Lilac Girls

by Martha Hall Kelly

The overhead lights were so bright. Were we lit up for every Nazi to see?

  “The only Nazis that’ve come anywhere near here followed Anna Sadowski when she was carrying grenades in her bra. Flirted with her the whole way. Some girls get fun jobs.” Janina stepped closer. “Stay for cards?”

  Cards?

  “There’s money in that book. Shouldn’t you hide it? Do you want to get us shot?”

  “Come on, stay. I’ll do your hair.”

  “I need to get home before dark.”

  She clutched her hands to her chest. “An updo?”

  Janina worked part-time at the best hair salon in Lublin.

  “Pietrik told me to leave right away.”

  “Are you two sweethearts?”

  “I have to go—”

  “Everyone says he likes you…”

  I hurried to the door. “Don’t listen to rumors.”

  Janina picked a magazine from the table, and slid herself up onto the desk. “So you’re not interested in any rumors?”

  I turned.

  “Even rumors about, say…Nadia Watroba?”

  I stepped toward the desk.

  “What do you know?”

  Janina thrust her chin in the air. “Oh, now you’ll stay.”

  “She’s my best friend.”

  “Oh, really?” Janina said, flipping through the magazine.

  “Would you stop? Her dog is outside waiting, very sick—”

  She slapped her magazine closed. “Not Felka?”

  Nadia’s Felka was a famous dog.

  “Yes, Felka. So tell me now.”

  “Well, I only know a little…”

  “Janina, if you don’t tell me—”

  “Okay. Okay. All I know is that Pietrik—well, I think it was Pietrik—took Nadia and her mother to a safe apartment.”

  “Close by?”

  “In Lublin, yes. But that’s all I know.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Just that I heard she’s somewhere right under the Nazis’ noses.”

  Dazed, I thanked Janina, walked back down the front steps, and started for home, through the park as Pietrik had told me. Nadia really was safe! My whole body relaxed as I pulled the wagon quicker to get Felka home and fed. Nadia was with her mother and still in Lublin! There was much I could do for her—care for Felka, keep working for the underground.

  After all, my first mission had gone well even if Janina hadn’t taken it seriously. Was I now part of the resistance? I’d delivered money. I would take the oath tomorrow and make it official.

  Halfway home, the skies opened, flooding the cobblestone streets, soaking Felka and me through.

  “You were lucky once,” my wet shoes said with each step. “Don’t make a habit of it.”

  1939–1940

  I took the train home from Camp Blossom, happy to leave, my thoughts fixed on finding a job as a physician. I wore my BDM uniform, but before long regretted this. It would have been restful to watch the thick forests fly by outside the train window, assembling a mental checklist of possible clinics to visit. But I did not get a moment of solitude, for every passenger stopped to display admiration for my uniform.

  “May I touch your eagle please, Fräulein?” a young boy asked.

  He stood at my train seat, posture good, arms by his sides, rocking slightly as the train swayed. His mother stood behind him, two fingers to her lips, eyes wide, as if meeting the Führer. Yes, it was somewhat burdensome to represent the BDM, but flattering as well, since great respect was shown to those of us in that uniform. As young people, we had such power.

  “You may,” I said.

  Water came to my eyes as he stroked the gold thread with the touch of a butterfly.

  Nothing grips the heart like an unspoiled German child.

  It was understandable my uniform caused a fuss, since most Germans had never seen the full complement of BDM badges on a woman. While the all-male Hitler Youth had patches and pins for every activity, down to potting plants, BDM achievement badges were limited in number and hard-won. On my navy-blue leader’s jacket, I wore the Red Cross patch, the silver proficiency clasp for nursing, and the first aid and physical fitness badges.

  But it was the eagle indicating the highest level of leadership, the golden bird worn over my heart, his bullioned wings fanned out, which attracted the most attention. Mutti had cried with pride the day I first wore it home. She’d been more impressed with that than my diploma from medical school, accelerated on account of the war.

  Once home, I tried to find my first job as a doctor, but even though I’d graduated second in my class, practices were reluctant to hire a woman doctor. It seemed the Party rhetoric about a woman’s rightful place being at home raising children had taken root and many patients requested a male physician. Since, as a female university student, I’d been required to take needlework classes, I took in sewing work for extra money.

  I finally found a part-time post at the Skin Clinic of Düsseldorf, which paid a small fee for each patient I treated. It was a dull job, the highlight of most days lancing a boil. Would I forget the few surgical techniques I’d learned in medical school? A surgeon must operate consistently to stay proficient.

  Our economy had improved markedly by then, which only reduced the number of patients seeking skin treatment. Even dishpan hands, once the bread and butter of dermatology, were not a problem for most German housewives anymore. Polish laborers provided by the Reich, imported from the east, took care of the scullery work.

  As a result, my earnings soon dropped to almost nothing. Father’s condition went from serious to critical, and Mutti had to stay home with him. I barely sustained all three of us. In no time I became the only starving doctor in Düsseldorf, so I continued to work part time at Onkel Heinz’s butcher shop.

  After the stillness of the Camp Blossom woods and the quiet clinic, the bustle of the crowds coming to the shop for their meat, the anxious Hausfrauen in their ironed housedresses jostling to the counter, like a polite herd of cattle themselves, was a welcome variation. There I could escape my troubles and just tear great sheets of white paper from the roll and practice surgical knots as I wrapped packages in striped twine.

  I came to work as usual one Sunday, when the shop was closed to the public. That was the day Heinz had me work there alone, so no one could see what I made for him.

  His special project.

  “Hurry up,” Heinz said.

  He pressed himself against the butcher-block table, which sagged from the blows of his cleaver and his father’s before him. His bulge was plain even under his butcher’s apron, which was stiff with dried calf’s blood. How did I get myself in such a fix? Years of being too afraid to say anything; that is how.

  Heinz watched as I stood at the worktable and chose the tautest lamb intestine. The waiting was the best and worst part for Heinz. I turned the tissue inside out, macerated it in bleach, and removed the mucous membrane, careful to leave the peritoneal and muscular coats. Onkel Heinz urged me on, but I took my time, since any tear or pinprick could spell disaster.

  “I’m going as fast as I can,” I said. It was best to stall, for once I finished, the worst part came, and the whole process began again.

  Bad thoughts stung me as I worked. Why wasn’t I home researching new jobs? It was my own fault I was stuck there, trapped by Heinz, fearing he would reveal our secret. I should have told on him years before, but Tante Ilsa would never have paid for my schooling if she’d known. What would Mutti say? I could never tell her, of course. Even sick as he was, Father would murder Onkel Heinz if he knew. This was the price I paid for my education. Heinz said I’d brought it on myself, a young woman alone there with him.

  Heinz moved next to me and lifted my skirt. I felt the familiar creep of his calloused fingers onto my thigh.

  “Why does it take you so long?” Heinz asked. I smelled that sweet wine he liked on his breath.

  I pushed his hand away. “Things take time.”

  H
einz was not exactly the cream of the master race. With an IQ somewhere between borderline deficient and mildly retarded, he was easily put off by any excuse more than two words long. I patted the delicate tissue dry, measured, and cut. Heinz was red in the face by the time I rolled it down, smooth and clear as a silk stocking.

  I didn’t have to be told to go to the meat locker with the tin bucket of lard. There was a curious comfort in the sameness of it. I pulled the string attached to the bare bulb to illuminate the space and braced myself against the cold wooden shelf behind me. Even with the flour sack across my face, I knew what was coming. The sweet flour smell cut his odor of beef blood, cigars, and bleach. Don’t cry. Crying only angered Heinz and made it take longer. He inched my handiwork over himself, dipped one paw into the lard, ran it down the membrane, and began.

  I reviewed the bones of the hand.

  One: the scaphoid bone, derived from the Greek skaphos, which means boat.

  Folds of fat hung from Heinz’s abdomen like a hairy apron and flapped against me with each thrust. With his irregular breathing coming faster, it would not be long.

  Two: the lunate bone, shaped like a crescent moon.

  I had long ago stopped wishing for a sudden heart attack. Years of fatty roasts must have provided him with arterial plaque buildup two fingers thick, but he managed to stay alive nonetheless.

  Three: the triquetrum bone. Four: the round pisiform bone, named for the Latin for pea.

  Heinz could not contain himself and began his usual moaning and so on, his breath a cold fog on my neck. His hands shook as he gripped the shelf, his thick butcher’s wrists supporting his weight.

  Without warning, the refrigerator door opened, and the flour sack slipped from my face. Ilsa stood in the doorway, holding the door open with one hand, a jar of marmalade in the other. She must have heard Heinz groaning like a stuck pig.

  “Shut that door, woman,” Heinz said, pants puddled at his ankles, face purple.

  Was that disgust on her face or just weariness? She placed the marmalade on the refrigerator shelf, turned, and left.

  The locker door chunked shut behind her, and Heinz went back about his work.

  —

  ONE SLOW DAY AT the skin clinic, I sat at my desk after finishing with my last patient, a rotund four-year-old thumb-sucker. I’d sent his mother home with some antiseptic cream for a rash. How would I make a living doing this? I was much better suited to the tranquility of a university position, but a teacher’s salary would not support my family much better.

  I picked up The Journal of Medicine and noticed a classified ad for a doctor needed at a reeducation camp for women, 90 km north of Berlin, near the resort town of Fürstenberg on Lake Schwedt. There were many such camps at the time, mostly for the work-shy and minor criminals. The idea of a change of scenery was appealing. A resort town? I would miss Mutti but wouldn’t miss Heinz.

  The only other thing I knew about the camp was that Fritz Fischer, my former medical school classmate, worked there, but it had a pleasant-sounding name.

  Ravensbrück.

  DECEMBER 1939

  Christmas Eve day, Paul and I made it over to the Fifth Avenue Skating Pond in Central Park. I loved to skate, having learned on Bird Pond near our house in Connecticut, but rarely practiced, since I avoided most activities that made me look taller than necessary. Plus, I’d never had anyone to skate with before. Betty would have rather swallowed live bees than be seen on skates. I vowed to take full advantage of Paul’s time in New York.

  It was perfect skating weather that day, clear and sharp with a stiff wind, which overnight had made the ice smooth as the finish on a billiard ball. As a result, the flag atop Belvedere Castle was up, the red sphere on a white field every skater coveted. Word that the ice was ready passed from doorman to doorman along Fifth Avenue, and the pond became thick with skaters as a result.

  The first tier of skaters was already there when Paul and I arrived. The men, near professionals, performed their genuflections and whirligig spins, icicles on their beards and noses. Then the ladies arrived, two or three at a time, their heavy coats like sails blowing them across the ice. With a little practice, Paul proved to be a serviceable skater, and arms linked, we glided throughout the network of adjoining ponds. My old self never would have skated in such a public place, but I tackled the ice with vigor, and we soon found a nice rhythm together. Suddenly I felt like trying every sort of new thing.

  We sailed under arched bridges to Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata and Waldteufel’s The Skaters’ Waltz, which couldn’t have sounded lovelier, even transmitted through the skate shack’s tinny speakers.

  The ice grew more crowded, so we skated back toward the shack, the scent of warm chestnuts in the air. We were about to sit and change out of our skates when I heard my name.

  “Caroline. Over here.”

  It was David Stockwell. He skated to us and stopped with a sharp edge and a smile, posing like something out of a Brooks Brothers advertisement, drawing his jacket back with one gloved fist. How could David act as if nothing had ever happened between us, as if up and marrying an acquaintance after stringing me along for ten years was completely natural?

  “Hey, who’s this guy, Caroline?” David said.

  Was that a flash of jealousy? David did seem small by comparison. Would he think Paul and I were romantically engaged? Slim chance of that. Paul was keeping his distance and gave off only friend signals, not even standing close to me. What if he did show David I was his? Thinking about that made me wish it were true.

  Paul extended his hand. “Paul Rodierre.”

  David shook it. “David Stockwell. I’ve known Caroline since—”

  “We really must be going,” I said.

  “Sally is over there lacing up. She’d hate to miss you.”

  I’d had advance warning about Sally from Betty, of course. Her new sister-in-law was a petite girl whom Mrs. Stockwell had showered with a haute couture wedding trousseau the cost of which could have fed half of New York for a year. I gave David my best “we really can’t stay” look.

  He turned to Paul. “I’m with the State Department. Working to keep us out of the war. Heard about your speech at the gala. Seems you’re working to get us into it.”

  “Just telling the truth,” Paul said.

  “It was our most successful event ever,” I said.

  Paul skated closer to me and linked my arm in his. “Yes, darling, overwhelming, wasn’t it?”

  Darling?

  David blinked, taken aback.

  I moved closer to Paul. “Deafening applause. And the donations. Everyone’s behind France now.”

  Sally Stockwell skated toward us through the crowd. It was hard to ignore the smallness of her, maybe five feet two inches tall. She was done up in full skating costume, boiled wool A-line skating skirt, a snug little quilted Tyrolean jacket, and white fur of some kind at the top of her skates. The yarn tassle on the knitted cap she wore, tied under her pretty chin, swayed as she neared.

  “You must be Caroline,” Sally said. She stretched a white angora-mittened hand out to me, and I shook it.

  Sally was more Olivia de Havilland than Bette Davis and impossible to dislike, with a disarming honesty that made even the most trivial conversation awkward.

  “David’s told me everything about you. ‘Caroline helps French babies. Caroline and I starred in our first play together—’ ”

  “I was Caroline’s first leading man,” David said. “Played Sebastian to her Olivia.”

  Paul smiled. “They share a kiss, don’t they? How were the reviews?”

  “Lukewarm,” I said.

  Sally skated closer. “Sometimes I think you and David should have married.”

  “So good to see you both,” I said. “Sorry to run off, but we have to be going.”

  “Yes, spending the whole day together, aren’t we, sweetheart?” Paul said.

  He was laying it on thick. That would activate the gossip mill, but I
didn’t care. It felt good to be loved, if only for show.

  We said our goodbyes and waved to Sally and David as they merged into the flow of skating couples. How lovely it was of Paul to pretend to be my beau. He was not mine to flaunt, of course, but it was still nice to have someone in my life to show off, especially to David Stockwell, who’d so thoroughly trampled my ego.

  After skating, Paul went back to the Waldorf to change, and I decorated the fat blue spruce Mother’s bosom friend Mr. Gardener had brought down from the country and made coq au vin. Serge had sent down a winter vegetable soup from Connecticut, loaded with sugar parsnips, fat carrots, and gorgeous sweet fennel, for our first course.

  That night the snow, which had hit Connecticut earlier, made it to Manhattan with a vengeance, leaving Mother stranded with Serge up at our country house. Paul arrived at my door with snowflakes in his hair and on the shoulders of his overcoat. His face was cold against mine as he leaned in to kiss me on each cheek. He’d gone heavy on the Sumare, once one of my father’s favorite scents. I’d peeked in Paul’s medicine cabinet at the Waldorf when I used his bathroom and seen the bottle there beside the blue jar of Noxzema.

  Paul held a bottle of Burgundy and a nosegay of crimson glory roses wrapped in white paper. I would need to keep my wits about me and watch my wine intake. I was relieved he’d dressed up, in his aubergine jacket, for I was wearing a dress and silk stockings.

  He slid the bottle, heavy and cold, into my hands.

  “Joyeux Noël. It’s the last of the case my cousin sent from his vineyard. Hope you don’t mind, but I left your number with the Waldorf operator in case I need to be reached.”

  “Of course not. Worried about Rena?”

  “Always, but it’s just a precaution. I spoke with her this morning and gave her the visa update. Roger says he’ll know in a few days.”

  Rena. It was as if she stood there with us.

  Paul stepped into the living room. “You could land an airplane in here. Just us tonight?”

  “They can’t get out of the driveway up in Connecticut.”

  “So I’m your only amusement? Such pressure.”