Pierre Frei - Berlin - A Novel

The door opened, and a moustached police sergeant in a green uniform marched in. 'Hey, Erwin, got him yet?' someone asked.

The sergeant took off his cap and sat down. 'One of the task force shot him. Trying to do a bunk in a boat. Bullet through the head at a hundred metres. If they'd chopped his head off right away we'd have been spared the expense. But no, they put the likes of him in a padded cell instead. He abused and killed a dozen boys. I hear.'

Helga was horrified. 'But there are children in the hospital too.'

The sergeant cast her a suspicious glance. 'How d'you know that?'

Helga corrected herself at once. 'I mean, it would be so irresponsible to put a brute like that anywhere near children! High time the Party did something about it.'

'Let's have a beer, Frieda,' the sergeant called. He didn't want to know about the Party.

After her meal Helga set out, leaving her bike at the inn. It would not have been much use anyway. Waterways threaded the densely forested landscape, but there was always a tree trunk or a footbridge somewhere to help you across them. After going half a kilometre she reached a wall twice the height of a man, and made her way along it to the entrance. A notice on the railings of the gate announced:

KLEIN MOORBACH HOSPITAL RACIAL HYGIENE RESEARCH INSTITUTE BRANCH

The battlements of an ugly, late-nineteenth-century building rose menacingly beyond the gate. The hospital had been the country house of some family of the minor aristocracy. A man with a peaked cap came out of the porter's lodge with a German shepherd dog on a leash and began going his rounds. The gravel of the forecourt crunched under his boots.

Helga closed her eyes and sent her thoughts flying to the yellow-brick building. Mama is here, Karl, she thought. She felt his warmth, as always when he clung to her for protection. He was a good boy, not at all difficult. But he was twice as helpless as his contemporaries, and thus far, far more vulnerable.

She set up her easel under a tree so that she had the place in front of her. 'Mama will get you out of there,' she said firmly.

Back home, she took up her position in Reinhard's old office and embarked on a pitched battle with the authorities. She made phone calls which generally got no further than an underling's office. She sent letters enclosing a report from Dr Weiland on the harmless nature of Karl's condition.'. Care by his mother at home is all that is required. There is no need for hospitalization.'

Some of her petitions and appeals were even acknowledged, weeks later. The reply was always negative. '… Must therefore inform you… not the department responsible… have read your letter… we suggest you apply to… your complaint is not upheld… With German greetings, signed…'

Month followed month. New theatres of war opened up. The German Army marched from victory to victory. Helga took no notice. She racked her brains during sleepless nights. Where there's a will there's a way — the old saying kept hammering inside her head. But there seemed to be no way to reach Karl.

She left the apartment only for the most essential purposes. Most of the time she sat there apathetically, waiting in vain for letters and phone calls that never came.

'This can't go on,' her sister Monika said on one of her rare visits. 'Doing nothing like this doesn't suit you at all.'

'What's the alternative, then?' asked Helga, feeling hopeless.

'Well, at least don't sit around like an old lady. Do something!'

And so, one Monday, Helga Lohmann pulled herself together and went to her old place of employment in Luisenstrasse. She had made an appointment to see the matron. The red-brick building of the famous hospital, which King Frederick William I of Prussia had named the Charite in 1727, intending it to provide free medical treatment for the poor, basked cheerfully in the sun.

Things were less cheerful inside. Young men in striped dressing gowns thronged the corridors. One-legged cripples on crutches, legless men in wheelchairs, a blond giant with burns on his face and bandaged stumps for hands — the human debris of victorious battles.

A squad of white coats hurried past. 'Eugen!' she exclaimed.

The tall, grey-haired man leading them stopped. 'Helga!'

'Your rounds, Professor,' someone reminded him.

'In a minute.' He took her hand. At twelve in my office — in Neurosurgery. I'm so pleased to see you.' The smile on his tanned face was radiant.

Her interview with the matron was brief and positive. 'Oh yes, we certainly need nursing staff everywhere. A week's refresher course, and I can use you as a fully qualified nurse. I can't promise it will be in the children's ward, but will you come all the same?'

'Oh yes, Matron, I'd be glad to.'

'Good — go down to the personnel department, then, and they'll see to the paperwork. I'll ring and let them know you're coming.'

'In half an hour's time, if that's all right. I want to look in on a friend in Neurosurgery for a few moments first.'

Helga was received by a middle-aged secretary. 'The professor's expecting you.' Professor Eugen Klemm was head of the Neurosurgical department at the Charite.

'Helga. ' He took her in his arms. 'I can't tell you how good it is to see you. How many years has it been? No, don't tell me, it'll make me seem even older. Unlike you — you haven't changed a bit.'

'Flatterer!' Warmth flooded through her, and an unassuaged longing. She drew away from him. 'You're a great man now, aren't you? What about your private life? Married? Children?'

'Married eight years, a daughter aged seven, a son aged five. And you?'

'Married for ten years, widowed a year ago, one son. Our son, Eugen.'

It was a few seconds before he took it in. 'Why didn't you tell me? It would have changed everything.'

'We had a few blissful weeks together. We never planned anything more. An ambitious, up-and-coming doctor and a little probationer nurse — it would never have worked. You wouldn't be where you are now. And I should tell you that my husband acknowledged the baby even before he was born, and I had money of my own too, so I didn't need any help.'

As simple as that?' There was a note of disappointment in his voice.

'No, Eugen, it wasn't simple. Karl's eleven now. He's a dear boy.' She hesitated, and then came out with it. 'They've taken him away from me. He's mongoloid, he doesn't fit in with today's ideas of society. They've put him in Klein Moorbach. He won't survive there without me. Help us, Eugen.'

She could see that her revelation hit him hard, but he remained calm and matter-of fact. 'Klein Moorbach is a private clinic. Its medical superintendent is Dr Ralf Urban. He is an outstanding psychiatrist and neurologist. An expert on severe mental disturbances.'

'Karl's not mad,' she said earnestly. 'Just slower to develop than other children.'

'I know,' he said. 'But, well, things are seen differently in some quarters. Klein Moorbach is a branch of the Racial Hygiene Research Institute.'

'Yes — what exactly does that mean?'

'I'd rather not go into detail. Listen, Helga, I know Urban. I can ask him to take you on as a nurse in the children's section. I'll think of some plausible reason. You'd have to use your maiden name. In no circumstances must it emerge that you're Karl's mother.'

'How do you think I can prevent that? He'll rush at me shouting "Mama!"'

'You must think of something. I can't help you there.'

And then?'

'You're a good nurse, you get on well with children. Make yourself indispensable. Stay in Klein Moorbach — with our son. I don't know how long it will be — a year, two years? But some day these horrors will be over — the Party, the Brownshirts…'

'Eugen, you mustn't talk like that. Of course some of the things that happen aren't right — like with my tenants the Salomons. The Fiihrer doesn't know everything that goes on. But he'll make sure it turns out all right in the end.'