Liese had ripped the star from her coat and turned her curls from chocolate brown to platinum blonde before she had changed into her first new name. The dye she made Michael bring stank and stung like a swarm of bees had taken root in her scalp. Lottie had taken one look at her brassy new mother and burst into terrified tears.
‘She’ll get used to it. It’s best that I look more like her anyway. Thank goodness Bardou managed to pass on his colouring, or I would have had to put her through the same.’
It was Michael who soothed the little girl in the end, who managed to convince her that her new mummy was as pretty as the old. When the child finally fell asleep, he went back out and returned with all the bottles of dye he could find.
‘It was a good idea. You won’t attract attention like this, and blonde hair makes fake papers far easier to manage. The most useable pictures we get are of real German girls.’
Liese no longer asked about the ghostly women whose lives she took over. The dead; the bombed-out and the missing; the ones whose identities were stolen from carelessly gaping bags. Nothing mattered, except their name and the town they had come from. She learned that set of rules as quickly as the rest.
‘If you are asked for your papers, decide quickly if you actually need to present them. If the police are distracted, or there is a crowd to check through, say that you’ve newly arrived, that you’ve not had a moment to register. If you have no choice but to hand them over, say the same thing. You’re new here. A seamstress come to work in the factories, still looking for the right accommodation. Tell them you’re a widow, that your husband lay down his life for the Fatherland. Blink away a few tears – that usually works. We’ll keep changing the documents, so the dates you left wherever you came from don’t stretch out so long they make your cover suspicious.’
Michael made it all sound matter-of-fact and he swore the fake papers he dealt in were foolproof. He showed Liese the different components so that she could see the care that went into creating them. The blank forms obtained from a network of well-bribed policemen; the carefully shaved-off photographs. How the official stamp was lifted from the old document to the new by rolling across the impression with a hard-boiled egg and transferring it.
As soon as she had her first set, Liese practised surrendering them, watching her face in the mirror until her reactions seemed normal. The first time she was challenged, she still thought her heart would leap out of her chest; that the documents she held in her rigid hand would scream liar and Jew. In the end, the policeman barely glanced at them, his attention caught instead by Lottie’s cheeky beam. Only one guard tried a trick that even Michael hadn’t heard of, clutching a bagful of candy and going down on his knees.
‘And what’s your mama called, pretty one?’
Liese didn’t know a man could turn so red until Lottie, her head cocked to one side and her hand plunged into the treasure, answered Mama in a world-weary tone.
‘But what about in a few months, Michael, when she has more words? Or next year when she will be able to ask him why he wants to know?’
‘The war will be done by then. No need to worry.’
His stock answer and never one she believed.
Michael had treated Hitler’s invasion of Russia in 1941, and Stalin’s consequent shift from Germany’s ally to its enemy, as if the turnaround was a triumph of communist foreign policy. That ‘with everyone finally in the right place and standing shoulder-to-shoulder against fascism’, the war’s end was in sight. Liese could see no sign of that.
Berlin was crippled by shortages, even for those who had held on to their rights. Ration cards were as much use in the fireplace as they were in the shops. The Allied bombing raids were kinder than in other German cities, the targets still primarily Berlin’s industrial edges, but the effects were creeping closer, pounding homes to rubble, turning Berlin’s citizens into refugees. Twice, Michael had led Lottie and Liese to a safe house only to find its floors reduced to a cellar that was already full.
Everything was rumour. Michael was her only safe connection to the outside. In the few hours Liese had had to consider an underground life before she was plunged into it, she had pictured it peopled with a new kind of family. Communists and Jews, all of them illegals and Party-haters; all working together to keep each other afloat. She had consoled herself with the varied faces she would meet; convinced herself there would be playmates for her too-alone daughter. Now she spoke only when she had to and bribed Lottie not to speak at all. All she had moved into was more isolation.
They were forbidden a radio. They met no one but Michael. Her news came from days-old newspapers and the snippets of gossip he carried with him. Liese had become a master of making games from nothing; Lottie had finally grown used to silence. How well the three-year-old could now whisper broke Liese’s heart.
None of the apartments they lived in felt like a home. The furniture was always sparse, the walls and the cupboards always bare. Lottie and Liese’s world had shrunk to the size of a suitcase and nothing personal could be included in there. The only thing guaranteed to survive each flight was Dolly; Lottie was immovable without her. Inside was colourless; outside was mostly a memory. If they ventured out, it was rarely before twilight. The families she heard creeping through corridors, or hushing their voices on the other side of thin walls, remained invisible. Michael came alone; he moved them from place to place alone; he never spoke about colleagues or friends.
‘We work in cells. Sometimes two, sometimes three. Never more. Someone with writing skills, someone with printing skills, someone with a flair for distribution; that’s the ideal. I get lists of safe places, notices of the best times to move you and the others; locations for a document drop. I deal in aliases; I don’t ask names. It has to be like that: if they catch me, that’s all they catch.’
‘Don’t you get lonely?’
He hadn’t understood the question.
‘Why would I? I’m too busy. There’s always people to move. There’s always leaflets to spread round the city. Our system is so streamlined now, even the Nazis would envy it. Our agents have infiltrated the factories, the universities, even the postal system. And you should see how we hide our material. The last lot went out disguised as cake recipes; the batch before that were wrapped in guides about how to work a camera. That one was my idea. Open them up though and the message is the same: “Hitler can’t win the war; he can only prolong it. You are being robbed of your rights: it’s time to stand up for freedom.” Everyone’s reading them; there’s so many out there, they have to be.’
His eyes were as bright as the boy she had found stealing in the salon four years ago. His passion for the struggle and his ideals were undimmed.
Liese envied him. She longed to play a part that would make her feel less of a burden. To be doing something and not simply waiting on the war’s end, but, with Lottie so little and so dependent on her, she couldn’t find a role.
‘It doesn’t matter. Keeping Lottie safe is the only thing that counts for now. We need our children, Liese: too many have already been lost. If this is still going on in a year or two, when she’s bigger, we’ll find you something to help with. Don’t worry about that now.’
That had been the night when it happened. When the contrast between his life, which burst with purpose, and hers, which felt lost in the shadows, overwhelmed her with a loneliness that choked up her throat. When the urge to be young and carefree pushed aside the constant need to be careful. When Lottie, for once, had fallen asleep so well fed there was no chance of her waking.
Their coming together was unplanned, unexpected; welcome.
A hand to brush away her frustrated tears became a shoulder to cry on. Lips murmuring soothing words drew closer, found a new kind of language. The tempo between them shifted. A first hesitant kiss became an exploration of hands and mouths that dissolved edges. When Michael was the first to draw back, rubbing his eyes, asking ‘Are you sure?’ Liese took the lead.
‘Stop th
inking, stop questioning; just be.’
For once in Michael’s life, he listened.
There should have been awkwardness, the clash of a long-fixed friendship blundering into uncharted territory. There wasn’t.
‘You feel like coming home.’
Michael had whispered that as the sun wriggled through the window’s thin covering and Lottie stirred.
Liese had raised herself on one elbow, staring down at him as the sunlight softened his thin features, remembering the last face that had lain next to hers.
‘Whatever this is, you won’t let me down? I don’t want promises and I won’t make them, not while we’re forced to live like this. But I need to know that, if I need you, you won’t let me down.’
He pulled her to him, kissed away her doubts as their bodies came back together. Kissed her so deeply at the door when he left that Lottie started laughing.
Liese went through the next few days feeling lighter, less frighteningly alone.
‘It was just one night, nothing to make a big fuss of.’
Lottie smiled back at her mother and carried on playing.
One night perhaps, but it had surprised them both with its tenderness. And there would be another, if the world would settle long enough to make space. One night that had slipped between her and fear, at least for a little while; that brought with its kisses a sliver of hope.
‘He won’t be long now, monkey. Another few minutes, that’s all.’
How many times had she said that in the two years since their hidden life had begun? Too many for Lottie to care. She didn’t look up from the bed, where she was feeding Dolly the last breakfast crumbs. The last crumbs of anything, an extravagance that made Liese nervous, despite Michael’s sweeping assurances.
‘Finish off whatever food is left. I’ll bring more for the train and then, when you get to the Spreewald, there’ll be so much to eat, Lottie will think every day is her birthday!’
Michael had swung Lottie round and made her laugh and never thought the word birthday meant nothing to her.
It had been impossible to start marking the day, so Liese had filed it away instead with all the other missed treats she would one day make up for. Birthday parties, Christmas, ice cream, a pet. The list she carried in her head of everything her daughter’s childhood was meant to be, and wasn’t, kept growing.
‘Be ready by six.’
She’d been ready by five, their few possessions packed. Lottie was so used to night-time flits, she could pull on her dress in the dark. This would be the last change of name, the last change of address, or so Michael had promised. ‘A safe place to sit out the war’ he swore would soon be ending.
So where was he?
‘Wait till you see the house we’re going to live in. Michael says it’s so huge you’ll have your own bedroom and there’s a garden and an orchard for running around in. And I bet there’ll be a cat; all big country houses have a cat.’
Gabbling away to stop herself panicking; pouring out another litany of words Lottie didn’t know how to react to. Lottie continued feeding her doll without a glance for her mother.
Liese checked her papers for the twentieth time. Lena Edelmann. A name closer to her old one, in case Lottie’s rapidly expanding language skills really had remembered anything from before. A new identity playing a widow who had found work as a maid, moving out of Berlin to work on a farm and find her daughter a better life. It made as much sense as any of the others she’d practised. It would, at least, give her a job and a purpose.
‘This will be good for you both, I promise.’
Despite what Liese had said that first night, Michael had been full of promises lately. Ever since they had snatched a second and then a third night together; since their connection had deepened enough for her to stop counting. They were more careful now though, neither of them having any desire to add a pregnancy to the tightrope they walked.
‘Or not yet.’
Michael had blushed when he said that, and grinned like his old self again when he saw Liese’s answering smile.
Now, when Liese watched Lottie playing on her own, she imagined her in the middle of a trio of siblings. She conjured the family around the little girl that she had once longed for, and wove brothers and sisters into every story she told. When Michael heard her doing that, he began to pick up the same dream.
‘The couple who agreed to take you in are kind-hearted people. They’ve helped others; they know how to keep you safe. You could make a proper life with them; give Lottie as near as the war will let you to a real childhood. And then, when it’s done, I’ll come there and I’ll get you. We’ll come back to Berlin and we’ll make a life, the three of us first and then the rest. Maybe we’ll find your parents. Whatever happens, we’ll start over together, as a family. If that’s what you’d like.’
Such a shy look when he said that, his face all boyish.
Liese had smiled back at him and realised that, yes, she would like it very much. There was no time for any more declarations, but that felt like enough.
Except today was the first step and he wasn’t here. Michael was almost two hours late and he was never late. Punctuality was a code he lived by; that and reliability were the twin pillars of ‘the struggle’s creed’.
Liese’s stomach churned. Please God he hadn’t got caught up in the latest leaflet’s distribution, like he used to do in the old days, and had forgotten them, not after all they had been through. They had already been in this apartment too long. Nearly four months. Time enough to be noticed. For the old lady who lived opposite to remark on ‘how lonely that poor little girl must be’. For Liese to be looked at twice by the men clustered smoking outside the block’s scruffy door. She hadn’t mentioned any of that to Michael. He was watching out for their safety, she knew he was; her appearing nervous would only put him on edge.
Everything was ready – there was nothing left to do and distract her. Lottie was polished and shiny in her smartest dress, although it hung too loosely when it should have been too tight by now. Michael had found them a smarter case than the battered one that had limped beside them from flat to flat. He had also found Liese a hat to cover her grown-out hair. It was a silly pancake of a thing, trimmed with jaunty silk roses more suited to a wedding. It made her plain blue blouse and skirt look shabby, but it would do the trick. The shops had run out of hair dye months ago and Liese, in Lottie’s words, was starting to look ‘stripy’.
Eight o’clock.
It would be too late to go if he didn’t come soon. The plan, the little she knew of it, was for her and Lottie to catch an early train before the day’s checks began in earnest.
‘I can’t come with you. Even with my brilliantly staged limp, a man my age in civilian clothes draws questions like a magnet. You’ll travel with a woman, a country sort who won’t attract attention. I’ll pass you onto her.’
It had annoyed her, that, the implication that she was a parcel who didn’t need to know what her label said. It had also annoyed her that he wouldn’t give her any details beyond the bare minimum of the town in the Spreewald and a morning train, but the struggle demanded secrecy and the struggle always won. And if it was the struggle that had delayed him this morning, he could forget about her biting her tongue anymore.
‘Michael coming.’
Liese let go of her breath in a sharp exhale. Lottie’s well-trained ears had heard the whisper of footsteps before she had.
‘Come here now, sweetheart. We’ll have to move quickly if we’re going to get to the station on time.’
She waited for the customary three raps on the door. Nothing. What was keeping him?
‘What did you hear, monkey?’
‘Feet banging.’
Why would Michael run up the stairs with no care for the noise? Liese took a step back from the door.
‘Lottie, I don’t think it’s Michael. We may have to—’
A door slammed further down the corridor. Another one slammed closer. The unmistak
able sound of boots came crashing up the hall.
‘Mama’s hurting Lottie. Stop it!’
Liese had Lottie’s hand held so tight, the tiny fingers had turned purple.
‘Quick, get under the bed.’
Lottie stared and began sucking her sore hand.
‘It’s a game, monkey. It will be fun, I promise, but you need to be quick.’
Her voice was too shrill, her mouth too stretched. Lottie whimpered and edged away.
‘Please, Lottie. Do what I say. I’m going to come under there with you.’
‘Open up!’
Lottie shot onto the bed like a firecracker exploding and hurled her body across Dolly’s.
‘Open up!’
There was a knife lying among the breadcrumbs on the table. Liese was a finger’s stretch away from it when the flimsy lock disintegrated.
A green-uniformed man strode in, wiping his hands. He swallowed her and the room in one sweeping look.
Remember the rules.
Except this wasn’t a busy street with places to duck into and Lottie wasn’t charming but terrified.
‘Papers.’
Liese stood as tall and still as she could. ‘Is something wrong?’
The officer held her gaze for a fraction too long.
‘Your neighbours think there is. They think there are all kinds of people hiding out in this building who shouldn’t be here. Let’s hope you’re not one of them.’ He held out his hand. ‘Papers.’
Liese removed them from her pocket, slowly and deliberately, praying the grainy photograph would withstand his mistake-hunting scrutiny.
‘Why is there a suitcase?’
Be polite, not guilty; don’t cower.
‘I have a new job, as a maid on an estate in the Spreewald. We were about to leave for the station. I am a widow; my husband died fighting for his country.’
His expression didn’t flicker.
‘The address of this estate?’
‘Lehde, in the Lübbenau district.’
What Only We Know: A heart-wrenching and unforgettable World War 2 historical novel Page 17
