Dinner Menu
If it’s Tuesday it must be …
Potage St Germain
Vienna Steak
Espagnole Sauce
Mashed Potatoes
Tinned Carrots
Raspberry Cream
Cheese
Coffee
Potage: Pea soup made with dried peas bulked out with onions and potatoes. Nothing fresh or green. No evidence of chervil or lettuce. The steak should be made with minced beef and veal but could be anything. The Sauce? Gravy by any other name. Dessert is a mix of tinned raspberries and synthetic cream – resembles pink zinc ointment. Cheese is mousetrap or American. Coffee usually the best part of the meal.
Edith had come home early. Someone had been in her room. She knew as soon as she stepped inside. Bedside cabinet left ajar. Travelling alarm folded shut. Someone had been through the chest of drawers and hadn’t even bothered to push them back properly. Clothes at odd angles inside the big armoire.
On her desk, the letters in the rack were tilted the wrong way. The recipes slotted into the Radiation Cookery Book were misaligned as if someone had flipped through it. There were scratch marks on the brass around the lock of her writing slope.
There was contempt beneath the carelessness. Whoever this was, didn’t care if Edith knew, wanted her to know. The German girls wouldn’t dare. Frau Schmidt would be more careful. Which left Molly Slater. Always the last to leave. Her boss let her come in any time she liked. If this was another warning, it wouldn’t work and two could play at that game.
Molly shared with Ginny. Edith knocked lightly then eased the door open. It was clear which girl occupied which side. Ginny’s space was as sparse as a nun’s cell. A small swing mirror on a rickety stand acted as her dressing table. All it held was a soft bristle hairbrush, a pot of cold cream and a jar of Vick. Her narrow bed lay under the window. On the sill, a couple of books, a few china ornaments that she must have brought from her bedroom at home. A group of little photographs in silver frames: a couple in a back garden, the man in uniform, must be her mum and dad; Ginny holding the reins of a horse; Ginny kneeling, arms round a spaniel. Still so close to childhood. How young these girls were …
She turned to examine the rest of the room. Molly’s clothes from last night lay on the chair. More spilled from the chest of drawers. The wardrobe was stacked with hatboxes, filled with furs and gowns. The dressing table was strewn with makeup and perfume, the mirror draped with scarves. A carved wooden box held a hoard of gold chains, silver lockets, rings, brooches and watches. The dressing-table drawer revealed more: necklaces, jade, amethyst, tourmaline. Good stones in nice settings. A string of pearls with the silky sheen and ivory overtones of the genuine thing. Black-market booty, presumably. The bottom drawer held humbler trove: Cussons talc, Yardley bath cubes, bars of Lux. Edith closed the drawers carefully. Molly felt quite safe. No need to hide anything. None of them would dare to look.
That evening, Edith announced to Frau Schmidt that her room was to be kept locked at all times, apart from bed changing and cleaning. She would hold the German woman personally responsible if she even suspected that anyone had been in there. Edith then left to dine at the Mess, leaving the threat hanging, confident that the message would be passed on to Molly Slater.
‘Hello, there.’
A voice she knew but couldn’t quite place. She looked up to find Harry Hirsch standing in front of her.
‘I don’t know if you remember,’ he smiled down at her. ‘But we met at Dori’s New Year’s party. Do you mind if I join you?’
‘Of course not! I’d be delighted,’ she added, and meant it. She was, in fact, absurdly pleased to see him.
‘What are you drinking?’
‘Whisky and soda.’
Harry Hirsch signalled to the Mess waiter to bring drinks over. She remembered him very well. It had been the briefest of encounters but there had been something there. A hand retained in farewell, a parting New Year’s kiss that had lasted just a moment too long.
He looked older, thinner, his skin sallow, bruise-coloured marks under his large, dark eyes, forehead creased in a permanent frown. His hair grazed his collar and his jaw was shadowed. Slightly worn and dishevelled, he looked as if he needed someone to look after him, which only added to his appeal.
‘Forgive my appearance,’ he said, rubbing his chin. ‘I’ve only just come in. I’m starving.’ He reached for a menu card. ‘What’s the food like here?’
‘So-so. A bit boring.’
‘I don’t care. I could eat a horse.’
Edith glanced at the menu. Vienna Steak. ‘You probably will be.’
He laughed.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘Interviewing DPs,’ he carried on reading the menu. ‘Balts as they call them here. Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, to give them their nationalities. There’s a team of us. They need people who speak their languages. We wear civvies. They don’t trust uniforms. Had enough of them in the war.’ He put the card down and sighed. ‘It’s hard. What’s happened to them, their stories. Wears you out eventually. Same thing over and over, but it never seems to get less harrowing and there is so very little I can do. Not my job anyway. My job is to sort through them all, looking for the few bad eggs.’
‘Found any?’
‘One or two.’ He sipped his drink. ‘I had a call from Dori a few days ago.’ He put his glass back on the table. ‘She suggested I look you up.’
‘It’s good to see you …’ Edith started. Something expectant about his expression, the way he emphasized Dori made her stop what she was saying. She stared at him as the connections clicked into place.
‘Oh, yes. Of course! It could be something or nothing,’ she added quickly. What did she have really? Suddenly it all seemed very flimsy. ‘I hope you didn’t come all this way …’
‘I wanted to see you.’ He smiled. ‘This is my excuse.’
‘There’s a young man. They call him Valdis or Val. His full name is Valdema-rs Jansons. I checked. He could be one of your bad eggs.’
‘Dori said you might have photographs?’
‘I keep them in the office. Safer there.’ Especially after today. ‘I could get them.’
‘Good idea.’ He looked down at his wrinkled shirt and creased trousers. ‘What say I make myself presentable and we could dine together?’ His expression mixed hope with the smallest dash of apprehension. As if there was the slightest chance of her saying ‘no’.
Edith called Jack for a lift then went back to the billet to change.
She felt a tingle of excitement. This was practically a date. She could be Stella, for one night anyway, rather than dependable Miss Graham. She selected the French navy crepe with red piping and little red cloth buttons, unrolled a pair of carefully hoarded silk stockings and found her high heels. She dressed her hair, pinning it up in a French pleat, and set about applying her makeup. She surveyed herself in the mirror. Not half bad. She smoothed the soft material over her stomach and bottom. The dress fitted much better. She chose to walk to and from work most days. The food might be plentiful but it was bland, stodgy and in the light of the surrounding deprivation, easy to resist. She applied a few dabs of Blue Grass perfume and undid her top button to reveal a little more décolletage.
Frau Schmidt took it all in from the bottom of the stairs.
‘Going out again?’ she ventured and smiled, a gleam in her eyes. Nothing said. Much implied.
‘Yes,’ Edith stepped past her. ‘And remember what I said.’
Jack was waiting outside. ‘Blimey! Look at you all spruced up!’ His eyebrows rose. ‘Going anywhere special? Meeting someone, mebbe?’
‘Just dinner in the Mess. Thank you, Jack. Can we drop into the office? I have to pick something up. And no need to wait. I’ll make my own way back.’
‘Right you are, ma’am,’ Jack said, his mouth quirking up at the corners as he started the car. ‘Right you are.’
Harry was waiting for her in the bar, his black hair wet and slick as if he’d just showered. He was clean shaven and his face had more colour. The sleeves of his tweed jacket were a little too short exposing white cuffs and sinewy wrists. The top button of his shirt was undone, his maroon knitted silk tie loosely knotted. He was wearing charcoal-grey slacks and suede boots. Not the normal male attire for a Mess dinner. Edith liked him all the more for that.
‘I thought we’d dine straight away. I really am starving. You can show me the photographs while we eat.’
‘I’d rather not, if it’s all the same.’ Edith put down her briefcase. Something told her that these images were not to be perused over dinner, not to be looked at in a public place.
‘We’ll look at them later then. Over a nightcap. I’ve got some decent brandy I picked up on my way through Paris.’
Over dinner, Edith did most of the talking, telling him about her work, what she’d been doing since they last saw each other. She apologized for the food, which was worse than usual. The Potage St Germain, thin as gruel. The Vienna Steak overdone to the texture and consistency of crêpe rubber. Harry didn’t seem to notice. He barely looked up from his plate. He accepted second helpings of everything and ate with the single-mindedness of a man refuelling.
‘That’s better.’ Harry pushed himself back from the table. ‘I’m sorry.’ He smiled. ‘I haven’t been much company but I really was starving. Haven’t eaten properly for days.’ He patted his stomach. ‘Full now. Shall we? Or would you like dessert?’
‘Oh, no.’ Edith grimaced. ‘The raspberry cream will be synthetic pink goo and the cheese mousetrap.’
‘In that case, how about that nightcap?’
Up in his room, Edith went to the desk by the window while he opened the brandy.
‘Now, what do you want me to look at?’
He poured the drinks while she took photographs from her briefcase.
‘These.’ She set them out on the desk. First, the one Jack had taken at Travemünde.
‘This is Jansons?’ Harry picked up the photograph and held it under the desk light.
Edith nodded. ‘He’s going out with a young woman from my billet. The photo was taken at Travemünde last week.’
Harry drank his brandy and picked up the next photograph. As he studied the image, his pallor returned. He looked at her, his eyes unfocused and confused, as if he’d been jarred from a nightmare.
‘You have others?’
Edith set them out on the desk.
‘Where did you get these?’ His voice sounded distant, mechanical, as if he was hypnotized.
‘The house, where I’m billeted. There’s a hut at the end of the garden. Someone was trying to burn them. A friend and I rescued them. The chap in the middle, the SS man, is Stephan. He lives with our housekeeper, supposedly her husband.’ As she spoke, he continued to stare at the photographs, his hand over his mouth. ‘We couldn’t work out where they were, what was going on. Do you know?’
He nodded.
‘I say, are you all right? I’ll get you another brandy, shall I?’
Harry did not reply. Edith went to fetch the bottle. He was positively grey now, the muscles of his face rigid, his skin filmed with sweat. He wiped his mouth again. He looked as though he might be sick.
‘Valdema-rs Jansons is not his real name,’ he said, teeth clamped together. Harry choked, as if the name had stuck in his throat. ‘Excuse me.’ Hand over mouth, he bolted for the bathroom.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said when he returned, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief, his face ivory pale. ‘I shouldn’t have eaten so much.’
‘No, no, it’s my fault. I should have warned you.’
Harry poured himself a brandy, filling the tumbler. He gulped and grimaced, putting the glass down with a trembling hand.
‘How would you have known?’ He passed a hand over his face. ‘His name is Ivars Kalniņš. He’s Arājs Kommando.’ He pointed at the smiling young man posing at Travemünde. ‘Latvian auxiliaries, recruited to help the Nazis. They take their name from their commander Viktors Arājs, a really nasty piece of work.’ He pointed to the group photograph. ‘Kalniņš and a man called Ma-ris Ozols. This one in the middle is an SS Hauptsturmführer Einsatzkommando 2. A subdivision of Einsatzgruppe A, mobile killing unit.’
‘That’s Stephan.’
‘He should be in gaol. Her, too, for harbouring him. Their orders—’ He covered his mouth, as if to arrest the words he was about to speak. ‘I’m sorry …’ He cleared his throat and took his hand away. ‘Their orders were to render the Baltic countries Judenfrei. Free of Jews. Judenrein. Cleansed. Which meant all dead.’
Edith felt the same numbing, freezing horror that she’d experienced when Leo had told her about about Kurt.
‘But … but,’ she managed to say. ‘That would be thousands of people!’
‘Hundreds of thousands,’ Harry corrected.
Edith could scarcely take in what he was saying. Just when one thought there could be no more, nothing worse to discover, further barbarities were uncovered, a fresh level of iniquity beneath the one above. It was like prising up the paving stones of Hell.
‘Does that mean you know where these photographs were taken? When?’
‘Oh, yes. Liepāja. I don’t know the date exactly, but it would be mid-December 1941.’
She leaned over, their heads closer together.
‘And this one. In the background. We couldn’t quite make it out.’
‘We?’
‘My driver, Jack Hunter. He was with me when we found them.’
‘What do you think you can see?’
‘I don’t know. It’s so blurred. Overexposed. At first, we thought snow, then Jack thought it could be sand, but it didn’t look like the desert. We went out to Travemünde and he thought it might be dunes. We couldn’t quite work out what was happening behind. This fissure, like a crevasse, with what looks like piles of logs, or something, at the bottom.’
‘I’ll tell you, shall I?’ He put his hands over his eyes, pushing his fingers up to his forehead, massaging his brows as if to ease a physical pain. ‘You look, but you can’t see. Why would you? Sand is right. Dunes is right. This is a beach, the dunes behind the beach to be precise, in a place called Šk,e-de, about nine or ten miles from Liepāja. Liepāja is my town. Where I’m from. The fissure, crevasse you see is a pit. The logs of wood are bodies.’ He paused, staring down at the photograph, not blinking, not moving.
Edith bit her lip, nails digging into her palms, forcing herself not to interrupt to comfort his obvious distress, or to show her shock. She stayed very still to listen, to bear witness. ‘This, here,’ his hand shook as it hovered over the deep gash in the sand, ‘is the site of a mass execution. Here, along the lip of the pit, pale, like little shadows? These are naked people. Jews. Lined up to be shot. Behind them, you see darker marks on slightly higher ground? Arājs Kommando, local police, SS doing the shooting in shifts.’ He closed his eyes, seeing what was not shown. ‘They’re positioned like that, so the force of the shot propels the body forwards and into the pit. Very methodical. If they didn’t fall cleanly, there were kickers to push them down. The people were killed in groups of ten. It went on until there was no light.’
There was a silence between them as Edith tried to take in what he was telling her. She looked again at the photograph. She could see the figures in the bleached and empty landscape, but still the image was an enigma. She turned it in her hands, frowning, squinting, looking closer and closer, as if somehow seeing would bring understanding, but what he was saying was beyond her grasp.
‘You were there?’ Her voice was scarcely above a whisper. ‘My God!’
‘If I had been, I wouldn’t be here now. I was hiding. In the woods.’ He made a strangled, choking sound, somewhere between a laugh and a sob. ‘They were too busy killing to search. I saw everything.’ He bit his lip, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. When he took it away, Edith saw blood. ‘Let me tell you what happened, shall I?’
He began pacing, arms tightly folded about him.
‘There’d been killings before. “Actions” the Germans called them. In July, August, Jewish men rounded up and taken to the dunes, but nothing on this scale. Then we heard from Riga. They’d emptied the ghetto. Killed everybody, thousands and thousands. Taken them to the forest, a place called Rumbula. Dug trenches. Made them lie down to be killed. One layer on top of another. Sardine packing they call it. I didn’t know all that then but we knew something had happened. You can’t keep a thing like that secret and the Arājs Kommando arrived fresh from the killing. Thugs like Kalniņš and Ozols taunting us, yelling you’re next. Kalniņš was originally from Liepāja. He took a special pleasure in it. On December 13th, a Saturday, Kurzemes Vārds, the newspaper, published an order saying all Jews had to stay in their homes. We knew then. This was it.’
He stopped. His thin throat worked as he drained the rest of his brandy.
‘People ask, if you knew, knew what was going to happen, why didn’t you try to escape? They don’t understand. Such a thing was impossible. We were confined to our houses. Police, Arājs Kommando, SS patrolling the streets with guns, dogs, looking for any excuse. Where would we go? We wore the yellow star. Even without it, Liepāja is a small town. Everybody knows who you are. Latvia is a small country. Anyone helping Jews would be shot and very few took that risk. We were friendless in our own country, surrounded by hostility, but even to the last minute, we couldn’t believe, didn’t want to believe. Hope is the last thing to go and when it is replaced by despair, so black and hopeless, all action seems – impossible.’
As he talked, so he walked the length of the small room and back, turning and turning again as if trying to escape the cage of his memory. As he paced his hands fluttered, making strange little movements in the air, as if fighting off blows in a dream.
‘The police began rounding people up in the early hours of the morning, taking them to the Women’s Prison. They were kept in the courtyard. When it was our turn, the yard was full so they lined us up outside, facing the wall. We were there all day and all night. It was December. Cold. The next day, we were formed into columns and marched out of the city. North to the sea at Šķēde. Men, women, old, young, little children. The local police and the Arājs Kommando lined the route, so no one could escape. I was with two friends, Osckar and Jan, we positioned ourselves at the edge of the column. The police and Arājs Kommando were beating people, shouting at them to hurry. Some fell, others stumbled over them, there was confusion, the column bunched and stopped. The police waded in, beating left and right with long sticks. We seized our chance. Osckar lunged at the nearest of them. He had a knife hidden. He stabbed him in the throat. They were locked in a tussle. The police, the Arājs didn’t want to use their weapons for fear of killing one of their own. The blood, the fight, added to the confusion. Men were shouting, women screaming. Jan and I broke from the column and ran into the forest.’
‘Your friend?’
‘Already dead. They shot after us. Jan was hit. I didn’t even look back. Just heard him cry out. I ran faster. I’ve always been a good runner and I knew the woods. They didn’t come after me, didn’t want to risk a mass break-out from the column. I suppose they thought they’d find me later. I could hear shooting, volleys of shots coming from somewhere in front of me. Quite near. I had to know what was going on in the dunes. I crept closer, right to the edge of the woods. I had to see, to bear witness, or else who would believe? They didn’t notice, too intent on what they were doing. I saw … what I saw … I could scarcely believe it myself.
‘I waited until night and walked on through the forest, following the coast. I came to a little harbour with small boats moored there. I stole one and put to sea. I had lived in Liepāja for most of my life, knew how to handle a boat. The Baltic in the middle of winter is not an appetizing prospect, but I’d rather die in the freezing water than down in a pit with sand kicked over me. I sailed west, making for Gotland. From there I reached Sweden and safety. My plan was to get to Britain. Join the Army.’
‘What about your family?’
‘My father and mother went with the Russians. Who knows what happened to them. I have a brother, Chaim, he’s in Palestine. The rest? Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. All dead. The worst thing, the very worst thing is, I could do nothing to save them. I just left them and ran. Like I left Jan.’
He stopped pacing and stood at the desk, looking down at the photographs.
‘What you don’t see is the colour. The blood streaking the sand at the side of the pit. The exposed flesh, fish-belly white in the winter light. Little children shot in their mothers’ arms, babies thrown up, blown apart in the air like clay pigeons. You don’t hear the whine of the wind, the screams, the moaning and sobbing, children wailing and whimpering, calling Māmin,a! Tētiņš! Mother! Father! But nobody would help them. Nobody. People standing round watching, drinking schnapps, taking photographs, posing for the camera, like these here. They came from miles around to see it. Like your trip to the seaside. And the guards shouting, jeering, laughing, hurling insults right until the last moment, then the quick percussion of gunfire, silence after that, then the swish of sand.’
‘You were near enough to see it all?’
‘I am in my dreams.’
He gave a retching, gasping sob, covered his face and began to weep. Tears squeezed between his fingers, trickling down his thin wrists.
Edith put her arm round his shoulder, drawing him to her, absorbing his trembling, feeling her own deep inside.
‘I’m sorry,’ he turned his face into her. ‘I’ve never shed a tear. Walked away from there, dry-eyed. It was as though there was nothing inside me, just hollowness. As if I’d been eviscerated. I don’t know what’s come over me now.’
In the face of such horror, there was nothing she could say. What he had told her was beyond language, beyond tears, beyond imagination. She drew him close, hushing, soothing. She kissed his closed eyes, tasted the salt wetness on his cheeks. She led him to the bed, stroking his neck, the back of his head. She lay down with him and took him into her, offering him the universal, primordial comfort that a woman can give to a man.
Afterwards, he was quiet for a long time. From downstairs came faint sounds: a burst of laughter, distant conversation, someone playing a piano. He put his head on her shoulder and closed his eyes. She smoothed his hair, shiny blue green, like a raven’s wing. He had long eyelashes for a man. Along his jaw, a bluish shadow was already beginning to show. He looked up at her, his dark eyes heavy lidded, vacant with sleep. He gave a sigh and reached up to pull her mouth down to his.
Their lovemaking was slower, more leisurely the second time around.
When it was over, they lay talking. He told her something of his life in Liepāja, in the time before, how he’d gone with his brother to Spain, to join the International Brigades.
‘You were a Communist?’
‘You were either one or the other,’ he shrugged. ‘That’s where I first met Leo.’
Leo had been to Spain in some unspecified observer capacity. He certainly hadn’t taken part in any fighting, but Edith knew where his sympathies lay.
‘When war looked imminent, Chaim took a boat to Italy, then to Palestine. He begged me to go, but I decided to go home to Latvia to be with the family. When the Russians came, we welcomed them. Then the Germans invaded. My parents and my girlfriend, Roza, went east. I stayed, thinking we could organize some kind of resistance.’ He passed his hands over his eyes. ‘We had no idea.’
‘Your parents? Roza? You have heard nothing?’
He shook his head. His face was set, bleak, desolate, his eyes closed. Edith reached over and kissed him then slipped out of bed.
‘Where are you going?’
‘I have to go back.’ She adjusted her stockings. ‘I can’t be caught here, there would be hell to pay.’
‘Don’t go yet. You’re the first woman in I don’t know how long I actually wanted to stay.’
‘If I don’t get back to the billet, I’ll be missed.’
‘You don’t care about that, surely?’ He laughed.
‘Of course not, but—’ she shook her head. ‘It’s too hard to explain.’
Frau Schmidt would have one over on her. Molly Slater would feed the mill of rumour and gossip. She couldn’t risk that.
‘In that case …’ He got out of bed and padded over to her. He looked smaller, younger without clothes. His skin a milk-pale contrast to the darker tan at his neck and arms and the pelt of black hair, which tapered from his chest, flaring again over his flat belly. He put his arms round her. She could feel him stirring against her. It took a while to break away.
‘No,’ she said finally. ‘I really must go.’
‘When will I see you again? I’m leaving tomorrow. Going back to Kiel. I’ll be there for at least a week.’ He turned from her, grabbed the counterpane and wrapped it around himself. He shuffled back, muffled now in the folds, looking like a small boy. ‘I can be in Hamburg, weekend after next. Atlantic Hotel. I’ll see you there. Shall I?’ She nodded and kissed him once again. ‘And Edith? If you meet one of Leo’s chums, don’t say anything about the photographs you found. Just between us, OK?’
‘Of course I won’t, not if you don’t think I should …’
‘No. Don’t. Not under any circumstances.’ He frowned. ‘I’ve heard that Viktors Arājs is in the Zone and they’re looking for him.’
‘Then finding Jansons might lead them to him. Help bring him to justice.’
‘You don’t understand, they don’t want to punish him, they want to use him!’
Harry’s hollow, bitter laugh sounded loud in the quiet room. He didn’t look like a boy anymore. He looked like a man in need of solace. She let him lead her back to bed. She lay back as he began to undress her. Slowly, carefully, rolling one stocking down, then the other. She didn’t want him to hurry as he laid her clothes aside, one garment at a time. His gentleness, his slowness added to her exquisite helplessness.