Restitution (20 page)

‘Then they’re fools.’ Her voice sounded harsh. She remembered what Papi had said, what he’d left unsaid, before he was arrested.

He nodded at his wife. ‘See? She’s honest. An honest German.’ He sounded amazed.

‘Thank you.’ There didn’t seem any more to say. She slumped back in the Opel wondering if she was the first person in the family to take a maid’s job and what Aunt
Friederika would have said. Under her fingers she could make out the shape of Gregor’s mouth organ in her dress pocket.

The work was light compared with what she’d done at home on the farm. Each morning, after she’d cooked their breakfast, the Whites would drive to the displaced
persons camp where they worked with orphans, writing reports on their condition and arranging for those who had homes to return to them. Joseph White had been a psychologist in New York, he told
Alix. His area of expertise was assessing children. Now he was trying to help the more traumatized before they left the camp. Emily had been a children’s nurse in Philadelphia.

While they were at work Alix would clear the table, wash dishes and make beds. Then she had time to do her own laundry – they’d given her a couple of maternity smocks – read
and rest. ‘If you want to write letters, I’ll help you get them delivered,’ Joseph told her. ‘I know it’s hard making contact with family right now.’

She’d nodded and said nothing.

Later in the morning she’d pick currants or raspberries and collect eggs from the hens, trying not to remember how she’d done these things at home with Mami, Jana and Lena. The
laundry van delivered clean sheets, smelling of unfamiliar American detergent and hot metal. Alix remembered how Lena used to hang their washed sheets on a line by the rosemary and lavender bushes
in the kitchen garden so they’d bring the scent of summer into the bedrooms.

A young man the Whites called Frank, who spoke English with an accent Alix could barely understand, drove meat supplies to the house two or three times a week: tins of pork, veal cutlets, once
or twice even a fresh chicken. Alix stared at the food, which apparently she would be allowed to share. ‘Second trimester; calories are important now.’ Joseph nodded at her stomach as
she laid the table for lunch. ‘Red meat, vegetables and fruit—’ She must have made a sound expressing her amazement. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘Most Germans don’t know what red meat looks like any more.’

‘Most Germans don’t
deserve
to know.’ He peered at her. ‘Heard any more about your father?’ She’d told him about Papi and he’d helped her send
enquiries to the Red Cross.

‘Nothing.’

‘That’s too bad. What your father did was remarkable.’

‘They didn’t accomplish very much.’ She tried to keep the tremor out of her voice. ‘All they had to do was detonate a bomb in a briefcase and kill one evil monster. It
might have ended the war. Then some of them were
stupid
enough to write down the names of those involved.’ She put a hand to her mouth.

‘But they nearly managed, you know. Even without killing him. There nearly was a coup.’

‘Nearly wasn’t good enough.’ She, a von Matke, was going to lose control, here, among strangers. She struggled with the flood of anger and grief which threatened her.

He pulled out a chair for himself and motioned to her to sit at the table as well.

‘You resent your father for not succeeding?’ His eyes were soft but Alix observed a cool flicker of professional interest in them.

‘My father wasn’t a practical man. He could start things but never finish them.’ She told Joseph about the clocks, how Papi used to open them up to mend them and find he
couldn’t always replace all the parts. ‘Some of the other conspirators seem to have had the same problem – they couldn’t complete what they’d started.’ Mami
hadn’t told her much about the reasons for the failure of the plot. Perhaps she hadn’t known much herself. They’d pieced some of the story together by listening to the radio
broadcasts and reading between the lines. ‘The signals people didn’t even know what was going on. They could have succeeded if they’d organized it better.’

Joseph leaned forward and touched her hand. ‘He was brave, Alix. Remember that.’

‘I’m trying to.’

‘What was his role?’

‘Mami thought he’d made telephone calls to senior officers on the day of the attempt, persuading them not to oppose the coup.’

‘Just being on a list somewhere would have been enough to condemn him,’ Joseph said. ‘And the rest of your family? Your mother? What happened to her?’

She shrugged. She wasn’t going to tell him about that last evening and morning in Alexanderhof. Besides, she tried not to think about Mami. Every time someone came to the door her heart
thumped, half in terror it would be her, half in longing. At least by the time Mami found her, if she ever did, the baby would probably have been born and sent off to a good family in America. Alix
had no intention of talking about Mami to Joseph White. He’d use his professional tricks to expose all those memories Alix was trying so hard to bury. She’d avoid Joseph from now on. He
was dangerous.

And so was his wife. Emily White watched Alix clear the lunch table. ‘You’re blooming. I bet it’s a boy. They say boys make pregnant women look even more
beautiful.’ A look Alix couldn’t interpret passed over Emily’s plump cheeks. Alix couldn’t work out how old Emily was – early thirties? Joseph looked older, perhaps
the same age as Mami.

Alix stacked the cutlery on top of the plates. ‘Boy or girl, it’s all the same to me. I’ll give it up.’

‘And yet you didn’t. . . You weren’t tempted to do something to stop the pregnancy?’

Alix stared at her. ‘No, it never crossed my mind.’

Americans were very free with their questions. Strange to talk about things so openly after years of being told to watch your tongue.

‘You never talk about what happened. With the soldier.’ Emily’s voice was gentle. ‘It might help. That’s what Joseph does with some of those children, you know. He
tries to get them to talk.’

Alix placed the pile of plates on the tray.

‘You know you can trust me, don’t you, honey?’

She nodded and picked up the tray.

‘You must have been so frightened.’

The tray shook and a salt cellar toppled off. ‘I’m sorry.’ Alix put the tray back on the table.

Emily steered her to a chair. ‘Tell me.’

‘I don’t remember.’ She’d locked the memory up so securely sometimes she thought she’d never remember any of it. Except for handing over her watch, the Patek
Philippe her father had given her for her birthday and which she’d worn every day until it had been taken from her in the forest by a man who thought that she and everything she owned were
his.

Pomerania, February 1945

Where are you, Gregor?
She ran on through the forest, past the spot where she’d hidden from the Russians yesterday when the wagon had been hit. Every now and then
she slowed to listen out for Gregor. He was taking so long. The snowflakes fell less thickly now and the light was turning grey; Pomeranian fog sweeping in from the Baltic.

A tree rustled. A pair of eyes was watching her, Asiatic eyes, slanted, amused. He stood on the other side of the track wearing a blue scarf with his filthy uniform. Alix stared back. For a
second neither made a sound. Then another figure and another joined the first man. They looked at each other and laughed. Even at this distance Alix could smell stale urine and unwashed clothes.
For whole seconds she stared at them.

‘Uhri.’
The first soldier pointed at his wrist.

Then she was running like she’d never run in her life but finding it hard to build up any speed in the knee-deep snow. Each breath tore her lungs. She ran until her heart seemed about to
burst and she had to stop. She crouched by a beech tree. Behind it the ground dipped into a snow-filled hollow. Her best hope. She threw herself into the dip, shovelling snow onto her legs and
torso and covering her face with leaves. The fog would help hide her but if they came close they’d see her. She lay motionless, heart racing, too scared even to pray.

Voices came towards her. It sounded like Russian but might have been some other Soviet language. Whatever it was she knew they were describing what they wanted to do to her: the hunger in their
words was obvious. Closer now. A twig cracked and she held her breath. A pheasant coughed. Alix counted. When she reached two hundred she lifted her head, letting the leaves tumble off, so she
could peer round the beech. She saw them shuffle away, arms round one another’s shoulders. Alix stayed where she was and counted again.

A bottle smashed against a tree trunk; then another.

She let out a long breath. The mist cooled the perspiration on her brow but her tongue was swollen with thirst. In the rucksack there was a glass bottle of water. Still she waited, rubbing her
leg muscles. Papi used to tell her stories about ancient people living deep in the forests, worshipping tree spirits and repelling even the Roman army. Swedes, Poles, Prussians, French, Russians,
the trees had seen them all come and go, sheltering generations of women.

Alix took off her rucksack and pulled out the bottle, almost weeping as liquid ran down her dry throat. She stood and brushed snow from her coat. The fog hung round the trees like a grey
veil.

As she stepped onto the path, a reddened, calloused palm clasped her mouth from behind without a sound. Coarse wool scratched her cheek. She gagged at the reek of him.

‘Uhri
!’ He jabbed at the Patek Philippe. She tugged it off with her right hand and passed it over her shoulder to him. He spun her round to face him and held the watch in
front of her, grinning. She turned, hoping that she could sprint for the trees, but as though reading her mind he grabbed her arm with his free hand. A wave of his gun showed her what would happen
if she tried to run away again. He tried to fasten her watch on his wrist but the strap wasn’t long enough. He scowled at the watch, before stuffing it into a pocket. Perhaps he’d swap
it with a comrade. He let go of her arm and offered her a vodka bottle.

‘No.’ She stepped back but he shoved the bottle at her. ‘You, drink.’ And she took it, tipping it up and letting the vodka brush her lips.

‘Please.’ If only she’d studied Russian instead of French and English, hopeless, useless languages.

He grabbed back his bottle and emptied it in a single gulp. Alix twisted round. Again she wasn’t quick enough. He grabbed her by the hair. ‘You
stay.’
He pointed at the
ground. ‘There.’

‘No,
bitte.’
Her heart would surely burst out of her mouth.

He pushed her down onto the snow. She felt the coldness penetrate the back of her breeches. He was tugging at his own trousers with one hand, in an instant the other was round her throat,
threatening to throttle her if she moved. Alix looked up and saw the silver-frosted bough of a birch tree above her, back-lit through the mist by the sun’s ruby early morning rays. He was
tugging at the belt of her breeches now. She knew what she had to do. Come what may, she had to keep looking up at that silver branch. It had to fill her mind, her world. From now on her body was
just a husk; the real Alix would float above it to the sanctity of the tree, untouched by what was happening on the cold earth. All of this flashed through her mind, as though other women were
calling up through the generations to help her. This scene had been enacted in these forests so many times in the past: soldiers speaking many languages but always the women pinned to the ground,
bile in their mouths, lying in their own urine as they shivered and pleaded. She was just one in a pattern going back centuries.

He was cursing to himself, apparently incapable of completing the act. His sour smell filled her senses. He released the hand round her neck and picked up his vodka bottle, gazing at it as the
idea took shape in his mind. ‘You still now.’ The bottle moved down her body.

The silver bough waved at her gently, as though promising it would not abandon her.

Near Frankfurt, October 1945

Emily waited outside the room while the doctor, a young man from Milwaukee, examined Alix with a grave face, asking her questions in a low voice. Had Joseph White filled him in
on Papi’s role in the Bomb Plot? He stood up. ‘You sustained some tissue damage when you were, er . . .’

‘He stuck a bottle . . . into me . . . because he’d drunk a lot of vodka and didn’t seem able to manage anything else. Then he smashed the bottle and cut me.’ She showed
him the mark on her upper wrist.

‘Thank God he didn’t use the broken bottle on you.’

‘After that, fortunately, he passed out before he could do me any more harm.’ She’d had eight months to rehearse a way of explaining what had happened and was surprised how
matter-of-fact she sounded.

The doctor swallowed. ‘So the baby . . .?’ He looked down at his notes. ‘I see.’ He’d have noted that she wore no ring on her finger. ‘You were lucky there
seems to be no infection, just inflammation.’ He washed his hands in the little sink. ‘I suppose I could give you penicillin, just in case, but it’ll be safer to wait until after
you’ve delivered.’

Delivered.
As though the baby were an eagerly awaited parcel.

Alix spent hours in the Whites’ library, reading the books the German owners had left behind when the Americans requisitioned the house. In the long afternoons there was
little else to do after all the washing, ironing and mending was finished and it was too early to start supper.

She found herself wandering through the empty rooms, staring at family photographs, wondering where all those people were now. Sometimes she’d sit for hours clasping Gregor’s mouth
organ, touching its worn metal surface. She became greedy for contact with the outside world. She chatted to Frank the driver, asking him if he’d heard news from the east. When would the
Russians leave? What was this about a wonder weapon? Frank had regarded her with suspicion at first, but as weeks passed and her English became more fluent he started to talk back. ‘You speak
real good American,’ he told her once as he brought in bags of flour and sugar.