A City of Broken Glass (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  “Thank you,” I said. “Your story will be heard.”

  “It will make no difference,” Frau Warski said bitterly. “Since Évian, we have known that no one cares.”

  I had no ready answer. Months ago, the world had held an international conference in Évian, France, with the charter of addressing the burgeoning Jewish refugee problem. The only outcome had been a near consensus that no country wanted to take them in. The conference went so badly that the Nazis had been able to use it in their anti-Semitic propaganda.

  “Please!” screeched a voice from across the stable.

  A short woman dressed all in black called again. I looked at her more closely and drew in a quick breath. I knew her, and she knew my real identity, the one I struggled so hard to hide.

  The one that could get me killed.

  2

  As I hurried to the woman’s side, I hoped that she would be discreet. Her name was Miriam Keller, and although she was married to my longtime friend Paul, she did not much like me. I did not see him as I stepped through the crowd of refugees, but that was unsurprising. Only Polish Jews had been targeted so far, and Paul was German.

  Her face shone pale in the stable’s gloom. Although it was cold, beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. Like the last time I saw her, two years ago, she was pregnant. She lay curled on her side on the floor. Her stomach humped through her coat. She looked ready to deliver again.

  A woman with blond hair tied back in a dark blue kerchief pillowed Miriam’s sweaty head in her lap. Miriam’s belly heaved. She was in labor. The poor woman might deliver her child on the filthy stable floor.

  “Hello, Miriam.” I knelt and took her hand. Even through my glove, it felt cold. “It’s Adelheid.”

  She jabbered weakly in Polish. I wiped her forehead with my green scarf, a gift from my late brother. With her free hand she clutched a gold locket that hung around her neck. I had once worn it myself, but I had returned it to Paul after I decided not to marry him. He had kept it, then given it to the woman who became his wife. Where was he?

  “Fräulein Ivona!” I called.

  She came over. Her dazed expression told me that she had become overwhelmed by people and suffering.

  I put my hand on her arm and squeezed. “Can you please translate?”

  Her frightened blue eyes met mine. “I—”

  “You can do this. Soon we will be back in Poznań. They will not.” I gestured around the stable with my free hand. “We must glean what information we can so that their plight can be publicized, their suffering alleviated.”

  “I don’t speak Polish,” she said. “Beyond a few words.”

  She had made no claims of being a translator when she presented herself at my hotel that morning, claiming only to be a driver hired by the newspaper. I had assumed that whoever hired her had thought to ask if she could also translate.

  A flood of urgent words poured out of Miriam.

  “Miriam,” I said. “In German?”

  The woman with Miriam spoke in broken German with an accent more French than Polish. “She left Ruth. In a case. No, a cupboard. By the door. Ruth is good girl. Very strong.”

  “Who is Ruth? What cupboard?”

  The woman spoke to Miriam, and Miriam gasped out a few syllables.

  “Yes?” I asked when Miriam stopped talking.

  “In Berlin,” the woman said. “In the apartment. She says you know where it is.”

  “I do,” I said.

  Miriam’s eyes fluttered closed. The metallic odor of blood spilled into the air.

  “Is there a doctor or a midwife here?” I asked the woman.

  “No,” she said. “I asked.”

  Miriam spoke again, and the woman translated. “She says Ruth is her daughter. She’s two.”

  My heart sped up. Unless someone had rescued her, a two-year-old girl had been stuck in a cupboard for three days. The poor child might be dead already. I swallowed. “Ask her where Paul is.”

  “Paul?” Fräulein Ivona asked. “That’s a Christian name.”

  “He had a Christian father,” I said.

  Her companion did not bother to translate. “Gone. Many days.”

  I thought of Miriam, dragged off alone and pregnant, locking her daughter in a cupboard. It was too horrible to contemplate. Yet it was clearly true. She clutched her companion and spoke urgently.

  “Get Ruth. Promise.”

  Miriam’s bloodshot eyes bored into mine. “Proszę!” she pleaded.

  “Please,” the woman translated.

  “Tell her I cannot go back.” Going to Berlin was out of the question. The Gestapo had a file on me. If they caught me, they would kill me. Anton, too. But I wavered for a moment, wondering how I could abandon the little girl.

  “Why can’t you go back?” Fräulein Ivona asked.

  “For reasons of my own.”

  The woman holding Miriam’s head begged me with her eyes. “Promise anyway.”

  I stared into Miriam’s frightened dark eyes and opened my mouth to lie. “I promise.” I did not have to go back to Berlin to find Ruth. I still had friends there who could bring her to safety.

  Miriam’s body relaxed, and she gave me a huge smile of relief. I was probably her first hope that her daughter might be saved.

  What had happened to Paul? She seemed to expect no help from him. Was he dead, or in prison or a concentration camp? Or was he somehow alive and free?

  The woman holding Miriam’s hand bowed her head in a quick thank-you.

  Fräulein Ivona turned away quickly.

  Behind me I heard shouting, first in Polish, then German. “All members of the press must leave!”

  I was the only member of the press in the stable. I started to stand, but Miriam grasped my hand.

  “Stay,” the woman translated. “Not safe here for her. For the baby.”

  “I will fetch a doctor,” I said. “From town.”

  The woman gestured around. “She does not want the baby to be born in a stall. Like an animal.”

  “I will try,” I said.

  A hard hand settled on my shoulder. I looked into the face of a stolid Polish officer.

  “This woman needs medical help.” I shook off his hand and stood. “She is having a baby. Could you send her to the local doctor?”

  He shrugged. “She has no valid passport, so she can’t leave the stable. I can put her on a list for medical care, but it may be long in coming. What’s her number?”

  “I do not know her number. But she is right here.” I pointed to Miriam. “She is a person, not a number. If she does not get medical care soon, she might die. And her baby with her. Will those numbers matter then?”

  He shook his head.

  I knelt next to Miriam again. “I need your number.”

  I hated to help them to reduce her and the others to numbers instead of names, like prisoners. But there was no other way Miriam might get medical care. “Did someone give you—?”

  Miriam held up her hand. On the back, someone had written a number in black ink. I copied it into a page of my journal. “I will get you a doctor. Don’t worry.”

  The woman next to her translated my words. Miriam’s eyes widened in fear. She whispered a few words.

  “Soon,” she said. “She says come back soon.”

  I copied the number onto a second page and then tore it out and handed it to the soldier. “Her condition is serious,” I told him. “The baby could come at any moment.”

  He took the number from me, then hooked his thumbs in his wide leather belt.

  “She will have to wait,” Fräulein Ivona said, “like the other Jews.”

  “People,” I said, “like the other people.”

  Two more soldiers arrived.

  I turned to the soldiers. “Please put her on your list for medical care. A mother and a baby might die right here in the stable. Surely, as Christians—”

  The new soldiers seized me by the elbows and started dragging me out. I struggled
to pull free. “I will not leave her.”

  “Don’t,” Fräulein Ivona said. “They will arrest you. You can do her no good in jail. And what becomes of your boy?”

  Anton looked from me to the soldiers, ready to fight.

  The soldier on my left said, “Listen to your sister.”

  I looked at him, surprised. Fräulein Ivona as my sister? We did look strikingly alike, slight and blond with Aryan blue eyes. She was around the same age my brother, Ernst, would have been, had he lived. She could have been my sister.

  She rested her white gloved hand on my shoulder. “Do listen to your sister. You cannot win this, but you can lose.”

  I let the soldiers lead me outside. I would find a doctor in town and bring him here to argue for Miriam’s release. Perhaps they would listen to him. At the very least, he could help to deliver the baby.

  We returned to the hired Fiat. Fräulein Ivona had not given up her bread to the refugees. With a dramatic sigh, she broke it into three pieces and shared them around. I had no appetite, but I ate a few bites of my portion anyway, so that Anton would eat his.

  Then we drove through the village. At the inn, they directed me to a doctor’s office nearby. The doctor’s wife, Mrs. Volonoski, listened to my entreaty, round face more grave with each word.

  “Anka!” she called.

  A young girl of no more than ten rushed in. Honey blond braids bounced against her shoulders. Mrs. Volonoski rapped out quick instructions in Polish, and Anka sprinted down the hall and out the front door.

  Mrs. Volonoski led us to an empty waiting room full of solid Polish furniture, walls painted forest green above dark oak wainscoting. A fire crackled in the fireplace.

  “Where are the other patients?” I asked.

  “I sent them away,” Mrs. Volonoski said. “He will not be back here today, not with so many refugees to treat. Probably without pay, too. You sit now.”

  We each took a straight-backed spindle chair. Mrs. Volonoski said something in Polish to Fräulein Ivona and disappeared. She returned a moment later with three cups of strong black tea.

  A knock sounded at the door.

  “All day!” She wiped her long fingers on her striped dress. “Excuse me.”

  She trotted down the hall to answer the door to a blond girl carrying a baby bundled up against the cold.

  Anton wrapped himself in his coat and curled up in his chair. I wondered if he, too, revisited the morning’s events. His eyes closed, and I hoped that he slept.

  I wished that I had left him in Switzerland. He would not soon forget today. But I had expected only to write an easy feature. I had not known that Poland was too close to the Nazis now.

  Fräulein Ivona looked at Anton, then to me. “Do you know the woman in the stable well?”

  “I met her once before, but I do not know her well,” I said.

  “Then why did she expect you to help her?” Her carefully outlined lips made a moue of surprise.

  “She had no alternative.” I stared out the window at a pair of chickens scratching in the brown grass of the front yard. “And I will help her, if I can. A child’s life is at stake.”

  “You can’t save them.” She drew out a silver lipstick tube. “There are too many.”

  “I can save this one,” I said.

  “I thought you said you could not go back to Berlin.” She applied her lipstick in two sure strokes.

  “I know people in Berlin,” I said. “I have written stories from there.” The articles had been published in the paper, so I had no reason to deny it.

  “Then why not go back yourself? Are you wanted by the Gestapo? Is that why you cannot go back?” Her question held too much curiosity.

  I forced out a laugh. “Nothing so complicated as that. The newspaper has paid me to be here. If I leave, I could lose my job.”

  “Good that you are not wanted,” she said. “The Gestapo are most persistent.”

  “Are you familiar with the Gestapo, then?” I glanced through the window at the yard. Chickens pecked in a desultory way at the dust, searching without much hope.

  “No more than anyone else,” she said. “I have heard stories.”

  “I, too, have heard stories.” I left it at that.

  “The man I am seeing? I think he worked for the Gestapo once, although he’s never said.”

  “I imagine he would not.” And I had no intention of telling her anything either.

  “He is a curious type.” She drew off her white gloves and tucked them in her pocket. “He speaks little of his past, even when drunk. I think he has dark secrets he drinks to contain.”

  “Drinking seems a poor way to keep secrets.” I sensed that she spoke from nervousness. After what we had seen, she probably did not trust herself to be alone with her thoughts. I sympathized and tried to concentrate on what she said, but my thoughts strayed back to Miriam. She was so young, not much older than Fräulein Ivona.

  Where was Paul? The Paul I remembered would never have abandoned his pregnant wife and child. But he had changed since the Nazis came to power and robbed him of his citizenship, his livelihood, and his freedom. When last we met, we had fought. He had accused me of being in league with the Nazis and refused to help me to investigate the death of a close friend. I no longer knew what he was capable of. Tellingly, Miriam herself did not seem to expect him to return to rescue their daughter.

  Was she still alive to be rescued? Did she still have a mother? I looked out the door and down the empty road. No sign of Anka.

  Fräulein Ivona moved her chair close to the fire and picked up the heavy poker. The firelight shone on thick red scars that ran up the back of her hand.

  Anton sat up. “How did you hurt your hand?”

  An impertinent question. I opened my mouth to scold him, but she answered before I spoke.

  “My father—” She shook her head. “A long story.”

  I gave Anton a quelling look, and, chastened, he sat back.

  “Do you like your father?” she asked him.

  Anton nodded uncertainly. It was a complicated question, as we did not know who his father was.

  “Mine died a few years ago.” She rubbed the scars on the back of her hand. “And I miss him every day.”

  “I am sorry to hear of such a loss for you.” The words sounded stiff, but I meant them.

  She stared into the flames for a long time before answering. “I failed him too often, because I was weak, like my mother. Like many mothers.”

  My mind strayed to Ruth, trapped in a dark cupboard, Miriam terrified in the stable, and all I had been through with Anton. Motherhood was not for the weak.

  “Some mothers are strong.” Anton glanced at me meaningfully.

  “Thank you, Anton.” I smiled at him.

  “Some mothers get up to all sorts of mischief.” She shot me a furtive glance before returning her gaze to the shifting flames.

  What mischief had her mother gotten up to?

  We all watched the fire. My thoughts returned to Miriam and her daughter. As soon as I brought Miriam a doctor, I would call Bella Fromm in Berlin. A Jewish aristocrat, she had strong connections within the diplomatic community and had opted to stay and help others safely out of Germany. If she had remained in Berlin, I could trust her to check the cupboard and help the little girl. She also had worked with Paul and had met Miriam. Things had become so much worse in Germany in the past months that perhaps she, too, had left. For her sake, I hoped so.

  If Bella was gone, I could call a Jewish physician friend. She would look for Ruth if she could. If both had managed to flee, however, I could think of no one else to send. My contacts in Berlin had not fared well under the Nazis.

  “It is our fathers who shape us.” Fräulein Ivona poked a burning log so hard, it split. The log atop it rolled off the andiron and into the back of the fireplace.

  Anton blurted, “Not always. Sometimes—”

  Anka burst into the room. She jabbered breathlessly, in Polish. Her mother hur
ried in behind her.

  “She says that her father is at the old flour mill. He is helping people there,” Frau Volonoski said.

  I stood. “Where?”

  She gave me careful directions. It was not close.

  “Thank you!” I sprinted to the car, Fräulein Ivona and Anton close behind. Chickens in the yard fled from us.

  “I am no good at directions,” Fräulein Ivona said.

  “May I drive?” I hoped that she would allow me, as she was a slow driver. All in all, she had been a terrible hire. I wondered how she made a living at it, but I supposed that her male passengers might overlook a great deal.

  She seemed relieved as she handed me the keys. “Please.”

  I pulled out onto the rutted road.

  3

  Fräulein Ivona stripped off her gloves and lit a cigarette. She watched the flame burn down almost to her fingers before she blew it out. Then she took a deep drag. “Why do you take the boy on these excursions instead of leaving him with his father?”

  I wrestled the car around a pothole before answering. “I did not know this trip would have excursions of this nature. And I cannot leave him with his father, because he is dead.”

  “I am sorry to hear that. I just assumed when I saw the wedding band that your husband was still alive.” She sucked in another drag from her cigarette. “It must be difficult for you, a woman alone.”

  “Anton and I manage just fine.” I floored it down a straight stretch of road.

  “So there is no man since the father? No man now?”

  “No.”

  She cocked her head to the side and said teasingly, “I cannot believe such a thing. You are a beautiful woman. You must have toyed with the hearts of many men.”

  “Toyed? No.”

  She tapped ash off her cigarette onto the floor of the car. I resisted the urge to chastise her. It was her car, after all. “I think you have more experience with the hearts of men than you admit.”

  “Have I?” I acted surprised, but perhaps she was correct. I’d had six opportunities to marry, which seemed extravagant when I thought about it. I ran through my suitors in my head. First, Walter. While still in my teens we were engaged, but he died in the Great War. My life would have been different had he lived.