The German Midwife

by Mandy Robotham

  So many messages in a few, simple sentences: couched in front of the wireless in those last days before we were all taken, Papa and I had talked over endless possibilities for us and Germany, sometimes both of us wet with tears. Always, always, though he ended with the sentiment: ‘Mankind will triumph, Anke. Be sure of that.’ In his scribbled words, he was finding a way for his ethos to live on. I knew then that his thinking, and that of thousands like him – imprisoned or free – would drive out bullies like Koenig. We just had to wait. And survive.

  I was still awake when the staff car left at about midnight, to their base down the mountain. But they would be back, hovering; there was no doubt. I felt impatient to gauge Eva’s take on the situation – she had always given the impression it was to be just us at the birth, and now Christa. But her flighty mind was easily swayed; any suggestion of the Führer’s in favour of the doctors and she might yield. The thought of trying to practise midwifery with Dr Koenig’s overbearing presence in the room brought me out into a cold sweat. And Dieter? I knew he understood, but even as SS he had limitations. Depressed, I drifted uneasily into sleep.

  The doctor was certainly keen. He was back before breakfast, supervising the transformation of a large guest room on the same level as Eva’s bedroom. They had brought an operating bed, portable lights, and an anaesthetic machine – appropriated from a needy field hospital, no doubt – plus an array of instruments. The maids had been up since the early hours scrubbing the floor and walls, and the curtains had been replaced with blinds. My nose wrinkled with the overpowering smell of carbolic.

  I ghosted through the corridor towards Eva’s quarters almost tiptoeing past the new theatre room.

  ‘Fräulein Hoff, may I have a word?’

  I tensed at the sound of Dr Koenig’s voice. ‘Certainly, Doctor.’

  He beckoned me towards Sergeant Meier’s empty office. ‘Please, sit down.’

  Taking his place behind the desk, he sat back as if the chair was moulded to his own, broad shape.

  ‘Well, Fräulein, you do appear to have made something of an impression on Fräulein Braun,’ he said, fingers weaved together and resting on his girth.

  ‘She tells me you have made a plan, which stipulates that as medical doctors—’ the stress heavy on doctors ‘—we are to remain on site but outside of the delivery room, until or unless you request our help.’

  ‘I believe that is what the Fräulein wishes,’ I said, eye contact dutiful but minimal. ‘I am, of course, led by her wishes.’

  ‘In which case, I feel it’s prudent that we are both clear on our realms of practice.’ In other words, my limitations as a midwife, and his scope to do anything in the name of medicine.

  ‘Certainly,’ I said.

  The list he reeled off was predictable, but constricting: any delays in the labour beyond a certain number of hours, any change in the baby’s heart rate, bleeding, discoloured fluid once the waters broke, changes to blood pressure, pulse or temperature. Eva would need to be a textbook case to avoid his large, overbearing hands on her. I was to report the progress of the labour personally to him at every hour.

  I nodded at each request, knowing that without his or Dr Langer’s actual presence in the room, it was only me who could assess the clinical facts. I was experienced enough to detect real signs of danger, and ignore those grey areas straddling normality.

  ‘Fräulein?’ He seemed impatient I was showing no signs of reverence. ‘Are we clear on your role, and when to hand over?’

  ‘Yes, Doctor, we are,’ I said. ‘Although I have every confidence Fräulein Braun will cope with the labour and birth her baby without needing our help to any great degree.’

  He grunted, disbelieving of any woman to birth without his expert aid.

  ‘Is that all? Fräulein Braun is expecting me.’ I moved to stand up.

  ‘I shall expect to see your notes daily,’ he said on parting.

  ‘Of course. Good day, Dr Koenig.’

  I held on to my breath until halfway down the corridor, letting it out in one huge sigh as Dr Langer emerged from the theatre room. He stopped, remembered to click his heels, and nodded – his beady, black pupils set on my face. I worried for a second that he might recognise me, but my appearance was so far from that of the waif at the camp I didn’t think it possible. Now, I had a recognisable head of hair, pink skin covering my cheekbones, instead of a deathly grey, and a light in my eyes. I was no longer a shadow.

  ‘Fräulein,’ he said quietly, and moved on.

  Eva was quite perky, as though the mere arrival of the doctors signalled the baby was on its way. Her complexion was that of the healthiest sportswoman, hair thick and glossy as it swung above her shoulders.

  ‘Morning, Anke,’ she said. ‘The baby is very awake today. I’ve been up since the early hours. We saw the sunrise together.’ She beamed with pleasure, and cupped her bump with both hands.

  ‘That’s wonderful – a moving baby is a happy baby, as we say.’

  She was glowing the readiness of a woman about to enter another realm, another life. Truly blooming.

  I busied myself with the check, though I was anxious to get her talking.

  ‘So, you’ve met with Dr Koenig and Dr Langer?’ I said.

  She lay on the bed automatically, and I bent to listen to the baby.

  ‘I did.’ She almost held her breath, as she did every time I reported on her baby’s wellbeing.

  ‘The baby sounds wonderful. It’s a train today, instead of a galloping horse – lovely and steady.’ And she laughed, like she always did. ‘Anke, what do you think of the doctors?’

  I paused deliberately. ‘I think they are doing the jobs they were sent to do, in ensuring your safety, and the baby’s.’

  ‘But they don’t have to be too close, do they? If it’s all going well?’

  ‘Not if you don’t want them to be.’ I sat down on the bed and faced her, puffing out my cheeks theatrically to relay true concern. ‘I can keep them at a distance, but only if you make it clear it’s your choice. I’m a midwife, Eva – we don’t hold rank over doctors. But you do.’

  Her plumped features were suddenly relaxed. ‘That’s good. You know I’ll do anything to ensure the baby is safe, but I feel I can do it – with you and Christa. I really do. We just need this little one to behave.’ She talked towards her stomach, and – right on cue – the baby made a wave of her abdomen.

  ‘I’m not afraid, you know,’ she said as I turned to leave. ‘I’m not afraid of giving birth, of everything that goes with it.’ She smiled, as if convincing herself. ‘It’s just after …’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘I know.’ There was no more to be said. We were all afraid of the after.

  I sought out Dieter in Sergeant Meier’s office, his under-secretary being conspicuously absent the whole morning.

  ‘Am I interrupting?’ I said, when he seemed preoccupied.

  ‘Ah, no, come in – you’re a welcome relief from the frustrations of correspondence. I sometimes think this war will be won or lost on typewriters instead of the battlefield.’ He offered the chair opposite.

  I told him what Eva had said, and waited for the inevitable, long sigh.

  ‘I expected as much,’ he replied. ‘She was very quiet over dinner last night, and I don’t think either of our illustrious army medics made a terribly good impression. Dr Koenig came across very bullish and condescending, and Dr Langer was a mouse in comparison.’ He clasped his hands in a prayer-like stance and propped up his chin. ‘But I don’t think Dr Koenig will take kindly to being sidestepped, by you as a midwife or any other woman. I’ll need to let him down, let’s say, creatively.’

  He was deep in thought and seemed to forget I was there, until I forced a cough.

  ‘Dieter, can I ask you something else? Who is in charge here? Herr Goebbels, Magda, or the doctors? I don’t understand why we haven’t a directive from the Führer himself, about his own child.’

  A turquoise light narrowed under
his blond lashes. ‘I’m not entirely sure either, other than that I know the Führer has never made a secret of the fact that he doesn’t want children. From what I can gather he treats Eva badly, but he is fond of her in his own way. He tolerates her, as much as any woman. But not enough to be present.’ The next words crept out of his mouth, teeth set together, almost by accident: ‘He’s too busy being the father of Germany. No, this is the Goebbels’ baby, Joseph’s little starlet.’

  Later that night, tracing the flecks of light on my dark ceiling, I had plenty to mull over. Childbirth was, by nature, a series of unknowns, but had its own assurances. There was a pattern, a labour script, but it was also like the plays I used to watch in a little theatre just off the Alexanderplatz, where the drama could veer wildly in every performance, labile and fluid. I loved that it was experimental and erratic; it had been fun to fall off the cliff of expectation, sitting there on the edge of our seats.

  As a midwife, it was the natural adrenalin that drove you on to seek out each new chapter with fresh eyes. Before the war, the next scene had been set firmly, when loving mothers took home their newborns, babes who went on to be loved in a thousand different lives. In the camp, that script was virtually torn up, and yet, in a hateful way, I had got used to even that. Now there was just a wide unknown. The baby would be born – that was a certainty – but as to the narrative after, I could only hope Eva figured largely somewhere in the Goebbels’ tightly written drama.

  And the fate of my family? Perhaps they were only bit parts. Easy enough to put a line through.

  27

  The Sewing Room

  Dieter was gone for the rest of the day, and I busied myself going over notes for Dr Koenig. In the afternoon, Eva asked me to accompany her on a walk to the Teehaus, a thinly veiled excuse to pump me for more birth stories, which I didn’t mind. She liked tales of homebirths especially, and I dipped into my memory – the good side – naturally skating over whether they were Germans, Czechs, Hungarians or Jews.

  To Eva’s clouded perception, all the babies were plump and pink, blond and blue-eyed, and her face lit up when the labours came to fruition. She loved to know what women giving birth were like – what they said, who they called out for, and the sometimes funny requests they made. ‘Do you think I’ll be like that, Anke? Oh, I hope not too much moaning!’ She clutched at her bump as if to say: ‘That’ll be us soon.’ I couldn’t fault her willingness to move forward, fearless in her own little universe.

  As for me, I waged a daily battle with impatience, up there in the static sky. Lena came to my rescue early the next day, asking if I wanted any sheets made into cloths for the birth. She could easily run them up on the former housekeeper’s old sewing machine.

  A machine! The prospect of some employment made me smile. Daniel got out his oilcan and gave the dusty machine a service, and one of the kitchen boys heaved it onto the little table just inside my chalet door. It was verging on ancient, but totally familiar to me – my grandmother had one almost identical, passed on to Mama and now sitting in the small room in my parents’ house. I had a brief vision of her bending over the table, muttering and cursing quietly as the thread stuck frequently in the bobbin, and I swallowed back the image.

  Sorrow for another day.

  The breeze trickled in as I laid out the cloth. Lena brought me the kitchen sewing box with all manner of threads and needles, and several pairs of large shearing scissors – if only Sergeant Meier could have seen, his well-oiled hair would have fallen to the floor in shock! I was no seamstress, despite my experiences, and certainly nothing like Christa, but I could do a decent seam and hem, and those were all the skills needed. And I had plenty of time.

  I was soon humming in time with the treadle, and feeling quite … was happy too strong an emotion? Perhaps it was contented or fulfilled? I was alive, not under immediate threat of death, and perhaps my family had some chance too. There were reasons to be hopeful.

  28

  Release

  I cut and stitched through lunch – Lena came out to see how I was doing, and brought me a sandwich, sweet girl. By dusk I had a pile of neatly hemmed cloths, which I would boil, ready for the birth. My eyes were tired and sore as I tidied away the threads, and I didn’t see the figure move onto my porch. His face in the doorway startled me.

  ‘Dieter!’

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to—’

  ‘No, no, I just wasn’t expecting you.’ I said it like a wife welcoming a spouse home from work, and realised how frivolous I was in his company.

  ‘I see you’ve been busy?’ he said, eyeing the fabric debris.

  ‘I’ve found a task at last to keep me busy. Any jobs gratefully accepted, no repair too small. Though I can’t guarantee the results.’ I smiled like a shop girl peddling wares, sounding ridiculous, though equally it seemed beyond my control.

  ‘Well, it’s nice to see you … content. If I can say that.’

  He hovered in the doorway, looking jaded. ‘Anke, would you like to join me in a drink? I could certainly do with one.’

  I adopted that stunned look again, but made light of it, for his sake. ‘I can’t promise the effect it will have – I may just fall asleep – but yes, I would.’

  He disappeared into the gloom of the evening, and came back minutes later with a bottle of brandy. Good brandy.

  ‘Will this do?’ he held it up, with two glasses.

  We sat on the porch and sipped. The liquid on my tongue burned, and like that first drag of the cigarette, I almost coughed it back. Gradually, though, it became a glow, and I recalled the joy of good alcohol on a pleasant night out.

  The evening was still, the breeze having dropped, and there was no one in sight, the guards presumably at dinner and the rest of the household having retreated indoors. It felt somehow … empty. A distant radiance from the snowy mountain peaks glowed through the arena of blue and there was only a slight rustle of the surrounding trees.

  ‘So, how is the good Dr Koenig?’ I said into the air.

  He laughed. ‘Is it that obvious?’

  ‘Well, you look like you’ve worked hard at being the diplomat.’

  He sighed, and took a large swig. ‘That’s not the half of it. I’ve had to spend a whole evening and a full day with him and that … with Dr Langer, listening to tales of medical school and how the ungrateful citizens of the Reich owe their lives to their skilled hands. All of them, it seems. It took that much to pacify him about Eva.’

  It could have been the alcohol, I don’t know, but I was suddenly irked. A minute blister of irritation somewhere deep inside grew into a swell of hate, at how fat, pompous, little-talented individuals like Dr Koenig needed their egos stroking, in order that others should be left alone.

  ‘Did you really need to do that?’ I tried disguising the edge to my voice.

  His eyes were closed, face to the dimming sky. ‘You know I did, Anke. It’s what I do – my purpose.’ He said it lazily, as if the alcohol was having a numbing effect.

  ‘Have you thought about not doing it?’ This time, a definite slice. I didn’t want an argument, but like my flirting, it was out of my control.

  He sat up, eyes open. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Do you know, Dieter, do you really know what is going on in your country – our country? In Poland, Hungary, in this glorious Third Reich?’

  His features flashed red as he stood up, casting around to check we were truly alone. ‘Of course I know! Do you think I’m ignorant, or worse – a monster?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Like I told you before, it was expected. There was no choice but to join, it was not an invitation.’ His voice was a bitter whisper. ‘We all have sacrifices, Anke.’

  I couldn’t help myself. ‘And are your parents in a labour camp, surrounded by death and destruction, seeing one human’s cruelty pitted against another, day in, day out? Or is it their comfortable lifestyle they stand to lose – a servant or two, the nice meal on the table?’ My own voi
ce was hot with fury and brandy.

  ‘No!’ His voice spewed out and his eyes panned, watching to see if his bile had travelled.

  He brought it under control again, a low boil. ‘Now it’s you who’s being naive, Anke. Do you honestly believe that you can toss aside a uniform like mine at will? Quite apart from the shame to my parents, they would be at real risk – all of them – if there was the slightest doubt about my loyalty. SS officers don’t just turn tail and retire. They are prone to car accidents, and suicides. Their families die in house fires.’ He swallowed hard. ‘More often than you imagine.’

  An ugly chasm sat between us as I absorbed the reality of his words.

  Dieter sat, slumped and looking utterly exhausted, a hand pushed through his hair. ‘I’m a prisoner of sorts too,’ he said quietly. ‘I may not have seen what you have, have suffered as others, but I know what goes on. I have ears and eyes, and sometimes wish I hadn’t.’

  Right then, I believed him. Why, I don’t know – sitting there in the jacket as leaden as a storm sky, murkier than hell, those hideous skull bones on his collar reflecting what little light we had. But I did.

  ‘So, how do you live?’ I asked.

  He sucked in a large breath. ‘I do everything I can to limit my effectiveness without raising suspicion. If I appear incompetent they will simply replace me with another who is efficient – viciously efficient. So I push paper, sometimes in the wrong directions, slowly. A typing error here, a lost paper there, so that a name falls off a list, lost in the mire.’

  He looked at me, squinting in the half light. ‘I don’t pretend to be hacking at the foundations, Anke. I’m not that brave, but I can weaken the scaffold just that little bit. Just enough to divert time and resources away from doing real harm. It’s not that much, but it’s all I can do.’