Cold War

“First, we’re going to talk this through.”

“I don’t want to, Christian. I don’t want to remember. That’s the whole point.”

“But you do remember, vividly and repeatedly, and I need to know what happened so I can help you.”

“I’ve already told you!” she snapped angrily.

“I want to know what happened next, after the rapes.”

“Jasha crawled over to me and when she saw what they’d done she started shouting for help. Some people came who had stood by and done nothing the whole time,” she noted bitterly. “That happened a lot. Women would be grabbed and would scream for help, but everyone would just look the other way or go in the opposite direction.” She paused and added in a whisper, “I did it too. When I heard screams, I just fled, terrified they would do it to me again.”

“So, some passers-by brought you back here?” Christian focused on the narrative.

“No. I was too bloody. They decided I had to go to a hospital, so they found some sort of cart or a wheelbarrow. I don’t remember exactly, only that I couldn’t walk. They took me and Jasha to the Hospital am Urban and Trude Liebherr—”

“Our neighbour?” Christian asked. Herr and Frau Liebherr lived just across the landing.

“Yes, yes. She’s a head nurse there, and she recognised us. When, after several days, they needed my bed for more recent victims, she brought me home, but insisted I live with them.”

“With the Liebherrs?”

“Yes. They were so kind, Christian. They treated me like their own daughter, and I felt safe with them. I didn’t have to go out at all, not even for food. They shared whatever they had with me. They even suggested I stay on with them after my injuries had healed.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t want to lose the apartment. Jasha was still with me. She’d been raped too and she needed a roof over her head. But then she got the chance to cook for an American family and live in their house. She was much safer there. I had to let her go.”

“Of course,” Christian agreed, “but why not stay with the Liebherrs after she left?”

“Because of their son. I was afraid of him.”

“Karl? The SED official?”

“Yes, he is such an ardent supporter of the Soviets and — I couldn’t bear to be near him.”

“Did he harm you?” Christian asked sharply.

“Not physically, but he — he made excuses for what the Russian soldiers did. He said they had a right to do whatever they liked because of what we’d done to them.”

“He said that to your face, knowing what had happened?”

“He didn’t know the details, I suppose, but his mother had told him enough — at least about the state I was in when I was brought to the hospital, about my two broken arms and loose teeth and … you know.”

“And he still took the side of the Russians?”

“Yes. They all feel that way, Christian. Entitled not just to rape, but to maim, insult and humiliate us. And what can we say? After what we did to them?”

“That two wrongs don’t make a right, and that you cannot call yourself civilised if you behave like a barbarian.”

“But weren’t we barbarians, Christian?” she asked him earnestly, her eyes boring into him, searching for his secrets.

He met her eyes unflinching and answered in a hard and very precise tone. “Who do you mean by ‘we’? We Germans? Then, yes, some Germans were and still are barbarians.” He paused, but then he spoke slowly and deliberately to make sure she felt the full weight of what he was saying. “But on my soul, Philip never in his life did anything that besmirched his honour let alone conflicted with his Christian conscience. And, whether you believe me or not, neither did I — although I was no saint in other ways.”

She seemed to be listening to him very attentively, so Christian continued, “My sister Theresa, not to mention her SS husband Walther, deserves the hell she is burning in.” For a moment, he let his thoughts linger over the incomprehensible fact that his own sister had embraced Nazi ideology. Without a trace of shame or discomfort, she’d lived in a confiscated Jewish home, enriched herself from the work of slave labourers in her husband’s factories, and adulated an inarticulate, hate-filled madman. He still could not fathom it, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered at the moment was Charlotte.

Turning to her, he said, “Charlotte, each person’s soul is their own, and we can only be responsible for ourselves. You cannot be blamed or held accountable for the actions of men you never knew and could not control. No matter what they did in the name of Germany, you are not to blame. Do you have anything on your conscience that would justify what the Russians did to you?”

She shook her head slowly and looked at him from her tearstained and swollen face for several seconds before mumbling, “It’s not that I blame myself, Christian. It’s just that I lost all sense of self-worth. All of it! If you’d seen me…. I begged and grovelled and…” she cut herself off, took a deep breath, and declared, “I’ll never be whole again, Christian. And I’ll never be able to — to — be a wife to a man. Not even Fritz or ….” Her voice faded away, but Christian knew she was thinking of David Goldman. He wondered if it had been the thought that she would one day have to tell David about “it” — if her dreams of a relationship came true — that had triggered her spasm of despair and pleas for him to shoot her.

Christian took a deep breath. How could he predict the way another man would react to learning the woman he loved had been brutally gang raped? Some men could overlook that kind of thing. Others couldn’t. He didn’t know Goldman beyond a couple of business meetings. He decided on a half-answer. “There’s no need for him to know about it. At least not yet. You have to live for today — and tomorrow.”