Bette

by Lyn Cote

  “You loved her?” Ilsa scoffed. “Love doesn’t exist. Not for us—not for Jews.”

  Her sarcasm pushed him. For a moment he seriously considered shaking some sense into her. But he didn’t have the right. “How much did Portugal want for a visa?” he snapped.

  “Five hundred Deutschmarks.” She straightened and faced him, flushed, defiant, her eyes bright in the November evening.

  Drake pulled out his wallet and grabbed one of her hands. He counted the bills into her palm and folded her fingers over them. Then he put his wallet back. “Get the visa. Then come to me. I’m at the Grand Hotel. I’ll be here another week on business and finishing up some diplomatic appointments.”

  “Why?” Ilsa held the money away from her as if it would contaminate her.

  “Because Chloe asked me to get you . . . your family out of Germany if I could. From what your family said, they’ve given up on fleeing.” Maybe it was easier to deny what was happening than face the nasty reality that they were no longer wanted in their own country and no other country wanted them either. How would he react if he were in this demeaning situation?

  “I don’t foresee things changing for the better here,” he continued. “So you need to decide whether you’re going to give up, too, or try to get out while you can.”

  He turned and walked away briskly. The street depressed him and he knew he’d have a long walk before he’d come to a street where taxis ran. Taxis didn’t pick up Jews anymore, and Jews sat in the back of buses and streetcars—just like Jim Crow at home.

  Ilsa’s face lingered in his mind, making him feel things he didn’t want to feel, making him contemplate the impossible. He was a Gentile. She was a Jew who hated Gentiles—with good reason. And hadn’t he adjusted to his bachelor life? He’d only ever loved Chloe and he’d lost her to a better man.

  Then another unpleasant thought tugged at him—did he have the right or the obligation to tell Chloe Ilsa’s secret?

  Six days later, Drake stepped out of a taxi and found Ilsa standing off to the side of his hotel entrance. A jolt of pure attraction lanced through him. “Ilsa?”

  Looking hunted, she met him. “I have the visa.”

  “Good. Come in.” He took her arm, trying to reassure her of good intentions. “I’ll buy you lunch and we can talk.”

  She shook her head. “They won’t serve Juden in there,” she taunted him.

  Drake was at a loss. He flushed, his face hot.

  “Come.” She nodded her head toward the right. “Street vendors still sell to us. If you have gelt. I have none.”

  “Lead the way.” He reached out to take her elbow, a gesture of concern.

  She wrenched away. “It is best you not touch me. I’m Jude, nicht wahr?” Bitterness dripped from each word.

  But Drake didn’t blame her. The Nazi takeover in ’33 had changed everything. Still, he should be glad of her fire. She wasn’t giving in like her family. He’d sent them another note, again offering to help them and he’d received a polite no-thank-you in return.

  So now he merely motioned her to lead on. Within two blocks, they entered Unter den Linden, Berlin’s grand boulevard, “Under the Linden Trees.” He led her to a cart selling tea in paper cups and sandwiches. The vendor wouldn’t look at Ilsa or hand her the tea or sandwiches. Irritated, Drake paid him and handed one cup and sandwich to Ilsa.

  She glared at him suddenly. “You realize this isn’t Kosher?”

  Drake stared at her. He wanted to ask her if she’d kept Kosher while married to the Gentile who’d tossed her out. But he held his temper. He could withstand her fiery darts. He even applauded her resistance to despair. “You’re hungry, aren’t you?” he asked at last.

  “Ja.” She led him a few feet away to a park bench, where she ate her sandwich ravenously between gulps of hot tea. When she was done, Drake handed her his untouched sandwich. She flushed, but she took it. Staring down at her lap, she ate the second sandwich, rocking slightly against the cutting wind. “Ich bin hungrig always, always.”

  She wore a coat, but it hid nothing from him. Still he resisted pointing out the obvious reason for her constant hunger. “How long is the visa good for?” he asked, trying to keep the conversation impersonal.

  “For three years.”

  “That long?” Passersby stared at them. An SA, a Nazi State policeman, halted across the boulevard from them and glared. It was an intimidating, malevolent stare Drake had never received from any American cop or official. It made Drake glad to have a US passport in his pocket. But Ilsa didn’t and he didn’t want to make her the Nazi’s immediate target. Drake pulled her to her feet and discarded the paper cups in the nearby trash container.

  Glancing at the SA officer, she whispered a curse and then, “Gestapo.”

  Drake led her away. “I’ll try to find out about booking you passage—”

  “I can do that. I’m just a Jew but I can arrange the rest.”

  He wanted to argue with her. But he decided it wouldn’t do any good. The Gestapo officer remained where he was. His disapproving glare burned into Drake. But Drake shook it off. It wasn’t yet against the law for Jews to talk to Gentiles. The Gestapo officer was just indulging in intimidation.

  Still, Drake felt Ilsa’s mounting tension within himself. He didn’t like the way his gaze wanted to linger on her, the way she made the years roll off him, making him feel like he was twenty again and anything was possible. He opened his wallet. “Here is my card. If, after I leave, you need me or anything, write me or call collect. If I’m not home, my staff will take a message.”

  “You are very rich?” Again her tone oozed resentment.

  “I’m comfortable, but I was rich in 1928.” He gave a wry grin, but noticed she kept casting surreptitious, nervous glances back at the Gestapo officer. Don’t be afraid. He can’t hurt you while I’m beside you. But Drake was leaving Germany in a few days. Who would protect Ilsa then? Drake quickened their pace. I’m just here to help out. I can’t change things. None of this is my fault. But still he felt the heavy guilt. And still, he wanted to protect this woman.

  “This Chloe must be sehr shoen if you still want her when she’s married to someone else and a mother,” Ilsa pointed out suddenly with ripe sarcasm, as if daring him to get angry.

  Why had she targeted Chloe? Was it jealousy or envy? “Chloe is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”

  “Gretel said so in her letters. She says she is blond like you and has blue eyes.” Ilsa’s tone sharpened even more. “She would make a good Aryan. Like you.”

  Drake stiffened at the insult. “I’m no fascist.”

  “And I’m no innocent. If you want me, I will go to the back entrance of the hotel. They will let me in that way. What is the number of your room?”

  For a moment, he didn’t understand what she was saying. Then it shocked him. “I can’t believe you said that to me.”

  “Why not? I don’t take charity. What is the number? Do you want me now or should I come back later?”

  He reached out and captured her chin with an angry hand. “Don’t insult me or yourself any further.” He let go of her clenched jaw. “I know you’re having a bad time. More than a bad time. But I didn’t come to take anything from you.”

  “No, you are the hero of the play.” She sneered at him. “You still serve your lady, Mrs. McCaslin—Chloe.”

  “If you met her, you’d never speak about her like that. She took Gretel in and has given her love and a home. She didn’t have to. She did it because she’s Chloe.” He realized he was acting overly defensive—playing right into Ilsa’s accusations—and made a face at himself. What this woman thought of him didn’t matter. And even though he knew he wouldn’t forget Ilsa Braun any time soon, they would remain strangers.

  “I don’t know anything of that kind of person. I am eine Jude in Deutschland. This is my home, but I am not wanted here. I am no longer a citizen. Ich bin Untermenschen, not human. I have no rights. I am nothing.” She glar
ed at him, daring him to take affront at her insults.

  He had no answer for her. Frustration boiled through him. He couldn’t help his blond hair and blue eyes any more than she could change her dark hair and race. He pulled out more cash and shoved it into her hand. “I don’t deserve your insults. Buy yourself milk. The baby needs it now so its bones will be strong.” He walked away without looking back.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Washington, D.C., March 1938

  Bette and Curt sat side by side in the impressive Presbyterian Church on New York Avenue. Bette was wearing a new black hat and gloves and had taken care that the seams of her silk stockings were straight. She always took care to look as if she fit this grand setting. Would Washington, D.C., ever cease to feel too grand for her, a little country girl?

  Looking ahead, Bette recognized a few important figures—senators, congressmen, and War Department officials, some she worked for. She sat straight and proud, knowing they would see her with Curt, a handsome sophomore at Georgetown University. But more than anything, she was eager to share Gretel’s exciting letter with Curt. Sharing news of Ilsa would make it feel real.

  The pastor finished his sermon, which had touched on the Anschluss, the German takeover of Austria that very month without a shot fired. The pastor had asked for prayers for the Jews of Austria who would soon feel the Nazi heel upon them. Bette glanced around the congregation, wondering how many among them felt the same dread of Nazis.

  Gretel’s letters always brought news from home in Berlin and it was always bad. Bette had learned the fearful word Eizelaktinen, which meant random violence against Jews. Just last month, Gretel’s father’s store window had been smashed and he’d been dragged into the street and beaten—in front of a crowd of witnesses who’d turned and hurried away. Reading the stark words, Bette had felt shaken, as if it had happened to her own dear stepfather.

  Now, amid sounds of muffled coughs and murmurs, Bette rose with everyone to sing the closing hymn. Curt’s comfortable baritone joined her light soprano in the familiar words, “He hideth my soul in the cleft of a rock that shadows a dry thirsty land.” But who would hide Gretel’s family? “He hideth my life in the depths of his love and covers me there with his hand,” she repeated this last phrase and made it a prayer for Gretel’s family. But Gretel’s letter had brought hope about Ilsa. Bette savored this as the benediction was pronounced.

  Outside the sunshine was bright, but the breeze cool. Bette let Curt help her arms into the sleeves of her gray-wool jacket. He smiled at her and kissed her nose. “Where shall we go for lunch today?”

  “You know it doesn’t matter to me.” She admired his eyebrows, a darker shade than his blond hair. “You decide.”

  “How about the Old New Orleans Restaurant?”

  She nodded. They walked hand in hand down H Avenue past Lafayette Square heading for the streetcar. Overhead, the elms and sycamores along the way had bravely started to bud this week. She squeezed Curt’s hand and imagined kissing his eyebrows, feeling the short soft hair under her lips. Thinking these forbidden thoughts, while they walked so circumspectly out in public made her feel naughty, outrageous.

  “Are you sure you want to spend that much on lunch?” she asked. “We could just buy sandwiches and sit in the park.”

  “I like to show off my girl. And you’re not wearing a sit-in-the-park outfit.” Touching her cheek, he tucked her closer to his side. “Besides we only get to see each other on Sunday and I like to show you how much you mean to me.”

  The urge to point out that they could meet more often than once a week tempted Bette. But she repressed this. How could she argue with him when he complimented her and added a surreptitious kiss on her earlobe? “After lunch, I’ll read you Gretel’s letter,” she promised. And maybe I will kiss both your eyebrows, no matter what you say.

  “I like Gretel, but I love you,” he murmured into her ear, making a shiver course down her neck.

  How she loved to hear him say these things. “I love you, too,” she murmured back, holding his arm tightly to her side. So why can’t we get married now, Curt? Again, she kept her thought to herself. Why spoil the day with another disagreement about this topic? Soon, they reached the popular restaurant on Connecticut Avenue with its trademark painting of a large Negro woman wearing a long red gingham dress and red bandana tied around her head. Bette drew in the delicious aromas of fried chicken and fresh buttery corn bread.

  After lunch, they rode the creaking, rattling streetcar again and then walked to the Washington Monument and sat down on one of the benches. Only a few tourists roamed the wide open space around the solitary obelisk. The cool breeze had chased most people inside, which gave them the privacy they craved. Bette wondered if the few tourists were far enough away to suit Curt’s sense of propriety. Since she only got to see him once a week, she treasured their few moments of intimacy. But Curt would not kiss her until they were nearly alone. Still, she shivered with anticipation as he slipped his arm around her.

  “Read me Gretel’s letter,” he said.

  She reveled in their closeness as she opened the letter from her friend, who was working in a Jewish-owned dress shop in Brooklyn, and began reading. She soon came to the best part: “‘You’ll be so happy to hear my good news. Ilsa’s baby is finally well enough to travel. Ilsa was able to get passage out of Germany. When you receive this, she should be en route by train through Spain to Portugal. My family is so relieved. They were afraid that she would wait so long that her visa would lapse.’”

  “I’m glad,” Curt said with feeling. “I know you and Gretel have been worrying.”

  The tourists around the monument vanished and Bette’s anticipation rose. Would Curt notice?

  “Yes, it’s such a relief,” Bette continued as if nothing were about to happen. “‘But she won’t be coming here. She hopes she can catch a ship to South America and—’”

  Glancing around, Curt stopped her words with a kiss on the corner of her mouth. Bette held her breath, feeling the delicious warmth his kisses always brought her. Curt’s kisses, the highlight of her Sunday afternoons.

  “What else does Gretel say?” he murmured, trailing tiny kisses down the side of her neck.

  “Gretel says: ‘I will wait to hear from Ilsa. She will send me a telegram with the name of her ship and her destination. When she lands, she will telegraph me again and I will go and help her get settled.’”

  Keeping all her reactions to Curt muted because of the setting, Bette tried to focus on the next page. “‘I don’t know how long I will stay. I’ll work while she and the baby recover from the journey. I’m practicing my Spanish so I’ll be ready for anything. I wish I were able to get my US citizenship but I have four more years before I can apply. I hope I won’t have any trouble reentering the States on my resident visa but I’ll face that if and when I must.’”

  “Gretel’s English has really improved.” Then he turned her in his arms and kissed her full on the mouth.

  Wrapping her arms around his neck, she breathed in the scent of him, memorizing the sensations rippling through her. He ended the kiss, but kept her close. “I’m worried,” she murmured beside his ear. “What if Ilsa’s ship gets—What if what happened to the St. Louis happens to her ship?”

  Not long ago, the SS St. Louis, also from Portugal and packed with twenty thousand Jewish refugees, had been refused admittance to Central America and then the US. The ship had been forced to refuel and head back to Europe with all hands aboard. “How could America do that? Turn its back on people who need help so desperately?”

  “Surely after the Anschluss that wouldn’t happen again,” Curt said. “I’ve heard that the US will be taking in more Jewish refugees.”

  Bette nodded, wishing he entered into her concern over Ilsa more than he did. But of course, he wasn’t as close to Gretel as she was. And Ilsa was just a name to him.

  “I hope they mean that.” Sighing, Bette traced with one finger the rim of his ear. “But all
this talk about the Fifth Column . . . you know, ‘secret Nazis.’ I hear officers at work talking. They’re afraid that some of the refugees could be Nazis in disguise, saboteurs.”

  Curt stroked her hair back from her face. “That Father Coughlin is the one who gets my goat. Why does anyone listen to his rabid anti-Semitism? I believe in freedom of speech, but his ranting is almost incitement to violence in my mind.” He kissed her again, drawing it out, making it last.

  Under the sweet assault of his lips, Bette forgot all about the problems of her time. They were too large for her to solve. The matter closest to her heart came out: “Curt, I wish we could just get married.”

  Ignoring her statement, he squeezed her hand even as he rose and pulled her up with him. “I have to start back. I have a lot of studying to do tonight.”

  “Curt, why won’t you even discuss getting married? There is nothing keeping us apart but you.”

  “Bette,” he said, steel infusing his words, “I won’t marry you until I finish college and am able to support you as a husband should. It wouldn’t look right. I won’t have my wife supporting me.”

  “What does it matter if I go on working while you finish college—”

  “Bette, you know the answer to this. Now don’t spoil our time together.”

  She wanted to answer back, “I’m not spoiling our time together. Your pride and stubbornness are.” But of course, she didn’t. She decided to try a different tack. “Curt, I know that you’re working and studying hard.” She adjusted the hat on her head. “But couldn’t we see each other more often? Couldn’t we eat together Wednesday nights instead of just a phone call? I don’t live that far from you—”

  “Bette, we’ve been over this before.” He sounded mildly peeved. “I want to be with you, too. But every hour of my week is allotted to classes, study, or work. If we married, you wouldn’t see me except at breakfast and much later for a good night kiss. So what good would it be to be married?”

  Bette thought that they’d have more time if they married. With her working, he wouldn’t have to work and he could spend more time with her. But she wouldn’t bring that up. He’d been very upset the last time she’d put it into words. She went back to her present argument. “But, why can’t I see you mid-week?”