‘Well, that’s women and babies for you. But no, it’s not too soon, she’s thirty-seven weeks and no longer premature. It’s just that I don’t want to say for sure until I really am. I don’t want the troops descending.’
‘What do you need me to do?’
I wanted to kiss him right there and then, for reacting in the way I hoped he would.
‘I want to get Christa up here, but without alerting the Goebbels or Dr Koenig. Is there a way we can send for her with a good excuse?’
‘I can, if you think of one that’s credible. I do know Frau Goebbels is away at the moment, so her suspicions won’t be aroused.’
The news was a profound relief, and we settled on calling up Christa on the pretence of keeping an eye on Eva at night, as she was up and down to the toilet a lot, and to put the finishing touches to the baby’s layette. Questions were bound to be asked, but we could easily counter those. More important was protecting the space around Eva, so she could and would labour with this baby.
The Camp, North of Berlin, November 1942
‘So, you are a midwife?’ Gerta Mencken squinted at my file. ‘And yet you are in the sewing room?’
‘I thought I would be of more use there,’ I said in a deadpan tone. I had become adept at lying, stripping all emotion from my voice, features flat and my eyes seemingly sightless.
Mencken had a reputation for being a loyal Nazi, but one who maintained her ethos as a nurse in pre-war Germany. Looking at the top of her bleach-blonde hair, cropped into a masculine style, I wondered how the two even began to mesh.
‘Yes … well.’ She wasn’t convinced. ‘You’re here now, and we could benefit from your skills. We have more women than first anticipated.’ She looked at me and softened her mouth purposefully, though that wasn’t convincing either. ‘The women will benefit from your experience.’
Like every true Nazi, Frau Mencken knew how to elicit the best from her prison-workers, using a subtle form of moral blackmail. I could help to make the experience more tolerable for them, she was saying, and serve the Reich at the same time.
‘Report here tomorrow morning, six a.m. We’ll take you through the procedures.’
I’d had an itch since arriving at the camp. Unlike the numerous bugs and lice resident on my body, causing me to scratch wildly until I was raw, this barb was on the inside, pricking away at my brain. It was the knowledge that babies were being born in the camp. Naively, I’d imagined all pregnant women were screened out before boarding the transports, since this was no place to grow or birth a baby. It was a labour camp, only children aged twelve and above – those who could do a day’s work – were permitted. But most of my new clientele hadn’t been obviously pregnant when they became separated from their husbands and some had been brutally raped by German soldiers on capture. Even so, as the camp opened, the numbers of births were small.
Elke, an inmate since 1939, told me the first babies were treated with real reverence in the Revier – clean sheets, baths for the mothers, even a glass of milk after the birth. For all the fussing, though, the newborns didn’t survive camp life, succumbing to malnutrition at days and weeks old when the mothers had no milk in their breasts, or transported at a day old and ‘Germanised’ if they were lucky enough to be born with blue eyes. Most babies were sons and daughters of the political prisoners, German or non-Jew at least, and therefore just tolerated. The few Jewish babies didn’t make it past a day, even then.
As the war raged on, the camp population increased and, with it, the amount of Jewish women arriving already pregnant. Scores had been raped with the invasion of Warsaw, and their numbers swelled along with their bellies. Yet the Nazis were shrewd. The camp provided essential supplies for the troops and labour for the engineering factories around us, and Poles were good workers, Jews especially. I overheard Mencken one day telling her chief Kapo that pregnant women ‘were like mules – if they’re strong enough to carry the child, they have more stamina. One week after the birth they’re back on their feet and we need that strength. They’re worth more to us then.’
Her thinking didn’t stop the enforced abortions. Any woman thought to be under twenty weeks was taken to a separate block and a certain end to either one or two lives. Their screams could be heard at intervals as junior Nazi doctors arrived to hone their skills without anaesthetic. If the women bled out, it was put down to experience and collateral damage – although I often saw Mencken stomping through the corridors, cursing the medics for reducing the numbers of ‘her girls’. But she was thinking only of the figures, and not the sorry corpses lying on the slabs.
Women can be equally determined, though, and their zeal to preserve life in the womb easily outstripped the Nazi will. Some women knew of a baby only once they felt a telling tickle inside, since monthly periods – through stress or malnutrition – stopped almost on arrival. A baby’s movements and a slightly rounded abdomen were often the first signs of a pregnancy. Even then, the loose woollen dresses hid the tiny bumps well, and some women concealed it to all but their barrack mates until the birth itself.
On my first morning in the Revier, a woman was brought in from the 4.30 a.m. roll call, having stood no doubt for hours on the grey square, collapsing with labour pains. By the time she reached the building and I was pushed towards her, she was in advanced labour, dripping sweat and flushed from shoulders to brow. She was Czech, rambling in a dialect I couldn’t catch, and I had no choice but to apply the universal language of childbirth: a soft touch to her hand, massaging its rough skin down towards her scarecrow fingers, a cooing-shushing of my voice as I talked evenly to her in German. ‘Let me just have a look there, can I have a look under your dress?’ I didn’t even know her name.
After one contraction, she stopped muttering and opened her eyes. Our pupils met, I smiled at her and nodded. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘You’re having your baby.’
‘Bebe,’ she said, and bore down to show me her child.
The Revier had seen better days. It was a solid building at least, without holes in the planking, though its weathered walls peeled with neglect. The clean sheets of Elke’s memories were also long gone – now grey and ripped, torn to make napkins for those babies who survived. The chief guard, I learned later, did not share Mencken’s ethos about healthy pregnant women and tolerated her efforts rather than encouraging them. There were no instruments, or drugs, and it was only a clutch of prisoner-midwives from across Europe that made it anything other than a building to house birth. Their experience and humanity transformed it into a maternity unit that bore life.
Whatever our skills, the ending of a life was never close behind the giving of a new one. All the non-Jewish babies – those without blue eyes – were moved to a Kinderzimmer after just two days with their mothers, who were allowed to visit only briefly in daytime. At night, the door was locked, and the window left open, even in winter. Mothers frequently found their babies stiff and lifeless come the morning. Other newborns starved slowly over the weeks ahead and only a handful lived beyond a month.
For the Jews, however, there was a more certain fate. I will never forget the first time I heard the splash of a newborn hitting the water barrel; my stomach wrenched and my throat burned with the realisation that a life was being brutally snuffed out. The pain each mother endured at that sound could not be fathomed. As a midwife, having been driven by the light of life at each shift – a mother united with her baby – my entire ethos was shattered. What would I be doing? Simply aiding the brief transport between life and death? Would I be servicing the Nazi machine to hone a new workforce, helping Hitler in his despicable aim for a clean Germany, bathed in moral filth?
After that first day in the Revier, I twisted in my bunk, not from the itch of bedbugs, but a conscience wrestling with my brain. The truth was, I had little choice. It was either comply or be taken out into the forest and shot for dissidence – many had never returned after making less of a stand. Or face the ominous threat of transport to the E
ast. At that time, no one knew quite what ‘the East’ held but we all sensed it wasn’t good.
Over the following weeks, the moral wrestling waned and I found a new purpose, a light that can only ever be described as dimmed – a chink in the greyness, yet something to take from the horror of this alternative world. The women who came into the Revier were amazing; to reach beyond twenty weeks without miscarriage was miracle enough, but to do it with a baby whose limbs pushed proud against the scabietic parchment of their abdomens, saying: ‘I’m in here, I’m alive,’ seemed unbelievable. They had preserved their babies with every depleted cell, eyes sunken with lack of nutrition and worry, tiny bumps top-heavy on legs sometimes as thin as reeds. They never once thought of giving up. Ever. To give life was everything. Most knew it would be a short existence, but all harboured a slim hope that the war would suddenly end, with a swift liberation by the Allies and a last-minute reprieve for their newborns.
I soon realised my role – and that of the ten or so other qualified midwives in the camp – was to bring dignity where we couldn’t prolong life. We could create memories, perhaps of only hours or days, where kindness and humanity won out. We sat, we coached and cooed, we scavenged what little extras we could to make every woman feel they were party to the best care money might buy.
Each of us had our way of creating a small world impenetrable to the harsh reality of noise and stench around us. It was a tiny cosmos where we cried and laughed with them, where we held a space – perhaps only for a few minutes – so pure that only their child, their baby, existed for that time. Their history. The burning ache of a baby’s parting was no less painful, but alongside the sadness sat memories of what they did for their babies – memories of being mothers.
And in that sickly arena of skulking death, I came alive again.
35
Brewing
Unusually for me, I was agitated after Eva’s check, hovering around the complex and virtually spying on her from a short distance. She emerged onto the terrace around noon, and I went to tell her Christa would be arriving to help with the last of the preparations. She seemed pleased, but also preoccupied – shifting uncomfortably on the sun lounger, unconsciously clutching at her bump as she did. Her face was less pale now, and flushed a lot of the time. She asked me to stay to keep her company, and so for a while I sat leafing through a magazine, with my ears tuned in to her breathing and eyeing the contortions of her body. Looking at her, I felt certain she was – in midwife-speak – on the cusp.
We parted for lunch, and Christa arrived an hour or so later, collected by Daniel. I felt true relief at her presence. Untrained and with little medical background, she was nonetheless what I needed most, a trustworthy ally – like Rosa before her. She came armed with bundles of material and her sewing box, convinced she would be settled in for at least three weeks before the birth, and her face fell when I told her of my suspicions.
‘Really? So soon?’ Her large green eyes widened.
‘It’s still possible it could all fizzle out again, but the signs are good.’
‘Are you relieved?’
‘Yes and no,’ I said truthfully. ‘I’ve been slightly caught out, but to be honest if Eva went past her due date, we would be under scrutiny much more. Better that this baby comes when it wants. We have to face it some time. If there’s one certainty about birth, it’s that no one is pregnant forever.’
We both laughed, to break the tension that lingered above our heads, a brooding raincloud that would track us now until either the sun broke through, or it cracked with a tyrannical thunder.
‘What was the reaction at the Goebbels’?’ I asked.
‘The mistress and master are both away – separately. I don’t doubt they have their spies in the house, but I think I was casual enough about the reason.’
She said there were no more messages from the resistance group. ‘And you?’
‘No, nothing.’ I should have told her, because of our trust, but I reasoned it wouldn’t change our plan, only add to the tension. We were set on giving Eva a healthy baby, and getting out with our lives.
We decided Christa would sleep in Eva’s room that night, to keep up the pretence, but I did want Christa to call me if needed, rather than one of the maids. There was still no telling who was in the pocket of the Goebbels, or the resistance.
Just after three that afternoon, Eva called me to her room, her face bathed in alarm.
‘Look!’ she said, guiding me to the bathroom. Her silk knickers were on the floor, soiled with a mucousy coating, streaked pink and red. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s just a sign you’re getting ready, a good sign,’ I reassured her. The ‘show’ – a jelly-like plug guarding the womb entrance – could come away two weeks, two days or two hours before labour began, but with everything else I’d seen, it was another indication we were close. ‘Come, let’s listen to the baby.’
She was still tightening, the skin a solid shell as she lay down, but she didn’t squirm or react. I’d known women in tears at this point with exhaustion and despondency, but Eva was showing her stamina yet again.
Christa helped her into the bath, and we agreed the plan for the night. Still, I didn’t mention the ‘labour’ word, playing on Eva’s innocence. I also knew I needed to sleep – in case of being called in the early hours – and I headed back to the chalet after dinner. Christa joined me briefly on the porch, but even she was tired and soon left. In the dusky backdrop, I glimpsed a shadow hovering around the house. For an anxious moment, I imagined it was the resistance trying to make direct contact, but the patrol was circling, and the body didn’t flinch as two sets of boots neared. The patrol gone, the bobbing silhouette of a cap took on a familiar shape.
He approached with a grin, cap in hand. Wordlessly, we both cast a look around and disappeared into the chalet, closing the curtains. He took off his jacket, and we kissed before speaking, my fingers snaking under his braces and clutching at the solid ribs through his shirt.
‘I’ve been itching to do that all day,’ Dieter whispered, as we parted our moist lips. ‘If I’m honest I’m willing Eva to hang on, so I can have more of you.’
‘Me too,’ I said.
‘Is there any news?’
I told him of the signs. ‘She’ll either labour tonight or it will go off and we’ll be in for a longer wait,’ I said. ‘To be honest, I can’t tell. She’s quite hard to read.’
‘Well, well,’ he mocked, ‘a woman who beats the intuition of the great Sister Hoff! Eva Braun has my respect.’ I dug him playfully in the ribs, and that was our cue to slide into bed and delay my precious sleep.
36
A Night Shift
‘Anke! Anke!’
A hoarse urgency saw me battling towards the surface of sleep, swimming against a tide. As I broke free, a rap on the glass.
‘Anke! Anke!’
‘Coming,’ I managed, only just feeling Dieter was beside me. As he roused I turned and put my finger to my lips, signalling his silence. Christa’s face was close to the door; she was in her nightdress, hair loosely pulled into a ponytail.
‘I think you need to come,’ she said.
Strange that I’d been dreaming about Eva giving birth – this time at the Teehaus, with Negus and Stasi as my trusty assistants – and yet it took seconds for the present to fall into place.
‘Anke.’ Christa’s tone pulled me further towards waking. ‘I think her waters have broken.’
At that, I was fully alert. ‘All right, you go back to her, I’ll be a few minutes behind. What time is it?’
‘Two-thirty a.m.’
She might have wondered why I kept the door ajar, why I didn’t say, ‘Come in, and tell me all about it,’ as I dressed swiftly. But in the circumstances I didn’t care.
As I retreated inside, Dieter was propped on one elbow, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘Nothing wrong, but it’s happening,’ I said, pulling on my stockings awkwa
rdly. ‘Christa thinks Eva’s waters have broken, which means it’s likely to move on.’
He swung his legs to the side of the bed, palming away more fatigue from his face. ‘What about Dr Koenig? When shall I call him? You know we have to, Anke.’
‘I know.’ I stopped buttoning my blouse, cogs spinning. ‘But you are actually in your own bed, aren’t you? And you know nothing about this until I call you, or the house wakes up.’
‘Don’t leave it too late, Anke,’ he warned. ‘Koenig is already riled. He could make things worse for you. I’ll do my best to keep him at bay but …’
‘I know.’
‘You know what?’
‘I know to be careful, Dieter. Honestly, I’m doing this just to keep alive, for my family. I won’t risk it at the last minute. But I am Eva’s midwife. To me, that counts.’
‘And I love you for it.’
I froze at his words, one shoe on, as he beckoned me towards the bed. He put out both hands, long, strong fingers curling into mine, and squeezed them tightly.
‘It’s crazy, it’s the strangest time,’ he said into the floor. ‘And it’s war. But this … it’s love.’ He pulled up his chin and pushed those turquoise eyes into mine, the hue obvious even in the darkness. ‘I love you, Anke. I love you and what you are.’
I moved my lips towards him. My heart was tumbling beats – adrenalin from Christa’s news and lust for the man in front of me, a heady cocktail. ‘I love you too. Every ounce of you. What we’ve had, even if it’s—’
‘Shhh – we don’t need to talk like that. Just get through today, and we’ll work it out after. We will, I promise. We’ll leave this life behind.’
The German Midwife: A new historical romance for 2019 from the USA Today best seller. Page 22