Lilac Girls (48 page)

“You've been drinking?” Pietrik said.

“Only you are allowed to drink,” I said, taking a sip from the paper cup. I felt a new clarity of thought.

Pietrik reached for the cup. “I'm taking you home.”

I snatched the cup back and stood just as Marthe and Papa came by, Halina's art teacher in tow.

“You are Halina's mother?” said the teacher, a pretty, dark-haired woman, who wore round, black glasses and a violet caftan. The teacher put one arm, the sleeve like a batwing, over Halina's shoulder.

“Halina and I have long talks,” said the teacher. “She speaks highly of you.”

“Oh, really?” I said. “She admits she has a mother?”

The group laughed a little too hard. It was not that funny.

“Oh, yes,
teens,
” said the teacher. “Have you seen Halina's self-portrait? My colleague at the university says it's his favorite piece here.”

“It's my mother,” I said.

“Pardon?” said the teacher.

Marthe and Papa exchanged looks. The room spun like a fun house.

“Halina painted it of
herself,
Kasia,” Marthe said.

Pietrik took my arm.

“If you
knew
my mother, you wouldn't be sleeping in her bed today,” I said.

“We're going home,” said Pietrik.

I pulled away from his tight fingers. “Halina may not have told you in one of those long talks, but I got my mother killed by working in the underground. After all she did for me.”

I brought the paper cup to my lips, and it collapsed in my hand, splashing vodka down my dress front.

“Pietrik, we'll take Halina home to our house,” Marthe said.

“Yes, my mother was an artist just like Halina here, but she drew portraits for bad people, Nazis in fact, if you must know.” I felt my face wet with tears. “What happened to her? Only God knows, Mrs. Art Teacher, because she never said goodbye, but take it from me, the woman in that poster is my mother.”

All I remember after that is Pietrik holding me up on the way home, us stopping for me to be sick in an alleyway and to wipe formerly hot cereal off my American dress.

I
WOKE BEFORE DAWN
the next morning.

“Water,” I called out, for a second thinking I was in the
Revier
at Ravensbrück.

I sat up in Halina's bed and saw that my dress had been exchanged for my nightshirt. Pietrik had changed me? The previous night bobbed to the surface, and my cheeks burned there in the dark. What a fool I'd made of myself. Even before rising, I knew I'd go to Stocksee.

I walked past Pietrik's room. He slept with one arm across his face, chest bare. Beautiful. What if I just crawled in with him? Why didn't I have the courage to sleep with my own husband?

As dawn broke outside our window, I gathered my overnight things and pulled open Caroline's package, careful not to make a sound. In the small box I found my transit papers. German money. Polish money. A letter addressed to Germany's largest newspaper detailing Herta Oberheuser's war crimes at Ravensbrück and her early release, complete with German postage. Three maps, a list of approved gas stations at which to purchase fuel, and detailed travel instructions. A note apologizing for only being able to obtain one set of travel papers, and a whole package of Fig Newton cookies. I tossed the box in my suitcase and clicked the locks. Pietrik stirred in the next room.

I froze for a second. Should I leave a note? I scribbled a quick goodbye on the paper from Caroline's package and made my way down the stairs to the old turquoise car Papa loaned me now and then, the one Pietrik had kept alive for years. As Papa said, that car had more rust on it than paint, but it got us wherever we needed to go.

At first, I fretted as I drove. What if it really was Herta? Would she hurt me? Would I hurt
her
? My head cleared a bit once I was under way, one of the few drivers on the road that early. I spread a map and the driving instructions out on the seat next to me, turned the radio volume up, cranked the window down, and breakfasted on a whole cellophane sleeve of Fig Newtons. The box said,
NEW TWIN-PAK STAYS FRESHER!
and they did taste better than ever, soft and moist cookie outside, sweet figgy middle. Eating these helped my mood very much. Perhaps this trip was a good idea after all.

On my way northwest, I passed through one neglected village after another, the only color in the drab towns the red on white propaganda posters proclaiming the virtues of socialism and the
UNBREAKABLE FRIENDSHIP WITH THE PEOPLES OF THE SOVIET UNION.

The travel arrangements were complicated, since Germany had been stripped of all the land it had taken during the war. In the East it had been returned to Poland under Russian occupation, and in the West it was divvied up between the Western Allies. Two new states had been created out of occupied Germany, free West Germany, no longer fully occupied by the Allies, and the smaller German Democratic Republic, or GDR, in the East.

It took me a whole day to make it through Poland and East Germany. The roads were potholed and often strewn with litter, and it was rare to see other passenger cars. A Soviet military convoy lumbered by, license plates painted out. The soldiers riding in the back of the trucks eyed me as if I were a circus oddity. The first night I slept in my car, one eye open, alert for robbers.

The next day, through dense fog and drizzle, I made it to the inner German border, the 1,393-kilometer boundary between West German and Soviet territories. Caroline had directed me to one of the few routes open to non-Germans, the northernmost designated transit route, to the Lübeck/Schlutup checkpoint. As I approached the guardhouse and the red-striped pole, which blocked the road, I slowed and pulled up behind the last car in line.

Light rain fell on the car roof as I waited and I studied the white concrete watchtower standing along the wall in the distance. Were they watching me from up there? Could they see my dying car spewing lavender smoke as I waited? Somewhere a guard dog barked and I considered the stark surrounding countryside and the long, metal fence that ran the length of the road. Was that where the booby traps were, beyond that fence? I would be fine as long as I didn't have to get out of the car.

My car inched forward in line, my naked windshield wipers useless, the rubber stolen long before by petty bandits. I turned off my radio so I could concentrate. Where was Zuzanna when I needed her? Oh yes. Enjoying her new life in New York City. I rechecked my papers for the tenth time. Three pages thick and signed in ink with a flourish.
Kasia Kuzmerick, Cultural Ambassador,
it said. I ran my finger over the raised seal. I certainly didn't look like any cultural ambassador but those papers made me feel important. Safe.

By the time I made it to the gate, my dress was soaked with sweat under my heavy coat. I rolled down my window to speak with the East German guard.

“Polski?”
said the guard.

I nodded and handed him my papers. He took one look and turned toward the guardhouse, my papers in hand. “Don't turn off the car,” he said, in German.

I waited and studied my gas gauge. Was the needle actually moving downward as I watched? Two more East German soldiers swept aside the guardhouse curtains and glanced out at me. At last, a middle-aged officer came out to my car.

“Get out of the car,” he said in German-accented Polish.

“Why?” I said. “Where are my papers?”

“They have been impounded,” said the officer.

Why had I not listened to Pietrik? Maybe he was right. Some people never learn.

I
t took me some time to get out of my car at the checkpoint, for the door would not open, no matter how I tried. I climbed across and out the passenger side, much to the amusement of the border guards, standing there flaunting their rifles.

The rain was down to a fine mist, and I watched it collect and bead on the shiny cap brim of the officer who had ordered me out. I braced myself with one hand on the hood of the car, for my legs felt about to fail, then snatched it away, for the metal was hot from the engine. Was the car about to overheat?

“You have fancy papers,” the officer said. “They have, however, been replaced with a one-day pass.”

“But they are—”

“If you don't like it, turn around,” the officer said. “Either way, get this car out of here—it's on its last leg.”

I took the pass. Did he see my fingers trembling? The pass, soggy by then and no bigger than a pack of cigarettes, was a miserable exchange for my beautiful papers.

“Make sure you are back here by six tomorrow morning, or you will be living here in this house with us.” He waved the next car forward, signaling the end of the conversation.

Back in the driver's seat, I broke out in a cold sweat of relief. The second checkpoint was easier, and once the West German border guards checked me through, I crossed into the West, and drove north toward Stocksee.

West Germany was like a different world, a wonderland of green fields and neat farms. The road was smooth, and modern trucks passed me on that popular trucking route, for my car refused to go over fifty miles per hour. I stopped only once, at the first telegraph office I saw, and sent a wire to Caroline saying I was on my way.

Somewhere on the outskirts of Stocksee, I heard a terrific clank and turned to see my muffler fall on the asphalt and clatter to the side of the road. I backed up and retrieved the lanky hunk of metal and hurled it into my backseat. After that, my car sounded like the loudest motorbike when I pressed the gas pedal, but what choice did I have? I had to keep going.

I chugged into Stocksee in the early afternoon and shivered as I passed the flowered sign:
WILLKOMMEN IN STOCKSEE!
Herta's home base? It was a rural town close to a lake with the same name, a big lake, tranquil and dark. She always did like lakes.

I drove past rolling farmland and into the heart of Stocksee, a tidy little place. If the dress of the inhabitants was any indication, Stocksee was a conservative place too, for most wore traditional
Tracht,
the men in lederhosen,
Trachten
coats, and alpine hats, the women in dirndl dresses. I slowed my car by a sidewalk and asked a man for help in my best rusty German.

“Excuse me, sir, could you tell me where Dorfstrasse can be found?” The man ignored me and kept walking. A stab of fear went through me when I saw a woman resembling Gerda Quernheim, Nurse Gerda from the camp, pass by on the sidewalk. Could it possibly be her? Out of prison already?

I found the doctor's office, a single-story building of white-painted brick. I parked far down the street, relieved to turn my car off, and sat there attracting hostile looks from passersby. One peered into the backseat in a pointed way, looking at the muffler lying there. I tried to steady my breathing and gain courage. Should I just return home? Call the police and ask for help? That might not end well.

A silver Mercedes-Benz slid by me and docked at the curb in front of the doctor's office. It was an older model but the kind of car Pietrik would have admired.

A woman got out of the car. Could that possibly be Herta driving such an expensive car? Why had I forgotten my glasses? My heart beat like a crazy, flip-flopping fish. The woman was too skinny to be her, wasn't she? My hands were slippery on the steering wheel as I watched the woman walk into the doctor's office.

I slid to the passenger door and exited, the hinges complaining, and shook my hands about like two wet mops, trying to calm myself. I entered the doctor's office, and stopped to read the brass sign next to the door:
FAMILY MEDICAL CLINIC.
The words
WE LOVE CHILDREN
were painted below. Children? It couldn't be Herta. Who would let someone like her touch their little ones?

It wasn't a big waiting room, but it was unnervingly neat and tidy. The walls were painted with schools of manic fish and turtles, and an aquarium bubbled in the corner. I sat and thumbed through magazines, glancing now and then at the patients, waiting to see if she'd walk by. It was hard to look at those well-fed infants with their velvety skin and know Herta might be the one touching them. As their names were called, the mothers went in to see the doctor just as we once had. Did she give them their inoculations or leave that to a nurse?

I watched an angelfish in the tank suck in and spit rocks from the pink-gravel bottom. A German mother sat across the room, the picture of Aryan purity. The Nazis would have put her on the cover of every magazine during the war. I considered telling her how they killed babies at Ravensbrück, but then thought better of it. Never volunteer information. The Germans were always suspicious of that.

Though it was cool in the room, sweat ran down my back. To calm myself, I paged through
German Mother
magazine. The war was long since over, but the
Hausfrauen
had not come far. Still working hard, but no longer for their beloved Führer. If the magazine was any indication, the Germans worshipped a new idol—consumer goods. Volkswagens, hi-fis, dishwashers, and televisions. At least that was an improvement. The receptionist scraped her glass window open.

“Do you have an appointment?” she asked, blue eye shadow on her lids. Makeup? The Führer would not have approved.

I stood.

“No, but if the doctor is free, I'd like one.”

She handed me a clipboard, a long form trapped under the silver clamp.

“Fill this out, and I'll check,” she said.

The Germans still loved their paperwork.

I filled in the form with my real married name and a false address in the nearby town of Plön. It was barely readable, my fingers shook so. Why worry? The war was long over. Hitler was dead. What could Herta do to me?

I listened to the music as I waited. Tchaikovsky? It wasn't calming me.

The last patient went in to see the doctor, and I sat alone. Would she remember me? I was certain she'd recognize her own handiwork.

The receptionist appeared at her window.

“The doctor will see you after the last patient. I will be leaving soon, so may I have your paperwork?”

“Of course,” I said and handed her the clipboard.

I'd be there alone with the doctor? Should I just leave?

I went to the wooden coat-tree in the corner, empty except for a white lab jacket, to hang up my coat. The nameplate pinned to the breast pocket said
DR. OBERHEUSER
. A chill ran through me. How strange to see that name in print. At Ravensbrück the staff had been careful not to reveal their names. Not that we hadn't known them.

The receptionist stood and tidied her desk, ready to go home.

Why stay? If I left then, no one would know I'd been here. Caroline could send someone else.

The last mother walked through the waiting room, baby at her shoulder, and smiled at me as she left the office. I thought of Mrs. Mikelsky's baby with a pang of sadness. I could follow that nice girl out of the waiting room and go home to Lublin. I hurried my coat on and started toward the door, openmouthed, sucking in air. I made it and felt the knob smooth in my hand.

Just go.

Before I could turn it, the receptionist opened the door that led to the back rooms.

“Kasia Bakoski?” she said with a smile. “The doctor will see you now.”