Their voices travel from the dining room, unnaturally heightened, when I arrive home, mid-morning, from Kuschi’s Sunday walk. The door is ajar and I listen from behind it.
‘Really, Franz, I have no idea who the culprit is. I’m shocked by her behaviour, truly. But I can’t imagine why she won’t name him. She’s protecting him. I suppose he’s married…’ There’s a pause. ‘It’s my fault. I should have been more careful with her. But I was so distracted with losing Karl…’ Mutti’s voice breaks.
‘No, Hélène. It’s not your fault. I’ve a damned good idea why she won’t name him.’ Vati’s voice is acid and my stomach turns over.
‘You know who it is?’
‘Oh yes, and it’s worse than you imagine.’
‘Franz, tell me! What can be worse than a married man?’
Vati grunts. I close my eyes. I’m in freefall. I prop myself against the wall, breathless with terror. Walter comes to me, behind my eyelids. His presence is calming. Strength returns to my limbs.
‘For heaven’s sake, tell me!’ Mutti pleads.
‘It’s that Jew.’ Vati’s voice is dangerously low. ‘That bastard who used to come here all the time. We showed him kindness and tolerance, back then, and this is how he repays us!’ Mutti gasps and the vision of Walter is lost. I snap my eyes open. ‘Karl warned me but Herta swore it was nothing. I even helped the evil swine leave the country. If he were here, I’d murder him with my own hands. I can’t bear to think of him violating her. It’s – it’s…’
I draw a deep, deep breath and swing the door open.
They stare at me. Both of them. Ragdoll Mutti with her eyes popping out. And Vati.
Oh, Vati, with your lies and your deceit. You might not recognise it, but we are the same, you and me.
I hold my head up high and meet his eyes, full of hate.
His fury hits me with the force of a hurricane.
‘You disgusting, filthy— How could you do such a thing? You are vile! You make me sick… Ruined us… Downfall!’ He yells incomprehensible words at me. He lunges and I step back, too slow, as he hits my face so hard I stagger sideways, lose balance. The corner of the dining table smacks the side of my head hard as I fall. I land awkwardly on all fours and roll into a ball to protect my belly.
Blotchy faced, he towers over me, eyes tiny blue-black holes in the furrows of his shaking flesh. Mutti is grabbing his arm and shouting, ‘Stop, stop, please, Franz!’
‘It wasn’t Walter,’ I scream. ‘He never touched me, I swear!’
‘I don’t believe you, you lying little bitch.’ He shakes Mutti’s arm off. ‘You’ve turned into one of them! Manipulating, scheming and plotting. Blackmailing your own father! Look at you – nothing but a filthy whore!’
He aims a boot at me, but I roll away and he misses.
He will go for my belly; kick the baby from my body.
‘What do you mean, blackmailing? Franz! Have you lost your mind?’ Mutti grabs him again, both arms this time. ‘Get up, Hetty, get out of this room, NOW.’
Vati is trying to shake her off, but she is gripping him as though her life depends on it. I pull myself up, holding the table. My head throbs and I stumble for the door. Someone is there, standing in the doorway. Vera? Another nosy little cow. She’ll gossip with all her stupid maid-friends and by tomorrow the entire neighbourhood will know the shameful truth.
But it isn’t Vera. This person is too tall. A man’s silhouette. The door swings wider and Tomas’s lanky frame comes towards me.
Could this get any worse? I wish I was dead.
So now he knows the truth too and he can confirm Vati’s suspicions. He gives me a long look, then turns to Mutti and Vati.
‘Herr, Frau Heinrich. Heil Hitler.’ He salutes, wearing his Sunday best suit. ‘I’m very sorry to intrude. The front door was open. Nobody came when I rang the bell. I wanted to surprise Hetty, collect her early and take her for lunch.’
He stares at me. I must look a dishevelled mess, my clothes twisted round, my hair loose and blood running down behind my ear. ‘Can I help, Hetty? Are you quite well?’
Vati deflates. He sinks to the sofa, head in his hands. ‘I’m done for,’ he mutters.
Mutti turns to Tomas. ‘I’m sorry. This is not a good time. Herta has got herself into trouble and…’ Her voice fades.
Tomas’s eyes flicker over my stomach. He looks into my eyes. His expression is unreadable. What does it matter now, anyway?
‘She refuses to reveal the father, you see, s-so…’ Mutti stammers, rubbing her hands together and glancing at Vati as if for permission to say these things. He is mute, his head still buried.
There’s a moment of quiet and I tenderly touch the sticky lump which has formed on my temple. Tomas steps towards me and takes my arm.
‘But darling,’ he says steadily, ‘why wouldn’t you tell them? The baby’s mine, see?’ he adds firmly, smiling broadly at us all.
Vati’s head shoots up. The three of us gape at him.
The sunlight in the room intensifies. The air stills. Mutti and Vati are silent. I cannot breathe.
I stare at him, willing him to meet my eyes again, but he is looking at Vati now. His cheeks are pink and his glasses, smudged as always, sit halfway down his nose. He pushes them up, just as he did in the classroom all those years ago. He swallows and his Adam’s apple rises and falls in his throat. Tiny white pimples dot his cheeks. An unlikely hero – but, right now, this is the sweetest, dearest face imaginable.
‘I’m sorry you had to learn it this way, Herr Heinrich,’ Tomas says. ‘It wasn’t how I planned it. We’ll marry as soon as possible, of course, won’t we, Hetty? I can prove my Aryan ancestry. I’ve got all the paperwork. Not a drop of Jewish blood runs in my veins, so we shan’t be denied permission on that test.’ He turns to look at me. ‘I’d been planning to ask you over lunch, my dearest.’
Vati and Mutti are still mute. They glance at each other.
Mutti laughs nervously.
‘But, Herta, I don’t understand. Why did you deny it was Tomas? Why the secrecy?’
Everything is moving too fast. I can’t think properly.
Tomas answers for me.
‘It was my fault,’ he says. ‘I told her not to tell. It came as a shock. Never expected to be a father at seventeen! I was ashamed but I’ve got my head round it all now and I couldn’t be happier. I love your daughter with all my heart, Herr Heinrich.’
That part, at least, seems to be true.
Vati, who had been lost in thought watching Tomas, suddenly seems to snap awake. He looks once more at Mutti, then steps forward and shakes Tomas by the hand. He begins to smile. Mutti, too.
‘Well!’ Vati exclaims. ‘This is indeed wonderful news. Herta had me worried for a few minutes – but never mind that now. I’m sure I can speed up the permission process. A doctor will need to examine you, Herta, but with Tomas guaranteed as the father, that won’t prove a problem. This calls for a celebration. My daughter married and the first of many children on the way. A drink! It isn’t too early for a drink at eleven forty-five, is it? Tomas, what will you be having?’
I have to sit down; I’m shaking all over. Mutti sits beside me and rubs my back, fusses over my head. She rings the bell and asks Vera for ice, cloths and iodine to wipe the wound.
Vati and Tomas smoke cigars and toast each other with champagne.
An unexpected life begins to float in my mind like a weird, surreal dream. A little flat with Tomas. Me a wife. A baby. Walter’s baby. I shall always have a piece of Walter with me. I place a hand on my belly and for the first time, I can begin to imagine a future where this new being inside me will be okay. Hetty and Tomas. Tomas and Hetty. It sounds all wrong…
Can he really want me this much?
The thought makes me shudder.
But he is giving Walter’s baby and me a chance. I cling to that thought with all my might, to stop myself from drowning.
*
Mutti insists we stay for lunch instead of going out as planned. Vati’s mood, fortified by champagne and plenty of wine, is jolly.
‘Listen, young man, I had humble beginnings. There is nothing wrong with that,’ he tells Tomas. ‘You have proved yourself to be a good, upright German, despite the – the difficulties caused by your father. That shows determination. Moral courage. I’ve no doubt you will do well in the Wehrmacht. We need many more young men like you. I’m fortunate I have all this,’ he gestures to the grandness of the room. ‘I’ll help with the rent on your first flat until you can stand on your own two feet.’ He looks at me. ‘And Mutti will be close by to help with the baby – it will be good for her to have something to distract her from, you know… Something positive…’
*
After lunch, Tomas and I walk together in Rosental. I’m nervous to be alone with Tomas. It’s so strange. To passers-by we must look like a nice young couple, strolling hand in hand. In love, baby on the way. A perfect little German family.
If only they knew the truth.
‘It’s warmer than I thought,’ I comment as we walk. ‘I should have worn my shawl, not my coat.’ Tomas doesn’t reply.
I try again. ‘The trees are in full leaf already. Do you think it will be hot this summer?’
I prattle on, barely knowing what I say, to fill the void.
We sit down on a bench facing the lake. The matter has hovered, unspoken, since we left the house.
Filth. Slut. Ruined. Destroyed the purity of your blood. A long-silenced voice awakens.
Tomas is deep in thought and picks up a pebble from the pathway in front of the bench. He turns it over and over in his hands, smoothing his fingers over its flat, gleaming surface.
I break the silence. ‘I know how much I’ve hurt you, Tomas, and I’m sorry for it. I will try to be the best wife I possibly can. I will be so good to you, as you have been to me. But I want to understand. Why are you doing this?’
He exhales, long and forcefully, clutching the pebble tightly in his hand. ‘Because I must save you. You are a fallen angel. This thing that has happened. It doesn’t change that. In fact, you need saving more than ever.’ He lifts his gaze to the sky, as if he can see angels circling gracefully above him.
‘Tomas, come on. This angel thing… You don’t really believe…’
He looks down at the stone in his hand, stroking it with his fingertips. ‘I tried so hard not to love you. I really did. But it’s impossible. And I realised, a greater force is pushing me to do this. To save you.’
‘Save me from what?’
‘The Jew. He forced you. He must have done. It cannot have been your fault. That way, I can bear it. And I won’t let anything bad happen to you again. I will protect you.’ He raises his arm and flings the pebble out across the lake. It arcs over the water and lands with a deep splash.
My heart begins to pump faster. Harder.
Tomas rubs his hands over his face. He repositions his glasses.
‘I don’t want thanks,’ he says, his voice smooth, level. ‘It is out of love that I do this. But I want you to understand one thing – I’m sure you know it anyway.’ My throat tightens. ‘The baby has to go. I will not have that mischling child! It might be hard at first, but you’ll be grateful in the end.’ He drops his eyes to my stomach and a look of revulsion clouds his face.
I’m hit by a wave of nausea.
‘What do you mean, you won’t keep the baby? What are you expecting me to do?’
‘You don’t seriously expect me to raise a bastard Jewish mongrel? Every time I saw it, it would remind me. It’s inconceivable, Hetty.’
‘But you said! You told Vati and Mutti the baby was yours. That you would marry me because of it. Why would you do that? I don’t understand.’ A dark shadow descends.
‘I said that to protect you, not the brat. Besides, why would you want to keep it? I mean, surely you would want to put all that… trouble behind you. So you can give yourself fully and completely to me. We will have babies of our own. Lots of them.’
He grabs my hand and squeezes it, but I can’t breathe as my throat twists and shuts.
The ground somersaults and darkness closes in.
‘Hetty?’
The lake swirls back into focus.
‘Are you okay?’ Tomas’s thin face and smeared glasses are in front of me, his eyes full of concern. ‘Ssh,’ he says. ‘Don’t try to speak. Take deep breaths.’
I do as he says.
Breathing becomes easier and my heartbeat slows.
‘And what exactly would you have me do with it?’ I say at last, restraining the hysteria, keeping my voice even. ‘I mean, how am I to dispose of it when it’s born? This is a baby we are talking about. Would you have me tie it in a sack and drown it in the river like a litter of kittens?’
You are no saviour. You’re a sick bastard, like the rest of them.
‘No, of course not,’ he laughs. ‘But seriously, I don’t know or care, it has to go. I mean, there are orphanages, aren’t there? For unwanted brats.’
‘But what would we tell people? They will know I’m expecting. How will we explain the disappearance of a baby?’
‘I don’t care.’ His voice is harsh suddenly. ‘Tell them it died. Babies do. With any luck it will, then that will solve the problem, won’t it?’
‘How can you say that?’ I splutter. ‘How can you say that about an innocent baby? Besides, it wasn’t like that. Walter is a good person. We loved each other, and what we did – I wanted to do it.’ My throat has closed. I can no longer speak. I stare at him in horror, will him to say something more, to turn to me and say it was just some awful, cruel joke. Surely even Tomas cannot be this cold-blooded?
But he says nothing, refusing to look at me, his mouth turned down, his glasses sliding down his nose. I can no longer stand the sight of him.
Everything has a price.
This baby is the price of loving Walter.
Losing it is the price Tomas demands.
What choice do I have? I’m doomed if I pay it, and doomed if I don’t.
But the thought of being married to Tomas, sharing his life and his bed, fills me with utter dread.
I stare out over the lake and remember how Walter pulled me from its depths.
How I wish he had let me go…