The Woman at 1,000 Degrees

44 End of Childhood 1941

So, after about a year in Copenhagen, Mum and I ventured into the Nazi empire with smoked Faeroese meat in our picnic basket and Icelandic thoughts in our heads. It wasn’t easy to discern where Denmark ended and Germany began. The villages all had the same Third Reich atmosphere. The train slowed down going through Flensburg, giving passengers a chance to observe the freshly washed flags, immaculate streets, and glistening shop windows full of photographs of the Führer and all his blond children. There was no denying it: every door handle of that redbrick city radiated the joy of victory and self-confidence, and even the cobblestones couldn’t conceal the pride of their most recent territorial conquests: Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Romania were now in the bag. We stepped onto the platform and changed trains, sat in a smoke-spewing carriage that transported us noisily towards the North Sea. There was, and still is, the port town of Dagebüll, which turned out to be the terminal, the end of my childhood.

Naturally, I was excited to be ‘leaving home’ and discovering new horizons, but our parting came as a shock. The train halted in the centre of the ‘town,’ which was little more than two houses, a hotel and a platform. From there we walked down to the harbour, two coated women, tall and short, blond and dark. Owing to a shortage of funds, Mum hadn’t been able to afford two tickets for the ferry and intended to say goodbye to me on the pier. I was to board the ferry alone and be greeted by strangers. To boost my morale, Mum told stories about Grandma Vera and sang to me:

Sailors sometimes sang this verse to defy their fears if they had to head out to sea in uncertain weather. But it was of no comfort to me, since my mind was too preoccupied with a brand-new feeling that mounted inside me with each step. A little pupa had insinuated itself into my gut and was mutating into a caterpillar, then a worm and finally a small hamster. And when I saw the sea stretching out beyond the pier, the hamster suddenly expanded into a full-grown beaver that pressed his snout up my throat and repeatedly started to click his tongue against my gum. I loosened my red scarf, but to no avail. I couldn’t fathom what was happening to me. I’d never had a visitor in my chest like this before. He had taken over my body. The only thing I could cling to was the knowledge that I no longer had any control over it, a fact that only helped to exacerbate my sobbing and the lump in my throat, a phrase I only learned later.

It was a small ferry, but the tide had raised it, making the gangway almost horizontal. Several well-dressed passengers stepped on board. As we headed down the pier, Mum gave me her main advice: ‘And remember to pray for your father.’ Then she stopped, put down the hard wooden cases, hers and mine, and asked whether everything would be all right now. I couldn’t utter a word, nor could I squeeze a single sound past the beaver whose snout filled my throat and who relentlessly clicked his tongue against my gums. Through some formidable effort I nevertheless managed to swallow, but then my eyes exploded and I started to wail. Inside I was screaming: Mum! Mummy! Don’t send me out to sea! Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me alone!

I couldn’t understand any of this. I who had been so much looking forward to this! But no, now I couldn’t lose my mother. She drew me into her arms and managed to speak some comforting words before she, too, erupted. At first I thought she was laughing. But when she pulled out her white embroidered handkerchief, I realised she was just as devastated as I was, if not more so. I looked at her in astonishment, the greatest woman ever to be born on this earth, who now stood with her soul in shreds and her face in pieces and a thin handkerchief as her only refuge. All of a sudden I felt that she was smaller than I was and that I needed to console her, a feeling that was so sad, however, that I started to weep again. A gentleman in a hat walked by and glanced at us, two bawling women. Then the male world sounded its horn for the departure.

‘Remember, Herra, dear, I love you. Your Mum loves you and will miss you every day and night. And we’ll see each other again in the spring.’

A uniformed man carried the case on board, and I slowly moved along the gangway, which undulated to the rhythm of my tears. Then I hurried to the front of the ferry, as it backed out of the pier, and waved hopelessly at Mum. On that bright, icy January day she stood on the German pier with her hair tossed to the northern wind and waved goodbye to her child. Her chest heaved and contracted. And she continued to stand there waving, even after the boat had turned and I had moved to the back of the deck and we’d sailed a considerable distance. I watched my mother shrink to a girl, then a doll and finally a tin soldier. She kept on wiping her eyes with one hand. In the end she was the only person left on the pier and then she disappeared like a sinking sun on the horizon of the sea.

My darling Mum.

My subconscious, which had already read my biography, of course, knew perfectly well that our separation would last well beyond January, February, March and April 1941. And even her little and superficial sister, my consciousness, could sense that this was a crossroads in my life. My childhood was over.

It is written in the book of life that every chapter of our existence concludes with a nervous breakdown. We show up at the next one as if reborn, having cried away all our tears, weakened by the wailing that still echoes in our souls. And this was my state when I reached the island of Amrum – a lonely little Icelandic girl who had lost her father and mother in a round of poker with the ruthless rulers of the world.