AllFreeNovel
Share Us
iii
Carla's brother, Erik, came home that summer, near to death. He had contracted tuberculosis in a Soviet labor camp, and they had released him when he became too ill to work. He had been sleeping rough for weeks, traveling on freight trains and begging lifts on lorries. He arrived at the von Ulrich house barefoot and wearing filthy clothes. His face was like a skull.
However, he did not die. It might have been being with people who loved him, or the warmer weather as winter turned into spring, or perhaps just rest, but he coughed less and regained enough energy to do some work around the house, boarding up smashed windows, repairing roof tiles, unblocking pipes.
Fortunately, at the beginning of the year Frieda Franck had struck gold.
Ludwig Franck had been killed in the air raid that destroyed his factory, and for a while Frieda and her mother had been as destitute as everyone else. But she got a job as a nurse in the American zone, and soon afterward, she explained to Carla, a little group of American doctors had asked her to sell their surplus food and cigarettes on the black market in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. Thereafter she turned up at Carla's house once a week with a little basket of supplies: warm clothing, candles, flashlight batteries, matches, soap, and food--bacon, chocolate, apples, rice, canned peaches. Maud divided the food into portions and gave Carla double. Carla accepted without hesitation, not for her own sake, but to help her feed baby Walli.
Without Frieda's illicit groceries, Walli might not have made it.
He was changing fast. The dark hair with which he had been born had now gone, and instead he had fine, fair hair. At six months he had Maud's wonderful green eyes. As his face took shape, Carla noticed a fold of flesh in the outer corners of his eyes that gave him a slant-eyed look, and she wondered if his father had been a Siberian. She could not remember all the men who had raped her. Most of the time she had closed her eyes.
She no longer hated them. It was strange, but she was so happy to have Walli that she could hardly bring herself to regret what had happened.
Rebecca was fascinated by Walli. Now just fifteen, she was old enough to have the beginnings of maternal feelings, and she eagerly helped Carla bathe and dress the baby. She played with him constantly, and he gurgled with delight when he saw her.
As soon as Erik felt well enough, he joined the Communist Party.
Carla was baffled. After what he had suffered at the hands of the Soviets, how could he? But she found that he talked about Communism in the same way he had talked about Nazism a decade earlier. She just hoped that this time his disillusionment would not be so long coming.
The Allies were keen for democracy to return to Germany, and city elections were scheduled for Berlin later in 1946.
Carla felt sure the city would not return to normal until its own people took control, so she decided to stand for the Social Democratic Party. But Berliners quickly discovered that the Soviet occupiers had a curious notion of what democracy meant.
The Soviets had been shocked by the results of elections in Austria last November. The Austrian Communists had expected to run neck and neck with the socialists, but had won only four seats out of 165. It seemed that voters blamed Communism for the brutality of the Red Army. The Kremlin, unused to genuine elections, had not anticipated that.
To avoid a similar result in Germany, the Soviets proposed a merger between the Communists and the Social Democrats in what they called a united front. The Social Democrats refused, despite heavy pressure. In East Germany the Russians started arresting Social Democrats, just as the Nazis had in 1933. There the merger was forced through. But the Berlin elections were supervised by the four Allies, and the Social Democrats survived.
Once the weather warmed up, Carla was able to take her turn queuing for food. She carried Walli with her wrapped in a pillowcase--she had no baby clothes. Standing in line for potatoes one morning, a few blocks from home, she was surprised to see an American jeep pull up with Frieda in the passenger seat. The balding, middle-aged driver kissed her on the lips, and she jumped out. She was wearing a sleeveless blue dress and new shoes. She walked quickly away, heading for the von Ulrich house, carrying her little basket.
Carla saw everything in a flash. Frieda was not trading on the black market, and there was no syndicate of doctors. She was the paid mistress of an American officer.
It was not unusual. Thousands of pretty German girls had been faced with the choice: see your family starve, or sleep with a generous officer. French women had done the same under German occupation; officers' wives back here in Germany had spoken bitterly about it.
All the same, Carla was horrified. She believed that Frieda loved Heinrich. They were planning to get married as soon as life returned to some semblance of normality. Carla felt sick at heart.
She reached the head of the line and bought her ration of potatoes, then hurried home.
She found Frieda upstairs in the drawing room. Erik had cleaned up the room and put newspaper in the windows, the next best thing to glass. The curtains had long ago been recycled as bed linen, but most of the chairs had survived so far, their upholstery faded and worn. The grand piano was still there, miraculously. A Russian officer had discovered it and announced that he would return next day with a crane to lift it out through the window, but he had never come back.
Frieda immediately took Walli from Carla and began to sing to him. "A, B, C, die Katze lief im Schnee." The women who had not yet had children, Rebecca and Frieda, could hardly get enough of Walli, Carla observed. Those who had had children of their own, Maud and Ada, adored him but dealt with him in a briskly practical way.
Frieda opened the lid of the piano and encouraged Walli to bang on the keys as she sang. The instrument had not been played for years: Maud had not touched it since the death of her last pupil, Joachim Koch.
After a few minutes Frieda said to Carla: "You're a bit solemn. What is it?"
"I know how you get the food you bring us," Carla said. "You're not a black marketeer, are you?"
"Of course I am," Frieda said. "What are you talking about?"
"I saw you this morning, getting out of a jeep."
"Colonel Hicks gave me a lift."
"He kissed you on the lips."
Frieda looked away. "I knew I should have got out earlier. I could have walked from the American zone."
