Chapter 1 Audrey

BERLIN, GERMANY | OCTOBER 1938

Your tempo is off today, Fräulein James.”

From her seat on the gleaming black bench in front of the conservatory’s second-best grand piano, Audrey James bit down on her bottom lip, which was normally painted a deep crimson that set off her grey eyes in the style of the American film starlets. But she had been in a hurry to get to her lesson this morning and left the house without completing all her typical ablutions. Frankly, she was lucky to have smoothed the wrinkles in her dress and unwound the curlers in her hair in time to catch the bus across town to the konservatorium. She ran out of time for the lipstick.

“Yes, Herr Fogel, I apologize,” she said, straightening her posture and resetting her fingers on the ivory. “I will try again.”

The mood in the home of her best friend, Ilse Kaplan, where she lived as a long-term guest, had been strained of late, and the tension was affecting Audrey’s typically sanguine disposition. Two weeks prior, Ilse’s younger brother Ephraim had been attacked by a gang of Hitler Youth on his way home from school. Audrey had seen them around the city, those miniature versions of the Nazis. They’d beaten him badly; he’d needed stitches in two different places on his face, and his black eye was only now beginning to yellow.

Keeping her back and neck as straight as an oak trunk, Audrey closed her eyes and let her fingers dance across the white and black keys, hearing her way into the correct tempo. She’d been working on Wagner’s Sonata in A Major for several weeks in preparation for her graduation recital in December. It was one of the most complicated, furious pieces she’d ever undertaken to learn, but the effort required would render the mastery of it even more delicious. She had wanted to prepare Mendelssohn’s Number 2, but Mendelssohn was a Jewish composer. Wagner was the darling of the Reich—and Herr Fogel.

“There we are,” Herr Fogel muttered.

Several minutes later, Audrey finished, the last note lingering in her ear long after it dissipated. She always loved that moment. She opened her eyes, blinking into the golden autumn light streaming through the large windows of the airy conservatory space that overlooked the quiet Bernburgerstrasse.

“Better. Better,” her professor said, adjusting his wire spectacles. “But watch your progressions in the middle of the second movement. I shall see you on Friday, Fräulein James. Good day to you. Heil Hitler.”

“Thank you, Herr Fogel, good day,” Audrey said. He eyed her, waiting. It was the same look with which he fixed her at every lesson, in anticipation of her first note. Expectant. Relief when she delivered. “Heil Hitler,” she added.

When he left the room, Audrey allowed herself to slouch a fraction, releasing the tension in her spine and shoulders. A person could feel the weight of the Third Reich. Even a non-Jew who was not personally impacted by their stringent policies could feel the pressure of what the Nazi Party was doing to the country. These days, one was expected to salute the Führer. At the grocer, the chemist’s. When the postman delivered a parcel. It had become the standard greeting for all Germans, replacing genuine geniality with a thinly veiled trial as they tested one another into declarations of allegiance. Because all it took to bring someone down in this Germany was a question mark.

Audrey carefully tucked her music sheets into her satchel (Herr Fogel did not abide crumpled pages), pulled on her coat and gloves, and made her way down the marble staircase to the first floor. As she passed another classroom, a cello strung a haunting tune. She stopped in the foyer and fished a tube of red lipstick out of her bag, slicking it on with a rebellious flare. Painted faces were not the ideal. Hitler preferred women’s faces fresh. No trickery of appearance, no allure or drama. No excitement or individuality at all.

When she opened the door to the street, her father’s most recent letter, two weeks before, came back to her. He had all but demanded she return to England immediately.

I know you wish to finish your studies, but Germany is no longer safe, and I fear the borders will close. You must return to England before Hitler makes it impossible for you to do so.

She had been living with the Kaplans since she began her three-year program at the conservatory, but Germany had always been her home, as it had been her mother Helene’s. She’d met Audrey’s father, Victor, an Englishman, in Germany during the Great War. A solicitor by trade, he had flown a reconnaissance plane for the Brits, shuttling back and forth between France, England, and the Eastern Front to gather aerial photography of the enemy’s encampments and armaments. In the fall of 1917, his plane malfunctioned and he crash-landed just outside of Brandenburg, near Helene’s family home. She and her mother put themselves at risk to shelter and nurse Victor back to health. They fell in love, and Helene became pregnant. Audrey knew her father must have been mad about her mother; only a love like that could have caused him to marry Helene and stay in Germany after the war was over. It would have been a love story for the ages, but Helene died of complications from Audrey’s birth.

Victor was devastated by his wife’s death, and never remarried, but stayed in Berlin to continue to grow his fledgling legal practice and fulfill his promise to Helene to support her aging mother. With no time or knowledge of how to raise an infant on his own, he hired a wet nurse to care for Audrey in her infancy, followed by a nanny, Sophie. She was a kind woman who clapped and cheered when Audrey put on little theatricals in the attic, asked her about the books she read and what she was learning in school. Sophie was Audrey’s best friend until Ilse swept into her life like a warm August wind when she was seven years old.

Audrey had been watching from her window as furniture and crates were stacked on the pavement outside the house across the street, curious as to who was moving in. Then she saw a girl her age with soft eyes and braided brown hair who’d waved, smiling in a way the girls at Audrey’s school never did. Without hesitation, Audrey had marched over the street to ask to be her friend whilst Sophie hustled along in her wake, apologizing to the Kaplans for the intrusion.

Audrey was spunky but mostly friendless, and Ilse was a good listener with a heart that spoke to Audrey’s in all the ways she needed, showing her that she was, indeed, loveable. Sophie was caring, but she was paid to watch over Audrey, and her father was distant and formal in his interactions. Nothing was ever explicitly said, but Audrey knew he held her responsible for Helene’s death, and it didn’t help that Audrey so closely resembled her mother. A portrait hung on the wall above the fireplace in the sitting room, and though Audrey was never invited into her father’s bedroom, she’d once glimpsed several gilded-framed photographs of her mother on the walls before he closed the door, shutting her out of his sanctuary of grief. He never understood that she was grieving, too, for the loss of the mother she never got to have, and the loss of the father who blamed her for it. But Ilse had let her in, and Audrey found a family in the Kaplans, who welcomed her at any hour of the day.

Each summer, Victor returned to England and brought Audrey with him. He hosted his London friends and his sister Minna at their holiday home in Kensington, and took Audrey to the symphony and shows in the West End. Arts were their shared interest, and the only real connection Audrey felt was when they bonded in these moments. But all the while, Audrey counted down the days until September, when she would be back in Berlin with Ilse.

Then, five years ago, Helene’s mother died, and Victor determined it was time for them to sell the Berlin house and live full-time in London. His English roots ran deeper than the earth’s core, but England had never felt like home for Audrey. Home was Berlin, and home was with Ilse, the sister she’d never had and the one person she couldn’t live without. Heated arguments had ensued, but with his promise to his late wife fulfilled, Audrey thought he’d finally just come to a point where he couldn’t live in Berlin with Helene’s ghost anymore. He had no reason to stay, and plenty of reasons to run.

When Victor announced their plans, Audrey’s nanny had resigned, saying Audrey was well on her way to becoming a fine young woman and no longer needed her. Sophie’s sister was also leaving Berlin, and Sophie decided to join her.

“We’re getting out whilst we can,” Sophie had told Audrey before she left. Her brother-in-law was political and deeply concerned about Adolf Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. “Eli has job prospects in Brussels, and I figure I can find a family in need of service, anywhere I go.”

Audrey tried to be strong when Sophie left, and she summoned that strength once more on the day she herself departed for London. She and Ilse held each other outside Audrey’s house in a clutch of despair.

“I shall be lost without you,” Ilse said, her voice thick. “Especially if things get worse. You’ve always been my shield.”

Over her shoulder, Audrey spied the house down the street where an awful boy named Karl once lived. He and one of his mates had cornered Ilse when the girls were about ten years old, hurling insults like jagged rocks. Audrey placed herself between them and Ilse, but it was a trap; a third bully crept up from behind and cut off Ilse’s long braid with his mother’s kitchen shears. The boys had cackled harshly, throwing the braid at her feet and spitting on it. Ilse fled home sobbing. Audrey screamed at the boy, knocked the shears from his hand, and kicked him as hard as she could in both shins. She made sure he was also reduced to tears before she sprinted away after Ilse.

Tears slipped down Audrey’s cheeks now even as she brushed Ilse’s away. “No,” she said, with a sad smile. “I’m not your shield. I’m just the sword.” Ilse laughed despite herself. “I know you’ll be fine,” Audrey continued. “You’re stronger than you think. Besides, your biggest pest is going to be Ephraim, now, anyway.”

Ilse chuckled as they pulled away.

“You must promise to write every other week,” Audrey said. “And so will I.”

“Mama says maybe we can come visit someday,” Ilse added, hopeful. Her glossy dark hair shone in the morning sunlight.

“And I’ll make my father bring me back soon,” Audrey said. “I’ll find a way. I’ll insist.”

“I know you will,” Ilse said with a watery laugh.

For the next two years, Audrey distracted herself with studying acting and music alongside her finishing school classes in London, but her heart was in Berlin. So, in secret, she applied to the premiere konservatorium. It was a prestigious school, but Audrey had guessed—correctly, as it transpired—that her father’s soft spot for her artistic interests might be the ticket back to Berlin, and to Ilse. He agreed to let her return to the continent to attend the conservatory, so long as Ilse’s mother Ruth, a woman of profound caution, kept a watchful eye on her.

But now, her father wanted her back safely in England. Audrey knew, on a level, that he had a point. The attack on Ephraim wasn’t an isolated incident. It was indicative of the climate, the hatred of Jews and anyone who didn’t fit the Nazis’ own definition of who was a “good” or “real” German. But she wasn’t about to waste three years of her time, dedication, and her father’s money by abandoning her program so close to the finish. She’d written back, reminding him that her graduation was only a few weeks away, and she would return then.

She caught her bus at the end of the street. As the vehicle meandered through the city, the prospect of leaving again weighed on her mind. She did miss her father, in a way. Despite his aloofness, he was still her family, and their relationship had improved somewhat as she got older. But she hated the thought of going back to London. Victor had allowed her to pursue an artistic education, but he still believed that a woman’s place was in the home, supporting her husband and bearing children. Audrey didn’t much fancy the looming battle of trying to convince him that she wanted more than a half-life. She didn’t want her own aspirations stifled by the effort of supporting a man. She didn’t want to live for someone else, masquerading under his name. She wanted to see her own name up in lights on a stage someday because of her own talent and hard work.

At her father’s insistence, Audrey had her passage to England booked, but she had buried the ticket beneath a stack of cardigans in her dresser drawer, as though hoping to smother it into nonexistence.

She didn’t know what the alternative was, but she couldn’t imagine leaving the whole Kaplan family when their lives had shrunk so much over the past while. Ilse was forced to abandon her nursing training, and they all had to carry identity cards stating their Jewish heritage. Before the attack on Ephraim, the most recent blow had been when Jewish passports were invalidated and stamped with a J. Prior to that, Audrey had some vague thoughts that perhaps the whole Kaplan family would come with her to London after her graduation. She knew Ruth wanted to leave, as so many Jews were choosing to do, or at least send their children to England on the kindertransports. But Herr Kaplan wouldn’t hear of it.

“This is our home,” he’d said. “And I have my business, Ruth. We cannot pack up and leave all that.” He shook his head. His textile company was one of the few remaining under Jewish ownership.

“Yet with each passing day, it becomes more likely our business will be stripped from us, Ira,” Ruth pleaded. “So many already have.”

“But ours may not. And if we emigrate, we will lose all our wealth to the Flight Tax,” he’d replied. “Germany will regress toward the mean. We must simply wait out the madness. Have faith, Ruth.”

But Audrey could see that Ruth’s faith was tested. As was Ilse’s. Even mischievous, twelve-year-old Ephraim was wary after his ordeal with the Hitler Youth, and Ruth’s sense of caution had blossomed into full-scale paranoia. None of them went outside much anymore. Previously mundane excursions to the grocer or bank were anxious, fleeting errands where Ruth or Ira tried to conduct their business as discreetly as possible under the black and red swastikas draped with imposing ceremony over doorways and on buildings. The emblem that signified the constant presence of the Führer in their daily lives.

Audrey let out a heavy sigh. The bus was stuffy. The Kaplans’ house was still a twenty-minute walk away, but she got off early. She readjusted her grip on her satchel, welcoming the cool autumn air, a tonic after the cloud of gloom that dogged her. When she reached the house, she scaled the few steps up to the front porch, then glanced back across the treed street at her childhood home, now occupied by a couple in their seventies, the Richters.

Audrey turned the key in the lock and the sound of her footsteps echoed inside the expansive entryway. She removed her shoes and headed into the telephone room, which was kitty-corner to the front door. This room was her favourite in the Kaplans’ grand home. It was small, perhaps five feet square, large enough for a utility chair, telephone, and a little desk, which sat right beneath the mail slot on the other side of the porch. The post would slide through and land in a large wicker tray next to a brass banker’s lamp and a smart, six-inch-long silver letter opener with an ivory handle. Seeing the latest Modenschau fashion magazine on top of the pile of post, Audrey hissed in excitement and hurried upstairs to find Ilse.

She knocked but didn’t wait for a response before bursting into Ilse’s room. Her friend was lying on her stomach on her butter-yellow bedcovers, knees bent, stocking feet drifting side to side like a metronome.

“It’s arrived!” Audrey said, holding up the magazine.

Ilse let out a little squeal. “Ooh! Let me see, let me see!”

Audrey handed it over and flopped down beside her.

“How was rehearsal?” Ilse asked, turning a page.

“Good. Fine.”

“Are you feeling ready for the recital?”

“I suppose, yes,” Audrey said. “But to be honest, the fact that none of you will be able to be there has sort of taken the shine off. It’s not right.”

Ilse nodded. “I know. I wish I could. You know that.”

“But it’s really not a big thing, anyway,” Audrey said with a wave of her hand. It was, and she was immensely proud of her accomplishment, but she carried such guilt about it now.

Ilse frowned. “Don’t be stupid. Of course it’s a big thing. You’ve worked hard for this, and you’re talented. I know what you’re doing, and you can stop right now.”

Ilse had a way of seeing straight through Audrey that was both endearing and occasionally problematic.

“All right. But you should have graduated already, Ilse. It isn’t fair that I got to finish this, and you didn’t get your nursing certificate.”

Ilse sighed. “There isn’t much point wailing about it, though, is there? I can’t be a nurse if Jewish doctors can’t practice, and Mama’s made up her mind about our restrictions. She’s half-mad with worry.”

Audrey knew Ilse didn’t blame Ruth. Not really. But she was clearly growing weary of the limitations foisted on them.

“I’ll still be useful in some ways, even without the certificate,” Ilse said. She’d been the one to give Ephraim his stitches. It was becoming nearly impossible to find a Jewish doctor who was still willing to work, even under the table. “But that’s why you need to let me help you choose a dress! At least I can participate somehow. I’m proud of you. You’re going to be a concert pianist one day, I’m sure of it. On some big London stage.”

Audrey nudged her friend playfully. “I doubt it, but I love you for saying so. Though I’d far rather be here instead of London.”

Ilse’s eyes were wistful. “I know.” She squeezed Audrey’s hand. “If we’re to be separated again soon, all the more reason to celebrate now, right?”

It had been just as difficult in the weeks leading up to Audrey’s first departure to London, years ago. But she’d been not much more than a child then, just fifteen. This time felt as though it ought to be different, that Audrey should be able to decide whether to stay or leave Berlin. She was twenty now, a woman. She told Ilse as much.

“Except no one considers you a woman until you’re married, do they?” Ilse said. “As far as making your own choices. Until then, it’s your father’s call.”

Audrey scoffed. “Right. And then after a woman gets married, her choices are limited to what her husband is willing to allow. We’re just always under a man’s control. What if I don’t want that?”

Ilse rolled her eyes. “I know you’ve never been interested in marriage, or boys generally.”

Audrey cast her eyes to the embroidery on Ilse’s bedspread, the subtle pattern of forget-me-nots, dark yellow against the lighter fabric. She recalled the only time a boy tried to court her, when she was thirteen and had hardly adjusted to all the new changes in her body. She hated the development of her breasts, the onset of her menstruation and all it meant. That she was a woman now, Sophie told her. But all she’d ever seen of women’s lot was death and heartbreak and discontent. And when the son of the grocer two streets over approached her with a bouquet and a request for a kiss, Ilse had had to defuse her ire as Audrey hit him with the flowers. Muttering apologies to the rejected boy, Ilse had marched Audrey home from the market, offering an understanding ear and a gentle lecture on propriety as rogue daisy petals clung to Audrey’s hair from the skirmish.

“You might find you want to get married one day, you know,” Ilse said now. “People change. They grow.”

“You mean they grow up,” Audrey said wryly. “They concede to what’s expected of them.”

Ilse turned back to the magazine, and Audrey knew she was giving up the fight for another day.

“I like this one,” Ilse said, pointing at a long gown. “The Empire waist—”

“Doing girl things?” a loud voice said from above.

Audrey’s eyes whipped up to the ceiling, where Ephraim’s head had just emerged from the attic access door. Lately he had taken to using the attic for play, as he had done as a young child, and the location of the access allowed him to torment his sister whenever she least expected it.

“Ephraim!” Ilse cried. “Get out! How long have you been up there, you yutz?”

Ephraim cackled and threw the rope ladder over, then scampered down. He stuck out his tongue at Ilse, who pitched a pillow at his head, which he narrowly dodged.

“Mind my stitches!” he shouted, deliberately loud enough for Ruth to hear, wherever she was in the house.

“He’s so childish sometimes,” Ilse said as he darted out the door. “What about this one, then?” She folded the magazine over to better display a page.

“Mm,” Audrey said, frowning. “I don’t think so. The sleeves are too billowy. They’ll get in the way of playing. I like the wrap-front on that one though. But I’d need it tea-length, so it doesn’t interfere with the pedals.”

It seemed a little ridiculous to focus so much on the dress, considering everything that was going on. But it was, as Ilse had said, a way for her to be involved, and served as a bit of welcome distraction from the stress in the house. Audrey also knew that it mattered. Only two women would be performing at the graduation—the rest were male, and would all wear the same black suit, that equalizer of men. But what a woman wore was always important, no matter how skilled—or inept—she might be. The right outfit had a way of validating a woman. Whether that fact was fair or not was irrelevant. Anyone who denied it was a fool.

Audrey and Ilse whiled away another hour perusing the pages of the magazine before wandering downstairs. It would only be another half hour before supper, and Ira was due home any time now.

They found Ruth and Ephraim in the sitting room. Ephraim had settled from his earlier unruliness and was curled in a large leather armchair by the fireplace, working in his notebook. He was always writing. What he was writing, no one really knew. But he was rarely seen without ink stains on his fingers. Wherever Ephraim was, a shadow always followed; the negative space his twin brother, Michael, should have filled. He’d died of a dreadful fever before the boys had even reached their second birthday. Audrey had been nine, but she still remembered little Michael’s eyes, because they were serious yet warm, just like Ilse’s. Such a contrast to Ephraim’s mischievous ones.

Michael’s death had wrought a permanent change in Ruth, as though a piece of her very body had died that day, too, only she hadn’t ever attempted to amputate it. She’d just allowed it to fester and grow gangrenous, seeping into the rest of her cells because the contamination served as a constant reminder of the child she had lost, ensuring he was unforgotten. Audrey couldn’t imagine why anyone would ever have children at all, if in the act of doing so, one had to risk enduring such ruinous pain. She couldn’t make sense of it. It was one of the major ways in which she and Ilse differed; Ilse wanted so much to be a mother one day.

Now, Ruth was staring into the fire, clutching a folded newspaper so hard her knuckles were white.

Ilse stopped in the doorway. “Is everything all right, Mama?”

Ruth nodded but didn’t make eye contact. She was only forty-two, but her light brown hair was streaked with grey, making her look older than her husband, who was seven years her senior.

Ilse exchanged a glance with Audrey, who shrugged.

“Game of bridge?” Ilse suggested. Audrey was a terrible player and always had been, but played on occasion for Ilse’s sake.

“I’m sort of enjoying my book right now,” she said. Ilse chuckled, then took her usual place over on the navy velvet divan. Audrey followed, settling at the opposite end of the small sofa and picking up the copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy that she’d been reading. Ilse had been immersed in Virginia Woolf lately, and had already disappeared behind A Room of One’s Own. The Kaplans’ wealth enabled them to boast a fabulous library that Audrey had worked her way through twice in the three years she had been living there. Ilse’s father believed that knowledge and self-education were essential for all, women included.

Ten minutes later, a series of clicks at the front door alerted the family to his arrival. Ruth exhaled. There was always an underlying sense of tension in the air when Ira was out, palpable relief when he came home safe.

“Papa!” Ilse said happily, but her smile slipped from her face when Ira appeared in the doorway, looking drawn and tired.

His eyes went to the newspaper in his wife’s hands. “Ruth—”

“You saw it, then?” she demanded, cheeks flushed.

“It is not as bad as all that.”

“What isn’t as bad as all that?” Ilse asked.

“Let us just sit and talk it over,” Ira said, kneeling beside his wife and reaching for her hand.

“What is it, Papa?” Ilse asked again.

He hesitated a fraction too long, and Audrey’s gut twinged.

“Hitler has ordered the deportation of all Polish-born Jews from Germany.”

The room was silent.

“But we aren’t Poles, Papa,” Ephraim said. “We are Germans.”

Ira cleared his throat. “No, son, we are not Poles. But these people were denied entry by Poland and are now living in ghettos on the border. Stateless. Homeless.” He paused. “It would seem that a young man in Paris has parents in one of the ghettos, and has exacted revenge by shooting a Nazi diplomat. The propaganda”—he glanced down at the paper still clutched in Ruth’s other hand—“makes it clear that Hitler is using this assassination to fan the flames of outrage. So…” He trailed off, massaging his forehead in a weary sort of way.

“So… what, Papa?” Ilse pressed. “Are we in danger?”

“We are always in danger,” Ruth said.

Herr Kaplan shot his wife a placatory look. “We are not in imminent danger,” he said. “But there is no denying the escalation. We must continue to exercise caution, whilst maintaining our composure and our faith that more secure times lie ahead. I do not wish for you to live in fear. At least, no more than you already do,” he added heavily. “But there is no doubt these recent events are pushing Germany to a boiling point. We must take care not to get burned.”

Ruth just nodded. “Dinner should be ready now,” she said, ending the discussion. “Supper is a more casual affair this evening,” she added as the family gathered in the dining room. Matya, their cook and housekeeper, had to leave early, she explained. “Her mother is ill.”

“That’s not a problem, my love, this looks wonderful,” Ira said, sitting down at the head of the table.

“What shall we pray for tonight, Papa?” Ephraim asked.

Over the course of their childhood, and as their guest over the past few years, Audrey had gotten quite used to feeling out of place during prayer times. Though she had been baptized as a child, her family was not particularly religious. She had only attended church at Christmas or Easter. Audrey had always supposed her father had simply given up on God after the death of his wife, his first and true love, and she couldn’t entirely blame him for the departure. Whilst she found some measure of comfort in the familiar hum of the Hebrew words, it seemed to her, given all the dreadful things happening in the world, that it was unlikely anyone was listening.

Audrey watched Ira fix his surviving son with a hard look that didn’t entirely eclipse the unease beneath. Ilse was also studying her brother, brow furrowed as she took in his stitches, the bruising. Ira swallowed.

“Deliverance,” Ruth said softly, her eyes swimming with tears.

But her husband shook his head slowly back and forth.

“Reason,” he said. “We shall pray for reason.”