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 East. 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 awkwardly. ‘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.’
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 i
n 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.’
A Woman of War Page 22