Let Me Go (13 page)

"Your son," I tell her once again. Little more than an hour has passed since we spoke of him, but she's already completely repressed him from her memory. She is vague again now, her face misty.

"Which one?" She rummages in her memory and frowns.

"You have only one son."

"That's true," she admits in a faint voice. But it's clear that she isn't convinced, that she's fumbling around in shadow.

"Do you ever think of him?" I venture. "Do you ever think about your son?"

She tilts her head. "I don't know . . . and he died so long ago."

But now, once again, her tone is uncertain, almost questioning. Remembering what happened before, I fear her reaction, but I want to bring her to some acceptance of reality. I ignore the nudge with which Eva tries to get me to stop.

"Your son is alive," I say to her gently, in a persuasive tone, as though talking to a child.

Her face drains of all expression. "That's not true," she replies darkly. And the scene, as in my worst predictions, repeats itself. My mother plunges her face into her hands and starts moaning, "My son died a long time ago . . . stop telling me lies . . . stop frightening me."

She's so old, so frail. Once again, in spite of myself, I soften. I am about to go and am worried that I won't be able to sever the bond that ties me to her. And to think I've tried to do it thousands of times, in thousands of different ways, even denying my own mother tongue.

Some time after my visit to Vienna in 1971, in Bologna I met a compatriot of mine who, naturally enough, started to talk to me in German. It took only a few phrases for me to realize that I could no longer speak my own language fluently and correctly. I was stunned. It was like discovering that I had painlessly lost a limb. A little like in wartime, when a man will lose a leg and go on running till he falls, unaware until then that anything has happened.

It was only after seeking out and finding, after more than fifty years, my cousin Eva, who speaks no Italian, that I was forced to return to my mother tongue. But it wasn't an easy task. It was like climbing, step by step, on hands and knees, a high, steep staircase.

I look at my mother. She's so distant, so unknown, so incomprehensible, so irritating. So disarming sometimes.

She raises her head and starts begging me. "Don't leave me alone, never leave me alone again. You've got to come back. You've got to come back every day. I'm your
Mutti,
and nobody loves me. Nobody ever gives me a kiss. You've given me a kiss and I want you to come back. Because you're my
Mausi."
And she looks at me with a flash in her eye that, if we were speaking about any other woman, I would happily describe as loving.

"My little
Mausi,"
she repeats, and smiles sweetly, affectionately. But it lasts only a moment. And here she is once again, canny and sly.

"It's a shame you're so old," she hisses. "I don't like having an old daughter. It makes me feel decrepit. Thank heavens Peter is dead. I couldn't bear to have two children as old as that!"

She sighs. "But you must come back anyway, old as you are. My companions in here have younger children. What a shame that is."

Something in me freezes. She has already tormented both me and Eva for quite long enough with all this talk of old age. But that's enough now, I say to myself. She's got to stop.

I'm hurt and crushed. She doesn't deserve a thing; she's cruel, insensitive, and lying. She's just vulgar. I shouldn't have come. I should never have listened to Frau Freihorst.

Why did I hurry to Vienna? Perhaps because in spite of everything I can't bring myself to hate her, this mother who isn't a mother?

Make me hate you, Mother!

Make me hate you. That would be the best solution. Say something vile about the Jews who were under your guard in Birkenau, those Jews you used to order about with the power to determine whether they lived or died. The demon that has possessed me suggests my next move, and it's the right one. I make a point of looking at the clock.

"You're not going already?" she says, taking the bait.

"It'll soon be the end of visiting time."

"I want you to stay!"

Fine, perfect. I reply with false regret. "I wish I'd known more about you, but you don't talk much. You don't talk much, and when you do, you break off halfway through. It isn't nice to visit your own mother and not be able to talk to her."

She grows agitated, rises to her feet, waves her arms around.

"But I do want to talk!"

"It's getting late . . ."

"If I tell you other things, will you stay?" She stares at me with pleading in her eyes.

"Perhaps," I concede vaguely.

"What do you want to know?"

It will have to come of its own accord.

"About Birkenau?" she suggests. But it's basically the topic that she finds most attractive. Her career, her faith, her iron convictions.

"If you like," I reply innocently. "For example . . . yes, I'd like to know what sort of relationship you had with the prisoners on your block."

She hesitates for just a few seconds. Her face, for one wary moment, becomes icy.

"What relationship would you expect me to have with subjects that our government held to be inferior? Inferior and dangerous, which was why they were locked up in the camps in the first place. No relationship whatsoever, except the one you have with a hated enemy."

That's fine, I say to myself, but it still isn't enough.

"Did you just think that way because they made you?" I suggest. "Or were you personally convinced that the Jews were inferior creatures?"

She hesitates and looks me in the eye.

"Do you want the truth?"

"Yes."

For a moment she remains silent and motionless, then she leans toward me and smiles.
"Mausi
..." she murmurs, almost deferentially.

She's too close to me—she's making me feel uneasy. And disgusted, I would have to admit. I can smell her breath, the slightly acid breath of an old woman.

Fortunately, she draws back, crosses her hands on her bony knees, and says in one breath, "If you want to know the truth, I hated those Jewish women. They gave me an almost physical feeling of repulsion; it turned my stomach to see all those perverted faces, the faces of an inferior race. And how united they were, how they protected each other! They managed to conceal the sick to make sure they didn't end up with Klahr. Yes, my little
Mausi,
I hated those cursed Jews. A horrible race, believe me. Pfui."

I'VE GOT WHAT I wanted. I'm stunned, and perhaps she can read it in my face. She looks at me uncertainly.

"I've been open with you," she declares, "you mustn't think ill of me. Hating the Jews was an unavoidable duty for a member of the SS, you understand?" She is trying to explain the inexplicable.

"Does that mean you can hate to order?" I ask with a kind of melancholy irony.

"If you are convinced of the reasons, certainly," she replies very seriously.

"What reasons?"

"The reasons why the Jewish people had to be liquidated."

I don't take it any further. Instead, I ask: "Why were the prisoners afraid of ending up with that . . . Klahr, you said?"

Even more bitterly than before, she says, "Yes, I said Klahr. Oh, everyone was afraid of Klahr; they were terrified of him."

"Who was he?"

"A medical worker. Let's say . . . a sort of specialist nurse."

"And why were they afraid of him?"

"He was the one that gave the injections."

"What injections?"

She makes a sharp decisive gesture, as of someone fixing something in the middle of their chest.

"What does that mean?"

She takes a breath and replies indifferently, "If a prisoner ended up in the sick bay, the medical wing, or the hospital block, and contracted a serious illness, they wasted no time."

"So what did they do? Tell me!"

"The patient was given an injection."

"What sort of injection?"

"An injection of phenic acid right into the heart. Zap!" And she repeats the horrible gesture. "Do you know what phenic acid is?"

I DO KNOW WHAT phenic acid is. Not precisely, but I know. Before I have time to compose myself, however, Fräulein Inge comes back in.

"Nearly lunchtime," she reminds my mother gently. But my mother shrieks, "I'm not eating today!"

Fraulein Inge nods indulgently. "Well, we'll see."

"How much time do we have left?" I ask.

"There'll be another half an hour before all the guests have taken their places and the soup has arrived," she replies politely. "I'll come and get your mother at the last minute."

"I'm not coming!" she shrieks again.

"I know," Fräulein Inge answers, giving me a little wink. I admire her patience. So I've got another half hour. I look at her. I'm convinced that she'll have forgotten me soon, perhaps even by this evening, just as she must have done in 1971. And I've done everything I can to remove her from my thoughts.

What a sad couple we are, Mother, and what an absurd bond connects us. We will finish each other off.

"Will you stay another little while?" she asks, with a tear in the corner of her right eye. Sometimes her voice is so sad and soft.

"Yes," I reply.

"I don't want to eat," she repeats. "I want you to stay with me. Will you stay for a long time?"

"I'll stay for . . . a while," I answer vaguely.

"Another two hours," she wheedles. "And will you call me
Mutti
again?"

Eva nods to me to keep her happy. I'm worn-out and repelled. I say it.

"Mutti."

But the word finds no echo inside me.

But she flies off into a great emotional performance. She explodes into a torrent of sobs, blowing me tearful kisses on her fingertips. Until all of a sudden she gets to her feet, comes over to me, and kisses me on the forehead.

"Thank you," she says in a broken voice.

She goes back to her armchair, smooths her skirt over her thighs, and calms down. Her eyes grow gradually distant again.

I'm bewildered: This new, sudden distance between us worries me. I try to bring her back to me.

"Let's talk a little bit about you," I suggest once again. "How do you spend your days?"

But my attempt is unsuccessful. Gesturing impatiently, she snaps, "I'm going to wait until the evening."

"But Frau Freihorst often comes to keep you company, doesn't she?"

"Gisela?" she says in a voice that barely conceals contempt. "She only comes because she gets bored at home without me."

Even to me, as to Fräulein Inge before, she denies her friend, her only friend.

"I'm bored here too," she adds. "When I was young, life was more exciting."

She purses her lips, lost in her memories.

"At first, things with Stefan were lovely. In Poland we used to ride on horseback and he painted sunsets."

Her expression becomes bitter.

"But then he changed. His mother hated me. And so did his father. My father-in-law was even worse than my mother-in-law. He used to insult me . . . he called me
'Naziweib,'
the Nazi broad. My mother-in-law wasn't too much trouble at first, but then I had my daughter and she became unbearable."

For a moment she seems to have come to a halt, but then off she goes again. "In Birkenau, on the other hand, time passed quickly. I had plenty to do, yes, plenty. But of course I had free time as well. And I used it to go and see the work at the goldsmiths' where the prisoners worked. It was very interesting. I had them make me a necklace with letters on it."

The goldsmiths'. The Jews' gold. Including the gold from the Jews' teeth.

"Don't you want to know what I had them inscribe on it?" my mother asks. I nod weakly.

"Heidkempe,"
she answers dryly.

"Heid . . . kempe?
What does that mean?"

"Can't you guess?"

"No. I haven't the faintest idea."

"It starts with He, you see? Helga. And it goes on with the initials of Ida, Krista, Emilie . . . and it finishes with Pe."

She comes to a halt again.

"Peter?" I suggest.

Her face clouds over. "Who
is
that?"

"Your son," I reply, exhausted.

"My . . ." She runs her hand over her forehead. "Yes." And then she's off again: "But he died a long time ago."

She is pensive for a moment, then she goes on.

"One
Lagerführer
got them to make him a Viking ship entirely of gold," she says. "It must have been over a foot high."

She laughs briefly. "It was a present, you know? A present for his son's fifth birthday."

She continues unimpeded, articulating her memories. When she wants to remember something, she remembers it very clearly. Her memory is extraordinarily selective.

"A friend of mine in the camp had them make her a gold frame; she was going to put a photograph of her parents in it," she goes on, "but it was poisoned. It was poisoned by two female Jewish prisoners. By two filthy Jewish scum. They were taking revenge for something or other, the whores. But of course they were found out, and they ended up in front of a firing squad. Naked. But first they had to spend a fortnight in the punishment block. They were in the dark with rats as big as cats that practically ate them alive. When they got out, they were mad with terror and couldn't wait to get that bullet in the back of the neck."

She has been speaking through clenched teeth, with hatred that still seethes inside her like incandescent lava.

I feel appallingly torn. Part of me is paralyzed with horror; the other, as though acting under hypnosis, goes on asking, wants to know.

"You said
Heidkempe . .
. what were the names in the middle? There was Ida, Krista, and . . ."

"Emilie," she clearly replies.

"Who were they?"

"My sisters."

My aunts, then. I should have been able to know them, just as I knew my maternal grandparents. How much you denied me, Mother.

"But they've passed on too," she announces without nostalgia. "I have no one now. Just the inmates of this barracks. Yes, it is a barracks. They're all unbearable here, including Fräulein Inge. I hate her. And I'm very alone and I have no friends. I have no one now."