The Other Side of Silence (39 page)

Leaving only Katja with her. Katja who was smitten with her
beautiful Werner and made love to him with her shoes on, and killed
him, and now bears his child. Oh my Katja, my little girl, my
resurrected Lotte, my own young long-haired self. “How far do we go
on? Until what happens?”
Until we know what is on the other
side
. “Suppose it never ends?”
Then at least we’ll know the
desert
.

All of it, all this life, written on her body, in her blood, all
of it gathered around a hate that is perhaps no longer adequate,
reduced to – what? Her silent self sitting here on the corner of a
wide stoep deserted of people, a stoep across which generations of
women have passed towards their own versions of palm trees in the
sun. Who will ever know about them? Who knows about her? One woman
against the whole German Reich, against the world. Katja, Katja.
Will you ever understand? Will I ever understand? To be mad in this
place is the only sanity.

∨
The Other Side of Silence
∧

S
he is still sitting
there when Katja returns in the late afternoon.

“We must go and find something to eat,” says the young woman.
“You must be exhausted.”

She just shakes her head. The grimace of her slashed mouth shows
that she is smiling.

Did you find out something?

Katja is silent. Hanna knows what the answer will be:
The man
returned to Germany years ago
. Or perhaps:
No one remembers
him any more. When I ask about Hauptmann Heinrich Bohlke they just
shake their heads
.

But that is not what Katja says. She sits down next to Hanna and
takes one of her hands in both of hers, and says, “Yes. I found
him. I spoke to him. He will see you tomorrow.”

How in God’s name did you do that?

Katja shrugs. “I spoke to some soldiers. They sent me to others,
to higher officers. In the end I was taken to the military
headquarters. I told them I’m the daughter of Hauptmann Bohlke’s
sister, I’ve just arrived from Hamburg, I have a message for
him.”

But how come they believed you?

“Men are so gullible, especially I think in a dry land,” Katja
says simply. And then tosses her long hair back, and smiles. In
spite of the paleness of her face, her hollow cheeks, there is a
radiance about her which hits Hanna like a stab. She has seen it
before, she has lived with this young person for so long now, they
have shared so much; and yet she continues to be surprised by
her.

And you say tomorrow…?

“In the morning. At ten o’clock. I told him I’d bring someone
with me. A woman he hasn’t seen for years and who has travelled a
very long way to see him. You can’t imagine how intrigued he
was.”

As Katja puts out her hands to pull Hanna up from the stoep a
man approaches. He is pushing a rickety wheelbarrow piled high with
dried animal skins. A small vervet monkey with an ancient wizened
black face is perched on top. When the man notices the women he
stops to raise a jaunty little Tyrolean hat from his unkempt grey
hair, an incongruous sight in the late dusty glare of the African
sun.

“Guten Tag, meine Damen.”

Katja gives a diffident nod; Hanna does not respond. She just
takes Katja’s arm and prepares to stalk off.

“You must have been walking a long way,” he remarks, wiping
sweat from his face with a cuff. His face looks tired, his clothes
tidy but worn – wide moleskin trousers, corduroy jacket – but in
contrast with his hangdog appearance his brown boots are
immaculately polished, and there is an almost boyish twinkle in the
eyes set deeply under the very bushy eyebrows.

Hanna tugs at Katja, but the young woman, clearly intrigued by
the man’s appearance, stops to challenge him: “What makes you think
we’ve been walking far?”

Replacing his merry little hat, he points: “Your shoes. They
look terrible.”

“You’re very observant,” says Katja.

“It’s my job. I’m a shoemaker. The best in Windhoek.”

“You seem very sure of yourself.”

“It’s because I’m the only one around, that’s why.” He takes off
his hat again and makes a bow before them. “Siggi Fischer,” he
says, “at your ladies’ service.”

Hanna rapidly conveys something to Katja, who translates, “Thank
you, Herr Fischer, but we have to go.”

“Do you have a place to stay?” he asks.

“No, but…” begins Katja, but Hanna pulls her away.

“You both look tired, if I may say so,” interposes Siggi
Fischer. “Why don’t you come to my house? You are no doubt used to
more comfort, but it is clean and you can have a comfortable bed. I
often put up people who have nowhere else to go. And it’s very
close.” An almost impish grin. “Of course, in Windhoek everything
is close. We have only four streets.”

We have a busy day tomorrow
, Hanna curtly conveys through
Katja.
We have an appointment with an important person at
ten
o’ clock. And we still have to get back to our horses. They
have been tied up all day
.

“Where are your horses?”

Up there on the ridge, among the trees
.

“Poor beasts.” He closes one eye and displaces his hat to
scratch his head. “May I make a proposal? You can come to my house
and rest there while I bring down your horses. After that I can
make you some supper – nothing special, I should warn you, I’m not
a rich man – and tonight while you sleep I can repair your shoes.
They really are in a sorry state.”

“We have no money to pay you,” says Katja quickly, but she
evidently finds it hard to suppress the sudden desire for some
basic comfort he has stirred up in her.

“Have I asked you for money?” he counters with a show of
indignation.

Why should you go to so much trouble?
asks Hanna through
Katja.
You don’t even know us
.

“That is why,” says Siggi Fischer raising his hands in a
theatrical gesture. “We see so few new people here. Except the
military, of course, who come and go, but they mostly keep to
themselves. And just as well, if you ask me.”

He is too talkative
, Hanna signals to Katja.
We need
our rest tonight
.

“It will be a very long night if it’s just the two of us,” the
young woman answers in a low voice.

“Is she ill?” asks the shoemaker, gesturing towards Hanna. “Why
doesn’t she speak?”

“She’s had an accident,” says Katja. “She lost her tongue.”

“Tsk, tsk.” He shakes his head. Then he resumes in a
matter-of-fact tone: “I’ll tell you what. You can have a bath at my
house while I fetch the horses. And when I come back you tell me if
you want to stay or not.”

At that moment the little monkey leaves his perch on the
wheelbarrow and jumps on Katja’s shoulder. For a moment, uttering a
small cry, she contracts in fright, then realises that it is
hugging her, uttering small baby sounds.

“You see, Bismarck likes you,” says Siggi.

That appears to settle the matter. Hanna is still not placated
at all, but she grudgingly agrees to stay behind in the small
sheet-iron house on the outskirts of the town while the shoemaker
goes off to find their horses. Katja stokes the copper geyser in
the kitchen and prepares a bath. There is a tin tub on the kitchen
floor. Hanna goes first, while Katja makes coffee. It is the first
time, she realises, that she has seen Hanna naked and it is
shocking. Not the ancient disfigurements and cuts and sutures so
much, however atrocious they are – the lines and ridges across her
belly and breasts, the scar tissue where her nipples used to be –
as the skeletal appearance of her body, the way the skin clings to
the bones, the patterns of her ribcage and her hips, the
protuberance of her matted sex. Hanna makes no attempt to cover up.
As she washes with the coarse soap Siggi has put out for them, she
appears almost deliberately to display herself –
See, see, this
is me
– and then remains standing for Katja to sluice clean hot
water over her. She stands with her eyes closed, head thrown back,
feet apart, to let it run over her body, an immersion and a
cleansing, the closest perhaps she has come to a feeling of
voluptuousness in years.

Then, still naked, she takes her turn to wash Katja. The girlish
body has begun to fill out, anticipating a more matronly heaviness
around the hips, her breasts are fuller than they were, the areolae
large and dark, the belly showing the early swelling of
pregnancy.

For a moment she instinctively, self-consciously covers her
breasts with her hands. “I’ve changed a lot,” she says, her face
flushed. “I no longer look the way I used to.”

You are beautiful
.

“No, I am not beautiful,” says Katja. “I’m just a woman.”

Hanna pursues the bathing ritual, the rites of cleansing, a
careful and almost loving long caress. They are mother and child,
they are woman and woman, each acknowledging in the other the
mortality of the self. In a way it is a lingering leavetaking,
because beyond tomorrow there is only the darkness of the unknown.
They have come so far; there is only a short last lap to complete,
and this is their preparation for it.

They are so clean, so new and liquid, that it is almost a pity
to put on their dusty and crumpled old clothes again. But they
remain barefoot, feeling guilty about the shoes after what the
shoemaker has said about them.

Together they clean up the kitchen and mop up the floor, then
set about exploring the house. It is indeed very small. Apart from
the kitchen there is only a long narrow room which clearly serves
as sitting room and dining room and work room combined; and, at the
far end, a tiny bedroom. The front room is cluttered with the signs
of their host’s trade: lasts and anvils, hammers, awls and other
tools of many shapes and sizes, a large work bench much the worse
for wear, which shows evidence of also serving as a dining table,
shelves with finished and half-finished shoes, hooks on the wall
from which harnesses and saddles and bridles are suspended, piles
and bundles of skins and hides on the floor, everything pervaded
with the smell of leather and linseed oil and wax.

Most of the bedroom is occupied by the huge bedstead of dark
polished wood. The curtain around the canopy is dusty, but the
bedclodies look surprisingly crisp; and the mattress must be
stuffed with feathers as it bulges so hugely. Next to the bed is a
small cradle, stacked with books and newspapers. On the wall
opposite hangs a single picture, a foxed engraving of what looks
like the Alps. On the bedside table is a yellowed photograph in a
too-heavy wooden frame, showing the face of a woman, her features
faded into a blur.

It is all so ordinary. But it is the very ordinariness of it
that shocks them. It is too unreal, too ludicrous, too preposterous
in its ordinariness, belonging to a world that must have gone its
own way while their lives have been unwinding in another dimension
altogether. The same thought may strike them: That this is the
first time in God knows how many months that they find themselves
in a space where they will not have to plot the death of their
host.

For Hanna it is too much.
As soon as he comes back, we must
go
, she signals to Katja.
We cannot stay here. It is not
right
.

That is when she notices the single object that changes
everything, though it is hardly any less ordinary than the rest. In
the corner near the door stands a small rickety table with a single
chair pulled up to it; and on the chequered surface are set out the
figures of a crudely carved chess set. The game seems to be still
in progress as several pieces lie overturned on one side, and the
rest are set up in broken formation. Across the years, like the
memory of a once-loved voice, a sound trapped in a shell, comes the
image of Herr Ludwig’s face moulded in the lamplight – the aquiline
nose, the sad, gentle mouth, the firm-set chin, the bird-tracks
around the eyes – as he stares down at her hand hovering over the
board with a black bishop between her fingers; moving it, not
towards the checkmating of his king, but on a tangent. She hears
the distant echo of his voice, asking, “What have you done?” And
her own, controlled and quiet, answering, “You win.”

Hanna is still fingering a discarded black rook from Siggi
Fischer’s chess set, smooth from much handling, when she is
distracted by a sound. The wiry shoemaker enters from the kitchen
and comes towards them through the happy mess of the living room.
His monkey is perched on his shoulder, but it leaps to Katja’s when
he arrives in the doorway to the bedroom.

Hanna’s first thought is that she has not yet covered her face;
involuntarily she moves her hands up to shield herself. But he
seems not to have noticed anything untoward.

“I’ve watered the horses,” says Siggi. He looks at the rook in
her hand. “I see you’ve found the chess set. Do you play?”

Hanna half turns away, shaking her head, panicky with
embarrassment. She signals to Katja to explain,
You must excuse
me, I must put on my kappie
.

“You don’t need it indoors, do you?”

Surprised, Hanna glances at him, but he shows no sign at all
that her appearance has unsettled him.

As if he has trapped her in a petty theft she hands him the
rook.
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb your setting. It looks
as if your game was interrupted
.

“I only play with myself.” He smiles. “And I always lose.
Perhaps you will join me after supper.” A pause. “I hope you have
decided to stay.” He looks from one to the other.

“Where will you sleep if we do?” asks Katja.

“I make a bed on my work bench. I always do when there are
visitors. Not that I get many of them.”

“We shall be happy to stay,” says Katja without consulting
Hanna. She feels the woman stiffening momentarily beside her, then
relaxing with what may be a sigh of resignation.