Edelweiss

by Madge Swindells

  ‘That’s fine for now,’ she snapped, ‘but for the future, I’ll never be content with the role of a figurehead. You would not have tolerated a male heir to conduct his affairs in such a way, and I do not accept such a position merely because I am a woman. I need four years in which to study. That’s all. I am going to enrol at Munich University where they have a course in estate management. While I’m there, I’d like your permission to drop my title and live like any other student.’

  The Count looked so belligerent, that she was sure he would refuse her request. Instead, he sighed softly and in a resigned tone said, ‘Perhaps you could persuade Ingrid to go with you.’

  Marietta hadn’t realised she had been holding her breath, she released it slowly. She’d won. ‘Thank you, Father.’ She flung her arms around his neck and hugged him. ‘Ingrid wants to go to a finishing school in France. She longs to become a famous society hostess.’

  ‘A pity,’ her father said ruefully. ‘She’ll have to marry wisely. Remember, Marietta. After four years you’ll have to get on with the serious business of being a countess and an heiress.’

  ‘Oh Father, of course I will,’ she promised lightly, hugging him again. ‘Thank you.’

  *

  Lying in her bed in the Plechy Palace, she mused that it was only a few months since her grandmother had died, yet overnight the carefree schoolgirl had vanished, and her promised freedom had become a mirage. Huh, freedom! It’s not fair, she muttered miserably.

  Eventually she sat up and put the light on, looking around for something to read . . . anything that would distract her. A letter from Ingrid was lying on the table. She picked it up and read it again. Ingrid wrote of parties, fashions and the young men she had met. She had been flirting with an Italian count and he seemed to be serious. Yesterday, I overheard the famous designer, Schiaparelli himself say, ‘a lovely girl is an accident, a beautiful woman an achievement’. From now on, I’m going to model myself on Mrs Wallis Simpson.

  Marietta smiled, despite her gloom. How exactly did one set about flirting, she wondered? She considered some of the boys she had met so far. A few kept trying to court her, and of course, she’d danced with some, but the idea of kissing any of them was revolting. Yet lately she was filled with curiosity and strange, undefined longings. Would she ever fall in love? She was seventeen, almost eighteen, and she had never been kissed. She’d led such a sheltered existence she simply didn’t know whether she should care or not. She remembered the journalist, Bill Roth. Did he think of her at all? She sighed and switched off the light.

  After a restless night, she wrote her father a note and left it on his desk before returning to Munich.

  Forgive me, Father, but I must be guided by my conscience. You brought me up to do my duty and I cannot shirk my moral responsibilities. Your loving daughter, Marietta.

  Chapter Four

  Bill arrived in Spain in mid-October, as General Franco tightened his grip along the eastern front of the country, and he was sickened by the savagery he saw as Franco’s troops swept the battered government forces before them. He wrote about the bombed civilians, the starving and the destitute; he wrote about mothers who shielded their children with their own bodies, of the slaughter of hundreds of disarmed soldiers in the bullring at Badajoz, of women and children in rags, their faces yellow and gaunt, showing their suffering so clearly. There was no shortage of such material and Bill kept filing stories day after day. He had little time for sleep, but in the odd snatched hours between battles, his dreams were invaded by visions of the girl he had met in Salzburg. Bill was only too glad when, in mid-November, the new permanent correspondent arrived to take over. He was afraid of becoming too used to the atrocities and the cruelty.

  Back in Berlin, Bill found his apartment in Kantstrasse looking like an advertisement in Vogue. It wasn’t just fine, it was breathtaking. The clever use of mirrors made the narrow entrance hall appear huge. The bare boards were gone. White marble tiles, mirrors and plants had turned his humble apartment into a millionaire’s pad. The furniture looked expensive and modern. There were bookcases filled with books, framed black and white engravings of old Berlin on the walls, a blue and white ceramic vase on the table was filled with golden autumn flowers. The bedroom was breathtaking, white and grey with a crimson silk cover over the bed. The office looked far more spacious than he remembered. Bill couldn’t take in every detail: he was in shock as he tried to work out the cost.

  He saw with relief that there was a telephone on the desk in the white and olive office, and using it summoned Taube Bloomberg to come round to the apartment immediately.

  By the time she arrived, the contents of his suitcase had spoilt the orderliness of the bedroom, and his papers had comfortably covered the highly polished desk.

  He faced her awkwardly. ‘Thanks for getting this organised.’ Bill gestured towards the telephones and typewriters. ‘Look,’ he went on, trying to brace himself for a fight with a woman, ‘I don’t want to make a big thing out of this, but I gave you a limit on what you could spend.’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘You couldn’t buy those tiles for that price, let alone have them laid,’ he said bluntly.

  ‘They’re secondhand, as is the furniture. It’s amazing what you can pick up these days. Here are the receipts. You can see exactly what I paid for everything.’ She handed him a folio of annotated bills.

  ‘Who did the work?’

  ‘An odd job builder. A Jew,’ she said carefully. ‘You can get Jewish labour quite cheaply if you don’t mind having Jews around.’

  Bill felt furious and disgusted with her, then belatedly the truth dawned. ‘Are you Jewish?’

  ‘Any objections?’ Now her aggression was like a palpable force between them.

  ‘Just what are you made of, Miss Bloomberg? How could you beat down one of your own people?’

  ‘Oh!’ She let out her breath audibly. ‘It was my brother, actually. And I didn’t beat him down, he was glad to help me.’

  ‘Please thank him for me.’

  ‘He has left Germany . . . thank God,’ she added softly.

  Bill immediately regretted his brusqueness. ‘Miss Bloomberg, you did a wonderful job. I think you’re some kind of a genius. When I walked in I couldn’t believe what you’d achieved and I thought you’d overspent. I’m sorry if I offended you.’

  She was still looking nervous. ‘I have overstepped my authority and hired a secretary for you. She seemed so right for this job.’ She broke off. ‘You look all in. I can see you’re exhausted, I’ll make coffee.’

  ‘The fact is, I haven’t slept properly for days.’

  ‘You go ahead and sleep.’ She was very anxious to please him, but Bill was too tired to wonder why. ‘What time would you like your secretary to wake you?’

  Bill had the impression that this was not the way an interior decorator should behave, but he was too damn tired to care. ‘Tell her to keep the noise down, hold messages and wake me at 6 p.m. with coffee. I’ve a heck of a lot of last-minute notes to write up.’

  After what seemed only five minutes of sleep, there was a knock at the door. Bill looked at his watch, it couldn’t be six already, but it was. He made his way to the bathroom. It was too much effort to run a bath, so he rubbed his face with cold water and brushed his hair. When he returned to his bedroom a plate of sandwiches and a pot of coffee had been placed on a table. This girl knew her business. With a cup of coffee in one hand and a sandwich in the other, he walked through to the secretary’s office. Taube Bloomberg was sitting there, looking fierce, although he sensed a certain desperation about her.

  ‘Why are you still here?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m the new secretary, sir,’ she said.

  ‘But why you? You’re not a clerk, you’re right at the top of your profession. I guess you know that.’

  ‘I’m good, I admit it, but there’s no profession for me to be top of, because, as you guessed, I’m Jewish. Please, Mr Roth. I’ll work
very hard. I’ll even accept half pay.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ Bill said gruffly, feeling more sorry than he should. ‘The job’s yours.’

  ‘It is illegal for you to employ me in any professional capacity, and since I’ll keep your apartment clean as well, I registered myself as your maid.’

  Bill flinched and walked out of the room to hide his sadness.

  *

  Now that he was back in Germany, Bill set out to discover the identity and whereabouts of the ‘girl in blue’, whom he could not get out of his mind. Who was she, he wondered, what gave her so much nerve? And why were there so few like her? He knew the answer to that question . . . there were dozens of concentration camps in Nazi Germany and they were filled to overflowing with gypsies, petty criminals, Protestants, Catholics, priests of every religion and all those who had showed even slight opposition to the Nazis’ New Order.

  Armed with a photograph, Bill visited the Archbishop of Munich’s secretary. The priest denied all knowledge of the girl or any involvement in the rescue of the orphans, but Bill was granted an appointment with the Archbishop. The interview gave him an excellent story, but no more information about the girl in blue. He seemed to have reached a dead end. Bill tried to put his obsession aside and for a while he succeeded, with the help of Taube.

  It was wrong to mix business with pleasure, he knew, but he was lonely and so he took her to the theatre several times and they often had dinner together. Taube was a great asset to his career, Bill soon discovered, she had a flair for sensing news and she knew so many people.

  For Taube, working for Bill was like manna from heaven. She felt that she owed him a great debt, but she quickly realised she enjoyed the world of journalism and they soon established a close professional relationship. It wasn’t long before he told her about the girl he had met in Salzburg and showed her his cuttings. Taube knew immediately that Bill had fallen heavily in love with the anonymous saviour, but she recognised that Bill was totally unaware of how transparent his feelings were.

  A week later, she came up with a tip that some students from Munich University were planning to demonstrate against the sacking and deportation of their professor. She gave Bill the details. ‘It’s being organised by a group of Catholic students calling themselves Edelweiss, but they’re hoping for support from non-members, too. By the way, they’re backed by the Cardinal of Munich.’ She wondered why she felt sad when Bill rushed out of the apartment to make his travel arrangements.

  Chapter Five

  When he got to Munich, Bill found a restaurant in Ludwigstrasse, chose a table next to the window and placed his camera and bag under it. He sat and watched the wind buffeting the trees in the gardens opposite. The branches were almost bare and the last leaves were blowing in every direction. After he’d eaten breakfast and lingered over a second bowl of coffee, Bill asked the waiter to look after his gear for a while.

  He located the ousted Professor’s graceful old house in the Schwabing area, opposite Moses’ fountain. A heavy furniture van was parked in the street, its contents being unloaded under the supervision of a pot-bellied workman. A Brownshirt and his family were moving in. White with anger, Bill took a few photographs, pretending he was interested in the fountain.

  By 10 a.m. he was back at the restaurant, sipping at another cup of coffee when he heard a car draw up with screeching brakes on the other side of the square. Through the trees he saw a girl step out. Opening the boot, she removed a tin of paint and a brush. The driver, a dark-haired girl, crashed the gears and for a few seconds the ancient convertible moved forward in noisy lurches. Bill switched his gaze to the girl with the paint and caught a glimpse of her face under her hair, blown awry by the wind. With a jolt of intense excitement, he stood up and, grabbing his camera, signalled to the waiter that he’d be back. Could it be her?

  As he started across the square, she moved to the wall and with hurried strokes began painting a slogan. Bill crossed the square swiftly, adjusting his camera. By the time he reached the wall she had finished her task and he read: Release Professor Cohen – racism offends justice. His flashgun exploded and the girl jumped, spilling paint on her shoes.

  ‘You again!’

  He had found the girl in blue. Above her cornflower blue eyes her perfectly arched eyebrows met ominously as she frowned at him. ‘Why are you here? How dare you follow me around?’ She was visibly shaking – with anger or fear, he wondered?

  ‘Don’t you remember me? Bill Roth. I met you in Salzberg,’ he said.

  ‘Unfortunately I remember all too well. You photographed me when I specifically denied you permission. We don’t want the press here. Go away.’ She glared at him.

  ‘You have nothing to fear from me. But I don’t think you should be doing this. It’s too dangerous. You’ve got to get out of here.’ He grabbed the tin of paint and the two wrestled with it. ‘Damn,’ he said, as the paint sloshed over the pavement. ‘If you want to fight the trolls, go underground. You’re sitting ducks . . . all of you.’ He shut his mouth firmly. He’d said enough . . . more than enough. Holding on to her arm, he pushed her towards the restaurant.

  She seemed more amused than angry. ‘Look here, Sir Galahad. Go and find someone else to rescue. I’m busy.’ She pulled her arm free and fled.

  Well, at least he’d got her away from the painted wall. Bill walked back, paid his bill and collected his gear. Slinging his camera over his shoulder, he hurried towards the library where he found a crowd rapidly gathering.

  *

  Marietta found her friend Andrea on the library steps. Breathlessly, she explained about the American journalist and the photographs he had taken.

  ‘National headlines could prove embarrassing, or even fatal,’ Andrea muttered. ‘We’d be hand-picked for martyrdom.’

  Marietta felt scared, which made her angry. ‘If we don’t like the risks we shouldn’t be doing this,’ she said. ‘In a way he’s offering us a loudspeaker to the world. We can’t expect to be both good and safe. It’s one or the other, isn’t it? I mean . . . it always has been.’ She began to regret her words.

  Andrea looked as if she’d been slapped in the face. ‘All hail to Joan of Arc,’ she retorted. Marietta flinched. She loved Andrea who was her closest friend. The truth was, she loved everyone in the Edelweiss movement and she didn’t want them to be harmed. Now suddenly here was Bill Roth offering them a worldwide audience and a passport to a Gestapo cell.

  On the other side of the square, Bill saw Marietta climb up between the statues of Greek Gods, and lean over the balcony. Her clear voice rang out with surprising strength.

  ‘Citizens of Munich,’ she called. ‘Professor Cohen was a good man, and a profound thinker. We knew him as a wonderful teacher, but he’s been sacked and deported with his family, simply because of his religion . . .’

  Her words were tough and determined, but she looked shy and disarmingly beautiful. The hecklers could not leave her alone. She flushed bright beetroot at each vulgar remark, but carried on determinedly while the wind played with her hair.

  ‘Professor Cohen is only one of thousands who disappear from our cities every year . . . thousands of human tragedies . . . Is this what we want here? In our heart of hearts don’t we all feel deeply ashamed? Don’t we long to call out – no more.’

  In the distance Bill saw more troops approaching. The Brownshirts were closing in. Some men in the crowd rushed to help the girls, but they were attacked by the baton-wielding stormtroopers. A group of students fled up the steps of the library, white-faced and shocked. A boy fell under a vicious blow from a baton, blood spurting from a cut on his face.

  ‘Look at them now . . . we’ve got to stand up to these thugs, and stand together, or else we are lost . . .,’ she yelled, as armed police raced towards her.

  Hands were pulling at her ankles as she hung on to the statue of Sophocles. She kicked them off and retreated higher, clinging to the philosopher’s head.

  Bill tried to push
his way up the steps. ‘Run,’ he yelled. ‘Get back into the library and run for your life.’ Then something struck the back of her head and she fell limply to the ground. Bill watched helplessly as two men half-dragged her towards the cars, her legs trailing on the cobbles.

  *

  Bill tried to fight his way towards the car, but he felt a stunning blow on his ear and another on his neck. The Brownshirts were stamping his camera into the cobbles. Bill was fighting mad, but he was badly outnumbered. A third blow sent his world spinning off into darkness. His last conscious thought was regret. He still didn’t know her name.

  *

  It seemed like only a split second later when Bill came to. He hung on to a lamppost to drag himself upright. The crowd was rapidly dispersing and no one came to his assistance. His camera was a mangled wreck and Bill kicked it into the gutter in disgust. He made his way slowly back to the restaurant, feeling dazed and disorientated. The waiter fetched him black coffee, and ice for the bump on his head, all the while urging him to leave as soon as he could.

  Bill felt in his pocket for the first reel of film he had taken. It seemed undamaged. Thanking the waiter for his help and tipping him generously, Bill made his way to the offices of the local newspaper, and there persuaded an acquaintance to allow him to use their facilities. Two hours and three beers later his report was filed and the photographs developed.

  He had also developed a massive headache and he gratefully accepted the local man’s offer of a bed for the night.

  He woke early and after several reviving cups of strong coffee made his way to the central police station. It was Bill’s first introduction to the Gestapo at close quarters and he had to admit it was an intimidating experience. The building reminded him of a spider’s web. Once you had blundered in, you were trapped. He presented his credentials to the first guard, who was stationed inside the front entrance, and asked to speak to whoever was in charge. He was ushered into a lift which took him into the bowels of the earth. At the fourth basement level he was told to alight and was led into a large room. There a Gestapo official took down his details and he was instructed to wait. It didn’t take genius to see that he was stuck.