Ice Cold (6 page)

He fell sick early February this year, 1939. He was off work for the whole of the second week in February, hanging about at home, even had to stay in bed for a couple of days. He kept on at me, finding fault, didn’t have a good word for me. The longer he was stuck in the apartment the worse it was for me.

There was no bearing it, he was so restless, worse and worse every day. Pacing around the apartment like a wild animal in its cage.

When I was just a little kid, my dad brought a fox-cub home one day. He kept it in a little kennel
down in the yard. It was ever so trusting. Then, when the fox got older, it kept on going up and down in its prison. Up and down, up and down, over and over again. It turned vicious and tried to bite. Until at last one day my dad killed it.

I couldn’t help thinking of that fox when I seen him pacing up and down in the apartment like that. Up and down, over and over again, like the fox. Getting more and more restless all the time.

If the kids didn’t clear out of his way straight off, he shouted at them. Kicked out at the little boys.

On Carnival Saturday he told me he had to go out, nothing was going to keep him cooped up at home no more. He had to go out and find himself some fun.

I couldn’t have cared less what he meant by that, I was sick and tired of his coarse talk and his hints. I hardly listened to him no more.

After that, I was ever so surprised when he said he’d go to the cinema with me. He even went in, too. We watched the newsreel. Then we left before the main film. I was so tired, I didn’t want to see it after all, and I didn’t want to leave the kids alone so long neither.

It was a clear, cold winter night. I looked up at the stars, and the sky was sparkling away. We didn’t go straight home, not the shortest way. We
walked around for a bit because it was such a lovely evening. I was pleased he’d taken the time. I thought maybe everything might work between us yet.

We were home about nine-thirty. I was so tired, what with walking in the cold air, I undressed and went straight to bed.

He was off for a beer, he said, couldn’t stand it here at home no more. He put his jacket and coat on again and went out. That’s the last time I saw him.

O
n Sunday morning, before church, old Frau Bösl puts a mug of malted coffee down in front of Kathie. ‘Here, drink that. You’ll be on your own here all day. I’m going over to Haidhausen with the children after church to visit family. Our Anna will come for you.’

So Kathie sits all alone at the kitchen table, drinks her coffee, indulges in her thoughts. She stands up, goes over to the window and looks out. For hours on end. When she just can’t stand it any more she goes into the bedroom and lies down on the bed, fully dressed. Closes her eyes and waits, waits for Anna to come to Ickstattstrasse and fetch her. And while she lies there she doesn’t even notice she’s getting more tired all the time, until the moment comes when she falls asleep.

In her dream, snowflakes are falling slowly from the black night sky. Little flakes dancing down, shining brightly. Kathie is a little girl again, she looks up at the sky, putting her head right back. Her woolly cap almost comes off. She
sees the bright flakes falling, feels them cold on her face, she opens her mouth wide and tries to catch them in it as they fall, but they melt in the little girl’s warm breath before they can touch her tongue. Kathie reaches both her gloved hands out to the snowflakes. Sees them settle like stars on her woollen mittens. She feels the hand on her shoulder, large and heavy. Hears her grandmother’s voice close to her ear, a hoarse whisper. ‘Come along, Kathie, we’re going home now.’ She trudges home through the snow, holding her grandmother’s hand.

At home she shares a room and a bed with the old woman. The bedroom is small and draughty, with only a thin partition to divide it from the rest of the attic. Frost-flowers, made by their breath as they sleep, grow on the window panes. On many stormy winter nights, small snowflakes fall through the poorly insulated roof. They fall in and settle on the wooden floorboards without melting. Those were the nights that Kathie liked, nights when she always lay very close to Grandma. Felt the old woman’s warm body and closed her eyes, listened to the old lady’s stories. Endless tales of ghosts and nightmarish spectres, angels and wonders. She felt safe when her grandmother’s warm body was very close. Safe and warm, even now in her dream.

The old woman’s body was bony in her old age. Bony from all the work she had done in a life of deprivation. Kathie’s grandmother had borne ten children, all of them
boys. She saw four of them grow up. The others died, some at birth, others before they learned to walk. Poverty was her constant companion. Kathie’s father was the first-born. He and his family lived in the little house now. The old woman moved into the attic room when the house passed on to him. Kathie had shared a bed with her as long as she could remember. She came into the world far too soon, did Kathie, premature, a poor little mite, she wasn’t even as big as a beer-mug at birth, so the old lady told her. She took the little mite into bed with her and kept her warm, and so they went on. There were many nights when Grandma coughed and gasped so badly that Kathie lay awake and couldn’t drop off to sleep. All the same, she never wanted to move out of the room. She couldn’t imagine, didn’t want to imagine not sharing her bed with the old woman, the only member of Kathie’s family who wasn’t cold and forbidding. Her mother always out and about with her pedlar’s wares, her father cross and grumpy or coming home from the inn dead drunk. Those times he often fell down in the corridor and stayed there, sleeping it off. He’d sold off what little land belonged to the house, bit by bit, and drank or gambled the money away. If it hadn’t been for the money from the pedlar’s trade, they’d have had to sell the little house itself long ago. They’d have been broke, as the old woman often said crossly, they’d have been on their beam ends.

Kathie’s grandmother warmed her, and Kathie felt good.
But there were also nights when she was afraid of the old woman. Nights of full moon, when Kathie opened her eyes and the old woman’s face was very close to hers. In the faint light and the shadows the old lady seemed to be staring at her, wide-eyed. With her gaze fixed on the girl. Moonlight falling in through the window had made the toothless old skull into something sinister. As if Grandma were asleep with her eyes open. Frightened, Kathie would sit there, staring at Grandma until she couldn’t bear it any more, and plucked up all her courage. She shook the old woman until she woke up, shook her with both hands. ‘Grandma, wake up!’ she would cry. ‘Grandma, wake up, I’m scared of you!’

On one of those nights of full moon, she woke to see her grandmother sitting by the window. There she sat in only her nightie and her knitted bed jacket, staring at the moon. Kathie, curled up in bed and afraid, kept staring at the old woman and didn’t know what to do. When she told her mother about it, Mama only said, ‘Let her be, she’ll go back to bed when she feels cold. She’s tough, she won’t catch her death in a hurry.’

But one December night death caught Grandma. It’s four years ago now. Kathie slipped into bed with her. That evening the old woman’s body seemed even bonier than usual. Kathie lay very close to her; it was an icy cold December night. A night of frost. Even as she fell asleep she heard her grandmother’s cough, heard her heavy breathing rattle in her throat. It was almost morning when Kathie
woke up. She felt cold, she’d been shivering, she put an arm out to Grandma, wanting to cuddle up to her. Only then did she realize how strangely cold and still her grandmother lay there in bed. She listened for her breathing, but however hard she strained her ears there was no sound to be heard. It was perfectly quiet in their bedroom. Kathie got out of bed and ran barefoot downstairs to her mother. And it was her mother who told her the old woman was dead. She doesn’t remember what happened next, only that she saw her grandmother lying in her coffin in her best clothes. And that she, Kathie, had wondered why Grandma wasn’t wearing any shoes. She wore her grey woolly socks in the coffin, but no shoes. In her black Sunday dress, hands folded over the rosary on her breast, she looked as if she were asleep. The grey woolly socks have stuck in Kathie’s mind to this day, and she also remembers that she wanted to leave the village. Go away and lead another life, not the kind of life that Grandma had lived and the one that her mother was living.

And she feels hands on her shoulder again, feels as if they’re large and heavy. She wakes with a start and doesn’t see Anna until Anna speaks to her. It’s already after three, and Kathie was fast asleep when Anna came into the room. She’d better get up quickly, Anna’s in a hurry, she says, it’s urgent. She wants to go and see Mitzi with Kathie, and after that to the Wiesn.

‘It’s silly to sit about indoors in this lovely weather.’

Kathie is still sleepy, but glad to get out of the apartment all the same. She hasn’t known what to do all day, alone in Munich like this. She puts her coat on quickly, and her shoes, and then they go over to Mitzi’s on this fine, warm late summer’s day. The air is mild, so she hasn’t done her coat up, she’s left it open, she has her little blue hat on her head, she’s strolling through Munich with Anna. To Mariahilfplatz, where Mitzi lives.

Kathie stops at every shop window they pass, looks in, just to see herself reflected in the panes in the sunlight. To see herself with her coat unbuttoned and the little blue hat on her head.

Mitzi lives next to the grocer’s shop behind the church. The wording over the shop says Bombay Groceries. Kathie looks closely at the shop sign and reads it before they go into the building. Kathie likes Mitzi’s apartment. It’s light, and in the city centre. As she sits there waiting for Mitzi to be ready, she looks around the apartment. Furnishes it in her mind. Decides she’ll have a little apartment like this some day. She asks Mitzi how expensive an apartment like this is, and what kind of work does she do, to be able to afford such a pretty place?

Anna answers for Mitzi. ‘Mitzi here is an embroideress. But you can’t afford a place like this just by doing embroidery. It’s her fiancé pays the rent. A fine gentleman from Gelsenkirchen. He has a little business and comes to
Munich twice a year. Our Mitzi knows how to fix these things. You want to look for a fiancé too, you’ll never afford a place like this working as a maid. You’d have to watch every penny. And here in Munich, well, Hans looks after her. You just have to keep your eyes open and maybe you’ll find someone to pay for an apartment for you too, someone to look after you. You’d have a pretty good chance with Hans, and maybe something even better will turn up.’ So saying, she winks at Mitzi and they both laugh. But Kathie has got the point. Who knows, maybe something
would
come of this apartment idea sooner or later? Anyway, she’s imagining herself in her own apartment. She’d have room at last, not like at home.

‘What are you looking like that for? Ooh, look, our Kathie’s miles away!’ The voices and laughter have brought her out of her thoughts. Back to Mitzi’s kitchen at the table with the oilcloth cover. Anna is sitting on the chair opposite, still laughing at her. ‘Come along, get a move on, we’re off to visit Mitzi’s sister Gustl in hospital, and after that we’re going to the Wiesn.’

So they set off, Anna, Kathie and Mitzi, on their way to Thalkirchnerstrasse.

It says DERMATOLOGY on the door of the hospital department. Kathie has no idea what that means, she just follows the other two into the ward where Gustl is lying. There are six of them in the ward. The separate beds are divided
from each other by curtains, most of them not drawn. The curtain round Gustl’s bed is open too. Mitzi’s sister lies in bed, very sick. She looks white, almost translucent, and weak. Her hair is thin and sparse although she’s still a young woman. Kathie thinks she can’t even be in her mid-twenties, although she has an old woman’s face. She complains of the hospital food. And the strictness of the nursing nuns, they treat you like dirt, those preachy ladies, as Gustl disparagingly calls them. Mitzi secretly slips her a few cigarettes, asks when she can come again, that’s if Gustl would like her to, and then visiting hours are over. Kathie is glad to get out of the hospital into the open again, the air in that ward almost stifled her.

They go straight from Thalkirchnerstrasse to the Wiesn, and it’s an even nicer afternoon there. They’re in the beer tent, where they meet a few men who invite them to have a bite to eat, and they go on the swingboats and to the shooting ranges too.

It must be about seven when they arrive at the Soller inn with their companions. It’s at Soller’s that Anna tells her the story of Mitzi’s sister. How Gustl had been going out with an artist. A well-known artist here in Munich. Gustl had been ever so pretty, not the picture of misery she is today. She worked as an artist’s model, or, as she was always saying, his Muse. Anna twisted her lips and sounded sarcastic as she uttered the word ‘Muse’. They really lived it up at the parties that fine gentleman gave. Or at least, that’s what
Gustl told Mitzi. Anna was ready to believe those stories, though she’d never been to the parties, but she’d heard things. Mitzi had told her about the parties, and she, Mitzi, had it from her sister. Gustl never showed her face here at Soller’s. Why would she want to come to a place like this? She moved in very different circles. And those fine artists, they were partying all the time. Seems the bubbly flowed freely at those parties. Seems they had money and to spare. Not like the poor starving sods here at Soller’s. As for that artist of Gustl’s, he was very peculiar. Used to go about stark naked wearing just a feather.

‘Just a feather, think of that, and guess where he wore it? Up his arse! Up his arse! Really perverted, seems he wore feathers in his arse like a peacock. Well, that’s what Mitzi says, but he paid well. He always put the money under the bedspread. Only coins. That’s what those artists are like, they think up funny ideas, they don’t just put the cash down for you. He used to count it out coin by coin in the bed, put the sheet over it, and Mitzi’s sister had to lie on top of it. Acting as if she didn’t know her fee was under the sheet. That got him tremendously excited, and afterwards, when she counted the money, he wanted to watch that too. Well, everyone has their funny little ways. They lived it up, they really did. She was always laughing at us, she had money, and he took her travelling with him – until she caught syphilis. Poor thing. There she is in Thalkirchner-strasse, in the Dermatology department. You saw what she
looks like now. Her hair’s all fallen out, she looks like an old woman. That artist had other Muses too, and guess how quickly his prick drooped! He dumped her just like that. No more feathers, no more bubbly.’