Free The Girl Behind The Curtain (Hidden Women) by Stella Knightley Page A

A cleaner came three times a week. I pulled the modem out. The light that should have indicated that broadband was available was red rather than blue.
    ‘I think it may be a problem with the supplier rather than with your machine,’ I informed Herr Schmidt. I went upstairs to check my own modem. Same red lights. Same problem. I came back downstairs. ‘Hopefully, it will come back on soon enough, but if not, you’ll have to telephone customer support. I’d do it for you but I’m afraid my German isn’t up to it.’
    ‘Your German is already much improved,’ said Herr Schmidt.
    ‘Thank you,’ I said, though I thought he was being generous.
    ‘Well, I . . .’ I turned to go back upstairs to my own room.
    ‘Will you join me for some supper?’ Herr Schmidt asked. ‘I have made too much.’
    ‘Why not?’ I said. I had planned to spend the evening watching British TV streamed over my laptop. That wasn’t going to happen while the Internet was down.
    ‘I have cooked some sauerbraten ,’ he said.
    I racked my brains for a translation. Was that cabbage? I couldn’t smell cabbage.
    ‘Beef. A pot roast,’ he helped me out.
     
    Herr Schmidt was a good cook and he was also very interesting company. He had a wide knowledge of current affairs. What he knew about British politics put me to shame. I wasn’t half as interested as he seemed to be in what went on in Westminster. I definitely wasn’t as interested in Brussels and the EU. When I saw reports on the economic crisis, my response was to stick my fingers in my ears and go ‘la la la’.
    ‘You must pay more attention,’ Herr Schmidt admonished me gently. ‘The decisions these people make affect real lives. Yours and mine.’
    He also asked me lots of questions about my work. Fortunately, this was a topic on which I could hold my own. I told him how I had been getting on so far in the vast archives of the university.
    ‘But this subject has been covered so many times before,’ I said. ‘I’m hoping to find something new. Something that really brings the period to life. Like a diary written at the time, rather than a memoir. Memoir is so different, you see. When people look back after any significant period of time has passed, they try to find meaning in everything that happened and imbue it with a proper narrative. Fiction can’t help but creep in. With a diary, written as events unfold, the writer doesn’t know how it will all end and so they don’t try to make the facts fit. You get a much truer representation.’
    Herr Schmidt looked deep in thought for a moment. I wondered what I’d said to make him so.
    ‘I think I may have something for you,’ he said. ‘Please, wait there.’
    I remained at the table, with my fingers curled around the small glass of red wine I had been nursing throughout dinner. While Herr Schmidt was out of the room, I gazed around his elegant home, so oddly frozen in time. I tried to guess the age of the furniture. Perhaps it was as old as nineteen-thirties. The piano was even older: an upright carved out of oak stained so dark it was almost black. My attempts to guess Herr Schmidt’s age continued. Listening to some of his memories, it seemed he was possibly closer to a hundred than ninety years old. I hoped I would be half as energetic if I got to such an age.
    Herr Schmidt returned. ‘Here it is.’ He had in his hands a shoebox, which was held shut by a number of elastic bands. He told me the story of how it came to be in his possession.
    ‘I was injured at the beginning of the Second World War. I couldn’t go back to the front so I spent the duration of the war here in Berlin, firefighting and clearing the rubble after the Allied air attacks. I found this in the remains of a burnt-out hotel just off the Ku’damm. The Kurfürstendamm, that is.’
    He set the box in the centre of the table.
    I reached for it.
    ‘Please, take it up to your room,’ he said. ‘I don’t need to see what is inside again. It mocks