“Frau Doktor Spiegel’s!” I yelled above the wind. He nodded. He rode confidently, as if we were out for a quick canter in the woods.
Lars, on the other hand, barely managed to stay in the saddle. I dropped the reins from my left hand and held him against me, hoping I could stay balanced.
Anton watched the reins fall and moved his horse ahead of mine. Smart boy. Instead of swerving off, my horse followed his lead. I trusted that Anton could control both horses.
I wrapped both arms around Lars and threaded my fingers through the gray’s mane. I felt Lars fighting to keep his balance, but I also felt his strength ebbing. We were close, but I did not know if we would make it.
We rode past crowds ranged on the edges of the Jewish quarter. They carried lit torches and baskets of rocks. Stones flew through shop windows. Looters were already inside others, throwing items into the street. The horses’ hooves crunched in the broken glass.
I gripped the gray more tightly with my knees.
We galloped to Frau Doktor Spiegel’s street, a few blocks from the edge of the Jewish quarter. The mob had not ventured so far in yet. A hurricane lamp burned in her front window, but otherwise the apartment looked deserted. Streets stretched dark as far as I could see. Someone must have cut the power to the entire Jewish quarter. Telephones, too, I imagined. But we had nowhere else to go.
Anton jumped off his horse before it stopped moving, and helped Ruth down. He grabbed my reins and steadied the gray with one hand and soft words. A wobbly Ruth clung to his shirt.
Frau Doktor Spiegel’s door opened. “Fräulein Vogel?”
“I cannot get him down on my own.”
They steadied Lars while I slid off. Together, she and I carried him toward the apartment.
“The horses,” I called to Anton. “Send them off.”
He slapped their rumps, and hooves rang against the street as they trotted away, probably heading home to their nice quiet stables. I envied them.
Anton took Ruth’s hand and led her inside.
“The kitchen,” Frau Doktor Spiegel said.
We got Lars up on the table. I stripped off his coat and stained shirt. Blood soaked my makeshift bandages. “He has a gunshot wound to the lung. The bullet is still in there.”
“Get me a torch!” she ordered. “By the sink.”
Anton found the electric torch and clicked it on. When he shone the beam on Lars, I feared that he was already dead. My heart stopped. After all this time, I had come to view him as indestructible. That, no matter what, he would endure. But he was just a man.
Outside, the mob grew louder. They were only a few streets away.
“He’s not dead yet, Fräulein Vogel!” Frau Doktor Spiegel snapped. “Can you assist me here, or should I haul him back out to die in the street?”
I fumbled with his bandages. “I have never had problems assisting.”
“You’ve also never looked at one of your patients the way you just looked at him, not even Paul.”
Lars’s lips moved into a faint smile. He was still conscious.
“Once he is well, he will be insufferable.” I kissed his blue lips, hoping my words would be true.
She pulled a vial with three white pills out of her brassiere. I worked on preparing Lars for surgery. “What is that?”
“It’s my opium,” she said. “I keep it there. In case of emergency.”
She studied it, face ghostly in the glow of the electric torch.
“What emergency?” Anton asked.
The same emergency that Paul faced. She kept that opium so that when things became unbearable, she could commit suicide. “Frau Doktor?”
She removed a pill and stuck it in Lars’s mouth. “I suppose this is an emergency as well.”
His chest was fully exposed. She doused her instruments with carbolic acid, and we began work. Anton sat on the floor, holding Ruth. He told her a story of Winnetou and his sister Nscho-tschi in the Wild West. I had never been more proud of him.
I held the light with one hand and assisted with the other while she took out the bullet and stitched Lars up. Side by side, we both worked as quickly as we had under fire in the war. It was the same. If the mob outside found her practicing medicine on an Aryan, they might well kill us all.
But she finished before they arrived.
We moved Lars into the bedroom. I stayed with him while Frau Doktor Spiegel and Anton cleaned the kitchen. No one could see the bloody instruments and cloths, or they would know that she had broken the law to save his life.
Ruth sat on the floor next to me with both arms wrapped around my legs. I stroked her back with one hand, and held Lars’s hand with the other. He was a fighter. He was still alive. He would not die now. But as I knew from many battlefield surgeries, he very well might later.
Frau Doktor Spiegel appeared in the doorway. “Clean yourself up, Hannah. I can’t have you covered in blood when they get here. They’re close.”
She handed me a wet towel and a clean dress. I changed and wiped myself as clean as I could, then dropped the bloody items into a bag she held.
“Take this to the back courtyard. Dump it with the rest.” She handed Anton the bag. He ran.
I sat next to Lars and adjusted the blankets, pulling them to his chin.
“I want to transfuse him,” she said. “He’s lost too much blood. Now that I don’t need you standing…”
“Of course.” My blood type was O. Because I was a universal donor, I had spent the last year of the War perpetually anemic from emergency blood donations.
“I’ll fetch my—”
Something crashed through the front window. Ruth yelped. Anton rushed into the room.
“There is brandy in the front room,” I said. “Bring it now.”
He was back quickly, bottle in hand.
The front door splintered open. Did they have an ax? Frau Doktor Spiegel went toward the sound.
I sprinkled brandy on Lars, then hid the bottle under the bed.
In the living room, something hard smashed against the walls. Glass broke and crashed to the floor with each stroke.
“Get behind me,” I told Anton. “And hold Ruth.”
He scooped her up in his arms and stood near Lars’s head. I stepped in front of them, although I could do little against an organized mob.
I pulled my Hannah Schmidt passport out of my satchel and took Lars’s from his back pocket. It seemed dry. I wished I could check to see if it had bloodstains.
Two men in SA uniforms stormed into the room. Both were tall. I could only hope I would be able to convince them to let us go. They glared at me.
“What are you doing?” I trembled with fear, but they expected that. It would have been suspicious otherwise.
“We’re teaching you filthy Jews a lesson.” One spit on the floor.
“I am not Jewish,” I said. “I am not even German. I am Swiss.”
They both stopped. During the Games in 1936, the storm troopers had been issued orders not to harm foreigners. I could only hope that they had similar orders now. In the front room, a different soldier yelled at Frau Doktor Spiegel. Glass crashed to the floor.
I walked over and handed my passport to the soldier who had not spit on the floor. He turned on a torch and examined it, studying the last stamp, the false one from Zbąszyń. He pointed his light at my eyes. I squinted.
“I am sorry, Frau Schmidt,” he said. “This is not a safe place to be tonight.”
I silently thanked Herr Silbert.
The soldier shone his light on Lars and the children. Something thudded against the floor in the front room.
“Those are my children, and that is my husband.” I hoped that Ruth would stay quiet.
“Does he have identification? If not, we must arrest him. All Jewish men between the ages of sixteen and sixty are being arrested tonight.”
“He is Swiss.” I handed him Lars’s passport. My hands shook. He would not survive the trip to a concentration camp.
&nb
sp; “How old is the boy?” The soldier jerked his thumb toward Anton.
“Thirteen.” I grabbed Anton with one hand. He was tall for his age, and I had no identity papers for him at all. His Anton Zinsli passport was back in the hotel in Zbąszyń.
What if the soldier demanded proof? I would not let Anton go without a fight, even if I knew it was futile. I could not win a battle against the two soldiers, but it might buy Anton enough time to run out the back door. If he would go.
The soldier directed the torch at Anton’s face. I held my breath. I loosened my grip on Anton’s arm and steadied myself.
I turned my back to the soldier and mouthed, Swiss embassy, to Anton.
He understood what I said, but looked mulish. Oh please, I begged silently. Just this once, son, do what I say. I would hate to throw my life away for nothing at all.
The soldier gave a brief nod. “Tall one,” he said, “but you’re not sixteen.”
Anton was spared.
The soldier studied Lars’s false passport. My heart beat hard in my throat. Like everyone in the Jewish quarter tonight, I had no recourse but hope. Actually, I had more. I had hope and forged Swiss passports. Would that be enough?
Behind me, I heard Anton and Ruth’s quick breathing, and Lars’s slow breaths. I was grateful that Lars, at least, would sleep through whatever came next.
The sound of tearing fabric came from the front room. Were they ripping up the drapes?
The soldier passed the beam of the torch across Lars’s pale face. “Why is he in bed?”
“I—” I dropped my gaze to the worn Persian rug. “He—overindulged and passed out.”
The soldier took a step toward the bed and sniffed. The smell of brandy was strong there, as I had hoped it would be.
“My advice, miss,” he said calmly, “is to get him and the children out of here as soon as you can.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “When will it be safe to travel?”
“I think we will be at this all night,” he said.
“I see.”
“Stay near the bed,” he said. “I’ll let that alone, as a favor to the Swiss.”
I stood between the children and the soldiers, my arms centimeters out from my sides, as if that could protect them.
He flicked his truncheon casually at the wall toward Frau Doktor Spiegel’s wedding picture. So much younger than now, she stood proudly next to her husband, surrounded by family and friends. In the back right corner, Paul smiled out from a different time. The truncheon shattered the glass. The soldier flipped the picture out of its frame, tore it in half, and dropped it on the floor.
He swiped a pair of reading glasses off the dresser and ground them under his heel. Ruth whimpered. I covered her eyes, hoping to keep her from seeing as much as I could. Anton watched every movement. And I could do nothing about that. I drew him close to my other side.
The soldier dumped each drawer. I was grateful that Frau Doktor Spiegel was not here to see him stomp on her underthings, although by the crashing coming from the kitchen, things were no better there. He opened the closet door and began methodically removing everything, breaking what he could.
The thorough way he destroyed her possessions was more terrifying than mob violence would have been. He did it efficiently, like a familiar job. He had orders.
He spotted the electric torch in Anton’s hand. Anton offered it up to him, but he shook his head. “I’ll assume that it’s Swiss.”
Ruth stared at him, as nonplussed as the rest of us.
“My apologies for disturbing you, Frau Schmidt,” he said.
I gaped. I had no response for his polite address in the midst of his destruction.
He touched his cap, turned on his heel and left, taking his companion with him. I let out a long breath. I left the children on the bed with Lars and went to check on Frau Doktor Spiegel.
The noise had not prepared me for the extent of the damage. Every picture had been removed from the wall and had its glass smashed. Her books had been ripped from the shelves. Torn pages littered the floor.
They had even sliced open the upholstery on her sofa and slashed the rug on the floor. My bare feet stepped carefully around the glass. I thought of my own shoes, lined up by the synagogue door.
In the kitchen, her precious Vaseline glass collection lay in shards. I shone the torch around. They had even broken the jars of jam and honey.
Through her broken front door, I watched them move on to the next house, remembering the soldier’s words. They would be at this all night.
She knelt on the floor, one fist pressed tight against her heart.
“Frau Doktor?” I hurried to stand next to her.
She stood. She held a long black tube with large needle at one end, a smaller at the other. “They broke my transfusion glass, of course, but we can do a direct one. I’m old enough to remember how.”
She gestured at the wrecked apartment. “This will wait, but I think my patient will not.”
I followed her into the bedroom, awed by her matter-of-fact courage. She had watched everything she owned destroyed in front of her. If Lars’s wounds had been discovered, she might have been executed on the spot, and still she kept moving.
I lay on the bed next to Lars. Anton held the torch while she stuck the large needle into my arm, the small one into Lars’s. Ruth covered her eyes.
“Hold the light on my watch.” Frau Doktor Spiegel took my pulse, trying to calculate how much of my blood had flowed into Lars. Without a glass to measure, it was the best that we could do.
Eventually, she pulled out both needles and taped a strip of gauze over my arm, then his. His color looked better. I took his pulse as soon as I could move my arm. Weak but steady.
“Yes,” she said, reading my expression. “It looks promising for him.”
“Now I need to get him out of Germany.” The burnt-out lorry was back at the synagogue, and useless to us regardless. Yet none of us could stay here for long.
“Fräulein Ivona drove Lars’s old lorry to the synagogue,” Anton piped up. “I saw it by ours.”
I remembered the Opel Blitz that was parked in front of us.
“Are you certain it is the same one?” I asked. That lorry had a finished compartment, because she had stolen it from Lars. Anton had ridden in it when he crossed the Polish border.
“Yes,” he said. “It had an extra gas tank, the fake one. And it had a dent in the tailgate.”
“Wait here,” I said.
Over Frau Doktor Spiegel’s protestations, I left them all in the apartment to fetch the lorry, borrowing Anton’s shoes for the trip.
Light-headed from the blood donation, I stumbled down glittering streets.
All of Berlin seemed to be covered in broken glass. In every direction, columns of smoke marked where synagogues burned.
Weeping old men, women, and children lined the street. Lorries rolled by filled with Jewish men. Many bore the marks of SS fists. The men’s next stop would be the concentration camps. Paul, at least, had been spared that.
I quickened my step, swerving around the remains of a grand piano. Boys just a few years older than Anton stood next to it, hacking at the ebony wood with hatchets. I looked up. Someone had pushed the piano out of a third-story window. The cloth that once covered it had caught on a shard of glass and fluttered like a flag of surrender.
Unnoticed in the confusion, I reached the synagogue without incident. The fire department had put out the blaze, and a policeman stood guard in front of the building, stopping further vandalism. Destruction raged around him, but he stood firm. He caught my eye and I bowed my head in thanks. Whoever he was, he had risked much to keep this one building safe.
I clomped to Lars’s old lorry. I opened the driver’s door and felt in my pocket.
I did not have a key.
I would have to sneak into the synagogue and see if I could find Fräulein Ivona’s purse. I glanced back at the policeman, wondering how I could get past him.
I reached inside and felt the ignition, just in case Fräulein Ivona had left them there for a quick getaway. My fingers touched the key. I blew out my breath in relief.
I started the lorry, returned to Frau Doktor Spiegel’s, and loaded everyone inside. Lars and Frau Doktor Spiegel rested in the back on a mattress; the children huddled together on the front seat. Lars was still completely unconscious. She had given him enough opium to knock out a horse.
We drove out of the Jewish quarter into well-ordered neighborhoods where nothing had been disturbed. Moonlight reflected off intact windowpanes. The night was quiet here, everyone sleeping, everyone safe. None of them knew what horrible crimes were being committed just a few miles from their soft pillows.
The Kellers owned their own house. I parked in front. “Say good-bye to Ruth, Anton.”
He gave her a quick good-bye, and she ducked her head shyly.
“I will be back soon, Anton,” I said. “After that it is straight on to Switzerland.”
“I’ve heard that before.” He chucked Ruth under the chin.
“This time,” I said. “It is finally true.”
I lifted her out of the front seat and paused near the bed of the lorry. “Is everything in order, Frau Doktor Spiegel?”
She chuckled. “In this neighborhood, it certainly is.”
“Is Lars—?”
“He is as well as can be expected. As am I.” She held up her wristwatch. “Stopped. The men must have broken it. I didn’t even notice. Remember how I said I would not stay a extra second?”
I nodded.
She shook her wrist. “My second’s up. Stopped with the watch.”
“After we get across—”
“Palestine,” she said. “Even if I have to ride there in the back of another lorry. I expect they need doctors there, too.”
Ruth rested her head against my shoulder.
“Get that little one into bed,” Frau Doktor Spiegel said. “It’s very late. We all need a rest.”
“Jawohl, Frau Doktor.”
She gave me a tired smile.
Relieved that she had a plan that did not involve the rest of the opium, I hurried up the walk with Ruth on my hip. She looked around excitedly, clearly recognizing the yard.
A City of Broken Glass (Hannah Vogel) Page 29