November 3, 1938
Come to the BDM fund raiser this afternoon, Hetty,” Erna urges at the end of school. “You need a change of scene,” she adds, looking carefully into my eyes. “A . . . break. Besides, I miss him, too, you know. I haven’t seen you, properly, since . . .”
“I know. But Mutti is home. I must take care of her. Soon, I promise.”
She gives me a sad smile and I hurry home.
Mutti returned yesterday. Impossibly thin and angular, she looks like she could be snapped in two. More streaks of gray are visible in her glossy, dark chignon. Like her dress, her eyes are dull. She smiles and hugs me. Tells me it’s good to be home. She’s here, but she isn’t here. The mutti she used to be is buried alongside Karl in the graveyard.
After lunch Mutti and I walk arm in arm to the florist’s on the corner of Hallische Strasse, Kuschi padding quietly at our side.
Mutti looks and looks at the selection of colorful blooms but is unable to decide.
“How about these?” I point to some blue cornflowers. Her favorite color. Her favorite flowers.
“Too cheerful.” She shakes her head.
I look over the selection. Is there such a thing as a flower without cheer?
“Can I help you, dear ladies?” The shop owner sidles toward Mutti, a dazzling smile beneath his stiff-looking mustache.
Mutti gives him a withering glance.
“I’m looking for something suitable for my son’s grave,” she says.
I wince at her words.
The man extinguishes his smile and adopts a suitably respectful demeanor, head bowed, face downcast.
“I’m so very sorry,” he says. “Let me help you. Please.”
He swiftly gathers blooms from various buckets: tiny gypsophila; cream roses; white willow sprays; and pale lilies, lightly brushed with pink. He bundles them together with brown paper and presents them to Mutti.
“Yes,” she comments. “Just right.”
We walk arm in arm again to the graveyard and place them on Karl’s grave.
“There,” she says, looking down at the perfect pale flowers against the fresh, dark earth.
Such a waste that they should lie here to wither and die.
We sit on the bench beneath the spreading branches of a big fir tree and look out over the graveyard toward the church. Faint strains of organ music reach us, but mostly it’s just the wind sighing in the trees.
“I miss Karl, too,” I say.
She grips my hand tightly and sobs, her whole body trembling with the loss she has suffered.
“Mutti,” I say at last, when her tears are all spent. “I’m due at a fund-raising meeting at the BDM this afternoon.”
She looks at me vaguely. “Yes, yes, you must go. I’ll stay just a little longer.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ll be fine. Go. I’ll see you at supper.” She gives me a thin smile, then turns back to watch over Karl’s grave.
I walk softly away.
Once I leave the graveyard, I quicken my pace and make for the woods near the river. I can hardly breathe. Is he safe? Will he be there, like he promised? My legs feel jellylike as I push them to go faster. Or could there be a trap when I get there? A vision of the woods crawling with Gestapo, ready to arrest me for my sullied, filthy blood, flashes in my mind. I grasp the iron railing beside the pavement, which swoops and rolls, then rights itself.
A woman passes and gives me a strange look. I release the railing and continue on my way, slower now, less steady on my feet. Can she know that I’ve been with a Jew? Not just once, but three nights in a row. I glance over my shoulder, but the woman is walking swiftly away, head bowed against the wind.
In my pocket is the note Walter left for me with Lena at the café after his stay in the treehouse a week ago. I clasp it as though my life depends on it.
My darling,
How I have missed you! Not a second passes without a thought of you, and our three nights together. I feel tremendous guilt that in among all the anguish, I should have shared such bliss with you. I’m desperate to tell you what has happened. It isn’t safe for us to meet in the open. The woods are best. I’ll wait for you at 3:30 p.m., tomorrow, just off the path by our favorite picnic spot. I hope you remember.
W xxx
He’s already sheltering beneath the trees, hat pulled low, when I reach the curve in the river where we once sat beneath the hot summer sun. It might have been another lifetime.
“Thank God you’re here.” He steps forward to greet me.
“And you. I was so scared they would arrest you when you got home.”
“Not yet,” he says. “I’m doing everything I possibly can to avoid it.”
He takes my hand and leads me deeper into the woods. The undergrowth is tangled and it’s difficult to pick our way through. He stamps on brambles and holds back branches to stop them whipping my face.
A light drizzle is falling, but that’s a good thing. Fewer people will be out for an afternoon stroll.
We stop in a small clearing. At last I’m able to look into his pale, tired face.
“Please tell me—what’s happened to your father and your uncle?”
“The Gestapo let them go. They kept them for two days—”
“But that’s wonderful!”
Walter shakes his head. “Of course it’s good they’re home. But at an enormous price. Hetty, it’s awful. They were beaten and interrogated nonstop for two days and nights. They were starved and weren’t allowed to sleep. They broke them. In the end they were so weak they agreed to sign papers to transfer the business to the National Socialist Party in order to be released. They also have a hefty fine to pay and only have until the end of the year to pay it.”
“Oh God no. I’m so sorry.” His news is sickening. Shame, unbidden, floods me. To think I’m part of it. “On what basis can they do this?”
“Tax fraud! Utter lies. They invented the worth of the business, which is in reality almost bankrupt, and taxed us on fictitious profits. Then they accused us of not paying tax bills, worth more than the stock and net worth put together. It’s preposterous. Josef and my father can’t fight it anymore. The bastards have got what they want. Perhaps now they’ll leave us alone. My father still writes letters hopelessly, all over Europe for a place to go, but since the conference at Evian in the summer, no country will take any more refugees. Even Palestine. He fears the Nazis will soon take my grandmother’s house, too, and then the whole family will be homeless.”
I see a change in his face. A collapse. An acceptance that the worst is to happen.
The lump is back in my throat.
“And what about you? Did they come for you?” My voice drops to a whisper. Something about the way he shifts his body and drops his gaze stirs the fear in my belly. He sidles a little closer to me and reaches for my hand.
“It was a good job you hid me.” I can tell he’s struggling to keep his voice light. “They did come looking. But, well, for now at least, they’re having to leave me alone.”
“But why? Looking for you for what?” I grip his hand tight and press my body against his.
“It’s very bad, Hetty.” He hesitates. “There’s been an allegation of Rassenschande—”
“No!”
“So it seems someone really is watching us.”
“It’s Ingrid, it must be. Bertha warned me—”
“What do you mean?”
“She . . . She told me that Ingrid suspected I had a young man, and that she had seen proof of something sensational.”
“I know you thought she saw us together that time, but you said she wouldn’t remember who I was . . .”
“I don’t know if she did, and just seeing us in the shop, in itself, isn’t a crime. So I think it must have been something more . . . Oh, Walter, I think she found my diary.”
“Hetty, don’t tell me you wrote any of this down . . .” He looks at me. “Did you actually mention my name?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
Walter sinks his head into his hands and groans.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Of all the stupid—”
“I’ll destroy it. As soon as I get home. I promise.”
“So she doesn’t have it?”
“No! I used to keep it under my mattress. But I found a much better hiding place. She couldn’t possibly have found it there—”
“She can’t have; that’s why they couldn’t arrest me.” Walter chews his nail while he thinks. “They’ve no proof. The person who made the allegation has so far refused to name you. To bring me to trial for Racial Defilement, the other party—you—cannot be prosecuted, because you would have to give evidence of the defilement, thereby implicating yourself. And you can’t give evidence against yourself. I think that’s why this person, whoever they are, has withdrawn the accusation, for now. They’ve no evidence to back up their claim. Perhaps they hope to catch us together. Or maybe they’re afraid of the consequences of dragging your family name into the whole thing. But, if they had hold of your diary, and it confirmed everything . . .” Walter stares at me, his eyes stretched wide. “Hetty, you must burn that thing. They could prosecute you, too, you know that? Please promise me!”
“I promise . . .”
Fighting the grip of panic, I peer through the trees at the water-blackened branches and sodden leaves, whose earthy hint of decay rises, musty and sweet. Like some menacing omen, the threat closes in, slipping silently between the trees, ever closer to Walter.
I cling to him.
“Walter, you must go now. Leave for England, please.”
He nods, holding me tight. “Anna’s father has gotten me a visa at last, by providing financial guarantees and assurances about my ability to support myself and my future wife.” The word makes me flinch. “He’s really been very good to me. He’s even arranged the wedding date, as firm proof of the intention, for March next year.”
“March next year,” I echo, for a moment allowing my mind to project further ahead than the next few days. What future has this Germany in store for me, without Walter, without Karl? It stretches ahead, like this forest: bleak, empty, desolate. It has to happen, I know, but the cold reality is a bitter poison on my tongue. “I want you to be safe, Walter, I do. But I can’t bear the thought of you and her—”
“I know. I can hardly bear it either. But I don’t see how I have any choice. I’m so sorry. Shit,” he says, letting go of me and burying his face in his hands. “Words are just so inadequate . . .” He raises his head, eyes watering, and pulls me by the shoulders to face him. His jaw is fixed, teeth clenched. “I feel like a traitor, leaving you and my parents behind. I’d give anything to take you with me. As for my parents, as soon as I’m in London, I’m going to work like hell to get them to England. I’ll do everything I can, work twenty-four hours a day if I must, to make it happen. Besides, if I don’t think of it as a rescue mission, none of it is bearable.”
I float my head onto his chest.
“I’ve already made some progress,” he says. “I’ve been in touch with contacts of Josef’s. We’ve registered a company, Keller & Co, London. The British are keen on new business—jobs, prosperity for them, too. If I can get things started quickly, and convince them it’s vital to have Vati and Uncle Josef to grow the business, it just might work out.” Even as he says it, I can tell he fears it’s futile.
I think of Ingrid and the Gestapo.
“How soon can you go?”
“I don’t know. We still have the exit tax to pay, that’s the hitch. My grandmother is trying to negotiate a gift of all her artwork, and the most valuable furniture, to try to keep the house. The rent on letting the upper rooms is our only income. Without it, our family will be destitute.”
We sit in silence, both of us lost in our own thoughts.
“How I wish I could come with you,” I whisper, turning to him. “Walter? Could I? How can I stay here, without you? How can I be part of this”—I search for the right words—“Nazi thing when I don’t believe in it anymore? When I can see how the reality is so terrible, so wrong . . .”
Walter looks at me then, his eyes full of sorrow.
“Even if you could get a visa, which would be impossible as a start, you realize that you and I couldn’t be together? I can only go to England and stay in England as Anna’s husband. I have to register as an alien. I’m permitted to stay only for one year. I have to justify my presence annually for my visa to be renewed. Without Anna’s father sponsoring me, I will be sent straight back here, to Germany. And it’s the only hope I have to save the rest of my family. Our friend is hardly going to put everything on the line if you follow me to England, is he? Besides which, you wouldn’t be safe. The Gestapo will find you and punish you. They are keen to make an example of those who are anti-German, anti-Nazi. You of all people should know that.”
The grim trees press in; the clouds drop down and gloom pervades this deserted spot. He tries to kiss me, but I turn my head away.
“Hetty . . . look at me, please.”
The lump in my throat is huge and hard. “I’m going to miss you more than I can bear,” I mumble at last.
“One day, I hope, this madness will end. With luck, England, America, the Western world will fight for freedom. Hitler won’t stop here, that’s for sure. And then, who knows? We must have hope. For now, you must bite your tongue and pretend to go along with things, just as you always have. Nobody can know what you really think. Stay safe, and true to yourself.” He gently wipes my tears away with his fingertips. “I will love you always and forever. Every day for the rest of my life; if the worst happens and you never hear from me again, you must know this.” His voice breaks then, and there is no more to be said.
LATER, DURING SUPPER, Mutti barely eats a thing while Vati eats with gusto. I stir the greasy pork around my plate; its full, fatty flavor turns my stomach.
Ingrid brings assorted pastries and a small glass of sweet pudding wine. I gulp half a glass, swill it around my mouth to cleanse it of the sickly taste of pork. I stare at her, try to work her out. Is it her?
She carefully avoids my eyes.
Vati clears his throat and looks at me.
“Your mother and I have been talking.” His water-pale eyes are serious. Red rimmed. He exudes exhaustion. Like a shroud, the shadow of Karl’s death smothers us all.
“School will be over for you soon and we have decided what your next step should be.”
“I want to go to university. You know I do. I want to become a doctor . . .”
“Herta,” Vati snaps, “we’ve been through this. It’s impossible.”
“I could go abroad.”
He snorts with contempt. “University is out of the question. You will go to Hausfrau school.”
“What!” I shriek. “I don’t want to go to Hausfrau school! I would only learn needlework, or to speak politely at a cocktail party, or plan a dinner for twelve. I have no intention of getting married, so—”
“Don’t talk to your father like that,” Mutti scolds. “You are being unspeakably rude.”
They both glare at me, and I close my mouth. Heat flares.
“You’ve been allowed too much free rein. Freedom has infected your mind. May I remind you”—Vati’s voice is low with warning—“that selfish desires, if allowed to perpetuate, spell the death of civilization. Duty comes first, above all and everything. Of course,” he continues, “you want to get married. Early marriage is good for the young. Curbs their natural inclination to be flighty and out of control.”
“I’m not . . . What do you mean, free rein? What am I supposed to have done wrong?”
Neither answers me. “I know my duty. I don’t understand—”
“Your duty is to marry and produce as many children as you can for our Führer, for the future of this country. That is all.” Vati is angry, red in the face. “Your brother did his duty. He was prepared to give his life to do his bit for the Reich. While you? You cavort around, more intent on entertainment and enjoyment, cultivating wild plans for . . . for . . . travel, and university and jobs and other ridiculous notions.” He thumps his fist on the table. Mutti and I both jump.
“Your mother has lost control of you,” he continues. “It’s not that I blame you, Hélène, given what has happened, but it isn’t right for a girl of your age, Herta, to be granted such freedoms. Always out and about doing heaven knows what, with heaven knows whom, and no brother to keep an eye on you.”
I look around for Ingrid, ready to throw daggers at her, but she’s left the room. Blood pulses in my temples. They cannot stop me going out. How I wish I could point out how Vati carries on.
“Franz, I’m sorry, she shouldn’t . . .”
Ingrid returns to clear away the dessert.
“Coffee?” she asks, her voice bright and cheerful as though she has been listening gleefully outside the door.
“In the sitting room, if you please, Ingrid.”
She leaves the room again, without bothering to shut the door.
Vati wipes his mouth on his napkin. “Your cousin Eva has just finished at a very good school in Halle. Or perhaps you could go to Dresden, or Berlin.”
Hausfrau school!
“Vati, I would like to take my Abitur.” I try to keep my voice steady. “Please. I’m a good student—I should get an excellent mark.”
“The Abitur is a waste of time, especially for girls. You can study teaching at Hausfrau school, if you are so set on a job. That would be acceptable to your mother and I.”
He places his hand over hers where it lies, limp and pale on the table. He smiles at her, then at me. His anger has evaporated. He has that look on his face that says, I’m being so very indulgent. I’m kindhearted but I don’t give in to hysteria or weak-minded women.
I look from one to the other. Mutti is closed off and I’m all alone. If Karl were here, he would know just what to say. He would make them see reason.
I collapse back in my chair. Words are useless. They won’t listen. Mutti and Vati move on, talk of something else. The air around me is leaden, pressing me down. Squeezing and suffocating. More than ever before, I’m aware of the confines of the walls of this house, solid and impenetrable as a prison.
I will not go to Hausfrau school, Vati. I simply will not go.
Back in my room I shove the linen aside in my cupboard and, with shaking hands, pull up the loose floorboard. Reaching into the void, my fingers brush the journal. Thank you, God. Thank you, thank you. I pull it out and stare at the patchwork of colors on its cover. I remember, as though it were yesterday, when Karl sat on my bed, anxiously awaiting my reaction when he gave it to me. And how the light dazzled in his eyes when he knew the pleasure it gave me.
I imagine burning it. Watching the pages curl and blacken in the heat. Would the cover turn to ash, or would traces of it be left in the grate for Ingrid to find in the morning?
I smooth my hand back and forth over its cover, as if it were a precious pet. One day I’ll be old and my memories will be all I have. When they fade, what will there be to remind me? What if I should forget altogether?
Carefully, I fold the journal in a pillowcase, place it in the void, and drop the floorboard back into place. If Ingrid hasn’t found it yet, she is hardly likely to before Walter leaves this country for good. And I’m going to make damned sure of that.