The Cellist of Dachau by Martin Goodman

Author:Martin Goodman [Goodman, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barbican Press
Published: 2023-03-27T17:00:00+00:00

18

Sydney, 1962

Place a shark in an aquarium and ask it to describe the life of the little fishes it encounters there, and the shark won’t account for its own impact. Similarly, Katja could not know how her shadow drove the world. When her fellow Australian citizens sensed Katja’s approach, they tended to cross the street. That is one reason her portraits of the country contain no people.

‘What was your maiden name?’

Katja had to think a moment. What was her name before she became Birchendorf? It was so far back.

‘Klein,’ she remembered.

Her daughter put her minimal English to work and wrote a translation onto the form she had taken from a resettlement officer. The German Klein became the English Little. She made the name her own. Uwe Little. She would not be a Birchendorf any more. When Katja spoke to her in German, the girl mouthed English back.

In 1951, when Uwe turned thirteen, Katja accepted that she now shared her home with an Australian teenager. When the girl dyed her hair black Katja took it to be a fashion statement. Uwe buttoned her white blouse tight around her neck and tugged her sleeves below her wrists. She wore black tights under a woollen black skirt even in summer. In a teenage world of flesh and brightness, Uwe stood out. Perhaps that’s what she wanted.

Uwe went to secretarial school. She passed shorthand and typing classes with distinction. She found a job and left home. Katja did not hear from her. She waited.

In December 1962, Katja stepped out of a taxi and commanded the driver to keep the meter running. The day was mild and sunny. Katja hated the lack of a northern winter. Out on the streets she felt like a penguin in a zoo, dressed in her dark clothes and there to be laughed at.

Inside the entrance hall of the apartment block she found her daughter’s name on a mailbox. Uwe had written it like a child, the nib pressed hard on the paper while she concentrated. Uwe Little.

Katja climbed the cement stairwell to the third floor where she pressed the bell on the black door. No one came. She hammered on the wood and shouted Uwe’s name. A woman stuck her head out of the apartment next door.

‘She’s my daughter,’ Katja snapped. ‘I’m her mother.’

She banged on the door again and the neighbour retreated.

Eventually the door opened a crack. Uwe stepped back and her mother pushed her way in.

Uwe’s hair was lank and unwashed and showed its brown roots. She had been sweating into a pillow. Her cheeks were drawn and her shoulders were thin yet her belly bulged out against her nightgown. She moved to her narrow bed and sat on its edge.

‘Have you got money?’ Katja said. ‘We’ll need your money. I didn’t bring any and I have a taxi waiting. I am taking you home.’

Katja spotted Uwe’s purse on the windowsill and walked across to fetch it. It held a few banknotes and coins. It was enough.

What a nasty little room.

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