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 It was only right when we rescinded the internationalization of our waterways.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.