The Children's War (156 page)

The words grew unfocused. Peter blinked hard to try to bring them back, but instead all he could see were a series of faces, angry, afraid, contemptuous: the
expressions of his victims as he held them up at knifepoint. He had never hurt anyone, but in his desperation he had earned their hatred. Groceries were part of what he took during those dangerous days immediately after Allison’s murder. Money and jewelry, too. Anything that might buy him an identity. What would you have thought? he wondered to his mother’s ghost. After spending seven months scrabbling for crusts of sawdust-laden bread, would she have forgiven him his crimes against his own people?

His vision finally cleared and he read further:

Alice didn’t show up for work. I checked at her home after work and her mother said she went out last night and didn’t come back. She’s the one who told me about the political abductions. Nacht und Nebel, she said. Night and fog, I guess. ( I really must study more.) Isn’t that odd? She must have said it all to make her disappearance more dramatic. She’s probably run off to Scotland to get married and didn’t have the right paperwork or something. Still, I feel worried. I wish things would settle down. It has been so many years, yet still there are all the wartime regulations and so many soldiers and military police in the street. I know it’s difficult bringing order here when so many people are resisting, but it seems that nearly everything is illegal.

There were some arrests down the block. I don’t know what for, but I peeked through the curtains and it looked like they were just kids. This martial law is wearing on my nerves. I wonder when things will change for the better. I wonder when the rest of the POWs will be released. You can tell it worries Charles’s mother, she doesn’t say anything, but she’s always rereading his father’s old letters. They started requiring all the letters to be in German, I guess it’s easier for the censors that way, but it’s really hard on everyone. People are always running around looking for someone to translate the letter they’ve gotten from their husband or son or whomever. I’ve been told that if the censors don’t like the quality of the German used, they just throw away the letter. I guess they don’t know how important these letters are to the people back home. Charles has asked me again about asking my mother if I have any German blood. Maybe I should look into it.

Several pages later the mood changed:

Great news! We have a flat of our own. Charles said he knew his hard work and loyalty would pay off. We went to look at it this evening; it’s a mess and the building next to it has crumbled so there will be squatters everywhere, but it’s legal and it’s ours! A neighbor there said a young couple used to live in the flat but they were arrested for something. Poor sods, but their bad luck is our good fortune! Oh, a place to ourselves, this will make it easier to get a birth permit. I want a son—a boy who will grow up just like his dad.

Well, you got one, Peter thought grimly; that would be Erich, the bringer of your destruction. Peter felt thoroughly depressed; all the hopes he had held about his parents’ intentions were evaporating before his eyes. He closed the book and rested his eyes for a moment. They should leave, it was dangerous staying there so long. He picked up the third book and skipped to the middle. The entries were now in German and his heart sank, but then he read:

I don’t know what to do about Niklaus. I’m worried he won’t know what to do if something happens. I wish I could tell him, but Charles insists I don’t—at least not yet. Says he’s still too young. What am I to do?

Peter sat up and stared at the pages as if not believing the words written there. Tell him what?

“We should go,” Barbara said. “There are patrols in the streets and it’s getting late.”

“Yes, of course,” he replied quickly, scanning the rest of the page for further clues. There was nothing else though. It was pure folly, but he decided to take the books with him. He couldn’t let his past go now that he finally had it in his hands.

Barbara watched nervously as he tucked the diaries into his coat. “Do you think that’s wise?”

“No. But I can’t just leave them here. Do you mind?”

“No, of course not.” She smiled.“My father told me that at some points in our history all my people have had is our past. I wouldn’t want to deny you yours.”

They left then, the books carefully tucked into his clothes. They walked the route home in silence, Peter scanning for trouble, Barbara praying that they would not be searched. Their papers were checked twice, but the officers were polite in both cases and they had no trouble.

“Are you going to spend the night reading those?” Barbara asked, though it wasn’t really a question. She knew the answer well enough.

He smiled and nodded.

“You’ll be wanting these.” She went over to the shelf and retrieved his reading glasses. She brought them over and handed them to him.

“Thanks,” he replied sheepishly. They really did help, but he often forgot to use them. Barbara seemed to think it was a forgetfulness fueled by vanity.

“Would you like some tea?” she asked.

“I’d love some.” He settled onto the couch and opened the first book. He decided that he would start at the beginning and read through without skipping ahead. That way he would get a clear picture of what was going on as his mother wrote each entry, and if there were disappointments ahead, it would delay them. He didn’t want to jump ahead and find out that what his father believed he was too young to know was that he was embezzling or going to be promoted or had found some German relative so they could all be
Volksdeutsch.

His fear was tangible. With her words his mother could destroy a lifetime of hopes. It was stupid of course; nothing would change what had happened and who he was, but still, stupid or not, he so wanted to have something in his past to be proud of—something other than greedy, collaborating parents. Something other than disappointment, betrayal, and abandonment.

The words swam in front of him. He could just throw the books away, burn them before it was too late. Then he would never know and he could maintain his hope. But he knew he would not do that: worse than any knowledge was the uncertainty. If they had believed everything they had foisted on him, well, he’d have to live with it. It would be only a minor perturbation on all the horrors that he had to live with. It was not like Joanna’s murder or Allison’s, or what had been done to him. It was just a point of view two people long ago had had—a point of view that had become irrelevant with their deaths.

He laughed aloud. No matter how rationally he debated with himself, he knew the truth deep down.
It was important.
They were his parents and it was his childhood. He could live with what he found out, he could hate or love them, forgive them or not, but he could not deny that it was important—as stupid as that might be. Odd, he thought, how things so long ago seem so much more significant. For all the terror of his later experiences, he had faced them as a man, a man with well-formed opinions of himself and the world. They could scar him, but they did not form him, not the way his experiences as a child had.

He heard the kettle whistle, and with renewed courage he began reading.

28

T
HE HOURS PASSED.
Barbara refilled his cup, supplied him with a sandwich, turned on the lights as the room grew unbearably dim, but otherwise she stayed out of the way. He read as if possessed, and she watched as the shadows passed across his face. Eventually, she told him good-night, kissed him on the forehead, and went to bed. She awoke several times and realized he was still reading, but then she settled down and slept well.

Entry by entry Peter uncovered the thoughts of a girl and then a woman as she grew into maturity in a strange, new world. Satisfied with the birth of one son, she detailed the boy’s developments, the first words and phrases, his first attempts at drawings. There were notes on his size and weight as he grew, and she had scraps of paper inserted in the pages—crayon drawings Erich had made, little notes he had written. Despite the expense, there were photographs as well. Charles and Catherine proudly holding their young son, Erich. They looked happy and complete. A perfect little family coping with the brave new world around them.

Catherine seemed truly happy in her role as wife and mother, working her job, taking care of her husband and son. Great long happy passages were written, devoid of all comment on what was happening in the world around her, and great long equally happy silences occurred between the entries. They moved to a better flat, the one Peter would call home; Charles’s career progressed and he moved forward in the Party. Charles eventually found a job for his wife in a government office as a file clerk, and she wrote happily of the chance at last to get off her feet and work in a clean building, but eventually the peace was shattered as Catherine wrote:

Pregnant again. Haven’t done the paperwork in advance. All a bit of a surprise. Charles is furious with me, but as I pointed out, I didn’t manage it alone. He yelled about space and cost and his career. We’ve been screaming at each other for days. He told me I should get an abortion, and he arranged an appointment for me in a good clinic. I’m not so sure I want to do that, though. I’ll have to do some thinking in the next couple of days.

Peter looked at the date. For a moment he could not move, then he stood, went over to the bottle of gin, and poured himself a glass. He held the glass up and looked at the light through the clear fluid. Well, he thought, what would he have advised? Given the crowding, the poverty, and the government, his father’s actions were perfectly rational. Peter thought of his boyhood friends. Nearly every one had been an only child. Those that weren’t had seen their families dragged down into poverty by the extra, often-illegal burden, and the parents of those children had seemed particularly ill-tempered toward them. And there were all his friends later in life: the women with their countless abortions, the itinerant husbands and boyfriends who made it clear another child was not on the agenda. How many times had he accompanied a female friend to the clinic because the man responsible couldn’t be bothered or hadn’t even been informed?

No, there was nothing unusual in his father’s demands. What was unusual was that Peter was there to read the words years later. What, he wondered, had provoked his mother to keep the baby? He drank the gin down, poured himself another glass, and went back to the diary. The issue was not raised again until several weeks later when Catherine wrote:

I didn’t go to the appointment. I really want a little girl, and this is my chance to have one. Charles was furious, but after a while, he calmed down and said he’d see what he could arrange to expedite the paperwork so we won’t be blacklisted or lose our housing or Erich’s placement in school. He got the permit yesterday, and everything is sorted out now. It will be great having another baby. I’m going to name her Anna, after my grandmother. I think it’s a beautiful name. Charles says I should think
about picking out a boy’s name, just in case, but I’m sure it will be a girl. I so want a daughter and I want Erich to have a sister. He’s such a wonderful boy! Yesterday, I was feeling ill and he went and got me a glass of water all on his own! He’s so thoughtful. I’m so proud of him.

This was followed by an unending stream of anticipatory entries:

Got some baby clothes from my cousin Sandra. Pretty little dresses and some ribbons and even a lovely little hat! It’s going to be so wonderful when my daughter is born. I can already imagine her with her blue eyes and blond hair and delicate features. She’ll have a big brother to look out for her and we’ll be the perfect family, just like in the posters!

Peter sputtered his disdain at the reference to those grotesque posters of hardworking, brawny men, voluptuous but demure mothers, and their two happy children, always an elder boy and a younger girl. Nobody ever achieved the ideal: the Germans had as many children as the mother could tolerate, doubtless inspired by different posters, and the English rarely bothered to produce more than one offspring, inspired, for their part, by overcrowding and despair. The background was always incongruous as well: bountiful farmland with German-style farmhouses and villages as inspiration for the city dwellers living in their concrete wastelands. Maybe only in the villages were the posters full of gleaming cities and the wonders of modern technology.

He read on through the pages as Catherine chose a middle name for her daughter and even started eyeing toddlers who might one day be suitable husband material. The words were unrecognizable as the thoughts of the woman he had known. It was as though she were living in some dreamworld, brainwashed by propaganda and her own desire for peace and normalcy. Every now and then she expressed a worry that the child in her womb “felt like a boy,” but she dismissed these notions as superstitious nonsense just as readily as she embraced any omens that the baby was a girl.

Eventually, a note of trouble entered their lives as Catherine’s pregnancy became obvious.

Last week the big boss came through our office. He stopped to talk to one of the managers, and during that time I got up to file some papers. He stopped dead in his conversation and just stared at me. Then he asked the manager if I was pregnant. The manager sort of shrugged and said that he guessed so. Then the big boss asked if I was married. The manager said again that he thought so. “Fire her,” the big boss said. And just like that I was fired. He didn’t say one word to me, like I was too dumb to understand or like it was beneath his dignity to address me directly. It was so humiliating! I had to clean out my desk then and there. I guess they had a
policy against married women that I didn’t know about and which everyone else ignored.

After looking around, I realized no one will hire me with this big belly. Charles said with another baby on the way, we can’t afford for me not to work. It’s unfair but his pay is lower than his colleagues’ because of the race laws (we don’t have the extra expenses of maintaining a proper Aryan lifestyle since we’re used to the filth—that’s not what they say, but that’s what it comes down to). Nor does he get the extra compensation for working abroad that all the Germans get. We have to pay more in rent as well since we don’t have the right papers to live in the subsidized districts. There are extra taxes, too—the reconstruction taxes (for rebuilding our cities) and the restitution taxes (to pay for all the damage we did to their cities). Obviously the German employees don’t have to pay any of those.

Anyway, the packing plant agreed to take me back, but I’ve lost all my seniority. Still it was nice to see all my friends again and I’ll get a little time off from work for the birth. This pregnancy sure has been hard on me now financially as well as physically, but I’m sure when I get to see my little girl’s face, it will all be worth it.

The date of the birth passed without comment, naturally enough, but three weeks later Catherine made her last entry in the first book:

Had a son. Healthy. Charles named him Niklaus Adolf.

Charles named him . . .
Peter took off his reading glasses and cleaned them while staring at the unfocused words. He cleaned them slowly, carefully removing every trace of dirt from the lenses, then for good measure he polished the metal of the frame. He pulled out his knife and used it to tighten the screws, then took a moment to bend the frames back into a more comfortable shape; then he checked the lenses and cleaned them again where he had accidentally touched them. He replaced the glasses and finished the gin that he had poured for himself. Sighing slightly, he picked up the second book, but without opening it he set it back down and rested a bit, laying his head back against the couch and closing his eyes.

A piece of paper: high-quality bond, clean on both sides, white as freshly fallen snow. A real find, his little treasure. It was early in his school career, he was five, maybe six? He remembered finding the sheet of paper in the schoolroom and hiding it in his notebook. At home, he climbed up the makeshift ladder of a chair on a table and took his father’s fountain pen out of its hiding place, then he clambered onto the window ledge, and looking out onto the street for inspiration, he drew a picture. It was a beautiful drawing: the street as it should have been with trees and happy people and nice houses and buildings. Horses pulled carriages, dogs chased children, the sky was littered with birds. He turned the
paper over and continued the scene with the street leading off into the countryside and a forest of animals peering out from the trees.

His mother was the first one home after him, and as he heard her heavy sigh in the hallway, he signed his name to his masterwork and jumped off the ledge in time to greet her at the door. He held out the picture for her to see as she entered, exclaiming that he had drawn it for her. A tired smile appeared on her face as she set down the bags of groceries and took the sheet into her hands. “It’s lovely,” she praised, but as she felt its quality, a look of confusion came over her face. Where had he got the paper? He explained. She turned it over and saw that both sides were covered. “Oh, Niklaus,” she chided gently as she handed it back to him, “you shouldn’t waste such good paper.” He held the paper outstretched for minutes after she had picked the bags back up and turned into the kitchen, but she did not notice: there were groceries to unpack and cooking to do, the baby had to be picked up, and the laundry needed to be collected from the roof.

The light seemed bright and he got up and turned it off, opting for a small lamp instead. Wandering into the kitchen, he put on the kettle for another cup of tea. He started with cold water, dumping the tepid water into the sink in a display of wastefulness that would have gotten him smacked as a child. Though the kettle had a whistle, he stood by it anyway, waiting for the water to boil. Once it was ready, he poured it into the teapot and waited for the tea to steep. He knew what he was doing: delaying. He was afraid of what might come next. After that brief, heartless entry that greeted his arrival into the world, he was so afraid of what he might find out. Perhaps, he reflected sadly, perhaps it was because he already knew.

He returned to the couch and picked up the second book. Carefully he dusted off its cover, held it unopened in his hands. Would the explanations lie within its pages? He opened it; there was no inscription, not even her name. The first entry was dated two days after the last. It was in German and from then on she used only that language.

I forgot how tiring babies are! I gave all the pretty dresses and clothes away, Amanda was glad to get them. I have some boy’s clothes left over from Erich, but not much, most of it I gave away after he was a baby. I guess what we have will do, and maybe I can scrounge up a few more things. Oh, God! What are we going to do with two children? It’s so crowded and I just don’t have the energy for this anymore. I feel exhausted every time I feed him, I have to run out on break and meet Mum at the plant entrance. I’m still bleeding, and standing all day hurts. Work all day and take care of the baby all the rest of the time—thank God Mum is on the evening shift. Soon he’ll be old enough to leave at the workplace care center, until then I hope Mum remains available.

It was a month later before she made another brief entry:

Shopping and cleaning and endless nappies! It is so crowded, the baby is always crying, Erich won’t behave, and Charles expects so much! God, there is just no room and I don’t get a minute’s peace. I wish Charles would help more, but he’s busy, busy, busy with his career.

Peter closed the book and walked over to the window. As he stared out, rubbish bins and water tanks and the usual courtyard detritus stared back up at him. It wasn’t he, he reminded himself: it was a demanding, anonymous baby. She was tired, overworked, without help or comfort. Growing increasingly disenchanted with what life had to offer her, an intelligent woman condemned by society to play the fool. An ambitious woman whose only hope of advancement was for her husband, a man not quite as bright as she. A woman who took on all the burdens of household and childcare while working an exhausting job, because that’s what everyone expected of her. Still bleeding after three weeks. Was that normal or was it a sign of how much her body was stressed? And the smudged ink; was it tears?