Fraulein M.

by Caroline Woods

  When she disembarked in the spider-shaped square of Nollendorfplatz, the Hercules fountain had been turned off. The electric streetlights were coming on, one by one, each with a corona of mist. She told herself if she raced to the other side of the square by the time the last lamp popped on, then Grete wouldn’t have found out.

  She didn’t make it.

  By the time she arrived at the apartment, snot had pooled beneath her nose, and she’d lost feeling in her fingertips. Frau Pelzer had gone home for the night, leaving one lamp burning in the parlor. Berni kicked the door shut with a bang and dropped her coat on the floor, then collapsed into a dining chair. A platter of fish pickled with pink peppercorns sat underneath a plate. She watched ants swarm a discarded crust of bread.

  The door to the apartment swung open, and Anita bounded inside, skin bright red from the cold. “You didn’t hear me calling? I was right behind you in the square.” Her face was split by an earnest, vulnerable grin. “They’ve offered to give me free beard epilation at the institute.”

  Normally Berni would have teased her gently—she had never heard Anita mention her beard before—but she remained motionless, her eyes fixed on the table.

  Anita fell into the chair opposite her and tucked her hair behind her ears. “They’ve signed me into a therapy group as well, to meet on Thursdays—”

  “Wonderful. Now you’ll be expecting me to go with you every week.”

  Anita’s big eyes, their lashes curled and blackened, blinked sadly. “I can only guess that the reason you’re being so horrible is that Helmut has ended it. You’re better off without him.”

  “What do you know?”

  “Have you . . .” Anita reached for the wick of one of the candles on the table and pinched it off. “Have you heard from Grete?”

  “I haven’t. She still won’t return my letters. But Helmut tells me she is in Potsdam, working for a vegetable of an old woman.”

  Anita exhaled. “So she’s safe.”

  The word safe made Berni twitch. It was the second time today she had heard it. “As if ‘safe’ is all that matters.” All the trouble, she had been thinking lately, had begun with Anita.

  Anita’s smile faltered. “Well, it is something. Knowing she’s cared for.”

  “She was cared for by nuns.” Berni stood, the chair legs groaning across the wooden floor. “That is not all she needs.” She couldn’t remember feeling so tired. She longed for her bed, where she could cry in peace, really let it out. The sound of pumps clattered behind her, and Anita came to block the entrance to Berni’s room, still brimming with energy.

  “Come, I’ll put on some music and you can forget Helmut.”

  “Why did you do it?” Berni snapped.

  Anita’s face crumbled. For all the effort that went into the sculpted eyebrows, the stained lips, she could do nothing to mask her emotions. “Do what?” Her voice cracked a little.

  “Do what? Do what? Put my sister’s hand on your—”

  Anita exhaled. “I’ve told you I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “A lot of good your apologies do me now.”

  “But I am sorry.” Anita stiffened. “You forget I don’t see my own family. Not ever. I don’t even try to write. You—you forget.”

  “Is that what you meant to do? Drive a wedge into my family so we’d be the same?”

  “No!” Anita grasped Berni by the arms, trying to get Berni to look at her. “That was never my intention. But we can be the sisters now, Berni. The doctors will make a real girl of me, just like Grete. And we’ll be the sisters.”

  Berni shoved her aside. As though Grete’s gender were the only thing that mattered. What Berni wanted to do, even more now than at the Silver Star, was throw Anita at the wall, really hurt her. Instead she blew through her curtain, into her cold room. In the distance she heard sirens. She drew the drapes over her windows to shut out as much light as possible, then got into bed without bothering to wash her feet. When she opened her eyes Anita stood on the threshold, rubbing one leg against the other like a fly.

  “Go away,” Berni croaked.

  Anita sat on the edge of her pallet, shoulders hunched. She breathed a few times.

  “When I was a child,” she began, her voice low, unaffected, “all I wanted was a Käthe Kruse doll. The one with brown yarn hair and a red calico dress and apron. I wanted that doll so badly. I’d seen little Käthe sitting in the window of a fabric store near my mother’s house. A fabric store, not a toy store, because they meant to encourage mothers to make doll clothes for their daughters. My mother wasn’t much of a seamstress, but I thought that sounded so lovely.”

  Berni rolled over so that she could look at the ceiling and listen. A string of sirens had whined past and then faded, and all she could hear now was Anita tracing stars on the quilt.

  “Every year when my mother asked what I wanted for Christmas, I said, ‘Käthe Kruse, Mutti. Käthe Kruse.’ She said it was wrong for boys to play with dolls, that I’d be teased, that I’d be beaten. I was beaten anyway, I told her, so I might as well have Käthe. Instead I’d get wooden blocks, a train on a string. My little sister, Birge, got a blonde Käthe a few years later. She let the hair unravel and turn dirty. Sometimes I kept Birge’s Käthe under my quilt. I knew if I’d been a girl there’d be Puppen under the tree with my name on them.”

  “And what was your name?” Berni whispered.

  The response was barely audible. “Otto.”

  Otto. Berni formed the word with her mouth, giving it no sound.

  “Maybe I mixed up your sister with mine,” Anita said.

  They passed a while in silence. Then Anita got up and went to her room. Still Berni hid, burrowed in her blankets.

  January 7, 1933

  My dear Grete-bird,

  I am always let down when Christmas is over, not because I will miss it but because the season is never what I imagine it will be. These past several years I’ve spent the months leading up to the holiday imagining this will finally be the Yuletide you and I spend together, that I’ll have figured out a way for you and I to set up a life of our own. We’re not a week into the new year and I already feel hope rising; you’ll read enough of these letters that you’ll finally forgive me, and either I’ll come to Potsdam or you’ll return to Berlin. Would you be fine starting out in a shabbier neighborhood, if it means we can live on our own? Kreuzberg? Yes? Good.

  You won’t believe where I’ve spent this afternoon. I’m at a sort of museum. A museum of vice, I suppose. The titles of the books in the shelves would make you blush. Anita is here having an interview. She’s a candidate for an operation that would turn her from a male to a female. Because someone must be cautious I’ve warned her not to hope too high. But I do have hope for her.

  I know Anita is the reason you’re angry with me, and you probably never want to hear her name again. As I’ve mentioned, I don’t blame you, and I’ve given her hell. But I think we might need to forgive her, Bird. It’s taken me a long time to see it, but she hates who she is so much that she’s willing to risk her life to change. Can you imagine knowing you were Margarete and looking down and seeing . . . Hans? It baffles me so thoroughly I think I can forgive. But I won’t until I have your permission. Won’t you write and tell me what you think?

  Whenever it snows I think of you, because I wonder if it’s snowing on you, too. Of course it is; you’re not so far away. I’m sharing the waiting room sofa with a lovely older woman with beautiful white hair. She’s reading Der Zauberberg and keeps stopping so that she can read a line or two to me. Here is a good one: “Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.”

  This woman and I are so peaceful, with the manservant bringing us water from a crystal jug, she with her Mann and I with my copy of Faust, that I can almost forget the nincompoop boys picketing outside. Hitler Youths. They come here every day. Shouldn’t they be working, or attending school, anything other than harassing these people? You agree, yes?

&
nbsp; This old woman is fiery and candid and has just told me she’s been celibate most of her life. I plan to try that myself. Already I have been wearing my worst underwear when I go out with Anita, just to be sure I don’t sleep with anyone. I thought you should know.

  With love,

  Bernadette

  • • •

  February 10, 1933

  Dearest Grete,

  We are living in strange times. With all of the elections last year and the last-minute changes in chancellors and all the resignations, I think I (and most of us) hoped we wouldn’t hear about politics for a while. Now old Hindenburg has reached into his hat and pulled out Charlie Chaplin—excuse me, Herr Hitler. I know a lot of people are waiting to see how he’ll fail. Sonje insists this is the best thing that could have happened, because the debt and unemployment are too much for anyone to handle. She says Hitler will get himself launched out of the chancellor’s office in a few months, just like von Papen and Brüning.

  Still, the Nazis seem to be working fast. I don’t know how it’s been in Potsdam, but here we had tens of thousands of SA parading down Unter den Linden holding lit torches on the night of the 30th. It was, I don’t know—convincing. I do not mean they convinced me to worship Hitler; far from it, but the parade made the appointment seem to mean something. I know that’s what they intended, but still it frightened me, though I wouldn’t tell Sonje. I’m telling you. Are you frightened?

  I’m writing in a café and can hear someone lecturing on the radio, but I can’t tell which of them it is. They’ve put speakers in Nollendorfplatz. A constant stream of Hitler’s and Goebbels’s voices comes at you as you’re waiting for your tram, or as people queue for theater tickets. I don’t know what they think they’ll achieve other than general annoyance. So much of the message is hate-based, about the Jews and the way they sabotaged us in the war, that old story. Occasionally there’s a line about abortion, how it’s caused by women wearing trousers, and I have to laugh so that I won’t cry.

  A boy has just run past with a swastika band on his arm. I understand the appeal the Nazis have for children, non-Jewish children, that is: parades, firelight, drums. And for men, particularly brutish, un-intellectual, unemployed men. Now they’re told to put on black boots, carry flags and torches, and feel important. It’s the women I can’t understand. The Nazis make no secret of the fact that they intend us to leave the professions, the universities, even the conversation to men. And still the women flock to Hitler. You see them pressing their bosoms to his car windows when the motorcades pass. Subjugate us!

  What are they thinking?

  Write about the weather if you prefer not to answer that. Or write just to say you’re alive.

  Your Berni

  • • •

  March 1, 1933

  Grete, when I saw the Reichstag burn I cried your name. Even though I know you are miles away, I worried you’d be caught in the flames. That is how often you are still on my mind.

  They put van der Lubbe in custody toute suite. The police work quickly. However did they manage to catch this Socialist boy, the lone madman, within a few hours?

  They’ve called Sonje’s friend Gerrit in for questioning twice now, to interrogate him about his feelings toward the government. Brave Hitler, outlawing the political parties of his enemies. Who knows what dangers, what terrors we’d be subjected to if we were allowed to continue to think on our own? The Communists were planning a massive uprising, it seems, beginning with van der Lubbe lighting that match. Now, for our protection, bars like the Medvedev have been shuttered. Anita and I will never have the chance to be corrupted at the Eldorado, or to listen to the “deviant” radio channels; they have gone to static. Forget about any newspapers but the Nazi ones. Do you remember Sister Maria teaching us about habeas corpus? In our country people can be detained and held without trial now. All for our protection, thanks be to Herr Göring.

  It hasn’t yet been a hundred days since I saw you, but that was another lifetime. In this Third Reich even our letters are read for our protection, our telephones monitored, for our protection. Guten morgen, Herr Letter Censor! Thank you for your protection!

  I hope you are safe and in good health. My offer to meet, anytime, anyplace, still stands.

  Your Berni

  • • •

  May 12, 1933

  My sister, I hope you are well and safe.

  Just weeks ago, Anita learned she’d been accepted as a patient at the institute I told you about, in the Tiergarten. She’d been accepted for surgery. She might have become what she always wanted. Well, the Hitler Youths who were protesting outside have finally breached its unholy doors. The doctors have fled.

  And the protestors have stripped the library of its unclean books. They have gathered them in a heap and burned them in the plaza in front of the opera. I went to see, and stood at a distance to protect myself from the flames and to keep myself from jumping into the fray. There was paper everywhere, young hands greedy to get it into flammable piles. A river of unruly paper, like nothing I’d ever seen. It slithered out of their hands and spilled down the sidewalk as if trying to escape.

  I saw Rilke verses burn, Kleist’s essays. Anatomy texts. They even burned the black-red-gold flag, the flag of the Republic. They had a bust of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, founder of the institute, on a spike.

  Shouts, laughter, shrieks, mania. No more words to describe it. I tasted the ash of Anita’s and so many others’ hopes.

  I don’t know what else I can say that can be both intimate and public, now that everything is both. No more words. They’ve all been burned.

  Take good care of yourself, my sister, always, always,

  B.

  South Carolina, 1970

  “Come, Janeen, you can tell me now. Have you been here with a boy?”

  “No,” Janeen grumbled, walking her bicycle beside her mother’s as they crunched into the gravel parking lot of the Hollis tract, a swamp of ancient bald cypress and tupelo on the eastern edge of town. “I’ve only come with Dad.”

  She waited for her mother’s face to change, for some note of sorrow upon hearing Remy’s name, but Anita only nodded. She jabbed her kickstand with the toe of her espadrille. “I have heard it’s a popular place where people park, if you know what I mean.”

  “I know what you mean,” Janeen said, watching her mother carefully extricate the urn, its lid taped shut, from the basket on her handlebars.

  A few weeks had passed since her father’s funeral, and they’d come to the swamp to scatter his ashes. Anita seemed to think they’d been sitting around too long. “We need to free him, Liebchen. We must return him to the earth. Ashes to ashes, et cetera.” It had been Janeen’s idea to leave him to rest in a place he’d loved. Her mother would’ve been happy to spread him in the park in the center of town and be done with it.

  Janeen followed Anita through the entrance to the unfinished boardwalk, ducking under the caution tape into the pea-green air of the swamp. Closed to the public until a dispute between loggers and the county could be resolved, the waters were teeming with bass and catfish.

  Maybe coming here hadn’t been such a good idea, Janeen thought as she stepped gingerly over the boards. Everything gave her pause, reminding her of the last time she’d been here with Remy. The overturned blue canoe floating in mud: he’d wondered if they could salvage it. Crude messages scratched in the boardwalk’s posts: they both had blushed and pretended not to see.

  Her mother barreled ahead on the winding walk. “Careful,” she called as she shimmied down the trunk of a fallen tupelo that made a bridge over the water. Her long thighs gripped the bark. “It is a bit slippery.”

  Janeen inched down the log in an awkward sidesaddle, glancing warily at the urn. “You be careful, Mutti. Don’t drop him.”

  “I won’t, Liebchen. Iron grip.”

  Finally, Janeen’s thigh touched her mother’s, and she stopped. The skin of algae beneath them lay perfectly still. The enormous bas
es of the cypresses’ trunks, some a thousand years old, looked like the humped spines of dinosaurs rising from the yellow water. A haze of tiny insects hovered at the surface.

  Janeen could hear her mother breathing and the eerie kill-deer, kill-deer of plovers in flight. For a minute she watched a white egret take long, slow steps on its wire legs. She glanced at her mother, who squinted out over the swamp. Her nose was dotted with pale brown freckles. For years Remy had urged her to wear a hat, and Janeen noticed now that she’d finally put one on: Remy’s LSU baseball cap. Janeen reached for her mother’s hand.

  “Okay,” said Anita. She turned the urn upside down and dumped the ashes straight into the water, as though she were making instant soup.

  “Mutti!” Janeen shrieked. A bubble rose to the surface as her father disappeared. “What in the world—”

  “What is it?” Her mother actually looked perplexed. “This is what we came to do, nicht?”

  “But I wanted to . . .” How could she explain to someone who had no sentimentality whatsoever? She needed to weep, to scatter him gently. She had a Robert Penn Warren poem folded in her pocket that she wanted to read aloud. “I thought I’d say a few words,” she mumbled, embarrassed. Her mother just blinked at her.

  “What did you wish to say? Please, sweetheart, he can still hear you.”

  “Forget it.” The moment had already passed, and she’d never get a chance to retrieve it. Her eyes burned with tears.

  They watched a pair of yellow warblers cross frantically from tree to tree, flapping madly then coasting, flapping then coasting. When Anita spoke again, her voice had softened. “I am sorry, Janeen. I’m not good in moments like this. They don’t bring up Germans to be light and fluffy, hadn’t you noticed? We are a hard-boiled people.”