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

contained some unknown brown liquid and an array of mostly dented tins of fish. These were also labelled in Russian. By this point I had learned some Russian in Rochlitz, but none of the basic vocabulary we had been taught so far was helpful here. Fortunately, however, the label also featured a smiling green cartoon fish, so although I did not know what sort of fish, I at least knew it was fish. Before the famine I had not been fond of fish. Now it was impossible to imagine a time when I turned my nose up at anything edible. As this appeared to be the best bet, I bought the least battered of these with the coins Mama had given me. The other shop was mostly empty except one shelf that had a colourful tin toy elephant with two sad-looking girl dolls carefully set beside it and another shelf that also had a selection of dented tins with the same smiling green cartoon fish.

This was my introduction to the primitive beginnings of state-owned retail in the communist system. It did improve over the next few months, but it never came close to what comparable shops offered in Leipzig before the war. The weekly market was not under direct state control, but in the winter its selection was just as sad, and its prices were significantly higher than in the government shops. So, we survived on the now almost adequate ration offerings, supplemented by Papa’s parcels.

School continued through the winter and although the weather was not as cold as the previous winter, our classrooms were ironically even colder now because of an obscure bureaucratic issue affecting coal allocations to the schools. We all wore scarves and gloves as we struggled to write during our lessons. I was supplementing what I was being taught in Rochlitz with reading at home as the quality of the teaching continued to decline. Whereas immediately after the war the teacher shortage was due to men being dead or in Siberia, now there was the additional factor that teachers would simply vanish, presumably having fled to the West.

This got Herr Schimmler especially exercised. Speeches were given regarding the cowardice inherent in abandoning the glorious project to build the workers’ paradise, and we were given even more instruction on the righteousness of the Marxist-Leninist worldview and the manifold benefits generated by that system. Some of what they said had a purity of logic behind it that I found attractive in an intellectually bracing sort of way, like a cold clean wind sweeping the horrible chaotic detritus of the last decade away. From time to time I listened with something even approaching excitement. However, this never lasted very long, because in the creation of all that foregoing horrible chaotic detritus I had observed that human weaknesses and emotions always seemed to triumph over logic. The natural world, in contrast, operated on sets of logic-based rules. This was foremost evident in mathematics, physics and chemistry, but it was also true in wild nature, such as in the workings of the forests I was so familiar with. To be sure, these rules were complex and functioned like nesting gears in an inconceivably vast mechanism, but they were ultimately subject to comprehension. Human society had escaped that mechanism and was in contrast not subject to comprehension. I certainly wished it would not be so, but at the age of fourteen I was already a cynic.

I have never been good at reading people and trying to guess what they might be thinking or feeling, but even I could sense that these lectures on communism were having the opposite of the intended effect on most of the other students as well. It certainly had the opposite effect on Theodor.

Early in the new year another letter arrived from Papa.

Dear Luise,

I am very glad to hear that the packages are now getting through to you. I hope they have been helpful. I will continue to send as many as I can. I am starting to become hopeful regarding the possibility of release this year, at which point I should be able to send far more. I hear that the economy in the western zones is gradually improving, so it should not be difficult for me to find work. I may soon have even more good news regarding these matters, but I don’t want to say anything now.

On the subject of good news, our production of The Tempest was a triumph! You will recall that Major McWhirter, myself and a few other doughty volunteers planned to put on a performance of that great Shakespeare play before Christmas. Despite the lack of proper costumes and sets, we were very pleased with the outcome, and the audience, both British and German, was delighted. We provided a translation for the latter.

Major McWhirter is a good man and a wise one too. In studying The Tempest so closely I began to see themes in it that are applicable to our situation — both the situation of we Germans as a people, and of me personally with respect to what I once believed. In this play Shakespeare writes very cleverly about the difficulties in defining justice and fairness, and about obedience and disobedience and how the latter is sometimes proper. He also manages to movingly blur the distinction between monsters and men. None of this involves direct explicit lessons, but this subtle and crabwise incursion into one’s psyche is often more powerful.

I apologize if discussion of Shakespeare makes me seem obtuse and narcissistic given your struggle to put food on the table for our children, but this is ultimately part of the path to more food, and then better and better things.

Your Wilhelm

Chapter Forty-Five

June 1948

Theodor graduated from high school in Rochlitz with excellent marks. I was happy for him, but equally unhappy for myself as I enjoyed having my big brother there as a familiar and occasionally even friendly face. The timing of his graduation