by Bodie Thoene
“They weren’t Jews,” Lucy argued. “I don’t think they are Jews or smugglers or any such thing! Not black marketeers or . . . or anything like that. I believe them. This Gestapo man has his sister visiting for the holidays and—” She paused for effect. “Really, Wolf, I would be careful until you are certain. You might arrest the sister of a Gestapo agent, and then he would find a way to take back our apartment.”
At the streetlamp Wolf gave her a withering look. He clenched and unclenched his fingers around the steering wheel. Had she succeeded in planting a doubt? “I have told you before to keep your mouth shut, you Bavarian slut! You chat with that boy like he is an old neighbor in your village, and now you tell me maybe they are not Jews.”
“I’m simply saying you should check the story. Have them watched for a day or so.” She pouted, staring out the window. “I just think you should be careful. How would it look on your record if you arrested the family of a Gestapo agent after coming drunkenly to their door and imagining you smelled Jews inside?”
Wolf pressed hard on the accelerator to show Lucy his displeasure at her. He had not been drunk earlier, but now he definitely felt the endless rounds of schnapps and wine. Her words made him doubt, and he did not like to doubt what he had been so certain of only a few hours before.
“They are Jews. Otto is no doubt taking bribes to protect them. He should go to prison right along with them.”
She mocked him again. “Oh? The Reich has prisons for babies, does it?”
He ignored her remark as they moved slowly toward the domed Burgtheater, which was bathed in floodlights and draped in banners. He snapped his fingers. “Ha! He could be living with her, eh? She is an attractive sort. A racial charge would knock him into the clink and toss away the key.”
Lucy snorted in scorn at such a wild thought. “Or, she might be his sister. In which case you will be court-martialed for slandering a loyal servant of the Reich.”
“Why . . . why do you argue with me?” Her way of undermining his every idea made him furious and frustrated. “You are a fool to believe such a thing. The woman might pass for an Aryan. And the boy and the baby. But that girl—Jew was stamped on every feature.”
Lucy shrugged as if the matter bored her. She grew more silent and sullen as he mumbled his theories as though they were fact enough to hang this Otto Wattenbarger fellow. Well, she had warned Wolf. Was it her fault if he did not listen? Maybe he would be the one arrested and then she could walk away from Vienna a free woman. She had not seen criminals in the flat—just a woman with weary, fearful eyes. Everyone had eyes like that in Vienna. “And so what if they are Jews?” Lucy regretted saying the words even as she blurted them out.
Wolf roared the question back at her. “If they are Jews . . . if they are not his family, as they claim, then a high-ranking party member is taking bribes to help rich Jews! Personally profiteering—and who knows what else he might do for money!” He glanced at her with all the disdain he could muster. “In a few days I will have your proof! Everything I shall need to send Wattenbarger where he belongs. You will see. Irrefutable . . . Jews in his apartment!” His cold blue eyes glinted steel and ordered her to be silent. Her involvement in the matter was finished.
***
The message came by early post to Murphy. He read it without surprise and passed it across the lunch table to Theo and Chaim Weizmann, head of the Zionist movement. The two had just been extolling the effectiveness of Captain Orde’s campaign against the Arab gangs in Palestine. Orde and his training manual were the last, best hope for members of the Yishuv to withstand the pressures of politics and terrorism combined.
RE: THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN PALESTINE
Dear Murphy,
I am disturbed to hear there are rumblings of discontent in several branches of the government with regard to the tremendous successes of our Captain Orde. No doubt those news dispatches he has written with anonymous pen were not in the least exaggerated. If anything, he has concealed most of his accomplishments beneath the dry jargon of a journalist. The truth is, however, that neither the Nazis nor the Arabs like our friend in the least! Messages have been sent—stern messages—that he must be taken out of the picture in the Mandate, or there will be no peace conference in London next month. The Arab Higher Committee has vowed that they “will not attend as long as Great Britain is supplying favor, arms, and ruthless officers like this Captain Orde to aggress against our peace-loving people!”
Thus spake the leaders of assassins, cutthroats, and butchers who write history with their own particular twist. They further insist that this Captain Orde is not a captain at all, but a full general incognito.
The last is a compliment, but believe me, no one within our government or the army is smiling or in any way pleased. Sam Orde is in trouble with the High Command. He has done too excellent a job. His results speak for themselves. There is talk that he may be posted back to England and given a desk job out of harm’s way. A tragedy, although it may save him from assassination by the Arabs.
You may be losing a great correspondent in Jerusalem; England is punishing a loyal servant for offending those who would murder British subjects in their beds, and a great victory may be won for the Mufti. It reeks of appeasement once again . . .
There was much more to the letter, but that was the meat of it. Theo placed the paper almost reverently on the table. “So the rumors are true.”
“If we were a nation, Samuel Orde would be the head of the War Department. And no one would ask if he was a Jew.”
Theo smiled cynically. “Oh, they would ask. And they would challenge his right to be there doing his best.” He had lost his appetite.
Chaim Weizmann nodded at the reports he had heard about Orde from the Jewish Agency. “A fellow so single-minded and dedicated makes people around him a little . . . ill at ease, I think. A few thousand years back in our history, we might have called him a prophet.”
“And stoned him.”
“Or called him a great general.”
“And made him king.”
“There is a fine line that a man must walk in his success,” Weizmann finished.
“He reminds me a lot of my brother-in-law,” Theo said.
“Ibsen? The German pastor?” Weizmann seemed surprised by the comparison. “He is a soldier?”
“Why not? A true man of God fights darkness with prayer and good deeds. A soldier in a right cause fights darkness by drawing his sword and putting an end to men who kill without conscience. All darkness comes from the same source. And all truth comes from God.”
“Then we really are fighting a holy war.” Chaim laughed.
“At times I hear invisible swords crashing above my bed and behind me as I walk down the street.” Theo smiled, too, but his eyes were serious. “This aim of the Muslim Council and Hitler to kill the Jews is pure evidence in the flesh that the real war is between Light and Darkness. And every living human serves one side or the other.” He looked squarely at Murphy, who had been silent during this exchange. “Maybe if Orde is posted back to England, you should point at his enemies and tell him to rejoice. Frankly, we can savor the fact that Herr Hitler hates us. It makes this life difficult, certainly, to lose everything one worked for. But that is not the point. When the devil looks at Sam Orde and Karl Ibsen, he shakes in his boots, because he sees men who have not given in.”
“A worthy aim,” Murphy remarked. “Churchill said it to Charles.”
Weizmann raised his glass in a toast. “As the poet said:
Here’s to unknown generals of light,
unsheathe their swords of truth and right!
With prayers and deed together fight,
and put the evil hosts to flight.”
“To Samuel Orde,” Murphy said.
“To Karl Ibsen,” Theo added.
“And to the unknown soldiers.”
31
Christmas Eve
Lucy could not help raising her eyes toward the window of Otto Wat
tenbarger’s apartment as she ducked into the courtyard of Madame Singer’s corset shop.
An old basket maker and a maker of votive candles shared the same courtyard. They stood talking over their Dutch doors and looked up when they saw Lucy. Both men smiled and nodded, hoping that she was a customer come for last-minute shopping on Christmas Eve. They seemed disappointed as she passed them, pausing instead before the closed door of the old corset maker.
“She lives upstairs,” called the candle man. “Ring the bell and she will come.”
At least they were not jealous of the business Frau Singer attracted. Lucy pulled the red and green braided bell cord. Upstairs she could hear the faint jingle of the bell.
The window opened a fraction. “Coming! Coming!” the woman called down. Then the window shut tight and the two men began to talk to each other again about the things they had sold at the bazaar in the Rathaus Park and how the Germans had nearly cleaned Vienna out. Things were better since the Nazis had come, but how was anyone to restock now that the merchandise was sold and shipped back to “the Big Brother”?
Lucy pulled the collar of her plain brown woolen coat up around her ears as she waited. It was cold in the courtyard; an icy wind whistled down the steep eaves of the building.
“Ring it again,” laughed the basket maker, and at that moment the stately, refined figure of Frau Singer appeared in the doorway. “So sorry, my dear.” The woman spoke in a soft Viennese accent. She stepped aside and let Lucy come in from the cold. “I did not mean to keep you waiting. The tea kettle whistled, the phone rang, and at the same moment you came.”
Lucy stamped the clinging snow onto the mat and then smiled and nodded as if it did not matter at all. She wondered what Wolf would say if he knew she had come here to a Jewish shop? “You are the corset maker?” Lucy asked, looking around.
“I am Madame Singer.” The woman extended her hand. “My stocks are somewhat depleted—” She waved her hand around at the broken shelves of what had once been the finest corset shop in Vienna. “I have moved everything upstairs for safekeeping.” The face was kind, softened by a fan of fine lines at the corner of each eye which pleated when she smiled and nodded. “It does not really matter. My ladies still know where I am.”
Lucy tried not to stare at the obvious destruction in the room. “I have heard that you are the best at your craft.”
The old woman laughed. “Painless corsets,” she said, and Lucy knew that the woman did not blame her for what the other Germans had done to her beautiful shop. “Painless corsets cannot be bought off a shelf, now can they? They must be fitted and handmade. That is why I am still here, my dear.” She took Lucy by the elbow and directed her to a steep flight of stairs leading to her living quarters. “What are you in need of, a pretty and well-proportioned girl like you? A brassiere? Something for a strapless evening gown?”
Lucy followed her, feeling an instant kinship with the woman. She was so much like the women of her village—without pretense, welcoming everyone readily.
“I am expecting,” Lucy said bluntly, “and I would like to keep my figure as long as possible.”
At the top of the stairs, sunlight made rainbows through the beveled windows of the old woman’s main room. Silk negligees hung on racks beside the tea cart. Bolts of silk and cotton lined up in a row on the fat, friendly blue chintz sofa. An old-fashioned treadle sewing machine stood center stage in front of a warmly hissing gas stove. Brassieres lay stacked in neat lines on top of the lace-covered dining table. It was whispered that Hermann Göring’s wife bought her underthings here. She had been angry when she heard that rowdies under her husband’s orders had demolished Madame Singer’s shop.
The old woman pulled open Lucy’s coat and appraised Lucy’s figure an instant. “Off with the coat, if you please,” she ordered. “Let’s see what we’ve got to work with.”
Lucy obeyed, not feeling at all self-conscious. She held her arms out to the side as Frau Singer circled her slowly.
“Very good,” said the old woman. “You are long in the waist and so will carry the child well. How far along are you?”
“Nearly four months.”
At this information, the thin penciled arch of the eyebrows rose in surprise. “Gottenyu!”
Yiddish, Lucy thought. The first signal that the old woman really was a Jew. “You hide this very well naturally!”
“I need some time . . . ” She faltered, unable to explain why she could not simply wear maternity clothes and waddle about like other pregnant women.
“Yes? This is not a time for corsets, my dear. Soon enough you will simply blossom, and there will be no hiding of a thing like that.”
“I will lose my job,” she said, a half-truth. “You know how they are.”
Frau Singer eyed her with a knowing look. She did not need to say any more. “Well then, I will do my best. You will have to wear plain skirts and jackets straight at the sides, thus—” She demonstrated. “Bring your skirts, and I will adjust the waistline for you.” She smiled and the lines fanned out across her face. “It is like a magician. Sleight of hand, all in the angle. I once helped the mistress of a duke remain out of confinement for the full term. Everyone thought she had just put on weight. Too many pastries from Demel’s, they said. And then, poof! She lost the weight and had a baby boy suddenly appear on her doorstop. Or so she said. Everyone knew the truth, but that is really the way it happened.”
Madame Singer did not ask questions; Lucy was grateful for that. Pins in her mouth, the old woman measured and hummed pleasantly as she figured how much of this fabric and that she would use. “We will make adjustments as your body changes, my dear,” she promised. Then she fixed tea and the two women sat at the window and chatted as the afternoon sky grew dusky. “I will not offer you a pastry,” Madame Singer remarked in a motherly tone. “That would be too cruel, and someone would accuse me of making my customers fat so that I could sell corsets.”
Lucy paid a remarkably small amount and promised to return in three days to pay the rest and pick up the special corset. She left the shop feeling refreshed, as if she had just had her hair curled and her nails manicured. No wonder the wives of the Nazi officials still patronized the little shop.
The candle shop and the basket maker’s shop were locked up tight when Lucy walked from the courtyard. She looked up at the lighted window where the doomed little family lived, unsuspecting of Wolf’s plans for them. A cold blast of air swooped down from the gables, and the warmth Lucy felt blew instantly toward the Danube.
Standing on the corner in the freezing wind, she held tightly to the scarf around her hair. The streetcar trundled past, but she did not run toward the stop. Still she looked up at the window. A cat sat on the sill, placidly looking back at her.
She could not explain why, but she found herself rummaging through her handbag in search of blank note paper and a pen. Leaning against the streetlamp, she thought of the sweet baby sucking his thumb, the frightened face of the chubby little girl, the weary look of her lonely mother . . . and the anger that seethed just beneath the surface of the boy named Peter. “Heil Hitler, indeed,” she muttered, shaking her head. She wrote the note, then darted across the street and into the building. Wrapping her scarf close around her face, she planned to pretend to be on the wrong floor if they happened to catch her.
The groaning metal cage of the elevator lifted her up. Her heart pounded. She was breaking the law; she could be executed for such a simple act. And yet, who would ever know?
It was Christmas after all. Lucy hoped that someone would do something nice for her if she was in such a fix.
She pushed the brake button, locking the elevator, then folded the note, ran to the apartment door, and shoved the paper under it.
Lucy was back out on the street again, waiting at the streetcar stop before her heart slowed to a normal rate. Only then did she shudder at the thought of what Wolf would do and say when he found that the rabbits had escaped from his snare.
&
nbsp; She looked back toward the lighted window of the apartment. The cat still sat silently on the window ledge as if nothing unusual had happened at all.
***
The holidays had come to London, filling the streets with music and lights and smiling faces Charles and Louis had never seen in all their short lives. Together they climbed the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham Palace; from this perch they watched the changing of the guard. Red coats and tall black shakos on the heads of the soldiers made them seem like nutcrackers come to life! The clop of horses’ hooves against the cobbles of the street was better than the toy cavalry horses sent from Macy’s by Mr. Trump!
It was a magic time. Charles could not remember Christmas as a time of real happiness. All their lives they had lived under a shadow of fear that made the singing of carols sound brave and defiant, but never joyful.
A shadow reached here, as well, but it no longer threatened the boys. Charles saw the sadness cross Anna’s face sometimes. He knew what she was thinking without being told . . . she was thinking of the children in the photograph on her piano. Lori and Jamie Ibsen. She was wondering about their Christmas—where they were, where their father was now.
Charles understood such sadness. When his own father had been in prison, his mother had carried such thoughts in her eyes as well.
With so many children coming to England, they had much to be happy about. But Christmas would be much better if these two could come, too. Lori and Jamie were lost somewhere. Anna smiled and said Merry Christmas, but Charles could see the worry in her eyes.
***
Jacob hoped the Gestapo had forgotten about the Ibsen family and New Church. He had somehow imagined that people drove past and pictured the building as deserted and condemned. The urgency of fleeing had been lost in the midst of planning for escape. There was so much to think about. Every plan must have a backup; every eventuality must be explored and thought out. He worked his troops with calisthenics until even Lori could climb the rope as quickly as Jamie or Mark.
