One Last Summer (2007) Read online

  I see Alexander often, but as he is the senior Russian officer, the guards watch him all the time. We are careful not to smile or show any outward sign of recognition lest one of them or a land army girl notices and realizes that we know one another. The guards allow Brunon to tell Leon, Alexander’s second-in-command, what work needs doing. As none of the Russians have admitted that they speak German, the guards permit Brunon and Leon to converse in Polish, which fortunately, for Alexander and his men, none of the guards understand.

  Martha killed three of the oldest chickens for the Russians’ Christmas dinner. She should have boiled them but she said that didn’t seem right at Christmas, so she roasted them, although they were undoubtedly tough. Brunon smuggled them and a huge pan of fried potatoes, gravy and steamed vegetables into the tack room and passed them up through the trapdoor into the stable loft. He found an old stove in the rubbish at the back of the barn at the beginning of the winter and gave it to the prisoners.

  Thankfully, the guards had no objection. They don’t seem to care what the Russians do now, so long as they don’t make any trouble for them. The prisoners soon had the stove re-assembled and working. They connected it to the kitchen flue that runs at the back of the stables, so if the camp commandant visits he won’t realize the prisoners have heating unless he goes into the loft, and he isn’t likely to do that. They burn the little wood the guards allow them to carry up, alongside the logs Brunon and Marius pass through the trap-door. Brunon says it is warmer there than the drawing room.

  Brunon sees that the straw in the loft is changed regularly, and I found some more blankets in Mama’s linen cupboards. They were old but still quite good. Without the hatch, the Russians wouldn’t have enough clothes, food, wood or any soap or blankets. Fortunately, the trap-door can be opened from both sides, so the prisoners can push anything they know the guards will confiscate down into the tack room when the soldiers carry out their regular searches and inspections.

  Marius or Brunon pass everything back up when the guards have finished. I laughed when Brunon told me that the prisoners have erected a make-shift latrine in front of the hatch so the guards can’t see it from a distance, and avoid going near it to take a closer look.

  One night, when I went into the tack room, I found a folded piece of sacking with my name in charcoal on the outside. Inside was a piece of feed wrapper with music written on it and one word: ‘Danke’. It wasn’t signed, but I knew it was from Alexander.

  I played the music when the prisoners were working in the yard and could hear me. It is very beautiful, probably the most beautiful piece of music I have ever heard, and must have taken hours to write out, but I dare not write back. Any communication with POWs is severely punished.

  If only this war would end so everything could go back to what it was before – but then it never will. I will never see Papa, Paul, Peter or Manfred again in this life. There are too many people dead and too many empty places that cannot be filled. When will winter end and spring begin?

  MONDAY, 7 FEBRUARY 1944

  The drifts are six feet high, and, as fast as the prisoners clear the yard, the snow blows in or starts falling again. Irena is pregnant. If she isn’t having a child when Wilhelm comes home on leave, we can be sure that she will be by the time he goes. This one will be born sometime around Marianna’s fourth birthday. Irena is a wonderful mother, much more devoted and less distracted than me. Both she and Wilhelm (who telephoned from Berlin after she wrote to him with the news, just to tell her how delighted he was as the thought of becoming a father again) say they would love three girls. I think that they wouldn’t mind a boy, either.

  Just like her last pregnancy, and the one before, Irena cannot keep any food down. She is generally exhausted by the end of the day, so when the children go to bed, we make her go, too. When Wilhelm is home she will stay up all night with him if that’s what he wants, but once he returns to Berlin it is as though the spark has gone from her life, and there is nothing that I, Martha or Brunon can do to cheer her.

  After I put Erich to bed tonight I left the kitchen and went to the tack room to see what kind of a job the prisoners had made of repairing the saddles and bridles. When I lit the lamp I heard a noise. Alexander whispered through the trap-door that he had been watching the kitchen door from the skylight. He had seen me leave the house and wanted to talk.

  I bolted both doors – the one to the yard, and the one to Papa’s study – then he climbed through from the stable loft into the tack room. He replaced the trap-door in seconds and, as Brunon has screwed hooks into the back of it and hung horse blankets on it, unless you look very carefully, you’d think that the ceiling was solid.

  Alexander promised me that although he and his men can climb through the trap-door whenever they want, they have no thought of escape. They know that if they even try, everyone at Grunwaldsee will suffer.

  Also they realize they have virtually no chance of getting across East Prussia and back through the German lines to their own without getting caught and shot. But knowing that they can get out whenever they want makes them feel a little less like caged animals. I pointed out that they can only break into the tack room, and the only door out of that, apart from the one that leads into Papa’s study and the house, opens into the yard and is in plain view of the guards in the lodge.

  We sat on bales of hay and talked while Alexander helped me inspect the saddles and bridles. It didn’t take long. One of the Russians was a cobbler before the war and he had made sure that all the prisoners did a workmanlike job. I have never seen the tack in such good repair, and I asked Alexander to thank the man.

  He said they took pride in their work at Grunwaldsee because they wanted to repay my kindness for saving their lives by giving them food and allowing them to live on the estate. But he also added that none of them could see how mending my bridles and saddles could possibly help the Reich’s war effort, reminding me that the prisoners are Russians and enemy soldiers first, and workers second.

  He told me that they had heard me playing the music he had written out for me, and it brought them great pleasure as well terrible homesickness. I thought that he had composed the music, but he laughed and said he wasn’t that talented. It was written by a Russian called Shostakovich.

  Long after we finished looking at the tack, we continued to sit and talk about music, art, literature, the concerts we had heard and played in together in Moscow. I am amazed by how many Russian composers I haven’t heard of besides Shostakovich. But then we were only allowed to study German composers in school and play German pieces in the Hitler Youth orchestra.

  Alexander misses his violin and cello. I wish I could loan him ours, but the guards would hear him play and then there would be trouble.

  The second drawing room that we used as a music room is rarely visited now. The piano is shrouded for most of the time, the instruments packed away in their cases. I have little time to play the piano other than on my weekly visits to Bergensee and at Christmas. All that studying and time Alexander and I spent practising come to nothing. It seems a terrible waste.

  We talked about our families. Alexander married a girl called Zoya, who was in the orchestra with us in 1939. I can only just remember the name; I cannot picture her at all. Alexander said it was a typical war wedding; they barely knew one another but felt they had to make the gesture in case one or both of them were killed. A bit like Claus and me. They only had one week together before his unit was ordered into Poland.

  Zoya wrote to tell him she was going to have his child, but, as he hasn’t heard from her or seen her since Christmas 1939, he doesn’t know whether it was a boy or a girl. He confided that sometimes he even forgets that he is married. I can understand that. I find it easy not to think about Claus in between his leaves.

  Alexander has seen Erich in the yard and thinks his child must be about the same age. I do so hope that he finds his family after the war. He was so easy to talk to that, for a short while, I managed to forget m
y problems with the estate, Claus and even the war. Alexander asked me to call him Sascha. I remember his parents and Masha calling him that when I stayed with them in their Moscow apartment.

  Whenever I think of Papa and Paul, and recall Wilhelm telling me how Paul died, I feel as though my heart is breaking. How much worse it must be for Sascha not knowing whether his wife, child, parents or sister are alive. Not hearing one word, one single word, in over four years. He said his unit had received very little mail even before they were captured.

  I tried to hearten him by telling him that it looks as though the Russians are driving us out of the Soviet Union. I felt dreadfully disloyal for saying it, especially as Paul and Manfred died there. But when I talked to Sascha I couldn’t help wondering what we are doing in his country, for all the Führer’s insistence that we Germans need Lebensraum. Why ship ethnic Germans out of the East after they have lived there for generations and move them into Poland? And what right have we Germans to appropriate Polish and Russian territory, houses, land and crops that were never ours in the first place?

  Neither of us is naive enough to think that there will be a quick or easy end to this war. Alexander said that, as he was captured, he could think of no better prison than Grunwaldsee and no kinder warden than myself.

  He is a captain, the same rank as Wilhelm – and Paul when he was killed. He has only told his lieutenant that he knows me and, as they are old school friends, he assured me that Leon Trepov can be trusted, so if I can’t speak to him directly, I can always pass on a message.

  I couldn’t believe it when I looked at my watch and saw that it was midnight. I can’t remember another evening that passed so quickly.

  I promised to meet Sascha again tomorrow evening. I will take some leather oil with me in case the guards get suspicious, although in this cold weather they lock the prisoners into the stable loft early and watch the outside steps and door from the comfort of the lodge window.

  It is crazy. Here we are in the middle of a war and I cannot sleep for thinking about a meeting that I have arranged with one of the enemy. The enemy! It is easy to think of foreigners as such when you don’t know them. Even when we invaded Russia, I only spared a quick thought for Masha, Sascha and their parents. Now I cannot bear the thought that one day he and Wilhelm might face one another in battle.

  Chapter Twelve

  THURSDAY, 30 MARCH 1944

  The papers and the radio are full of photographs and stories of our troops marching into Hungary, but the casualties continue to pour through on the trains and it is obvious that there is heavy fighting in Russia. Every day I thank God that Wilhelm isn’t there – and Claus, too.

  The spring thaw has finally come. There is very little snow left, and every tree and bush is full of buds. We, or rather the Russians, have begun ploughing the fields. I still go to the tack room nearly every evening, but now I always use the door that leads into it from Papa’s study.

  I keep the door locked except when I actually use it. The fat guard looked into the tack room one day when I was fetching Elise’s saddle and noticed the door. He asked me what was behind it. I told him it was an old entrance to the servants’ quarters but the key had been lost years ago. Fortunately, he believed me. Thank God for a stupid man.

  Although I cannot be seen from the lodge or the yard, I go to the tack room just after nine o’clock when the guards switch on the radio and get out their schnapps bottles. Mama, the children and Irena are always in bed by then. Martha, Brunon and Marius are upstairs in their rooms, and Minna stays in Mama’s room. She sleeps there now in case Mama wakes in the night and goes wandering again. They are all too busy to notice what I’m doing, and no one except me and the Russians know that Sascha and I spend our evenings together.

  Once the lamp is lit, the hatch shut and the doors locked, I feel as though Sascha and I are closed into our own private world. We wrap up in horse blankets and sit and talk about anything and everything – except the war.

  It is strange how many things we have in common: music; a love of literature; art; horses; and the countryside. Although Sascha was brought up in Moscow, his father had a country house and he learned to ride there.

  He has described the woods and fields around his father’s dacha so well,

  I feel as though I have visited them. A few weeks ago I smuggled a couple of sketch pads, some pencils and charcoal into the tack room. Sascha is a brilliant artist. He drew a portrait of me and a sketch of Grunwaldsee. I was reasonable at art at school but I gave it up to concentrate on music. Sascha said it was a mistake and he is teaching me basic drawing techniques. He says I am improving, but I think he is only being kind.

  Yesterday, after I had drawn a passable portrait of Elise, he kissed me only on the cheek but I shuddered. He apologized. I didn’t mean to, but I began to tell him about my marriage to Claus and how much I hate married life, and once I started talking I couldn’t stop. Afterwards I felt very foolish, but Sascha was not at all embarrassed, only kind and understanding. He said it is easy for a man to frighten his bride and that love, like everything else that is worth having in life, has to be worked for.

  Sascha is sensitive, gentle and sympathetic; the exact opposite of Claus, who is always stern, impatient and exacting. When I lay in bed last night I began to wonder what it would be like to be married to him; to live and work beside him; to sit and talk to him every evening in the drawing room about art and poetry and music; to eat all my meals with him; and to sleep with him. Perhaps even make love with him the way Irena does with Wilhelm.

  I have always been careful with this diary, now I am doubly careful. Should anyone read it, I would be in such trouble. Quite apart from some of the things I have written that border on treason, Sascha and I would certainly be shot.

  Charlotte looked up from the page. Dawn had broken, and she hadn’t noticed. The light had grown in the room until it outshone the bedside light. She hadn’t meant to read through the night, but there was so much that she had forgotten. Not events, but sights, sounds; the texture of Sascha’s skin beneath her fingertips; how he had smelled of rain, pine woods, the clean outdoors and wood smoke from the stove in the loft.

  She recalled the bitter struggle she’d had with her conscience from the earliest days of their friendship. She couldn’t forget the sacred vows she had exchanged with Claus in Grunwaldsee church on their wedding day. But the sense of guilt that had tormented her hadn’t prevented her from stealing away as often as she could to spend time with Sascha.

  That evening, when Sascha had kissed her, lightly and chastely on the cheek, had marked a turning point in their relationship. She believed that Sascha had meant it as a friendly kiss, a recognition and reward for work well done. But from that moment, things happened between them that she had never dared commit to her diary. Yet every second they had shared remained etched indelibly into her memory. Secret treasures she had clung to, dwelt on and relived during the most wretched times in her life.

  Those memories had both sustained her and caused her anguish for over sixty years. They had given her the strength to go on when she had nothing and no one to live for. And they had given rise to her bleakest despair when she had doubted Sascha’s motives for befriending her. Had he sought simply to gain food and warmth from her that would enable him and his men to survive? Had he ever truly loved her as she had him? Were her memories of Sascha and their love real, or was she, like so many elderly people, remembering what had never been?

  Had the most momentous evening of her life meant anything to Sascha? Had he clung to it, cherished it and relived it time and again afterwards, as she had – and still did?

  The day had been cold and fresh, but it had lost its harsh winter bite. She had smuggled a wooden box stuffed with hay into her father’s study. Inside was unimaginable luxury: a small pot of real coffee, made with beans Mama von Letteberg had sent from Berlin along with a few other delicacies. She had stolen a few spoonfuls of the coffee and two truffle chocolates from the par
cel before sharing out the rest of the contents between her own and Brunon’s family.

  Sascha had been waiting for her. As soon as she’d pushed the bolts home in the tack room doors, he’d dropped down through the hatch, closing it behind him. He’d landed lightly on the balls of his feet, sniffed and said, ‘I don’t believe it.’

  She proudly opened the box, showed him the contents and said, ‘Believe it.’

  She laid a lace tablecloth over a wooden crate, set out two porcelain cups and a silver jug of cream. Not knowing if he took sugar, she’d brought the honey pot and a porcelain dish for the truffles. When she’d finished setting out the feast she’d felt embarrassed, as if she were a child playing house.

  He caught her hand, lifted it to his lips and said, ‘Thank you. I feel almost human again.’

  Even now she didn’t know why she’d said it, but she repeated automatically without thinking, ‘As opposed to subhuman.’

  He gazed into her eyes, and she’d felt as though he were looking into her soul. ‘Is that how you think of me and Russians, Charlotte?’

  ‘Never,’ she had protested. ‘You, Masha, your family – you are no different from us.’

  ‘We were – are,’ he contradicted. ‘But we didn’t realize it. It takes a special kind of sadist to turn prisoners of war into a field and tell them to graze like cattle. And an even greater one to point a flamethrower at a wooden house and shoot children when they run out.’

  Her blood had run cold. Then from somewhere she had summoned the courage to tell him what Wilhelm had said, and ask if he knew what her brother had meant by ‘behind the curtain of lies’.

  It was just as well that coffee had been almost impossible to get hold of for another five or six years, because, for a long time afterwards, the smell had catapulted her back into the tack room. And brought with it all the paralyzing horror she’d felt while listening to Sascha recite lists of atrocities that the German military had carried out on the defenceless civilians in his homeland.