Dissonance (26 page)

Madge was standing in front of 2A, pacing, fretting, calling for her lost son. She was done up in her dressing gown and slippers, her arms folded, her hair in rollers.

‘I believe this is yours,' Sara called down to her, releasing Erwin.

Madge made her way through the small crowd of pyjama-clad bodies emerging from apartments and heading for the stairs. Some had covered up with business jackets, or rugs, and some had taken the time to change into their day clothes.

‘Where have you been?' Madge asked, approaching her son. ‘I've been worried sick.'

‘I went to the pictures, with Professor Schaedel.'

‘In my daughter's room?' Sara asked.

‘That was later.'

‘What were you doing?' Madge asked, looking at both of them.

No reply.

‘Not even a phone call?'

‘I forgot.'

‘Don't you ever think of your mother any more?'

The air raid warden ordered them to cut the chat. ‘Down to the shelter, please.'

Madge glared at her son. ‘We'll sort this out later.'

Chapter Two

Each of the four pale-blue, scallop-edged plates contained unequal portions of mashed potatoes, boiled peas and cabbage, carrots and corned beef. Madge had forgotten the recipe for white sauce, so there was just tomato sauce, and a hot, steaming bowl of rewarmed sauerkraut that had started to ferment.

They all sat at the big table in apartment 2A, Madge staring across at Erwin, who still couldn't look her in the eyes.

‘What next?' he could hear her asking, as she unlocked their door, switched on the light and came in from the hour-long drill.

‘It was just a bit of fun,' Erwin had replied, placing his satchel on the telephone table, sitting down and fumbling with his laces: a day's worth of unresolved knots that had formed a small black ball.

‘Fun? Fun comes after work.'

‘It did.'

‘That wasn't fun, that was …' Staring at him, trying to find the right words: vice, weakness, lust.

Erwin slipped one shoe off with the tip of the other and walked, hobbling, towards his room. She followed him. ‘Of course I trust you,' she managed, softening her voice.

‘We talked.'

He went into his room, lay back on the bed with his hands behind his head and said, ‘You don't believe me.'

‘I do. If we can trust each other …'

He didn't answer. She sat on the bed beside him, holding his leg, rubbing it. ‘If you're going to …'

He looked at her. ‘Don't be so melodramatic.'

She stood up, planting her hands on her hips, shaking her head. ‘What do you want me to do? Get angry, lock you in your room? You're a man now.'

He sat up. ‘We talked.'

She stormed from the room, slamming the door as she went.

‘We talked,' he called after her.

‘You were meant to be home practising.'

Back around the table, with the smell of corned beef and sauerkraut strong in her nose, Madge stared at her son and wondered whether a hundred thousand hours of practise might not have been wasted. Because of the one thing that ruins every man. Weakness. She looked at Luise and saw shades of Shirley Basedow, the plain, frumpy
hausfrau
who had ruined her own life. Soon there would be a bastard child, like Declan, a testament to how things might have been, if only men could stay strong. Then she looked at Sara.

You couldn't blame the mother, of course, she thought. She'd done her best. She herself knew how hard it was to raise a fatherless child.

‘How is it?' she asked the frail-looking woman.

Sara smiled, as if to say, fine. She put her napkin to her mouth and wiped the grease. And then she managed to swallow, tightening her cheeks and grimacing as if she was eating carpet. ‘I don't think I've ever had corned beef.'

‘I was brought up on it. Freshly slaughtered. We had our own abattoir for a while, until the wages got too much.'

‘It's fine,' Sara said. ‘With the price of meat as it is. You'd think it would be cheaper, wouldn't you, with the war going so well. All of those French cows and pigs.'

‘They have to eat too,' Luise said.

‘Corned beef is the great Australian meal,' Madge was saying. ‘It's our contribution to world cuisine.'

Sara smiled and chewed.

‘Where you have your wurst,' Madge continued, ‘we have corned beef.'

‘It's a flavoursome meat,' Sara said. ‘An acquired taste, perhaps.'

‘Perhaps,' Madge conceded.

Madge had decided that there was no point working against the Hennigs any more. They were an unchangeable presence in their lives. It was better that Erwin wasted a few hours every week accompanying the waif than trying to get in her window every night. At least that way she had some control over the rampant pair, and she could keep Sara onside to help.

It had been as much for Erwin's sake as anything. ‘Mum,' he'd kept saying, ‘stop going on about Sara, she's not that bad.'

Or Luise to Sara. ‘Yes, I know she's bombastic, but the more you see her the more you get used to her.'

Madge had left a clean, empty plate. She'd mopped up her sauce and juices with bread, licked her fingers, wiped her mouth with a napkin and looked at Sara, who'd barely dented the side of her corned beef mountain.

‘You're such a dainty eater,' Madge observed, eyeing off Sara's pile of perfectly good meat. ‘If my father were here he'd be growling at you. He'd make you sit there until midnight if need be.'

‘We used to slip our vegetables to the dog,' Sara said.

Madge nodded. ‘We had an outside dog. And if it rained he was locked in the shed.'

Luise looked at her. Madge met her eyes and smiled.

‘In the shed?' Luise asked.

‘Yes.' The older woman looked back at her suspiciously. ‘Why's that?'

Luise pushed her plate away. ‘I can't eat any more corned beef.'

‘My father thought they had a smell,' Madge explained.

Luise watched Madge touch her napkin to her lip. She saw how she was using her tongue to search her gums and teeth for food. She heard a little whoosh of suction that contained saliva, false teeth and a clicking jaw. ‘We weren't really rehearsing,' she said.

‘I didn't think so,' Madge replied.

‘What do you think we were doing, Madge?'

Madge set her head forward and looked at the girl with half-closed eyes. ‘I'll tell you one thing, there won't be any more midnight visits.'

‘No?' Luise replied, looking at Erwin. He dropped his head. ‘Well?' she asked.

‘I'll clear the dishes.'

‘He was an outside dog?' Luise asked.

‘What's this all about?' Sara said.

Luise was determined. ‘They leave a smell in the house, don't they?' She looked back at Erwin. ‘Are you still with us?'

Madge stood up. She pointed to the door. ‘Out of my house.'

Erwin didn't know what to say.

‘Lot of good you are,' Luise said. ‘This is what happened to your dad.'

Luise stood up and stormed from the room.

Luise had the shits. Her visits stopped. The second floor hallway and apartments filled with the stench of unresolved thoughts and feelings, resentments bubbling away like stew, tumbling inside heads, becoming smooth and rounded like a brick in a concrete mixer.

On the first day, Erwin and Luise came out of their apartments at the same time. She looked at him and then turned and jumped down the stairs, four at a time. On the second day he sat beside her in the conservatorium common room. ‘Well?' he asked, smiling.

She looked at him.

‘You're not going to talk to me?'

She squinted. ‘Why would you think that?' She stood up, gathered her books and walked off with long strides so everybody could see what was happening.

This is how it continued for another week, Luise feigning a sort of Marlene Deitrich posture and face – shoulders swept back, sunken cheeks and dark, tired eyes fluttering to a Korngold soundtrack. Luise had summoned shadow and fog, onion tears and a filter that made her look how she felt. She passed him in hallways and streets with her head raised and arms folded, only once stopping to ask, ‘And how is Madge today?'

Until a warm Tuesday afternoon when everything changed in an instant, in the time it took a gust of wind to rise off the Elbe, to cross Blankenese and Sülldorf and blow in the Hennig's window, lifting lace curtains and knocking a miniature ceramic ape off a window ledge.

She was sitting halfway up the stairs when he came in off the street. He made to climb past her, but she stopped him. ‘I'm pregnant.'

It wasn't a word he kept in his grab bag. There was piano and mum, house, horsewhip, cheese and artichoke, there was even girlfriend and sex, but not pregnant.

‘How do you know?'

‘I know.'

‘Have you told anyone?'

She looked at him as though to say, Don't be stupid.

There was silence; the haze had lifted from the stairwell but there was something in its place. ‘What did the doctor say?' he asked.

‘It's been about three months.'

‘Since you saw the doctor?'

‘Since I got pregnant.'

Erwin looked at the rough, wooden steps, at his shoes and the complication of his laces. He could see Madge, baring her teeth. ‘You dirty little boy, how could you? I warned you. I said she'd ruin us.'

‘What are we going to do?' Erwin whispered.

‘You don't sound very happy,' she said.

‘I am.' He held her hand. ‘We'll make great parents, won't we?'

She lifted an eyebrow. ‘You tell yours and I'll tell mine.'

He shook his head. This was the picture they'd left out of the textbook: a seventeen-year-old boy telling his mother what he'd been up to – Madge, drawn as Goering, breathing fire, venting steam from her ears, flailing her nail-spiked tail around the room, striking down anything in her path.

‘No,' he said. ‘We'll tell them together.'

Which they decided to do before they had time to think about it, gathering Sara and Madge in the Hergert sitting room as Madge said, ‘What's all this about?' and Sara added, ‘Don't tell us you want to get engaged?'

‘Or you're pregnant,' Madge laughed.

Luise was standing with her arms crossed. She looked at Madge with her cold, stony face. Madge stopped laughing.

Sara took a moment to realise. ‘What?'

Madge looked at her son. He dropped his head to avoid her eyes. ‘Erwin,' she whispered.

‘What?' Sara asked.

‘She's pregnant,' Madge snapped.

Sara was taken back. She sat still, thinking about what she'd just heard. ‘Oh,' she managed. She looked at Luise. ‘Oh.'

‘I didn't murder anyone,' Luise declared.

Madge sat up. ‘We need to find a doctor, quickly.'

‘It's too late.'

‘Nonsense. You're not showing.'

‘It's too late.'

Madge shook her head. ‘We didn't come to Germany for this.'

‘Madge, it's only a baby,' Sara attempted.

‘Don't be stupid,' Madge said. ‘Listen to yourself, Sara. How do you think those at the top got there? They gave up everything.' She could already hear the crying, at two and four in the morning, robbing her son of sleep, of concentration, of the drive he needed to be at his best.

Erwin squeezed his fingers together. He'd anticipated every word.

Sara stood up. ‘Be happy for them,' she said.

‘One thing leads to another,' Madge replied. She looked at her son. ‘I warned you, didn't I?' She stormed into her room, slamming the door.

When she was gone, Sara took one child in each arm and said, ‘Don't listen to her, this is wonderful!'

Erwin thought back twelve, thirteen years to Killalah, to Madge sitting beside him with her bamboo cane. He could still hear the metronome, and her voice counting – firm, loud and full of hope. Everything that had happened since: Father O'Gorman, Reg Carter, the train to Adelaide, the smell of coal smoke and dry grass coming in his compartment window, of hops filling his Hindley Street hotel room, the sound of horses and carts and people arguing in the street below; his legs, brown and lanky, swinging from piano stools that couldn't go down any further; scales, billions of them, until his hands ached. And all the time, his mother standing, smiling, encouraging him.

He looked at her door. He didn't know how he'd ever coax her out, or explain.

‘Don't listen to her,' Sara repeated. ‘You need to help each other now.'

There's more to life than music, Luise thought, as Erwin imagined how the baby could sit in a basket as he practised.

‘You can live with me,' Sara offered, stroking Erwin's cheek. ‘And I'll be the grandma.'

‘No, we'll get a flat, won't we?' Luise offered, looking at Erwin.

‘How will you pay for it?'

‘I'll work.'

‘You'll study.' She smiled. ‘It will be simple; like having a dog.'

Eventually the Hennigs left, but Madge didn't come out. Erwin waited in the dark for hours. At twelve o'clock he opened the window to the street, took off his shirt, took the whip from the drawer and started. He dropped to his knees, and struck himself hard. He groaned loud enough for all of Blumweg and the building to hear.

But especially his mother.

The next morning, with Erwin off at the Con, with their washing hung out to dry on a temporary line that started outside her window and finished outside his, Madge sat down with a coffee and two German-made Scottish shortbread ­biscuits.

The score to a Chopin etude sat on the table in front of her. She opened it and saw Erwin's pencil markings:
louden lots, quieten, sea-splash rhythm, like a sewing machine …

She noticed how the markings gave way to scribble, to drawings of Killalah, the truck, of her breathing fire and venting steam.

That's the thanks you get.

She took a sip of coffee as the air raid siren began.

‘Bugger.' She sighed, and stood up. Checking the gas, she took the key from a dish on the telephone table. She hobbled out into the hallway and locked the door behind her. Out of habit she walked along to 2E and went to knock.

She stopped.

Bugger her, she thought, turning and walking down the stairs.

Inside, Sara was asleep. She'd been up half the night consoling Luise. For a moment she stirred but then turned over, pulling a pillow over her head and muttering, ‘Not again.'

Madge found her spot in the basement. She sat on the end of a bench against a cold, crumbling wall, smelling damp and listening to the girl from 3B go on about a wealthy uncle in Poland.

‘He has five hundred cattle,' she said, holding up five fingers, but Madge just smiled. Then the girl said, ‘These are your people,' pointing towards a sky that was a low wooden ceiling.

‘Who?' Madge asked.