Marina didn’t even remember that the Sterns were Jewish until Hilde asked for help in sewing stars onto their clothing. Marina had then felt a great wave of fear and nausea for her friends. She asked her father to help them get visas out of the country, but Oskar seemed reluctant. “Don’t get involved,” he had said. “It’s not safe, Marina.” It was a tone of resignation and finality that she had heard before, one that indicated the discussion was over.
Marina had refused to give up. She began an exploration of the underground. It was not hard to find the right people, if you knew where to look, and if you were willing to take risks, which Marina was. But it took time to get the necessary papers, and by the time she found the right printer who could forge visas to Palestine, the Sterns had been sent to a Jewish ghetto in Poland.
To this day, Marina didn’t forgive herself for her delay. Nor had she forgiven her father for his inertia. Perhaps he was complicit in the actions of the regime. She didn’t know, but if so, she was as guilty as he was. Guilt by association. Guilt by blood. Whatever sins he might be committing she needed to do something to expiate. That was why she was here. She sat back in the tiny Sunday school chair and listened to the hymn being sung by the choir outside. It was familiar:
Wo bist du, Sonne, blieben?
Die Nacht hat dich vertrieben,
die Nacht, des Tages Feind . . .
It was Marina’s bedtime lullaby, the one she sang to her daughters. “Where have you gone, dear sun? Night has made you run; night, the foe of day . . .” Her own mother used to sing it to her. Edith’s alto was rich and full; it had been months since Marina had heard it. Nighttime is casting its shadow, the choir sang. True enough. But night was not the only shadow casting darkness upon them.
– Nine –
“Oma, can we get one of Irene’s kittens?” Sofia lay on her pillow in bed next to Rosie, light woolen blankets tucked around her and her favorite doll, Millie. Her long blond hair swam around the pillow cover like strands of algae in a lake. In a different world, Sofia could be a mermaid, Edith thought. Those intense blue eyes luring sailors off course. Edith herself tried now to resist them.
“Sofia, we can ask Opa when he gets here, okay?” She bent over Rosie to give Sofia a kiss, taking care not to bump her head against the ceiling that slanted over the girls’ bed. It was a wonder that Sofia liked sleeping on the inside of this double bed. The bed frame had been pushed as far as possible against the wall, to make space for Marina and Lara’s bed on the other side of the room. The descending roof sliced through the air above the pillow closest to the wall, making the space slightly claustrophobic. Edith would have thought that Sofia would feel anxious and enclosed. But Sofia insisted on taking that side of the bed, saying she liked to hear the dormice scratch and scrabble on the other side of the wall when she woke up late at night, that it made her feel less alone.
Rosie had been whispering quietly to Hans-Jürg, but at the mention of the word Opa, she popped up, letting the bear fall to the floor. “Is Opa coming tomorrow morning or tomorrow afternoon?”
Edith picked up the bear, gently pushed Rosie’s torso back down, and pulled the blanket over her. “Tomorrow lunchtime.”
“Is he staying for the night?”
“I think so. But it’s bedtime now, sweetheart, so you must go to sleep.” Edith gave Rosie a kiss on the forehead and laid Hans-Jürg next to her pillow.
“Is he staying the next day?”
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
“Where’s Lara?”
“She’s downstairs reading, I think.”
“Why doesn’t she have to come to bed?”
Edith sighed. “When you’re thirteen, you can stay up longer and read too. But first you have to learn how to read.”
“Sofia can read and she’s not staying up,” Rosie pointed out.
This girl was too smart for her own good. “Enough, Rosie. Quiet now. Good night!”
Edith pulled the door shut on the girls’ quiet whispers and crossed the tiny foyer that connected the staircase to the two bedrooms on the second floor. She stepped into the room that she shared with Oskar. It was no bigger than the one the girls shared with Marina, but because it had to accommodate only one double bed, there was also room for a writing desk and a chair, both of which were wedged into the alcove that looked onto the Breckenmüllers’ garden. Edith walked over to the chair and draped her sweater over its shoulders.
The desk was a Biedermeier. Oskar’s other beloved, Edith thought, running her fingers along its top edge. The secretary had been with them since the early days of their marriage. It had been no small feat, transporting it here from Berlin, but she was glad they’d made the effort. It was an old friend, stunning in its beauty—even after all these years, the infinite gradations of chestnut and bay that danced over the surface of its whorled grain could distract her from her writing if she let her mind stray. It was also wonderfully practical, with its many recessed drawers and hidden compartments that held clips and blotters and pen nibs and a variety of other miscellaneous items like buttons and tobacco.
Whenever the late-morning hour was quiet enough, Edith sat at this desk to write letters. Here, as nowhere else, Oskar was always present. She felt him in the spare smoking pipes that rested inside an empty jam jar; in the collection of well-sharpened pencils lying side by side in a hollow cigar box; in the small silver army knife, “the thinking man’s mustache comb,” as Oskar called it, tucked into a stack of papers. Edith had her own designated drawer on the left side where she kept her ink and stationery, and she was careful always to put her things away and out of sight when she was done using them, lest she disturb the Oskarness of the entire space.
Now Edith shuffled over to the bed, pulled off her house slippers, and lay down. The claustrophobic roof incline in this room had been offset by the skylight they had always dreamed of, a very large pane of glass, almost as big as the bed itself, and square in shape rather than the customary narrow rectangle. This skylight had caused a big ruckus during construction: The roofer had insisted that, because of its “unprecedented and irresponsible” size, there was no way to ensure “the integrity of its borders.” He warned that it might leak over time. Edith had said she’d take that chance, fired the man, and hired his subordinate, who had no issues with installing the window and was grateful for the extra pay. She did keep a tube of bathroom caulk under the bed, though so far she’d had no need for it.
Edith stared through the glass to the darkening indigo blue of the sky. She wondered what her husband was doing. She had never been to the Führer’s summer vacation home in Austria, but Oskar was obliged to go to Fürchtesgaden regularly. The Führer had purchased the property shortly after the war began and then undertaken extensive renovations of the main house and grounds with the aim of establishing an alternative seat of government in the bucolic perch high in the Alps. Edith was aware of those renovations only because they coincided in time with the expansion of their own house in Blumental. Knowing that Oskar was engaged in a similar venture, the Führer relentlessly pressed him for opinions on a wide range of questions. Should he install Ionic or Corinthian columns to replace a load-bearing wall in the ballroom? What was the relative heat resistance in a fireplace hearth of marble from Italy versus granite from India? What was the expected life span of a caged singing canary?
The sky above Edith’s bed was clear enough now to make the Pleiades visible. A faint and gentle cloud of stars. At dinner that night, Erich had said the Führer was still entertaining at Fürchtesgaden on a regular basis. Despite all military indications to the contrary, he seemed confident of success in the war. This was welcome news, for Edith knew that Oskar’s mood was dependent on the Führer’s. If, as Erich reported, champagne was still flowing nightly, it meant that the Führer was feeling buoyant, which was far better for his subordinates than when he felt discontent. When their leader was unhappy, disquiet reigned among the cabinet ministers. They all knew from the bitter experience
of predecessors who had suddenly disappeared that he held each and every one of them responsible for the smooth operation of all things around him, and they tried valiantly, often in vain, to satisfy his demands.
Tonight Edith was troubled that Oskar had not left Fürchtesgaden with Erich. It implied a closeness to the Führer that she once thought would be anathema to Oskar. But her husband had changed over the past year. He had become quiet, more contemplative, almost secretive, and had spent more time in Berlin. Edith didn’t know what to make of it. She had always assumed Oskar was a begrudging and reluctant advisor to the Führer. She’d presumed that Oskar’s loyalty to the present administration arose entirely out of his Prussian instinct to serve his country as best he could and not shirk responsibility. He was the only holdover from the prior administration whom the Führer had called upon to remain in his post. There should be continuity of leadership in the Economics Ministry, the Führer had insisted, to secure the nation’s economic stability during a volatile political time. Presented in such a way, there was never any question that Oskar would agree, as the Führer well knew.
But one-on-one meetings with the Führer in the private offices of his summer retreat? Those had never been part of Oskar’s job description, nor, Edith would have thought before now, did he want them to be. In truth, Edith knew little about Oskar’s responsibilities. Since the second war began, the few times she’d broached any topic related to the administration or his office, he closed off discussion peremptorily. Nowadays, he crossed that barrier only to offer her and Marina advance information about military movements that might affect them in the south, and to update them about events in France, especially those that could bear on Franz’s safety. Oskar’s day-to-day administrative duties in Berlin were largely a mystery.
Edith wondered when she had first begun to doubt her husband. Perhaps it was as early as the darkening of the atmosphere in Berlin. She had watched the growing intolerance of minorities, especially Jews, with bafflement and fear. That fear peaked when people like their friends Hilde and Martin Stern were told to pack up their belongings and report to the train station, where they disappeared on one of countless trains heading east. Why were coal trains being repurposed as human transports? Where were they going? Marina sought information on a daily basis, and shared some of what she heard with Edith. The few facts Marina came across simply raised new and more disturbing questions in Edith’s mind. What was Oskar’s role in these transports? Did he control those trains? Did he sign the orders sending hundreds of people away from their homes?
Reluctant to acknowledge the terrifying reality suggested by those rumors, Edith didn’t confront Oskar until a letter she had written to Hilde Stern returned unopened last winter. They’d been sitting alone in the living room sipping the coffee Oskar had brought from Berlin. Outside, a storm raged, one of those that rattled the glass in their casements. The wind buffeted the chestnut tree, and the heavy branches of its shadowy bulk knocked and scratched on the windows. Oskar looked up from the newspaper he’d been reading as a bough screeched across one of the glass panes. “When was the last time we had that tree trimmed, Edith?” She ignored the question. The letter that she’d sent to Hilde two weeks earlier had been returned from Lodz that afternoon, completely intact and sealed, with the words FORWARDING ADDRESS UNKNOWN stamped across Hilde’s name. Now, she thought. She’d been content to embrace ignorance, but she loved Hilde and had to know that she was safe.
“You know, Oskar,” she began, “sometimes I sit here wondering what you do in Berlin. I look up at the clock and I think, ‘What is he doing right now?’ ”
Oskar laughed and put his coffee cup down. “Is that why we haven’t had the tree trimmed, my dear? Because you are preoccupied with my work?”
Edith approached cautiously. “No, not ‘preoccupied,’ that’s overstating it. But I do think about you, you know I do. And I wonder about your day, what meetings you might be in, what decisions you might have to be making.”
“Oh, my day is far from exciting,” Oskar said, reaching for the sugar bowl, frowning when he discovered it empty. “If I told you everything I did, you’d immediately feel an overwhelming urge to nap.”
“No, Oskar, really, I’d like to know a bit more. We used to talk about things all the time.”
“Family matters, mostly,” Oskar said. “Not dull things like fuel supply depots in Köln.”
She knew she was pushing but willed herself to continue. “Is that mostly it? Military support issues?”
Oskar sat up in his chair, his jaw beginning to clench. “Edith, I have told you I cannot speak of these things with you. There are things I am involved in—things that, for your sake and our family’s, I cannot share.”
Having started, Edith was not now going to stop. “Is it just coal being transported on those rails, Oskar?” Edith’s mind flooded with imagined scenes, and she closed her eyes, trying to block them out. “Marina hears things about the rail lines, you know. Horrible things . . .”
Suddenly Oskar slammed his hand on the table, hard enough to tip the cup in its saucer. His eyes were hard. She had seen caution there in the past when she’d strayed close to dangerous territory. But the look today was harsher—a warning, the kind shouted at someone headed toward a minefield.
“Don’t!” Oskar barked. “Do not speculate. You don’t have that luxury, Edith, nor does Marina. Given who you are, people mistake your speculations for the truth, and that opens the door to trouble.”
Taken aback by his sudden furor, Edith tried to disarm him. “Oskar, Marina and I only speak to each other about these things.”
He was not reassured. “It is just. Not. Safe!” Oskar almost snarled.
“How, Oskar? How is my talking to my daughter not safe?” Edith demanded.
Oskar picked up the toppled coffee cup and clenched it with such force that Edith feared the china would crack. “Edith.” He waited after speaking her name, breathing in and out with his eyes closed. Was there moisture at their corners? She could not tell. “There are rumors everywhere about everything,” he finally continued. “Marina shouldn’t believe what she hears. And she certainly shouldn’t engage in discussions about it. It’s not safe. People disappear for less. Certain topics are risky for anyone, and particularly for us.”
Now it was Edith’s turn to explode. “But it’s Hilde and Martin! I need to know they’re not hurt. I need to know they’re not on those trains packed together with complete strangers, hundreds to a car, heading to some godforsaken place! Please tell me they’re not!”
Edith could have mentioned any number of other Jewish friends that she and Oskar had known in Berlin, but she was most concerned about the Sterns. The last time she had seen Hilde, her friend had offered Edith the small wooden inlaid box that she had found in Turkey on her honeymoon, the one Edith had always admired. Hilde and Martin had been ordered to leave Berlin, Hilde explained, along with thousands of other Jewish families, and they were permitted to bring only two small cardboard boxes of personal belongings. Edith was dumbstruck. Later, Oskar was able to determine that the Sterns had been sent to a settlement established expressly for Jews in Lodz, Poland.
Edith had reassured herself that they were all right. She didn’t know much about the settlement at Lodz, but she told herself that Martin was likely to have gotten one of the larger apartments there, given his prominence in the Berlin community. Perhaps Hilde even had a small garden, or at least a window box, where she could plant some flowers. Of course, the settlement would be very crowded, and no doubt there would be food shortages, even worse than those in Berlin. But like Edith and Oskar, Hilde and Martin Stern had endured the horrendous scarcities of the first war. They were not strangers to hunger. They could, Edith reasoned, survive such adversity again. When Edith heard a report that soldiers had shot several Jews on the streets of the Jewish tenement in Minsk, she was sure that those unfortunate youths—she was convinced they must have been young—had foolishly antagonized the officers. T
here was still no excuse for such excessive force, but if similar events were taking place in Lodz, Edith felt certain that Martin and Hilde, two quiet, retiring people who were very respectful of authority, wouldn’t be involved.
These rationalizations began to fray when Marina told Edith about the train transports. Thousands of Jews, Marina said, were being packed into freight trains like cattle and shipped east. Rumors of their ultimate destination abounded. Some said they were being deported to Palestine and other foreign countries; others claimed that they were sent to forced labor camps in eastern Germany and Poland.
That winter evening, Edith’s outburst seemed to strike a chord in Oskar. He leaned forward and took her hands. “Edith, I don’t know where the Sterns are. I have been keeping an eye on Lodz, and what I can tell you is that many people were relocated. The settlement was vastly overcrowded, but many people remain there. Perhaps our friends are among them.”
That evening and again tonight, Edith wanted to believe her husband. Perhaps he was right, she thought, staring up at the sky through her beloved skylight. Perhaps she should not assume anything from an undelivered letter. The stars were twinkling hesitantly, it seemed to her. Perhaps Hilde was growing petunias and Martin was now smoking contraband cigarettes. Perhaps the Führer really did want to talk to Oskar about cold-pressed steel pipes. Perhaps Oskar would return home early tomorrow afternoon and hide her boots in the woodpile as a joke, as he always did. Perhaps.
The Good at Heart Page 8