Warsaw Requiem

by Bodie Thoene

  Lori and Jacob looked at each other in a way that made Alfie wish he had not said the word. Lori always said that the word Dummkopf made her heart hurt. Alfie had not meant to make her feel bad; he was only asking a question about how the Englishmen at the British Consulate might feel about people the Nazis said were Dummkopfs.

  “Alfie,” Lori said quietly. She put her hand on his arm. “You are smart. It is because of you that we are all alive now. It’s because of you that I wrote Elisa in London. You have the smartest heart of anyone I know.”

  Alfie smiled down at her. She was very pretty and always so nice. He loved her very much. “Jacob is right,” he said. “It would not be good to take Werner with us today to the English. He is just a cat and might say something he should not.” Alfie meant that the cat might rub against the legs of English women and make them scream like he had in church. Werner-cat could not say anything wrong . . . any Dummkopf knew cats do not speak. “You know what I mean?” Alfie asked Lori.

  “Yes.” Lori patted him and straightened his tie again. “It is smart to leave him home today.”

  ***

  The British Consulate was located in the most convenient section of Danzig. At 14 Stadtgraben, it was near the main train depot and the post office. The consulate occupied three stately baroque mansions that stood side by side on the main thoroughfare. The common walls had been opened up to join the buildings. Secretarial offices were housed in the smallest wing. In the center mansion, all the woodwork had been refurbished, and the ballroom had been enlarged for official receptions. The portrait of the king smiled down regally from the wall where a wide mahogany staircase wound up to the offices of the British officials. The third wing had been made into the living quarters for the British staff. Paneled walls had been made into the living quarters for the British staff. Paneled walls and thick wool carpets, painting depicting idyllic English countryside and great British naval victories, all gave this wing of the consulate the air of an exclusive London club.

  Each day at four o’clock precisely, work in the first two wings came to an abrupt halt while tea with sandwiches and pastries was served, just like at the Savoy in London. It was always a comfort to those members of the British Foreign Service that English culture could be satisfied with an assortment of teas and jams.

  And so at 3:50 every afternoon, the gates of the consulate swung shut on the faces of the hundreds of refugees who made pilgrimage to this building as though it were a holy place where they might be healed of some terrible disease. They waited quietly in the street as the holy communion of high tea progressed within. They turned their gaunt faces up to the bright spotless windows, hoping that someone might look down and have pity.

  But there was little pity at teatime. If diners chanced to look out at the silent masses, they saw people who did not comprehend the afternoon ritual. They saw hungry refugees who desired entry into England when they had not the slightest concept of British culture. This lack of understanding on the part of the hopeless thousands who filed past this building was indeed a sort of fatal disease. They could not share the holy rites or orange pekoe or Ceylon teas with scones and clotted cream. What did they care for orange marmalade?

  Often the great decisions of life and death, escape or imprisonment in hostile Europe, boiled down to who would fit in at Piccadilly. Did the British want a steady diet of foreigners with foreign ways mucking up the tearooms of London’s hotels?

  Lori Ibsen had some idea of this principle, although she could not put it into words—not in German words, or English. But she looked at Alfie Halder, with his blissful smile and clumsy gait, and trembled for him as they held their appointment notice through the iron bars of the consulate building. Even all dressed up and scrubbed until his skin was pink, Alfie did not fit. He carried his big head at a slight tilt to the side and down at the chin, his smile too broad, his eyes too wide and childlike.

  He looked as though he could comprehend nothing, although Lori knew that Alfie Halder somehow understood everything all too well. Information ran through his mind like tea through a silver strainer, and in the end, it was all perfectly distilled within the cup of his great innocence.

  Alfie’s faith was what Lori’s father had described as “that perfect faith which the Lord spoke of, the faith of a child . . .” Even this great faith looked up at the windows of the British Consulate and asked, “Do they let . . . boys like me . . . inside, Lori?” He did not use the word, but indeed, he understood the issue.

  Children like Alfie had been systematically euthanized by the Nazi government. If he were rejected by England because he was “not quite all right in the head,” that rejection would be equal to a death sentence. And so many millions stood condemned for less cause than that!

  “Lori?” Alfie asked quietly as the guard examined the official notice that these five young people were to come to the consulate at 3:45 exactly.

  Lori held a finger to her lips to silence Alfie. The guard checked his wristwatch and scowled. “You’re late. Two minutes. We close at 3:50 for teatime, don’t you know?”

  Lori was the spokeswoman for the group. “Yes. We know all about four o’clock tea.” Her English was quite good. The guard appraised her with a forgiving look, and yet . . .

  “Well, you’re late.”

  “These trams, you know,” she replied, as though public transportation in a foreign country was so very unreliable. “Anyway, shall I tell the official that we were kept waiting at the gate?”

  Very good—in attitude as well as accent. “I see you are expected.” His tone was apologetic. He glared back at the mob that pressed against the backs of the five visitors as though everyone might come in at once. Raising a hand he shouted, “Everyone back except these five! Back in your line! Only these five admitted!”

  ***

  It was among the poorest of all the parishes in Danzig. The streets were so narrow beneath the overhang of the gables that a taxi could not drive there.

  Wolf paid the cab driver and promised him extra if he would wait here at the end of Heilige Geist Strasse, “Holy Ghost Street.” This lane was named after the Catholic church where a young priest reported that he may have seen a woman matching the description of Lucy Strasburg. He could not remember if the woman had been expecting. “She was kneeling,” the priest had said. “Her face was childlike and glowed with an innocence rarely seen except among the very pious. Could this be the same fallen woman described by her brother? The same woman in the red dress holding the champagne glass?”

  The priest was uncertain. He had called the office of the bishop and explained that the woman had left the church before he could retrieve the photograph from his study. Now the young priest carried the picture in the pocket of his cassock, but the woman had never returned. The office of the bishop contacted Wolf with this information. “Perhaps your sister lives in this district?”

  There was a strong stench of sewage and rotting fish in the air as Wolf walked down the sloping lane. His eyes flitted from window to window of the dingy medieval rooming houses and cheap hotels. Beer cellars and secondhand shops lined the lower stories. Passing the dark entrance to a bar, Wolf could hear the shrill laughter of women mingled with the coarse voices of foreign sailors.

  Yes. This is suitable for Lucy, he thought. A sow gone to wallow with her own kind. A prostitute in search of a job. Up to the hotel room, and then to church in the morning to ask forgiveness. This was just the sort of place he would expect to find her.

  He felt his anger rising at the thought of how she would raise a baby in such a place. He would find her, take the baby to his own estate, and take Lucy back to the Reich for trial.

  Staring up at the drawn shades of the windows, he imagined what she was doing, how she made her living selling herself for bargain prices to the ragged men of Heilige Geist Strasse.

  The ancient, soot-tarnished facade of the church loomed at the end of the curving lane. There was a workhouse across the small square where a line of destitu
te men and women waited for entry into a public soup kitchen. Their gray, hopeless faces reminded him of the disembodied souls in the painting of The Last Judgment. When Danzig was annexed to Germany again, such nests as this would be cleaned out.

  At the core of his rage lay the realization that Lucy had chosen this life over him, over all he had offered her! Was that not proof of what she was? Proof enough for anyone with eyes to see.

  Wolf entered the dark church building through a heavy wooden side door. This had been the instruction of the priest, lest Lucy see her brother if she was nearby, and not return to the church.

  Wolf’s jaw was set with anger as he descended the steep stone steps into the basement offices of Holy Ghost Church. One passageway led to the underground crypt and the other led to the library and robing room of the structure.

  As arranged, the tall, worried young priest was in the library, hunched over a large volume of commentary. He jerked his head up and blinked at Wolf, as though he had forgotten the reason for his meeting here. Just as quickly, the confusion passed. He stood and nodded and extended his hand. When he spoke, his voice was a ridiculous whisper, as though Lucy might somehow hear him.

  “You are the brother of the woman?”

  Wolf had conducted secret meetings with agents in Danzig who bore less air of mystery than this priest.

  “You have seen my sister?”

  “Yes . . . that is, I think it was her. Blond. Pretty . . .” He said the word pretty as though it were a forbidden word. Wolf had wondered what thoughts had passed through the priest’s hypocritical mind when he saw her.

  “She was pregnant?”

  He shrugged helplessly. “Kneeling at the altar. I could not tell. And when I turned away and looked back, she had gone.’

  “I suppose it is possible she has had the child.”

  The priest nodded. “She prayed before the Madonna and Child, as many women who are expecting do. And mothers come to pray for their children. I suppose—”

  Wolf raised his hand to cut the priest off. “Why did you not try to speak with her? Detain her in some way?”

  His voice accused the priest of neglecting his duty. “I was uncertain. And she was praying.” He pulled her photograph from his pocket. It was the picture of Lucy on the steps of St. Stephan’s. Wide, innocent eyes. Hopeful, slightly confused expression.

  “Is this the woman you saw then?”

  “I am almost certain. But much older. Infinitely more . . . sad.” The priest’s voice trailed off as he studied the picture again. “I carry the picture with me. She will not get away again. We thought you should know. In case she is the one. This neighborhood is quite—”

  “I saw it . . . smelled it . . . myself. If my sister is here in such a place—and the baby—we must take her home. To think of her here is—”

  “Yes. Heartbreaking. I know. I will do what I can. The bishop felt it wise that we meet. I will keep watch, Herr von Fritschauer. Such a lady as your sister has no place in the squalor of Heilige Geist Strasse.”

  And so the chain of unwitting agents had found its final link on Wolf’s behalf. Once again Wolf stressed that Lucy should be taken to some counseling office and detained without being made aware that her brother was searching for her. She must not be frightened away. A clever woman, she might slip the snare again, and time was running short.

  ***

  Lucy’s one-room flat was located in a tall narrow building in the Heilige Geist district of Danzig, not far from the ancient city wall. At one time it had been the spacious mansion of a wealthy coal merchant. Of course, that had been three hundred years earlier, before anyone had ever dreamed of indoor plumbing and electric lights.

  In 1790, the place had been divided into a dozen flats on each of the first three stories. Much, much, later in its history, a sewer pipe had been installed on each floor, to be shared as a communal toilet by the tenants. About that same time, gas lighting was added. A single cold water faucet in each room completed the last in nineteenth-century conveniences to each flat.

  Since that time no improvements had been made. And so it remained as t had been for sixty years. Dockworkers, poverty-stricken students, sailors without ships, and prostitutes in search of business lived here. Twelve flats to a floor, sometimes twelve tenants to a flat, they shared the toilet and accepted the fact that they were only a little better off than the rodents that used the groaning water pipes as thoroughfares from room to room.

  But Lucy was on the fourth floor. Nestled in among hand-hewn rafters that might have served as the masts of an ancient galleon in a former life, she somehow felt above the squalor that packed the tenement. Her room had been the poorest room of all when this had been the house of a rich man. It had been his attic, the place he stored old furniture, the place his children played hide-and-seek. Tucked under the eaves at the back of the house, there was only one window, which faced another slate rooftop. Lucy could see the sky if she leaned out and craned her neck. She had pried open the sash and propped the window open with a stick. She did not need curtains; nor did it matter that the aged glass was caked with two hundred years of soot. There was no one to look in, and unless she cared to climb out on the roof to find a view, the window was only for ventilation.

  This room was smaller than the others, she was told. It had a faucet and a basin, but she had to walk down one flight to empty her chamber pot. Peter had done that task when he was with her. Now the dreaded chore of entering the filthy closet that passed for a bathroom sickened her. She was grateful that her room was a floor above the stinking, teeming warren of the rest of the building.

  She had to climb four steep flights of stairs, and her place was tiny, at best. But it was also cheaper than the rest. And isolated. She and Peter had scrubbed and scraped and scoured every inch until now it was the cleanest flat in Alstadt. At night the rats chattered along the rafters and the pipes. She placed little piles of rat poison at every opening, and Peter had nailed tin cans over the broadest rat tunnels to block their highways. Now only a few of the braver rodents skittered past and out again as quickly as possible. Peter had kept an axe handle by his bed. Lucy inherited it when he left. Usually a hard bang on the floor would frighten the midnight invaders away.

  This afternoon, in honor of the imminent arrival of the baby, Lucy had once again scrubbed every inch of the room. From the rusty iron frame of her curtained bed, across every splintered plank of the bare wood floor, up the walls and along the rafters, the room was immaculate.

  She moved the rickety table next to her bed and laid out everything she knew she would need. String to tie the cord. A sharp knife to cut it. A basin for water to wash. Another basin in which she would put bloodied sheets and towels. Antiseptic. Alcohol. Cotton gauze.

  She sat on the edge of the sagging bed and studied her meager array of necessities. She stroked the child within her and looked up toward the shining silver crucifix that hung on the water-stained wall above the foot of her bed. She would be able to look up and see Him there. Of course she knew that Holy Christ would have no part of one like her, but the baby . . . Would not Christ have mercy for the sake of this child?

  Just beneath the crucifix, Lucy laid out the satin christening gown, the matching cap and booties. Along with the silver filigree of the cross, they were the only bright and beautiful objects in the room. They were there, waiting to be filled by someone beautiful; someone tiny and perfect and innocent.

  She fingered the soft hem of the christening gown. White. Clean. Lacy. Like a wedding dress . . .

  Ah well, no use thinking of what will never be. Lucy fixed her imploring gaze on the silver Christ. “I . . . I know . . . You cannot hear me. I am too dark inside for You to hear.” She mastered her tears, lest they stain the satin of the christening gown. “And so I will not ask You for myself. Nothing for me. But for this—” She touched the baby, who moved beneath her hand. “Sweet Christ? Please? Do You remember what it was to be . . . born in a stable? Your mother. Was she afraid? Wer
e there rats there too?” She searched the silver face, so full of agony, the hands, the fingers claw-like around the spikes. Had the mother of Jesus begged mercy for her child?

  Lucy swallowed hard and did not look away. “For my baby, I ask—not for me, but for this little one. I need help! And I will give the baby to You if You help me. Not to Wolf. Or the Führer or Germany. This will be Your child! I am past Your mercy, not worthy. But—Oh, God! I am afraid! Alone. Please . . .”

  Tears came, though her battle remained strong. What was the use? Why should she expect help? She stood and went to the window, breathing deeply the scent of the sea. She wanted to live. She wanted the baby to live and grow up to be someone better than she ever was. And she did not know how to do that alone.

  ***

  The churchyard at Winchester had been the last place Orde had stopped before he left England for duty in Palestine. Today it was his first stop on his way back to London as well.

  The churchyard gate groaned as Orde swung it open and entered. Cemetery gates always groan, Orde mused, swinging it back and forth again before pulling it closed. It was as though the rusty iron had captured the pain in Orde’s heart and expressed it audibly for him.

  He picked his way through the overgrown headstones to the far corner of the grounds. There, in shiny black granite, lay the marker for his Katie:

  KATHERINE JENNIFER ORDE

  BELOVED WIFE OF . . .

  Orde had wanted the stone to bear Katie’s name, followed by the words AND CHILD. He was advised that since the baby had not been born, the sentiment would not be appropriate. But to Orde the child had been alive; it had been his, and he regretted that he had let them talk him out of it.

  “Hullo, Love,” he said quietly, laying the flowers at the base of the stone. “I must be the only one who remembers there are two of you here.” He could see his own reflection in the stone. He looked much older. His image of Katie was still young; bright and beautiful as she had been the morning she left the house. “I remember, even though it’s been a while. I remember clear as yesterday how it was. Our plans and such—baby things all put away in the nursery.” He wrung his cap in his hands. “I gave it all away before I left. The house is the same, though. I’ll be walking into the same house you walked out of when you went away.” He looked up as a group of boys on bicycles rattled by outside the fence. “I’m not looking forward to going back there, I’ll tell you. I feel more comfortable here, somehow. This is where I buried my heart. Where I think of myself.” He frowned. “I won’t be here long, Katie. I’m leaving for Poland, soon, if there’s still a job for me.” He ran his hand along the lapel of his jacket. “See, the whole world is going to war but me. I’m not a soldier anymore.”