Fraulein M.

by Caroline Woods

  “Tell me this,” he said finally. “What would you have done if you found this in your mother’s house?”

  “I’d bring it to her and ask why she had it.” She spoke through her napkin, eyes on her sandwich. “I’d ask who gave it to her. Tell her you have a right to know.”

  “So there is something you know and I don’t.” When she didn’t answer, he blew a hard breath. “You’re goddamn right I deserve to know. I’ve been babysitting my mother all summer as she writes and writes and talks to herself in German. No one else cares.” White bits of spit flew from Erik’s lips as he spoke. “She even talks to people who aren’t there. That’s what I thought she was doing this morning—I wasn’t kidding. I thought she was talking to ghosts. I didn’t expect you two, in the flesh. I’m relieved it was you who showed up. If it had been that old lover of hers I don’t know what I would have done.”

  The noise inside the restaurant seemed to increase: busboys slapping plastic tubs full of dishes on a metal counter, waiters calling to each other. Janeen leaned forward. She tented her hands on the table in front of her, like two spiders. “Old lover of hers. Someone your mother was seeing after the divorce?”

  Erik looked taken aback. “No, no—someone from a long time ago. From Germany. He was in town, I think, and they had dinner together. Why?”

  “Do you know what his name is?”

  He opened his mouth, looking scared now. And then he said what Janeen knew he would say, the name that had been on the tip of everyone’s tongue. “Klaus?”

  Don’t panic. Janeen had to focus on finishing lunch, and then she’d go back to the hotel and figure out the best way to tell her mother, if Anita didn’t already know. This was why they’d come, she realized now. Her mother must have known this was where Klaus would go.

  “Janeen. Janeen!” Erik snapped his fingers. “Do you know that name? You have to tell me what’s going on, man, you can’t hold out on me.”

  “Ask your mother, not me. Ask about Klaus. Ask about the plate. Erik . . .”

  “Yes?” he replied, looking miserable and defeated.

  “I—” She took his hand. “Be prepared. That’s all.”

  After that they didn’t have much else to say to each other. He paid for their lunch, said he’d take her back to the hotel, and this time he hailed a cab. Light rain streaked the windows of the taxi, lifting steam from the roads.

  “I don’t know when I’ll see you again,” he said when they stood in front of her hotel, having exchanged phone numbers. This, too, made it seem as if they’d just been on a date, though this didn’t bother Janeen now. Something had crystallized between them in the last few hours; even though she still couldn’t bear to tell him her father had just passed away, Erik was beginning to feel more tangibly like family.

  “Come visit me in Ithaca, will you?” he said. “Keep me from gorging out if I keep finding old Nazi props of my mother’s.”

  “I’d love to.” She couldn’t help but smile.

  Erik smiled back. All his earlier bravado was gone, replaced by earnestness and melancholy. “I’m glad I met you, Janeen. Even if you’re just as goddamn stubborn and mysterious as the other women in this family.”

  A worried look came over his face, and she knew his thoughts had turned back to his mother and Klaus. She wished she could say something reassuring. “I’m glad to have met you, too.” She opened her arms to him, and he held tightly to her. Her head over his shoulder, she saw their reflection in the cab window. She thought, with a thrill: Cousins.

  Anita, 1970

  Early the next morning they found Margaret’s new home on Tiemann Place, at the border of Morningside Heights and Harlem. Her apartment building was crisscrossed by a series of black fire escapes like a zipper. Anita stood on the sidewalk, staring at the locked front doors. Beside her, Janeen shivered. “We told her to expect us this evening,” she said, a hint of pleading fear in her voice. “Wait, Mutti. Let’s think first. Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have told you about Klaus.”

  Anita shook her head, gazing at the windows, wondering which one was Margaret’s and if she stood behind one of them, looking out. “Shouldn’t have told me about Klaus. Are you crazy?” The news had made it impossible for her to sleep. She’d wanted to come over here earlier, surprise them as they slept; it had taken an inordinate amount of pleading from Janeen to get her to wait until morning.

  “Look, there’s an intercom. Maybe we should buzz her?”

  “Quiet.” Anita leapt forward, following an old man carrying a bag of bagels into the lobby, and seized the door’s handle just before it closed. He turned and furrowed his brow at her but said nothing. Janeen huffed to catch up. There was no doorman, and so they walked right into the elevator and pressed 8. Anita snapped her incisors, watching the elevator climb slowly.

  The hallway was empty, carpeted in faded gold. Margaret had left her door unlocked, so Anita did not even need to knock. Behind her, Janeen made a cry of protest as she pushed her way into the cold white apartment.

  “Grete!” Anita shouted before she stopped short. She felt Janeen plow into her shoulder.

  Margaret looked up from a small glass dining table. A half-empty pitcher of orange juice sat before her, and a platter of bread and cheese, deli meat, cups of muesli. The table and chairs were set up among a mess of suitcases and half-unwrapped kitchen tools. Loose cables and wires protruded from holes in the drywall. In the midst of it all, Margaret looked like a little gray mouse. She scurried toward Anita. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

  Gently Anita pushed Margaret aside and went into the living room. There were two place settings at the table; a crumpled paper napkin sat on the other seat. The blackened crust of a piece of bread and a sweating slice of Swiss cheese were left on the plate. Anita swung around, her head spinning, to see that Margaret’s eyes were open so wide that Anita could see white all the way around the irises.

  “Where is he?” Anita whispered.

  Margaret did not answer. A toilet flushed somewhere to the right of them, further inside the little apartment, and Anita froze. She could see Margaret’s eyes flitting around, onto the bubble-wrapped green plates on the counters and the hardcover textbooks on the floor, the way they did when her tinnitus was at its worst. When the bathroom door opened, light pooled into the small hallway off the living room, then went out, and all three of them flinched.

  “Oh!” said the man when he came into the living room, his face relaxing quickly into an expression of welcome, as though this were his house. “Company, Margaret?” He had thinning whitish hair combed straight back, oiled to show the comb lines, and the remnants of a sunburn. His eyes were a very pale blue-green, and he was tall, over six feet, with delicate jowls and a pronounced bump on his nose. He stared down into Anita’s eyes, his expression intelligent and focused, and then he glanced toward Margaret, who licked and then bit her lower lip.

  “Forgive me,” she said. “Anita and Janeen Moore, this is my husband, Charles Forsyth.”

  Anita could scarcely move, and so the man had to come a bit closer in order to shake her hand. His was cold and damp. When he moved to shake Janeen’s, he broadened his lips into a long, toothy smile, and Anita wanted to reach between them and pry their hands apart.

  He turned back to Anita. “Soon to be ex-husband,” he said through another smile, the skin around his eyes folding into pleats, like closed fans. “But why be specific?” He spoke with no accent, in English that was almost too perfect, his voice dry and bland as crackers.

  She had to think quickly. “Charles Forsyth, the famous photographer! It is a pleasure to meet you. What a moving collage you did on the Kindertransport. The photos of the children waving over the rails of the ship!” She clapped her hand to her chest.

  He acknowledged this with a long nod, and Margaret tried to usher them all toward the breakfast table, but Anita continued. “As a German, I was appalled by our government’s barbarism toward Jews.” She noticed how he tracked her every move, his pos
ture cool yet alert. “Ah, but it was refreshing to see Americans work to expose the injustice.”

  “Well.” He put up his hands, indicating that he didn’t deserve such praise. “You know the very reason the Kindertransport happened was the Americans’ limit on Jewish refugees. In taking ten thousand, England made herself look very good.” He was still smiling, his pale eyes twinkling merrily, but Anita thought she detected something hard at the edges of his voice. “There’s barbarism everywhere, Mrs. Moore,” he added with a grin. “That is all I am saying.”

  “Quite,” Anita said, and swallowed. There was a buzzing in her ears. She watched his mouth move as if in slow motion as he talked to her, not hearing the words. His face looked newly shaven, but he’d missed a line of hairs, most of which were white, a few red.

  He reached a long arm toward the table to fetch his coffee. “Are you here for a visit? From Germany?” When she didn’t answer, he asked again: “Are you a friend of Margaret’s from Germany?” His face remained bland, impossible to read, as he sipped.

  The buzzing noise reached a fever pitch in Anita’s ears. “Excuse me,” she whispered, the words scratching out of her tightened throat. She attempted a smile. “I just remembered I left something in my hotel room, I—I have to go.”

  The man cocked his head to the side. “Well, that’s a shame. We could have made two more places for you at the table.”

  “We shouldn’t interrupt your breakfast,” Janeen told Margaret. She sounded relieved.

  “Lovely to have met you,” he said, and Anita pinched her lips tightly together, her buttocks, everything clenched so that she could maintain her composure.

  “Another time,” she managed. She took Janeen’s hand and headed for the door, which felt light as she pulled it open, its white paint marred and scuffed. The hallway floor seemed to push away from her with each step, as though she were walking on the moon.

  “Who was that man?” Janeen said in a whisper as soon as the elevator doors closed.

  “Probably her former husband, as she said.” Anita willed the elevator to hurry, hurry. “We shall let the authorities figure it out.”

  Outside it had begun to rain, cold droplets that chilled Anita’s ears and the part in her hair. She hurried Janeen toward Broadway, where they were confronted by traffic and noise. Water dripped from the greenish iron undercarriage of the elevated rail. A girl in hot pants shivered beside one of the iron pylons.

  “There,” Anita said, pointing to a public telephone on the opposite corner.

  “You’re going to call the police?” Janeen asked, shivering, clearly distracted by the scene under the train tracks, despite everything. “And say what?” she called. Anita had already crossed Tiemann Place to stand behind the two men who were using the phone, one shielding the other from the rain with his open leather jacket. Both of them glared.

  “Mutti, wait, let’s . . .” Janeen’s lips were bluish. “Think first.”

  “There is nothing to think about!” Anita snapped. When finally the men abandoned the phone, leaving the receiver dangling by its thick metal cord, Anita rushed forward. Rain ran into her eyes as she tried to think who to call. 911? The FBI?

  A pale hand reached out and held down the metal switch hook. Anita turned to see Margaret standing beside her. “It won’t do any good,” she said quietly. “He’s left.”

  “Left!” Anita cried, and she tried prying her sister’s fingers off the telephone. “He couldn’t have gotten far. Hands off, let me call the police, you let that Schweine go . . .”

  “Please do not.” Margaret hadn’t bothered to lift the hood on her jacket, and her white-blond hair curled and sagged with rain. “He’s just gone out for a while. He’ll return, God willing. I tried to convince him you hadn’t recognized him.” She looked back over her shoulder. “He’s been staying there a week. Plans are in motion to have him captured. I didn’t think anyone else need become involved.”

  “You haven’t even told your son?” Janeen asked, hugging herself, her teeth chattering.

  Margaret shook her head slowly, looking shocked. “No, I especially would not tell my son. Why involve him in something like this?”

  Slowly, Anita’s wrist slackened, and the handset dropped. A train went by on the elevated tracks, rattling the telephone booth and sending sheets of water pouring onto the street. “The FBI would have taken him by now, you know this—if you’d actually called.”

  Margaret looked up at the waterstained façades of the brown tenement buildings. She sighed and closed her eyes, her mouth becoming slack and tender, and Anita’s heart went cold.

  “You love-starved little idiot,” she said to Margaret, even though they were both old now. “You’ve been sleeping with him.”

  Margaret’s eyes jumped, and she opened her mouth, but the shout came from Janeen. When Anita looked up she saw Janeen had her hands over her ears. “Stop it, stop it!” she cried.

  “Ach, Janeen,” Anita cried. “It’ll be all—”

  “No, it won’t be all right, Mutti, not as long as we stand here in plain view.” Janeen’s upper lip quivered, showing, finally, her anger; Anita sensed it was directed at both herself and Margaret. “If he’s out of the apartment, he could be watching us right now. No matter which of you two is right, it won’t do us any good if he sees us here, arguing in front of the telephone.”

  “She’s right,” Margaret said quickly. “We need to get inside.”

  “What are you suggesting,” Anita huffed, “that we go back to your place?”

  Janeen began nodding, still shuddering violently, and Margaret put an arm around her. She glanced at Anita. “I don’t think we’ll have company.”

  • • •

  The apartment smelled like Klaus. Anita couldn’t stop thinking this. A whiff of something from the old country lingered in the air, even though he hadn’t been there in decades and neither had she; still she could recognize it, the musky scent of masculine force, of traditional meals cooked by someone else, of the sweat left behind by painful lovemaking. The breakfast table still had not been cleared. She would have bet that if she’d entered the bedroom, she’d find the sheets dirty. All of it made her head ache.

  She stood at the glass door to Margaret’s tiny balcony while her sister changed in the bedroom and Janeen prepared tea, not quite able to convince herself she was really here. Somehow Janeen seemed comfortably rooted in this nightmare space; she had quickly found her way around the little kitchen and had water boiling, milk and sugar on a tray. Now, for God’s sake, she was unpacking some of Margaret’s boxes, putting cereal bowls in the cabinet beside the mugs. Anita felt too weary to tell her to stop.

  She felt something fall around her shoulders, and when she turned she saw that Margaret had draped her in a weblike white afghan. “You’re shivering, Anita.” When Anita looked down she realized she was also dripping rainwater on the parquet, but Margaret didn’t mention this. She kept her head down, avoiding eye contact. Anita could see she’d put her hearing aids in.

  “Come,” Margaret said. “Have a seat on the sofa.” She gestured toward the same one from the day before, still covered in plastic.

  “No, thank you,” Anita said, turning back toward the gray scene outside. “We won’t be staying long.”

  The kettle boiled. Margaret gestured toward the kitchen. “She’s taking care of us.”

  “I know she is,” said Anita. “She does too much of that.”

  Janeen brought the tray over, the tea in a white pot. “I hope you don’t mind,” she said as she removed the lid from a blue tin of butter cookies—she’d gotten it, Anita realized with a bit of nausea, from the breakfast table.

  “Not at all,” said Margaret. Janeen responded by stuffing her mouth with three pretzel-shaped cookies sprinkled with rock sugar, and Anita realized she’d again forgotten to give the girl breakfast.

  The tea poured out dark. “Mutti?” Janeen asked, holding up a thin cup on a saucer. Anita took it but did not drink. She tur
ned away from her sister and daughter, who sat amiably now, sipping their tea. Anita looked out over roofs, at water towers and the emerging sun. Somewhere in this city, Klaus lurked. Or he could have been under one of the rivers, on a bus speeding away from New York, toward Canada or Mexico.

  “Erik loved meeting you,” she heard Margaret tell Janeen. “He called me last night.”

  “Oh?” Janeen asked, her voice strangely high-pitched. “Did he say anything else?”

  “Anything else? What do you mean?”

  As Janeen hedged, Anita watched a sparrow bathe in a shiny pool on the balcony and sipped from her cup, punishing her tongue with the scalding tea. The bird washed its wings. This was the last thing she’d wanted to submit herself and Janeen to. On the contrary, she’d hoped to find her assumptions had been wrong. She would have been very happy to be wrong, happier than she’d ever been.

  Behind her, Janeen cleared her throat. “I think you should tell Erik about Klaus Eisler.” She said it with no hesitation, but both Anita and Margaret stiffened; it was as if Janeen had turned on a harsh lamp, bathing the once-calm room in glaring, scrutinous light. In any other circumstance, Anita would have reprimanded Janeen for telling an adult what to do. Now, she waited, holding her breath.

  “My dear.” The plastic on the couch creaked as Margaret resettled herself. “It’s a delicate matter. I’ve been told by the people I’m in contact with not to let anyone in on this plan.”

  How dare you, Anita wanted to say. They all knew there were no “people.” It was one thing to lie to her, but another to lie to her daughter.

  Still, underneath everything: the desperate hope Margaret was telling the truth.

  “That implies you don’t trust your own son, ma’am,” Janeen said, just a hint of wobble to her voice. “And I think you can. Tell him the story and explain you’re preparing to turn Klaus in. I know you will.”