‘Lucretia’s shrug.’
‘Yes, I was always Lucretia inside Auschwitz. There was no reason to think the birth certificate was anything other than a properly registered document, and that was quite important. Officialdom ruled in Germany: if you didn’t have the right papers you couldn’t work or find anywhere to live or travel. So I thought the name would have to stay until I could reach England and have it legally changed. But I called him Alan – I thought it was sufficiently anonymous.’
‘In Pedlar’s Yard he was known to most people as Al.’
‘Al.’ She appeared to consider it. ‘It suggests a completely new persona, doesn’t it? Tougher and more masculine.’
‘Yes.’ A pause. ‘My mother knew who he was, didn’t she? She knew about Auschwitz.’
‘From what you’ve told me about her I think she must have known quite a lot. I used to talk to him about the Vienna years when he was very small – about meeting Conrad – the serving girl and the rich aristocrat. I tried to make it into a fairy-story for him.’
‘My mother knew all that. She told it to me as a fairy-story. But not Auschwitz.’
‘I never talked to Alraune about Auschwitz,’ said Alice. ‘But he lived there until he was almost four, and he would have had memories.’
‘I think my mother knew about Auschwitz, though. But she used to say there were dark places in the world, and that we would only ever make stories about the good places. The places full of light.’
‘When you tell me things like that about her, I regret very much that I didn’t know her,’ said Alice, rather sadly.
‘I wish you had known her. She was a bit like you – I don’t mean to look at. But when she talked – she could make you remember that there might be really good things waiting in life ahead of you. She could make you forget the bad things in life.’
‘That’s a very good quality to have,’ said Alice at once. ‘I think she’s passed it on to you.’
‘Do you? She hadn’t got it full-pelt, turbo-charged, like you have. But it was there.’ A pause. ‘D’you suppose that’s why he married her?’
‘Because she reminded him of me?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s possible. I’m sorry he made her so unhappy, though. I’m sorry she died like that – and I’m more sorry you had to be there when it all happened.’
‘She hated him in the end. I hated him as well. The brutality—’
Speaking very slowly, almost as if she might be fighting some inner battle, Alice said, ‘But you should try to forgive some of what he did, Michael. He was not entirely to blame.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The cruel promise of spring was stirring beyond Auschwitz’s grim gates, and somehow Alraune had survived those first few months.
But it was as if there was a sullen core of smouldering hatred inside him, and there were times during those months after his birth when the dark eyes seemed to rest on Alice with unchildlike anger. And were they Leo Dreyer’s eyes? Or were they perhaps the eyes of the young officer who had made that faint gesture of apology? There would be a faint far-off comfort to be derived if the young officer could be his father, but could that blue-eyed Saxon have sired this black-visaged scrap of humanity? Please God, don’t let him be Dreyer’s son; please don’t let him grow up to resemble the man I loathe and fear most in all the world!