by Ursula Hegi
As the river retreated, it left hollows in the cemetery, where the earth settled on the coffins beneath, the deepest of them on the grave where Herr Höffenauer and his mother lay buried. Near the bank at the north end of Burgdorf, the Rhein cleaved out a long basin, giving the town a second swimming hole, one gouged by men, the other by the flood. Throughout the region, the wet stench of rot lingered in walls and floorboards, in mattresses and drapes that had been touched by the river.
The first day the sidewalks were dry again, people dressed in the brightest clothes they owned as if to entice that brightness from the sky and back into their lives. What they wanted was a brightness far beyond the kind you can see with your eyes when the sun opens the sky, the kind of brightness that had been lacking from their lives since long before the flood, the kind of brightness that had been sucked out of each house, each town, and replaced with fear and suspicion.
Frau Simon had her busiest morning in years: she sold seven hats—none of them gray or brown, but all in vibrant colors: yellow and blue and red and green—the most elaborate of them to her best customer, Monika Buttgereit, whose thwarted passions for the driver of the bakery truck had funneled themselves into one obsession that her parents thought it wise not to object to though it embarrassed them: hats. Hats with fabulous feathers, with lace, with fancy clasps. Her newest acquisition was a two-tone purple satin turban with a pearl-studded veil, which—Frau Simon swore—suggested a definite hint of mystery.
Just before Frau Simon was about to close her store that noon, she walked out with her last customer, Trudi Montag, trying to persuade her, there on the front steps while the river-soaked wind blew heavily around their ankles, to let her set aside that second hat Trudi had liked, the red one with the speckled feather, which still perched on a wooden stand in the display window.
“For at least a few days,” she implored. Her white blouse was tucked into the slim skirt of her elegant suit.
But Trudi was staring past her at a slow black car that approached from the direction of the church square.
“It suited you so, that red hat, Trudi. I’d hate to see it on anyone else.” Frau Simon reached down to fluff Trudi’s bangs and—with one practiced gesture—tilted the moss-green hat, which Trudi had just bought, slightly to the right. “There now.” She sounded pleased.
On the opposite sidewalk, people walked faster, turning up the collars of their coats like half masks against the soggy, stinking wind, and in the street, women on bicycles pedaled harder, thighs straining against the fabric of their skirts, causing their shopping nets to swing from the handlebars like useless pendulums.
“Not that green isn’t a flattering color for you, Trudi. Especially with that coat you sewed last month. It’s only that I like both hats on you. With all the self-improvement you’ve done … It would be a pity to let that hat go to someone else. A pity. Maybe I’ll mention it to your father when I return my books. Your birthday is only three months away, and it’s never too early to—”
As the car came to a smooth stop in front of the milliner’s shop, two Gestapo officers slipped out.
“Lotte Simon?” The shorter of the men stepped up to her.
Frau Simon backed into the entranceway and rubbed her arms through her sleeves as though suddenly cold.
“You have to come with us.”
“But why?”
“An investigation.”
“An investigation? Into what? I—”
“Only a routine.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
Trudi felt numb, angry, afraid. And then numb again. She glanced around for help, but the street had emptied as if in anticipation of an even greater flood, and in a second-floor window next door a lace curtain moved.
“Let me call a lawyer—please!” Frau Simon’s fingers grasped her silver necklace.
“Get into the car.”
The short officer was giving all the orders while his partner stood next to him—more formidable because of his silence—as if prepared to back each word with force. Beneath his chin Trudi noticed an almost healed cut from shaving. His face was bony as though he deliberately courted starvation.
Trudi found her voice. “Frau Simon hasn’t done anything,” she cried.
“You—” The man who hadn’t spoken pointed at her, his voice kind, yet stern, like that of a teacher cautioning a willful child. “Go home, little girl.”
“I am not a little girl.” As she stared up into his eyes, she was stunned by their indifference. He doesn’t care about any of this, she thought, not about us, not about the Partei, not about the Führer. And she knew that, to remain safe, he couldn’t let anyone know that about him.
His eyes narrowed, fighting her invasion, barring her access to his secret, and she forced the knowledge of his indifference into her gaze. But he severed himself from her scrutiny by curving his arm between them like a scythe and let his fingers trace the side of her face.
“A little girl with pretty hair,” he stated.
As she shrank from his touch, she would have given a lot not to be blond and blue-eyed, and it struck her as ironic that in the one area where she fit the ideal she didn’t want to belong. How she yearned for dark hair—an even deeper shade of brown than that of Frau Simon, whose face had gone ashen, making her lipstick look like a smear of blood.
“Let her go. Please,” Trudi pleaded.
The arrest was crisp, efficient, and Frau Simon vanished into the dark car as if swallowed by it. “Lock the store, Trudi,” she screamed as they drove off with her. “And make sure to—”
Noon light blinded Trudi as she stood on the sidewalk, alone. She was overcome by a sense of having to be careful. Extremely careful. Only by chance had she been allowed to stay behind. She felt relieved and, instantly, guilty because of that relief. From a house across the street drifted the smell of boiling turnips; she couldn’t understand how anyone could possibly bear to eat.
Inside Frau Simon’s shop, dazzling, colorful hats were displayed on curved stands, always at angles that showed off their most intriguing features; yet, now their feather and lace decorations seemed frivolous. Trudi didn’t know why she took off her new hat and reached into the display window for the red hat she’d admired earlier. As if watching herself from a place far away, she set it on her head and—ever so slowly—walked to the pyramid-shaped mirror that was set up on a table in the center of the long shop. But what her reflection gave her was the shame in her eyes. The roots of her hair began to ache, and she yanked off the red hat and replaced it on its stand, glancing around to make sure no one had watched her. But only the hats surrounded her, gaudy like carousel horses after the last ride of the summer, and she wouldn’t have been surprised at all if, suddenly, they’d begun to swirl around her, propelled by the tinny wail of a barrel organ.
“You were foolish, Trudi,” Frau Abramowitz scolded her that evening when a small group of neighbors gathered in the Abramowitz living room with the drapes closed.
Four standing lamps, their shades covered with flowered fabric that matched the sofa, cast amber rings of light against the wallpaper. The table was covered with a lace cloth, and Frau Abramowitz had made black tea and baked Streuselkuchen.
“So foolish … They could have taken you, too.” The fine creases in her face had not deepened with the years—her skin still looked like expensive crushed silk, as though she’d barely aged after those early wrinkles had taken their tender hold.
“We can’t just let them take Frau Simon like that,” Trudi protested.
“There are other ways,” her father said.
“They don’t work, those other ways,” Frau Weiler said. “You know they don’t work, Leo.”
“Hedwig is right.” Herr Abramowitz picked up the cake knife, and his diamond cufflinks flashed in the light. “I’ve been saying this for years. And I’m prepared to tell this to our beloved Führer—that is, if he ever lets me get close enough to him.”
Frau Weiler nodded excitedly,
splotches of red blooming on her cheeks.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Herr Blau told his wife, who sat next to him on the deep sofa, hands folded on her starched apron.
“Michel,” Frau Abramowitz pleaded. “You don’t know what you are saying.” Her fingers busied themselves, rearranging the bouquet of pussy willows on the table.
“I am not saying anything, Ilse. I am cutting the cake. Watch me.”
“You’re always doing it—discussing for the sake of discussion, shining with words, outdazzling.”
Leo Montag limped to the drapes and made sure the windows were closed. He had brought Emil Hesping, who’d arrived at the pay-library soon after Trudi had rushed home with news of Frau Simon’s arrest, and the three of them had returned to the milliner’s building. With Emil’s key, they’d opened her apartment and packed her jewelry, silver wine cups, and most of her clothes into boxes, which were now stored at the pay-library.
Except for greetings, Herr Hesping hadn’t spoken since they’d arrived at the Abramowitzs’ house. His lips set in a half-smile, he’d been leaning against the door frame, but now he loosened himself from the smooth wood and stepped next to Michel Abramowitz.
“If you manage to get close to our Führer, a cake knife won’t do.”
“It is not safe listening to this. Not safe.” Herr Blau tried to raise himself from the sofa, his veined hands clawing the air as if reaching for some invisible hold. “For any of us. We better get home.”
“Have some Streuselkuchen, Herr Blau.” Emil Hesping pressed a flowered plate with a piece of cake into the old man’s hands.
But the tailor shook his head and managed to stand up. “I did not hear a thing.” His false teeth were clicking. “Don’t worry. Good-bye Herr Abramowitz. Good-bye Frau Abramowitz. Thank you for a lovely—”
“Oh, sit down, Martin.” His wife grasped the back of his suspenders and pulled him back.
He sank into the soft cushions, muttering to himself.
“That is a lovely necklace,” Emil Hesping said to Frau Blau.
She smiled like a young girl as she touched the drop of amber that trapped a pale, tiny crab. “It’s from the North Sea … nearly a century old.”
“Remember, we’re here to talk about Frau Simon,” Leo said.
The others turned toward his calm voice. One hand on the damask drapes, he scanned the sidewalk through the gap. His curly hair was completely silver-white now, giving him the same coloring as Trudi. Her mother’s hair had been black, and sometimes, when she searched in one of her mirrors for a trace of her mother in herself, she couldn’t locate any evidence—as if her mother had vanished and Trudi had become entirely her father’s daughter. It usually made her buy yet another mirror with a gold frame, the kind her mother would have chosen.
“We need to agree,” her father said, “that whatever we talk about in here—even if it happens to be rash or thoughtless—” He raised one eyebrow and glanced at Herr Abramowitz, then at his friend, Emil, “—won’t leave this room.”
“Agreed,” Michel Abramowitz said quickly.
Emil Hesping nodded.
Herr Blau adjusted his glasses and peered at the faces around him as if to make sure no one had taken offense and would turn all of them in. “As long as I don’t have to listen to any inappropriate comments about Herr Hitler.”
“You don’t like him either,” his wife reminded him.
“Flora!” He glared at her. “First of all that was a joke, and second it was told in the privacy of our—” he stammered, “—just before we went to sleep.”
“You said the man isn’t fit to hang wallpaper in this country and—”
“I did not.”
“—and that the articles in the Stürmer are getting crazier. All that hate …”
“I don’t even look at that paper.”
She turned her eyes toward the ceiling as if to call upon the saints to witness his lies.
“The only comment I made about Herr Hitler referred to his—his background as—as an Austrian paperhanger.… It is a very respectable trade.”
“That is one of the kindest things anyone could say about our Führer.” Emil Hesping gave a funny little bow in Herr Blau’s direction. “I am overwhelmed by your generosity.”
Trudi remembered the last time Emil Hesping had talked with her and her father about the Führer. A devious man, he had called him. An evil man. A sentimental man.
Hitler ist ein Schwein—Hitler is a pig—someone had painted on the brick wall of the school, and the police had ordered two nuns to wash it off. “So they want to be heroes,” one of the nuns had grumbled, “but what they forget is that someone has to clean up after them—usually the women.”
Herr Hesping cleared his throat. “I heard that Frau Simon was taken to Düsseldorf. For questioning.”
“Who told you?” Frau Weiler wanted to know.
“Someone in the SS who knows.”
“And you won’t tell us?”
“I can’t, Hedwig.”
“How can you have SS friends and be loyal to Frau Simon?”
“Some people don’t understand the complexity of loyalty.”
“The price of loyalty,” she snapped. “When they held me in jail four years ago, I did not compromise one single belief.”
“Times have changed since then.”
“I refused to lie. Of course there were things I didn’t volunteer. If they didn’t ask me the right questions, that certainly was their problem.”
“Wouldn’t you lie to save someone’s life?” Trudi asked.
“How could I?”
“How could you not?”
“Trudi.” Herr Hesping touched her arm. “We’re not even talking about a situation where that’s needed.”
“But we must know that about each other.”
“It may never be necessary.”
“I won’t let anyone force me into lying.” Frau Weiler’s eyes glistened the way Ingrid’s eyes did when she talked about martyrs. Ingrid was nearly finished with her studies to become a teacher, and during the past year Trudi had seen less of her.
“Let it rest, Hedwig—please,” Leo Montag said.
“It seems Herr Heidenreich has been doing some quiet damage,” Emil Hesping said. “Informing.”
“Kurt Heidenreich?” Herr Blau shook his head. “But we always talk, and he never—” He clasped one veined hand across his mouth. “I hope I can remember everything I’ve told him.”
“Let’s rather hope that he forgot,” Michel Abramowitz said.
“I heard that he refused to stuff Frau Kaminsky’s parrot,” Trudi said, “but he didn’t tell her until she came to pick it up. It was rotting, too late to take to the taxidermist in Krefeld. She had to bury it.”
“Let’s talk about what we can do to to help Frau Simon,” Leo Montag said.
“Any suggestions?” Frau Blau asked.
Michel Abramowitz hesitated. “I’ll make some inquiries.”
“That may not be good for her or for you.” Leo Montag spoke slowly. “You know me, Michel, and this is hard to say, but—”
“She needs a good lawyer who’s not a Jew, right?”
Leo flinched. “In this country—now … Yes. Unfortunately.”
“Or a Communist,” Herr Blau reminded him.
“That was so long ago,” Frau Blau said.
Herr Abramowitz raised his chin and stared at the piano with the silver-framed photos of his children, dating from infancy to three years earlier when his son, Albert, had left for Argentina after many attempts to persuade his parents and sister to join him. We weren’t ready then, Herr Abramowitz thought. We waited too long. And Ruth still wasn’t ready to go without her husband. But he and Ilse had finally agreed to let Albert help. How he hated the waiting, the uncertainty. Nearly half of the Jewish community in Germany, which had numbered five hundred thousand in 1933, had already left the country. But for those who hadn’t, it was becoming harder and harder to find a place that would
take them. Even Palestine was no longer an option. Because of Arab objections, the British had restricted immigration into Palestine, hindering what had once looked like a workable agreement between the Palestinian Zionist Organization and the Nazis: to keep Jewish wealth in a fund in Germany, which was to be used for buying German exports to Palestine, while the Zionists were to take care of Jewish immigrants.
And other nations, including the United States, severely restricted Jewish immigration. Nobody wants impoverished Jews, Herr Abramowitz thought bitterly. There’d be no problem for us if we could take our money out of Germany. The real irony is that we’re still here—not because the Nazis prevent us from leaving—but because we have no place to go.
“At least we have Albert,” he said heavily.
“Michel—” Leo started.
Herr Abramowitz raised one hand to stop him. “I want all of you to know that our families—Ilse’s and mine—have lived in your country for many generations. My great-grandfather built this house.… And about finding the right kind of lawyer—I agree with you. I have a colleague, Aryan head to toe, but human inside. He’ll check into what’s happening with Frau Simon.”
“For now, just watch out, all of you,” Emil Hesping warned. “You know how easy it is to get arrested.”
Herr Blau nodded. “I know parents who won’t discuss politics in front of their children. They’re afraid they’ll tell their teachers or Hitler-Jugend leaders—even if they don’t mean to turn their parents in.”
“Some of them mean to,” Leo said.
Emil Hesping nodded. “That’s what the pure German family is all about.”
