The Kaminsky Cure Read online

  As for her replacement, Gabi has seen to that. Scouring the Vienna papers, she has learnt that a lady with the highest references is prepared to offer coaching in various subjects to private pupils of good family. Correspondence has revealed that this lady is Fräulein Hertha von Kaminsky, a former governess to some family of a distant branch of the Habsburgs, and Gabi has gone to Vienna (staying illegally with Helena before her marriage) to supplicate her help.

  Acutely conscious that hers is not what a von Kaminsky might consider a good family, Gabi has abandoned subterfuge this time. Hoping that this dependant of the royal family will be no friend of the upstart Nazis, she has laid her petition frankly and humbly before Fräulein von Kaminsky, who is about as broad as she is tall, in her comfortable apartment on the Ring. She has ended with the words ‘I feel so guilty. It’s all my fault that my children are being treated like this.’ Yes, Gabi like Ilse feels guilty. Guilty for being the victim that makes her children victims, while the Führer and his cronies who have brought her to this pass are proudly pinning medals on each other’s chests and dreaming of a new Berlin – Germania, the Jew-free capital of their Jew-free Reich. (Most of them are also kind to dogs.)

  Fräulein von Kaminsky is not a connection of the Habsburgs for nothing. She possesses a sense of noblesse oblige as well as that aristocratic disdain of the Nazis which Gabi had hoped for. So in the New Year she will be coming to teach the older children. What will Ortsgruppenleiter Wimmer think about that? Fräulein Hertha von Kaminsky is no ordinary Viennese like Frau Doktor Helena Saur, but on the fringes of the Habsburgs; and royalty is royalty, even dethroned and at several removes. Whatever he may think about it, at least Franzi Wimmer has precedents to follow. First there was Jägerlein, then there was Frau Doktor Saur. So Franzi’s problem won’t be new. But the short-sighted Catholic Pater will have something entirely novel to think about. Fräulein von Kaminsky is an ardent Catholic (no doubt that was a condition of her former royal job) and she’s going to give him earful after earful at every confession.

  There are lots of things I notice this Christmas that I’ve never noticed before. When my mother takes me shopping, for instance, which is only between the hours of three and five, there are certain village stores she will go into and certain stores she won’t. And the stores she will not enter are usually the smarter ones, the fish shop and the Co-operative, for instance, which are near the best inns like Franzi Wimmer’s and have glossy portraits of the Führer prominently on show inside, whilst the shops she does enter are the cheaper ones, even the dirtier ones, like the baker whose bread is often stale and the dairy where the milk is often sour. They have pictures of the Führer on their walls too of course, but smaller ones and not so often dusted. Some of them even have little specks of fly-shit on his face.

  I’m puzzled by my mother’s shopping choices. I take it that as we are from Berlin, we must be a cut above the rest, so we should be going to the best shops, not the worst. And why do we only go in the late afternoon? I know that other people like Jägerlein go at any time of the day. My mother doesn’t explain these anomalies, and I sense I’m not supposed to know the real reason, although I’m still convinced it has to do with our being proper Germans, whilst the villagers are not. Nobody tells me where I’ve gone wrong. Nobody explains that Gabi is a vicious and degenerate Jewess, that the best shops won’t serve her, that in any case she’s allowed to shop only between the hours of three and five so that decent Aryans shoppers can arrange to avoid the disgusting sight of her altogether.

  My parents have always been bickering and crying (I think that’s normal – what else do I know?), but they never openly mention this source of their troubles. Imagine, I can’t recall ever being called a half-Jew yet, let alone a Yid, and perhaps I never have been. I don’t even know what a Yid or half-Jew is. Sara does, of course; she knows all right. And so do the others. But not me. Why should I? I’m never allowed out to play with the village children, so they aren’t going to tell me. And neither Jägerlein nor my mother is going to either. As for my brother and sisters – they’re certainly not going to tell me what it’s like to be called a half-Jew or a dirty Yid. Like rape victims, they never tell because they feel they’re guilty.

  So I haven’t noticed what I am yet. But there’s something else I do notice this Christmas, and that’s how strange Willibald looks, sitting by the tree. He’s all dressed up in funny clothes. No, not German St. Niklaus’s clothes nor even Austrian Krampus’s, but the field grey uniform of the Wehrmacht. It must be admitted it’s an ill-fitting uniform, but that’s what it is.

  Yes, Willibald, all of forty-four, has joined the colours and is on Christmas leave from the Eastern Front! He’s a lance-corporal like his Führer was, a member of the heroic German army (and, the way he tells it, no small hero himself), that has valiantly crushed the treacherous Polish attack on the Thousand Year Reich and sternly subdued the sullen and insidious Slav.

  Frau Dr Saur come and gone. Fräulein von Kaminsky coming. And now my father a soldier of the Reich? What’s going on? No one tells me anything. Is it any wonder I’m confused?

  It’s quite simple, really, though I won’t understand this till much later. Willibald’s Jewish ‘connection’ has been catching up with him, and he’s been trying to outrun it. He’s running for his livelihood, and maybe for his wife’s and children’s lives as well. Considering what he feels about his wife at least, that’s pretty generous of him. The Education Ministry has ruled that not only non-Aryans, but also persons with non-Aryan ‘connections’ are disqualified from teaching Aryan children. And Willibald certainly has some non-Aryan connections – five to be precise. But part of the Pfarrer’s duty is to teach religion to Lutheran children in the schools – that’s what he’s paid for by the Church. And now the State won’t let him do it.

  The Church Supervisors in Vienna have been wriggling like hooked fish on the horns of a dilemma. The Lutheran children would have to be taught by someone else, but where was the money coming from? If they took it from Pfarrer Brinkmann, his family would starve physically, and even those of them that were Nazi-sympathisers weren’t ready for that. But if they didn’t take it from Pfarrer Brinkmann, the schoolchildren would starve spiritually, and they couldn’t have that either. Would Pfarrer Brinkmann perhaps consider serving in the armed forces of the Reich, from which his age and calling had so far exempted him? Then he’d get a soldier’s wage, his family could stay in the Pfarrhaus, but part of the Pfarrer’s salary thereby released could be used to pay for alternative instruction for the children in the schools.

  Pfarrer Brinkmann jumps at this opportunity. Partly because there’s another advantage he’s detected: maybe his service in the army will help towards his long-term aim, the Aryanisation of his children. (Considering his paternity doubts about some of them, it’s pretty big of him to include them all.) Only his children, mark you; he has a lesser glory in mind for his wife. And yet how curious that Willibald is not merely willing but actually anxious to don the Wehrmacht uniform and take an oath of loyalty to the Führer who is so intent on cleansing the Fatherland of vermin like his wife and semi-vermin like his children. The truth is, Willibald is still a patriot and wants Germany to win the war. The thought that final victory would almost certainly be final defeat for us is a thought he chooses not to think. So he glories in his military exploits this Christmas, such as they are or as he makes them out to be, without a qualm or scruple.

  And how curious too that the non-Aryan connection that disqualifies him from teaching in the Führer’s schools does not disqualify him from serving in the Führer’s army. There’s something wobbly again here in the tidy rhythms of the Third Reich, and it should have offended the bureaucrats’ minds. How can they expect to win the war if they can’t straighten little things like that out? They should put Eichmann onto it, except that he’s too busy cleaning Jews out of Vienna.

  And curious too is that I don’t remember Willibald going off to the war a few months ago, and I
’ll scarcely recall him coming back next year. (He doesn’t last long; the military soon realise that final victory and Willibald Brinkmann just do not go together). Yes, he’ll be gone for more than a year, and yet I’ll scarcely seem to notice. Perhaps because even when he is there, it often seems as though he isn’t.

  What does he do in the war, then? The High Command in Poland do not see him as a front line soldier, though he will never tell you that, and he becomes a steward in the Officers’ Mess. Keeping the accounts for his betters is what he’s good at, and there’s always the chance of a few perks coming his way in the form of a drop of schnapps or a pat of butter. His last posting is near an obscure and dreary town, Oswiecim by name, in a flat and wooded plain.

  In Oswiecim, which once hosted a Polish army barracks, some nifty construction is going to be hustled forward in the summer of 1940. And Willibald will have time to pose on horseback, surveying Polish prisoners, so he later says, as they labour for the Reich. He will tell us that he was guarding them, a solitary horseman subduing by his mere Teutonic presence a thousand unruly and rebellious Poles. But look more carefully at the photo and you see this can’t be true. First of all there aren’t any Polish prisoners in sight, rebellious or not. Secondly he can only just maintain his precarious perch on the drooping worn-out nag. Thirdly he has no weapon and could hardly have stopped a single Pole escaping, even if there were any there, except by toppling on them from his saddle. Lastly and most importantly, the place will soon be known by its German name of Auschwitz; and the guards at Auschwitz aren’t your common or garden Wehrmacht grunts like Willibald. No, they’re all elite SS troops, the right stuff, with high ideals and hearts of steel. Willibald is billeted near Auschwitz all right, but he isn’t guarding anything except the salt and pepper in an inglorious reserve regiment’s officer’s mess. He’s a tourist in this scene, the horse is the photographer’s and Willibald has paid to have his picture taken on it.

  It’s perhaps some discomfort about that and whatever else he may have heard or seen during his sojourn near Auschwitz that prompts Willibald to concoct a story, heard only after the war, of how he stopped an officer from executing a recaptured prisoner. According to the most sober version of this tale, the officer had already snapped the safety catch off his Lüger and aimed it at the prisoner’s head when Lance-Corporal Brinkmann interposed himself between them and shouted out (and at this point of the narration he will indeed shout out, regardless where he is, his eyes glaring fiercely at his audience), ‘Shoot him, Herr Major, if you will! But you must shoot me first!’ In some versions the officer then lowers his trembling arm and with hunched shoulders slinks shamefacedly away, whilst in others he comes to his senses, thanks the valiant corporal and shakes his manly hand. There will even be a version in which the major becomes a colonel and actually salutes Lance-Corporal Willibald the hero and declares in throbbing tones (and how Willibald can throb, too!), ‘Today you have taught a German officer his duty.’

  But he’s not going to tell us all that till after the war, and we haven’t even reached the middle yet. Not that we haven’t been getting on with it. Christmas has come and gone, and so has spring. After spring came summer, when, according to the wireless, our glorious German forces who had only just finished with the Poles, started laying into the French and British. Nearly every week in June we heard the village school celebrating another German victory, nearly every week in July. Probably they’d still be at it now in August if it wasn’t the summer holidays. But soon the holidays will be over and they’ll be –

  3

  At it again

  France has fallen now, and so has just about everywhere else. Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway – all defeated by our triumphant forces. The English are certain to be next, especially if our invincible Wehrmacht decides to build the enormous Panzer Martin’s been designing on the dining room table, which (the Panzer, I mean) looks about as big as a battleship. It’s still ripe summer, the war will soon be over and Willibald will be coming home the conquering hero. But just at present he’s still away with our valiant occupation army in the east. Is that why, despite everything, we seem to be quite happy? Things aren’t so bad for Jewish Gabi just now. Her Aryan husband’s serving in the Wehrmacht, which she thinks protects her and her half-breed brood for the moment, Fräulein von Kaminsky’s teaching the older children in her chesty and superior voice, and I will start primary school in a couple of weeks. We’re poor but we aren’t starving, and we’re getting along all right, my mother says.

  So are the preachers getting along all right, a whole series of them, getting along to hold divine service in Willibald’s place and to teach the Lutheran children in the local schools. They’re getting along to the Pfarrhaus every Sunday as well, to share our midday and sometimes evening meals. And a lot of unusual ladies are getting along too, coming in a very different and irregular series, to stay for a few days or a few weeks and then depart. Spinsters from Hamburg, widows from Frankfurt, a ‘von’ this from here, a ‘von’ that from there and even a ‘von and zu’ from somewhere else. And there are Frau Professor Hoffmann and Gabi’s best friend Maria from Berlin who are both schoolteachers and have known Gabi since she was a child. When I ask Ilse why all these ladies keep visiting us, she says they come to help with the work and keep our spirits up and they’re something to do with the Confessing Church, which gives me a funny picture of a church kneeling at the Catholic Pater’s confessional. But as I don’t yet realise why our spirits need this elevation and no one tells me, I assume this is something else I’m not supposed to know about. Not only do these ladies share our Sunday dinners, they eat every meal together with us, and sometimes talk in hushed voices, when, again, I know I’m not supposed to understand and do not want to anyway.

  And then there’s Fräulein von Adler, who smokes a pipe and comes all the way from Graunau just to visit us. Her grandfather was the Lutheran minister here in Heimstatt once, and so was her father. But when she was born in our very Pfarrhaus (she stabbed her pipe stem up towards the marriage bed beyond the ceiling as she spoke), she was such a puling infant she seemed to be at death’s door. Her father being in the same way in hospital himself, her mother called in the Catholic priest to get her baptised, so that she’d at least avoid post-mortem psychic deportation to Limbo or Purgatory or wherever the souls of unbaptised babies were supposed to go. Better a ticket on the wrong train than no ticket at all. As it turned out, though, she recovered (so did her father) and didn’t need a ticket so urgently. But she’d certainly got one and later on Fräulein von Adler decided she might as well use it, so she’s still a Catholic. At least that’s what she told us between puffs on her short-stemmed bubbling pipe, peering at us with narrowed eyes through the bluish smoke that stole unregarded across her mannish face. And Ilse says it’s true her father was once the Lutheran minister in Heimstatt.

  What is a ‘von’ and why do we suddenly know so many of them, I wonder. And what is a ‘von and zu,’ which sounds more like a journey than a title? Martin, to whom I foolishly communicate my puzzlement, tells me not to be so stupid, as though the answer’s obvious, and anyway we only know two or three of them. I assume again it must have something to do with our being proper Germans. But whatever it is, all these visitors are endlessly intriguing to me, and I watch them come and go with eager fascination – each one is strange in one way or another.

  The visiting preachers, for instance, often don’t have much to say to the ladies of the Confessing Church, nor to Fräulein Hertha von Kaminsky, although there is much distant heel-clicking and bowing when she’s around. They don’t have a great deal to say to Fräulein von Adler, either, who tends to cackle and point her moistly glistening pipe stem derisively at them whenever they come into the room, as if they’re clowns making their tumbling entrance at the circus. And several of them have nothing whatsoever to say to Gabi, even when she brings them their meals, which they usually elect to eat in solemn solitude in the study rather than with the rest of us in
the untidy dining room. One of them, Pfarrer Kretschmann, a long thin man with sharply sloping shoulders like a Gothic steeple, announces he’d prefer Aryan Frau Jäger to cook and serve his dinner, although it’s her day off on Sundays, that being, my mother pointedly reminds him, the Christian day of rest.

  ‘A German pastor does not need lessons in religion!’ this man of peace snaps back. ‘Least of all from one of you.’

  My mother takes a swig from a glass of water, but doesn’t swallow it yet; she keeps it in her mouth for nearly a minute. That’s a trick she’s learnt from Fräulein von Kaminsky, who told her it might prevent her from saying something she might subsequently regret. This practice, Fräulein von Kaminsky assured Gabi, was followed by the Habsburgs too, and whenever I think of the Habsburgs, I imagine a whole royal family going about with crowns on their heads and buckets of unswallowed water in their mouths.

  Pfarrer Kretschmann is a German Christian, Gabi tells us later, and that’s why he doesn’t get on with the Confessing Church ladies. I don’t doubt he’s a German Christian since he’s both German and a Christian, but why that should set him against the ladies of the Confessing Church I don’t understand, since they appear to be German and Christian too. Apparently Gabi has something else in mind, which the others have already fathomed but I have not. It will be years before I find out he’s one of those Nazi Christians who excise the Old Testament from all their teaching and preaching on the ground that it’s just Jewish history, unfit for pure Aryan ears. The New Testament is all right by them, although why that isn’t Jewish history too is never properly explained. Perhaps some of them think that if it was God that put the bun in Mary’s oven, Jesus must have been only half a Jew, since clearly God Himself must be an Aryan. And then perhaps they treat Jesus as an honorary full Aryan in view of his Church’s sporadic attempts down the ages to eliminate the Jews, attempts which it is the Führer’s destiny to surpass and complete. Perhaps others go the whole hog, and claim Jesus was the full-blown Aryan thing, no half-breeds for them. Wasn’t he the pale Galilean, and doesn’t Matthew speak of Galilee of the Gentiles?