The Dutch Wife

by Ellen Keith

  In bed, he made no demands. Some nights, he was a wildfire and thrusted with a crazed fury. Other times, his movements were slow and savoured. If I flinched in pain, he would pause until it subsided, and when it was all over, he’d linger, his head on my breast as he recounted his life story. He told me about his rise up through the ranks, his favourable encounter with Himmler, but I preferred memories from before the war, stories about his family estate in Munich, his two wire-haired pointers, Axel and Faust, and his broken engagement. I spent a lot of time trying to imagine his former fiancée, trying to understand what kind of woman could love a man capable of overseeing so much terror.

  THE day the first autumn leaves tore from the branches of the trees outside, I caught myself thinking about Karl. There was something so dreary about those orange leaves, the way they flapped in the wind, only to be whipped across the road to the infirmary blocks, where dozens of men were taking their final breaths. I thought of his arms around me, the way they seemed to block out everything until nothing existed outside of that tiny koberzimmer: no battlefields, no camps, no husband. With the other visitors, I could coax myself into some type of trance, a reality far away, but Karl made distraction difficult with all his questions, his unpredictability.

  Perhaps he sensed this effect he had on me, for that night he stayed longer than usual, lying at my side and stroking my hair. He was massaging the nape of my neck when he stopped, separating a coil of curls from behind my ear. “My mother used to say grey hair was a crown of glory, proof of a righteous life.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You have a few strands of grey.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “You’re far too young for it.”

  “At Ravensbrück, a twenty-six-year-old went white almost overnight after her sister died of typhus.”

  He rolled onto his back. “I’m sorry.”

  This caught me by surprise; it was too late for apologies. “For what?”

  “That this is happening to you.”

  “To me?”

  “To your people.”

  I sat up and glowered at him. “And the Jews? The communists? The Gypsies? What about them?”

  “I didn’t put anyone in this camp. I just follow orders.”

  “But you joined the party, so what do you really believe?”

  “You know, I used to think—” He stopped short.

  “What?”

  “No, nothing.”

  “You can be honest with me, you know.”

  He hesitated, started to say something and paused before beginning again. “My best friend in primary school was a Jew. Aaron Stein. We sat together in the back row and pierced our fingers with needles so we could be blood brothers.” His face clouded. “I shouldn’t be saying this. Nobody here knows.”

  “You think I’m going to turn you in to the Kommandant?”

  Karl smiled a little but looked trapped in his own memories. “He was always braver than me, a better explorer. Back then, I wanted only to sit and play with toy soldiers, to charge into battle like my father. Aaron was the one who would scramble onto rooftops and lead us on spy missions through old warehouses.”

  “What happened to him?”

  He swallowed. “I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”

  I tried to strain my thoughts, draining away those of Karl and leaving only memories of Theo, but it was no use. Much as I tried to avoid it, his gaze kept locking on to mine, with such intensity in those gas-flame eyes.

  “Will you play something for me?” Karl asked.

  “The violin is in my bedroom.”

  “Go get it.”

  I fastened my robe and slipped into our sleeping quarters. Sophia raised her head curiously as I reached for the violin, but didn’t say a word. When I returned, Karl sat against the wall and I noticed he’d put on his underdrawers. He gestured to the instrument. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  A pleased look passed over his face.

  “What would you like me to play?”

  “Anything.”

  As I raised the violin, the trees outside groaned in the wind and the floorboards creaked, seemingly in anticipation. He watched me tune it. I took my time, wondering whether I could still play after so long without practice. But when I closed my eyes and my bow met the strings, the music returned like a summer storm. Chopin: Nocturne, op. 9, no. 2. A piece I’d been working on before we were captured. Soft, gradual notes, like floating in the middle of a lake at twilight, fireflies overhead. The smell of applesauce warming on my mother’s wood stove. The rough wool of Theo’s sweater as we skated along the canals.

  With the bow in my hand, something came back to me, and for a few minutes, I was gone, away from the camp. I felt innocent and indestructible, the woman I had once been. I didn’t look at Karl until the piece ended, until the violin was back in its case. The corners of his eyes glistened. He reached for my wrist, coaxed me into his arms and rested his chin against my hair, while I grappled with a mixture of loathing and comfort.

  Chapter Eleven

  KARL

  SEPTEMBER 15, 1943

  BUCHENWALD

  THE CAMP CINEMA STOOD NEXT TO THE SPOT CORDONED off for the prisoners’ brothel. Like most of the buildings in the camp, it was long and drab and made of wood, with nothing to identify it, none of those rows of lights, the gold lettering or velvet carpet that marked the cinemas in Berlin. As Karl stood in front of it, he tried to picture Else tugging at his hand in excitement on one of her visits, her mother’s stole wrapped around her shoulders as she scanned the film titles.

  To his left, a couple of haggard prisoners lined up at the steps to the brothel. All of them political prisoners or criminals. Himmler would never let Jews near the brothel.

  Like it had so many times that day, his mind flashed to Marijke, the flick of her tongue in his mouth, the deep arch of her back under his fingertips. Something inside him clenched at the sight of that crowd, the idea that he’d touched the same woman as those delinquents. But he brushed aside the thought, straightened his hat, and went into the cinema. Clusters of SS officers gathered inside the entrance, while others sat on the rows of chairs. The lights were dim, the interior as plain as the exterior, and the hot, stuffy air buzzed with chatter. Brandt called to him from across the hall.

  When Karl walked over, Brandt passed him a glass of genever. “Glad to see you, Müller.”

  Nobody else had a drink. Some of the officers in the back row watched Karl and leaned in to speak amongst themselves. Karl felt a twinge of paranoia, the same apprehension that had once mocked him when he’d joined Boy Scouts late in the season, the only one in the troupe who couldn’t build a fire. But the men turned away, shifting their attention to a wooden whipping block that had been shoved into a dark corner between the brooms and an old projector.

  Brandt followed his line of sight. “There’s not enough storage room for everything this camp needs to run. If our numbers keep swelling, we’ll need to think about installing some permanent stocks and gallows.”

  Karl nodded and took a sip of his drink. “So which film are you screening tonight?”

  “One of the great masterpieces of German cinema. We may be far from Berlin, but that doesn’t mean you have to miss out on the finer things in life.” Brandt swirled the genever in a circle and looked up at Karl over the rim of his glass. His lips were moist. “I’m sure you’ve seen it, but it would be good for you to watch it again.”

  Karl debated the meaning of that. “Of course, sir. It will be an honour.”

  The Kommandant finished his drink and puffed out his chest, the lapel of his uniform splitting to reveal his shirt. He signalled to a man nearby, who hurried off. A moment later, a bell rang, and Brandt ordered everyone to a seat. Karl followed him to the two empty spots in the front row. The lights dimmed and the screen crackled on.

  Jud Süss. He had seen part of it before with colleagues in Berlin but had bee
n forced to leave partway through on account of an upset stomach, punishment for a late night of drinking the evening before. The opening credits started rolling to a dramatic musical score. A message appeared: “The events portrayed in this film are based on historical fact.” Then a date and place: 1733, Stuttgart—the coronation of Karl Alexander, duke of Württemberg. Banners and garlands covered the city streets, and the commoners cheered, ran to greet the duke as his carriage rolled past. Fancy clothes, a luxurious palace. Soldiers marched by in perfect unison. The music grew eerie and the scene cut to a sign in Hebrew script in the middle of the crowded ghetto. Men with long, unkempt beards, shifty stares. The plot came back to him. The Jew, Süss, agrees to help finance the duke on the condition that he be allowed entry to the city, where Jews had long been banned. Süss shaves his beard and sidelocks, dresses himself like a Christian, and weasels his way up into the duke’s inner circle. Tricking and conniving.

  He glanced at Brandt, who leaned back, stroking his chin and watching intently while the councilman’s beautiful daughter begged the Jew to save her imprisoned husband. Karl hadn’t seen this part, and his hand tightened around the arm of his chair as the Jew dragged beautiful Dorothea to his bed, pinning her down and raping her.

  Behind him, a couple officers grumbled. “Filthy Jewish pig,” said one. “Kill them all,” said another.

  After the film ended and they returned to their villas, Karl changed into his robe and slippers and retreated to his bedroom with a glass of brandy. In bed, he reached for the book on his nightstand. Plant Life in Bavaria—well-thumbed and full of bookmarks for all the trees and shrubs that had caught his attention on his evening walks back home. He flipped through a few pages, trying to find a sketch that resembled the bush that had taken over the veranda of his villa, before putting it down with a sigh.

  The door to his wardrobe jammed as he tried to open it. With a little jerk, it came free and he reached for the book that lay in the bottom of his suitcase. The pages weren’t as worn as those of the plant guide, though he’d received both the same year. He opened the front cover to study the inscription on the inside:

  Karl, we can expect great things from this man. Read this with care. He’s the answer Germany has been searching for; I’m sure of it.

  Merry Christmas.

  Love, Papa.

  The closing line was written in his mother’s flowery script, as if she had decided to make up for his father’s shortcomings in affection. With a sip of brandy, he turned the page and began to read. Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler. Volume I: A Reckoning.

  FOR a week, he locked himself in his office night after night, poring over a stack of books and old newspapers at his desk. Articles on the Führer’s rise to power, copies of his edicts, of Goebbels’ essays and Himmler’s speeches. Pamphlet after pamphlet: “The Jew as a World Parasite.” “What Does Bolshevization Mean in Reality?” He examined the racial wall charts designed for doctors’ offices and read the SS booklet on racial theory twice through. Just as plants and animals differed in species, it claimed, so did humans. Different races inherited different characteristics, which made some more adept for survival than others. The booklet showed a photograph of a German farm on terrain reclaimed from the sea next to a shot of a Russian one on fertile Ukrainian soil. The German farmhouse appeared expansive and sturdy, while the Russians had managed to build only a rickety shack. The text explained that the Jewish race had sprouted from the mixing of a multitude of races, and that the negative traits of these races had come together and magnified through the generations. The Jews were parasites without a home: they latched on to host countries, and adapted to blend in with the locals, adjusting their language, sometimes dressing like Christians. Trying to control the local economy, corrupt bloodlines. Just like Süss had in the film. And Germany was far from the only country to recognize this truth. He recalled the ship overflowing with Jews that had tried to dock in Cuba a few years earlier. The Cubans had known better than to let them overrun their country, to sneak in with their conniving ways. Even the Americans had turned them away. Countries all the way down to Argentina were closing their doors to immigration. From what he had heard, German officials in Argentina were doing a particularly good job of drumming up Nazi support and educating the locals about the dangers of Jewish parasites.

  The word “parasite” sounded harsh, but he thought back to his plant guide, the trees he knew from childhood. Colonies of Heracleum mantegazzianum—giant hogweed—had invaded the land around the lake, choking out the smaller plants that couldn’t compete for sunlight. Nasty weeds, those things. Their sap could burn your skin if you got too close. But Germans were unlike the smaller plants. They were the silver fir, standing tall and proud.

  When broken down to a science, racial theory made sense. For centuries, the Nordic race had proved its superiority. Beautiful architecture, glorious music, strong, capable rulers. And when the existence of their people was threatened by an invasive species, wasn’t it only natural for them to protect the very foundation of the Reich? This world war, the booklet concluded, was not simply a war against nations, but the German people’s battle to save their race from turmoil and decay.

  His research turned to war correspondent reports from the Völkischer Beobachter that told of courageous German efforts at Stalingrad, of Churchill’s desire to thwart their people, to make them suffer as they had after Versailles. The more he read, the more he thought of the many comrades his father had seen collapse at his feet on the battlefield. The Triple Entente had acted just as ruthlessly during the First World War, but after its end, they had treated Germans like the only aggressors. Kicked them at the knees and laughed as they buckled. They robbed them of good men and then left them to starve as they raked in their reparations. And after seeing how Germany could rise up again and make the nation stronger than ever, the Allies were afraid. As Goebbels himself said in his speech on the Führer’s birthday, the Führer had done everything he could to prevent another clash of nations, to end the war as quickly as possible. But Britain thirsted for power.

  “Confidence,” Goebbels stated, “is the best moral weapon of war. When it begins to fail, the beginning of the end has arrived.” Karl thought hard about this and considered his own hesitation when faced with the executions, the sculptor’s son. Was he too weak to embrace the position he’d been granted? The duties? The Führer needed all of them to play their part in ending the war, in preventing the spread of Bolshevik chaos, in restoring the Nordic spirit to its former glory. The Führer needed Karl.

  IN his first year with the SS, Karl had formed a bond with two of his colleagues in Berlin, Rolf and Dietrich. When the three of them got leave during the same week, they went mountaineering together in the Bavarian Alps. In the tent, they’d huddled together against the cold while they slept. But the second night, Rolf’s hand drifted under the blanket, coming to rest on Karl’s neck and stroking the curve of his jaw. Karl brushed him off but said nothing, assuming Rolf was lost in some dream. The final night, it happened again, but Karl didn’t want to start a fight or give Dietrich the wrong idea, so he pushed Rolf away and left it at that. Rolf was, after all, their superior. On the way back to Berlin, the three of them stopped at Karl’s parents’ for lunch. Between courses, his father pulled him aside.

  “You shouldn’t associate with this Rolf. I would have hoped you could at least spot the signs.”

  Karl didn’t respond.

  His father said it was indisputable: Rolf’s soft, effeminate features, the pitch of his voice, the delicate way he cut up his beef. “You have to report him.”

  Karl protested that he couldn’t betray a friend, especially without real proof.

  “Children have friends; men have comrades. Don’t let some womanish emotions distract you from your duty. Besides, if you’d choose to keep a man like him in your circle, I’d worry about how that could reflect on you.”

  Three weeks passed before Karl acted. But he did, and it turned out he wasn’t the
only one Rolf had accosted. Rolf was sent to a correctional facility for treatment and never returned to Berlin.

  AUTUMN came early to Buchenwald. By late October, the trees around Karl’s villa shivered in the night, growing as scrawny and sorry-looking as the prisoners. Each evening after sunset, the wind began to howl, and the officers wouldn’t stop complaining about the cold. Karl escaped as often as possible. Marijke’s arms, the heat of her kisses, took him away from it all.

  On a brisk morning, he awoke to frost. It formed thin layers of ice over the puddles and gave a satisfying crack under his weight as he made his way toward the muster grounds. Camp numbers had swollen above thirty thousand, though that figure fluctuated daily. Some died off; some were transferred elsewhere, and they occasionally had to eliminate those who were a “burden to the system.” Brandt acted like spouting off vague terms could make the guards forget what they were doing.

  While Karl stood listening to the roll-call officer bark out an endless list of numbers, he grew conscious of how detached he’d become. He no longer flinched at men collapsing in front of him from the morning cold. The corpses that littered the grounds seemed little more than a nuisance, forcing him to step out of his way, the countless rows of prisoners mere numbers. Economic input, the currency of the Reich.

  A scream broke out from the detention cellblock that stood beside the gatehouse. He stood still, careful not to let any emotion show as the cries of the tortured grew. The smoke from the crematorium mixed with the crisp air, a foulness that had worked its way into the wool of every uniform he owned. He may have grown blind to the sights of death, but the smells and sounds were impossible to avoid.

  Several of the inmates in the front row cringed at the noise. The breeze picked up, and one of them shuddered, his toes poking through the tip of his left shoe. The sight made Karl think of Marijke shivering in her bed. The roll-call officer puttered through his duties, so Karl told him he had business to attend to and went to the equipment depot to see about an electric heater for the brothel.