by Kate Hewitt
“Yes.”
“We would not see you.”
Lotte nodded, biting her lip. “No. Save for visits at the abbey, on occasion.” She had not let herself think too much about that aspect of her vocation, yet now, looking at her father’s troubled face, it slammed into her with a force that could have made her gasp with the shock of it.
“And this is what you want?” he asked slowly. “You are sure? You feel this call on your life, a call from God?”
Lotte hesitated as a kaleidoscope of memories tumbled through her mind—Christmas as a child, lighting the advent wreath, faces haloed by candlelight. Walking along the Salzach, her mittened hand swinging in her father’s. All of them gathered around the table while her mother, with quiet triumph, placed a platter of Prügeltorte in the middle. Singing around the piano, wandering along the Salzach, curling up in the sunny corner of the sitting room with a volume of Rilke’s poetry or the latest novel. All these pleasures would be denied her forever.
“Yes, Papa,” she answered quietly. “This is what I want.”
Her father’s face fell for a second, seeming to collapse on itself, and then he smiled, his slight shoulders squaring. “Then if you’re sure,” he said. “I can only give my blessing.”
Before she could answer there was the sound of the side door opening, and then her mother’s heavy footsteps up the stairs.
“You have returned!” her father cried, delighted, as if Hedwig and Johanna had come from a long way—a trek through the Arctic, or down from the Alps.
“The price of butter has almost doubled,” Hedwig replied grimly.
“Ah!” Manfred clasped one hand to his chest with deliberate, laughing theatricality. “Did you have to buy margarine?”
Hedwig gave him a look of incredulous disdain, as if the very suggestion, teasing as it had been, insulted her. She, a woman who had churned her own butter from the age of eight, until she’d come to Salzburg, buy such a thing? “Of course not,” she replied with dignity, and he laughed and kissed her cheek.
Lotte watched the interaction—like a hundred others her parents had had over the years—with a pang of longing she hadn’t expected to feel. This too she would miss—not just witnessing it between her parents, but for herself. Never to know the love of man, the touch of his lips on her cheek, his hand on her waist, his teasing smile, her answering laugh…
She watched as her mother predictably twitched away from her husband’s embrace, a smile flitting across Hedwig’s lips before disappearing, and Lotte’s pang of longing suddenly turned into a welcome wave of relief.
All the complications, all the uncertainties, all the unspoken disappointments and longings. Lotte knew her parents loved each other with a solid strength that was deeper than mere passion, and yet still her mother twisted away, her father’s teasing smile dropped for the merest moment. She would miss that confusion for herself, and she did not mind.
“Why the long face?” her mother asked her, although hers was no better.
Lotte shrugged and tried to smile. “I don’t know.”
Her mother narrowed her eyes as Johanna began to unpack their shopping.
“Lotte has some news,” her father said in the manner of a grand announcement. “She will tell us at supper tonight.”
So she would have the occasion her vanity had longed for, after all. Now that her father had said it, Lotte felt a tremor of excitement—or was it fear? Johanna had stopped her unpacking and she looked between Lotte and Manfred as she shook her head slowly.
“What do you mean?”
“Lotte will tell us.” Her father pressed a finger to his lips as if keeping a secret. “Now I must return to the shop.”
With a parting smile for Lotte, he headed downstairs. Hedwig and Johanna turned to look at Lotte expectantly.
“What is this news?” her mother asked in a tone that bordered on suspicious.
“Papa said I was to tell you at supper.”
Her mother grunted in reply and Johanna continued to unpack the shopping. After a few seconds, Lotte went into the sitting room, her heart beating unevenly. Tonight she would tell her family. Tonight it would become real.
She pressed one hand to her hard-beating heart as she took a steadying breath. As she gazed out at the February morning, the world washed in gray, Lotte did not know whether she felt excited—or afraid.
Chapter Eleven
Johanna
September 1937
“When are you going to tell your family about us?”
Franz’s voice was quiet but intense as Johanna kept her gaze on the blue-green ribbon of river winding through the city; she did not reply. They were walking along the Salzach on a sunny afternoon, the last of the summer’s warmth lingering in the air like the remnant of a golden memory. Within a month it would almost certainly snow. The service when Lotte would enter the novitiate was the next day; it had been six months since she’d shocked them all by entering the abbey as a postulant, and Johanna had been surprised by how much grief she felt for the sister that she would only catch glimpses of for the next several years, if not more. She missed Lotte’s laughter, her cheerful presence, the way she lit up a room. The house had felt emptier and colder without her.
“Johanna.” Franz reached for her hand, tugging on it until she was forced to stop. “Answer me. I have been patient. I am trying to be so still. But when?”
“Franz…” There was no reasonable excuse she could give, Johanna knew. It had been nine months since he’d kissed her by the Christmas tree—nine months of lingering in shadows, and stealing kisses, and keeping secrets. Still she had not spoken of him to her parents, or allowed him to do likewise.
“Is it because I’m a Jew?” he asked, a bleak note entering his voice. “I wouldn’t even blame you, with the way things are. It gets more dangerous every day.”
Johanna shook her head, caught between guilt and impatience. “You care more about that than I do.” Although that wasn’t exactly true. She cared less that Franz was half-Jewish and more that he wasn’t fully Catholic, yet it was a sentiment she did not know how to explain.
“Do I?” His voice turned hard as he gave her a particularly piercing look, his eyes narrowed against the bright sunlight. “Birgit told me what you said, you know.”
“What I said?” Johanna registered his unyielding look with a flicker of unease. “What did I say? When?”
Franz’s gaze remained steady on hers; he wasn’t angry, and somehow that made it seem worse, whatever it was. She felt guilty as well as panicked, and she didn’t even know why yet. “That time you called the knife grinder an idiot Jew.”
“The knife grinder… oh!” Johanna blew out a breath, the guilt and panic coalescing into a weary resentment; she couldn’t summon the strength of anger, either for herself or her sister. “That was before I met you, and in any case I didn’t really mean it.”
“But you said it.”
“About Janos Panov, who happens to be a bit simple-minded!” A blush crept into her cheeks; it felt wrong to try to defend herself. “And I told you, I didn’t mean it. We all say things we don’t mean in a heated moment. That’s all it was, I was angry about something else.” She shook her head. “Why did Birgit tell you such a thing?” Johanna realized she was angry, and with Birgit. Why would she tell Franz such a thing, unless to make him dislike her?
“She was asking me how I came to be here. I told her what I told you, about Professor Schlick.”
“And that led to her telling you what I said about Janos Panov, ages ago?” Johanna answered in disbelief. “She’s just jealous.”
“Jealous?” Franz raised his eyebrows. “She has her own secret in that regard, I think.”
“She told you about him?”
“Not in so many words, but why are we talking about Birgit?” He pulled her towards him, and she came into his arms reluctantly, still clinging to the vestiges of her anger even though she didn’t really want to. “Johanna, I love you. I want to be with
you. When will you tell your family about us?”
She closed her eyes as he nestled her against him. Already he was so familiar to her—the rough wool of his coat, even the smell of him—the spicy tang of his aftershave, the heated scent of his skin. “Soon.”
“Your father already knows, I think, or at least guesses. How could he not? He sees us springing apart often enough.” He tilted her chin up to face him as he gave her a small smile, his dark eyes still troubled as he scanned her face. “If it’s not because I’m a Jew, then what is it?”
Johanna hesitated as she tried to sort through the complicated tumult of her own feelings. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’m…” She paused, hating to admit this vulnerability even to herself, never mind to Franz. “I’m scared.”
He caressed her cheek, his smile turning tender as his eyes crinkled with concern. “Scared of what?”
She shook her head, unwilling to say more. She was scared of her parents’ possible disapproval or disappointment, because she’d fallen in love with someone who did not practice their faith, never mind whether he was a Jew. But more than that, she was scared of declaring her feelings to the world when she couldn’t make herself trust Franz’s. Scared of her own feelings, the depth and strength of them, the knowledge that if he left her she wouldn’t be merely heartbroken, but completely shattered. She might never be able to put herself together again, and she hated the thought of being so vulnerable. So weak.
“Johanna…” His gaze was still tender as he sighed. “If not now, then when? We have been creeping about and hiding for nearly a year now. I want to tell your family how I feel. I want to tell the world.”
“Do you?” she answered, before she could think to temper her words, her tone. “Do you really?”
He frowned. “Have I ever given you cause to doubt me?”
Wordlessly, reluctantly, Johanna shook her head. Ever since that Christmas kiss Franz had been nothing but kind, tender, caring. How could she doubt him? And yet she did, and she knew the problem was in her own mind. She really was like her mother—twitching away from a caress, doubting his word, his kiss. And why? Because she couldn’t let herself trust in the simplicity of his love. She couldn’t let it be easy.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and then she saw, to her horror, Franz’s face harden into unfamiliar lines as he pulled away from her.
“You’re always sorry,” he said as he walked on, not waiting for her to catch up.
“Franz—” She hurried after him, panic making her heart flutter, her breath come out in a gasp. She’d never seen him look so cold. She hadn’t thought he could.
“There are enough people in this city who want to make me feel like a second-class citizen,” he told her in a flat voice as he kept walking at such speed that she struggled to match his long strides. “I don’t need you, the woman I love, to do it, as well.”
“Franz! I don’t. I don’t mean to—”
“But you do. You want to keep me as some dirty secret.” His mouth twisted in a sneer as he looked at her with hard, glittering eyes, his face transformed by his anger into something terrifyingly indifferent. “Your dirty Jew.”
“Franz.” She gasped as though winded, but he’d already turned away from her again. She knew she’d never wanted him to feel like that, and she’d never heard him talk like this. “It’s not like that, I swear.”
He shook his head, unmoved. “I’ve had enough of it, Johanna. I’ve told you how I felt, many times. I’ve waited and waited. Well, I don’t intend to wait any longer.”
“What? No—”
“I won’t be anyone’s secret,” Franz said, and he walked on, leaving her there alone, standing by the river.
The next day Johanna stood in the side chapel of Nonnberg Abbey, numb to everything—the swelling crescendo of the organ, the stark reality of her youngest sister processing down the aisle, dressed as a bride, complete with white veil. The six postulants to be received as novitiates, bringing them one step closer to taking their final vows, were all dressed in the same bridal fashion—long white dresses and matching veils, their hands clasped sedately at their middles. Their families had all been herded to this small, shadowy space, kept behind an iron grille, to watch from afar.
As Johanna peered through the grille, she saw that Lotte looked achingly the same—and yet so very different. She had the same shining hair underneath the veil, the same rosebud mouth and porcelain cheeks and big blue eyes. Yet as Johanna looked at her, she seemed a stranger, her gaze distant, her face tilted upward, as if to a heavenly light only she could see. The small smile curving her lips looked knowing and secretive. She did not glance once to the side chapel where she must have known her family was standing, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of her.
As the postulants approached the chancel steps, they knelt, their white skirts spreading about them, their heads dutifully bowed.
The archbishop of Salzburg came forward and intoned in a stentorian voice, “What do you ask, my daughters?”
“We ask for the blessing of God and the favor to be received in His congregation,” the women chanted back. “We offer our Lord our liberty, our memory, and our will, and we ask only for His love and His holy grace.”
“Are you firmly resolved,” the bishop asked, “to despise the honors, riches, and all the vain pleasures of this world in order to prepare for a closer union with God?”
“We are so resolved, most reverend Father.”
Johanna glanced at Birgit, her gaze transfixed on Lotte, who was no more than a white blur against the old stone. She had argued with Birgit last night, had accused her sister of ugly things. She couldn’t even be sorry now, although Birgit had been furious and then tearful.
“I’m not jealous,” she’d cried, her face red with fury, her eyes glittering with hurt. “And I wasn’t trying to cause trouble. It just came out, because Papa arranged for Franz to come because he was Jewish. Did you even know that? To help Franz, but also to help us. To make us realize they’re not idiot Jews, whatever you were stupid enough to say. That’s one of the reasons he’s his apprentice. Because of you! But I don’t suppose you care about that, or what it has meant for me?”
“I don’t care about any of it,” Johanna had snapped, wishing she meant it, and they’d gone to bed in frigid silence. They hadn’t spoken since, and Johanna couldn’t even be sorry.
Her gaze moved from Birgit to their mother, whose expression was grimly accepting, her shoulders squared. Her father, she saw, smiled even as he brushed a tear from his eye.
And Franz… Franz stared straight ahead, his mouth in a hard line, his body angled slightly away from her. He had not spoken to her once since he’d left her at the river yesterday afternoon, and Johanna had not tried to approach him. She was angry as well as hurt, and she had her pride. If Franz was going to be so stubborn, well, then, so was she. She knew it was foolish, but she could not keep herself from it.
“Do you make this request of your own free will?” the bishop asked, his voice echoing though the chapel.
“Yes.” One by one the postulants answered; Lotte was second to last, her voice ringing out with clear certainty. Johanna looked away, hating that Lotte could feel so certain, so joyous, about her calling, even though it meant she’d likely never see any of them ever again. Did she not love them? Did she not care?
“May the Lord who has begun this, bring it to perfection,” the archbishop intoned, and everyone said amen.
As the nuns’ voices rose in song, the archbishop blessed the white veils the postulants would soon wear, to replace the bridal veils on their heads. Each one held the black habit they would don in their arms like an offering. As each postulant was given the new veil by the Mother Abbess, she kissed the cloth.
Johanna forced herself to watch Lotte—dear little Lotte—complete the ritual, and then the postulants filed out of the chapel, to an anteroom where they would put on their new habits, their new lives. None of the Eders would see Lotte agai
n for at least a year, probably more. Johanna had not met her sister’s eyes once; it was as if Lotte wasn’t even aware of them. As if, for her, they’d ceased to exist.
After the service they walked in silence down the Nonnbergstiege and back to the narrow house on Getreidegasse, Franz lagging a little behind everyone else. Johanna longed to drop back and join him, but she made herself stay where she was. He was still angry; she knew that, but she hoped he might thaw if she gave him enough time. She had already resolved not to beg.
Up in the kitchen she put an apron over her best dress unthinkingly; this was her habit, just as Lotte was now wearing the white veil and black robe of a novice.
Her mother gave her a surprisingly sympathetic look as she joined her at the table to prepare the midday meal. With a jolt Johanna wondered if she knew, or at least guessed, about Franz, just as he’d intimated the day before. Why had her mother never said anything, then? Yet why should she have expected her mother, who spoke so rarely anyway, to speak of such intimate matters?
They worked in silence for a few minutes, peeling and chopping, and then suddenly, surprisingly, Hedwig spoke. “Johanna.”
The import in her mother’s voice made Johanna still, a knife in one hand. “Yes?”
“If you still wish it, if it is still possible… you may go to school.” Johanna stared at her blankly and her mother clarified, a touch impatient now, “The secretarial course. You may enroll, if you still wish it.”
“I may?” It had been over a year since she’d first asked, and so much had changed. The secretarial course felt like a child’s dream, and yet she was as likely to stay in this kitchen now as she ever was.
“Yes, if you still wish it,” her mother said, turning back to the potatoes she’d been peeling, her head bowed over the heap of them as she took up her knife and began to peel once more. “You are right. The world is changing. It would be good for you to have skills.”
Johanna stared at her mother, shocked by this development. Did she even want to do the course any more? She hadn’t thought about it in months, and yet she realized she did still want it, perhaps now more than ever. It meant possibility, opportunity, maybe even hope. “Thank you, Mama.”
