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

I will ask Major McWhirter if it is possible to send a package to you. I earn a little bit from the woodworking and there is a camp canteen where I can buy food beyond what I need for myself. Please write to me to let me know what you might need and I will see what I can do.

Your Wilhelm

This new version of my father was as strange and distant seeming as the last, perhaps more so. I could no longer connect what I read to the tense hard man in the uniform I had last seen in the spring of 1945. My stomach tightened when I read the reference to inhuman crimes against common people. I thought unavoidably of the film we had been shown in school. Belief and disbelief about Papa’s potential incarnations — scholar, student, leader, wizard, criminal, prisoner, father — swam around each other like different coloured fish, each distinct when viewed individually, but collectively forming a blur that I could only disperse by taking Thomas Mann’s 731-page Buddenbrooks off the shelf and losing myself in it. That night I had a nightmare about witches whose faces were concealed under the wide brims of their hats, cooking something in a large pot suspended by chains over an unearthly green fire. I could not see what was in the pot, but I felt that some part of me knew what it was, just out of reach of conscious awareness, like a briefly forgotten name at the tip of my tongue. I grasped for the word and the knowledge, but I was grasping into smoke and vapour.

The first package, and the only one for many months, arrived surprisingly soon after. The postal system was highly capricious, especially when crossing from one zone of occupation to another. A few letters and parcels arrived as quickly as they had before the war, but most arrived a month or two after being sent and many did not arrive at all. To my disappointment, this small parcel, festooned with various inspection marks and stamps, was entirely filled with tins of fish oil from Bremerhaven. This seemed odd at first until Mama explained that this was an excellent way to get vitamins and it would serve very well to fry our remaining shrivelled potatoes in.

Chapter Forty-One

Spring 1947

I have written of starvation before, but there had always at least been some food — a little semolina, some soft old apples, some equally soft old potatoes — so, in retrospect, when I referred to starvation, I was actually referring to being very hungry. But by the spring of 1947 we had entirely run out of food for the first time. The nettles and other wild foods were late due to the hard winter. Some weeks we would receive a single loaf of bread through the ration system and some weeks it supplied nothing. Under other circumstances it would have been comical to read the notice tacked to the town hall aloud: “Fat: zero grams per household. Bread: zero loaves per household. Meat: zero grams per household. Eggs: zero per household.” But now even the gallows humour had fled.

Women who had illicit relationships with Russian soldiers and officers did better, people who had connections to farmers did better and people like Herr Peschel did better, but we starved, eating absolutely nothing for several days in a row. Those tins of fish oil seemed like a distant golden dream. Only the occasional loaf of strange gritty bread from our ration card, plus a few things given in pity to us by Herr Peschel and Herr Rittmann prevented us from actually dying of starvation. I am completely serious. People around us were dying. Theodor developed tuberculosis. We all coughed, but his cough was deeper and sounded much more threatening. He looked ghastly.

Despite having no money to pay for treatment, Mama took Theodor to the doctor, an elderly gentleman with a snow-white pompadour and a gentle manner that I did not mind seeing the one time I had to go. They were gone for several hours, and when they returned Theodor told me that the doctor had given him antibiotics at no cost. These were a relatively new wonder drug and were quite difficult to get a hold of, so this was an amazing stroke of luck. He said he was able to do this because he was leaving for the West next week. Antibiotics were not in short supply in the West, so he could afford to give them away here. He then told Theodor and Mama that they should leave as well, that the East was no place for a young family. Mama had apparently replied that this was her home and that there was nothing for her in the West since her husband was still in prison camp.

“What do you think, Theodor, should we leave?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I think the doctor is probably right, and it can’t possibly be worse there than it is here. But it is illegal to leave the zone and Mama is absolutely against it.”

“Mama is so weak and so depressed. I am not sure she knows what she is talking about.” It felt transgressive to say this about the mother I loved and respected so much, but it was the truth.

“Perhaps, but I’m not in condition to go anywhere myself anyway.” This was punctuated by a horrendous bout of coughing. I saw blood-flecked phlegm in his hand. It is incredible in retrospect that the rest of us did not become ill.

The first grain to appear in spring was winter barley, sown back in the fall. The official rations were still scant at best, but the nettles had come back and the barley promised a new source of food. Mama, Theodor and I set off after dark, leaving Clara (now eleven years old) in charge. We took scissors and a baby carriage down a country