The Woman at 1,000 Degrees

47 Red Lips, Black Shoes 1941

Frau Baum sniffed out our driftwood business and managed to confiscate our trolley. We therefore had to search for other shore treasures. Maike taught us how to read seagulls, and bit by bit we turned into two-legged beach rats and observed these companions of ours in the sky as they hunted for food and other goodies. And naturally they found plenty on those shores. Submarines were busy torpedoing ships, and the currents of the North Sea took care of spreading their cargoes all the way from Skagen to the south of Ostend. Once, we found a half-broken barrel of herring, and on another occasion, fifteen hundred lightbulbs that wouldn’t screw into any lamp. It was hilarious to see the birds struggling with those glistening glass pears. Our most valuable catch, though, was two wooden boxes full of shoe polish in small jars, which we transferred to Maike’s deposit and then sold on the black market, without the Frau ever finding out. She did, however, once mention at dinner how shiny the villagers’ shoes had become. We managed to suppress our grins as I answered, ‘Yes, that’s because of the feast.’

‘Feast?’

‘Yes, the Biikebrånen. It’s next week.’

The German woman hadn’t spent a winter on the island yet and was therefore unaware of this particularly Frisian tradition, which probably dated back to heathen times: On the night of 21 February, people wander down to the shore, where each village builds its bonfire or biike. They sing and dance and also burn a straw man, which some consider the symbol of winter; torching him was meant to reawaken the spring from the earth. Maike’s grandfather told us that in the past, women used to light the bonfire to say goodbye to their men as they headed out to hunt whales. Her grandmother jokingly added that this was Frisian women’s way of letting the lads know that there were no men on the island.

‘Are people really going to light fires on the beach? That’s just like ordering missiles from the Brits,’ Frau Baum said, leaning back on her chair with her legs wide apart, sweating in her apron, and shaking her head.

‘Mum, what’s misfiles?’ her daughter, a little blond flower with weather-beaten rosy cheeks, asked.

‘Missiles are bombs that bad men who live in England drop out of their planes to blow up houses and make people die,’ Heike answered swiftly.

‘Why do they want people to die?’

And then I said: ‘Because they speak German and not English.’

‘Mum, I don’t want to die. I want to speak English!’ said the little girl, starting to cry. Her mother’s face burst into a blaze.

‘Why did you say that to her?! What kind of bleeding nonsense is that! And I don’t want you lot going around the village speaking fri… frigging Frisian! You’re in germany, you go to a german school, so you should speak german!’

‘No, Mother, I want to speak English,’ the little one whined.

Although we were only eleven years old, our feminine intuition understood the woman’s hysterical outburst. The woman’s heart was trapped on an alien island in a frightful meltdown. Her fury had nothing to do with us; it was about something else, something bigger. We couldn’t take it personally. Earlier that day I had read a letter from Mum, which was also full of exclamation points. ‘Oh, if only I had you here beside me! I miss you so much, Herra, love! Remember to pray for your father!’

Men fight, women take fright.

Frau Baum wasn’t the only person who was anxious about the imminent bonfire. It was being discussed all over Norddorf. The other Germans in the village, the Tieck crowd, were fuming. Their daughter Anna raised the issue at school and warned them that anyone who went to the bonfire would be shot by English bullets. Heike furrowed her brow. Finally an order came from Berlin banning the lighting of any fire on the shores of the Third Reich. On the other hand, there were no swastika officials in this little village, and it says a lot about the pluck of those free-spirited Frisians that they fearlessly built their bonfire regardless, as they had done every February for thousands of years.

Heike dropped out of the Fris-Icelandic club and berated me under the cold quilt back home for getting carried away by this nonsense.

‘It’s true what Frau Baum says. Old traditions have to go. We have to stand together.’

‘But we’re not responsible for this. We’re just… watching.’

‘Herra, we’re at war. Neutrality is cowardice. Those fires are a threat to the German Reich.’

‘Yeah, let’s go and try to put them out, then. Are you coming with me?’

She didn’t answer. And was silent as she had been when Maike and I discussed Biikebrånen. We were full of both fear and excitement. And pride. Because we had obviously left our mark. Every shoe that walked the dull grey streets of this humdrum village shone like obsidian in the sun. And in that very same week things got even better when we discovered two silvery metallic containers on the shore, the size of suitcases. Heike and Maike strictly forbade me to go anywhere near them and pointed out that our dear hunting dogs, the seagulls, were keeping well away from them.

‘That’s only because there’s no smell from the boxes. There’s no food in them,’ I said.

‘Yes, exactly! Bombs don’t have a smell!’

But my Icelandic nature refused to submit. My reckless, stupid curiosity compelled me to peep into the boxes. The girls held themselves at a screaming distance as I crept up to the metallic cases and finally undid their simple latches. Oh yes, there were bombs in them all right: thousands of tubes of war-red lipstick. I yelled triumphantly and called the girls over. And after trying several colours out and laughing ourselves silly, we filled our pockets with these treasures and dragged the silver boxes out of view, burying them behind a dune.

On Biikebrånen Night every woman arrived at the ball with shiny black shoes and fiery-red lips.