My Name is Eva(77)
‘But can you bear to stay here, in the country that has hurt you and your compatriots so much? I get so angry thinking of the Germans who were sentenced at the early trials, who are now being released. You can’t say they’ve properly served their time. And there are those who were never put on trial, never accused, who’ve slipped back into their civilian lives unquestioned. Don’t you ever feel you want to do something about it?’
‘My dear, there was a time when I did. But now I have little time left, I ask for peace. I don’t want to end my life disturbed by thoughts of hatred and vengeance.’
‘I’m not sure I’m ready for that. I haven’t made my peace yet.’
‘But you will be going soon too.’ Irene smiled at her and patted her hand. ‘There is no more work for you here now, it is time for you to go home.’
Eva sighed and shook her head. ‘I know. I’m leaving the day after tomorrow. But I don’t know what I’ll do next. Seeing shows in London, afternoon tea at Fortnum’s, polite cocktail parties and dinners with my parents and their friends… it will all seem so utterly pointless after what I’ve seen and heard here.’
‘You have a sweetheart waiting for you, I expect, and your family, they will be overjoyed to see you again.’
‘My parents will be pleased, but there’s no one else.’
‘So what will you do? It will be strange, I am sure, just to go home. And you are a clever girl. You must continue working.’
‘I think you’re right. But I don’t know what yet. Being here has shown me how little people need to make a good life. I don’t need very much. And besides…’ She hesitated, pictures of Hugh and the tortured prisoners in her head, alongside a laughing fair-haired child. ‘I once made a promise, several years ago. I swore I would do more to make amends but I haven’t been able to fulfil that promise yet.’
Irene’s reddened eyes regarded Eva’s frown and she said, ‘You are a good person, my dear. You will do what you must do, God willing.’
‘Thank you. And do you know, you are one of the people who has inspired me most. You kept up the spirits of all the women with you in Ravensbrück and showed them how to survive. You are wonderful.’ Then Eva leant over and kissed the old woman on her dry, papery cheek. ‘I’ll miss you and this extraordinary place when I’m back in London.’
And Irene reached down beside her chair and said, ‘Then you must take this to remind you of us. A single sip, or even just the smell of this, will bring you back to us here, to Wildflecken.’ She laughed and handed Eva a small bottle of fiery crimson liqueur.
Eva read and translated the handwritten label, tied round the bottle’s neck. ‘Wild Place Slivovitz,’ she said and laughed. ‘Then I’ll never be able to forget you or the camp. A part of me will always feel it belongs here.’
71
Eva, 10 September 1951
Germany
This has to be the very last time, then never again, Eva promised herself. Just once more and then I’ll go back to England. I know I can’t stay here in Germany for ever, I know I have to leave her. She’s nearly four now, she may have started learning her numbers and letters at kindergarten and soon she will grow up. It can’t hurt to see her while she is still so young, can it, while she still reminds me of the baby who nuzzled my breast before we were parted? She went without a murmur, wrapped in her soft shawl, while I wept.
So Eva returned, not to Wildflecken, which the Americans had started adapting as one of the bases for their Cold War operations, but to Gemünden, the village near the resettlement camp. Wearing cat’s-eye sunglasses, a chic silk scarf tied over her hair, Grace Kelly-style, she hoped she would not be recognised in the new cotton dress she had bought with bartered cigarettes. She drove from her guesthouse in the next village along the country roads she remembered so well from hours of carefree hiking on her days off, during that first summer.
And on the way she passed the ski resort that she had only ever visited once, that fateful day. She tried not to think about what lay hidden in the dark green forest on its slopes, but she couldn’t help glancing through the window at the thicket of trees as she drove past. No one had ever come to the camp looking for Peter and she had never heard any enquiries about him. He was just one of thousands of disturbed young men, recently returned from the war, who couldn’t settle back into the lives they’d led before the conflict.
When she reached Gemünden she wandered like a tourist around the picturesque beamed cottages and rested for a while at a table outside the inn, where she asked for Himbeerwasser and Apfelküchen in a distinctly American accent. She sipped the raspberry-flavoured drink through a straw, ate a couple of forkfuls of the cinnamon-spiced cake, looking across the village square. The distant tinkle of cowbells drifted from the meadows around the village and stray chickens clucked as they scratched and pecked in the dusty road.
Surely, in her new disguise, no one would realise she was the girl in a uniform who had filled in the forms and stamped the applications at the camp. And if Peter’s mother was still alive and should come into the village to sell eggs or buy flour, she could never associate this fashionable figure with the girl who had hiked to the farm in sturdy leather boots and corduroy shorts.