The Past is Myself & The Road Ahead Omnibus: When I Was a German, 1934-1945 by Bielenberg Christabel

Author:Bielenberg, Christabel [Bielenberg, Christabel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446464939
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2011-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

PETER’S RETURN

(Winter 1945)

HOW DID THE day start? I must try to get it all quite straight. Things were not ordinary because Nicky had tonsillitis and I had brought him into my room. It was warmer there and would save me having to run along the icy passages at night. He was on the mend already, sitting up in bed in the daytime with a thick woollen stocking round his neck looking a bit peeky, but no longer feverish and beginning to get a little bored.

But the start, the never to be forgotten start. ‘Frau Doktor! Frau Doktor!’ It was still dark outside when Sepp’s voice from below my window was followed by a huge lump of snow hitting one of the panes and nearly demolishing it. ‘Frau Doktor!’ I stumbled out of bed, for Heaven’s sake he mustn’t wake Nicky. I managed to get to the window and open it in time to stop Sepp firing another cannonade at the Alder. ‘Come down, come down, Frau Doktor, I have good news.’ Sepp’s voice was shaking with excitement. I dragged on my pants and a jersey, I couldn’t find my boots, but retrieved my skiing socks from under the washstand and, forgetting poor Nick’s much-needed sleep, I stumbled down the stairway to our sitting-room, through the kitchen out of the back door and into the snow. Sepp was waiting by the door to the cow-byre. Martina was already at the milking and the dim light from inside the shed was enough to show me that Sepp’s get-up was as haphazard as mine. Bedroom slippers, a pair of old pants and what looked like a striped flannel nightshirt. He came towards me out of the shadows, and as long as I live I will not forget the look of simple glowing goodness which shone out at me as the light from the kitchen behind me lit up his homely unshaven face. ‘I am the bearer of great tidings—’ no – ‘Herr Doktor rang up in the night,’ he said, ‘all the way from Berlin, he is free.’ There was a moment’s silence and then ‘Sepp! Sepp!’ I do not know how it was that we found ourselves wrapped in each other’s arms, but I know that I was crying and laughing and behaving very much as people do in novels and Sepp was beating me on the back as if I had swallowed a fish bone. I could hardly breathe because I was pressed so tightly against his scratchy old nightshirt. When I asked him to come into the kitchen, I could not move because the cold was so intense that my socks had frozen to the snow.

‘No, Frau Doktor,’ he said as he chipped the ice from under my feet, ‘I must get back to the milking – don’t slip now, I’ll tell you all about it after breakfast.’ I went back into the kitchen and sat down near the freshly lit stove. Except for the cracklings and splutterings of the

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