Necessary Lies by Eva Stachniak

carefully gathers the crumbs from the table.
    â€œLeave it,” Käthe says. “They can clean it up,
nein
? That’s their job.” She always says the same thing, and Anna always nods and keeps cleaning. This is what she has learned long ago, a thing William found so hard to do. “Just nod and do your own thing,” she kept telling him, “it’s not impossible.”
    Käthe points to a small lamp by her bed. “Touch it,” she says. Anna touches the brass base with her finger. The lamp lights up.
    â€œJulia gave it to me,” she says. “It’s very convenient. I don’t have to look for a switch when I wake up at night.”
    â€œIt’s nice,” Anna says. “Very nice.”
    It was William who has made Anna think of his childhood as lacking. “Deprived” is the word he used. A war, he said, can be an excuse to deny a lot to a child.
    â€œThere was never enough love,” he said, and Anna thought of a little boy pulling at his mother’s skirt. He could plead and whine all he wanted and the most Käthe would do was to tell him to stop it, or hand him over to his nanny. He always felt the sting of her stubborn, silent mourning for his father.
    Bel ami, bel ami, bel ami!
he remembered the song from some afternoon tea-room, in Breslau, his mouth full of poppyseed cake, crumbs falling onto a tiny china plate with little flowers all around it. This was an unusual time, his mother was smiling then, listening to the song. For a moment her face was carefree, and so pretty that he thought her an angel. She was wearing a white dress with a v-shaped collar, with a single pink rose pinned to it. He felt a desire to put his head on her breasts, quickly, to feel the beating of her heart before she had the time to stop him. She was tossing her hair back and then, suddenly, as if she could read his thoughts, her face grew tense, and she sat up straight. “Let’s go, Willi,” she said, ignoring his protests. He had not even finished his cake.
    â€œIs that all that happened?” Anna asked. It seemed to her strange that he would remember a moment of such little consequence. There could have been so many reasons to hurry.
    No, he didn’t like it when she said things like that. He didn’t want her to find ordinary explanations for what he had felt. His mother was full of them, too. “But it was the war, Willi. Your grandfather was in prison! Those were dangerous times!” Words like these came too late, he said, and only after he had complained of her silence. A belated effort to soften his heart, or maybe just one more call of duty, a little, self-satisfied station on his mother’s way of the cross. How could she hope to atone for all the incomprehensible moments of harshness? To make him forget the sharp pulling of his arm, her kisses that brushed his skin lightly without leaving a trace. His mother never raised her voice. He used to dread her calm more than he would dread an outburst, her subtle sighs of resignation echoed by every wall in the room.
    This was a dangerous zone Anna was trying to enter, a minefield of hurt feelings. She may have learnt quickly what not to say, but that didn’t mean she understood.
    William said that his mother had always kept him at arm’s length. He liked this expression; it suited what he wanted to convey. Not too far, and not close enough. He was her duty, her responsibility so faithfully fulfilled, but he was not her joy. When Anna objected that there must have been other times, he conceded. Yes, during that terrible winter trek from Breslau. When he thought he would die and she, holding him close to her, promised he wouldn’t. She kept me warm, he said. She fed me. Then, there was nothing more important than hot cabbage soup and fur gloves she somehow managed to get. But as soon as they were out of danger she was back to her old ways.
    His presence, William would tell Anna, was