Vienna Prelude

by Bodie Thoene

  Decrees against the Jews of Germany had gone hand in hand with the rearming. Theo Lindheim had been spared much of the persecution others were now enduring, simply because he had been a great hero for the Fatherland during the “war to end all wars.” His trophy case contained two Iron Crosses, and he walked with a limp from a wound received as a fighter pilot in the last battle above the Argonne. Elisa was proud of him—proud that the guests around their dinner table had been among the great men of Germany. They came less and less often lately, but still no one denied that Theo Lindheim was a great German patriot, even if he was a Jew.

  Elisa passed unnoticed through the shoppers and climbed the familiar stairs to the mezzanine. She could have greeted every clerk in the store, but they were all busy, and she was too preoccupied to make small talk. They would want to know about school in Vienna and what her plans were. Some even would have asked her about her romance with Thomas von Kleistmann, and that was one topic she could not face—not now.

  Christmas was supposed to be a happy time, full of love and laughter and friends. Her relationship with Thomas was one thing her father’s status as war hero had not been able to save. There was a law now in Germany that the blood of a pure Aryan could not commingle with that of the defiled Jew. It was not a matter of religion, they had explained to Thomas. It did not matter that the Lindheim family were baptized Lutherans. A little water could not wash away their Jewishness. As an adjutant on the staff of Admiral Canaris, Thomas could not continue to see Elisa. He had been told this in a very polite and logical tone; there had even been some sympathy in the voice of the officer. But the law was on the books, and violation was punishable by severe prison sentences.

  Elisa shook her head slightly to brush away the thought. She had denied herself the luxury of self-pity while she had studied and practiced in Vienna. The solitude of the practice cubicle had been filled with the passion of her music alone. In Austria no one ever stopped to question her heritage. She was beautiful and talented, a violinist of great potential, according to Professor Ryburg at the Academy. She had lost herself in a world of music and hard work. Letters from Thomas von Kleistmann had been burned unopened rather than returned to him at the risk of Gestapo interception. In Vienna she had not had the time to miss him.

  Now, at this instant, in the familiarity of Berlin, she found herself searching the faces of the young officers in the store and hoping against her own will for a glimpse of Thomas. She almost regretted that she had come home to Berlin for a few days of shopping before the family took their December holiday in the Alps of the Austrian Tyrol. Certainly there were no terrible edicts against love in Austria. Those laws had only come with the dank rain of the swastika’s thundercloud.

  Elisa drew herself up. Perhaps she would not come home again until all this had passed away, as her father and Thomas von Kleistmann believed it would. She would stay across the border and fall in love with whomever she wished. She would play the music that was now forbidden for Jewish musicians in Hitler’s Germany. The sound of Mozart followed her up the stairs—a reminder that it was against the law for her, a racial Jew, to play “German” music in public. Even in her own father’s store.

  A tall, strong-jawed Wehrmacht soldier smiled and touched his hand to the brim of his cap as he passed Elisa. She lifted her chin and looked the other way, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of even a glance.

  The taxi driver was wrong, Elisa thought. More than Jews still shop at Lindheim’s. But a great many fools come here.

  Elisa was well aware, of course, that legally, technically, Lindheim’s was no longer a Jewish store. Theo Lindheim had the foresight to pass the control of the store on paper to a select group of his German business friends. His office still remained where it had always been on the second floor, and decisions were still relayed to him; but the names of five Aryan board members kept the store on good terms with the Nazi government. Even though it was illegal to export “Jewish capital,” Elisa had overheard her father and mother discussing the bank account in Switzerland . . . “just in case.”

  “In case of what?” Elisa had asked. Didn’t her father’s war record protect them all? Didn’t their baptism into the Lutheran church mean anything?

  When the signs began appearing in shopwindows—Juden unerwünscht (Jews unwanted)—Elisa had ignored them. With her blond hair and fine-boned features, she was often the subject of frank stares and longing looks by the same Nazi youths in S.A. uniforms who lay in wait for the Jews outside the synagogues. And she hated them—not as a Jew, but as a German; she hated what they had done to her homeland.

  Others who also hated them were systematically disappearing in midnight raids by Himmler’s Gestapo. Names like Dachau and Oranienburg were whispered in hushed tones.

  Admiral Canaris, who was the head of the Abwehr, feuded frequently with Himmler over the lawless policies of the Gestapo. The result was simply that Canaris had fallen out of favor with Hitler. Perhaps it made no difference to the career of Thomas von Kleistmann that he had turned his back on her. There could be no future for him if Canaris ended up in forced retirement in Dachau, like so many other fallen leaders.

  The thought gave her no pleasure. A young couple kissed on the landing, and suddenly Elisa felt angry at Thomas all over again. He had only to cross the border into Austria where she still played the bright music of Mozart on her violin! He had only to come to her there, and she would be his, no questions asked! How she had loved him once! And now what a terrible tangle her feelings of love and hatred had become!

  At the top of the stairs to the right was a small crowded lunch counter. Beyond that was the office of Theo Lindheim. Elisa debated going first to her father’s office or picking up the ski clothes she had left with the tailor for alterations the day before. Putting a hand to her hot cheek, Elisa decided it would be better to see her father after she had calmed down. There had never been a time in her life that he had not been able to read a mood in her eyes. She was certain that they would now be a very pale blue, and she was not up to having him ask her what was troubling her. A session with Grynspan the tailor and a new winter wardrobe would no doubt brighten her outlook.

  She turned left and wound through the bright bolts of Christmas fabric. Lindheim’s fabric department had always been famous in Berlin. Satin and velvet lined the aisles as women wandered through the maze of bright yardage. At the back of the department, a small sign announced Alterations, and behind a blue brocade curtain, the soft ticking sound of an old sewing machine could be heard.

  Elisa pulled back the curtain and stepped into the tiny, cluttered world of Grynspan the tailor. Patterns and material covered nearly every available inch of space. Suits dotted with chalk marks hung from a large rack beside the sewing machine. Three Luftwaffe uniforms were finished and hung just inside the door. German Air Force officers, it seemed, had not forgotten the exploits of Theo Lindheim.

  The tailor sat hunched over the sewing machine, guiding the fabric and pumping frantically on the foot pedal. Assorted pins hung from his tight lips. He looked as he had since Elisa was a little girl. There was only one change in his appearance; he had stopped wearing his yarmulke, which had marked him as a Jew and easy prey to the Brownshirts.

  His sixteen-year-old son Herschel sat in the back corner of the workshop and labored over the buttons on a man’s pin-striped suit. Neither of them looked up from their work, and Elisa waited silently in the doorway and listened to the news on the radio that sat on the shelf just above young Herschel.

  “London: December 10, 1936, will be a day long remembered. The blue-and-white flag of the Duchy of Cornwall fluttered slowly to the foot of its mast at 10 o’clock this morning on the high turret over Fort Belvedere. It was a signal that made history, for at that moment King Edward was renouncing the greatest throne on earth so that he could marry the woman he loves. . . . ”

  Elisa blinked hard and exclaimed, “Well now, there is one fellow on earth willing to face a little criticism for
love!”

  Herr Grynspan and Herschel both raised their eyes, startled to see her standing in the midst of their workroom. “Fraülein Lindheim!” the tailor sputtered around a mouthful of pins. “How long have you—”

  Elisa raised her hand for silence as the broadcast droned on in the tone of a funeral dirge:

  “Mrs. Wallace Warfield Simpson, tears streaming down her face, heard the words announcing that the King Emperor of whom so much had been expected had laid down his crown and scepter so as to be free to marry her and live the life of an ordinary mortal.”

  “Well, what do you know!” Elisa called loudly.

  “We should all be so lucky, yes?” said the tailor, pivoting on his little stool to face her. “What we Jews wouldn’t give to live the lives of ordinary mortals, eh?”

  “Papa!” Herschel exclaimed, looking frightened by the old man’s comment. “You must not say such things!”

  The old man jerked a thumb at the boy. “You see, if I were an ordinary mortal, I could open my mouth and not be afraid someone was listening.” He patted his round bald pate. “I gave up my crown too, Herschel. The Brownshirts don’t like little hats on Jewish heads.”

  “Papa!” protested the boy again. He flushed red when he saw that Elisa was smiling conspiratorially at him.

  “Perhaps the uniforms have been wired for sound.” Elisa winked

  The darkly handsome Herschel flushed deeper. “I would not be surprised,” he commented bitterly. “Papa, you must be careful.”

  The old tailor waved a hand in disregard. “I am the best tailor in Berlin. The German Luftwaffe officers would sooner go naked as not have me to sew their pretty uniforms as long as no one tells Göring!” He spoke bravely, but the words were far from convincing.

  “And I would rather go naked on the ski slopes than not have you sew my clothes, Herr Grynspan,” Elisa said impetuously. She was immediately embarrassed by her own words. “I mean . . . ”

  Herschel raised his eyebrows slightly, then stared down at the buttons on the suit. His ears seemed to be on fire.

  “There, you see, Herschel,” said the old tailor, confidently accepting the compliment. “There you have it from the mouth of the owner’s daughter. So what are you worried about?”

  “First, staying alive. Then going to the university!” Herschel said too loudly.

  “In the meantime, Herr Lindheim is paying you a wage. The Nazis would have something else in mind if it weren’t for him. Not the university, I think.”

  Herschel ignored his father’s comment and gazed directly at Elisa. He had always had a terrible crush on her, even when they were small children. When he was ten and she a mature seventeen, he had confessed his adoration for her, and she had told him it was hopeless. Since then he had always acted aloof. “And how is Vienna? Do they treat even Jewish girls well there?”

  “Only if they dress well and talk nicely to their elders,” she replied evenly.

  “And of course it is important that they have lots of money,” he added sarcastically.

  “Herschel!” His father half rose.

  “Never mind, Herr Grynspan.” Elisa was amused. “Just sew his lips together while he is sleeping tonight.”

  Herschel smiled broadly at her words. “It will do no good, Elisa. I can still write you angry letters, even with my lips sewed tight.”

  “Then, why don’t you?” She met his smile. “I would love to hear from an ordinary mortal.”

  The old tailor sighed and shuffled to the stack of packages. “Since you are this high, you children have been arguing. I never know about what. I stopped worrying about whether I would lose my job over it years ago. Now I am only hoping that your father, God bless him, and I both survive this scourge, this plague of locusts, eh?”

  “Maybe I will sew your lips together, Papa,” Herschel muttered beneath his breath.

  “First, you have to learn how to thread a needle,” the old tailor retorted. He leveled his gaze at Elisa. “Your father sent you to Vienna. If things get worse, Herschel is going to stay with an uncle in Paris. Maybe he can go to the university there, eh?”

  She glanced at Herschel, who labored over the buttons as though all his hopes and dreams were not contained in his father’s words. “Don’t wait to send him.” Elisa’s voice grew gentle. “Yes, the Sorbonne for Herschel. He will be a great scientist someday—I am sure of it.”

  “Or maybe I will marry a rich young Jewish girl?” Herschel smiled briefly at her. “Then I will not have to think about school or Nazis.”

  She gathered her packages. “As long as she is also an American, Herschel.” She slipped out into the bright lights of the fabric department once again. She could hear Herschel laughing as his father scolded him for his impertinence.

  “Marry a rich girl indeed!”

  “You would not like Elisa Lindheim as a daughter-in-law? Then we would not have to worry about the Gestapo.”

  “They are no safer than we are. Not much, anyway.”

  Elisa’s smile faded. The old tailor was probably right. She held her packages tightly and studied the familiar store as though she were seeing it for the last time. Suddenly she wanted very much to see her father, tall and sternly handsome with his gray hair and deep blue eyes. She hurried toward his office, longing to feel the security she had felt as a child playing beside his huge mahogany desk. All that had been so invulnerable and dear now seemed no more solid than reflections on the water. One stone tossed into the pool could cause it all to ripple and vanish forever.

  6

  Abdication

  Thomas von Kleistmann placed his cap on the seat of the empty chair beside him. It had become the arrogant custom of the men in uniform to leave their hats on indoors, but tonight Thomas felt small and embarrassed by such new customs.

  Theo Lindheim pressed his fingertips together and leaned across the broad desktop. His eyes were intense, probing. Just like Elisa’s eyes, Thomas thought.

  “And why do you come here to tell me this?” Theo demanded. “Certainly you risk your . . . career. Not only do you know of such events, but now you have shared this information with a Jew.” His words were not harsh. In the light of what was happening now in Germany, Lindheim’s question was valid.

  “Herr Lindheim, you were a great hero for the Fatherland—”

  “I am certain this is an embarrassment to the government, eh? A Jewish war hero.”

  Thomas nodded and looked down at his hands. “To some men in the government, yes. But there are others, Herr Lindheim. Men who have not forgotten.” He lowered his voice. “They have not forgotten what Germany was—”

  “Then they had better keep their memories to themselves, Thomas. Such things might interfere with what the Führer plans for the future.” Lindheim gestured toward the crisp white envelope Thomas had placed on the desk. “The future does not include Jews, eh, Thomas? Not even heroes of the Argonne?”

  Thomas did not meet Theo Lindheim’s gaze. He pursed his lips in unhappy response. “There are lists, Herr Lindheim. Endless lists—”

  “Germany has become a nation of lists, has it not?”

  “It is nothing your friends can stop. Himmler and his SS, his Gestapo . . . ” Thomas searched for words to describe what Lindheim already knew. “They are beyond the control of—” He stopped. He wanted to say that the Gestapo was beyond the control of law and decent humanity, but humanity was a word that was also being used less and less these days.

  “Canaris is an old friend,” Lindheim said sadly. “Does he know that you have come?”

  Thomas simply blinked at him in response; then pointed at the envelope. “He was aware that Elisa and I—” He faltered and began again. “When this came across his desk, he passed it along to me. For filing.”

  Lindheim tapped his pen on the SS insignia on the envelope as though he were crushing a spider. “This is from Himmler’s office. How has it come to Canaris?”

  “Himmler’s Gestapo watches Canaris, and Canaris watches H
immler.”

  “And Herr Hitler watches them both.” Lindheim opened the envelope and took out the neatly typed memo. He frowned as he skimmed the contents:

  T. Lindheim—Jew hiding behind association with Protestant Pastor Jacobi of Gedachtniskirche. Claims conversion. Jacobi has been advised about proper denunciation of racially impure from his pulpit. Jacobi refuses cooperation. Suspected of anti-Nazi sentiment.

  “So”—Lindheim’s voice contained an edge of controlled anger—“now they will hound Carl Jacobi because I am a member of his church?”

  “This is one small matter they have against Pastor Jacobi. Believe me, you are not the issue. Not the only issue.”

  “They have put me on a list then?”

  “They are searching for a case against Jacobi.” Thomas shrugged helplessly. “They are building cases against every churchman who does not conform to the party line.”

  Lindheim tossed the memo onto the blotter with disgust. “I see. Yes. The case against me is already established by my Jewish birth certificate. And my children? Half Aryan? Born and raised in the church?” He smiled bitterly. “Yes. I almost forgot. That issue was settled by your superiors. It is not a question of religion but of racial purity. And half a Jew is still a Jew.”

  “You can see, Herr Lindheim, it is not even a question of the church. Not even the churchmen are safe anymore.” Thomas ran his fingers through his thick black hair. “There are lists, you see.”

  ***

  Theo Lindheim studied the grief-stricken face of the young man before him.

  Theo never ceased to be amazed at the ironic contrast between Thomas and his Elisa. Thomas, whose pure Aryan blood was unquestioned by the SS, nevertheless had dark hair and swarthy skin—in these times, enough evidence to make the authorities suspect a Jewish background. Theo’s own daughter, who was half Jewish, easily passed for Aryan, with her blond hair, fair skin, and blue eyes.