Dissonance (38 page)

‘Is this the last of it?' Glowka asked, leaning on the doorframe, wiping sweat from his forehead.

‘That's it,' Luise replied. ‘But I can take it.'

‘No, no.'

And he was off again, with his arms full.

This will make things difficult, I know, but what choice do I have? We can't live together without some sort of –

She stopped, thinking.

 – goodwill, or at least respect. Just because Erwin is not here to stand up for me. Anyway, I will see you at work, and I hope you choose to be civil to me. If not, I will make my own way, with Frans, and you will lose out. And when Erwin returns he will have to choose. What do you think he'll do, Madge, and what do you think he'll say to you?

Luise re-read the letter and then left it on the table beside a bowl of fruit. She walked to her bedroom door and, taking her pen, ticked all the empty boxes beside Madge's name on the roster. Then she went to the piano, gathered her folders of music, turned and took five long strides towards the front door. She stood, looked back, and walked out. ‘Good riddance,' she said, looking at her hand and reminding herself to wash it.

When she arrived in her attic room, Glowka was wiping down the sink and benches with a damp cloth. ‘Let me know if you need anything,' he said. ‘I could mention to Lilli, maybe we could watch Frans for you some time, if you want to get out.'

Luise smiled. ‘That would be nice.'

‘He can play with Gunther, keep him out of our hair.'

And then he retreated, taking slow backward steps. ‘Good luck.'

‘Thank you for everything, Mr Glowka,' she said, touching his arm again, as he retreated into the cramped, too-hot hallway.

She settled Frans with his toys on the rug and, instead of unpacking, took out her half-finished letter to Erwin, searched her apron pocket for a pencil, sat on the bed and started writing.

Well, shall I tell you what your mother's been up to? Let's start with money …

At seven minutes past one Madge inserted her key (which, she'd told Glowka, didn't fit the lock properly) and fought to get the door open. ‘Damn it,' she cursed, as potatoes and leeks fell to the ground and rolled, a couple down the stairs, one potato falling down the gap all the way to the ground floor.

‘Bugger.' She looked down the gap, gathering the other vegetables in her string bag and going inside.

Something was missing. She looked at the picture hooks on the walls. Sara's missing (burnt, yellowed) photograph, Erwin …
and that one there, who was that?

Then she noticed the note on the table. She put her ­groceries down on the rug, sat and started reading.

‘Little cow,' she muttered, as she progressed. ‘Ungrateful little cow.'

Until she got to the line,
And when Erwin returns he will have to choose
.

Ha, she laughed, shaking her head. ‘See how you go by yourself.'

What do you think he'll do, Madge, and what do you think he'll say to you?

‘You nasty little girl.'

She screwed up the letter and threw it across the room. Then she stood up and looked at the roster on the girl's door. She snatched it, and it ripped, and she pulled the rest off the door and screwed that up too, compressing it into a ball that was as hard, tight and unforgiving as her rage.

‘Nasty little girl.' She stormed into Luise's room, opening her empty drawers and wardrobe and kicking the solid oak divan. Then she sat on the bed.

I must tell him first, she thought, returning to the sitting room, finding a piece of manuscript paper on top of the piano, settling on the stool and writing on the closed lid; scribbling a furious, illegible chain of words at right angle to the staves and music Erwin had scribbled – an unintentional palimpsest of smudged ink and spite.

Then she tried to re-read her first sentence. All she could make out was
Dearest Son
 … and the rest was just a flurry of spastic copperplate.

So she screwed this up too, and stopped to think: She's clever; cunning, and clever.

She tapped her fingers on the piano and struggled to control her breath. ‘She knows what she's doing,' she whispered. ‘
Exactly
what she's doing.'

And again, she composed a few more lines of scrawl to her son, this time in her head.
You think I should have let her have the money? Have you seen what she spends it on? She would have new stockings, but Frans would be hungry. And as for my roster, I've found it nearly impossible to get her to help out. Later, she says; tomorrow, she says.

… he will have to choose.

‘Damn you,' she said, knocking the piano so hard the metronome started a slow, insistent clunk. She stopped it. ‘You know, exactly,' she repeated.

Madge stood up and went out into the hallway. Mrs Schild, from 2G, was just arriving home from the doctor's. She saw Madge, squinted at her and said, ‘See you've lost your boarder.'

‘You've seen her?' Madge asked.

‘Yes … going up the stairs, to the attic. Mr Glowka was helping her.'

Madge stopped to think. ‘The superintendent?'

‘Yes.'

Madge was off, up the stairs, three at a time. She was carried by fury, floating in an ether of fractured pride and indignation. Suddenly she stopped; she held tightly to the banister, her hand trembling. ‘Erwin,' she was saying. ‘Listen …'

Mum, I was relying on you …

‘Erwin …'

What other choice do I have, Mum? She's my wife, and Frans is my son. Things have changed. This isn't God's Hill Road and I'm not sixteen anymore. Can't you see that, Mum?

‘Of course.'

Well …

Madge climbed the rest of the steps slowly; when she got to the top she knocked on the door to the attic room. Luise opened the door and stared at her without saying a word.

‘I'm sorry,' Madge whispered.

Luise wasn't convinced. ‘I can't live with you anymore, Madge.'

‘I know … I've been unkind.'

They stared at each other.

‘I could change things,' Madge continued.

‘You can't change, Madge.'

‘I can.'

Madge could hear the iron on the roof expanding a few feet above her head. ‘We can pool our money and shop together,' she said. ‘And if you don't like something, you just say.'

Why the big turn around, Luise wanted to ask, although she knew. ‘He wanted us to get along,' she whispered.

‘I know.'

‘I didn't want it to be like this.'

‘I can help you with your scales,' Madge offered.

This time, a shorter pause, and then Madge looked inside the apartment. ‘You haven't unpacked?' she asked, and stated.

‘No.'

‘And you'd pay rent for this place.'

‘Some.'

‘I could carry your suitcase.'

They passed Mr Glowka on the stairs on the way down. He smiled, but Luise barely looked at him.

‘Give it another go?' he asked, but Luise didn't reply.

Madge, meanwhile, was making a fist, and adding Mr Glowka's name to the list that already ran to several pages.

Then Luise suddenly turned and said, ‘That letter I gave you to post, Mr Glowka?'

‘Done it,' he said.

‘Oh.'

And she kept going down.

A week later, Erwin was sitting, leaning against a tree that grew along a blue metal road on the outskirts of Bilgoraj. The rest of his platoon of sixty or so men were lying in tall grass, resting, or sitting cross-legged playing cards on smooth granite boulders. One man was cleaning his rifle, and another was distributing mail.

‘Hergert,' he said, and Erwin raised his hand.

The middle-aged soldier with a limp approached him and threw two letters down. ‘Your first?' he asked.

Erwin smiled. ‘No, I got one from the Pope last week.'

He looked at the letters. One was Luise's handwriting, and the other, Schaedel's scrawl. He opened his wife's first, and ironed it flat against his leg. Then he started reading. A few moments later he breathed deeply and craned his head. He looked up into his tree, allowing his eyes to settle on high branches. ‘Christ,' he muttered, returning to the letter and re-reading the words
your mum
and
syphilis
. Then he said, ‘Of course.' He looked out across the patchwork of fields, forests and farmhouses.

Suddenly it all made sense – Jo thrown out of the house on the very first day his son had been brought home from hospital; exiled to his shed, reduced to standing on the back porch and knocking for washing powder, or a bread knife; Madge coming out and looking at him, thinking, You dirty bastard, you gave this to me.

Left to rot in his shed, until God granted him a way out, and then Madge, as bitter as ever, conceding, having to dig deep for some sort of charity. But even then, forbidding him to see Erwin, to have him in their room, or touch him, or kiss him.

Leaving Madge with nothing but bitterness, and an ­eternity of piano lessons – a discipline that would rescue Erwin from his father.

Discipline; sheets washed daily; a formal upbringing; everyone keeping their distance – head erect, body straight, hands flat. And a wash trough full of anger that Erwin had managed to avoid, somehow.

‘Dad,' he mumbled, seeing him on his camp stretcher, reading
The Oracle
. ‘Why don't you come inside?'

‘She won't let me, Erwin.'

‘Well, tell her. Say, you're not running the house.'

As his dad turned over. ‘Maybe it's best this way.'

He couldn't read any more of the letter. What else ­mattered? A life full of crotchets, and deceit – a lie that had persisted through the years; and, he guessed, if this one thing was wrong, then everything was wrong.

Gnade blew his whistle and they continued. Tunics were buttoned and rifles shouldered, underwear adjusted and cigarettes stubbed out. They continued along the road. They were on what Gnade called a scavenger hunt, a patrol through the countryside in search of stray Jews.

There were dozens, they'd been promised, hiding in sheds and barns, camping beside creeks and sheltering in caves. But so far they hadn't found anyone. Days of patrolling and all they'd seen was sun, sky and Polish farmers fixing tiles on sagging roofs.

‘From your wife?' Herbert asked, coming up beside him.

‘Yes,' Erwin replied.

‘
Look after yourself, wear a singlet.
'

Erwin tried to smile. ‘Exactly.'

Herbert held up his own letter. ‘The same,' he said.

After a few minutes of silence, Erwin asked, ‘Will you tell her about all of this?'

‘Why does she need to know? Why does anyone need to know? She has enough to worry about.'

Erwin sighed. ‘Yes.' Then he asked, ‘How did your sons die?'

Herbert looked him in the eyes. ‘A single grenade.'

‘A waste.'

‘Well, that's what it is, isn't it, a waste?'

‘What?'

‘War. We kill, they kill, and whoever manages to kill the most. Dear God in Heaven. Congratulations, here are your children: on this side the mean ones, and over here, the stupid. Take your pick.'

Erwin grinned at him. ‘But you don't believe in God?'

‘What's there to believe in?'

Erwin couldn't think of much. ‘Flowers … children.'

‘What's that got to do with God? Ask the Jews if they believe in God.'

A hundred yards up ahead a farmer came running out of his house towards Gnade. As he came closer he started shouting in Polish, and pointing to another house further up the road. Gnade called for his translator and soon the two men were deep in conversation.

‘What is it?' Gnade asked.

‘He says there are Jews,' the translator replied, ‘hiding in that house, up there on the left.' He indicated.

‘How many?' Gnade asked.

‘Three. A woman and two children.'

‘Thank him,' Gnade said. Then he turned to his men and indicated where they should make a line. ‘Spread out, and don't fall behind.'

They spread out, and moved forward, and as they approached the house they surrounded it. Gnade drew his pistol, gathered half a dozen men and approached the front door. They waited and whispered between themselves and then one, a stocky man with a machine gun, kicked in the door. They all streamed in. Erwin and Herbert could hear muffled voices and then silence, and then, a full minute later, a series of rifle and pistol shots.

Another pause, and then Gnade re-emerged, dragging a young Polish woman by her plaited hair. She was screaming, and then dropped to her knees, and then sat.

‘This woman had three Jews,' Gnade called to his men. ‘They are all dead.' He looked at her and asked, ‘Are you a Pole?'

The translator came forward. ‘Polish?'

‘Yes,' she managed, holding her face in her hands.

‘But what's worse,' Gnade continued, loudly, ‘is that she tried to defend her Jews. She pulled out this gun.' He produced an old pistol. ‘She fired at us, and now I have one man dead.' He looked at the woman. ‘Do you understand?'

She just looked at him.

Gnade took the butt of the woman's pistol and struck her across the forehead. ‘Do you understand?'

She sat up and held her bleeding forehead.

‘Do you understand?' the translator asked her.

‘No,' she replied.

Gnade looked at his translator. ‘Tell her that for every German killed, there will be ten Poles,' he said. ‘Go on, tell her.'

The translator explained, and the woman looked at Gnade disbelievingly.

‘But tell her I'm willing to do a deal,' he continued.

Again the translator explained, and the woman asked, ‘Yes, what is it?'

‘You can be one of the ten,' he replied. ‘As long as you take your own gun, and do it now, as an apology to my men, for killing one of their friends.'