February 1937
The two windows in the back wall of the Eisenbaums’ workroom bring in little light. They face west into a courtyard shared by other buildings that abut Eisenbaum’s and that preclude the presence of any other windows. The absence of light drives Frieda to despair — it will be difficult to read without constantly burning a lamp. A few weeks in this half-light and she will feel like a mole.
Under Oma’s direction she helped Wolfie and Leopold carry in the beds and chests of drawers, while Vati tended to customers out front in the store. The diminished workroom has been moved off to one side: the two sewing machines that Oma and Vati still use are there, as well as a smaller cutting table. The huge one has since been sold, along with Vati’s desk. White cotton fabric is piled in one corner beside a tailor’s dummy. The Eisenbaum household has sprouted in the remaining space like a flower in the wrong garden. The familiarity depresses Frieda, sucks her back to when she was fifteen and required to learn to sew so that she could one day take over the business. She sits on her narrow bed, listening to the hum of Oma’s sewing machine. She fled the business to become a doctor. Nothing, it seems, has turned out the way she planned. Not the business, not her career.
Oma has organized the cramped space with a judicious placing of curtains to separate designated areas: the workroom on the side where the door leads to the store, Vati and Mutti’s bedroom, and the room where Oma and Luise will share a bed and where Frieda will sleep on a cot. This leaves the large old stove at the back where they will cook their meals and eat at their kitchen table; here, too, they’ve placed the sofa where Wolfie will sleep. The small washroom has a toilet and sink. The washtub they brought from their apartment will have to do double duty for bathing.
Frieda’s hospital earnings diminish as the Jews remaining in Berlin grow poorer. A Jewish agency distributes small amounts of money so the physicians can keep treating patients. She sees more and more people brought in who have attempted suicide and failed: a woman who didn’t keep her head in the oven long enough; a man who jumped from a second-storey window only to break his legs and three ribs; a man who tried to hang himself with a sheet that unwound.
A smartly dressed young mother whose husband was taken away comes in with her two children and asks for poison pills. Frieda looks at the two little girls, aged four and six, their blonde hair in curls around their heads.
“Have you tried to emigrate?” Frieda asks. “I have no one to sponsor me.” She looks at the floor. “I have no one.”
It is one thing to try to save oneself, quite another to try to save oneself with small children. “Do you know anyone who will take the children?” Frieda asks.
The woman looks up angrily. “I will not give away my children. We’ll die together.”
Frieda looks into the large blue eyes filled with pain. What good is she, with her stethoscope and her medical books? “I’m sorry,” she says. “I wish I could help you.”
Late in October, when the days are growing shorter, the Eisenbaums have just sat down to supper around the kitchen table. It’s pleasantly warm near the large tiled stove on the back wall of the apartment, despite the cool evening air leaking in around the door that leads out to the courtyard. Oma has concocted a stew of turnips, beans, and potatoes that Frieda has become fond of.
She has just complimented Oma on the stew. All at once a thunderous banging explodes in the store. They all jump in their seats and stare at the door that separates them from the storefront. The enraged knocking continues on the street door of Eisenbaum’s. Frieda stumbles out of her chair, her head filled with noise.
Wolfie jumps up almost instantly. “Vati! We’ve got to get out of here! They’ve come for us.” He grabs his jacket from the hook on the wall and runs to the back door.
Vati shakes his head dolefully. “I can’t. You go! It’s me they want.”
Wolfie’s wild eyes take in his family while he stoops by the door, his hand on the knob.
“Go!” cries Oma.
He opens the back door warily, peers into the empty courtyard, then jumps out, disappearing into the dark.
The banging on the front door has gotten louder, angrier. Men are shouting, “Open up, you damned Jews!”
Oma gets up and heads into the store to open the door.
Her head pounding with alarm, Frieda notices Wolfie’s bowl filled with stew. She empties it into the serving dish and places his bowl beneath hers.
She hears Oma saying, “We were in the back.”
Boots stomp heavily behind Oma as she leads them past the workroom and the curtains dividing the bedrooms to reach the kitchen. Two burly Gestapo wearing black leather coats glare at the family.
“The Jews Ernst Eisenbaum and Wolfgang Eisenbaum must come with us!” one of the men shouts, as if they are not in a confined space.
“I am Ernst Eisenbaum,” Vati says, standing up. “My son is not at home.”
Luise has gotten up to crouch beside Frieda’s chair like a frightened dog.
The other man moves through the apartment in spurts, pulling the curtains open with furious energy. There is nowhere for anyone to hide.
He opens the back door. “Where does this go?” he spits out.
“Nowhere,” Oma says. “The courtyard.”
He glances at the sixth chair, the empty spot at the table. “Tell him he must come to our station at Grosse Hamburgerstrasse tomorrow morning.”
Mutti has turned white and stares at Vati with huge eyes. Frieda gets up to stand near Oma as she hands Vati his coat. Will she ever see him again?
He says goodbye to them with his eyes as each man takes him by one arm. They lead him out through the store.
Oma sits down at the table, puts her head down on her arms, and begins to weep.
For the next few days Herr Rheinhardt sits in the store, cheerfully greeting customers. He seems to be in an excellent mood. When he can’t find what he’s looking for in the stock, he calls Oma to find it. His wife, Kristine, the former sewing machine operator, has come back to help Oma sew together underwear and keep up production.
Wolfie returns under cover of night and stays out of sight. Oma has arranged blankets under Mutti’s bed for him. The curtains separating the rooms are not enough to hide him, with Kristine sitting in the workroom all day. The Rheinhardts mustn’t see him or they will inform the Gestapo. After a day, the strain is too much for everybody, and early the next morning, Wolfie leaves to go to the Sussmans’.
Vati has been gone three days. Five days. They all move around like ghosts, only Luise occasionally chattering. They don’t dare say it: is Vati still alive?
Frieda sleepwalks at the hospital, going through the motions of her job. Where is Vati, in an unheated, grubby cell? Are they beating him? Is he still alive? She is tortured by the visions that rise, unbidden, in her head.
Oma has stopped eating. Her sewing has slowed to a trickle. Frieda must do something.
She prepares a small basket of food: some bread and cheese, a Thermos of warm cocoa, and some biscuits. Oma insists on coming.
They take the tram to the building on Grosse Hamburgerstrasse that used to be an old folks’ home but is now Gestapo headquarters. Frieda has put on more makeup than usual and has worn her narrow maroon skirt with the slit on the side. She makes sure Oma hides her unkempt hair inside her hat and puts on some lipstick.
Frieda hesitates in front of the building with its flapping swastika banner. How many people have entered here, never to come out again? Before Frieda can stop her, Oma heads through the door.
By the time Frieda catches up to her, Oma is walking toward the Nazi sitting behind a desk in the lobby.
“Oma!” she whispers, wobbling on heels higher than she is used to. “Wait.”
The man is writing at his desk, paying no attention to them. Two men in uniform look Frieda over on their way to the staircase. One raises an eyebrow with interest.
Frieda stops in front of the desk, Oma at her side.
Finally, the man looks up, irritated. “Yes?”
“My father was brought here six days ago. Ernst Eisenbaum. My grandmother and I ... we would like ... we request permission to visit him if he’s still here. We’ve brought him some food ...”
“Jewish?”
She nods.
“No visitors!” the man exclaims in a peremptory voice. “Where do you think you are?”
The Nazi who hesitated on the staircase now continues climbing up. She can read his mind: Too bad. Just another Jewess come for her father.
The man at the desk glowers at them, his blue eyes livid, but Oma steps forward. “Please,” she says, “is he all right? We’ve just brought him a little bread and cheese.”
He stares at her, incredulous; his blue eyes go blank. “Leave the basket.”
Oma is not satisfied. “Is he all right?”
The man’s eyes narrow. “He’s alive. For now.”
Frieda takes in a sudden breath. He’s alive! She leads Oma away, the man’s words echoing in her head: For now.
Early the next morning, before Frieda has left for work and before the Rheinhardts arrive, Vati walks into the apartment.
“Thank God!” Oma cries and rushes to embrace him.
He sways on his feet while both Oma and Frieda wrap their arms around him. He looks thin and frail and ten years older. His stubble of beard is suddenly grey, his cheeks sunken. Mutti emerges from the bedroom in her nightgown and blinks. She runs to embrace him.
“Sit down and I’ll make you some porridge,” Oma says.
He obeys, sitting down carefully at the table, as if not to touch a tender spot. He watches them with bloodshot eyes. Frieda sits on one side of him and takes his hand, Mutti on the other.
“They made me stand for hours every day, hour after hour, and they just went on with their business like I was a stick of furniture. Because I said the store was worth one hundred thousand marks. Isn’t it worth one hundred thousand marks?” He blinks at Oma.
“Of course it is,” she says, stirring the pot of porridge. “A couple of years ago it would’ve been worth more.”
His hand is cold in Frieda’s.
“They wouldn’t let me sit down. I had to beg for water. One of the men who worked there ... he punched me whenever he went by. Here.” He put his arm over his stomach. “They said Jews inflate prices so they can get more money for their property. They said ... they said Rheinhardt would pay me what they felt the store was worth. Ten thousand marks.”
Oma stops stirring the pot and looks at him. The pause expands in the room until she says, “He’s buying the store for ten thousand marks?”
His head droops forward, landing in his hand. “They said they would keep me there until I signed the documents. Or until Wolfie came into the station.”
Wolfie? Frieda cringes. At least Wolfie is safe. For now.
“And then they showed me the basket you brought in. They let me have a bite of cheese, and all I could do was weep, I missed you all so much.” He closes his eyes. “So I signed. The store belongs to Rheinhardt now. It’s all legal.”
January 1938
The Eisenbaums must move again. Herr and Frau Rheinhardt now own the store, so the family has no business living in the back. Frau Rheinhardt says they plan to restore the workroom to its former size. Frieda can see the woman can’t bear the sight of them. Perhaps there’s a spark of a guilty conscience in there somewhere, although it will never find its way to the light.
The family finds a small cold-water apartment in a rundown building in the suburb of Friedenau, literally, the “meadow of peace,” where Leopold’s family has lived for the past few months. Other dispossessed Jews have moved into this working-class district infested with rats and cockroaches. A Gothic-style synagogue sits like a reproach on a nearby corner. Frieda can barely look at it. The only good thing about the place is that Wolfie can move back with them.
Oma has taken her ancient sewing machine with her, the one she used decades before they bought the industrial ones for the store, which of course had to be left behind. She concealed some of the white cotton fabric from the workroom in a suitcase beneath her clothes when they left. In the new apartment, she sets the machine on a small table near the bed she shares with Luise and begins to sew new underwear. When Frieda isn’t out working, she helps Oma and Vati cut patterns on the kitchen table.
Once they have a small supply of underpants and vests, Vati and Wolfie fold them into rucksacks, which they throw on their backs. Together, they trudge out to visit outlying areas of the city where there are few stores and such merchandise is hard to come by. They spend the winter peddling their wares door to door, returning each evening haggard and half-frozen with barely enough money to buy food for the family. After a nap, Wolfie goes out for the night, still supplementing their income with his winnings at cards.
Leopold once again asks Frieda to marry him. Doesn’t she want to be with him? he asks. Doesn’t she love him? And she does, but not the way he loves her. Not the way she loves her family. It is a flaw in her, she knows, an empty place in her heart that should be filled with joy. She has tried to fill it with her medical career, all the knowledge and wisdom she can glean from her books and her teachers.
Before his family moved to cramped quarters, Leopold brought her to their apartment one afternoon when everyone had gone out. He presented her with an amethyst ring, the tiny stones arranged in a pretty flower. His family would be leaving soon and he with them, but he said this token of love would bind them while they were apart. She felt very tender toward him then, especially with the prospect of his departure, and they made love in his bed. It was the first time they had been intimate, and what surprised her the most was the joylessness. Despite her affection for Leopold, she couldn’t keep Hans Brenner’s shadow from passing between them. Yet for a brief interlude, she forgot about the wretched world outside and thought, This must be happiness.
Then why has that empty space in her heart not been filled with ecstasy? It is a lacuna she cannot explain, a defect when her heart was forming in her mother’s uterus, maybe the flaw in her mother transplanting itself into her body and leaving a hole where emotion should live.
The Sussmans finally have all their papers in order and are only waiting for their American quota. After months of anxiety, their number finally comes up and they are allowed to leave for America. They are packing when Herr Sussman suffers a heart attack. It is all the stress, his doctor says. While he languishes in the hospital, their place is quickly filled by another panic-stricken family and the Sussmans are pushed to the back of the line. Who knows when their number will come up again?