Düsseldorf? Who knows whether Renate’s father’s grave still exists?
‘It’s no way to farewell your mother,’ says Renate as they stand by the fresh mound of dirt.
It is worse when they are back at the flat, the wreckage such raw testimony to the violence of Amalie’s death. Martin starts to sort through the ruins, but Renate sees no point. She clears the debris off an armchair, lays a small cloth over the torn cushion and sits herself down. There’s a raw pain where her mother used to be, a gouged-out emptiness and no one can fill it. It would help if her brother were here, but Erich doesn’t even know his mother is dead. Erich is imprisoned in the Buchenwald camp. They came for him at three o’clock the same morning his mother died. They would have taken his son Willi too, but their instructions were clear: only males over sixteen to be arrested.‘Another month,’ they said, having read Willi’s papers, ‘and we’ll come back for your birthday.’
Renate can be repaired, but not yet. For the moment she doesn’t want to think, doesn’t want to feel. She wants to crouch in a shadowy crevice of her own making, a precarious sanctuary separating the past when her mother was still alive from a future which appears hopeless. She wants to pull down the shutters on thought; she wants to black out the blistering image of Amalie rising above a bunch of thugs in a last heroic act to save her family. She wants to forget until time has given her strength to remember.
As for Alice, she’s only six years old, but after what she has seen, even if she were sixty she would be forever changed. Can a child watch her father being bashed to a bloody husk and not be affected? Can she see her grandmother rise like a phoenix and crash to her death, or witness her mother so immured in grief she is no longer in the world? Can a child see all this and not bear scars? Can she domesticate such horrors and continue with life? Or does she try to snuff out memory and decide that whatever she saw simply did not happen? It’s hard to know with Alice, but if she does remember, she wears her horrors chastely.
It helps she is a practical child who has already learned that if she’s labouring for others she can’t be gnawing at herself. She assists her father with his wounds and her mother with hers. She insists on being the one to go out for food and other essentials – not that there is any alternative in the days following Kristallnacht with her father hardly able to walk and her mother closed to the world. Alice stuffs her terror behind usefulness and tries to convince herself she’ll be safe. She knows she is pretty in a German sort of way, and she’s making a point of shopping in neighbourhoods where her family is not known. And although she’s always been scared of the dark, she is prepared to brave the strange streets late in the day, because no German child of her age would be shopping during school hours. There’s danger everywhere, and as she makes her way home through the dark streets, she fills her head with stories in order to thwart the terrors.
And there’s the trick. In order to do the shopping, to walk the dark streets, to help her mother and her father, to forget her Oma falling down dead, there are some things she cannot allow herself to think – not for a moment, not even for a blink of an eyelid – for, if she did, she too might collapse.
But it is not easy, neither in the streets nor at home. There is a smell to despair and it is distressingly human. It is acid and mould and a smoky sweat, and no matter how much she washes or dabs herself with her mother’s cologne, Alice cannot escape it. She is doing her best not to think about that horrible morning, but her mother’s despair clings to them all.
At night Alice lies in her bed wondering what her family has done so offensive to God that he has made them Jews. If she knew, she would make amends and all of them would be saved and go to America. Being
‘It’s no way to farewell your mother,’ says Renate as they stand by the fresh mound of dirt.
It is worse when they are back at the flat, the wreckage such raw testimony to the violence of Amalie’s death. Martin starts to sort through the ruins, but Renate sees no point. She clears the debris off an armchair, lays a small cloth over the torn cushion and sits herself down. There’s a raw pain where her mother used to be, a gouged-out emptiness and no one can fill it. It would help if her brother were here, but Erich doesn’t even know his mother is dead. Erich is imprisoned in the Buchenwald camp. They came for him at three o’clock the same morning his mother died. They would have taken his son Willi too, but their instructions were clear: only males over sixteen to be arrested.‘Another month,’ they said, having read Willi’s papers, ‘and we’ll come back for your birthday.’
Renate can be repaired, but not yet. For the moment she doesn’t want to think, doesn’t want to feel. She wants to crouch in a shadowy crevice of her own making, a precarious sanctuary separating the past when her mother was still alive from a future which appears hopeless. She wants to pull down the shutters on thought; she wants to black out the blistering image of Amalie rising above a bunch of thugs in a last heroic act to save her family. She wants to forget until time has given her strength to remember.
As for Alice, she’s only six years old, but after what she has seen, even if she were sixty she would be forever changed. Can a child watch her father being bashed to a bloody husk and not be affected? Can she see her grandmother rise like a phoenix and crash to her death, or witness her mother so immured in grief she is no longer in the world? Can a child see all this and not bear scars? Can she domesticate such horrors and continue with life? Or does she try to snuff out memory and decide that whatever she saw simply did not happen? It’s hard to know with Alice, but if she does remember, she wears her horrors chastely.
It helps she is a practical child who has already learned that if she’s labouring for others she can’t be gnawing at herself. She assists her father with his wounds and her mother with hers. She insists on being the one to go out for food and other essentials – not that there is any alternative in the days following Kristallnacht with her father hardly able to walk and her mother closed to the world. Alice stuffs her terror behind usefulness and tries to convince herself she’ll be safe. She knows she is pretty in a German sort of way, and she’s making a point of shopping in neighbourhoods where her family is not known. And although she’s always been scared of the dark, she is prepared to brave the strange streets late in the day, because no German child of her age would be shopping during school hours. There’s danger everywhere, and as she makes her way home through the dark streets, she fills her head with stories in order to thwart the terrors.
And there’s the trick. In order to do the shopping, to walk the dark streets, to help her mother and her father, to forget her Oma falling down dead, there are some things she cannot allow herself to think – not for a moment, not even for a blink of an eyelid – for, if she did, she too might collapse.
But it is not easy, neither in the streets nor at home. There is a smell to despair and it is distressingly human. It is acid and mould and a smoky sweat, and no matter how much she washes or dabs herself with her mother’s cologne, Alice cannot escape it. She is doing her best not to think about that horrible morning, but her mother’s despair clings to them all.
At night Alice lies in her bed wondering what her family has done so offensive to God that he has made them Jews. If she knew, she would make amends and all of them would be saved and go to America. Being
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