The Undertaking (19 page)

50

Katharina pushed open the door of the cake shop. It was quiet, without a queue, and smelled of sweet richness.

‘Good afternoon, Madam.’

The woman behind the counter had bowed slightly as she spoke, tipping her white cap towards Katharina. She dipped her head in acknowledgement, but said nothing.

‘Can I be of any help to you?’

‘I have come to collect my son’s birthday cake. Mrs Weinart placed my order.’

‘Ah, yes. Little Johannes.’

The woman disappeared into a back room and Katharina looked at herself in the mirror, at her straight back, her shining, healthy hair and her silk summer dress. She looked well. Better than she used to. She stopped looking when the woman returned, a large cake lying in the palms of her hands. Chocolate. Her son’s name perfectly formed in blue lettering.

‘It’s divine,’ she said.

She took her purse from her bag.

‘Mrs Weinart said to put it on her account,’ said the woman.

‘That’s very kind of her.’

She watched the woman wrap the cake in clean white cardboard, refusing to allow herself to chat as she used to. She had stopped bantering with ordinary people. She thanked the woman, took the box and walked back along the street, crossing into the shadows, for the sun was hot, and into the path of pale women and children carrying dirty cardboard signs scrawled with potted histories of bombed houses and missed meals. They wanted her money and sympathy. She hurried on, stepping around them and their mewling, suddenly fretting that she had a lot to do, although everything was already done. The apartment was clean, the food was ready and the clown was booked to arrive half an hour before the guests.

It would be the first time she had hosted Mrs Weinart and her children. Elizabeth and other women were coming too, but it was the Weinarts she worried over, fearing that they would be bored, cramped by the apartment’s small space, disappointed by the gifts she had bought for them to take home.

In the courtyard, she set down the cake and picked up a hoe to hack again at the weeds between the paving stones. The caretaker had fled
to his mountain cousins. Her father had shouted after him, calling him a coward, a traitor, but he went anyway. Mr Spinell threw his possessions into the street, clearing the way for a new caretaker. But none came. The weeds grew flowers and the herbs bolted, all of it ignored unless there were visitors. She banged the hoe a couple of times more and retreated upstairs. She kissed her son on the head and checked on Natasha, making sure that she was dressed, as ordered, in a black skirt and white shirt.

Her mother’s room was in darkness, the shutters and curtains still closed; a tiny intermittent glow of orange came from the bed where she lay, her head and shoulders propped up against pillows, just high enough for her to draw on her cigarette. It was already after noon.

‘Are you coming to the party?’

‘I don’t know. Am I?’

‘It would be nice if you did.’

Katharina turned and pulled the door behind her, holding it firmly until she was sure it was tightly shut.

Her room was hot despite the breeze through the open window, but calm and clean, restful without the child in his cot. She closed her eyes, but the bright summer light filtered through her bronze-powdered lids, failing to shut her into the darkness she craved. She hovered in refracted light, in a space where everything was broken – fragments of white, yellow, of her brother’s face and her husband’s smile floating and drifting in front of her. Tears fell down her face. She knew that she was no longer a sister, but needed somebody to tell her whether she was a widow or a wife, somebody to end the uncertainty of floating through a fragmented world. She got up and started to dress. She put on a belted navy dress, its sobriety quietly undermined by flashes of white material hidden under the skirt’s
pleats. She had navy and white shoes to match, and a navy outfit for her son: shoes, shorts and a jacket laid out on the dining table, ready for him to wear just before the guests arrived.

But he was already dressed. And Natasha had brushed his hair, sweeping back his blond curls.

‘I was going to do that.’

She took the child and began to tickle him. He giggled, but went back to Natasha, wanting her to brush his hair again. She did so.

‘He’s fine, Natasha. I’ll take him.’

Katharina walked around the room with the boy, holding his hands, spending the last few minutes seeing whether he might walk by himself. She let go of his hands, but he fell and cried. She comforted him, then surrounded him with the toys she had bought him for his birthday.

‘You take him, Natasha. I’ll make coffee.’

All but one of Mrs Weinart’s children had walked by their first birthday.

At three, the doorbell rang. Katharina straightened her skirt and opened the door. Mrs Weinart and her five children, dressed in pale pinks and blues, hair pinned off their faces by slides and wax, entered with a large box.

‘You are very kind to have us all,’ said Mrs Weinart. ‘The children are very excited.’

They presented their gift to Johannes, but he buried his head in Natasha’s chest, his right ear turned to her mouth, to her whisperings, her Russian words a balm for his nerves. Instead Katharina took the gift and showed Mrs Weinart to the sofa. She sat down in
the middle, in front of the coffee and cake. Elizabeth and the other mothers arrived and happily lingered for the afternoon, smiling as the children laughed at the funny man in bright colours, grateful for the distraction.

‘We need to find you a new husband, Katharina,’ said Mrs Weinart. ‘A handsome one this time.’

Katharina looked down at her cup, at its matching saucer. She said nothing, but the other women agreed.

‘An officer,’ said Elizabeth. ‘One who works in Berlin, away from all that frontline business.’

She watched, without listening, as their mouths moved, coming up with a long list of potential suitors so quickly that they had obviously discussed the possibilities many times before. She knew some of the men, all low-ranking but officers nonetheless, and listened, leaning back into her chair to await their conclusion on whom she should marry next, her period of mourning evidently over, shorter than it would have been if her husband had been an officer or hero, or if she had been a widow with small breasts and narrow hips.

She nodded at their suggestions, and the conversation returned to its usual topics, their Russian domestics, the discomfort of war, the long hours worked by their husbands. She mentioned her father instead of her husband, and they liked that, liked her acceptance that she was a daughter again, no longer a wife, all of them pleased that she no longer hankered after one of the Stalingrad soldiers, the men best forgotten.

They sang to her son and went home, seemingly content. She took Johannes to the park and let Natasha clean the apartment. She sat again on the bench she had shared with her husband, while their son slept, worn out by celebrations he did not understand.

She remained there until dusk, staring at the children using long
sticks to poke at a duck dead at the edge of the water. She was about to be married again, paired up with another unknown, a second husband, when she was not even sure that she had lost the first. Nor was she sure that she wanted the first any more, because even if he came back he was a coward, a failed soldier. They would not give him work in Berlin, or a promotion in Darmstadt. She would live as a schoolteacher’s wife, as his mother lived, frugally, the wedding presents still in careful use, the furniture protected by thirty years of darkened rooms.

Her father was in the apartment when she returned, eating the chocolate cake.

‘It’s good cake,’ he said.

‘The Führer’s baker. Is there any left?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve probably had enough, anyway.’

He moved the empty plate to one side.

‘They have landed in Sicily,’ he said.

‘Who have?’

‘The Americans, Katharina. The British.’

‘Is it serious?’

‘No. We just need to get our troops there as fast as we can.’

‘From where?’

‘Russia. France. Northern Italy. All over. We have enough.’

‘That’s good. Mrs Weinart thinks I should get married again.’

‘That’s a fine plan.’

‘An officer this time.’

‘You’re moving up in the world, Katharina Spinell.’

51

The restaurant was almost empty, each table set nonetheless, cloths and napkins ironed and starched. She was early. She left again and walked the streets, fingering her hair, dampening down her eyebrows, her nerves.

She had seen him once at the Weinarts, but had never spoken to him. He had spent most of his time smoking and talking earnestly with the men. He had paid her no attention. Nor any other woman.

She returned a couple of minutes after eight and he was there, waiting, smoking, looking at the door, at her as she came in. He smiled, stood up, saluted, held back her chair and offered her a drink.

‘A martini. Thank you. But no olive. I don’t like olives.’

‘That’s funny. Nor do I. Overrated, I think.’

He smiled again, and she liked his smile, the way it consumed his face.

‘I ordered dinner, already. I hope you like lamb.’

‘I do. Thank you.’

‘Actually, there was no choice. Supplies seem a little restricted.’

‘Even for you?’

He smiled.

‘Even for me, Mrs Faber.’

She looked around the room.

‘It’s very quiet.’

‘I think people prefer to be at home with their families these nights.’

‘But not you?’

‘I don’t have a family, Mrs Faber. But I believe you have a son. Mrs Weinart enjoyed his first birthday party. She told me the clown was particularly entertaining.’

‘I’m glad.’

‘You should be. She’s a hard woman to please.’

‘She thinks highly of you, Mr Meyer.’

‘And she thinks highly of you, Mrs Faber.’

‘Then we travel in the same compartment, Mr Meyer.’

She drank from her glass as he lit a cigarette, smoking through the opposite side of his mouth from her husband. Her former husband. Her more than likely dead husband. His eyes were very blue and his hair still as blond as a child’s.

‘You are surely the only young man left in Berlin,’ she said.

‘And you get to have dinner with me, Mrs Faber.’

‘I must be very honoured.’

The food arrived. And two bottles of wine.

‘Why is that you are not on a front, Mr Meyer? I thought all young men were obliged.’

‘The Führer finds me useful.’

‘Why? What do you do?’

‘I make him happy.’

‘That, I gather, is quite a skill.’

‘One I am good at.’

‘You are fortunate then. More fortunate than my husband or brother.’

‘You make your own luck in this life, Mrs Faber.’

‘I suppose you do, Mr Meyer.’

She went every Thursday at six to a room over the restaurant, the sheets as starched and pressed as the napkins downstairs. He was always there, lying on the bed, smoking, waiting, his cheeks blanched from a life spent indoors. And he was chubby. Almost fat.

‘I have a present for you,’ he said.

He gave her a box with Paris written on it. She opened it and took out a silk robe, blue, red and yellow tropical birds woven into its fabric.

‘It’s beautiful. Stunning. Thank you.’

‘I have chocolate too,’ he said.

‘May I have some?’

‘In a minute.’

He stubbed out his cigarette and clicked his tongue at her.

She took off her coat, her shoes and her dress, standing away from him at the end of the bed. Then her stockings, her underwear. She was naked in front of him, her arms hanging by her sides.

‘And your hair.’

She pulled at the pins and turned towards him so that he could see it fall the length of her back. She wrapped her arms across her chest. She was shivering.

‘It’s cold in here.’

He undressed, stretched her along the bed, fucked her, and then gave her the chocolate. She ate it immediately.

‘Aren’t you going to keep some for your son?’

‘He’s fine. And my mother would eat it anyway.’

In the dining room it was busier than usual, the men pristine in uniform and medals, the women upright, furs across their shoulders to ward off the October chill. She moved with him from table to table, her arm in his, exchanging pleasantries and warm intentions, smiling still when she reached her own seat at the curtained window, a draught swirling at her feet. He sat down, looked around the room, then at her.

‘You need one of those furs. Do you have one?’

‘A stole, no.’

‘I’ll have to buy one for you.’

‘That’s most kind, Joachim.’

The waiter brought them martinis, both without olives, and listed the evening’s menu – rabbit or Norwegian salmon. She laughed.

‘Fish! That’s why it’s so busy. You never said anything.’

‘I thought it should be a surprise. Would you like wine too?’

She nodded, he ordered and they fell silent until the fish came, pan fried, its exterior crisped, its interior moist and firm, a perfect salmon pink.

‘It makes me want to live by the sea,’ said Katharina.

‘Have you been?’

‘Twice to the North Sea coast.’

‘The Mediterranean?’

‘Never.’

‘I’ll take you when this is over.’

He refilled her wine glass and she ate more fish. She considered saving some for Johannes, for her mother, but ate it all.

The chocolate cherry cake for dessert arrived as the sirens started. Katharina stood up. He told her to sit down again.

‘They’re not capable. Never will be.’

She looked around the room, at the waiters and generals
continuing as they were, and sat back down. He ordered more wine.

‘How can you be so confident?’

‘We’re German. They’re not.’

‘Is that all? Is that all we need to win?’

‘It’s a cloudy night, Katharina. And there are gunners on the roof.’

She let the waiter refill her glass.

52

The sirens blared.

‘It’s an air raid, Mother.’

‘I’m aware of that, Katharina.’

‘Come on then, up. Get out of bed.’

‘I’m sick of air-raid shelters. Of threats that come to nothing.’

‘Come on, Mother.’

‘I’m not going.’

‘Fine.’

She pulled on her coat, lifted Johannes from his cot and wrapped him in blankets, all the while kissing his still baby soft skin. He cried, but calmed when she held him under her coat, to her heart, his eyes suspended between sleep and wakefulness. Her father ushered them through the door and closed it. They were halfway down the stairs when it opened again. It was her mother.

‘All right, I’ll come with you.’

‘Fine,’ said Katharina.

‘It’s just so tedious. And pointless.’

‘They’re sometimes lucky, Mother.’

She moved swiftly, rushing ahead of her parents and then stopping to wait for them, to hurry them along.

‘I need to find a cot,’ she said.

‘Go on,’ said her father. ‘We’ll catch up.’

‘He’ll be intolerable if I don’t.’

‘Go on, Katharina.’

The queue moved as calmly as it usually did; they all knew what to expect, the children’s former excitement drained by habit. She climbed the stairs until she found a cot, made of rope, with a pillow and two neatly folded blankets. She set the boy down, stroked his hair and stood over him, shielding him from the shadows and movement, stepping away when she was certain he had fallen back to sleep. She went towards the staircase to look for her parents but was forced back by the crowd, by a city on the move. She sat down instead, close to Johannes, irritated that her father had her bag with her book and sewing, the suitcase with the blankets and cushions. It would be a cold, dull few hours.

She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but listened instead to the noises outside. She was never sure which she heard first, the planes or the flak guns, or whether it was just a simultaneous explosion of noise that lasted until the bombs ran out. She listened to the rattle of the guns, pitying the men on the roofs, but envying them too, heroes showered the morning after with gratitude, flowers and sometimes chocolate. Their wives too. Thanked and lauded. Women married to success. Not to the Stalingrad men who brought silent awkwardness and a swift change of subject to something less embarrassing. She had learned no longer to talk of Peter, to act as though he was dead, although she had yet to receive the widow’s pension. She had no papers to prove he was dead. Or alive.

Fragments of concrete fell into her hair. She brushed them off. The bombing was close. Closer than usual. The children whimpered and huddled into their mothers’ whispers. Johannes slept on. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall. It could be tolerated. Like Meyer’s fleshy hands. Everything had only to be tolerated.

She opened her eyes again and raised them to the sky she could not see. The sound had changed. The drone was gone; its predictable hum displaced by the acceleration of engines. They were coming down from the sky, diving, lunging at the city, so close that she imagined she could see the pilots, their long, skinny faces, their eyes hidden behind round, wire glasses. She screamed and threw herself to the floor, terrified men and women falling on top of her, pinning Katharina to the dust as the planes came down, a furious, indignant swarm, bomb after bomb falling, the thud of each explosion penetrating the walls and ceiling, sucking the air from her lungs, the emptiness filling with dry, suffocating panic until the air returned in a rush; a see-saw of breath and asphyxiation, of deafening screams and deafened silence; the English pilots growing balder and fatter with each bomb they dropped, their heads back, laughing as they drew on thick, dark cigars. She was sobbing. She could hear her son crying in his cot, but she could not reach him, could not get out from under the mound of bodies on top of her. She clawed at the floor, at the fluorescence painted onto the cement, ordering her mind to survive what her brother’s had not.

They went back up into the sky, and it ended. Slowly, the people over her got to their feet and returned to their places. She sat up and rested momentarily on her knees, her hair and neck wet with other people’s saliva and tears. She wiped them away, straightened her hair and her clothes, and went to her son. He was falling asleep again, but she picked him up anyway, his body leaden, and carried him to her
seat, opening her coat so that his right ear was against her heart, her lips and right hand on his head, stroking, kissing, whispering, rocking.

‘Your father will be home soon, my love. He’ll stop all this.’

The all-clear came and they filed quietly out of the bunker, into a city on fire, a carnival of red and orange flames, of explosions and chaos. She started to run, hearing nothing of her neighbours’ wails or the screams of ambulances, nothing but the sound of her own heavy breath along the cratered streets, over the mounds of rubble and fallen lime trees. She refused to see the vanished houses. She didn’t want to know. She wanted only to be home.

Her house was intact. Not a blemish. She raced up the stairs, put Johannes in his cot, fell to her knees and thrust her arms into the back of her wardrobe. Into the sheets. She buried her face in them, smelling him, smelling them, rocking back and forth, sobbing into the fabric, wanting it all to be over, wanting him home and everything to be normal again. Although she didn’t know what normal was any more. She had forgotten. Lost all trace of it.

She stood up, opened a drawer and pulled out her gift for him, his name still on the clip, waiting to be claimed. She lay on her bed, still in her clothes, holding the sheets and the pen, waiting for her parents, but fell asleep and woke the following morning to the sound of her son. He was demanding food. She called to Natasha.

‘She’s gone,’ said her father. ‘The basement’s empty.’

‘It must have been terrifying for her.’

‘No backbone, that’s all. Typical Russian.’

‘It was horrendous, Father.’

‘They got lucky, that’s all.’

‘Have you slept?’

‘Not yet. It was a long night.’

‘I can imagine.’

She lit a fire, made coffee and fed Johannes. Her mother slept on, leaving Katharina to pick up Natasha’s routine. She was glad of it. It gave her a reason to go out and see the city.

The butcher’s shop was gone, pulverized, but still women queued outside. Katharina joined them, unsure why. Nobody told her and she never asked. She waited half an hour, concluded that nothing would happen and abandoned the queue, a loud cheer rising as she walked away. The butcher had arrived and was setting up a stall on the street. She rushed to retrieve her place, shoving at their ankles with her pram. Nobody looked at her, nobody moved. They would not let her in. She adjusted her fur hat and left.

She headed towards the city centre where she found carrots, bread, some apples, but no meat. At the pawnshop, she chose a dress suitable for the Weinart party. Grass-green velvet. He agreed to hold it for her.

‘I need to think about it.’

‘We all do, Mrs Faber.’

The city’s soldiers and its older men were sifting through the rubble as she went home, looking for those who had survived and those who hadn’t. Fires were still burning in parts of buildings too high to reach.

She stoked the cinders and fed lunch to her son. Her mother was still in bed, but awake. Smoking.

‘Are you all right, Mother?’

‘Fine.’

‘It was horrible, wasn’t it?’

‘It was worse for Johannes.’

Her father returned, covered in dust, without any meat. They had bread and vegetable soup, eating in silence. Katharina put Johannes to bed and packed a suitcase with her papers, Peter’s letters, his pen and their sheets. She added food, clothes and nappies for her son and put the case by the hall door, ready for the next air raid.

‘You won’t need all that, Katharina.’

‘I believe I will, Father.’