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

prior saying that the Soviets had stopped supplying power to the Western sectors in Berlin due to a claimed coal shortage and that at the same time the one functioning railroad between Berlin and the West was being closed for “technical reasons.” I did not think too much of it at the time and continued my hunt for good jazz, but now I realized that that was the start of the blockade the BBC referred to.

Later I would learn that it was in retaliation for the currency reforms in the West that made the Soviets fear that the economies would begin to diverge quickly between the zones. They assumed that the Allies would have no stomach for supporting their so recently hated German foes in Berlin. All of Berlin would become part of the East and would strengthen it. The Soviets were wrong of course. In retrospect, this was the real start of the Cold War, but to me at the time it was just another example of people being irrational and unpredictable, and another example of why life in the East was becoming more worrisome.

It was not all bad news that summer though. Another letter arrived from Papa. Mama handed it to me with a blank facial expression and without comment. Theodor was at work and the other children were playing outside. I assumed the letter was another literary analysis of Shakespeare or a description of teatime with the English officers.

Dear Luise,

I am delighted to finally be able to write to you from freedom! I was told a few weeks ago that my release was pending, but I didn’t write to you then because it was always possible that the paperwork would not be processed properly or that a problem with my file would be found, but none of that happened and yesterday, almost exactly three years after I arrived here, I walked out of denazification camp, fully discharged and free to live as I choose with only a few limitations. Chief among these is that I cannot yet work as a lawyer. Many men in my classification are barred from influential professions for life, but I am optimistic that my case will go better. I have a very strong letter of recommendation from Major McWhirter. This will certainly help.

In the meantime, I am confident that I will find some sort of administrative work in a small business. I am living with Auguste right now and although I am grateful to her, I am eager to obtain a place of my own as soon as possible.

Your Wilhelm

Mama’s muted reaction confused me. She had generally been in better spirits since our food situation stabilized, although when I say “better spirits” I do not mean laughing or even smiling much, but at least she was not withdrawn in her room for hours at a time anymore.

“Mama, this is wonderful!”

“Yes, it is good news for Wilhelm.”

“And it is good news for us as well!”

“You are right, it is. He will be able to send us more food and possibly even money now that he is out of the camp and will probably be able to get a job.”

“I mean that it is good news for us because now we can go to the West and join him, right?”

“No, Ludwig. To begin with it is illegal to leave the zone. It is one thing for an individual adult who is fit and strong to slip unnoticed across the border, but quite another for an old woman and her six children.”

“Mama, you are not an old woman!”

This at least prompted the flicker of a smile.

“You’re right in the sense that at forty-one years of age I am not old compared to, say, Frau Klempner or Frau Schneider,” she said, naming the two most bent and gnarled old crones we knew. “But everything that has happened in the last ten years makes me feel like I am sixty-one or seventy-one. I truly do. I feel this age in my bones and in my heart. And that is not the only problem. Papa is living with Tante Auguste right now and there is simply no space for us there, nor will there be enough space in whatever new flat he moves to as he will not be able to afford more than just a room at first.”

These all seemed like excuses rather than reasons.

“Mama, please. I do not want to stay here. It is becoming clear that life is better in the West and with this currency reform it is also becoming clear that the zones are pulling further apart, rather than closer together.”

She ran her fingers through her hair and looked at her lap. When she looked back up at me, her eyes were moist and she said very softly, “Ludwig, we have not been a real family since the early days of the war. We have all changed so much. We have passed through a long series of doors and many of those doors have closed behind us. Have you not noticed that Papa never mentions us all living together again? That he never writes that we should come?”

I had noticed and I had not noticed, some internal mechanism having checked my full awareness. Papa had never shown me affection, but to the best of my knowledge that was simply the way of fathers, and it did not mean that he did not love me or want me to be with him, did it? He was proud of me when I was invited to skip a grade in school, I remembered that. I struggled to summon other positive father and son memories — Papa leading Sunday family walks like a satisfied gander showing off his flock, Papa sharing wisdom in Latin or Greek, Papa helping with math homework before I became better at math than him. In all of these memories he appeared like a storybook character, two dimensional and peripheral. While these thoughts flashed quickly through my mind Mama