Berlin: A Novel (49 page)

Her husband had already left by the time Marlene woke. She took a bath and dressed. Jana was waiting for her in the kitchen with steaming white coffee and fresh croissants. The sun filtered through the leaves of the fruit trees, casting bright patterns on the table. The world was all right again.

'Sit down, have a coffee with me. Would you like a croissant?' The girl shook her head vigorously, making her short black hair fly. 'Oh well, if you don't want to ... You've been here eighteen months, you said? Wouldn't you rather be with your family?'

That silent shake of the head again, a gesture that might mean no, or denote fear or incomprehension. Marlene couldn't make the girl out. Perhaps gypsies just reacted differently from normal people. Although gypsies were really normal people too - only a little different from normal people.

'Is there a basket around?' She shook off these complicated thoughts. 'We'll go and ask Frau Werner for some vegetables. I'm sure you'll know where we can find her.'

Jana found a large basket in the larder. They went from the kitchen to the garden, and crossed the forecourt to the yew hedge. A green tunnel led through it to a corrugated iron door at the far end. Jana pulled the bell beside the door. It clanged, and a flap in the door was raised. 'Open up for the Frau Commandant.' Jana obviously enjoyed giving an order.

The guard let the flap drop into place and opened the door. 'Sorry, Frau Obersturmbannfuhrer, didn't recognize you.'

'Look, I don't want to be called Frau Commandant or Frau Obersturmbannfiihrer. I'm Marlene Neubert. Would you please repeat that?'

'Certainly, Frau Neubert.' The guard went a few steps with them.

She pointed to the low, wooden building at the end of a well-tended gravel path. 'Is that where my husband works?'

'Yes, Frau Neubert, that's the office building.'

Jana bent over the rose bed at the entrance and smelled a flower. 'Pretty roses.'

'You like roses?'

'Yes, I like them very much.'

Marlene turned a few leaves over. 'Greenfly. The bushes need spraying. Soap solution would do it.' She'd learned that from the woman next door to them at the Kleiner Wannsee house.

'I'll tell the trustee.' The guard went back to his post.

'We'll visit my husband later - let's go and find those vegetables. Come on, Jana.' The gravel crunched under their feet. Are your parents around here somewhere?'

Jana put the basket down. 'Mama over in women's camp. Papa at fence, wanted talk Mama a little, like used to. Frau Hauptsturmfiihrerin see. Call Oberscharfiihrer. Oberscharfiihrer come with big stick.'

'What, that nice Herr Schafer? He surely didn't ... ?'

'Did,' was the laconic answer.

'I expect he lost his temper for a moment. As far as I know the supervisory staff aren't allowed to use violence. Your father should complain.'

'Oberscharfiihrer hit Papa with big stick till Papa dead,' was the matterof-fact reply.

Marlene felt paralysed. It took her a long, long time to react. 'It must have been an accident. I'm sure Herr Schafer didn't mean to hit so hard,' she said, trying to retrieve her view of the world as it ought to be. 'What about your mother?'

'Mama seven days in cellar with rats. When she come out, three toes gone.'

'Three toes?' Marlene was horrified.

'First you not want sleep. Then you must sleep. Rats wait till you sleep.' The gypsy girl picked the basket up again. Marlene followed her - and froze. Ahead of her, a tall barbed-wire fence clawed its way up to the sky. The wooden watchtowers at its four corners seemed to have been borrowed from a chess set for giants. A guard with a dog was on duty at the gate. Huts of a dirty grey hue lay beyond it, in rows of five. Not even weeds grew on the perfectly straight clinker paths between them.

Before they arrived, Fredie had explained to her, 'Blumenau is where they put people who don't belong in our society. Jews, homosexuals, Communists, gypsies and so on. Those who really want to prove their worth can do it by working. As camp commandant I'm responsible for discipline and order.'

An eerie silence lay over this bleak wilderness. 'But of course, the people are all working.' She was relieved to have found an explanation for the deathly silence. She nodded to the guard. The dog growled as they passed him.

'You strong, you work, you eat.' Jana pointed to a row of neat dark green wooden buildings in the background, obviously the workers' quarters. She pushed open the door to one of the grey huts in front of them. A stench of excrement and urine met them. When her eyes were used to the dim light, she made out long rows of wooden bunks stacked four high. On them cowered skeletons with skin stretched over them, wearing striped rags. Heads shaved bald were raised, with difficulty. Eyes lying deep in their sockets stared expressionlessly at her. 'No work, no eat. Only get thin soup.' Jana spoke like a tourist guide, her voice devoid of emotion.

Marlene felt only a dull emptiness. In the last five minutes she had seen more horrors than in her entire life. The squalor of Riibenstrasse was a sunny memory by comparison, the repulsive desires of men who paid for sex a harmless bit of fun. 'I'll speak to my husband. I'm sure he doesn't know anything about this.'

Jana pointed ahead. 'Farm there.' The striped backs and headscarves of a hundred women weeding rose in hunched outline above the endlessly long vegetable beds. Women overseers supervised the work.

Hauptsturmfiihrerin Werner stood tall and slender between the beds, her cap pulled down over her forehead. She was wearing boots with her uniform coat, and carried a riding crop. In a terrible way she was beautiful, and well aware of it. Marlene went towards her. 'Good morning, Frau Werner.'

Jana muttered something that sounded like 'Good morning.' She was evidently frightened.

Marlene offered her hand. Frau Werner ignored it. 'I came to ask you for some vegetables. A few carrots and sugar peas, and two lettuces, if you wouldn't mind.'

Frau Werner turned to the gypsy girl. 'Have you forgotten how to address me in your new position?' she hissed.

Marlene leaped to Jana's defence. 'She did say good morning.'

'Come here. How do you address me?'

Jana took a step forward, assumed a wooden military stance, took a deep breath and shouted, her voice breaking, 'Prisoner 304476. Heil Hitler, Frau Hauptsturmfiihrerin.'

There was the ugly sound of a blow. A bloody weal crossed Jana's cheek from her left ear to her chin. Frau Werner lowered her riding crop. 'To help you remember how to speak to your superiors.'

Marlene was beside herself. 'You monster! My husband will see that you pay for this!'

Gertrud Werner looked her coldly up and down, and kicked the prisoner crouching closest to her in the ribs with the toe of her boot. A basket of carrots, sugar peas and two lettuces for the Frau Commandant. Free delivery to the big house,' she added mockingly.

'Come along, Jana. Dr Engel will see to you.' The red cross on the white background showed Marlene the way. The infirmary building was all sterile white tiles. Surgical instruments glittered in little glass-fronted cupboards. A swing door led to the next room, obviously the operating theatre, from which a smell of disinfectant wafted.

Jana screamed as the doctor dabbed alcohol on her would. When that dreadful woman hit her she didn't utter a sound, Marlene thought in surprise.

'Fancy hitting out like that - terrible!' she said to the doctor, venting her outrage.

'Very unpleasant, admittedly. Camp life gets on all our nerves. To be honest. I'd rather be at the Front. Were marching west now after our blitzkrieg on Poland.'

Dr Engel pulled down the girl's lower lids down. 'Fascinating, these black gypsy eyes.' He stuck a large plaster over her cheek. 'The wound will heal in a couple of days.'

'The people shut up in those grey huts are starving. They get nothing but thin soup.'

Engel took a test tube from its holder and held it up to the light. 'The commandant is responsible for the camp. My place is here with my scientific work.'

'We won't trouble you any longer, doctor.'

'Oh, you're not troubling me. Do visit me whenever you like.' Engel patted Jana's unharmed cheek.

A young woman prisoner was waiting for them in the kitchen with the basket of vegetables. She whispered something in Jana's ear and then ran away full tilt. 'Sema gypsy too.' Jana began shelling the peas into a pan.

A good-looking man, Dr Engel. I think he likes you.' Marlene picked up a handful of pods and helped to shell them.

'It's nine o'clock,' she told her husband when he came home late from the camp that evening.

'No end of administrative stuff. Sorry, darling, I should have let you know. Or you could have called. The field telephone in the kitchen connects directly to my office. You only have to lift the receiver. So take care cleaning - a temporary connection like that isn't very stable.'

'I'll remember that. Come and eat.' She was determined to talk to him about conditions in the camp and Hauptsturmftihrerin Werner after supper, but he nipped her story in the bud. 'By no means is everything here just as it should be. Getting the place under control is a considerable task, but I shall do it. And I want you backing me up, right?' Marlene understood. He didn't wish to be bothered with complaints.

'Thank you, Jana, go to bed now,' she dismissed the girl. 'We'll wash the dishes tomorrow. Goodnight.'

'Heil Hitler, Herr Commandant. Heil Hitler, Frau Neubert.'

'Nice girl.'

A prisoner like the others, don't forget that.' Fredie poured himself a cognac and leaned back comfortably in his armchair. Not bad, this house, eh?'

As long as the hedge is high enough,' she couldn't help saying.

When she went to lock the door of the house, she heard quiet weeping outside. Jana was sitting on the steps, her head between her knees. 'Hello, child, what's the matter? Don't you want to go to bed?'

The girl raised her tear-stained face. 'Sema say Frau Hauptsturmfiihrerin very angry. She wait for Jana with whip.'

'I'll go with you. She won't dare do it again if I'm there.'

Agonized black eyes looked up at her. 'When Frau Neubert gone, Frau Hauptsturmfiihrerin more angry. Then Jana have to go in with rats.'

'Come along.' She drew the girl back into the house and took her upstairs. Fredie had already gone to bed. There were a couple of mattresses in the attic. 'This will have to do for tonight. Tomorrow we'll see.'

As usual, Fredie was in a good temper at breakfast. He gave his permission for Jana to move into the house. Marlene was delighted. She cycled into the village and bought flowered linen curtains and bedlinen. They found some sticks of furniture in the attic, and she and Jana painted them pale blue. Together they refurbished the little attic bedroom.

In the afternoon she picked up the field telephone to ask Fredie if he wanted to come over for a cup of coffee. Surprised, she heard both his voice and a stranger's. He was speaking to his head office in Berlin. She hung up again at once. There was probably some problem in the temporary line, which went out of the kitchen window and then wound its way from tree to tree and over the yew hedge to the office building. She'd mention it to him.

Jana brought her an old nickel-plated alarm clock that she had found in a chest. The thing rattled fit to wake the dead. 'Well, you won't oversleep and be late for work,' Marlene teased her.

'Jana not sleep. Jana like work for Frau Neubert.' The girl flung her arms round Marlene's neck and kissed her cheek.

'Oh, what nonsense,' said Marlene, moved. 'Tell you what, I'll ask my husband if you can cycle into the village to fetch the breakfast croissants from the baker's. Can you ride a bike?'

'Not know.'

'Never mind, child, I'll teach you.'

Jana squealed when Marlene put her on the bicycle. They both had a lot of fun, and Marlene forgot all about the telephone.

You couldn't forget about the camp. It was omnipresent. When the wind blew from there towards the house, Marlene could smell it. It smelled of hunger, latrines and mortal fear, of the sweat of its inmates and the black shoe polish the slaves used to clean their masters' belts and boots.

She avoided the camp, but the camp came to her every day, when a female prisoner brought the vegetables. Then she saw not the basket of lettuce and carrots but the army of women's bent backs among the endless vegetable beds.

Fredie banned Jana's expeditions to the village, so Marlene herself cycled to Blumenau once a week to do the shopping. Conversation in the grocer's shop died away when she came in. There was suspicion, fear and hostility in the air. She felt like crying out, 'I can't help it! None of this is anything to do with me!' She didn't, offering a friendly greeting instead. Today, Friday 14 June 1940, the radio drowned out her voice. The German Army had occupied Paris.