The Blind Side of the Heart (39 page)

A little respect, if you please, young man. Wilhelm’s moment had come; he intervened. You will let that young lady leave at once. She is my fiancée.

The nurse opened the door. Wilhelm offered Helene his arm. Coming, darling?

Helene knew there was no alternative. She took Wilhelm’s arm and went out. At the end of the corridor she heard a shrill screech behind her. It wasn’t clear whether it came from an animal or a human throat. Nor could she decide, if it was human, whose scream it was. It could have been her mother screaming. Another male nurse opened the door for them. Wilhelm and Helene went along the next corridor in silence. This place was uncannily quiet; there was something very final about it.

In the train to Berlin, Wilhelm and Helene still sat in silence. The train went through a tunnel. Helene felt that Wilhelm was waiting for her to thank him.

Please, she said, don’t call me darling any more.

But you
are
my darling. Wilhelm’s eyes were on Helene’s face. I have to go to Stettin again tomorrow, for a week. I don’t want to leave you alone in Berlin any longer than that.

I won’t be alone, why would I be alone? My patients are waiting for me, they need me.

Do you think there’d be no patients waiting for you in Stettin? You’ll find patients to nurse all over the world. But there’s only one of me. Alice, my sweet little girl, your abstinence is noble, but to tell you the truth it’s driving me crazy. We must bring it to an end.
I
need you.

Helene took his hand. You don’t have to persuade me of that, she said and kissed his hand. It was good to hear that she was needed. How was she to talk about it?

What documents do I need to marry you? She was whispering. I don’t have any, not a single one.

That can be dealt with, stated Wilhelm nonchalantly. Didn’t you once tell me you knew how to operate a printing press?

Helene shook her head. The paper, the right print, stamps and seals. Documents like that are very difficult to print.

Leave it all to me. Promise?

Helene nodded. It was good that he wanted to look after her. Wilhelm mentioned a brother in Gelbensande who had been farming since he married, but who knew about drawing up official documents.

For some time the hospital had been urging Helene to produce her papers at long last: her identity card, her birth certificate, her parents’ birth certificates, and if possible a book of family records going back beyond her parents; they wanted to see all that. Helene had claimed that she had no identity card, and whenever she was asked she pretended to be taken by surprise and said she had forgotten her papers. They had given her more time. But she must produce her papers by the end of the month, they had said recently, or she would lose her job.

O
nly when Helene took a slightly wrinkled apple out of the basket, polished it on her white skirt, found a knife, cut it up and cored it so that she could hand Wilhelm an apple quarter, did she see that she had a view over to the valley of the Oder and the hills around it, to the docks and the Dammscher See, then, rather closer, over the flower beds on the Hakenterrasse and down to the River Oder itself, where one of the white steamers was just putting in, inviting people with both sunshades and umbrellas aboard for an excursion. They had all made different decisions about the likely weather on this day early in May. And only then did it strike her that she had never imagined what her wedding might be like. That was herself all over, she supposed. Helene pulled the coat lying loosely over her bare shoulders together over her breast, because it was cool here. You could smell the sea in the air, you knew you were near the coast. When she licked her lips, she thought she could taste salt. This morning the registrar had referred to the wind in his speech of congratulations, saying marriage was a safe haven from storm winds and tempests, and a wife should make a safe and comfortable home for the man who protected her. Then he had laughed and advised them to have a schnapps on this early May day. A cool wind was blowing their way. Wilhelm munched the apple, he chewed it vigorously and Helene heard his teeth crushing it, juice coming through his teeth, his saliva, his lust, he leaned forward, scrutinized Helene, stroked the strands of hair wafting in the wind back from her face and kissed her forehead. He had a right to do that now, and more besides. A gull screeched. A young woman on the road just below was edging a pram forward with her hips, shove by shove; she held her baby close to her with both arms; it was crying; a shawl was fluttering round her; she was trying to wrap it round the baby, but the shawl kept flying out in the wind, and the baby cried as if it were hungry and in pain.

Incredible, don’t you think? Wilhelm was looking down too.

I expect the baby has colic.

I meant the traffic here. Apple quarter in hand, Wilhelm pointed to a long ship. Soon there’ll be tons of Mecklenburg carrots travelling this way along our autobahn; they’ll be loaded up and go off into the world. We’re going to break the 1913 record this year, our turnover of goods will reach its highest level ever, eight and a half million tons, that’s gigantic. It was only right when we rescinded the internationalization of our waterways. Versailles can’t dictate what we do with our own river. Wilhelm stood up and pointed north-east with his outstretched arm. Look at that big building over there. They’ll be completing the second part of it in the next few weeks, the biggest granary in Europe. Wilhelm sat down again. Helene contorted her face and pressed her lips together, stifling a yawn only with difficulty. When Wilhelm was in full flight, it was difficult to interrupt his rejoicings over new technological achievements and buildings. See the mast on that ship over to the right? That’s its antenna, it can receive radio waves from transmitters and then we can send messages from that mast over there.

What for?

For better communications, Alice. And there’s the
Rügen
, two funnels, oh my word, a freighter of the Gribel Line won’t make it under that. Wilhelm lowered his arm and propped it on the grass to support himself. Now he was looking at Helene. She felt his eyes roaming over her and resting on her face.

The prospect of the wedding night to come made Helene feel embarrassed. She had been aware of the happy way he looked at her all day and had avoided his eyes. Now she had to narrow hers, because it was bright and windy up here on the heights. She looked back.

Won’t you give me a smile? Wilhelm lifted her chin with one finger.

Today he had seemed to her even taller than usual when he was standing up a moment ago, and even sitting down he towered above her. Helene tried hard to smile.

Wilhelm had let nothing deter him. When the law for the protection of Aryan blood was passed in September, he had not mentioned it once. His efforts to get papers for Helene had dragged on; she had had to stop working at the Bethany Hospital and they had asked her to leave the nurses’ hostel. Back in Fanny’s apartment, Helene had been glad to find that Erich had obviously left her aunt at last. Wilhelm came to see Helene as often as he could. He apologized for the length of time it was taking, and sometimes he gave her some money which, relieved to be more independent of Fanny, she put away in her purse. Once Wilhelm mentioned that a colleague of his had sued for divorce; he didn’t want to be accused of racial disgrace. Helene wondered whether he told her that to emphasize the risk he was running for her sake, or whether it was simply meant to show that her origins were beginning to seem immaterial to him. After all, he had mentioned the other man’s divorce as if he certainly didn’t see himself incurring racial disgrace. A little later they had met at the Lietzensee, near the embankment by the lake over which the road led. Plane leaves lay smooth and yellow on the ground. Well, here we are, said Wilhelm and he gave Helene an envelope. She sat down on a bench near the dappled tree trunk. Wilhelm sat beside her, put one arm round her and kissed her ear. She opened the envelope. It contained a certificate of nursing qualifications and a leaflet with a bronze-coloured cover certifying Aryan descent, a little shabby but almost new. It still had a certain smell. She leafed through it. Her name was Alice Schulze, her father was one Bertram Otto Schulze from Dresden, her mother was Auguste Clementine Hedwig Schulze, née Schröder.

Who are these people? Helene’s heartbeat was steady; she had to smile because the names sounded so new to her, unfamiliar and promising. These names were to belong to her, they would be hers.

Don’t ask. Wilhelm put a hand over her mouth.

But suppose someone asks me about them?

The Schulzes were our neighbours in Dresden. Simple folk.

Wilhelm was going to leave his explanations at that, but Helene wouldn’t leave him in peace. She tickled his chin: Go on, she said and smiled, because she knew that Wilhelm didn’t like to refuse her anything.

There were nine of us in our family; they had only one child, a girl. Alice often played on her own in the street until it was dark. What she liked best was coming over to us and joining our family at our big table. She didn’t want to eat anything, just sit at our table with us. One day her parents spread the news that Alice had run away. We children helped to search for her, but Alice never turned up. You look a little like her.

I disappeared? Helene laughed out loud. The idea of being a missing person amused her.

She was about your age. Everyone in our street thought Alice’s parents had killed her. How else could they be so confident about claiming that she’d run away?

Killed by her own parents?

Wilhelm raised Helene’s chin with his forefinger, as he liked to do when he thought she was being too serious. We simply wondered about the way they went on living just as usual, no sign of grief. They didn’t even want to tell the police. All of us toyed with the idea of going to the police ourselves. Alice wasn’t to start school until the summer, so there was no teacher to notice her absence. My God, didn’t several of your own siblings die too? Plenty of children died without death certificates. Soon after that the wife, Alice’s mother, fell downstairs and died. Her husband lived on until a year ago; he survived to a great age, but he always seemed old.

And they’re supposed to be my parents?

You wanted to know. Wilhelm rubbed his hands; perhaps he felt cold. Nothing to be done about it, and now you do know.

What about their ancestors? Grandparents, great-grandparents – these are just names that no one knows.

They existed, said Wilhelm. He said no more; he had just taken the record of her descent from her hand, rolled it up and put it into the inside pocket of his coat. He had reached for her hand and suggested getting married in Stettin, where he had rented an apartment in Elisabethstrasse several months earlier, and where Dresden stamps and seals might be even less familiar than they were in Berlin.

Helene had nodded. She had always wanted to see a real big harbour. And they had set off for Stettin before Christmas. It hadn’t been easy to say goodbye to Martha and Leontine. They had met at Leontine’s apartment the evening before they left; the thick velour curtains were drawn, Leontine offered Irish whiskey and dark cigarettes, just the thing for this moment, she said.

So when I write to you, Martha had said, do I write to Alice now? Leontine had objected, laughing, that no one could break off a relationship in that one-sided way. I’ll write to you every week, Martha had promised, as Elsa from an address in Bautzen.

In Stettin, Wilhelm had gone to the registry office to give notice of their engagement and fix a date. He let Helene sleep in the room next to the kitchen in the apartment and she was glad of his thoughtfulness. The wedding was to be at the beginning of May. And Helene wasn’t to work; Wilhelm gave her housekeeping money, she did the shopping and put the bill on the table for him to see; she cooked, she washed and ironed clothes, she lit the stove. She was grateful. If Wilhelm wanted beef roulades for supper, Helene might have to spend half the morning going from butcher to butcher to find the right meat for them. Wilhelm didn’t want her going to Wolff, quite close to them in Bismarckstrasse, however friendly he might be, however good his prices. Such people must not be encouraged, said Wilhelm, and Helene knew what he meant and was afraid he might follow her to see if she was acting according to his instructions. They had once met by chance; Helene had been coming out of the library in the Rosengarten district with two books under her arm when Wilhelm called her over to the other side of the street. He had cast a fleeting glance at her books. Martin Buber, do you have to read that? At such a time, with his ideas . . . I don’t like it. What do you think you get out of it? he asked, laughing. He had put his arm round her shoulders and was speaking close to her ear. I see I’ll have to keep my eye on you. I don’t want you going to that library. The People’s Library is just round the corner. You can easily walk the few metres to the park.

If Wilhelm gave her a shirt with a missing button, Helene went from draper to draper until she had found not just one button the right size, but back in the first shop a whole dozen, so that she could change all the other buttons on the shirt to match. Helene felt a gratitude to him that kept her cheerful.

Once Wilhelm said it was only as you came into their apartment that you noticed how dirty the corridor outside it was. He meant it as a compliment because she kept their place so clean. You’re a wonderful woman, Alice. There’s just one thing I have to mention to you. And he looked at her sternly. Our neighbour on the ground floor told me she saw you last week in Schuhstrasse coming out of that draper’s shop, what’s his name, Bader? Helene felt herself going red in the face. Baden, Herbert Baden, I’ve been buying from him since Christmas, he has very high-quality goods; you don’t get buttons like that anywhere else. Wilhelm had not looked at Helene; he had taken a long draught from his beer glass and said: My God, then you’ll just have to buy different buttons, Alice. Do you realize that you’re putting us both in danger? Not just yourself, me too.