‘Irena told me. She also told me that a boy you two knew, Georg Mendel, was involved in the round-up. Did you know that he went to Chile after the war? He and some of his former SS comrades proved very useful to Pinochet and his henchmen. They were expert torturers.’
‘That day was the first time I had seen something for myself,’ Irena confessed. ‘I had never questioned the official line. That the Jews were being resettled in the East – or Africa, or Madagascar. Then Wilhelm returned from the East. You saw how changed he was.’
‘He told you the truth?’ Charlotte asked.
‘Some of it,’ Irena qualified. ‘He said some things were too horrible to describe.’
‘Be realistic, both of you. What could two young girls have done to stop the SS?’ Helmut asked.
‘Emilia survived the war,’ Irena revealed. ‘Nina met her in 1946. She was on her way to Palestine.’
‘And Ruth?’
Irena looked down, unable to meet Charlotte’s gaze. ‘We should have done something that day.’
‘If you had, you wouldn’t be here now to talk about it.’ Helmut commented.
‘Some things are worth dying for,’ Irena said quietly. So quietly Charlotte wasn’t sure she had heard her correctly.
‘I’m not sure that all the forty-one million people who died in the war would agree with you,’ Helmut interposed.
‘No.’ Charlotte said. ‘I’m sure not all of them would, but some might, Helmut.’
‘It took me years to forgive Wilhelm. But in my heart I always knew he was right,’ Irena confessed. ‘I just hated having to live on without him and the children we lost.’
‘He would have been proud of you for building a new life for yourself and Marianna,’ Charlotte sympathized.
Helmut braved the silence that had fallen over the table. ‘I saw Claus in the sixties. Did he tell you?’ Helmut glanced at the label on the champagne bottle the waiter had brought and nodded approval.
‘He mentioned he’d met you at one of the army reunions,’ Charlotte concurred.
‘Would you believe we were in the same regiment? Claus for the duration and me for the last six months? But the Claus von Letteberg I met after the war wasn’t the man I remembered from my trips to Grunwaldsee. It must have been hard on you, Charlotte, having to nurse him. I’d heard that the conditions in the Russian prisoner of war camps were worse than the conditions in the American camps, and I thought
they
were hell. But we didn’t know the full truth about the Soviet camps until men like Claus came back. He didn’t want to talk about it to me, of course.’
‘Or to anyone, Helmut. But surely you of all people can understand why?’
‘There is a great deal of difference between eighteen months in an American camp in the Rhineland and ten years in Siberia. Even so, all I remember from my eighteen months is wanting to die. Waking, sleeping, living in filth in the open. I had never known such cold and hunger, such a feeling of being forgotten and abandoned by the rest of the world.’
‘So what did you and Claus talk about when you saw one another?’ Charlotte prompted, not wanting to discuss Soviet or American prisoner of war camps.
‘What every old soldier talks about at reunions: the poor decisions made by High Command. What about Greta?’ Helmut took Irena’s hand and patted it as though he needed to reassure her that he had no feelings left for his old fiancée. ‘How did she like England?’
Charlotte tried not to sound bitter. ‘You knew Greta. Like a cat, she has a talent for landing on her feet.’
‘Her husband really was wealthy and had a big house?’
‘He didn’t lie about that. It was big all right, and cold, draughty and dilapidated. He sold that, and some farmland he’d rented out, to buy a modern and luxurious house that Greta approved of. Also, he was rich enough to employ a cook and a maid, which suited Greta very well. She still places herself and her own concerns before everyone else’s.’
‘She didn’t have children?’ Helmut asked.
Charlotte shook her head. ‘She always said, even as a girl, that she never wanted any.’
Helmut looked at Irena. ‘I wouldn’t be without our two girls.’
‘Tell me about them?’ Charlotte asked eagerly.
‘Our daughter or Wilhelm’s?’ Helmut asked.
‘You told Marianna who her father was?’ Charlotte fought back tears.
‘I didn’t have to. She remembers him and our last day in Grunwaldsee,’ Irena tightened her grip on Helmut’s hand. ‘She often says it was the end of her childhood. When I went to Bavaria after the war we both used my maiden name. Then, when Helmut and I married, we changed our names to his. You know how difficult it was for relatives of the conspirators after the war. So many people regarded us as traitors. But now she uses the name von Datski, and proudly.’
Charlotte looked away. The scars of strain and suffering were evident on Irena’s face.
‘I tried to get in touch with you when Helmut and I married in Munich in nineteen fifty-three but Frau Leichner had sold her house and moved on, and the new owners knew nothing about any of her lodgers,’ Irena explained. ‘I said so many stupid things to you after the war, Charlotte. Cruel things that I didn’t mean and soon regretted. Looking back, I think I had a breakdown, but that isn’t an excuse. I wanted to blame someone for all that I had endured and all that I had lost. It wasn’t enough to lay the guilt on Wilhelm. He was dead. I couldn’t hurt him, or make him see how much pain he had caused me and his children. But you were there. And your heart was as broken as mine. I knew that from the way you cried over Karoline. Afterwards – for a long while afterwards – I wanted to write to you. Later, when I knew that I could contact you through your publishers, I thought about it but I wasn’t sure you’d want to know me again after all the things that I’d said.’
‘You should have known that I would, Irena. We were closer than most sisters,’ Charlotte said feelingly.
‘Marianna is an architect,’ Helmut announced proudly. ‘Wilhelm and Paul would have been pleased.’
‘That’s what we told her when she graduated.’
‘And we called our daughter, Wilhelmina after one of the bravest men I have ever met.’ Helmut handed Irena and Charlotte two of the glasses of champagne the waiter had poured.
‘She is a doctor. Both of them are married and both have children. Mina has a girl, and Marianna twin boys.’
‘Twins?’ Overcome with emotion, Charlotte reached into her pocket for a tissue.
‘Wilhelm and Paul. And they are just as I remember their grandfather and great-uncle. You must come and stay with us, Charlotte, and meet them.’ Irena rummaged in her handbag and handed Charlotte a photograph.
Two blond smiling young men looked back at her. Irena was right; there was a strong resemblance.
‘You can keep it if you like,’ Irena offered. ‘I have another.’
Charlotte laid it on the table in front of her. ‘I am so glad that you two found happiness together,’ she murmured, unable to tear her attention away from the snap.
‘A toast.’ Helmut lifted his glass. ‘To both Wilhelms and Pauls.’ After they’d lifted their glasses and drank, he said, ‘You must come and see us in Frankfurt, and that isn’t one of those polite, meaningless invitations people are always giving one another.’
Irena delved into her handbag and produced another tissue and a card case. Extracting a card, she gave it to Charlotte. ‘Soon, perhaps on your way back from here?’
Charlotte turned it over in her hand, and read the business address on the other side. ‘You own your company, Helmut?’
‘After Greta told me she didn’t want to know me, I went to live with my one of aunts for a while. I borrowed some jewellery from her, pawned it and bought an American truck. It probably wasn’t the soldier’s to sell, but a lot of people wanted things taken from one end of the country to the other. It was a way of making a living, and I was able to redeem my aunt’s jewellery within a month.’
‘Four years after that he had a fleet. Ten years later his company was placed in the top fifty German businesses,’ Irena said.
‘Our company,’ Helmut corrected.
‘Greta would be green,’ Charlotte smiled.
‘I’d forgotten how much you two quarrelled.’
‘We’ve never stopped, Helmut.’
‘Do you still live in America, or have you returned to Europe to look for a new home?’ Irena asked.
‘This trip has convinced me there’s nothing to come back for.’ Charlotte sipped her champagne.
‘We saw the article on you in Life magazine.’
‘I hope you didn’t believe everything it said, Irena. I’m just a jobbing painter lucky to be in work.’
‘Have you been to Grunwaldsee?’ Irena asked.
‘Yes, and Marius is still there.’
‘One of the reasons we came back was to take photographs of my father’s house and yours, for Marianna and Mina.’ Irena set her champagne glass on the table.
‘Marius would love to see you, Irena. You, too, Helmut,’ Charlotte added. ‘In fact, only yesterday, we talked about you and your habit of slipping people presents with the whisper, “Don’t tell Greta”.’
He laughed. ‘Greta had a mean streak. She hated to see me giving anything away, even if it was something she didn’t want.’
‘Marius has worked hard to look after Grunwaldsee. He even put memorial plaques in the church for Paul, Wilhelm, Mama and Minna. And the new owner has done a first-class job of restoring the house. Be prepared to see it just the way it was. Tomorrow I’m going to meet him.’ Charlotte gripped Irena’s hand. ‘Come with me?’
She looked at her husband. ‘Could we?’
‘If Charlotte is sure that we will be welcome.’
‘I am.’ Charlotte left the table. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have some things to do.’
‘Of course, but you’ll have dinner with us here tonight?’ Irena asked.
‘Yes, I’d like that.’
‘We’ll meet you in the dining room at eight.’
‘I’ll be there.’ Charlotte kissed Irena and then Helmut. ‘It’s so good to see you again. Both of you.’
Charlotte paused as she crossed the foyer. The kiosk that sold gold, silver and amber jewellery glittered and sparkled seductively beneath the reflected light of a crystal chandelier. She studied the displays of earrings, necklaces, brooches and bracelets, then stepped inside. Further inspection revealed the pieces to be finely crafted, and of very good quality, but expensive, as was almost every artefact manufactured in Poland with the German market in mind.
She looked around until she found a tray of more traditionally wrought pieces. Attracting the attention of the assistant, she began to buy. The final bill made the assistant blanch, but Charlotte handed over her credit card with equanimity. Asking the girl to parcel all the purchases in one box, she took a slip of paper from the notepad used to total the bills and wrote: ‘
To Greta, in recompense for the jewellery the Russians stole from me at the end of the war
’.
She hesitated. To write ‘
Love Charlotte
’ would be hypocritical. Instead she settled for ‘
With all good wishes, Charlotte
’.
Back in her room, Charlotte glanced at her reflection in the mirror. Her face was pale, accentuating the shadows beneath her eyes. Was it lack of sleep? Or was the cancer winning the battle raging within her body? She suddenly felt bone-weary, too exhausted to face routine living, let alone any more trauma or heart-breaking memories. It would be so easy to buy a novel, lie on the bed and wait for death, no longer the bogeyman of childhood, but, at best, a welcome friend that would take her to the people she loved and, at worst bring a longed for, and much needed rest.
Again, she sensed her body was telling her she had very little time left. There was no mistaking the message or its urgency, but there was no sense or logic behind it. She wasn’t even in any real pain.
One thing she was certain of, after meeting Helmut and Irena, was that she wasn’t quite as prepared as she thought she was. She had organized the settlement of her estate and the disposal of her most personal and precious belongings, but there were still letters to be written. To Wilhelm’s grandsons, his and Paul’s namesakes, whom she would never meet. An apology to Claus and Carolyn for returning to her homeland without them and deceiving them about a second trip they’d never make – at least, not together. To the executor of her will, Samuel Goldberg, to change the funeral arrangements she had made for cremation and the scattering of her ashes in Connecticut. And, to her immediate heirs, her sons and grandchildren, that they allow her to be buried without ceremony in the place she had always belonged – Grunwaldsee.
And Greta? Should she add something to the cryptic note she had put in with the jewellery? Perhaps not. Maybe some things were best left, because she didn’t doubt that if she did offer Greta the olive branch of forgiveness from beyond the grave, her sister wouldn’t understand what she had done to offend her in the first place.
She picked up the telephone and dialled the number Marius had given her for the main house. It rang for a few minutes before a strange man picked it up. Fortunately, he spoke German and, after asking her to repeat her name twice, fetched Marius. Judging by the amount of background noise – banging, thumping and masculine swearing, in Polish and Russian – she assumed the new owner’s furniture was being moved in.
‘Fräulein Charlotte, is anything wrong?’ Marius gasped breathlessly down the line.
‘Not at all, Marius, I’m sorry to disturb you. Please accept my apologies. Something has come up this afternoon and I am unable to visit you … yes, thank you, I will be with you tomorrow morning … I am quite well, it’s just that business has caught up with me, and I have letters to write … Laura? Yes, if she’s there, I’d love to speak to her. Thank you.’
Charlotte carried the telephone over to the table she’d moved in front of the open window. It was close enough to breathe in the air from the lake and feel the warmth of the sun, and out of the breeze that would have ruffled her papers.
‘Oma?’ Laura was even more breathless than Marius had been, and Charlotte realized he must have called her in from outside. ‘Mischa is going to drive me back to the hotel. I’ll be with you shortly ...’
‘No, darling. Please don’t interrupt your day. I’m terribly busy.’
‘Busy?’ Laura repeated. ‘Aren’t you resting?’
‘Some friends heard Mischa calling to me this morning and recognized my name. They made enquiries with reception and asked the staff to contact me. I haven’t seen them since shortly after the war, so we have a lot of catching-up to do.’ Charlotte felt it wasn’t entirely a lie.
‘Oma ...’
‘I really am fine, Laura. I’ve arranged to have dinner with them in the hotel restaurant at eight. You can join us if you like,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘But if you’d prefer to stay with Brunon and Mischa, that’s fine, too. I like to think of you enjoying yourself with young people.’
‘Brunon’s girlfriend is here from Warsaw. Mischa is organizing a barbecue for tonight …’
‘Then you must go.’ Charlotte was relieved that Laura wouldn’t be there to put any constraints on a conversation that was bound to be centred on events that had happened long before she had been born.
‘These people, can I meet them tomorrow?’ Laura asked.
‘They’re going to visit Grunwaldsee. Tell Marius … tell him Irena von Datski is coming home and looking forward to seeing him again.’
‘A cousin?’
‘Sister-in-law.’
‘One of your brothers’ wives …’
‘There’s far too much to tell you on the telephone, darling. We’ll talk later. Enjoy yourself with Brunon and Mischa this evening, and give Marius and Jadwiga my love.’
Charlotte finished writing her last letter at six o’clock that evening. She folded the paper neatly into three, opened an envelope, pushed it in and sealed it. She placed it on top of the pile on the table in front of her, leaned forward and flicked through them.
They were in no particular order, and she glanced at the names she’d written on the outside, trying to think if there was anything that she had forgotten to say to any of them, or if there was anyone she had left out.
Laura – to tell her that she had left her all her jewellery, which she was free to sell or wear as she chose, but she would prefer her to keep the amber necklace, wear it occasionally and remember not only her, but Sascha. Also that she entrusted her diary and all the paintings and furniture in her house to her, as well as the sketches of Grunwaldsee and Sascha. And one of the three photograph albums that Marius had kept for her.
Claus – to tell him that she had left him one of the albums as well as all her land in Connecticut and her house; but not her furniture, paintings and jewellery, which she had left to Laura.
Samuel – to inform him of the new arrangements she had made for the disposal of her body. And, along with her gratitude for his sixty-year friendship, all the paintings she had loaned to London galleries to do with as he wished.
Irena – she smiled when she saw her sister-in-law’s name. If there was such a thing as fate, surely it had brought Helmut and Irena to Olsztyn and this particular hotel at the same time as her; the third photograph album that Marius had saved, together with the family Bible so Marianna’s sons’ names could be written below hers, their missing Aunt Karoline’s, and Irena and Wilhelm’s baby son, who had died in Ravensbruck.
To her sons, Erich and Jeremy, and her youngest grandsons, Luke and Erich, simple goodbyes.
Marius – she hadn’t expected to find Marius, but there was over fifty thousand dollars in her personal account, and she asked Samuel to see that he, Jadwiga and Brunon received it.
Greta – the jewellery she had bought in the hotel gift shop.
To the trust fund set up in the name of Pyotr Borodin – the residue of her estate, all her paintings that remained ungifted and unsold, and all her future worldwide royalties which the IRS had estimated as a little over six million dollars.
She placed all the envelopes on top of the parcels she had wrapped inside her empty suitcase, which stood on the luggage rack next to the wardrobe.
She opened the wardrobe, lifted out a plain black evening dress and jacket she had bought for a dinner held in Claus’s honour the year he had been released from Russia, and hooked it on to the door before going into the bathroom to run her bath.
Laura leaned over the side of the yacht and trailed her fingers in the lake. The sun had set hours before, yet the water was warm, the sky above them pierced with what looked like a million glittering stars. She felt light-headed from too much wine, song and even enjoyment. It had been a long time since she had taken time out for a holiday, and even longer since she had gone through an entire day without sparing a single thought for work.
‘It’s been fun and it was a lovely barbecue, thank you,’ she said to Mischa, who was crouched in the stern, moving the tiller in an attempt to catch what little breeze there was.
‘It was a good day,’ he agreed, ‘and when my grandfather comes tomorrow it will be an even better one. He’s a one-man party.’
‘I look forward to meeting him. Isn’t Brunon’s girlfriend sweet?’
‘Very,’ he agreed dryly. ‘They make a lovely young couple.’
‘That sounds patronizing and sarcastic.’
‘Does it?’ He filched a cigar from his pocket, pushed it into his mouth and, holding and striking his lighter in his free hand, lit it. ‘Don’t they make you feel a hundred years old?’
Laura looked up. His eyes were dark in the moonlight and it was difficult to make out his expression. ‘At least a hundred and ten,’ she answered flippantly. ‘But then I’ve felt that old since I turned thirty.’
‘The fourth decade is the cynical one. I should know, I’m thirty-three. But as you said, the girl is sweet and they do make a nice young couple. I have no doubt that in a year, or maybe even less, the Catholic priest will be marrying them. She’ll be in a white dress with a wreath of rosebuds on her head and a bouquet in her hand, and he’ll be dressed in a dark suit and a white shirt with a stiff collar, looking very grand and very uncomfortable.’
‘There are worse fates in life.’
‘Definitely. I’ve nothing against marriage, especially in this day and age of easy divorce.’
‘You are cynical.’ She watched him exhale, and the cigar smoke hung, blue and thick in the air between them. ‘Smoking is very bad for your health.’
‘But sometimes, like now, at the end of a long, sunny and pleasant day, it’s fun.’ The end of his cigar glowed in an arc as he lifted his hand to his mouth again. ‘Marius is very excited about seeing your great-aunt again. What is she like?’
‘I’ve never met her,’ Laura confessed.
‘I thought I didn’t know much about my family, you seem to know even less about yours. Weren’t you ever curious enough to ask your grandmother about her family and her life here before the war?’
‘One of the reasons I came here was to find out about my grandmother’s past. We haven’t done much talking as yet, but, as you saw, she gave me her diary to read this morning. I intend to start tonight.’
‘Are you pleased or disappointed with Grunwaldsee?’
‘It’s not what I expected. From what little my grandmother had said, I assumed it was a small farm, and newspaper reports led me to believe Poland would be poverty-stricken.’
‘Don’t let appearances fool you: it is. But it won’t be for long the way everyone is working.’
‘So how did your grandfather make enough money to buy and renovate Grunwaldsee?’ she probed.
‘How do you think?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘He didn’t ask my father to give him any Mafia money.’
‘Are you never serious?’ she countered irritably.
‘How do you know I’m not being serious? But, on the other hand, my grandfather did take many, many bribes when he worked for the KGB.’ He laughed when she frowned. ‘You English, you’re so naive when it comes to the Russian way of doing things. It’s easy to tease you.’
‘You must admit: one minute you were all Communists with no personal possessions, the next there’s a glut of millionaires.’
‘My grandfather mined gold. In Siberia.’
‘Do you never speak the truth?’
‘Only about trivial things. But unlike you stiff-upper-lip British, we do talk about our families and the dead all the time in Russia. Especially to those in mourning. We think it comforts them to know that the people they loved are not forgotten. After all, death is a natural state and we’ll all be in it one day.’
‘Spoken like a true melancholy Slav.’
‘And what would you know about melancholy Slavs?’
‘I’ve read some of
One Last Summer
.’
‘That was the gold my grandfather mined in Siberia. He wrote it.’
‘Really?’ Mischa was such a strange mixture of sarcasm and flippancy, Laura wasn’t certain whether or not to believe him.
‘He says that every life should be spiced with a little gloom, if only to provide a counter-measure for happiness. However, he curses the fates for tipping the whole spice pot into his. But he still insists it’s impossible to fully enjoy the good times when you have nothing to contrast them with. And if you haven’t experienced tragedy and misery you can’t identify with the poor, and if you can’t do that you won’t give to charity, which is why he bought Grunwaldsee and put it into a trust.’
‘Who is going to benefit from this trust?’
‘Me, for a start,’ Mischa smiled. ‘I’m moving into a self-contained apartment in the main house.’
‘That doesn’t sound very charitable to me.’
‘I lost my mother when I was six, so I am half a deserving orphan. But the trust is going to need a great deal of money if it is to continue. Grunwaldsee is expensive to run. That’s why my grandfather and I are still talking to my father. He has more money than he knows what to do with. Occasionally he siphons a little away from his gambling dens, drug rings and brothels to donate to charity.’
‘Now you’re laughing at me.’
‘Not at all.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk about charity. Between your sailing boat, sports car, horses, summerhouse and renovations of Grunwaldsee, what are you doing to alleviate poverty?’
‘Not enough.’ He inhaled on his cigar for the last time, jabbed it into the lake, then carefully dropped the stub into his pocket. ‘But you see what a caring soul I am; I don’t want to poison the fish. And here is the jetty of your hotel.’ He dropped the sail and tossed the anchor overboard.
‘Thank you for bringing me back. I enjoyed the journey. Would you like to come in for a drink?’
‘At this hour everything will be closed.’
‘Not the mini-bar in my room.’
‘I’ve heard about you English girls. How you seduce and discard men. I don’t intend to become your toy, not even for one night, Fräulein Laura.’ He held out his hand, she took it and he helped her on to the jetty. When she was standing on it, he pulled up the anchor and the sail. The dinghy was already edging into the centre of the lake when he called out, ‘Goodnight, Fräulein Laura. See you in the morning.’
SATURDAY, 28 MAY 1988
New York
I stayed for a while before I realized that there was nothing we could say to one another that we didn’t already know. If I spoke to him I would only succeed in opening old wounds and making new ones that would pain both of us.