Rika
When I was a kid, Mama’s blue Delft plate was propped upright in our kitchen dresser, instead of stacked like the ordinary dishes. In the breezy country under its chipped glaze, tiny Dutch people wearing clogs walked along a canal towpath past a windmill, or spread their laundry on the waving grass. My favourite was a little girl with plaits. I had plaits of my own back then, only mine were orange, not cobalt like hers. We used to have conversations, that little girl and me, when I was supposed to be doing homework at the kitchen table. In a whisper like fingernails on pottery, she’d tell me about baby rabbits, birds’ nests and pretty striped snails she found in the fields.
I’m not so sure about that plate now. Maybe I shouldn’t have begged Papa to stick it back together the day Mama broke it on his head. When his hair began falling out, the scar appeared again. More of it showed every time he came for Sunday dinner. The skin in the middle of his bald patch looked just like the glued-up plate.
I brought the plate home after Mama died and hung it on our kitchen wall. Papa said he didn’t want it and I’m not surprised. Lately, the little girl has started whispering to me again. Only she never mentions the meadow creatures now. More often, she calls me a dirty whore.
I bring my husband Anton coffee in bed every morning, to make up for the government stopping his job at the bank. He says it helps. Today though, I haven’t quite finished arranging the tray when he appears in the kitchen doorway. He’s all combed and oiled, his moustache neatly trimmed.
“I’m meeting a private client at nine. In Charlottenburg.”
I put the coffee pot down on a clean doily. “Don’t you want any breakfast before you go?”
But he’s already on his way out. “I don’t want to be late. I’ll get a Bratwurst at the station.”
I pursue him into the hall with the tray. “But that’s pork. Jews aren’t allowed.”
He laughs. “Only if there’s another Jew watching. But if you’re worried about my soul, make me lamb chops for lunch.”
When the front door has banged shut behind him, I tidy away the coffee things. On Mama’s plate, the little girl is waiting for me by the windmill, stick hands where her hips would be if she had any, a scowl on her sketchy face. With no basket over her arm, she isn’t even pretending to be on an errand. I don’t wait to hear what she has to say. It won’t be anything nice. I take the plate down and stuff it into the bottom drawer of the dresser, burying it under wedding linen we never use. Just before I lose sight of the girl, she runs away over the rim of the plate, ducking a decorative floral border.
The bell on the Butcher’s shop door sounds different this morning. It has a peculiar echo that buzzes around my right ear. I hope it’s not infected again. The last thing I want is a week stuck in the apartment with Anton, and bad-mannered tableware.
Our downstairs neighbour is waiting for her cuts on the sawdust-strewn floor, hair still in curlers under a paisley headscarf. Light from the plate-glass windows reflects on her spectacles, turning them into blank white ovals. For some reason, I can’t remember her name this morning so I just say. “Guten Morgen.”
She doesn’t greet me in return. Not even a nod. Instead, she folds her arms over the shelf of her bosom. “I’m surprised to see you here, Frau Landauer.”
Uncertain now, I glance around. Perhaps I’ve wandered into her kitchen by mistake. It wouldn’t be the first time. But this smells like the Butcher’s. The usual sides of pork and looped Bratwurst hang over the counter, and the same yellowing “no credit” note is pinned in the cashier’s booth. I turn back to the neighbour. She hasn’t moved, only now one eyebrow has appeared over the steel rim of her spectacles. She wags a finger at the front window. “That’s about people like your husband.”
Sun shines through a sign pasted to the glass, outlining black mirror-writing. The bright light projects shadowy letters onto the tiles above the cashier’s booth, turning them the right way round and magnifying them to twice their proper size.
“Jews are not welcome here.
The Jews are our misfortune.”
The words circle around my ear like Chinese Whispers, multiplying and amplifying until I have to shout to hear myself over them. “But I’m not a Jew.”
The butcher comes hurrying out of the back room in his stained apron. He’s carrying the neighbour’s order on a sheet of greaseproof paper, ready to be weighed. But he walks right past her and stops in front of me. A trickle of red drips down his arm. It hangs from his elbow, quivering. The butcher and I, the neighbour, and the shop window are all reflected in miniature inside that tiny scarlet bauble.
“I don’t want any trouble in my shop. Try the market stall on Lauterplatz.”
At home, I put the meat from the market stall in the larder, and cover it with a net to keep off the flies. There are plenty of onions left on the string behind the door. When I had ear trouble as a child, Mama used to hold me down and press a cut-in-half onion to whichever ear was worse. I suppose she thought it would help, although you could never be quite sure with Mama, even when she was sober. But maybe there was something in it. I unthread an onion, cut it up, and steam the slices in a saucepan. As soon as they’re soft, I wrap them in muslin.
My chaise longue is by the parlour windows, overlooking the street. Pressing the warm, damp poultice to my ear, I lie on it to watch sparrows in the tree by our front door. The oniony vapour stings my eyes and makes my nose run, but I daresay that means it’s doing me good.
Down in the street, the neighbour clumps up our front steps in her frumpy shoes, bosom out in front like a car bonnet. I remember her name now. Frau Hamacher. Her husband has a factory that makes ladies’ underwear.
I switch on the radio. The chaos in my ear rearranges itself around a foxtrot on the dance program and agrees to let me rest my head on a pile of cushions topped by the onion plaster. The covers may have to be boiled to get rid of the smell. I hope the colours won’t run.
Shrill cacophony pitches me out of sleep and down onto the Persian rug. I flounder amongst cushions, gathering sharp-smelling muslin and bits of damp sliced onion with numb, shaky hands.
The noise stops. Then starts again. Then stops.
I drag myself to my knees to pick up the shrieking telephone receiver. Anton, speech slurred by wine, says, “I won’t make it for lunch, Meine Liebe. Did you get the lamb chops?”
There are voices in the background which I don’t think are inside my head. “My ear’s bad again.”
His hand goes over the mouthpiece. Then he’s back, and now I can hear him smiling about something one of the other people has said. “We’ll have the lamb chops this evening then, shall we?”
After dinner, rainbow grease retreats from the soap flakes I sprinkle over the dishwater. I’m not as careful as I should be with the washing-up. Clattering crockery, glassware and cutlery are loud under the suds. The noise hurtles around my ear, twisting itself into a sound like two people arguing, talking over each other, neither pausing to listen to the other.
Anton’s still at the kitchen table, having a cigar. I’m surprised he can’t hear any of the racket. Mama always used to say she could, if she pressed her ear to mine. He leans back in his chair, yawning and stretching his arms behind his head. “I'm off to bed. I had some wine earlier. It’s made me awfully sleepy.”
After he’s gone to bed, there’s nothing to listen to except the quarrelling voices, which haven’t stopped even though I’ve finished the washing-up. One of them is the little girl with plaits. She must have jumped right off the plate into my ear. “you mustn’t listen when that whore speaks put your fingers in your ears don’t look she can’t see you if you close your eyes”
The other voice is younger, a small child. He’s crying, lost in one of my ear’s twisting passageways. “want to go home want mama where’s mama it’s dark don’t like the dark”
I cup a hand around the poor baby. “I’ll help you.” I open the bottom drawer, and shake the plate free from an embroidered tablecloth. There’s no-one on the canal banks this evening. Not even the miller. The sails of his mill sag unattended, their cloths loose and billowing. I press my ear to the cool glaze. “There. You can go home now.”
It’s the wrong thing to do.
They must have been hiding in amongst the leaves around the border, waiting for me. First one, then a handful, then the whole population of Delft comes crashing through the shrubbery. The miller, the children’s Mama, and a company of soldiers, all of them crowding into my earhole. The cacophony is shocking, sickening. And there isn’t room for them all. More of them spill up my sleeves, into my dress and stockings, itching me with their prickly wooden clogs.
“Get off me!” I run into the bathroom, stripping off clothes as I skid down the hall. Naked, I lock the door against the rest of them, and dive into the lukewarm remains of Anton’s bathwater in the tub, left behind for the tablecloth. Pouring water into my ear doesn’t wash out the people inside. Scrubbing with a flannel doesn’t stop them running up my arms, neither does the loofah, not even the pumice stone. They burrow into my skin, leaving red welts. Even when I scream they don’t stop to listen.
Blue soldiers out in the hallway fire their muskets at the door, shouting in Anton’s voice. “What the devil’s the matter? Let me in.”
“Leave me alone!”
After a while, the platoon resorts to cannons. The door comes flying in, and lands on the bath mat beside me, all splintered, with a boot-print in the middle. Soldiers barge in, life-sized now, with green uniforms instead of blue. They wear baggy trousers and peaked caps, and revolvers hang at their belts instead of muskets. Two of them haul me out of the bathtub and throw towels over me. “Has this Jew been hurting you?”
Their fingers are pink and hairy instead of twiggy blue. I can’t wriggle out of their grip. “Let me go. I’ve got something stuck in my ear. I need to wash it out.”
Two more of them stand in the doorway, with Anton, who keeps repeating, “She locked herself in. I couldn’t open the door.”
Frau Hamacher from downstairs is here too. I don’t know why because she never comes to visit. Her puffy spectacle-less face bobs between the soldiers’ shoulders. “There was water dripping through the ceiling and I heard screaming. I thought that Jew might be assaulting her.”
Anton yells back, “Assaulting her? Verdammt nochmal. This is none of your business. Why call the police? I didn’t charge your husband a single Pfennig for fixing that mess with his accounts, did I?”
In the doorway, a soldier with grey hair and a droopy moustache rounds on him. “Halt die Klappe Jew. You’re under arrest.” He beckons to the two men holding me. “Get her dressed and take her to the hospital.”
Paul
The tram is full when it reaches the foundry. Passengers in the aisle shuffle backwards to accommodate steelworkers coming off the night shift, their overcoats and hats carrying a burnt, oily tang from the furnaces. Only the seat next to Paul remains free. He wraps the green skirts of his uniform around his knees and shifts closer to the fogged-up window. Still, even after the conductor yanks his bell-rope and the tram lurches forwards, rocking those standing like stalks in a breeze, no-one takes the empty place. Paul shrugs, easing his long legs away from the bench in front and stretching them out sideways. Whomsoever is without sin, let him sit down beside a policeman.
There’s an Ordnungspolizei cloak amongst the huddle at the front. Paul recognises its wearer, a Watchmaster close to retirement, who wags his hand in greeting. Paul returns the gesture with a curt nod, all that can be expected from a detective. In any case, there’s a War. People ought to be serious. There should be no waving, especially not from men of the Watchmaster’s generation, who remember the last time.
With a jolt, the tram swerves over points onto another track. It sways to a halt at the westbound stop instead of continuing northwards. Passengers without seats are thrown about, colliding, snatching at each others’ shoulders. The conductor drawls into affronted silence. “All change. Line's closed. Subsidence.”
No-one moves until he gives the bell-rope a volley of hard tugs.
The old Watchmaster is waiting for Paul outside, hat pulled down against the rain. “Morning Werner. Been wanting to catch you.”
Paul glances around in case anyone is close enough to eavesdrop. “Morning.”
The Watchmaster leans closer. “They’re putting a customs checkpoint on the road up to Dorsten. I’m to work my shift out there tomorrow. In this rain. Got a doctor’s note about my chest, but the Chief won’t exempt me. I was hoping you could-”
Paul holds up a hand. “I don’t do that any more.” He strides away, without waiting for the Watchmaster.
Despite setting a brisk pace, Paul stamps his clocking-on card a regrettable quarter-hour late. Overtime more than makes up for it but still, the lost fifteen minutes are a blot on this year’s otherwise perfect record.
The pimply trainee from dispatches is fidgeting by Paul’s desk. “Guten Morgen Herr Werner. There’s been criminal damage at the railway station. But Herrn Schneider and Knoll have gone to a stabbing and Herr Kamphausen’s taking fingerprints at the Post Office burglary.”
Paul begins unbuttoning his coat. “They don’t need a detective for vandalism.”
The trainee steps between Paul and the coat rack. “The station master’s phoned three times.”
The new vandalism in the station entrance hall has been hidden behind blankets slung over two painter’s ladders. The stationmaster, pink-faced, raises his hat to rub sparse hair beneath it. A pin on his jacket lapel bears the ruling party’s angular Hakenkreuz symbol. He holds up the blankets, glancing to left and right. “Must have been here an hour. No-one saw him.” He lifts the fabric to let Paul pass.
The nude subject of the near life-sized sketch, Reichsmarschall Goering, is immediately recognisable. But the art-loving minister would probably rather not be depicted like this. The picture has been drawn in shiny red paint which has dribbled down the wall tiles in places. When Paul touches it, his finger comes away coated in oily-smelling scarlet that won’t come off on his handkerchief.
“I’ll have a look round. See if I can find the perpetrator.” There’s a pinkish stain on the rear door’s brass handle. “Ask the porters to get some white spirit and rags ready in case I do.”
The vandal’s progress after leaving the station isn’t difficult to follow. Shiny thumbprints grace a signpost at the taxi rank, and an abandoned tin of red car lacquer rolls in a gutter. The bespattered perpetrator himself is asleep on a bench at the tram stop, paintbrush still tucked into his trouser pocket. He can’t be more than sixteen. His features in slumber still bear the softness of recent childhood and judging by his well-starched shirt collar, his mother is probably worrying somewhere about why her boy hasn’t come home.
There’s only a faint whiff of alcohol about the youth’s breath. Perhaps like his model, Reichsminister Goering, the lad has been trying something stronger. Paul hoists the skinny body upright, administering a hearty shake. “Wake up son. It’s the police.”
The youngster revives, arms flailing. “Eh? Get off me.”
“What’s your name?”
“Fuck off.”
Paul laughs. “Your Pa did well to get that one past the registrar. Do you go by anything else?”
The boy scowls down at the wet pavement. “Horst Riesmer.”
The porters have left rags and a bottle of white spirit in a bucket behind the makeshift screen. Paul kicks the bucket over to Riesmer. “On you go then."
Riesmer wilts against the wall. “But it’s good. Best I’ve ever done.”
Paul splashes white spirit onto a rag and presses the stinking bundle into the boy’s unresisting fingers. “Start scrubbing lad.”
He rests his elbows on a ladder-rung to watch Riesmer’s listless efforts. It takes the boy twenty minutes to reduce his picture to a ragged-edged smear. In one of those modern art galleries, the mess might still pass as a portrait, but only if labelled as such. The stationmaster fidgets in his office doorway, scratching the back of his neck with a raw, chapped hand. “Looks even worse now. Like there’s been a murder.”
Paul nods. “Your men’ll have to do the rest. Our boy isn’t up to any more.”
Riesmer is squatting on the floor, face greyish. Paul applies his boot to the stringy backside. “You’re lucky I’m not the Gestapo, son. Else you’d be in the lock-up now with no teeth left and half your ribs broken. Now piss off home.”
Riesmer turns back before he shoulders open the doors. His broad smile hasn’t yet lost its little-boy charm “I owe you one Herr Polizei.”
“Better hope I never call that in.”
