Chapter 39 Audrey 
BERLIN, GERMANY | MAY 1945
Audrey’s stomach began to flutter as her train neared Berlin, and she feared she might be sick when it pulled into the station. But as she disembarked and made her way through the crowd toward the busy street, she noted the absence of the Nazi insignia, the scores of imposing flags that used to drape throughout the city. It felt like the morning after a storm, when light filters through the grim, grey dawn. But the city had been badly bombed in the Battle of Berlin just weeks ago.
At the field hospital in the Netherlands, Audrey had been glued to the newspapers covering the Allied Soviet invasion of the city, at once elated by the liberation and terrified for Ilse. Her last letter had come in February and she’d still been safe then. Audrey had wanted to write from the hospital, to make sure she was still all right, but her nurse said there was no point. No post would reach Berlin. Not when Germany was falling back, the end of the war finally in sight.
Now, though, Audrey saw just how extensive the Soviet assaults had been, and her anxiety about Ilse’s welfare crested. There were piles of rubble everywhere from countless destroyed buildings. Others were missing their windows and blackened with soot. The streets were filthy, the dust only just beginning to settle. Her feet carried her, with a slight limp, over the old Moltkebrucke bridge, which was still standing, then through the streets that were at once familiar and unrecognizable. She took them in with a reserved, painful nostalgia.
When she rounded the end of the Kaplans’ street, she gasped at the line of row houses. Several doors down, two houses had been nearly destroyed, their roofs all but gone. A few wooden beams and patches of shingles remained, hanging at strange angles. The windows were no longer there; Audrey could see inside the front rooms where most of the walls had been entirely blown away.
She ran now as best she could toward the Kaplans’ and let out a cry of relief to see the front door and windows intact. There was even a light on in the sitting room. She summited the steps, paused for a deep breath, then knocked.
A long moment passed before the door opened. Audrey’s throat tightened at the sight of an unfamiliar woman standing in front of her.
What had happened to Ilse? Her thoughts swirled, each more horrific than the last. She saw the Gestapo shouting, dragging Ilse out into the snow as she screamed her protest. Daniel crying in her arms. An officer threatening them with a gun to the head, shoving them into the back of a van headed for the same place all the Jews had gone. This woman and her Nazi husband moving their furniture in the next day.
“Hello,” the woman said. She was a bit older than Audrey, with light brown hair. “Can I help you?”
Audrey didn’t know what to say. Did she dare ask for Ilse?
“Ma’am, are you quite all right?” The woman was concerned now. Perhaps she thought Audrey a madwoman. A vagrant or a beggar. She was sure she must look the part.
“Er—” Audrey stuttered, swallowing her fear. “Perhaps I have the wrong house.”
There was the sound of small feet running and a boy appeared at the woman’s elbow. Audrey took in his clipped dark hair and pleated trousers, the eyes she’d known she would remember for the rest of her life.
“Daniel?” she breathed.
“Yes?” he said.
“Is Ilse here?” Audrey asked the woman now, heart pounding in desperation. “Friedrich?”
“Oh!” she replied. “Are you a friend?”
Audrey nodded warily. “Yes. My name is Audrey. Audrey James.”
Recognition flooded the woman’s face. “Hello, Audrey. I am Gisela Müller, Friedrich’s sister. He said you would come. I prayed you would. And soon.”
The fog lifted. Gisela. The sister who had dragged Friedrich out of the forest when he was a child… But her being here—what did that mean?
Before she could ask, Gisela ushered her in.
Daniel shut the door behind Audrey, and they stared at one another. She recalled the distinct memory of feeling his body lifeless against hers. He was a miracle.
“You’re so big now,” she said, then to Gisela, “I knew Daniel when he was just a baby. I used to live here.”
“I know,” Gisela said. “You’d better sit down. I’ll make some tea. I believe we have a great deal to discuss, Fräulein James.”
“I’d like to see Ilse first. Where is she?” Audrey asked, heading toward the stairs.
“She’s sleeping right now.”
“I’m sure she won’t mind me waking her, I—”
“I don’t think Ilse ought to be disturbed at the moment.”
“Where is Friedrich, then?” Audrey asked, struggling to keep the frustration from her voice.
But Gisela ignored her, turning to Daniel. “Go play quietly in your room please, Daniel. I must speak to this lady.”
Daniel obliged. When he was gone, Gisela led Audrey into the sitting room.
“What’s going on?” Audrey pressed, heat rising in her face. “Where is Friedrich?”
“He was arrested two weeks ago,” Gisela said. “After Germany surrendered, the Allies came for the officials. I assume he is in prison. I do not know where.”
Audrey lowered herself to the couch. She shouldn’t be surprised. Technically, Friedrich was SS. Of course he’d be arrested, but she’d hoped… She looked at Gisela. “I’m sorry. Did he tell you… Do you know what he was doing before the war? What he was really doing?”
Gisela nodded. Audrey saw the light from the window reflecting on the tears in her eyes, like a glimmer on glass. “I do. I am proud of him.”
“You are?”
“Yes. And he told me about you. You resisted with him. He said you went to prison for it, but you never gave him away.”
Audrey looked down at her fingers. “It was the right thing to do. Ilse and Daniel needed Friedrich more than they needed me.”
Gisela touched Audrey’s hand. “I’m thankful you did. Friedrich may be my half brother, but we grew up as siblings. I never knew of my father’s affair until later. I understood why Friedrich left to go fight Hitler. It was for his mother. For himself.”
Audrey studied Gisela’s face, afraid to ask the question that burned in her mind. Afraid of the answer. “Why are you here, Gisela?”
“About a year ago,” Gisela said, “Friedrich wrote to me and asked me to come. Ilse was unwell and he couldn’t manage caring for her and Daniel whilst also maintaining his cover at work.”
“Unwell?” Audrey repeated, as fear surged in her chest. “What’s wrong?”
Gisela sighed. “She had been short of breath, even just going up the stairs. She fainted on several occasions, once whilst at the stove, and sustained a bad shoulder injury. She was weak, and getting weaker. Friedrich managed to find a sympathetic doctor, who thinks it’s some sort of heart condition.”
Audrey shook her head. “This doesn’t make any sense. She’s so young.”
“The doctor says the problem has likely been there for years. Possibly her whole life. But it has worsened in the past year.”
“Why?”
Gisela shook her head.
“What’s the treatment?” Audrey asked.
Gisela glanced away.
“Gisela.”
“There is none,” she said quietly. “The doctor has been here several times in the past few weeks. She hasn’t long left, I’m afraid.” Gisela paused. “Ilse is dying, Audrey.”
Her words echoed in Audrey’s ears.
“I am terribly sorry,” Gisela went on. “But it is in God’s hands now.”
Audrey didn’t want to believe it. She tried not to. This simply couldn’t be.
“She never said anything,” she said, stricken. “Why wouldn’t she tell me?”
Gisela’s eyes were full of sympathy. “She did not want to worry you, she said. You had enough—”
Audrey rose. “I need to see her.”
On the stairs, the familiarity of the house hit Audrey like a sharp blow to the chest. She had hoped to come back, but it had always felt like a distant dream that might never come true. And now this homecoming burned, sour and acidic.
Outside Ilse’s room, she hesitated, afraid to startle her, but there was no way her arrival would not come as a shock.
She knocked.
Ilse’s voice came through. “Come in.”
Audrey’s gut clenched at the sound, and the sudden realization that she might not have much longer to hear it, if what Gisela said was true. She swallowed the lump in her throat and turned the handle with a creak.
And there was her best friend in all the world, her dearest love, sitting up in bed in her nightgown, a light blue crocheted blanket slung round her shoulders.
“Audrey!” Ilse gasped, and her chin started to tremble. “Oh my God. Oh my God.” She held out her arms and Audrey rushed into them, wrapping her own around Ilse’s small body. Before Audrey’s arrest, Ilse had gained back some of the weight she’d lost in hiding, but she’d lost it all again, plus some. Her fragility was a shock, and Audrey tried not to squeeze too tightly.
Audrey pulled back. There was no weakness in Ilse’s dark eyes, though. “Ilse—”
Her friend shook her head, at a loss for words. They were finally here. Together. Both alive, after all that had happened, after so many wretched years of separation. Warm spring sunlight crept in through the window, which was opened a crack; the chirp of birds and the scent of lilac wafted in on the breeze. The bedside table lamp was on, a notebook and pencil set beside it.
Ilse was smiling through heaving sobs, and Audrey leaned in and held her again, inhaling her. Her hair tickled the side of Audrey’s cheek.
“Is it true?” Audrey managed.
Ilse exhaled, trying to steady her breath. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she whispered. “I couldn’t bear it. I had hoped it would all turn out to be nothing of concern. It got better sometimes, then worse, then…” She cleared her gummy throat, and pulled away gently. “You were in prison. I only wanted to bring you good news, speak of happy things. Happier times.” Her voice wavered. “But you haven’t been honest with me either,” she said, taking in Audrey’s jutting shoulders and collarbone. “You’re skin and bones, and your hands…” She took them in her own. “Friedrich told me about the interrogation. I’m so sorry, Audrey. But tell me everything now, please. We must lay it all out.”
Audrey sighed. She knew Ilse thought she wanted to know, but she didn’t. Not really. Audrey didn’t even think she could bear to relay it all, anyway. Not yet. So she settled for some half-truths, telling Ilse her tale but stopping short of the full story where the reality became too unbearable. She didn’t tell her about how Wen had died. She couldn’t bear to speak of death with Ilse, who followed Audrey’s story for the better part of an hour, all the way up to her own front door that afternoon. When she finished, they both sat for a minute in silence.
“You’re still here because some judge thought you unusually brave,” Ilse said.
“Or mad,” Audrey said.
Ilse smiled weakly. “Why does that not surprise me?”
Audrey squeezed her hand. “And Friedrich? Gisela told me.”
Ilse averted her gaze. “He’s been so good to me. I know I told you some of it in my letters, but I want you to know that. I really did come to love him. Truly. And he loves me. We’re a good match. And now he won’t be here when—” She looked at Audrey, eyes red. “We talked about fleeing, before Berlin fell, to try to avoid his arrest. But I was too ill to travel, and he wouldn’t leave me. He said he hoped to be able to prove himself, but…” Audrey watched her with sympathy. “He was wonderful with Daniel too. He was as good as a father. It was a joy to watch. God, poor Daniel. He was so distraught when Friedrich was arrested. He still asks for him. All I can tell him is that he’s gone. How can I ever explain this to him?”
“We would have been lost without Friedrich,” Audrey admitted.
“I’m so grateful he called for Gisela when he did, once it was clear that things would be getting more difficult,” Ilse said. “I resisted it at first, but thank God, given what happened. She’s been so kind to me too. I’ve been very fortunate.”
How had things gone so wrong with the world that after all that had happened to Ilse, she still considered herself one of the lucky ones?
Audrey swallowed. “And the doctor, he’s quite sure there’s no treatment?”
“Yes. He’s sure. But you know”—she lifted her eyes to the ceiling, blinking hard—“I’m finding I don’t mind so much. Not really. It’s…”
Audrey waited whilst she searched the heavens for the words.
“I’m happy, in a way. Relieved, perhaps? I believe I’ll be with my family. Somewhere. Somehow. I’ve missed them so much.”
“I know. But we don’t know yet, about—”
“We do,” Ilse said, renewed tears shining in her brown eyes. “Friedrich found out last year. He was finally able to track them down. They were moved to the Dachau camp, then separated at one point, which made it more difficult. Mama…” She took a shaky breath. “Mama died in forty-two at Dachau. January ninth. All the record said was that she was ill.” Her shoulders fell. “And Ephraim was transferred to a camp at Mauthausen, for labour. He was murdered.” Her tone rose as she forced the words from her throat. “In a gas chamber. Last March. The sixteenth.”
Tears poured down Audrey’s cheeks, and nausea surged, tinged with as much rage as she could spare the energy for. “Oh Ilse. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ilse reached for her face, brushed away the tears with her thumbs. “This is why. I couldn’t bear to deliver you more heartache, make things any more difficult for you than they already were.”
They held each other again for a long while, entwining their grief like a pair of thorn-covered vines. A ray of spring sunlight shone in a bar across Ilse’s bedspread. Audrey looked down at the pattern of forget-me-nots. The flower that represented true love.
“I’ve thought about those dates,” Ilse said, sitting back against the headboard now. “Tried to recall what I was doing. Busy with Daniel, no doubt. But I must have risen and eaten and played with him and gone to bed and never felt a thing. Don’t you think that’s odd? I thought I would have known, would have felt it somehow in my heart. I think that’s part of the reason I never believed they were dead. Why I wanted to wait. But at least I’m not waiting for them anymore.” She tried to smile. “They’re all waiting for me now.”
“Don’t say that, Ilse,” Audrey murmured, her heart breaking all over again. She leaned forward and laid her head in Ilse’s warm lap.
“I’ve come to terms with it, Audrey, and you must, too,” Ilse said, stroking her thin hair. “Do you ever think about what would have happened if you’d found the dress you wanted at Hertie’s? If we hadn’t gone over the street to that little gown shop? We would have still been with my parents, and then… It just makes no sense. That I survived, and they didn’t. Because of a happenstance like that. And now? Maybe I was just never meant to live through this. Maybe nothing we did mattered.”
Audrey took a deep breath and surfaced, mopping her face with her sleeve. “I’ve thought about it. Of course I have. But our efforts weren’t all for nothing. We got you six more years that you wouldn’t have had if you’d been there with your family that day. You got to be a mother, Ilse. You fulfilled a dream. That has to have been worth it. It is for me. That you got to live a little longer. That you get to be here, at home, at—at the end.” It took strenuous effort to maintain her composure. She would need to be strong for Ilse one last time.
“You went to such trouble for me,” Ilse said. “To help me. You saved my life. You endured so much, Audrey.”
“Not as much as many,” Audrey muttered.
“I can’t ever thank you enough for it. And I don’t think I did at the time, really. Not like I should have.”
“I would do it all again. All of it.” And she meant it.
“All of our partings have felt impossible to endure,” Ilse said. “But we’ll only have to say goodbye once more.” Audrey’s heart was barbed with grief. “I love you, Audrey,” Ilse said.
“I love you too.”
Audrey shifted, resting her head on Ilse’s shoulder. At long last, she felt as though she had come home. She closed her eyes, soaking in the comfort.
They stayed like that for a long time. Birds twittered in the tree outside the window. Spring was here, and summer would arrive just as surely afterward, no matter who died or lived or what wonderful or horrible things happened in the world. Summer would still come.
“My great regret is leaving Daniel so young,” Ilse said, breaking the silence. “Here,” she said, leaning forward and reaching around behind her neck. She unclasped her mother’s necklace and held it out for Audrey. “Will you give this to him for me? When he’s older? I want him to have something of mine. Of the family’s.”
The chain pooled in the palm of Audrey’s hand. What she had always taken for a pendant was actually a small locket, the family monogram K ornately engraved in the centre.
“Of course,” Audrey said, closing her fingers around the silver.
A long time passed, each of the women lost in her own thoughts. It was peaceful, and soon Audrey began to think Ilse had fallen asleep again, but then she spoke, murmuring into Audrey’s shoulder.
“Before I go, there’s something else I need to ask you.”
Audrey lingered in the doorway of the Kaplan house as she watched the solicitor leave. The boulevard trees were in full leaf now, but the summer colours and scents were diminished this year, as though painted over with a sheen of grey. The warm July breeze touched her skin and her mind traveled back. Time moved fast and expired quickly at the best of times; even more so under the incubating heat of a war.
How many times had she crossed this street to go play with Ilse? If she listened, she could still hear their little girls’ voices on the wind, chanting out skipping rhymes. She could see the withered shadows of their bouncing ringlets, their buckled shoes on the road. Their childhood selves were suspended in time on this street, and always would be, even though Ilse was now gone.
She had died quietly in her sleep a week ago. Audrey was at the piano with Daniel, teaching him how to play Ilse’s theme when Gisela came downstairs with a full breakfast tray. Audrey knew what had happened by the look on her face. Gisela set the tray down on the coffee table and pulled Audrey into a hug. She was much shorter, but held her tightly as Audrey wept. Daniel looked up at the two of them with wide brown eyes that were keen for answers. Answers, Audrey feared, she might never be able to give him.
Only one family from Ilse’s synagogue had come back from the camps. A woman named Anna who was once pretty but returned from Auschwitz with thin, short hair, dull eyes, and a limp. She came home with her teenage son, just one of the five children who were taken with her and her husband in the winter of ’42. Ilse had left her name and address, and a few hours after Ilse’s death, Audrey knocked on Anna’s door. Anna didn’t say much, just followed her back to the house and directed Audrey on how to prepare Ilse’s body. She wished she could honour her friend more thoroughly, but this was the best they could do under the circumstances.
Ilse was buried in the Kaplan family plot on the Grosse Hamburgerstrasse alongside her paternal grandparents. Audrey stood beside the grave, holding Daniel’s little hand as he cried for his mama. She was at a loss for what to say that might soothe him. They didn’t sit shiva in any formal way, but Audrey stayed at the house for a week after Ilse’s death, delaying the inevitable.
Now she glanced at the stack of documents from the solicitor in her hand and turned to go back inside. She stopped for a moment, leaned against the doorway between the hall and sitting room, remembering how it was Ludwig Thurman’s usual spot. She wondered on occasion what had become of him. Was he arrested along with Friedrich? Or had he managed to turn his coat effectively enough to avoid capture? She shook the questions from her head. After all he’d done—or rather not done—she found she didn’t really care what had become of him.
Daniel was sitting at Ruth’s piano in his blue collared shirt and suspenders, feet grazing the pedals as he picked at the high notes, the summer sun illuminating his hair from the sitting room window.
When Ilse asked Audrey that day up in her bedroom if she would take Daniel, she had agreed, of course. Audrey couldn’t bear to deny anything Ilse wanted or needed, particularly in those final weeks. She would have fought a bear or cut off another one of her own toes if Ilse had asked her to.
“Thank you, Audrey,” Ilse had said through more tears. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. Gisela made some enquiries with an orphanage right after Friedrich’s arrest. But you turning up here has answered my prayers.”
Ilse knew Audrey never wanted to be a mother, knew the prospect terrified her. Ilse always thought that her resistance was based on a fear of childbirth, given how her own mother had died. She’d presumed Audrey was actually all right with the concept itself. But she was wrong.
Gisela came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Lunch is nearly ready. Everything settled with the solicitor?”
“Yes,” Audrey said.
In April, when it became clear that Germany was on the brink of surrender, Friedrich had withdrawn most of his money and put it in a trust for Daniel. Audrey would now manage the account until he came of age to inherit.
“Good,” Gisela said. “I think, then, it is time I return to Austria.”
Audrey nodded. “Thank you for staying so long, and for everything you’ve done for Ilse, and for Daniel. For me. You’ve been a good friend to us all when most would have abandoned the responsibility quite some time ago. I’m very grateful to you.”
Gisela inclined her head. “It is what Friedrich would have wanted. He thought very highly of you, I hope you know. And besides, I have—had—grown fond of Ilse. She was very special to Friedrich.”
His name hung in the empty space between them.
“Are you going to try to learn what’s happened to him?” Audrey asked.
“Yes, of course. I have already made some enquiries, but it is difficult to get accurate information. I think the administration of justice is going to be challenging. It may be years before it is all sorted out.”
“I hope they’ll be fair to him,” Audrey said. “He wasn’t like the others.”
“But he wore the insignia. He lived in a commandeered Jewish home. The version of himself that he put forward to mask his true intentions and sentiments was thorough. It will be difficult for him to prove otherwise, I fear. On paper, he is as guilty as the rest.”
Audrey knew she was right, but it was hard to hear it all the same. She pitied him, knew how it would have felt for him to be arrested and taken from Ilse, unsure of what would happen to her.
“My thoughts go with you,” she said to Gisela. “When you do find him, please tell him thank you. For everything. I’m indebted to you both.”
Gisela managed a smile. “I shall. What is next for you?”
Audrey sighed. “There’s nothing for me here, now. It doesn’t feel like home anymore. I don’t really have one.” She looked over at Daniel. “But I’m going to need help. I can’t do this alone. I have an aunt in England, the only family I have left. I figure that’s as good a place as any. For now, anyway.”
Gisela nodded. “We will all have to forge new paths for ourselves in this overturned world. Find our way. May the stars light your journey, Audrey James.”