“She’s such a sweet girl. I’m happy for the company. I’m all alone, you know. My poor Gerhard died three years ago and we had no children.”
When Luise starts licking her fingers, Frau Thaler brings out a handkerchief from her apron pocket. “There, dear, you can wipe your hands with that.”
“It’s very kind of you,” Oma begins, “but she’s ...”
Frieda holds her breath. The neighbour must see what Luise is, but Oma must not put it into words that can be repeated, even unintentionally. The Gestapo has informers everywhere.
“The Lord Jesus loves all his children, Frau Eisenbaum,” says the neighbour. “She’s welcome to come over whenever she likes. Send her over for breakfast in the morning. It’ll give me someone to cook for.”
During the summer Frieda is asked to fill in periodically for a physician who works at the Jewish hospital. She remembers him as a sought-after doctor with a busy practice. Now he ekes out a living tending to Jewish patients who have little means of paying him after being forced out of their occupations and businesses. Even he must take time off once a week or so, and Frieda has been recommended by Herr Doktor Kochmann. The senior physician pays her from his earnings, a meagre amount, with apologies.
The government has even decreed that Jews can no longer be travelling salesmen, so Vati and Wolfie must stop their selling jaunts in the suburbs. Oma has taken in alterations for Jews whose bodies are shrinking and who are still vain enough to want their clothes to fit. She shares the work with Vati, who otherwise mopes around the apartment, afraid to go out. Sometimes Frieda sees him sitting in a chair, staring at nothing.
A week doesn’t go by without a decree issued from the government. In July, the edict comes down that all Jews must carry identity cards with their photos and fingerprints. Along with all the other Jews in Germany, the Eisenbaums must troop to their local police precinct and get fingerprinted. They decide to go individually or in pairs; in case one of them is “detained,” at least the others will be safe. Vati goes with Mutti one morning.
“It is humiliating,” he says, “but there seems to be no danger.”
The next day, Oma escorts Luise with explicit instructions for her not to open her mouth. Frieda and Wolfie go separately at different times.
In the station Frieda watches the heavy, middle-aged policeman place her left index finger carefully into the ink pad then press the black tip onto her identity card. In a daze, she feels his cool, business-like hand repeat the process with her right index finger. Without looking at her, he wipes the black ink off her fingers with a cloth quite delicately, almost apologetically.
In August, the Nazi government outdoes itself: it issues a decree that all Jewish males must add the name “Israel” to their names, and all Jewish females “Sara.” These new middle names must go on the new identity cards. The first time she sees “Frederika Sara Eisenbaum” on her new card, it is a shock. The names must also be included in signatures. When Frieda writes out a prescription she must remember to sign it with her new middle name. She is enraged that the government revels in its humiliation of the Jewish population even after it has stripped them of everything they owned and the means by which they might earn enough to live like human beings.
One evening everyone has gone to sleep, Luise snoring softly in the bed she shares with Oma. Nearby Frieda shifts restlessly on her cot. Maybe she should take something, but barbiturates are costly and she is saving the few she has for a serious case of nerves. She has no doubt she will need them.
She hears a soft rustling of fabric and sees Oma’s shadow approaching in the dark. “Are you awake?” Oma asks.
Frieda pushes herself up on one elbow. “What’s wrong?”
Oma lowers herself carefully to sit on the edge of the cot. “I have to ask you to do something for me, Frieda. It’s very important.”
The bed creaks as Luise turns over.
“What is it?”
“I want you to get me some pills. Enough to put me to sleep.”
Frieda swallows hard. Is she really awake? Can she possibly have heard right? “I have some here if you can’t sleep.”
“You know what I mean. For when I can’t go on. Enough pills to make me sleep for good.”
Frieda feels her stomach sinking. What is she supposed to say: Don’t be silly, Oma, everything will be all right? She knows it won’t be all right, ever again.
She finds her grandmother’s hand in the dark. It’s soft but cold as she holds it in her own. “Oma.” She doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t want to lose her grandmother, who has always been the strong one in the family. “Is this really what you want?”
Frieda feels a tear drop on her hand. She pulls her grandmother into her arms.
Now that Austria has joined the Reich, Hitler has turned his gaze further afield, toward the Sudetenland, an area in Czechoslovakia where the people speak German. Leopold says that the region has mountains, and so is a natural defence for Czechoslovakia. But if Hitler takes it ... Every day Frieda reads the papers and cringes at the enraged voice on the radio as Hitler rails against the Versailles Treaty: this treacherous piece of paper created Czechoslovakia at the end of the war and tore the Sudeten Germans from the bosom of their rightful country. Frieda notices with alarm headlines like, “Pregnant Sudeten mother pushed off bicycle by Czech subhuman in Ostrava!” Or, “How long must our patient German brethren yield to such humiliating atrocities?”
By September, Hitler is making speeches on the radio about going to war over the Sudetenland to save the German population there: “The German people, united as one behind their Leader, can wait no longer ...”
There’s a heightened anxiety in the air, not just among Jews. Frieda sees it in the faces of people on the street during the much publicized conference when the leaders of France, England, and Italy meet with Hitler in Munich to try to avoid war. If it wasn’t clear before, it is now — Hitler must have Czechoslovakia; even if it means igniting a world war, he will not back down. Are France and England willing to go to war over a strip of land in an insignificant country like Czechoslovakia? In one of Leopold’s New York Times, Frieda reads that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain calls the crisis “a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.”
The Eisenbaums have no papers yet, and Frieda knows imminent war will make it even harder to acquire them. Embassies, even borders, will be closed and it will be impossible to leave.
During the conference, Goering speaks at the Nuremburg Party rally, which is broadcast live. Frieda and Vati sit staring at the radio while Oma stitches the hem of a skirt that lies in a heap on her lap.
“A petty segment of Europe is harassing the human race ...”
Czechoslovakia was the most recent enemy of the Reich. The Nazis are so transparent; why can’t people see?
“This miserable pygmy race is oppressing a cultural people and behind it is Moscow and the eternal mask of the Jew devil.”
“Why do you listen to this crap?” Wolfie jumps up and heads for the door.
“We have to know what’s going on,” Vati says quietly, without conviction.
Everyone in Germany holds their breath, Jew and Gentile alike. On a crowded bus, Frieda is standing over two women when she overhears one of them whisper to her companion, “I don’t want my son going to fight for Czechoslovakia.”
When the conference ends, the news is dismal. At least it’s dismal for the Jews, though good for everyone else. Aren’t all things relative these days? Hitler has won back the Sudetenland and in exchange has promised peace. He never wanted war, he says, only what rightly belonged to Germany. All the papers carry photos of Chamberlain, with his little pencil moustache, waving a sheet of paper in the air and proclaiming, “Peace in our time!”
“He didn’t have the backbone to stand up to Hitler,” Wolfie says, slapping the newspaper down on the table. “So much for England coming to save us. They’ve just shown him they’re weak and can be push
ed around. He’s not going to stop with the Sudetenland.”
November 7, 1938
While Frieda is stitching up a young boy’s knee at the Jewish hospital, a nurse sticks her head in the doorway. “A German diplomat was shot in Paris. By a Jew.”
“Why did he do it?” Frieda asks.
“His parents were on that transport to Poland in October. He was angry.”
Frieda blanches. A few weeks ago, fifteen thousand Polish-born Jews who lived in Germany were taken from their homes at dawn and pushed into boxcars heading toward the Polish border. Some lived in Germany for decades; their children were born here. None of that mattered; now they are “Polish citizens.” The Eisenbaums should have been on that transport, but Vati’s Iron Cross saved them one more time.
“Stupid young pup,” the nurse continues. “If the diplomat dies, we’ll pay for it.” She continues down the hall, spreading the news.
For the next two days, the condition of the young diplomat, Ernst Vom Rath, occupies the headlines. While he lies near death, the Nazis rub their hands: the world conspiracy of Jews has clearly shown its hand. Something must be done to punish them. All the Jews in Berlin are whispering among themselves, “If only he doesn’t die.”
Then, on the evening of November 9, regular radio programming is interrupted. “After a brave struggle, Ernst Vom Rath, third secretary in the German Embassy in Paris, has succumbed to his injuries. The Jew, Herschel Grynszpan, has been arrested and charged with his murder.”
When Frieda looks up, Oma’s stitching lies in her lap. “God help us all,” she says. Herr Doktor Kochmann, Hans Brenner, Ilse Remke, and Frieda are standing around a woman screaming in childbirth. They wear the usual white coats, except for Frieda, who wears one in bright yellow.
“This is killing me!” the woman cries. “Can’t you give me something for the pain?”
Brenner says, “You must push the baby out, Luise, then we can give you something for the pain.”
Frieda assumes it’s another Luise, but when she looks down at the patient’s face, it’s her sister. Luise screams out again and Ilse slaps her on the side of the head. The slap is so loud it sounds like glass breaking.
Frieda startles awake. Oma is standing at the window in her nightdress; Luise is sitting up in bed, her eyes large with fear. Frieda hears noises outside and jumps from her cot to look out the window. Is she still dreaming? A chest of drawers is being thrown out the window of a nearby apartment. Then a stuffed chair, brown cushions flying. Then an accordion that clanks out a strident death rattle as it drops. Lamps, tables, books all plunge into the courtyard with a horrifying clatter.
Frieda runs into her parents’ bedroom. Vati is standing in his nightshirt by the window while Mutti cowers in bed. Voices of men laugh and shriek all around outside, upstairs, downstairs. The shattering sound of china breaking, lots of china.
Then it’s their turn: fists begin to hammer at their door. Incessant fists, then boots.
Vati, his face flooded with terror, looks at Frieda, then steps slowly toward the front door. He puts his hand out to unlock it, turns to look at Frieda once more, as if she is his last comfort, then undoes the latch.
The door flies open as a group of men in civilian dress storm in with axes and hammers, their faces contorted with hatred. Are they really men? Are they human? One of them, a tall young man with clipped blond hair, lashes out in his rage and hits Vati in the face, knocking him to the floor. Frieda rushes to his side as the fiends run to destroy everything in their path. They pull the dishes from the small cabinet in the kitchen and throw them to the floor in a frenzy of destruction.
Frieda dabs at Vati’s bleeding nose with her handkerchief, helps him sit up amid the deafening noise of their lives being reduced to rubble. Mutti runs from the bedroom in her nightdress and crouches near Vati. Oma leads Luise toward them.
In an abrupt moment of panic Frieda remembers her medical bag — it’s sitting near her cot in the bedroom.
As she steps away from her family, Oma grabs her arm. “No,” she says, but Frieda pulls away and creeps to their bedroom, where the men are slashing away with their axes and knives at the featherbeds and mirrors. Feathers fly everywhere. As she watches, one of the men picks up the black medical bag and lifts out the stethoscope.
“Please,” she says.
He looks up, eyes puffy with rage. He steps toward her, lips curling at an ugly angle. She steps back.
“Those are medical instruments,” she says. “I can help people with them.”
“Look, Heinz,” says the young man with the cruel lips. “This Jewish cow thinks she can help people.”
Another man stops his rampage through the dresser drawers for an instant. “Shit on her,” says the other man. “Just do what you’re supposed to.”
The first man picks up a hammer, glowers at her with loathing in his eyes. She thinks she’s going to die. Maybe it would be better than this. Instead, he throws the stethoscope down on a night table they’ve neglected to pitch out the window and smashes down hard with the hammer: her beloved instrument is in pieces. Her audioscope is next, then the blood pressure cuff. All destroyed.
She stumbles back to her family in time to hear one of the men bark an order at Vati to get dressed.
“You’re making a mistake,” Vati says quietly. “I have the Iron Cross.”
One of the men slaps him across the face, his eyes full of disgust. “Another Jew with the Iron Cross. How much did this one cost? It won’t protect you anymore, you piece of shit.”
Oma says, “Where are you taking him?” The men pay her no attention as they continue to break whatever they find.
When Vati has put his clothes on, Mutti clings to him, but two of the men pull her away. They are taking him out the door.
Frieda cries out, “Vati!” He looks back at her with mournful eyes, then vanishes down the stairs. As she stands at the door, stunned, Frau Thaler opens her door a crack, then quickly closes it shut.
Once the men have gone, the family leap to the front window to see Vati being pushed into a truck filled with other men. He’s holding the bloody handkerchief in his hand. The truck pulls away out of sight. Frieda is numb. Her head spins with the racing of her heart. Will she ever see her father again? They let him go the last time, but that was different. They got what they wanted from him then, the business. This time there’s nothing left to give them. Only blood.
Through her shock she hears Luise wailing. Oma is too distraught to comfort her and stares out the window, tears rolling down her cheeks. Mutti is whimpering in the corner. What will they do now, Frieda thinks, when they have nothing left? Everything is gone. She looks out the window to see a hellish orange glow in the distance. Something is on fire. Their whole world is going up in flames.
chapter twenty-three
Salim bent his head on a resolute angle as he made his way along the perimeter of the salle. Rebecca would have liked to warn Erich, now that they were on friendly terms. But warn him about what? Possible fireworks in German? The Egyptian gave her no opportunity, in any case, striding toward them swiftly, elegant waves of brown hair falling over his forehead. The coach, his attention fixed on the bout, which his fencer was losing, turned in time to find Salim towering over him. Sentry went white.
“You’re early,” he said, blinking away his surprise.
“I couldn’t resist,” Salim said, smiling with his mouth, not his eyes. “It isn’t every day I can see people pretending to try to kill each other.”
Sentry turned stiffly back to the bout.
“You two know each other?” Rebecca said, partly to diffuse the tension, partly out of confusion. Last week at the hotel the two men seemed to be strangers.
Salim looked at her with interest. Did he remember her? “Won’t you introduce us,” he said to Sentry.
“Excuse me,” said the coach. “I must attend to this.” Watching Laszlo struggling in the bout, Sentry pulled the two waiting fencers a few steps away and began
to whisper what looked like strategy.
Erich tried to breach the lapse in civility. “I’m his son, Erich. This is Rebecca Temple.”
“Did you say ‘son’?” He surveyed Erich with guarded eyes. “You see, you never know about people. Your father didn’t seem the type for children.”
Erich stared at Salim, interested now. “How do you know my father?”
Sentry’s body stayed focused on the bout, but his head inclined slightly toward this last question.
“We knew each other long ago. Then we were both young and foolish. Now we are old and foolish.”
He seemed younger than Sentry, though maybe he was just better preserved. He had an energetic way of speaking and only a few grey hairs among the dark waves. A full lower lip balanced the thin upper line, which was firmly set, giving his face authority.
He turned to Rebecca, closing the subject of him and Sentry. “Have we met?” he asked her.
Erich glanced from Salim to her, appearing confused. “Briefly,” she said. “At the medical conference where you spoke.”
His eyes narrowed. “Yes, of course. The pretty young doctor.”
Did he remember she had seen him and Sentry quarrelling? That, at the time, he had given no hint that he knew Sentry?
The bell rang, signalling the end of the bout. Sentry turned distracted eyes to Laszlo, who was saluting his opponent. Rebecca had been too preoccupied with Salim’s arrival to follow the match. If Sentry had been equally sidetracked, Laszlo’s downcast face said all they needed to know about the outcome of the bout.
Pawel turned an expectant face toward their coach, waiting for enlightenment, some strategy he could use in his upcoming match with the same opponent who had just defeated Laszlo. But Sentry had lost his focus and seemed to be struggling between the task at hand and his unwanted guest.
Salim turned toward Erich. “We should let your father carry on. Perhaps we can all go sit down and watch from a respectable distance.”
Rebecca Temple Mysteries 3-Book Bundle Page 79
