Necessary Lies(80)

“It all becomes very simple then. You are German or Russian or Polish; you are a man, a woman or a child. There are no other choices. German men are hit in the head with a rifle butt. Children are taken somewhere, but you don’t know where.


Women? Women are raped. You have been with them in the same room. You already know their names, Marie, Erika, Ilschen, Frau Neumann. Some of them scream, some cry. What’s going to happen to us, they ask. Oh God, Oh God, why is this happening?

“I was taken to a big house and told to wait. I thought I heard K?the’s scream. From another room. Such an unnatural scream. Later, only later, I learned that before these soldiers have been let loose in this village, they have been taken to a concentration camp, to see piles of bodies, heaps of glasses, of hair. That they have been reminded by big white signs on wooden scaffolds. Soldiers! Auschwitz does not forgive. Take revenge without mercy!

“The first one gave me vodka to drink from his field flask and then a piece of greasy sausage to eat. He laughed and pinched my cheek and I thought: Thank you, God! He will let me go! Then he hit me. Down, you German whore, he yelled, and I closed my eyes and lay down.

“I stopped counting how many times I was raped. The soldiers lined up. Some spit on me or hit me in the face. I closed my eyes. I didn’t care if I lived or died. My throat was swollen, for one of them tried to strangle me, and others pulled him away. Another one pressed a pistol against my chest, and I prayed that he would fire.

“I must have fainted, for when I woke up I had no clothes on. I groped in the dark, in the blood and vomit. There was a wardrobe in the room, and a dress on a hanger. But it was too small. I had to leave the back unfastened, to make it fit. I climbed through the window. There was a church in this village, and I wanted to hide there.

“The church was dark and empty. There was a big cross at the altar. There was a body on the cross. A woman’s dead body. Naked, pinned down to the wood by her hands and feet. They had torn away the figure of Christ to make room for her. Her face was swollen and blue, her hair entangled. Her mouth was opened as if she were still trying to say something.

“K?the, I saw a few hours later. With Willi. Her face and legs were bruised and swollen, but she said she fell down the stairs, Nothing happened,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’ I knew she was lying, but it was just as well. I didn’t want to hear the truth. I wanted to forget. She said a Russian, Captain Zeneyev, helped her and Willi. ‘A good man,’ she said. ‘Isn’t he a good man, Willi?’ And Willi said, ‘Yes, Mutti.’ He was playing with an aeroplane made out of a Russian army bulletin.

“This Russian Captain let us stay in his quarters for a few days. He sent us a Russian nurse. Gave us food. Said he had a boy at home, the same age. Before we left, we saw carts with Polish refugees coming to this village. They moved into empty houses. Their children ran around the yard with hoops, climbed the trees, pretended to shoot at each other with sticks. On Sunday morning, the women, their heads tied in flowery kerchiefs, went to pray in the church.

“Moni, my daughter, she knows all this. I told her all about it, and she says we have to bear our punishment. Perhaps she is right. Johann was a prisoner in Russia, but he was released in 1947. He, too, didn’t want to speak about what he had seen. He said we had to be grateful for what we had. K?the made me promise I would never tell Willi. I never did. But I want you to know. You were his wife, after all. You should know.”

“Mutti” Monika says, softly. “Mutti, it’s all right.”

Frau Strauss begins to fold the Breslau albums. Her eyes narrow and her lips fold inward.

“It’s good K?the is in Canada,” she says slowly. “This is a cursed land. People are afraid of the past here, afraid to love their country, afraid to be proud of it. No matter what the young ones do, the world will never forgive the German people. K?the was right to go away with Willi. Please, tell K?the I said that. She will know what I mean.”

Frau Strauss shakes her head as she says it and looks up to the stuccoed ceiling, to the rosettes and meanders of white plaster ornaments.


Anna has underestimated Ursula’s persistence. Next evening, by the time she is back at the hotel, her feet aching and swollen from the march through the city, Frau Herrlich has already chatted with the proprietor of the pension, and he has brought her cappuccino to the lounge, to the low table by the marble fireplace. He is now motioning to Anna to hurry there, to meet her distinguished guest. “Four times,” he says. “Frau Herrlich has been here four times. I saw her on television just a few days ago. But you never left a message for her, did you?”

“No,” Anna says. “I didn’t.”

Ursula rises from her chair, points to the coffee cup, and waves to Herr Müller, a thank-you he acknowledges with a beaming smile. She has tied her hair in the back, straightening the grey curls. Only one unruly strand keeps falling over her eye. Without lipstick her mouth looks smaller and pale, but the lines cutting into her lips are deeper.

“I’ve been trying to find you,” she says.

The anger that seized Anna when she rushed out of the café, ignoring Ursula’s plea, has evaporated.

“I’ve been sightseeing,” Anna says. “My flight doesn’t leave until Saturday.”

“Good,” Ursula smiles. “I want to show you something, too.”