October 1935
In the next few weeks Vati and Oma disappear early in the morning to go to the store. Though they have some stock of goods remaining, their supply is dwindling on the store shelves since there are no operators left to cut and sew after the Aryan women have departed. Greta has come in to help a few times but her family is preparing to immigrate to Argentina and she must do her part and stand in endless lines at the innumerable agencies that require documents to be signed. At any rate there’s less money to pay her since business has fallen off.
So Oma must start sewing again, after all these years. The conversation at dinner goes like this:
Luise says, “Where were you all day? Why weren’t you here? I looked all over for you but you weren’t here.”
Each day Oma replies in an exhausted voice, “I was in the store, liebling, because Vati needs me. Vati cuts patterns in the material and I sew the pieces together.”
Oma and Vati are both pale with fatigue.
“Can I come too?” asks Luise.
Oma picks up a napkin with a tired hand and wipes food from around Luise’s mouth. “No, liebchen. You must help Mutti at home.”
A light goes on in Luise’s face. “Look what I made today.” She bends down to the floor at her feet and brings up a sheet of paper. “Mutti gave me a crayon and I drew myself. See?”
She holds the page with pride, first for Oma, then Frieda. A large head dominates a small torso with stick legs. Long squiggly lines hang from either side of the head, presumably braids. The eyes are two vertical strokes; the mouth is a large circle that seems to be asking, “Why?”
Frieda pictures her mother trying to get Luise out of her hair for a few minutes, sitting her down with some paper for amusement.
“Can I come with you tomorrow?” Luise asks, her mouth full of food. “Please, Oma?”
“I’m sorry, liebling. You must keep Mutti company. She’s lonely when Berta goes to the shops to get food.”
They have been lucky that their former maid, Irmgard, has an aunt, Berta, who, at forty-eight, is beyond the reach of the recently enacted laws disallowing Aryan women under forty-five from working for Jews. Unlike her niece, she is plain and unsmiling, flat-chested, her grey-brown hair pulled back severely into a knot. But she’s efficient and does what she’s told. Oma must show her how to cook the food the family likes, chicken soup, gefullte fish, and pierogies. Nevertheless the apartment starts to stink of sausage and sauerkraut, which she prepares for lunch for Mutti and Luise and herself. Though the sausage is pork, Oma says nothing and sometimes even takes leftovers for herself and Vati the next day for lunch. Frieda understands: it is too hard to fight everything.
Though Mutti has been saddled with Luise, she still manages to look beautiful. She must be taking the girl with her across the street while she gets her hair done by Ulrike, a woman who works out of her apartment. Mutti visits there twice a week for her hair, once a week for her manicure. She also manages to find time to read the classics of literature: War and Peace, Moby Dick, Les Misérables. She seems to like large dramas, as if getting lost in someone else’s epic rescues her from the confines of her life.
Frieda knows how hard it must be for her mother to take care of Luise, who can barely feed and clothe herself. Luise is a chore Mutti was never good at. They had nannies when they were young and so Mutti knows little of the basics of child care. Though Wolfie was only two when Luise was born, he tells Frieda he remembers their mother crying softly at night. Mutti knew early on that there was something wrong with her new child. Once Frieda was old enough, she was called upon to help. Frieda, please take your sister out of the bath and dress her. Or, Please help Luise eat lunch. This when her sister was eight and Frieda six. Then, luckily for all of them, Oma decided the business no longer needed her and she began to stay home. She was the only one who had the infinite patience required to take care of Luise.
Now that the job has fallen to Mutti again, it shows. Luise’s hair hangs in unwashed braids and her face is smudged. On particularly bad days, a crust of food forms around her mouth.
Frieda is exhausted after a day working in the hospital and the school. She covers for senior physicians who need a rest or are called away. But she is in competition with all the other Jewish doctors who have not emigrated and there is little money available. She wishes she could earn more for the family.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” she says, trying to keep the fatigue out of her voice.
“Be a good doctor,” Vati says, dipping his spoon into the cabbage soup.
She attempts a smile, but her face muscles aren’t up to it. His grey eyes are tired and focus on the food. He has aged in the last two years; she doesn’t remember when his shoulders began to stoop or his hair turned grey.
At least twice a week, sometimes at dawn, sometimes during dinner, they are startled into silence by the thunder of boots running up the stairs just outside their door. Without fail, what follows is a banging on a door upstairs or downstairs, then otherworldly weeping, pleading. To no avail. Some hapless man is marched down the stairs into a waiting car, his wife and children lamenting at the door. The Eisenbaums all hold their breaths, heads down, unwilling to face the fear in each other’s eyes.
Wolfie has started joining them for dinner, most likely to save the cost of a restaurant meal. But he stays only long enough to eat, then excuses himself, jumps up, and hurries out the door. Sometimes Oma reproaches him while he rushes to finish dinner.
“Every now and then, Wolfie, you might stay home and be with your family. And maybe you would come in on time to the store if you didn’t stay out so late.”
Then he has to make a point of going around the table to give Oma a kiss on the cheek before escaping. Vati remains curiously silent about Wolfie’s evening activities, sometimes even throwing Oma a warning glance. Frieda wonders about this change in Vati’s attitude, since he has never approved of the card games that keep Wolfie out till all hours of the night.
Then one morning she understands. As she walks out into the hall, she sees Vati step out of Wolfie’s room holding some bills in his hand. He closes the door quietly behind him. When he sees Frieda, he stuffs the money into his pants pocket.
“Wolfie had some luck last night,” he says without further explanation.
Frieda stifles her surprise, but realizes now that their future, her future, hangs by a slender thread.
Hoping for a day off from worry, Frieda sits at the back of the trolley with Leopold on one side, Wolfie on the other. Leopold is half a head taller than Wolfie, and though he’s attractive, with dark blond hair brushed back in curly waves, it’s Wolfie who stands out wherever he goes. Something about the way he holds himself, his head on a roguish angle, watching the world with brown eyes that know, yet are charged with curiosity. Eyes framed by long, boyish lashes. The three of them are riding to the end of the line to the Grunewald where the annual Sportsfest is taking place. Children from all the Jewish schools in Berlin are competing with each other in track and field. This morning the trolley is filled with people heading to the stadium. The air is nearly festive, but the excitement is subdued by the presence of non-Jews whose tolerance cannot be counted on, tempered by the general atmosphere of fear in the city.
Nevertheless, Frieda catches two young Aryan women casting furtive glances at her handsome brother. After the Nuremberg decrees there’s little chance of any interaction. He plays at catching their eyes while deftly conversing with Leopold.
“Your sister better not disappoint me. If I’m coming all this way, she better win.”
Leopold smiles sideways at Frieda. She’s happy to forget everything for a few hours, grateful, for once, to Wolfie, who manages to put everyone into good humour.
“Well, will she win or not? What are the odds?”
Frieda kicks his leg with her shoe. “None of your gambling here, Wolfie,” she says, only half joking. “This is a wholesome event and you’re not to corrupt it.”
“She will win,” Leopold says, shrugging. “She always does.”
At the end of the line, everyone gets off the trolley for the hike through a heavy wood. The autumn linden and oak smell musty, full of their approaching death. Frieda fills her lungs with their exhalation, pretends this autumn is like any other, a slide into the temporary sleep of winter. She lets the excitement of those around her buoy up her spirits.
They approach the front gates of the stadium amid a throng of people. They struggle to stay together. Leopold pulls Frieda and Wolfie to one side, where his parents, Herr and Frau Sussman, are waiting for them.
Frieda met them last spring at Passover when the Sussmans invited her to their Seder. Her family celebrates the holiday with a large dinner, but no ritual. The readings, the asking of the four questions by Hanni, the youngest, even the matzo, were foreign to her, whose family continued to eat bread, which was forbidden for the eight days of Passover.
Leopold introduces Wolfie.
“Ah, the brother of the doctor,” says Herr Sussman, a tall round man.
Wolfie raises an amused eyebrow.
“Fräulein Eisenbaum.” The equally tall but slim Frau Sussman smiles politely. Leopold gets his delicate features from her.
They all file into the stadium, an open-air structure, and take their seats on the rising tiers amid the noisy good cheer of the crowd.
Within ten minutes, the centre field is filled with groups of children, their schools distinguished by the different colours of their shorts: blue, green, red, orange, and all the shades between. At the signal, they all start to sing “Hatikvah,” the Hebrew song that has become an anthem of hope.
Frieda’s scalp tingles at the melodic din of thousands of voices lifting the Hebrew syllables into the air. She doesn’t know the words — her parents neglected her Jewish education — but she hums the tune and surveys the singing throng with pride.
The field is divided into several areas where different events proceed. A group of boys of uneven height, mostly thin and gangly, line themselves up on the track. Someone announces on the public address system that junior boys will race the one-hundred-metre dash. After the report of the starter’s pistol, the boys bolt down the track that runs along the perimeter of the field. The race is over almost before it begins. A moment later, they announce the winner, Friedrich Something; it’s hard to make out the names over the loudspeaker, but the multitude cheers nonetheless. Meanwhile, a group of girls has replaced the boys on the track.
“There she is!” Herr Sussman cries and points. The girls are lined up at the starting point, each crouched down, one leg bent behind the other.
“Which one is she?” Wolfie asks.
Leopold points to a tall, lanky girl in red shorts. Frieda remembers the dark braids from two years earlier. Hanni’s hair is now cut short into a face-framing bob.
The starter’s pistol crackles: the girls charge out from their positions. Hanni runs with her head back, her mouth open, as if sucking in some purer level of air above. Her short hair flies behind while her arms crank her body forward. She spurts to the finish line first. Jubilation rises up from the stands like the muted roar of the sea.
“Is that her?” Wolfie says. Leopold nods vigorously while the throng cheers. Wolfie jumps up and shouts, “Hurray for Hanni! Hurray!”
Hanni stands panting, head down, her hands braced on her knees. She looks up into the bleachers searching the crowd.
Wolfie waves and cries, “Hurray!” again.
Frieda pulls him down, embarrassed.
He grins at her. “You have to encourage children.” The girls return to their respective teams, one of her competitors patting Hanni on the back as they walk.
The next event Hanni takes part in is the long jump. The group of young girls stands off to the side as each takes her turn at the sand pit. One by one each girl walks back to the starting point, takes a run at the takeoff board, and leaps into the pit, legs flailing. Each gets three turns. One of the teachers measures the distance with a tape.
They all watch Hanni position herself well back from the pit. She stares at the sand calmly, unhurried in her concentration, oblivious, it seems, to the thousands of spectators. When she is ready, her body stiffens; she begins to stride rhythmically toward the pit, relaxed but accelerating, nine, ten, twelve strides before she plants a foot on the takeoff board, leaps into the air, takes flight, then slides into a landing in the sand. A work of art, thinks Frieda.
As she strolls away after her third turn, Wolfie says to Leopold, “She’s magnificent! Look at those legs. They go all the way up to her neck.”
Frieda sees Herr and Frau Sussman exchange nervous glances.
A shot put competition follows, then a gymnastic event in which girls somersault. Hanni finally appears again for the high jump. All the competitors take turns jumping over the bar, which is set low in the initial position. Each time the teachers raise the bar higher, more girls are disqualified for touching or knocking it down from its stand. Eventually, only Hanni in her red shorts and a taller girl in blue are left.
The teacher raises the bar another notch. Now it is over Hanni’s head. Frieda doubts that anyone can jump that high and clear the bar.
The girl in blue takes a run at the bar, jumps sideways, bringing her legs up and over, but not quite enough. The bar rattles, teeters, and plummets to the ground. The audience gasps, then claps politely as she strides away, her head down.
Hanni waits in the distance, bent over, hands on her thighs, until the bar is replaced on its stand. Frieda sees her step to the starting position. Hanni focuses her eyes on the bar for a full minute. Her chest expands as she takes in some deep breaths. Everyone grows quiet in the bleachers. Then she begins to run, her head back, her body tearing toward the stand with the unreasonable bar set over her head. She runs hard until the final steps, then bounds with a cat’s impossible grace, aiming her legs toward the sky. In that second, it’s hard to tell if she has cleared the bar, her body is so close. But when she drops down into the sandy pit, the bar lies fixed in its place high over her head, untouched. The crowd roars.
By the time the games are over in the afternoon, Hanni is a star. She has received winner’s ribbons in five different events.
The Sussmans are being congratulated by other parents as they all wait for their children outside the entrance of the stadium. Leopold stands next to Frieda, but doesn’t take her hand as he usually does when they’re alone.
Hanni arrives amid an entourage of girls, all flushed and giggling. Her face is ordinary, with heavy eyebrows and a longish nose, but she is lithe and taller than the others, the centre they all lean toward while they joke about the day. She smiles serenely, the ends of her dark hair damp and straggly from the shower.
“Here’s our winner!” Herr Sussman says, embracing his daughter.
Her mother and Leopold kiss her in turn. “We’re so proud of you,” says Frau Sussman.
“You remember Frieda,” Leopold says. “Congratulations.” Frieda shakes Hanni’s hand. “You’re an exceptional athlete.”
Hanni gives her a wide smile. “Thank you.” Leopold introduces Wolfie. Hanni eyes him. “Are you the one who cheered?”
Wolfie’s lashes drop boyishly and he grins. “I couldn’t help myself. The heat of the moment. At that moment you were magnificent.”
Hanni blushes to the roots of her hair.
They join the crowds of people tramping back through the woods to reach the trolley home. Everyone is tired but in good spirits.
While they wait in line, Frau Sussman turns to Frieda and Wolfie. “Please come back to our home — we’ll have some coffee and cake. You can help us celebrate.”
Hanni sighs. “I wish we could have real cake.” Frau Sussman stiffens. “I’m sorry, Mutti,” Hanni says, “but you know your cake isn’t the same without butter.”
“We will make do,” says her mother, looking away.
The dream of the day is over, thinks Frieda. Oppressive reality falls back upon them like a curtain. The show is finished and they must return to their stress-filled lives. One of the smaller deprivations is the severe shortage of butter, which can no longer be used in baking. “Guns not butter” is the new slogan the government throws about in their push for re-armament. Sacrifices must be made for coal, steel, and oil, because Germany has enemies who want to wage war.
“You remember the chocolate pastries we used to get at Schmidt’s?” says Hanni. “I dream about them. I can almost taste them.”
“I’ll get you some,” Wolfie says. “Schmidt’s is on the way home.”
The Sussmans look at him with apprehension. “They don’t allow Jews in Schmidt’s anymore,” says Herr Sussman.
“We can’t take that seriously when we’re desperate for chocolate pastries,” Wolfie says, smiling at Hanni.
“Please don’t do anything foolish,” says Frau Sussman.
Hanni can barely take her eyes off him.
On the trolley, the older Sussmans take seats near a window while the young people take the long seat across the back. As she sits down next to Leopold, Hanni’s skirt rides up, revealing a scrape on one knee painted with the telltale stain of iodine.
“You must be more careful with such lovely legs,” Wolfie says, sitting beside Frieda.
Hanni shrugs but smiles shyly at the compliment, pulling down her skirt. “The track is made up of rough cinders. All the teachers carry bottles of iodine. Everybody’s legs have spots by the end of the day.”
“So how high did you jump?” Wolfie asks. He must bend his head to speak to Hanni on the opposite end of the bench.
She smiles. “One-point-six-five metres. As if that will mean something to you.”
“I know excellence when I see it. Didn’t they say you broke a record?”
“My jump is the best in women’s.”
“In Berlin?”
“In Germany.”
Wolfie’s eyebrows rise. “We have a champion here! She must get some chocolate pastries at the very least.”
Frieda sees some girls turning around and pointing Hanni out to their parents.
“So what’s next after this triumph?” Wolfie asks. Hanni looks out the window nonchalantly. “I’m training for the Olympics.”
Now Wolfie looks really impressed. He turns to Frieda with wide eyes, mouthing The Olympics.
“Why didn’t you tell me she was that good?” Wolfie asks Leopold, who looks out the window as if he cannot bear the conversation
Leopold says, “I tried, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“I thought you were exaggerating.”
“I don’t exaggerate.”
“So then it’s Frieda’s fault for not explaining that you don’t exaggerate.”
Leopold takes Frieda’s hand. “Frieda is faultless.”
“Of course,” Wolfie says, rolling his eyes.
“Look,” Leopold says quietly, avoiding Hanni’s face, “there’s talk about a boycott of the Olympics by the Americans. At least they can see the irony of the games being held here. After everything they’ve done to us, you think the government will allow Jewish athletes to compete?”
Hanni stares out the window. “I’m the best jumper they’ve got. They’d be stupid not to let me compete.”
A silence falls over the group. The trolley sways eastward back through the city. Passengers embark and disembark, some of them glaring at the clusters of children with their parents.
“Please, let’s just go back to the Sussmans’ place,” Frieda whispers to Wolfie.
He turns to the window, watching the streets fly by. “I’m getting off at Schmidt’s. Who’s coming with me?” He turns to the others, his gaze resting on Hanni.
“I’ll come,” she says.
Frieda sighs. “We’ll all come.”
Leopold taps his mother on the shoulder as they go by and says they will meet at home. As Frieda heads toward the trolley steps, she turns to wave goodbye to the Sussmans. Frau Sussman’s face has turned pale as she watches her daughter step down from the car.
While they walk the block to the bakery, Wolfie takes Leopold aside, letting the two young women saunter ahead. Frieda glances over her shoulder and sees Leopold reaching into his pocket. So like Wolfie, she thinks with irritation. He’ll give you the earth as long as you pay for it.
Wolfie stops on the corner, three stores away from the bakery. “Wait here. If something happens, you don’t know me.”
As he steps toward the bakery, Frieda follows him. When they are out of earshot, she pulls on his arm to stop him. “You don’t have to do this to impress Hanni. She’s already impressed.”
Wolfie shines his smile on her, the one he pulls from his bag of magic tricks that makes him irresistible.
“You worry too much, little sister. Don’t you know me yet? Would I walk into danger?”
“What about the ‘If something happens you don’t know me’ business?”
“Just for show.”
She watches him stroll into Schmidt’s, insouciant, hands in his pockets, as if he’s just decided he’s in the mood for a pastry. Despite his warning, Frieda edges toward the front window of the bakery. Above the cake and pastry display, a sign reads, “We Don’t Serve Jews.” She will never get used to the sinking feeling in her stomach whenever she comes across that sign. Or the one that says, “Jews Not Wanted.” She should be accustomed to them by now, since they’ve sprouted everywhere like poison mushrooms after a storm. But they always take her by surprise, as if each one is the first she has seen.
Through the window, she sees Wolfie leaning over the counter flirting with the middle-aged server, who nods and giggles while placing pastries in a large box.
All at once, loud voices rise behind Frieda. In the storefront window looms the reflection of two men in Nazi uniforms. They open the door of the bakery and swagger inside. She curses Wolfie for his careless bravado. He won’t impress anyone at the police station. She grows hot with fear — she must not run, she must watch and try to help him.
The woman behind the counter stops smiling when the men approach. Frieda cannot see their expressions, but the Nazis stand behind Wolfie, one with his hand on his uniformed hip, waiting. Wolfie gives a polite nod, picks up his box of pastries, then smiles at the men. He’s engaging them in conversation! Damn him! He’s going too far. He points to the confections behind the counter and their eyes follow. What if they ask him for his papers? The jig will be up.
She glances over to the corner where Leopold and Hanni are waiting. Hanni stands rigid, her hand over her mouth. Though Leopold has his arm around her shoulders, he looks tentative, as if he is ready to run at a moment’s notice. They search Frieda’s face for clues. When she turns back to the store, Wolfie is stepping out the door.
Taking his arm firmly, she yanks him away. “Don’t ever do that again,” she mutters under her breath.
“I was just telling them the chocolate ones were best.”
“You shouldn’t press your luck,” Frieda says. “One day it will run out.”
“Everyone’s luck runs out sooner or later.”
Hanni beams him a dazzling smile.
Frieda looks over her shoulder at the bakery. “Let’s go.” She takes Leopold’s arm and begins to walk away briskly.
As soon as she walks into the Sussmans’ apartment, Frieda can see how much has changed for them. The apartment is half-empty; the large glass-fronted buffet that she saw in the dining room at Passover is gone. One of the long sofas is missing, and there is only one upholstered chair left in the living room. They’ve been selling their furniture, she concludes. The table in the dining room — not the huge mahogany one that was there before — is covered with a flowered cloth on top of which lie papers and books. A typewriter sits on one corner.
“You must excuse the table,” Frau Sussman says to her guests. “We use it as a desk where we fill out papers for emigration.”
The books were on travel to the United States and South America. One was a text on learning English.
Frau Sussman disappears into the kitchen with the box of pastries.
“You look surprised, Fräulein Eisenbaum,” says Herr Sussman. “The factory will not be ours for much longer.”
Frieda shoots a look at Leopold, who turns away. “One of our suppliers is eyeing it for a takeover. Did I tell you, Leo, he came in on Friday and said, ‘How many orders did you take in today?’ He already thinks of it as his. A greedy man can go far when he joins the party.”
“Will you get compensation?” she asks.
“If we’re lucky we’ll get ten percent. I have a cousin in a small town north of here. He got himself beaten up by the SS who was taking over his store when he suggested that there should be compensation. No, we will be lucky to get anything.” Glancing at his son, he says, “Leo must’ve told you we’re trying to get out of the country.”
“Yes, of course,” she murmurs.
“The papers must have the names of all the people who are applying. Four names for our family. I won’t leave without my children, so all the papers have to be in four names. And then, of course, all of us have to go. Or none of us can go. There’s only one problem.” Herr Sussman puts his hand on the back of one of the chairs as if he needs steadying. “Leo won’t go. He won’t go because he’s waiting for you. And what are you waiting for?”
Leo glares at him.
Frieda lowers her eyes from Herr Sussman’s scowling face. “I have to stay with my family. My father ... my father is not prepared to leave.”
“Doesn’t he see what’s going on around him? What do you think, Herr Eisenbaum? You’re a sensible young man.” He addresses himself to Wolfie who is next to Hanni on the sofa. “Can your father be persuaded to leave?”
“Vati is a decorated war hero,” Wolfie says. “We Germans love our war heroes. He rescued his officer from certain death in the middle of a fierce battle. Does that sound like the kind of man who can be persuaded about anything? We’ll be all right as long as the government remembers he’s a war hero. You, on the other hand,” Wolfie adds, “should run like crazy.”
Everyone stops in stunned silence.
“I’m joking,” he says finally.
They all let out a collective breath.
“Besides,” he says, “Hanni has to stay for the Olympics. She’s the best jumper in Germany.” He looks down at her and grins.
She smiles shyly, her eyes turned to him sideways.