I’m becoming fond of this draughty little sitting room at the back of the café, with its threadbare rug and worn-out, faded green sofa. A place of safety. A haven where I can meet Walter before he leaves Germany tomorrow. Strange how I should feel sheltered and safe here, amongst strangers, but exposed and vulnerable in my own home.
I peer out of the door into the little backyard behind the café with its coal store, toilet and bins. I listen to the gentle clattering in the kitchen and the low hum of voices in the café beyond. My heart beats hard and strong.
I’m staring into the bare fireplace when Felix, Lena’s son, slinks silently into the kitchen. A stranger has followed him. A pang of fear as I wonder who this is. There is nothing familiar about the gaunt, bald-headed figure who stands in front of me. His cheekbones stand proud, too proud, out of his face; his eyes are sunken and deep purple bruises and scabs cover his hairless head. One hand is thickly bandaged and his shoulders sag. A homeless beggar, perhaps. He is instantly repelling and I take a step backwards.
Then I look into his eyes.
What have they done to you?
‘I never thought I’d see you again,’ the stranger speaks.
I step forward, raise my hands to his face. His cheeks are wet beneath my fingertips and I trace his grey skin upwards, feel the fuzz of new hair growth on his head. His beautiful blond curls; hacked off. Gone.
‘No,’ I whisper. ‘No, no no…’
We sit on the sofa. Lena, her mother and Felix are in the room. Lena’s hand is over her mouth and she stifles a cry at the sight of Walter. Her mother hands us tumblers of some sort of strong liquor. I take a gulp and shudder as the fiery liquid slides down my throat.
‘Get him some food,’ she instructs Lena. ‘Can’t you see he needs food?’
‘No,’ he croaks, ‘no food,’ and his hand trembles as he raises the tumbler to his mouth and drinks the whole lot down. ‘More of this. Please.’
‘Fetch the cooking brandy, Lena. Felix, come with me, the café needs our attention.’ She shoos them from the room and we are alone.
‘Walter, what’s happened to you?’ I whisper. I long to touch him again but he looks as if he might just break if I do.
He shakes his head. His eyes are wet but he doesn’t seem to notice.
‘It isn’t fair,’ he says finally. ‘It isn’t fair that I’m out here, and they are still in – in that hell.’
‘Tell me.’ Gingerly I place my fingers on his arm.
He glances at me, wipes a heavily shaking hand across his mouth. ‘I can’t. I-I don’t have the words.’
‘I’m so sorry I ever doubted what you told me was the truth. Walter, I’m so sorry.’ I reach for his unbandaged hand and give it a gentle squeeze. How could I once have been so blind? I look at him, struggling to process what I’m seeing. He’s a shadow of what he was thirteen days before. My throat closes as a wash of emotion takes hold. How could they do this?
‘I tried,’ I begin. ‘I tried to get them out, your father and uncle.’ It sounds so lame. So useless.
‘I know. I know it was you who saved me. Friends in high places, they said, before they let me go. Thank you. It didn’t stop them giving me a final beating, though.’ He lifts his shirt and shows me his bruised and battered body. ‘Twenty-five lashes for the road.’
‘Dear Jesus.’ I bite my fist.
Lena returns with the bottle of cooking brandy. She fills his tumbler three-quarters full and quickly leaves again, her cheeks pinched, eyes full of horror.
‘What happened to your hand?’
He doesn’t answer. He just swigs great gulps of brandy. Beads of sweat appear on his forehead. Slowly, slowly the brandy seems to calm him. His breathing eases and the trembling subsides.
Tears brim in my eyes and Walter’s image swims. They wash down my cheeks, a flood of shame and pity.
‘The camp…’ He shakes his head.
‘Tell me. Please.’
He looks down at the fat bandage covering his left hand. He takes another mouthful of brandy, then he begins to speak in a flat, low voice I barely recognise.
‘The day I arrived, the eleventh of November, we were brought to the front of the camp on trucks. We were made to jump out and run through two lines of SS thugs to get to the gates. They were armed with clubs and iron bars to beat us with as we passed. There was a hold up at the gate, so many were trying to get through, to get away from the SS. I momentarily rested my hand on the wall to keep steady as people were shoving to get past. A brute hit my hand, full strength, with an iron bar. He broke three of my fingers. Crushed them. The tip of the smallest was pulverised to not much more than pulp. The pain was… excruciating. I passed out, was on the ground, but they beat me until I got up again.’ His voice is that of an old man.
‘But why? They’re out of control. Surely once their superiors…’ Even as I say it, I think of the order I saw on Vati’s desk, the beating to death I witnessed in the street, and I swallow my words of incredulity.
‘Their superiors. The commander ordered them to do it. They beat us constantly.’ He swallows hard. Looking down at the threadbare rug, his voice is scarcely above a whisper. ‘That first day… when we arrived. One man, his ear was beaten off his head. Another was blinded by an iron bar to his eye… Then, when we got in there, the camp couldn’t cope. I’ve learnt since, ten thousand of us were taken to that… that place in just a couple of days. There was nowhere to put us all, so we were made to stand, all the rest of that day, then all night and all the next day too. They gave us no food or water until the second evening. People were getting sick. My father, my uncle – I don’t know what happened to them. We got separated before we even arrived, put on different trucks. We weren’t allowed to move from our muster group. If we tried to speak, or escape, we were beaten, or worse.’
He stops and swallows more brandy. I rub his arms, his legs, gently, careful to avoid his bruises, his dreadfully injured hand.
‘The third day, some of us were rounded into a barracks, if you could call it that.’ His voice is becoming slurred from the drink. ‘It was a cattle shed – no windows, no light or heat, no floor, just freezing, stinking, mud. We were covered in it. There were lines of wooden bunks – well planks – four layers high, for us to lie in, one on top of the other. There were no latrines nearby. It was so cold, Hetty, bitter like I’ve never known before. If we weren’t in the sheds, we were lined up outside. They rounded us up, in at night, out in the day, like cattle. Worse than cattle. We were made to stand, hour upon hour, while they barraged us twenty-four hours a day through the tannoy system… messages about us Jewish pigs, how we cheated the Aryans, how we’ll be made to pay.’
He stops to take another drink, swaying slightly as he sits. It’s a miracle he’s even alive. A tableau of images flow through my mind. Articles from the Leipziger; Herr Metzger preaching the sins of the Jews; passages from Mein Kampf; Mutti’s warnings against the evil race: Hetty, stay away from them, stick only with good people, like us; the violence of the night of the riots. Hitler, spreading his words of hate.
All of it leading to this.
Guilt-ridden vomit rises in my throat.
‘Shh,’ I say. I don’t know why. Perhaps because there are no words. No words of comfort I can possibly summon for him. ‘Shhh.’
‘They humiliated us, utterly,’ he continues. ‘The SS Scharführer in charge of our section thought it would be amusing to make several of us share our cabbage soup from one tin bowl with no spoons. We were made to stand for hours, then sit for hours, on the damp muster ground all day from morning until night and we were refused permission even to relieve ourselves. We had to sit, walk, eat, sleep in our own piss, shit and filth! Father won’t survive this. He isn’t strong. I was there only ten days, Hetty, and I know the person I was, the person I used to be, died in that camp. This person, this shell you see now?’ He pats his chest. ‘I don’t know who this is anymore.’
Anger flares inside me. White-hot fury.
I take his face in my hands and look deep into his eyes. ‘I know you,’ I tell him, fiercely. ‘I know you are good and kind, the most wonderful of humans. You will go to England and carry on being that person. You will do good in the world, I know it. Because, you can’t let them beat you. You mustn’t let them!’
I’m not sure he believes me. But I’m certain that, deep inside, he is still there, my Walter. Injured, frightened, traumatised – but still there. I need no more convincing of who is right in our debate. Something is going deeply, crazily wrong in our country. I saw it that night on the ninth of November. I see the result of it now, in Walter. Ordinary men and women, carried along by something huge and ugly, overwhelming hatred or fear that makes them do unthinkable, unspeakable things.
‘I’m so scared,’ he says, ‘of what will happen to my family. My poor mother, my little cousins, my grandmother. I don’t even know if my father and uncle are alive. There were deaths in there, you know.’ He stares at me with wild eyes. ‘In the camp. Two dead men in my shed, just left there, right next to the living, beginning to rot.’
‘Oh, Walter…’
‘You have to help them,’ he says, becoming agitated. ‘You have to do anything you can to get them out of there, out of that camp, and you must help all of them leave. You have to, Hetty.’
‘Yes, yes, Walter, I’ll help.’ The words spill from me with ease. I can’t bear to see him suffer, to know of the suffering without doing anything. ‘I’ll find a way to get them out. Shh, shh, don’t upset yourself. It’ll be okay. I promise you. This will calm down, sense will prevail and it’ll be okay.’ I try to reassure him, but I know that I’m utterly, sickeningly, powerless in the face of something so vast.
‘It won’t, Hetty,’ he says, shaking his head violently. ‘It won’t be okay. It’ll never be okay. You didn’t see it. You didn’t see what I saw.’
‘No, no I didn’t. But I’ve seen enough. I will do whatever I can to help your people. You have to believe me. I promise you, Walter, I promise.’
My words seem to calm him and he drains the rest of his brandy. He falls silent and his hand, still shaking, grasps his tumbler tightly. I watch him, still not believing that this gaunt creature is all that’s left of my Walter.
‘Thank you,’ he says, turning to me again. ‘I believe you will. I leave for England tomorrow. I’ve booked a train ticket. It will kill me to leave them here, but at least once I’m there I can try to help them. It’s their only chance.’
Will it kill you to leave me too? How I wish I could go with you. Away from this place. Away from Vati and his mistress and his scheming. Away from my disintegrating life. I only want to be with you. To heal you, darling Walter.
‘I’ll help in any way I can,’ I repeat, choking on my tears.
‘I know.’
‘I’m not brave, you know. I’m terrified of the future.’ I swallow hard. ‘I don’t even know if I’ll see you again. That’s what scares me the most. Walter, I couldn’t bear it if—’
Finally, he draws me in, holds me gently in his arms. I cling to him as though my life depends on it.
‘We don’t know what the future holds,’ Walter whispers into my ear. ‘But know this, as long as you are alive, as long as I am alive, somewhere in this world, that is a good thing. One day you will find happiness, I’m certain of it. That is enough for me. I will always hold a place in my heart for you. Always. You saved my life, Hetty Heinrich, and I shall never forget that.’
And you have saved me, Walter Keller, then and now.
You have opened my eyes and made me see.