Dissonance (34 page)

As he imagined Schaedel, sitting on the floor of his apartment, lighting incense sticks and rubbing the belly of his cedar-wood Buddha. Intoning, ‘
Om mani pad me hung
 …
'

Try.

Erwin started feeling guilty; lonely. Inasmuch as everyone was lonely now, having lost, or contemplated losing sons, brothers and fathers.

The same woman passed him again, and there he was, back with the other kids, watching droplets form on the side of his glass of milk, rubbing old plasticine from his fingers, feeling a patch of cold piss in his underpants.

All at once he realised that everything was gone, soon enough: Mozart, music, the ability to sense, smell, to remember, to hear magpies and touch wooden blocks, to build them up into multi-coloured towers that had to be pulled down and packed away at home time.

Then Schaedel was behind him. The older man put his hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Am I still in the dog house?'

Erwin turned and looked at him, puzzled.

‘Luise said you'd probably be here.' Schaedel came around and sat on the bench beside him.

There was silence, as they both looked out across the freshly mowed park.

Eventually Erwin remarked, ‘It's funny, you know, but I can't remember anything before kindy.'

Schaedel looked at him. Erwin saw his eyes fill, and moisten. Then Schaedel leaned over and rested his head on Erwin's shoulder. ‘I'm sorry,' he said.

As Erwin heard himself: Try … try …

Part Four
Spring 1942

Chapter One

It was after nine and Erwin was standing beside the oven of a goulash canon, a Wehrmacht field kitchen that had been set up in its usual place in Dellstrasse. The horse that had pulled it there had been tethered to a light post and was snorting as it ate from a hessian chaff bag. A few children were patting its stomach, shying away when it twitched nervously and kicked its back leg.

There was a line of people waiting; mainly mothers with children gathered at their feet or in their arms. There were a few grandparents, sent with two or three enamel plates, each to be filled with the watery soup. ‘Is there meat in this soup?' someone asked, and the cook just laughed. ‘Yes, but it's best you don't know what,' he replied.

Erwin leaned his rifle against a wall and warmed his hands above the oven. A second cook, a smaller man with a shaved head, was handing everyone a bread roll and when he saw Erwin he threw him one. ‘You want some soup?' he asked.

‘I've already eaten,' Erwin replied.

These were the people who couldn't afford, or weren't able, to feed themselves. These were the widows, or wives of soldiers fighting the Bolsheviks, the old people without a family to look after them, the wounded and maimed – hobbling on crutches, or blinded, being led along Dellstrasse by a neighbour's son or the feel of familiar walls. Further along the road there was a small crowd, and raised voices. There was a scuffle, and then someone on the ground.

The second cook looked at Erwin, who was still trying to chew and digest his roll. ‘You've got some business,' he said.

Erwin picked up his rifle and walked towards the group. The man on the ground had stood up and was pushing a taller man. ‘If you want I'll put your head through a window,' he said.

Both men looked at Erwin.

‘What's happening?' he asked.

‘This man pushed in front of me,' the shorter man said.

Erwin looked at him.

‘He had left the line,' the taller man explained, moving a few steps forward.

‘That man was first,' a woman behind them said, pointing to the shorter man.

‘Thank you,' the short, fat man replied.

Erwin looked at the woman as she wiped saliva from her lips. He looked at her mouth, at her yellow teeth. He noticed her eyes: dark, underlined with folds of skin, the white of her pupils bleached red, tired from five nights of air raids. Three or four a night. The siren wailing every time she got back to sleep; leaving her yawning, exhausted, disconnected from a world of unmade beds and uncleaned pots.

‘Your type should be arrested,' she barked at the tall man, turning her gaze to Erwin. ‘Go on, teach him a lesson,' she said.

Erwin took a step to move with the line. ‘We haven't got time for this,' he explained.

‘Go on,' she said, waving her finger at the tall man. ‘We're meant to be in this together.'

‘He'd left the line,' the man explained.

‘Don't you raise your voice to me.'

‘Quiet!' Erwin insisted.

It wasn't just the lack of sleep. It was the lack of everything: meat, fruit, clothes. It was only six months since Goebbels had asked them to hand over their coats, jumpers and furs. He'd come on the radio and said, ‘The Russian winter has hit us hard: blizzards, thick snow, daytime temperatures thirty below zero.' So, Madge had given up her mohair coat, a scarf and three pairs of gloves. Now, every day, she walked to work with a rug over her shoulders, her stockings replaced with socks, her heels with a pair of Erwin's old shoes, her dress with a pair of canvas pants (issued to all female workers) and a cardigan that Grace had knitted her.

The war had become total. The map of Germany now stretched from France to Russia, from Denmark to North Africa. Everyone knew that meant a lot of bullets, corn, potatoes and boots. Everyone was working, but secretly, people were wondering how it could be sustained. Especially with Hitler bringing America into the war.

Everyone was tired. It didn't matter if you'd been up all night, there were tank turrets to be bolted together.

Weary women. Falling asleep as babies crawled towards stairs and toddlers wandered onto roads; gas left on; rotten meat baked into pies; and somewhere, in Klein Flottbek, a mother pushing her retarded son out of a fourth-floor window.

Erwin walked through a city that had turned from brown to grey, and then to coal-black. The gutters were full of mortar dust and fine rubble; the gaps between the cobblestones had captured fine shards of broken glass, shattered brick, rotten cabbage and blood. Unwashed windows fed rain into planter boxes full of dead flowers as tattered swastikas hung wet and mouldy beside lines full of knickers with broken elastic and socks with half-a-dozen mendings.

But there was still spirit: homes being rebuilt, as if all this could be patched up, as if bombs and bodies were just a minor inconvenience.

‘
Volksgemeinschaft
,' he whispered to himself, as he walked. Corporal Erwin Hergert (since his promotion at the end of 1941). Police Battalion 101. Walking the streets of Sülldorf and Blankenese, Flottbek and Othmarschen in search of troublemakers and thieves, profiteers, spies (not that he'd ever seen a spy) and wayward youth.

Erwin was getting cold. He buttoned his coat and adjusted the scarf his mother had knitted him using some of Sara's old wool. He stood in the doorway to the Music Hall and listened to a rehearsal. It was someone attempting Beethoven's
Pathetique
sonata, stopping and starting, fudging the left hand, forgetting trills and hammering a legato phrase.

He walked in through the open door, passed through the foyer and opened the doors to the hall. He watched a girl, no more than fourteen or fifteen, leaning over the piano, shifting on the stool, flicking through the score and shaking her head.

Take it slower, he wanted to say. You need long fingers for those octaves.

‘Do you have long fingers?' he heard himself asking.

‘Pardon?' she replied, squinting down at him.

He raised his voice. ‘Do you have long fingers?'

She looked at her fingers. ‘Not particularly.'

‘Well, maybe you should play the
Moonlight
?'

She smiled. ‘Everyone plays that. I wanted something … impressive.'

Not if you turn it into a dog's breakfast, he thought.

Then he started walking down the middle aisle towards her. ‘Are you playing here?' he asked.

‘Yes,' she replied. ‘It's my first proper concert.' She smiled. ‘My debut.'

He thought of Elder Hall, and a warm Adelaide Sunday that seemed like a thousand years ago.

‘When?' he asked.

‘Next Saturday.'

He was about to climb the steps to the stage, and stand behind her, and help, but realised he couldn't. ‘I'm meant to be on patrol,' he said.

‘You play?'

‘Yes. I study with Professor Schaedel.'

‘I've heard of him.'

‘He's very good.'

There were a few moments of silence. ‘You should spend some time practising octaves, on your left hand,' he said. ‘You need real muscles for the
Pathetique
.'

‘Like this?' she asked, and she showed him.

‘Yes. An hour a day, more.'

‘It's too late.'

‘No, it's not.'

Silence.

‘Anyway, I'd best get back, or I'll get in trouble.'

‘Why are you a policeman?' she asked.

‘I'm an Australian,' he replied. ‘I have to show them I'm … helping.'

‘It'll soon be over,' she continued.

‘I hope so.'

As she continued practising he turned and walked back up the aisle. He stood at the back and listened, and watched. He was remembering his own concert on the same stage, six months before. As Beethoven changed to Bach, Busoni and Grainger he saw himself on stage, head lifted, arms and hands at ninety degrees to his body, his long, golden fingers trailing across the keyboard.

He was up there, playing, looking down at his mother, Luise and Schaedel sitting together in the front row, surrounded by a group of thirty or forty people in the six-hundred seat hall. There were some conservatorium friends, music teachers, Bramweg shopkeepers (recruited by Madge), Verlag picture-stickers (recruited by Madge) and a few critics who, in the end, didn't even bother writing a review of his concert.

Madge had done it all, again: managing to hire the hall for free (
Come on, why not, every time I walk past it's empty …
), sitting down with Luise and making posters and organising for Erwin to take a pot of glue and a paintbrush with him on patrol and stick them all up; copying out dozens of handbills and walking the length and breadth of Sülldorf and Blankenese to deliver them as Luise and Frans, in a pram borrowed from a lady in 3D, trailed behind; setting up a trestle table and making tea and coffee, selling scones for less than what it cost her to make them; selling tickets and, ten minutes before the start of the concert, going out onto the street and spruiking the event.

Erwin had played well and there'd been a standing ovation, of sorts. As an encore he'd brought his wife on stage to sing
The Wanderer
. Madge had kept an eye on Frans, asleep in his pram. Afterwards there was a party in the foyer and then the Hergerts were left to clean up, Erwin loosening his bow tie to start on the vacuuming, as Luise helped Madge with the dishes.

Erwin clutched the strap of his rifle as he watched the girl fumble.

Sit up, he wanted to say, hearing his mother's voice in his ear. Sit still. Feet off the pedals. Look at the music, not the keys!

He walked back through the foyer, into the night. There was a light rain, but it dried nearly as soon as it touched the ground. A nearby cinema had just let out. People scurried home with arms intertwined, bowing their heads to whisper to each other.

Erwin crossed the road and looked at the movie poster:
Kampfgeschwader Lützow
 – with pictures of tanks, supported by infantry in freshly pressed uniforms, storming their way through Poland.

Yes, he thought, it's a long way from
Smiley Gets a Gun
. No Chips Rafferty, no fat, contented kookaburras in gum trees, no sheep crutching or cattle branding … no Killalah, no God's Hill Road.

He heard noises from the alleyway beside the cinema; loud voices, applause, a rubbish bin tipping and rolling. He walked around to the opening of the alley and squinted to see a pair of youths kicking an object on the ground. He took a few steps forward. The object was moving, reaching out for something.

‘Order Police,' he called, at the top of his voice, and the two youths looked at him. Then they turned and started kicking the figure again.

Erwin took his rifle from his shoulder, released the safety and fired a shot into the air. They looked at him again. He lowered his rifle and took aim.

They ran. He walked forward, still aiming. He had one of the boys centred in his sight. All he had to do was squeeze, and he'd fall, just like in the movies. He could do it; he'd done his two hours on the range.

He slung his rifle across his shoulder and knelt beside the figure. The boys' voices echoed in the distance. ‘Next time, Professor Faggot.'

Erwin lifted the man's head. ‘Professor Knorr.'

‘Erwin,' his old teacher managed.

Snot-Knorr was breathing heavily and there was blood on his beard. Erwin wasn't sure what to do. ‘Can you get up?' he asked.

‘Yes.'

Hans Knorr sat up. He felt his chest, and then his ribs, and said, ‘Nothing's broken.'

‘We should go to the hospital.'

‘No.'

‘Who were they?'

Knorr used the tip of his left index finger to wipe blood from his cut lip. ‘I used to teach one of them,' he replied.

‘Good, you can give me his name.'

Knorr squinted. ‘Why?'

‘So we can arrest him.'

‘We?'

‘Yes, the Order Police.'

Knorr took a moment to think. ‘But you're an Australian, aren't you?'

‘I was,' Erwin heard himself saying. ‘I am, yes, but this is my job now.'

Knorr smiled at him. ‘Have you given up on music?'

‘No. It's just that … there's a war on.'

‘So there is!' Knorr tried to stand up, but dropped, wincing, holding his side. ‘I'd like to go home,' he said.

Erwin helped him up. ‘I'll take you to the hospital.'

‘Home.'

Erwin took him under the arm and helped him walk. Then Knorr said, ‘I lost my job.'

‘I heard,' Erwin replied.

‘I put a bust of Mendelssohn on my desk, and when they came for me, they smashed it.'

They continued on, slowly, Erwin telling him about his aborted opera with Alfred, his marriage, Frans and all the gaps in between.

‘That's why I say I'm German,' he explained. ‘It feels that way.'

‘No,' Knorr replied. ‘You are an Australian. That's why we had a fight, wasn't it?'

‘Probably.'

‘So, now you're ready to learn?'

Erwin stopped to think. ‘Yes, perhaps I am.'

‘Good. Then you should come to my house, and I'll teach you … no cost.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes. Like I told you, you can teach a monkey to play the piano … but to
compose
 … ah, now, there's something.'

The following day was more picture-sticking for the women. This time it was
Uniformen und Soldaten
by Kurt Ehrlich, a book of colour photos of their boys: black-helmeted SS men guarding the tomb of an unknown soldier, army soldiers in France, reclining in a field of blood-red poppies, BDM girls distributing blankets and General Jodl reviewing a parade.

Clicking fingers, the smell of cheap glue, of linseed oil, turpentine, of menthol on Madge's tailbone and shit, Hergert shit – as Luise changed Frans's nappy, eventually placing him in a large cardboard box set out on the ground. ‘Sorry for the smell,' she apologised, as one woman said, ‘We should be used to it by now.'