The Fight For Love

1946, May 14

She walked up to the cottage, the place where her life had changed. The place where she became Carla Richter. It had been two years since she was last here, when she packed up her bags and left the only home she had ever had in Poland. I felt so strange being back here, considering the circumstances. She knocked once, no answer. She knocked again and heard her Madam Klein tell her to go away, that she wasn't interested in visitors. She then knocked one last time, but differently to the other two times. Knock Knock Knock-knock-knock knock knock-knock.

Silence came from the inside, and then the door opened. There stood Madam Klein, but she seemed different. She hadn't aged significantly, but she was hunched over with large bags under her eyes, as if she was an old woman in a young woman's body. She looked broken in every sense of the word. They stood in the doorway for several moments, as if communicating in some unspoken language.

"The war is over." Carla spoke at last. As is some sort of password, Madam Klein instantly lead her into the house. Carla looked around. The place wasn't as upkept as she last remembered it. There were visible cracks in the wall, timber panels uneven on the floor, and there was dust everywhere. Carla was lead to the chair in the sitting room, the two of them sat down facing each other.

"Indeed, dear child the war is over. You are free. Free to be who you really are, before you became Carla." Madam Klein sat hunched in her chair, as if she was too tired to hold her own body weight.

"To be truthful Madam Klein, I don't even know who that is anymore. For so long now I have been Carla Richter Polish girl that I don't know who I used to be anymore." Madam Klein smiled sadly.

"Well, what brings you here? Where have you been these past two years?"

"Everywhere and nowhere I guess, I travelled around from town to town meeting different people. Trying to make this small corner of the world look bigger, and remind myself that there are still good people, that Hitler and the other World Leaders are not a representation of humanity as a whole. But rather a representation of how power can corrupt people in the wrong hands." Madam Klein let out a soft, but coarse laugh.

"Two years and yet you appear to have aged twenty. Dear child you are wise beyond your years."

"I have learned a lot about the world. Yet the entire time I was travelling I felt so scared and alone, like how I felt the night you found me on the street. I figured it was just the fear of being discovered as a Jew, being sent to a prison camp or executed. But the war is over, and Madam, I am still scared." Tears welled up in her eyes, "Even more now than ever. And it wasn't until I was walking through these streets again that I realised I wasn't afraid for my own life, but I was afraid for his." The tears trickled down her face, she went her handkerchief in her pocket, but it was not there. Madam Klein offered hers instead. She shook her head slightly in disbelief.

"Henri Brandt. After all this time, you still love him, don't you?" Wiping her eyes, Carla looked up and smiled sadly, this expression she clearly adopted from her caretaker.

"Not a day goes by when I don't think of him, fear for him, wonder if he is alive." Madam Klein reached over and placed a hand on Carla's knee.

"Dear child I am deeply sorry for the hurt I caused you both." Carla took Madam Klein's hand.

"No Madam please don't be sorry. I see now that I was blind. Henri and I were like two torches set alight. Beautiful and passionate but when not kept in check, would set everything around them into flames. If I was exposed, not only would the government have my head, but yours and possibly Henri's too. And everyone who I had ever associated with would be help under suspicion. I would have burned everyone I had ever touched. You were protecting me from myself and for that I cannot thank you enough." Madam Klein wiped a tear from her face and shook her head.