The Blind Side of the Heart (2 page)

It had been such hard work, deciphering that letter. If only he’d been able to read better, as well as he could now almost a year later, at the age of nearly eight, perhaps he could have believed in the power of the letter to protect him, but the letter had failed, Peter hadn’t been able to finish reading it.

When he set off for the dairy and Herr Fuchs the teacher that morning, everything was all right and he didn’t need a letter from any father to help him through the night now, not ever. The war was over and today they were leaving, Peter and his mother. Peter saw a tin can in the gutter and kicked it. It made a wonderful clattering sound as it scudded along. The horror would be over, it would be left behind, not a single dream would ever remind them of it. Peter remembered the first air raids in winter, and once again he felt his friend Robert’s hand as they scrambled over the low, white-painted fence at the roadside. They were about to cross the street near the Berlin Gate and jump down into the ditch by the newspaper stand. Their shoes had slipped on the ice, they had skidded. Something must have hit his friend, severing his hand from his body. But Peter had run on alone over the distance they had yet to go, as if he had been speeded up when his friend was torn away from him. He had felt the firm, warm hand, and it was a long time before he let go of it. When he realized, later, that he was still holding Robert’s hand he couldn’t just drop it in the ditch, he had taken it home with him. His mother had opened the door to him. She had made him sit on a chair and encouraged him to unclench his fingers. Then she crouched down on the floor in front of him, holding one of the white fabric napkins with her initials on it, and waited; she had stroked and kneaded his hands until he let go.

To this day Peter wondered what she had done with it. He gave the tin can a hefty kick, sending it rolling over to the other side of the street, almost all the way to the dairy. It still felt as if he were holding Robert’s hand – then, next moment, as if the hand were holding him, and as if his father referred solely to that incident in the letter. Yet he hadn’t seen his father for two years; he had never had a chance to tell him about the hand.

Last summer, that August night when the bombs dropped, when Peter had read his father’s letter, he’d been able to decipher only every third or fourth sentence. The letter had been no help. His hands had been shaking. His father wanted to do what was right by the mother of his son, he wrote, he would be frank, he had met another woman. There were steps to be heard on the staircase and another little sound so close that, for the fraction of a second, it stopped your ears; then came a crash and screaming. Hastily, Peter skimmed the remaining lines. They were to be brave, he was sure the war would soon be won. He, Peter’s father, would probably not be able to come and see them any more, a man’s life called for decisive action, but he would soon send more money. Peter had heard a noise at the door of the apartment, hard to say if it was a shell howling, or a siren, or a human being. He had folded up the letter and put it back under the pillow. He was trembling. The smoke stung his eyes, making them stream, and waves of heat from the burning city were coming closer.

Someone took hold of him and carried him downstairs to the cellar on his shoulders. When he and the others crawled out into the open air, hours later, it was light outside. The stairs up to their apartment were still there, only the banisters had come away and were lying on the steps. There was smoke in the air. Peter climbed the stairs on all fours, had to clamber over something black, then he pushed open the door of the apartment and sat down at the kitchen table. The sun was shining right on the table, shining so brightly that he had to close his eyes. He was thirsty. For some time he felt too weak to stand up and go over to the sink. When he did turn on the tap he heard only a gurgling and no water came out. It could be hours before his mother was home. Peter waited. He fell asleep with his head on the table. His mother woke him. She took his head in both hands and pressed it against her, and only when he put his arms round her did she let go. The door of the apartment was open. Peter saw the black thing in the stairwell. He thought of the screaming last night. His mother opened a cupboard, threw sheets and towels over her shoulder, took candles out of a drawer and said she had to go straight out again. She told Peter to help her carry things; they needed bandages and alcohol for use as a disinfectant. They climbed over the charred body outside the door of their apartment. It was the shoes more than anything that told Peter this had been a human being, the body was so shrivelled, and he saw a large gold pocket watch. Something that was almost a feeling of happiness flooded through him that morning, for the watch couldn’t possibly have belonged to Frau Kozinska.

The photograph of the handsome man in the fine suit, leaning on the shiny black bodywork of the car with one arm elegantly crooked and glancing up at the sky, clear-eyed, as if he were looking at the future or at least at birds in the air, still stood in its frame on the glass-fronted kitchen cabinet. Peter’s mother said that now the war was over his father would come and take them to Frankfurt, where he was building a big bridge over the river Main. Then Peter would be able to go to a proper school, said his mother, and it made him uncomfortable to hear her telling these lies. Why doesn’t he write, asked Peter in a moment of rebellion. The post isn’t working any more, replied his mother, not since the Russians came. Peter looked down, feeling ashamed of himself for his question. From now on he waited, with his mother, day after day. After all, it was possible that his father might change his mind.

One evening, when Peter’s mother was at work in the hospital, he had looked under her pillow. He wanted to make sure. The letter had disappeared. Peter had opened his mother’s desk with a sharp knife, but he found only paper and envelopes and a few Reichsmarks that she kept in a small box. He had searched his mother’s wardrobe, he had lifted her ironed, neatly folded aprons and her underwear. There were two letters from her sister Elsa there, sent from Bautzen. Elsa’s handwriting was such a scrawl that Peter could read only the opening words: Dear little Alice. He hadn’t found any more of his father’s letters, not a single one.

This morning, when Peter entered the dairy, Herr Fuchs the teacher and his sister were not there. The children waited for them in vain and looked at the other people who came into the shop, first diffidently, then boldly, and opened all the cupboards, crates, tubs and cans. The people cursed and swore, there wasn’t a drop of sour cream left, not a bit of butter. An elderly lady kicked a cupboard and the door fell off.

As soon as the last of the grown-ups had left the shop the oldest boy knelt down on the floor, expertly lifted one of the tiles, and underneath it there was a cool storage space. One of the boys whistled and the girls nodded appreciatively. But the space was empty. Whatever had been inside it, butter or money, wasn’t there any more. When the boy looked up and his disapproving glance happened to fall on Peter, he asked why he was all dressed up like that. Peter looked down at himself in his best shirt and only now did he remember that he had to be home in good time. That was the last thing his mother had told him.

Even in the stairwell, he could hear the pots and pans clattering. His mother had been on night shift for the last week and spent her days cleaning up the apartment, as if it had ever been dirty; she polished the floors, dusted the chairs and cupboards, cleaned the windows. The door of the apartment wasn’t locked and Peter opened it. He saw three men round the kitchen table, and his mother half sitting, half lying on it. The bare behind of one of the men was moving back and forth level with Peter’s eyes, and his fleshy buttocks wobbled so much that Peter wanted to laugh. But the soldiers were holding his mother firmly. Her skirt was torn, her eyes were wide open, Peter didn’t know if she could see him or was looking straight through him. Her mouth was wide open too, but no sound came out. One of the soldiers noticed Peter, held the waistband of his trousers closed and tried to push him out of the door. Peter called for his mother. Mother, he cried, Mother. The soldier kicked his legs, hard, so that Peter collapsed outside the door. One foot kicked his backside and then the door was closed.

Peter sat on the stairs and waited. He heard Frau Kozinska singing:
A bird on a green bough sat singing its song, on a cold wintry night, yet it sang loud and long
. But this was summer and Peter was thirsty, and the trains would soon be going. He wanted to leave with his mother. Peter pressed his lips firmly together. He looked at the door and the gap where the lock had once been. There were still splinters of wood on the floor. Peter’s teeth nibbled scraps of thin skin off his lips. Soldiers had visited his mother once before, only a few days ago; they’d had to kick the door down, knocking the lock out. They had stayed all day, drinking and bawling. Peter had kept on hammering at the door. Someone must have pushed something up against it on the inside, perhaps there was a chair wedged under the handle. Peter had peered through the hole left by the missing lock, but there was such thick smoke inside that he couldn’t make out anything. So Peter had sat on the stairs, waiting, as he was sitting now. You couldn’t sharpen your teeth. Peter carefully chewed a scrap of skin that he had nibbled off. As he bit his lips he rubbed both forefingers over his gums. Although his mother kept his nails as short as possible, he always managed to loosen the skin over his gums with his forefinger, using the place where the nail lay embedded.

When the door finally opened last time the soldiers had stumbled out into the stairwell one by one. They went downstairs and knocked at Frau Kozinska’s door. The last of them had turned and called something up to Peter in German: I have a lad like you at home, keep an eye on your mother. And the soldier, smiling, had wagged one forefinger. When Peter went into the smoke-filled kitchen he had seen his mother bending over in a corner of the kitchen, smoothing out a sheet. You’re a big boy now, she had said without looking at Peter, you can’t sleep in my bed any more.

She hadn’t looked at him, unlike today. He had never seen such an expression in his mother’s eyes before. They were icy.

It was hard for Peter to wait outside the door. He stood there, he sat down on the stairs and stood up again. Peter tried to see something through the gap left by the lock when it was broken out. He stood on tiptoe on the last step and leaned forward. That way he could easily lose his balance. Peter felt impatient, his stomach was grumbling. Whenever his mother was on night shift she came home in the morning, woke him to get ready for school and had a meal waiting when he came home at midday. She made soup with water, salt and fish-heads. Later she took the fish-heads out and put some sorrel in the soup. She said it was healthy and nourishing. Very occasionally, when she had got hold of a little flour, she made it into small dumplings and simmered them in the soup. There’d been no potatoes since last winter. There was no meat, no lentils, no cabbage. Even in the hospital they had nothing but fish to feed to the children. Peter’s eyes were fixed, as they had been before, on the closed door and the hole left by the lock. He sat down on the top step. He remembered that after last time his mother had asked him to go and find a new lock. There were locks everywhere, in every building, in every godforsaken apartment. But Peter had forgotten.

Now Peter was chewing at the ragged skin round his thumbnail, where you could pull it off in long, thin strips. If he hadn’t forgotten about the lock, his mother could have locked the door. Peter’s eyes wandered over the charred door frame in the abandoned apartment next door. You could see the marks left by the fire everywhere; the walls, ceilings and floors were black. He and his mother had been lucky, only the apartment above them and their old neighbour’s apartment next door had burned out.

Suddenly the door opened and two soldiers came out. They were clapping each other on the back, in high good humour. Peter wondered if he could go into the apartment. He had counted three men before, so one of them must still be inside. Peter quietly got to his feet, went to the apartment door and opened it a crack. He heard sobbing. The kitchen seemed to be empty. This time none of the soldiers had been smoking; it all looked as clean and comfortable as it had in the morning. His mother’s cleaning rag lay on the kitchen dresser. Turning, Peter saw the naked soldier behind the door. Legs drawn up, head in his hands, the man sat on the floor sobbing. Peter thought it a strange sight, because the soldier was wearing a helmet, although otherwise he was entirely naked, and the war had been over for weeks.

Peter left the soldier sitting behind the door and went into the next room, where his mother was just closing the wardrobe. She was wearing her outdoor coat, she took the small case off the bed. Peter wanted to say he was sorry he’d forgotten the lock, sorry he hadn’t been able to help her, but he got out only a single word and that was: Mother. He reached for her hand. She shook his off and went ahead of him.

They passed the sobbing soldier sitting on the kitchen floor behind the front door of the apartment, they went downstairs, they walked straight along the street to the fish quay. Peter’s mother, with her long legs, walked so fast that he had trouble keeping up with her. He hopped and skipped along, and as he scurried after her, almost running, a great feeling of happiness came over him. He was filled by the certainty that they would be catching the train today, they would be setting out on their great journey, the journey west. Peter guessed that they wouldn’t be going to Frankfurt, perhaps they’d go to Bautzen and his mother’s sister, but first they would travel in the direction of Berlin. Once upon a time his mother used to tell him, as he dropped off to sleep, about the river, the beautiful market place in Bautzen, the wonderful smell in her parents’ printing works. Peter clapped his hands and began to whistle, until his mother suddenly stood still and told him to stop it. Once again Peter tried to take her hand, but his mother asked if he couldn’t see that she had the case and her handbag to carry.