Shining Through

by Susan Isaacs

  And then we were in the air, flying over Portugal, Spain and France, on our way to Germany.

  Konrad Friedrichs’s house was pretty much what you’d expect of a high German official who’d been working in Berlin for thirty-five years and never married. But it took me two days to realize that. For the first forty-eight hours, I baked a cake, prepared his two favorite dinners, veal cutlets, Naturschnitzel, one night and codfish—the world’s most disgusting food—the next. Somehow I managed to act in such a way that neither Herr Friedrichs nor his housekeeper noticed I was hysterical. But I was. As I grated a potato, I heard bombs dropping no more than a few miles away. All I wanted to do was crouch in a corner and cover my head with my arms and scream. Scream. Instead, I grated.

  The house was a modest one of brick in the Wilmersdorf area, about ten minutes from the foreign office. It wasn’t modest in an I’m-just-a-civil-servant way. It was on a pretty tree-shaded street with a lot of other small, well-kept houses. In a time of shortages and austerity—of wooden and cloth shoes instead of leather, when the bakers sold only day-old bread, to discourage demand for anything fresh and appealing—all the houses here had window boxes freshly planted with orange fall flowers. It was pretty obvious that this was a neighborhood for the privileged. Privileged but not prime; Goebbels didn’t live around the corner.

  My room was in the basement. To say it was small makes it sound wildly luxurious. The furnishings were a cotton rug (which back in Ridgewood would have been called a substandard bath mat) and a bed—a mattress on a wood frame. There was a strip of window, painted black, just under the low ceiling. It didn’t open. It was a very poor room, but my room at home had been poor. Still, at least there’d been a lace doily on my night table, and a calendar with a picture of a girl with long hair on a windswept moor. This room, though, was so empty it was mean, as if someone had deliberately stripped it. The first night, I’d gone out of the room to see if maybe there was a chest of drawers outside that I’d missed, but all I found was the coal chute, when I banged my head on it.

  If I’d gone out ten minutes later, I would have banged my head on Konrad Friedrichs. It must have been right around midnight. All of a sudden, the door to my room opened and there he was, in pajamas, slippers and a bathrobe. No one had even suggested that this would be part of the job.

  In fact, it wasn’t. I saw that right away, when I watched him reddening at my expression. He closed the door behind him. “This means nothing,” he said. His voice was lower than a whisper; it was more like a whoosh of air. “My housekeeper is old, deaf, but I must maintain a fiction—in case. Therefore, to knock on your door would be inappropriate.”

  “I’m a domestic, so you can just walk right in?” I couldn’t believe this guy.

  “I am not interested in your egalitarian sensibilities. Now, shall we get on with it?”

  I motioned for him to sit near the foot of the bed. I sat near the head, or what I’d decided was the head; there was no pillow. “Where does your housekeeper sleep?” I asked.

  “On the other side of the furnace, the far side of the basement.”

  “She has no idea…what I am?”

  “No!”

  “Does anybody—”

  “Please, you are not to interrupt. I will tell you all you need to know. If inadvertently I leave something out, you may ask a question before I leave.” He blew what I guess was a speck of dust off the lapel of his bathrobe. “As you may know, I have permitted you to stay in my house only because Herr Forest”—Forest was Norman Weekes’s code name—“put undue pressure on me.” His thin lips drew so tight together that they became invisible; only the deep, resentful vertical lines that were etched into his upper lip remained. “A man in my position is entitled to better treatment. I am idealist and a good German. For years I have passed information to Herr Forest in the hope that his…your people would wake up to the danger. I have risked my life in doing so, and what does he do in return? He gives me you to take care of, someone so unschooled that she is not fit to enter a house through the front door. You, who are to replace a clever, sophisticated, native-born German.”

  “I was their only choice.”

  “That is painfully clear. And so what can happen? They send in an amateur, she gets caught, and I—who for years have been above suspicion—am suspect. It is wrong!”

  What was I going to do? Argue with him? “You’re right. It is wrong. Terrible. Outrageous.”

  He only seethed on. “The situation—seeing that you are placed in a certain official’s household—compels me to associate with…with resistance types I would much prefer to shun entirely. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You only pass information to Herr Forest. What goes on among…these people in Berlin is of no interest to you.”

  “That is correct. They plot over caviar. They care nothing about the Fatherland, only about their own circumstances. The degree to which they believe that that man will bring us to utter ruin is the degree to which they oppose him.”

  His bearing never relaxed, not even when he sat on that terrible mattress, with what had to be a spring poking his behind. Back home, I thought, only a person with a chest full of medals, a mahogany desk at the War Department and an office full of visitors would sit like that. I remembered walking through the War Department with Edward one day and glancing into an open office, with just that kind of officer: upright, his left side just slightly lower than his right from the weight of his medals. A real stiff, right? The guy suddenly noticed me and blew me a kiss. I’d kept going, and Edward had asked, What are you smiling about? Oh, nothing, I’d answered.

  But then I caught myself. Forget back home. In Training School, they warned us: Think only of the present. The future, when it is of immediate concern. Never the past: The past will devastate you. And when you think, think in the language of the country you have been sent to. Speaking it is not enough. To survive, you must be Czech or French or Hungarian. Or German.

  I sat there in that impoverished little room trying to be fair, to admire Konrad Friedrichs, not detest him. If someone spends his whole life agonizing about the fate of his fatherland instead of what movie to see over the weekend or if he’ll ever fall in love or grow bald or get to visit Florida, he’s not going to develop a rollicking sense of humor.

  And he had to be frightened, doing what he was doing—living in this Nazi hell he hated, spying for the United States—all those years. And he had to be bitter too; I’d clearly been shoved down his throat. Instead of being treated as a treasure by Norman Weekes, Rex was being exploited. The OSS was treating him the way they would routinely treat some two-bit adventurer in an ascot who hangs around the resistance for thrills, not like the paragon of virtues—honor, bravery—that he was.

  “You will continue to work in my kitchen as you have been working for the next four days. On that day, Saturday, I will suggest to my housekeeper that she deserves a vacation. I will give what, to her, is a great deal of money and a train ticket so that she can visit her family in Würzburg for three or four weeks. She will think to herself that I am a foolish old man to take up with someone like you, but of course, she will not say anything. She will go.”

  The section of the mattress I was sitting on was incredibly lumpy. I edged back and tucked one of my legs under me. Herr Friedrichs’s nostrils flared wide and then closed, and you didn’t have to be his best friend to figure out this was a sign of intense displeasure.

  “You will please,” he ordered, “sit like a proper German and not move about out of control as if…you are listening to jazz music. Now, once my housekeeper is gone, your training will begin. You are, as they claimed, a good cook…for those with a taste for the cuisine of common people. But where you are going…you must be taught to cook and serve in a more elegant manner.”

  His house wasn’t exactly the sort of place where you’d find footmen slinging caviar at guests in white tie and tails. But if Rex wanted elegance…I smiled and said, “I’ll be ha
ppy to try and learn whatever you like. I realize I’m not a professional cook and—”

  “Do not interrupt! In three to four weeks you must learn to be an accomplished chef. That was the best cover they could find, because it suits Herr Forest’s purpose perfectly. The plan is to get you into my colleague’s household.” Rex’s mouth turned down in disgust at the thought of the kind of person who had risen to become his colleague in the foreign office. “You are to be in the household but not of it. You know our language, but you do not know our ways. So it is best that you be hidden away in the kitchen.

  “Now, this colleague is a peacock who fancies himself a man of the world, a gourmet. His chef will have an accident in the next week or two.” He saw I was going to interrupt again, and he cut me off. “I am assured it will not be a fatal—or even terribly serious—accident. Two weeks after that, a very respected person will mention what a glorious meal was served at my house and offer to help this official secure your services.”

  “What if the chef wants his job back after the accident?”

  “Be assured we have considered that possibility. While he is recuperating, he will be offered another position, at a far greater salary.”

  “What’s the name of the official I’ll be working for?” I knew, naturally. Norman Weekes had given me his name. But I wanted to see how far Herr Friedrichs, Rex, would trust a fellow spy.

  “Quiet!” Not very far. “You will know what you need to know at the proper time. It serves no purpose for you to possess this information now. So I will continue, and you will stop asking questions. This official for whom you will work has been chosen because he is known to bring papers—top-secret papers—from his office to his home to work on.”

  “I know. They told me—”

  “Silence! This practice of his is, of course, forbidden. But those who know of his habit are in no position to suggest that he stop it.

  “As far as I am concerned, there is only one redeeming aspect to this…this sanctuary cum cooking school I have been forced to run. The person they have chosen to teach you the fine points is someone I know, someone from the Abwehr. This individual comes from one of the oldest and finest families in Germany, and is the only member of the resistance…whom I consider a true patriot.”

  He stood up very slowly. At first I thought it was his age, but then I realized he was being careful that the bed didn’t creak. “This individual will be risking everything to help you and your countrymen.” His nostrils flared again, and you could see more than his anger as he spoke of Americans; you could see his contempt. “Your imprudent, arrogant ‘freedom-lovers.’” He put his hand on the door handle. “Now listen to me! You must not compromise this individual. You are to keep quiet about your background, your destination, your mission. You must do nothing—nothing—to endanger…” He paused, took a deep breath and regained his composure. “You will be taught what is elegant, what is correct, by one who is…flawless. Be silent. Be obedient. And be grateful!”

  The past will devastate you, they’d said. So what was I supposed to think about, those first few nights in that cell in Herr Friedrichs’s basement? The graciousness of my host? The warmth of his housekeeper? When I heard him say “my housekeeper,” I pictured a lovable, pudgy old family retainer with a white apron, someone who’d have tea with me before she went off on her vacation and tell me where she kept the towels. Or someone with a quiet smile, who would nod, listening to you, as she peeled an apple in one long strip—like my Grandma Olga.

  But Frau Gerlach could have posed for the witch in Hansel and Gretel; she had claw hands, and the bottom of her face looked more like an elbow than a chin. She had so many warts that you couldn’t help counting them. Her personality matched her looks. She hissed “Hure”—whore—at me a couple of times and wouldn’t eat anything I cooked. She kept a crock of cheese in the refrigerator, and when she came in to eat, she shooed me out with insane waves of her hands, as if she was getting rid of a rodent.

  When I turned out the lamp, my room with its painted window—cheaper than a blackout curtain—fell into complete darkness. But even if I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have slept. Airplanes droned above the house, and my stomach squeezed into a hard knot. Then came the muffled blast of distant bombing and, closer, the demented siren of police cars. And, because my window was level with the street, the sound of feet. The second night, somebody stopped right outside, and I lay in the blackness in absolute panic, saying to myself, They’re just lighting a cigarette or they have a pebble in their shoe or…I can’t stand this. I can’t take another second.

  So I thought about America—and I thought about it in English. Like a sick baby who gets a warm bottle, I wasn’t helped, but I was comforted. I thought about growing up in Ridgewood, where the Irish kids used to call the German kids “Heinies” and make fun of German last names: “Nudelfludel!” They’d howl with laughter. “Von Stupelpoop!” And we’d feel so superior that we never even called them dumb micks. Sure, it was prejudice, but from where I sat (lay) it seemed innocent. You got it out of your system, and sooner or later you got over the fear, the strangeness; the Irish and the German kids grew up and joined the same building-trades union, sometimes became friends or even got married.

  I came up with all sorts of pictures I didn’t even know I had filed away: How a horse-drawn truck came rattling up Fresh Pond Road in the summer with watermelons. Getting off the subway at Seneca Avenue after work on December nights, looking down from the el platform and seeing everybody’s Christmas lights. Going to my graduation from Grover Cleveland, walking slow because my mother was wearing four-inch heels, and how Olga stopped three or four times to adjust my cap and the tassel. “A scholar!” she said to my father, and the funny thing was, even though I said, “Grandma, it’s just high school,” I knew she really meant it.

  Naturally, I thought about John. I played “If it’s 3 A.M. in Berlin, what time is it in Washington?” It didn’t matter, because whatever hour it was, in my mind he was always with Nan. I envisioned him at his desk, on the phone with her, or at the house, listening to music with her in his arms, the way I’d found them, or up in the bedroom; she’d run her finger over her old monogram on the pillowcases and the top hem of the sheet, then run her finger over his lips and say, Oh John, being with you like this is so wholly, unequivocally right. And he’d probably do something like kiss her hand and quote some poem they both knew in French. And she’d say, Mais oui, mon amour. But then she’d hesitate: We’re in limbo, my darling. I hope you realize that. I can’t believe…She just disappeared?

  In a manner of speaking, he’d say.

  Do you know where she is?

  I can’t…

  Oh, I know you can’t tell me. You’re right not to. But how long do we have to live like this, sneaking, pretending? Oh, John, this has to be resolved. When will she come back?

  And he’d say, I don’t know, my beloved. Maybe six months from now. Maybe never.

  That Saturday, Frau Gerlach, warts and all, left for Würzburg. An hour later, my teacher, the individual from one of Germany’s oldest and finest families, walked into the kitchen carrying a mesh shopping bag filled with groceries. She wore a burgundy skirt and a cashmere sweater set that was such a pale pink it was almost white. She held out her hand and said, “Margarete von Eberstein.” I’d been up to my elbows in herring, so I quickly wiped my right hand on my apron, held it out and explained, “Herring.” It was only when she started to laugh that I added, “Lina Albrecht.”

  She pulled off her cardigan, tossed it onto a chair, pushed up the sleeves of her pullover and demanded, “How is old Konrad treating you?” Margarete possessed two qualities that I hadn’t seen in any of the hundreds of Germans I’d met in the past two years: vitality and humor. She wasn’t beautiful, or even pretty. And despite the “von,” her bones were no more aristocratic than mine were. But she had dazzling blue-gray eyes and a wonderful smile. “Is he as condescending as ever?”

  “Pretty much,” I
admitted.

  “I know he is a…special friend of yours, perhaps, so forgive me, but he is such a dreadful snob. He adores me without qualification. It’s so tedious.” Margarete’s energy was a little overwhelming. As she spoke, she whirled around the kitchen, grabbing a crock of vinegar from the shelf, a paring knife from a drawer. She plunged her hand into the sack of flour, rubbed a bit of it between her fingers and made a face at the texture. “Nothing has been good since those bastards came in—in ’33.”

  “Don’t you think you should be a little more careful?”

  “Why? Will you turn me in?” Before I could answer, she said, “Lina, if you and I and our friends are going to succeed, we must be very, very careful. But there are occasional moments when there is nothing to fear, and we must take advantage of them, glory in them, because they allow us the chance to be what we truly are: human beings.” She took an apple from a basket, quickly cored it, sliced it, and gave me half. “Now let’s talk about German cuisine. Meat and potatoes. All over Europe they think of it as banal. Leaden. Greasy. Olive oil for the Italians, peanut oil for the French, butter for the English, and for the Germans—bacon grease.”

  “Don’t forget lard.”

  “No, we mustn’t forget lard. Lovely, light, delicious lard. But what I want to show you is fine German cooking, the sort you must be doing to please the person for whom you will be working.” I wanted to say something, but I was chewing a piece of apple. Margarete held up her hand. “No names,” she warned, but then she flashed her fabulous smile. “No descriptions, either. Don’t tell me, ‘The man I’m working for is a bald dwarf who lunches with Rommel’s wife every other Thursday.’ The less we know about each other’s…activities, the safer we will be.” She reached into her shopping bag and pulled out a large package wrapped in white butcher paper. “Today, we are going to roast veal and prepare sauerkraut—but sauerkraut in champagne sauce.” She pulled out a small bottle. I glanced at it: French champagne.