Hildegard Stiehl§

The Loneliness of Lena

The Loneliness of Lena

  • author: Russell J.T. Dyer

  • published: 2018

  • publisher: A Silent Killdeer

  • isbn: 978-0983185468

  • pages: 295

It was a cool evening in late September. The wind was blowing in spurts, stirring the first few leaves to have fallen from the trees over Buxton street. Hildegard had to shoo them away with her hand: they kept trying to hide the picture she and Edith were drawing on the sidewalk. In addition to white chalk, Hildegard had a yellow one that her teacher had given her. She used the yellow one sparingly to draw a smiling sun, and hair on a girl in her drawing. Like her, Hildegard had golden hair, separated into two braids. She liked to draw on the sidewalk in front of the steps of their house.

“I’m drawing a man and woman in love: they’re kissing,” Edith said. She was two years younger than Hildegard.

Hildegard made a frumpy face and turned her body slightly so that she wouldn’t be directly facing what Edith was drawing: she didn’t like the idea of people kissing in her sidewalk drawing. Edith didn’t notice any of this: she was too busy and happy drawing little hearts above the kissing couple to notice the slight against her. If she had, it might have hurt her feelings.

After a while, Hildegard had forgotten about Edith’s couple kissing. They both started drawing trees and flowers around the edges. As Hildegard drew some small birds in the trees and flying in the sky, she sang in German: “Es vergeht kein Stund in der Nacht, Das nicht mein Herz erwacht, Und an dich denkt…”1

“Hildegard! Hildegard!” her father yelled from the top of the stairs behind them.

“Ja, papa,”2 she responded.

“Kommst hier,”3 he said in a low, but firm voice.

She snatched her yellow piece of chalk and ran up the stairs to her father.

“I told you never to speak German outside the house,” he said, bent over close to her face.

“I wasn’t speaking German, papa,” she said in her defense while shaking her head.

“You were singing in German,” he said.

“Oh. Ja, papa. I thought singing was good,” she said in a soft voice.

“Your singing was good, Liebling,”4 he clarified. “But not in German, not outside. Understand?”

She frowned and said, “I guess I understand.”

“Gutes Mädchen,”5 he said and kissed her on the cheek. “Come inside now and help me make dinner.”

“Yes, papa,” she said with a smile. She enjoyed doing things with him.

“First, say good-evening to Edith,” he instructed her.

She let out a moan and then yelled down to Edith, “I have to go in now, Edith. Good night.”

“Good night, Hilde!” Edith yelled back with a big smile. Hildegard walked past her father and went into the building. “Good night, Mr. Stiehl,” Edith said while waving at him.

“Good night, Edith,” he said, looking at her. “You should go inside now. It’s late and you should not be outside by yourself.”

“Yes, sir,” she said in agreement. She picked up her chalk and ran up the stairs and entered the building while he continued to hold open the door. Hildegard was at the door to their apartment, waiting for her father. They’re located on the first floor, by the entrance since he’s the building custodian.

“See you tomorrow, Hilde,” Edith said with a smile as she walked past her and then went up the stairs: she lived on the second floor, at the front of the building, but not over Hildegard’s apartment — instead, she was across the hall, but one floor up. She could see the steps and the chalk drawings they made in front of the steps from her window, but not someone standing at the entrance.

Hildegard’s father has been the building custodian for many years. It didn’t pay much: mostly it was free rent and a small stipend for living expenses. He would do odd jobs in the neighborhood to make extra money: there was a grocer on the block that would pay him a few pounds a week to help him set up and take down his stand outside the store each morning and evening. He also worked at the bar on the corner at night when they were busy. He would help serve beer: people around here drank mostly beer.

When they were inside their apartment, in the kitchen, Hildegard saw that there were beans boiling in a pot on the stove. From the look and smell of them, they had been there a while. She asked, “What will we make for dinner, papa?”

“Bratwurst with beans and rice,” he said as he started unpacking a paper bag which contains a couple of items from the grocer. The meat was on the counter. It was wrapped in a piece of waxed paper. That’s how he got it from the butcher earlier that afternoon.

“Good. I like bratwurst,” she exclaimed. “Oh, do we have mustard? I think there is no more,” she said a little worried.

“Yes, I have some here,” he said as he took it from the bag.

“Hurray! Thank you, papa,” she said as she squeezed his arm.

A few minutes later, the sausages were frying. He preferred them fried. Hildegard was setting the table for the two of them. Whenever she did this, she remembered when she was much smaller her mother would have her set the table for three. She missed her.

Her mother had died in an air raid. Hildegard was with her when it happened. Her father was away in those days: he was in the army, working as a translator. He would listen to radio broadcasts and tape recordings and read documents that were intercepted from the Germans. He would write reports translating them. He was one of a few British citizens who were born in Germany that did this.

When the air raid sirens sounded, Hildegard and her mother were both asleep. It was a Sunday afternoon. They had gone to church and eaten a big lunch afterwards: fried bratwurst and mashed potatoes. They were tired from the heavy lunch and had fallen asleep on the sofa, so they didn’t hear the sirens at first. They woke and were leaving their apartment to go to the basement of the building when the bomb hit the front of the building.

Hildegard was in the hallway outside of their apartment. The percussion pushed her light body down the hall, slamming her onto the stairs going up, knocking her unconscious. Her mother was still in the apartment when it hit, though, about to pass through the door. The bomb chomped the front of their apartment and the building entrance, destroying their living room. Shrapnel ripped through her and then the floor above crashed down on top of her body, crushing her and any hope one might have of her surviving.

“Hildegard,” her father said in a soft tone, petting her on the shoulder as she stood holding a plate pressed against her chest and starring at the spot on the table where her mother would sit. “Hildegard,” he repeated.

She shook her head and looked up at him and said, “Yes, papa.”

He smiled warmly. He had seen this behavior before, her lost in a trance. The doctor had told him not to push her, to let her recover at her own pace. Still, he was worried about her. It had been six years since his wife had died tragically. As it was, she hardly strayed far from the apartment building — other than to go to school. Even then, she preferred that he walk her there and back. He would have thought that she would have been afraid to be anywhere near their apartment, after it was bombed. Instead, she loomed around the place like a ghost haunting it, always wondering what everyone in the building was doing and watching out the front window for strangers lurking.

Hildegard’s only friends were ones willing to play with her near their home. There was only one child close to her age in the building: Edith. She followed Hildegard around like a puppy, but Hildegard treated her with a little bit of contempt, as if she resented her friendship. There was a boy a few months older than Hildegard that she tolerated. He was called, Karl and lived a two buildings away, but came by often. His father had been visiting relatives in Germany at the start of the war and was drafted into the German army — some suspect, though, that he volunteered. When Karl visited her and Edith, she seemed fairly unaffected, disinterested. Other than those two, Hildegard didn’t play with any other children, at least not that her father could see.

It made her father sad that she would not venture out and find more friends and that she found difficulty warming to other children. Even more so, it bothered him that she was cavalier about the two friends she had. He had hoped that she had friends at school, but her teachers said she had no, just Edith and Karl.

“Papa, when I’m older, do you think I can be the custodian?” she asked.

“What! You want to take your poor father’s job?” he said with a laugh.

“No, papa! I mean, when I’m older, maybe I can be the cu

“I think it’s a little soon to plan for my old age,” he said smiling. “Besides, don’t you want to see the world? You don’t want to stay here.”

“No, papa. I want to stay here, always,” she said with a serious look, as serious as a child can look.

“Well, I hope you do not.” She frowned when he said that. “I hope you travel the world and see all of these places you have been learning about in your geography class.” She said nothing; she just shrugged her shoulders.

After another ten minutes of cooking, they were soon seated at the table and eating. “What did you do at school today? Anything interesting?” he asked her.

“Nothing much,” she said.

“Not even in geography?” he pried.

“There was nothing good today in geography class.”

“Really? You didn’t learn anything new in geography class, today?” he queried.

“No, I did. We studied the United States of America,” she said while sneering. “But I don’t like them,” she said and then took a bite of bratwurst.

“Why not? What’s wrong the United States?” he asked. “Don’t you know that they helped us in the war?”

“Yes, I know,” he acknowledged.

“Then why don’t you like them?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t like them.” She knew subconsciously why she didn’t like them, but she could not articulate it and did not like to bring forth the memories that informed her prejudice. It was very disturbing to her.

During the war, her mother would work part-time at the corner bar to make some extra money, just as her father had done before the war, except that she worked there every Friday and Saturday night since the owner and his one worker were off fighting the war in France. When she worked at the bar, Hildegard would stay home alone. She couldn’t afford to pay a babysitter. She would just take a break from the bar around nine o’clock to put her into bed.

One night, there were a few American soldiers in the bar. There were many in London, waiting to be deployed to mainland Europe. One of them had drunk too much and had tried to get friendly with Hildegard’s mother. She pushed him away and informed him that she was married, but he was unwilling to accept that. When it got late, though, he and his friends left.

The American soldiers were the last customers that night, so they closed early. When the bar closed, she would normally stay and help clean, but the bartender, who was in his sixties and the father of the owner, said he was tired and that they could do it in the morning. So he locked up and she walked home, alone.

The American soldier was outside, hiding in the shadows, waiting for Hildegard’s mother. He followed her to her building and quietly up the outer steps, into the building. They didn’t have an electronic lock on the entrance door in those days. She didn’t hear or see him until he pushed his way inside her apartment as she was opening the door. She struggled and screamed once, before he slapped her to the floor, knocking over a floor lamp.

Hildegard woke and ran to the front room. She saw the soldier holding down her mother while trying to unbuckle his belt. Her dress was torn and she was slapping him and yelling, “Get off of me, you scheisskopf!:superscript:6 Hau ab, du Wichser.”7

“Oh, a kraut, are ya?” he said with a chuckle.

“Verpiß dich! …du yank!”8

Hildegard started crying. She was terrified.

Just then the door burst open. It was three of their neighbors, Edith’s mother and a German woman from the second floor in the back of the building, and an Englishman from the apartment above them. He had been in the war, but had been hurt badly and was sent back home. He walked with a limp and his face was slightly disfigured, which normally scared Hildegard when she saw him coming down the stairs. She would hide from him. But this night she was happy to see him.

He grabbed the American soldier and pulled him off of her mother and threw him across the room, banging his head on the wall near the front door. Edith’s mother kneeled down next to Hildegard’s mother, while the German woman picked up Hildegard and held her close, saying in German that everything was alright.

The American soldier heard this while straightening himself and muttered, “Fucking Nazis,” just as the Englishman had managed to limp over to him and sock him in the stomach. The soldier folded forward and then he struck him across his face causing him to stagger. He struggled to breath and to stay erect. He was not succeeding.

Just then the neighborhood constable arrived. He caught the soldier as he was falling over on his side towards the door. “Here! What have you been up to, yank?” the constable asked. “Been causing trouble, have we?”

The English neighbor explained the situation while the ladies took Hildegard and her mother into the kitchen to calm them. Hildegard wasn’t sure what had happened; nor did she comprehend what almost happened. Her mother never discussed it with her and never told her father — nor had she told him. But Hildegard remembered that night and she remembered that the soldier who had attacked her mother was an American.

Hildegard scooped up some beans and rice and said, “No, papa. I don’t like Americans.”

He frowned at her and said nothing in return.

Footnotes

  1. “There is not an hour in the night, That my heart doesn’t wake up, And think of you…” in German.

  2. “Yes, father.” in German.

  3. “Come here.” in German.

  4. “Darling” in German.

  5. “Good girl” in German.

  6. “shit head” in German.

  7. “Get away, you wanker.” in German.

  8. “Fuck off! …you yank!” in German.