Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle

by Warsh, Sylvia Maultash

  “Of course I remember. It’s been a long time.”

  “Could I speak to Susan please?”

  A beat went by. “You think Susan’s here?” he asked, his voice playing at disbelief but with room for ambiguity.

  The last Rebecca had heard he was in law school. A voice like that would serve him well in his chosen profession.

  “I spoke to Diane Rolf,” she said, hoping that would be enough.

  “How is Diane?”

  Obviously it wasn’t. “Look, I know you’re trying to protect Susan, but a lot of people are worried about her. She just had a baby and she may need help.”

  “Even if what you say is true, I’m perfectly capable of assessing that and taking care of any problems. I have a friend who’s a doctor, too, if need be.”

  “I’m her sister. Could I just speak to her? Just so I know she’s all right?”

  A pause. “Hold on.”

  Rebecca could picture Susan shaking her blonde head and Jeff whispering to her just to say a few words to get her sister off the phone. Rebecca felt awkward suddenly, that this stranger had become their go-between. Evidently he wasn’t a stranger to Susan.

  “Hello, Rebecca,” said Susan in a slow, tired voice.

  “Susan! Are you all right?”

  “As all right as I can be.” She sounded exhausted.

  “Give me the address there and I’ll come and get you. You can stay at my place.”

  “No, Rebecca. Ben’s there.”

  “He’ll be at the hospital for the day. I’ll get him a hotel for tonight.”

  “Then there’ll be the next night, and the next. I’m staying here, Rebecca. Tell Mom and Dad not to worry. I’m fine.”

  “Susan, please ...”

  “I need time. More time. Please don’t tell Ben where I am.”

  “That’ll be easy, since I don’t know where you are. Is it really the best thing, to stay with your old boyfriend? I can find you a room in a hotel if you really want to be alone.”

  “Stop treating me like a child. I’m here because I can talk to Jeff. He remembers me when I was a person, before I disappeared into motherhood. It’s not like I can have sex or anything, Rebecca. What are you worrying about?”

  “Look, you’re depressed after having the baby. You’re not yourself.”

  “Not myself. No, I’m not. I can’t be that Susan anymore. But then, who am I? I’m lost, Rebecca. I turned around one day and I wasn’t there. Please don’t tell Ben where I am. You know what I mean.”

  Iris arrived while Rebecca was sitting at the front desk behind the counter, staring listlessly at the lab and X-ray results in front of her.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, hanging up her coat in the closet.

  Rebecca pretended to read one of the forms. “Family problems.”

  Iris, who knew Rebecca’s family after being her assistant for seven years — more than an assistant, really — waited for more. Not obviously. She sat down at the paperwork on her side of the counter and wiggled her pen at it. Her short blonde hair swept up, taking some pounds off her generous frame as the eye followed the curve up and away. What would she do without Iris?

  “It’s Susan. You know — the baby blues.”

  Iris nodded. She’d had two children of her own several decades ago.

  Rebecca went into automatic mode for the rest of the day, treating patient after patient, carefully making sure she didn’t miss anything, distracted as she was. She was exhausted at the end; her only consolation was that she could call up Diane to get Jeff Herman’s address if it came to that.

  After her last patient, she stopped by the hospital. Ben was sitting in a gown beside Miriam’s incubator, his hand through the porthole touching her face. Rebecca’s heart contracted. What had he done to deserve this? Married a smart, beautiful woman who wanted more than he’d bargained for: herself. He was still relatively young. Maybe he could adjust.

  When he saw her he came outside, throwing the hospital gown into the large laundry disposal.

  “Did she call?” he said, without preliminaries.

  “She’s staying with a friend,” Rebecca said. “She’s all right.”

  “Friend? Who?” Relief and confusion fought in his face. “What’s the address?”

  “I don’t know.” For a change she was glad to be ignorant.

  “What’s the number? I want to talk to her.”

  “I’m sorry, Ben. She says she needs time. She doesn’t want to talk to you yet.”

  He put his palm across his forehead as if taking his temperature. “What did I ever do to her? Why is it all my fault?”

  Rebecca had no answers for him. He trudged away, his thin frame stooped, the black skullcap bobbing toward the elevators.

  When she could no longer see him, she drew a hospital gown over her street clothes, then scrubbed her hands inside the preemie unit. She sat down in a chair beside Miriam’s incubator and reached her hand through the porthole, laying it gently on the tiny face. The lights were low; a few other parents spoke to their fragile infants in whispers. It was a different world in here, everything else forgotten in the all-consuming drive to just get through the night. She understood that. She was on home turf.

  “Hi, sweetheart,” she murmured. “Auntie Rebecca’s here. Tell me about your day.”

  chapter ten

  September 15, 1935

  In the Sunday afternoon lull between lunch and dinner, Frieda pours tea for Leopold and Wolfie in the living room. Mutti is in her chair by the window reading Middlemarch in translation. Irmgard, the maid, is in the kitchen preparing some chicken soup and dumplings; Luise and Oma are taking their afternoon nap; Vati sits by the radio with his nose in the newspaper. The soothing strains of Mozart float through the air while Wolfie rattles on about fencing at his sports club.

  Though Frieda loves her brother, she recognizes the wastrel in him. It is his insouciance and good looks, the dark, wavy hair that falls over one eye, that persuade people to overlook his annoying habit of asking them to lend him money. He cannot help it, his friends say, and he’s always so good-humoured that we forgive him.

  “I’m not happy with the new fencing instructor,” he says to Leopold. “He knows the moves but has no style. What did you think of him?”

  “Oh, he’s all right,” Leopold says. “Remember, he’s had to come down from his last job.”

  All of them know without further comment that the instructor was dismissed from some Aryan sports club because he was Jewish. It isn’t just the Jews in the civil service and most of the professions who have been let go. Jewish journalists, actors, artists, and athletes have now been purged, prompting them to take the positions that are being vacated by nervous Jews who are emigrating.

  “Where did Steinberg go?” Leopold glances at Frieda. “The last instructor.”

  She nods her acknowledgement at being included in the conversation.

  “England,” Wolfie says. “He’s probably sweeping floors there.”

  “That’s more than he can do here,” Leopold says. “It’s all academic to me anyway. I won’t be able to afford fencing lessons anymore.” His pale complexion goes pink and he avoids Frieda’s eyes. “Business is not good for my father. Nobody wants to buy brooms from a Jewish manufacturer anymore.”

  Wolfie leans over with solicitude. “I’m so sorry, Leo. Instructors be damned! I’ll teach you. It always makes me feel good to do battle with you because I’m so much better than you.” He hits Leopold’s arm playfully.

  Frieda hopes Leopold hasn’t lent her brother any money.

  “Hanni wanted me to be sure to ask you,” he says to Frieda. “Next Sunday her class is competing in that big sporting event they hold every year in Grunewald. Her school has been training for months and she’s very excited. Will you come?”

  “Ah, the champion high jumper,” she says.

  She smiles noncommittally, not eager to make the long trip out to the forest preserve of Grunewald, on the western ou
tskirt of Berlin, where the Jewish community has bought their own stadium.

  “I, for one, would love to come,” says Wolfie. “I love a sporting crowd, and all those young girls in their shorts! As long as it isn’t too early in the morning.”

  Frieda bites into an almond biscuit to avoid a smirk. He rarely gets up before noon on Sunday, having stumbled into the house in the middle of the night before.

  Suddenly, Mozart is interrupted. A crowd cheers across the airwaves, subsides, and a sharp, precise voice begins: “From Nuremberg we bring you the following announcement by the Deputy Führer, Rudolf Hoess.”

  A straightforward voice begins, with a lack of emotion that chills her blood: “Utterly convinced that the purity of German blood is essential for the further existence of the German people, in order to safeguard the future of the German nation, the Reichstag has unanimously resolved upon the following law, which is promulgated herewith:

  “Section 1: Marriages between Jews and nationals of German or kindred blood are forbidden. Marriages concluded in defiance of this law are void, even if, for the purpose of evading this law, they are concluded abroad. Proceedings for annulment may be initiated only by the Public Prosecutor.”

  Frieda brings her hand up to her cheek as if she’s been struck. She wishes Leopold were not there so she didn’t have to put up a strong front.

  “Section 2: Relations outside marriage between Jews and nationals of German or kindred blood are forbidden.”

  Frieda crushes the biscuit in her other hand. Is it still her hand? Can she be sitting here in the same living room she has always known when the world is turning upside down? She looks up. Leopold and Wolfie appear to have stopped breathing and stare into space. Vati has put down his paper and turned to look out the window, as if he cannot bear the view inside. Mutti has closed her book.

  “Section 3: Jews will not be permitted to employ female nationals of German or kindred blood in their households.”

  Irmgard, their maid, has stepped into the room, wiping her hands on her apron. Her mouth falls open as the banal voice continues.

  “Section 4: Jews are forbidden to display the Reich and national flag and to present the colours of the Reich. On the other hand, they are permitted to display the Jewish colours.”

  In a fog, Frieda tries to picture the photos she has seen of Nuremberg, the medieval walls, the charming timbered houses. Her throat has constricted, her stomach tensed into a knot. She will never think of the ancient city the same way again.

  “Section 5: A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of Section 1 will be punished with hard labour. A person who acts contrary to the prohibition of Section 2 will be punished with imprisonment or with hard labour. A person who acts contrary to the provisions of Sections 3 or 4 will be punished with imprisonment up to a year and with a fine.”

  The radio cuts to the roar of a crowd. Oma stumbles from her room, awakened by some instinct of danger. The clamour on the radio stops as if on command, and Hoess, in the voice of a sleepwalker, begins again.

  “The Reichstag has adopted by unanimous vote the following law, which is herewith promulgated: A citizen of the Reich may be only one who is of German or kindred blood, and who, through his behaviour, shows that he is both desirous and personally fit to serve loyally the German people and the Reich. The right to citizenship is obtained by the grant of Reich citizenship papers. Only the citizen of the Reich may enjoy full political rights in consonance with the provisions of the laws.”

  When Frieda looks up, everyone is staring at the radio, motionless, including Irmgard. “I don’t understand, Frau Eisenbaum.” She addresses Oma. “Does that mean me?”

  Oma stands near the doorway, her palm to her cheek. Irmgard has been with them for fourteen years, since she was sixteen.

  “But what am I to do?” Irmgard cries, her hands clasping and unclasping the bib of the white apron she wears over a black dress. “I’ve never worked anywhere else!” Her tears fall on the polished wooden floor. “How will I live?”

  Mutti is playing the ostrich, her eyes closed. Vati, immobile in his chair, stares away, arms crossed over his chest, his face drained of colour.

  Finally Oma has the presence of mind to pat Irmgard on the back and say, “You will find other work.”

  Leopold jumps up from the sofa. “I must go home. My family needs me.” Then, raising his voice for Vati’s benefit, he adds, “We are preparing our papers to leave Germany. It must be clear by now there’s no future for us here.”

  Vati turns his head slowly toward him. “We have seen bad times before,” he says, his voice firm despite the sorrow in his eyes. “If we only hang on, things will get back to normal again. Hitler hasn’t been so bad, after all. More people are working now.”

  “With all due respect, sir,” Leopold says, “most of the new jobs are in the armed forces. He’s re-arming Germany. That can mean only one thing. He’s getting ready for war.”

  “Impossible!” Vati says. “He’s preparing the army in case of attack.”

  Leopold’s long legs cross the living room. He shakes his head. “These decrees, they make anti-Semitism legal. Things can only get worse before they get better. Your family is in danger, as are we all.”

  Vati’s eyes narrow. “Are you implying that I would risk the safety of my family? What impudence! If I thought for one moment that they were in any danger, I would stand in line at the American Embassy myself to get papers. I’m a veteran of the war and have been accorded privileges. I’m sorry your family feels they must leave, but we are in a totally different position.”

  Frieda follows Leopold out of the living room. He leans down to kiss her cheek. “There’s no future for us here,” he says, his hazel eyes agitated behind his glasses. He peers behind her, as if still addressing her family in the distance. “None of us.” He begins shyly. “I didn’t think it would come to this.”

  She raises her finger in the air to stop him, glances behind herself into the apartment, but sees no one. She steps out into the hall with him, closing the door behind them.

  “You heard me say my family is preparing to leave,” he says. “How would you feel if I went with them?”

  Her chest goes tight. “You must do what you think is best.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” He takes a gulp of air. “If you married me, you could get papers too. You’d be part of the family. You could leave.”

  She examines his face. He is serious. “You’re proposing to me?”

  She has wondered what she would do in such a case. She knows Leopold loves her. And yet she feels no delight in the question being raised, only wariness for how to answer. She is not ready to marry him. Or anyone. Is something wrong with her?

  “I have an uncle in America who will sponsor us,” he continues. “New Jersey.” He pauses a moment. “My parents don’t want to go without me.” He takes her hand. “And I won’t go without you.”

  She feels her throat constricting. “Leopold ... I ...”

  “I’m sorry for being this forward. I know it’s too fast, but ... circumstances are forcing my hand.”

  “I think you should go,” she says. “Go while you have the chance. It’s not so bad for us. My father is right — our circumstances are different. And I can’t leave my family. They need me. I have responsibilities, patients to look after. But please, please don’t stay on my account.”

  Frieda watches him walk down the street from an upstairs window. Her heart is clamouring in her chest. She is torn between Leopold’s logic and faith in her father. Vati has seldom been wrong before. It is easier to believe in him than to fall prey to the dire predictions of Jews who have read Hitler’s ravings in Mein Kampf. It is easier to go on with one’s life than to turn it upside down. But when that life becomes precarious? This, then, is the issue. Are their lives precarious? Do they leave everything they love behind for a country where they don’t speak the language, where their past achievements and position mean nothing, where they will be fo
reigners?

  At least she has some medical work here. Not in the state hospitals, where Jews can no longer work. And not paid for by the state-sponsored medical insurance, which is also off-limits to Jews. But several Jewish hospitals have opened to fill the need for both patients and physicians. And though payment is meagre there, since most Jews have been denied the means by which to make a living, Frieda supplements this income with work at a Jewish school. It is not what she dreamt of, but it is something. What rankles her most is that she will never be addressed as Frau Doktor Eisenbaum, since she could not finish her medical thesis.

  The next morning Frieda puts on her jacket and heads for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Oma asks.

  “Where are you going?” Luise mimics from the table, where she is eating breakfast.

  Frieda is surprised at the question. “To the hospital. Same as every morning.”

  “Be careful,” Oma says, her small head trembling. “Keep your wits about you. The streets can be dangerous.”

  “Aren’t you going to the store?” Frieda asks. Vati has already left.

  Oma shrugs. Frieda looks at her grandmother, the strongest person she knows. Her strength is disintegrating before Frieda’s eyes. Oma’s white blouse is tucked crookedly into her black skirt. It has been a while since Oma worried about her.

  Frieda slips out the door.

  The morning is cool and overcast as she leaves the apartment carrying her leather briefcase and walks north toward the Kurfürstendamm. The banal voice from yesterday will not be stilled in her head. She dreads going by the store. After the speech from Nuremberg yesterday, Vati said nothing to her, but in the evening she overheard him and Oma murmuring about the business, how they would continue. Things would be harder, they reasoned, but they had a viable business. Hadn’t the government itself ordered undershirts for the army from Eisenbaum’s, even after the boycott of Jewish stores? The government may hate the Jews, but it needs them.

  She passes two stores owned by Jews, both closed, with the gates up. The door to a small neighbourhood café opens as a customer steps out. She catches sight of a sign posted inside the door: “We Don’t Serve Jews.” A little shock passes through her, buzzes in her head. She stands at the door as it closes, staring at the few tables where people are eating breakfast. A middle-aged waitress who has served her family sees her and rushes to open the door. “Fraulein, we are forced to put up this sign. Just ignore it. Please. Please come in.”