Lilac Girls

by Martha Hall Kelly

  How lucky I was to have such a generous friend. Mother might pretend not to care, but she would be delighted the Woolsey silver was back.

  Betty and I set up the wedding cake on a card table in the garden and used my long-lost silver tongs to serve the petit fours. The happy couple stood, surrounded by wedding guests and the last of the fall smooth-leaf hydrangeas with their white-blossom globes, like bystanders craning their necks to see the festivities. Mother, holding Julien, managed to cut the cake, while the couple took her loving cup between them, sipping vodka from it while Betty and members of the orchestra shouted, “Gorku! Gorku!”—Bitter! Bitter!—to urge them to drink.

  On my way back to the house for more lemonade, I heard the tinkle of a bicycle bell and turned to find Earl Johnson riding around the corner of the house, his tires leaving a dark snake of an impression across the grass. He rode his red Schwinn Hornet bike, complete with chrome headlamp, the white straw basket peppered with yellow plastic daisies.

  Earl removed his cap and had the good sense to look sheepish. “Sorry to ride on the grass, Miss Ferriday.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Earl,” I said. So what if I’d asked him ad nauseam not to ride on the lawn? “It’s only grass. Just maybe walk around next time?”

  Zuzanna spotted Earl and walked toward us, baby on her hip. On her way, she plucked a sprig of late fall lilac. She brushed it under Julien’s chin, causing him to draw his legs up and down like a frog in delight. How sure Zuzanna’s step was now that she was finally well.

  Earl stood straddling his bike. “Got a letter for you. From—” He squinted at the return address.

  I plucked the letter from his fingers.

  “Thank you, Earl.” I glanced at it just long enough to see Paul’s handwriting and tucked it in my apron pocket. I ran my fingers across the letter there and felt it was thick. A good sign. Was it simply a coincidence that Pan Am had recently started direct flights from New York to Paris?

  Earl produced a second envelope from his bike basket. “And a telegram. All the way from West Germany.” He handed it to me and waited, hands on his handlebar grips.

  “Thank you, Earl. I can take it from here.”

  Earl turned with a “Good day” and walked his bicycle back toward the front of the house but was intercepted by Mother, who led him to the cake.

  Zuzanna reached me, an expectant look in her eyes.

  I tore off one side of the envelope and pulled out the telegram. “It’s from Kasia. From West Germany.”

  I caught the scent of zinc oxide and baby powder as Zuzanna covered my hand with hers—cold, but caring and soft. A mother’s hand.

  “Shall I read it aloud?” I asked.

  Zuzanna nodded.

  “It reads: ‘Under way to Stocksee. Just me.’ ”

  “That’s it?” Zuzanna asked. “There must be more.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s all, dear. She signs off, ‘Kasia.’ ”

  Zuzanna released my hand and steadied herself. “So she’s going. To see if it’s Herta. By herself?”

  “I’m afraid so, dear. You know how important this is. She’s a brave girl. She’ll be fine.”

  Zuzanna held Julien close. “You don’t know what they’re like.”

  She turned and walked in the direction of the playhouse, the baby at her shoulder watching my shrinking form with one shiny fist to his mouth. The band struck up “Young Love” by Sonny James as I watched Zuzanna walk across the meadow.

  Once at the playhouse, she stepped inside and gently closed the door, leaving me with a sinking feeling I’d finally gone too far.

  1959

  The receptionist led me into the doctor’s office.

  “Wait here,” she said.

  It was nicely furnished, with an Oriental carpet, pale green walls, and French doors that overlooked a quiet garden. It smelled of leather and old wood, and the furniture looked expensive. An upholstered sofa. A shiny brown side table with feet like lion’s paws. A tall leather chair at the doctor’s wide desk. Across from the desk sat a black-painted chair with a caned seat, clearly earmarked for the visitor. Could this really be where Herta spent her days? If so, it was quite a step up from her last office. She was certainly not eating beans out of a can.

  “You are the last appointment,” said the receptionist. “The doctor’s had a long day. Two surgeries this morning.”

  “Some things never change,” I said.

  “Pardon me?”

  I walked to the chair. “Oh, nothing.”

  My hands shook as I grasped the wooden arms of the chair and lowered myself down. Built-in bookcases lined one wall, and a pink china clock sat on a shelf.

  “I’ll be leaving now,” the receptionist said. “Here is your receipt. The doctor will be in shortly.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I glanced at the receipt: Dr. Herta Oberheuser was printed in pretty script across the top. My evidence!

  I almost took the receptionist’s hand and begged her to stay in the room with me but instead watched her leave. What could possibly happen? She closed the door gently behind her. If this was indeed Herta’s office, how good it would feel to tell her off, then slam that door behind me when I left.

  I stood and walked to the bookcase, the carpet muffling my steps. I ran one finger down a smooth, leather-bound book set and pulled out a heavy volume, Atlas of General Surgery. Herta’s specialty. I slipped the book back into place and stepped to the gilt-framed oil paintings on the wall of cows in a field. The desk held a blotter, a telephone, a facial tissue box, and a silver water pitcher on a china plate. The pitcher perspired. That made two of us.

  I looked at the diplomas framed on the wall. DÜSSELDORF ACADEMY FOR PRACTICAL MEDICINE. DERMATOLOGY. There was another for infectious diseases. No surgical diploma? I poured myself a glass of water.

  The door opened, and I turned to see the woman who’d stepped out of the silver Mercedes slip into the room. I froze, my mouth suddenly full of sand, and then placed my glass on the desk. It was Herta.

  She strode to the desk, clipboard in hand, wearing her white doctor’s coat, a black stethoscope draped around her neck. Thank goodness she didn’t offer to shake my hand, because my palms were wet.

  I sat, my whole body jellying, as she eyed my paperwork on the clipboard, her attitude somewhere between bored and irritated.

  “What can I do for you today, Mrs. Bakoski? New patient?”

  “New patient, yes,” I said, clasping my hands in my lap to stop them from shaking. “Looking for a family doctor.”

  She sat in the leather chair and pulled herself to the desk.

  “Polish?” she asked as she uncapped her fountain pen. Was that a hint of disdain?

  “Yes,” I said and forced a smile. “My husband is a grocer.”

  Why was I shaking so? What was the worst that could happen? Commandant Suhren was in a pine box in a German cemetery. Or was he? The way Nazis were turning up in that town, I might see Suhren doing the backstroke in the lake.

  “You live in Plön?” She frowned, lifted my glass from the desk, and placed a linen coaster under it.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “On School Street?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Funny, there is no School Street in Plön.”

  “Did I write School Street? We are new to town.” Outside the window a magpie fluttered its wings.

  “What can I help you with today, Mrs. Bakoski?”

  How could she not recognize me when her face was so etched in my mind?

  “Can you tell me your background?” I asked.

  “I was trained as a dermatologist and have recently made the switch to family medicine after practicing for many years both at Hohenlychen Sanatorium and a large teaching hospital in Berlin.”

  Once my heart stopped thumping so loudly, I became more comfortable with my role. She really didn’t recognize me.

  “Oh, that must have been interesting,” I said. “And befor
e that?”

  “I was a camp doctor at a women’s reeducation camp in Fürstenberg.”

  She leaned back in her chair, fingers steepled. There was no doubt it was her, but Herta had changed. She had become more refined, with her longer hair and expensive clothes. Prison had not broken her but had made her more sophisticated somehow. My whole body tensed at the thought. How was it that the criminal was enjoying such a luxurious lifestyle while the victim was driving around in a tin can?

  “Oh, Fürstenberg is lovely,” I said. “The lake and all. Pretty.”

  “So you’ve been there?”

  That was the moment. I had a choice. To walk out having identified her or stay for what I really wanted.

  “Yes. I was a prisoner there.”

  The clock chimed the half hour.

  “That was a long time ago,” Herta said. She sat up straight in her chair and organized phantom objects on her desk. “If you have no further questions, I have patients to see, and I am behind schedule.”

  There was the old Herta. She could only be pleasant for so long.

  “I am your last appointment,” I said.

  Herta smiled. A first. “Why stir up old dust? You’re here for some sort of vigilante justice?”

  All my rehearsed speeches went away. “You really don’t recognize me, do you?”

  Her smile faded.

  “You operated on me. Killed young girls. Babies. How could you do it?”

  “I did my job. I spent years in prison just for doing academic research.”

  “Five years. You were sentenced to twenty. So this is your excuse? Academic research?”

  “Research to save German soldiers. And for your information, the German government for years has exercised the right to use executed criminals for such research purposes.”

  “Only we weren’t dead, Herta.”

  Herta took a closer look at me. “I served my time, and now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  “My mother was at Ravensbrück too.”

  Herta closed her desk drawer a little too hard. “I can’t be expected to keep track of every Häftling.”

  “Halina Kuzmerick.”

  “Doesn’t sound familiar,” Herta said without a second’s hesitation.

  “You had her moved to Block One.”

  “There were over a hundred thousand Häftlings at Ravensbrück,” Herta said.

  “Don’t say Häftling again.”

  “I have no recollection of that person,” Herta said with a quick glance in my direction.

  Was she afraid of me?

  “Halina Kuzmerick,” I repeated. “She was a nurse. Worked with you in the Revier.”

  “There were three shifts of prisoner nurses. You expect me to remember one?”

  “She was blond and spoke German fluently. An artist.”

  Herta smiled. “I would like to help you, but my memory is not the best. I’m sorry I can’t remember every nurse who sketched portraits.”

  The clouds outside shifted, and sunlight poured through the window onto Herta’s desk. Everything slowed.

  “I didn’t say she sketched portraits.”

  “I have to ask you to leave. I really am busy. My—”

  I stood. “What happened to my mother?”

  “If you’re smart, you’ll go back to Poland.”

  I stepped closer to her desk. “They may have let you out, but there are people who think you deserve more punishment. Lots of them. Powerful people.”

  “I paid the price.”

  Herta capped her pen and tossed it onto the blotter. Her ring caught the sunlight and threw a kaleidoscope of light about the desk.

  “That’s a beautiful ring,” I said.

  “My grandmother’s,” Herta said.

  “You’re a sick person. Pathological.”

  Herta looked out the window. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Relating to or manifesting behavior that is maladaptive—”

  “This ring has been in my family—”

  “Save it, Herta.”

  Herta took a fancy leather pocketbook from the drawer. “Is it money you want? Seems like every Pole has their hand out.”

  “If you don’t tell me exactly what happened to my mother, I will go to the people who sent me and tell them you’re here, with your Mercedes-Benz and your clinic where you treat babies. Then I’ll go to the papers and tell them everything. How you killed people. Children. Mothers. Old people. And here you are, like nothing happened.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Of course the fancy paintings will have to go. And the leather books.”

  “All right!”

  “The fine clock too—”

  “Just stop it. Let me think.” Herta looked down at her hands. “She was a very good worker, if I recall. Yes, she had the Revier running well.”

  “And?” At this rate, I would miss the border checkpoint time by hours.

  Herta tipped her head to one side. “How do I know you won’t tell the papers anyway?”

  “Keep going,” I said.

  “Well…she stole. All sorts of things. Bandages. Sulfa drugs. I couldn’t believe it. Turns out a pharmacist from town named Paula Schultz came with deliveries for the SS apothecary and funneled supplies to her. Heart stimulants. Shoe polishes for their hair, so the older women—”

  “I know what it was for. Keep going.”

  “All that was bad enough, but I didn’t know about the list.” Herta snuck a look at me.

  I leaned in. “What list?”

  “The surgical list for the sulfa tests. Nurse Marschall discovered your mother took it upon herself to, well, edit it.”

  “Edit it how?” I asked, but I knew.

  “She tried to take you and your sister off. And another prisoner.”

  “So they killed her?” I said, tears flooding my eyes.

  “Sent her to the bunker first. Then Nurse Marschall told Suhren about the coal. How she took it to make remedies for the Häftlings with dysentery. I never even told him she broke into the apothecary closet, but the coal was enough for Suhren.”

  “Enough to kill her?” I said, feeling myself sucked down a drain.

  “It was stealing from the Reich,” Herta said.

  “You didn’t stop them.”

  “I didn’t know it was happening.”

  “The wall?” I groped for my purse looking for my handkerchief, unable to continue.

  Herta took her cue.

  “I really must be going now,” she said and started to stand.

  “Sit,” I said. “Who shot her?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Who shot her, Herta?” I said, louder.

  “Otto Poll,” Herta said, speaking faster. “Binz woke him up from a dead sleep.”

  She was afraid of me. Just the thought made me stand straighter.

  “How did it happen?”

  “You don’t want—”

  “How did it happen? I won’t ask again.”

  Herta sighed, her mouth tight.

  “You want to know? Fine. On the way to the wall, Halina kept telling Otto she knew an SS man. Someone high up. Lennart someone. ‘Just contact him. He’ll vouch for me.’ I had sent that Lennart a letter for her, I’ll have you know. At great risk to myself.”

  So that was why Brit had seen Lennart at the camp. Lennart the Brave had come to Matka’s rescue after all. Just too late.

  “Keep going,” I said.

  “ ‘Are you sure?’ Otto kept saying to Binz. He loved the ladies. Then Halina asked a favor—”

  “What favor?”

  “ ‘Just let me see my children one more time,’ she said, which Suhren allowed…big of him, considering her betrayal. I had no idea we’d operated on you and your sister. Binz took her to where you both were sleeping. After that, she went quietly. Once Suhren met them at the wall, they got on with it. ‘Just do it,’ Binz said to Otto, but his gun jammed. He was crying. She was crying. A mess.”

/>   “And?” I asked.

  “This is all so sordid,” Herta said.

  Did I really want to know?

  “Tell me,” I said.

  “He finally did it.” Herta paused. It was so quiet there in her office, only the sound of children far off in a garden, playing.

  “How?” I asked. Just get through this, and you’ll be back in the car on the way home soon.

  Herta shifted in her chair, and the leather sighed. “When she wasn’t expecting it.”

  At long last, the story I’d waited to hear. I sat down, hollowed like a blown-out egg but strangely alive. Hard as it was, suddenly I wanted every crumb of it, for each detail seemed to penetrate and bring me back to life.

  “Did she cry out? She was terrified of guns.”

  “Her back was turned. She wasn’t expecting it.” Herta wiped away a tear.

  “How did you feel?”

  “Me?” Herta asked. “I don’t know.”

  “You must have felt something once you found out.”

  “I was very sad.” She plucked a tissue from the box. “Are you happy now? She was a good worker. Practically pure German. Suhren punished me for getting too close to her.”

  “Were you?”

  Herta shrugged. “We were somewhat friendly.”

  I knew the doctor had liked Matka, but would my mother really have socialized with this criminal? Matka had surely only pretended to be friendly in order to organize supplies.

  “If you’d known we were Halina’s daughters, would you have taken us off the list?”

  Herta laced her fingers and stared at her thumbs. We listened to the faraway hum of a lawnmower.

  After several seconds, I stood.

  “I see. Thank you for telling me the story.”

  Why was I thanking her? It was all so surreal. Why couldn’t I rail at her, tell her to go to hell?

  I started toward the door and then turned back.

  “Give me the ring,” I said.

  She clasped her hands to her chest.

  “Take it off now,” I said. “And put it on the desk.”

  The thought of touching her made me queasy.

  Herta sat still for a long second and then pulled at the ring.

  “My fingers are swollen,” she said.

  “Let me see,” I said as I took a deep breath and grasped her hand. I spat on the ring and worked the band back and forth. It released and revealed a narrow strip of white at the base of her finger.