“I will never forget you,” I said.
“And I will always be with you,” said Elsi.
When Gilda sees my tears in the restaurant, she places her hand on my shoulder, but I pull away. I do not want to become attached to anyone else. The next person I love will be someone I have chosen.
“I know for you that this doesn’t feel right, but it is. Elsi knows it, too, which is why she has not put up a fight.”
“Shut up!” I say. “Do not say anything about her. You know nothing!”
“Why are you so protective of her? I know she has been through a lot, and God knows how she survived it. She is a brave woman, but you were not her daughter. She could have contacted our agency, at least to learn of your family’s fate. She must have known we existed.”
“I would be dead if not for her.”
Gilda shakes her head. She is testing me to see how I am coping, perhaps even trying to distance me from Elsi, to break the bond between us. I am used to such tactics by adults. They always think that children can’t see through their ploys. They are transparent like glass. I always felt that my mother was alive, but I loved Elsi so much I couldn’t imagine leaving her. I let fate decide. At one point, I half hoped Catarina had really been killed in a bombing to justify everything. I had found a life again. A good one. I lived with the brightest star in the night sky.
“I understand that you love her. She has been good to you—that is obvious. But I search for missing children. It is what I do. Please come back to the table and finish your food. We have a long drive ahead tomorrow.”
I sit down, but I am no longer hungry.
“Things will turn out all right,” says Fraulein Janz. “Those times were extraordinary. Things will get easier. Life will go on. But for Elsi’s sake as well as for your own, you should not contact her. I will, of course, inform her that you have reached your destination safely.”
“You are going back to see her?” I am suddenly alarmed.
“I have to go back and see if she can tell me anything about the other children from the Center.”
“You must leave her alone. She doesn’t deserve your prying. She can’t lead you to the missing children.”
“She is the only link I have now.”
“I will tell you some things . . . as long as nothing happens to Elsi. As long as you promise you will never go back there.”
“Things about the children?” she asks.
“You have to promise that you will not report her for keeping me. Don’t look so surprised. I didn’t care about my past. I wanted to stay with Elsi. If I didn’t, I would have run away. So please, promise me that you will remove her name from the file and say I was living with someone else. Promise me that you will never visit her again.”
“I don’t know if I can do that. In any case, she will not be in trouble for taking care of you. There were difficult circumstances. It was war.”
“If you promise to change the name in the report, I will help you. If you promise never to go back there, I will tell you things. You can then put the files from the Center to bed. You can close the cases.”
She is watching me. I know that she would give anything to learn information.
“All right,” says Gilda firmly. “You have my word. I will use another name in my report. I will remove any reference to Winthur. I will note that it was a false name. I will note that you were living freely with a family who believed you were an orphan. I will mark the file as closed with no further leads.”
“If I learn that you have gone back on your word—”
“I won’t.”
I stare at her a moment. I can often tell whether people are honest or lying. I think I can trust her.
“Tell me something about yourself first,” I say. “Do you have children?”
“No. I am not married either.”
“Why do you do this job?”
“I asked to work at the Agency because it was something I felt I owed to others. I lived a reasonably good life during the war. I did not suffer as much as many others, and I did not care that others did. I only worried about myself. If I can give back the children who were stolen by my own countrymen, then in some way I can forgive myself for ignoring the evil that was happening right in front of me.”
I was not expecting that answer. What she said is something that most would not admit to. At least I know that she has nothing to personally gain from any of this, no vendetta.
“So, Matilda,” she says. “Will you tell me also what happened after Willem died? I am interested in knowing how you coped after this.”
I was serving up breakfast to the orphans when Mutti—Elsi—came through the door. She had her hands over her ears, and she walked straight past us and into the bedroom. I watched the children eat their breakfast, then took them back to the sitting room. I told them that they could talk among themselves but not too loudly, in case the neighbors might hear them and investigate.
I went into my parents’ bedroom, and Elsi was sitting on the bed, staring at the floor. Her face and dress were covered in dust, and she had scratches on her arms and knees.
“Are you unwell, Mutti?” I asked.
She said she had a headache, but that she would be out in a moment. A short time later, after she had washed and changed, she went to help the children and told them they were very brave. Some of them were upset and confused and wanted to return to the Center, which they believed was their home.
A man and woman from the underground resistance came and took the children as promised the next night. The children were scared because the couple appeared fierce and very formal. Elsi and I had to comfort them, and we gave them blankets and food for the journey. She said that the couple would take them back to their country. She did not say “to your parents” because she knew that would be unlikely. Willem had told her that the new children arrived with no information, not even the names of their towns. But at least they would go somewhere safe to live with resistance families who were keen to take them in, and not to the camps, and not to Germans who were loyal to Hitler.
After they left, Elsi told me what had happened to Willem. She did not cry when she told me. She had grieved too much already, she said. Too many people she loved had died. She was running out of grief. But I wept, and she held me, and I did not stop crying for days. And then I stopped because she told me that I would have a little brother. And then that was all I could think of. That somehow all the things that happened were going to happen anyway. Elsi told me that God has a plan for everyone.
We were too close to the scene of a crime, one that we were connected with, and the police were certain to come. Elsi had an address of a house that Willem had left to her. She had begun to work on a plan to get there. She did not feel comfortable knowing that Nurse Claudia knew of her existence and my adoption. Undoubtedly, Nurse had been questioned by the Gestapo. Elsi felt that sooner or later the authorities would come looking for us in the town when nothing turned up at Willem’s apartment in Berlin. It was clear why Willem had put the ownership of our new house under a false name, so there was no connection to him.
Before we left, however, we got some news that floored us both. Leon, one of the men who had helped rescue the children, arrived at our house in the middle of the day. This was rare that they should call on us. The members of the resistance only ever traveled to places at night. Elsi saw him from the window, and straight away she knew that something bad had happened.
Leon came to tell us that the two resistance workers and the smuggled children had been stopped in Denmark as they were transferring to a fishing boat for Sweden. Leon got word that they were all shot on the spot. He said that the couple had made the trip successfully twice before. He did not seem surprised when he reported this news, just disappointed. He had been hardened by tragedy—by previous failures elsewhere. He said they would have to find another escape route to help others.
After Leon left, we both felt stunned. What had happened was tragic, and E
lsi felt responsible. After that, she seemed to grow very sad and weary. I couldn’t sleep that night because I was remembering all the faces of the children. It seemed so unfair that they had died and I had somehow been saved. I dreamed of killing Frau myself. I wished I had.
A couple of days later, once Elsi’s nerves had begun to settle, we resumed our planning. Elsi was trying to negotiate with someone from the resistance to drive us northwest to Oldenburg. Even though my adoption papers listed Willem’s Berlin apartment as our address, Elsi was very worried that the authorities would never give up finding us, and she was convinced they were clever enough to find Willem’s secret house near the Center. And she did not feel comfortable with traveling by train, though she need not have worried. In hindsight, I know Willem had been thorough in creating our new identities—mine as Matilda Winthur.
I was curious as to what was happening back at the Center now that Willem wasn’t there. One day when Elsi went to the markets, I decided to go to the woods nearby and spy. The house and the grounds were quiet. It did not look as menacing from the outside as it had from within, yet my legs still trembled as I neared the place, especially when the punishment house came into view. It was only then that I realized it was not a house at all but only one very small room, built poorly and exposed to the elements.
For over an hour I watched the place, but no one appeared. I thought that it had been abandoned and wondered if perhaps it was haunted by Willem’s ghost and people no longer wanted to be there. Then I saw a lady I had never seen before go into the food store. She was wearing Hetty’s apron. Next I saw Nurse Claudia unlock the door to the old dormitory that Willem had been planning to destroy. Out came two new children that she led to the swings. I went home and told Elsi that whoever was there now had put new children back into the hut. Elsi had not seen it, but she had heard from Willem how disgusting it was, how it was unfit to live in.
Later that night she went to Leon to find out if he knew anything about the Center. He told her that a new temporary commander had been urgently installed, because two teenage girls had recently been taken there from occupied territories, as well as two younger children.
She came home very angry. Elsi rarely got angry, but she was pacing and she hit the table with a plate, smashing it into hundreds of pieces.
“Willem died for nothing! They have just started from where they left off. New children to send this way, to send off to camps, to abuse.”
I had never felt scared of Elsi, even when she slapped me that one time on the hill, but I was frightened for her and the baby. Her nerves were balancing on knives, and I was worried she would slip and I would lose her, too.
Elsi said she was relieved that Willem didn’t have to know his efforts had amounted to nothing. I reminded her that we both were still alive and that he would have wanted that.
She hugged me, her anger passing a little, and said that I had an old head on young shoulders. She became calm then, and we ate dinner, though she was thinking the whole time and not talking. I did not want to disturb her because whatever she was planning was important. Then during our meal she put down her fork.
“Matilda, it is time to end it . . . to finish what Willem started.”
She told me the plan. I was also angry, perhaps not as much as Elsi, but I, too, had been thinking during dinner. I was angry about the children being shot, and about Sarah and Luise as well. Then to find out there were more children who would be sent away! I liked her plan because it was something I had fantasized about in the punishment room. To help the children escape. She did not want me involved, but she knew that she might not be able to do this on her own, so she agreed to let me help. If she had said no, I would have followed anyway.
Elsi took the gun that Willem had given her, and we left for the Center late in the night. Willem had kept keys to every door there, and we hoped that the locks had not been changed. She said that I was to follow her, but to stay well back out of danger, and that if she told me to run, I had to do exactly that, and everything else she instructed.
We went not by the roads but through the woods and into the back area where there were no longer any guards. I knew that Nurse stayed in the main house some nights, but we couldn’t be sure if she would be there that night. Cook had never stayed there, so I did not think her replacement would be there either.
I recognized the large old key from Vati’s ring of keys to unlock the dormitory, and I crept in and woke the two children who were there. That was my job because Elsi thought I wouldn’t frighten them like an adult would. I told the children I was there to rescue them, and that I had once been a prisoner, also. They didn’t believe me at first. In the torchlight they looked terrified. I told them shocking stories of children being sent away to worse places, and how I had been rescued. I can be very convincing. It worked, and they followed me outside. Then Elsi poured gasoline across the floor and threw a match. The timber was alight immediately.
As we turned to leave the yard to run toward the woods, Elsi told me to keep going with the children and to stay out of sight until she came later. She had to go into the main house and see where the older girls were, the ones who had been taken solely for the amusement of SS officers. I did not know their purpose for being there at that time, however, and did not learn it until later, when I was old enough to fully understand that young women were taken and used this way, and that a secret directive was given to Nazi men to sire as many Aryan bastards as they wished.
Elsi had never mentioned this part of the plan to me, where she would enter the main building. She had only said that we would free the younger ones and set fire to the dormitory. I had thought at the time that the gun was only for protection. I stayed hidden in the woods with the other two children and watched for movement in the silent house that was lit up brightly by the burning hut beside it.
We waited for maybe five minutes, and then three gunshots sounded from within the house. I told the children to stay in the woods while I investigated. I had to use fear to keep them there. I told them that they would be shot by spies who surrounded the house if they attempted to leave, but that I would return soon to finish rescuing them.
Then I ran back to the house, passing the hut that was now collapsing under the weight of the flames, and in through the kitchen door, left open by Elsi. At the end of the upstairs hall was a bedroom with its lamp switched on. Elsi was standing near the bed. The new commander was dead with a bullet hole in his chest, blood splattered across the sheets. I later learned that the first bullet had missed him widely, as she fired upon entering. Elsi had never used a weapon before.
A girl, a few years older than I, was in the bed whimpering, the sheets drawn tightly around her naked body. Another one was standing close by. The new commander had been bedding the new girls himself.
“Matilda, do you ever do anything you are told?” asked Elsi. I was quite scared, more so because Elsi was eerily calm, and I thought someone might hear the gunshots and see the fire and catch us all. “The girls tell me that Nurse Claudia is here inside the house. Can you check her room?”
I left Elsi to settle the girls, who were both crying uncontrollably. At that point they didn’t realize they were being rescued. Nurse’s room was on the same floor. I checked her door, which was locked.
“Nurse!” I called softly through the door. “We need to speak with you.”
“Go away!” Her voice was frail. She was terrified.
“Elsi wants to talk with you.”
“She is going to kill me.”
“We won’t leave until you come out. She only wants to talk.” I said this with no idea of what Elsi was planning next. I just knew Nurse had to come out, and we had to get back to the children waiting in the woods.
The room stayed very silent.
“Please come out,” I called. “This house might catch fire and you might burn down with it.”
I waited several moments, and then the door opened and Nurse stepped into the hall, trembling, her
eyes wide with fear. From where we were standing, we could view the inside of the commander’s bedroom, and she hesitated several times before following me into the room.
Elsi didn’t turn immediately. She was talking quietly to the two girls, who were now huddled together in the corner. Then she walked toward us, her gun arm hanging loosely at her side. With her other hand, Elsi turned me around and lifted up my skirt to reveal the scars on the backs of my legs.
“Do you see these marks, these strikes?” she asked Nurse.
Nurse nodded.
“Do you see why this commander had to die? Why this can’t continue?”
“I’m so sorry, Matilda,” said Nurse to me. “It was never my choice.”
Elsi raised the pistol and held it with two hands. I had heard Leon tell her about firing. He said that a gun can bounce in your hands if you aren’t prepared. She must have told him what she planned to do. Elsi aimed it at Nurse’s head.
“I will say nothing about you both if you let me go,” begged Nurse, her hands pressed together.
“I doubt that is true,” said Elsi, who had taken a step closer.
“Wait,” I said. I had some reservations about another execution. I knew what it was like to be in a position of fearing for my life, and some part of me did not want this to happen to anyone else.
“Did this woman ever beat you?” Elsi asked me.
“Once.”
“Did you see her beating others?”
“Sometimes,” I said. “But not like Frau.”
“Did she ever watch you being beaten?”
I hesitated before answering.
“Yes.”
Elsi cocked the gun.
“Stop!” said Nurse frantically, holding up her hands.
Elsi lowered the gun slightly.
“Do you think you would have done differently in my place?” said Nurse. “That you would have risked your life? That you would have somehow made a difference here?”
I could see that Elsi was thinking about this, her eyes no longer seeing Nurse but somewhere else. And then she raised her eyes.
Broken Angels Page 37
