Eat rinje, whimpered Peter. Eat rinje. He pointed to the picture hanging over the chest of drawers. It showed a basket full of fruit in glowing colours. Did he mean the orange it showed? Should she have brought that orange from the hospital home for him? The girl needed the orange, Peter had potatoes.
Rinje! Peter was shouting now, deafening Helene. She bit her lip, she gritted her teeth, she didn’t want to lose patience, patience was all that mattered, it gave shape and form to life. Helene picked Peter up, turned the picture to the wall as she passed it and carried him to her bed.
Another day, she whispered. There’ll be an orange another day. Peter calmed down. He liked to be caressed. Helene stroked his forehead and pulled the blanket up over him.
Mother sing?
Helene knew she couldn’t sing well, she stroked him and shook her head. A woman in the hospital had taken her arm today with a bony old hand and told Helene she wished she would just let her die. Please, I just want to die. Go to sleep, Peterkin.
Sing, please sing! Peter didn’t want to close his eyes.
Perhaps she just had to make a bit of an effort. Helene would have liked to sing, she simply couldn’t. Could she think of a song? Mary and Joseph walked in a garden green, but Christmas was over long ago. Her voice was scratchy, the musical notes wouldn’t come. Peter was watching her. Helene closed her mouth.
Sing.
Helene shook her head. Her throat was hard, the opening too small, she had too little strength and her vocal cords were rigid and creaky. Was there some kind of premature ageing of the vocal cords, a medical condition, voice failure?
Auntie sing, Peter demanded now, trying to sit up again. Helene knew that Frau Kozinska had sometimes sung for Peter. She was often singing when Helene met her in the street or on the stairs too. Sometimes you could hear her voice up in their own apartment. Helene shook her head. Frau Kozinska liked to sing, she was always enviably cheerful, but she had left Peter alone too often, and when she was at home in the evening she was fond of the bottle. It was a blessing that he could go to nursery school now. The weeks when she was on night duty were difficult, however. Helene had to leave Peter alone; he slept most of the time. She told him before he went to bed that she would be back, and locked the door. When she came home in the morning the first thing she did was to fetch coal from the cellar, usually bringing a good load upstairs all at once, carrying the coal in a pannier on her back and buckets of briquettes and logs of wood in her left and right hands. Once upstairs she lit the stove. Peter would be asleep in her bed. She stroked his short fair hair until he stretched and wanted her to pick him up. Then she washed and dressed him, gave him something to eat and took him to the nursery school, where he wanted her to give him a hug, but she wouldn’t, because if she did they would not be able to part company. Home again, Helene saw to doing the laundry, mended the straps of Peter’s lederhosen; now that Baden had had to close his shop she couldn’t find a good cheap draper’s. Baden had disappeared, he’d been taken away in February with the rest of them, to the East, it was said. So Helene mended the straps of the lederhosen and found a coloured button to replace the artificial edelweiss flower he had lost. Then she slept for a few hours herself, added a couple of briquettes to the stove, fetched Peter from nursery school and took him home, gave him his supper and put him to bed, switched off the light and slipped out of the door. She had to hurry to catch the tram and reach the hospital in time for the night shift.
Every two weeks, when Helene had a day off, she took Peter’s hand and they went down to the harbour to look at the ships. Only very occasionally did a warship come in. Peter marvelled at the warships, and she showed him the flocks of birds.
Ducks, she said, pointing to the little formation in the air, five of them flying in a V-shape. Peter liked eating duck, but Helene couldn’t afford to buy it for him. Now and then Wilhelm sent money from Frankfurt. She didn’t want his money; it was hush money, and she didn’t need to be paid to keep her mouth shut. Every few months he sent her an envelope with money and a note from him. Dear Alice, buy the boy gloves and a cap, it might say, but Helene had knitted Peter gloves and a cap long ago. She took the money, put it in an envelope and wrote the address on it: Frau Selma Würsich, Tuchmacherstrasse 13, Bautzen, Lusatia. She sent off the letter without any sender’s name on it right to the end, until the day when she received a long, narrow package from Bautzen. The package contained the carved horn fish. The necklace that had once been in it wasn’t there. Perhaps money had been needed in Bautzen, so the rubies were sold, or perhaps the package had been opened in the post and someone liked the look of the necklace. There was a letter inside the fish. The letter itself stunned her, it smelled of Leontine and it was in her handwriting. Dear little Alice, it keeps on raining in Berlin but the frost has gone at last. I wonder if you are still living at the same address? Martha has been very ill for the last few years. You know her, she doesn’t complain and she didn’t want you to hear about it. We didn’t want to burden you with our news, and Martha wouldn’t let me write to tell you. She had to give up her work in the hospital. They’ve sent her to work in one of the new labour camps. My hands are tied. She could do with a husband now, or influential parents, some close relation. As soon as I’m able to visit her I must tell her that a letter arrived yesterday from the Charitable Foundation for Institutional Care, saying that your mother died of acute pneumonia a few weeks ago in Grossschweidnitz. I am truly sorry, although I know that many consider it a merciful death.
The sirens of the big ships sounded a deep note, making your insides vibrate. Helene could feel the humming right to the soles of her feet. Peter asked his mother where the ship’s guns were. The letter was signed, in Leontine’s handwriting: With love from your sister Elsa. As a postscript, she had added the following note: Do you remember our old neighbour Fanny? She has been taken away. An Obergruppenführer lives in her apartment now, with his wife and three nice children. Helene knew what the letter meant. Leontine had to cover up her tracks or both their lives would be in danger, and had chosen the only possible words to describe that monstrous event. She had enclosed some dried rose petals in the letter. They fell out when Helene opened it. Helene wanted to weep, but she couldn’t. Something prevented her; she couldn’t take in what she had read. The petals gave off a sweet scent, or perhaps it was just a trace of Leontine’s perfume. Her real name must not be dangerously connected with Martha, Helene or any other such person. Was Leontine still working at the hospital? Did she have to cut Fallopian tubes and remove ovaries? Did they want to send her too to a field hospital? After all, Leontine was divorced now, she had no children, they could send her anywhere they liked, however many names she adopted: Leo, Elsa, Abelard even. Helene would always have known her firm, swift handwriting again; it had left its mark on her. A great longing came over Helene and made her feel dizzy. She was perspiring.
Guns? Peter tugged impatiently at his mother’s sleeve. Where’s the guns? Helene didn’t know.
Are you sad? Peter looked up at his mother.
Helene shook her head. It’s the wind, she said. Come on, let’s go to the railway station and look at the trains. Helene couldn’t help thinking what it would be like if she simply bought a ticket and went to Berlin with Peter. It ought to be possible to find Leontine. It must be possible. But who knew how dangerous that might be?
The railway station lay on the river Oder just below the city. The trains were coming in and out. Wind blew over the platform, bringing tears to many eyes. They had sat down on a bench and were holding hands. There was a new nurse at the hospital, Ida Fiebinger, who came from Bautzen. Helene had felt strange when she first heard Ida Fiebinger speaking, the melody of the local accent, the closed vowels, the slow lilt of the sentences. Helene kept seeking Ida out. One day Nurse Ida said, when the stormy wind had blown down a tree in the hospital yard: When the wind doesn’t know /where it can blow, /over Budissin it will go, using one of the dialect words for Bautzen. Helene was astonished when she heard it and suppressed a smile with difficulty. It was so long since she had heard that old saying.