Chapter 9 Audrey 
BERLIN, GERMANY | DECEMBER 1938
Audrey was elbow-deep in suds from the washing-up when Vogt entered the kitchen. She glanced over her shoulder, swallowed, then turned back to the dishes. She hated having her back to him, or being alone with him. She always felt like cornered prey.
“Guten Abend, Audrey.”
He opened the icebox and helped himself to some of the leftover chicken that Audrey was hoping to give Ilse for breakfast tomorrow. She cursed him inwardly.
“Guten Abend, Herr Vogt. I could have brought that out to you.”
He ripped a piece of the chicken with his teeth. “I am aware,” he said, licking the grease on his lips.
It was the men’s weekly poker night. She had learned in the first few days that Müller and Vogt would be hosting these gatherings every Friday. When Vogt informed her that she would be expected to cook beforehand and clean up after, she had been ironing his shirts. She smiled graciously but her gut swirled with apprehension that there would now be several more Nazis hanging about the house.
“But I’m sure you’re up to the task, Audrey,” Vogt had said, taking in her appearance from her feet all the way up to her chest. “You look like the sort of woman who knows how to take care of men.”
Audrey hated herself for blushing. She had never been spoken to like that by a man. She felt naked in front of him. She tried to believe that his hand had only accidentally grazed her bottom when he’d left, but, a month later, she knew better. Even now, he passed by her unnecessarily close on his way out.
Once he’d left, her shoulders relaxed, and she set the last of the dishes in the wooden drying rack beside the sink. There would be many more glasses to clean when the evening was over. All she wanted was to take a bath and crawl into bed. But she had work to do. She began to prepare a small plate of biscuits to go with the men’s after-dinner cocktails.
She wished they could have kept Matya on to help with the food preparation, which was not in Audrey’s bailiwick. Her first couple of meals weren’t outstanding successes, but she did her best with the box of kosher recipes Matya had kept on the kitchen counter, added some pork every so often and hoped it was good enough. She and Ilse felt awful about letting her go. Matya was valued by the family and relied on her income to support both herself and her aging parents. Audrey wondered from time to time what would become of them. They weren’t targeted on the night of the pogrom, but she wouldn’t be surprised if they were trying to flee somehow.
Audrey felt that the key to survival was making herself useful, keeping the men as happy and well fed as possible, and ingratiating herself so that she could pick up on any information Müller and Vogt might have. It required all her skills as a performer, but she was up to the task. Now, plate in hand, she pasted a smile on her face and swept through the door to the dining room.
A cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke hung over the brightly lit room. The men were seated around the Kaplans’ lace-covered dinner table, Müller and Vogt at either end, heads at a table they had no business eating at. She couldn’t stand seeing them sit where Ira and Ruth should have been, and was grateful that Ilse would never witness it.
There were three other men in the poker club, to whom Audrey had been cursorily introduced at their first visit: Claus Von Holten, a stocky fellow in his midtwenties who was shaped rather like a gorilla. Based on snippets of conversation she’d overheard, she surmised he worked in weaponry of some kind. There was also Ludwig Thurman, upper-middle-aged, the oldest of the group by about a decade. He seemed to hate sitting still, and did so reluctantly for each hand of poker. Whenever there was a break in the game, he would stand and pace the room, an overflowing rocks glass and a cigar clutched in the same hand, the other stuffed deep into his trouser pocket. The other men often dressed in more civilian wear for the festivities, but Ludwig wore his uniform as though it were a second skin. Aldous Stoltz was the third guest, a weedy young man with small glasses who didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the group. He walked with a slight limp and used a cane on occasion. She’d never seen him in uniform, though she figured he must be a Party member.
“Ah, Fräulein James,” Müller greeted her now as she offered each man the biscuits in turn. “Thank you for these, but you needn’t fuss over us any longer. We can manage by ourselves for the rest of the evening, and if you bring round any more delights, we may burst. Good night.”
She bobbed a curtsey. “Yes, Herr Müller.”
Despite Müller’s gruffness when they first met, and his hesitancy to hire Audrey, he was reasonable enough to work for. He attempted to make conversation with her, inquiring about her family and experience. She’d embroidered her own history and developed a character to play, which helped her to separate her true self from the persona of a loyal German that she despised, but that was necessary to portray if she wanted Ilse to remain undetected.
In the kitchen, Audrey pressed her ear up against the door to listen in on the conversation. In the days after the pogrom, she’d learned that Jewish children had been banned from attending school, and that the Nazis had fined the Jewish community to pay for the damage done to the city during the riots. That had made international news. Sometimes their boisterous voices dropped to whispers, and Audrey often wondered why. Even now, there was silence beyond the door. Then she heard one of them—Claus, maybe—mutter.
“Nosy one, isn’t she? What are we going to do about that, Fred?”
Audrey blanched.
“I don’t—”
Another voice, Ludwig’s. “We can’t talk about any kind of plan or news with her poking her head in every ten minutes.”
“I know how to keep her busy,” Vogt offered.
“Enough, Vogt,” Müller snapped.
“We could gather at my place instead,” Claus said. “It would be safer without any other ears around.”
Audrey’s breath caught on a hook of fear. Did they suspect her of spying?
“Do your wife and children not have ears, Claus?” Aldous asked.
“Just dismiss her,” Ludwig said.
A creak, as someone shifted in a chair. “I don’t think she’s of any concern,” Müller said. “But I can tell her not to wait on us, if you prefer. She can go upstairs when you’re here.”
“Well, where’s the fun in that?” Vogt asked. “Besides, I’ve got an idea that will please us all. Fräulein!” he shouted. “Audrey, get back in here.”
“Vogt—”
“Audrey!”
Audrey paused a moment, then pushed the door open, adopting a mask of innocence. “Yes, Herr Vogt?”
“You’ve been to finishing school, haven’t you? Learned your pianoforte like all good girls do?”
She paused, nodded.
“Play for us,” he ordered, gesturing at the piano with his thumb. Müller’s mouth was tight. Ludwig rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and took another drink. “Something cheery,” Vogt added.
“Yes, sir,” Audrey said, swallowing the resentment. How dare he warp her talent and joy into some sort of hackneyed diversion, as though she were a circus animal. She wanted to say as much, but dutifully took her place at the bench.
Since the arrival of Vogt and Müller, she’d rarely had a chance to play. The housekeeping and cooking kept her busy, leaving little time for rehearsal, but she was also simply distracted by the stress of their predicament, the uncertainty of their future. But every so often, when the men were away, she would take a reprieve from her chores and sit down to play. She did it for Ilse as much as for herself, to provide some mere delight to her friend, who could still just hear the music upstairs.
It was in those moments that she missed her lessons the most. She’d telephoned Herr Fogel in the first week after Müller and Vogt moved in, fed him a story of familial strife until she could sort out whether it was possible to continue with her program. He’d been disappointed, but hadn’t pressed. She had been so close. The recital was only two weeks away, but Audrey wouldn’t be there. The imminency of that achievement had been thrust into the background of her life by all that had transpired over the past few weeks. She had no emotional energy to spare for the loss of her studies, which paled in comparison to all that Ilse had lost and continued to lose every day she sat trapped inside her own attic with cobwebs and piercing grief for company. Perhaps one day, when the world had turned the right way up again, Audrey could complete the program.
At the piano now, she spared a glance sideways at the dining room. All the men had their heads together, speaking in low tones, except for Vogt, who had risen from the table and wandered over. Audrey clenched her jaw and considered her choice of music. With a rush of brazen defiance, she began to play Mendelssohn’s Piano Sonata Number 2, the piece she’d wanted for her recital but couldn’t use because Mendelssohn was a Jew. Vogt was too vulgar to recognize such a cultured piece, she thought, satisfied at her own trickery.
Leaning against the side of the piano, Vogt set his drink down on the gleaming wood, and Audrey watched as the condensation dripped off the glass. He really was such a brute. She could only imagine what Ruth would have said.
With a pinch in her throat, Audrey cut the piece short and stood up. The other men ceased their conversation and looked over at her and Vogt.
“You didn’t tell us you could play like that,” Vogt said, his voice slick with chagrin.
“You didn’t ask.”
“Mendelssohn,” he said.
She felt her cheeks warm, but said nothing. She’d underestimated him.
“Go.” He flicked his head in the direction of the stairs.
She didn’t need to be told twice.
“And Fräulein,” he called after her. “Next time, you will play Wagner. And you will play to the end.”
Ten minutes later, Audrey locked Ilse’s bedroom door, then tapped gently on the wall beside the attic access, the all-clear message for Ilse. The hatch opened with a soft creak and the rope ladder fell, the ends swishing on the floorboards as Ilse climbed down.
“Oh, God, I have to go,” she whispered.
Audrey opened the door a crack to check that the hall was still deserted, then slipped out to give Ilse some privacy to relieve herself in the basin Audrey kept in the room. Audrey had been bringing water to her bedroom in a large ceramic jug every night. Müller had noticed it once, and she’d told him she found it so terribly dry in the house now that the weather was getting colder, but really it was so Ilse could attempt to bathe herself.
Crouching beside the door in the dark hallway, Audrey wondered, as she did almost every hour of the day, how it had come to this. A few minutes later, she snuck back into the room. Ilse was sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at the floor with a vacant expression.
Quickly, Audrey disposed of the fetid contents of the basin in the toilet, then returned to the bedroom, locking the door behind her.
Ilse hadn’t moved. Audrey hated to see her so diminished. Ilse never complained, but she was coiling into herself. Her dignity had been stripped away. She was alive, yes, but what sort of existence was this? They were fugitives in hiding; the moments they had together were few, confined to whispered exchanges in the middle of the night.
“Come here.” Audrey opened her arms for Ilse, who fitted herself into them, resting her weight against Audrey’s chest as her body shook with suppressed sobs. She exhaled in staccato pieces, broken and detached. Audrey stroked her soft hair. “I don’t know how much longer you can go on like this, Ilse. It’s only been a month, and it’s seemed an eternity.”
It never felt like long enough when she held Ilse, who always moved away first, as she did now.
“I’m fine. I’m just having a weak moment. I can manage this. I can,” she emphasized, in response to Audrey’s look.
Both women jumped as a burst of laughter sounded from the floor below, which set Audrey’s heart racing.
“This is getting more and more precarious. Vogt—”
“What? What did he do? Did he say something?”
“No, but we’re not safe with them here. Their friends. God, there are eyes everywhere. We can’t sustain this much longer without being caught out.” She didn’t know, exactly, what the penalty would be for harbouring a Jew. But it didn’t really matter. If Ilse were caught, Audrey’s life would be forfeit anyway. She knew she loved Ilse more than she should; their current situation had thrust that truth to the forefront of her mind. Though she was still trying to understand what her feelings meant, the thought of anything terrible happening to Ilse was intolerable.
“We can,” Ilse said. “We have so far. I know it’s not safe, but we just have to wait a little longer.”
Audrey still hadn’t heard back from her father. His replies typically arrived within a few weeks, but who knew how the postal service might be impacted by all these new rules and systems the Nazis had implemented. She’d been checking the post daily, not just because she was anxious for news, but because she had told Vogt and Müller that her parents were dead. Also, his letter was sure to contain some reference to Ilse and the Kaplans. If the officers discovered it, the girls were finished. To be safe, she had burned all of her letters from her father and taken responsibility for checking and delivering the post to Müller and Vogt, setting their correspondence—which was occasional—beside their plates on the breakfast table.
She had mixed feelings about what her father would say. Ilse insisted on remaining in the house in case Ephraim and Ruth came back, and Audrey knew, if her father managed to sort out some way to get Ilse to London, that it was going to be a fight. Ilse was so desperately clinging to the prospect of her family’s safe return that she couldn’t see the rope was rapidly fraying beneath their fingers. Audrey had to get her out. If her father didn’t reply soon, she would write again.
“Ilse, if your mother and Ephraim do come back, what then? These men aren’t going to vacate the house just because—”
“Then we’ll all leave, go somewhere, anywhere we can. We’ll find something. Maybe your father will have a solution? Perhaps they could come with us to London.”
Audrey took a deep breath, recognizing the discussion was at an end for now. “Yes, perhaps,” she said.
They listened to the low tones of the men, who seemed to have moved to the sitting room. Glasses clinked.
“I heard you playing,” Ilse said after a pause.
“Yes. Vogt made me.”
“Ah. Well… I’m sorry. But I can’t say I mind. You know I love hearing you. What’s that other piece you’ve been playing lately?”
Audrey’s stomach jerked. “Just something of my own I’m picking away at.”
“What’s it called?”
Claus raised his voice downstairs, and Müller hushed him.
“I, er, I don’t have a name for it yet.”
“I love it.”
Audrey smiled in the darkness. “I’m glad.”
“Do you remember when Papa took us to see Peter Pan when it opened?”
Audrey did remember. That performance, along with another at the Staatsoper Opera House in Hanover around the same time, had sparked her love of music and the piano. “Yes,” she said. “What was that… eleven years ago?”
“Yes. A few months after Michael died. Papa took us to distract us, cheer us up. Mama was in a terrible state.” Audrey reached for her hand, squeezed it. “You couldn’t stop staring at the pianist. I’m not sure you took in a word of the play.”
Audrey chuckled softly. “No, I suppose not.”
“It was always one of my favourite books, you know. Peter Pan.”
Audrey lay back on the bed. “I know.”
“I always thought Peter was foolish,” Ilse said, reclining beside her. “For not wanting to grow up. Though I think he might have been right. It’s not been what I expected.”
“No,” Audrey murmured. She could feel her eyelids growing heavy. “It isn’t.”
“But then I think of little Michael. I suppose the only thing worse than growing up is the alternative. Isn’t it?”
Audrey woke with a start, Ilse still asleep next to her. She berated herself for dozing off. What if one of the men had knocked on the door, wanting something? She thought of Vogt and his many demands.
She sat up, blinking in the dark room. Ilse was breathing deeply, the curves of her frame curled into a ball, as though protecting herself even in her dreams. Audrey wanted to stay like this all night, to bask in a fantasy that things had gone back to normal, that the family was still alive and whole, the house full of love instead of the scent of Nazi boot polish and malice. Without thinking, she bent to kiss Ilse on the head, something she’d never done before.
Ilse stirred.
“You should get to the attic,” Audrey whispered.
Though half-asleep, Ilse scooted up the ladder and shut the attic door.
Through a crack in the curtains, Audrey checked her watch in the light of the streetlamp. Two thirty. She wanted to undress and crawl back into bed, but she’d missed checking the evening post after suppertime, so preoccupied she’d been with the poker night.
She crept downstairs into the dim foyer, lit only by a single lamp casting an orange glow from the sitting room. On poker nights, Müller usually went to bed around eleven thirty, Vogt around midnight. He was most often alone, but sometimes with a woman, a different one each time. Audrey was sure they were prostitutes, and loathed changing Vogt’s sheets, which stank of sweat and perfume and transactional lust.
Audrey opened the door to the telephone room, glanced at the post basket, but it was empty. Tomorrow evening, she would write again to her father.
As she turned back to the hall, she was met with a puzzled-looking Müller in his red velvet dressing gown. She jumped, held a hand to her mouth.
“I’m sorry I frightened you,” he said. “What on earth are you doing at this hour?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, recovering quickly. “I came down for some warm milk. And then I realized I hadn’t collected the post this evening.”
“How meticulous of you.”
Audrey attempted a smile. “I try to be thorough, Herr Müller.”
He stared at her for a moment with a quizzical eye. She wasn’t in her nightdress, which was suspicious.
“Well, good night, sir,” she said, sliding past him toward the staircase.
“Your milk,” he said.
She stopped. “I’m sorry?”
“You said you came down for a glass of warm milk.”
“Oh, yes. Thank you.”
She hurried to the kitchen to prepare the drink she didn’t want. As she opened the icebox, she heard Müller’s soft footsteps behind her.
Just leave me alone, she thought.
“I couldn’t sleep, either,” he said. “I will take some too. Please.”
“I could get you a drink, if you prefer.”
“No, thank you. Milk will be fine.”
Audrey lit a match to start the stove element, and Müller took a seat at the small scrubbed wooden prep table in the kitchen. He crossed one leg over the other, the tassel on his slipper waving gently with the movement.
“How have you been enjoying your position so far, Fräulein?” he asked as Audrey emptied a bottle of milk into a small pot.
“Oh, very well, sir,” she said. “I was pleased to have found new employment so soon after…” She trailed off.
“Were you close with Ira Kaplan?” His tone was conversational, but Audrey knew better.
“Not particularly, sir. I only worked for him for a little under a year. I was already looking for another position when all this transpired.”
He nodded slowly. “I see. And you collected papers from his home so often that you were granted a key? I would have thought a man of his wealth could employ a maid to receive them at the door.”
Audrey swallowed. “I’m not sure, sir,” she said, tossing a modest smile at him. “I just did as I was told.”
He watched her for a while until the milk was hot. Audrey poured it into two porcelain cups and handed one to Müller. “Here you are. If that’s all, I’ll be heading back upstairs—”
“Sit with me, Fräulein,” he said.
“I’m just the housekeeper, sir,” she replied. “I don’t think it’s proper for—”
“I insist.”
Audrey obeyed, and took a seat across from him, feeling flushed.
“Are you quite all right?”
“Oh yes. Just a bit warm standing over the stove.” She waved a hand over her steaming cup. She needed to redirect the conversation, and fast. “So what exactly do you do at the—”
“I must admit that I discovered certain discrepancies during my initial inspection of the house that first day,” he said, cutting across her. “For instance, all the bedrooms were missing blankets from the beds, save for the room you are currently occupying.”
Audrey shrugged. “I cannot speak to that, sir. You said the place was looted. Perhaps—”
“And I have wondered for some time who put the blanket up in front of the broken window.” He twitched his head back in the direction of the sitting room.
Her pulse quickened, but she attempted nonchalance, tracing the rim of her mug with her finger. “Perhaps someone was, what… squatting, is it called?” she suggested. “If the house appeared vacant?”
Herr Müller’s face was impassive, but his eyes scrutinized her. “Perhaps. It is possible. Although if an intruder had been doing so, they arrived and left in the time between the Jews’ exit and our arrival two days later. That seems an odd ploy.”
“Speaking of the Jews’ exit,” she said, seizing an opening, “if the remaining Kaplan family was detained, what happens when they return? I assume their detention is somehow temporary?”
Müller’s eyes were hard. “They will have been sent to one of the camps. Buchenwald. Dachau. Sachsenhausen. They are intended as permanent institutions for the prisoners. All part of the Führer’s scheme for the purification of Germany, Fräulein.”
“Permanent? Surely you—”
“You know, I am not convinced that you are as flighty as you pretend to be. I do not believe a dull mind could ever develop the skill you have as a pianist.” He set his cup down on the table with a thud. “That was most surprising. And you say you were an accounting secretary, so your maths must be above average, particularly for a woman. May I ask why the ruse?”
Audrey took another sip of her milk, willing her cheeks to cool. “Sometimes it is easier, or more advantageous, for a woman to pretend to be less intelligent than she truly is, Herr Müller.”
“Advantageous, how?”
She hesitated, then decided to offer a kernel of truth. “For example,” she said, delivering an expression of mild concern that she hoped would elicit sympathy, “I feign ignorance of Herr Vogt’s advances on me, because it serves me to avoid its manifestation.”
Müller shifted in his seat. “Your concern is not without foundation,” he said quietly.
A twinge of foreboding plucked at Audrey’s insides. It was one thing for her to feel it herself. Quite another to hear Müller confirm it so readily.
“I am not blind, as I’m sure you have by now surmised.” He stood. “I will speak to him, Fräulein James. I regret he has made you uncomfortable.”
Audrey nodded. “Thank you.”
“But I cannot be in the house at all times. It would perhaps be prudent for you to take precautions.”
Audrey cleared her throat. “Yes, sir.”
“Good night,” Müller said.
“Good night.”
Audrey waited until she heard him on the stairs, then took a deep, steadying breath. When she’d finished cleaning the mugs and pot, she went back to the telephone room. Trying to keep her mind from diving too deeply into what she was doing, she retrieved the long silver letter opener, then headed upstairs, her steps heavy with the weight of the conversation. In the hall, a yellow slit of light shone in the crack beneath Vogt’s door. Heart thudding in her ears, Audrey hurried to her room and shut the door.
The house was silent, everything still as night stars. If he was awake, she hoped Vogt wouldn’t hear the sharp metallic click as the lock slid into place.