East Prussia last month and massacred German women and children at Nemmersdorf, a village outside Königsberg. The papers were full of dreadful photographs of crucifixions and people being disembowelled and burned alive. I wished I hadn’t looked at them because ever since all I can think about is Erich, Marianna and little Karoline being butchered as those poor children were.
Sascha said the photographs might be propaganda, but he warned that, whether they are or not, Russian troops who invade East Prussia will not be kind to German soldiers or civilians after the atrocities our army perpetrated in the East.
People from the east of the country have tried to book hotel rooms in Allenstein, but the police have ordered the hoteliers to turn them away. Our Gauleiter, Erich Koch, insists that the Russians have been driven back. We have all been ordered to remain in our homes, even the people who live close to the Polish and Russian borders, and the civilian population in Königsberg, which is bound to be the first city the Russians attack as it is our capital.
Is it true that the Russians have been driven back? Is Brunon safe?
TUESDAY, 26 DECEMBER 1944
This has been the most dismal Christmas I have known. Martha, Minna and I tried to make it special for Erich, Marius and the estate children, but none of us felt like celebrating. Papa von Letteberg couldn’t get away from Berlin and Mama von Letteberg refused to leave him.
I know from the rumours Marius brings back from the town that the Gestapo are still arresting people connected to the von Stauffenberg plot. Mama von Letteberg must fear that Papa von Letteberg will still be implicated. The Allies are bombing German cities and advancing on the Italian and French Fronts; some people are saying that the German border towns in the west are already in Allied hands. It is insane. Allied troops are closing in on Germany from every side and the authorities are arresting, imprisoning and killing our own officers, when we need all the men we have to fight our enemies.
I went to church this morning and pretended to pray for Papa, Wilhelm, Paul, Peter, Manfred and Herr and Frau Adolf’s souls, Irena and her children’s safety, and Mama’s peace of mind. I did it because everyone expected me to, but I resent every wasted minute I spend in the cold, draughty building. Attending services seems such a mechanical, futile exercise, when I no longer believe in God.
However, I did think of my family, living and dead, and wished that somehow they could all know that my thoughts were with them. As a Communist, Sascha jokes a great deal about God. He says that if a God exists, he went on holiday in 1939 and hasn’t come back.
My only consolation is that Mama knows nothing of what is happening. When I took up her Christmas Eve supper and the gift of handkerchiefs that
My only consolation is that Mama knows nothing of what is happening. When I took up her Christmas Eve supper and the gift of handkerchiefs that I had cut from old sheets and embroidered, she asked me to remind Papa and the boys to wrap up warm, as the frost is getting harder and the snow thicker. Sometimes I wish I could ignore everything that is happening and live in the past like her.
Greta didn’t send any presents, not even for Mama, but she wrote to tell us that all leave has been cancelled and Helmut has been assigned to a front-line regiment. About time! Why should old men like Brunon fight while young men like Helmut have safe, cushy jobs? She scolded me for not answering her last letter, but I cannot trust myself to write a single word to her after her denouncement of Wilhelm and her threat to take over Grunwaldsee, so I didn’t even send her Christmas greetings.
I wanted to send Christmas messages and food parcels to Irena and the children, but Mama von Letteberg warned me against even trying, as any attempt at communication could make things worse for Irena and the girls – wherever they are.
So, only Martha, Minna, Marius, Erich and I sat down to a Christmas dinner of salted bacon and boiled potatoes. The food stuck in my throat. I remembered other years when the house was full of people, laughter, joy and Christmas spirit. Even the tree Marius – who tries so hard to take his father’s place both as steward and head of his family – had cut down and carried into the hall, and the few sweets we had concocted for the estate children from syrup and mashed potatoes looked sad in comparison to the decorations we made last Christmas, let alone the Christmases before the war.
I feel as though the house is full of ghosts. A door only has to bang in a draught and I hear the twins running and whooping downstairs on their way to a party. Or I walk past the study and open the door, expecting to see Papa smoking and reading the paper instead of doing the accounts, as he pretended to do every morning. Even Mama’s sewing room looks forlorn.
Just after dark on Christmas afternoon a truck drove into the yard. The snow was thick on the windscreen, and the sides and top of the canvas awning were encrusted in ice. Remembering the SS who had taken Irena and the children away, I ordered Martha and Minna to hide Erich and Marius upstairs, before walking out to meet it. I was terrified, even before I heard the moans coming from the back.
The driver and an officer climbed out. I looked inside. It was packed with wounded soldiers. The men were in a terrible state, with bloodstained bandages wrapped around their frozen heads, hands and feet. Even in the cold, the stench was awful.
While the driver checked the men, the officer, a ridiculously young lieutenant, clicked his heels, bowed and handed me a parcel and a letter. He said they were a special delivery from Standartenführer Graf von Letteberg.
I suggested that the men might like to come inside in the warm, and have something hot to drink. Martha always has a soup of sorts simmering on the stove, although these days it is more vegetables and water than anything else.
The lieutenant refused. Some of the men were badly injured, and most had lost fingers and toes to frostbite. He said that if he didn’t get them to the doctors at Bergensee soon, gangrene would set in. I asked if I could do anything to help, but he shook his head.
I watched them drive away, then returned to the kitchen and called Martha, Minna and the children. I hoped the parcel would contain something to cheer Erich. He is old enough to know that Christmas should be special, and this one has been lonely for him. He still constantly asks for Marianna and Karoline – they used to play so well together – and he misses Irena, who spent hours telling the children stories. Not even Marius has been able to stop him from moping.
There was no Wehrmacht uniform this year, but a small, wooden train, which Erich loved, a box of candied fruits, which I shared between Martha, Minna and the children, and a set of hand-knitted and embroidered baby clothes for me. I dread to think how much Claus had paid for them.
Claus’s letter was guarded, but he suggested that I pay his parents a visit in Berlin as soon as I could. So I know that the Russians are on the point of invading East Prussia again. But there is no way that I can leave Grunwaldsee, with Brunon gone.
After I put Erich to bed I sat in the kitchen for half an hour with Martha and Minna. They were so depressed they went to bed before nine o’clock, or perhaps they suspect that something is going on between me and one of the prisoners. As soon as I was alone I took what food I could find and two bottles of Martha’s homemade cherry wine, and went into the tack room.
Mama is right; the frost is hard this year. The old stove in the loft still works well, but even so, Sascha told me that his men spend most of their time huddled under as many layers of clothes as they can find. The tack room was freezing. It is almost as cold in there as it is outside.
I offered to sneak Sascha up to my room and bed, but he insisted that with the new guards having keys to the house it was too dangerous, so we nestled together under the horse blankets after he had passed most of the food and wine through the trap-door to the others.
His unselfishness gives me one more reason to love him, but I wish he’d eat more of the food I bring and not hand everything over to his men. No one knows what lies ahead, but one thing is certain. We are all going to need every gram of strength we possess.
For the second time we dared to discuss the future. Sascha suggested that if the Russians break through the German lines and invade East Prussia, I give him and his men horses and a cart so they can make a run for the Russian Front, taking me and Erich with them. I reminded him that, apart from Erich, I had Mama, Minna, Martha, and Marius to care for, and the Russian army wouldn’t feel well-disposed towards a party of German women and two boys, especially if they knew that one of the women was the daughter-in-law of General von Letteberg and the smallest boy his grandson.
Then Sascha began to weave even crazier daydreams and, wrapped in his arms, warm and cosy under the blankets, with a glass of cherry wine inside me, I allowed myself to believe they were possible.
He talked of heading for the coast, stealing a boat, sailing to neutral Sweden and finding a house there, something small and cosy, like the summerhouse by the lake. We would live there with Erich and the baby, seeing no one and living off the land. He would use the boat to fish in the sea and in winter he would hunt for deer. We would keep a few chickens and a milk cow or two, and grow our own vegetables.
It was an enchanting fantasy and a wonderful Christmas present, but I am more afraid than ever. I try to hide my fears from Sascha, but he knows me too well. It is impossible for me to keep any secrets from him. Soon it will be another year, 1945. It should be a happy one with a new baby to look forward to, but I am frightened for Erich, Irena and the children, Mama, Germany, and Sascha and his men. What will it bring?
Charlotte made a wry face as she fingered the following pages. They were of a coarser, thinner paper with a crêpe-like surface. Torn from a notebook she had been given when she had been conscripted, she had sewn them into the diary the day after Germany had surrendered. She pictured herself as she had been, sitting in a corner of the strange farmhouse kitchen, stabbing holes with a needle she had borrowed from the farmer’s wife, and tying the loose papers together with a thread torn from the hem of the uniform she no longer needed.
Closing the book, she lay back on the pillows. She looked at the clock. Eight o’clock. Laura didn’t want to breakfast until ten. She could sleep for an hour. She even closed her eyes but her diary had evoked memories too vivid and real to ignore.
Once again she was in Grunwaldsee. Saturday, 3 January 1945. She had been helping Martha peel vegetables in the kitchen. It was snowing so heavily there had been no point in trying to do any outdoor work. The Russians were cleaning the stables, and both she and Martha flinched at the intermittent swish of riding crops interspersed with shouts from the guards. The new guards beat and humiliated the prisoners continually and mercilessly, but they never touched Sascha or Leon. Sascha had told her that it was an old trick: give the officers ‘soft’ treatment and in time the men under their command will turn on them. But in this case it had backfired. Sascha’s platoon had followed him and Leon into the hell of the prison camp, entrusted them with their lives, and that trust had been rewarded with survival. The respect Sascha’s men bore for him and Leon couldn’t be so easily eroded.
After everyone in the house went to bed that night, she had smuggled gauze and iodine into the loft. The brandy bottle had been emptied months before, but she had taken a bottle of rough, homemade vodka that one of the estate’s Polish workers had given Martha in gratitude for taking a pan of chicken broth to his sick wife. Sascha had pulled the cork with his teeth and taken a draught, before passing it, the bandages and the bottle of iodine through the hatch. After he closed it they had curled up together, shivering under the horse blankets.
‘I’m sorry.’ She hadn’t had to explain why. ‘Are your men badly hurt?’
‘Battered, bruised and bleeding, but they’ll live. I wish the beasts wouldn’t always pick on the youngest. The skin on their backs is in shreds.’ He had clenched his fists. ‘I want to kill those bastards …’ He looked at her and his anger died. ‘“A word of kindness is better than a fat pie” – you will give me many kind words, won’t you, my love?’
‘Yes. And thank you for another of your Russian proverbs. There is a lot of truth in them.’ She kissed the tip of his nose, because his mouth was covered by the blankets.
‘Especially in “All ages are submissive to love”. I will still love you fifty years from now.’
She had clung tightly to him, too afraid to look so far into the future. ‘If we’re still alive, we’ll be old, gnarled, bent and grey.’
‘And living in peace, if only because Stalin and Hitler will have run out of soldiers to do their fighting for them.’
‘“Eternal peace lasts only until the next war,”’ she said, quoting another of the sayings he had taught her. ‘My father fought in the last war to end all wars. Twenty years after they signed the peace treaties, Hitler started this one. How long before the next?’
He sensed her despair and tried to comfort her. ‘We will survive, Charlotte.’
‘How can you be so sure, Sascha?’
‘Because of this little girl.’ He moved his hands beneath the blanket, closed them over her stomach and smiled when he felt the baby kick.
‘It’s a boy.’
‘A girl,’ he corrected, ‘who will carry our love into the new world, which will be built on the rubble of the old. Want to dream?’
‘Of our house,’ she agreed.
He pulled her head down on to his chest. He knew it was the position she liked best because she could hear his heart beating beneath her. ‘I think we should paint all the inside walls white as well as the outside ones.’
‘And the furniture?’
‘We’ll paint it red and green. Red in the children’s rooms, and green in the living and dining rooms. And we’ll fill the children’s bookcase with all the fairy stories we can find – Russian, German …’
‘And you’ll paint pictures on the wall of the nursery.’
‘Of hobgoblins and fierce bears.’ He made a ferocious face.
Forgetting caution, she had laughed. ‘I won’t let you, they’ll frighten the children.’
‘Our house will be so quiet, so peaceful and so full of love that we will have to invent danger to teach them that there are some things they should be afraid of.’
‘If only that could be true.’
‘You doubt our dream world?’
‘Never,’ she had lied.
‘Good, because it’s time we discussed what fruit bushes to plant in the garden. Redcurrants and blackcurrants, of course, and raspberries –’
‘No gooseberries – they are too prickly.’
‘No gooseberries.’
The air in the tack room was freezing, the hay and horse blanket bed so cosy, she didn’t leave until three o’clock, and even then Sascha had tried to hold her back. Had they both sensed they had spent their last evening together?
Morning dawned late, as cold, grey and snow-filled as the day before. The date was etched on her mind: Sunday, 4 January 1945, her last day in her childhood home. Lunch laid out on the kitchen table: a thin carrot and cabbage soup.
She remembered Erich’s face: white, pinched, with his blue eyes enormous above his hollow cheeks as he looked at her over the rim of his bowl. She had been cutting bread, Martha had been setting the salt and pepper on the table, and Minna unfolding Erich’s napkin for him. Then Marius had flung open the door that led in from the yard and shouted that the Wehrmacht had retreated and the Russians were in Allenstein.
