Let Me Go (9 page)

She draws back with a puff of irritation. "Castrated in Auschwitz?" she asks, scornful and incredulous. "He's been telling you a pack of lies."

This time I explode. "They exposed his reproductive organs to X-rays for twenty minutes, giving him very severe burns, and then they removed his testicles to dissect them and examine them under a microscope. Are you going to deny that they experimented with the sterilization of human beings in Auschwitz?"

"It's a lie!" she insists. And clarifies: "Some things were only done in Ravensbrück."

"And what about Mengele?" I remind her. "Doesn't that name mean anything to you?"

"Mengele?" she echoes, as though shifting the word from one side of her mouth to the other. "Never heard of him."

I feel as if I'm being provoked, played for a fool.

"And Meyer, Kaschub, Langben, Heyde, Renno, Brandt—do those names mean nothing either?"

Her mouth is thin and hard. "Never heard of them. I don't know who you're talking about."

She frowns and folds her arms. "And anyway I don't want to talk to you anymore; you've annoyed me now."

She gets to her feet, apparently in a terrible mood all of a sudden. She takes a few steps through the room. She walks upright, apparently quite steady on her feet. She walks over to an ornamental plant and starts picking off red berries and popping them slowly between her fingers.

"Say something nice to her," Eva hisses to me, "you must leave her in a balanced state of mind."

She's right. But while I'm searching for something conciliatory to say, I hear her muttering. "You've never once called me
Mutti."
She wipes her hands with a handkerchief and repeats, "You say you're my daughter and you've never once called me
Muttil"

She comes over to me and asks in a hurt and doleful voice, "Am I not your mother?" And with a certain mischief she starts pinching my cheek as though I were a little girl. I nod mechanically, and she starts shrieking, "Then you have to call me
Muttii
Everyone else's children call their mothers
Mutti,
and you have to call me Mutti too. I want you to."

She crosses her arms over her chest and assumes a domineering expression. I feel helpless, caught off guard. I can't call her
Mutti.
I can't do it.

"I'm waiting," she insists, in the intransigent voice of someone who is sure of her rights. I could reply that everyone else's children have probably had a lifetime to get used to calling their mothers
Mutti,
but I'm afraid of annoying her.

"I can't say it," I decide to admit.

"You can't call me
Mutti?"
she scoffs.

"I'm not used to it," I answer, shrugging my shoulders.

"I want you to call your mother
Muttii"
she insists. It comes across as capricious, nothing more than that. "If you don't, I'm going to leave here and I'm not even going to come back to say good-bye to you," she says vindictively, in a defiant tone.

"I can't do it," I say curtly, irritated and dismayed. But she starts playing a new role. She hides her face in her hands and starts sniveling.

"I don't understand why you came here to humiliate me . . . to humiliate an old mother who asks only to be called
Mutti."
And she weeps and sobs and coughs: We're back in the world of melodrama. My inner demon starts to goad me again.

"Blackmail her," it suggests to me. "Tell her you'll call her
Mutti
only if she's more open with you."

There's no way out.

"Perhaps your friends' children call their mothers
Mutti
because there are no lies between them." I listen to my voice and don't recognize it; it sounds like someone else's voice.

"I never tell lies!" my mother insists resentfully.

"That's not true," I contradict her. "You said you'd never heard Mengele's name mentioned before."

She gives a twisted smile. "Well, maybe I forgot."

"Fine," I answer slyly, "but that's enough. Stop telling lies. It's absurd to have lies between a mother and daughter, don't you think?"

She falls silent and stares at me with the candor of a child. She nods. Finally a sly little smile flickers across her face.

"If I tell you the truth, will you call me
Mutti?"

I smile to myself.

"Fine," I reply. And without delay I return to the subject closest to my heart.

"I told you about that friend of mine who was castrated in Auschwitz. . . ."

She lowers her eyes and shakes her head.

"Did you know they were doing . . . those things in Auschwitz?"

I hear my cousin sigh, but once again I pay no attention.

"Of course!" my mother erupts impatiently. "Of course I knew; I was in the Waffen-SS, and we all knew what was going on."

"Did you personally know any of those doctors in Auschwitz who performed sterilization exp—?"

"Brack," she interrupts. "I knew Dr. Brack quite well."

There, I think to myself, at last.

"Really? And did you ever talk about what he was doing . . . for the good of humanity?" I ask, using her own words.

"Yes," she agrees, "once. There was a party—a wedding, in fact. A colleague of mine had got married to an SS comrade—we were celebrating that—and he, Brack, was a bit overexcited, and then . . ."

She fixes me with a sly look. "First you have to call me
Mutti,
and then I'll tell you what Brack said."

"Fine," I give in, but it takes a great effort to frame the word
"Mutti."

My mother stares at me: She's waiting. Why is this so important after half a century? It can't be anything but a senile whim; she wants to be on a par with her companions.

Mutti.
But she doesn't deserve it. She's never shown the slightest trace of maternal love, and she's sitting there stiffly, arrogantly, waiting arrogantly for my
"Mutti"
—her trophy. But I remember our pact, and what I stand to get in return.

I make a huge effort.
"Mutti,"
I manage to say.

She rejoices, clapping her hands. "Again, again!"

"Mutti."

She collapses into floods of tears—too high-pitched, too shrill. Perhaps she realizes that she can't move me to tears. Then she calms down, settles back into her armchair, arranges her face into a stubborn mask, and mutters, "I don't want to talk about that horrible man Brack. And anyway there were things he didn't talk about. He didn't talk about what he was doing in the scientific experiment block . . . It was a secret, you know? A state secret."

Lying, opportunistic, fanatical, disloyal: That is how her file describes her.

IN HIS BOOK
DER SS-STMT,
Eugen Kogon includes a report from SS Oberführer Victor Brack addressed to Heinrich Himmler, about the preliminary experiments into the sterilization of human beings:

The following result may be considered secure and scientifically founded:

With a view to the permanent sterilization of individuals, it is possible to apply doses of X-rays high enough to produce a castration with all the related consequences. The high dose of X-rays destroys the internal secretion of the ovaries or testicles. . . . But as it is not possible to screen the surrounding tissue with lead, we must accept the inconvenient fact that these organs will be damaged, with the consequent apparition of so-called "after-effects" of the X-rays. In case of excessive intensity of radiation, over the following days or weeks burns will appear on the areas of skin affected by the rays.

Because the intention was to proceed with the sterilization of the subjects without their knowledge, Dr. Brack made a suggestion:

One practical method might, for example, be to summon the individuals to a counter in front of which they would have to remain for about three minutes to answer questions or fill in forms. The clerk behind the counter would be able to switch on the radiological apparatus in such a way as to activate both the X-ray tubes, given that the radiation has to come from both sides. In this way, with a dual-tube apparatus, it would be possible to sterilise between 150 and 200 people a day, and with 20 such sets of between 3,000 and 4,000 . . . . The fact that those affected will discover, after a period of weeks or months, that they have become sterile is of no importance.

If you, Reichsführer, were to opt for this solution, in the interests of maintaining the equipment, Reichsleiter Bouler would be willing to place at your disposal all the staff and doctors necessary for the implementation of the project.

"Now you're angry," my mother observes. She tilts her head and gives me a rueful smile.

"And anyway I didn't know that man Brack very well," she admits weakly.

She has deceived me and she knows it. I feel cold inside.

"When you were little, you were so pretty," she says, trying to get around me, "so pretty that my friends insisted that I have your photograph published in a race journal."

Her friends . . . I struggle to concentrate again.

"What year are you referring to?"

"What year?" she repeats. She makes a gesture as though to wave a wisp of fog away from her eyes.

"Were you still . . . with Papa?" I ask cautiously.

"With Stefan?" She shrugs.

At any rate, those "friends" must have been only hers. A vivid memory returns.

* * *

A SUMMERHOUSE IN Kremmen, a little village not far from Berlin. Stone foundations, the rest built of wood. Summer furniture: wicker and pale pine.

The windows are open; from the village square, lined with old horse chestnuts, comes the sound of bells.

You reach the house through a little front garden, but everything happens at the rear of the house. In the courtyard, among the lime trees, the neighbors' goose beats its wings as it runs after my brother, Peter, trying to peck him.

A little gate made of twisted interlocking planks leads into a garden whose colors, sounds, and perfumes I can still clearly remember: the jasmines, the elders, whose berries could be used to make a strange wine-colored soup, the dog roses that made a fine sweet jam.

And the cheerful song of the larks, the swallows under the eaves, and two storks on the roof of a nearby barn. I still hadn't realized that we were at war.

The scene takes place in the sitting room. It is evening; the sun is still low; the soil in the garden gives off a damp, pleasant odor.

We have guests. My mother is laughing a lot. Apart from her I remember another woman and three men. The guests are all in uniform, including the woman.

Then my mother picks up Peter, who is kicking his legs and squealing. She wants him to give each of the guests a kiss on the cheek, but he begs to differ. Each time she brings him to a guest, he tosses his curly head in another direction. He's being naughty and has no intention of kissing strangers.

My mother starts to get cross, and her voice hardens. "Little nuisance!" But he's fed up and delivers a punch to the stomach of a uniformed man rather than kiss his sandpapery cheek. The recipient lets out a little shriek of amusement. My mother, disappointed, puts the little rebel back on the ground, whereupon he starts crawling on his hands and knees through the sitting room making funny childish sounds. I see him as though he were right before me, blithe and lively.

I don't see any good coming of this and try to sneak off, but my mother catches me. It's my turn. The same bit of playacting. I feel a cramp in my stomach. I don't like kissing strangers either. But she has her eagle eye on me, and I resign myself to distributing my kisses, however reluctantly. But then I come to a man I dislike. I have disliked him since the moment I first saw him. He is tall and has scary eyes. His eyes are very pale, like Siamese cats' eyes. They seem to emit shards of glass.

Here I am in front of him. The man bends down, gives me an icy smile, and stretches forward to receive that stupid kiss. But it's too much for me—I bite him on the chin.

He starts back, clutching his chin. Yelling, my mother grabs me and shakes me. I don't cry, but I hate everyone.

A quarter of an hour later. There's no one left in the sitting room. Peter has found the dustpan and is cheerfully stamping on it. Then he sits down on it as though it were a sled. I squat on the ground and watch him. He's a real little devil.

All of a sudden someone throws a big fishing net over us. I didn't know there was one in the house, and I don't understand why it's been thrown over us, but I'm terribly frightened.

I scream and Peter screams too; he clutches me and yells at the top of his voice. We clumsily scramble about, but the more we try to free ourselves from the net's embrace, the more entangled we become and the more we shriek.

There is no sign of the grown-ups. Perhaps they're spying from behind the door, enjoying our pathetic anxiety, our forlorn terror.

We're like two beetles on their backs. We wave our legs around and scream. The sun has set and the shadows of evening are coming in through the window.

A trap. A trap set by a world of adults, suddenly cynical and malevolent.

My mother had frightened us on other occasions; above all when she handed out her implacable punishments. If my stepmother's motto was "don't think, know," my mother's was "above all, obey." She was hypersensitive to disobedience. She couldn't bear the slightest hint of insubordination. Since I was rebellious by nature, every time I showed the slightest sign of insurrection, she would punish me by locking me in the shed. In Berlin, when we were living in the district of Niederschönhausen, we had one that had only a tiny window, but my mother had covered it over with cardboard so that I would stay in total darkness for hours. Another punishment that I considered terrible was the administering of a triple ration of cod liver oil. Peter, who still became absolutely terrified when he felt our mother growing more nervous and agitated than usual, feared that special spoon as though it were the devil incarnate, and the minute he saw it he started to shriek in desperation. One day he refused the spoon so firmly that the oil splashed in my mother's face. She was incandescent with fury and locked him up—after giving him the punitive ration of cod liver oil—in the big wardrobe in our parents' room (by this time my father had already been called up to the front). Once in there, my brother was in danger of suffocating. When she let him out, he was lying on the bottom, his head lolling on a shoe box. That gave my mother a genuine scare, and she started to shake little Peter. He looked as though he was dead or unconscious, but he was probably only woozy from the lack of oxygen.