Audrey Magee - The Undertaking

‘Mrs Faber. Please. Dr Weinart is waiting for you.’

‘Oh. That’s me.’

‘I know it’s you.’

Katharina stood up, fumbling with her bag, coat and magazine, her face flushed. The women were staring at her. She hurried after the nurse, across a hall and into a room overlooking the city.

Dr Weinart rose as she entered.

‘Ah, Mrs Faber. The daughter of Mr Spinell and wife of Peter Faber.’

‘That is correct.’

‘Your father is a fine man. A very loyal supporter. I can assume the same of you?’

‘Of course, Doctor.’

‘Good. And your husband seems to be so, too. How is his campaign?’

‘I have not heard from him for several weeks, I’m afraid.’

‘He is a busy man, fighting for his country. It’s often hard to find time to write.’

‘That’s what my father tells me.’

‘Listen to your father.’

‘It is very kind of you to take me on, Dr Weinart.’

‘We can’t have our loyal supporters attending the son of a Jew.’

‘We didn’t know, Dr Weinart.’

‘He hid it well, Mrs Faber.’

‘Which of his parents was it?’

‘His mother. He fooled a lot of people, as they do. Now, how can I help you?’

They sat down on leather chairs on either side of a large mahogany table.

‘I am pregnant. At least, I think I am.’

‘That is very fine news. But it will take a couple of days to find out for certain.’

‘I see.’

‘I need a sample of your urine.’

‘Yes, Doctor.’

‘You understand why?’

‘I have read about it in the newspaper. It sounds very interesting, although a little hard to understand, I must admit.’

‘Great German science, Mrs Faber, is never simple.’

‘Could you explain it to me?’

‘I will inject your urine into a rabbit’s ear and the reaction of its ovaries will tell me whether you are pregnant.’

‘I see.’

‘The response of a female African clawed toad is much faster, Mrs Faber, but they are hard to come by at the moment.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Give the nurse your sample and come back to me on Friday. We will know the truth then.’

‘Yes, Doctor.’

She handed in her sample, and went back downstairs, onto the street, where the wind cut at her chest. She would have to find a new coat. And a stole. Preferably matching. She turned right along the boulevard, glancing at coffee shops, looking for the one with the most customers and therefore the most supplies. She found one a couple of streets down from Dr Weinart. It was warm and quiet; the patrons were well-dressed, their heads buried in newspapers or books. They didn’t look up as she walked in. The waiter was polite but brisk, unwilling to linger.

She sat at a window and ordered hot chocolate. It was sweet, sugary rather than chocolatey, and the milk was thin, but it was hot and frothy. She wrapped her hands around the thick white porcelain. Pregnant, she would receive extra rations. Full fat, creamy milk.

She dropped her right hand to her belly. She knew he had taken hold. She didn’t need the rabbit. She could feel the growth, the frantic multiplication of cells, the sense of something other feeding on her. She rubbed her womb, her hand over the space where their baby was growing, wanting it, but afraid of it.

What if her husband was already dead? Or worse, injured. Those shadows of men she remembered from the end of the last war, hanging around street corners, maimed and scarred, dependent on their wives, without jobs, without pensions. She stirred her drink, dredging up the chocolate stuck to the bottom to blend it with the milk. How would she feed the baby then? How would she become anything other than her mother? She didn’t want to be her mother. Anything but that.

She finished her drink, paid the waiter and started the walk home, dawdling at the shop windows displaying fur coats, stoles and evening dresses, walking quickly past the boarded-up windows, past the Jewish draper defiantly open for business, with nothing to sell and no customers. She stopped at a stall and bought some flowers for her room. White roses, short stemmed. Would she tell her mother now or on Friday? She should wait. Enjoy the privacy, the quietness. When would she write to Peter? Would he want a boy or a girl? What did she want?

She took a quick, sharp breath. Nothing deformed. She didn’t want anything maimed. And shocking. The field trip to that house south of Berlin had been shocking. When she and the other girls were taken by bus, led up a marble staircase by a nurse in crisp white and brought into a room with tall windows, ornate ceilings. The noise. The screeches. The stench. The faeces on the wall. The puddles of urine. The nurse shoved her further into the room of metal cots and screaming children in stained lilac cotton gowns.

‘You are here to learn, young lady.’

Katharina stared at the twisted limbs shunting across the green linoleum floor towards her, closing her eyes as they pawed at her feet and legs, as they pulled themselves up with her skirt, smearing her with snot and saliva drooling from faces contorted by birth or faulty genes.

‘They are happy to see you,’ said the nurse.

Katharina ran through the door when it reopened, down the stairs to the reception room, towards coffee and cakes with thick fresh cream. Later the nurse addressed the youth movement girls in neat uniform and tidy hair on the importance of choosing the right husband.

‘It’s vital to ensure there are no impurities – of blood, flesh or brain – that might pass from one generation to the next.’

‘What will happen to them?’ said Katharina.

‘That is to be decided. It costs a lot to keep them here, money that could be better spent on healthy children.’

Katharina walked faster, her feet pounding the pavement. She knew nothing about her husband, or his family. Nothing about the child growing inside her. She chose him for the strength in his sinewy hands. For the light smile on his face. The kindness of his eyes. She knew nothing about his parents. His grandparents. About what lay inside him. It was inside her now.

She turned the key in the lock. She would say nothing to her mother now. Not yet. Nor to Peter. She would wait until she knew more.

He read her letter six, eight, ten times, folded it, slipped it back into its envelope and, still in his socks, walked down the stairs of the house in Poltava. Faustmann, Kraft and Weiss were by the stove, at cards.

‘I’m going to be a father.’

‘Bloody hell, you’re a fast mover,’ said Faustmann.

‘Congratulations,’ said Kraft. ‘When is the baby due?’

‘July.’

‘We’ll be done here by then,’ said Weiss.

They toasted him with vodka and dealt a new hand.

Katharina tied her scarf more tightly and moved up the line, closer to the ducks and geese hanging from steel hooks in the butcher’s window. Mrs Sachs came towards her, a brown parcel under her arm, white string in a neat knot.

‘I got a duck,’ she said.

‘It looks big,’ said Katharina.

‘I’d have preferred a goose. More traditional.’

‘I’d be happy with either.’

‘You should have been here earlier.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘Word went around last night.’

‘We didn’t hear.’

‘You would have heard if you hadn’t moved,’ said Mrs Sachs. ‘The new people in your old place got a goose. A big one.’

‘They’ll have a good Christmas then. And how are you, Mrs Sachs?’

‘Well enough under the circumstances. My son is outside Moscow. The cold is killing him.’

‘The cold is killing us all, Mrs Sachs. Have you any coal?’

‘We haven’t the luxury of a fireplace, Katharina. As you will no doubt remember.’