by Alex Gerlis
She sat on the sofa, trying to work out what to do and, at the same time, deal with another emotion, one that had struck so unexpectedly when she returned to the apartment on the Saturday night. She’d realised then she missed Rolf and not because his disappearance had jeopardised their mission and her safety. She realised she also missed his presence, his friendly chats, his mischievous smile, the way he’d help her with her coat, the way he’d insist on serving her food like an over-attentive waiter, the way he ran his fingers through his hair and the way he edged towards her when they linked arms to walk through the park.
She realised she was allowing these feelings to interfere with what should be her priority: to think clearly and come up with a plan. She knew she ought to leave Vienna, but her instinct told her the chances of making it back to Switzerland were very slim. It was simply too dangerous. She walked around the flat, pacing up and down the sitting room, walking from there into the tiny hallway, then into the bedroom and ending up in the kitchen where she leaned against the sink, staring into the hallway and at the front door. If only there was someone in Vienna who could help her, anyone…
It must have been the sight of the front door that triggered a memory of the nun. It had been nearly eight months since they’d seen her and when she had left she’d been quite adamant. You won’t see me or hear from me again… Resist any temptation to try and find me… For your safety… and mine.
And so there hadn’t had any contact with her – but now Katharina was desperate. She was alone and scared. She’d have to ask the nun for help, though for the life of her she couldn’t think of how to do so. For the next hour she wracked her brain in an effort to remember any details the nun had given them.
She remembered her mentioning she was from a poor convent and her giving the name of an order she’d not heard of before, but that hardly narrowed it down. The name of the nun soon came to her: her grandmother had been called Ursula, so that wasn’t too hard to recall. She heated up some soup and ate it at the small table in the kitchen, allowing her mind to wander and go back over every detail of the nun’s visit, from the moment the doorbell had rung. She closed her eyes, picturing the sequence of events that followed. The nun had introduced herself and said she was collecting. She was still standing in the doorway when Katharina had given her some money – she remembered that – but something else had happened between the nun introducing herself and Katharina giving her the money. She was thinking so hard that by the time she spooned some more soup into her mouth it had turned cold.
A slip of paper. The nun had given her a small piece of paper. She remembered glancing at it and noticing it had an address on it. She’d no idea what she’d done with it. Somehow she knew she hadn’t thrown it away. Rolf had said something after the nun had left about keeping it safe.
It took her two hours to find the slip of flimsy paper, inside the little letter rack on the mantelpiece in the lounge, in between other bits of paper, something from the bank, shopping lists…
The convent of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul was in Alsergrund, the 9th District, not far from the hospital. She’d be able to visit that night on her way into work.
She found the convent in a small turning off Liechtensteinstrasse, not the smarter section of that road alongside the park but the part north of Alserbachstrasse. Like the turning itself – no more than a dark and narrow alley – the convent was easily missed. Dark metal doors were set into a high wall and a small brass plate bearing the name of the order was set alongside them. Below this was a bell. When Katharina pressed it she heard nothing, she’d no idea whether it had made any sound. She waited five minutes before trying again, unsure if she was being observed from any of the windows set high in the dark brick wall. Moments after she’d rung the bell for the second time a small hatch in the centre of the door opened and a bespectacled face studied her.
‘What do you want?’
‘I’m looking for a Sister Ursula. Is she here?’
The eyes behind the spectacles opened wide. ‘Who are you?’
‘I met her once and… I said I could contribute… to the… erm… charity…’
‘Wait here.’ The hatch closed. It started to rain and Katharina began to feel the cold wind blowing down the alley, biting into her. The delay was long enough for her to begin to feel uneasy. But just as she was wondering whether to leave one of the metal doors opened noisily, just far enough to reveal a tall and elderly nun standing within the entrance, looking at her.
‘Why do you want Sister Ursula?’
‘We met her when she was collecting for your convent. She was very kind and I recently… well, I’d like to give her some money for your charitable work.’
The older nun stared at her in disbelief. She removed her hand from within her habit and held it out, as if begging. ‘You can give it to me.’
Katharina fumbled in her purse and pressed a generous note into the nun’s hand. ‘Is Sister Ursula not here? Perhaps I could have a word with…’
‘What’s your name; tell me how you know her?’
‘As I say, I met her in the street, months ago… she was so kind, it was a difficult time for me and she said a prayer that gave me so much comfort… Is she not here?’
The nun stared long and hard at Katharina. ‘Sister Ursula is dead.’
***
Had she turned up at the convent of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul just six weeks earlier Katharina would most likely have found Sister Ursula there. And it was also quite likely Sister Ursula would have helped her because, in the six months since she’d handed Herr Leitner over to the Schusters, Sister Ursula had regained some of her composure. She no longer felt as much self-doubt; her fear seemed to be no greater than that of so many other people and she was constantly reassured by what the priest had told her in confession. Keep thy mind in hell and despair not.
But then she experienced hell and realised the true meaning of despair.
Just south of the AKH hospital where Katharina worked was Saint Anna’s Children’s Hospital, although officially it no longer had the name. Now it was called the German Red Cross Children’s Hospital and, since the spring, Sister Ursula had been working there full-time.
The hospital was now not just dealing with the routine illnesses children suffered. It was also dealing with children injured in the bombing and suffering from other deprivations of war. Sister Ursula had come to realise the despair she’d experienced was nothing compared to what she was witnessing on a daily basis on the wards.
And it was on one of those wards that Sister Ursula met a girl, who said she was eight but appeared to be a older, and had been found alone and dazed in the ruins of an apartment block in Hernals after a heavy air-raid. No one knew who she was: she could only give her name as Paula. She appeared to have no connection with where she was found. But Sister Ursula had an instinct about Paula. She suspected she wasn’t as confused as she seemed. Although she kept insisting her head hurt, she didn’t appear to be injured or unwell.
Sister Ursula suspected Paula was Jewish. She had dark hair, coal-black eyes and a darker complexion but, more than that, she had the aura of someone who was keeping a secret. Sister Ursula wasn’t the only one to have such suspicions. There was a paediatrician at the hospital called Peter Sommer, a man whose short temper and unsympathetic manner made him singularly unsuited to his specialism. The gossip among the nurses was that he chose paediatrics because children were less able to complain about him than adults.
One day when she was in charge of the ward where Paula was, Dr Sommer approached her. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that girl Paula,’ he announced. ‘I can see no valid medical reason for her being here. I’ll tell you what I think: the girl’s a liar. Someone had the idea of using the air raid as a way of getting her into hospital – and she’s pretending she’s has lost her memory.’
‘Surely she’s far too young to be able to do that,’ said Sister Ursula.
Dr So
mmer flicked his hand in a dismissive manner. ‘And I’ll tell you something else. Look at the girl: tell me she’s not a Jew, eh? It’s a waste of our time her being here. She should be the Gestapo’s problem, not ours. They can sort her out.’
‘Please Herr Doctor Sommer. I am sure there’s an innocent explanation. When the poor girl recovers she’ll be able to tell us exactly who she is.’
That night Sister Ursula hatched a plan. When all was quiet around midnight she went to work on her plan. An 11-year-old girl had died from pneumonia earlier that day and Sister Ursula took her file. By the time she’d finished with it, the dead girl had Paula’s identity (‘surname unknown’). The body would be removed by the time Sommer returned to work on Monday. She filled in a discharge form for the girl who had died, meaning Paula now had her identity.
At 2.00 in the morning she took Paula from the ward and explained she now had a new name and was going to be taken somewhere safe. The girl nodded. She was counting on her Mother Superior allowing the girl to stay a day or two in the convent before Sister Ursula could find somewhere for her to go. Maybe the apartment where Herr Leitner…
They left the hospital through the back entrance and were walking through the ambulance bay when she noticed the three figures in front of her. Three men, silhouetted against the moon, standing motionless in their path. She knelt down and whispered into the girl’s ear. ‘Can you run? Try to get away…’ But at that moment a strong torchlight shone in their faces and a voice ordered them to get to their knees.
Sister Ursula and the girl were separated soon after being dragged back into the hospital, where an elated Peter Sommer told the men from the Gestapo he had an instinct the nun may do something.
‘You tried to defend her, didn’t you?’ He was strutting around the office, looking pleased with himself. ‘I thought to myself, why’s that woman arguing with me? And I could tell by the look in your eye, I didn’t trust you. So I came back here and found you’d swapped files. I’m no fool, you know. I can put two and two together. So I called my friends in the Gestapo and – here we are!’
The girl never revealed her true identity – she continued to insist she was called Paula. She was taken away and the Sister Ursula never discovered her fate. As for her own, that was never in doubt. Just one week after her arrest she was found guilty at the Volksgerichtshof – the People’s Tribunal – of high treason and sentenced to death. In the 10 days between her death sentence being passed and her execution date, a succession of increasingly senior clergy came to visit her at the Landgericht. Their message was all the same: apologise; admit your guilt; plead for clemency. She turned them all down. In the still, dark hours before she was due to die, her Mother Superior visited her. The elderly woman knelt down beside her and whispered urgently into her ear.
‘Sister, I know you were active against the Nazis. I turned a blind eye to it. But, I beg you, please give them some information, maybe the names of people less holy than us, then they will be satisfied and you will be granted clemency. That’s the wish of the church.’
‘What, the church wishes me to betray people?’
They came for her an hour later. She was marched into the execution chamber and made to stop by the guillotine. The Gestapo officer who stood in front of her looked almost nervous.
‘Confess and give us names and you will be granted clemency. Is there anything you wish to tell us?’
Sister Ursula smiled sweetly. She felt no fear and no self-doubt.
‘Keep thy mind in hell and despair not,’ she replied.
***
Katharina had hurried away from the convent as soon as she heard that the nun was dead. She hadn’t given her name and was wearing a coat over her nurse’s uniform, so it would be hard for anyone to identify her. That night she made up her mind. She’d wait until the end of the week and, if there were still no sign of Rolf, she would go Leopoldstadt at the weekend and check on Leitner. She didn’t think she could go on like this for much longer, trying to act normally. In any case, she doubted Herr Plaschke’s patience would last much longer.
From Tuesday onwards she was working an early shift at the hospital, leaving the apartment at 6.00 in the morning and returning around 5.00 in the afternoon. She’d taken to leaving a note for Rolf on the kitchen table to let him know she was at work and when she’d be back, just in case. On the Wednesday, she arrived back in Ungargasse even more exhausted than usual. One of the tram routes was out of action thanks to bombing the previous night and other trams were so full she’d walked most of the way in the pouring rain. It had been an especially difficult shift: a hospital train had arrived in Vienna overnight from the east and many of the soldiers were dreadfully injured. She sat with a young soldier from Mainz as his life painfully ebbed away. Not once in the four hours she was with him did he lapse into unconsciousness and there wasn’t enough morphine around to make him comfortable. He remained awake until the very end, a look of terror on his face throughout. He tried to dictate a letter to his family but couldn’t make it beyond the first painful sentence.
So when she entered the apartment she was too tired and distracted to notice the shoes on the carpet or the coat on a hook in the hall. She didn’t see a small pool of light spilling out from under the lounge door as she went straight to the kitchen, and didn’t realise the note she’d left that morning was no longer on the table. But when she went to the sink and filled a glass with water she spotted another one on the draining board, half-full. And on the other side of the sink were the remains of the loaf of black bread, half of what had been there in the morning. She leaned against the sink, a sense of fear creeping over her but one that was quickly overwhelmed by mounting excitement. She spun around to see Rolf framed in the doorway, lit from behind and in silhouette. As she took a faltering step forward she made out his features. He looked gaunt and exhausted, and had a sheepish expression on his face. They each took a step forward, hesitated for a moment then embraced. It wasn’t quite the embrace of lovers long parted but nor was it formal or awkward. It was an embrace of relief, of emotions expressing themselves and of sheer happiness.
They led each other into the lounge and sat on the sofa. Neither spoke for a long time. Rolf gazed at the carpet and occasionally at Katharina, smiling when he did so. Her presence alongside him reminded her of her vigil with the dying young soldier earlier that day: no need to speak, just to be there.
‘When did you get back?’ Katharina said softly, breaking the long silence.
He looked up as if he hadn’t taken in her question, but he eventually replied. ‘Late morning, maybe lunchtime. I saw your note, thank you.’
‘Do you want to tell me what happened? I can’t tell you how worried and frightened I’ve been. The night you didn’t come back… I was waiting for the Gestapo. Please tell me: were you arrested?’
‘I wasn’t arrested, don’t worry.’ Rolf looked back at the carpet and fell silent again. It was a while before he spoke again. ‘The night I didn’t return, I bumped into a woman who was the oldest friend of my fiancée, Frieda. She told me Frieda had been arrested by the Gestapo in 1942, in March. Apparently she was interrogated and tortured. She died after a few days…’ He was speaking quietly, but almost matter-of-factly.
‘I’m so sorry, did you…?’
‘… She never divulged anything. I’d no idea she was dead: Frieda was such a strong woman that it somehow never occurred to me she could be dead. I thought she was in hiding or had escaped – maybe even in prison, but dead… no. Since I’ve been back here in Vienna I’ve assumed, for right or wrong, we’d be reunited. Don’t ask me why, but I was convinced it’d happen.’
Rolf turned his head away from Katharina and looked towards the windows, his eyes full of tears. Katharina edged closer to him and took her hand in his.
‘Tell me where you went.’
***
When Rolf was a student in Vienna the city was such an intense cauldron of politics, violence and emotions that he often fel
t the need to escape from it. He found his refuge in the Vienna Woods, an enormous expanse to the west of the city, where the lower foothills of the Alps dropped down towards the Danube. You can find whatever life you choose in the Vienna Woods, someone had once told Rolf. It was part forest, part hunting grounds, part leisure area and part vineyards, and it was where Rolf could be alone and at peace. Despite having been brought up in the country – or possibly because of it – Frieda had little interest in Vienna Woods. She’d become such a city girl that she was happy to remain in its confines for ever and regarded Rolf’s love for the woods as quirky behaviour.
Rolf came to know the area intimately: he’d rarely stay on the paths and found places he could go where he wouldn’t see another soul for hours. In the summer months he’d sometimes camped out overnight. In winter he preferred the vineyards and discovered small huts secreted among them where the workers kept their tools and rested during the harvest.
So it was to the Vienna Woods he’d fled that Wednesday morning, after Franzi had told him about Frieda. He’d waited until she was upstairs then slipped into the kitchen, where he’d taken a large sausage, some cheese and bread, and stuffed them into his bag. He’d then taken a tram to Grinzing, the small wine-producing town to the north west of Vienna that was always the starting point for his visits to the woods. From there, he’d caught a bus deeper into the forest. When it had dropped him off he’d walked for many hours, until it was dark. He walked on instinct, heading towards a vineyard he remembered well where there was a hut hidden on its edge. When he’d arrived he was exhausted and covered in mud, but relieved the hut was as he remembered it: firmly built and dry, with a bench to sleep on and blankets in a box underneath it.
