Bone and Blood (15 page)

‘So did you lose your faith?' Aisling was glad of the chance to ask. She had observed that the aunt sat there with her rosary beads like Granny but she hadn't heard her say anything about a priest or about going to Mass even though it was Sunday.

‘No. I believe what I believe. There were good German Catholics too. There's a memorial on Müllerstrasse, not so far from Karstadt, to a Catholic priest who tried to mobilise the Church against Hitler. I learnt that even Jews and Communists didn't have the horns of the devil. I learnt differences on the outside are not as great as extremes we can find inside. I never understood how some of the guards were Catholics too and could go to Mass on Sunday. Günter didn't seem to have any problem with that.'

‘Günter?' Aisling intervened to keep him in there, ‘Katharina's father?' An inspired guess.

Brigitte gave a sharp look, ‘Monika said this?'

‘No, I just guessed. He's the only man you mentioned.'

‘I kept it from Katharina for a long time. I didn't want her to hate the German side of her. After she found out about him, she would have nothing to do with religion. She didn't want to go back to Ireland either – it is too Catholic for her and she said Nazis were welcome there after the war. I don't know if that's true.'

‘Go back? I thought she was never in Ireland.'

‘I took her once to Dublin. She was nearly sixteen then. My mother was in St. James Hospital. I would visit the hospital everyday and we would meet later at the bed and breakfast. We ate sandwiches and Katharina would tell me about the Dublin I never knew – the Ha'penny Bridge, the post office where you can still see the marks of the bullets from the Easter Rising, St. Stephen's Green. The memorials to Joyce, to Yeats. Katharina liked Trinity College and the Book of Kells. She found Dublin strange. So many nuns and priests, churches crosses and religious ‘kitsch' as she called it everywhere. Even then she was not keen on religion. She said that Ireland exported its creative and talented people like James Joyce or Samuel Beckett and made the lives of those who stayed a misery.'

Aisling did some mental arithmetic. Katharina made her only visit to Ireland in 1961 – her father was about 10 years old then. Was Dublin really full of nuns and priests in the street at that time? You wouldn't see them now anyway. It was hard to imagine what the Dublin they visited was like. For the first time she wished she had paid more attention to dates in her own history. She'd have to ask her father if Dublin really was that different in those days. It was hard to picture Brigitte and Katharina in Dublin in 1961 and that was the year the Berlin wall went up too.

‘So were you in Ireland when they started to put the wall up?

‘No, we came back in August just before it started. I was afraid there would be another war just when we were beginning to enjoy some peace.'

‘Katharina wasn't born in the camp was she?'

‘No, we got out on in April 1945 but the war wasn't over until 8
^th
May.'

‘We? Was that you and Günter?'

‘Günter – no,' Brigitte looked at her in a way that made her realise that was a really stupid question. ‘I'm sure Günter got away all right. All those questions about Ireland that had puzzled me at the time, made sense. He was probably even smart enough to escape prisoner-of-war camps. When he saw the writing on the wall, he managed to get himself transferred to the Army. A good move, I realised afterwards, as there was more chance of escaping as an ordinary soldier. I couldn't help wondering if he made it to Ireland at the end of the war. He left the camp in February.'

‘Did the Allies set you free from the camp?'

Brigitte snorted, spraying some cake crumbs into the air, ‘Oh yes, it would be good if it was like some of those films where they drove in their tanks and smashed the guard and fed and clothed us like human beings again. No, it wasn't like that. The Russians were getting close to us. The Bibeltiki were more afraid of the Russians than of the Nazis – they were German after all and for them to be captured by Russian communists was a fate worse than death. They co-operated with the guards when the plan came to move us to another camp. By then I had Irma.' Brigitte laughed again but more lightly this time, ‘Vertraue mir!'

‘Come again,' Aisling prompted,

‘I can hear Irma's voice even now – Vertraue mir! – It made no sense to me that we should play with the dogs but she did it and it worked. Vertraue mir!'

‘Trust me! Why did she say that?'

‘Well it was like a test. I had to trust her, didn't I? She couldn't tell me why we were sharing our precious crusts with those dogs. She just kept saying it and smiling her strange smile. Vertraue mir! She made it like a game.'

‘Who was Irma?'

‘Irma? She's the only friend from that time who is still alive. It was a lucky day for me the day that she was moved in with the Bibeltiki. No-one else would share a bunk with her because she had a red triangle. Anna was too ill then to care so they put her in our bed. Irma was the only one – other than the Bibeltiki – in that place who managed to keep a little bit of themselves free. They had a way of getting inside your mind and your body so that there was nothing of yourself left. That was worse than anything. Your belly begged them for the vile tepid turnip water they called soup, the muddy chicory mess they called coffee, for the hunk of bread with stones in it that could break your teeth if you had any left. Your head begged them for a moment's peace so you could get some sleep that wasn't cut short by some appell or siren or order that had to be obeyed on the instant. You breathed because you had to obey orders and not for yourself.'

Brigitte spread her right hand on the table cloth – moving everything, then putting it back in exactly the same spot – a movement that Aisling had seen her make a hundred times already.

‘So if you weren't there when the camp was liberated did you escape?'

Brigitte's laugh had a cynical echo, ‘ Escape! I had fantasies every day about escaping from that place. Not that I did much about them. To try to escape was just the easiest way to commit suicide and there were some who did that. When Anna died I thought of it but then there was Irma and I couldn't do it to the others who would be punished for me. Irma wasn't like the Bibeltiki and they were suspicious of her because she was a communist. When they put her in our bed, I laughed.'

‘You laughed?'

‘Yes, they all thought that I'd lost my mind because we all knew Anna was dying.'

‘But you laughed?'

‘At home at night when we would kneel by the bed to say our prayers, we would pray that Communists wouldn't get to Ireland. As a child, I used to check under my bed every night for bogeymen or communists. From ‘reds under the bed' to ‘a red in the bed.' I watched this thin, intelligent woman, marked with the communist red triangle, trying to accommodate herself in the bunk where we slept without disturbing us too much.'

‘What! There were three of you in one bed?' Aisling was shocked but pleased with the fresh flow of images.

‘Yes, three in a bunk meant for one. It could only work because we were all so thin anyway and so exhausted you would sleep like a stone for the few hours that the place was silent. We didn't sleep at all the night that Anna died beside us in that bunk. Irma prayed with me as I muttered the Rosary in English. She joined in too when the whole block prayed and read aloud from the Bible for Anna. I was glad they did. I couldn't bear to see her thrown on a cart like a carcass of a dead sheep without some sort of funeral. She was only skin and bone by the time she died. Irma helped us carry Anna's stiff body to the trolley where they would come and take her on the cart for the dead before appell. We stripped her ourselves to that they wouldn't do it. We covered her little thin body with two washcloths but we knew they would take them away when they took her off the trolley and leave her naked again. I hoped my hair would stay with her. We weren't strong but she was so light to lift that I wanted to blow her up straight into heaven. Irma helped me get through the next day. She nudged me awake when I was falling asleep at roll call even though she didn't get any sleep either. For a few days we had the luxury of the bunk with just two of us and I inherited Anna's enamel mug to drink from. A legacy I still treasure.'

‘Do you mean the enamel can on the shelf in Katharina's room?'

‘Yes, I wanted her to have it when I die.' Brigitte sighed, ‘but she wasn't interested in Anna.'

‘And Irma?' Aisling didn't want her to lose the thread.

‘Irma seemed to know a lot more about what was happening inside and outside the camp. German was her mother tongue, of course, and she spoke French too and some English but I found it hard to work out when she had the opportunity to talk to anyone. She told me Germany was losing the war and everybody knew it now even the camp Guards. The Allies were already close and the Russians were getting closer and closer. If we could manage to stay alive a few weeks, we had a chance of life and freedom. I trusted her all right.'

‘Did she die too?'

‘No she is a grandmother. Katharina has met her many times. ‘Irma is not ashamed,' she says, as if my shame hid some great evil. Katharina was so quick to condemn the fascists and to analyse them but she didn't want to know how evil reached into each of us. She wanted me to be the victim or the heroine and I was neither. Kill each other? Kill each other when solidarity was the only thing that could keep us alive. She was disappointed in me.

‘Strange – they talk about parents disappointed in their children but I was never disappointed in Katharina. She was a gift from nowhere – even when she took up with that Jules, she was always good to me. All I expected in return was that she would see me out. I wanted to die in peace at home. When she was ill, she tried to persuade me to move into some Altenheim, but an old people's home is a waiting room for death no matter how modern and comfortable. She even said she thought maybe Ireland would be better than living here alone. I had family there who could visit. I will do it my own way.'

Sometimes Brigitte behaved like a spoilt child who had to have her own way especially with Monika. If she was serious about committing suicide, her secret was safe with Aisling as long as it was after the funeral. Time for a break.

‘I think I'll go out for a bit. But I'd like to hear a bit more about it sometime, if that's all right.'

‘Yes, it helps. Maybe Katharina was right. You're a good child.'

Aisling made a quick getaway after that. She was no child and not good either. But let Biddy dream on.

When she left, Brigitte reached for the rosary beads but dropped them again. It wasn't the rosary that had helped her live with herself then. It was Irma who helped her to clean the thick, dirty mess from down there. It was Irma who held her when she shook in bed that night. The only prayer she said was, ‘Thank God, Anna is not here to see this and know this.' It was Irma the Communist who helped her pray in her own words and held her anger at God mixed with her prayer for forgiveness.

What was the word that Irma used that night? Brigitte made her spell it because it sounded as dirty as she felt. S, C, H, Ä, N, D, U, N, G. Schändung. The dung part made her think of summer days, saving shoes as they walked barefoot in the field. The feeling of cow dung between her toes. And then washing them in the brown water of the stream that was always icy cold even in summer, as icy as the sheet in the shower block. Schändung. She locked it all in that word and left it in the dung heap. Later Katharina asked her in English when she worked out the time of her conception, ‘Was I the product of a rape?' And then again in German, impatient now.

Brigitte shook her head and in her head she dipped her toes in dung, and then again, and said nothing. Katharina looked disgusted anyway. There was no right answer, consent was worse than rape.

After that she looked up Schändung in Katharina's big dictionary – violation, desecration. Violation, desecration of the tabernacle – of something holy that was something different. Something not of herself. That wasn't the word that Katharina used. She said ‘Vergewaltigung' for rape – a word Brigette thought meant murder. No word is right because the act meant life not death. Perfect life with the mess of dirt washed away by Adelheid in the warm water from the big jug. And the clean baby put in my arms. She was right to shake her head to Katharina and speak no more of it.

Irma said other things too, don't let it spoil your pleasure in yourself. Your body will heal. Let it heal your mind. Your body will heal and it will be you who says. Love for the child helped her to see the kindness in Günther, helped her live with the shame that she never resisted. Was that why Katharina was a Jules? Because I turned from men? Now it is too late to torture myself with that question.

Something's wrong? Brigitte lifted her eyes. They were back again. Flies on dead meat. The dirty-dishwater-taste rises from a stomach that knows only emptiness or short-lived promises. Closing her eyes and seeing the shadows from the lamplight daring to take the place of the moon and stars, Brigitte willed the moon back to its rightful place over the lake again. Carrying her back to the dung in the byre and far from the dreams leading her to this place. Shadows of light from this little corner of the byre safe from the nightmare where her fingers were raw sausages she chewed for comfort.

A wisp of will whispered its way into the darkness, ‘Supper is ready', ‘Abendbrot ist fertig.' She wanted to say, I know those words but her throat felt paralysed and no words came.

The word ‘supper' that she carried from Ireland had meant something later and shorter – tea from hand to mouth. A bowl for her grandfather, a mug for her father, china cup for her mother and a scramble of other cups for the rest. A slice of soda bread, crumbling in your hand with homemade raspberry or blackberry jam at the right time of year. ‘Abendbrot' carried with it the flavour of smoked ham, strong solid bread, a nibble of foreign tastes that challenged her palate –a radish sharp from the garden of Dieter's mother with a host of different fresh green leaves. Dieter wondered at how she had never tasted radish before. In Ireland where most people grew potatoes, onions, carrots and cabbage, surely they could grow radish too. And so many different sorts of cheese. So hard that you had to cut with a sharp knife or so soft that you could taste it with a spoon. Delia had found her one day in the little pantry with a spoon in her mouth and laughed.

The glory of the Sunday table with a white cloth and some flowers in a vase. Clearing away leftover food into the pantry afterwards. Delia kept that rhythm even after the bombs had started to fall on Berlin. In those days the bombs were at night. She feared for this city that she had fallen in love with, where everything was so stylish and tasteful. White tablecloths in the Café Linden – on her first day of sightseeing in Berlin, sitting with Delia watching the buses, the style of the women strolling by. Arm in arm they strolled too – Pariser Platz, the Brandenburg Tor and the Reichstag – the smell of coffee still in her nostrils.

The whispers of ‘Abendbrot' carried the taste around the block later, a platter – geisting its way from one bunk to the next, changing what it offered to the memory of each.

‘Schinken' someone said, and ‘luftgetrocknet' ham came from the dry air like an answer to a prayer. And she could see Delia cut thin, dark slices from the ham left hanging in the larder. She remembered once at home they had something that tasted a bit like it hanging near the fire. Her mother would add bits to the cabbage. They never ate it raw. Only once Michael her oldest brother had come home late and sliced it down on top of fresh scone bread on the table – ready for breakfast. Her mother found a quarter gone in the morning and flipped him with a wet dishcloth. Memories and words to fill desire. ‘Roggenbrot mit Butter.' She loved the rye bread smeared with butter. Half with thick butter to taste the foreign taste of the bread and half with fruit gelée from Dieter's mother.

The whispers filled the platter faster and faster – too full for her to take it all in. And to go with it came cans of tea – Kräutertee – Schwarztee… until a mocking voice that she recognised brought the floating platter of small baby sausages: ‘Würstchen'… ‘Mein kleines Würstchen'… ‘Mein Schatz' halted the platter and it wafted away on a giggle. Was it a giggle or a snicker or a snigger – or a giddy bit of repressed laughter? ‘Mein Schatz', that was what Dieter said to Delia and then sang in English with an exaggerated Irish accent, ‘You are my dear, my darling-o'. Silenced then by, ‘Vorsicht, blockowa kommt.'

She hated that word, ‘Vorsicht'. First Delia and her ‘Vorsicht' – be careful not to be seen talking to the Goldmanns. Be careful not to be out after curfew, Be careful not to speak English outside. Be careful what you say to Herr Schmidt. And then Anna, be careful that the guards and their spies don't catch you looking out the window; don't catch you with your hands in your pockets; don't catch you reading the German newspapers that were used as toilet paper. With the ‘forsicht', darkness came in with the draught of the guard to gnaw the bones left over from the guilty-geist-midnight-feast.

Aisling flicked through a magazine. The aunt's eyes were shut and her head was back. She hadn't woken up when Aisling came in and Aisling couldn't see her breathing. Was she dead? There had been a flicker when she said, ‘Supper is ready' but then nothing for ages. She'd better not die when Aisling was there. Of course, she must have expected to die first. There's nothing harder than a mother burying someone she gave life to. She heard it said often enough to her mother.

The story of Katharina and the aunt were a bit like Mum and Michael. She hated it when her Mum danced around him – both of them pulling each other's strings and knowing nothing of each other. Michael wore a pullover that his mother bought him not because he liked it himself but because she chose it. She asked him once. Do you really like that silly pattern? He shrugged. It's O.K. She wanted to shake him then. She hated her mum anticipating what he wanted but she hated Michael even more for pleasing her. Everything was OK those days and she knew it wasn't. ‘You're such a fucking goody-goody angel,' she said to him the day before he topped himself. He looked at her in the eyes. ‘No I'm not. I'm even worse than you think I am,' he paused and gave that weird grin with his mouth to one side, ‘Even worse than you.'

‘Don't think I don't know why you hang out at Fiona's so much. I know it's not Fiona you're interested in. But I know her big brother's not like you – he likes women.' She said the last bit in her sexiest voice. It wasn't true, he'd never come on to her but she was gratified – Michael looked worried. ‘Don't worry – I'm not going to go blabbing any of your secrets. Why should I? They say that it goes with being a Mammy's boy so I'm not surprised.'

And if she had shut her mouth then or if she had told her parents then, would he be still alive? He knew she had the power of a blackmailer. She could smoke a joint openly in front of him without fear of tell-tales. She used to wish she had something wicked enough to hide from their parents to make a secret a burden to him. Stupid wishes can come true sometimes she'd learnt and was more careful with her wishes. Her mother was always on her back looking for signs of ‘new boyfriends' – whiffing out signs of sex. Some nice young man to bury the memory of the unborn. Boyfriends! It said it all. Immature gropers without style or substance.

There were too many like Jamie who still acted like he'd done her a favour by screwing her. If anybody had told her the first time would hurt like that and that there would be so much blood she wouldn't have done it with him. Worst of all was him banging away and hurting her she couldn't stop him. She'd put her favourite beach towel on the bed under them – just as well – blood leaking everywhere and semen spewing out of the rubber, like guts spilled out: it made her feel sick. She hurt for days after too. He couldn't look at her straight in the eye after. I didn't know you were a virgin. She said a Hail Mary so fast he had to laugh. At least that bit was over with when she did it with Maeve's dad and he made sure she came.

Losing Maeve meant meant losing transport too. Meant brazening it out to a city-centre gang once too often for comfort. Throw the phone and coin purse and run. Maeve had her own car – a 21
^st
birthday present from her parents. Even if her own parents had the money, they'd never part with it for a car for her. Her dad said so. In his view it was safer to buy your own car when you could afford it. Another reason Aisling moved back home after Michael died. She'd decided she wanted her own car and it was easier to persuade her parents to let her drive their car and to take lessons in it when she was living at home plus the fact that living didn't cost her anything and her dad never thought to reduce her allowance so she had the satisfaction of seeing her savings move into four figures – enough to get her a pair of wheels but not enough to pay the insurance. She would take her test when she got back. That and being over twenty-one should get her into a cheaper bracket. She'd get a letter from her Dad's insurance company too to say that she had been driving since she was seventeen and never had an accident. True because she hardly ever drove.

Brigitte's hinting at unimaginable horrors annoyed her. Aisling wanted the details not hints and fears. It didn't take an expert to work out that Katharina was conceived during the war. She wanted to find out whether Katharina was born from rape. She made a point of asking very deliberately about the dates when Brigitte was in that camp so that Brigitte would know she guessed something so she might as well tell her straight out. Surely Katharina did the same. Her Gran had only once talked of Katharina in front of Aisling and said something about Brigitte's ‘lovechild'. Aisling couldn't connect the dead old woman she had seen in the coffin with something that sounded as romantic as lovechild even if everyone knew it was just a euphemism for bastard. Gran didn't know about Katharina's origins. It was enough to know there was no husband for Brigitte. ‘I used to wonder why she didn't have the baby adopted. That's what would have happened if she'd had it in Ireland.'

She decided to push the aunt a bit harder if she woke up. The “Erste Frühling” had revived her interest in comic-strip stories. She'd looked up ‘graphic novel' on the net and found there was a lot more to comic-book stories in the years after she had tired of fantasy and horror and stopped visiting Forbidden Planet and Sub-City in Dublin. When she went to university she was reluctant to be seen as a dork or a comic-book nerd. She'd tried manga with a promise of a more adult story-line than American superheroes for teens but the Japanese-style graphics annoyed her. She'd given up too soon. There was more on offer. Graphic novels were now being described as ‘sequential art', as ‘literary storytelling'. She liked the sound of one about James Joyce's daughter written by a daughter about her own father. A mix of past and present. She'd order it when she got home to Dublin. Meantime there were comic-book shops in Berlin. Plenty of them. Good for outings and exploration. Bound to be better than Dublin. But not sequential. More like a montage like a film rather than a story with a straightforward timeline. Not flashbacks either. Montage of memory but with hindsight.

Maybe a private practice with the story of Gerry. The times when it felt like Gerry and Aisling. In another place, the age gap wouldn't be so important. So what if he was Maeve's dad. Grow up she felt like saying. True at the beginning and the end Gerry was Maeve's Dad more than his own man. Mounting in the middle. Grown adults taking pleasure. Nobody's loss. Happier Gerry probably having sex again with Anne. Catholic guilt creeping in again to turn a good fuck into an incident. Maeve's horror at her reaction, “You're not even ashamed.” Sorry to be found out. Sorry the pleasure was spoiled by the brown envelope solution. Montage into Maeve's Dad and Anne's husband again. No lover boy left. Not quite true as he came back again in fantasy fucking. No wonder Brigitte was all over the place. She probably saw Günter in Katharina. Nobody else to share the image. Lonely too maybe.

Aisling made a pot of tea and rattled the cups. It worked but neither of them ate much or said much. The aunt insisted on helping clear away. She had her own way of stacking the dishwasher – some method that Aisling hadn't mastered yet and had no inclination to. Let her do it herself. She waited until they were sitting again. The first really warm evening since she arrived. She opened the big windows wide onto the street and sat with half an eye on passers-by.

‘I've been thinking about the Lager. It's a bit hard to imagine. Did they torture you?'

‘You may think you want to know but you don't really young lady,' her aunt's tone was regretful – not as bossy as usual.

‘But I'd like to know. It would do you good to get it off your chest.'

‘Katharina has sent you to torture me.'

‘Hey come off it. I only asked!'

Brigitte closed her eyes and her head fell forward to her chest. Aisling waited to see if it was one of those two-minute dozes or if her head would go back and the snoring would start – then she might be gone for an hour or so. But this time, it seemed like she wasn't asleep at all. She started speaking even before she lifted her head.

‘Maybe it is not so shocking for you young people to-day. You see everything on the TV and in films. You watch images of lots of blood and violence. You think you can rewind the film again and people will come back to life. Even in Ireland, so many people blown to bits in those Troubles – bits of bodies collected in black plastic bags after a bomb in the street with no warning. If they'd known a real war, they wouldn't be so quick to start one. I was glad I was living here then.'

‘It was mostly in the North. We didn't see much of it in Dublin – just on the news.' Aisling wasn't going to be side-tracked like that. She wanted a story with face-to-face reality not some story of anonymous plastic bags. Real images in her mind to inspire her. A mix of reality and fiction. Some graphics without words because she would use her skill in creating images to tell the story combined with what was common knowledge.

‘So did many people die in that camp?'

‘You are more persistent than Katharina. Or is it I am older now or you are younger? I don't know how many – thousands of course but how many thousands I have no idea. The deaths of people I knew were enough for me. Katharina was good with the numbers of people killed by the Nazis but the thousands or millions made no sense to me. Day-to-day death is harder to count. Worst of all were the days when you wished it were yourself. ‘