Fraulein M.

by Caroline Woods

  The two of them gathered a few of the cardboard boxes, Janeen still blushing, and with a final suspicious glance toward his mother Erik led Janeen back out toward the foyer. They heard the chirp of young voices, Janeen’s nervous laughter, and then the elevator door shut with a bang. Anita and Margaret were alone in the stuffy, warm apartment. Margaret inclined her head toward the one remaining piece of furniture, a couch covered in plastic. They took their seats on opposite ends, settling into the cushions with a series of awkward squishing sounds.

  “Forgive me for staring at you, Berni,” Margaret said. “You look exactly as I always pictured you as an older woman. You’re still a work of art.”

  Anita rested her glass on her knee. It made a wet circle she could feel through the fabric.

  “Alone, we are, both of us without men. Though I cannot imagine your pain, Berni. I am sorry.”

  It wasn’t just the name, Anita realized; it was the way Grete—Margaret—pronounced it. The name Berni rolled so easily off this woman’s tongue, it made it impossible to pretend Margaret Forsyth was a stranger. “I’d rather not be called Berni anymore.”

  Margaret blinked and sat back quickly, looking hurt. She swallowed and made an attempt at a laugh. “Your accent is something else. It is kind of a Gullah German.”

  “Lowcountry Deutsch,” Anita replied. “Shall we switch to German?” It would be a relief, after all these years, like going from swimming in her clothes to gliding in the nude.

  A gleam came into Margaret’s eye. “Should we call each other du?”

  Anita couldn’t answer.

  “Es ist wirklich du,” Margaret said quietly, shaking her head. “I cannot believe it. For years I told Charles I thought my sister might have made it out of Berlin as well, and he treated me as if I were crazy. Wishful thinking, he called it. ‘Why would she leave without telling you?’” She fluffed her fingers in the front of her hair, mussing her stiff blond coif, and her shoulders shook for a moment.

  Anita did not move. She had to quiet the devil on her shoulder, telling her it would all be so easy if she’d just open her arms to her sister and forgive.

  Margaret looked up at the white medallion on the ceiling where a light fixture had been and let out a hard breath. “I suppose, when I sent the letter, some part of me hoped it would be you on the other end. I did not want to think too much about what it meant if it were you. Now that I see you . . . forgive me. It’s as if I am waiting at the Zoo all over again.”

  Anita snorted. “While you were at the Zoo I was on a train with three children, and as I should have been tending to their needs, I could not stop thinking of you.” It was good, in a way, that Margaret had made her angry; it kept her from feeling other things. “After what you did, how could I have taken you with us? How could I have trusted you?”

  “I understand. What I did was unforgivable. But I never would have put those children in danger. I never wanted to hurt anybody. I hope you know this.”

  Anita gripped the wooden arm of the sofa. In her heart she knew what Margaret said was true. She could picture Grete on that train to Belgium, comforting the boy, her arms around the girls. “Perhaps you wouldn’t have brought us trouble,” Anita said, “but no, I could not trust you. I never would have thought you capable of what you did to Sister Maria. Convenient, wasn’t it, that Klaus needed to round up Catholic dissenters? You could settle your old score.”

  Margaret turned away, becoming a silhouette against the bright white windows. “I planned to tell you everything at the Zoo. I took no pleasure in settling old scores. For the rest of my life I will think of Sister Maria and those priests, and the lawyer, every hour of every day.”

  “You deserve to suffer for it,” Anita said quietly. “If you wrote to me in the hope that I’d absolve you, you will be disappointed.”

  “That is not why I wrote you. Some of us do not deserve absolution.”

  A chill went through Anita’s veins. “Tell me.” She reached out with her toe to press a loose flap of tape on one of the moving boxes. “Klaus Eisler. That is he, isn’t it, Henry Klein?”

  “It is he,” said Margaret in a small voice. “I hope they catch him.”

  “Do you?” Anita stared at the soft creases around Margaret’s mouth, the powder blush she’d applied in a stripe too heavy on one side. What would they say to one another, if the heavy apron of the past could be lifted away? They’d laugh about the indignities of their increased age. She could tell Margaret she’d become a librarian and ask about the nursing school where Margaret taught. She could tell Margaret she was proud of her.

  Finally they heard the elevator door, like the barred door of a zoo cage, bang open again, and a man wearing a back support tiptoed into the room and gestured toward the sofas.

  “I will let you finish moving,” Anita said, but Margaret gripped her arm.

  “Could we have a few more minutes?” she asked the man, who went back to the elevator. “I want to make it known you were right to leave me behind, Ber—Anita. You did what any sensible and just person would have done. You could have let my letter go unread as well, and it means a great deal that you have come. I want to know you again. If you’ll let me. We were once all the other had in the world. Do you remember?”

  Loneliness showed in her voice, and Anita wondered who kept Margaret Forsyth company. Did she still, in a manner of speaking, have no one she could call du?

  She wanted to nod, to take Margaret into her arms. Instead, Anita rose and put her hands in her trouser pockets. “We will come to your new apartment tomorrow evening.” Her head pounded as Margaret wrote down the address. She stuffed the piece of paper into her pocket with a nod and barreled toward the foyer. Ignoring Margaret’s protests, she went to yank open the iron elevator door, only to find herself staring down an empty shaft.

  Janeen, 1970

  Her cousin was handsome, Janeen thought as he bought her a subway token, even though he had the kind of lips that seemed always to hang open. He was a little cocky, too, had an air of prep-school bravado in his expensive tennis shoes and green shorts. By the way he kept looking back at her, she could tell he expected her to be shocked by how decrepit and dirty the station at Seventy-Second Street and Second Avenue was, especially compared to the relative clean of the streets above.

  She kept a straight face when they passed the shriveled woman with her accordion, when they caught the attention of a group of men in sleeveless tanks and dark glasses. They stopped at a portion of the tracks that smelled of something rotting. Erik pushed his blond hair, darkened from sweat, away from his forehead and leaned against the tile wall. “They can’t really be sisters. Are they? They look nothing alike.”

  “I think they really are.”

  “I’d say I couldn’t believe my mother would lie about having family, but I can.”

  Janeen cleared her throat. “So, do you have to move, too? To wherever your mother said—Morningside Heights?”

  “Nah, I got a sublet in Kips Bay for the summer with some friends from school.” He crossed his arms. “Have you known about me all these years, or were we both in the dark?”

  “We were both in the dark.” They gave a moment of bemused silence to the secrecy of their mothers. “I didn’t know anything until a few weeks ago. Your mother wrote mine a letter, and I guess I intercepted it.”

  Erik laughed. “I’ve been trying to intercept for years. No such luck. Did they know about each other? Were they from the same father? Sorry, I’m just trying to make sense of this.”

  “Same father. Their parents died when they were young.” Janeen found she was enjoying this a little, filling him in on their story. “They grew up in an orphanage together. And then they . . . left. My mother never told me much about it until now.”

  “Guess she can’t. They’re carrying a lot of guilt, huh? Their generation of Germans.”

  Before she had to answer, a hot gust of air began building in the tunnel, and Erik picked up his box. When it arrived, the subway
car was covered in graffiti, bubbly white and black letters that made no sense. The variety of people inside took her breath away: a white man in a tie eating a hot dog; three black children and their mother, huddled around a picture book; two young women, one Hispanic and one white, in halter tops and platforms.

  Erik chose a pole to lean on, and she grabbed onto it. “You should see what it’s like where I come from, in the Carolinas,” she said so that only he could hear. “My town, Pine Shoals, and the next one, Carter’s Junction—they’re completely segregated.”

  Her cousin gaped at her as though she were some sort of alien, and she saw herself through his eyes: her lavender sundress, the fuzzy brown pigtails resting on her shoulders. A bumpkin. “Where we going?” she asked.

  “A pawn shop downtown. Below Fourteenth. It’s a good one.” He waited, she thought, for her to be impressed about his knowledge of pawn shops. “My mother wanted me to consign this stuff, but she needs the money now. Man, it’s been hard to get her to get rid of shit. Most of it she wants to keep. And then there are things she wants me to throw away that clearly have value. She doesn’t know where her head is these days. Something’s going on with her.”

  Janeen averted her eyes. He probably knew she was hiding something; she’d never gotten away with lying. A name popped into her mind, something she could share: Joachim, her grandfather and namesake. He must have been Erik’s grandfather, too. A man who died in World War I a long time ago, who had so little and yet everything to do with both of them. Her lips prepared to form his name, and then the doors slid open.

  “This is our stop,” Erik said, gesturing toward the sign above the platform: Astor Place. “You sure you’re all right with this?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Just get off the damned train, please? The doors are going to close.”

  It felt good to make him laugh. “Yes, ma’am.”

  • • •

  As they walked toward St. Mark’s Place, passing tattoo parlors, florists, head shops, he told her what he was studying at Cornell. “Agricultural science.” He grinned. “My father made it clear I could major in whatever I wanted, philosophy, basketweaving. So I picked something he wouldn’t get at all.”

  “Why?” Janeen asked. “I’d like to make my father proud.”

  “Then your father’s nothing like my father,” Erik replied. Janeen said nothing. They stopped for a minute to pet some black-and-white kittens a barefoot man was selling out of a crate, then kept walking. “So?” Erik said.

  “So, what?”

  “What’re you going to do, to make your old man proud?”

  Janeen took a deep breath. One of the last things her father had asked—begged—of her was that she leave Pine Shoals for a while, then come back and write about it. “Write about the South, write about segregation. But see the world first,” he said. He’d been out of breath, but his grip on her hand was still firm. “Gain some perspective.”

  What would her father have said if he’d known she’d be in New York City in a matter of months, walking with a cousin neither of them had known anything about? “I’m going to be a journalist,” she said. “I was working on a piece about the student body president at College of Charleston hushing up war protestors when they kicked me off the school newspaper staff.”

  She flushed with pleasure when she saw the look on Erik’s face. “Not afraid to make enemies?” he said. They stepped over some hippies on a blanket covered in woven goods.

  “I can handle it.” They passed a restaurant, and she caught whiffs of fried egg, chive, chicken skin. She tried to look nonchalant.

  “Yeah,” Erik said. “I think you could.”

  They found the pawn shop underneath a little ice cream parlor, and when Erik asked if she wanted to go in and get a cone, she blushed; despite the gnawing feeling in her stomach, something about ice cream seemed too much like a date. It struck her again, as they went down the steps to the pawn shop, how strange this was. This college boy who she’d have flirted with if he’d been a stranger was in fact one of her closest relatives.

  Inside the store, Erik’s arrogance finally melted under the spastic flickers of fluorescent lights. He waited quietly as a bulky man haggled with the owner over a razor-thin gold chain and tiny pendant. “A real fucking diamond,” the man kept saying to the owner, a ferrety man in suspenders and glasses. Janeen was trying to look nonchalant, but she couldn’t help peering at the watches and handguns side by side in the case, the myriad television sets, the deer head mounted on the wall beside a Buddha-shaped clock.

  Finally it was their turn, and the shop owner gestured toward them impatiently. Most of Grete’s belongings, he said after a cursory dig, were worthless to him. “Not the kind of shit people come in here to buy.” He worked a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

  “What about this?” Erik said, his voice higher than it had been outside. He held up a tiny statue of a cherubic boy leading a goat. The man took it and turned it over.

  “Yeah, that’s a Hummel. It’s worth something. I’ll give you five for it.”

  “Five dollars?” Erik shifted his weight, and Janeen caught a whiff of perspiration. “This could sell for twenty-five or more. I looked it up.”

  With a shrug, the man handed it back. “Sell it somewhere else, then.”

  Erik let out a long sigh. “Man. Maybe I should have listened to her.” He reached inside the box Janeen had carried and pulled out a thoroughly tarnished metal plate. “She told me to throw most of this away,” he said, tossing the plate back inside with a thunk.

  “Wait a minute,” said the store owner before Janeen could slide the box off the counter. His fingers, yellow around the nails, closed around her wrist, and she felt Erik lean forward protectively. “I just want to take a look,” the man said, and finally she relented.

  They watched as he took a filthy, greasy rag from under the counter and began polishing the metal plate vigorously. His nostrils flared wide with exertion, and Janeen and Erik stared, mesmerized. The black film came off easily, revealing the dull shine of old silver. Symbols began coming into view. “Uh-huh,” the man muttered. “Mmm-hmm.”

  In the center of the plate a quaint country village emerged; around the rim, strange symbols. Runes, Janeen thought, they were called runes. Two lightning bolts, something that looked like a Z with a cross through it. A death’s head, a key. A swastika.

  Janeen’s lungs burned. She realized she’d been holding her breath. When she dared glance at Erik, he was frowning deeply, his eyes bulging from his head. “What in the hell?”

  “This,” the pawn shop owner crowed, “is one of the plates the Nazis sold on Party Days. Looks like someone got this one at Nuremberg.” He seemed excited. “This, son, is worth some money. One-fifty or two hundred, I’d give you.”

  “She told me to throw it away,” Erik murmured, staring in horror at the symbols.

  “Ha!” said the store owner. “A Hummel and a Nazi plate. Who is she? The Stomping Mare of Ravensbrück?”

  Erik went pale, and Janeen reached out and plucked the plate out of the man’s hand. “We need to think about it,” she said. “Two hundred sounds good, but maybe we should check elsewhere? Erik?” She waved her hand in front of his face. “Shouldn’t we have lunch first?”

  The owner shouted after them: he’d go to two-fifty. Maybe even three. The thrill in his voice made Janeen sick; she wondered if he collected Nazi memorabilia.

  “Why would my mom have something like that?” Erik said when they’d had a chance to take a few gulps of the cooler, if not fresh, air outside. Still there was very little color in his face. “And why’d she hold onto it, all this time?”

  Janeen could guess exactly why Grete owned such an object, and who’d given it to her. “It’s a good sign she wanted you to throw it away, isn’t it?” She put her free hand in the middle of his upper back and pushed gently, taking over the role of guide. “Let’s get something to eat.”

  • • •

  A littl
e while later they found themselves in a hard booth, all right angles and wood. Both ordered reuben sandwiches. As she sucked creamy foam off the top of her pint, Janeen felt the bench wobbling; under the table, both of Erik’s legs were jiggling violently.

  “You’re keeping something from me,” he said as Janeen wedged open a gold packet of butter with her knife. “You didn’t look surprised at all to see that—those Nazi—” He spat out the words as though trying to flick something off his tongue.

  She wanted to tell him everything, become confidantes, but something held her back. It was Margaret’s story, and it was only right that she share it with her son. Beyond that—it was Margaret’s duty to tell him, and Janeen didn’t want to let her off easy.

  “Help me make sense of this,” said Erik. “Please. They started out in the orphanage together. Then what?”

  She chose her words carefully. “They did what they could to get by? Sounds like the girls in orphanage had few options besides joining the Order or marrying young. Or the academy.”

  “The academy,” Erik said, shaking his head. “There’s one thing I did know about. Every damn time I didn’t do my homework she’d go on about the academy, the academy, I vanted so badly to go to the academy vhen I vas a girl, you should know how lucky you are. I don’t get what the big deal was, she still went to college, am I right?”

  Janeen felt almost embarrassed for him, this rich kid. You don’t know she had to sell her soul to go to college, she almost said, and you don’t know the consequences my mother faced for keeping hers. “Give her a break, will you? They had it tough.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ve never given your mother a hard time.”

  The waiter came then, and she tore into her sandwich. Erik left his untouched, watching her. After a few minutes had passed, during which Janeen felt uncomfortably aware of the sounds of her own eating, he reached under his feet and pulled out the plate.

  Janeen recoiled when he put it in the center of the table. The thing gleamed now. Nuremberg, depicted in the center, looked perversely wholesome with its clock tower and cross-timbered houses. Erik traced the occultish symbols as though stroking an Ouija board.