One Last Summer (2007) Read online

  Shortly afterwards, a captain knocked on the door and told us that because we were young girls who didn’t know better, he would let us off this once, but the next time we offered subhuman enemy military personnel food or clothing that was needed for the people of the Reich, we would be imprisoned.

  This war gets stupider by the day. I can’t see how putting Irena and I in prison, or being cruel to prisoners who haven’t done anything except fight for their country when they were ordered to, will help the Third Reich in any way.

  Chapter Ten

  Charlotte laid down her diary, her mind transfused by images of the bloodied, pathetic, hollow-eyed men of over sixty years ago, their gaunt figures bowed by blows and defeat as they trudged westwards in broken boots.

  She looked around her hotel room. It was only half past eight in the evening, but she felt as though it were midnight. She wondered if her exhaustion had been caused by the cancer, or the emotional strain of seeing Marius and Grunwaldsee again. There were so many questions that remained unanswered. Questions she would have asked if she and Marius had been alone.

  Laura knocked on the door.

  ‘How pretty you look,’ she complimented, when her granddaughter walked in wearing a calf-length, blue silk dress.

  ‘You’re not changing for dinner?’

  ‘I ate so much in Marius’s house, I couldn’t face a meal.’

  ‘Are you ill?’ Laura asked in concern. ‘Or just tired after today?’

  ‘Tired,’ Charlotte conceded. ‘Returning to Grunwaldsee has brought back so many memories. But although I don’t want to eat, if you give me five minutes, I’ll change and come to the dining room with you.’

  ‘There’s no need. I met two American Jewish girls in the lobby. They’re here with their mother. Their great-grandparents left East Prussia in 1920 and they’re searching for their old home. You never know, a dinner with them might lead to a documentary. Not many filmmakers have explored post-First World War migration from Eastern Europe.’

  ‘So many people coming back, looking for a country that has gone,’ Charlotte murmured absently. ‘I mean the past, not East Prussia.’

  ‘“The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there”,’ Laura said quoting the first line of Hartley’s The Go-Between.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t mind if I stay here?’

  ‘Not at all. But you will order yourself something later, if only a drink?’ Laura pressed.

  ‘Perhaps some brandy and ice cream,’ Charlotte said mischievously.

  ‘We don’t have to return to Grunwaldsee tomorrow, Oma.’

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting Marius and Brunon have offered to show us around the estate?’

  ‘We could put them off and go somewhere else.’

  ‘No,’ Charlotte answered decisively. ‘If I can bear to see the house, I can bear to see the fields.’ She reached for her diary.

  Laura tiptoed from the room, closing the door softly behind her, as her grandmother returned once more to her past.

  WEDNESDAY, 22 JULY 1942

  Sometimes it seems as though I only turn to this diary to record tragedy. I can barely see this page for tears. Paul was killed in Sevastopol on 1 July. Three weeks ago, yet the telegram only came this morning. Brunon was with me when the boy walked into the yard. He offered to tell the maids and warn them not to say anything to Mama, but I couldn’t risk her finding out accidentally, so I went to her room.

  Her screams were appalling but mercifully short-lived. Five minutes later she was smiling, unwilling or unable to remember what I’d told her. Irena had left before the telegram arrived, to visit her parents with her new baby, Karoline, and Marianna. I’m glad. I don’t want to see anyone, not even Brunon or Martha. I think they understand, because when I left Mama’s room I fetched this diary and locked myself into Paul’s bedroom. They must know I’m here, but they haven’t knocked on the door.

  The twins shared this room from the day they were born. After Wilhelm married, Paul continued to sleep here whenever he came home on leave. Now I can only look at what he left behind. His books, his chess set, his collar studs, cufflinks, tiepins and cologne. It’s like Papa’s death all over again. A moment ago I opened Paul’s wardrobe and touched his clothes. Clothes he will never wear again. It’s so unfair. He hadn’t even begun to live the life he wanted to.

  I can hear a woman sobbing in the yard. I know it’s Maria and I feel that I should go to her, but even the thought seems hypocritical. Paul never spoke to me about her, and we all pretended that nothing was going on between them.

  I don’t know whether I should order the carriage. We have no petrol for the car. Should I go and see Irena, or wait for her to return this evening? I hope and pray that Wilhelm is safe. I cannot bear the thought of losing him too …

  SUNDAY, 27 DECEMBER 1942

  This Christmas was much more dismal than last. Every year there are fewer of us – first Papa, then Peter, now Paul and Maria. She killed herself a week after the news came about Paul. She tied a sack full of stones to her ankles and jumped off the pier into the lake. We think she may have been carrying Paul’s child. I couldn’t write about it then because I blame myself. If I had talked to her, treated her like a sister, spoken to her about Paul, accepted and welcomed her into the family, she might still be alive, and we would have had her and Paul’s child to love.

  Instead, all we have is her grave, and it is my fault for ignoring her grief.

  Brunon and Martha have been very brave. The doctor helped by writing ‘accidental drowning’ on the death certificate so we could bury Maria in Grunwaldsee churchyard and not outside it with the other suicides.

  Sometimes I feel as though I am surrounded by death, although I try very hard not to think about it, with Wilhelm and Claus returning to the Russian Front and Manfred already there. They must survive this war. They must! Must! Must! Must!

  Charlotte recalled breaking the nib on her pen when she wrote the exclamation marks. It was as though she had tried to keep Wilhelm, Claus and Manfred alive by sheer force of will.

  There were no geese left for us to slaughter this Christmas, so we made do with the old chickens that were no longer laying. Everyone except Manfred managed to come home, even Greta and Helmut, unfortunately. Their engagement must be one of the longest on record. I asked her when she intended to marry, and she replied, ‘Not until the war is over.’ I told her to prepare to die an old maid. She insisted her war work is far too important to interrupt for marriage, as though running Grunwaldsee is inconsequential.

  Wilhelm, Claus, Papa and Mama von Letteberg, and the Adolfs were here for Christmas Day, and I managed to organize a good Christmas dinner, but if it hadn’t been for the hams and food Mama and Papa von Letteberg brought, we would have had a very bare supper table. I tried to get Mama to eat Christmas dinner with us, but she kept looking around and asking for Papa and Paul, until it seemed better for everyone, and kinder to her, to allow her to return to her room.

  Claus and Wilhelm were with us for only two days. They had twelve days’ leave and spent five days travelling to get here and faced a five-day journey back. Irena and Wilhelm disappeared to the summerhouse as usual. Claus was more remote than ever. He was furious when he discovered that I allowed Erich a nightlight. He accused me of wanting to keep him a baby when he should be preparing for manhood. I reminded him that Erich is only two years old, but Claus shouted that he wanted a man for a son, not a sissy, with the result that I had to get up in the night when Erich woke screaming because he is terrified of the dark. I am glad Claus was only home for two days; any longer would have been intolerable.

  Irena cried and clung to Wilhelm when they left. I simply waved to Claus. Someone who expects his two-year-old son to behave like a man would undoubtedly be embarrassed by a show of affection from his wife.

  The one thing that hurts is Mama von Letteberg’s gentle questioning as to whether everything is all right between me and Claus. How can it be when I quarrel with
Claus every time we meet and I hate him to touch me?

  SUNDAY, 7 FEBRUARY 1943

  It has been announced that the Sixth Army fought to the last man at Stalingrad. Just like at Thermopylae there are no survivors. Although Wilhelm and Claus were not with the Sixth Army, they are in Russia, and we know that officers frequently carry messages to other units. Dear God, there were a quarter of a million German soldiers at Stalingrad. So many German boys I know were stationed there, I can’t bear to think about it. I am desperately worried about Wilhelm, Manfred and Claus. It was stupid of me to think last Christmas that things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  I am only glad that the demands of running the estate leave me little time to sleep and no time to think. We have hardly any breeding stock left after the army requisitions. Even dumb Wilfie has been taken, to do what we can’t imagine. All the men have gone, except the very young like Marius, who, for all his ten years, works like a slave outside school hours, and the old like Brunon, who is labouring when he should be in retirement.

  There isn’t enough food; we go without just to feed the children. Officials from the War Office came with a list of produce they expect us to supply to fulfil next year’s quota. Whether it was worry over Wilhelm and Claus, realizing the impossibility of meeting the quota, or the way Claus behaved when he was home, I don’t know, but I broke down. I told the officers that there was no way I could supply another thing until I had more labour.

  I was heartily ashamed of myself afterwards, but Brunon said it was the best possible thing that I could have done, because two days later I received an official letter to say that we have been allocated extra labour in the form of twelve Russian prisoners of war.

  I had to sign what seemed like a thousand documents to state that I would pay the Reich, not the men, and that neither I nor my family nor my employees would feed them, or collaborate with them in any way.

  An officer came from the prisoner of war camp to warn us to expect sub-humans in appearance and behaviour. I told him that I had toured Russia in 1939 with the Allenstein Hitler Youth orchestra, and there was nothing he could tell me about the way Russians lived in the country areas.

  They came tramping down the lane at dawn this morning. We assembled to watch as they entered the yard. Brunon and Marius had armed themselves with pitchforks. They needn’t have bothered. Three soldiers with rifles were guarding them, not that the prisoners looked as though they had strength enough to create trouble or run away. The wrists, hands and faces poking out of their rags were encrusted with dirt and painfully thin. Their eyes are dark, ringed by black, which could be grime or exhaustion. And they have lice. I saw some crawling in their beards, and they were scratching at their armpits.

  Brunon put them to work right away, clearing snow from the courtyard, forking manure and cleaning out the stables. The ground is too hard to begin ploughing. They are not good workers. They are slow, and won’t do anything until the guards shout and threaten them.

  I watched them from Mama’s bedroom window when I took Erich up for his daily visit. Every afternoon I try to organize a small treat for Mama. I visit, and Minna brings us acorn coffee, all that we can get now. Real coffee and cakes are something we see only in our dreams. Mama and I sit and drink the ghastly coffee while I desperately try to pretend that everything is normal.

  For the first time in months Mama sat next to me. She watched the men working for a while, then she turned and, almost like her old self, said, ‘You must feed our workers, Charlotte. Your papa says that a man must eat well to labour well.’

  When I returned to the kitchen, one of the land army girls was complaining that she had picked up a louse in the stables. That is something I cannot possibly have. If the Russian prisoners are carrying typhus lice, we could end up with an epidemic.

  I telephoned the camp right away and demanded to speak to the commandant. He said there was nothing he could do. The Russians live like animals and refuse to wash or obey the basic rules of hygiene. I spoke to Brunon and he said the only solution was for the Russians to live here at Grunwaldsee where we could ensure that they keep themselves clean. That is impossible. I cannot have twelve enemy prisoners of war sleeping here in a household of women, babies, old men and young children.

  I put a call through to Papa von Letteberg to ask his advice. I can’t possibly fulfil the army quotas without extra labour, but neither can I risk a typhus epidemic which could kill the children and the rest of us. Hopefully he will telephone tonight and advise me what to do.

  TUESDAY, 9 FEBRUARY 1943

  Papa von Letteberg telephoned with the news that Wilhelm and Claus are alive, safe and well, but Manfred was at Stalingrad. The Adolfs and Irena are broken-hearted. Poor, idealistic, stupid Manfred. I can’t believe that he will never create trouble at a family gathering again. If anything, the tragedy has brought Irena and I even closer together. My beloved sister by marriage. Even if the war ended tomorrow we will have lost too much for the world ever to be the same again. Both of us spent most of the day crying for Manfred, Paul, Peter … It is so hard when there isn’t even a body to bury or a grave to mourn over, only a memorial service to arrange.

  Papa von Letteberg couldn’t say where Claus and Wilhelm are, or what is happening on the Russian Front, but he has solved the problem with the Russian prisoners of war. He telephoned the camp commandant personally and insisted that the men who work at Grunwaldsee be kept clean. The commandant then telephoned me to give his assurance that would be the case in future, but I could tell he was furious with me for daring to contact one of his superior officers about the matter when he had assumed that he had already dealt with it.

  I asked Brunon to visit me in Papa’s office so we could be alone, and told him what Mama had said about feeding the prisoners. He advised me that the soldiers had already repeated the instructions that the Russians were not to be fed, although one or the other of the guards are always scrounging in the kitchen.

  Almost as though he knew what I was thinking, the camp commandant telephoned again later to make it plain that if anyone at Grunwaldsee gives the prisoners food, he would make it his business to see that person severely punished, whoever it was.

  I had no choice but to agree that the prisoners will be left alone. That means setting them tasks that won’t bring them into contact with us, the land army girls or the Poles. Brunon and I looked at the work sheets and decided that as soon as the weather breaks, the Russians will be put to ploughing and planting the potato fields. No one need go near them, provided we keep them on that side of the farm and, if they are locked in the barn while their guards are fed at midday and then taken directly from the fields back to the camp at the end of the day, we will see very little of them.

  I only hope that these prisoners will make things easier. I am so tired of struggling. So very, very tired.

  SUNDAY, 30 MAY 1943

  Today Wilhelm and Claus returned to the Russian Front after a four-day leave. It wasn’t long enough. I forgot all our differences when I saw him and Wilhelm drive into the courtyard in a staff car. They looked so pale, ill and exhausted that my heart went out to both of them. There were many questions from the land army girls and women whose men are at the Front, but all they would say is that the German army is doing the best it can.

  Wilhelm looked so weak that Irena and I wanted to call the doctor, but Claus, who’d been driving, insisted it wasn’t necessary and what they both needed was rest and food. I ran to the kitchens to see what we had, while Irena went upstairs to draw baths.

  Neither Claus nor Wilhelm would come near us until they had been deloused. As soon as they had bathed, and Martha had wrapped their uniforms in rubber sheeting to be taken to the laundry to be steam-cleaned, they dressed in the civilian clothes they had left behind and came to eat.

  Because of the shortage of fuel and maids, we have closed off even more rooms in the house. I laid the table in Mama’s morning room. If either of them found it strange that we were eating in ther
e they didn’t say anything.

  While they were bathing, I asked Marius to kill one of the chickens. We couldn’t spare it, but it was all I could think of giving them. The first of the new potatoes had been lifted and there was a cabbage, so I made sauerkraut. Martha, who has been teaching me to cook, says I am almost as good as her now.

  I gave Wilhelm and Claus a bowlful of the ham bone and dried pea soup Martha had made for everyone on the farm. It was dreadfully thin, but Irena and I gave up our bread ration and, by the time they’d eaten that, the chicken and potatoes, which I had fried in the chicken fat, were ready and, together with the sauerkraut, made a fairly presentable meal.

  There was one bottle of cherries left from last summer, and we gave it to them with a glass of Papa’s brandy. I couldn’t bear to serve them acorn coffee, so Irena made rose-hip tea. They both declared it to be the best dinner ever. How different from the five- and six-course meals we used to eat in the old days.

  Afterwards, all they wanted to do was sleep. Irena went to bed with Wilhelm but I went back out into the fields. Yet another cat has disappeared. This time it is Martha’s favourite. Brunon and I are certain that the Russians are killing and eating them, but I don’t want to say anything, as the guards don’t need any more excuses to treat them badly.

  Yesterday, when Martha took Brunon and Marius their lunch in the fields, she saw one of the soldiers beat the youngest Russian prisoner. He looks far too young to be a soldier, yet the guards are always hitting and kicking him. She said blood ran from his head and there was a loud cracking noise that sounded as though the guard had broken the poor boy’s skull.

  Yesterday evening, after we ate a supper of herb omelette, black bread and one of the last few bottles of Papa’s wine, we heard the prisoners tramping up the lane. Claus went to the window. He said the Russians were the lowest. Remote and distant, he is so totally unlike the man I thought I was marrying that my heart has turned to stone. Then I saw Claus carrying Erich across the courtyard to stroke the horses and I felt an overwhelming wave of love for my son.