Necessary Lies(63)
“So when did they run away?” Yan asks about K?the and William. Underneath the bridge they drive along, the Oder river is slow and muddy.
“January 1945,” she says. “When Karl Hanke ordered all women and children to leave.”
She would like to tell him more, but Yan changes the subject. He is thinking of opening his own law office, going private. It’s impossible to survive on the salary he is making. Adam is growing up; he deserves a better life.
“What do you think?” he asks her, and Anna says it is a great idea.
Karlowice, Karlovitz, Anna almost says but stops herself just in time, is a quiet district that escaped the siege of Breslau largely unscathed. Yan parks the car and they walk along the street, past thick, overgrown gardens, in which houses hide behind tall chestnuts and acacias, behind junipers and boxwood hedges. All Anna can see from the street are tiny towers with metal flags, tiled turrets, white and black triangles of half-timbered walls, the steep red roofs with half circles of windows. The villas are surrounded by wrought iron fences, overgrown with vines.
She is armed with the name of the street and a few photographs she has found among William’s things. Three maids in the dining room, holding big Meissen platters. Standing by a long table set with porcelain and family silver, their blouses buttoned up, white aprons starched, stiff, and immaculate. On these platters, William said, were his grandfather’s favourite dishes. Veal with mashed potatoes and cauliflower in brown butter, roasted geese stuffed with dried fruit, bowls of sauerkraut and Eisbein, Wiener Schnitzels, and vanilla pudding for dessert. K?the, in front of the house, wearing a long dark coat, a fox collar around her neck. In another picture she is holding William’s hand, bending over him, as if listening to a secret. Yan glances at the photographs and hands them back to her without a word.
Anna is trying to remember all William has ever told her about this house. Frau Knorr with her sweet smile and her daughters, Moni and Bibi. Little Jutta with her freckles and reddish locks, playing hopscotch on the pavement. “My first love,” he said, recalling polka dot dresses, and heavy coats with a herringbone pattern. Maids tied kerchiefs at the top of their heads to keep the dust out of their hair as they beat the carpets, rising clouds of grey particles that drifted with the wind. Most of all, he said, he remembered his mother’s face, always tense, impatient with him, and her angry voice, “Willi! Williiiiiii! Stop it. Stop it at once!”
That’s what has always happened, Anna thinks. He started telling her about Breslau, but the story always swerved and returned to his mother, to the old stubborn feelings of being watched, judged, and found wanting.
Anna is first to spot the house on Gerhart Hauptmann Weg, now Maria Konopnicka Street — a German writer giving way to a Polish one. It is a corner house, covered with ivy, with a wrought iron fence, grey columns and a narrow path that leads to the front door.
William remembered a stained glass picture hanging against the windowpane, with a country girl climbing a rock, high in the mountains, her right hand reaching into an eagle’s nest. The glass frame was made of red, yellow and aquamarine squares, and when the sun shone the glass glittered. But of course it’s no longer there. Whoever walked into this house in 1945 must have found K?the’s books, clothes, photographs, preserves in the cellar, the mahogany box with William’s toys. Perhaps some of these things are still here, Anna thinks, perhaps all she has to do is to be let in and she will see the carved furniture, the bookcases. Maybe even old pictures are here, hidden in the attic where the new owners have put them, thinking that maybe other people’s memories should be spared. She has heard things like that happen. Refugees from the East, driven from their homes by Stalin, were not as hostile to the Silesian Germans as the Poles from Central Poland. They were known to preserve old family keepsakes and return them when asked.
The front door of the house opens and a woman appears. She is in her late thirties, wearing a tight pink dress and white clogs. She must have seen them through the window and now she is curious, wants to establish her presence. Anna feels her gaze, not unfriendly, she thinks, but cautious and she remembers the first West German cars of her childhood, slowly coming to a stop on their street. They followed these visitors like shadows, guiltily accepting handfuls of chewing gum and candy, hiding the sweet treasures from their parents. One man Anna remembers particularly well, because of the shining gold of his glasses and his bluish grey suit. He was invited inside by Pani Walczakowa, offered coffee and a slice of plum cake. Later she heard Pani Walczakowa describe how the German asked to be left alone in one of the rooms, and through the keyhole they all watched him sit there without moving.
“Why don’t you ask her to let us in?” Yan says, curious, wondering what will happen. “Maybe she won’t mind.” The woman waits, motionless, watching them. When Anna gathers her courage, the woman does not seem at all surprised at her story. “Your husband was born in this house?” she repeats, nodding. “Moved all the way to Canada?” She seems impressed by these words. “Come in,” she says. “Please. Come in.”
“I’m Magda Olejniczak,” she says. Her hand is soft and limp.
“Anna Herzman,” Anna says, and smiles with gratitude.
Inside, Magda points to a few pieces of furniture that, she says, have been here for as long as she remembers. “This side table,” she says, “and the grandfather clock.” She doesn’t know if they were here in 1945, as she is not the first owner of the house. In fact it is her parents’ house and soon they might be forced to sell it. Taxes are rising and jobs are no longer secure, she says. Her father had a good, steady job, she doesn’t say where, but now he is threatened with cutbacks. Also some people don’t like the fact that he didn’t join Solidarity from the start. As if he did something wrong, she says, by being cautious.