Willie's War Ch. 04

A month later, in May the German army took Holland and the Lowlands, preparatory to taking on its main opponents. A divisionary attack through Belgium in the style of 1914 drew the strength of the enemy towards it, while the main thrust was delivered through the Ardennes, a thickly wooded and weakly guarded region beyond which it was believed no modern army could penetrate. The Wehrmacht penetrated it anyway. Outmanoeuvred and slow to react the French and British reeled and then broke, and it seemed that yet another war would soon be over.

After some weeks the British retreated to their island, and in June, France sued for peace. Hitler appeared to be taking over all of Europe.

It was towards the end of this time that Willie received another letter from Eduard, reassuring him he was still madly in love with him. He said he was in good spirits and had managed to view all the historic sites of Paris, but most of the time his gruppe were flying out from Boulogne-sur-Mer to do sweeps over the channel, harassing British coastal shipping and seeing off cheeky reconnaissance aircraft.

On the same day Fraulein Dietz received a telegram, and being aware of her brother's relationship with Willie she dourly revealed its message to him after her lunch in the dining room.

"It says that Eduard as been killed in action," she said simply. "Eduard was a brave man, and we thank the Almighty that he served the Reich well." Having relayed the news she coolly returned to the business of the day, leaving Willie to break down in an inconsolable flood of tears.

Over the following weeks the hurt from losing of Eduard didn't seem to recede. The pain was everywhere. Inside his head, inside his heart, inside his body. He thought for the thousandth time of returning home, but rejected it for the thousandth time. He had always been a quiet individual, studious and impetuous but quite serious, and much more interested in his studies than finding a girlfriend. His father, when he was alive, had sometimes joked that he would have made a perfect daughter.

Now he was a girl now and he had no wish to alter that, because he felt more comfortable being a girl than he'd ever felt in his life before. But his mother would demand he should revert to being a man and join the army. And the one thing his mother expected of him, the one thing everyone she was associated with would expect of him, was that he would obey her.

One day during the summer Fraulein Dietz sent a message for him to attend her in the dining room where she had been entertaining Otto Hahn to lunch. She told him to bring the household accounts with him because she wished her solicitor to examine them.

Willie, who had been hungry and contemplating his own lunch, even though it was more than likely to be wurst again, sighed and took the account ledger in to her.

There was no critical inspection, he stood quietly at the table whilst Herr Hahn merely glanced at the totals and looked grave.

"You are the sole owner of Ravenskopf now, but that is hardly a blessing," he told Fraulein Dietz, "Your financial situation is dire, and despite everything I do for you, a dose of good fortune will be needed for you to avoid bankruptcy."

Celina Dietz stared straight into his face and waved a dismissive hand at the accounts. "That stuff is already out of date, and I have my good fortune. My clever little Willie pointed out to me some time ago that I have a stack of discarded paintings in a salon in the central hall."

She gave Willie a brief smile of satisfaction. "Apparently the early twentieth century was a golden period for art and design, with much creative competition between wild Expressionism and playful Art Nouveau. Willie thought that some of the items there could be valuable, and when I had them examined by experts indeed some were valuable. There were a number of originals by Vassily Kandinsky the leader of Der Blaue Reiter movement, for instance. Nothing there was to my taste of course, so I sold everything in return for a substantial amount of money. It will stand me in good stead for my plan."

Otto began to look impressed. "Your plan? Do you mean your idea that Ravenskopf can be converted into a hotel?"

"I prefer to call it a Recuperation Centre, a place of recreation for weary senior military officers." She flashed a glance at Willie. "You will have an avalanche of invoices to deal with soon. Teams of workmen will be arriving any day now to begin the necessary renovation and conversion."

She then continued to Herr Hahn, "War can be an exhausting experience and I have no doubt that many officers will spend at least some of their furlough here before returning to their wives and girlfriends. Ravenskopf will have first-class accommodation and be staffed on a par with the best hotels. I already own a good cellar, laid down by my grandfather and hardly touched. There is a good park for gentlemen to take the air, and fine hunting in the woods around. The Great Hall I shall have refurbished as a restaurant and each evening it will feature a spectacular floorshow with lots of pretty girls and boys."

Her glance swung once more to Willie. "I shall be engaging other people here shortly. Not just pussy-boys as I have at the moment, but real girls too. When we open our doors for business there will be a need to cater for every taste."

She threw another look of distaste at the accounts. "The paperwork I give you will eventually not be sufficient to fill all your time, so when everything is up and running I will expect you to take part in entertaining my clients."

That revelation was received in horror by Willie Froehlich. "Fraulein Dietz, I'm not a prostitute. I'm not even a show business person like Loti and Rosalyn."

Fraulein Dietz's eyes glowered with temper and she banged her fist on the table. "I will not tolerate you speaking to me in that way. What would you have me do? Allow you to live here as an ornament? You need the company of men just as much as the others do. Eduard is gone and it's no use you sitting around waiting for some other prince charming to find you and carry you away. Fascinated by books and art as you are, perhaps you would settle for a university professor, but you're so picky I expect you would soon find fault with him too.

She waved away his objections with the same distain she had used in waving away the household accounts. "Don't be so prim and pompous. Whilst you remain at Ravenskopf you will do whatever I wish. It is exactly the air of unspoilt innocence about you that will make you popular, and I'm unwilling to ignore it. If you are inexperienced, well, like everything else in life, one can learn. Either that or you can be an artist. You can leave and die of consumption in a stinking garret somewhere."

Otto Hahn leaned back easily in his chair and smiled. He had once been warned off in no uncertain terms by Eduard in his fancy for Willie, but with the brother of Celina Dietz now safely tucked away in another world he foresaw a clear field ahead for himself.

Afterwards, as he was leaving, he threw Willie a leery grin and openly ogled him from the doorway.

"Patience really does have its reward, doesn't it Willie?" he gloated. "When Fraulein Dietz puts you on her stall I shall be first in line to taste what a succulent little cherub like you has to offer. Don't worry about not knowing too much. I shall take keen pleasure in teaching you how to be a first-class slut."

He leaned down with the intention of plastering a fat wet kiss on Willie's cheek, but Willie instinctively ducked and had to endure the feel of teeth colliding with the top of his head.

Progress on converting Ravenskopf into a residential hotel went faster then anyone expected. By late summer, there was an army of carpenters, painters, glaziers and builders hard at work, and Willie was kept busy with paperwork while all the time feeling deep discontent. Time slid by, October became November and the bright weather showed no sign of giving way to the sleet and gales of winter.

The prospect of being pressed into being a bed companion to anyone who fancied him depressed Willie, and as the work on the house neared completion he made a decision to risk abandoning the security of its walls and make a return to the outside world.

Having no money of his own when he decided to leave it was to Loti and Rosalyn he turned. He knew that the men they went with frequently gave them gratuities; sometimes only trinkets or items of underwear, but sometimes gifts of money too.

The following evening he made his decision known to his two friends. He found Loti practising a tap-dance routine and clearly hoping to have a prominent role in the up and coming floorshows, while Rosalyn was seated at a dressing table, trying on junk jewellery and peering forward at the mirror to smooth his eyebrows, stretching his mouth to apply a swathe of lipstick.

"But where will you go?" Rosalyn asked in consternation.

"I'll go back to Heidelberg," he told them; "I have friends at the university, and amongst them is sure to be someone who will take me in. All I need is the price of a ticket to get me there."

Quite apart from stumping up the price for his train journey Loti and Rosalyn went through their own closets to find something for him to wear, and they came up with a long blue skirt, a black blouse that could be worn a couple of times without any need to be washed, a sweater and a pair of woollen gloves. They made available also a pair of stout shoes and some new peach satin underwear trimmed in lace that had been given to them.

When Fraulein Dietz left the house one day to go and purchase new furnishings for the central hall he departed soon after her, walking the four miles into the town to take the train to Breslau, where he could catch a connecting service to Heidelberg. He wore a cloche style hat and a rather shabby loden coat over the items that had been given to him, and he had only the barest essentials with him carried in a small, battered suitcase

At the ticket window at the station he fumbled for money while the ticket seller stared at him through the metal grating. She had a round face that looked bored, squatting on a thick neck. "Where do you wish to go?"

Willie heard the rumble of a train coming from the east, and he thrust his hand forward. "A ticket for Heidelberg."

The woman promoted a cold and baleful air. "Five Reichmarks second class, three for third class."

"How much is first class?"

"There is only second and third."

"Third then."

She shook her head and ripped out a ticket, and Willie raced along the platform. Doors slammed along the length of the train has he clambered aboard, and it shuddered forward almost at once.

Everywhere was packed and for a while he had to stand in the corridor, but eventually an old woman invited him to sit in a compartment where, by virtue of being slender, he managed to jam himself in between the window and her lean flanks. Her thigh pressed so hard against his own he could feel her bones beneath the meagre padding of her flesh.

He was quiet as he settled, calmed by the prospect of his journey into the unknown, but later, as the landscape passed by and other steam trains thundered in the opposite direction he dwelt on what he was leaving behind. Tears rolled down his cheeks on account of some good memories he retained; his friendship with Loti and Rosalyn for instance, and the love he had known from Eduard. Now he imagined himself being a lonely old lady like the one beside him one day – feminine terms of reference were not uncommon to him by then – in a room somewhere, with no friends and no visitors.

In the children's books he had once read, all the endings were happy endings, and only the wicked people received their just desserts. He knew that this was not a fate reserved for the wicked, he knew too that he was not a wicked person, but only one whose instincts made him want to escape and exchange isolation for an intolerable situation.

Then he slept, and the old woman had to wake him up. She knew he had to change trains at Bahnhof Breslau, and Willie thanked her politely and caught the connecting service.

As the railway bore him further westward he found himself growing increasingly doubtful. He may have sounded confident about his plans when talking with Loti and Rosalyn, but, truth be told, he wasn't at all sure what he would find when he reached his destination.

He arrived in the university town late in the evening and having nowhere to go directly had to settle for spending the night in the station waiting room, and when he glanced out of the window after midnight he saw the first snowflakes of winter falling.

The next morning he totted up the remains of his money and reckoned he just had enough to buy breakfast, but decided to hang onto it until he was more certain of his circumstances. He walked to the university and asked the porter on one of the gates about some people he had once known well. Most of them had joined the army he was told, and the rest the man didn't know about, but he was sure they were no longer students there.

Willie recognised the porter, but the man didn't recognise him. Of course he didn't. At best Willie Froehlich would be a blurred face on a college photograph somewhere, and he wouldn't be wearing a frock. Once, perhaps, he would have remembered his name, but the war had shattered the smooth rhythm of intake and graduation and everything was confusion. Being a former student who had forfeited graduation he felt petulant at still seeing young men still entering the campus, he felt envious of the way they strolled in through the gate wearing their colourful university corps caps.

"So many people are still allowed to come here." he murmured aloud.

"Not much room left for the arty-farty crowd anymore though," the porter told him, "Although the Rector of the University as introduced twenty-five new courses in 'racial science'. Germany still needs scientists and engineers, y'see, and it needs educated men to be officers in the army. But there is no place for slackers now; everyone that comes here must agree to do military training at weekends, and to go into the countryside to help with the harvest in the summer."

Willie sighed. But for the war he could have been studying art in Paris or Rome by now. His mother was quite well off and would probably have indulged him if he'd remained in favour with her.

Discouraged and apprehensive he went back into the town, crossed the river via the Alte Bridge and began wandering the less affluent area of Neuenheim where students who didn't live on the campus had a habit of finding lodgings. He had no idea how long he walked, his feet became numb with cold, his back ached and his head buzzed, but he walked. Snow was coming down in good earnest now and the wind had risen, howling eerily round the corners of the buildings.

He knocked on a number of doors but was given no information about anyone he had previously known. He began to feel very hungry, but he had so little money he knew he would have to go without for food for a while if he intended to have a bed that night. A ravenous appetite sent his plans crashing when he surrendered to spending half of what he still had on a hot potato from a street vendor.

Time passed quickly and the failing light of late afternoon startled him with the prospect of having to spend a night sleeping out in the open, and by then the snow was beginning to settle on the narrow cobbled streets. The eastern sky was bright orange and people were walking past him gritting their teeth as they hurried through the cold to reach their homes.

His mind flitted to the ache of hunger still in his belly, then back to the snow on the pavement, now three inches deep. He tried to take shelter in an alleyway, but found himself immediately challenged by a woman of obvious character.

"Don't hang around here, Sweetlooks. I can do without your kind of competition on my patch. Piss-off an' spread y'legs somewhere else."

Willie was in no condition to get into a cat-fight with a prostitute, and he departed feeling sorry for her more than anything else. When younger she had probably looked rather fetching, but now her looks were beginning to fall apart. Her hair was a shade too brassy and her idea of makeup seemed to be to add more rouge and more foundation over the layers beneath. Kissing her would be like kissing concrete.

He reached a small parade of shops and swung in towards them. Wiping his face on his sleeve he looked at his reflection in a window. It was increasingly cold – the worlds cold skin stretching to breaking point, and he knew his nose must have looked as red as a tomato.

There was a grocer and a second hand clothes shop, and a bookshop. Some used books lay on a table beneath an awning outside the bookshop and Willy paused as he always did when confronted by the printed word. His breath came in thick plumes, his nostrils tingling with the chill, and he could hardly bring himself to examine the titles on offer.

"Why not have a book? It will cost you no more than a few pfennigs." said a voice. The remark was made by a man who was standing at the open door of the shop. He was obviously the owner, soberly dressed in a dreary three-piece suit and a brown bow-tie. His ruddy features, despite carrying a neatly trimmed white beard and the hair of an old man, were curiously unlined, as if neither smiles nor frowns ever visited their indifference.

"A few pfennigs is all that I have to keep me from starving." he replied somewhat mournfully, and then he added with a tinge of hope, "Do you need any help in the shop? I'll sweep the floor for you if you'll let me sleep on it afterwards."

The man uttered a noise, something between a grunt and a moan. "Homeless and desperate are you? I can sympathise with that. Come inside for a moment."

Willie followed behind as he went inside. The walls of the little shop were lined with shelves of books and as a rule books gave him a feeling of comfort, but at that moment he remained apprehensive and stayed close to the door, his cheeks flushed, and his eyes wide and staring like those of a frightened child.

"Who are you, and why are you tramping the streets?" the man asked pointedly.

Willie looked away from his face. He was pleasant enough, he liked the gold chain on his waistcoat and he liked his tone of concern too. "I'm Willie Froehlich. I...er... I've been thrown out of the place I lived and the people I hoped would take me in aren't living around here any longer."

The man surveyed the girl he had invited into his shop with a keen eye. Despite her being muffled up to the chin he could tell from the abrupt slope of her shoulders that there wasn't an ounce of excess fat on her anywhere. She had a broad, determined forehead, high cheekbones and a small mouth, down-curved, ready for anger or disappointment. Thick blond hair swept across her forehead and was pinned up at the back. She was of small stature, almost like a child, and that curried the paternal instinct in him.

"Are you a National Socialist?" he asked.

"No, I don't belong to any political party."

"That can sometimes be a disadvantage." he said, "However, if you're not in a hurry to go elsewhere I have a spare room and I can give you a bed and food in return for some help in the shop. There are other things I wish to do quite apart from selling books."

When he saw Willie pouting thoughtfully he added. "Don't worry about me having lecherous intentions. I'm old and quite incapable of taking advantage of you. Be sensible. You have no spare meat on your bones, and without a good layer of lard you could easily freeze to death out in the street tonight"

Willie hesitated for a moment, and then pushed the hair back from his forehead. "You haven't even told me who you are."