The Edelweiss Sisters: An epic, heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 novel

by Kate Hewitt

  Now that clocks were mostly made in factories, much to her father’s displeasure, he specialized in the repair of the instruments, especially older ones—taking them apart to replace a wheel or die plate or to repair a rivet. When Birgit had turned eighteen, her father had, with much pride, given her a set of her own tools—a caliper, files, pliers, a piercing saw, a staking tool, and a riveting hammer, all in their own leather case. Birgit had half hoped he might have added and Daughter to the painted Eder Clockmaking sign outside the little shop, but he had not, and she had not had the confidence to suggest it.

  Still, it had been enough that she could work alongside him. She had always enjoyed their hours together, spent mostly in silence, save for the occasional remark about what they were doing. “Look at this mechanism,” her father might say, or “do you see how the hand skips? It is the ‘clock jitter.’” And she would nod and murmur something back.

  And yet, despite those many hours of companionship, Birgit reflected with a small kernel of bitterness she tried not to nourish, it was Lotte who sat on the stool by his knee, Lotte upon whose head he rested his old, gnarled hand, caressing her curls before he turned to Hans Pilcher to ask him about his shoe shop on Linzergasse.

  Birgit turned away as Herr Pilcher droned on about the agonies of inflation that had bankrupted so many businesses like his own.

  “But people will always need shoes, Herr Pilcher,” her father said cheerfully. “Just as they will always need to tell the time.”

  From the corner of her eye Birgit caught the direction of her father’s smile, not at her—his colleague in clockmaking—as it might once have been, but at the newest member of the little salons—Franz Weber.

  Just looking at Franz Weber made injustice burn white-hot through Birgit. He had arrived in the shop only a week ago. Her father had been deeply involved in the repair of a Biedermeier wall clock, and so Birgit had gone to the front room when the door had jangled, smoothing down her skirt and offering the man she thought was a customer a welcoming smile.

  “Gruss Gott, mein Herr. May I help you?”

  The man before her was tall and rangy, stooping slightly as he came through the doorway before taking off his hat to reveal a head of dark curls. He had been glancing around the little shop with its many clocks with an air of alert and lively interest, but as Birgit spoke he turned to her with an engaging smile.

  “I hope you may, Fräulein. I am looking for Herr Eder.”

  “Herr Eder is deeply involved with his work at the moment, but if you need a repair or are looking to purchase a clock, I am sure I can help you.” Birgit was used to customers asking for her father, and often being a bit disgruntled at having to make do with his daughter, but in time many had come to accept her.

  “I am afraid I am looking neither to purchase a clock nor have one repaired,” the man replied with a winsome smile that Birgit couldn’t help but feel was gently mocking her, just a little. “I am here for employment. Herr Eder is taking me on as his apprentice.”

  “What!” The word had escaped Birgit in a shocked gasp before she could think better of it. She stared at him dumbly, shocked by his pronouncement, given in a tone of such friendly assurance.

  Her father was taking on an apprentice, when she, she had been his apprentice for these four years and more? And he’d not said one word about it to her?

  “I see I have surprised you.” The man’s smile deepened, revealing a dimple in one lean cheek. He was so friendly looking, with eyes the color of chocolate and unruly, curly hair, that Birgit disliked him all the more for it.

  “Indeed you have,” she said shortly. “My father made no mention of an apprentice to me.” I am his apprentice, she wanted to cry, but she kept herself from it.

  “Then I would say you should ask him. Is he too deeply involved in his work to be consulted?”

  Again Birgit had the impression he was teasing her. Again she didn’t like it.

  “I will speak to him,” she replied shortly, and turned away from the man without saying anything further, although she knew her behavior bordered on rudeness.

  In the backroom her father was bent over the innards of the Biedermeier, his pince-nez perched on his nose as he frowned down at the broken mechanics of the antique clock. He had noticed neither the bell nor Birgit leaving the room to answer it, such was his concentration.

  “Papa, there is a man here to see you,” Birgit said, speaking more loudly than usual to gain his attention. “He says he is to be your apprentice.”

  “Ah, yes, of course! Herr Weber.” Manfred looked up from the clock with a beaming smile that made Birgit burn all the more. “He was expected today. I had forgotten.”

  “You did not tell me about him,” she said, and she heard all the hurt in her voice that she could not repress.

  “Did I not? Ah, well. I apologize, my dear. It was all arranged rather quickly, you see.”

  “Quickly? What was the hurry?”

  Manfred simply gave her a vague smile. “Oh, you know how these things are. You hear a name, and in the next moment it is done. Well! Let us go greet him. I am sure your mother will have cakes for us.”

  Birgit followed behind as her father went into the front room and greeted Herr Weber with an unbridled enthusiasm that she was far from feeling. Judging from Herr Weber’s sideways laughing look, he knew it.

  Duly they all went upstairs to their living quarters and Hedwig, although caught as unawares as Birgit had been, was able to present a sugar-dusted Gugelhupf that she had prepared for the afternoon. She made coffee that Johanna brought to the sitting room, giving Franz a frank look of curiosity that he just as frankly returned.

  Her older sister, Birgit knew, was not pretty in the sweet, milky way that men often liked, but some might still call her beautiful. Her long blond hair was looped in braids behind her ears, and her blue eyes under strong brows were piercing in their directness. She was nearly as tall as their guest, with a strapping figure, unlike Birgit’s own floury softness. She was shaped more like a dumpling, while Johanna looked like an Amazon warrior.

  In any case, Birgit hardly cared whether Herr Weber liked her sister or not. She didn’t like him.

  Her father made the introductions, “This is Johanna, my eldest, and such a help to her mother. And Birgit you have met, of course. She has been assisting me in the shop. Lotte, the youngest, is at school. She has been attending the Mozarteum these last few weeks, our little songbird! Daughters, this is Franz Weber, who will be my apprentice.”

  Birgit watched as her father bestowed Franz with another friendly smile. Anger warred with disbelief as she listened to them exchange pleasantries. Franz was from Vienna, and had only come to Salzburg the day before, to take up the apprenticeship.

  Birgit could hardly believe her father had solicited someone all the way from Vienna and what for? There was not so much work that they needed another apprentice. Her mother and Johanna seemed as mystified as she was, although her sister looked pleased by the prospect, especially when it became apparent that Franz would be living with the family, as most apprentices did.

  “You can have the little front room in the attic,” Manfred declared. “Hot in summer, cold in winter, but we shall make it cozy enough, and it will ensure your privacy, as well as ours.” Hedwig had already excused herself to go make up the room. Manfred turned to Franz in smiling expectancy, and he bowed his head in grateful acceptance.

  “I am so thankful for your help, Herr Eder.”

  “It is my pleasure, of course, and you must call me Manfred.”

  Birgit fumed silently as they continued to chat, and then Franz turned to Johanna and asked her about herself.

  To Birgit’s amazement, her sister wittered on about how much she enjoyed hiking, and spoke of the Alpine club she’d been a part of years ago. She’d only gone a few times, as far as Birgit could remember, and she’d complained about how cold it was.

  “I have had very little opportunity to walk in the mountains, living in
Vienna as I did,” Franz Weber told Johanna with a smile. “But I look forward to exploring them here.”

  “We will take you up the Untersberg,” Manfred declared, “where Charlemagne is said to sleep. It has the best views of the city.”

  “I look forward to it,” Franz replied, but he was looking at Johanna as he said it.

  Birgit, as usual, was invisible.

  She wouldn’t have minded any of that, indeed she as good as expected it, but when, the next morning, Franz took the bench next to her father’s that had been hers since she’d been sixteen she struggled not to snap at him, or worse, break down and cry.

  How could this be happening? Why had Father not said a word? The answer, Birgit feared, was that, as with so many other things, she had become invisible.

  She moved to a corner of the room where the light was not as good and fumed silently as her father began to teach Franz about clocks. It was clear to Birgit after just a few minutes of listening to Manfred’s gentle instruction that Franz Weber knew next to nothing about clockmaking. Her father spoke to him as he’d once spoken to Birgit when she’d been a child of eight, and he pointed to the wheels and gear box, the die plate and pendulum, naming them all, while Franz marveled like one who had never heard such things before. And yet he was her father’s apprentice, taking her place as surely as if he’d said so himself.

  She kept silent for the rest of the day, and the day after, as her father and Franz worked side by side. Then, one morning when Franz had gone out at her father’s request to fetch a delivery of wire, Birgit had been unable to keep quiet any longer.

  “I do not understand, Papa,” she stated, trying to sound reasonable instead of either hurt or furious, “why you have hired an apprentice who does not seem to have ever seen the inside of a clock.”

  Her father smiled faintly as he put his tools away before they went upstairs for their midday meal. “Franz has a degree in mathematics from the University of Vienna,” he replied mildly. “He is more than qualified to work in my little shop.”

  “But he has no experience,” Birgit protested. “He looked at the gears of the Vienna regulator you showed him as if it was another world.”

  “Indeed it was. It was my privilege to show him the mechanisms of that miniature universe, and how it is but a shadowy reflection of the complex workings of God’s creation.” He let out a little laugh. “I have yet to convince him of the latter, but I look forward to the debate.”

  Birgit knew her father was recalling how he and Franz had debated the philosophy of something called logical positivism that Franz had learned in Vienna that declared, quite emphatically, that the only meaningful philosophical problems were ones that could be resolved by logical analysis.

  Birgit had tuned out the discourse, which she hadn’t even tried to understand, while her father and Franz had cheerfully gone back and forth, and Lotte had listened, entranced as ever. For once Johanna had ventured from the kitchen to sit and listen, although like Birgit she hadn’t spoken.

  “I still don’t understand,” Birgit told her father as he put away his tool case. “There is not so much work that you need an apprentice. Another apprentice,” she added meaningfully, and a terribly sympathetic understanding suffused her father’s face.

  “Oh, Birgit, mein schatz, is that what this is about?” He rested one hand on her shoulder. “This is not about you, Birgit, not at all. You must not think for a moment I have been in some way dissatisfied by your work, your uncomplaining service.” He smiled and squeezed her shoulder. “There are deeper things going on here, things we must trust to the benevolent hand of God. Now, come. Your mother has prepared us lunch, and I believe I can smell Tafelspitz.”

  And so Birgit had followed her father upstairs, and said no more.

  As Herr Schmidt continued to pontificate—“The true Germany is not found in the spirit of the hour!”—Birgit decided she could take no more. For a week she’d watched as Franz Weber had learned the art of clock repair, taking to it with a more natural finesse than she had ever possessed. Whenever he fumbled with the tiny mechanisms or delicate tools, he gave her father a laughing, lopsided smile of apology and Manfred assured him he was doing well, while Birgit remained invisible.

  Now she slipped out of the stuffy salon, its windows closed against the night air for the sake of the older guests, and down the stairs to the side door that led out to the courtyard. Johanna, coming from the kitchen, called to her from the top of the stairs as she reached for her coat.

  “Where on earth are you going?”

  “Just for a walk.”

  “A walk?”

  None of them ever went out at night, especially now with the increase in roaming gangs of brown-shirted boys that their father warned them against.

  “Just for a moment,” Birgit said as she swiftly did up the buttons of her coat. “It’s so stuffy in there, and I can’t take another second of Herr Pilcher’s coughing.”

  “Birgit—”

  “I’ll be back soon,” she promised, and then slipped out of the door before Johanna could say anything else.

  Outside the night air possessed an autumnal chill; the mountains ringing the city were already dusted in snow. Birgit wrapped her arms around herself and tucked her head low as she walked down Getreidegasse. She didn’t even know where she was going; there was nowhere, really, for her to go. Shops were closed and she had never before dared to enter a coffeehouse alone. Besides, she had no money.

  She headed down the cobbled street as it narrowed and became Judengasse, or Jew’s Lane, where the Jews had had their synagogue in the Middle Ages, before they’d been expelled from the city. Birgit knew the brutal basics of the history—how the Jewish community had been blamed for the Black Death, and how they’d been burned alive in the synagogue as a result, but then other Jews had come and settled there until they’d been driven out, and none had returned for three hundred and fifty years.

  Even now Salzburg had only a small Jewish community and one synagogue; besides the knife grinder, or, from afar, the founder of the Salzburg Festival, Max Reinhardt, Birgit did not know any Jews herself. But she knew they were hated by many, although she didn’t really understand why. It was one of those things that simply was, and you shrugged and then got on with life, because what else could you do?

  All she could think about was Franz Weber, and she wished he had not come to Salzburg, never mind any Jews.

  Birgit’s steps slowed as she caught sight of a crowd ahead of her, where Judengasse met up with the Alter Marktplatz, the city’s oldest market square, a fountain at its center. Even though the crowd of people was at a distance, Birgit sensed their animosity. It rolled off them with an animalistic heat, a manic fervor. They were up by the marble steps of St. Florian Fountain, and something—or someone—was the object of their malevolent attention.

  Instinctively she stepped into the shadow of a doorway as she continued to watch the gang of brown-shirted boys, and a few others besides, harass some unfortunate soul.

  “How can we get you clean, you dirty Jew?” one boy jeered, and Birgit drew her breath in sharply as a few of the boys lifted the man above their heads and then hurled him into the fountain. It was, she saw with a lurch, Janos Panov, the knife grinder.

  She watched with a transfixed sort of horror as the poor knife grinder cowered in the fountain while the crowd showered him with abuse as well as punches and kicks. Even from where she stood, Birgit could see the blood on his face, his bruised hands as he held up his arms to shield himself from the blows.

  If her father were here, he would be furious. He would wade into that crowd of bullies, slight man as he was, and help Janos out of the fountain. He would decry the cowardly, bullying tactics of the crowd, and tell them they should be arrested or even whipped. At least, Birgit thought he would.

  But what could she do?

  Nothing.

  She did not know the knife grinder particularly well, a simple-minded man who was cheerful enough as he shar
pened knives on his little cart, harming no one. His treatment now was wrong and, even more, it was evil. How could these stupid boys not see it? What could they possibly have against a man like Janos, who pushed his cart and ground people’s knives and gave a subservient bob of his head to every person who passed his way?

  A choked sound escaped her as the crowd finally left Janos alone. As they headed down Goldgasse, no doubt looking for someone else to torment, Birgit hurried forward. Before she could reach Janos, however, someone else did.

  A young woman in a dark coat, her hair hidden under a cap, waded into the fountain, soaking her clothes, and put an arm around him as Birgit came up to the steps.

  The woman glanced up and beckoned to Birgit.

  “Help me,” she commanded, and Birgit rushed up to her. She could hear the gang’s laughter still echoing down the street. What if they came back? She knew there was no point thinking of it now.

  “What shall we do?” she asked as she stared down at Janos, half unconscious, blood blooming in the water around his head in clouds of pink.

  “Get him out of the fountain, for a start.” The woman’s voice was crisp, yet holding a surprising hint of wryness. Birgit could not make out her face in the dark. She reached down and hoisted Janos by his armpits while, fumbling, Birgit took his legs.

  Together they half-lifted, half-dragged the knife grinder out of the fountain and propped him against the steps.

  He gave them a smile of thanks, blood trickling from a cut on his head, one eye swelling shut and his lip split.

  “My thanks, Fräuleins,” he mumbled, and then spat out a tooth. “Proscheniye.”

  “You don’t need to ask our pardon,” the woman returned fiercely, and Birgit wondered how she knew Russian. She only recognized it as such herself because Janos sometimes spoke a few words when he came by with his cart.