Edelweiss

by Madge Swindells

  ‘Are you a Jewess?’ An SS guard caught her shoulder and spun her round.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What are you doing here, Fräulein?’

  ‘That’s none of your business,’ she said angrily, shaking off his hand.

  ‘Papers!’ He held out an immaculately gloved hand.

  Sullenly, she handed over her identity document. Some of his arrogance faded as he studied it. Almost reluctantly he saluted her. ‘It would be wise to keep away from the station, Countess,’ he said, as he handed her papers back. Quivering with fury, Marietta returned to Louis’ car, but she waited until she had driven out of sight of the station before fumbling in her pocket for the woman’s note. It was written on a sheet torn from a diary. If you love God, save my child. Her name is Hilde. She is six years old and all alone. There was an address. Nothing more. Marie changed direction and drove rapidly southwards. She knew exactly where to get help.

  *

  Bill was outside the Austrian parliament taking photographs of the official Nazi takeover and the jubilant crowds waving. He finished four rolls of film and pushed his way back to his car. He was stopped several times by SS guards, but his position as an American correspondent ensured him free passage. The Nazis had all been well-briefed . . . foreign journalists, many of whom never looked behind the window-dressing, were Hitler’s most valuable tools.

  He was hungry. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was almost eleven. Perhaps he could find a café nearby. As he walked along by the shops, he heard someone call his name.

  ‘Bill . . . Bill . . .’

  He turned and smiled with pleasure as he caught sight of Ingrid. ‘My goodness,’ he said, giving her a quick kiss. ‘You look tremendous.’

  Sophisticated and beautiful, her hair was swept into a loose chignon at the nape of her neck, her perfect features accentuated by expert make-up. She was wearing a navy blue and red outfit with a matching hat; its blue veil, with red blobs on it, hid her eyes. Bill pushed the veil up over the brim.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Now I can take a proper look at you.’

  ‘You’ve just ruined a Schiaparelli hat,’ she said, laughing happily. ‘Those silly red blobs make me feel dizzy. All the same . . .’ She rearranged the net. ‘I was going to take a stroll past the shops, and perhaps have some coffee and cake. You would like to come with me? Yes?’ She smiled coquettishly.

  ‘People are rioting round the corner,’ he said warningly.

  She made a little deprecating gesture with her mouth, as if blowing the problems away. ‘There’s the most divine orchestra at Sacher’s. And their coffee is wonderful . . .’ Her graceful, ringed hand gestured her approval. ‘Come, or we might not find a vacant table.’ She swept ahead of him and Bill decided to play along.

  Ingrid chattered away while he ate a huge breakfast. She told him about her finishing school and the parties she had been to. She could keep going all night, he reckoned.

  ‘I’ll be twenty on April the thirteenth,’ she confided, ‘but by then I’ll be back in Paris, so I’m having my party next Friday. Please come. Really . . . I would love you to.’

  Why not? Perhaps if he saw Marie he would realise that it was all over and stop pining for her. ‘Thanks Ingrid,’ he said. ‘What time shall I come?’ He tried not to notice how happy Ingrid looked.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The two cousins were sitting in the breakfast room, a pleasant place decorated in blue and yellow with a French door looking on to a small private walled garden. The morning sun glinted in Ingrid’s hair, her pale face looked ethereal and her eyes were sparkling as she smiled as if at some secret joke.

  Marietta looked exhausted and scruffy in old slacks and a crumpled blouse. Her hair hung lifeless and dirty, and there were deep shadows under her eyes.

  ‘You look a sight, Marietta,’ Ingrid said. ‘When are you going to learn to look after yourself? Why are you eating that disgusting English meal?’ She wrinkled her nose at Marietta’s plate of eggs and bacon. ‘You’re building up bad eating habits. You’ll be sorry when you’re fat. Not that anyone would notice in those dreadful clothes you wear.’

  ‘I’ll worry about it if and when I get fat,’ Marietta said vaguely, not paying much attention to Ingrid’s silly chatter.

  She took another helping of crisply-fried bacon and carefully laid the strips on to a piece of buttered toast. She was taking a large bite when Ingrid dropped her bombshell.

  ‘Guess who I met yesterday?’

  Marietta shrugged. She couldn’t have felt less interested.

  ‘Bill Roth.’

  The toast fell on to Marietta’s lap. She retrieved it and put it on to her plate. Suddenly she wasn’t hungry.

  ‘I invited him to my party, but I thought I’d better check with you first.’

  ‘What party?’ Marietta said.

  ‘Oh, really! I’ve told you a million times. I’m having a birthday party next Friday.’

  ‘Sorry. I forgot.’

  ‘Well, what about Bill?’ Ingrid sounded peeved.

  ‘No, you should not have invited him here. Where did you see him?’

  ‘He was walking past the hat shop near Parliament last week. You know the one I like . . . I saw him through the window.’

  Marietta frowned and tried to hide her agitation. The thought of Ingrid setting her cap at Bill was hurtful. ‘I really don’t want to see him again,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t suppose he wants to see you either, since he was in such a hurry to leave you. Don’t be a dog in the manger, Marietta. I like Bill. I really do,’ Ingrid said defiantly. ‘And if you don’t want to see him, you can’t mind if I do, can you?’

  ‘No . . . no . . . of course not.’ Oh damnation, Marietta thought, why do I care? Why does it hurt?

  ‘Good, because he’s coming.’

  For a moment anger dimmed her self-control and she felt like lashing out at Ingrid.

  Ingrid put her head on one side and smiled up from under her new hairdo. Marietta frowned.

  ‘Please be straightforward,’ Ingrid said. ‘He is available, isn’t he?’

  ‘I detest him.’

  ‘Well then,’ Ingrid said, as if that solved their problems. Marietta left the breakfast room feeling disturbed and depressed. Bill Roth means nothing to me and I don’t care who he goes out with, she told herself several times, trying to ignore the twinges of genuine pain in her stomach.

  *

  Friday came all too soon. It was almost six o’clock; the guests were arriving, but Marietta was pacing her room. She peered anxiously into the mirror. A pale and angular face stared back at her. Surely her nose was too long, her mouth too wide, her eyes too dark. She sighed and rifled in her drawer for the make-up kit Ingrid had given her, but which she had never used. She tried foundation to give her face some colour, and lipstick to shape her lips, then she smoothed on eye shadow. When she had finished, she took a long, hard look at herself. ‘My goodness, make-up does make a difference,’ she murmured.

  Why am I bothering? Let him have Ingrid. She’s welcome to that disloyal American. With frenetic energy she searched her cupboards for the third time. Ingrid was so sophisticated nowadays and she had such lovely clothes. Marietta gritted her teeth; she only had one Parisian dress and she had never worn it. It was a short, clinging shift of dark green silk, with fringes around the tiered skirt. They shimmered and shook when she moved. Just right, she thought.

  *

  Bill was feeling claustrophobic. Palaces did this to him, he had discovered recently. He was acutely reminded of his last evening in Sokol Palace. It was only three months ago, but it might have been another era, so much had happened since then. Too much horror and fear. He felt years older than the naive boy who had stormed out of the ball.

  God, but this place was overstocked with antiques and paintings. How could people live like this? They should ship them to the nearest museum, he thought, as he peered around every statue and potted plant for Marie.

>   Distracted by Ingrid showing him off to her friends as though he were her latest conquest, Bill began to think Marie wasn’t coming. Then he saw her. He caught his breath in wonder. She was no longer a girl, but a woman, and she was surrounded by a sea of dinner jackets. He hung around, noting how her every movement was full of grace, how her eyes glowed with genuine warmth. The force of his desire made his hands tremble. Ingrid clutched his arm and whispered in his ear. ‘Marietta has a secret. He’s standing next to her right now. He’s always here, and they steal out together at night. Father would be furious if he found out. Perhaps she’s going to elope.’

  Bill felt shocked to the core. He gazed at Marie’s companion more closely. He was quite old – pushing forty; he looked Scandinavian with his pale skin and near-white hair. The two of them seemed to have plenty to talk about. When had she met him? Was he one of the eligible twenty? He turned away in secret agony and trailed behind Ingrid, listening wearily to her frivolous chatter. ‘They say Picasso painted his Guernica within weeks of the German bombing. It’s a sensation in Paris. Marietta and I drove there for the opening of the exhibition. Quite extraordinary.’

  Infuriated by her shallow prattle, he left Ingrid anchored to a group of actors and made his way doggedly back to the source of his pain. Marie was still talking to the same man. They know each other well, he thought, feeling empty and alone.

  ‘Marie!’

  She seemed to freeze. Her shoulders tensed visibly, and she turned slowly.

  ‘Bill.’

  ‘Oh Marie . . . How are you?’ His voice was hoarse, and he cleared his throat. For a moment their eyes met, then Marie forced a taut smile.

  ‘Ingrid told me she had invited you. I hope you and she have a lovely evening.’ She turned away.

  ‘I came to see you,’ he said quietly. ‘I over-reacted at your birthday. I’m a stranger here and I don’t really understand the way you think about . . . about certain things.’

  Marie listened to him with a haughty and disdainful expression on her beautiful face. He stumbled on with his prepared speech. ‘I realise now that I had no right to judge you. I’m sorry. Yes, truly sorry. I apologise.’ There, he’d said it! Bill could count the number of times he’d apologised on the fingers of one hand.

  ‘Apologise? Good heavens! Whatever for? It’s lovely to see you again. I hope you and Ingrid have a wonderful evening. Please excuse me, Bill.’ She turned back to her companion, who was looking embarrassed.

  Bill stood there feeling astonished and very wretched. ‘Stop fobbing me off, Marie,’ he muttered, grabbing her arm, all too aware that he was being rude.

  Marie quickly excused herself to her companion and drew Bill aside. ‘Go away,’ she said.

  ‘I think you were wrong not to tell me about von Hesse, but that doesn’t stop me from loving you,’ he said quickly.

  ‘And your apology doesn’t stop me from thinking you’re a pompous, self-opinionated fool. And you’re using Ingrid to see me. Just how mean can you be? There’s no future for us, Bill. There never was.’

  ‘I’d use anyone or anything to see you, if that’s what it would take. And who the hell is that creep?’

  ‘He’s a man I admire, which is a lot more than I’ll ever say of you.’

  She turned back to her companion and Bill could think of nothing to keep her. In a temper he went to find Ingrid. To hell with Marie. He flirted with Ingrid all evening and danced with her for hours, hoping that Marie was watching, knowing he was monopolising the belle of the ball and taking vicious pleasure from the admiring glances.

  *

  Bill left around midnight, having given up hope of seeing Marie again and disgusted by the way all the guests spoke of everything under the sun except reality. What would life be like under their new Nazi leaders? He decided to return to Berlin at once, and bury the memory of Marie forever.

  Chapter Nineteen

  After Hugo’s success in Austria, he was given the undercover task of whipping up hatred between the Volksdeutsche and Czechs in the Sudeten areas of Czechoslovakia. He installed himself in Hirschen Manor, a lovely old gothic home situated outside a small Austrian village near the Czech border. It had been owned by a family of Jewish merchant bankers, who were now resident in a labour camp.

  There was one room which he assumed had been the family room, for it was situated in the sunniest wing of the house. Hugo called this his planning room. Here he paced the floor far into the night perfecting his plans.

  So far he had succeeded brilliantly, thanks to his team of hand-picked plain-clothes agents, all of whom spoke Czech fluently. Nightly, they slipped across the border into Sudetenland in various disguises. Today’s newspaper had recounted the sad story of a Volksdeutsche glass-blower who had been dismissed from his job simply because he was of German roots. He was found hanging from a rope in his garden the following night. In vain, his Czech employers explained that he had been sacked for theft and that his wife suspected that he had been murdered. No one wanted to know. Hugo carefully pasted the story in his scrapbook. The incidents were multiplying. Hatred was spreading like a forest fire, as Germans and Slavs rioted and fought each other in clubs and bars.

  It was Monday morning and, like all good German housewives, Heide Smeidt was hanging her spotlessly white, freshly laundered linen on the washing line in the garden where she lived, two miles outside the village of Volary, in the Sudetenland area of old Bohemia. It was one of those perfect summer days that seem to banish all cares and Heide was singing an old German folk-song as she worked. Before her stretched a field full of barley, with patches of deep red poppies here and there. Beyond was the stream, and on the far bank, an old mill by the forest.

  The mill had been abandoned for years, so Heide was surprised when the door swung open and a man came out. He looked like a labourer, but whatever could he be doing here, she wondered? As she watched him approach the stepping stones across the river, she felt vaguely uneasy, but she was not sure why. She picked up the laundry basket and went into the house. On second thoughts she slammed home the bolt. ‘Silly,’ she muttered to herself. ‘How silly you are. It’s just a worker crossing the river. That’s all.’ She glanced through the kitchen window. Why was he moving so purposefully towards their cottage? Her husband, Jan, worked at the foundry, five miles away, and two of her children were at school. The other, a two-year-old boy, was playing on the sitting-room floor.

  There was a knock on the door. ‘I’ll go, Jan,’ she called, pretending her husband was home. She glanced through the window. There were two men. Where had the other one come from? ‘Hello.’ She opened the window. ‘D’you want my husband? He’s upstairs.’

  ‘Yes,’ the first one said. ‘We’re from the Union. There’s a special meeting tonight. Here’s the address.’

  ‘Oh!’ Relief flooded through her. ‘Is that all?’ She reached through the window, but a strong arm caught hers and slammed it hard against the frame.

  She screamed with pain and fright. ‘Let me go!’ She might as well have pulled against a steel bear trap.

  She heard the second man kicking the door. The wood splintered and smashed, and she heard her child wailing.

  ‘What do you want?’ she screamed.

  In answer the man punched her hard in the face. She heard her nose crunch sickeningly. Pain dimmed her fear as she gagged on the blood. She fell back on to the floor and hit her head on the table, passing out momentarily. When she came to she was spread-eagled on the floor, her skirt around her neck and they were dragging her into the sitting-room. One of them saw her open her eyes and kicked her savagely in the ribs and the face.

  ‘Oh God, help me. God help me,’ she sobbed. ‘Why are you doing this? Who are you?’

  ‘Czechs,’ they said. ‘Czech patriots. Go home, you German whore. You and your race are not wanted in Czechoslovakia. This is our land.’

  They stripped off her clothes as she kicked and screamed. Then they raped her, taking turns to hold her down. Opening her eye
s she saw that there were more of them. Was it five, or six? She could not see clearly for the blood was running in her eyes and she couldn’t think for the pain which was everywhere. Each time there was a new pain. She screamed when they bit off her nipples and then again when they sodomised her over the kitchen table. And then when they broke her arm and smashed her ribs.

  Later, they dumped her naked in the river and left. She managed to crawl to the river bank, where she lay, bloody and broken for hours until the children came home from school.

  That night she recovered consciousness briefly in hospital. She repeated to her grieving husband and the doctor what the men had said. She did not recognise any of them, she muttered.

  One was huge, with frizzy white hair, an albino. One had been very dark with a cast in his eye. The others . . .? She tried to remember, but died before she could.

  *

  It was a beautiful evening. Dappled sunlight fell across the planning table, but Hugo hardly noticed as the sun set and dusk changed to darkness. Soon the moon rose and its light sparkled on the fountain by the roses.

  It was time for the news. Locking away his files, Hugo switched on the radio and heard the Führer vow to save the ‘innocent and oppressed’ Czech Germans by force of arms, if necessary. ‘I will have justice for the Volksdeutsche in Czechoslovakia!’ he screamed to the world.

  Hugo stretched and bent over his planning table again. He began rearranging a line of black dominos. Each represented a train with twenty cattle trucks. He knew from past experience in Austria that he could squeeze sixty men into one cattle truck.

  Hitler was demanding massive inflows of Czech male and female slave labour to arrive within the first few days of the occupation. As well as farm livestock, dismantled factories, even the Czechs’ new railway sleepers were to be shipped back to Germany. Hugo thrust his hands into his pockets and began to pace the floor. The transportation problems seemed insurmountable. He was disturbed by the shrill ring of his telephone.