The Rose Gardener Page 31

  Erich’s birthday on December 24th had gone off without any problems to speak of. The alcohol supply in the house had been almost completely used up, and there was no fresh supply to be had, so Erich stayed sober and experienced a slow withdrawal where drinking was concerned. It no longer came to the deadly mixture of alcohol and pills that had regularly catapulted him into his extreme moods. He seemed to have access to a last reserve of medication; it was always clear to look at him when he was risking a decline into melancholy, and he still managed time and time again to forestall its approach at the last minute. Beatrice asked herself what would happen when he no longer had this option. There would then be no more means of helping him. He would get sick or lose it — or both.

  On New Year’s Eve he had clearly taken pills: he was euphoric and in a good mood even though there wasn’t the slightest reason for it. The radio announced allied advances on all fronts, and even though the most catastrophic of news was still softened with a report of a victory, no one could overlook the reality that defeat was underway and was progressing at a rapid pace. The Americans had taken Aachen; now they were standing on German soil. To the east, Russian troops were advancing threateningly close to the German border. Never, so went the propaganda, would the Russians manage to overcome the eastern wall and invade the Reich, but BBC London, whose reports, listened to in secret, spread like wildfire over the islands each day, reported troop deployments on an unimaginable scale. The giant Russia that once had been caught almost sleeping and had been able to offer the enemy little resistance, had now activated all of its strength, drawing fighters out of every last corner of the country. According to the BBC, the fate of East Prussia, the eastern part of the Reich, was already sealed. It was a question of days when the Russians would make their attack; and it was a question of hours when they would have overcome the defenders at the border.

  Even Erich, thought Beatrice, can’t believe in final victory anymore.

  On this last day of 1944, dinner consisted of a watery barley soup, and with it a loaf of dry, tasteless, hard gray bread; for dessert they had mirabelle preserves that dated all the way back to Deborah’s time. As a surprise after dinner, Helene brought out the last two bottles of wine in the house. She had taken them weeks before and hidden them in her dresser.

  “So we’ll have something to toast with,” she said.

  “Truly we can always rely on you,” said Erich, and laughed somewhat too excitedly.

  If Beatrice hadn’t noticed before that he had taken pills, now it was fully clear to her that he must have done so. Under normal circumstances he would have lapsed into a fit of rage. All December long he had spent almost every evening rummaging around in the cellar looking for alcohol, and at times he had been in full-on despair because he found nothing. It could have put him in a profound state of anger towards Helene to now learn that all this time there had been a last reserve in the house. But now he just laughed over and over and announced that he had married the craftiest, wiliest woman on earth, who was always good for a pleasant surprise, and Helene sat at the table, beaming, and looked like she was about to burst with pride from all his compliments.

  Erich drank quickly, and the most of any of them, and managed to ensure that the bottles were empty before midnight, so that in the end they had to toast with bitter tea made from dried blackberry leaves.

  “1945,” Erich said pathetically. “I drink to this momentous year! It will be the year it’s all decided. The year of a heroic struggle. The year of brave men and women who will summon their last strength to bring final victory to the German people, and to the German Reich!” He lifted the cup with the putrid tea. “Heil Hitler!” he cried.

  “Heil Hitler!” Helene dutifully followed suit. Beatrice thought they could hardly have held it against her if she abstained from the slogan, and so she knocked her cup against theirs and said nothing.

  At half past midnight Erich announced that he wanted to see the stars, and that Beatrice should come out with him. She followed him out onto the porch behind of the house. Immediately she was gripped by damp cold, by a fog that hung in the air and was so uninviting that she wanted most to turn right back around. What had now been many months of hunger had left her starkly emaciated; she suffered from the cold of this winter far more than any of those that had come before. Erich, on the other hand, though also thin and diminished by then, had drunk enough to feel good outside in spite of everything.

  “Not a star in sight,” he remarked, directing his gaze on the black, cloud-covered sky. “Not a star in this, the first night of a consequential year. Only fog. This eternal goddamn fog. Tons of fog here on this island. Back where I come from, in Berlin, there’s not this much fog.”

  Probably because there’s not as much water, thought Beatrice, but she said nothing. She had both arms wrapped around her body and was making an effort not to let her teeth chatter.

  “We’re finished,” Erich said all of a sudden. His tone of voice hadn’t changed, he spoke with the same evenness with which he had been talking about the fog. “Germany is finished. I know it, you know it. I just don’t want to upset Helene all too much yet.”

  “I think,” said Beatrice, “that Helene knows it too.”

  Erich waved dismissively. “Helene is a child. She always believes whatever’s just been told to her, so long as it comes to her in a convincing enough way. You can’t take her seriously.”

  The fog lay around them in veils of damp haze.

  I’ll get pneumonia, thought Beatrice.

  “I don’t know exactly what the end is going to look like,” Erich said. “What it’s going to look like for people in Germany, and for us here. But it will be horrible, that much is certain. It will be horrible.” He listened to the sound of his voice as the fog seemed to swallow his words and render them irreversible.

  “Awful, awful things have happened,” he continued. “Much suffering has come over people. I’m not saying what we did wasn’t right, or better yet, that we didn’t believe what we were doing was right. That we didn’t have what was best in mind.”

  Beatrice thought of the columns of prisoners that could be seen all over the island; of the emaciated, used up laborers; of their faces — miserable, hopeless, or simply deadened. She thought of all that she had heard about torture and privation, about the grisly combination of meager nourishment and grueling work. She thought of Julien, who for years had had to live hidden away in a garret. Was that what happened when someone had the best in mind?

  “But naturally we made mistakes, just as everyone makes mistakes, and they’ll use it all against us and barely give us a chance to defend ourselves,” said Erich. “And they won’t intend to find any reason to treat us with mercy.”

  “Who is ‘they’?” Beatrice asked.

  “The victors. And history. Both will turn us into devils. I’d like to ask you for something, Beatrice: Whatever you hear, whatever horrors might reach your ears, hold on to the image of me that you’ve formed throughout all these years. Don’t let it be taken from you. Don’t let it be sullied. Don’t allow it to be dragged through the mud.”

  “What have you done, Sir?” Beatrice asked. “What could they tell me about you?”

  He shook his head. “There won’t be that kind of distinction anymore. They’ll lump us all in together. They’ll paint devils on the wall. Don’t let it influence you, Beatrice.”

  She thought of the sadistic joy he had taken in tormenting Julien and Pierre. Maybe the devils were already on the wall. But Erich seemed not to consider this possibility. He was getting more and more sentimental.

  “Who knows if I’ll live to see the end of the war. If I’ll live through it. In their desire to enjoy their triumph, the victors might be ruthless. Perhaps they’ll kill me.”

  Beatrice said nothing to this, but neither did he seem to be expecting an answer.

  “I w
ould like for you to look after Helene, if anything should happen to me,” he said suddenly. The words came after a long pause. He had stared out into the night, while Beatrice asked herself whether or not she should tell him she was about to freeze to death. “Helene is a person who cannot be alone. She wouldn’t be able to deal with life. She is weak. You are strong, Beatrice. You have to care for her if I’m not around anymore.”

  “I don’t think that anything will happen to you, Sir,” said Beatrice, partly out of politeness, partly because she did in fact believe that Erich would not have to lose his life. He seemed, however, to be excited by this idea. He repeated his description of the end of the war, what form it would take and what an Armageddon would break out over all of them. Again he described the victors’ revenge and vowed that when it came down to it he had done nothing that had not been thought to be for the good of the German people.

  “It is normal to want to do everything for your country, don’t you think, Beatrice?”

  “I’m frightfully cold, Sir,” said Beatrice. She could no longer stop her teeth from chattering.

  He looked at her. In his eyes was an odd expression. “You’re cold? I’m hot. I am filled with heat, deep within me. It’s like a fever!”

  “I have to go inside. I’m afraid that if I don’t I’ll get sick.”

  What she was saying seemed to anger him. She had interrupted him as he was describing the end of the world. Besides that he probably had the feeling that she wasn’t taking what he said seriously.

  “Fine, then, fine, go back in the house!” he said biliously, and waved his hand. “I really don’t think it’s cold out here, but if you say so …” He seemed to take her freezing as a personal affront. To prove his point he spent another whole hour on the porch and came back into the house only as Beatrice and Helene were getting ready to go to bed.

  Two days later he and Beatrice got the flu.

  Erich was relatively quick to recover from his illness, but Beatrice had to lie in bed for weeks. Her flu turned into pneumonia; she ran a high fever, had stabbing pains and was visited with horrifying fever dreams, which by the end were simply torture for her. Again and again she saw Julien before her, and in her few lucid moments she was afraid that she would speak of him at some point in her confusion. Helene sat at her bedside constantly — she would have heard everything. Erich also came in the room often; twice Beatrice awoke, startled out of agonizing dreams, because his face was bent closely over hers. Both times she screamed like an animal caught in a trap. It must have been very painful for Erich, but he said nothing; rather he just looked very concerned. Once, sometime when she was able to think clearly again, Beatrice heard Erich and Helene fighting in her room.

  “It was irresponsible to stand out in the cold with her for so long,” said Helene, in a rage. She was making an effort to speak quietly, and her voice sounded like an agitated hiss. “I can only pray that she doesn’t die!”

  “It wasn’t cold outside. It was warm!”

  “You’re insane. It’s those pills of yours that trick you. It was cold enough to freeze to death. And wet. And on top of that she’s delicate and rather undernourished, like we all are. She couldn’t have not gotten sick!”

  “I got sick too.”

  “That was your own fault. And you weren’t as sick as she is, not by a long shot!”

  “Cut it out already and be quiet. Do you want to wake her up?”

  Beatrice pressed her eyes closed. The two of them shouldn’t know that she was awake.

  Dr. Wyatt came every day to check in on her. Often Beatrice was unaware of his visits, but sometimes she realized he was there. Helene stood right next to him, so questions about Julien were impossible, but once, in a hazy, semi-conscious state, Beatrice did mention him.

  “Where’s Julien?” she asked.

  She later remembered the large hand that was pressed over her mouth in an instant, as well as Dr. Wyatt’s horrified face.

  “What did she say?” Helene’s voice came from far away.

  Wyatt murmured something or other. Helene seemed satisfied; she didn’t ask a second time. The danger had been contained for the moment, but not for good. The relief was clear to see on Dr. Wyatt one morning when he could confirm that Beatrice was free of fever.

  By then it was mid-February. A cold wind howled around the house as Beatrice left her bed without help for the first time in six weeks. She walked around on shaky legs and had gotten so thin that her clothes hung off her like sacks. Her eyes looked too large for her face, so haggard had her features become. Her skin had a blue-gray tinge; it looked sick and ashen. She washed her scraggly hair but could not summon a hint of luster. Badly she’d have needed something to round her out; she’d have needed vitamins and hearty, nutritious meals — but there was nothing. She had to go hungry and do without, like all the other people on the islands. By then a boat from the Red Cross would reach the islands once a month and bring food and medicine, but it was never enough. Too many had the flu, too many were old and weak. Beatrice was lucky because she lived in the house of a high-ranking officer; unlike many other people on the islands, Erich was treated with privilege and could get things that others had long stopped receiving. But even that wasn’t enough to get Beatrice back on her feet. She had been sick for too long, and her illness had been too severe.

  The pale, early March sun enticed her to finally leave the house. She still looked like a ghost — transparently pale, with eyes ringed in dark shadow. She moved with the care of a person who has lost trust in her body’s strength. She cried a great deal, because she could not gain command over her weakness; because she often felt too wretched to lift a book in her hands and read. Against the advice of Dr. Wyatt, and despite Helene’s handwringing protests, she dragged herself to school. She didn’t want to fall completely out of touch, and what was more, she wanted to bring structure to her days again. The attempt was a disaster. She grew faint with weakness and fell from her desk; a German doctor was called and an ambulance brought her home, where, to Helene’s horror, she was carried to her room on a stretcher.

  “She still needs a great deal of care,” the doctor said gravely. “She is in a truly bad condition. She shouldn’t go to school for at least the next four weeks.”

  It grew to eight weeks. Her condition did not want to improve. Her legs gave out from under her if she tried to take even one step. Tears came to her eyes as soon as anyone spoke to her.

  “It’s the weakness,” Dr. Wyatt said each time he came to see her. “You’re crying out of weakness, child. Your nerves are shot. What you need is to finally get something real to eat for once.”

  The famine on the islands had by then become dire; even for the household of a German officer there was hardly any provision. Helene gathered sorrel and dandelions and tried to make these into vegetable dishes; now and again there was a barley soup that consisted primarily of water, and on holidays they ate some of the hard gray bread, the only good thing about which was the fact that weeks later it still sat in your stomach like a stone and gave you a feeling of satiety — albeit a deceptive one.

  Day after day from the start of April the sun burned down from blue skies; Beatrice sat in the garden for hours at a stretch, and very slowly her spirit returned. The rays of sunlight gave her the energy that she could no longer get from food. Gradually, her ghostly pallor gave way to a delicate, brown tan. Color rose to her sunken cheeks. Eventually she could go for a walk by the sea for the first time; she stood for a long time on the beach, breathed in the clean, salty air, watched the sun as it flickered and glistened off the waves, and felt strength flooding back into her and life regaining the upper hand. She could feel a gnawing hunger, like always, but at the same time there was again the optimistic feeling that she would overcome all of it, and that also there were still good things awaiting her. And soon the war would be over.

  Germa
ny fell apart in these days in April of the year 1945. The Russians had taken East Prussia and Silesia; they had freed Poland and stood just outside Berlin. From the west, the Americans, English, and French marched ever further into Germany, took over town after town, acre after acre. Most of the cities lay in ruins, their inhabitants were quick to give up, paying no attention to the ceaseless sloganeering of the Reich’s leadership to hold out. It could only — so went the unanimous opinion — be a matter of weeks before Hitler himself would have to surrender.

  It’s over, thought Beatrice. It’s practically over already.

  On April 30th, Adolf Hitler shot himself in the head in the basement of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.

  On May 2nd, Berlin was taken by the Russians.

  On May 7th, Germany surrendered unconditionally.