Bone and Blood (17 page)

Maybe none of it was true. It was confusing. Brigitte never used the word ‘Ravensbrück'. Aisling had guessed it from Katharina's collection. You never heard much about it. People were always going on about Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Bergen – Belsen. Weird. Stuck here with an old woman who was out of her mind. And what if she was sane?

Brigitte looked at her, ‘Once you take such a story into your heart, then you also have blood on your hands. Once you really know that other human beings, that other women are capable of such an act, you know that you are capable of it too. It is easier not to know but once you know something, you cannot not know it. You are old enough to know that.'

‘Yeah,' Aisling admitted, ‘but I think all this business about everyone being capable of it is just a big guilt trip. Not everyone did it. You said yourself that the bibelthingies didn't behave like that even if they were left standing and hungry for longer.'

‘That's the point. The Bibelki had the strength and grace of their belief to take them beyond that anger. They had knowledge – or some of them anyway. Once you really know another human being, you know what they are capable of and you can see yourself in her and her in you. But you need to know that to have the strength to refuse or forgive. It is easier not to know.'

Aisling stopped herself from asking, ‘What about Monika?' Instead she said, ‘Knowing what you are capable of and doing it are poles apart.'

‘There is always choice in it,' Anna said. The guards chose that women's fate as another way to make us see ourselves as no better than animals. And if we were no better than animals, then they had the right to control us. To get control of your spirit, your ‘Geist' again, you had to know the depths and know how to climb up from there.'

‘And if you really know it, then you are as evil as the most evil,' Aisling retorted.

‘Yes. So it is. It is knowledge that is hard. It is easier not to know, so it is easier not to believe just as it is easier not to talk about that place. Once I thought sharing something with Mary would help. I could find a way to believe myself without going crazy. I made the mistake of telling some parts of my story to Katharina. She was an inquisitive child. Then she had such nightmares. She spent her time working out how to escape or hide if soldiers came for us, even as a teenager when people died as the wall was being built. I learnt it was better not to bring back those memories.'

Her face softened. ‘Sometimes I told myself I had imagined the worst, that it was a story told to frighten me. Blamed my poor understanding of German. That it was a nightmare on one of those days and nights when every day was a waking nightmare. Then I would see Anna's face and hear her prayers and I knew she does not lie.'

Aisling found herself torn between wanting to be drawn into belief and wanting her own scepticism to win. She was silent now. She had got what she was looking for– something so evil that it gave her goose bumps. How could she use it? She liked the Aunt's angle; making everyone responsible. You could make a great horror-comic out of the images but one without baddies and goodies – horror lurking everywhere under the surface. Too many comic books were just like novels with the good triumphing over evil. Not true to life. A good story with a bit more depth was needed for a graphic novel.

‘Das Badezimmer ist frei.'

Aisling was tired and ignored Brigitte calling out to tell her the bathroom was free. There were some things Brigitte seemed incapable of saying in English. Usually, Aisling took it as an alarm call to get up, washed and out for ‘Brötchen'. The trip out for fresh bread and rolls was a part of the breakfast ritual that she really enjoyed. Queuing was even fun because she had to decide which to buy for herself – plain white crusty rolls; or triangles with crunchy pumpkin seeds; or a round one with sunflower seeds; or a rectangle of rye; or a ‘Splitterbrötchen', which she liked better than croissants. They knew her now and would repeat what she said in German smiling at her. Brigitte had one white roll but she always told Aisling to buy five. Every other day there was the big decision on which half-loaf of bread they should have for ‘Abendbrot'. Aisling preferred the rolls and would eat what was left over from breakfast for snacks in the day.

But this morning she stayed in bed. She couldn't sleep. She wished she could rewind the evening back. Wished she had gone out after Abendbrot. The old woman was right. Secrets are better left buried. Once they are out they change things.

Something was finished but what? Graphics and more graphics needed for the graphic description. She should have binned the vicious cartoon she drew of Maeve instead of showing it to Cathy, who loved it of course. Queen Maeve. The hurt in her eyes worse than the cold, silent mouth. ‘Maybe the cartoon was worse than having sex with her dad. Thankfully Michael tore up the cartoon strips she did of him. No more. The price was too high. This would have to be different.

Brigitte was dismissive when Aisling had asked about Katharina's books. Books and more books about the times Brigitte wanted to forget. Memorials, lectures, exhibitions to drag back times and deeds better forgotten. She sat up in bed and reached for her drawing pad. Skinny, striped people walked from the tip of the pencil stub in her hand as she leafed through. “Everyday life in a Women's Concentration Camp1939-1945”. Graphic artists there too. Drawings and portraits. Compare the French “Living Room” – black lines of half-starved people – with the plumper Czech quarters. Different times? Different treatment? Different backgrounds?

She waited until long past the usual breakfast-ritual time. When she did get up about 11.30, the breakfast things were still on the table. Brigitte had moved to her favourite chair and was dozing. She roused herself then and muttered an attempt at a polite, ‘Did you sleep well?'

Aisling said, ‘Fine thanks.' No apologies. She'd done nothing wrong, had she? Aisling prepared a breakfast like she did at home – toast and some juice – usually eaten at the breakfast bar on her own. She took a tray into the dining room. Brigitte said ‘Guten Appetit' and then nothing more. She said ‘Good appetite' in German before every meal. It was a Sunday. Yola didn't come on Sundays. Aisling cleared the things away on her own while Brigitte dozed. She hated this feeling of being out of place – not knowing where to put things. She swore she would keep the ritual for the next few days – it was easier.

As an attempt at a peace offering Aisling showed her the graphic novel she had been reading, “Der Erste Frühling”: a retelling of a family story in 1945. Easy to read German especially with the graphics.

‘A comic-book – do you think I'm a child? I can read German! I don't chose to read about those times.' So this “comic-book” was one more attempt to get the aunt to recall. The present tense touched a gutstring. Strumming sounds for graphics stripping across her brain.

‘Graphics are not just for children! Graphic novels are for adults too.' The best novel I have ever read and the best film is all graphics – a Persian woman Persepolis. Protective of my secret heroine. The one I wish to be.

Brigitte spotted it. Her turn to put the needle under the skin. No pathetic old dear but a sparring partner without gloves. Never heard of comic –strip novels. Why did Aisling care about comic books when she cared so little about anything else. Rhetorical.

Defensive then. ‘I do cartoons'

‘I suppose you draw me too? An old biddy waking her daughter alone and waiting for her own death.' Brigitte laughed at her when she blushed then.

‘Alone? I'm here.'

‘So you are.' Shrewd eyes to see through her. ‘You're not as bad as you think you are.'

What did she mean by that?

Brigitte blinked out the sunshine. She would ask Aisling to draw the curtain when she came in from the kitchen. So many moments of sunshine flashing back. The still blue heat of that beach in Greece. Once upon a time they lived happier ever after in those moments of sunshine. Now it washed over her and ebbed out on a draught of air swept in by the voile curtain. It took with it that glimmer of the first Spring when sunshine could tempt her out of the cellar. When she moved from the cellar, she wrote her name on the frame of the main door as she had seen others do. If Dieter or Delia came to look they would know she was alive. She cried as she left the half-ruined building – tears that didn't flow for Anna.

Sunshine carried her belly in search of work and food for new life, when she wanted only to die. Brick by brick she scraped and piled. Happy to help the city stagger to its feet and dare to put its full face to the sun again. Kaffee with Adelheid on the pavement at the Café on Kurfürstendamm, wishing she had taken off her headscarf and rolled her hair. Some of the women were even wearing hats. ‘Did they live through our war?' Adelheid muttered in her ear.

The rhythm of years when autumn followed summer year after year merging now. Brigitte closed her eyes to catch the roast glow of autumn sunshine chasing the heels of her Katharina – catch a leaf and make a wish she called out. Rehberge Park – collecting leaves together for a school project. The feeling of pride swelling up inside me – she was only five years old and already she could tell the names of trees, and her Mama had to buy a dictionary to find the name in English. The only leaf that Mama could be sure of was the oak.

‘But Mama' – her forehead wrinkled with that old woman look she had sometimes– ‘you lived in the country. Have they no trees in Ireland?'

The pain that shot up her leg opened her eyes again and she saw only Peggy's granddaughter – to-day the sharp face paler than Katharina's in the coffin. No make-up. Probably they put make-up on dead people these days. Katharina would hate that: she never wore make-up. Maybe this child will help me kill those moments of joy so that I can let go. The pain of remembered joy – maybe greater because it was so unexpected – is the worst. But who can ever say they know the worst?

Things could be worse. Irma laughed at that even on the long march towards what we thought was likely death. Luckily her laugh was the laugh of a happy camper, low and throaty, and ready to change to a cough at any moment. My mother hated the saying because the pessimist used it to escape the moments of joy in life – always imagining something more hurtful or heart-breaking than what had happened already, which was bad enough. The optimist used it to say what had happened, which was bad enough, was not as bad as some other imaginary event. The explanation took several kilometres because so much of her energy was taken up with putting one foot in front of the other. The longer the better. She even tried to tell some Irish stories in German. The mental effort raised the pain from her feet. Telling stories to ‘shorten the road' was always the way especially coming home from the bog on a summer evening after making the most of a dry, sunny day. Thoughts of the bog, back-breaking work and being bitten by midges had kept her in Berlin. Now even that was a glimpse of heaven.

‘The Irish should be philosophers of death,' Irma said one day but she did not understand what she meant. She still didn't understand it. Irma could imitate my words and accent in English, ‘You have helped shorten the road for me.' They didn't know yet how long or short the road would be.

Aisling shifted uncomfortably in the silence. Brigitte was stranger than usual to-day and she couldn't help worrying that she'd pushed her too far last night. It wasn't going to be easy stuck here until the funeral. Monika had rung yesterday. The funeral would be on Thursday. Maybe they could enter the Guinness Book of records for the longest wake ever. At Michael's wake, she had hated the people who tried to cheer them up by remembering the good times. But maybe it was different when you died as an old person. When one of Gran's friends died, she would talk and laugh about the times they had together more often than she would cry about them.

If only this was a proper wake, at least with people calling around, you didn't have time to sit being morbid. It made it easier to talk of normal things – the weather, the TV or holidays without feeling that it was some sort of sacrilege. Here with Brigitte, there was so little for them to talk about. It seemed safer to stick to the only subject that she cared about.

‘Do you have any other photos of Katharina?' Aisling's eyes indicated the one that always sat by Brigitte within touching distance.

Brigitte looked down at Aisling's feet wound round the legs of the chair. The girl rarely relaxed. Words came to her lips but she bit them back, letting them loose only in her head, ‘Don't be polite with me, young lady. I know your weakness. I can smell it. If you are going to survive you have to know it too.' She permitted herself just a small twist of the knife that Aisling had given her. The girl had her own reasons for getting away from Dublin – that suited Brigitte fine. She had no need to feel any sense of obligation.

‘Do you use photos to bring back memories of your brother?'

Aisling hated Brigitte then – hated her for the casual swinge of the blade that sought out her weak spot but hated her even more because she saw through Aisling's veneer of visiting relative. Revenge for the break in their ritual. ‘That's different… I didn't… I'm not a mother.' Her childhood stammer came through her anger.

‘You didn't what? Maybe you didn't love him enough? Maybe you wished him dead sometimes. Maybe you would have behaved differently if you knew he was going to die. Maybe you know what it is to feel guilty.'

The cruel bitch, did she know something more or was she guessing? Surely Gran never guessed any of it and what would she know anyway and what would she tell – sister or no sister? It was her own evil mind. Aisling turned it back to her, ‘So what if I teased him sometimes. Why not? He did worse to me and to my cat. Should I feel guilty for that now – just because he topped himself?'

There – it was out. What she wasn't allowed to say. It was no accident. Everybody thought it, even Mum but no-one was allowed to admit it. Brigitte didn't seem to register it so say no more and hope for the best. She's hardly going to big mouth it to Gran. ‘There's something about Brigitte, Bridget, Biddy that is different from other people, I've met,' Aisling thought then, ‘Could it be just that she's a mix of Irish and German? Not that: in some ways she's more Irish than Gran. It's something about not play-acting a role. She's not the ‘poor mother', the ‘grand aunt'. It leaves space for me to think about who I am. ‘Very profound, I'm sure, Aisling. Maybe you should switch to philosophy at uni next year,' she told herself. Time out would be best but how to keep her allowance. Maybe even time out in Berlin?

‘Are you sure everything is OK? It's taking long enough?' Text exchange with her father again. ‘Everything is fine.' She wanted to do this herself. To be treated like a whole person for a change. She wanted to be away from Michael's ghost long enough to work out what her next step would be. Bad and all as Biddy was, she treated Aisling like an equal.

Brigitte sat with half-closed eyes.

‘Are you O.K.?'

‘O.K.? I will never be O.K. now. Katharina's agony was worse than anything else I have ever suffered. I thought I had accepted all the suffering in the past – even the time she left me to live with her Jules. But watching her die made me question everything again. I asked myself, what if I had been prepared to die like one of those martyrs from my mother's prayer book, then this suffering would never have come into the world. Maybe I could have chosen death not violation and gone straight to heaven.' She paused. ‘Even that is not true,' she added quietly, ‘There was no real threat of death. And what was violation? Surely more resistance than I felt or showed after the first time. How to tell her I was more afraid of the blockowa than of him? Which would be better? The child of a rape or the child of consent with a Nazi? I couldn't work out which would hurt her least.'

Aisling found herself touched by a novel sense of gentleness and forgiveness. Where did it come from? She watched as Brigitte searched around for a cigarette.

‘You shouldn't smoke; it's bad for you.'

Brigitte laughed her odd, crackling laugh making Aisling's mouth water for the taste of her bitter chocolate.

‘You mean it might kill me. Hardly before the funeral and afterwards it would suit me very well. If I had the courage back then, I would have killed both of us. I wished myself dead so often it was a surprise to me that I lived and a shock to find the child I didn't want to bring into the world could bring me such happiness.' Brigitte drew on the cigarette and blew the smoke into the air. Aisling watched it rise.

‘Oh, we had happy times – happiness that I never expected to find. A pure gift. But once you have that happiness, you want to hold onto it and that is where you make the mistake. If you live to be as old as me, you might learn how wrong you can be about everything.'

For a moment Aisling felt the power in her own hands. Maybe I can turn on the happy times; or go for the secrets; the guilt; the story that silence couldn't hide? It was a good feeling. Like something had happened inside her. She surprised herself when she went for the kinder option without the kicks.