The Other Side of Love (31 page)

“And what happens to my baby?”

“Our child,”

he said tenderly.

“Kathe, Kathe, little princess, there’s nothing to worry about. Ideologically sound couples who can’t have kids of their own are battering down the doors to adopt Lebensborn children.”

She took out her handkerchief. Her hand was trembling. Diehard Nazis would raise Wyatt’s baby. But what other way could a Mischling be absolutely safe in Hitler’s Germany? She dabbed at her eyes.

“How can I be gone for months?”

“Just leave it all to me. Now, stop looking so like the world’s coming to an end. Try the trout. It’s delicious.”

“I’m not hungry.”

His smile was proud.

“So, the nausea. My poor little girl, the last place you want to be is a restaurant. I’ll drive you back.”

As they were chauffeured through the Tiergarten, he took her hand, pressing it to his thigh, keeping it there despite her attempts to pull away.

“Kathe, do try to think a bit kindly of me. When I saw you at Eagle’s Nest it was as if a mule had kicked me in the stomach. To be honest, if I weren’t married, I’d have proposed on the spot. In a million years I never intended to take advantage of you.”

She believed him. And, though her loathing had in no way diminished, she perceived him differently. Groener was an emotional

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centaur, part normal, even sentimental human being, part creature nourished on the inverted Nazi morality.

The long black car pulled up in front of Kingsmith’s.

“How about a manager?”

Groener asked.

“D’you have a reliable man to take charge?”

She had already given the matter consideration.

“Herr Knaupf, the chief clerk.”

Groener’s arrangements required far less ingenuity than she would have believed possible. A couple of days later, Standartenfiihrer von Rudorf, grey-haired and courtly, one of the rare members of the Prussian officer caste wearing a black SS uniform, arrived at the house. Clicking bows to Clothilde and Ka’the, he expressed regret at disturbing them at the time of mourning, but his business was urgent. An English translator of unimpeachable loyalty was needed immediately for a job that would last from six months to a year. Should Fraulein Kingsmith agree to serve the Reich in this vital wartime service, her mail would need to be routed through PrinzAlbrechtstrasse 8: she would be stationed the entire time at a secret base.

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Villa Haug, ten miles from Munich, had been purchased for its secluded grounds. The house itself was large but eccentric. To the original torso of a three-hundred-year-old Bavarian farmhouse later generations had added limbs of freakishly opposing architectural styles: a chalet that dripped wooden stalactites jutted from the front, a classically elegant Palladian wing receded towards the back gardens. To the left of the kitchen rose a four-storey crenellated Norman tower. Not far from the Gothic gatehouse - manned night and day by SS guards - was hidden a lodge where SS officers and young women sometimes passed a few days and nights. For the most part, though, the girls arrived already pregnant.

Villa Haug was run along the same lines as a top-notch boarding school. The mothers-to-be were called by their first names, the matron checked their drawers and cupboards for neatness. Meat, milk and butter were plentiful, the cooking dull. Weekday mornings were given over to classes on party ideology; and in the afternoon, no matter what the weather, they walked two by two along the gravel paths. During Kathe’s stay there were between twenty and thirty expectant mothers, all of them blue-eyed, blonde and over five foot four inches tall, all able to prove Aryan ancestry back to

1750. They were fresh-faced adolescents who giggled and whispered ribaldly about the young men who had fathered their expected children, holding out hands to exaggerate the size of the man’s sexual organ. They compared bellies; they seldom spoke of the girls who

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had babies and disappeared. When radios blared trumpet fanfares, they clutched each other, waiting breathless for announcements of victory. Yet their stupidity was imbued with sweetness. When doldrums or the ailments of pregnancy beset a girl, the others gathered around to comfort her; when a rule was broken, the transgressor was protected.

Kathe had been given the top room of the square Norman tower, which had narrow windows on all sides. From here she perceived Villa Haug through the distortion of the old glass. During the classes on Nazi ideology, she daydreamed of Wyatt. She stared ahead with crossed hands, her face so white and exalted that Fraulein Scheldt, who taught the class, remarked to the matron that of all the empty-headed crop Kathe alone had true commitment to the Fiihrer’s plans.

Mail came every Monday from Clothilde, and in bursts from Sigi. Groener wrote often. The twice he visited Villa Haug, he eyed her waist-line with an odious hangdog egotism that made her shiver for days after.

In January, Clothilde forwarded a censored letter with a Swedish postmark. Kathe turned the envelope over. Handprinted on the flap was

“Ulla-Britt Onslager, Nybrogatan 55, Stockholm’.

Dearest Kathe,

I have only just heard the sad and terrible news. The entire family joins me in sending deepest sympathy on the loss of your father. It goes withwt saying that I would have written sooner had I knownr Even though we are apart now, I think often and fondly of our pranks at La Ramee - oh, what fun we had

“finishing”

in Switzerland. Kathe, it’s a disgrace how seldom we write. I realize that you are busy with the war effort, but surely there is still time for friendship. As for me, the big excitement is that everybody in the family came to Stockholm for Christmas. Karl was so smitten with the Onslagers en masse that he proposed. Yes, dear friend, he actually popped the question …

The remaining two pages were given over to effusions about Karl’s proposal, a letter so girlishly banal that the censor had not inked out a word. Kathe stared out of one of the narrow windows. White flakes drifted slowly from a white sky. At the Swiss finishing school there had been a Swedish girl named Ulla-Britt Onslager, a tall exquisite redhead. Was this actually from her? It didn’t matter.

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*

The code-phrase

“time for friendship”

meant the sender was Aubrey’s replacement.

Kathe shook her head, forcing herself from her numbness. She recalled one of the girls chattering about a brother studying the Norwegian language, another girl whispering over breakfast that her father was working on a new tank that would crush the French and the English.

must pay attention, she thought, taking out her notepad.

On 9 April, the chaste calm of Villa Haug was battered by continuous trumpet blares and announcements. In the morning victorious troops of the Reich swarmed into Denmark; in the afternoon all strategic cities and ports of Norway were taken.

“In this single day we have protected the freedom and independence of both our sister Nordic nations,”

set the tone for the rest of the speeches. Kathe felt as if she were drowning in the successive waves of poisonously triumphant gobbledegook.

Sweden was spared, and remained neutral territory.

As her pregnancy had progressed, Kathe had found it more and more difficult staying alert to the conversations around her. She had fallen deep into reveries of Wyatt, daydreams as unrelated to reality as smoking opium - and as addictive. No matter how often she reminded herself of his last letter, it was impossible to break herself of fantasizing a future in which they were united. Even worse were the unwilled night-dreams. How could such crazily erotic dreams possess her swollen body?

On 9 April, the night following the Scandinavian coup, she found herself in a familiar yet altered landscape. The grounds of Villa Haug sloped down to a small lake, like the garden in Griinewald. Somewhere a gramophone played

“Mi Chiamano Mimi’, the liquid soprano notes falling around her like background music in a film. Wyatt came down the path to meet her, and she had a vague recollection that it was wrong for him to be in Germany, but she couldn’t remember why.

“What are you doing here, love?”

he asked. She explained that Villa Haug was the only safe place to have their baby.

“What baby?”

he asked, and then she looked down at her body. Her stomach was flat.

“But I’m pregnant!”

she cried, her joy dwindling to apprehension. Then he took her in his arms, his hands caressing her back, cupping her backside, and she forgot everything else. Melting like the lusciously seductive Puccini aria, she drew him down. As they stretched on soft new grass, they were suddenly naked. Dizzy with desire, she rushed faster into the fleshly currents. The music ceased. Shouted announcements echoed around

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her.

“Achtung! Achtung! All children and infants without certification of racial purity must report immediately!”

Wyatt had vanished, and Groener was piling stones on her stomach.

“Wyatt! Help me!”

she cried.

Rathe awoke to a drum-like tension in her lower abdomen.

When she had arrived at Villa Haug, a septuagenarian doctor had examined her with shaky hands, then had unquestioningly entered the false dates she gave him on her chart. Until now, she had successfully pushed out of her mind any problems. But as the tension began coming at regular intervals she was forced to admit that the moment of truth was upon her. Around five o’clock, long after the tautness had turned into pains, she pulled on her robe and clumsily descended the stone staircase.

Nurse Weber, thin hair straggling under her cap, stood at the stove heating coffee. Her pathetically plain face kind and sympathetic, she asked:

“What is it, dear?”

Kathe, grateful one of the heiling, badge-wearing Nazi Brown Sisters wasn’t on duty, explained about the pains. Nurse Weber used her apron on the steaming pot. Pouring them each a cup, she said:

“You’re not due, are you, Kathe?”

“Not for weeks, but”

The deep cramping pain cut off Kathe’s words.

The nurse pressed a hand to Kathe’s stomach.

“Mm, yes. Well, the first is unpredictable. Have a little breakfast.”

As Kathe sat down at the scrubbed table, the bleakness and dreaminess of the last months vanished. A purposeful dedication filled her. The task was at hand, and she couldn’t waste energy on extraneous emotions like fear. Between pains, she ate what was set in front of her. Nurse Weber left to telephone Jhe doctor, then returned.

“Doctor Stahl’s unavailable. But I’ve deliviR-ed more than fifty babies. You mustn’t worry.”

Kathe looked at the steady freckled hands.

“I’m glad,”

she said gratefully.

Lebensborn philosophy banned any type of anaesthesia. In the bright sterile delivery-room, Kathe sweated, thrashed and groaned. Yet the sense of purpose never deserted her. During the pain she blew out breaths; between, she prepared herself for the next onslaught. Around six in the afternoon of 10 April, when dusk was falling and the other girls were assembled to hear the radio announce further Scandinavian victories, a terrible agony ripped her apart. There was something exhilarating and fervently elemental in this pain, a pain so intense that it dimmed her past and future, encompassing everything else in her life. She couldn’t control her long high-pitched shriek. When her scream faded, she heard another sound.

A thin wail.

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‘It’s a boy!”

Nurse Weber’s homely face glowed with triumph.

“Kathe, you have a son.”

“Is he all right?”

“Fine and healthy.”

“You’re positive nothing’s wrong?”

Kathe gasped, forcing herself to add:

“He’s early.”

“A fine healthy little fellow.”

“You’re not lying to me, are you?”

“A perfect baby,”

Nurse Weber reassured.

“Here, look at him.”

The flannel-wrapped infant was laid in her arms. His pink face was the size of an apple and just as plumply round. A miniature version of Wyatt’s full, well-delineated mouth yawned up at her. She couldn’t help smiling.

“See? Isn’t he a lovely boy? He’ll have his naming and be inducted into the Black Order tomorrow.”

Nurse Weber turned away, gathering up the bloodied and soiled sheets.

“You Lebensborn mothers think it’s lucky to have a boy, don’t you? Girl babies only get a speech. But the boys have a fine ritual.”

She paused.

“The parents were notified when your labour began. By tomorrow night our young man’ll be safe and snug in his home.”

The parents … His home …

Reality overtook Kathe. She clasped the baby tighter. The hedge of secrecy that surrounded Lebensborn became impenetrable when it came to adoptions the SS hid adoption records with fanatical zeal. Once her son left Villa Haug, it would be impossible to track him down. He would be lost to her. Her tears dripped on to the small fuzzy head. Nurse Weber, evidently accustomed to this response, manoeuvred the infant from her arms, whisking him into the nursery.

IV

The Lebensborn naming ceremony was one of the Nazis”

cultic quasi-mystical curiosities. With a remarkable lack of insight into the feminine psyche, the SS believed the Villa Haug liturgy so inspirational that if the mother were allowed to be present she would produce more children for the Reich. Before breakfast, Nurse Weber helped Kathe down the stairs and into a wheelchair, pushing her to the ancient core of the house, where the walls were several feet thick. The single window piercing the small room was heavily shuttered. The shadowy light came from four thick candles set at the corners of the room’s only furniture, an altar-like table on which had been set a pillow embroidered with a huge black swastika and the runic lightning-flash SS symbol. In the shadows behind the table hung a framed print of Hitler in medieval armour gazing with noble pensiveness into the next thousand years.