Fraulein M.

by Caroline Woods

  Take care of yourself, I replied. My dear young soldier.

  Ours is a peaceful revolution. We are simply reclaiming what is ours.

  I thought of the pink mitten, and of what the girl on the train had said about our breadbasket and the Poles. I did not mention it, though. I anticipated the day he’d see me in my new gray dress, my white bonnet, the shiny black cross pinned at my throat. I wrote that thanks to him, nobody in Silesia had even mentioned my speech. Thanks to him, I had a shelf of medical texts and journals, which I read late into the night, fascinated.

  The day I learned there was such a thing as nonprogressive hearing loss was one of the best of my life. I decided—on my own, as I didn’t dare consult anyone else—that I had mild conductive hearing loss in my left ear, moderate in my right, and that my tinnitus was most likely linked to anxiety. Conductive hearing loss, my books claimed, could be partially remedied via something called a hearing aid, a device nearly the size of a telephone. I couldn’t imagine ever daring to use such a thing, but I had answers. I felt as though the sun shone more brightly upon me than it ever had before, that someone had arranged a parting of the clouds, finally, just above my head.

  My elation faded when I thought of Sister Lioba, the one in charge of the infirmary at St. Luisa’s, and her callous pronouncement that I might or might not become deaf one day. I wondered how many hundreds of girls had passed through her “care” since I’d left, and I vowed to become a different kind of nurse.

  As for Berni, I was too cowardly for the direct approach. I waited outside your apartment building one foggy spring morning, trembling. After thirty minutes a girl came out, reed-thin, her greasy black hair hanging ragged underneath her hat. I almost didn’t recognize her, but I saw the way she walked with her shoulders thrown back, and I followed.

  By the time we reached the S-Bahn station at Julius-Leber-Brücke, I still had not found the voice I needed to shout to her. A train approached; I could see the cone of dim light on the mist. This was it, otherwise she’d get on and leave me. I pushed my way through the crowd, toward the lone figure kicking pebbles onto the track, and I cleared my throat.

  “Berni!”

  I wasn’t sure she heard me until I saw her back muscles stiffen, and she whirled around. She lunged at me with teeth bared, because at first all she could see was my uniform. And then she recognized me. The back of her index finger landed on my cheek and she said, “Grete-bird.”

  There was so little we could say to each other in that listening crowd. I wanted to tell her that I’d realized what hypocrites people could be. I had to say, somehow, that I no longer blamed her for sleeping with Helmut Eisler. Finally I thought of a safe topic: “I’m going to a nursing college.” She’d always wanted it for me, and I thought maybe she’d celebrate.

  She didn’t answer right away. The train closed its doors, leaving only a few of us on the platform. Her eyes darted over my clothing, my brown coat, the pin on my neckerchief. With two blistered fingers she held my Landjahr badge, the green triangle.

  “Yes, Grete-bird, I can see.” She leaned in close to me, so that I could feel her skin’s warmth on the left side of my neck. “Helmut told me you’d turned nationalist, and I defended you. ‘Not my sister,’ I told him. I said you’d never become Hitler’s whore. Yet here you are.”

  I took a step back. Even with that leaden fist in my stomach reminding me of all I’d seen, I resorted to my old defense. “You’re jealous of me.”

  Her body seized, and her laughter turned to coughing that worsened so quickly she had to lean over. I could diagnose it now: my sister had chronic bronchitis.

  “Berni,” I said, “you need to go somewhere with fresh air.” I reached for her, forgetting what we’d both just said, and I put my hand on her back. “The weather in Silesia—”

  Her coughs subsided, and she embraced me. Crushing my ribs, she whispered in my ear that all she needed was a way to leave Germany altogether. Damn Silesia, she said, and damn all of Germany, and I panicked inside, though I knew nobody else could hear her. She said that if she had the strength to do it she would take every last good citizen with her, and—this part chilled me—she said that if I had any sense left in my Nazi brain, I would leave as well.

  After that, I did not see Berni for a while. I dropped a bottle of Prontosil in the mail for her—my professors sang its praises, hailed its German inventors—spending a week’s pay on it, and I prayed she would not throw it out. I would not find out for some time, because in that year she, too, did not write or reach for me. I thought about our last conversation frequently, trying to find any meaning or reason in it other than the truth. Because I knew in my gut exactly what she meant when she said “whore,” and I knew she was right. Signs were everywhere, and even I could not ignore them for long.

  For one, there was the nursing school curriculum. In the BDM I learned first aid: splinting broken bones, resuscitation techniques, and dental and bodily hygiene, all of which I imparted to my troop in monthly presentations. I could see nothing but positive results from this sort of medical training, and naively expected that my nursing program under the Nazi regime would be the same. But our instructors focused exuberantly on what they called “ground-breaking measures in institutional and curative care.” Within the first few weeks of school, they handed us charts detailing the protracted suffering—at great cost to the Volk—that patients with physical or mental handicaps endured. What did those patients deserve? Peace, the pamphlet claimed. And we would be trained to give it to them.

  “What does this mean?” I whispered to Lise, the beauty of our class with her gleaming black hair and elegant figure. I chose the wrong girl to ask.

  “It’s law,” she snapped at me. “They passed these racial hygiene initiatives three years ago. Where have you been?”

  Although the government had not officially “euthanized” anyone yet—that would come later—I soon realized forced sterilization had been going on all over the place. What was their justification? People unfit to have children burdened the Reich. Among ordinary instruction in obstetric, orthopedic, and pediatric nursing, we learned how many dependent babies we accumulated each year because of syphilitic prostitutes and idiot pimps.

  When our teachers spoke that way I broke out in cold sweats, thinking of Berni. When they used the phrase “genetically deficient,” the tinnitus in my right ear reminded me of my secret. I felt dizzy, often, in class, and had to get up frequently for a glass of water. At night I would sit bolt upright, and vow the next morning to warn Berni and you, and Fräulein Schmidt, who I knew was Jewish, to find a way to get out of the country.

  By the light of the morning everything would look different. People still took dogs for walks and planned birthday parties. Look how calm they are, I thought. Could our country really be edging toward a cliff? Could a government turn against its citizens? I reminded myself of all that had drawn me to the Nazi movement to begin with. The sense of family and belonging it seemed to promote. The Jobs-for-Germans initiatives. National Socialism wasn’t all bad, I told myself; there were simply fanatics at the margins who would never realize their goals.

  And maybe the sterilizations that had already happened had been welcome. People did opt for them all the time. As for euthanasia, I had a hard time imagining it would ever happen.

  An ardent Nazi called Schaller, a gaseous and warty man who would have been called a spinster had he been a woman, taught our anatomy class and did nothing to hide his lust for girls in crisp uniforms. Of course any girl who had joined the Party and wore badges had an A from Schaller, just as we automatically had a C or below in Fräulein Angstadt’s geriatric care class, brave Fräulein Angstadt whom they sacked the following year.

  That spring semester, Herr Doktor Schaller leapt headfirst into racial theory. He gleefully pulled down a chart showing heads in profile, with measurements of skull and nose and brow that were supposed to determine bravery, laziness, and malice. He showed us the “Nordic” type, whitewas
hed with baby features, the “Dinarian,” Roman-nosed, the “Jew,” a caricature that looked like no person’s face I’d ever seen.

  Herr Doktor Schaller proclaimed the Dinarian type thoughtful and serious, because the rendering looked like Hitler. “But the Nordic,” he said, “is the ideal. And there’s only one Nordic type I can see in this classroom.”

  I began sinking in my chair.

  “. . . And that’s Grete,” he finished, his glance gleaming in my direction.

  “She’s no Nordic!” cried Lise, whose face had broken into splotches as soon as he pulled down the chart. She tucked strands of her dark hair back into her bun. “Aren’t they supposed to be smart?” She imitated my speech, dropping the s and z. I was mortified to hear that a problem I thought I’d fixed had not been fixed at all.

  The class’s laughter soothed her initially, but she would not be satisfied for long. She cornered me on our walk home to the dorms that evening. “Just wait,” she told me. “Wait until they find out what you really are.”

  One evening in summer that same year, 1935, I had just prepared a cold dinner for myself in my little room when I heard a knock at my door. I opened it to find a young towheaded orderly, his hands clasped behind his back. The sight of him made my stomach drop.

  “Margarete Metzger? You are wanted in the medical director’s office.”

  My heart pounding and knees weak, I walked to the far wing of the hospital. I passed every exit but did not dare run out. As I walked my breathing became erratic, and phlegm drained down my throat. Twice I had to stop, put my hand on the wall, and catch my breath.

  When I arrived I knocked softly. All my skin tingled as I pushed that door open.

  The room was dark, lit only by one lantern on the director’s desk. Herr Doktor Schaller leaned back in his chair, a folder opened in front of him. When he saw me he beckoned me inside, removing his glasses. “Please, have a seat,” he said, but I couldn’t. I stood at the far corner of his desk and waited.

  Schaller shut the folder and simpered at me. He’d been somewhere sunny for the weekend; his nose and the tip of the fleshy wart on his cheek were tinted scarlet. “Margarete.” His whitish tongue performed a staccato of my syllables. “Mar-gar-et-te. Do you know why you’re here?”

  I shook my head no, but surely he could see guilt on my face, welling in my eyes. I knew why I’d been called here alone. I knew what he’d expect of me, in exchange for his silence about my deficiencies. I wondered seriously if I could do it—lower myself, desecrate myself, to save my own skin. Spit gathered at the back of my mouth. I closed my eyes, teetering a bit on my feet, thinking of all I’d said to you and Berni, all my unfair judgment.

  “You’ve been reported,” the doctor continued, in a manner that showed this had little consequence for him. He might have been letting me know a library book was overdue. While I stood there with palms perspiring, he poured himself a short glass of something brown and lifted it to his fat face. When he’d downed his drink, he tapped the folder on his desk. “The Gestapo received a tip about you, and they were gracious enough to allow your friend to intervene.”

  My friend. He meant himself. The intimacy of the term made me want to choke. But I’d heard the other word, the one that mattered: “Intervene?”

  Doktor Schaller’s eyes flitted over my shoulder. I jumped when I felt movement behind me. A tall man in a black uniform had been standing against the bookshelves the entire time. Someone to arrest me, of course, and I nearly produced my wrists for him right then. As he stepped closer, the light hit first his smooth lower lip, then his strong nose, then the gleam of his eyes. I could not breathe as he removed his cap with its shiny brim, his gaze locked on mine. He had grown much taller since the last time I’d seen him—almost three years before—and his jaw, neck, and hands had all become those of a man. He inclined his head toward me, a hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth. His hair had darkened from blond to sandy brown.

  “Guten abend, Fräulein Metzger,” Klaus said.

  The fear rushed out of my body. I felt a surge of love, warm and sweat-inducing. Despite what I had begun to feel about his uniform—even despite the sterilizations, the pink mitten, Berni—I felt unbelievably, unbearably proud that such a man had come to my rescue.

  Schaller sat back and interlaced his fingers. “Officer Eisler is here because one of our students had a concern about your racial identity. She seemed to think you were secretly Polish, possibly a Jew.” He and Klaus both laughed.

  I could not join them. Secretly Polish. Not hearing deficient. How stupid, I thought. All Lise had been able to consider was race.

  “I must say, you have an unusual accent,” said Schaller. “Not Polish, though, eh?”

  Klaus answered for me, as my tongue felt thick. “Our Grete is a fine little Aryan.”

  “Evidently. But you can never be too careful,” Schaller added. “Plenty of Jews walking around with blond hair these days, dyed or otherwise. It’s a good thing you have a friend in Herr Eisler here, Margarete.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered to Klaus.

  “It was nothing, Fräulein,” Klaus said, flicking invisible dust off his sleeve. “All I had to do was produce your file and the matter was cleared.”

  The doctor shook a finger at me. “Why hadn’t you submitted the proper forms? You weren’t listening when I explained the new racial background checks, were you?” I shook my head, and he slid my folder across the table to Klaus, winked, then told us we were free to take our leave. Klaus put his hand on the small of my back and held open the door.

  We were quiet on our walk to my dormitory. I felt rattled, exhilarated, as though I’d stood too close to the train tracks when a locomotive blew past.

  Beside me, Klaus took big steps, my file tucked under his arm. I could not believe this was Klaus, here in the flesh, in my building. Now in my corridor. Now, at the door to my bedroom. My shaking hands took what felt like hours to find the right key. After I unlocked it he tipped the door open with one finger, and I went in under his arm. Inside my room he placed his black cap on the desk and turned on the study lamp. He strolled around my room, his large steps covering it in an instant. He took up so much space that I felt dizzy in his presence.

  We stood in the middle of the floor, staring at each other. His pale skin glowed in the dim light; his shoulders were broad. When had he become a man? And in that time, had I, too, become a woman? My thoughts were a woman’s; I wanted to run my fingertips over his smoothly shaved cheeks, to unbutton his jacket and see his chest.

  “You saved me,” I whispered.

  He nodded and pulled out my desk chair. When he sat his long slacks drew upward, showing black socks and a sliver of skin. He ran a hand through his short fair hair.

  “You must be very careful when you speak, my Fräulein Pole,” he said, grinning. “You were lucky this time, nicht? You must continue to work on your pronunciation. The Hereditary Health Court has the ability to sterilize anyone whose genetics pose a threat to the Reich.”

  Had I been thinking clearly, I might have noticed the respect in his voice for the words “Hereditary Health Court.” To Klaus, they were not the problem. I was. But so overwhelmed was I with gratitude, with relief, that I fell to my knees in front of him, my cheek on the woolen knee of his pant leg. Patiently he stroked my head. “You silly one. Don’t you want to read your file?” His hand moved to play with the sweaty hair at the base of my neck.

  “My file?” I’d been so focused on Klaus having saved me that I hadn’t considered what sort of evidence the Gestapo had on me. Klaus lifted me to my feet so that I could take the folder. I was so distracted that I glanced over the pages inside without reading them.

  “You must read,” Klaus urged me, his face alight.

  I shuffled feverishly through the papers as Klaus watched. There was an application signed by my Ringführerin, recommending me for country service, and a copy of the certificate declaring I’d completed the Landjahr. I dreaded reaching
the back of the file, where I’d learn everything Berni had told me about our background was untrue. But Klaus kept pressing me to look, and finally I reached the two oldest documents: my birth certificate and the admitting papers from the orphanage.

  I sank onto the bed. The first detail I noticed was that I’d had my birthday wrong all these years: instead of August 15, I’d been born on August 19. Born at home, to Frau Gertrude Metzger, wife of Joachim, son of farmers. A midwife in Zehlendorf caught me.

  Our parents lived in Zehlendorf. I read it again: Zehlendorf. We, their two daughters, lived there until January 1919, when someone—I could barely read her signature, but it began with a K, not our mother’s G—took us to St. Luisa’s. Our mother had been dead since the end of 1918.

  Our aunt! It was our aunt who’d taken us to St. Luisa’s, not our mother, as I’d always feared. Berni had been right. A sense of Gemütlichkeit overtook me as I remembered her unwavering faith in our parents. She shared those stories with me so that I, too, would believe. How I missed my parents, whom I never knew! How I missed my sister!

  I was sobbing into Klaus’s shoulder; he’d joined me on the bed. I realized I didn’t care about their origins. I wish I had known them, whether they were Catholic, Jewish, fair, dark, bourgeois, proletarian. Klaus held me as I mourned them, and I clutched at him, clawed at him, still looking at the names of my parents and conflating my grief for them with my love for him.

  I moaned into his shoulder. “How can I thank you? How can I ever . . . ?”

  “Shh,” he said, his thumb on my chin. “We will find a way.”