Clara's Story 8 October 1918, Berlin: The end of a phase

Clara shuddered. It was one of those strange uncontrollable little movements. Her mother used to say it meant someone was walking over your grave. What did that mean, actually though? They were walking over where you were going to be buried? How would you know now? It was nonsense really but she had no better or even any other explanation for it. It wasn’t as if it was cold in the kitchen: the Kackelofen was lit and the sun was streaming through the window.

She put the rest of yesterday’s birthday cake away. Ernst had insisted she should celebrate her birthday despite his illness. She’d baked one of her special cheesecakes but nobody had had much appetite for it. It would keep a few days, she guessed. Perhaps when he was feeling better they would all appreciate it more.

 She looked at the clock. He should have called for his tea by now. It was half an hour past the normal time. She’d looked in on him earlier. He’d been sound asleep. Doctor Friedrich had said it was good to let him sleep. Perhaps she should go and look in on him again.

The doctor hadn’t really given a clear diagnosis. “It’s a combination of things, Frau Lehrs,” he’d said. “His worry about this war has weakened him. The rickets has got worse. And now this chest infection…”

“That shouldn’t kill a man, though, should it, Herr Doctor? He will recover won’t he?”

“I’m afraid I can’t say. He’s still quite young but you know this terrible war has taken its toll. It’s made men even younger than him want to give up. I’m sorry I can’t give you any better news.”

Damn men and their wars.  Clara made her way towards her husband’s room. So many men killed on both sides and so many left with half-lives. And now they were all so poor. It wasn’t so bad for them as for some of the people who worked in Ernst’s factory. But they had had to cut Imelda’s hours in order to pay for the nurse.

The door to Ernst’s room was flung open. Schwester Adelberg rushed out. “Frau Lehrs, you must come quickly,” she cried.

Clara hurried into the bedroom.

Ernst’s breathing was laboured. His chest was rattling.

“Should we send for the doctor?” said Clara. But she could tell from the look on the nurse’s face that it was too late.

“You must say your goodbyes,” Schwester Adelberg whispered guiding her gently towards the bed.

Clara knelt down beside her husband and put her face next to his. She took his hand. He was trying to speak but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. Yellow bile streamed from his nose and seeped from the corners of his mouth and his eyes. He tried to push the sheets and blankets away.

“Does he have a fever?”

“It’s the blood rushing to his vital organs, trying to save them. His lungs are filling. That sound you hear is them working to expel the fluid but it has gone too far now.”

“Is – is he in pain?”

“He’s probably not comfortable and he’s very likely afraid and lonely. Talk to him.”

“Ernst – Ernst, my love. Don’t leave me yet. It’s too soon.”

Schwester Adelberg touched her shoulder. “There’s nothing more we can do,” she whispered. “Try to comfort him.”

Clara stroked his arm. “I’m here my darling. It will be all right. Sleep gently. You’ll soon have no more pain.”

He looked at once like a child and a man forty years older. Her father had not looked this frail when he’d died. Ernst’s poor body was a twisted wreck. But it had been like that all of his life and he’d done so much despite his disability. She stroked his hair.

He relaxed a little. He took one final breath and the rattle in his chest stopped. His faced changed and he looked peaceful. Yet at the same time he looked like a piece of paper. His lips and cheeks were grey. Yes, the life had gone out of him. That wasn’t her Ernst anymore. Even so she leant over and kissed his forehead. “Goodbye, sweetheart,” she whispered.

She knelt for a few more minutes holding his hand and then she stood up. “We’d better get the doctor here to sign a death certificate,” she said.

“I’m happy to stay and lay him out properly after the doctor’s visit,” said Schwester Adelberg.

“Thank you.”

“And would you like me to help with the arrangements?”

“That would be very kind. Now, I’d better go and let the children know.”

As Clara made her way down the stairs she realised that another phase of her life had ended. 

 

 

January Stones 2013 Gladly

 He was absolutely unbelievable, Kerry decided.  He must have been in his sixties easily.  Him and his wife.  And what a get up. Hiking boots, bright yellow socks, knee-length trousers, tweed jacket, woolly red bobble hat, one of those long walking sticks and a serious hiker’s rucksack. Just a small one.

His wife was no more elegant. She was short and rather stubby.  The bright red duffle coat, blue trousers and pink wellies did not help. And of course, she had a red bobble hat to match her husband’s. She’d probably knitted both of them.

Fancy going out walking in this weather. True, the snow had stopped but everywhere was either icy and slippery or wet and muddy, depending on where the sun had been shining. He’d obviously fallen over. He had mud all the way up his side. Both of them had really red cheeks. With those and the hats they looked just as if they’d come straight from Lapland and helping Santa.

And what was this they were now putting on the conveyor belt? Fresh pasta.  Cook-in sauce. A bottle of the finest single-malt whisky the store sold. The little wife grinned almost shyly at him and he winked.

It was all right for some. She would be stuck here for another three hours. Same old routine. Ring ‘em up. Bag ‘em up. Take the money or process the card. Yawn, yawn.

Her till was just opposite the in-store café. She was enjoying a slight lull between customers when something made her look over there. The red hats! She’d know them anywhere. The bottle of whisky was sticking up out of his rucksack. He was carrying a tray on which were a frothy, cream-topped hot chocolate, a banana milkshake, a doughnut and a slice of cheese cake and the little wife was pointing eagerly at a table near the window. Yep. Definitely all right for some.

He spotted her looking at him. He grinned. “Cheer up, lass. Everybody has to make their own gladness.”

He had a point, she supposed.

Her next customer arrived. “Are you all right there?” she said, offering her brightest smile.            

 

    

Abigail’s Snowman

 

It was all going to melt soon.  By this time tomorrow it would all be gone. It was so completely freakish.  Almost a foot of snow in the early hours and throughout the morning, and now mid-afternoon, cars were driving reasonably easily through deep slush.  Yet, if you wanted to get the car off the drive, you needed to clear the pavement.

She’d done that. And now she had an interesting pile of snow. “We should make it into a snowman,” she’d said to Jeff and Lester.

“Mum, I’m a bit past that, don’t you think?”

“I suppose.” She remembered when Lester had been a little boy and had got so excited about the snow. Now he was just miffed that he couldn’t go off on his mountain-bike.   

“It’s not worth the effort. It’ll all be gone in a matter of hours.” Jeff shook his head.

“Well, I’m going to do it.”

She’d actually enjoyed shovelling the snow into a big heap. It had been better than being cooped up inside and the exercise not only kept her warm but also made her feel good. She didn’t want to stop.

 

She formed and honed the lump of snow into something vaguely human-shaped. She straightened his side, moulded arms and a square head with ears on it. She plumped his cheeks, shaped hands, and then fingers. She added, subtracted and sculpted. 

Soon two pairs of eyes were looking at her through the window. The front door opened. “I’ve found these round the back,” said Jeff. “I thought they might do for his eyes, nose and mouth.” He handed her some of the dark pebbles off the Japanese garden. 

Lester appeared at his side. “I know what else.” He dashed inside. He came back with the matching plaid scarf and ear-muffs Great Aunt Tilda had given him last Christmas.

“And I know what we need now.” Abigail was adding the finishing touches as the two men in her life looked on. “Go and get my sunglasses. The big round ones.”

Jeff came back with them. She placed them carefully on the snowman’s face. “Perfect,” she said.

“Not bad,” said Jeff.

Lester took pictures on his iPhone. 

 

When Abigail woke up in the night and looked through the spare bedroom window to see how well the snow was thawing, her snowman was decidedly slimmer. By then next morning his head had rolled off and the scarf, muffs and sunglasses were lying on the ground. By the following afternoon he was just a lump of snow that was barely recognisable as something someone had made.

“It doesn’t matter,” Abigail whispered. “You were still worth it.”  Tomorrow would come soon enough and she would have to be all po-faced and straight-laced at the station. Even a copper deserved a bit of fun now and again.  

 

                    

When Time Went Crazy January Stones 2013

The Jenkins were not the sort of people to party all night, right through to breakfast. In their youth maybe, but not these days.  Nevertheless, there they were, eating brunch and wondering where the night had gone.

“Did we finish the wine last night?”

“I don’t think so. We didn’t play Scrabble either.”

It was a real puzzle. The last either could remember before they started breakfast was that they hadn’t quite finished their dessert from the evening before.

Something must have happened, though, because they were wearing different clothes now. 

“It’s really funny,” he said. “That lemon sorbet was making me quite full but I’m starving now. What’s going on?”

“It’s weird about the photos as well,” she replied.

They carried on looking at the shots of Gibraltar on his phone. They weren’t due to go there until the next day.

As the plane landed he shook his head. “I was looking forward to my beach day on Sunday. Now I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.”

A short while later they were lying on the sun beds at the beach.

“I think I must be dreaming,” he said.

“Well, so am I then.  But don’t you think it’s funny that we’re both having the same dream?”

“Hmm.”

“Anyway, don’t forget the photos.” She picked up his iPhone and started searching. “Oh my. It looks as if our Sandra will marry Tony after all.”

She handed him the phone. There was their daughter in a flowing white dress and Tony smarter than they’d ever seen him before. Judging by the colour of the leaves on the trees it was already autumn, but was that this year or another one?                   

Weather Behaving Badly January Stones 2013

They talked about El Niño and La Niña. So we had quite a few years of proper summer unfortunately accompanied by drought. Then we had several years of miserable weather. They talked of Global Warming and then renamed it Climate Change because the Warming was actually making it cooler for the posh people. But we hadn’t seen anything yet. 

They made a film about a new ice age arriving suddenly. It seemed melodramatic. Then came Katrina and the film seemed more reasonable.After Sandy it began to look tame.

The stream winds started moving in the wrong direction. We got snow on snow followed by rain on rain and floods, followed by temperatures going up overnight. Two feet of snow fell and disappeared within twenty-four hours.

Yet, one morning soon after, there was thick ice on the windscreen and  cars sliding round the S bend though the temperature gauge said it was six degrees Celsius. Later, after the sun had shone all day and the gauge now said seven, there was, once more, ice on the car.

What’s going on?

 

January Stones When physics got sick

The Scientist carefully took the shards of glass out of the cupboard, dropped them in the sink, and watched underwhelmed as the tumbler formed itself. It seemed natural, as if it had happened a thousand times before. Yet his constantly questioning mind wondered whether this, this first occurrence of something quite extraordinary, marked the beginning of the end as the second law of thermodynamics was breaking down.

As he filled the tumbler with water he became aware that at the same time as being in his kitchen he was also upstairs and at the other side of the universe, so clearly Planck’s Constant had suddenly become somewhat bigger.

Later, examining the internal structure of protons, he found that they were indeed made of cream cheese and constantly mumbled nonsensical German so the label “quark” was actually extremely apt. Yet there was a paradox because surely the cream cheese itself was made of atoms, and they, in turn, of protons.

And yet.

There was no problem for Newton. Apples still fell merrily on the heads of those foolish enough to sit under apple-trees in the autumn. The big nuclear reactor in the sky still reacted. His home planet appeared to be carrying on its Maypole dance around its star and keeping up its complex ceilidh with the rest of the universe.

The Scientist paused for a moment and pondered. Perhaps the Humanities people were right after all. Every physicist knew that all of these laws did not work all of the time. Everything was relative anyway – Einstein had shown this. There could be a god, then. Or maybe the Matrix was not so far-fetched. It might even be the philosophers who had got it right – that life is but an illusion.

 

Scientific advice by Doctor Martin James who identified two subatomic particles, some ten years or so before the World Wide Web was born at CERN, thereby gobsmacking his children’s science teachers. 

 

        

The House on Schellberg Stree Renate, 29 January 1939

 They made their way into one of the already crowded lounges. People sat on top of suitcases, on the floor, or squashed three to a seat on the uncomfortable wooden benches.

“You could go and have a look around the boat if you want,” said Fräulein Gottlieb. “Put your things in your cabin first. But I want you in bed within an hour.”

Renate was sharing a cabin with Adelinde, Christa and Irmgard. Jakob and Erich were sharing with two other boys.

“I’m tired,” wailed Christa.

“Me too,” said Adelinde. “Shall we go straight to bed, girls?”

Christa nodded. Irmgard didn’t say anything. She placed her hand into Adelinde’s and stuck her thumb in her mouth.

Renate felt wide-awake, though. “I’d like to have a look around. I’ll see you soon.”

“Give me your things, then,” said Adelinde. “I’ll put them in the cabin.”

Renate waved to the three other girls and set off across the crowded inner deck. She didn’t think she had ever seen so many people crammed into one space. Warm body odour and sea air made for a strange mixture of smells. She had never been on a boat as big as this – should she call it a ship? This ferry that was going to take her to England. People were still getting on. Would this – ferry – be able to hold them all?

It was hard to breathe in here. A slight breeze drifted from above her head. She noticed a staircase – which was more of a ladder made of steep steps with only air between them – which led to an opening in the roof above her. She made her way up the rungs.

Outside it was cold. The shore looked close. She shivered. It wasn’t just the cold, though; she would not see her own country for a long time and now she was going somewhere she didn’t understand. She still didn’t really understand either why she was going there, or what being Jewish meant.

The boat started to judder. There was a loud creaking and groaning, the sound of chains clanking and shouts from the men working at the side of the harbour. The town began to move backwards away from them. The breeze now became proper wind. Renate could hardly keep her balance. The boat rolled from side to side and then as it turned out of the harbour, it started to go up and down like a seesaw. One moment the line where the sea and the sky met seemed to be up above her head, the next minute she was looking down at it. She couldn’t work out where she was and began to feel dizzy. Perhaps it would be better if she sat down.

She made her way carefully down the steep steps which kept falling away from her then rushing up to meet her feet. Once she slipped and banged her hip into the rail at the side.

The warmth flooded over her as she arrived on the lower deck. For just a few seconds it felt good. Then the smell of the closely packed passengers made her feel slightly sick. Yes, she should go to the cabin. Perhaps if she lay down she would feel better.

She tried to push her way through the crowds. It was even more difficult now, as the boat was moving up and down and from side to side at the same time. She struggled to keep her balance.

“Watch what you’re doing,” shouted one man angrily as she accidentally trod on his foot.

“I’m sorry,” she managed to mutter as she then almost fell on a woman who was trying to feed a baby.

The boat lurched to one side and then rose up in the air, crashing down suddenly, then juddering for a few seconds before once more springing up. She saw a small door in front of her and hoped that that was what it looked like. And even if it wasn’t, at least she might be on her own in there so no one could see what she was about to do. The ferry veered to the other side. She pushed the door open and just made it in time into one of the toilet cubicles, where she vomited straight into the pan. Perhaps that would make it better now.

It didn’t. Time and time again, the acid yellow fluid came out of her mouth. Still the boat moved around in every direction. Then it got worse. And finally there was no more yellow fluid to come out of her stomach into her mouth but still her whole body went into spasm and she retched with every movement of the boat. This journey was going to take forever. Twelve hours, Fräulein Gottlieb had said. Twelve hours of this. The boat rocked. Her stomach retched. She wasn’t alone, she could hear. Then she could smell other people’s vomit. That made her feel even worse. Finally not able to hold herself up straight, she sank to the floor. With her chin propped over the side of the toilet basin, and even as the retching continued, she felt her eyelids close.

She must have fallen asleep for now there was a different sort of rocking. Somebody was shaking her.

“Renate! Renate!” she heard a voice cry. “Oh, you poor child. Why didn’t you come and find me?”

Renate looked up to see Fräulein Gottlieb’s bright eyes looking into hers.

“Too sick,” murmured Renate. “Had to stay by the toilet.”

“My dear, I’m so sorry,” said Fräulein Gottlieb, helping Renate to her feet. “My poor, poor girl. Just look at you. Let me help you get cleaned up.” She tried to tug the creases out of Renate’s crumpled dress and coat. “When Adelinde wished me goodnight from the cabin, I assumed you were all there. Then I was busy with one or two others who were also feeling sick. On my break, I only meant to close my eyes for a moment … then the rocking motion of the boat, you know … it always sends me to sleep. Adelinde came to find me because you hadn’t got back to the cabin. She was worried.”

Renate noticed the boat was not moving so violently now –  just rocking gently, like a cradle; soothing. And she felt so tired ... oh so tired. She would love to curl up now and be in a soft, cosy bed but Fräulein Gottlieb was working at a vomit stain on the skirt of her dress, and the smell of other people’s vomit would have put her off sleeping.

“You should have come to get me,” said Fräulein Gottlieb, “if you felt so poorly. I’m supposed to be looking after you.”

 “Come on, let’s go and get some fresh air,” said Fräulein Gottlieb. “We ought to be able to see some land now.”

Renate had stopped feeling sick at least. But she was so weak, and her legs were wobbly. The ferry was going really slowly now, and the rocking from side to side had almost gone completely. They were just going up and down gently. Even so, she had to lean on Fräulein Gottlieb as they made their way across the deck. Other white faces looked at her and she was at least glad that she wasn’t the only one who had felt so bad. No one smiled and many people frowned. Were they all dreading arriving in England as much as she was?

“You go up first,” said Fräulein Gottlieb, when they arrived at the staircase. “Then I can catch you if you fall.”

It took Renate all her strength to haul herself up to the last step of the steep stairway. The cool wind took her breath away at first, but then she realized that it also made her feel better. The sun was shining now and there were no clouds in the sky. Perhaps this would be all right, after all. It was hard to believe it had been so grey and cold when they’d set out.

They really were not far from land. The first bit of the harbour wall was just in front of them. Renate could see some big cargo ships moored there. Cranes were loading huge crates on to their big decks. Beyond that, black shiny roofs and white buildings were gleaming in the sun. She had to shade her eyes to stop the glare.

“Well,” said Fräulein Gottlieb. “Here we are. Your new home. England.”

“Home?” said Renate. That sounded final.

“Your uncles will be there to meet you,” whispered Fräulein Gottlieb, “once we’re in London. They’ll know how to keep you safe.”

Renate looked again at the town. It seemed to offer her no welcome.

 

They’re welcome to you. You’re all filth. Haven’t even got sea-legs. A proper German would know how to sail. A proper Englishman would know how to sail. Not you. A Mischling. you’re not even a proper Jew. so you’re more than filth.