‘Bring your girl to Aunty Emma’s,’ my mother blurts, as if the day’s best thought has suddenly popped into her head.
‘Out of the question,’ I sigh.
‘But you’re hiding her from us!’
‘What I find a bit rich,’ I say, a little louder, ‘is her still living there…’
Those who call themselves my parents fall silent.
‘Now her Jewish bosses have been carted off…’ I add.
‘What kind of talk’s that?’ Father is immediately annoyed. ‘That’s none of our business.’
‘Wear your uniform, Wilfried. She’ll like that!’
Aunty Emma is in the hall and shining. She could easily pass for ten years younger, as if she spends her nights on a drip filled with the elixir of youth. There is a nip in the autumn air as she stands there in a summery floral frock with a deep neckline. She has been to the hairdresser’s and her lips are painted a vibrant red. Father’s eyes almost pop out of his head.
‘Careful. You’ll catch your death!’ Mother hisses, suddenly fifteen years older, suddenly even more grotesquely wigged. Mother did sprinkle herself with lily of the valley an hour ago, something she rarely does and which led my father to decide she was losing her marbles.
‘But our Wilfried is wearing his uniform! He looks so handsome! Come in, quick!’
We climb the wide marble stairs with our hands on a wrought-iron bannister decorated with creepers and black hearts. The first-floor doors, more like wooden gates, are wide open. A gramophone is playing. A male voice sings: ‘Einmal wirst Du wieder bei mir sein…’ Persian carpets are spread over the floor of a large room. On a side table, encircled by a chaise longue, a burgundy divan and upholstered armchairs, is a beautiful cake, topped with fresh strawberries for fuck’s sake.
‘Goodness,’ my father says, rubbing his trousers.
‘Sit down, everyone! Make yourselves at home.’
We each choose a spot and sit down on the edge of our chairs, ready to leap up at any moment if some baroness or other should rebuke us. That’s not entirely ridiculous; there are ghosts in this apartment.
‘Tea? Coffee? Or would you like to go straight to cognac?’ My aunt bares her pearly whites in a smile, as if posing for a pre-war brand of toothpaste.
Mother tries to take on the role of elder sister, she who knows when things are threatening to get out of hand, she who sees things coming while they’re still light years away. ‘Easy does it, Emmy. Coffee is fine.’
Father nods like a fish out of water.
‘Schatzi! Meine Gäste sind here.’
Aunty Emma’s German doesn’t make me want to laugh. You hear attempts like that everywhere these days and who’s to say I will ever master the language of Goethe? Through an open door at the rear we hear a hummed reply. I see my father rearrange himself in his chair, as if surreptitiously farting. I hear him swallow. Mother straightens her back.
He appears smiling, still doing up the top button of his uniform.
Big. Red hair. Mein Freund Gregor.
And yes, the officer clicks his heels, brushes my mother’s fingertips with his lips and gives my father and me robust handshakes. A textbook Prussian from head to toe. My heart is racing. I really would appreciate it if he didn’t let on that we have seen each other before in a sleazy bar on België Lei. I am also picturing the way he rages and storms in the stories Meanbeard has told me. But now we’re here together in the former residence of a wealthy Jewish family. He’s in uniform and so am I.
‘Very pleasing to meet you.’
‘Almost right, darling.’ Aunty Emma gives us a wink. ‘It’s important for him to learn our language, you know.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ says Father with forced joviality. In that very instant I think I hear him let go a quiet fart, awkwardly strangled, strained and nervous, like a child’s at a strict boarding school.
Mother coughs.
Gregor winks at my aunt, clearly infatuated and—in the experienced hands of one of our women—therefore doomed to become a lapdog. Probably with a little missus waiting for him at home. But that doesn’t matter, because it’s war. What story will he have fed Aunty Emma? Something that came to him easily no doubt. After all, this SS swindler is very plausibly acting like he really has just met me for the first time. Not even his eyes give him away. My armpits are starting to get clammy. The song finishes and the gramophone starts to crackle. He gets up immediately and turns the record over in one flowing movement, like in a film.
‘I can’t get enough of him!’ Aunty Emma laughs.
Revealing something that intimate is unheard of—it’s not our way, not the way we do things in this city. Mother almost jumps up she’s so shocked. But she suppresses it immediately. A different game is being played here, something foreign, from a different world, and everyone has to adapt.
Aunty Emma fidgets with her hair, suddenly exposed.
‘Warte mal!’ says Gregor, evidently struck by a bright idea. He lifts the stylus from the record and puts it back at the start of the song, walks over to Aunty Emma and holds out a hand.
‘Please, Gregor… Not now…’
But her lover insists. Aunty Emma stands up, quickly tidies her hair and starts dancing with him. The two of them sway against each other, somewhat clumsily because of the difference in height. ‘Komm zurück,’ gushes the male voice. ‘Ich wa-a-a-arte auf dich, du bist für mich… mein Glück.’ They press closer together. Gregor’s right hand is resting almost on my aunt’s bottom. She has closed her eyes in the meantime, drifting off in a dream from the cinema. We sit there gawping at them. My father pats his trousers a few times uncomfortably, as if trying to tap along to the music. Completely mortified, Mother searches through her handbag, finds her embroidered hankie, buries her face in it and blows
