The Winter Garden (2014) (35 page)

At that moment Clara felt as though she was only a bit player in a story she couldn’t understand. A story devised by someone who was directing the action, pulling the strings, and moving
events towards an end only he could see. Who was he, this person behind the scenes? What did he want? And what did he have in store for her?

Back in the apartment, she forced herself to think calmly about where and when she might have been followed. She had been told, by Archie Dyson, that the Gestapo had its eye on her. For weeks
she had sensed there was someone on her tail, even in Munich. She had been burgled; that must have been when the photograph was taken. She cursed herself for having failed to notice that it was
missing. Whoever took the picture knew enough about her to understand how much she cared for Erich. And now, that same person must have known she was away from the apartment. They knew where she
lived. They knew the car she drove. The message was pretty clear. They had threatened something that Clara held dear because she knew about something that they held dear. She just didn’t know
what it was.

The apartment in Neukölln was not on the telephone and she resisted the temptation to jump on the U-Bahn straight away. Instead, she called Erich’s Gymnasium where the gruff
headmaster, who was working late, answered the telephone himself and assured her that Erich Schmidt had been in as usual that day. Then she sat in her silent apartment, a cup of black coffee in her
hands, and forced herself to think. She had gone to Munich to find the sister of Anna Hansen. Somehow, though she could not see why, Anna Hansen’s life had become linked to her own. The
unexplained death of a rackety model turned Reich bride was now casting a shadow over her own life. She needed to discover what happened to Anna Hansen and soon.

That night she had to will herself to sleep. At last, as her breathing slowed and sleep approached, she saw a figure beckoning to her and in the dark spaces of her thoughts, where images swam
before dreams descended, she felt something on the edge of her perception. It was trying to force its way out from the pictures in her mind, to separate itself and come to the fore, but it had no
face or voice and it moved like a memory might, shifting in and out of the shadows in her mind.

The Heim Kurmark was in Klosterheide, a small village five kilometres north of Lindow and an hour and a half ’s drive north of Berlin. It was a stately, high-gabled
building of rose-coloured stone which sat on the ridge of a hill, its slate roof topped by a cupola with a bell inside, sounding the hour with a gloomy, metallic toll. The austere façade
hinted at its origins. It had been a monastery originally and there remained an odour of piety about it, competing with the strong scent of ammonia and cleaning polish. Earlier that year the place
had been taken over by the officials of the SS, given a deep clean, and rechristened as a Lebensborn home – part of a string of institutions throughout the Reich funded by the Well of Life
Foundation and devoted to the care of unmarried pregnant women who wanted to escape the moralizing of priests and family members. Here, in a programme devised by Heinrich Himmler, they could bear
children with the choice of keeping them, or donating them to an SS family keen to meet the officially sanctioned target of four children. Above the heavy oak door a black SS flag twitched in the
brisk autumnal breeze.

Clara climbed out of the car and waited at the door. So Katia Hansen was unmarried and pregnant, then. That might explain the contempt of the landlady back in Munich. But it did not explain why
she had chosen to travel halfway across the country, trusting to the tender mercies of the SS when she was at her most vulnerable. Unless that had to do with the fact, as the landlady also
mentioned, that other people were looking for her too. Clara had no idea whether her journey here would be any more fruitful than the one to Munich, but this time she was spurred by more urgent
considerations. Someone wanted to find Katia Hansen and, it appeared, Katia Hansen didn’t want to be found.

There was no bell, so after a while Clara pushed the door and ventured inside. It seemed strangely quiet for a place devoted to babies and young children. She saw linoleum faded by repeated
scrubbing, drab mustard walls and a scuffed wooden floor. Even the light slanting through the cloudy windows was wan and drained of radiance, as though promising the babies that the world outside
would be no less drear than the place in which they were born.

Before she had taken more than a couple of steps a nurse, dressed in a white headdress, bustled out to meet her.

‘Katia Hansen, you say? Was this visit arranged?’

‘I’m a friend of the family. I have some sad news for her,’ said Clara, sidestepping the enquiry and summoning a tone of grave solemnity. ‘Her sister has died.’

The nurse flinched, as though Clara had uttered an obscenity. Perhaps, in a way, death was an obscenity in this place of birth.

‘Her sister, you say. She has died?’ Clara watched the nurse analysing this information, pondering whether Katia Hansen had illegally concealed some familial flaw, some health defect
which ran in families, a tendency to early death.

‘She was murdered,’ Clara clarified. Surely being murdered couldn’t run in families.

‘Murdered! Really? How shocking! Then I shall have to go and find her. I think she’s in the lecture room. But I would ask, please, be gentle. A girl in her condition should not have
to take a shock.’

Clara was shown into a waiting room, featuring a battered array of cane furniture and a poster promoting porridge and brown bread as a wholesome diet for pregnant women. A window at the side
gave onto the garden where more nurses swathed in white, their caps bearing a red cross, were sitting in a circle with a baby on each lap. There was something peculiar about those babies, Clara
thought, and it was not just that they were uniformly blonde and dressed in identically knitted suits and bootees. Then she realized the peculiarity was that they looked so much better fed than the
babies one saw in Berlin. They had round, apple cheeks beneath their bonnets and chubby little arms, braceleted with fat. On the terrace immediately below the window stood a line of cribs, done out
with lace covers and flowery blankets, and a little further down the lawn was a round table where ten children were eating a meal from steel bowls.

Katia Hansen was a slight girl of around twenty whose voluminous smock suggested a pregnancy of at least seven months. Her hair was dark brown, probably the same as Anna’s before it was
bleached, and her delicate features reminded Clara instantly of Katia’s older sister. She shrugged off the nurse’s arm and looked at Clara in amazement.

‘Is it true? What Krankenschwester Flick told me about Anna? What happened?’

‘Sit down, dear,’ said the nurse, with a glimmer of kindliness. ‘This lady has come to explain everything.’

‘It is true, I’m afraid,’ said Clara. ‘I’m sure the Reich Bride School has been trying to trace you. And the rest of the family.’

‘There is no rest of the family,’ said Katia, sitting down. ‘It’s just me. And they can’t have tried very hard. Who are you, anyway?’

‘I knew Anna in Berlin.’ Clara took a deep breath and explained. About meeting Anna through Bruno Weiss. About the Bride School and the shooting. She tried to keep the details of the
murder vague, but she thought she should add that the police had already released the gardener who had first been arrested.

‘So who do they suspect now?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Poor Anna.’ A tear fattened on Katia’s cheek and she swiped it away with a forefinger. ‘Whatever else, she didn’t deserve that.’

Whatever else?

Out of the corner of her eye, Clara noticed a car draw up in the drive and a group of SS officers slamming the door and stamping on the gravel. One of them carried a bouquet.

‘They’ve come for the ceremony,’ explained Katia, matter-of-factly.

‘What ceremony?’

‘There’s a baby being dedicated to the Fatherland today. The mother doesn’t want to do it, but she can’t see much alternative. She knows it’ll have a good future as
a child of the Reich. There are always plenty of takers.’

‘Why’s that?’ When times were hard it seemed strange anyone should want more mouths to feed.

Katia shrugged. ‘SS families need a minimum of four children. Himmler says they have to be “kinderreich”. If you get a child from the Lebensborn it’s guaranteed to be
racially pure. Oh, here’s Eva now.’

A large girl with a frizz of red hair entered the room, and settled nervously in a chair. She was formally dressed in a hat and coat and clutching a baby draped in a white shawl. The child began
to grizzle, and the girl hushed it urgently, rocking it back and forth in her arms. The crying only grew louder and eventually, looking quickly around, the mother undid her blouse to breastfeed.
Clara watched as the baby’s navy, unfocused eyes swivelled towards the distended, blue-veined breasts and seized the nipple, causing the mother to flinch. Eva sat and stared directly ahead of
her as the child suckled, a look of desolation on her face.

‘Eva had her little girl a month ago.’ Katia smiled across at her, then lowered her voice. ‘It’s being adopted by a childless couple. We’re all supposed to attend
the dedication ceremonies, only I can’t stand them . . .’

She glanced outside. ‘Is that your car? Do you think we could go for a drive? We’d have to be quick but I’m dying for a cigarette.’

They walked swiftly down the corridor. As they passed, Clara glanced into the dining room where the SS officers had congregated. It was set with a couple of rows of chairs, and a table made up
like an altar at the front, covered with a white linen cloth and dressed with a vase of flowers and a portrait of the Führer. A crimson banner was hung behind on the wall and next to it the
black banner of the SS with its jagged lightning strokes. Beside the table, a couple stood, a grizzled Sturmbannführer and a woman in a flowered hat with a grim expression that suggested she
would cope with whatever life threw at her. Even if it was a baby.

Katia walked smartly towards the car and lowered herself effortfully into the front seat. She had the same bold, no-nonsense manner Clara remembered from Anna. Though she had only just heard
about her sister’s death, she had barely shed a tear. Catching Clara’s eyes on her, Katia said, ‘In case you’re wondering, it was an accident, so what was I supposed to do?
The doctors can’t give contraceptive advice. If they do, it’s off to a camp for them, and the contraceptives you can find are all duds. Deliberately so. More kids for the Fatherland.
And as for an abortion, forget it.’

‘Of course,’ said Clara. Abortions were banned in the Third Reich. The punishment for assisting an abortion was death. Except for Jews, for whom terminations were actively
encouraged.

‘Not that I’d have considered that,’ Katia continued as they headed off up the drive. ‘Anyway, it’s supposed to be an honour to be here. You have to apply, and they
only accept half the applications. They prefer the father to be SS, and you have to prove you’re hereditarily healthy. Thankfully my boyfriend wasn’t racially inferior. Just inferior in
every other way.’

‘Who was he?’

‘A chauffeur. He was in the SA and he drove the SS, back home in Munich. Drove off into the sunset in the end. Still, it turns out I’m well rid of him.’

‘The home seems like a very restful place.’

‘Restful? You’re joking. We’re run off our feet. There’s no end of lessons on diet, and babycare, obviously, and lectures and films. This morning we had a talk on a
foolproof way to ensure our next child was a boy. Information straight from Herr Himmler, apparently. Make sure the man drinks no alcohol for a week and takes a lot of exercise.’ She laughed
bitterly. ‘So not much chance of that then. Himmler had better think of another way of creating more soldiers for the Führer.’

‘What happens after the baby’s born?’

‘Oh, they’re very good with them. They take this scientific approach, which means the nurses weigh all the food and give them two baths a day and everything is sterilized. They feed
the mothers up too. Whole milk, fresh vegetables and second helpings. That’s one of the few advantages of a place like this.’

‘I meant, what happens to the child afterwards?’

‘If you are not in a position to look after it, it’s given out to an SS family. No matter how many children they already have. They’re always telling you large families are
good. We’ve had lectures on great Germans who have come from large families – you know, if there hadn’t been such a large family, certain geniuses would not exist. Mozart and
people.’

‘Is that what will happen to your baby?’ asked Clara gently. ‘Will you give it up for adoption?’

Katia’s face clouded. ‘I don’t know. The others don’t mind it. Some of them have older kids already. I’ve got a friend here who says, “I’m proud to give
the Führer a baby. I hope it will be a boy who can die for him.” But I hope mine’s a girl and I don’t want some old SS hag taking my kid.’

Clara noticed that tears were once again sloping down Katia’s cheeks.

‘This isn’t how I imagined having a baby, you know. I wanted to do everything properly, nice husband, nice house, nice wedding, and then this happens.’ She sniffed.
‘Didn’t you say you had cigarettes?’

The road passed into a copse of trees and Clara drew up. They got out and lit up. Katia inhaled greedily, then leaned back against the car. In the dappled light of the leaves, she looked
exhausted. Lines of bitterness were already carved on her face.

‘I’m sorry you had to come and tell me about Anna. You probably think I’m very unfeeling, seeing as she was my only sister and everything. It’s probably that I
can’t take it in quite yet. The joke is, I was always the good girl in the family. Anna was the black sheep. Right from early on, she was the one who had rows with our parents, getting drunk,
staying out late. Not wanting to join the Bund Deutscher Mädel. Having unsuitable boyfriends. Deciding she wanted to be a dancer, which our father said was no better than being a prostitute.
And I was the clever one, top of the class at school, never put a foot wrong. Yet here I am now, pregnant without a man, while Anna was attending a Bride School and about to get married to an SS
officer.’