Our kiss was long and we pressed in hard. Despite what he’d said, it was born of desperation and longing. I kissed the top of his head, sucked in the smell of his boyishness. I never wanted to leave that space.
‘Anke,’ he called as I headed for the door, ‘here, take this. You’ll need it.’
He held out his wristwatch into the air, and I took it. It wasn’t Reich standard issue, but more of a personal style, a wide plain face and the strap well worn, a ridge in the leather to fit his slender wrist.
‘Thanks.’ I smiled, slipping it into my pocket and walking through the door to an uncertain day.
I crept through the front door and tiptoed the corridor without shoes, stopping briefly and tuning my ears in to the night sounds. No obvious activity. In Eva’s room, Christa’s relief was clear, though not Eva’s – her head was buried in the pillows as she lay on her side, knees brought up and her nightdress just covering her buttocks. One hand cupped her bump and the other covered her eyes, even though the light was low, just a single lamp on the bedside table. She was breathing steadily, but not moaning or crying.
Christa had already gathered some of the equipment, and I’d brought the rest.
‘How long has she been up?’ I whispered.
‘She began stirring around midnight, tossing and turning. She got up at about two and was on the toilet for a while. She called me in just before I came to you.’
‘What did she say?’
‘That she felt a pop, and then water coming away. The pains were stronger almost immediately.’
‘Did you look in the toilet, see what was there?’
‘A small amount of blood – I know that’s all right – but the water looked a bit dirty. I left it for you, I didn’t flush it.’
‘Perfect, Christa, you’re a marvel.’
A low moan rose from the bed as a contraction started, Eva breathing more deeply, and then a rolling wail, though not panicked. Her upper hand went to the pillow, the material and her face crimping together. Christa went to her, rubbing her back and murmuring encouragement.
In the bathroom, Christa’s report was exact. The blood was a good sign of the cervix beginning to open, the brown stain of the water not so encouraging. Certainly Dr Koenig would view it as a reason to intervene, but if the baby was fine, I wasn’t concerned. Eva was lying on a white towel, and it was easy to see the meconium wasn’t thick, only a light colouring of the amniotic fluid – the much preferred variety.
‘Eva, it’s Anke,’ I whispered. ‘Can I listen to the baby?’
As with so many times before, she rolled automatically, although this time in obvious discomfort, and it took her time to fidget onto her back.
Under my hands the baby’s head was low in the pelvis, but unlike the days before, I couldn’t locate a back, just limbs on either side. I closed my eyes and checked again, not wanting to believe it. But with a blind man’s instinct, the translation was the same. It was a guesstimate, but a good one – this baby was back to back, its spine spooning into Eva’s own backbone. It didn’t cause the alarm of breech babies in midwives, but it often meant a long, slow and exhausting journey, as the baby either tried to spin a full hundred and eighty degrees inside, or negotiate the mother’s pelvis back to back – said to be much more painful as the line of the birth canal was less giving. With a head this low, I felt Eva’s baby would be unable to turn properly. We could be in for a long night and day.
With contractions clearly regular, Eva gave consent for me to examine her, and it confirmed what I suspected: a telltale space behind the baby’s head and a head trying – but not quite managing yet – to snuggle in to the bony confines of her pelvis, best described to women as an egg ‘not quite in the eggcup’. On a good note, her cervix was a thin four centimetres dilated, working and labouring, and I thought I felt a thick coating of hair on the baby’s head. There was no going back now.
The baby, thankfully, sounded fine, a steady hundred and forty beats per minute, and another contraction took Eva onto her side. Extreme backache was another factor with the baby’s position, and Christa was already employed in rubbing hard into Eva’s spine during the contraction. Eva whimpered more with the low soreness than the contraction itself, one hand dancing over her sacrum as she breathed.
Quietly, I told Christa my suspicions, not to alarm, but as a way of preparing her. This would not be a labour where the baby beat the arrival of the overbearing Dr Koenig.
‘So what do we do now?’ Christa said.
‘We wait, that’s all we can do. We listen to the baby, we see to Eva and we keep her going. The rest is up to her and the baby.’
‘And hope?’
I managed a light laugh. ‘Yes, Christa, you’re learning fast. We hope a lot.’
With Eva, I focused only on the positives. ‘You’re doing fine,’ I told her, my face close to hers.
She grimaced as if unbelieving.
‘You’re in good labour, your baby is well on its way.’ With certainty, I promised: ‘Today is your baby’s birthday,’ and then remembering her fussing about the timing: ‘It’ll be here well before Gretl’s wedding. You’ll be showing off your baby to all the guests.’
This raised a smile at least. ‘She’ll be so envious,’ she murmured into the pillow as another contraction welled up.
Christa padded along the corridors to fetch more fresh water, and reported the house was still quiet. The kitchen maid would be up by five to light the stove, and after that, we might have to reveal ourselves. I figured Dieter would be smart enough to send Daniel to collect the doctors rather than employ a car already in town – adding another hour to their journey, if not more. Then I would begin the defence of one wall while trying to break down the other.
The Camp, North of Berlin, April 1943
‘Well, if she won’t come in, we’ll have to drag her, or she’ll die in her bed. It will serve her right.’
Mencken shut her desk drawer with such force several bodies recoiled, as if a gunshot had sounded right inside the Revier. She was in a foul mood – her workforce had been cut yet again, which dented her pride and put her reputation under threat.
Only a month before, Mencken had received the highest of all Party accolades, a letter signed by Heinrich Himmler himself, praising her for an ‘exemplary record of workforce provision’ in the camp. With the letter neatly framed and locked in her desk drawer at the Revier, Mencken was driven to maintain Himmler’s confidence in her work. She didn’t spare a human thought for the labouring woman in Hut 16 who was refusing to come into the Revier – but if she bled out and wasn’t at her work post within a week, it would reflect badly on the Chief Nursing Officer.
‘Send the guards into the hut,’ Mencken barked at one of the Kapos. ‘And make sure they take the dogs.’
A sudden, crass vision of a contracting woman faced with snarling dogs and the fear welling up inside her made me speak out. ‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘I’ll attend her in the hut.’
Mencken’s face crinkled with distaste. Hut 16 was an all-Jewish barrack, and as much as she hated Jews tainting her dominion, she wanted eyes over all births – and us midwives, no doubt. Only those babies born rapidly during Appell – roll call – or in the toilet block were outside the Revier.
‘Why would you do that?’ she said, soot-dark pupils directly on mine.
‘The dogs will only halt the contractions. If it stops the baby could suddenly turn and we’ll have a transverse or obstructed labour, and she’s more likely to bleed.’ I was exaggerating wildly but Mencken was a nurse, not a midwife, and it was easy to blind her with jargon. Two midwives on either side of me nodded, joining the conspiracy. Mencken’s mind churned, thinking no doubt of the moral infection of her relatively clean unit and the tiny room set aside for Jews, already full to capacity.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘But I want to know the minute she delivers. It’s on you, Hoff – if she’s not back at her place within the week, you may just lose yours. Or be going East.
’ It might have been a bluff on her part, but it was enough to make my nerves flutter – we had gradually learnt that transport out was to a place not designed for labour, or life. No one spirited away in a lorry bound for the East ever came back.
Hut 16 was almost deserted, with all prisoners on work duty. The only noise was a low moan from the front of the hut, backed by the clatter of the camp. It was as much silence as I’d heard in months. A young woman stood as I entered, shoulders stiff, her expression on alert. She relaxed a little on seeing I wasn’t a guard or a Kapo. At just seventeen, she was an aged head on young shoulders.
‘I’m Rosa,’ she said, obvious worry lines on her young brow. ‘I’ve tried reasoning with Mama, but she won’t go. She says the baby should live and die in our home.’
‘It’s fine,’ I told her, a hand on her thin flesh. ‘We can stay.’ At those words, Hanna came out of her labour bubble, rolled to one side, and we began the journey towards birth.
We waited and tended, Rosa by her mother’s side constantly. I sat vigilant as the roles were reversed, daughter dissipating her mother’s distress, reassuring when she uttered the inevitable, end-stage words: ‘I can’t do it.’
‘Yes, you can, for us, for all of us,’ Rosa reassured, and she watched – wide-eyed but with silent maturity – as her mother birthed a surprisingly bumptious boy. His sandy hair and light eyes confirmed what Rosa later told me: Hanna had been raped by a civilian factory foreman, taking advantage of his well-earned ‘perks’ as he called them, as he stole from her. He plundered her body, and the Reich thieved the resulting life just hours later. Hanna, though, was alive, Rosa still had a mother, and the warped scales of justice in this new world told us we should be grateful for that.
I stayed until the work detail returned. Almost a hundred tiptoed in, the news having somehow been spread among the camp. Quietly, they moved to the bunks, and then by degrees towards Hanna and Rosa, each offering a hand or a hug. Almost all gave up a meagre portion of their dishwater soup that day to Hanna, so that when they sat singing in a circle around her, she fell asleep in Rosa’s arms, with the fullest belly she’d had in months, but a heart left scraping at its own empty insides.
Hanna was up and at her work post in six days, and Mencken noted the extra days’ toil, reluctantly affording me a nod as I passed her in the Revier. Over the next months, more births occurred in the huts. They were Jews mostly, but it wasn’t treated so much as dissent, as long as I or another midwife was willing to go out. Mencken revelled in keeping her tight ship morally clean, despite the ever crumbling walls and filthy floors; they had fewer rats there than the huts, only by virtue of the building being up on wooden stilts.
However, since most babies died well before infection could set in, dirt wasn’t my main concern. Besides, when a baby was due to be born in a hut, a general rallying and hoarding of rags or paper by all the women made the area cleaner than the hospital block, making it oddly safer against infection. And in their own ‘home’, they were surrounded by friends and love, a vital balm to their inevitable grief. I felt, in a small way – as I had on my community stint in Berlin – among strong women who understood each other, spiders spinning elegant webs of love and protection, who would weave repeatedly, never mind how many times that web was brought down.
Even so, I set out to each birth with a heavy heart. No matter how close the community in the hut, the end result was always the same – a mother without a baby, either in hours, days or sometimes weeks, if she was unlucky to watch her child mew with hunger for that long. The separation was agony every time, and we could not battle against the cosh or the gun. I composed myself before each birth, an icicle wedged somewhere deep in my own heart muscle, and then sobbed on Graunia and Kirsten when the level of injustice became too much. It was they who reminded me what we were doing – affording dignity inside the Nazi machine. But I needed reminding often that it was good, and not simply aiding the bad.
Over time, I was trusted enough to move from hut to hut, tending the ante-natal or post-birth women, and using my nursing to help with the rounds of the sick, the endless sores and wounds that needed dressing. Soon, I was rarely at a birth in the Revier and I became known as the ‘homebirth midwife’, though it was sad to imagine any woman would think of those hovels as home. After that first birth, Rosa became my official helper, and we worked as a team at countless arrivals.
It’s true that we never lost a baby at birth. In pregnancy, yes – and after was the norm. Our only success was in the recovery – that women survived. Tended by their friends, they were cradled in love and shared sorrow, and as long as Mencken’s workforce provision was healthy enough to stand, she tolerated my efforts.
The mobility meant I was a good messenger, practised at hiding minute, folded pieces of paper around my body or in my shoes, with larger items nestled well among the sodden rags post-birth. None of the female guards ever wanted to delve into these with their manicured nails, and the male troopers were even less likely to. The best gains were on visits to the vegetable kitchen – each of the workers was searched religiously in and out, but I was often too filthy for even the guards to touch, given my proximity to birth blood and pus. Sometimes, I managed to smuggle a small potato, on a good day a badly grown turnip.
One fortuitous day a new guard was so clearly sickened by a newborn’s end that she forgot to ask for the return of a penknife she hastily gave me for cutting the cord. She was either too ashamed or afraid of the consequences from her superiors to ever challenge me about it. With a sharp edge, I could distribute tiny pieces of contraband among the huts, a potato shaving here, a sliver there, to the sickest or weakest women.
The knife gave both calories and comfort. At each birth I severed a wisp of the baby’s hair, while Graunia had spirited away a printing pad and some paper (she got two days in solitary for her incompetence at the ‘stationery count’), and we were able to create hand- and footprints as memories. It was a poor substitute, but as they cradled the precious paper, the women held on to a brief life that became history – tangible and real. For some, in their post-birth grief and madness, it was the only thing that tethered them to reality.
And so we lived, and survived. Much like Berliners who came to barely register the flutter of Nazi insignia through the city, our expectations of life slowly lowered by degrees.
37
Watching and Waiting
Dieter’s watch signalled we had managed to get to almost six a.m. before there was a gentle knock on the door. He was dressed, newly shaved and his cologne came through the gap in the door, pushing down the anxious pulse of my heart.
‘How are you doing? Anything to report?’
I slipped outside the door and laid myself flat against the wall, hoping to sink my voice into its fabric. Our fingertips met briefly, ears scanning for nearby bodies.
‘Well, no baby yet, but Eva is in good labour,’ I said. ‘She was four centimetres at about three, but it’s always best to be conservative – two for the doctor’s benefit.’
Dieter’s face reflected confusion at my midwife’s tongue.
‘It means she’s almost halfway to pushing the baby, but still a good few hours to go.’ I sighed heavily. ‘I suppose you’ll have to get a message to Koenig now. We can’t hide it any longer, and we’ll need help from the kitchen soon.’
‘All right, if you’re sure,’ and he turned to go. I caught his arm.
‘Dieter, when they arrive, please come and collect me. Don’t let them come knocking on the door. And no maids lingering in the corridors.’
His face took on a look of concern.
‘I know it’s a big request,’ I added. ‘But I don’t want Koenig bulldozing in here. It might send Eva off balance.’
His eyebrows went up. Was it Eva, or me, whose calm would be upset?
‘Seriously,’ I said. ‘It could delay the whole labour. Trust me on this.’
He looked at me intently, no facial theatrics now. ‘I do trust you, Anke
. Implicitly.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I promise I’ll keep you well informed. I won’t leave you in the dark.’
Christa and I took turns tending to Eva, who was generally uncomplaining for a woman experiencing so much back pain. She simply needed reassurance that the agony was normal as the contractions became more intense. Every half hour, I listened to the baby, and we spooned camomile tea into Eva’s mouth and warmed the lavender leaves for relaxation, the odour strong in the room. We drank insipid coffee to counter the lavender’s soporific effect and keep us sharp, given the early start. In between, I wrote copious notes on the progress of the labour, choosing my words carefully, knowing they would be crawled over by medics and the Reich alike, perhaps even the Führer himself. More so if anything went wrong.
At 8.30 a.m., there was another light knock of the door. Dieter again.
‘They’re here,’ he said. ‘I’ve put them in the parlour and Lena is keeping them busy with breakfast. But they’re insisting on seeing you – soon. Koenig appears to be nursing a large hangover, but Langer is razor-sharp. Be careful.’
‘I will. I’ll be there in five minutes – promise.’
I listened to the baby and left Christa in charge. As I walked towards the parlour, it was obvious some of Eva’s moans were snaking through the corridors and prompting a house on high alert. She was getting more vocal, and I could only guess it meant the labour was progressing.
‘Fräulein Hoff.’ Dr Langer got to his feet as I entered, but Koenig’s girth stopped him rising quickly. That and the mouthful of bread and meat he was working through. He nodded in reluctant acknowledgement.
‘How is the labour progressing?’ Langer’s eyes were jet black, more weasel-like than before.
‘Fräulein Braun is doing very well,’ I replied. ‘She was two centimetres at three a.m., the contractions are good, her waters broke at two-fifteen.’
The German Midwife: A new historical romance for 2019 from the USA Today best seller. Page 23