Matilda is Franco-British and has spent most of her adult life working as an actor in France. Storytelling has always been her primary concern. She went to RADA in London and then spent years working on geeky Russian techniques. It is whilst doing a BA in Film studies in Paris that she started writing seriously and realised she might have missed a trick. Having initially written for film and theatre, she’s keen to write fiction and life-writing on this MA. 

Contact details: matildajanekime@gmail.com

Yearning  

PROLOGUE 

1938  

The tea is tepid. Erich is drowsy. A light drizzle sprinkles onto the flat Baltic outside. He is waiting for a telephone call. He looks at his bookshelf, someone has brought over a couple of boxes from Otto Brawn’s house. They were found in the basement whilst trying to make space for a prisoner. He must find time to cull them and have the problematic volumes sent for incineration. He has grown accustomed to the melody of the port sounds of Königsberg: creaking masts, rushing wind, hurrying boots, a confused seagull, or a wailing man. His shoulder aches; his rotator cuff is flaring up. It has been fragile since rowing at school, and a decade of salutes on that same side have aggravated it. He wonders if it might be acceptable to do the arm movement less vigorously in his promotion. Which is unconfirmed. He must not forget this. It is not the first time Der Führer has telephoned him personally. The last time, Erich was briefed about the call but let it ring five times before answering, to appear busy. Again, it had been late at night, and, of course, it was not the first time that Erich had heard him speak informally, but here, through the telephone, he had been struck, much more so, by the warm and fatherly tones of his voice – not unlike dark chocolate. There is an ear-splitting ring from Berlin and Erich is jolted out of his reverie.  

Hope it is not too windy up there, Oberpräsident Koch. Adolf Hitler barks jovially. 

 Aha, yes. Good evening. I am steady in my boots, Mein Herr! and am beginning to fatten up, which should help with anchoring.  

He had spoken without thinking. He had made a joke and in the same breath confessed to his paunch. He forgets to inhale – waits. 

Hitler laughs. Indeed, Oberpräsident. But stay fit for me, I beseech you, as you know I have been cleaning up my ranks, and I now have a shortage of loyal energetic men. This time, Erich is not sure of the tone.

Of course, Mein Herr. I was teasing. Then adds, despite himself, I shall go on a diet immediately.  

His Führer laughs again. Erich is exhilarated. This is going much too far. He must retract immediately and calm himself, say something serious and political. He blurts out: The uprisings have dampened. Prussians, even the Poles. I feel they’re beginning to accept the process of Germanization.  

Ah you do well to remind me, this is the reason I have called.

I’m all ears, mein Herr. Erich hoped he didn’t sound too syrupy.  

Rename the towns.   

The towns, mein Herr?  

Yes. Towns, villages, rivers, bloody farm animals for all I care. Anything Old Prussian, Lithuanian. I want it gone. Like in Silesia… Set up a commission. I leave it in your capable hands, Gäuleiter Koch.  

Very good idea, Mein Herr, I couldn’t agree more. First thing tomorrow. How stimulating.   

Looking forward to your report. Good Luck with the diet. I should cut down on the  biscuits too. Ha! Goodnight Oberpräsident Koch. 

Sieg He… 

He had hung up. Why hadn’t he thought of it? Of course. The soul thieving war of  Toponymy. It didn’t matter, they were hardly close enough for him to whisper ideas into the  Fürher’s ear. The thought of Herr Hitler’s fleshy fear moves him. His trousers have grown tight. He undoes his top button, stretches his arms up into a yawn, notices that he is sweating and gets up from his chair energetically to open the window. Lights are twitching down below, and, to the West, he can make out the lighthouse through a low hanging cloud.  

The Baltic – now unflustered – and East Prussia herself, in a fitful sleep, seemed to stand by. 

2022  

It is nippy October sunshine. The car park in the centre of Midhurst, plump desolate Surrey.  Mum, my sister Emily and I are huddled on a bench. You’d think they’d have positioned the  bench in the direction of the twee high street, where a post-box sits wearing a knitted hat; or  towards the leafy cricket pitch that hugs the road into town. But no, this bench view is of a   

dozen cars parked in rows upon a backdrop of a public toilet.  

There is one portion of fish and chips between three adults. Mum had assured us in the shop that it was a big fish, she made a gesture with her hands. Huge, she said. It’s not enough. God forbid there would ever be too much food. We shall share. Everything. Food, baths, coffee, sometimes a chocolate or a mint in the car. This is a woman who, one hand on the steering wheel, will bite a mint in two and hand you the remaining half. It doesn’t matter  that you don’t want it. The last Christmas I remember spending as a compact family unit, I  lost weight. I believe I am the only person in England who returned to her home in London in  January thinner.  

Complaining about this is fiddly: both my sister and I are in our mid-thirties and over  six foot tall. (Positively) strapping some might say. On the one hand, this does suggest a need  for proper nourishment, but on the other we certainly couldn’t claim that forever sharing has  affected our growth. 

Here we are, ravenous and stuffing our faces with fish. Oily-fingered and feeling raw.  A woman emerges from the concrete bathroom ahead and shuffles in our direction. As Mum  would say dryly, it’s not a good look. She is wearing a nondescript coat over a nightgown and slippers. She’s had an operation on her skull. There is a distinctive scar where her hair has been shaved; the overall impression is of a forehead that begins at the eyebrows and then just keeps going to the crown of the head. Silky and white. I’ve spotted her long before Mum  does, and I know what’s coming.  

Our balding friend is shuffling closer, like Lord Voldemort before he regains his powers. I sense laughter on the air, but I’m also worried about how subtle Mum won’t be. I  look away to pretend I’m not looking. Emily glances briefly and I can see the half smile  begin on her face; she too knows. Mum turns frankly in her direction and stares just long  enough to be rude. Turns back to us and says not even remotely under her breath – if I ever get like that, that’s it, turn me off. The laughter bursts out of us like a sorry whoopee cushion. We shake quietly. Hang on, I say. I’m struggling to speak through the laughter. Hang on. You  mean that’s the marker. If you’re a bit bald. That’s when you want out. Just a bit bald. Our  hands are in the fish and tears squeeze out of my sister’s face. And the slippers. Someone  says. Mum bends over double shaking and reaffirms. Yes. The slippers.

***  

We’ve been to see Dora. In a hospital bed at home on the ground floor of her house. The air  is dense as if the carpet were on the walls as well as on the floor. The place is overheated and  dark. The bed is electric and vibrates to stimulate circulation. She no longer watches  television, or reads, or speaks. I hope the carer puts the radio on in the morning. Why no one  has worked out a system that plays music or podcasts, I don’t know. It seems so easy. 

No one really knows who should be doing these things. Mum takes us about once a  month, one of us or both. We both drive, but neither of us has a car. So, it’s Mum’s rules. We  can get her to stay for an hour as we sit and talk to Dora and convince ourselves she’s  laughing with her eyes. I’ve noted that it’s best to leave when she’s asleep, not wait for her to  wake again, as then it’s too difficult. The guilt twinges acutely, like leaving someone in a  desert without water, or at the bottom of the ocean without an oxygen bottle. Dying in slow  motion.  

Dora is the second wife of my grandfather, Keith. My father’s stepmother. When my  father died thirty years ago, the rest of his family essentially stopped speaking to us. And  when his father died twenty years ago, this family essentially stopped speaking to her. So, by  virtue of not being spoken to, we got closer. All outcasts banded together, shipwrecked from  a storm of East End Greengrocers, where the men have died too young and it’s supposedly  about money, but actually it’s all about grief.  

When I was ten, Mum, Emily and I moved from the south of France to London. That’s when Dora and Keith entered our lives. I remember Mum saying – reiterating that I’m  only ten years old at this point – that Grandpa Keith had a brain tumour, which is why he’d  suddenly become nice. 

Dora was nice from the get-go. They would come up from Surrey to take us out. Ice cream or Father Christmas parades in Knightsbridge. Ideally both. She had a bright blonde bowl haircut and was always wrapped in soft things – cloaks and cardigans in cashmere, mohair or chenille. She was jolly, and good at caustic remarks. The sardonic streak is why she and Mum bonded; that and something blue-blooded that I only understood years later when I started digging into the Prussian story. The only manifestation of her native German when she spoke English was her slightly shorter vowels, crisp as bone china.  

Keith died after a year of us living in London. We were in the first flat, the one where  Emily and I had a bedroom shaped like a corridor – was it a corridor? Controversial. It’s in  this flat that I watched Dirty Dancing every day after school for a month. It’s in this flat that I  asked Mum who Shakespeare was – pronouncing it with a French accent, Chaaque Spiaerr…  And that she thought, what have I done… Raising my children in the lavender shrubs; now  they are unfit for society. It’s in this flat that I had a meltdown in the bath, having worked out  that my father’s death followed by his father’s death was too much of a coincidence. Surely,  I, as the prodigal daughter with the blue eyes and straw hair just like them, must be in for the  chop soonish. I was saved from drowning in my own sorrow in the tub by someone coming  along to reassure me. It was Dora. A serious discussion ensued between naked wet child and smiling dry adult on two different sides of an enamel wall.  

Anyway, after Keith’s death, we kept Dora and she kept us. This is how Mum, Emily  and I became the hobbling musketeers of this vigil. What remains of the Prussian family has  evaporated. We’re doing something, but it’s not enough. Her days are spent looking out of the  window at her garden, growing romantic from lack of care. That’s if she’s looking straight on. If she turns her head to the right there is a framed A3 photograph of Dora and her late  husband. The kind of photo that they’ve paid a professional to take. They’re both smiling and looking portly and peacefully middle-aged. To her left on the wall is a cubist painting in the Juan Gris style, a mish mash of blues and greys.  

1939  

The Vistula Lagoon is shaped like a hare in flight. A sand spit separates it from the Baltic sea.  At the eastern tail of the hare is the historic port of Konïgsberg, and, if you were to swim  through brackish water for fifty miles west, you would hit the smaller town of Elbing. All of  this is Weimar Germany on paper, but East Prussia in most people’s bodies.

Dora was asleep in Elbing, her milk blonde hair in a mess on her head like a straw hat.  She lay face down in a sleep so heavy that sometimes her father worried she might be dead.  

***  

The next morning, she was going to church with Omi. She enjoyed the journey there and  back and was content to put up with church in the middle. Omi always arrived in a cart  attached to horsies. Two of them. A black and a brown one. Dora had decided they were  married, the brown one was the mother. Their legs were long like branches coming out of a  tree. The first time that the triangle head as big as her body had flown towards her, she was  sure she would be eaten. Now that she was almost five, she knew better and believed Omi when she said they were nice and would never hurt her unless she got under their legs. She  loved sitting up there, next to her fierce grandmother all in black. Omi behaved as if she were  already in church even on her way to church. Dora thought she must be practising. All the  better, it meant she could focus her full attention on the horsies clip-clopiting ahead, the  swollen buttocks looking at her with swishing tails. She remembered the first time she had  seen one of them do their business. Right there in the street! Outside the bakery. The tail had  moved aside, and the bottom had opened like a wriggling worm in the garden. Dora had stood, transfixed. Omi had chided her for staring. But it was in the street, exclaimed the girl. Maybe he is showing me! Even Omi couldn’t help but half grin at this. The little girl had spent the next week telling everyone that the husband horse had showed her his poo by the bread shop.  

In church, the words of the priest became one long rumbling word with silences inside  it. It was cold. Dora shivered next to Omi and looked at the twinkling lights of the candle  flames. If she focused her gaze on the flame, without blinking, for long enough, she could  make herself cry. This, she felt, made more sense. It made sense to be in church if you were  crying. Other people seemed to be crying; then again maybe they were sneezing, or maybe  they were praying. Dora never prayed when everyone else did, because that’s when the  grown-ups closed their eyes. Dora would open hers to get a good look at everything. Today,  she saw, behind her, a small boy who wasn’t praying either. They grimaced at each other and  opened their eyes extra wide in defiance. He had bug eyes. His hand moved through the air  rolling a tiny invisible motorcar; the car braked just before bumping a lady. Maybe his  mother. It steered upwards and started driving up the silhouette of her wool coat towards her  shoulder. The lady was still praying with her eyes shut tight. Dora smiled encouragingly and  turned her body away from the altar. When the motorcar neared the top of her head, the boy  had to stand up on the bench so that he could reach round and down towards his mother’s  furthest ear. Dora was so excited she stood up on her bench too. She didn’t know who or what was in the race, but the prayers seemed to be gaining momentum towards a finishing line, and the little car might just win. Just as the boy was folding over his mother’s head like a  rainbow, a Das Amen cracked through the church like thunder. Dora almost screamed and  jumped back down on her bench with a thump. Omi unfurled from her conversation with God  and looked resentfully at her. Dora thought a prayer might be in order and threw herself on  her knees to recover.  

2013  

I shot a man, once.  

Each word a tattoo in the air. Sitting in her armchair on the ground floor of her semi-detached house, Dora was in her early-seventies then, and still running on Gin and Tonic. Shooting was actually the chosen topic. We were discussing how our little half-sister,  aged thirteen, not present, had just shot her first rabbit. I think then Emily, my little full sister, definitely present, said she’d once been clay-pigeon shooting and enjoyed it. Emily was much better at this type of talking than I was. The type that bobbles along the surface. Warm prosecco, too much heating and cosy furnishings made me twitch. Enthusiastic talk of cats and dogs often delivered the killer blow that would send me for a walk round the block with a cigarette.  

Back from a gander, I was kneeling opposite Dora. The carpet was and still is  cream-colored. Emily was to her left, closer to her, also on her knees. We were arranged  around an electric fireplace. I was in conversational survival.  

Have you ever shot anything, Dora? I asked our grandmother, hoping for a giggle. 

I shot a man, once.  

I started to laugh, but I think even my laugh knew that it was pretending. The tone was truth. Whether or not one of us said Really? or What! is superfluous because Dora needed  no encouragement to continue. She was not exactly talking to us. We were bystanders in the  carpet. The sentences unravelled out of her mouth like a vintage film reel.  

I was on a train to East Berlin, after the war. She pronounced it ever so slightly as  vaw.

I was eleven. With my mother and small brother. An empty carriage. My brother had  a pushchair, a very nice pushchair. Expensive. A Russian soldier got onto the train and tried  to take the pushchair. My mother was arguing with him. They were fighting over the  pushchair. I took his gun and I shot him dead. My mother threw the body out of the moving  train and we never spoke about it again.  

Her eyes were wet. She was looking ahead, somewhere above me, to the left. The  sensation was as if the three of us had been deep underwater and were slowly floating up  towards the surface.  

How’s Livy? Emily changed the subject.  

I whipped round in my sister’s direction, horrified and ready to strangle her. Livy was  Dora’s Yorkshire terrier who had recently moved to younger pastures for a better life with  better walks. Dora jumped on the change of subject and rode it. She wiped her eyes, turned  back to us, grasped her G&T and embarked on news of Livy. Chit-chat rolled on.  

1941 

Dora and Twiggy are looking out the window at the soldiers walking past in marching rows.  There is no band, no instruments. Dora likes the drums especially, tied onto the men like fat  stomachs that they must hit. Why march without a band? Things are changing. She doesn’t  go to school anymore. Now there is Twiggy the governess who comes most days of the week.  Mutter says there are too many soldiers. How many is too many? I suppose they take up  space. Twiggy’s real name is Fraulein Ursula, but she is so tall and thin Dora thinks she looks  like a twig. In a certain light, her nose is made of wood.  

Usually she is not allowed to look at them, Dora’s not sure what’s happened. She was  writing a story about an unhappy cow who had no milk: ein ung luckliche (an happi) kuh. She  was being bold with the spelling of the word cow … Kah, maybe kooh, maybe mooh… when  she heard them, or rather heard the silence that descended whenever there were too many. Maybe there were no drums because the boots were drumming. Twiggy – as if called – had  glided across the room to gaze out the window. Dora saw Twiggy’s eyes become deep as if  she could suddenly see far away. She crept up to the window and looked too. Twiggy had  completely forgotten the girl’s presence. Her brother cried in the next room, they heard  Mutter shush him vigorously. Was the window rattling just a little bit? A quavering in the  carpet. The entire street seemed to take an inbreath. The houses, in the hope of being  inconspicuous, sucked in their tummies.  

That night there had been a party atmosphere. A pretend one. They were all in the  living room. Her Vater had come home in high spirits with apple strudel! Mutter said there  was no cinnamon or sugar so what was the point of it. She was always saying things like this.  Vater went quiet for a second then said dramatically: Yes, you’re right, we shall put it in the  dustbin. Dora watched the whole exchange and almost choked. NOOOO MUTER, THERE  ARE APPLES INSIDE, THERE ARE STILL APPLES! She pleaded, her face hot with the  promise of tears. She turned to her father, ready to knock him to the ground and make a break for it with the strudel, even to Russia, if she must. Her father was laughing. A moment before she understood the significance of this. Mutter was smiling too. This was too much. Shock and relief made her cry anyway. Her father scooped her up and said sorry for making such a  mean joke. Would she forgive him if she had an extra slice, maybe she should have a slice now, before supper, just to taste…  

2014  

I went back to visit Dora, alone. This time I was the one sitting up close. Dora in the fern  green armchair. I casually held a notebook and pen as if they were fleshy extensions of my  hand and fingers. This was unnecessary stealth considering how far the memories took her. I  asked only technical questions about dates and people. I was being manipulative, pretending  that I was only interested in the geographical and historical elements. In fact, I wanted it all.  All the pain and all the love. I was born in 1934… You are so old, Dora. She agreed. A joke  now and then to keep things light. Galinda. Was she your father’s mother?… Not Jews and  not Nazis, OK. Did East Prussia still exist then? Sorry, my history is shocking. She agreed again. Oh yes, the Polish corridor of course.… Hang on, what year is this?  

Dora told me that her maternal grandmother had died before she was born. The story was that Gertrude’s mother was showing the maid how to use the old laundry press – a  wooden mangle – and that she’d been caught in it and squashed. What? I couldn’t help but  laugh. I know. She giggled. Squashed. She told me she’d adored her father and disliked her  mother. I listened. The information was ample but most I will tell you in another way. We  giggled less. My comments became sparse. We spoke about Russians a lot. Russians and fear, Russians and rape, Russians and work camps in Siberia and the Red Army marching on Elblag in bitter January 1945.  

Near the end, tears flowing down her face, she told me she’d never spoken of these  things before, ever, not even to her husband. I pathetically tried to hug her. She is of an ilk for  whom accepting a hug is a too stark acknowledgement of emotion. For some reason, I asked  her if she’d ever been to Russia.  

Yes actually, I went with Pat and Josephine (from Midhurst ) on a trip – about fifteen  years ago. We went to Saint-Petersburg, and I stood, and I looked at the Hermitage… and I  thought it was marvellous.  

1942  

A mushroom was looking at her. A pilz… or champignonsuppe when you ate it for supper.  The big hand of her Vater, Gerhart, lifted a leaf and uncovered many more. A family, a  classroom of mushrooms. Dora counted them. They looked like her baby brother’s clean toes  after a bath. She sensed her Vater wanted to say something grown-up and she didn’t want to  listen to it. She counted again, touching the top of their fuzzy heads gently with her fingers.  

They had gone to the forest that morning. The blanket of leaves had crunched beneath  her feet. The trees were all undressed. Dora could see her breath in the air. It smelt a bit like  the fireplace and a bit like the cold. Vater had told her that some trees never lose their leaves,  the ones in Russia. Dora thought, how nice for the Russian trees. But then he said that the leaves on those trees don’t change colour – turn orange or red – so what a shame that was. I know you’re going, she said. 

What? They were still kneeling with the mushrooms.  

I heard you and Mutter talking. And lots of other Vaters have gone. She wasn’t cold  anymore.  

Well, well, Mausebär! What a sneaky Mausebär you are. All quiet like a mouse, not a bear. His head moved towards her bearing his front teeth as if he were a chewing mouse.  Before he shaved his moustache, it would move up and down like the wings of a fly. She  squealed.  

I’m still a bear and maybe I’ll eat you if you leave!  

Oh please do, Mausebär. I’d like nothing more than to spend the rest of this war in  your tummy. All warm and eating your food again after you’ve eaten it. He sat up against the  tree trunk and put her in his lap.  

Do you have to go for a long time?  

I certainly hope not. I will write letters… and I promise that the very moment I can  return I’ll come back so fast there’ll be smoke coming out of my behind.  

Dora chuckled. Like a motorcar?  

Exactly like a motorcar, Mausebär. Now, before I leave, I want to teach you  something. This is a special grown up thing. And it’s very dangerous. You will be the only  little girl who knows about this. You need to take this very seriously.  

Ok I’m ready.  

I’m going to teach you how to fire a gun, a karabiner rifle.  

And then I go to the war too?  

Ha ha ha…no no no no….my little one. It was a strange laugh with a twinkle in the  eyes. Mausebärs don’t go to war. I just think it’s a good idea if you know how to use one.  Your Mutter will hide it somewhere in the house and you’ll know where. 

Dora’s mouth was slightly open. She had not expected this. She knew all the soldiers  had guns. But she was not a soldier. She knew where the gun was kept at home. In a trunk in the larder. She knew that her Vater used to go hunting and shoot deer. She knew he wasn’t  allowed anymore. She knew it was because of the Nazis. They had stood up. Her Vater took the long leather case that was propped up against the tree they’d been sitting by. She watched  him, with one hand on the bark, feeling its crusty bread surface.  

Out of the leather bag came a long wooden – smooth, not crusty – kaaaa karaa... Karabiner. He said. She only knew the word kanone.  

First off let us see if you can carry it, Mausebär. Put your back against the tree. Lean  on the trunk. It’s heavy, like a pumpkin. We’ll carry it together first and you tell me if you  think I can let go.  

He put the wide bit on her shoulder and arranged her hands on the veined wood. It was  heavy like a pumpkin. He was still holding it.  

You think I can let go?  

Dora scrunched up her face in effort.  

Yes. The tree is helping me.  

It worked.  

Look, loooook, I’m doing it, Vader, look, I’ve got the pumpkin gun!  

Good news, now let me take it off you and let’s see how far we get…