One Last Summer (2007) (21 page)

SUNDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER 1943

We hadn’t used the loft for anything, not even feed storage, for years – probably, as Brunon said, for a century or more – so it was very dirty. But the Russians had it scrubbed out before eight o’clock in the morning after spending their first night at Grunwaldsee. They worked hard, especially after Brunon whispered to Alexander’s lieutenant, Leon, who can speak Polish, that it was going to be their new living quarters. Brunon made sure they were given plenty of fresh straw to make beds with, and, when I went to see it, it really didn’t look too bad.

The guards are careful to keep all civilians away from the prisoners. Thinking that I had forgotten about the hatch, Brunon reminded me about the trap-door that leads from the tack room into the stable loft. He said it will be comparatively easy for us to smuggle extra food to them. Not that we will have that much to give them other than vegetables, oats, and the rabbits and hares Brunon traps.

Martha has been given the guards’ rations to cook. They are good. I know because their first full week’s allowance was delivered this morning, but all we were given to feed the twelve prisoners for a week was one small bag of worm-infested swedes. They’re not even fit to feed the pigs.

I would like to tell Alexander what Wilhelm said about events in Russia, but it is too dangerous. Perhaps in another week or two, when the guards and prisoners are used to a routine, it will become easier to find a time and a place where we won’t be overheard.

SUNDAY, 26 DECEMBER 1943

There was some Christmas joy this year, but only because everyone at Grunwaldsee has learned to be happy with the small things that we would have taken for granted before the war. Fortunately, Erich, Marianna and Karoline are too young to know any different. It was Papa von Letteberg who gave me my best present. Wilhelm and Claus have both been transferred to staff posts in Berlin, effective as of four weeks before Christmas.

I suspected he used his influence, although he denied it when I tried to thank him after following him into the library on Christmas Eve. He had gone in there to borrow a book. I would never have dared to mention it if we hadn’t been alone. And I am always very careful whenever I telephone his office in Berlin.

Wilhelm has been posted to the General Army Office, which is based at the Headquarters of the Reserve Army in the Bendlerstrasse, so I really have grounds to hope that he will never have to see Russia or active service again.

There were no toys in the shops, so I cut up some old clothes and a rabbit-skin coat, and made three toy rabbits, but I doubt they will replace the real rabbits on the farm in the children’s affections. We grown-ups were prepared to settle for good wishes and whatever Christmas dinner we could organize. But Claus and Wilhelm changed everything by coming home laden with presents.

Claus brought a carved, wooden farmyard and a little cart for Erich, one that he can fill with toys and pull along. He also brought a perfect little Wehrmacht uniform in Erich’s exact size. As we have both lost brothers to this war, and with so many of our friends and neighbours killed, it seemed a peculiar present. But I didn’t say anything when I laid it on Erich’s table along with his rabbit, the suit I had made him out of a pair of Paul’s trousers and the rest of Claus’s gifts; although I must admit I was delighted after church on Christmas Eve to see that the presents Erich liked best were the pencils and papers Papa and Mama von Letteberg gave him, Claus’s cart and my stuffed rabbit.

Mama von Letteberg is to stay with us the whole of Christmas week; Claus, Wilhelm and Papa von Letteberg could only spare us two days. They left at dawn this morning. I know that all the problems between Claus and me are my fault, but that does not bring me any nearer to resolving them.

However hard I try, I simply cannot love him as a wife should. It is as much as I can do to stop myself from screaming whenever he touches me. He must sense how much I dread being alone with him. I have to force myself to lie still and allow him to do what he wants, because I know how much he and Mama and Papa von Letteberg want me to have another son. And not only them. I love Erich so much that I too would also like another child.

It is obvious that the Berlin shops, especially for staff officers, are nowhere near as empty as those in Allenstein. Wilhelm and Claus not only brought presents and sweets for the children but a whole carload of food and gifts for the entire family. I had an emerald and gold necklace, earring and bracelet set from Claus. Wilhelm brought jewellery and lingerie for Irena. Claus gave me lingerie, too – in private. It is too big, and not at all the kind of thing a wife would wear. I couldn’t help wondering if Claus had asked his mistress to choose it for me. I know he has one from the hints Greta took such delight in dropping when she helped Irena and I make supper on Christmas Day while the men sat and talked over their brandy and cigars. Irena was horrified by the thought, but I have no reason not to believe Greta.

Greta and Irena don’t understand that I really don’t mind the thought of Claus sleeping with other women. The more often he does those disgusting things to someone else, the less he will want to do them to me. It is only when I see Wilhelm and Irena in perfect harmony, each thinking the other’s thoughts before they are voiced, that I become jealous. Not of Claus’s mistress, but what my brother and his wife share. It is very hard knowing that I will never experience that perfect love.

I want this war to end. I want to be able to go into Allenstein and walk the streets without seeing more and more women and children wearing black. I want to be able to switch on the radio without hearing Wagner’s bombastic chords preceding ‘special war announcements’. But the end of the war will mean living with Claus.

If Claus does stay in the army when peace comes, I hope he will allow me and Erich either to live here or at Bergensee. Then he can visit us on his leaves and spend as much time as he likes with his mistress.

I wish I could stop comparing us to Wilhelm and Irena. They live for the moments they spend together. It was as much as they could do to leave the cottage to bring the children to eat Christmas dinner with us. While we were all sitting at the table, Papa von Letteberg suggested that, as I can run Grunwaldsee this well in wartime, with the help of only a few prisoners of war and conscript women and Poles, fulfil all the military quotas, and lay on hospitality and a fine meal like the one we were enjoying, then Claus could retire at the end of the war, put Bergensee in my hands and concentrate on writing his memoirs.

Unfortunately, that comment turned the conversation on to what is happening at Bergensee now. The army medical department has commandeered the house and turned it into a convalescent hospital for severely wounded and mutilated soldiers. Mama von Letteberg can’t even bring herself to visit.

I go once a week with whatever little we can spare, which isn’t much, mainly a few apples and vegetables, and to play the piano for the patients. I started calling there after Paul was killed. It is terrible to see so many young boys with eyes, hands or limbs missing. I told Mama and Papa von Letteberg how grateful they are for the loan of their beautiful home.

Wilhelm said I shouldn’t feel sorry for them. They are alive, and they can learn to adapt. His new commanding officer was badly wounded in the retreat from North Africa. He lost an eye, his right hand and two fingers from his left, and has severe shrapnel wounds in his legs and back, yet all his junior officers regard him as the best soldier they have ever served under. They all admire and respect him, and are ready to follow him to the ends of the earth. It is obvious Wilhelm adores him. I am glad. His talk of injustice and the futility of the war after the defeats in Russia were close to treason, but his new commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Graf von Stauffenberg, seems to have given him a renewed interest in his work. I am so pleased for him and Irena. She cannot bear to see him unhappy.

As always, whenever Claus, Wilhelm and Papa von Letteberg leave after one of their short visits, the house seems unnaturally quiet. Brunon has set the Russian POWs the tasks of cleaning tack, mucking out the stables and pigsties, and chopping down the dead trees in the woods for firewood. It means that during these winter months the land army girls have an extended holiday, but we are terrified that if we don’t give the Russians enough work they will be sent back to the camp.

I see Alexander often, but as he is the senior Russian officer, the guards watch him all the time. We are careful not to smile or show any outward sign of recognition lest one of them or a land army girl notices and realizes that we know one another. The guards allow Brunon to tell Leon, Alexander’s second-in-command, what work needs doing. As none of the Russians have admitted that they speak German, the guards permit Brunon and Leon to converse in Polish, which fortunately, for Alexander and his men, none of the guards understand.

Martha killed three of the oldest chickens for the Russians’ Christmas dinner. She should have boiled them but she said that didn’t seem right at Christmas, so she roasted them, although they were undoubtedly tough. Brunon smuggled them and a huge pan of fried potatoes, gravy and steamed vegetables into the tack room and passed them up through the trapdoor into the stable loft. He found an old stove in the rubbish at the back of the barn at the beginning of the winter and gave it to the prisoners.

Thankfully, the guards had no objection. They don’t seem to care what the Russians do now, so long as they don’t make any trouble for them. The prisoners soon had the stove re-assembled and working. They connected it to the kitchen flue that runs at the back of the stables, so if the camp commandant visits he won’t realize the prisoners have heating unless he goes into the loft, and he isn’t likely to do that. They burn the little wood the guards allow them to carry up, alongside the logs Brunon and Marius pass through the trap-door. Brunon says it is warmer there than the drawing room.

Brunon sees that the straw in the loft is changed regularly, and I found some more blankets in Mama’s linen cupboards. They were old but still quite good. Without the hatch, the Russians wouldn’t have enough clothes, food, wood or any soap or blankets. Fortunately, the trap-door can be opened from both sides, so the prisoners can push anything they know the guards will confiscate down into the tack room when the soldiers carry out their regular searches and inspections.

Marius or Brunon pass everything back up when the guards have finished. I laughed when Brunon told me that the prisoners have erected a make-shift latrine in front of the hatch so the guards can’t see it from a distance, and avoid going near it to take a closer look.

One night, when I went into the tack room, I found a folded piece of sacking with my name in charcoal on the outside. Inside was a piece of feed wrapper with music written on it and one word: ‘Danke’. It wasn’t signed, but I knew it was from Alexander.

I played the music when the prisoners were working in the yard and could hear me. It is very beautiful, probably the most beautiful piece of music I have ever heard, and must have taken hours to write out, but I dare not write back. Any communication with POWs is severely punished.

If only this war would end so everything could go back to what it was before – but then it never will. I will never see Papa, Paul, Peter or Manfred again in this life. There are too many people dead and too many empty places that cannot be filled. When will winter end and spring begin?

MONDAY, 7 FEBRUARY 1944

The drifts are six feet high, and, as fast as the prisoners clear the yard, the snow blows in or starts falling again. Irena is pregnant. If she isn’t having a child when Wilhelm comes home on leave, we can be sure that she will be by the time he goes. This one will be born sometime around Marianna’s fourth birthday. Irena is a wonderful mother, much more devoted and less distracted than me. Both she and Wilhelm (who telephoned from Berlin after she wrote to him with the news, just to tell her how delighted he was as the thought of becoming a father again) say they would love three girls. I think that they wouldn’t mind a boy, either.

Just like her last pregnancy, and the one before, Irena cannot keep any food down. She is generally exhausted by the end of the day, so when the children go to bed, we make her go, too. When Wilhelm is home she will stay up all night with him if that’s what he wants, but once he returns to Berlin it is as though the spark has gone from her life, and there is nothing that I, Martha or Brunon can do to cheer her.

After I put Erich to bed tonight I left the kitchen and went to the tack room to see what kind of a job the prisoners had made of repairing the saddles and bridles. When I lit the lamp I heard a noise. Alexander whispered through the trap-door that he had been watching the kitchen door from the skylight. He had seen me leave the house and wanted to talk.

I bolted both doors – the one to the yard, and the one to Papa’s study – then he climbed through from the stable loft into the tack room. He replaced the trap-door in seconds and, as Brunon has screwed hooks into the back of it and hung horse blankets on it, unless you look very carefully, you’d think that the ceiling was solid.

Alexander promised me that although he and his men can climb through the trap-door whenever they want, they have no thought of escape. They know that if they even try, everyone at Grunwaldsee will suffer.

Also they realize they have virtually no chance of getting across East Prussia and back through the German lines to their own without getting caught and shot. But knowing that they can get out whenever they want makes them feel a little less like caged animals. I pointed out that they can only break into the tack room, and the only door out of that, apart from the one that leads into Papa’s study and the house, opens into the yard and is in plain view of the guards in the lodge.

We sat on bales of hay and talked while Alexander helped me inspect the saddles and bridles. It didn’t take long. One of the Russians was a cobbler before the war and he had made sure that all the prisoners did a workmanlike job. I have never seen the tack in such good repair, and I asked Alexander to thank the man.