Page 7 of The Banned Books of Berlin
Los Angeles, April 2024
‘Madeleine, honey! At last!’ Gramps threw his arms wide and Maddie bent down for a hug. He’d never been a tall man but he seemed to have shrunk further every time she saw him. Stepping back, she searched his face for signs of the strange effect that her mother had mentioned, and was relieved to find he looked as good-natured and unruffled as ever. In fact, she noticed a new light in his eyes and a sense of purpose about his movements. It was a warm day but he was colourfully dressed in a blue plaid shirt under his tweed vest with a red bow tie. When she was a teenager, Maddie had been embarrassed by the eccentric outfits her grandfather wore. He was a little more restrained these days, and she’d matured enough to appreciate his style.
‘Come on through,’ he said, ushering her down the hall of his duplex at top speed. ‘Would you like a coffee? You look exhausted. Did you get in late last night?’
‘I didn’t sleep too well,’ Maddie replied. ‘But no more coffee, thanks – I’ve just had one. Tell me about this death cleaning, Gramps. Sounds morbid to me.’
‘You couldn’t be more wrong,’ he said. ‘It’s the most life-enhancing thing you could imagine – clearing the decks, you might say, for the next phase. Of course I got rid of a pile of things after Betty died and we sold the house, but I seem to have accumulated just as much junk since then. Once it’s gone, I can look ahead with a clearer mind to focus on the things that really matter. You’ll thank me when I’m dead.’
‘Gramps! I don’t like to think about that,’ Maddie protested.
‘Well, I need you to,’ he said. ‘Madeleine, I want you to be my ally. That’s what they call it nowadays, isn’t it? Your mom doesn’t understand and I don’t want to worry sweet Ben, so I need you to speak up for me. Don’t worry, I’ll explain.’
He opened the door to his study and stood back to let her pass. Maddie’s heart sank when she saw the state of the room: piles of books and papers all over the floor, and teetering stacks of cardboard boxes.
‘Most of this can be taken to the recycling centre,’ her grandfather said. ‘You’ve brought the car, haven’t you? But I want to go through a few things with you first.’ He moved a file from his chair to the desk and sat, motioning Maddie to do the same. ‘Now listen. I’m preparing for the end, Madeleine, and I want you to help me.’
Maddie stared at him, lost for words. ‘Not too soon, I hope,’ was all she could manage to say.
‘You never know.’ Gramps glanced at the photograph of his late wife in a silver frame on the desk. ‘You probably don’t remember your grandma’s death but it was very sudden – here one minute, gone the next. A blessing for her, of course, not having to suffer, but so much unfinished business for those of us left behind. All the conversations we never had, the decisions that should have been made together …’ He shook his head. ‘It won’t be like that when I die.’
Maddie shifted uncomfortably. ‘This is a bit downbeat, Gramps. Maybe you need a holiday? Or perhaps a new hobby? If you’re not playing so much golf, you could always try bowls.’
He tutted with irritation. ‘You’re as bad as your mother. What’s the matter with everyone nowadays? Death is a part of life. It’s coming for all of us sooner or later and we might as well acknowledge the fact. Madeleine, you disappoint me. I thought at least I could talk to you.’
‘But I hate to think of you passing away.’ Her eyes filled with tears.
‘Dying, you mean,’ he said.
‘All right then, if you insist – dying,’ she went on. ‘It would be awful if you weren’t around. We’d miss you so much.’
He took both her hands in his and squeezed them. ‘But it’s going to happen one day, honey. Why don’t we get used to the idea together?’
‘I guess,’ Maddie said doubtfully.
‘Good job.’ He smiled at her. ‘It’s going to be fine. My mother showed me the way, you see. When she got sick, she sat me down and we went through the options together. She was German, if you recall, and they’re a much more logical race. She’d lost her own mom when she was young with no preparations made, so she was determined to do things differently.’ He gazed into the middle distance, his eyes far away. ‘She was a force of nature. You’d have loved her.’
‘Tell me about her, Gramps,’ Maddie said, but he shook his head.
‘Another time. That’s a long story and we need to press on.’ He passed her a ring binder labelled ‘Robert Cole’s Last Act’. ‘So these are my plans for the funeral: favourite music and hymns, a couple of poems and a prayer, where to hold the service and the wake. Also, a copy of my will and a signed form saying I don’t want to be resuscitated or kept alive on a machine. Got that? I tried to explain all this to your mom but she wouldn’t listen, so I’m telling you. I’m eighty, I’ve had a good life and I’m ready to go when my time comes.’
Maddie opened the folder reluctantly. It was going to be a long day.
They worked all morning, Gramps directing Maddie from his chair as she held up items for his verdict. He’d been a history teacher and was a voracious reader so there were dozens of books that she put aside on his instruction to take to a dealer. Most of them were in English but there were also a few in German, including a volume bound in burned leather that left dark streaks on her hands. Sections of pages were welded together, charred at the edges, and a faint aroma of smoke still clung to the paper. From the layout of the text, she guessed it was a collection of poetry.
‘Do you really want to keep this?’ Maddie asked, wiping her palms on her jeans. ‘It looks a little the worse for wear.’
‘Of course!’ he exclaimed. ‘My mother brought it all the way from Germany; it must have meant something to her. I wonder …’ He turned the book over in his hands.
‘Wonder what?’ Maddie asked.
‘Well, you remember the Nazis banned a whole heap of authors because they were Jewish, or gay, or held views that weren’t acceptable – and then burned their works, to show they meant business?’
‘Oh yes.’ Maddie sat back on her heels. ‘I’ve seen a photo somewhere.’ She shivered. ‘Awful.’
‘What if this was one of those very books?’ Gramps asked. ‘At any rate, I wouldn’t dream of throwing it away.’
So there were evidently limits to death cleaning. Two photograph albums also escaped the cull; Maddie was particularly interested in the first, which showed various pictures of her grandfather as a child and then a young man. There didn’t seem to be any baby photos but he was a cute little boy, with round cheeks, curly hair and the same gentle, wondering expression on his face she knew so well.
Maddie paused at a snapshot of a young woman, probably in her mid-thirties, smiling at the child she held in her arms as though they were sharing a private joke. She had thick wavy hair and a mischievous expression.
‘That’s my mom,’ Gramps said. ‘Your great-grandmother, Freya.’
‘She was lovely.’ Maddie felt instantly they would have been friends.
‘She sure was.’ Gramps sighed. ‘I’ve always thought she deserved an easier life than the one she got, but I guess that’s the luck of the draw. My father was killed in the Second World War before I could even meet him, so Ma brought me up on her own.’
Maddie sat back on her heels. ‘How did she end up in California?’
Gramps shrugged. ‘Hitler, I guess. She wasn’t Jewish but she could probably see the way things were going. She didn’t like anyone telling her what to do, or what she could and couldn’t say. I think she had a rough time in Germany before she came to the States in 1938, before the war. She wouldn’t talk to me about what happened but she never wanted to go back.’
‘I can’t believe we’ve never had this conversation before,’ Maddie murmured.
‘Well, I didn’t like to say too much about my mother in front of Betty,’ Gramps replied. ‘They never got on, you see. It had been the two of us on our own for so long when I was growing up that I guess Mom found it hard to share me with another woman.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Now, on we go! No time for chit-chatting.’
Maddie took a last look at Freya’s picture before closing the album. Here was a young woman who’d escaped true evil, travelling thousands of miles on her own to make a new life in a strange country. She wasn’t the type to let some anonymous cowards dictate her life, and there was a lesson for Maddie in that.
They broke for lunch an hour or so later, feasting on a strange assortment of food from the fridge and store cabinet: instant noodles, cheese on graham crackers, potato chips with cocktail sauce, canned peaches and peanut-butter cups.
‘Is anything on your mind, dear?’ Gramps asked, after they’d finished eating. ‘You seem a little out of sorts.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing, really,’ Maddie replied. ‘Just a stressful time at work.’ It seemed so feeble to talk about her worries, compared to the hardships of previous generations. ‘Tell me some more about your mom, Gramps,’ she went on. ‘Did she have a job?’
‘Sure,’ he replied. ‘She was a wardrobe mistress for some of the big movie studios. Sounds glamorous but it was hard work. Just about covered the bills but we lived pretty much hand to mouth. I never realised we were poor at the time, though – my childhood seems idyllic, looking back. Mom and I were happy with the little we had.’
‘So she wasn’t bitter about what she went through?’
‘Well, if she was, she hid it from me.’ Gramps searched in the cabinet. ‘Sorry, honey, I’m out of coffee. Will tea do instead? Oh no – I’m out of that, too.’
‘No problem.’ Maddie replaced the mugs. ‘I’ll run by the grocery store on the way back from the recycling centre this afternoon and pick up a few things.’
‘Set your face towards the light, that’s what Mom used to tell me,’ he went on. ‘Look outward rather than inward and don’t be afraid to stick up for yourself. That advice has served me well my whole life. Maybe it’ll help you, too.’
Look outward rather than inward: those words ran through Maddie’s mind as she worked. She’d been obsessing about her own problems rather than sparing any time for her family; it had been weeks since she’d had a proper conversation on the phone with either Ben or her mother. Well, at least she was here now, and maybe she could put things right.
After another couple of hours, the study was more or less clear and the car loaded with boxes of books and bags of paper for recycling. Maddie had emptied the shelves of the tall, glass-fronted cabinet, but when she opened the double doors beneath, she was dismayed to find a couple of cardboard boxes pushed to the back.
‘What’s all this?’ she said. ‘I thought we were done.’
‘No idea,’ Gramps replied. ‘Let’s investigate and find out.’
One of the boxes was surprisingly heavy. Maddie reached inside to find a wooden case with a sloping front and a metal carrying handle, fastened by two brass hooks. Opening them, she lifted the lid to reveal a gleaming black typewriter, its ivory keys ringed with silver.
‘Would you believe it!’ Gramps said, delighted. ‘I thought that old thing was lost.’
‘Is it yours?’ Maddie asked, releasing a couple of clips and carefully lifting out the machine.
‘No, it was Mom’s.’ He shook his head. ‘The number of nights I used to fall asleep listening to the sound of her clickety-clacking away.’
‘But I thought you said she was a dressmaker?’
‘Well, I guess she had correspondence,’ he replied vaguely. ‘You know, bills and so forth.’
Maddie looked at him. ‘Really?’
‘We must keep it in the family, at any rate,’ he said. ‘You’re the writer, Madeleine – it should be yours.’
‘Thanks. I’d love that.’ She ran her fingers over the keys her great-grandmother had touched, watching the cascade of metal levers rise and fall, before turning to investigate the other carton. It was full of film magazines from the thirties and forties: Daily Variety, The Film Daily and several other titles . There was also a sheaf of signed photographs of movie actors: women in furs and soft focus, men in evening dress.
‘We can’t throw these out,’ Maddie said. ‘I could sell them for you online, or maybe we should give them to a library somewhere.’
‘Sure, whatever you think.’ Gramps yawned. ‘Listen, honey, I’m done. I might take a quick nap, if you don’t mind. Thanks for everything.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Now, there’s one last favour I have to ask: somewhere special I want to visit …’
‘So how did it go?’ Maddie’s mother asked warily, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
‘Fine, I think,’ she replied. ‘But I see what you mean about Gramps.’
‘Did he show you the funeral file?’ Sharon asked.
Maddie nodded. ‘And he’s asked me to take him to the Death Café. Apparently they all sit around talking about the end over tea and cake.’
Sharon sighed, shaking her head. ‘He’s obsessed. It’s so gloomy.’
‘But he doesn’t seem depressed. He says he’s making it easier for us when the time comes.’ It was certainly the case that Gramps had seemed energised by his plans for the future. And yet, could he really contemplate death with such equanimity? Maybe he was just whistling to keep his spirits up.
‘Is Gramps going to die?’ Ben asked, materialising behind his mother.
‘No, of course not,’ Sharon said briskly, turning around.
‘He’s old, though,’ Maddie added, ‘so it’ll happen sooner or later. He wants to be prepared.’
Sharon frowned at her, but Ben merely nodded and went back into the kitchen.
‘He can cope,’ Maddie told her mother. ‘I mean, Gramps is taking things too far, but we can’t pretend he’s immortal.’
‘You know Ben hates uncertainty, though,’ Sharon said. ‘Just tread carefully.’
Maddie followed her brother into the kitchen. ‘Have a look at what we found in Gramps’ study,’ she said, laying the typewriter case on the table. ‘This is what everyone used before computers came along.’
Ben was mystified by the lack of a screen, though he enjoyed hearing the bell ring when the end of a line was reached. The typewriter would need a new ribbon and several of the keys stuck together when Maddie pressed them, but it was generally in good condition.
‘Will you help me unload the car?’ she asked Ben. ‘There’s some more cool stuff you might like to see.’
She and Ben carried the box up to her bedroom and unpacked the contents. This was exactly the kind of task her brother enjoyed: sorting and arranging a collection of items according to his own particular system. He lived in the moment, focusing only on what lay before him.
‘I don’t want this one,’ he said, handing the last magazine back to her. ‘It’s different.’
Maddie looked again and realised it was not a magazine at all, but a faded brown envelope. Inside was a notebook bound in embossed leather, fastened by a rusty brass clasp. Its pages were covered in handwritten German and a complete mystery; Gramps had tried to teach her a few words of the language when she was a child but she’d forgotten most of them. The book looked like a diary, as some of the entries were dated, although there were several pages of continuous text with underlined titles that might have been articles or stories.
‘What’s that?’ Ben asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ she replied. ‘We’ll have to ask Gramps to tell us what it’s about.’
She tried to slip the notebook back in its envelope but it wouldn’t fit smoothly; investigating, Maddie found that a black-and-white photograph of two young women was caught at the bottom. The girl on the right had a cool, androgynous look, her hair cropped short at the nape of her long, graceful neck and falling over one smoky eye. A silk blouse slipped off her naked shoulders and strings of beads hung around her neck and the waist of her low-slung harem pants. Her arm was draped around the neck of a girl Maddie immediately recognised as Freya, although she was a few years younger and slimmer than in the previous photographs. She wore a tight-fitting black dress with a tasselled sash and stood with her hand on her hip, head tilted. Her eyes were also outlined in kohl and her skin was dazzlingly pale. She looked in need of a good meal and a decent night’s sleep. Both girls were gazing directly at the camera but with very different expressions: Freya’s was wary, while her companion stared brazenly at the unseen photographer, chin lifted.
Maddie turned the picture over. ‘ Violet und ich, der Zaubergarten ’ was written on the reverse, in the same hand as the words on the envelope. ‘Violet and me, the Magic Garden’, according to Maddie’s translation app.
Her great-grandmother was becoming more intriguing by the minute.