The Woman at 1,000 Degrees

51 A Night in Norddorf 1941

I couldn’t sleep and finally got up again. I could hear some laughter coming from outside and stepped out in my pyjamas. A magic atmosphere hung in the air; the garden glowed under the moonlight. The white orb perched on the church steeple like a slice of lemon on a cocktail stick, illuminating the narrow chimneys and steep straw rooftops. And in the garden next door the blond twins were playing badminton. The theatrical silence of the night was regularly broken by the girls’ shots. The object they were striking back and forth at each other was no ordinary shuttlecock but some featherless, slimy object that glistened in the moonlight. As I drew closer, I realised it was an eyeball. They were whacking an eye between them. I asked them three times where they’d got it from, and they finally answered that it was Frau Baum’s eye. And then they laughed themselves silly. But carried on playing with a human eye under the full moon.

My heartbeat quickened faster than their shots. There was something in me, something that was driving me, some unknown force. I walked past the twins, out onto the street, and into the village. halemwai, dünemwai, oodwai, said the signs, nodding at me. There was something unreal about this nocturnal light that was almost like sunshine. It was a small village, so on every street I could hear the echo of the badminton game, giggles, and squishy strikes of the rackets.

I reached Fräulein Osinga’s house and saw a light in the window. On the street stood a small-chinned woman with combed-back black hair and burning, male-famished eyes. She became embarrassed and swiftly disappeared. I stood on my toes and peered through the window and saw my teacher sitting on the edge of the bed feeding the soldier, who lay bare-chested against a high pillow. Pretty puffs of steam rose from the spoon. Fräulein Osinga was dressed in a burgundy silk nightdress, with her back turned to me. Her blond hair was pinned behind into a huge kind of layered bun, which stood on the back of her neck and followed the movements of the head but otherwise didn’t budge, as if made of wax. It was moving slightly now, though, as she turned to the English patient with a steaming spoon, and into that insignificant gesture I read something far greater. I saw it so clearly: the teacher was going to lose her life for the sake of Willem Wannsee.

For a good long moment I stood watching the English face, mesmerised, totally content not to have reached the age of love, totally content to be a free child who didn’t have to lie down with princes but could make do with the handle of a mop. Then I continued on towards the moon, across the village, until I was standing by the last house at the end of the street, looking down at the eastern shore of the island. A few moments later I was on top of a tumbledown shack that stood behind a fence. From there I climbed the roof of the shack, and then a ladder that was attached to the straw roof, all the way up until I stood on the ridge of this alien house, holding onto the chimney.

It was a very tall building that offered me a good view of the village behind me. The straw roofs sucked in the moonlight but didn’t reflect it. Only the cobblestones on the streets returned as much light as they got. The heavens were pouring with stars. In the distance, on the other side of the steeple, I could see the Frau’s eyeball shooting over the dark rooftops at regular intervals. Frau Baum always found some way to keep an eye on people. I did wonder, though, whether the relentless whacking from the badminton rackets might have a bad effect on her eyesight.

Down on the street below, some girls in coats were chatting. They were heading towards the teacher’s house. The English pilot probably didn’t realise he had crash-landed in Pantiesville.

Then I turned to look out at the eastern coast, which glowed as white as marble in the lunar incandescence, and then beyond at the strait between the islands and the mainland. A patrol boat slowly crossed the surface, dutifully followed by the reflected sparkle of its lights on the waves. Its engine murmured from within its bowels, and I felt its sound echoing inside me. I was at one with everything, and everything at one with me. And beyond the strait an entire continent unfolded. I stretched out my newly branded arm and touched France, stuck out my nose and smelled Poland, then rolled up the sleeve of my other arm and felt a breeze from the North Pole. My spirit burst out and could no longer be contained in that tiny, light-footed body it now considered its toy. Two sluggish seagulls flew by the gable of the house with gentle flapping sounds. My first reaction was to follow them: I knew I could fly, but I also knew I could sit here for another three hundred years, like the chimney.

I took the second option and continued to gaze out over the countries with those sharp eyes the night had given me. Then I saw Dad tottering into the dark dawn with a towel wrapped around his waist, along with eighty other wretches; they were granted three seconds under the shower each. And just a bit further up the continent, Mum had just woken up with bags under eyes, on her way along the cobblestones of Lübeck. They were two unlucky Icelanders who, through an error of destiny, had become the slaves of strangers, the completely wrong strangers, instead of taking care of their child, who sat here intoxicated on the rooftop of a lovesick village.