The Willow Wren by Philipp Schott (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📕

know what you’re talking about.” I think he said something else too, but his voice was quieter and then there was the scrape of a chair and I was just barely able to scramble out of the way in time for the door to open and Papa to walk out. His face was red. He might have noticed me, but he did not acknowledge me.

“War,” I thought. “There will be a war.” The idea seemed both terrifying and exciting to me. Theodor and I had a few toy soldiers. They were made of tin and had once been brightly painted but were now chipped and worn. I think they might have originally belonged to an older cousin. I always lost to Theodor when we played, but I still sought him out for battles whenever he would stoop to play with his little brother.

I described my earliest memory before, the one with the sweets in Oma’s wardrobe. One of the few times Papa spoke to me directly about his past he described his own earliest memory. He was born in 1904, so this might have been in 1907 or ’08. He recalled seeing the old veterans from the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War marching through the streets of Bamberg. He was particularly impressed by the highly polished steel helmets and bayonet tips shining in the sun. That was the last war that Germany had won. That was the war that led to Prussia being able to persuade the mess of smaller German principalities to unite with it as one country for the first time. His own father was less keen on watching the march. He died long before I was born, so I never met him, but from the stories I heard he was an austere intellectual with an elaborate Edwardian moustache and beard. Perhaps this is just the cliché that grew around his memory because he was a professor. People also said that he was very disdainful of the military and suspicious of nationalism. But Papa was a typical little boy who found marching soldiers very impressive and he insisted on staying. Papa remembered that.

I am connecting these thoughts now — my parents’ talk of war, my toy soldiers and Papa’s story of the marching veterans — and I suppose the lesson is that most little boys are excited by soldiers, and most of them grow out of it one way or another, even if it takes a very long time.

I am astonished that I remember that conversation. Nothing for over fifty years and then suddenly now it springs to life in my mind. It is as if my brain is an antenna that has been retuned, perhaps slightly swivelled or lengthened, allowing all of this to come back so clearly. Pin-sharp voices now where for decades there had been only static. Moving pictures now where before there had been only murk and vapour. Even smells. Papa smelled of sweet port wine–scented tobacco and of bright aftershave or cologne. In fact, not only can I bring back their voices, but if I concentrate, I can hear the cars rattling by on the wet cobblestones in the street outside our grand Connewitz apartment, and I can hear the maid humming quietly downstairs and I can hear the wind above, scraping a single tree branch against the clay shingles on our roof. I hear all of this so clearly.

Chapter Three

1937–1938

Early autumn in Leipzig before the war. It’s hard to tell you about it because you really cannot imagine now how beautiful this place was. It was beautiful in every season, but especially so in the autumn because of all the hardwood trees. Those were real autumns with the full paintbox of colours, not the initially pale yellow then quickly dead autumn of Saskatchewan I would later come to know. Just as you cannot really imagine how beautiful it was, none of us then could imagine how that beauty would be transformed to an ugly horror in just a few years. Who could picture the elegant mansions as smoking piles of broken plaster and brick? Who could picture the happy cafés as impromptu relief stations filled with people crying or staring vacantly, sitting on broken chairs? Who could picture the tree-filled parks as wastelands of charred stumps?

I am saddest about the parks. Connewitz had such wonderful parks. The neighbourhood was teardrop shaped, about a kilometre wide, east to west, and about two kilometres long, north to south. It was studded with little squares and tiny corner parks, but the best parks were the large ones along the western edge, towards the rivers Pleisse and Elster. These parks had proper forests. There I would disappear for as long as I could. Imagine! A four-and-a-half-year-old boy playing in the forest on his own. It was a different time. Most boys went with friends, but I did not have any.

My brother Johann had been born a few months prior and there was much drama around his birth. I do not recall the details, but I do know that it all became too chaotic for Oma, who left to live with my aunt in Weimar. I was very sad to see her go of course. No more whispered conspiracies about the sweets. No more compliments on my plump legs or my wit. The house was different. Mama was so busy and under so much stress with Clara and Johann. Theodor was in school now and bossier and more pompous than ever. And Papa was as busy as always with his job and with his Party work. I was left on my own a lot, but I loved that. I especially loved that I could tell Mama that I was going out to play for a couple hours and she never said no or asked exactly where I was going or what I was doing.

As I wrote at the very beginning, I was born on a Sunday. Mama told me that a Sunday’s child is special. She