Back in the street the trams rattle through the town. He was here a long time ago, but it is a vague memory now. It isn’t home. To Erich, home is Berlin. It is time with his father, brothers, and mother. Home is also duty.
He stops at the pharmacy. The man behind the counter is serving someone else, but when he sees Erich, he is in a hurry to finish the purchase and the conversation. When the customer is gone, he pulls out a package tied with string from beneath the counter.
“Thank you, Elias,” says Erich.
“You are welcome. There will always be those who support you. I was very fond of your father.”
A woman enters and walks to the counter.
Erich nods to the pharmacist and the other customer. As loyal as the pharmacist is, Erich is uncomfortable that people know him here. He wishes that he didn’t have to rely so much on others. He is grateful for the help, but eventually he will have to get rid of any trace of himself.
1937
Erich’s father came home one weekend from secret business in Berlin. Erich watched him drive the long laneway to the house. He had been away for weeks. His mother had worked hard to take care of everything needed around the house while looking after their small children. She never complained. She never sought any kind of reward. Erich was shortly to begin his studies in mechanical engineering in Dresden, to follow in his father’s footsteps.
His father looked very smart as he stepped out of the car in a black suit and cap that had a silver skull. Erich’s mother looked very proud, though she joked about the skull. She had been very happy with her husband, and there was little wrong he could do. He was being paid to develop something for Hitler. Erich wasn’t allowed to know at that time. It was a secret, and even his mother confided later that Horst had told her very little.
Erich’s father announced that they were moving to Berlin. He had taken lease of a town house so he could see his family more with the promise that Erich could begin his studies there instead. His father said that they would not sell the house and land, that they would come back sometimes for holidays so that the children could run around the wide spaces, and swim and fish in the lake nearby.
Erich’s sister, Claudine, several years in age below him, wasn’t happy. She wanted to stay at the house. She stamped her feet. Her wild spirit took her to neighboring fields, and Erich had to search far for her.
He found his sister beneath a tree on a hill. With a stone she was carving angrily into the bark. She wasn’t just carving her name; she was carving all their names.
“Make sure you spell mine right this time.”
She glared at him, but the signal lacked the dislike that she would show for her younger brothers and mother. She had always tried to keep up with Erich but failed simply because she could not sit as still as he did, would not focus her energy on one thing.
Erika, she wrote on the tree spitefully.
“Ouch,” he said playfully.
She had carried anger after the first day her papa left. She loved him, perhaps more than she loved her mother. Nene showed very few expectations of her willful daughter, other than the hopes she would marry well and produce children, something Claudine would growl about whenever their father would make a joke of it. Though unlike Nene, Horst didn’t mean this. He did not mind what his daughter did, that she liked to paint and draw and dream. He did not seem bothered that she would disagree with him on most issues. For some odd reason that Erich could not fathom, her willfulness and independent views seemed to impress him, and he would quietly listen to her angry outbursts about the way her mother undercooked the beef, the bed linen that smelled strongly of bleach, the poor condition of the roads for bike riding, about the way her little brother pronounced words poorly; in fact Claudine had an opinion on everything. Sometimes Erich would laugh about it; sometimes he would sit and listen with fascination, though not at her comments, but at the way his father would patiently listen and nod and wish her well in any endeavors.
Under the tree Erich talked to his sister about coming back, about holidaying again at the villa, about the benefits of Berlin. He had been there a couple of times on short journeys with his father, and he told her that she would love the color and movement and music. That she could study at one of the art schools there one day. She would find so much more to do. At this she calmed, almost hopeful, returning with Erich and questioning her father on everything he saw there, the restaurants, the art exhibitions, what the women wore. Were there handsome soldiers in uniform?
Later that evening, his parents had disappeared into the sitting room off the kitchen, and he could hear their murmurings. The children had been put in their rooms, the baby with their mother.
Horst’s jacket had been removed and hung over the back of the chair. Erich examined the lining, the stitching, the emblems, and the smooth feel of the fabric. While he was distracted by the jacket, Claudine had put an ear to the sitting room door and was shortly reprimanded by Erich and sent away. Though Erich was not without such wiles or curiosity.
The next day when his papa was sleeping late and his mother was busy in the laundry at the rear of the house, he pulled out some papers from Horst’s bag. There were architectural drawings of tanks and typewritten reports on their effectiveness, charts of their movement, their ammunition, their speed, their turning circles. He always knew that his father was clever, but on that day Erich realized that Horst was part of something significant and progressive. Erich envisaged his country as the one to lead the world, and a future that was better for everyone. It was on that day also that he was first sold on Hitler’s Germany.
Present-day 1945
He arrives at a small brick-terraced home between others like it. He turns the key and lets himself in. She sits there motionless at the window with her back to him. In the early days one would rarely see her still.
“Mother,” he says quietly as he walks around to stand in front of her. She has a puckered scar that dips in and out of the lines on her forehead. Dribble sits on her chin. Blue eyes, staring into the street, hold no recognition. She has no sense of time or place, and she carries no memories. She is hollow.
At the sight of her, hands reach inside of him and tug at his resolve, but before they can take hold, he pushes them way. She taught him how to remain impenetrable, to rise above any emotion and only act from conscious, rational thought.
“I’ve brought you food,” he says, but she doesn’t look at the packages in his hands. She continues to watch from the window, fixed on nothing. Movement in the street doesn’t divert or fill her empty thoughts. She chews the inside of her cheek, then stops, her eyes drooping slightly. She will soon be asleep.
His mother is unable to feed herself and suffers epileptic seizures that have been occurring more frequently. She cannot do any basic functions, but sometimes her eyes roam side to side, as if she were trying to hear. She is fifty and a young woman yet, with scarcely any gray in the hair that frames her face.
Erich tries not to remember her as before. It is about now and forward, not the past. In the kitchen he leaves some medicine from the package for Marceline.
“Vati!” calls a small child hurtling toward him on unsteady legs. He picks up the girl and holds her to him.
“Let me see you today,” he says, pulling her away from him to examine her better. One light curl falls across her eyes, and he pushes it back behind her ear.
Marceline walks in. She is efficient, picking up items the little girl has dropped on the way. She had come highly recommended from his German contacts in the town. She was used to servicing German officials, dressing their children.