“Than being locked up here with you? Yes.”
“Why didn’t you do away with yourself then, like your mother? She left you a capsule, with cyanide, from what I understand.”
“It’s cowardly.”
“And running away with a fake passport and abandoning one’s only surviving child is not?”
Morris’s words must have struck a nerve. The girl’s blue eyes shone with hatred Tadek never thought possible to exist in someone so young. However, she was a Neumann, her father’s daughter after all and Morris had told Tadek far too much about the man himself, for Tadek to have any sort of illusions concerning this entire family. They were Nazis through and through. There wasn’t an ounce of remorse they would show his kind and therefore, he shouldn’t feel any to her either, according to the same Morris.
“He had to do what he thought to be best. Running with me would have raised far too many suspicions. Escaping alone, without burdening himself with caring for me, is much more sensible. It was a sacrifice my father had to make and I understand it. He has a lot of work to do. He needs to organize the new movement along with the others and then they will return and obliterate you all. Our revenge will be such that people of the entire world won’t forget it for centuries to come. The Führer may be dead but the Third Reich is not. It’s alive in our hearts and while they’re beating, we will fight for our great cause.”
“Impressive. One of Goebbels’s speeches that you learned by heart?”
The girl turned her proud head away from him, once again concentrating all her attention on her soup. Tadek almost jumped when she suddenly barked out, “who’s the bum you dragged into my house?” She meant him, no doubt.
“That’s Tadeusz. Your new tenant.”
“I don’t remember placing an advertisement for a room for rent.”
“Tadek, this is Gruppenführer Neumann’s daughter, Gerlinde.”
Gerlinde ignored Morris’s attempt at the introduction. “What is he, Polish?”
“You can talk to him directly, Miss Neumann. He understands both English and German.”
Gerlinde just glared at Tadek, measuring him icily from head to toe. Tadek pulled on the sleeve of his shirt, given to him by the Russians in exchange for his uniform and service. He was dressed alright considering; the Soviets had liberated enough goods from the Berliners and were more than generous while distributing them among each other. Even his hair wasn’t shaven but recently washed and neatly parted on one side. Yet, under Gerlinde’s disdainful glare he once again felt himself something less than a human. The SS men regarded them the same way in the camp, with the mocking half-a-sneer sitting on their faces, much like the one that this pretty, blonde girl had on her face now.
“I am Polish, yes,” he managed to utter after all, hating the tremor in his voice. He was older than her, so much stronger; he fought on the frontline and killed without any lingering remorse… Was he really afraid of this almost-child’s reaction now, just because she was an SS General’s daughter? Yes, he was. Just like they all in the Sonderkommando were afraid of one very vulnerable SS man Voss who even slept in his crematorium quarters not too far from them and didn’t bother to lock the door for the night. They held some power over them, the real Nazis, not that pitiful and reluctant Wehrmacht lot. Even this little Nazi still did.
“Where will you be taking your lunch?”
Tadek was almost grateful for Frau Hanke’s gruff voice and for Morris’s reply, “in the dining room,” for he swore he couldn’t stand to spend one more minute in Gerlinde Neumann’s company.
3
The monotone ticking of the clock – the only sound she could hear in her bedroom on the third floor – had long transformed into a torture of its own. Gerlinde stared at it with hatred, considering throwing the clock out of the window. She had no sentimental attachment to it of any sort. Her mother had given it to her on her twelfth birthday, as always, completely oblivious to her daughter’s tastes and inclinations. It was some pastoral-themed atrocity, cumbersome and ridiculous with those traditionally-dressed boys and girls dancing around it, their little, ugly faces frozen into permanent masks of utterly unnatural joy. Dolls and everything doll-related was all that Gerlinde remembered ever getting from her mother, no matter the occasion. First, they were to play with, later – to practice for the future. The fact that Gerlinde could have had some other ambition than being a mother didn’t seem to interest anyone at all. She was a girl, after all, Mathilde sighed each time an occasion presented itself, which meant almost daily. She was meant to have future soldiers for the Reich. Otherwise, she was useless.
Mathilde Neumann never concealed her disappointment at bearing a daughter for her husband, instead of a son. As a child, Gerlinde suffered terribly from such outright maternal neglect but later learned how to be indifferent to it. When the Ivans were still standing on the Oder, Gerlinde began to entertain the idea of her mother’s death. Horrible as it sounds, she was, for some reason, certain that Mathilde Neumann wouldn’t survive the war. Gerlinde pictured her buried under the rubble or shot by a stray bullet but at the same time laughed secretly at such implausible scenarios. Unlike her fearless daughter, Mathilde Neumann positively refused to leave the house ever since her husband had left the city. She died like a coward too, from a cyanide capsule crushed between her teeth.
Having discovered the body, Gerlinde stood over it for a long time, hoping to squeeze at least an ounce of sorrow out of herself. Instead, all she felt was exhaustion after a sixteen-hour shift at the Charité Hospital and a desire to close her eyes at least for a few hours before a new shift would begin. And so, she buried Frau Neumann with her own two hands and
