A City of Broken Glass (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  Second, Paul. A few years after the War, he had asked me to marry him. I had declined. I had realized that I did not want marriage, but I was unsuited for lighthearted casual relationships with men. For years I avoided them.

  My third and fourth proposals came from the same man. In 1931, and again in 1934, a powerful Nazi officer named Ernst Röhm had tried to force me to marry him to provide cover for his homosexual activities and claim Anton as his own. The adventure had brought Anton into my life and had helped me to solve my brother’s murder. And both times we had eluded Röhm. I shuddered to think what would have happened otherwise.

  Then, I had lived in Switzerland with a banker named Boris Krause, the man I probably should have married. A kind, stable man—with him I had enjoyed the happiest, most peaceful time of my life. Eventually he, too, asked for my hand in marriage, but only if I settled down as a proper wife and mother and gave up spying for the British against the Nazis. I had been tempted, but I refused his offer, too. Ironically, my career as a courier came quickly to an end. By then he had moved on to someone else, and I thought I had as well.

  My sixth and final chance came by an accidental marriage on paper to a former SS officer named Lars Lang. He had been my contact when I worked against the Nazis. Together we had smuggled many secret documents to the British. We had been listed as married on a set of false paperwork created to help us escape Germany. Still, the feelings we had for each other were not false. I had been willing to turn that piece of paper into a real marriage, but he vanished on a trip to Russia two years ago. I assumed that he was dead, but I still wore his ring.

  Fräulein Ivona turned and blew out a lungful of smoke. I coughed.

  “Apologies,” she said without looking contrite. “So, you have no man?”

  I suspected she wanted to talk about her own man. She had alluded to him several times on the way to Zbąszyń. I decided to humor her before she suffocated me in her smoke. “Have you?”

  “I do.” She flapped her hand in the air as if that would chase the smoke out of the car. “But I am not certain if he is a good man or a bad one. How does one tell?”

  “It is rarely that simple,” I said.

  “But surely you know about men. You were married, after all.”

  “Being married did not help to understand men better.”

  Fräulein Ivona flicked her cigarette out the window. “Even if he has done bad things, I think mine is a good man. I think he might have been led astray at times. Anyone can be led astray, can’t they?”

  “Perhaps.” I braked to avoid a gray goose waddling across the road. “Although I do believe that we are responsible for our own actions. And that someone who has been led astray once may be led astray again.”

  The goose honked angrily as I eased past it.

  Fräulein Ivona drew another cigarette out of a metal case. This time, she offered me one. I shook my head. “In spite of that, he’s a good man.”

  “Indeed?”

  “He is kind, handsome…” Ivona ticked points off on her fingers. Lars used to do that. I swallowed. I had not expected that I would still miss him as much as I did. Two years was not as long as it seemed. She prattled on. “He is reliable. And he is a very excellent lover.”

  Women had not spoken so frankly about men in my day. “How fortunate for you.”

  She nodded and unfolded a fifth finger. “That counts double.”

  I laughed.

  “But,” she announced. “He is not really mine. He is married to someone else. And yesterday … yesterday I saw him look at another woman, and I knew that he loved her, not me.”

  I pitied her, with her good man who was married to someone else and starting up a third dalliance. “A complicated situation.”

  She talked as if I had not spoken. “Soon—” She made a sound like ffft. “—he will be on to the next girl.”

  “He will?” She would probably be better off if he did move on.

  She lit the second cigarette before answering. Again, she watched the flame creep close to her fingers before blowing it out or speaking. “He never stays with a girl longer than a month. He told me at the beginning that we had only a month.”

  I looked over at her, finally curious. “He gave you a deadline? Why did you choose him?”

  “Because he is such an excellent lover, of course.” She raised her arched eyebrows as if surprised that I could ask such a foolish question. “He is kind, too. After my mother died, I wanted that.”

  I turned a quick left at the large gray boulder, as Frau Volonoski had directed. I wished for street signs and hoped that this was the correct boulder. “When did your mother die?”

  “A little more than a month ago now. Her heart gave out.” She stared at the Fiat’s dusty red hood. “The nuns were very kind to us through the end.”

  “I am sorry to hear of your recent loss. My mother has been dead many years, but I still think of her.” Although I did not miss her.

  “She had been ill for a long time, so it was for the best.” Ivona leaned away from me. “Perhaps I shall be the one he settles on.”

  “If he is married, it seems that he has already settled on someone else.” I kept my voice as gentle as I could. The girl was not so tough as her words.

  “If he truly loved her,” she said. “He would be with her, not dallying with others.”

  I did not want to second-guess the motivations of her philandering lover, but he sounded like trouble.

  “You really have no man in your life?” she asked, as if surprised that a woman could exist in such a state.

  “No.” Since Lars’s disappearance, I’d had no interest in dating men, and at thirty-nine, I had passed the age where they were interested in dating me. I had managed most of my life without them. I now hoped only to stay safely away from emotional attachments, besides Anton.

  She clucked her tongue. “Why not?”

  “Broken heart,” I said lightly, although it was true.

  “I think my man is broken. More than just his heart, but that, too. Still, I think it can be fixed.” She took a long drag of her cigarette. “Don’t you?”

  “People are not clocks,” I said. “It is difficult enough to know what is in someone else’s heart, let alone fix it. But, as I said before, I am no expert.”

  “Didn’t you find happiness, at least once?”

  She sounded so sad that I hurried to answer her. “I did. More than once.”

  In the distance, the chimney of the flour mill loomed against a forbidding gray sky. The building was much bigger than I had expected, at least four stories tall. Like the stable, it was made of brick.

  “It looks like a castle!” Anton said from the backseat.

  “It does at that,” I said. “With those crenellations along the roof.”

  “One thing I do know,” I returned to my conversation with Fräulein Ivona, “there is much more to life than men and romantic love. It is part of the whole, of course. But it is not everything. Children, friends, work. I build my life on those things, too.”

  “It sounds like you have quit trying!” she said. “Did the man who broke your heart drive you away from love?”

  “A man did not break my heart.” I thought back to watching Lars board the train to Russia, fearing even then that he might not return. “Life did. But remember, life holds more than just men. Much more.”

  She pursed her lips and shook her head, clearly disbelieving my words.

  I braked to a hasty stop in front of the mill. A cloud of dust roiled around us as we hurried to the front door.

  As at the stable, soldiers surrounded the building. These could not be bullied. I showed them my press credentials. I told them again and again about Miriam and the baby, but they remained stony-faced.

  Finally, Anton took matters into his own hands and darted past the soldiers and into the flour mill. I lunged toward him, but soldiers caught my arms.

  “Anton!” I rounded on the soldier. “Anton Zinsli is a Swiss citizen,
and if he comes to harm, there will be severe consequences.”

  A soldier broke off from the group and went into the mill after him. The others still held me fast.

  “If I let you go, miss, can you behave yourself, as a sane adult?” The oldest soldier asked. He was about my own age.

  “I will.” I had spoken with precious few sane adults all day. Perhaps I could serve as a role model.

  An eternity later, Anton reappeared at the door, accompanied by the soldier and a tall dark-haired man carrying a black bag. He had fetched the doctor.

  I put my hand on Anton’s shoulder. “You should not have gone in there.”

  He looked levelly into my eyes. “However you punish me, it will be worth it if the woman on the stable floor lives.”

  I caught him in a rough hug. “We shall discuss this later. But think for a moment. What if you could not have come back out? Watch your step, or you will not be able to help yourself or others.”

  The doctor held out his hand. “I believe I have another patient?” he said in German. “Doktor Volonoski.”

  I shook his hand. He had a firm, relaxed grip. “Frau Adelheid Zinsli. Thank you for coming out.”

  I opened the Fiat’s passenger door for him. Fräulein Ivona climbed into the backseat, leaving me in the front seat with the doctor. Anton rode on the running board, arm looped over my window.

  I drove more cautiously back toward the stable, mindful that Anton would pitch into the road if I was not careful. “There is a woman about to give birth in the stable. Could you get her released to a hospital?”

  “Depends,” he said. “Was the labor progressing normally, or was she in distress?”

  “She was in distress.” I lied to convince him to move Miriam elsewhere. Even if she could deliver her baby safely in the stable, that did not mean she should have to. “She is about twenty-eight years old. It is her second child. She was in full labor.”

  “Have you expertise in these matters?” the doctor asked.

  “I was a nurse,” I said. “During the War.”

  He gave me a tired smile. “Wonderful. Can you assist?”

  Help to deliver a baby? I had worked with wounded soldiers, not expectant mothers. But there was no one else, so I must. “Of course.”

  When we arrived, I left Anton in the car. “Do not leave,” I said. “Fräulein Ivona, please stay with him. Keep Anton in sight every second.”

  “Acting as a nanny was not in the terms of my hire,” she said primly.

  I gave her a handful of tattered Polish zlotys. She counted them, folded them, and tucked them into her pocket before answering. “Very well.”

  The doctor and I strode to the stable door.

  “How bad is it?” I asked him. “In the mill.”

  “Very bad,” he said. “Old and young were dragged from their homes and made to stand for days on platforms and in trains with no food and little water. Running through the forest at the end was too much for many of them. And the Germans set dogs on some and beat others. I studied medicine in Dresden, and I cannot believe what has happened to the German people.” He shook his head sadly. “I’ve been treating heart attacks and strokes, although there’s little enough I can do without medication.”

  “How can I help?” I asked.

  “Could you be my nurse? Just for this afternoon? I believe that the Jewish council in Warsaw is sending doctors and food tomorrow.”

  “I can.”

  When we reached the soldiers, Doktor Volonoski started a weary-sounding speech. The young soldier’s face remained impassive. He already acted tougher than he had that morning, getting used to his new role.

  “Please,” I said in Polish. “Proszę.”

  An older soldier with muddy knees came out of the stable. I turned to him, ready to start again. Bureaucratic rules would not be enough to keep us from Miriam.

  He muttered a few words in an undertone to the young one. The young soldier’s face softened when he spoke to the doctor, and they all took their hats off.

  I knew what he would say before he spoke. “I am very sorry, miss. Your friend did not survive the labor.”

  My knees threatened to give way. “And the baby?”

  He asked the soldier, and the soldier mumbled his answer to the ground, ashamed and sad. I understood his answer before the doctor translated it. “The baby was lost, too.”

  4

  The older soldier pressed a set of cold keys and a heavy locket into my palm. “She said: For Ruth.”

  I dropped the keys into my pocket, certain that they belonged to Miriam’s Berlin apartment. The locket rested in my palm, a design of leaves surrounding a sun etched in its surface. It shone gold in the watery sunlight. I had not held it for years. The last woman to wear it had died alone in a stable. I hung the thin chain around my neck.

  “I want to see her.” The reporter in me needed to verify it.

  The soldier looked uneasy.

  “Please,” I said.

  “I will go with her,” the doctor said. “I will keep her out of trouble.”

  He would not be the first one who was wrong about that.

  “Quick,” the soldier answered.

  Doktor Volonoski and I followed the soldier into the fetid barn. The soldier led us to a pregnant body stretched in a corner. Someone had removed Miriam’s threadbare black coat and placed it over her face. I lifted it. Her eyes were closed, her unruly hair plastered to her forehead. Damp strands formed ringlets around her temples.

  Her still, bluish face told me what I would find, but I took off my glove and dropped my fingers to her neck. Her oily skin felt icy. No pulse. She must have died soon after I left the stable.

  “I do not understand,” I told the doctor. “When I left she was fine.”

  “I thought you said that she was in distress.” He looked reassuringly at the soldier, as if to vouch that I would not make a scene.

  “In distress, yes, but not near death.”

  “I am sorry. But things can change quickly during a labor.” He gestured around the filthy barn. “Especially in conditions like this.”

  I drew the coat over her face and opened the locket. It contained a picture of a two-year-old girl. She looked like neither Paul nor Miriam. A dark ribbon tied back her long blond hair. She glanced sideways at the photographer, eyes alight with mischief. She looked a little like me. Indeed, if things had worked out differently with Paul, perhaps she would have been mine.

  The edge of the little girl’s picture curled forward. I gently pried it out with my fingernail. Underneath was a picture of a blond man who looked very much like Ruth. Was it Miriam’s brother? Or was it Ruth’s father? If so, it might explain why Paul had not followed his wife into Poland.

  I smoothed Ruth’s picture on top of the man’s. Then I closed the locket and clasped it between my palms. Let it keep its secrets, for now.

  The doctor helped me to my feet.

  “Thank you.” I stared at Miriam’s inert body. She had been so young, and the baby had never had a chance to live. Two more innocents claimed by the Nazis. I sighed.

  The doctor’s worried gray eyes looked into mine. “I feel sorrow for your loss.”

  I wiped the back of my hand across my eyes. “As do I.”

  I would find out more about her last minutes. I glanced around the stable, searching for the blond woman who had served as her translator. She was nowhere in sight.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the old woman sitting closest to Miriam’s body. “Where is the woman who was with her?”

  She, too, looked around the stable. “Gone.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Out.” She pointed toward the half-open front door.

  I had thought no refugees were allowed through there.

  “You can stay here no longer.” The soldier took my arm and began steering me toward the door, his grip just short of painful.

  “Wait!” I called back to the old woman. “What’s your name?”

 
She put her finger to her lips and turned away.

  The soldier and Doktor Volonoski ushered me out of the stable. I would help Doktor Volonoski with the refugees in the mill today, but tomorrow I would come back here and find out what had happened to Miriam’s translator.

  * * *

  Fräulein Ivona and Anton stood where I had left them. He had both eyes fixed on the door, waiting for me. She looked everywhere but at the stable. She clearly wanted to be far away. I did not blame her. No one else wanted to be here either.

  “Is she all right?” Anton asked.

  I wavered. I hated to leave him with this kind of news alone.

  “I have to help the others, in the flour mill.” I inclined my head toward the doctor.

  Fräulein Ivona fussed with her fashionable jacket. She knew the answer, too. “Are you sure that you shouldn’t get some lunch and come back?”

  I shook my head. “No time for that. I can eat later.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “You care about them so, though they are strangers? And Jews?”

  “They are human beings, some injured and sick. If I can help them, I must.”

  “So their pain is more important to you than your hunger?” It appeared as if this thought had not occurred to her before.

  “I will survive, Fräulein Ivona.” I put my hand on her arm. “They might not be so fortunate.”

  “Let me get you food before you go,” she said.

  “If you could have something ready for me later,” I said, “that would be a tremendous help.”

  I dropped them at the sole hotel. I handed Anton my satchel. “Take good care of this for me.”

  He slung the strap across his body. “When will you be back?”

  “When the doctor says we are finished.”

  “I will have her back for dinner, young man,” Doktor Volonoski said.

  I turned to Fräulein Ivona. “Please stay with him.”

  She tugged her wrinkled jacket into position. “Of course, Frau Zinsli.”

  “I do not want him left alone.”