The Visitor

THE VISITOR

Mother is nowhere to be found, so I take my place in front of our guest and smile as graciously as I can. After the last few weeks of violence, fear and upheaval, this moment of social formality is strangely comforting. I pull absentmindedly at one of my two long braids, which hang over each shoulder. I can’t wait to turn sixteen next week and I can finally wear my hair in a low bun like a lady, like my older sisters who have married and moved away. I think about them often, I do hope they are safe. Sister Brunhilde just had a baby.

Our visitor is a kind looking lady about Mother’s age, we exchange niceties, and she hands me a bowl of strawberries. I frown as she introduces herself with her first name, Christine, it signifies that she sees me as a child. I, on the other hand, state my name as “Fraulein von Horcke.”

“Strawberries!” I exclaim and catch my childlike enthusiasm. I shake my head and sit up straighter, assuming the same tone Mother uses in polite conversation. “What a rare delight. You must have brought them with you. I am afraid the Russians have been eating all our strawberries before they are even ripe. Can you believe that? What pleasure they get from eating green and white strawberries, I do not know.” I am borrowing Mother’s words. “They are so idle; they cannot be bothered to prepare firewood - they have been plundering and burning all the furniture from the manor. When they are done eating unripe strawberries and cherries, they trample on the vegetable garden! Mother says it’s the same everywhere, it seems you have been more fortunate - these are exquisite.”

The lady clears her voice and taps a strawberry with the tip of her teaspoon. “I suppose I am very fortunate; I have had no contact with the Russians. I hear it was awful,” she says finally.

“You are lucky, indeed.”

I close my eyes as I eat the strawberries one piece at a time, relishing the slithery texture on my tongue. It takes me back to carefree late spring afternoons before the war, before brother Axel and brother Siegfried went to fight. Before Franz went with the Hitlerjugend to defend the town of Demmin and didn’t return. He told me when it was all over, he would ask Father for my hand in marriage. Father would never accept of course; it wouldn’t be proper for me to marry the son of an estate manager.

The strawberries are so sweet, I could almost believe they had been sugared - had sugar not been impossible to come by for months, if not years. We even have to give the scarce honey we have managed to produce to the Russian commandant living in our manor (the soldiers and village children keep destroying the hives, making the bees aggressive and difficult to work with). Mother once managed to hide a tiny jar in fruit cellar, but alas, they stole that, too.

The commandant is the only decent Russian, the first wave of soldiers at the end of April were the worst. Now, the commandant stops the most obvious stealing and looting, and the soldiers leave the women mostly alone. Mostly.

“The weather has been nice," the lady comments. I wish she had told me her last name so I may address her in the proper manner. Like father, I do insist on protocol.

“Indeed,” I say, looking out the window at the daisy speckled grass, inhaling the scent of warm grass from the opened window. “We should like a little rain though, it has been dry for six weeks.”

Six weeks. Since they took father on May Day. The local ranger arrived at the manor, wiping his forehead with a dirty handkerchief, summoning Mother and Father to the Russian major. The major, a stony-faced man with sculpted cheekbones, accused father of hiding weapons, then dragged my parents through the woodland behind the manor and threatened to shoot them like dogs if they didn't show them where the guns were buried. Father assured him there were none, but an hour later they found a rifle buried by the summer house near the pond.

They herded Father into a lightweight van, Mother didn’t even have the time to bring him some soap, clean underwear, and a towel, they drove off so fast. We have not seen him since.

(…the pond, he never got further than the pond…)

Mother has tirelessly tried to find news about his whereabouts, even traveling - accompanied by our old farm vet Herr Gollwitzer - to Neubrandenburg to an internment camp where the Russians have apparently been holding landowning families. All to no avail. I don’t like to dwell on it, I prefer to hide behind the quiet stoicism of my mother.

“I heard the Russians do terrible things,” I told my father the evening that he loudly declared that we would not leave. Other families began fleeing the advancing Russians on bikes, trains, and even on foot, and when Mother asked what we should do, he banged his fist on the beautiful, large wooden dining table - which, incidentally, was carried off by the Russian soldiers along with most of the chairs in the house when the first regiments moved out - Waldstran is our home, he said, and we would stay put.

“Don’t you worry, mein Schatz.” He patted me on the cheek. “They will have to go through me to get to you. I will hang a white sheet from the tower. They will need the farm to work if they want to feed their soldiers. I refuse to believe the Russians are so unreasonable.”

It was that beastly Moeller boy who had told me what the Russians did to girls and women. He had spoken with a gleeful leer, adding that he planned to watch them arrive and witness the action. I doubt he had the time with all the looting and vandalizing he did in the weeks after their descendent onto our little village.

Our manor has been looted more times than I can count, by the refugees who having been pouring through for weeks, the Poles, and now the soldiers. Mother told me to pretend like we have been bombed so as not to cry over every broken plate, ever burnt portrait or stolen jewellery. It helps.

“I do wonder what is keeping Mother,” I say, realizing I have been neglecting our guest, lost in my recollections, my eyes mostly closed. I try to recall where Mother said she was going. I grapple at my memory, but my mind is slippery, like when I tried to catch the goldfish in the pond with my bare hands as a child. I reach for my braid on my right shoulder but find nothing.

Something like a dark shadow seems to rise in my chest. An ominous feeling. Like that night in mid-May, when heavy footsteps marked the arrival of inebriated Russians towards the dark fruit cellar - which mother had cleared out to offer shelter to neighbouring families - they burst through door with their rifles high.

“Quick, in the hamper!” Fraulein Weber - the eldest daughter of Pastor Weber - had whispered, pushing me into the wicker picnic hamper before the soldiers’ eyes could acclimatize to the dark. They demanded wine and when there was none to provide, they rounded up the girls and left. I never saw Fraulein Weber again. I can still smell the dank, sweetly sour smell of the cellar. Mother used to send me down to get new jars of preserve when I was little, I love that smell, yet…

(Mother!)

…the memory makes me uneasy. The dark shadow continues to rise, and something is fragmenting in my mind.

“I..” I look at our guest, I cannot recall her name now. Caroline, I think. “I think we have met before,” I say now, frowning at her. There is something familiar in her features, something unnerving in her expression. I cannot put my finger on it. I feel an exasperating sort of confusion, I know this feeling is not new to me, it fits like an old shoe. An old shoe I do not recognize.

“Yes,” she says, laying a hand on mine. “Yes, we have. Many times, do you know who I am?”

I frown at her. I want to tell her that I do not, but the words come out wrong. A panicky realization that I should know seems to close in around my throat. “Father hid the Titian painting in the hen house. The Russians never found it.”

“No one ever found it, I believe,” the lady says with a gentle smile. Her expression confuses me still. It is a mixture of pity, affection, and something else…

Dread.

She knows something I do not - I am not safe. Mother told me not to trust anyone, only her and our trusty farmhand, Peter, who has been such a help over the last few weeks.

“Where is Mother?” I ask, aware of the panic raising the pitch of my voice. I look around me and suddenly the familiar is unfamiliar. I withdraw my hand from the lady, I don’t like how she is looking at me. “Who are you?” I shriek. “I must find Mother! Have they taken Mother?”

The smell of the cellar again. Mother - I can see her. I know something bad is going to happen, like in a bad dream, as though my mind is controlling the actions, but I am powerless to stop it.

“Mother!” I scream, and it dawns on me that I have heard that scream before - my scream. Many times. I have seen her eyes locked onto mine in desperate sorrow as the life drained away. I can still smell pungent reek of alcohol from the soldier, the cold cellar floor on my cheek…

“Mother!” I am screaming, scratching. I remember the red button around my neck, “for emergencies”, they had said.

The lady is crying and has retreated to the corner.

I reach for my braid again, this time moving my hands to my head and finding only short, coarse tufts of hair. The unwelcome memory releases and blackens my mind gradually, like dark ink seeping into absorbent paper; I had pulled out my braids afterwards, facing the mirror with lifeless eyes, even though my birthday was not for two days. Protocol could no longer comfort me, Mother was gone, Father was gone. I got on a train with the Langhammer family and stayed with their kin until sister Frieda sneaked into the occupied zone to rescue me.

I cannot stop the screaming.

The door flies open. People rush in. Restraining hands, loud overbearing voices, a prick in my thigh and the world goes still. I float, grasping for reality, grasping for images but losing them before I can touch them. Reality now feels perennially just out of reach.

(…It’s like she is stuck there. When she is at her most coherent, she always goes back to that time. It’s agonizing to watch because I know how it ends. She lived in Munich for almost seventy years, was happily married to my father for fifty years before he passed, she had a good life. Yet that’s all gone. Disappeared...)

I am still floating through the blackness. Faceless memories and liquid shadows of nameless objects swirl around me. Nothing is tangible, everything escapes the grasp of my mind. I do not know where I am, I don’t know when I am. Am I, even?

An immeasurable amount of time passed when I open my eyes again. I am in a room with furniture I don’t recognize, I must have been moved. Someone comes in holding a tray, a black woman in pink shirt and identically pink trousers. It is a bizarre outfit. She is wearing strange white clogs, and I suddenly remember old Peter endlessly carving wooden clogs in Waldstran, he must have made at least fifty pairs lest the Russians or locals stole all the wood.

“Hello, Frau Schwarz,” said the pink lady cheerfully, “It me, Ola. I’ve brought you your breakfast, tea, and toast. Your favourite.”

“I do like that.” I say, unsure whether I need to do something, unsure why this lady is bringing me breakfast. “You must be very far from home.” I say, admiring her smooth dark skin and long fingers.

She laughs. “I was born in Augsburg, Frau Schwarz. Germans come in all colours now, remember?”

“Oh, yes, how lovely.”

“Your son is coming today, Frau Schwarz.” She leads me to a small armchair in front of a round coffee table.

“My son?” I pause. “Helmut?”

She looks at me with a wide grin. “Yes, Helmut. Your daughter, Christine, was here just yesterday.”

I feel bad that I do not recognize this lady who clearly knows so much about me. I take the teacup with shaking hands and thick, knobbly fingers that aren't mine. She finishes setting up my breakfast and stands up straight, wiping her hands on her shirt. I follow her gaze to a painting above the bed - a lake with lily pads and specks of fiery red poppies.

“Do you know where that is?” I ask her, setting the cup back down.

“No, Frau Schwarz, do you?” She speaks with a benevolent, clear voice, like a kindergarten teacher.

“Why, that’s Lake Herta.”

Pink lady puts on music, Moonlight Sonata, my favourite. I play along with my fingers; they know what they are doing.

“It’s just a few miles south from here,” I say.

“From here?” she asks. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Of course,” I say, taking a bite of toast and honey.

She tilts her head back and looks at me incredulously. “Where do you mean by ‘here’, Frau Schwarz?”

“Why, Waldstran, of course.” I wonder if I should tell her my name is Fraulein Erika von Horcke. “Have you seen my mother?”