She meets Hanni every evening during the general milling about before bed, both of them exhausted but grateful for the presence of the other. Hanni has been building a wall with bricks; since they must use their bare hands, Hanni’s, like the others in the detail, are chapped and bleeding. Frieda uses the underside of her own skirt where it is cleanest to wipe the dirt and blood from Hanni’s hands. She has no water, no soothing cream. But Hanni is young and strong and she will survive this.
In September someone says it is Rosh Hashanah, the New Year. Frieda remembers the honey cake Oma used to bake, golden brown and sticky sweet. Sweet things for a sweet year. There will never be a sweet year again. Oma’s face rises up into the air, grey hair pulled back into a tidy bun, lips smiling. Frieda-mouse, she says.
“Oma!”
The sound of her own voice brings her back. She is bent over a garden of roses, pulling the weeds out with her hands, sweating from the direct sun. Her hands are clammy, and her back aches. When she tries to straighten up, her arm catches on a thorn. Drops of blood rise to the surface and trickle down her skin. She wipes them away with a leafy weed.
Then to her right, she hears a groan, a thud. “Frieda!” someone calls softly. “Help her.”
The women around her know she’s a doctor and have come to call on her in their times of need. The guards lean against a fence in the shade, talking and smoking.
Frieda creeps to the figure lying among the roses. Olga. She turns her over and bends her head down to the woman’s chest. Puts a finger on the pulse.
“What d’you think you’re doing?”
Frieda looks up. A guard.
“She’s a doctor,” one of the women dares to say. “The woman fainted.”
“Well?” the guard says, smirking at Frieda. She looks drunk. “What can a doctor do for a dead person?”
“She’s not dead,” Frieda says quietly. “She has heat stroke. She needs water.”
“Maybe she’d like some schnapps,” the guard snarls, taking a flask from her skirt pocket and taking a swig. “Pull her out of there and get back to work.”
It is also in September that Frieda notices Hanni’s dress fits differently, though she has moved her apron higher to disguise it. She cannot be getting fat in the camp, so it can be only one thing. Frieda is barely able to contain her anger in the dusky evening by the side of the barracks.
“Why didn’t you tell me right away? I could’ve gotten rid of it for you. Now it’s too dangerous for you. You’ll have to have it. What were you thinking?”
Tears slip down Hanni’s bony cheeks. Frieda takes a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, Hanni. Was it Wolfie?”
She nods.
“He should’ve known better.”
“Each time we saw each other we thought it would be the last. And then it was.”
“When is it due?”
“End of December.”
“Like Jesus,” Frieda says, scowling.
One morning late in November, before work starts, the block leader shouts out, “Number 43709! Get your things and come with me!”
Frieda repeats the number to herself. It’s her! She’s going to die. They’ve found out what she’s been doing and now she’s going to pay with her life. She deserves no less. Ah, well. It wasn’t much of a life. If she believed in God, she would pray. If she believed in God, she might not have played God. In His absence, she did what she had to.
The other women stare in pity as she walks past them carrying her soup tin and a comb, payment for tending to a woman with a broken wrist.
She follows the block leader to a building near the entrance of the camp. “Find some clothes in there,” she snaps, pointing to a room piled high with clothes. “Hurry up!”
Frieda is confused. At least she wasn’t sent to the corridor. They don’t seem to be planning to shoot her. Amid the detritus of stolen lives, she finds a grey tweed skirt, an off-white blouse, and a black wool jacket. And in one pile, a heavy woollen coat! She pulls the comb through her tattered hair, then steps out. She feels human again.
She shares the back of an enclosed truck with five other women. None knows where they are going or what is in store for them. After about a half-hour, the truck stops and the five women are led off. Sitting by herself, all she can see out the window of the back door are trees with their bare branches.
The truck drives on. Twenty minutes later, it stops again. The back door opens, and the guard motions for her to get out.
She makes out a stone block building surrounded by pine. The forest smell revives her; when she dies, she would like it to be amid the smell of pine. The building looks like it might have been a hospital once, though the vegetation is encroaching.
The guard takes her inside and gives the uniformed man at the desk her papers.
“Fräulein Eisenbaum,” says the man, perusing her documents.
She is surprised to hear her name spoken after so long being a number.
“Come with me.”
She follows him down a hallway of closed doors to the back of the building. Finally he leads her into a room with counters and cupboards and a sink near a window. A laboratory. A young blond man is washing glass tubes at the sink. The sound of running water amazes Frieda.
“Where’s the doctor?” the escort says to a man at a desk off to one side.
“He went out, Herr Scharfuhrer.”
“You take care of her, then.” He turns and leaves.
The youngish man at the desk stands and proffers a hand.
Nobody has asked to shake her hand for a long time. But this man is a prisoner like her; he wears a green triangle on his jacket, the sign of an asocial or criminal prisoner. She slowly gives him her hand. He sits down and reads her documents.
Asocial usually meant beggars in the street or gypsies. His sallow skin could be gypsy. He doesn’t look like a criminal, but then who do the Nazis consider criminal? Thieves? Kidnappers? Murderers? The irony would make her smile, if she still could.
“What do they do here?” she asks.
The water stops running, the room suddenly quiet. The blond man must be standing at the counter behind Frieda.
“Medical experiments,” says the man at the desk. His tone is matter-of-fact, as if it is a normal activity. “You’re a doctor.” It’s not a question. He has her papers before him.
She nods. “What kind of experiments?” Not that long ago she would have been horrified. In this new universe, horror is the new normal. It is the everyday, where all things are possible.
“All kinds. Surgery. Drugs. All kinds.”
“Why am I here?”
“Oh, didn’t they tell you? Herr Doktor Brenner asked for you.”
Herr Doktor Brenner. A name from another life.
“He said you were important for his work. It wasn’t easy, let me tell you, getting a Jewess reassigned.” He seems compelled to explain. The shock must be visible on her face. “It was convenient for him. You happened to be assigned to the same camp. You’re lucky. This is a satellite camp of Ravensbrück. You understand?”
She stares at him, not understanding. Or maybe understanding too well. The black and white tiles mesmerize her; she wants to lie down and not get up. A small white spot on a black tile begins to pull her in. She wants it to suck her in and make her disappear.
The man bends forward. “Don’t worry. It’ll be better than where you were before. And you may find the work scientifically interesting.”
She looks at him as if he’s dropped from the moon. Scientifically interesting. Once this might have meant something to her. But now she has only one interest: staying alive. When she loses that interest, nothing will help her.
chapter twenty-nine
The new patient sat in the treatment room with her coat still on. Rebecca stepped in wearing what she hoped was a reassuring smile, despite her fatigue.
“Mrs. Sentry. What can I do for you?”
She nodded, unsmiling, her complexion pasty. “I ca
n’t sleep. I don’t think I’ve slept since ... since she was killed. She didn’t deserve it. I hated her once. But she suffered, and I forgave her. And now — I keep seeing her like that. The blood ...” She looked away. “I hate pills. I never take anything. But I don’t know what else to do. Can you give me something to make me sleep?”
The woman watched her with listless eyes, her shoulders hunched.
“I’ll need to examine you. Could you take off your coat, please, and sit up here?” She motioned to the examining table.
Rebecca listened to her heart, checked her eyes and ears, took her blood pressure. The woman was fifty-nine but very fit and looked ten years younger. Apparently she had taught phys. ed. but now only coached. According to a routine medical history, there was some heart trouble in the family.
“It’s hard to know much, you see, since most of them were killed in the war.”
Rebecca nodded, but didn’t understand. How could she?
“Your blood pressure is slightly elevated. You should monitor that. I’ll give you a prescription for some Valium. It’s a muscle relaxant that will help you sleep. You could try half a tablet to begin with and see if it helps. If not, take a whole one.”
“Thank you, doctor.” All at once the woman’s lower lip trembled and she began to sob. “Everything’s upside down since she died. Someone broke into the house today and threw everything around. They didn’t take anything, but it was a terrible mess.”
Rebecca stopped writing the prescription. She stood up and placed her hand gently on the woman’s back. “That’s very upsetting. What did the police say?”
She stopped crying. Hesitated. “My husband didn’t want me to call them. He said he knew who did it — a student of his — and he’d deal with it.”
“So, nothing to do with your cousin’s death?”
She shook her head, appeared to recover.
Rebecca would tell Fitzroy anyway.
Mrs. Sentry stepped down from the examining table and began putting on her three-quarter-length coat.
“By the way, your cousin gave me something a few days before she died.”
The woman stopped buttoning her coat.
“It was a broken doll in a shopping bag.”
“A doll?”
“It had her name on it.”
“What name?”
“Eisenbaum.”
The blood drained from Mrs. Sentry’s face. She sank into a chair near Rebecca, shaking her head. “It never ends.” She sat a moment staring at the floor.
“Are you all right?”
She bent over, leaning her forehead into her hand. Rebecca couldn’t see her eyes. “We were in the same camp during the war. She was the only one left who knew my secret because she was there. I’ve kept it from my husband all these years.” She looked up and observed Rebecca, perhaps to see the effect of her words. “And if I tell you, you must promise never to say it to him.”
“Anything you tell me is confidential.” Rebecca didn’t really want to know.
“I need to tell someone, now that she’s gone.”
Rebecca nodded reluctantly.
The woman lifted her head, squinting at Rebecca. She took a few breaths; a tear rolled down from one eye. “I was pregnant when I was sent to the camp. By my husband, of course, though we weren’t married then. I didn’t see him for three years during the war. You have to understand. To have a child in the camp was a death sentence. Even if you could hide your pregnancy — we were so thin it wasn’t unusual for the Germans not to know — even so, once the baby came, that was it. Kaput! You can’t hide a baby. A mother with a baby can’t work. And they’re angry that you’ve reproduced. More Jews. They throw you both in the gas chamber. But there was a doctor there, a Jewish woman, who saved those of us who had babies. We all begged for the same thing when she delivered us. Can you guess?” She blinked at Rebecca, almost defiantly.
Rebecca shook her head, not wanting to hear.
“We begged her to kill our babies.” Tears welled in her eyes.
Rebecca held her breath. Why should she keep breathing?
“Here, now, in this country, it doesn’t seem possible. But we wanted to live. It was the only way.”
“A doctor killed the babies? A Jewish doctor?”
“She saved many women this way. She delivered the baby in secret. She’d say a prayer. Then she’d put her hand over the little mouth. It wasn’t very hard, she said. They were so little. She saved us at the expense of her own soul.” She closed her eyes. “My husband thinks our daughter died naturally; she was a few weeks premature. I told him it was a blessing.”
A girl. “I’m so sorry.”
The woman sobbed quietly into her hand. Rebecca handed her a box of tissues, then drew her chair closer. She put an arm around her patient’s heaving shoulders.
When Mrs. Sentry stopped weeping, Rebecca said, “Your cousin kept the doll like a baby. She must’ve remembered.”
The woman wiped her eyes with a tissue. “She showed it to me once. It was horrible.”
She stood up, taking a deep, cleansing breath. “I feel better, telling someone. Like a burden is lifted. I can tell you’ve suffered in your life. You understand.”
Rebecca walked her to the front of the office. While Mrs. Sentry seemed taller now, resuming her erect posture, Rebecca had shrunk in proportion, encumbered. This was a role she hadn’t counted on: the shifting of burdens from patient to doctor. How many burdens before her heart plummeted under the weight?
“Let me know how you’re doing. I’d like you to come back for an appointment next week.”
“I appreciate it, doctor, but I really don’t have time. I don’t like coming to doctors.” Before she turned to leave, she whispered, “Remember, my husband must never know.”
Iris was preparing the examining rooms for the next day. Rebecca sat down behind the front counter, gazing at the X-ray and blood test results that had come in. They blurred before her eyes. She couldn’t get the picture of Birdie out of her mind. The small, dirty face filled with fears, real and imagined. The nonsensical babble. The beautiful woman in the photo had disappeared into this creature who lived so deep inside herself, no one could reach her.
All at once, tires squealed out front. Rebecca jumped up and ran to the window overlooking Beverley Street. Her stomach turned inside her. In the deepening twilight, Mrs. Sentry lay sprawled on her side in the curb lane in front of her house.
“Iris!” shouted Rebecca. “Call an ambulance!” She grabbed a blanket and some bandages and ran downstairs.
Two young men had put down their book bags. They crouched over the woman. One of her legs splayed out at an unnatural angle on the asphalt.
“I’m a doctor,” she said, kneeling beside them. “Is she conscious? Did she say anything?”
“She’s out cold,” said one.
Rebecca threw the blanket over her, then placed her stethoscope inside the woman’s clothes. Her heart was still beating. She was breathing.
“Mrs. Sentry, can you hear me?” she said loudly. “Johanna?”
No response. Blood smeared one side of her head. Possible skull fracture, Rebecca thought mechanically.
One of the students took off his jacket and stooped over as if to lift her head. “Don’t move her!” Rebecca said. “The ambulance will be here in a few minutes. Did you see what happened?”
“A guy ran her down. Not like a hit and run. It was like he was aiming at her.”
Rebecca fell back on her haunches, feeling weak. It could have been her.
“I got the licence number,” he said. “Good work. Did you write it down?”
He pulled a scrap of paper from his pocket and showed it to her.
Iris crossed the street and ran over, bringing Rebecca her coat. “Anything I can do?”
For the second time in less than a week, an ambulance siren keened through the evening air, on its way to the same corner. It blocked the northbound lane of Beverley. Attendants jumped out and
checked Mrs. Sentry’s vital signs while Rebecca briefed them. Carefully they installed a brace around her neck and lifted her onto a gurney.
Two constables had arrived in a patrol car and were speaking to the students. Once the ambulance had pulled away, the same dark-skinned constable from the other night looked over at Rebecca.
“Is it the doctor?” he asked, stepping toward her. “Didn’t we just see you on the weekend? A car tried to run you down?”
She nodded tiredly.
“What’s your connection to this woman?”
“Mrs. Sentry’s my patient. She just left my office.”
“Was it the same car?” he asked.
“I didn’t see it.”
“These students say it looked like a Dodge. Isn’t that what you said?”
She nodded again, feeling sick to her stomach.
“I don’t like the sound of this, doctor. You better come to the station and speak to Detective Fitzroy.” He gestured to the patrol car.
“I’d like to go to the hospital with Mrs. Sentry.”
“You can do that later, doctor. Do you happen to know the next of kin?”
She told him where he could find the victim’s husband and son. He wrote down the names in his notepad. Then he opened the rear door of the police cruiser to let her in.
Detective Fitzroy sat across from her in a small room at the Fifty-Second Precinct, the one she was getting to know too well, near City Hall.
“Nothing personal, doc, but I don’t like seeing you this often.”
“Feeling’s mutual, but your constable insisted.”
“He was concerned for your safety. So am I. Tell me exactly what happened.”
“Mrs. Sentry came to my office. She said she couldn’t sleep since her cousin was killed, and I prescribed something for her. A few minutes after she left I heard tires squealing. When I looked out the window she was lying on the road. My secretary called for an ambulance and I ran down.” The personal details were confidential. And irrelevant.
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