The Wish Child Read online

  Ursula said to her sister, ‘Do you think it’s possible to fall in love with letters?’ and Emilie said certainly, because what else could she say now that all the men were paper? They were nothing but letters, photographs, certificates; they were little notes cast from a moving train; they were telegrams.

  *

  In the evenings Emilie removes her headscarf and brushes out her hair. There is so much of it; it hangs down past her waist, as golden and bright as Erich’s. Unpinned and unbraided, she is a girl again. This is how she looked when she first met Christoph, back when she believed her future held many children, when she thought of names and held them inside her: Marco, Annegret, Gustav, Lotte. She pulls these remains from the silt, remembers checking the calendar, counting the days. For months she wondered what was wrong, held her hands to the void of her pelvis and thought: why does nothing take? Here where the new calves raise themselves up on trembling legs, where the glossy hens settle in their nests, where the queen bee lays her thousand eggs, why am I empty? Her sister brewed chasteberry for her to drink and sat with her as she sipped it, steam rising like hope, gone in a breath. And each morning she prayed to the bronze head that Christoph had bought in a shop in Leipzig, asking him to grant her this one wish, and at night he came to her in dreams, not just a head but a complete man, touching her with his bronze fingers, pinning her beneath his cool glinting bulk and sliding inside her until she shivered. She lay on the grass and listened to the lapping of the lake as he moved on top of her, her bronze lover, and daisies and dandelions dug their pollen fists into her back. And when her husband entered her she felt a weightiness forming within, a thick metallic cargo, and she thought of a little bronze child taking hold and beginning to grow, a honey-coloured child buzzing in her, brimming with sweetness.

  Later, at the clinic, they laid her on the white-wrapped bed and parted her legs. This is for the best, they said. You’re right to have agreed to the procedure. They told her not to be afraid of the mask but to breathe normally, to count backwards and to breathe in the gas. And she was not afraid, never had been afraid, and had not only agreed to the procedure but requested it, and she wanted this because it was her duty, and she was proud to do her duty. Ten. Nine. Eight.

  *

  By the end of autumn, the hives are quiet – all the drones have been expelled; all the old and the weak pushed out into the cold. Erich peers inside at the clustering bees. He tells them, ‘Don’t worry. Papa will come home soon.’ Yes, when the windows frost over they will heat pfennigs together on the oven and hold them to the glass so they can see little circles of the garden; they will look at The Life of the Führer in Pictures. But it’s been months since Papa last had leave, and nobody knows when he will be back again. (And what has he buried, what has he burned?)

  ‘Will the war be finished in time for Christmas?’ Erich asks.

  And Mama says, ‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’ – which is not an answer but a question.

  The following week she and Tante Uschi take Erich to church even though it is not Sunday. When they arrive it is already brimming with people, and Erich says, ‘Did somebody die?’

  Tante Uschi says no, nobody died, but time is up – today is the day they have to decide which bell to keep.

  ‘Why do we have to decide?’ says Erich.

  ‘We’re only allowed one,’ says Tante Uschi. ‘The Führer needs the rest, for the war.’

  ‘Oh,’ says Erich. He wants to ask what the Führer will do with all the bells, and whether he needs them for a victory parade to celebrate the end of the war, but the mayor has made his way to the front of the church and is starting to speak.

  ‘The Hosanna is the oldest and therefore the most precious,’ he says. ‘This is the bell we must keep.’

  ‘But the Saint Paul is the most beautifully cast,’ says Herr Kuppel. ‘Consider its border of vine leaves, its elegant inscription.’

  ‘The Luther is the most technically perfect,’ says Frau Ingwer. ‘A noted campanologist mentions it in a book.’

  ‘The Saint Gabriel has the sweetest voice,’ says the pastor. ‘I first rang it when I was six years old, and I remember the rope lifting me into the air, taking me up inside the belfry, up and up until I thought I might touch heaven, and the bird-like voice of the bell was falling down around me.’

  ‘The Luther is the heaviest.’

  ‘The Hosanna can be heard as far as Leipzig.’

  ‘The Saint Gabriel saved the village from fire.’

  Nobody can decide.

  ‘Can we not refuse to give up our bells?’ says a voice from the back of the church.

  Everybody turns to look at the person who has uttered this extraordinary statement: Oma Kröning. Other villages and towns have hidden their bells, she says; covered them over with piles of timber, buried them in the ground. The people there are aware of the penalties if caught, but have decided they cannot choose just one bell to keep at the expense of the other bells.

  Erich’s village is not such a village, however.

  And when they come to take the bells, they take them all.

  *

  In January they watch the lake as it freezes, Erich and Mama, each day checking the depth of the ice, each day creeping a little further across its thickening skin. When Mama says it is safe they will strap blades to their feet and glide across the frozen water, and she will teach him how to spin without falling. Choose a fixed point, she will say. Keep your eye on it as you turn. And if he feels himself losing his balance, if he sees the world tilting on its side and the ice rushing towards him, he might for a moment make out dark shapes moving beneath the surface – but she will take his hand and steady him, her face bright with cold, queen of the ice. This pains me more than I care to say. I have no fixed point. I am nowhere, I am nothing. I have never taken my mother’s hand and walked across the water; I have never heard the crack and hush as a branch gives way to snow; I have never seen my breath in winter.

  *

  When spring arrives and the meadows begin to shine with buttercups and cowslips and violets, Erich watches the orchard for swarms. Mama trusts him to go there on his own, but she reminds him not to speak to the foreign workers if he sees them there, or anywhere else, for that matter. I almost wish we had Lina back, she says – but Lina has finished her six months’ service, and now they must make do with these other workers, even though they are not German.

  Erich sits amongst the hives, the sun hot on his upturned face, and if he looks at it even for a moment – though Mama says he must not – it is still there when he closes his eyes, a ghost star in a ghost sky, a backwards day. He can hear the bees bursting back into life after the winter. He knows how to catch them if they swarm, how to guide them to one of the empty hives. Perhaps, he thinks, he could shut them in a box and send them to Papa in Russia, and Papa could release them, a wonder weapon, an army too small to be hit by any bullet, and they would sting the enemy in the throat and the temples and the heart and then sink to their own splendid deaths.

  He glances around – did someone speak? Are the foreign workers hiding in the orchard, whispering in their own language, making secret plans? But no, they are nowhere to be seen; it is only the beehives, talking softly of the lives they used to have. They rest their blank eyes on him: Great-Onkel Gustav, who fell at Saint-Privat, and beautiful Luise, Opa Kröning’s first love, and the Frankish butcher and the black-hatted pastor, and the moneylender, and Saint John the Baptist. In the slow hours of my death we marched in the high heat of August, they say, their stories jumbling together. We came in at the battle’s end, they brought me their souls. He remembers Oma Kröning sitting on his bed when he had pneumonia and telling him about the hives. And he remembers that she asked him if he would like Papa to carve one that had his face, and that he said yes when he meant no, no, no.

  You Too Belong to the Führer

  No      of      from

  And no     of the     ones

  Who a
re still guarding       ,

  Which, taking leave, seeks its   .

  No      of   ,

  And no      of the

  Who could never rouse youth to   ,

  Who     , whilst all around   is     .

  April 1943

  Berlin

  Sprint 60 metres in 14 seconds. Jump a distance of two metres. Throw a ball 12 metres. Perform two forward rolls; stand up without using your hands. Perform two backward rolls. Run beneath a swinging rope. There will be a test of courage.

  On the eve of the twentieth of April, Sieglinde Heilmann dresses in her new uniform. It is still far too early to leave for the celebration, but she cannot wait any longer knowing that the brown jacket and dark-blue skirt are hanging in her wardrobe. They are a perfect fit, and she looks just as she should: clean and tidy, hair combed and braided, face scrubbed, no evidence of unsuitable ancestors. See, here is her white blouse with its oak-leaf buttons, and here on her jacket’s sleeve is her cloth badge, sewn on above the left elbow, with the white edges turned under so only the black border shows. Here are her brown lace-up shoes fitted with the proper metal plates on the heels and toes so they make the right sound when marching. Here is her certificate of health. And here is her handbook, and it is intact, it is perfect, every page; leaf through it and check for yourself – there are no holes, no deletions, not a single cut. So many rules, says Mutti, but Sieglinde loves the book and loves the rules; they tell her what to do, how to live, and she learns them by heart.

  You must take pride in obeying your leader, and in doing your duty without fail and as a matter of course. Girls aged 10 and 11 must take part in a one-day excursion once a month, walking 10 kilometres at a rate of three kilometres per hour whilst carrying a haversack. After each hour of walking, a break of at least 15 minutes is to be taken. If for any reason you cannot attend a social evening, sports afternoon or excursion, you must apply to your group leader in advance for leave. If an unforeseen event prevents you from attending, you must provide your leader with a note of explanation at the next available opportunity. In the case of absence due to illness, as in the previous situation you must provide a note as soon as you are well. If you are sick for more than a week, you must notify your leader during that time. When you are better, you must report to your leader. If you wish to go away on holiday with your parents or stay with relatives, you must apply to your leader for leave one week in advance. If you cannot participate in a particular area of service (for example swimming, due to an ear condition), you must report to your League of German Girls doctor for a physical examination and obtain written confirmation from her. There is no such thing as an unexcused absence.

  That night Sieglinde and the other new girls promise themselves to the flag and the Führer, a birthday present to him, and from then on they are allowed to attend the weekly sessions at their local meeting house, which are compulsory. They learn about the brave Germans of the past who fought for their country – Arminius, whose proper name is Hermann, who united Germania and slaughtered three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest; Heinrich von Plauen, who defended Marienburg against the murderous Poles; Queen Luise, who met with Napoleon to plead for Prussia; Andreas Hofer, freedom fighter and martyr, who refused the blindfold at his execution and himself gave the order to fire. And you do not have to be a grown-up to die for Germany – think of Herbert Norkus, just fifteen when the Communists murdered him over in Zwinglistrasse, which isn’t far away at all. He came from a family of very modest means, but was he out looking for trouble? Was he picking fights? No, he was delivering leaflets, doing his duty for the Party so that their words might reach the people in those troubled days, and for this he was stabbed six times, and his bloody handprints stained the wall where he fell, and he died for the words, and for the flag that means more than death.

  The girls learn songs, too – folk songs and war songs and lullabies – and Julia, their leader, reads them fairy tales from a big red book with golden edges that she keeps in the cupboard along with the paints and paintbrushes, the scissors, the spools of thread, the pieces of fabric, the tail ends of balls of wool and string, the bottle tops, the scraps of wood, and from these raw materials the girls make smiling families, sturdy houses, clean bright trains with clean bright passengers painted in every window. Why, they could make a whole village, a whole city. Is it true, asks Edda Knopf, that there is a false Berlin on the outskirts of town? A decoy built to confuse the enemy? Julia says it could be true; it certainly could be. Didn’t we cover the Lietzensee with floating planks to make it look like a suburb when seen from the air? Didn’t we strip the Siegessäule of her shining layers of gold? We are a resourceful people, she says, and the girls nod. And the stories she reads them are stories of disguise and change, too, of one thing becoming another: seven sons wished into ravens; a little tailor crowned a king; a severed finger the key to unlock the glass mountain; a bone that works its way free of the earth and sings the name of its killer. And Julia speaks to them of the Führer, who has freed Germany from the fraudulent treaty signed in the hall of mirrors, and who does not ask of us anything he has not asked of himself. Six million were starving, without work – can you imagine such a number? says Julia, and no, we cannot, it is an unthinkable number – and the Führer gave jobs and bread to the six million just as he had promised, and there was no need for begging and stealing, and the streets were safe once more. And girls, you too belong to the Führer! And because you belong to him, you must make your payments each month, even if it is difficult for you and your parents and means you must make a sacrifice, and you must always remember that the Hitler Youth has prospered only because of sacrifice. But the war? The dead? The father who cuts off his daughter’s hands? The sun and moon who eat children? Everyone falls silent and uncertain. Sometimes, Julia says after a moment or two, we need to accept things we don’t fully understand. What matters is not so much what we believe, only that we believe. The Führer knows exactly what he is doing; we can follow him with our eyes closed. And we must trust him, and we do trust him, all of us, we trust him and we belong to him. We will march on, even if everything shatters. And if our elders scold us, let them bluster and shout. Forwards! Forwards! Youth knows no fear! And we tell ourselves that Barbarossa is not dead, cannot be dead; deep in the mountain he sleeps, his red beard piercing stone, and when the ravens leave the Kyffhäuser he will wake, he will hang his shield on the pear tree’s withered branch and it will flower again.

  *

  ‘Remember the rules as we move through the factory, children. We are very lucky to be visiting it, unlike some other schools who have been sent away to the country, where there are no factories to visit. And remember to greet our guide Frau Müller with the proper German greeting. Some of you, I’ve noticed, have reverted to a simple hello. That is unacceptable. And some of you are not keeping your arms straight. Also unacceptable. It is true that there have been train crashes when Reichsbahn officials have mistaken the German greeting used by other Reichsbahn officials for signals – but that is not our concern. Your arms are swords, they are bayonets, they are unbending branches of oak. Yes, Gerd? Stop laughing, boys and girls – it is a good question, a useful question. If your right arm is wounded or missing you may use your left. Was there something else? Well, then I expect you would use your leg – but that’s quite enough now. Nobody would lose both arms and legs. Yes, there is the man on Alexanderplatz with his little trolley, but he fought in the Great War and therefore is entitled to certain privileges, and besides, he is very polite and speaks flawless German when begging for food. Some of you would do well to follow his example; for all we know, our Gauleiter Dr Goebbels might be planning another competition to find the politest Berliner. I myself entered the last one – I was unsuccessful, and did not receive a prize presented by the Gauleiter at a special ceremony – but that does not mean I have abandoned my good manners.

  ‘Now children, look at all the
different medals and badges you can earn when you are older. Don’t touch them. The pins are very sharp – but secondly and more importantly you will dull their shine. You will ruin the crucial work done by all the ladies who sit here day after day, polishing them with their rags so they gleam like gold and silver even though they are not. Aren’t they beautiful? Beautiful rewards for ugly acts. Perhaps ugly is the wrong word. I take it back. I did not say it.

  ‘Here are the Assault Badges – turned out by the thousand every week, children, did you hear that? Isn’t that wonderful? Some of you will have seen such a badge before, on your Vati’s breast, perhaps, or perhaps he hides it away with his special things to keep it safe. And here is the medal for strengthening our West Wall, with its tunnels and bunkers to hinder the enemy, and its dragon’s teeth to stop their tanks, and it cannot be breached. And this one is for battle against the partisans who keep springing up many-headed from their nests as we keep cutting them down. See their forked tongues, their serpent eyes. And if you had fought in the east in that bitter winter you might have earned the Eastern Front Medal, its ribbon woven in red and white and black for the blood, the snow, the death, but this one is just an example, children, because that winter is past, that battle is over, and the factory does not make them any more, and alas, you can never earn one. But here is the Tank Destruction Badge – you must destroy the tank on your own and unaided, so bear that in mind – and see, children, the Sniper’s Badge, the sharp-eyed eagle considering its prey. You need at least twenty kills for this one, and forty if you want the silver trim, and sixty if you want the gold, and you must have witnesses to your kills, and each kill must be recorded and confirmed.