The Prosperous Thief (19 page)

She was thirteen at the end of the war. Hannah and Jonathon had looked after her well, and even though Willi had been away most of the time, he had written to her often and when he visited always made sure to spend most of his time with her. Yet it felt as if she had lived those war years in some pretend place, cut off from her real life. With the end of the war, her normal life, so long put on hold, would begin again.

Willi was again in Oxford and all of England was celebrating, even those like the Kerrs next door who, from Alice’s point of view, had little cause for celebration given their younger son had lost a leg and their older son his life. Everyone was saying life would return to normal but how could it for Alice, a German-Jewish girl still living in England without her mother and father?

On the day Hannah and Jonathon took the train to London, leaving Willi to look after her, Alice knew this was no routine trip. She did not ask why they were going to London, had learned long ago that good news would be good whenever it happened, but even the possibility of bad news – the worst news, the news you have dreaded for six years – cannot be encouraged in any way. She tried hard not to be anxious. But there were the letters and they refused to be ignored. Or rather the silences. Her mother’s letters had stopped more than a year before her father’s, and the last letter from her father had arrived ten months ago. Alice knew her mother had been taken to Auschwitz, and while people had survived there, Alice was quite aware they were very few compared with the millions who had died. But when you’re desperate it’s easy to convince yourself that those you love will be spared. So she continued to be good, to do nothing wrong, standing calmly on the Oxford train station waving goodbye to the Mosers, so frantic with fear and worry she did not trust herself to speak.

Hannah and Jonathon returned from London the following afternoon. They entered the house looking more ragged than usual. There were brief greetings before Jonathon took Willi into one room and Hannah took Alice into another.

Hannah came straight to the point. Auschwitz, she said, had few survivors and Alice’s mother was not among them. As for her father, he too was dead, although had nearly survived. Alice wanted to ask: what does ‘nearly survived’mean, when anything less than ‘survived’ – nearly, almost, not quite – means dead? But kept quiet, and trampled her tears instead. Her father, according to Hannah, had died just before the end of the war, probably of typhus.‘Probably?’ Now Alice couldn’t stop herself, only to be told,
definitely
dead and
probably
of typhus. How can they be so sure? How can
you
be so sure? But said nothing: even to argue against the information was to give it more credence than she had courage for.

A half-hour later she and Willi, Hannah and Jonathon were together again in the living room. Words were hard to find.

Jonathon poured glasses of sherry, Hannah turned on the wireless, the cat played with his toy teddy bear, both Willi and Alice were pale and tight. Eventually Willi spoke: he would be leaving for Palestine as soon as possible as there was nothing to hold him in England. But there is, there is, Alice wanted to protest, there’s me. But trebly orphaned now, she kept her griefs to herself.

In that single miserable afternoon Alice became the person people leave. There must be something terribly wrong with her, she decided, so best to hide her flaws, hide who she really was if she was ever to have a chance at life. Although at that moment, with her parents not coming back and Willi about to leave, there was nothing she could see to recommend life. Indeed if not for the Mosers who had been so good to her, she would have taken her rotten life and tossed it to the winds. Instead, she learned how to play-act an acceptable Alice. Pretend you’re someone else, the drama teacher at school used to say, and would praise Alice for her ability. Now Alice applied her talents to her everyday life. It was unbearable to think of herself without her mother and father, an orphan just like the children in storybooks, so she didn’t. It was unbearable to think of being without Willi, so she didn’t. It was impossible to fill the gaps left by those she loved, so she didn’t. It was far easier, she discovered, to change herself.

She played the role of good student at school, and the role of good ward at home. She played the role of good English child when they were in England and good American girl once they moved to California. She played the role of good friend so well she found herself to be very popular. But in her dreams the roles fell away and she would cry for the parents who year by year were fading, and cry for a loneliness she felt she ought not feel, and dream German-language dreams of her American life. And in the morning she would wake with the shadow of her past hovering sad and unreachable in front of her.

Unlike her dreams, her public performances served her well. When a month after their first meeting Phil Carter told her he loved her, she realised she had added another role to her repertoire. Not that this had been deliberate, for she liked Phil, most of all she liked the fact that Phil was so different from her. Solid, predictable, so sure of himself, he was a man who liked people and was likeable himself. He had a bit of humour, a bit of seriousness, he played a good but not exceptional game of racquetball, a good but not exceptional game of baseball. He was practical like his parents, considerate too, but not particularly sensitive. He had no feeling for art and music, but neither, Alice had noticed, did most husbands. His passion, apart from her, was for vintage cars – Oldsmobiles, a good solid American car, according to Phil, for whom American was always best.

Phil was a man who liked what he already had, so Alice knew he would never stray and certainly would never leave her. He was a reliable man: apart from the occasional beer, he didn’t drink and he never gambled. And he’d be a good provider. Following graduation he had been snapped up by one of the foremost construction companies in the Bay Area and, by the time he proposed, had been promoted twice. Phil Carter, with no connection to the Holocaust and not even Jewish, was bedrock.

Her choice of husband had served her well. Not for her the depressions and illnesses of other Holocaust survivors. Whenever her spirits started to flag, Phil would remind her of everything that was good in her life – her consolations, he used to call them.

Such a different matter with her son. While Phil had separated her from the past, Raphe seemed to reforge the connection. Running through her son was the blood of her dead parents, and emerging from his face, the face of her father. In Raphe, her past, present and future seemed to coalesce. In him more than anyone else her past had come alive.

‘Tell me about my grandfather,’ hewould say over and over again.

And she would recall her father, the gentle man whom everyone had liked. And as she talked, Martin would re-emerge, a small, neat figure in the flat at Krefeld, drinking his coffee, reading to his daughter, playing games with her, talking with her. And she would look at her young son,‘You’re so like him, Raphe. So like him.’

Phil worried about both of them.‘This dwelling on the past is not doing the boy any good,’ he would say to Alice. And more gently,‘Raphe can’t replace your losses.’

Alice knew this, but she knew equally that Phil had missed the point. This boy, her only flesh and blood, was doubly precious because of all she had lost. And because of the resemblance to Martin, he was also a living link with her father.

But not the only link, she was now thinking. For there was this stranger, this Henry Lewin in Melbourne, Australia. Here, possibly, was a real and tangible connection to her father. She didn’t know what to do. Raphe of course would want to contact the man immediately. But there was so much more at stake, her carefully constructed life for a start. She decided it would be best to keep Henry Lewin to herself until she had thought the matter through.

It was dark and chilly in the park. Alice checked her watch, time to set off for St Martin in the Fields. With the skill and determination of an expert she directed her thoughts away from the archive, away from Phil, away from her dead parents, away from the past, and most assiduously away from the unknown Henry Lewin in Melbourne, Australia. But as she made her way down to Trafalgar Square to meet her son, Henry Lewin kept creeping in. This man who might have known her father at the very end, who might have had conversations with him, who might have heard him speak of his wife and young daughter, who might know if her father had suffered, who might reveal how very nearly her father could have survived. This unknown man kept intruding and would not go away.

A Meeting in the Woods, Northern Germany, April 1945

T
he end of the war is fast approaching and the entire country is on the move. After the best six years of his life, Heinrik Heck now finds himself back on the losing side. It’s a miserable situation to be in, particularly when he thought his luck had changed for good. Although given his record, he now realises, he should have known he’d chanced on nothing more than a lucky detour. But what a detour! He started as a nobody and six years later he’s running the officers’ mess at the Belsen camp. Not a bad war when you come to think about it: steady employment, plenty of food and a full set of dentures to boot.

‘What can you do for Germany?’ he was asked when he first enlisted, and always quick on his feet, said he could cook. And a good choice it was. Cooks were more essential to the war effort than almost anyone else and, as it happened, less likely to be killed. But now with peace marching through the countryside, a peace that would bring no joy to Germany, Heini guesses that a German cook from the gutter will be no use to anyone. In fact, he can see himself heading straight back to a slum room in the Scheunenviertel and doing it tough. Which is why he’s getting out of Belsen, leaving this very day. The enemy won’t want him except to punish him and the Germans will simply shove him back to where he came from.

He’s not the only one to predict a dim future; there’s a flood of Germans leaving the camp and doing little to disguise it. The war made them all Germans no matter what their background, but Heini knows that defeat is an efficient sorter of men.Yet when he told one of the other cooks what he was planning, the fellow accused him of being a deserter. Deserting what? Heini asked. The army, the other fellow replied, a soldier to the end. But the army is disappearing as we speak, Heini wanted to say. And while you’re sitting here waiting for orders from absent officers, the enemy’s already within smelling distance.

It surprises him the number of men who refuse to see the obvious. After all, it doesn’t require too many brains to realise that if the victorious armies do the right thing they’ll reserve their best for the Jews, or at least what Jews are left, then they’ll look to the people Germany conquered. As for the Germans themselves, ordinary Germans not the bosses, they’ll not warrant a moment’s consideration.

The Jews first, now that’s a laugh. Packed in like worms one day and doing it worse than anyone, then suddenly the Americans arrive, or the British or the bloody Russians, and it’s bratwurst for breakfast. Although Heini would have to admit the Jews were forced to pay up big for their luck. Not that he’s ever been fool enough to believe fairness prevailed for anyone in this life, which is why he’s getting out of here.

He knows he ought to try and find Agathe, but he doesn’t really want to. He’s got no guarantees for her, nor the kid either, and besides, it’s clear they’ve learned to do without him. Nearly two years since he last saw Agathe, and while her letters came thick and fast at first, soon it was a scribbled note every few weeks and not even worth the postage. Then nothing for months. Yet fool that he was he kept writing and hoping, and when finally she decides to respond, he finds he’s all out of patience. Now with more than a year since either made the effort, best to leave well alone. Although it’s a shame about the kid. Such a pretty little thing, and old enough by now to know who her father is, though goodness knows how many fathers have been presented to her since she last saw the real one.

Agathe always knew how to charm a man, certainly she was in no doubt how to charm Heini. There they were in Berlin back in 1938, she working in a factory and a big wheel in the BDM, and he new to the army and learning how to cook. A month later she tells him she’s pregnant and they’re married a short time afterwards in Leipzig. Another year and this time they meet in Dresden where she’s staying with a girlfriend and he sees his daughter for the first time. The baby reminds him of his sister and he says he wants to call her Hilde. That was nearly six years ago and he’s only seen his wife and child a handful of times since, mostly in Leipzig where his in-laws live, and better Agathe and the kid are still there than in Dresden from what he’s heard. He’d have liked to see his daughter again, no doubt about it. But Agathe would have made other plans, so best he do the same.

He makes his way back to the barracks. They’re deserted, in fact, he could turn into a raving lunatic like some of the prisoners here and no one would notice. He lays out his belongings on the bunk, civilian clothes separate from the army issue. After nearly six years of war, the civilian pile is nothing more than a pair of trousers and two shirts; even his coat with the lambswool collar has gone. He adds his army underwear to the civilian pile, then takes his army coat, tears off the insignia and adds it to the pile too. These are the clothes he’ll be taking, the rest he shoves in a locker. Next he turns his attention to his pack of photographs and letters. No letters, he decides, and only one photograph. Eventually he comes down to a choice between a picture of his sister and brother, and one of his daughter. He holds the photos one in each hand, looks at them for a long time, then tears both into tiny pieces. A fresh start, he tells himself, although it makes him feel a bit sad.He packs a few cooking implements – two knives, a wooden spoon and a whisk, everything else is too cumbersome – and the gear he’ll need for camping out, puts everything in his pack and hides it under his bunk until later.