Читать книгу The Women at Hitler’s Table - Rosella Postorino - Страница 15

Augustine marched up the aisle of the bus so briskly that the hem of her dark skirt seemed to froth. She rested her hand on the back of our bench, touching Leni’s hair, and said, “Let’s change spots, okay? Just for today.”

It was dark out. Leni looked at me, confused, then got up and plopped into an empty seat. Augustine took her place beside me.

“Your bag’s full,” she said.

Everyone was staring at us—not just Leni. Even Beate, even Elfriede. The Fanatics weren’t. They were sitting way in the front, right behind the driver.

We had spontaneously broken into groups. Not that we expected affection within those groups. More simply, fractures and shifts had occurred with the same inexorability with which the earth’s plates move. The need for protection that Leni betrayed with every blink had left me responsible for her. Then there was Elfriede, who had shoved me in the washroom. In that gesture I glimpsed my own fear. It had been an attempt to make contact. Intimate, yes; the Beanpole might have been right about that. Elfriede had been looking for a fight, like little boys who understand who they can trust only after duking it out. The guard had averted the fistfight, which meant we still had a score to settle, she and I, a debt that generated a magnetic field around us.

“It’s full, isn’t it? Answer me.”

Theodora looked over her shoulder, an automatic reaction to Augustine’s harsh voice. A few weeks ago Theodora had remarked that the Führer worked on gut reaction, that he was a man of instinct. Yes, yes, he has a brilliant mind, Gertrude had said, two hairpins clasped between her teeth, not realizing she had just contradicted her friend. But do you know how many things they don’t report to him? she went on, after sticking the hairpins firmly into the braid coiled up on the side of her head. It’s not like he knows everything that happens, it’s not always his fault. Augustine had feigned spitting on her.

Now she sat beside me, cross-legged, one knee pressed against the seat in front of us. “For a few days now the chef’s been giving you extra food to take home.”

“Yes.”

“Good. We want some too.”

“We” who? I didn’t know what to say. Solidarity among us food tasters was a foreign concept. We were tectonic plates that shifted and collided, floating beside one another or drifting apart.

“You can’t be selfish. He likes you. Make him give you more.”

“Take what’s here.” I held my satchel out to her.

“It’s not enough. We want milk, at least a couple bottles. We’ve got children and we have to have milk.”

They earned even more than the average laborer, so it wasn’t a question of need. It’s a question of fairness, Augustine would have said if I had pointed that out. Why on earth should you be given more than us? To this I could have shot back, Ask Theodora to do it. She knew Theodora would refuse. Why did she expect me to agree, though? I wasn’t her friend. But she sensed how desperate I was for approval, had sensed it right from the start, even if I couldn’t admit it.

How do people become friends? Now that I could recognize their expressions, could even anticipate them, my companions’ faces seemed different from the ones I had seen on the first day. That happens at school, or at work, in places where you’re forced to spend many hours of your existence. People are forced to become friends.

“All right, Augustine. Tomorrow I’ll try asking him.”

THE NEXT MORNING, Krümel told the two of us that his helpers had returned, so we were no longer needed. I explained this to Augustine and the other women who had chosen her as their spokesperson, but Heike and Beate were relentless. It’s not fair that you were treated to something extra and we weren’t. We have children. Who do you have?

I didn’t have children. Whenever I had spoken to my husband about it he would tell me it wasn’t the right time, that he was away at war and I was alone. He had left in ’40, a year after our wedding. There I was without Gregor, in our apartment furnished with things from the secondhand shop where we liked to go on Saturday mornings, stopping for breakfast at the nearby bakery, cinnamon Schnecke or poppyseed strudel, which we ate directly out of the bag, one bite each, as we strolled along. There I was, without him and without a child, in an apartment full of junk.

Germans loved children. During parades the Führer always stroked their cheeks and urged women to have lots of them. Gregor wanted to be a good German but wouldn’t let himself be influenced. He said putting a person into the world meant condemning them to death. But the war will end, I objected. It’s not the war, he replied, it’s life. Everyone dies all the same. When I accused him—You’re not well, ever since you left for the front you’ve been depressed—he became angry.

Maybe at Christmas, with Herta and Joseph’s help, I would manage to persuade him.

If I became pregnant I would be nourishing the child in my womb with food from the lunchroom. A pregnant woman isn’t a good guinea pig, since she might muddle the results of the experiment, but the SS wouldn’t find out—at least not until the quarterly lab results or my belly gave me away.

I would risk poisoning the baby. We would both die, or we would survive. His mealy bones and tender muscles nurtured by Hitler’s food. He would be a child of the Reich even before being my own. But then again, no one is born without sin.

“Steal it,” Augustine told me. “Go into the kitchen, chat with the chef to distract him—talk to him about Berlin, about when you used to go to the opera, come up with something—then, the minute he turns the other way, take some milk.”

“Are you insane? I can’t do that.”

“It’s not his to begin with. You’re not taking it away from him.”

“But it’s not fair. He doesn’t deserve this.”

“What, Rosa—do we deserve this?”

LIGHT GLIMMERED OFF the marble countertops, which the kitchen helpers had degreased.

“Sooner or later the Soviets will surrender, you’ll see,” Krümel said.

We were alone. He had sent his staff to unload the provisions that had arrived by train at the Wolfsschanze station, saying he would catch up with them later, since I had asked him to explain a chapter in the book I was reading, a book he had given me. I hadn’t thought of a better excuse to keep him there. After he had explained—Krümel delighted in playing the teacher—I was going to ask him for two bottles of milk, even if he would never give them to me, even if he replied rudely, harshly. It’s one thing to be given something as a gift but another thing to demand it. Besides, who was it for? I didn’t have children, had never nursed anyone.

Krümel had sat down to talk to me and within minutes was chatting away excitedly, as always. The disaster in Stalingrad that February had demoralized everyone.

“They died so Germany could live on,” Krümel said.

“That’s what the Führer says.”

“Well, I believe him. Don’t you?”

I nodded hesitantly.

“We’re going to win,” he said, “because it’s only right.”

He told me that in the evenings Hitler ate facing a wall decorated with a Soviet flag that had been seized at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. In that room he explained to his guests the danger of Bolshevism. The other European nations underestimated it. Didn’t they realize the USSR was as dark, eerie, and unfathomable as the ghost ship in Wagner’s opera? Only a man as stubborn as himself could sink it, even if it meant chasing after it until Judgment Day.

“Only he can,” Krümel said, checking his watch. “Oh, I need to go. Was there anything else you needed?”

I need fresh milk. Milk for children who aren’t mine. “No, thank you. In fact, is there something I can do to repay you? You’ve been so kind.”

“Actually, I could use a favor. We have several kilos of beans to shell. Would you mind starting on them, at least until it’s time for you to go back home? I’ll tell the guards you need to stay here.”

He left me alone in his kitchen. I could have poisoned the supplies, but that didn’t even cross Krümel’s mind. I was one of Hitler’s food tasters, was part of his team, was also from Berlin. He trusted me.

ONCE IN LINE for the bus, my satchel against my belly, I thought I heard the glass bottles rattle together and tried to hold them still with both hands, walking slowly. Not so slow as to make the SS guards suspicious. Elfriede was behind me. She often stood in line behind me. We were always the last ones to move. It wasn’t laziness—it was our inability to conform. No matter how willing we may have been to follow the rules, the rules had a hard time fitting us. We were like two pieces of the wrong size, or made of some incompatible material, but that was all you had to build your fortress, so you found a way to adapt.

Her breath tickled my neck. “Berliner, did you let them get you into trouble?”

“Silence,” one of the guards said listlessly.

I gripped the bottles through the leather, walked slowly to prevent the least contact between them.

“I thought you’d learned it’s best for everyone to mind their own business around here.” Elfriede’s breath on my neck was torture.

Then the Beanpole came toward us calmly. When he was beside me, he looked me up and down. I continued to follow the other women until he grabbed my arm, pulling it away from the leather. I braced myself to hear the clink of glass against glass, but the bottles didn’t wobble. I had done a good job, nestled them snugly into the dark depths of my bag.

“Having another tête-à-tête, you two?”

Elfriede stopped behind me and the guard grabbed her as well. “I warned you that if I caught you again I would take advantage of it.”

The cold glass against my hip. All the guard had to do was accidentally touch my satchel and he would catch me. He let go of my arm, clasped my chin between his thumb and forefinger, and leaned down toward me. My chin was trembling. With my eyes I sought Elfriede.

“You stink a bit like broccoli today. It’ll have to wait for another time.” The Beanpole cackled. “Why that look on your face? I was joking. We even joke with you here. What more could you ask for?”

THE HANDOFF TOOK place back on the bus, hidden from view by the bench seats. Augustine had brought a small cloth sack. My chin was still trembling. Below my cheek, a nervous tic.

“You were great, and generous.” Her smile of thanks looked sincere.

How do people become friends?

Us and them. That was what Augustine was proposing. Us, the victims, the young women with no choice. Them, the enemies, the abusers of power. Krümel wasn’t one of us—that was what Augustine meant. Krümel was a Nazi. And we had never been Nazis.

The only one who wasn’t smiling at me was Elfriede. She was focusing on the expanse of fields and silos that passed by one after the other outside the window. Every day the bus carried me down eight kilometers of road until reaching the bend at Gross-Partsch, my place of banishment.