By the time they reached Eger, the following day, they were safe. They abandoned the trucks. It was part of the terms of surrender that all military equipment was to be left behind at the border. The Americans at Eger would not have let them through on trucks either.
The Wehrmacht began to disintegrate. Bertha and Officer Kern got down from the truck and set off on their bikes. The soldiers all laid their weapons down by the side of the road. There were piles of helmets like mounds of skulls. Most of the personnel, like Officer Kern, changed out of their uniforms into civilian clothes. They rolled up their uniforms and placed them under bushes, behind walls, anywhere along the route. A few of them, like Kern, held on to their hand weapons, concealing them among their belongings, just to be safe. Many of them kept their boots. Where would you get boots as good as German army boots?
Officer Kern asked Bertha to drop the title of Officer. From time to time she still involuntarily gave him that prefix as they cycled through Eger. They passed a large refugee camp outside the town on the German side. They saw the American troops who were stationed in Eger and who let the retreating Germans pass freely. There were too many of them to stop.
By the time they reached the foot of the Fichtel mountains, Bertha Sommer knew everything there was to know about mud. It clung to her shoes and to the tyres of her bike. She knew mud in every stage of its composition, how it dried and fell off in lumps from the wheels of prams and carts. She had seen thousands of footprints and wheeltracks.
The sun in May 1945 quickly dried the tracks.
Franz Kern and Bertha Sommer headed for the hills. They were trying to get off the main roads as soon as possible. From now on there were new dangers. Angry Czechs and Poles returning home in the opposite direction. The main roads would be treacherous. There would be thieves. There was nobody you could trust. A bicycle was like gold. In May 1945 it was like owning a ranch. Defending it was like a war in itself, a cold war at least.
They went as far into the Fichtel hills as they could. The first German afternoon, Bertha wrote in her diary when they stopped to rest. It was written in bold handwriting in the evening when they had put sufficient distance between themselves and the main German retreat. They had reached a height from which they could see the traffic crawling along the road. It never stopped; even after 10 in the evening, when darkness fell, the horns and the lights passing along below them went on.
They had stopped because Bertha was exhausted. She had no energy left. She needed to sleep. Here in the first elevation of the Fichtel mountains, they could take a rest knowing that there was less danger of being attacked or getting their bikes stolen. They ate some black bread, sitting with their backs to tree trunks. They also had some chocolate, the remains of their rations, which was meant to last until they got home.
Berthas arms were burning from the sun and began to feel cool after dark. She shivered and put on her coat. She was glad she had insisted on bringing it, even though it made cycling harder in the heat of the day. She thanked Franz for getting her this far. They sat talking for a while; exchanging biographies.
Bertha Sommer, born Kempen, four sisters, mother still alive, brought up in a strict Catholic background
Most of it was already known. They expanded and told stories about themselves.
Franz Kern, married, no children, born Nuremberg, two brothers killed in action, one a pilot
Kern hid the bikes under foliage and branches. It took a while. She heard the cracking of twigs and branches. He came back and they talked for a while longer until Bertha began to laugh.
Nerves, she explained. But she couldnt stop laughing. She became embarrassed about it. She hadnt laughed like this since she was a child. Since the Third Reich began. She sat by the tree, chuckling behind the palm of her hand like an elated child.
Whats the matter with you, Fräulein Sommer? he asked.
Its nothing, Im just happy, she said. She went on laughing uncontrollably to herself, excluding him. Maybe it was the cold night air. It could have been fear. People laugh out of fear.
Halt, Kern said. I hear something.
She stopped abruptly and fell silent. There was nothing to laugh about. Neither of them said a word. They listened.
After a while, when they were sure it was nothing, she settled down and fell asleep. With Franz Kern, she felt safe enough to sleep. Nothing mattered any more.
Kern stayed awake. An ingrained war mentality. He heard every crack, every microscopic night-time noise on the hillside juxtaposed on to the distant sound of endless traffic along the road below. He had spent the war years listening to radio signals. He only fell asleep just before dawn when the birds set up such a shrill contest of noise that it drowned out every other sound, and every danger.
Somewhere between the night of the 10th and the morning of the 11th of May, all formality was lost between them. They had begun to call each other by first names. Bertha and Franz.
22
Jürgen took me to see his new practice. He had claimed me to himself after dinner while Anke put Alex to bed. It was a duty she enjoyed. It took an hour, often longer, to put Alex to bed. They agreed quite amicably about it. You have the whole day tomorrow, Jürgen said to her.
Jürgens practice looked more like a reception in an advertising agency than the rooms of a gynaecologist. The reception itself was a jungle with tropical plants and fish-tanks. The fish-tanks came from his fathers practice, and Jürgen told me how his father used to scrape the green crust off the glass with a blade every Saturday. He told me how he once saw the blade snap in his fathers fingers, and one of the larger fish swam up and swallowed a small shard of it.
Above the reception desk, there was a large, commanding poster of a stork in flight carrying a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Elsewhere there were other maternity posters from the fifties and newer posters about AIDS.
Jürgen showed me how the practice was designed with three surgeries, each with well-planned interlinking doors so that he could pass from one to the other, minimizing the time delay between patients. The nurses ran the operation very smoothly, indicating which room was next.
Jürgen and I sat in one of the surgeries talking about his success. I sat in the doctors seat while Jürgen sat on an examining couch, swinging his legs. He spoke with an infallible doctors touch.
He told me that he had taken on two assistant gynaecologists. But he was still looking at new ways to make each examination more efficient. They had already ensured that women undergoing examination were in the chair, undressed and waiting under a white towel when the doctor came in. There was a special examining chair in which the woman was hoisted up, legs splayed apart.
Had he become dispassionate about women, I asked. Was it difficult to take his mind off women?
I dont see women in this surgery I only see patients.
He was taken aback by my question, as though I had undermined his professional integrity. But then he understood, everything belonged to the realm of serious inquiry. I began to play with an instrument lying on his desk.
I talk to them in the third person. I make no connection between their vaginas and their faces. The only comparisons I make are for health reasons. The only thing that arouses my attention or my interest is disease and problems. Actually, the only time I am ever reminded that they are women is with some of my Turkish patients. They will take off all their clothes except the head-dress.
I was playing with some kind of torch in my hands. I looked at the red light that shone through the gaps in my fingers every time I lit it.
I examine the prostitutes of Münster as well. Its part of the work I do for the city. My father used to do it too. Every week I examine them and give them disease-free certificates. Without it they cant work.
It was a while before I realized that the torch in my hand was specifically designed for gynaecological examinations. I put it back and went over to the window. I stood looking down over the square where work on new paving had been abandoned for the weekend. Shallow sandpits into which the paving stones would be placed were cordoned off by red and white tape. A tool shed stood in the middle. A woman waited while her dog on a leash crouched in a sand dune.
You came at the right time, Jürgen said.
It became clear that he had brought me here to talk about something else. Perhaps Anke? For a moment, I thought he was going to drag up the past. The crash.
Anke can get very unhappy sometimes, he said. She will do everything for Alex. But things are difficult for her. Its hard for me too, but I understand, because Im a doctor. I can detach myself from the world, from the emotion. I am used to suppressing emotions.
She has gone back to college again? I asked.
Yes. She decided that she needed to think about something else. She has to progress. With Alex, she can be so depressed. She has to feel she is going somewhere.
He came over and stood by the window. There was some premonition in his words. We were both looking out through parallel blinds at the Sunday evening square. There was nobody out there now. I was leaning with my elbow on the window frame. Jürgens eyes were looking at me.
Alex is very ill. You know that. Hes got leukaemia. He wont live long.
I expressed shock. Jürgen quickly ran through a medical explanation, giving me the causes, treatment and long-term outlook on leukaemia. There was little hope in Alexs case. I wondered if this was Jürgens way of protecting himself from his own emotions. When things went wrong, he turned into a doctor.
Its good to talk to you, he said. Anke and I still find it impossible to discuss it. Together, we still hope its not true.
Jürgen pulled me away from the window. He suggested going for a drink. There was nothing more anyone could say about Alex. Nothing I could say to help.
You know, Jürgen said. If Alex had been born in the Third Reich, he would have been eliminated life unworthy of life. In ten years time, his condition will be quite routinely picked up at the embryo stage. I feel lucky for him. Alex is like a refugee. We feel as though weve saved his life. Part of his life, anyway.