Nothing But Fear (11 page)

Halle (Saale) den 4.9.1946

An den

Herrn Landrat des Kreises Wanzleben

in Wanzleben

Frau Hildegard Voll war die Braut meines infolge aktiver Teilnahme an der Widerstandsbewegung Schulze-Bosen am 22.12.1942 hingerichteten Sohnes Horst Heilmann. Frau Voll selbst war mit meinem Sohn Horst und Schulze-Boysen, der der Lehrer der beiden an der Universität war, auch politisch eng verbunden. Frau Voll verdient es infolgedessen bei ihren Bemühungen um Rückführung des inzwischen von der Beschlagnahme frei gegebenen Inventars der Familie Dr. Schneider, nachdrücklichst unterstützt zu werden
.

Ich bitte Sie, Frau Voll jede mögliche Unterstützung zuteil werden zu lassen
.

Dr. Ing. Adolf Heilmann

Stadtbaurat
.
⁴

T
he remainder of her trip to Kleinwanzleben was by bus. She visited Papa Schneider's business connections, Rabbethge and Olbricht, who received her with open arms, putting her up and supporting her in her fight with the local authorities. She was called a spy and a capitalist, and they tried to get rid of her with threats, until a message came through from the most powerful man in Sachsen, Vice-president Robert Siewert. Mother was given the right not only to have their possessions returned but also to travel with them to the West Zone, and a train carriage was placed at her disposal.

The courtyard was empty when Mother returned to the manor. The clock on the tower had stopped at quarter to six – and she could see in her mind's eye the farm's foremen swinging from the trees. They had been lynched when the Russian Army came and liberated the forced labourers – most of them were prisoners of war from Poland and they were quick to get their revenge. Mother let herself in through the front door and tiptoed through the rooms. Everything had been plundered, and she was given an armed escort by the police and went from neighbour to neighbour reclaiming the things they had stolen.

She marched into the Niemüller's. They were in the middle of a meal in their dining room, and she seized everything in the room. Then she visited the former principal and pointed to the grand piano. It was theirs. Their bookcases were scattered far and wide and had been used for anything but books – washing, tableware – and she pulled the rug
out from under Papa Schneider's solicitor, who had also been hoarding ill-gotten gains. Mother had the wine dug up from the garden, and she found the silver, the Meissner porcelain and the paintings that had been rolled up and hidden away in the cellar. It was all loaded onto the train and sent to the West. She was profuse in her thanks to the removal men and the party secretary and Olbricht and Siewart and gave them most of the wine and hoped to see them again in happier times!

Once she had had everything sent home to Einbeck and unpacked, Mother brought out the snaps. Now they could celebrate! She distilled her own schnapps using treacle – sugar beet schnapps. It dripped out of the tube and down into a glass flask and still tasted of raw alcohol even though she filtered it through charcoal. Papa Schneider had cheered up – he had his paintings and his books and could clip his fountain pens in his jacket pocket – and Grandmother was out of bed for the first time. Eva put on her best dress, and Inge laughed. They all sat down in their old dining room and then they raised their glasses and said
‘Prost!'
, their smiles broad and their mouths black.

F
alster lay too far north ever to have a proper summer – and too far south to have a winter. It didn't snow, and the sun didn't shine. It just rained and was grey and cold and foggy, and the wind drove in from the Baltic and swept across the flat fields. It was a comfortless place, and when
December came a Christmas tree stood at the top of the chimney on the Nykøbing Sugar Factory as though thinking of leaping to its death.

The heating was turned right up when Grandmother came to visit at Christmas. The guest room in the cellar was made ready with lace and Schweizerdrops smelling of mint and chocolate, and then we fetched her from the station. We stood freezing on the platform looking for the first sign of the train from Rødby Ferry. It rumbled across Christian IX's bridge and came to a halt with a screech of brakes – Deutscher Bundesbahn – and the doors opened and Grandmother stepped down with fur and hat and gloves and valise.
‘Ach, Hildemäuschen!'
, she said and embraced Mother. Father took the suitcase, and I helped her out to the car. On the way home I could already hear the sound of wrapping paper and knew I had been a good boy even before she asked the question –
‘Na, bist du auch artig gewesen?'

Grandmother had brought chocolate and roasted almonds and a new book of poems called
Des Knaben Wunderhorn
. After dinner, when Mother disappeared into the kitchen and Father tidied up, we sat by ourselves in the sitting room to read them aloud. On the first page there was fire crackling in the hearth, and a cat purring, and the scent of pine in the heat. I turned the pages, and it was snowing outside, a post-horn echoed in the distance, and mountain landscapes with castles and knights unrolled under a sky filled with angels. Then the lights were switched on, and Father came in, and the fire and the cat and the tree and the castles and knights were all snuffed out. Father shook his head.

‘Look at you sitting there in the pitch dark! You can't see anything!' he said, looking around at the polished mahogany table, the carpets lying without a wrinkle, the silverware. Everything was in place. He nodded and said,
‘Schlafengehen'
, and I kissed Grandmother goodnight and went up to bed. The rain dashed against the windows, and I couldn't fall asleep. Christmas was further from Hans Ditlevsensgade 14 than I dared to dream of.

We followed the German Advent calendar, and Grandmother always made sure she was there when I opened the window on 6th December. That was the day St Nicholas handed out presents to children who had behaved, while those who hadn't were beaten by Knecht Ruprecht and shoved into his sack – I had been thinking about it for ages. He would come creeping out of the cupboard at night and sidle over to my bed, birch rod in hand, sack across his shoulder, and would shove his face up close to mine – he had red eyes and a hooked nose – and I hid under the duvet, screwed up my eyes and held my breath until I heard the door close. In the morning a package lay in the shoe I had put out for St Nicholas, and it was all over until next time. Grandmother had put in a good word for me and kept Knecht Ruprecht at bay.

From then on it was just a matter of unwrapping the days, and they were full of the sweets that lay in the shoe outside my door – French nougat, jelly babies, marzipan – and waiting at the end of the line was Christmas Eve. It was hard to make time go fast enough. The rain beat down. It was dark. Grandmother and I played cards in the cellar,
and she always apologized –
‘Ach nein, das tut mir so leid'
– when she took a trick. We sucked Schweizerdrops, which melted in the heat of the radiator – Father had turned the heating right up to rule out any risk of a chill or the 'flu – and in the evenings she read aloud from romantic classics by E.T.A. Hoffmann –
Nussknacker und Mausekönig
or
Der goldene Topf
– the gothic lettering in her books was just as frightening as the stories and looked like magic spells. I was convinced that Grandmother could make any wish come true, and what I wished for most was snow.

I leapt out of bed and peered out of the window, but it was the same every day – there was no break in the greyness and in the end I stopped believing. Christmas came but it didn't snow. In the afternoon we went to Klosterkirke – the bells were chiming, people walking in clusters holding hats and umbrellas – and I hated walking up the aisle and sitting in a pew, where everyone moved away, looked elsewhere. It took an eternity to get through the service. It was for everyone else and shut us out. And when we folded our hands together, I prayed that ‘Silent Night' would not be one of the carols this year. After the initial prayer came the first carol – ‘Det kimer nu til julefest' – and then we sang ‘Et barn er født i Bethlehem' and ‘Julen har bragt velsignet bud' and I staked my life on a miracle and lost and died of shame when they finished off with ‘Silent Night'. For Mother sang in German,
‘Stille Nacht! Heil'ge Nacht!'
You could hear it quite clearly, and people shifted in their chairs and coughed – and in my mind's eye I saw the entire congregation turning and staring and pointing at us, and all I
could do was sing along and do my best to drown out her voice in Danish.

What mattered most for Father was that things were neat and tidy, and Christmas Eve was a mess. It was a struggle getting a tree into the living room, and when we got home from church we would lay the table and have a nice time decorating the tree according to fixed rules that involved a minimum of damage and of fire risk. He placed a bucket of water beside the tree, fetched the boxes of Christmas decorations up from the cellar and laid them all out on the bureau, the golden balls one side and the silver ones the other. Then he counted the candle-holders and took the same number of candles out from the stash in the cupboard – there were enough to last for the next hundred years – and hung them on the tree. It was not a Danish Christmas tree full of all sorts of paper decorations and flags and strewn with glitter that – Mother snorted – looked so cheap. The glass balls and the candle-holders hung in ordered rows on our Christmas tree, which was so German that it hurt, and as the crowning glory Father placed a star made of steel at the top.

After Christmas dinner and pudding Father lit the candles in the living room – it was dangerous and made a mess and gave such poor light you couldn't see a thing – and then it was time for presents –
‘Bescherung'
– and we were summoned to the Christmas tree.

‘Ach! Wie schön!'
said Grandmother.

Mother provided accompaniment on her accordion as we stood in a row and sang carols in German and Danish and German again, and admired the tree glittering in the darkness
on this one occasion of the year when Father pulled out the plug. Eventually the moment arrived. We had got to the presents, and they were nearly all for me. Mother got cheroots and vodka and a cheque from Father, and Father got a sweater that was the right size and not itchy and was just like the one he had already. I cannot remember what Grandmother was given, but it was all over quickly and we sat there looking at the tree – Mother lit a cheroot and poured herself a vodka. Father fished out the key and opened the lid of the gramophone in the large mahogany radiogram and put on a record with the Wiener Sängerknaben, and we listened to the choir of boys my age singing
‘Kling Glöckchen, Klingelingeling'
.

Once the singing died away, the ceremony was over, and Father immediately started putting things back in place and removing any trace of Christmas. He rolled up the ribbons, took down the Advent wreath and everything was carried back down into the cellar. Mother was in the kitchen, and I was left sitting with Grandmother in the living room waiting to see which candle would be the last to go out on the tree. Outside it was dark and the rain was falling again, and Grandmother smiled a secret smile and handed me a parcel that she had been saving.

‘Hier, kleines Knüdchen, und fröhliche Weihnachten,'
she said.

I ripped off ribbon and paper – it was a glass ball and inside it was a house. It was our house! Then I turned the glass on its head and looked out through the window. And it was snowing.

P
apa Schneider started up his businesses again and established himself in the West. He had applied for compensation for his losses in East Germany – ‘
Entschädigung
' – and they settled in Einbeck. Inge travelled back to Mexico, where her mother was living – she was married to a diplomat – Eva went to domestic science school and dreamed of finding a husband, and Mother was to resume her studies at university. They kept Grandmother company at home, playing cards and reading aloud – she was too ashamed of her looks to set foot out of doors – and when visitors came, she withdrew into her bedroom and waited for them to go.

Papa Schneider had a good reputation and was one of the first Germans to be invited abroad on an official visit. He went to Holland and after that was due to go to Turkey. Just to be on the safe side he had himself operated on for gallstones before he left – he was a very correct man and was representing the country. It was as though he were adjusting a tie in his insides. It was a simple operation, no trickier than tying a Windsor knot, but something or other went wrong.

For the second time Grandmother lost a husband on the operating table, and in 1948, terribly disfigured, she was left among the ruins of her life with two daughters and a corpse. She drew a veil across her face and they went over to the hospital. Auntie Gustchen and the family from Biebrich had already arrived and received them dressed in black, while Papa Schneider lay in the bed as cold and
rigid and unapproachable as ever. The same thought was in everyone's mind, but none dared say it, and in the end it was left to Mother to go across and feel whether Papa Schneider really was dead.

She was going to feel the pulse in his neck but didn't dare touch him – his eyes were closed – and she doubted whether a heart ever beat inside him. Mother put her ear to his mouth and listened for his breathing. There was a faint movement of his lips. She pulled back her head but it was too late! He had breathed his last whispering it to her, the name, his secret, and Mother knew what he was called. She stared at Grandmother and the family, who were standing agog in the doorway, waiting, but the word was stuck in her throat. She could say nothing and simply nodded when Auntie Gustchen asked
‘Tot?'
Either God had failed to call Papa Schneider to him or else he had lost courage at the last moment, and now it was her turn.