COMING UP FOR AIR
A young girl’s struggle to take control of her life
Book I: Another Kind of Childhood
Book II: The Unbearable Burden of Sex
Book III: Spitting against the Wind
by Rose Mary Boehm
A young girl’s struggle to take control of her life
Book I: Another Kind of Childhood
Book II: The Unbearable Burden of Sex
Book III: Spitting against the Wind
by Rose Mary Boehm
FOREWORD
When, at some time in the 70s, in London, young friends of mine asked me about ‘my side of history’, I wasn’t sure where to start or, even, whether I wanted to. When I began to dig, I found impressions rather than a story, I found a small voice that grew up over the years, and I decided to ‘start at the very beginning’.
The novel has been written in three parts (or books, as I called them) in more than one way: the first part is unashamedly autobiographical, the second consists of autobiographical snippets as well as tales from friends, and the third is pure invention. Some characters in the novel are based on real people, some are blends of people I’ve known; events, places, dates and time I shifted at will, and all names of the protagonists are fictitious.
I hope you forgive me for occasionally imparting what many consider ‘necessary background information’ especially for the younger readers, many of whom said they had no idea of the historical or geographical context in which this childhood and growing-up process took place. I have tried to convey a time of love, fear, solidarity, bewilderment, pain, hypocrisy, fun, hope, friendship, optimism, promises and expectations. But, more than that, I intended to show today’s young adults there is nothing new under the sun, and that we can free ourselves from repeating errors in our reactions to the world which are born from the many confusing messages life imparts.
SETTING THE SCENE
Already in World War I, the Rhine-Ruhr area was a prime target for Britain and France, who even then planned air attacks on its industrial cities.
In World War II, the Rhine-Ruhr power stations and coking plants topped the list of targets for the British strategic air war against Germany. The Rhine-Ruhr industrial region was the ‘Armoury of the Third Reich’, where the industrial giants of their time manufactured the components for Hitler’s tanks, aircrafts, submarines, cannons, etc.
In May 1940, British Bomber Command opened the strategic air war against Germany, and night after night British bombers took off in the direction of the industries of the Ruhr.
Following the German air attacks on British cities in the autumn of 1940 and the spring of 1941 which had caused around 40,000 deaths in London alone, the British Air Ministry and the War Cabinet decided on air attacks on important German industrial cities such as Cologne, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen and Hamburg. The Unison plan envisaged strategic air raids on the populated areas in various industrial cities.
I must have been about two-and-a-half or three years old when the bombers began to come with ever increasing frequency, soon losing their loads anywhere.
For me, there existed no history, no guilt, no hate, no understanding. All I knew was my life between 'upstairs' and 'downstairs' (my home and the shelter), and the sound of the district siren screaming from the schoolhouse opposite our house, paralysing me with fear. I knew that night meant danger, and that this piercing sound, accompanied by the staccato of the anti-aircraft guns, would inevitably be followed by the low hum of overhead bombers, and then the ear-splitting explosions which shattered windows and tied my tummy into knots.
The ‘shelters’ were the cellars of the buildings in which we lived. As soon as the air-raid siren started its deafening warning, Mother, Father, my brother and I would hurry downstairs to the shelter. But nobody could make me go down if my 'children' weren’t safe. My dolls had to go first. I was the 'mother' of a collection of motley down-and-outs. One had a hole in its celluloid head and its hand was mangled. I used to chew the celluloid fingers – a taste I am reminded of now and then when I drink Retsina, the cheap Greek white wine.
In November 1944, the US Secretary of War ordered the US Strategic Bombing Survey, one of the last directives coming from the late President Roosevelt who had always believed that an impartial and expert study of the effects of American aerial attacks on Germany would allow the Americans not only to evaluate the potential of air power as an instrument of military strategy, but also help plan the future development of the United States armed forces, while determining future economic policies with respect to the cost of national defence and, as expected, the report’s major conclusion was that strategic bombing, particularly the destruction of the German oil industry and truck manufacturing, contributed tremendously to Allied successes in World War II.
Not that it is very important to those who are at the receiving end, but there is a distinction to be made between tactical and strategic bombing: strategic bombing missions tend to seek to destroy a country’s industrial infrastructure, throwing in a few cities for good measure, while tactical bombing missions go for military targets such as airfields, ammunition dumps, command facilities, troop concentrations etc. Never before had the world seen strategic bombing as used in World War II. In some cases thousands of aircraft dropped tens of thousands of tonnes of munitions on a single city.
Between them, the Allies were able to bomb around the clock. During the day, the US Air Forces made precision raids against specific targets with their well defended aircraft, while the less protected British bombers crossed into Germany under the cover of night and massed over the cities by the hundreds.
When, at some time in the 70s, in London, young friends of mine asked me about ‘my side of history’, I wasn’t sure where to start or, even, whether I wanted to. When I began to dig, I found impressions rather than a story, I found a small voice that grew up over the years, and I decided to ‘start at the very beginning’.
The novel has been written in three parts (or books, as I called them) in more than one way: the first part is unashamedly autobiographical, the second consists of autobiographical snippets as well as tales from friends, and the third is pure invention. Some characters in the novel are based on real people, some are blends of people I’ve known; events, places, dates and time I shifted at will, and all names of the protagonists are fictitious.
I hope you forgive me for occasionally imparting what many consider ‘necessary background information’ especially for the younger readers, many of whom said they had no idea of the historical or geographical context in which this childhood and growing-up process took place. I have tried to convey a time of love, fear, solidarity, bewilderment, pain, hypocrisy, fun, hope, friendship, optimism, promises and expectations. But, more than that, I intended to show today’s young adults there is nothing new under the sun, and that we can free ourselves from repeating errors in our reactions to the world which are born from the many confusing messages life imparts.
SETTING THE SCENE
Already in World War I, the Rhine-Ruhr area was a prime target for Britain and France, who even then planned air attacks on its industrial cities.
In World War II, the Rhine-Ruhr power stations and coking plants topped the list of targets for the British strategic air war against Germany. The Rhine-Ruhr industrial region was the ‘Armoury of the Third Reich’, where the industrial giants of their time manufactured the components for Hitler’s tanks, aircrafts, submarines, cannons, etc.
In May 1940, British Bomber Command opened the strategic air war against Germany, and night after night British bombers took off in the direction of the industries of the Ruhr.
Following the German air attacks on British cities in the autumn of 1940 and the spring of 1941 which had caused around 40,000 deaths in London alone, the British Air Ministry and the War Cabinet decided on air attacks on important German industrial cities such as Cologne, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen and Hamburg. The Unison plan envisaged strategic air raids on the populated areas in various industrial cities.
I must have been about two-and-a-half or three years old when the bombers began to come with ever increasing frequency, soon losing their loads anywhere.
For me, there existed no history, no guilt, no hate, no understanding. All I knew was my life between 'upstairs' and 'downstairs' (my home and the shelter), and the sound of the district siren screaming from the schoolhouse opposite our house, paralysing me with fear. I knew that night meant danger, and that this piercing sound, accompanied by the staccato of the anti-aircraft guns, would inevitably be followed by the low hum of overhead bombers, and then the ear-splitting explosions which shattered windows and tied my tummy into knots.
The ‘shelters’ were the cellars of the buildings in which we lived. As soon as the air-raid siren started its deafening warning, Mother, Father, my brother and I would hurry downstairs to the shelter. But nobody could make me go down if my 'children' weren’t safe. My dolls had to go first. I was the 'mother' of a collection of motley down-and-outs. One had a hole in its celluloid head and its hand was mangled. I used to chew the celluloid fingers – a taste I am reminded of now and then when I drink Retsina, the cheap Greek white wine.
In November 1944, the US Secretary of War ordered the US Strategic Bombing Survey, one of the last directives coming from the late President Roosevelt who had always believed that an impartial and expert study of the effects of American aerial attacks on Germany would allow the Americans not only to evaluate the potential of air power as an instrument of military strategy, but also help plan the future development of the United States armed forces, while determining future economic policies with respect to the cost of national defence and, as expected, the report’s major conclusion was that strategic bombing, particularly the destruction of the German oil industry and truck manufacturing, contributed tremendously to Allied successes in World War II.
Not that it is very important to those who are at the receiving end, but there is a distinction to be made between tactical and strategic bombing: strategic bombing missions tend to seek to destroy a country’s industrial infrastructure, throwing in a few cities for good measure, while tactical bombing missions go for military targets such as airfields, ammunition dumps, command facilities, troop concentrations etc. Never before had the world seen strategic bombing as used in World War II. In some cases thousands of aircraft dropped tens of thousands of tonnes of munitions on a single city.
Between them, the Allies were able to bomb around the clock. During the day, the US Air Forces made precision raids against specific targets with their well defended aircraft, while the less protected British bombers crossed into Germany under the cover of night and massed over the cities by the hundreds.
From Book
I - Another
Kind of Childhood
from CHAPTER 1
If ever there is to be a World War III,
there’ll be probably nobody left to write about it.
When Mother carries me down to the shelter, I feel safe. I sit on her arm, and she holds me close to her. I clutch her neck with my arms and know everything is alright.
When Father carries me down, he doesn’t sit me on his arm: he wraps me into a blanket and presses me tightly to his chest. I slowly slip through the blanket and call this a ‘wonky’ method of transport. We laugh.
from CHAPTER 4
Only small children and powerful nations
solve their problems by using extreme violence.
Parachute flares tend to be used where large areas need to be illuminated at night. In World War II, clusters of coloured flares were deployed by reconnaissance aircraft to mark targets for bomber missions.
Mother calls them 'Christmas trees'. My brother calls them flares. I am wrapped in a blanket, in my favourite position on Mother's arm, one of my arms around her neck. We are on the balcony. It is night time. Danger time. We stare at these 'Christmas trees' which drop into the night sky, hanging there for a while like coloured stars which have lost their way. Or perhaps we have moved up to meet them? There are more, oh, and - over there - and - Mother, look, some more over there! Now she runs with me down to the shelter. Moments later there is the whizz, the rumble. I press my hands to my ears.
In the shelter I always lie on the sofa and trace the pattern of the velvet cover. It’s dark brown, with odd little shapes in lighter brown and a soft, ‘dirty’ pink.
Our neighbours have brought their china rabbit and the chicken for me because I have to make sure that rabbit and chicken aren’t killed upstairs, even though I am not sure what happens upstairs when we are down here. Maybe that man with the hoarse, loud voice comes in these explosions and sweeps through the house, killing everything with his breath.
Black. He is black and he has a cape, like on the posters. There are these posters everywhere with a black, shadowy figure which wears a hat and a cape and one can't see his eyes.
My dolls are all right. They sit in their pram.
“Mother, the broom is looking at me.”
She gets up and turns it so that the brush part is now on the floor. We are in the centre of the shelter. On either both sides are wooden enclosures and each one belongs to a family. We have potatoes and coal in ours - and the broom. When his hairy top sticks out over the partition I feel bad inside. I don't like it ‘looking at me’.
The siren won't sound the all-clear tonight - that long, long howl which tells us it's alright to go back upstairs.
Like during thunderstorms, the bangs come closer. My brother looks white like a ghost and holds me tight. Now my mother comes to my other side and holds us both. Suddenly the candles die and something seems to explode inside of me.
Screams.
Silence.
My mother's voice: “Frau Hagmann, Herr Hagmann, are you there?”
“We’re alright.”
“Thank God for that!”
Confusion. Everyone speaks at once.
“Where are the matches - Oh mein Gott, the house is gone - we are trapped - must have been next door. The Brandts... Must have been the Brandts’ house!”
My brother feels rigid and Mother has let go of us. I can see her now, near the thin wall that separates us from the neighbour's shelter. There is a huge hole in the wall which was not there before and Mother walks towards it. It looks like a mouth, a dark, black mouth. The man with the cape is on the other side. He is going to breathe on Mother. No, Mother, don't... don't... A light appears from the other side and a figure in white. It’s Herr Brandt in his long underpants holding a candle.
“We are alright. Are you? It was next to us.”
I can't help thinking that Herr Brandt looks quite silly in his underpants.
Many houses are still burning. Burning flesh stinks, burning rubber stinks. Death stinks.
from CHAPTER 18
Nothing is as resilient as the human spirit.
On 30 April, 1945, in his bunker under the devastated city of Berlin, Adolf Hitler blew his brains out while the whole of Germany lay in ruins, and every major city destroyed by Allied bombs. Bridges had been blown up, train tracks had been bombed, and every road was clogged with German refugees. Thousands of women in eastern Germany drowned themselves rather than submit to rape by the Russian soldiers who were advancing rapidly towards Berlin. Boys of 14 and younger and old men of 60 and older had been forced to fight the advancing Allies in a hopeless, last-ditch effort. German soldiers who had survived and returned from the eastern front stripped off their uniforms and swam naked across the river Elbe to surrender to the Americans. The Germans were terrified of the Red Army which had gained a reputation during their advance for committing unspeakable atrocities.
People cowered in their underground bomb shelters in the cities or waved white flags of surrender from their windows in the smaller towns and villages. Thousands of homeless people had taken shelter in the bombed-out shells of churches and were cooking over open fires in the streets. Refugees trying to flee from the war zone sat for days beside the railroad tracks waiting for trains which never came. Others tried to escape on foot with their meagre possessions but had nowhere to go, and Allied planes were strafing everything that moved.
Subways were flooded, phone lines and electricity cut. The water supply in the bombed cities was either contaminated or non-existent, and there was no food, clothing, or medicines... Thousands of dead civilians were still buried under the destroyed buildings in every large city, adding the stench of decomposing flesh to the general confusion and misery.
On 27 April, 1945, American troops advanced eastward across Germany to link up with their Russian allies. The Russians had been marching west, across Poland, towards Berlin and beyond.
The American tanks had lined up on one side of the village by the upper woods; the German remainders were digging in on the other side, by the lower woods. Our village stretched out between the two fronts. Sporadic exchange of fire would send us scuttling down to the shelter. Many houses and farms were burning now, hand-to-hand fighting had begun in the streets, and I had seen some youths ducking down along the road carrying bazookas.
We heard the crackling sound of burning wood just after the explosion and raced upstairs to put the fire out, each one of us armed with one of the water-filled buckets that had been strategically placed on each landing. Before we reached the attic, we saw water trickling down the stairs. In the attic stood a zinc bathtub filled with water for just such an occasion. The shot had ripped through the roof on its way to the opposing army, and shrapnel had hit the bathtub. What we’d heard was the water dripping down the stone stairs. We giggled nervously.
It’s over. Our white sheet hangs from the window, but Adelheid's father is furious.
“Germans do not capitulate!”
“Oh, do be quiet once and for all. What do you think will happen to you? We don’t ‘capitulate’ you silly man, we are being liberated, especially from people like you!
This sheet will probably save even your mean neck!”
from BOOK II - The Unbearable Burden of Sex
from CHAPTER 33
When children start asking questions
for which you actually have answers, you know
that soon they’ll be leaving home.
Frauke and I had finished our homework. The late afternoon sun was about to sink behind the horizon when we decided to walk very fast along the towpath by the canal to see whether we could be fast enough and ‘catch’ it before it disappeared even though we knew it was impossible and just a game.
We talk while we walk. Suddenly Frauke stops. “Do you think it’s true about how they make babies?"
"What do you mean... that the man lies on top of the woman?”
“Well, yes, and that he puts his willie into her hole.”
That’s not something anyone ever told me about and definitely hasn’t occurred to me. I have never seen my brother without at least his underpants, and my father never ever walks through the house in his underwear or even in a dressing gown. I have only ever seen him fully dressed. Still, I have an idea what a ‘willie’ is, I am not that dumb, but the idea that anybody should ‘stick his willie into my hole’ gives me the creeps.
To Frauke I pretend I know exactly what she is talking about. I am too embarrassed to let on that I just discovered how backward I am. So I say boldly, “Of course it’s true, but it’s really disgusting, isn’t it? I don’t think I’ll go for it.”
“Neither shall I. I’ve thought about it often. And I don’t understand how my mother could actually do it with my father...”
Now there’s a thought. This, of course, is a revelation. When I get home I look at my parents with different eyes and decide that they are really quite despicable and that I’ll never, ever...
I took high school very seriously and actually enjoyed it. The school was in another part of town, and in the winter we took the tram which rattled past the coking plants, the steel works and even through some leafy roads lined with sycamore trees. In early spring we’d go by bike. There were usually three of us, three girls. We lived very close to one another and became good friends over the years by default. With Frauke I discovered how babies are made and with Karin I learned how to smoke.
Karin’s mother works and isn’t home yet. That’s why the three of us are alone in her house – Frauke, Karin and I. After sneaking in to see ‘Les Diaboliques’ we realised that we have to do something or we’ll be hopelessly left behind. Not smoking clearly marks us as little girls of no importance, and therefore smoking is one of the first things we have to learn how to do.
Karin has stolen a handful of cigarettes from her mother, one by one so she wouldn’t notice. We each take one and hold it awkwardly, imagining we are Simone Signoret, Rita Hayworth or Betty Grable. Karin holds a match to each one, and we suck the air through the cigarette to make it glow. The smoke fills my mouth and stings, tasting of smoke-filled memories. We hold it in our mouths for a moment before we let it drift out again.
“I don’t think that’s how it’s done,” says Karin. “When my mother smokes she inhales it, it stays in her body for a while and then she exhales and the smoke comes out with her breath, sometimes through her nose.”
“Alright, let’s try...”
The next puff has us inhaling and immediately coughing until our eyes water and sting. We double over, nearly vomiting, and we look at each other with tears in our eyes - we all look pale grey to green.
“Okay, guys. This needs practise. Since everyone smokes, it can’t be difficult to get used to it.” By the end of the afternoon we feel rather sick but triumphant: we don’t cough any more, our eyes don’t water and we hold and light the ‘glimmer sticks’ like old pros, ready to conquer the grown-up world, ready to enter a party with something to hold on to, ready to give us the air of utter sophistication and experience. Now we have to practice the ‘look’ (think Lauren Bacall) and we’ll be complete.
from CHAPTER 34
Don’t ever be afraid of biting off more than you can chew.
In my left hand I hold several brushes and a makeshift palette. On an easel in front of me stands a canvas of 50 x 80 cm, and in my right hand I hold a medium-size brush. My new teacher stands behind me and, with his brush and some dark brown paint shows me how to plan the basic structure of a painting.
He had primed the canvass for me. “You have to be clear about the difference between painting and drawing. What we are doing here is simply planning the composition and placement. Do it in charcoal or with oil paint and a brush. At this stage you can bring out areas that will eventually be dark – plan ahead. Imagine the finished painting in your head. Painting is not a dreamy ‘let’s see what happens next’ but a very conscious process.
“When you paint, you ‘draw’ lines by making one colour meet another and you create the illusion of three dimensions with light and shade. When you are happy with your plan, mix enough of the colours that correspond to overall tones you want to use and start ‘massing’. At this stage don’t worry about the details.”
I had joined a small group of local artists, and Albert Gransberg, a prominent member, had offered to teach me the rudiments of portrait painting, his speciality. The group had reluctantly accepted me on the basis of my drawings. Some felt that, at almost 13, I was too young, but they were overruled by those who wanted ‘to nurture young talent’.
Herr Gransberg was the youngest of the group. A man in his mid thirties, he was handsome in a rugged way and tall. He had dark hair which he kept a little longer than was the fashion at the time. I liked that.
[...]
Herr Gransberg has asked me to call him Albert.
I am determined to learn how to create three-dimensional illusions by using light and shade and paint a portrait using only shades of blue. Albert is following my progress with great interest and leans over me from time to time to hold my hand and the brush, re-mixing white and blue on my palette and with a few touches brings out the forehead, rounds the cheeks, makes the lips full and gives life to the eyes.
His left hand is holding my shoulder. Now he moves it down to hold my arm. He squeezes it rather hard and leans into my back. I shiver.
I am sitting for Albert again. He has asked me to ‘get my butt’ into an old wooden armchair. I have seen some of his sitters filling the chair, making it appear small. When I lean back in it, the chair seems huge and I feel a bit lost. Albert stands behind his canvas and looks at me with this intense look of his that gives my goose pimples. After some brush strokes he shakes his head and walks towards me.
He bends forward and opens the clasp that holds part of my hair and lets it fall over my face. He returns to the canvas and looks at me some more.
“Darling, open your blouse, just a few buttons at the top. I want to see the tips your little titties...”
I suddenly feel weak all over and know that I am blushing. I don’t know where to look and what to do, so I just sit there and do nothing. “Darling, I only want to paint you. Come on. The light is perfect just now!”
He walks towards me. I feel paralysed and stupid. With his left hand he opens the top buttons of my shirt and opens it wide until one of the painful little lumps that I hope will become breasts one day sticks out. I am deeply ashamed. He playfully passes his brush over my nipple and leaves a reddish smear. “Are you wearing knickers?” He picks up my left leg and lifts it over the armrest of the chair shifting my skirt up to expose my thigh.
Back at his easel he looks at me and nods. “Move your skirt up a bit more, my sweet...”
After what seemed like hours of paralysis I can move again, put my leg back on the floor and fumble with my shirt buttons. My heart is beating hard, my face feels hot and my legs don’t work terribly well. I try to regain some composure while some strangely agreeable panic is rising to my throat. Not looking at Albert I manage to grab my jacket and open the studio door walking the few steps to the street on legs made of jelly.
Albert opens his studio window and shouts after me, “Don’t be silly, darling, it’s alright ... don’t worry ... see you next week - same time!”
from Book III - Spitting against the Wind
from CHAPTER 42
A little learning is a dangerous thing ...
I am slowly walking back towards the large room where so many people are typing, shouting into telephones and at each other, where machines clang and clatter, and where I have a small desk and a typewriter. I am still not quite sure what they expect of me and who exactly my boss is. Up to now they are all using me to run errands, make coffee or to tease me mercilessly. Between copy boy and cub reporter ... but I’ll show them. Just because I am the first girl they have ever had in here, that doesn’t mean they can ignore that I have a brain! I’ll show them. But I need a break to show what I can do. There must be something I can do. It won’t happen until I make it happen...
The moment I open the door they all look up from whatever they are doing and stare at me. Then they hoot with laughter, and some slap their thighs. Yes, alright, I suppose I deserve this one. But I feel deeply embarrassed and stupid. How could I possible fall for this?
One of the reporters had sent me down to the typesetters to bring him back a Rasterpunkt - a matrix dot - one of the dots that make up a newsprint black and white half-tone picture, the same dots that are now counted to indicate resolution, as in, for example 300 dpi. This was one of the oldest jokes regularly inflicted on the latest recruits to the press room, and I dutifully walked all the way downstairs to the typesetters and asked for one. They had been warned by the jokers upstairs and had been ready for me. One of them made quite a performance out of putting something very small I couldn’t see (he used tweezers) into a relatively big box and handed it to me saying that I must handle it with great care. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. That at least was the moment when I should have tweaked. But no. I was too eager to please, too determined to make this work. I had promised myself that I’d run every errand, make every coffee, take any shit with a smile to make them like me and give me that chance I so craved.
Especially the editor-in-chief was intimidating. He had his own office half-way up the stairs from where he could more or less control the editing room. He kept his door open, and there was no passing his floor without being seen by ‘the boss’. Ernst Führing seemed old to me then, but he must have been a young man of around 36, built like an American football player. Weary brown eyes looked out from a frame of thick, rather feminine eyelashes, he had a large, handsome face, and his dark floppy hair gave him a slightly dishevelled appearance. He only ever wore white shirts, open at the neck, his tie knot pulled down, the sleeves rolled up until his elbows. I usually saw him sitting behind his huge desk, either speaking like machine-gun fire into the black telephone, or ‘parking’ it between chin and pulled up shoulder when he was looking for some papers. When I brought him material to sign off he would normally ask me to wait and then he’d dump even more papers and photos into my arms with delivery instructions. Standing he must have been around 1.80 m but one saw the beginnings of a belly, and since his trousers where usually just belted below that slight, round overhang, they took on a life of their own, cascading down to his highly polished shoes, the turn-ups at the back of the trouser legs disappearing beneath them.
He often stopped me when I was on my way up to the art department or asked in the press room for me to run an errand. Every time I was near him he’d make some comment, some sexual insinuation, some joke I didn’t get, or indicate that I should be doing something different, something that women do. I began to dread my contacts with ‘the boss’, even though he never made a pass, for which I was grateful.
The in-house photo reporter, Wald Radetzki, had quite some reputation. And I was fascinated by his celebrity status. It wasn’t just that his name turned up on most news pages of the paper, he also photographed local society and was more than once the object of other photographers when he accompanied some of the famous (and the infamous) women to various events.
He was just Radetzki to everyone here, and when I first met him on the stairs, I felt considerable awe and worried immediately that I may have a shiny nose. The Radetzki I knew from photographs was far less impressive than the real thing. Blinded by my admiration for his local notoriety, I didn’t see a man of already middle years, with a lived-in, somewhat sloppily designed and cruel face, a man who desperately wanted to stay young by donning ‘beatnik uniform’: black tight trousers, black roll-neck sweater, black leather jacket and black leather cap, his cameras slung carelessly over his shoulder; I only saw what I wanted to see: an admittedly older but sexy, sophisticated male, tall, slim, and handsome.
I was on one of my never-ending errands from the press room down to the printers, just passing the dark room which I’d never seen open, when Radetzki came up the stairs, taking two steps at the time. He looked up.
“Hey, gorgeous, and where did they hide you? What, are you on your way to me? Lovely surprise.”
I stand still, desperately wanting to be the most sexy thing on earth, thinking Rita Hayworth, definitely not Doris Day. But all I can come out with is, “Oh, hi, I am the new trainee.”
“Well, well, well ... turn around, would you? Let me check you out!”
I know I blush and I am angry with myself. I also hate the fact that I have absolutely nothing witty to say to this apparition. While he scares me a bit, he is also incredibly attractive in a forbidden sort of way. I know immediately that Mother wouldn’t approve of me being even near this man. That alone makes him irresistible. Not knowing what to do, I smile what I hope is a seductive smile and do a very fast turn on one foot, losing my balance just a little on the small step. Radetzki immediately reaches up and puts two strong hands on my hips: “Wow, little treasure, easy... mind you, you’re welcome to fall!” and he lets go. “We’ll be seeing a lot more of each other. By the way, what’s your name? ... Annemarie? That’s Anne for short, surely ... Must dash, have just come from an assignment and they’ll want the photos like yesterday ... until soon. I’ll make sure of it.”
He takes out some keys, opens the darkroom and disappears into it. Shuts the door behind himself. My legs are like jelly. I can barely continue my descend down to the basement. I feel his hands on my hips and I feel my insides knotting up.
Radetzki couldn’t be ignored. And I knew that he was one of the local ‘bad boys’ – if not the local bad boy. There isn’t that much room for bad boys in a provincial town, and there possibly isn’t that much on offer. He made a point of looking for me from time to time and the others teased me mercilessly. “He never came looking for any of us. Hell, he didn’t know we existed! Radetzki in the press room? You must be joking. And suddenly we see him regularly. Ain’t that strange. You’re going to fall for him, aren’t you? Bet? Who offers... I bet she will. One Mark (one German Mark) ... two against? Done...”
I was flattered but also flustered by his attentions, and I dreaded the day when I would have to go to the darkroom on one of my errands. I was sure the ‘press gang’ would arrange this somehow – and soon.
Not long after bumping into Radetzki, the boss asked me up to his office. I sat down, straight, wondering, on the edge of the seat. He looked at me over his reading glasses, a smile at the corners of his eyes. “Hello Anne, I know we haven’t been using you quite the way you’d want to be used as a budding reporter. Have we now?” He didn’t seem to expect an answer, so I just continued to look at him, hoping to look serious and grown-up. “This is about to change, my dear. Tomorrow afternoon you’re going out with Radetzki to cover the Lehmbruck they are about to put up on the Green in front of the theatre. They just got it back from Paris. Dress warm, you’ll be outside. Good luck.”
Oh, shit. That’s so sudden. I thought it’d never happen. And not only does it happen, is about to happen, but with Radetzki. My stomach turns into something hard and uncomfortable. What if I behave like a complete moron? What if I write a load of crap? What if... ooooooooh, hell... My art training comes in handy at least. I won’t have to look up much on Wilhelm Lehmbruck. I know. I even have a book on him. So far, so good. But who are the other guys who’ll be there? Who’ll give the speech? Did somebody buy the thing for the town? Why was it in Paris? Why has it come back? I daren’t ask my ‘colleagues’ because I don’t want them to know and start teasing me again, remembering their bet.
Rattling along in the tram on my way home, I am becoming absolutely terrified. Did I think I could cut it as a journalist? Did I volunteer for this? Was it me who’d hoped for so long to get an opportunity like this? And wasn’t it me who’d dreamed of being alone with Radetzki and having his attention? Oooh, yes. What an idiot. What am I going to do?
[Annemarie leaves home to live for a while with an aunt in Finland, and spends the nordic summer on her cousin Helvi's island. She writes letters to her best friend Gabi.]
from CHAPTER 51
Desire makes us helpless, it catches us unawares
and entangles us in its nets.
All of a sudden the place became what I could only call ‘nervous’. Its normal slow pace and placidity made way for a kind of busy-ness, and I wondered. I didn’t need to wonder for long. Auntie Eeva told me. “Armas is coming.” As though this was all the explanation needed.
Helvi was in the boathouse, dusting and fussing, opening and cleaning windows, airing eiderdown and mattress, washing the steps. The ‘house’ itself was built on stilts, wooden steps leading up to the door. Underneath the cabin a motorboat awaited its owner.
It was Friday, and summer had well and truly arrived. Everyone told what an exceptional summer it was, that summer of ’57. They had all nearly fallen over themselves with glee when a newspaper told them in big letters on the front page: ‘In Oulu, two Africans fainted from the heat!’ “Not only in Finland, in the North of Finland ... ha-ha-ha-ha ... two Africans! Fainted! From the HEAT!” Their amusement knew no end.
Armas Vuoristo. The mystery man. The man who made the whole of Hyvinvointi (Wellbeing), as the farm was called, buzz with excitement. He was supposed to come tomorrow, Saturday, as he always did, and Sauna afternoon started with the sauna, followed by the sumptuous after-sauna picnic-supper set out on big trestle tables on the grass near the sauna. My small ‘suite’ was above the sauna, its windows looking towards the boathouse (the trees, the stables and the gardens) and the sea.
Gabi, dearest, I haven’t written and I feel sooo guilty! Here, on the island, time has a way of just disappearing. Can’t explain it. Nothing quite happens, and yet everything happens. Before you know it, another 100 years have passed and you’ve slept (or eaten, or meandered, or photographed, or sunbathed) right through them.
This letter will go to the mainland with the milk boat. Milk boat? It’s more like the ‘everything’ boat. Amongst everything else, the milk-boat man also brings visitors, the mail, the papers and, in turn, takes visitors and letters to the mainland.
Gabi, all the growing I feel happening inside of me since I got here didn’t include a need for celibacy, even though I was very happy the way things were. I mean simply that I didn’t deliberately cut out sex, I just haven’t thought of men (or boys) at all and missed them not one bit. The ‘slug’ was a lesson, too. That ‘Vappu’ night was the last time a male got near me and I enjoyed the emotional peace.
Last night, sauna night, things got heated up. Forgive the pun. Just imagine: there I was, in my altogether, on the second ‘shelf’ which is, let’s say, at tit-height. Cousin Helvi, as always, relaxed up top. Seppo hadn’t arrived yet. The kids had beetled off again to sauna with the neighbours (their kids and ‘ours’ are summer friends), and I was just dozing off into my sauna dreams when I felt a draft. I heard the sauna door close and thought that Seppo had come in. He’s always the last. I didn’t even bother to open my eyes. Helvi’s voice made me perk up. “Hej, Armas, hej, hej ...” “Hej, Helvi ...” I peeped out from my shelf and saw something undoubtedly male! A BIG man was just letting go of Helvi’s hand and a big hand was approaching in my direction, the big man bending down to where I was sprawled out, hot and sweating, and a rather attractive face followed the hand while I sat up to take it, nearly hitting my head on the upper ‘shelf’.
Gabi, I swear, my hand (which isn’t small) disappeared in his. Armas is a big man all over. This was such a silly situation (at least for a non-Finn), two naked bodies introducing themselves kind of formally. And as he held my hand (the Finns are not very touchy when you first meet them... a simple, short handshake is all you can expect) for what seemed a loooong time, he made an effort and not once looked at my tits or anywhere further, just at my eyes and my face. “Hej, Pikku Anja... Armas Vuoristo. I was looking forward to meeting Julius’ daughter. It’s a pleasure. Tervetuloa! Welcome!”
Gabi, he is a very good-looking man and built like a bear. He’s all muscle and must be almost two meters tall. He’s got thick black hair, with just a little bit of grey showing at the sides and, if anything, has a touch of Mongol rather than Scandinavian. He has amazingly intense dark-brown eyes, lovely, smooth skin and very little body hair (well, given the fact that we met stark naked, I had a chance to observe and take note!) Clark Gable, eat your heart out!
Helvi told me that the Finns came from the East, from Mongolia and Russia, and that they are not of Scandinavian origin, even though by now they’ve mixed enough, especially with the Swedes who were the top dogs here for around 600 years. And apparently Finnish is (a problem for the older generation – at least of my family, who grew up speaking Swedish), together with Estonian and Hungarian, a Uralic language and does not belong to the Indo-European language family. No wonder it’s so bloody difficult! What do I say, ‘difficult’? It’s impossible!!!
Well, anyway, back to the important news: Armas Vuoristo! After calling me ‘Pikku Anja’ (I found out from Helvi that it simply means ‘little Anni’) we all did more sweating – Armas up top with Helvi, chatting in Finnish, Seppo never turned up that Saturday, and Auntie Eeva came only in for a quickie (she’s not too keen on the sauna any more, she says her heart’s not quite up to it) and never even made it to my medium height but stayed on ground level. During all that time, I was very aware of that bear man, especially since I heard his deep voice when he said something to Helvi, or perhaps answered a question.
Gabi, Armas is the man of my dreams – and even though I found out that he’s already 48, he looks much younger and, well, I do like older men! Oh, I don’t know when I continue the letter. Right now I must dash. Helvi is calling me. You’ll get this letter in instalments. Until tomorrow perhaps.
That evening, after Armas and I had met under what were rather unusual circumstances – at least for me - I didn’t want to be the first heading for the jetty and the oh-so-needed cool sea. I felt a bit self-conscious. But then the heat got the better of me. I slid down from my bench and awkwardly walked towards the exit, fumbling a bit with the heavy sauna door until I could disappear. I ran out, let myself plunge into the welcome cold water and swam away from the jetty. When I turned to swim back, I saw an apparition from another time: there was Siegfried, surely, wet and steaming, running towards where I was treading water, dived from the jetty and disappeared. His dive had been so clean, this big body hadn’t even make a splash. While I was straining my eyes looking for him – even though the sun had not quite set the water was already dark and kept many secrets – a noise behind me made me turn. Armas came up from the water like a walrus, grinning, shaking his dripping head, drops of gold flying against the last of the evening sun. “Wow, little one, this is the good life. After months of town and work, this is where I live again. Come on, let’s go and get some nosh. After-sauna eating and drinking is right next to paradise. I race you.”
Of course he won. His powerful strokes left me well behind. He waited for me on the jetty by the stairs, held out his hand and almost lifted me out of the water. Just then Helvi made the dash for the jetty and the sea, “See you in a minute at the supper table!”
By now I was no longer thinking about our nakedness, just about his nearness and power. We got our dressing gowns from the sauna ‘ante chamber’ and joined Auntie Eeva at the table who said that a cold bucket of water had been perfect for her and quite sufficient. Seppo apparently had just arrived from the fields or the cows and had made straight for the sauna.
You want to read more? Go to amazon.com or amazon.co.uk (Kindle or paperback)
from CHAPTER 1
If ever there is to be a World War III,
there’ll be probably nobody left to write about it.
When Mother carries me down to the shelter, I feel safe. I sit on her arm, and she holds me close to her. I clutch her neck with my arms and know everything is alright.
When Father carries me down, he doesn’t sit me on his arm: he wraps me into a blanket and presses me tightly to his chest. I slowly slip through the blanket and call this a ‘wonky’ method of transport. We laugh.
from CHAPTER 4
Only small children and powerful nations
solve their problems by using extreme violence.
Parachute flares tend to be used where large areas need to be illuminated at night. In World War II, clusters of coloured flares were deployed by reconnaissance aircraft to mark targets for bomber missions.
Mother calls them 'Christmas trees'. My brother calls them flares. I am wrapped in a blanket, in my favourite position on Mother's arm, one of my arms around her neck. We are on the balcony. It is night time. Danger time. We stare at these 'Christmas trees' which drop into the night sky, hanging there for a while like coloured stars which have lost their way. Or perhaps we have moved up to meet them? There are more, oh, and - over there - and - Mother, look, some more over there! Now she runs with me down to the shelter. Moments later there is the whizz, the rumble. I press my hands to my ears.
In the shelter I always lie on the sofa and trace the pattern of the velvet cover. It’s dark brown, with odd little shapes in lighter brown and a soft, ‘dirty’ pink.
Our neighbours have brought their china rabbit and the chicken for me because I have to make sure that rabbit and chicken aren’t killed upstairs, even though I am not sure what happens upstairs when we are down here. Maybe that man with the hoarse, loud voice comes in these explosions and sweeps through the house, killing everything with his breath.
Black. He is black and he has a cape, like on the posters. There are these posters everywhere with a black, shadowy figure which wears a hat and a cape and one can't see his eyes.
My dolls are all right. They sit in their pram.
“Mother, the broom is looking at me.”
She gets up and turns it so that the brush part is now on the floor. We are in the centre of the shelter. On either both sides are wooden enclosures and each one belongs to a family. We have potatoes and coal in ours - and the broom. When his hairy top sticks out over the partition I feel bad inside. I don't like it ‘looking at me’.
The siren won't sound the all-clear tonight - that long, long howl which tells us it's alright to go back upstairs.
Like during thunderstorms, the bangs come closer. My brother looks white like a ghost and holds me tight. Now my mother comes to my other side and holds us both. Suddenly the candles die and something seems to explode inside of me.
Screams.
Silence.
My mother's voice: “Frau Hagmann, Herr Hagmann, are you there?”
“We’re alright.”
“Thank God for that!”
Confusion. Everyone speaks at once.
“Where are the matches - Oh mein Gott, the house is gone - we are trapped - must have been next door. The Brandts... Must have been the Brandts’ house!”
My brother feels rigid and Mother has let go of us. I can see her now, near the thin wall that separates us from the neighbour's shelter. There is a huge hole in the wall which was not there before and Mother walks towards it. It looks like a mouth, a dark, black mouth. The man with the cape is on the other side. He is going to breathe on Mother. No, Mother, don't... don't... A light appears from the other side and a figure in white. It’s Herr Brandt in his long underpants holding a candle.
“We are alright. Are you? It was next to us.”
I can't help thinking that Herr Brandt looks quite silly in his underpants.
Many houses are still burning. Burning flesh stinks, burning rubber stinks. Death stinks.
from CHAPTER 18
Nothing is as resilient as the human spirit.
On 30 April, 1945, in his bunker under the devastated city of Berlin, Adolf Hitler blew his brains out while the whole of Germany lay in ruins, and every major city destroyed by Allied bombs. Bridges had been blown up, train tracks had been bombed, and every road was clogged with German refugees. Thousands of women in eastern Germany drowned themselves rather than submit to rape by the Russian soldiers who were advancing rapidly towards Berlin. Boys of 14 and younger and old men of 60 and older had been forced to fight the advancing Allies in a hopeless, last-ditch effort. German soldiers who had survived and returned from the eastern front stripped off their uniforms and swam naked across the river Elbe to surrender to the Americans. The Germans were terrified of the Red Army which had gained a reputation during their advance for committing unspeakable atrocities.
People cowered in their underground bomb shelters in the cities or waved white flags of surrender from their windows in the smaller towns and villages. Thousands of homeless people had taken shelter in the bombed-out shells of churches and were cooking over open fires in the streets. Refugees trying to flee from the war zone sat for days beside the railroad tracks waiting for trains which never came. Others tried to escape on foot with their meagre possessions but had nowhere to go, and Allied planes were strafing everything that moved.
Subways were flooded, phone lines and electricity cut. The water supply in the bombed cities was either contaminated or non-existent, and there was no food, clothing, or medicines... Thousands of dead civilians were still buried under the destroyed buildings in every large city, adding the stench of decomposing flesh to the general confusion and misery.
On 27 April, 1945, American troops advanced eastward across Germany to link up with their Russian allies. The Russians had been marching west, across Poland, towards Berlin and beyond.
The American tanks had lined up on one side of the village by the upper woods; the German remainders were digging in on the other side, by the lower woods. Our village stretched out between the two fronts. Sporadic exchange of fire would send us scuttling down to the shelter. Many houses and farms were burning now, hand-to-hand fighting had begun in the streets, and I had seen some youths ducking down along the road carrying bazookas.
We heard the crackling sound of burning wood just after the explosion and raced upstairs to put the fire out, each one of us armed with one of the water-filled buckets that had been strategically placed on each landing. Before we reached the attic, we saw water trickling down the stairs. In the attic stood a zinc bathtub filled with water for just such an occasion. The shot had ripped through the roof on its way to the opposing army, and shrapnel had hit the bathtub. What we’d heard was the water dripping down the stone stairs. We giggled nervously.
It’s over. Our white sheet hangs from the window, but Adelheid's father is furious.
“Germans do not capitulate!”
“Oh, do be quiet once and for all. What do you think will happen to you? We don’t ‘capitulate’ you silly man, we are being liberated, especially from people like you!
This sheet will probably save even your mean neck!”
from BOOK II - The Unbearable Burden of Sex
from CHAPTER 33
When children start asking questions
for which you actually have answers, you know
that soon they’ll be leaving home.
Frauke and I had finished our homework. The late afternoon sun was about to sink behind the horizon when we decided to walk very fast along the towpath by the canal to see whether we could be fast enough and ‘catch’ it before it disappeared even though we knew it was impossible and just a game.
We talk while we walk. Suddenly Frauke stops. “Do you think it’s true about how they make babies?"
"What do you mean... that the man lies on top of the woman?”
“Well, yes, and that he puts his willie into her hole.”
That’s not something anyone ever told me about and definitely hasn’t occurred to me. I have never seen my brother without at least his underpants, and my father never ever walks through the house in his underwear or even in a dressing gown. I have only ever seen him fully dressed. Still, I have an idea what a ‘willie’ is, I am not that dumb, but the idea that anybody should ‘stick his willie into my hole’ gives me the creeps.
To Frauke I pretend I know exactly what she is talking about. I am too embarrassed to let on that I just discovered how backward I am. So I say boldly, “Of course it’s true, but it’s really disgusting, isn’t it? I don’t think I’ll go for it.”
“Neither shall I. I’ve thought about it often. And I don’t understand how my mother could actually do it with my father...”
Now there’s a thought. This, of course, is a revelation. When I get home I look at my parents with different eyes and decide that they are really quite despicable and that I’ll never, ever...
I took high school very seriously and actually enjoyed it. The school was in another part of town, and in the winter we took the tram which rattled past the coking plants, the steel works and even through some leafy roads lined with sycamore trees. In early spring we’d go by bike. There were usually three of us, three girls. We lived very close to one another and became good friends over the years by default. With Frauke I discovered how babies are made and with Karin I learned how to smoke.
Karin’s mother works and isn’t home yet. That’s why the three of us are alone in her house – Frauke, Karin and I. After sneaking in to see ‘Les Diaboliques’ we realised that we have to do something or we’ll be hopelessly left behind. Not smoking clearly marks us as little girls of no importance, and therefore smoking is one of the first things we have to learn how to do.
Karin has stolen a handful of cigarettes from her mother, one by one so she wouldn’t notice. We each take one and hold it awkwardly, imagining we are Simone Signoret, Rita Hayworth or Betty Grable. Karin holds a match to each one, and we suck the air through the cigarette to make it glow. The smoke fills my mouth and stings, tasting of smoke-filled memories. We hold it in our mouths for a moment before we let it drift out again.
“I don’t think that’s how it’s done,” says Karin. “When my mother smokes she inhales it, it stays in her body for a while and then she exhales and the smoke comes out with her breath, sometimes through her nose.”
“Alright, let’s try...”
The next puff has us inhaling and immediately coughing until our eyes water and sting. We double over, nearly vomiting, and we look at each other with tears in our eyes - we all look pale grey to green.
“Okay, guys. This needs practise. Since everyone smokes, it can’t be difficult to get used to it.” By the end of the afternoon we feel rather sick but triumphant: we don’t cough any more, our eyes don’t water and we hold and light the ‘glimmer sticks’ like old pros, ready to conquer the grown-up world, ready to enter a party with something to hold on to, ready to give us the air of utter sophistication and experience. Now we have to practice the ‘look’ (think Lauren Bacall) and we’ll be complete.
from CHAPTER 34
Don’t ever be afraid of biting off more than you can chew.
In my left hand I hold several brushes and a makeshift palette. On an easel in front of me stands a canvas of 50 x 80 cm, and in my right hand I hold a medium-size brush. My new teacher stands behind me and, with his brush and some dark brown paint shows me how to plan the basic structure of a painting.
He had primed the canvass for me. “You have to be clear about the difference between painting and drawing. What we are doing here is simply planning the composition and placement. Do it in charcoal or with oil paint and a brush. At this stage you can bring out areas that will eventually be dark – plan ahead. Imagine the finished painting in your head. Painting is not a dreamy ‘let’s see what happens next’ but a very conscious process.
“When you paint, you ‘draw’ lines by making one colour meet another and you create the illusion of three dimensions with light and shade. When you are happy with your plan, mix enough of the colours that correspond to overall tones you want to use and start ‘massing’. At this stage don’t worry about the details.”
I had joined a small group of local artists, and Albert Gransberg, a prominent member, had offered to teach me the rudiments of portrait painting, his speciality. The group had reluctantly accepted me on the basis of my drawings. Some felt that, at almost 13, I was too young, but they were overruled by those who wanted ‘to nurture young talent’.
Herr Gransberg was the youngest of the group. A man in his mid thirties, he was handsome in a rugged way and tall. He had dark hair which he kept a little longer than was the fashion at the time. I liked that.
[...]
Herr Gransberg has asked me to call him Albert.
I am determined to learn how to create three-dimensional illusions by using light and shade and paint a portrait using only shades of blue. Albert is following my progress with great interest and leans over me from time to time to hold my hand and the brush, re-mixing white and blue on my palette and with a few touches brings out the forehead, rounds the cheeks, makes the lips full and gives life to the eyes.
His left hand is holding my shoulder. Now he moves it down to hold my arm. He squeezes it rather hard and leans into my back. I shiver.
I am sitting for Albert again. He has asked me to ‘get my butt’ into an old wooden armchair. I have seen some of his sitters filling the chair, making it appear small. When I lean back in it, the chair seems huge and I feel a bit lost. Albert stands behind his canvas and looks at me with this intense look of his that gives my goose pimples. After some brush strokes he shakes his head and walks towards me.
He bends forward and opens the clasp that holds part of my hair and lets it fall over my face. He returns to the canvas and looks at me some more.
“Darling, open your blouse, just a few buttons at the top. I want to see the tips your little titties...”
I suddenly feel weak all over and know that I am blushing. I don’t know where to look and what to do, so I just sit there and do nothing. “Darling, I only want to paint you. Come on. The light is perfect just now!”
He walks towards me. I feel paralysed and stupid. With his left hand he opens the top buttons of my shirt and opens it wide until one of the painful little lumps that I hope will become breasts one day sticks out. I am deeply ashamed. He playfully passes his brush over my nipple and leaves a reddish smear. “Are you wearing knickers?” He picks up my left leg and lifts it over the armrest of the chair shifting my skirt up to expose my thigh.
Back at his easel he looks at me and nods. “Move your skirt up a bit more, my sweet...”
After what seemed like hours of paralysis I can move again, put my leg back on the floor and fumble with my shirt buttons. My heart is beating hard, my face feels hot and my legs don’t work terribly well. I try to regain some composure while some strangely agreeable panic is rising to my throat. Not looking at Albert I manage to grab my jacket and open the studio door walking the few steps to the street on legs made of jelly.
Albert opens his studio window and shouts after me, “Don’t be silly, darling, it’s alright ... don’t worry ... see you next week - same time!”
from Book III - Spitting against the Wind
from CHAPTER 42
A little learning is a dangerous thing ...
I am slowly walking back towards the large room where so many people are typing, shouting into telephones and at each other, where machines clang and clatter, and where I have a small desk and a typewriter. I am still not quite sure what they expect of me and who exactly my boss is. Up to now they are all using me to run errands, make coffee or to tease me mercilessly. Between copy boy and cub reporter ... but I’ll show them. Just because I am the first girl they have ever had in here, that doesn’t mean they can ignore that I have a brain! I’ll show them. But I need a break to show what I can do. There must be something I can do. It won’t happen until I make it happen...
The moment I open the door they all look up from whatever they are doing and stare at me. Then they hoot with laughter, and some slap their thighs. Yes, alright, I suppose I deserve this one. But I feel deeply embarrassed and stupid. How could I possible fall for this?
One of the reporters had sent me down to the typesetters to bring him back a Rasterpunkt - a matrix dot - one of the dots that make up a newsprint black and white half-tone picture, the same dots that are now counted to indicate resolution, as in, for example 300 dpi. This was one of the oldest jokes regularly inflicted on the latest recruits to the press room, and I dutifully walked all the way downstairs to the typesetters and asked for one. They had been warned by the jokers upstairs and had been ready for me. One of them made quite a performance out of putting something very small I couldn’t see (he used tweezers) into a relatively big box and handed it to me saying that I must handle it with great care. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. That at least was the moment when I should have tweaked. But no. I was too eager to please, too determined to make this work. I had promised myself that I’d run every errand, make every coffee, take any shit with a smile to make them like me and give me that chance I so craved.
Especially the editor-in-chief was intimidating. He had his own office half-way up the stairs from where he could more or less control the editing room. He kept his door open, and there was no passing his floor without being seen by ‘the boss’. Ernst Führing seemed old to me then, but he must have been a young man of around 36, built like an American football player. Weary brown eyes looked out from a frame of thick, rather feminine eyelashes, he had a large, handsome face, and his dark floppy hair gave him a slightly dishevelled appearance. He only ever wore white shirts, open at the neck, his tie knot pulled down, the sleeves rolled up until his elbows. I usually saw him sitting behind his huge desk, either speaking like machine-gun fire into the black telephone, or ‘parking’ it between chin and pulled up shoulder when he was looking for some papers. When I brought him material to sign off he would normally ask me to wait and then he’d dump even more papers and photos into my arms with delivery instructions. Standing he must have been around 1.80 m but one saw the beginnings of a belly, and since his trousers where usually just belted below that slight, round overhang, they took on a life of their own, cascading down to his highly polished shoes, the turn-ups at the back of the trouser legs disappearing beneath them.
He often stopped me when I was on my way up to the art department or asked in the press room for me to run an errand. Every time I was near him he’d make some comment, some sexual insinuation, some joke I didn’t get, or indicate that I should be doing something different, something that women do. I began to dread my contacts with ‘the boss’, even though he never made a pass, for which I was grateful.
The in-house photo reporter, Wald Radetzki, had quite some reputation. And I was fascinated by his celebrity status. It wasn’t just that his name turned up on most news pages of the paper, he also photographed local society and was more than once the object of other photographers when he accompanied some of the famous (and the infamous) women to various events.
He was just Radetzki to everyone here, and when I first met him on the stairs, I felt considerable awe and worried immediately that I may have a shiny nose. The Radetzki I knew from photographs was far less impressive than the real thing. Blinded by my admiration for his local notoriety, I didn’t see a man of already middle years, with a lived-in, somewhat sloppily designed and cruel face, a man who desperately wanted to stay young by donning ‘beatnik uniform’: black tight trousers, black roll-neck sweater, black leather jacket and black leather cap, his cameras slung carelessly over his shoulder; I only saw what I wanted to see: an admittedly older but sexy, sophisticated male, tall, slim, and handsome.
I was on one of my never-ending errands from the press room down to the printers, just passing the dark room which I’d never seen open, when Radetzki came up the stairs, taking two steps at the time. He looked up.
“Hey, gorgeous, and where did they hide you? What, are you on your way to me? Lovely surprise.”
I stand still, desperately wanting to be the most sexy thing on earth, thinking Rita Hayworth, definitely not Doris Day. But all I can come out with is, “Oh, hi, I am the new trainee.”
“Well, well, well ... turn around, would you? Let me check you out!”
I know I blush and I am angry with myself. I also hate the fact that I have absolutely nothing witty to say to this apparition. While he scares me a bit, he is also incredibly attractive in a forbidden sort of way. I know immediately that Mother wouldn’t approve of me being even near this man. That alone makes him irresistible. Not knowing what to do, I smile what I hope is a seductive smile and do a very fast turn on one foot, losing my balance just a little on the small step. Radetzki immediately reaches up and puts two strong hands on my hips: “Wow, little treasure, easy... mind you, you’re welcome to fall!” and he lets go. “We’ll be seeing a lot more of each other. By the way, what’s your name? ... Annemarie? That’s Anne for short, surely ... Must dash, have just come from an assignment and they’ll want the photos like yesterday ... until soon. I’ll make sure of it.”
He takes out some keys, opens the darkroom and disappears into it. Shuts the door behind himself. My legs are like jelly. I can barely continue my descend down to the basement. I feel his hands on my hips and I feel my insides knotting up.
Radetzki couldn’t be ignored. And I knew that he was one of the local ‘bad boys’ – if not the local bad boy. There isn’t that much room for bad boys in a provincial town, and there possibly isn’t that much on offer. He made a point of looking for me from time to time and the others teased me mercilessly. “He never came looking for any of us. Hell, he didn’t know we existed! Radetzki in the press room? You must be joking. And suddenly we see him regularly. Ain’t that strange. You’re going to fall for him, aren’t you? Bet? Who offers... I bet she will. One Mark (one German Mark) ... two against? Done...”
I was flattered but also flustered by his attentions, and I dreaded the day when I would have to go to the darkroom on one of my errands. I was sure the ‘press gang’ would arrange this somehow – and soon.
Not long after bumping into Radetzki, the boss asked me up to his office. I sat down, straight, wondering, on the edge of the seat. He looked at me over his reading glasses, a smile at the corners of his eyes. “Hello Anne, I know we haven’t been using you quite the way you’d want to be used as a budding reporter. Have we now?” He didn’t seem to expect an answer, so I just continued to look at him, hoping to look serious and grown-up. “This is about to change, my dear. Tomorrow afternoon you’re going out with Radetzki to cover the Lehmbruck they are about to put up on the Green in front of the theatre. They just got it back from Paris. Dress warm, you’ll be outside. Good luck.”
Oh, shit. That’s so sudden. I thought it’d never happen. And not only does it happen, is about to happen, but with Radetzki. My stomach turns into something hard and uncomfortable. What if I behave like a complete moron? What if I write a load of crap? What if... ooooooooh, hell... My art training comes in handy at least. I won’t have to look up much on Wilhelm Lehmbruck. I know. I even have a book on him. So far, so good. But who are the other guys who’ll be there? Who’ll give the speech? Did somebody buy the thing for the town? Why was it in Paris? Why has it come back? I daren’t ask my ‘colleagues’ because I don’t want them to know and start teasing me again, remembering their bet.
Rattling along in the tram on my way home, I am becoming absolutely terrified. Did I think I could cut it as a journalist? Did I volunteer for this? Was it me who’d hoped for so long to get an opportunity like this? And wasn’t it me who’d dreamed of being alone with Radetzki and having his attention? Oooh, yes. What an idiot. What am I going to do?
[Annemarie leaves home to live for a while with an aunt in Finland, and spends the nordic summer on her cousin Helvi's island. She writes letters to her best friend Gabi.]
from CHAPTER 51
Desire makes us helpless, it catches us unawares
and entangles us in its nets.
All of a sudden the place became what I could only call ‘nervous’. Its normal slow pace and placidity made way for a kind of busy-ness, and I wondered. I didn’t need to wonder for long. Auntie Eeva told me. “Armas is coming.” As though this was all the explanation needed.
Helvi was in the boathouse, dusting and fussing, opening and cleaning windows, airing eiderdown and mattress, washing the steps. The ‘house’ itself was built on stilts, wooden steps leading up to the door. Underneath the cabin a motorboat awaited its owner.
It was Friday, and summer had well and truly arrived. Everyone told what an exceptional summer it was, that summer of ’57. They had all nearly fallen over themselves with glee when a newspaper told them in big letters on the front page: ‘In Oulu, two Africans fainted from the heat!’ “Not only in Finland, in the North of Finland ... ha-ha-ha-ha ... two Africans! Fainted! From the HEAT!” Their amusement knew no end.
Armas Vuoristo. The mystery man. The man who made the whole of Hyvinvointi (Wellbeing), as the farm was called, buzz with excitement. He was supposed to come tomorrow, Saturday, as he always did, and Sauna afternoon started with the sauna, followed by the sumptuous after-sauna picnic-supper set out on big trestle tables on the grass near the sauna. My small ‘suite’ was above the sauna, its windows looking towards the boathouse (the trees, the stables and the gardens) and the sea.
Gabi, dearest, I haven’t written and I feel sooo guilty! Here, on the island, time has a way of just disappearing. Can’t explain it. Nothing quite happens, and yet everything happens. Before you know it, another 100 years have passed and you’ve slept (or eaten, or meandered, or photographed, or sunbathed) right through them.
This letter will go to the mainland with the milk boat. Milk boat? It’s more like the ‘everything’ boat. Amongst everything else, the milk-boat man also brings visitors, the mail, the papers and, in turn, takes visitors and letters to the mainland.
Gabi, all the growing I feel happening inside of me since I got here didn’t include a need for celibacy, even though I was very happy the way things were. I mean simply that I didn’t deliberately cut out sex, I just haven’t thought of men (or boys) at all and missed them not one bit. The ‘slug’ was a lesson, too. That ‘Vappu’ night was the last time a male got near me and I enjoyed the emotional peace.
Last night, sauna night, things got heated up. Forgive the pun. Just imagine: there I was, in my altogether, on the second ‘shelf’ which is, let’s say, at tit-height. Cousin Helvi, as always, relaxed up top. Seppo hadn’t arrived yet. The kids had beetled off again to sauna with the neighbours (their kids and ‘ours’ are summer friends), and I was just dozing off into my sauna dreams when I felt a draft. I heard the sauna door close and thought that Seppo had come in. He’s always the last. I didn’t even bother to open my eyes. Helvi’s voice made me perk up. “Hej, Armas, hej, hej ...” “Hej, Helvi ...” I peeped out from my shelf and saw something undoubtedly male! A BIG man was just letting go of Helvi’s hand and a big hand was approaching in my direction, the big man bending down to where I was sprawled out, hot and sweating, and a rather attractive face followed the hand while I sat up to take it, nearly hitting my head on the upper ‘shelf’.
Gabi, I swear, my hand (which isn’t small) disappeared in his. Armas is a big man all over. This was such a silly situation (at least for a non-Finn), two naked bodies introducing themselves kind of formally. And as he held my hand (the Finns are not very touchy when you first meet them... a simple, short handshake is all you can expect) for what seemed a loooong time, he made an effort and not once looked at my tits or anywhere further, just at my eyes and my face. “Hej, Pikku Anja... Armas Vuoristo. I was looking forward to meeting Julius’ daughter. It’s a pleasure. Tervetuloa! Welcome!”
Gabi, he is a very good-looking man and built like a bear. He’s all muscle and must be almost two meters tall. He’s got thick black hair, with just a little bit of grey showing at the sides and, if anything, has a touch of Mongol rather than Scandinavian. He has amazingly intense dark-brown eyes, lovely, smooth skin and very little body hair (well, given the fact that we met stark naked, I had a chance to observe and take note!) Clark Gable, eat your heart out!
Helvi told me that the Finns came from the East, from Mongolia and Russia, and that they are not of Scandinavian origin, even though by now they’ve mixed enough, especially with the Swedes who were the top dogs here for around 600 years. And apparently Finnish is (a problem for the older generation – at least of my family, who grew up speaking Swedish), together with Estonian and Hungarian, a Uralic language and does not belong to the Indo-European language family. No wonder it’s so bloody difficult! What do I say, ‘difficult’? It’s impossible!!!
Well, anyway, back to the important news: Armas Vuoristo! After calling me ‘Pikku Anja’ (I found out from Helvi that it simply means ‘little Anni’) we all did more sweating – Armas up top with Helvi, chatting in Finnish, Seppo never turned up that Saturday, and Auntie Eeva came only in for a quickie (she’s not too keen on the sauna any more, she says her heart’s not quite up to it) and never even made it to my medium height but stayed on ground level. During all that time, I was very aware of that bear man, especially since I heard his deep voice when he said something to Helvi, or perhaps answered a question.
Gabi, Armas is the man of my dreams – and even though I found out that he’s already 48, he looks much younger and, well, I do like older men! Oh, I don’t know when I continue the letter. Right now I must dash. Helvi is calling me. You’ll get this letter in instalments. Until tomorrow perhaps.
That evening, after Armas and I had met under what were rather unusual circumstances – at least for me - I didn’t want to be the first heading for the jetty and the oh-so-needed cool sea. I felt a bit self-conscious. But then the heat got the better of me. I slid down from my bench and awkwardly walked towards the exit, fumbling a bit with the heavy sauna door until I could disappear. I ran out, let myself plunge into the welcome cold water and swam away from the jetty. When I turned to swim back, I saw an apparition from another time: there was Siegfried, surely, wet and steaming, running towards where I was treading water, dived from the jetty and disappeared. His dive had been so clean, this big body hadn’t even make a splash. While I was straining my eyes looking for him – even though the sun had not quite set the water was already dark and kept many secrets – a noise behind me made me turn. Armas came up from the water like a walrus, grinning, shaking his dripping head, drops of gold flying against the last of the evening sun. “Wow, little one, this is the good life. After months of town and work, this is where I live again. Come on, let’s go and get some nosh. After-sauna eating and drinking is right next to paradise. I race you.”
Of course he won. His powerful strokes left me well behind. He waited for me on the jetty by the stairs, held out his hand and almost lifted me out of the water. Just then Helvi made the dash for the jetty and the sea, “See you in a minute at the supper table!”
By now I was no longer thinking about our nakedness, just about his nearness and power. We got our dressing gowns from the sauna ‘ante chamber’ and joined Auntie Eeva at the table who said that a cold bucket of water had been perfect for her and quite sufficient. Seppo apparently had just arrived from the fields or the cows and had made straight for the sauna.
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