‘Clear fluid?’ Dr Koenig managed, mouth still full.
‘Yes,’ I lied unashamedly.
‘Heart rate?’
‘Within normal limits, Doctor.’
He grunted. ‘I’d like to see her.’
Here it was. The distrust not only of doctor to midwife, but also of Reich to prisoner. I took a breath. ‘Fräulein Braun has asked that unless there is any reason, she would only like myself and Christa, one of the maids, with her. As planned.’
She hadn’t said this explicitly, but it had been every way implied.
His eyes blazed into mine and his delivery was pure pomp: ‘I think, Fräulein, if you tell your mistress why we are here, she will admit us to her bedroom briefly. We are present for the safety and survival of her baby. Perhaps she needs reminding of that.’
‘With all due respect, Dr Koenig, I think you will find I am also here for the same purpose, and Fräulein Braun is already aware – and grateful – for your concern.’ The words were crisp, born out of irritation and a profound contempt of his arrogance. I ignored a shuddering somewhere in my stomach. ‘I am concerned, however, that any interference will not help. She needs quiet and calm for the labour to progress.’
‘Hmph.’ He dismissed centuries of midwifery intuition with one derisive sound. His face coloured to match the boiled ham piled onto his plate. Langer was a ghost in comparison, and they glanced at each other. The temptation to shoot me down must have been overwhelming but they were still mindful this was the Führer’s mistress – treading eggshells was wise.
‘Very well, but I want to know of the slightest change or delay.’ His voice attempted to command.
‘You have my word.’
At Eva’s door, I stood for a moment eavesdropping on the sounds from within – not out of distrust of Christa, simply a need to switch on my birth radar. With the pressures outside, there had been no time to gauge the change in pitch, the rolling weave of the contractions.
‘Christa!’ Eva’s voice was needy.
‘I’m here,’ I heard Christa say through the door. ‘Come on, one closer to seeing your baby, one at a time, Eva.’ She had a perfect midwife’s patter.
‘But it huurrtts,’ Eva moaned, as a statement more than a complaint.
‘And you are strong, and the reward is your baby,’ Christa kept up as Eva mooed noisily into her own body. How many times had she said that already, and how many more would she say it again before we saw this baby?
Contraction over, I opened the door and saw it immediately – the familiar white fold on the floor, just inside the doorway. I scooped it up and pocketed it before Christa could see me. She had enough to deal with already. I listened to the baby, whispered to Eva that the doctors were here, as confirmation the baby was truly on its way. She smiled meekly, and asked me if it would be all right. Eva’s wet face showed such need, this lonely princess in the tower. I told her she was the strongest woman in the room, everything was going fine – she nodded, content with such loose assurances.
I retreated behind my notes, slid the folded paper from my pocket:
We’re ready and waiting. We have safe transport for you and your companion. Your families will be safe. You have the future of the Reich in your power, and of Germany. We will seize the opportunity, as can you. Leave us a sign, back door by the pantry.
Was it a promise or a threat? Or both? If we didn’t deliver the baby into their arms, would they – army generals, German dissidents or even a small group of Allies – take it by force and leave Christa and me to face the consequences? I had lived this war as long as any German, but my experience was overt and brutal, violence not shrouded. I had no experience of these games, nor of an ugly exchange of bullets. And if there were a showdown, up here on the mountain, people would be caught in the crossfire. Dieter would be forced to defend, and he’d already dodged one bullet.
My brain was a quicksand of doubt, fear and bloody-mindedness. How dare they? And yet they could and would. This war had no boundaries, no rules. How could I appease them, delay for more time, and shore up Eva’s safety with the baby?
I decided quickly I could no longer do this alone and be a midwife to Eva. On the pretence of checking the gas and air, I found Dieter in the office. He looked up quizzically.
‘No, no news,’ I said. ‘But I do need your help.’
I came clean, as he looked on, surprised but not aghast – about the notes, the unknown mole at the Berghof, the plan to scupper the Reich, the threat here and now to the baby. His eyes hardened as he read the latest threat, a sea glass blue as they narrowed. Was he angry with me? He had every right to be. A furrowed brow meant he was thinking hard – torn no doubt between his defence of the regime he hated, the woman he had proposed love to, and the Germany he aspired to, all twisting uncomfortably around his core of concrete morals.
‘Dieter, what shall we do? I’m really at a loss.’
His answer seemed to take an age. ‘Well, if the labour goes as you predict, the baby will give us real time, but we can delay the resistance by promising what they want.’
‘You don’t think they can give us what they say? Safety for us and the baby?’ I needed to test his thoughts.
His reply was steadfast: ‘Listen, Anke, I don’t want the Goebbels to have a tool in their hands any more than you do, but this so-called resistance, it’s false hope. They don’t care about you, Christa or Eva. They will leave you hanging.’
The analogy was painfully visual and reinforced my own belief.
‘So what happens we don’t deliver?’ I added.
‘I don’t know, but it gives me time to think.’
‘Will you tell anyone else? Meier? Radio for troops?’
He looked at me, his own cogs in furious motion. ‘No. We keep this to ourselves. It may be an elaborate bluff and not come to anything.’ Still, he opened his desk drawer and fingered a pistol sitting on the top. He caught me looking at him, a wordless exchange like that very first day at the Berghof, and his mouth set in a thin line.
‘Dieter, now it’s my turn to tell you to be careful. Please.’
‘I will. I promise.’ He smiled an assurance, but it wasn’t convincing.
‘I need to get back to Eva.’
‘All right, but please give a report to the doctors soon. They’re getting restless. I’ll write a note and leave it by the pantry door; it will appease for a while.’
Our little fingers linked briefly across the desk, and I wanted desperately to lean forward, kiss his knuckles and draw him in to me. Even with the jacket, I wanted to meet with his lips and feel their softness, but it wasn’t safe. Safety was survival now.
38
Imminence
As I arrived back, it became obvious Eva was approaching transition – the tunnel between dilating and pushing stages. Her pitch had changed, and she was thrashing inside her own head, moving it from side to side, a self-directed ‘No, no’ coming from her. Christa was permanently by her side, offering honey water and solace with her own aching hands.
I took over massage for several contractions, reading the progress at the peak, looking at the crease in her buttocks as I rubbed around her sacrum, noting a distinctive purple line rising nicely. But an early pushing urge was common with back-to-back babies, and I’d need to be sure she was fully dilated before Eva bore down hard. It was half past ten and a good while since I’d checked on progress internally. Had I been truly in charge I would have waited until she showed signs of pushing, but the good doctors would need placating soon.
My luck was in Eva’s stoicism – in her nether world she agreed to almost anything, and I checked her quickly. The baby’s head was now deep in the pelvis, and the cervix at eight centimetres, paper-thin and working well. I mapped the position, feeling a tiny kite shape under my fingers at six o’clock – a small gap in the baby’s skull bones, which meant he or she was still spine to spine but tucked nicely down. Not perfect but good enough, since the baby appeared to be finding its wa
y through so far. The next two hours would be crucial in making sure Eva didn’t push too early; the noise of her bearing down would almost certainly travel through the house – to the doctors, and anyone with resistance ears. They would be hovering for different reasons, but neither in Eva’s best interests.
I found Koenig and Langer in the temporary theatre, checking the anaesthetic equipment, like vultures circling. I coughed at the acrid smell of disinfectant.
‘Fräulein, is anything awry?’ Koenig was quick to look for problems in his tone.
‘No. On the contrary, Dr Koenig, Fräulein Braun is a very strong woman, along with her baby. All is well, and the labour is progressing as expected for a first baby. She’s now seven centimetres dilated.’ I wilfully put her back a centimetre.
‘I would have thought she’d have been further along,’ Koenig complained.
‘But she’s only been in active labour for seven hours, Doctor. An average first baby is twelve hours—’
‘Yes, I know that!’ he snapped. ‘I am all too aware of an average labour, thank you. I want a report in two hours. She needs to be fully dilated by then. If not I will speak to Captain Stenz and we will see then who is in charge here.’ He was red and breathless from the exertion of command. Langer stood motionless, a rictus grin chipped into his chalky skin.
‘Very well,’ I said, and turned to go, sensing Langer’s creeping form on my heels.
‘Fräulein Hoff?’
‘Yes, Doctor?’ I was all innocent curiosity.
He dropped his voice as his wide, thin mouth and sour breath invaded my space. ‘Don’t imagine that we – or at least I – are not wise to your … particular practices.’
I cocked my head, a child caught red-handed and yet smiling virtue. ‘I am all too aware of my realm of practice, Doctor. We have laid out the rules in detail.’
‘Fine, have it your way.’ His verminous eyes sprayed cunning on his words. ‘But I have a memory for faces, and I remember yours well, despite the good living up here. You are a liar and a traitor, and even if you have the ear of the Führer’s mistress, you remain an enemy of the Reich and cannot be trusted.’
I matched his look, desperate to blink, but holding my breath and entire self in limbo.
‘And yet, despite that, Doctor, I am a good midwife, capable of bringing this baby into the world. Without recourse to butchery.’ On that, my breath failed and I turned before he could see me colour and exhale at the same time, feeling his disgust burn into my back as I walked away.
The Camp, North of Berlin, June 1943
Rosa, my invaluable extra hands, was by my side when Dinah went into labour. It was her sixth baby, five of which she had left behind in Munich on her arrest. This new child was just a nugget in her belly as she was prised away from the others. Both Rosa and I were wary of the birth being quick, and arrived in the hut as Dinah began her pains. We brewed what nettles we had, and drank tea; I’d persuaded Mencken that herbs from the camp vegetable patch were effective in contracting the womb, and she allowed me to keep a supply.
And so Rosa and I waited. Dinah gave up her baby at dusk, in a trickle of fluid and a stream of tears. The baby – only her second girl – was initially quiet, breathing but calm, and we gained an extra half hour or so before her eventual wails meant I was forced to announce the birth. The guard who came in hovered nervously at the door, and had to be reminded to hand over scissors to sever the cord. She edged in reluctantly. We knew she had no stomach for the drowning – that was left to a specialist guard and a prisoner who had been incarcerated for child murder as war broke out, their morals of equal stature.
The guard took back the scissors and retreated, saying: ‘I’ll call the others.’ Dinah wept as she asked Rosa and I to fetch a blanket she’d miraculously reworked and hidden under the flooring, in readiness for the birth.
We were gone only five minutes to the other end of the hut, carefully replacing the boards. As we returned, the tears were flowing on Dinah’s face. The baby – Nila – was lost under the thin covering, but her mother had bundled up the cloth around her tiny features, a hand hovering over the fabric.
‘I want to spare her that end,’ she sobbed, ‘but I can’t do it.’ Her fingers twitched with the need but were equally paralysed. She would have felt the baby’s subtle breath through the fibres.
‘Please help me – help her.’ Her face was molten wax with the pain. It took me an age to understand what she was asking. ‘Help her,’ she said again.
‘I … I can’t, Dinah,’ I stuttered. ‘How can I?’ Rosa was silent beside me. I looked at her young face, intent. I knew she was remembering the day her own brother was born and taken, all within hours. She had heard the splash, and many since. I swear I saw her head dip in the tiniest of nods.
Dinah’s eyes were wide and wet, sporting a sorrow as deep as any well. ‘Please,’ she repeated. ‘For her.’
I couldn’t hold the baby as I did it, desperate not to feel the last flinch of life against my skin. But I did bundle the cloth and put my hand over Nila’s tiny pout, one eye on the door for the returning guards. She twitched, but with only the slightest of struggles, then yielded as if to make it easy for me. I held firm as Dinah’s head went close to her daughter’s, kissing her damp head. It was the mother who knew the final flinch. When there was no more breath in those rosy lips, we wrapped her in the blanket. She looked at peace, although my body was in turmoil, everything filthy in this world churning in my gut, detritus bleeding into my insides.
‘Thank you,’ Dinah said, anger swelling amid her turmoil. ‘Her soul is in here.’ She dug at her bony chest as she spat the words. ‘Not out there, not with them. I wouldn’t give them that. They can’t have it. She’s mine. Always.’
I did my sobbing later in the hut with Graunia and Kirsten, spewed what little food was in my stomach, poured repentance and guilt on their laps as they held me. What I did know, the thought kept close to me every day until then, was that the taking of a life still amounted to murder. Even in this vile excuse for a war. I held on to it, each time I heard the shot, or the splash. It was cold-blooded homicide, carried out by minions but engineered by that man who had promised to be our father, to look after the fatherland. He’d pledged, for those who believed his ranting at Nuremberg, to give us a better life, and here he was, robbing everything that was close and precious to us. Our lives. Our families. Our humanity. How dare he? Adolf Hitler was no father.
And what about me? I had crossed that line, taken a life, for whatever reason. Was it murder, or mercy? Would I – could I – ever come back from that?
39
Strength of the Web
In Eva’s room, her telltale growl signalled she was pushing. Low, rasping and primal, it came from deep within her, as if every woman was born with a tiny fire pit nestled in their being, ready to ignite for such occasions. I was thankful the volume was manageable for now, and I watched intently as Christa rubbed hard into her sacrum, my eyes focused on Eva’s buttocks and the tiniest of movements. There it was – at the peak of the contraction, the rounds of her skin parted, the line between her buttocks moved upwards and the skin flattened and became shiny, almost translucent. Spine to spine or not, this baby was moving down.
Encouraging Eva to breathe through each contraction, I timed half an hour before I suggested checking her internally again. If she really was fully dilated, then her labour was proving quick despite the baby’s position. If she wasn’t, we had to somehow stop her pushing.
My heart sank as I felt a definite ridge of cervix in front of the baby’s head: a common but irritating ‘anterior lip’. The tissue was thicker than previously – too thick to push away – and if Eva continued bearing down, it would swell even more, leaving us no choice but to wait. And I knew Koenig wouldn’t be willing to do that.
‘Eva, you’re nearly there, just a tiny bit more work to do before you push,’ I said, her coppery labour scent obvious as we came face to face. Tears sprang automatically.<
br />
‘How long, Anke?’ she pleaded. ‘I don’t think I can do much more. I need it to stop.’
‘I know you do, and it will, but for now just breathe as much as you can. For your baby.’
She nodded with resignation, slipping back into her role at the Berghof – the dutiful, obliging mistress.
Christa and I spent the next half hour moving Eva around, to the bathroom and back, distracting her from the heavy swell in her buttocks, which broke into a brief push at the peak of some contractions. ‘Just breathe through it, Eva, blow your breath out, blow out the candle in front of you,’ we urged through each bout of pain.
‘I’m trying, Anke,’ she moaned, eyelids at half-mast. ‘I’m trying so hard.’
Finally, there was no holding back. Pain erupted and a streak of blood came through like lava as she bore uncontrollably – Christa and I felt its power, and no amount of coaching would dampen this brute force. Perhaps it was Eva’s former fitness that showed through again, because I could feel no more cervix as I eased inside. The baby’s head was low, just half a finger’s length away, and moving further forward under my fingers with a contraction.
‘That’s amazing, Eva!’ I couldn’t help the joy and relief in my voice. ‘You can push your baby.’
She looked at me, as if I was an apparition. ‘Really? I thought it was too early. I thought I shouldn’t yet.’ Her face was flushed and sweat had gathered at the roots of her hair. Now, though, she looked more alive than in recent weeks, ready to receive her child. Just that news had galvanised her, and she visibly gathered energy.
I was prepared for a lengthy pushing stage and I told Eva simply to ‘go with urge’ for now. It was noon; without the doctor’s knowledge we weren’t yet on a timeline, and the baby’s heartbeat was normal. By one o’clock, though, I would need to send word that Eva was fully dilated, and the clock would be ticking. We had less than an hour to make some progress and get a head start. I sent Christa for some air and to gather more tea and supplies, as we settled ourselves in.
The German Midwife: A new historical romance for 2019 from the USA Today best seller. Page 24