The Dressmaker's War

by Mary Chamberlain

  “We should be grateful and thank the Lord,” Sister Brigitte said when they arrived in Munich six days later and understood what they had to do. “Our vocation is to help the elderly infirm, no matter where they are.” She looked at Ada then. “Or who.” Sister Monica must have told her, Get the measure of her. Mustn’t say a word out of place, Ada thought.

  Ada didn’t agree with Sister Brigitte. These people were the enemy, after all, no matter how old or sick they were.

  —

  THERE HAD BEEN one bucket in that carriage. People stood in their soiled clothes, weeping with shame. Ada’s nostrils clogged with her own fetid stench, her throat and mouth dry as sand. Clackety clack, clackety clack. The train had stopped. There was shouting outside. The sides of the cars had been let down, and the prisoners blinked in the light, took deep breaths like gasping fish, stumbled over the bodies of the dead and dying inside. The station sign read MÜNCHEN. “Bavaria,” Sister Brigitte had hissed, “Catholic.” As if it made a difference. Ada had no idea where Bavaria was, and didn’t care. She wanted to run away, or die. Let them shoot her, blast her apart, far from here. But she was too weak to run and too scared.

  —

  THEY WEREN’T ALLOWED to talk when they were working in the home, not to themselves or anybody. Even though it wasn’t a prison, they were prisoners, forced laborers, with guards everywhere. The old-age home was a large establishment, men only, former army officers and retired people, professionals, somebodies, who could pay their way. The healthy ones were free to come and go and walk round. Widowers, for the most part, who had no idea how to look after themselves once their wives had died, and didn’t want a housekeeper. They had a comfortable sitting room and a spacious dining hall, and a large conservatory with doors that opened to the air. The infirm ones were much older, lived in the hospital attached. The guards came into their wards, pointing batons and shouting at them and all the other women working there, Polish women, large P’s pinned to their threadbare clothes. They were forced to scrub the wards, do the heavy laundry, dig the graves, and work the vegetable patch.

  “Courtesy costs nothing,” Sister Brigitte said in one of her nightly homilies. “Even if we’re not allowed to talk to them. The Polish women are prisoners, too, like us. Forced to work like slaves, against their will. So smile at them. Allow them to pass. Nod your acknowledgment. Remember, they’re as frightened and lonely as we are.”

  More frightened, Ada thought, the way they turned frantic eyes to make sure no guard had seen, shook their heads at her, Don’t make trouble for us. Don’t make it worse.

  The nuns were allowed to take the sick old people into the garden, to push their beds outside and let them soak in the sun and breathe the air. The summer had been hot, but now it was October and the temperatures dropped to freezing at night. There was no heating in their room, and Ada wondered what it would be like in the dead of winter, with the drafts from the window that wouldn’t shut, and a single blanket on each bed.

  “We’re lucky to be alive,” Sister Brigitte said, “and busy. The devil makes work for idle hands.”

  The old people were fed well. Those who were fit helped the prisoners in the gardens. They grew vegetables, but the SS took most of the produce and there was little for them. The feeble were tied to their beds, liquid dribbled into their mouths. The nuns ate cabbage soup and dumplings, and Ada put on weight.

  —

  “CAN I HAVE a word, Sister Clara?” Sister Brigitte said one evening in late October as they climbed the stairs to their attic room. Ada wondered what she’d done. Perhaps she’d talked in her sleep, or swore. Given away secrets, not that she had many left. Sister Brigitte knew she wasn’t a real nun, and maybe she knew what Sister Monica had guessed, that she hadn’t been a real wife either. Or perhaps she had some news. Ada knew she’d spoken to the guard—not spoken, because she didn’t speak German—but drawn a red cross and pointed. “Because,” she explained to them, “they can let our families know.”

  Perhaps there was news of Stanislaus. He was here, in Germany, had traced her, had come to save her. I lost my way that night, Ada. Come back to me. She would, too. Forgive him. Just a misunderstanding.

  “I can’t help noticing,” Sister Brigitte said. She sat on the lower bunk, tapped the space next to her for Ada to sit. “That you haven’t had your monthlies. Is there anything you need to tell me?”

  Ada shrugged. “It’s the shock.” Her mother used to say it does that to women. “And the worries. And the tiredness.”

  “And do you feel sick?”

  “Only when I have to lay them out. I can’t stand the bodies, you see. The smell.”

  “You were married?” Sister Brigitte wasn’t listening to what Ada was saying, otherwise she wouldn’t ask such silly things.

  “Yes, but—” Ada stopped herself. She couldn’t say not really, in case Sister Brigitte didn’t know the truth.

  “And the marriage was consummated?”

  This was nothing to do with Sister Brigitte.

  “When was the last time you were with your husband?”

  Ada wanted to say Be quiet.

  “Are you expecting a baby?” Sister Brigitte’s question made her shiver.

  She hadn’t given it a moment’s thought. A baby. Of course not. But the evening he’d left in Namur. She had been woozy, Stanislaus had been on top of her. She’d felt him thrust inside her. It had hurt. She had been damp when he moved away, had bled a little. He hadn’t worn a rubber.

  Ada sat on the bunk, staring at her folded hands. Now Sister Brigitte had raised the possibility, it made sense. No periods. She’d put on weight. She’d even felt fluttering inside her. What did they call it? Quickening. She’d thought it was something she’d eaten, or swallowed.

  “Didn’t you know?” Sister Brigitte said. Ada shook her head, stunned. How could she have a baby? Where could she have one? Where could she keep it?

  “What am I going to do?” She heard her own voice thin as a reed, felt her stomach floundering. Pregnant. What if the Germans found out?

  She couldn’t be pregnant. She only did it that one time without a rubber. No one gets pregnant that easily, everybody knows that. A baby.

  “You’re very quiet,” Sister Brigitte said, patting Ada’s knee. “God will show us the way.”

  “Us?”

  She had put them all in danger. They’d all pay for it when she had the baby and the Germans found out she wasn’t a nun, that the nuns had lied and covered for her. She began to panic.

  “I could say I was raped,” Ada said. It was obvious what to do. “By a soldier. That might make it all right.”

  “It would be a lie.”

  “Maybe I need to tell one then,” she said. She swallowed hard. She’d become good at lying. “Would they let me keep the baby?”

  “When you make a lie,” Sister Brigitte said, “you have to live it, and sooner or later, the truth comes out. The lie, and living the lie.”

  “But the baby?”

  Sister Brigitte shook her head. “Perhaps a good German family can adopt it.”

  “Take my baby?”

  “Sister Clara, we can’t keep the baby. How will we hide it? Keep it quiet?”

  She couldn’t give up the baby, not to the Germans. She’d escape. Take some of the old people’s clothes, or the other prisoners’ clothes. Rags. She wouldn’t look like a nun then. She’d have to get past the guards. Pretend she was one of the Poles. They slept somewhere else at night. Slip away, when no one was looking. Maybe there was a German who’d take pity on her. Help her get home. Or find Stanislaus. He’d come back to her then, take care of them both. Always wanted a son, Ada.

  But she’d never find him. She’d been a fool, believing him. She should have stood up to him that night in Namur, their last night, before the Germans came. I’m too tired, Stanislaus, too tired. Now here she was, a prisoner of war, and in the family way. Alive only because she was living like a nun, living a lie.

  And if s
he did escape, what if she was caught? Sister Brigitte and the others would suffer. She could see the guard cracking his baton. Where has she gone? Tell us. Sister Brigitte wouldn’t flinch. But the others would. Mousy Sister Agatha especially. And if she stayed, and they found out? What then? It was hopeless. There was no way out.

  “Let’s kneel and pray,” Sister Brigitte said. Ada eased herself off the bunk and sank to her knees. She calculated she must be about five months gone. Pregnant. Imprisoned. She shut her eyes. Hot, angry tears rolled down her cheeks.

  THE STONE FLOOR was cold. The balls of her bare feet were numb, her toes frozen, curled round the edge of the slab. Her legs were deadweights on her body. Moonlight brightened the landing below, an oblong of white against the black of the stairwell.

  She swung forward, teetered, pulled back.

  There were fifteen risers on this flight, fifteen on the flight below. She had counted them. The house in Theed Street only had twelve, but it had been enough for their neighbor to fall and miscarry.

  Her shift was thin, and Ada shivered. She gripped the rail with one hand, pressed against the wall with the other. A single push.

  It was a mortal sin, but it wasn’t just for her. It was for everyone, for the other sisters who would suffer. Count. On three, she told herself, on three.

  She arched her back, hands firm against the walls on either side. All she had to do was swing and let go. What if she broke a bone instead? Cracked her head open?

  One.

  She lifted one foot, then the other. These steps were stone. The stairs in Theed Street were wood. Their neighbor only had a few bruises and a bump on her forehead.

  Two.

  She took a deep breath. It was a long way to the pocket of moonlight on the landing below. The flight was steep and dark.

  A door opened far below, and she heard voices. She leant forward, lost her footing, the shift tangling round her legs. She tried to stop her fall, felt her head crash on a step, her back crack against the wall, her arm buckle beneath her, her body ricochet from side to side. She heard herself scream, a piercing yell that sounded far away. A light snapped on.

  She was lying crooked on the stairs, one leg straddled across the other. She hadn’t fallen far. Five steps, at the most, though it had felt like more.

  “Was ist los?” A German soldier stood over her, one boot close to her face, the muzzle of his gun pointing down. Her head throbbed, and there was a shooting pain in her side. She tried to talk, heard herself barking as she gasped to catch her breath.

  “Sister Clara,” Sister Brigitte’s voice was above her, “are you all right?”

  The soldier moved his boot onto a lower tread.

  “She fell,” Sister Brigitte said as she ran down the stairs. “She sleepwalks, that’s all.”

  Ada could see Sister Brigitte waving her hand, dismissing him. The soldier hesitated, turned, and walked back down the stairs.

  “YOU’VE AT LEAST one cracked rib,” Sister Brigitte said, “if not two. And a nasty bump on your temple. But at least you haven’t lost the baby.”

  The pain jarred every time she breathed. Ada lay on her back. She couldn’t turn; it hurt too much. All this for nothing. Perhaps the shock would do it. Perhaps that was how it worked. You lost the baby after. She’d thumped it round enough. Surely it would loosen its grip, flush itself away.

  “Poor little mite.” Sister Brigitte was feeling Ada’s stomach. “He must have thought he was on a helter-skelter.”

  Did Sister Brigitte believe the story she’d told the soldier? Sleepwalking. Tripped on her shift. Lost her balance. Perhaps she did; she couldn’t see that Ada had done this deliberately. Sister Brigitte called the baby “he.” He. As if the baby was already a person. Ada wished she had died. Broken her neck, burst her skull. But the stairs were too narrow. She’d got wedged. She was still here, alive, in Nazi Germany, with sore ribs and a throbbing head. And a baby growing inside her. Ada felt sick.

  “It’s all right,” Sister Brigitte was saying. “I know what I’m doing. I’m a trained nurse. Just lie here and keep still.”

  Ada lay awake all night, hoping the pains would start, the blood would trickle along her thighs, the sheet become sticky beneath her. Her ribs hurt when she breathed. She heard the pigeons scratching on the attic roof, their soft coo-coo as the gray dawn filtered through the tiny skylight. She missed her mother, wished she was here with her. Not that her mother would have approved, her not married and this. She’d have to fib. Tripped down the stairs. An accident. Her mother would know what to do. Rest. Keep still. Perhaps she’d have the bed to herself. Cissie would have to sleep on the floor, and Gladys on the chair bed in the front room, where Uncle Jack had slept before he died. Cocoa. She’d drink cocoa with lots of sugar, swirling eddies in the cup, velvet vapors.

  She was aware of Sister Brigitte leading the prayers, washing her hands and face, tiptoeing out of the room. She woke as Sister Brigitte slipped an arm behind her. “Just sit up and lean forward,” the sister said.

  Ada pushed herself up, wincing with every move. She could feel Sister Brigitte pulling up her shift, exposing her naked breasts. Ada crossed her arms in front.

  “Well, there’s a modest one.” Sister Brigitte was laughing. “You don’t think I haven’t seen it all? Stretch out your arms.” Ada felt as if her skeleton was being pulled apart. Sister Brigitte wrapped her chest in a winding cloth, round and round and round.

  “It won’t make it better,” she said. “But at least you can stand. You have to work.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have no choice. Offer it up.” She looked hard at Ada, crooking her arm. Ada gripped it, pulled herself off the bed. Sister Brigitte took Ada’s chin and turned her face so she could look her straight in the eye. “That was a sinful thing to do. I trust you won’t do anything so wicked again. Pray to the Lord to forgive you.”

  Sister Brigitte knew the truth. Of course. Ada shook her head. She had no idea what to do now.

  SHE FELT THE skirt of her tunic snag as she walked past the old man. She’d seen him before. A widower, one of the healthy ones who lived like kings in the residential part of the home, waited on hand and foot. She stopped and turned. He had caught it on the end of his walking stick. He was laughing, a tall man in a dark gray loden waistcoat buttoned to the neck, a pale shirt, and green moleskin trousers. He was handsome, in a way. His hair was white and his eyes the same translucent blue as Stanislaus’s. For one giddy moment, Ada wondered if he and Stanislaus were related.

  “You’re a very pretty nun,” he said. Ada felt the heat rising up her neck and hoped the wimple hid her blush. “What’s your name?”

  Ada looked round her. They were forbidden to talk. There was no one in sight, apart from the patients. “You speak English,” Ada whispered.

  “A little,” he said. “But you forget a language if you don’t use it. What’s your name?”

  She was about to say Ada. So easy to be tricked.

  “Sister Clara.”

  “Sister Clara,” he said. “And before, before you were a nun?”

  She wasn’t sure if she should tell. Did nuns do that? But it felt good to speak English. The silence was unbearable during the day.

  “It’s all right,” he said, as if he could read her thoughts. “You can tell me.”

  She looked round her. They were alone. “Ada.”

  “Ada,” he said, “short for Adelheid. It’s a very German name. Did you know that?”

  She shook her head. No one was at the near door, or the far door. She wanted to keep talking. “And your name?”

  He shook his stick free of her tunic and pulled himself up tall. “I am Herr Professor Dieter Weiss.”

  “That’s a lot of names.” Ada wanted to giggle. She hadn’t laughed, she realized, for months. She winced. Her ribs hurt. They were still alone, no guard to crack his whip and shout, “Es ist verboten, zu sprechen.”

  “Herr is German for Mister, Professor is German for profes
sor, Dieter is my Christian name, and Weiss is my family name.”

  “I’ve never met a professor,” Ada said. She liked this old man. He had a name. It made him a person, not a sack of flesh she had to wash and feed.

  Herr Weiss smiled. “I am retired now, but I used to teach at the Gymnasium. You English would call it a high school, or a grammar school.” He lifted his stick and pointed at the window, through which Ada could see one of the soldiers leaning against a tree smoking. “These are my boys. I taught them all. Barely out of breeches.”

  “What did you teach?”

  “History,” Herr Weiss said, “German history. Would you sit and talk with me?”

  Ada looked round her. “It’s not allowed.”

  “Why isn’t it allowed?”

  Ada shrugged. “It isn’t.”

  “But this establishment is my home now. I will talk with whomever I wish in my own home.” He waved his stick at the figures through the window. “Don’t worry about them. I still have respect, as their former teacher.”

  He laughed. His teeth were clean and even, his face shaved and fresh. He didn’t smell like the others. Ada needed to sit.

  “Follow me,” he said, “to the conservatory. We will blazen it out.”

  “Blazen?”

  “Is that not the word? What do I mean?”

  “Brazen, perhaps,” Ada said. “It means to be bold.”

  “You see?” He took her by the elbow, steered her down the corridor. “You are good for me already.”

  Ada let him guide her. Helping an old man, Commandant, that’s all, just along to the summer room. Then it struck her. If he would teach her German in return, if she could learn to speak it, she’d be all right, be able to get round. And who knew? Maybe she could get away. She held his stick while he lowered himself into a chair.