Shortly after the Second World War has ended, six-year-old
Amalia Klein skips through the rubble and grime of
Wiesbaden, clutching her one doll. American troops are on
the street and women queue quietly for milk. "This is the
landscape of her childhood," thinks her mother Anna in this
absorbing story.
THE ROSES UNDERNEATH shows the painstaking work of
documenting possessions left by displaced people, as Anna
fills out forms in a museum. She speaks English which
makes her useful to the Monuments Men of the American army.
Baroque chairs, silver cups, carpets, all have to be
itemised. So many homes have been destroyed, and so many
people dispossessed, that Anna wonders if it can ever be
completed. Her husband, a doctor, stayed in their town of
Thuringia, now in the hands of the Russians. She doesn't
know if they'll see him again. Between hunger, illness and
tattered clothing, Anna's only hope is to go along with the
American officers - who seek art looted by the Nazis.
Captain Cooper gets Anna assigned to him as navigator,
translator and go-between for his drives around, which
raises her wages and provides her with lunch. She distrusts
his motives, understanding the worth of art since her uncle
was an art dealer, but expecting that the Americans will -
just as the Nazis did - strip her country of valuables and
ship her heritage away wholesale. All she'll be left with
is the bombsites and ragged bony children. Cooper tries to
change her views, but is he sincere? And what of his
comrades?
The uncertainty and deprivation are unremitting, so that we
constantly feel grit in the air and see sour suspicion on
the faces of peasants. Anna is accused of being a Nazi and
then of being a communist, the latter enough to have her
barred from the museum work. She is obliged to leave little
Amalia with strangers in order to attend her job, and
through her eyes we see orphaned children in a United
Nations refugee camp. Nobody has easy choices to make.
While the tale centres on paintings found at a villa, the
symbolic wealth of a defeated nation's heritage forms the
centre of THE ROSES UNDERNEATH. The future of Anna's family
is at stake, reflecting the turmoil felt across Europe. CF
Yetmen has written a memorable story, which will strike a
chord in many hearts.
With the country in ruins, Anna Klein, displaced and
separated from her beloved husband, struggles to support
herself and her six-year old daughter Amalia. Her typing job
at the Collecting Point for the US Army's Monuments Men is
the only thing keeping her afloat. Charged with securing
Nazi-looted art and rebuilding Germany's monuments, the
Americans are on the hunt for stolen treasures. But after
the horrors of the war, Anna wants only to hide from the
truth and rebuild a life with her family.
When the easy-going architect Captain Henry Cooper recruits
her as his reluctant translator, the two of them stumble on
a mysterious stash of art in a villa outside of town.
Cooper's penchant for breaking the rules capsizes Anna's
tenuous security and propels her into a search for elusive
truth and justice in a world where everyone is hiding
something.
In her debut novel, C.F. Yetmen tells a story of loss and
reconciliation in a shattered world coming to terms with war
and its aftermath.
Excerpt
Emerging on the Adolfsallee, they turned left toward the
Wiesbaden town center,
Amalia taking off in a half-skip, half-run. People were out
and about, beginning
daily tasks of cleaning, clearing rubble, finding food,
securing work or just
walking the streets in search of something. A line of
women—pails in hand—had
already formed where the milk truck sometimes appeared. The
Allied bombs had been
comparatively gentle on Wiesbaden, but that was just a
relative notion. Bombs were
bombs. Anna watched Amalia jump over holes in the sidewalk,
her green dress
bouncing in the dust clouds she kicked up. This is the
landscape of her childhood,
Anna thought. Mountains of rubble and rivers of blood. The
girl was only six and
had seen so much misery and stomached horrible fear, and
Anna worried that more was
to come. The war had been over for three months already, but
what had replaced it?
What were they living in? A sort of provisional purgatory,
she thought, with
occupiers who had to sort the bad from the good, the guilty
from the innocent, the
past from the future. We are damned; we unleashed hell on
the world. And now we
Germans must make good. She thought this every day. But to
make amends for
monstrosities perpetrated in your name and with your
complicity, even if it was
coerced? Was it even possible?
“Mama, look.” Amalia was pointing at something on the ground
and beckoning. As Anna
approached, she saw what had caught Amalia’s eye. Gleaming
in the sunlight was a
large metal button, the kind found on a Loden jacket or a
dirndl or some other
traditional dress, the kind the Nazis had been so fond of
the German Volk wearing.
It was heart-shaped and stamped with a scroll pattern. “Can
I take it?” whispered
Amalia, her eyes beaming as if she had found buried
treasure. Which, Anna thought,
she had, in a way.
“Yes, you may,” said Anna, joining in the spirit. “What a
prize.”
Amalia picked up the button, now black with grime and held
it on her flat palm.
“Can we wash it, Mama? So it will shine?”
“Yes of course, little Maus,” said Anna. “Now put it in your
pocket and keep it
safe. We need to hurry.”
Amalia slipped her hand into her mother’s and they walked on
between the piles of
stones that lay like sleeping prehistoric creatures along
the street. Anna imagined
them hibernating, waiting until they could be reanimated
into something new,
something hopeful. As they approached the Rheinstrasse, the
bustle of the city
flowed along the main thoroughfare and the Bonifazius church
glowed in the morning
sun, Gothic spires flanking its bombed out sanctuary like
two sentries. The
American MP directing traffic at the intersection whistled
and motioned for them to
cross. They turned and walked east into the sun, joining the
people heading to
whatever jobs they were lucky enough to have. Nearing the
large, looming
Landesmuseum, where the Americans had set up shop, they
walked along the newly
installed chain-link fence with the barbed wire on top until
they came to the guard
at the workers’ entry outside the rear courtyard. The sign
read U.S. Army
Monuments, Fine Art and Archives, and the young soldier
standing at the entrance
looked as earnest and rigid as a statue himself. Anna sat
Amalia down on a bench
next to the gate.
“Listen to me, Maus.” Anna squatted down. “Do you remember
what I said? You wait
here until I come out and get you. And what will you say if
anyone asks you why you
are here?”
Amalia exhaled and flatly recited the words: “My name is
Amalia Klein. My Mutter
ist Anna Klein. She ist in there. I wait for her?” She
pointed at the building.
“Mother, not Mutter,” said Anna, stroking the blond hair
that threatened to escape
from Amalia’s braids. “Mother.”
“Mother,” said Amalia. She pulled the button from her pocket
and studied it with
scientific intensity.
Anna’s stomach clenched. She wished she had some choice
other than leaving her
daughter here, on a bench on the sidewalk. But she didn’t.
“Look, Maus.” She
pointed at the GI. “See that American? I bet he comes from
Texas, from the Wild
West. Maybe he is the sheriff of his town and he has a big
horse and he keeps all
the bad guys away. That’s probably why he’s standing guard
here now. What do you
think?”
They stole a glance at the bulldog of a GI. His face was
young but worn and tired.
His white MP helmet was balanced precariously on his head,
which seemed too large
for his short, square body. The name on his uniform said
Long, which almost made
Anna smile.
“So he’s going to need your help keeping bad guys out of the
museum while Mama goes
to work.” Anna turned Amalia to face the three-story
building and pointed to the
top floor. “Count three windows from the end and that’s
where I’ll be. I’ll be
watching you all the time while I am doing my job. Your job
is to sit quietly
here.”
“But how long will you take, Mama?”
“Not long, only until lunchtime. Do you promise you won’t
move? You have Lulu to
keep you company.”
A pile of trash rained down from an upper window. GIs and
German workers dodged the
periodic showers of debris, old blankets, mattresses, pieces
of wood, and building
materials. These were the remnants of the hundreds of
displaced people who had
sought shelter in the museum at the end of the war. Now it
would house the new
offices of the Americans they called the Monuments Men. Anna
was not altogether
sure what their job was, it seemed to have something to do
with returning items to
people. But they had needed English speakers and typists and
to her great good
fortune, she was adept at both.
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