“Something has happened,” Frau Holzer said fretfully.
Her husband sat near the kitchen stove reading the morning paper. “Sit down and drink your tea,” he said. “She’ll tell us when she returns.”
Elisabeth was on her way to Gestapo headquarters in the Alexanderplatz to pick up her passport. She kept her head down in what she hoped was a deferential attitude, but constantly glanced to the right and left. People stared, as she had expected. A yellow star was not often seen in Berlin these days, had not been seen for months. She had dreaded this walk, feared being accosted. But for many blocks no one approached. In fact, people shrank from her as though she were a leper, a carrier of contagion, turned from her as if by averting her eyes they might render her invisible. Not until she reached Unter den Linden was she approached by a swaggering officer in uniform, a tall thin man with a large mole on his cheek. Before he could speak she had her Abwehr safe-conduct pass out of her pocket and was waving it in front of him as though confronting a vampire with a crucifix.
He looked disappointed, made a show of studying the pass with his lips pursed, then said, “Where are you going?”
When she gave the address of Gestapo headquarters he said knowingly, “Ah. You are in trouble.”
“If I were,” she replied, forcing herself to meet his eyes, “I would not go voluntarily. In fact, my job is to report on other Jews who are in trouble.”
He smiled slightly and inclined his long head toward her as though he wished to bow but would not dare do so in a public street. “You will come with me, then. Safer for you that way. Not everyone stops to ask questions first, as I do.”
And so they proceeded to the Alexanderplatz, the lanky policeman and pregnant Jewess, and the stares this unlikely couple provoked were of course furtive.
The Holzers heard her return just as they were sitting down to their midday meal. Frau Holzer knocked on the door and invited her to eat with them. Elisabeth gladly agreed and when she joined them, brought with her a large bratwurst, a wedge of cheese, and her food coupon booklet. The Holzers stared at this offering in surprise.
“You must have it all,” Elisabeth said. “I’ve no use for it now.”
Frau Holzer was the first to recover. “But what will you do, my dear?”
“I can’t tell you much,” Elisabeth said. “But I’m going abroad. I leave first thing tomorrow morning and I won’t be back.”
“Oh dear,” said Herr Holzer. “Nothing terrible has happened, I hope?”
“No, no,” Elisabeth reassured them. “I am going on an assignment for the government.” She showed her new passport. “You mustn’t fear that your kindness to me has brought you any trouble. Everything is aboveboard. I have even been cleared by the Gestapo.”
“But you will be safe?” Frau Holzer asked, even as she fingered the food coupons.
“Oh, yes,” Elisabeth said. “You mustn’t worry.”
“I’m so glad,” said Frau Holzer. “It’s kind of you to leave us your coupons. Do you know, I think I will save some of them until Seppi comes home on leave. Then we shall have a feast.”
“Lovely,” said Elisabeth. “When you do, please remember me.”
Then Frau Holzer began to weep, and Herr Holzer, to the surprise of everyone, followed. At last they managed to say they would miss Elisabeth, that she had been a great comfort on the cold winter evenings and it would be lonely without her, that they would like to have seen the birth of the little one.
Elisabeth did her best to comfort them. Finally they sat down to a dinner of sausage and potatoes and bread, not good Schwartzbrot but a pasty wartime concoction that still filled the belly.
Again Elisabeth left in the gray light of early morning, this time for the Swiss consulate to get her visa stamped. Because she also had a train to catch, she would have to take a tram. Except Jews were not allowed on trams. She did as Dohnanyi had instructed, carried the coat rolled up so that the star didn’t show. This looked odd, since the spring mornings were still chill, but when the woman she sat beside on the tram asked, “Aren’t you cold, my dear?” Elisabeth replied, “Between the baby and the suitcase—” pointing to the valise at her feet—“I was carrying so much weight I became warm. Anyway I’ve grown so large the coat doesn’t fit very well.”
The woman nodded, having already lost interest, and Elisabeth stared out the window, clutching the coat tightly to her chest. The streets were filling with people on their way to work, most of them on bicycles because of the scarcity of petrol. Despite the presence of spring flowers the city looked shabby, the shop windows bare, the crowds glum and weary. Perhaps she hated these people, she thought, these same people she had grown up among. Or perhaps it was only pity mixed with contempt at their smallness. One way or the other she would be glad to be away from them, not only on account of her safety but because of the way they made her feel.
Near the consulate she slipped into an alley and emerged wearing the coat. Her documents showed her to be Jewish and they would be examined carefully, not only by the Swiss but by the police stationed outside. She held her breath each time she handed over her papers, safe conduct always on top, to officers who studied her with cold eyes. Through the gate, struggling through the heavy doors which no one held open for her, past the guard desk in the lobby, along the corridors to the office where her visa was stamped, the fresh ink pale blue beside the large red J. The Swiss clerk with the stamp looked at her a moment through thick glasses and then smiled.
“Good for you,” he said quietly.
She nodded and turned to leave.
“Wait,” he said. “I’ll see you to the front door.”
Another tram ride, again with coat off, to the Lehrter Bahnhof. The morning had grown warmer, and carrying the coat no longer drew attention. At the station she tucked it carefully under her arm. As long as you don’t drop it, she reminded herself. Inside she walked past a row of kiosks which before the war would have been filled with candies, sandwiches, books and magazines, newspapers. Now a single stand sold pretzels, and the Nazi newspaper Völkische Beobachter. Fortunately Elisabeth had a book with her, a translation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. A novel from an enemy nation, but safe because it was old.
The noise in the vast main terminal was a shock after months of silence in her rooms. Fortunately she already had her ticket from Dohnanyi, tucked as carefully into her pocket as her official papers. She set down the suitcase underneath the large clock and timetable board in the center of the terminal, leaned against a bench to ease the weight of her swollen belly, and looked up. It was nine-twenty. Still half an hour to catch the next train to Nuremberg, where she would change for Stuttgart and then Basel. The Nuremberg train would leave from Track 4, according to the board, and Track 4 still stood empty. Elisabeth sank onto the bench and took a deep breath. She must not allow herself to relax, but must also try to avoid calling attention to herself by appearing too tense, too nervous. She looked around. The waiting area was crowded. People were traveling by train instead of automobile, and many were leaving the city, for the bombing raids were more frequent now that the Americans were in the war. Many of those waiting were children, perhaps going to relatives in the country where there were fewer bombs and more fresh produce. And there were soldiers on leave, most looking gloomy, probably on the way back to the front.
Then she saw Dietrich.
He was seated on a bench about twenty yards away, watching her above the open pages of a newspaper. Their eyes met, but he gave no sign of recognition, and she resisted the urge to smile. He went back to his paper.
When the Nuremberg train was announced, Elisabeth hoisted herself up from her seat, one arm pressed against her stomach, and glanced toward Dietrich. He was ignoring her. He leaned over and picked up a small bag. In his other hand was a railway ticket.
Elisabeth walked along Track 4 to her car, knowing that he was behind her. When she reached her compartment, a soldier who was already there took her bag and placed it in th
e overhead rack. He would have taken her coat as well, but she said, “No, it eases me to put it behind my back.” She sat down and wedged the rolled-up coat behind the small of her back.
The soldier smiled. “You’re carrying quite a load,” he said. “Heavier than my backpack, I’d guess.”
“And in a more awkward position,” Elisabeth said and smiled back, but her eyes were on the corridor outside. Dietrich walked past, gave her a small nod as one sometimes does to acknowledge the glance of a stranger. She could just see his shoulder as he stopped at the next compartment and then the door opened and he disappeared inside.
At Nuremberg, Elisabeth left the compartment while the soldier and an elderly gentleman who’d joined them in Leipzig stayed aboard. When she climbed awkwardly down the narrow steps to the platform, she saw that Dietrich had already exited and was walking slowly ahead of her. He glanced back once to see that she followed.
On board the next train she bought a cup of ersatz coffee and ate the food she’d brought with her, the scanty remains of the previous night’s feast of sausage and cheese. Then she had to use the toilet and left the compartment—which held an elderly woman, a young woman with two small children, and a businessman in his fifties—with great anxiety. It would look foolish to take her coat with her, but she was afraid someone might move it while she was away.
On the way back from the WC she noted Dietrich in the compartment beside hers. Again their eyes met, and she knew he was watching closely as she went to her own compartment and hesitated at the door. The rolled-up coat was still in its place. She breathed a sigh of relief and went inside.
At Stuttgart there was a layover of over an hour while the cars were separated and new engines brought in to tow them in different directions. Elisabeth took out her book and tried to read. The elderly woman in the compartment nodded at the cover and said, “Brontë, eh? Sturm und Drang. Like our Goethe.”
“The English aren’t so different from us,” the businessman chipped in. “Why they want to fight us is beyond me. Think what we could do together against the Russians.”
“In peacetime,” complained the elderly woman, who turned out to be a retired schoolmistress on her way to visit her daughter in the mountain town of Waldshut, “in peacetime”—to the bored children who squirmed on the seat across from her—“we would have reservations in the dining car, and be escorted to our seats by a steward, and we would have wine and schnitzel or perhaps roast chicken and dumplings and a pastry to end. With a pot of real coffee.”
“Madam, you make this journey more difficult by reminding us,” muttered the businessman, who worked for a timber concern in the Black Forest.
“I think they should know,” sniffed the elderly woman, “it will not always be like this.”
The mother of the children was sleeping, head thrown back at an angle and mouth slightly open. One of those people who can sleep anywhere, no matter how noisy or uncomfortable the surroundings. The children, a boy and a girl, fidgeted and poked one another.
The businessman got off the train at Freiburg. Elisabeth looked out the window. She would have to act soon. The train would pull into Weil, the last station before the border. At Weil, customs officials would come on board and she would be asked to present papers. Her papers identified her as a Jew, and yet she wore no star. She twisted in her seat, trying to ease the aching in her calves and thighs caused by the pressure of the weight she bore. The baby responded with its own twisting and turning, pushed so strongly she gasped.
The two women, young and old, looked at her.
“A lively one,” said the schoolmistress, and smiled.
“Yes,” Elisabeth said. “A long journey for us both.”
“Where are you going?” asked the young mother.
“Switzerland,” said Elisabeth.
Ahs all round. Switzerland was a destination now closed to most Germans because of currency and travel restrictions. Their curiosity was roused. And their envy. It was clear they wanted to ask more questions. But as the train pulled into Weil, where the others stood to gather their belongings, Elisabeth unfurled her coat and put it on. They stared at the yellow star.
“This is verboten!” exclaimed the schoolmistress. “You should not be on this train.”
“Nevertheless I am on this train,” said Elisabeth. “The border guards will deal with my papers. The outcome doesn’t concern you.”
The schoolmistress jerked open the compartment door and hurried out. But the young mother still sat, pulling on her children’s jackets, brushing their hair from their forehead, wiping their faces.
“You have papers to get out,” she said without looking at Elisabeth.
“Yes,” Elisabeth said.
“Good,” the woman said. “I hope you have a beautiful baby. In Switzerland.” She stood and faced Elisabeth. “My husband died outside Kiev. We are going back home to my family in the mountains.”
Elisabeth nodded. “I wish you well.”
“In the mountains,” the woman said, “life goes on. Always.”
The woman and her children left and the compartment was flooded with men in a variety of uniforms. They pushed in, stared at the pregnant Jewess who huddled in the far corner, holding her belly with one hand and offering her papers with the other. The papers were passed back and forth, then taken away.
One of the men had worn a Swiss uniform, and Elisabeth prayed his presence would keep the others from hauling her off. She wondered where Dietrich was. She stared out the window. Night had fallen, and her car had stopped past the station so that there was nothing to see except a black square of cold glass.
An hour passed. The lights inside the compartment were dimmed because of the blackout. Another hour passed. Then the men returned. They stood in the half-light of an electric torch and one said, “Well then, Frau Fliess. You will come with us.”
She followed, her trembling legs barely able to carry her, to another car and was put in an empty compartment that smelled of pipe smoke. No one came to her. Then the car gave a backward lurch and stood still. Then moved smoothly forward. The compartment lights came up, so she lowered the blackout curtain and peeked cautiously out one corner. For a long time there was only darkness.
Then a flash of gray, an outline of trees on a hillside, a wedge of three-quarters moon. A man in uniform came along the corridor. A Swiss uniform. Returned her papers, said Danke schön, and moved on.
And lights. Elisabeth had not seen anything like it since the beginning of the war. A floodlit hillside church flashed by and was erased by a wall of black trees. Then houses with lights in their front windows, and streets lined by lights, and lights everywhere, flying and floating past like good fairies.
She stepped onto the platform at Basel to a distant echo and call of porters, of doors slamming, of engines chuffing banks of smoke.
She carried her valise along the track, weaving back and forth from weariness, finally reaching the terminal waiting area, which was deserted.
Except for a well-dressed man, a sturdy balding man who wore wire spectacles. Who strolled over to Elisabeth brandishing an open penknife.
He stopped in front of her, leaned close, and began to carefully cut the threads which held the yellow star to the front of her coat. When he was done, he held the limp yellow rag aloft like a prize of war, then flung it into a nearby waste can.
“Dearest Elisabeth,” Dietrich said, “you don’t have to wear that star anymore.”
V-Mann
Summer 1942
SASSNITZ–TRELLEBORG FERRY. MAY 31, 1942. The lounge of the ferry is packed with German businessmen on their way to Sweden and Norway. They line up at special counters to buy cigarettes and liquor, or sit around tables over platters of herring and sardines. They drain amber glasses of aquavit. They are a loud, jovial bunch, with good reason, for money is being made hand over fist in Scandinavia.
One man in the lounge keeps to himself. He is tall and, unlike the others, solemn. He is wearing a trench coat and
broad-brimmed hat, and carries a briefcase, which he keeps close at hand. He stands in line for cigarettes—craves a good smoke as much as the next man and suffers from the shortage of tobacco in Berlin—but exchanges no pleasantries with those around him. Once he has bought his cartons he flees the lounge for the open air on deck, where he chain-smokes furtively, as though he would be embarrassed to be seen. The porters speculate about him. A loner, obviously. “He would not make a good V-Mann,” one says. “He sticks out too much. And he looks far too mysterious.”
“Gunther,” warns another, “is it wise to talk about a V-mann in such dangerous times? Even when joking? Besides, I’ve spoken with the man. He’s a professor. An egghead.”
“Ah,” says Gunther. “That explains it.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer had not expected to be sitting on the deck of the Trelleborg ferry, fretfully smoking one cigarette after another. Only a few days earlier he had been in Switzerland with Elisabeth. They spent the first night in Basel in adjoining rooms at the Hotel Drei-Könige-am-Rhein. After a quiet supper they stood upon a balcony overlooking the Mittlere Rheinbrücke. The Rhine in late spring was black and swift, so that had it not been for the anchor of the stone bridge supporting a procession of pedestrians and bright green trams, the city might have been a boat carried away on the current.
“It’s almost more than I can bear,” Elisabeth said. “Such a lovely view, and a good meal, while Hermann is suffering God knows what. Or perhaps is dead.”
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