Interpreters Page 15

  (LONG SILENCE)

  Go on. If you can.

  They took me to a Russian officer who spoke some Dutch. And it’s amazing how, with a gun at your head, you can suddenly become fluent in a language you’ve barely spoken a word of for thirteen years. The officer was keen to show off his Dutch. He opened a drawer full of watches. ‘Look! You want one? Just choose. Look at mine.’ And as his jacket rode up, like this, I could see five or six watches on each arm. It was chaos outside – soldiers were chasing pigs round the yard. There was all this squealing and shouting. Then there were gunshots and then silence. And then the officer asked me if I could cook. I’d have to do it outside as the stove in the kitchen was broken. And so a young soldier butchered the warm pigs and I cooked the pork on a fire in a field behind the farmhouse while the officers sat inside drinking vodka. And very carefully with a knife I made a hole in the pocket of my SS man’s trousers, and very carefully I slid my identity card down the inside of my trousers to my shoe and into the fire. It curled and went black and then was gone.

  And then?

  And then he let me go, the Russian with the watches. There was nothing left for me to cook and they were moving on. He was sorry I didn’t want to take a watch. He shook his head very sadly as I turned to go. They weren’t all as decent as he was.

  (LONG SILENCE)

  Somewhere in a forest near a hollow tree are quite a few of my teeth.

  Your teeth?

  Maybe somewhere in Mongolia there’s an old man with a faint bite mark on his hand and a vague memory of a very thin, half-naked girl running into the forest with her black woollen trousers in her hand. Maybe he can remember blood dripping from the butt of his rifle. I’d like to think he remembers.

  (LONG SILENCE)

  And what happened next?

  On the 31st of May, I walked into a Red Cross camp. ‘You know the war ended on May the 8th,’ a Red Cross nurse told me as she took off all my clothes – my SS man’s trousers, my pullover and jacket – and burned them. Then she cut off all my hair to get rid of the lice and washed me in disinfectant. And she put some antiseptic on my infected, bleeding gums. I stood there in a towel holding the only things in the world that I owned – a little wooden angel and a red leather notebook. The nurse gave me some underwear and a cotton dress. I remember it had blue and pink flowers on it. She asked me where I’d come from, and when I said Berlin, and that I’d been walking for six weeks, trying to get to Holland, she told me she’d deloused another Dutch woman a few days ago who’d said the same thing and who was probably still somewhere in the camp. She said I’d need to talk to the Americans. I wouldn’t be able to get into Holland without identity papers or a passport. But all I could think of was finding my mother.

  (SILENCE)

  And did you? Find your mother?

  I didn’t recognise her at first. I walked past a bald woman with fresh scars on her face and neck sitting a little way apart from the others. If she hadn’t called out my name, I would never have seen my mother again. We got hold of enough papers to get us out of the camp – I can’t remember how exactly. Then we managed to get a lift in the back of an army truck to the border, and so we ended up back in Holland, where we’d come from all those years ago. We walked to my grandparents’ house, and rang the bell, and they came to the door together and told us to go round the back if we wanted some food. It was only when my mother spoke that they realised who we were. And how pleased they must have been to see me, my grandmother and her neighbours! The German with the missing teeth and shaven head in a borrowed dress.

  But your grandfather must have been happy to see you?

  He was. Whenever my grandmother was out of the way, he’d come and find me and take my hand and squeeze it or stroke my head.

  And you stayed there?

  Where else could we go? We had nothing. I was under house arrest for a while. Then I had to report to the police station every day. If I kept out of the way of my grandmother, life wasn’t too bad.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The door to Angie and Geoff’s bedroom is open. I go in and look out over the green. I shut my eyes and walk out into the Close to school. Out of the front door, round to the right. At number three were the Fletchers. Tomas, a boy of about my age, Mrs Fletcher who was big, blonde and Swedish, and Mr Fletcher whom we rarely saw. Tomas used to do a lot of naughty things, often involving damage to other children’s property or bodies. He’d probably have a label of some kind now. And medication, too, no doubt. ‘Wait till your father gets home, Tomas!’ his mother would screech out of the front door in Swedish. Or at least that’s what Tomas told us she was shouting as he sat with us on the green, ignoring her, eating flying saucers and sherbet fountains. Max and I wondered if Tomas’s father minded being given the job of beating his son on his return from work. What if he’d rather sit down with a drink and the newspaper than get his belt out? And, if they were going to beat him, why didn’t Mrs Fletcher do it herself? She was a lot bigger than Mr Fletcher.

  At number two was a family with three children. The middle child had his leg in a calliper, I remember, but I can’t recall their names or anything much else about them. I don’t think they played out the front very often. I remember the boy at number one – Brian Nunn – who went to Max’s school and was given the task of escorting us for part of the journey when I first started school. This he did with some considerable reluctance, striding off ahead of us and occasionally pausing to check that we were still dawdling behind him, then striding off again before we could catch up and embarrass him further. When we first moved to the Close, Brian was a smartly turned-out twelve-year-old, with a neat side parting, whose shiny black shoes were always tidily lined up in his parents’ glass porch. Max and I watched with interest as, over the years, Brian transformed into a Hell’s Angel, albeit a fairly benign one, and the shoes were replaced by huge leather boots with silver buckles. We thought it was rather nice for Brian’s parents that Hell’s Angels still remembered to take their shoes off inside. We quite missed Brian when he left home. At eighteen, he was no longer embarrassed by us and used to talk us through the finer points of his Harley Davidson as he polished it on Saturday mornings – though I’m sure the rest of the residents of Tenterden Close, if not his parents, were relieved when he finally packed his panniers and roared off for the open road.

  Coming home, I’d walk the other way round the Close. At number eight was the Heaney family, Mr and Mrs Heaney and four girls, each a year apart, who all went to the local convent school. Over the years, all four had a crush on Max, who tolerated their notes and gifts and invitations to come out and play with his usual good grace. At number seven were Mr and Mrs Tate, a childless couple in their fifties, who sometimes, in the summer, let us use their very small swimming pool. Mr Tate was a bit of a handyman and had built a bar out of shiny knotted pine in the corner of their sitting room. Drambuie, Martini, sherry, crème de menthe, curaçao, advocaat. I loved the colours as much as the exotic names. Sometimes we’d perch on the leather-look and chrome bar stools and Mr Tate would produce multicoloured drinks from the mixers he kept in the fridge, finishing them off with a parasol or a glacé cherry or a pale green olive on a stick. ‘Bottoms up!’ he’d say with a wink as he handed them over to us and downed his own rather less virgin cocktail. I thought the Tates were the most glamorous people in the world. Mr Tate had twinkly eyes and a neat little moustache. He always wore a navy blazer and cream slacks and often sported a silk cravat. Mrs Tate clacked about the house in high-heeled sandals and caftans, long fake eyelashes and shiny fake nails. They seemed to have a lot more fun than the rest of the grown-ups I came across. They were the first people in the Close to own a colour television; eventually they had to pretend to be out to stop the hordes of children ringing their bell, begging to be allowed to watch Crackerjack in colour.

  The Feelys lived at number six. Peter and his sister Rosalind, who were our best friends in the Close. Our friendship survived my accidental assault on
Peter with a rounders bat and his impressive black eye which his mother, rather inexplicably, smeared with butter. And Rosalind’s patient, but ultimately unsuccessful, wooing of Max. Our next-door neighbours were the Croziers. The boys, Michael and John, were boarders somewhere in Kent so we didn’t see much of them. Sometimes, during the holidays, Peter, Rosalind, Max and I would call on them to come out and play. Mrs Crozier would open the door a few inches and call into the house, ‘It’s the little Jews from next door.’ I wasn’t sure that that was very polite and even less sure that the Feelys really were Jewish.

  I look around the room. It is as messy as the rest of the house. Angie’s bedside table is piled high with clothing catalogues and women’s magazines. I pick up the chunky catalogue at the top of the stack and flick through it, despising the perfect long-haired mummies with their banal aphorisms, their fitted floral skirts, their cardigans sporting ‘fun buttons’, their brightly coloured ballet pumps and co-ordinating, laughing, tousle-haired children. Despising the smug daddies with their moleskin trousers and jaunty shirts, their shiny white smiles, their manly grins and chiselled jaws. I want to take a thick black pen and cancel them all out. I want to add wrinkles and worry lines, and spots and tears. A weak chin or two.

  I realise that I’ve not had anything to eat all day.

  On the floor beside the bed is a pile of newspapers. And there it is. That colour supplement. Unread. About four from the top.

  There is a note of caution, almost anxiety, in Susanna’s voice when she rings. So different from her usual upbeat, confident tone.

  ‘Have you read it yet, Mum?’

  ‘Well, just the introd –’ I begin.

  ‘It’s just that when you didn’t call…’ she interrupts.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to –’

  ‘Some things came out a bit… not as I meant them to, really. They sound sort of critical. It’s mostly just the way he edited the interview. You know what journalists are like. He wouldn’t let me see it before they published it – that’s the policy apparently. Even though he’s a friend of George’s. And I had to work really hard on Max to get him to agree to be interviewed. He wasn’t at all keen at the beginning.’

  I recognise the need for absolution in Susanna’s voice, know that for the first time in her twenty-six years she desperately wants me to push her fair hair from her face, to see what is written on her forehead and make everything all right. It is a new feeling for her and not one with which she feels at all comfortable. I should feel pity for her, but I realise with a rush of shame that what I feel is something akin to triumph – that finally my daughter would know what it had always been like for me. What it could have been like for her if I had arranged our lives differently.

  ‘It’s great. Really interesting.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ The relief in Susanna’s voice is tangible. ‘There’s been lots more interest in the business too, this past couple of days. So that’s good, isn’t it?’

  ‘Look, Susanna. I’ve got to go and give a lecture now. I’m really sorry. We’ll talk about this properly another time. Give my love to George.’

  ‘OK, Mum. I’ll see you soon. And thanks.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For being so good about the article. I knew you would be. It’s just… I really don’t want you to feel –’

  ‘Off you go and have fun.’

  ‘OK. Say hi to Dan from me when he gets back from India.’

  I put down the phone and go not to give a lecture but back to bed, leaving the magazine unread on the floor. Would my mother count this as a white lie, or one of those bigger, more lethal ones? I wonder, as I pull the duvet over my head. I think back to that hot summer when I finally gave in and brought Susanna to England to live with Max and the rest of his ‘family’. I stayed with them for a few days, trying to work out who in the big old house was related to whom, how it all worked and how anything got done. I agreed with Max that I’d leave Susanna with him for a fortnight and then come back to see how things were working out. I was desperate for it to be cold and rainy, for her to change her mind about living in England, but the sun continued to shine in a cloudless sky and there was no phone call from Susanna begging me to come and collect her. I returned a couple of days earlier than arranged and, as I walked up the garden path, I heard music coming from the back of the house. I walked round into the garden and there were Max and Susanna playing violin and flute duets. Susanna saw me first, smiling at me with her eyes. I stood and waited until they had finished, then went and put my arms round her. She buried her head in my neck and hugged me very tightly. ‘I’ve missed you, Mum,’ she said. But somehow I knew then that she wouldn’t be going back with me.

  ‘How come you never told me Max could play the violin?’ Susanna asked me over dinner.

  ‘He hasn’t played since he was about seventeen. I thought you sold your violin, Max?’

  ‘I did. I borrowed this one from the music department so I could play with Susanna. She’s really good.’

  ‘So’s he, Mum. Really good. I always wondered how come I could possibly be musical with you as a mother.’

  ‘And now it all makes sense,’ I said.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  XIV

  The good die young, they say. My mother died in the winter of 1947. We never spoke of those weeks in the forest. I guessed what had happened to her but I couldn’t ask and she never told me. We shared a room in my grandparents’ house and she used to cry out in her sleep and wake up drenched in sweat. Night after night. And I’d know what she was dreaming about. I was having the same dream. There are some things you just can’t talk about. You think it makes it better, talking about things. But there are some things you can’t bear to even think about. And if you can’t even think of them, how can you begin to talk about them?

  And your grandparents?

  My grandfather did his best to make me feel welcome. Unlike my grandmother, he didn’t care what the neighbours thought about them harbouring an emaciated, shaven-headed German.

  (LONG SILENCE)

  Are you all right?

  And then he died. About a year and a half after we moved in with them. He had become quite confused in those last months of his life, but he recognised me right up to the end. He’d lie in his bed, stroking my hand and calling me his little radish.

  Have a tissue.

  Thanks. My grandmother waited until my mother had died before she allowed herself the pleasure of informing me that my grandfather was actually no blood relative of mine.

  What do you mean?

  Just that. He wasn’t really my grandfather.

  Who was he, then?

  The best friend of a Jewish lawyer who got my grandmother pregnant and then wouldn’t marry her because she wasn’t a Jew. He did the decent thing, my grandfather. He married my grandmother and brought up my mother as his own child.

  Do you think that was true?

  What was true?

  What your grandmother told you.

  I refused to believe it at first. I thought it was just a malicious game. To punish me.

  Punish you for what?

  For being a German. And for having the audacity to believe that someone as good and kind as my grandfather could possibly have been related to me.

  Perhaps she made it up.

  She was very organised, my grandmother. She had all the evidence filed away for me. The adoption papers. And the obituary of my real grandfather. Anton Schenck. A successful lawyer and pillar of the community who died in Florida. She sat there smiling while I read through all the evidence. And don’t ask how that made me feel. I’m not going to talk about it. Not now. Maybe not ever.

  And your father? What happened to him?

  I didn’t see him again, but I heard that he survived the occupation of Berlin and lived on into his seventies. I like to think of him trying to scrape a living off the land, wearing second-hand clothes and dead men’s shoes, digging up his neat lawn with its perfect stripes
to grow potatoes and cabbages, keeping rabbits and chickens for food, foraging for bits of coal along the railway tracks. He died in some woman’s bed. She wrote to tell me, but by the time the letter finally reached me he’d long been buried. So I never had the chance to dance on his grave, as I’d so often wished as a child.

  And what happened after your mother died?

  (LONG SILENCE)

  This and that.

  Do you want to be more specific?

  The desk sergeant I used to report to was a friendly man. He let it slip that if I managed to find a job somewhere, he wouldn’t ask too many questions or bother with the paperwork. There were lots of jobs advertised at that time; so many housemaids had gone off to work for the Canadians. They lived just outside Amsterdam, the Gronewegs. He owned a textile factory. The wife was some kind of invalid – or at least she liked to take to her bed when the mood took her – and, as they entertained a lot, they needed help with the cooking and serving and looking after the children. ‘We don’t care where you’ve come from, or what you did in your last job, just so long as you don’t steal from us,’ she told me – Mrs Groneweg – when she gave me my uniform and showed me to my little room in the attic. It felt like a palace to me after the stifling atmosphere in my grandmother’s house.

  How long were you there?