Audrey Magee - The Undertaking

‘I’d forgotten about them,’ said Kraft.

‘And partisans,’ said Gunkel.

‘We’d get on well with them in the end, when all this is forgotten. When they can practise their religion and own their farms again.’

‘This will never be forgotten, Kraft,’ said Faustmann.

They rummaged through the houses, looking for things that might be of use. Weiss held up a baby’s bonnet with ear flaps and strings. It was covered in dried mud.

‘Do you want to send this to your wife, Faber? For the baby?’

‘My child’s not wearing that, Weiss.’

Weiss slapped Faber on the back.

‘Don’t say I didn’t try, my friend.’

They moved out.

She read his letter at the breakfast table, over and over, each time struggling to contain her disappointment.

‘He’s not coming.’

‘Of course he’s not,’ said her mother.

‘He’s been refused leave.’

‘So he says.’

‘He’s very upset about it. And apologetic.’

‘They always are. In the beginning, anyway.’

Mr Spinell spread butter on his bread.

‘Don’t worry, Katharina,’ he said. ‘Your husband will be home soon.’

‘Unlike your brother,’ said Mrs Spinell.

He hurried his chewing.

‘I’ll be back tonight.’

‘Off with the boys again, are you?’

He slammed the door as he left. Katharina stood up to gather the dishes.

‘Leave them,’ said Mrs Spinell. ‘I’ll do them.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I feel better today. I’ll manage them.’

‘That’s good, Mother. I’ll get the baby ready.’

Johannes was awake in his cot by her bed, the trace of a first smile on his face. She scooped him up, rubbing her lips across the downy softness of his head. She sat on the chair that had been in her brother’s room and laid the infant across her thighs, humming and smiling at the squareness of his small chin, at the curl of hair hanging over his forehead. He yawned, then cried and snuffled. She pushed aside her nightdress, and lifted him to her nipple, her back taut, waiting for the shot of pain as he sucked. She slapped her feet against the floor and sang until the pain passed, until the nerves coursing up and down her spine settled into the rhythm of his feeding.

‘I got a letter from your daddy, sweetheart. You’re going to have to wait a little longer before you meet him.’

She returned to the living room, the baby on her shoulder, the dishes still on the table, her mother motionless, staring at nothing.

‘I told you that you should have married the doctor’s son,’ she said. ‘He liked the comforts of home. You could see that in him.’

‘Stop it, Mother.’

‘He’d be here now. With you and your child. Not off with the boys.’

‘There’s a war on, Mother.’

‘You’ll end up like me, Katharina. You chose a husband as useless as your father.’

Katharina paced the room, rubbing small circles into her son’s back to release the tension in his tightly curled legs.

‘That’s just what Johannes used to do,’ said Mrs Spinell. ‘He looks so like him.’

‘He looks nothing like him, Mother. Johannes was round and chubby.’

‘But he has his eyes.’

‘They’re Peter’s eyes. Please, Mother, not again.’

The baby burped and his legs relaxed. Katharina slid him off her shoulder to cradle him in the crook of her left arm.

‘Will you hold him while I tidy up?’

‘No.’

She laid Johannes on a blanket, a towel beneath his bottom, and took off his nappy. She gathered the dishes and filled the sink with hot, soapy water, deliberately using more than her mother would have permitted, and scrubbed furiously at the light stains on the crockery, at her mother’s words, at her husband’s letter, harder and harder, certain that nothing would ever be clean again, never back to the way it had been. To the way it should be.

‘Damn you, Peter Faber. Damn you.’

She dried and put away the dishes, washed and dressed the child and went downstairs to the pram Dr Weinart had given her. It was large, elegant and modern, made of navy fabric and shining chrome. She liked the way the other women looked at her as she pushed it.

She set the child into it, tucked blankets around him and pulled his white cotton cap over his ears. She rolled back her shoulders, raised her head and wheeled him onto the street, where the air was fresh but warm, the day’s heat still to come. She turned towards the park, to sit and watch the waltz of sunlight and leaves.

She chose the bench she had shared with Peter, turned the pram against the sun and inhaled the newness of the day. She closed her eyes and rested, and then took a magazine from the bottom of the pram. The doctor had given her several back issues from his clinic. Before, leafing through a magazine, she would pause at the pictures of coats, dresses and hats, but now she found herself poring over kitchens, bedrooms and living rooms. She wanted a home for her child. To be away from her parents. From her mother.

A shadow fell over the magazine. Katharina looked up. It was a woman, in a summer dress that had once been elegant, a baby at her hip and a young child hanging from her skirt. Both were boys.

‘It works well, doesn’t it?’ she said.

The dark circles under her eyes covered much of her face.

‘Sorry?’ said Katharina.

‘The pram. It’s very good. I used to have one just like it.’

‘Yes, I like it a lot.’

‘The suspension is excellent. Better than the model I had for my first child. My daughter.’

Katharina shielded her eyes from the sun to look up at the woman, at the yellow star dirtied and torn.

‘Yes. Yes. It is.’

Silence fell between them.

‘How old is your child?’ said the woman.

‘Six weeks.’

‘Your first?’

‘Yes.’

‘Congratulations.’

‘Thank you.’

She wanted to return to her magazine, but all three were staring at her, snot dribbling from the older boy’s nose.

‘How old are yours?’

‘Almost one. And the boy is three.’

‘And your daughter?’

‘Eight. Only she’s gone. Taken with her father.’

The woman’s legs buckled, and she pressed her hand onto the back of the bench for support. Katharina looked at her, at her hand on the bench, at the doctor’s pram, at the people who passed by. They could see everything. They could see Katharina talking to a Jew.

‘You can’t sit down here,’ said Katharina.

‘I know that. I’m just tired.’

The woman straightened her back and moved the baby to the other hip. She walked away, the boy still hanging onto her skirt. Katharina checked her child, shifted him out of the light and returned to her magazine.

Berlin, August 20th, 1942

My dear Peter,

The Führer has just announced that we are to take Stalingrad. To hear it from our leader’s lips is thrilling. Imagine it, Peter, a German Empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Volga. It is beyond anything I could have hoped for. The man is truly a genius.

And you are to be part of it, Peter. I am very proud of you and promise to stop badgering you about home leave. You have an important task to achieve. Your son and I will support you as best we can. I have enclosed three bars of chocolate to help you along a little of the way.

Everything here is fine. You have nothing to worry about. Johannes is thriving. My father and I took him on a little trip to the lake the other day, when the weather was hot, and dipped his feet into the water, although not for too long, as the water remains quite cold. He is a good child, Peter. You will be entranced, my darling. I am sure that I am hearing his first attempts at a giggle, especially when I tickle his belly.