What Only We Know: A heart-wrenching and unforgettable World War 2 historical novel

by Catherine Hokin

  Ask him. Ask your father.

  The instruction was so loud, Karen started and looked round to see who had spoken. The crowd carried on oblivious.

  Ask your father. At least try.

  It wasn’t her mother’s voice. It was her own. The one that she had become so adept at pushing away.

  She shook her head, but it kept on coming.

  If he’s shifting, why don’t you?

  Karen closed her eyes, took a breath and let herself listen. These streets had been Liese’s, but surely they had been Andrew’s too? If even a fraction of what Father Kristoff had suggested was true, didn’t she owe her father the chance to tell her? Didn’t she owe herself the chance to try to change how they were?

  She opened her eyes and stepped back onto the pavement, let herself be swept along with the crowd. There was a part of her that had its roots in this city, in these people, and there was a part of her that was as English as her father She had come to Berlin to unlock the past and yet he was its key. He always had been. She needed him to be her father, not her enemy. It was time she grew up and told him that.

  Part Two

  Seven

  Liese

  Berlin, August 1939

  How can it only be nine months since Kristallnacht?

  So much had changed it felt like nine years; it felt like ninety. Liese had stopped looking in the mirror months ago. She didn’t believe a nineteen-year-old would look back at her; she didn’t remember what nineteen meant. She assumed that, a long time ago, she must have imagined being the age she was now. She assumed she had imagined it would bring with it parties and flirtations, kisses and promises. Perhaps even a handful of liaisons, some suitable and some not, before she met the magical ‘one’. If she thought about it now, which she tried her hardest not to do, she also assumed that there were nineteen-year-olds still out there who lived that stardust kind of life. Who had managed to grab more than a fleeting taste of it. Who were able to chalk up the ‘wrong sort of men’ to experience and slip away unscathed. Liese refused to let those girls pop up when they tried, as she refused to allow herself regrets it was pointless to indulge. There were a lot of things Liese’s life no longer had, but the days of pining for them were done. Besides, she had the baby: how could parties and flirtations ever compare with that?

  Liese kissed her daughter’s head and settled her into the drawer she had painstakingly scoured for splinters. The child was perfect. Even Margarethe, who had greeted Liese’s pregnancy with all the outrage of a nun and recoiled from Grandma as if Minnie was listening, had stroked the tiny cheek and pronounced her ‘likely at least to be pretty’.

  She lowered herself onto the fold-out bed as carefully as she could. The midwife had been more efficient than gentle, but she had come, a mercy Liese would be eternally grateful for. The thought of being left to Margarethe’s flapping care had horrified her more than the shock of the first contraction. With the city’s hospitals closed to Jews, Frau Schenkel’s skills were thinly stretched. She had arrived with one eye on her watch, bundled Liese into the apartment’s only good bed and the baby out into the world and rolled away with her fee and no more than a dozen words exchanged. Forty-eight hours later and Liese was too much in love to remember anything of the birth but the joy of it.

  ‘I’m going to call her Lottie. You can’t say it without grinning.’

  Liese waited for Michael to compliment the name and its snuffling owner. He continued to stare out of the grime-coated window and took no notice of either. At least he was here. Six months ago, when Liese had finally pieced together her never-ending tiredness and her nausea into something more than shock at the speed with which their lives had collapsed, Michael’s anger and disdain had been hard to bear.

  ‘You’re pregnant? Are you kidding me? How could you be so careless? Don’t you know anything?’

  Clearly, she hadn’t. Except that she had wanted André and she refused to regret the night they had spent together. How could she? He might have fooled her and betrayed them, but he had left behind a blessing. Gazing now into her daughter’s velvety eyes, the burning sky and broken buildings that had led to her coming were as hard to remember as the birth pains.

  Liese hadn’t expected to fall so helplessly in love with her child. If she had only known how deep and immediate the bond would be, perhaps the pregnancy would have been less of a strain. If she had also known, as she announced the news to her parents in what now seemed the unimaginable comfort of Charlottenburg, how much worse their lives were going to get, she wouldn’t have bothered worrying over something as simple as pregnancy at all.

  Liese stared round the cramped room which doubled as her bedroom and her workroom and the apartment’s only living space and opened onto a second one just as mean. Two rooms and that was it, for three – and now four – of them to live in. The whole apartment could have fitted inside the chequerboard hallway of her grandfather’s mansion, and it rang from dawn to dusk with her parents’ complaints. Not just about the size, although that was always where the muttering started, but about the peeling walls and the fraying carpets. About the indignities of sharing a bathroom and a kitchen with the occupants of other equally miserable sets of rooms. About the damp which clung to the walls even in the middle of summer, and the smell of decay which wafted through the windows from the refuse left piled up in the courtyard until it rotted.

  Nothing had changed since the miserable December day when they had moved into the broken-down tenement that now served as their home. Paul and Margarethe wouldn’t make do; they wouldn’t make the best of things. They acted as if Liese had swept them out of Charlottenburg and into Cuxhavener Straβe on some inexplicable whim. As if she was the one depriving them of soft sheets and rose-scented soaps and all the little luxuries they couldn’t live without, that ‘a good daughter would get if she cared enough’.

  ‘Don’t they understand that this is partly their fault? That if they cause trouble here, there’s nowhere left for you to go?’

  Michael had stood in the dank hallway that first afternoon, his hair dripping with snow, every muscle tensed as if he was ready for a fight.

  ‘It’s the shock. Leaving Bergmannkiez for Charlottenburg was one thing, but to find themselves having to live somewhere like this?’ She had smiled with an optimism she really wanted to feel. “They’ll calm down. They’ll get used to it. And I can manage.’

  Liese didn’t believe her parents would adjust any more than Michael did, but her stuck-on beam had got him out of the door and back to the underground life his resistance activities meant he was now living. She knew if he had stayed, he would have picked a row with Paul, a row that Paul would be too arrogant to back down from and she would end up engulfed by. All she and Michael had been doing for weeks was fighting and the cause was always the same: her parents’ selfish, dangerous behaviour. Every time he had appeared in the reopened Charlottenburg house, he had paced the carpets bare. And stretched her patience as thinly.

  ‘Didn’t you explain that staying in Charlottenburg was meant to be temporary? Don’t they understand that you’ve already been here too long?’

  After the first week, Liese had stopped answering. Her parents couldn’t – or, more likely, wouldn’t – understand a thing. In the fraught early-morning confusion of their arrival, Liese had begged them to be discreet. It was as much use as pleading with a hungry baby to stop crying. Paul had refused to be ‘cowed’; Margarethe had applauded his ‘bravery’. That first day, they had thrown open the shutters and strolled in the garden with no thought for who could be watching, and no amount of pleading would keep them indoors. Michael had acted like Liese hadn’t noticed their madness or hadn’t tried in vain to curb it.

  ‘Can’t you control them? They’ll be wandering down the streets and waving at the neighbours next. The Nazis have seized the salon. They’ve seized the Bergmannkiez house. They’re hunting for every last bit of Jewish wealth. Even if some snoop doesn’t tell tales, it won’t take long to tra
ck this estate down.’

  ‘Why are you telling me? I’m not the one sticking my head in the sand and still imagining I’m the toast of Berlin. But if you think you can get through to them any better, by all means go ahead.’

  Liese had snapped. Michael had kept on lecturing and not listening. Their closeness on the night of Otto’s disappearance had vanished under the weight of old patterns.

  ‘The Nazis are swallowing up Jewish property like sharks at a feeding. If you won’t leave the city, at least let me find you somewhere less obvious than this.’

  If you won’t.

  She would have shouted at that, except there were already too many cross voices competing. Liese might have come to respect Michael’s convictions, but that didn’t mean she wanted to live with the judgement they trailed. When she had finally lost her temper and yelled that ‘not everything in the world was black and white – that sometimes it was grey and muddied’, he had simply looked blank. Liese had, nevertheless, gone on trying to reason with Paul and Margarethe. She had tried to remind them that this move was only step one; to persuade them to repack their cases and let Michael find them a different city or a countryside bolthole. Every time she mentioned leaving, they stormed through the house like tantruming children.

  Michael came less and less; Liese couldn’t blame him. She knew his absence wasn’t because he didn’t care – that it was, in fact, a measure of how much he did. She knew that he was looking for somewhere safer for them all to stay; that she had to trust he would find such a place quickly. She grew steadily better at ignoring her parents, at holding her nerve and holding her tongue. By the second week in December, with the household still undisturbed, she began to believe Paul and Margarethe’s foolishness had gone unnoticed. She started opening up the rest of the mansion’s rooms, removing the covers from the carved and tapestry-covered furniture in the reception rooms and shaking the dust out from the brocade and silk drapes. She found enough silver candlesticks to soften the burgundy-papered dining room and even, to Margarethe’s delight, a cache of crystal jars containing still-fragrant bath salts. The long-neglected house was starting to feel almost like home. And then came the furious banging.

  ‘Security Police. Open up.’

  Four men stood arranged on the steps, all in the unmistakeable green uniform. The one at the front, an officer from the flashes on his collar, was holding a clipboard.

  ‘You are?’

  ‘Liese Elfmann.’

  The officer glanced up from his list. ‘You are not.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  This time, his gaze was so direct Liese had to fight not to duck it.

  ‘You are a Jew. You are therefore Liese Sara Elfmann. If you had registered as instructed, you would have received your Jewish name and you would answer correctly. Move aside.’

  He flung the door past her, nodding to the remaining policemen, who marched through on his command.

  ‘The usual inventory: artwork; large pieces of furniture; furs and other good clothing; curtains and floor coverings. Check all floors.’

  He stepped into the hallway as his subordinates fanned out.

  ‘Has this property and its contents been accounted for?’

  Liese couldn’t admit a second time that she didn’t understand. There was no way she would cower.

  ‘This is my grandfather’s house. It isn’t mine to account for.’

  His hand twitched as if he might strike her, but a shriek from upstairs pulled his attention away.

  ‘Liese, what is going on? Who have you let in?’

  Paul came storming down the stairs, his silk robe billowing. He paused when he saw the officer, but, to Liese’s despair, he didn’t make any attempt to moderate his imperious manner.

  ‘Is that ape who frightened my wife one of your goons?’

  Liese waited for a fist, or worse, but the policeman merely consulted his clipboard again.

  ‘You are Paul Israel Elfmann?’

  That stopped him. Paul sagged against the bannister at his new middle name, his mouth flapping. The officer made another note.

  ‘Another one unaware of how Jews are now titled. The order to register was clearly communicated. As was the requirement for you to account for all of your wealth. And yet you have not collected your Jewish papers and there is no record of this property. Or of the business in Hausvogteiplatz, or the house in Arndstraβe you previously owned.’

  Previously thudded through the hall.

  ‘Do you have some difficulty following rules that I am unaware of?’

  Paul gaped at him like a child three questions behind in a spelling test.

  ‘I can assure you that none of this has been deliberately done.’ Liese was amazed how level her voice stayed. ‘Matters have been overlooked; we are sorry for that. We will, of course, comply with whatever is needed.’

  The searchlight gaze switched back to her.

  ‘Yes, you will. My men will complete their inventory. You will not interfere. You will vacate this house, to which you no longer have rights, by 5 p.m. tomorrow. Which is a generous time allowance, believe me. If you argue, you will leave now. If anything listed is removed, there will be penalties. If the amount recovered from the estate you have concealed does not meet the debt you owe in reparation for last month’s disturbances, additional charges will be levied.’

  Liese was still stuck at vacate.

  As he turned to leave, she grabbed at his sleeve.

  ‘But where will we go?’

  The blow left her sprawling.

  ‘Wherever your betters decide.’

  He wiped his hands and stepped over her. He didn’t look back.

  ‘Cuxhavener Straβe 17. Take this. Present it to the building’s Blockwart by 12 p.m. or he will reallocate the rooms.’

  ‘You have been very kind. I hope your bosses appreciate your efforts as much as we do.’

  Angry Michael had gone; the friend she needed had come back the minute she asked for him.

  ‘Keep smiling. It could be worse. This address is walkable from Charlottenburg. We can make three or four trips to collect your belongings with the time we’ve got. And it’s near the Tiergarten, so maybe there’ll be a bit of space and green around it.’

  He had taken the room authorisation and steered Liese away as firmly as he had steered her two hours earlier into the squat building with its endless rows of desks and faceless clerks. Her elbow clutched in Michael’s hand was the only part of Liese’s body that had felt solid since the Security Police had left the previous day.

  It had taken her the best part of the night to track him down, through neighbourhoods she would never normally have gone near, but every raised eyebrow and off-colour comment that greeted her enquiries had proved worth it. Michael had charmed the flint-faced secretary into believing they were about to be married and ‘in complete desperation for some privacy’. He had cracked the woman’s thin lips into a laugh, patting down his pockets and enacting the elaborate pantomime of his papers leaping into the wrong jacket. He had winked and flirted and begged for her mercy and, against all the odds, he had won. Liese had scurried out as the tenant of two rooms, instead of the one room other families were being told to be grateful for.

  Not that it mattered. Paul had raged when he was told about the move; Margarethe had sobbed. They had trudged through the snow to their new lodgings like prisoners bound for the scaffold, leaving Michael to balance their overstuffed cases. They had refused to participate in any return trips. Every item Liese salvaged from Charlottenburg was the wrong one. Every item she was forced to leave behind was a treasure. The whole day had been a nightmare; the only good thing Liese could find in it was her and Michael’s repaired friendship. She could even have felt safe from the threat of further police visits, except that, as soon as the Elfmanns had moved in, Michael wanted them moved out again.

  ‘You can’t stay – there’s something not right going on. Never mind that the Nazis are packing these buildings way over
what they were built for, everyone’s been cleared from the area except Jews. There’s got to be a reason for that, and it won’t be a good one.’

  He was right about the overcrowding. More families had been dumped at the apartment block every day since the Elfmanns arrived, all of them white-faced and bedraggled. Paul and Margarethe shrank from contact with their new neighbours as if danger lurked in the simplest nod. Liese, desperate for news that would explain the world’s redrawing, sought their company out. She picked her way round the children playing in the corridors or huddled in the courtyard, in search of their mothers. She was hesitant at first, conscious of how little she knew, uncertain where she fitted. Some of the women she encountered were Jewish to their bones; some were as newly stamped as she was. Some had been rich and were shocked at how low they had fallen; some had been poor and were simply grateful for a roof. Nobody demanded her story or was concerned when she tried but did not know how to tell it. What they shared was more important than what separated them: whoever they once had been, they were all the lowest of the low to the Nazis.

  Everyone had a tale of lost homes and lost professions. Everyone who could pull together the fees and a sponsor and a ticket out of Germany was gone. Everyone who was left was afraid and couldn’t name what their fear was. There were some who watched each other, who worked out space allocations and muttered. They were carefully ignored.

  As the weeks stretched on into a snow-choked New Year and food and fuel stretched too thin, most of the families gravitated together and shared what they could. Liese, exhausted by her parents, gradually began to feel part of a community, and that calmed her. That she was making friends, however, did not calm Michael.

  ‘You’re getting too settled. You can’t do that; you have to leave. If the rumours are true, there’ll be war before the year’s end, and that will mean shortages and rationing. God knows how Jews will fare under that. Your money’s running out and I can’t see your father, or your mother, finding work, unless someone forces them into it. Which could also be coming. You need to be somewhere else, Liese. Prenzlauer Berg or Wedding, where it’s easier to slip round unnoticed, especially with the new papers I can get for you all.’