The Times Magazine 41for a while, asking nothing of him, staying
out of his space, intuitively doing all the
things parents of autistic children desperately
want others to do in their company.
Eventually I fish around for a “ticket”
in my pocket. I hand it to Henry. He
hands it to my son.
A few weeks later I get an email from
Henry. My inbox, and heart, will be full of
him by this point. I have been interviewing
Henry for years, we have become friends,
and in recent months the conversations
have started increasing in length, scope and
urgency. “I feel a little apprehensive but
honoured that you wish to write about my
story,” writes Henry. “You will have access
to all my documents, files, photos and my
writings, journals, etc.
“Look forward to talking with you,”
he concludes. “Hope I can answer all
your questions.”February 27, 2020 Glasgow University,
13 days before the coronavirus outbreak is
declared a global pandemic by the World
Health Organisation
There he is. My adopted Jewish grandfather,
leaning on his stick outside the main gate
of my old university. A gentleman, the kind
one still comes across now and then in all
the major cities of the world. Standing on
a pavement, carrying nothing it seems but
the clothes on his back. Often wearing
a hat. The kind of man one struggles
to imagine dressed in anything other
than a suit. The kind who seems to have
walked here directly from the past. Who,
chameleon-like, blends into whatever
landscape he happens to be crossing while
remaining irrefutably himself. The kind
often described as a real character. Henry.
My heart soars at the sight of him. He
is wearing a flat cap and beige mackintosh,
shaded glasses, and a burst of colour
at his throat from what appears to be
an exceptionally bright bow tie. He is
surrounded by students milling this way
and that. The future on its way, just as
I was 20 years ago. I watch Henry for a
while, perched on a stone bench on the
brow of a hill, where I might once have
sat eating a floppy panini and missing a
lecture. Then I walk down to greet him.
We embrace, and it is unclear which of us
enjoys the spectacle of a middle-aged Indian
woman cuddling a white nonagenarian
gentleman beneath the gothic arch of a
15th-century university more. I ask Henry
if I can take his photo. He instantly stands
back and assumes his grin, a constant in the
images of him traversing a century. I sense
as I take this picture that I will treasure it.
We are taken to a lecture theatre by a
Jewish pharmacology student from London.“I’ll have what he’s having,” a passer-by says,
as the two of us marvel at Henry shuffling
along the street with his stick towards yet
another black cab.
Later that day a text arrives from my
father. My mother is in A&E again with
severe breathlessness.
A week later, gathered round her
hospital bed on an intensive care ward in
southwest London, we will be advised to
stop her active medications. To start her
on end-of-life care. To let her go.
I email Henry, Ingrid and their
daughters. “I feel as if we are family now,
the Ramaswamys and the Wugas,” I write,
high as a kite on grief. I tell them my
mother is dying. Henry emails back. “You
are prepared for whatever will happen,” he
says. “Be strong.”December 2020 Cathcart Cemetery,
on the outskirts of Glasgow
On a rare sunny day in December, as the
first year of the pandemic draws to a close,
Henry and I meet at Cathcart Cemetery
to visit Ingrid’s grave. The date has been
twice rearranged due to restrictions. We
are still, Henry and I, living in the season
of grief, when time is kept according to
the incalculable geometry of loss. I am
beginning to understand that remembrance
aches like new love. I am beginning to
understand that this is my new home, now.
Two months since Ingrid’s death. Six
months since my mother’s death.
Henry is wearing a red jacket and a beige
woolly beret. It is the first time I have seen
him since Ingrid’s death. He looks well. We
say hello but keep our distance. We are all
wearing masks. Once inside, Henry leads me
down one of the first rows of gravestones.
“I know it is one of these,” he mutters. “The
last time I found it right away.”
Afterwards we will leave the cemetery
and cross the road so Henry can perch on
his walker in the sun. We will take a few
photographs of each other. I will ask Henry
how he is coping without Ingrid, and he
will reply, “Very well.” And Henry will ask
me how my father is coping without my
mother. And I will reply, “Very well.” Henry
will tell me he made his first apple pie
without Ingrid, the master baker, at his
side. And that last night he cooked lamb
cutlets for his supper. “But I suppose
I am old now,” he concedes. “You’re going
to be 97 in February!” laughs his daughter
Gillian. And Henry will reply, flashing
me one of his grins, “I won’t be 97, I’ll
be Henry Wuga.” nHomelands: The History of a Friendship by
Chitra Ramaswamy is published by Canongate
on April 21 (£16.99)As we negotiate lifts and stone-flagged corridors,
she tells me she is concerned about ongoing
campus protests which, although they aren’t
directly antisemitic, often trigger antisemitism.
Does she mean pro-Palestine marches? “Yes,”
she whispers quietly.
Thirty students have turned up. I join
them, and Henry stands in front of us, at a
table on which he quietly sets out his history.
He has done more than 100 of these talks
and divulges his past like a professional. It
is a pleasure to watch him. I feel like a proud
parent. First, Henry gets out his and Ingrid’s
Third Reich passports stamped with a red “J”,
the name changed on his from Heinz Martin
Wuga to Heinz “Israel” Wuga, and on hers
from Ingrid Wolff to Ingrid “Sara” Wolff. Next,
one of the letters that shuttled between Henry
in Glasgow, his uncle in Brussels and his
parents in Nuremberg. Now the “white card”
he had to show when he landed at Harwich
in May 1939, stating he would not be able
to work. And a copy of his class photo from
1937/8, by which time the Nazi regime had
moved Henry to a Jewish school. “And this,
of course, is the horror.”
He holds up the cloth yellow star his
mother was forced to sew onto her clothing
from 1941 until the war’s end. “Horrendous to
have all these things, nevertheless...” Henry
stalls. “We must face facts and deal with
things as they happen.” This is the sentiment
that opens and closes his talk, just as it
parenthesises his life. “We have to tell the
truth because the truth is there,” he begins.
“We are duty-bound to do it.”
Afterwards, the two of us alone again,
we wait for a taxi to take Henry home. This
turns out to be the usual farce involving cabs
failing to turn up and irate drivers failing to
appreciate the heroics involved in getting in
and out of a cab when you are 96 and have
just spoken about the Holocaust for an hour.Wuga and Ramaswamy outside Cathcart Cemetery© GILLIAN FIELD