Edelweiss

by Madge Swindells

  Chapter Seven

  The following afternoon, the Edelweiss students met in Marietta’s apartment to decide whether or not to continue in the face of the Gestapo’s brutality. Marietta sat on the rug by the fire listening to the arguments, hoping that most of the students would remain together, for they had built up a wonderful bond. Lately, they numbered twenty-four . . . a good sized group. They were having fun, too, and they used words like ‘Fascist swine’, ‘Nazi pigs’, ‘the Trolls’, and ‘the blonds’, and they joked about the danger of cocking a snoot at the authorities. Her flat had become known as a haven of free speech and thought, and a favourite meeting place for liberal students and lecturers. The position was ideal, for hardly anyone noticed strollers slipping in from the park. Sometimes they stayed for hours, working on speeches, plans for demonstrations, or simply laying out the pages of their newspaper. The place was beginning to take on character, Marietta thought, looking around as the debate went on and on. There were books by Leon Feuchtwanger, Jakob Wassermann, H.G. Wells, Zola and Proust, all of which were banned. Marietta had added paintings and photographs of the wild life and scenery of her beloved Bohemia. Andrea had added a bust of Mozart and an engraving of Mendelssohn. Thanks to their housekeeper, Frau Tross, the furniture glowed with attention and the air smelled of polish.

  Finally the students ceased their discussions and held a ballot to decide whether or not to continue. There was a one hundred per cent vote in favour of carrying on. However fond she was of them all, Marietta was glad when the meeting ended and people drifted off to their own homes. Her body still ached from her beating and she desperately needed time to herself.

  *

  It was nine the next evening when Louis walked through the park entrance, enjoying the moonlight shining through the bare branches of the trees. As he approached the stone steps leading to Marietta’s flat, he heard someone playing the piano quite beautifully. For a moment his hand remained poised over the door knocker. It was Granados’ Goyescas and he was caught up in the emotional interpretation. He lingered for a while before creeping in.

  The sitting-room was in shadows except for the glow from the lamplight at the garden gate. A dark-haired girl was sitting in front of a piano, her thick curly hair falling over her shoulders and obscuring her features. Her hands were beautiful as she ran her fingers over the keys, as if unsure of what she would play next. She strummed a bar from one piece and then another, quite unaware of Louis’ presence.

  Then the moon rose swiftly over the trees. It was lustrous and huge and its light illuminated her face. As the pianist broke into Clair de Lune, Louis gazed longingly at her. She was very young and very lovely.

  She caught sight of him and gasped.

  ‘Sorry! Don’t stop. I’m Marietta’s brother. I’m invited to dinner, but I’m late. I don’t want to interrupt you. Please . . .’

  ‘Oh.’ She smiled uncertainly and Louis was beguiled by her eyes. They were large, deep-set and brown, and they were glowing. She was quite lovely, he decided, but not obviously so. He had the feeling that he alone had discovered her beauty and that other men would miss it entirely.

  She played on, and Louis listened quietly. He had the strangest feeling as if his soul flowed out and merged with hers and intertwined with the moonlight and the music.

  Eventually she stopped and sat in silence gazing at the keys. He knew that she felt the same way as he did, for they both sat on, sharing the night, unwilling to break the spell.

  Suddenly the door opened and slammed shut, light flooded the passage and Marietta rushed towards them.

  ‘My God, you’re sitting in the dark. What’s the matter with you two? Andrea, this is Louis, my brother. Louis, this is Andrea, my friend and lodger, but anyway I see you’ve already met. Good! I’m so sorry I’m late. Just look at this bag of cones I’ve collected. Enough for the evening.’ Her face was pink and glowing, her eyes sparkling as she threw some cones on to the fire. They hissed and spat and flames roared up the chimney. ‘Don’t tell me, Father sent you. It doesn’t matter. The point is, you’re here.’ She flung her arms around her brother and hugged him tightly. ‘It was wonderful in the park. I’ve been feeding the ducks. What’s for supper? I’m starving.’

  As the girls rushed around laying the table and coaxing Frau Tross into warming up dinner, Louis sat quietly by the fire, the music still alive in his head. Strangely without appetite, he sipped the warmed-up soup, and picked at his food.

  Andrea’s eyes glowed mockingly, laughingly and moodily in turn as they discussed their day. Louis listened to their chatter and felt increasingly depressed. Not only were the girls continuing with their group, but they were producing another newspaper.

  ‘I promised Father to look after you, Marietta,’ he interrupted, looking intently at her. ‘Please give up these politics. Concentrate on your studies.’

  ‘You call it politics. I call it humanity. I’m sorry, but I have no intention of being turned into a coward by these thugs,’ she snapped.

  Listening to them both, Louis couldn’t help admiring them, despite his fears. They were passionately dedicated to their ideals. He had never felt that strongly about anything.

  Andrea changed the subject abruptly, wanting to know what Louis studied.

  ‘Piano. A long-standing ambition of mine,’ Louis explained, ‘but first Father made me graduate at a military academy.’

  ‘That can’t be true.’ Andrea looked sceptical. ‘I haven’t seen you in the music faculty. He’s teasing me, isn’t he, Marietta? So tell me then, what’s your favourite piece?’

  ‘Clair de Lune,’ he told her, trying to look romantic.

  Andrea burst out laughing.

  ‘Oh, but that’s not true,’ Marietta said, smiling at him. ‘You prefer jazz to the classics. You told me so, often.’

  ‘Absolutely untrue,’ Louis protested.

  ‘Oh, yes, you did. How can you change like the wind? That’s Louis for you,’ she said shaking her head.

  ‘Last week was another era,’ Louis said. ‘Whatever happened before tonight is utterly insignificant.’ Watching them, Marietta felt amused. She had never seen Louis try to flirt before. He wasn’t too good at it, she observed and went off to study, leaving them together.

  ‘Play something,’ Andrea said. ‘Anything to convince me. I still think you’re teasing.’

  Louis moved over to the piano and sat down. He badly wanted to impress Andrea but he felt nervous. He began a tune from Cole Porter’s musical, Anything Goes. He hit the wrong keys a couple of times and looking up, saw her agonized expression. When he felt more confident, he switched to jazz. He began ‘Honky Tonk Train’. All at once Andrea was next to him.

  ‘Move up, let me play. That’s my favourite,’ she said, eyes shining with excitement. ‘I’ll improvise down this end.’

  ‘D’you know this one?’ he said a few minutes later. He strummed the opening bars of ‘One O’Clock Jump’.

  ‘Do I know that one?’ Andrea laughed her low, thrilling laugh. They were at one with each other as they played their way through the jazz hits of Dixieland and New Orleans. They had no need to speak.

  Andrea’s forehead was damp. To Louis she had that look of a woman who has just made love. Louis, suddenly serious, reached over and stared intently at her. ‘You’re not engaged or anything like that, are you?’

  Andrea did not reply. Instead her dark, expressive eyes gazed at him with trust and affection and a hint of sensuousness. There was pleasure in them, and happy anticipation. He felt he would be able to draw her face from memory: her smooth brow under a low hairline, her nose, which was a trifle too sharp, her full, expressive lips, the lovely line of her cheeks, her thick eyebrows over deep-set brown eyes. Strength and delicacy were mingled there. Passion and virtuousness. Louis knew that he had found himself a rare treasure.

  *

  Bill had learned to value Taube and to rely on her superb efficiency, so he was uneasy when she did not arrive on time the follow
ing morning. It was half-past ten when she walked in, looking pale and apprehensive. She took off her coat with the yellow star on the sleeve and sat at her desk. Then she burst into tears. Bill gently coaxed the story out of her . . . a crowd of thugs had roughed her up, threatened her, told her she wasn’t wanted and tormented her. The Brownshirts had stood by laughing. She was badly scared, but unhurt.

  ‘Taube,’ he said when she had dried her tears, ‘take my advice, get out of Germany while you still can. I’ll help you. You can work for my uncle for a while.’

  Taube put her head in her hands. ‘Oh Bill. I’ve tried so hard to get Father to leave. The trouble is, he’s not at all Orthodox. He sees himself as a Berliner, not a Jew. Besides he belongs to the CV, that’s shorthand for an unpronounceable cultural German-Jewish organisation which is supposed to support us, and they keep advising him to be calm and wait for things to get better.’ Her voice was verging on hysteria.

  Bill poured her a drink. ‘Keep going,’ he said. ‘I want to hear everything.’

  ‘It’s not so easy to find a place to go to, Bill. If you’re young and you have some skill or profession, then probably you’ll find a country willing to give you refuge eventually, but for the old people there’s nowhere to go. Unless you have money hidden overseas, but we don’t. All Father’s capital is bound up in his business. It’s the best music shop in Berlin with a huge range of stock. But the Nazis take all you own as the price of their wretched exit permits.’

  She bent her head and sat shaking for a few seconds. ‘My brother has just paid the equivalent of twenty thousand dollars to get out. He’ll arrive in New York with nothing but the clothes he’s wearing and he’ll be one of the lucky ones.’

  ‘Why don’t you follow your brother?’ Bill asked gently.

  ‘I cannot go without my family. To be honest, I’ve been doing the rounds of the Embassies, but so far I’ve drawn a blank. There’s no point in badgering Father to leave, if there’s nowhere to go. And there’s worse to come if we have to stay. Early this year, Father was told that all Jewish-owned small businesses must be sold to Aryans. He had to list our assets: property, businesses, stock, cash in the bank, jewellery, paintings, everything. We are to be robbed of all we own. How shall we survive?’

  She began to shake again. Bill put his arms around her. ‘Don’t give up, Taube,’ he said. ‘I’ll contact the American Embassy. Let’s see what the situation is. If you have a position to go to, maybe they’ll take a different attitude.’

  ‘Why don’t you come home to supper on Friday? Just so you can meet the family. Father’s so proud. You’ll see for yourself how stubborn he is. He seems to have retreated into unreality. Perhaps he would listen to you.’

  ‘I’m driving down to Munich on Friday, Taube. But next week would be fine.’ He waited until she was calmer, then went into his office and called an old school friend who worked at the Embassy. ‘It’s not as easy as you might think, Bill,’ Andy Johnson said. ‘There are thousands of the poor bastards wanting to get out. We’re swamped. We try to take those with the skills we need, particularly those young enough to work and to adapt . . . or those who have family in the States . . . There’s all sorts of rules and regulations. You’d probably have to stand security for them.’ He sighed. ‘I’ll make inquiries anyway.’

  ‘Do that,’ Bill said.

  *

  That night, the Edelweiss students gathered in the University printing department at midnight with a barrel of cheap white wine, to celebrate the printing of their manifesto. They congratulated each other solemnly. They were impressed with their layout and their professionalism, and feeling awed by the gravity of their own words when transposed to print. The newspaper had been put together and printed on campus after hours through the connivance of their English professor, who had written a leader exhorting students all over Germany to expose what was going on behind the Nazi scenes.

  Marietta had written one of the articles and she was proud of it. The heady feeling of success was better than champagne. She walked home bubbling with joy and floating on air. If only that American reporter, Bill Roth were here to read her efforts. She’d been longing to see him again, but didn’t know for sure if she ever would.

  Two days later, the Nazis’ reaction to the Edelweiss newspaper was swift and savage. The staff of the University printing department were brought in for interrogation. Some hours later, their professor appeared in the lecture hall, seemingly unaware of his black eye, cut lips and swollen face.

  Chapter Eight

  Bill walked into the Bloombergs’ shop at seven the following Thursday and found Taube’s father still working, mending a clarinet. He was a tall, stooped, thin man, and Bill’s first impression was that he was not in the best of health. His hair was grey, there were deep shadows under his red-rimmed eyes and his cheeks were hollowed. But when he smiled, his face lit up and he looked years younger. Bill reckoned he was around sixty, if that, and that he was consumed with tension.

  The shop looked prosperous enough. It was stocked with every type of musical instrument, one wall was taken up with stacks containing musical scores, and behind the main shop was a small workroom for repairs.

  ‘I do most of them myself,’ Anton Bloomberg explained as he showed Bill around.

  Bill then followed his host upstairs to the family’s apartment. The living-room was large and comfortable with fresh flowers and a few good antiques, but what struck Bill most forcefully was the peaceful atmosphere. It seemed that the aggression of the New Order could never penetrate here.

  Odette Bloomberg was remarkably pretty, with a delicacy and femininity which was most appealing. Bill liked her on sight. She had curly blonde hair, soft blue eyes, bright red lips that smiled most of the time, and that indefinable Berlin chic. She wore a straight tunic-style dress of navy and white with starched white collars and cuffs and little embroidered flowers down the front. She looked fresh and sweet and years younger than she was. Taube’s olive complexion came from her father, Bill saw, but the combination of their genes had produced a rare beauty.

  Odette said, ‘I’m glad to meet you, Mr Roth. Taube’s been so happy since you gave her employment.’

  ‘I guess I’m pretty satisfied, too,’ Bill said.

  Odette beamed with pleasure and began to question him about his home. Bill realised that she thought he was a suitor for her daughter. He wasn’t quite sure how to put her straight.

  While Taube and her mother made supper, Bloomberg played some old records he’d bought. ‘I always despised East European music,’ he said, looking apologetic, ‘but now that I’m forced to discover my roots, I’ve found some real gems. Listen to this.’ He played a haunting melody that sounded vaguely Slav. The two men liked each other. Before they were halfway through dinner they were on first name terms. Anton had three degrees in music and could speak six languages. He was also an incurable optimist and he loved his fellow man, particularly Germans. ‘They’re good people at heart,’ he told Bill several times. ‘They’re being browbeaten by the Nazis, but this madness will pass. You’ll see. Things will get better.’ Bill respected his sentiments, but thought them a dangerous weakness.

  Later, when he got home, Bill reflected on the evening. He had felt at home with the Bloombergs, perhaps because Anton reminded him of his uncle. At the same time, he was shocked by the degree of self-deception that was going on in the family. Why wouldn’t Taube’s parents face the facts? Because they dared not? Because there was nowhere to go? Or perhaps because they wanted to live normal lives for as long as they had left? It caused him nightmares, but he vowed to visit them again.

  When he did a week later, he heard the sound of a scuffle round the corner from where he was parking his car. There were thuds, a hoarse scream, people shouting . . . Bill raced from his car in time to see Anton being kicked into the gutter. ‘Dirty Jew,’ two thugs yelled. Bill dived into the ruckus, knocking one headlong and rounding on the other. The men fled and Bill pulled Anton to his feet.


  ‘They wanted my wallet and they’ve got it,’ Anton said, when he’d recovered his breath after being helped upstairs. ‘Every thief and thug in Germany uses anti-semitism as an excuse for their crimes. That’s all. It has nothing to do with hating Jews.’

  ‘I’ll call the police,’ Bill insisted.

  ‘You’d be wasting your time, Bill. Beating up Jews has been legalised by our so-called government. The police won’t do a damned thing to stop it.’

  ‘Listen, Anton,’ he said, holding a handkerchief over a cut on the older man’s forehead. ‘You can’t stay here. I’ve just decided that the Roth plant is going to expand into musical instruments. Eventually you can buy back the business from us out of your share of the profits as and when you like. You’ll need to advise us on our new operations in the US, so visas won’t be a problem.’ Bill tried to sound businesslike.

  Odette’s face crumpled and she burst into tears. ‘Oh . . . Bill . . .’ she sobbed. ‘You’re saving our lives . . .’

  ‘Shame on you, Odette,’ Anton said. He turned to Bill. ‘I’m touched by your gesture, Bill, but I’m not yet desperate enough to take charity. This madness cannot last for much longer.’

  ‘Please Father,’ Taube burst out forcibly. ‘Listen to Bill. Listen to me. You must say yes . . . for all our sakes.’

  ‘It’s not philanthropy,’ Bill argued. ‘America needs people like you.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re saying, young man. You don’t understand that we’re getting to the age when things break down. We’ll soon be too old to work. Already Odette has a weak heart, and I have high blood pressure. A new shop might take ten years to pay for itself.’

  ‘Be reasonable . . .,’ Taube begged.