SATURDAY, 19
th
AUGUST 1939
A train travelling west from Moscow into East Prussia
My eighteenth birthday. No one can call me a child, or tell me that I’m too young for balls or parties ever again. Mama married Papa when she was eighteen, but she didn’t have a career to think about, like me. I wonder why Greta didn’t consider studying for a profession instead of becoming a BDM leader. All she ever does is organize group meetings for young girls and teach sewing and cookery – not that she is an expert chef or dressmaker.
No one is likely to propose to her now. She’ll be twenty-seven this year, quite the old maid. She won’t like having to make way for a sister who is every bit as eligible to receive the attentions of young men as herself.
Herr Schumacher mustered the entire orchestra to play the birthday song to me at six o’clock this morning. They blocked the corridor outside our carriage for twenty minutes. It was impossible to go up or down the train to the bathrooms or dining car, but no one seemed to mind, least of all the stewards.
Afterwards I received birthday congratulations and presents from everyone, including roses and chocolates from Manfred and Georg, silly boys that they are, and I still have the most important ones waiting to be opened at home. I can’t wait to see my birthday table set up next to Wilhelm and Paul’s in the hall. Hildegarde and Nina gave me this beautiful book, and Irena an elegant silver fountain pen embossed with roses. I’ve decided to use the book as a diary. When Greta discovered that I’d started one last year, she told me only important people keep diaries. Well, I consider myself important, and I know I’ll be famous one day.
Herr Schumacher says I’m the most gifted member, not only of the musical section of the Allensteiner Hitler Youth but also of every other youth orchestra he’s ever worked with. He insisted that I played a piano solo as a finale to each concert as well as accompanying the Komsomol’s star violinist. Now my mind is quite made up. When I complete my studies, I will become an international concert pianist.
My writing doesn’t look as well as I’d like because the train shakes so. Hildegarde, Irena, Nina and I are sharing a carriage and, after the steward folded away the beds when my birthday concert finished this morning, everyone crammed in. They stayed for over an hour, even the boys. They’re so juvenile compared with my brothers and their friends. Wilhelm and Paul would never have put violin resin in Herr Schumacher’s tea, or crawled under the table in the dining car to paint his shoes with honey while he ate.
As Papa says, it was very clever of Mama to present him with me on the twins’ birthday, so they can be twenty-one and I can be eighteen on the same day. Grown-up gentlemen and a lady at last. What celebrations there will be tonight! And afterwards we’ll have what’s left of the summer together. I am so looking forward to going to Königsberg with Wilhelm and Paul in October. I was very lucky to have gained a place at the conservatory, especially as the quota of further education places for girls has been cut to 10 per cent. I don’t care what anyone says, I think it’s unfair, and I don’t believe our Führer did it. I think it was one of his ministers and our Führer doesn’t even know about it.
Poor Irena did not get into Königsberg or any other conservatory, and will have to work in her father’s office. It will be dreadful to leave her behind in Allenstein. We have been best friends ever since I can remember, just like our fathers before us, and I can’t imagine what it will be like only to see her in the holidays.
Although the twins will be in their third year of studies and I’ll only be in my first, they’ve promised to introduce me to all their friends. Paul says the music conservatory isn’t far from the university. I do hope Papa’s found us lodgings together. What fun we’ll have without Greta to stop us.
We left Moscow early yesterday morning and I’m beginning to think we’ll never reach Allenstein. Nina says she feels as though this is hell and we’re doomed to clank around the countryside cooped up on this train like cursed souls for all eternity. (Nina has always had a morbid imagination; perhaps her fixation on the clanking is down to her father’s job as a train driver.)
Irena has asked me three times in the last ten minutes if I think Wilhelm will meet me at the station. I wish she wouldn’t make sheep’s eyes at my brother every time she sees him. It’s so embarrassing for the rest of us to watch.
We crossed the border at dawn. I was glad to be in dear, familiar East Prussian countryside after a whole month away, even at that time in the morning. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed the forests and lakes until we saw them through the windows. Everything – the people, the architecture, the streets in the towns and villages – looks so much more orderly and prosperous than in Russia.
I was sorry to leave Masha. I enjoyed living with the Beletskys in their Moscow apartment for the final week of our tour. No one else liked their Russian family half as much but I think Herr Schumacher arranged for me to have the best available accommodation. Masha and her brother, Alexander, who is white-blond, blue-eyed and very good-looking for a Russian, as well as being an excellent musician, came to the station to see me off. They gave me an amber necklace of enormous, polished, solid nuggets – some with insects in – as a parting gift. It is longer and more beautiful than anything Greta has.
I promised to treasure it and think of them every time I wear it. How envious Greta will be when she sees it. Will she be at Allenstein station? I hope not. I do expect Wilhelm and Paul to be there to meet me, though, and, if I’m lucky, they’ll bring at least one (hopefully the special one) of their friends.
It feels as though I’ve been away for ever. I can’t wait to feast my eyes on the dear, dear house and hug Papa, Mama and the twins …
‘The doctor will see you now, Ms Datski.’
‘Thank you.’ Charlotte smiled at the nurse and closed the diary. The once-clean and pristine glossy pages had become fragile with age. She wrapped the book carefully in a silk scarf and gathered her shawl and handbag from the chair beside her. Ridiculous, really, to take a diary she hadn’t opened in years into a doctor’s waiting room. And strange how those few words had brought it all back: the rattling of the train; the smut-filled smoke from the funnel drifting past the window; the smell of cabbage and gravy wafting down the corridor from the dining car; her friends’ faces, scrubbed, beaming, devoid of pain and experience; and herself, hopelessly naive, romantic and pompous with all the arrogant superiority of youth. Was there anything left of that young girl in the old woman she’d become?
‘How are you, Charlotte?’ Dr David Andrews left his chair and walked out from behind his desk to greet her.
‘I came here in the hope that you could answer that question for me, David.’
‘Well, you certainly look as elegant and beautiful as ever.’
‘No one my age can possibly be regarded as beautiful. As for elegant, you make me sound like an expensively-decorated salon.’
He shook her hand and returned to his chair. To avoid meeting her gaze, he studied the painting on the wall behind her. It had been hung by the New York interior designer who had remodelled his office suite a year ago, but this was the first time he had really looked at the bland, pastel-shaded, Impressionist scene of fuzzy children playing on sands. He decided he didn’t like it.
‘Well, David?’ she prompted.
He cleared his throat and began speaking, conscious that his voice was brisker and colder than he’d intended. ‘I’d suggest a second opinion. I know a good man in Boston and another in New York. I can arrange a consultation in either city. You could combine a visit with a little shopping, or visit a gallery.’
‘And these “good men” of yours would find it easier to tell me what you can’t bring yourself to say?’
He forced himself to look into her eyes. Startlingly blue and disconcertingly clear. He would have found it easier to cope with hysterics. He could have prescribed tranquillizers for hysteria.
‘How long do I have?’
‘Most people ask what can be done.’
‘I am not most people, David.’
‘You never were.’ No one in their eighties had the right to look the way Charlotte Datski did. It wasn’t as though she even tried to look younger. Her hair was unashamedly silver without a hint of artificial colour or blue-rinse, her skin wrinkled, untouched by cosmetic surgery or face lifts, yet it didn’t seem to matter. Her beauty came from some mysterious, inner glow that manifested itself in those magnificent eyes. Her figure – tall, slender and straight-backed – still retained the elasticity of youth, and her long, flowing clothes were accentuated by amber beads and multi-coloured scarves that would have looked tawdry on anyone else, yet so right on her.
When his father had introduced them thirty years ago, he had known instinctively that Charlotte was an artist. She simply couldn’t have been anything else. And although she was the same age as his mother, he had joined his father and half the men of their acquaintance in falling a little in love with her. But unlike most widows, Charlotte Datski cherished her unmarried state, apparently relishing the independence it gave her. Even the rumours of affairs had remained just that – rumours. If Charlotte had taken lovers, she had chosen wisely. None of the men in their circle had ever spoken of a relationship, consummated or otherwise.
‘The truth, David.’ She fingered the beads around her neck, but there was no sign of nervousness in the gesture.
‘It might be cancer of the pancreas,’ he began cautiously, ‘but, as I said, you should seek a second opinion.’
‘You think you’ve made a mistake?’
‘No doctor can be one hundred per cent certain of a diagnosis, especially one like this,’ he hedged.
‘David, you’re the genius in a family of gifted academics. I’ll take your word for it.’
‘Even so, it’s far from straightforward. There’s no sign of a tumour, which means it’s invasive. In simplified terms, the cancer can be likened to a spider’s web of cells that has spread throughout the organ. Surgery is out of the question, but that doesn’t mean we can’t offer treatment. Initial tests suggest it’s slow-growing and that chemotherapy –’
‘Will there be much pain?’ she interrupted.
‘In my experience of similar conditions in other patients, very little. You might lose weight.’
‘I can afford to,’ she commented wryly. ‘How long do I have?’ she repeated.
‘I hate that question. Twenty years ago I told a nurse at this hospital that she had six months. I still blush every time I see her.’ Her silence brought the realization that his remarks were both patronizing and fatuous. ‘If the treatment’s successful, years.’
‘And if it’s not?’
‘It will be successful, Charlotte.’
‘But if it’s not?’ she repeated stubbornly.
‘Difficult to say: six months, a year perhaps. But I’ll arrange for you to be admitted this week and we’ll start the injections right away. It won’t be pleasant but –’
‘I can’t come in tomorrow.’
‘I understand. A diagnosis like this is a shock; you have arrangements to make.’ He flicked through his diary. ‘Shall we say Thursday morning?’
‘No.’
‘Charlotte, nothing takes precedence over this. We’re talking about your life.’
‘I have to go home.’
‘It’s five miles up the road,’ he pointed out in exasperation.
‘I was born in Eastern Europe.’
‘As your doctor, I strongly caution you against making any trips until you’ve completed the treatment.’
‘I may have left it too late as it is.’
‘You don’t seem to understand. You could die.’
‘We’re all going to do that, David,’ she smiled. ‘I know you’re thinking of me and you mean well, but this is not the first time I’ve faced death. The experience made me strangely unafraid of the inevitable.’
‘Are you telling me you want to die?’ He forced himself to meet her steady gaze.
‘Far from it. I love life. Every wonderful, colour-filled moment. But I’ve discovered there are worse things than coming to an end. Like dehumanizing pain and loss of dignity. I watched my husband die of cancer. Forgive my cynicism, but I believe he suffered more from the treatment meted out to him by well-meaning doctors than the disease itself. If he’d still owned a gun he would have shot himself months before they allowed him to drift into a coma.’
It was the first time David had heard Charlotte mention her late husband in all the years he’d known her. She’d lived in the States for decades and he knew of no one who’d met him. ‘Treatments have progressed enormously in the last thirty years.’
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘You can’t expect me to stand by and do nothing,’ he pleaded.
‘At my age, quality of life is more important than quantity.’
‘You could have both.’
‘You guarantee it?’
‘No physician can offer guarantees,’ he said uneasily, ‘but I believe you have a better chance than most of beating this. You’ve enjoyed excellent health until now. You’ve taken care of yourself and, as the cancer didn’t show up on your last routine check-up, we can take this as an early diagnosis. Everything is on our side.’
‘Would I remain much the same as I am now, without chemotherapy?’
‘You’d tire easily and sleep longer.’
‘I wouldn’t suffer pain?’
He gritted his teeth, not wanting to give her further excuse to avoid treatment. ‘Nothing a few painkillers couldn’t help you cope with,’ he conceded reluctantly.
‘I’ll buy some. Thank you for your time and your honesty.’ She picked up her shawl.
‘My father would love to see you.’ He followed her to the door. ‘Please, dine with us this evening.’
‘So your father can add his persuasive voice to yours? Thank you, but no, David.’ She held out her hand and he took it. ‘They say life is short, but from where I’m standing it seems long. Too long, when I think of all those I have loved and lost. I appreciate your understanding. A little more practice and you’ll be able to add sympathetic to your other qualifications. Send your bill to my lawyer.’
‘Isn’t there anything that I can say to convince you to begin treatment?’