The Edelweiss Sisters: An epic, heartbreaking and gripping World War 2 novel

by Kate Hewitt

  Hedwig nodded, gruff as always, and Johanna wondered how much it cost her mother to admit as much as she had. The world was changing, whether any of them wanted it to or not.

  Chapter Twelve

  Birgit

  December 1937

  Birgit had seen Werner three more times since he’d left for Innsbruck a year ago, and each visit had been both thrilling and sweet, taken during his all too brief leaves—a walk by the river, or a coffee in a steamy café, snatching a few moments of conversation amidst the clatter of cups. Birgit had not yet summoned the courage to ask him to meet her family.

  He had not asked again either, and she’d worried that he might have changed his mind, although he’d continued to write dutifully at least once a month, rather dull epistles, it was true, about army life and the hikes he was taking around Innsbruck, but even so Birgit savored every word. Far more pleasant for him to write of hikes and duties than warn her off the communists or rhapsodize about Hitler. He’d done neither of those, and she’d been able to dismiss the comments he’d once made as if they’d never been spoken at all.

  Then in December Werner had written her to say he would be back in Salzburg for the week before Christmas and he wished to meet her family. Her father in particular, he’d written, which had sent a tremulous thrill through Birgit. Surely, surely that meant a proposal. Already, and yet at last.

  Now that the evening was here, however, and Werner was expected any moment, Birgit felt nervous to the point of near terror. What if her father didn’t like him? What if Werner didn’t like her family—her mother could be so dour, and Johanna had been in a temper for months. Birgit had tried, ages ago, to apologize for telling Franz about the remark she had made, but her sister had refused to listen.

  “It doesn’t matter now, anyway,” she’d said shortly, after Birgit had persisted in explaining how she hadn’t meant to cast Johanna in a bad light, although afterwards she wondered if some small, mean part of her actually had, which made her feel even guiltier.

  “Leave it,” Johanna had said flatly. “It’s over.”

  Since then, her sister had been determinedly busy, having enrolled in a secretarial course. Johanna spent the evenings working at the kitchen table, practicing her typing or stenography, so they’d had little opportunity for any conversation.

  Their father had, with typical generosity, procured a secondhand typewriter for her to practice on. It was a monstrous black beast of a machine, and the loud clacking of the keys nearly drove Birgit mad. Still, Johanna was diligent and focused; she hoped to get a secretarial position when she finished the course in June and that seemed to be all she thought or cared about.

  As for Franz, when Birgit had tried to apologize when they were alone in the shop, he’d been almost as terse.

  “I understand, Birgit, don’t worry,” he’d said, and turned back to the clock he was repairing, a Schonberger dwarf wall clock made in Vienna. He’d become admirably proficient in the year since he’d started as an apprentice; more of a natural than she was, a fact she acknowledged fairly but with reluctance.

  Her parents, at least, had been surprised but pleased when Birgit had told them about Werner.

  “Ah ha, I thought there must be someone!” her father had said, wagging his finger at her and smiling. “You have been looking as if you had a secret to keep! So who is this man?”

  “His family is from Aigen and he is in an Alpine unit of the Bundesheer,” Birgit had said; she’d watched as her father’s playful smile had faltered. In recent months the whole country had seemed to twang with tension, everyone in a state of uneasy expectation, ears straining to know what might happen next.

  Earlier in the year, Mussolini had informed Chancellor Schuschnigg that Italy would no longer defend Austria against a potential invasion by Germany, a far cry from his stance in 1934, when Italian troops had amassed in the Brenner Pass to keep Germany from taking over Austria.

  Meanwhile Hitler was become ever more rapacious in his demand for territory; there had been talk of him wanting Austria’s iron and Czechoslovakia’s coal, although he had yet to make a move on either. Still, Germany continued to rearm at a furious pace. Increasingly its Wehrmacht was becoming a force not just to be reckoned with, but to be feared. And if Germany did invade Austria, there was a question as to whether the Austrian Bundesheer, with its many Nazi sympathizers, would bother to defend its borders, although it was being mobilized for just such an occurrence.

  Birgit had been able to see all of this in her father’s faltering smile before he’d squared his shoulders and given her a briskly cheerful look. “Excellent! I look forward to meeting him.”

  A knock sounded at the front door; Birgit had forgotten to tell Werner to come to the side door, and so he would have to go through the darkened shop. Nervously she smoothed her hands down the sides of her new dress, made of dark green crepe de chine, bought only last week at SL Schwarz.

  Her mother was upstairs at the stove, seeing to their meal; she had made Speckknödel, bacon dumplings from the Tyrol, as well as more familiar Salzburger Nockerln, a sweet soufflé. Johanna was in the sitting room with their father, having finished laying the table, and Franz had been upstairs in his room for most of the afternoon.

  Since Lotte had left, Birgit felt as if they’d all separated into disparate parts, like the gears of a clock that had gone out of sync, catching on and jarring with one another rather than working in harmonious unity for a clear purpose.

  The friendly evenings in the sitting room had ceased months ago; without Lotte’s soaring soprano, their singing simply hadn’t been the same, and so no one had even tried. And now that Johanna and Franz seemed to barely be on speaking terms, the likelihood of companionable evenings had seemed even more remote.

  Instead, in the evenings Franz went to his room and her father read the paper, while her mother and Johanna stayed in the kitchen and Birgit read or sewed. Sometimes it felt as if they were all waiting for something, and yet for what?

  For Werner, perhaps… and now he was here. But what if it all went terribly wrong? What if he said something amiss? What if her family did? Birgit suppressed a shiver of apprehension as she hurried to answer the door.

  “I made it!” Werner doffed his cap as he took Birgit into his arms. He was wearing his uniform, and she wished he wasn’t. “Are you pleased to see me?”

  “Of course I am,” she answered as he kissed her cheek.

  “You don’t seem it,” he told her with a laugh. “Are you nervous?”

  “A bit. Are you?”

  “Not at all.” He grinned. “I’m only pleased to finally be introduced. It’s about time!”

  “Come upstairs, then,” Birgit said as she locked the shop door behind him. Werner took the opportunity to sneak an arm around her waist.

  “Werner—”

  “Just one kiss,” he murmured, and laughing a little, Birgit wound her arms around his neck as he gave her a thorough kiss indeed. She felt herself relax into his easy embrace, glad of his arms around her, their solid strength, the certainty of his affection. It was going to be all right. It had to be.

  As they came up the stairs, her father emerged from the sitting room with a wide smile, holding out a hand to Werner.

  “Guten abend! So pleased to meet you.” He gave Werner’s hand a hearty shake as Werner doffed his cap. “I would say I have heard so much about you, but I haven’t.”

  “I look forward to enlightening you, mein Herr,” Werner replied, and her father shook his head, smiling still.

  “You must call me Manfred. And look, here is my lovely wife, Hedwig.”

  Birgit watched as her mother came into the sitting room, looking solid and square in her best dress of shabby brown velvet, her apron worn over it, her hair scraped back into its usual graying bun. Werner gave her a courtly little bow.

  Johanna hadn’t said a word, merely nodding as their father made introductions, and Franz still hadn’t come downstairs. With another panicky flutter,
Birgit wondered if this was all going to be a disaster. If only Lotte were here, with her light laugh, her friendly chatter, smoothing everything over, making it easy.

  Werner, however, was unfazed by any seeming unfriendliness. As they sipped aperitifs of plum brandy in the sitting room, he chatted about growing up in Aigen, how he had been a member of St. Erhard’s since he was but a child, which caused her parents to exchange a brief approving look. After a quarter of an hour Franz came downstairs, wearing his best waistcoat and apologizing for his tardiness.

  He shook hands with Werner and seemed like his old, charming self, laughing and tossing back his schnapps while Johanna had a mouth like a prune. Still, Birgit breathed easier. As they sat down to plates of steaming Speckknödel, she thought it really might be all right, after all.

  And at first it was. Werner asked her father about clockmaking, and he answered easily enough, telling him how his own father had started the little shop on Getreidegasse, how working with time itself felt important, “yes, yes,” he laughed, he was a bit of a philosopher, it was true.

  That topic of conversation exhausted, Werner turned to Johanna, and she gave somewhat terse replies to questions about her secretarial course while he made noises of admiration and approval. He even had something to say about the Tyrol, having been skiing there several times. When he mentioned having traveled through her mother’s home village of Ladis—remarking how charming it was—Hedwig had actually blushed, looking pleased.

  And then the talk turned, with alarming predictability, to politics. It seemed impossible not to talk of it, when every day there were new reports of Germany’s laws against Jews, the country’s rearmament, Hitler’s fiery speeches to the Reichstag while other world leaders wrung their hands and waited.

  Only that week a new Nazi exhibition had opened in Munich, The Eternal Jew, and it was that occasion which threw a stumbling block before them all.

  “Have you seen the exhibition?” Werner asked, all interested politeness, as Hedwig rose to clear the plates for the dessert.

  “I have not,” Manfred replied, after a slight pause. Birgit felt the chilliness steal through the room like an icy fog, although Werner was still smiling. “It is all the way in Munich, after all.”

  “It is only two hours by train. Not very long at all, really, from here. Closer than Vienna.”

  Birgit opened her mouth to talk of something else, but Franz spoke first.

  “Have you seen it?” he asked in a tone that was pointed and barely polite. Werner didn’t seem to notice.

  “Yes, when it first opened. A few of us in my division went.” Werner smiled and shrugged. “It was interesting, if a bit heavy-handed. We don’t need to see caricatures of Jews holding whips in one hand and gold coins in the other to know they control the banks, do we?” He let out a laugh, but no one else so much as smiled. Birgit’s stomach cramped. She’d seen the cartoon Werner mentioned in the newspaper and had thought it horrible and stupid. But surely that was what Werner meant, even if it didn’t quite sound as if he had. He wasn’t saying anything truly terrible, was he?

  Her father had not replied to Werner, and now he glanced up at Hedwig with a smile as she took his plate. “Thank you, my dear. Delicious as always.”

  The silence stretched on, like something breakable. It would take little more than a breath to shatter it, the single tap of a finger on the glass and all would crack, and then what? Birgit couldn’t bear it.

  “Oh, who cares about some silly exhibition,” she exclaimed. “Everyone knows the Nazis don’t know the first thing about art. Why, wasn’t it in Munich, as well, that they held the Great German Art Exhibition?” The laugh she let out sounded shrill. “And right across the street was an exhibition of what they called degenerate art. Everyone queued for that one and not the other.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Johanna replied tartly. “Where did you hear about it, Birgit?”

  “I read about it in the paper, I think.” Actually Ingrid had told her all about it, but she could hardly mention that to her family, or to Werner. She had kept the meetings she’d attended a secret from everyone—sometimes even from herself.

  It was as if there was one Birgit who wrote letters to Werner and waited for his visits, and another who slipped away to a coffeehouse in Elisabeth-Vorstadt once a month to listen to fiery speakers and crept through the city, leaving pamphlets that demanded the end of fascism. Those two Birgits would never meet. She wouldn’t let them.

  “Well,” Werner said after another endless moment, glancing around at everyone with a slight frown as if he couldn’t understand their sudden reserve, “it will be coming to Vienna in the new year. Perhaps you will be able to view it then.”

  “I am sure,” her father replied pleasantly, “that the exhibition is quite informative about the views of the National Socialists, especially in regard to Jews and others they have deemed antisocial.”

  Werner’s slight frown deepened. “Indeed,” he replied after a pause.

  Birgit tried again to divert the conversation. “Let’s not talk about politics,” she implored, trying for a smile, her voice ringing out with a cringingly false note of gaiety. “It’s so very dull. Franz, after supper you could play the—”

  “We weren’t talking about politics,” Franz replied quietly, his even gaze trained on Werner. “We were talking about the Jews.”

  Another silence descended on the table, this one heavy. Birgit felt as if they must all bow beneath its weight, even though no one moved. Werner looked between her father and Franz, a deeper crease appearing between his brows.

  “I have nothing against the Jews,” he said after a moment. “Not personally. They have a right to live their lives, after all, but surely you cannot deny their control of our country’s finances has been to the detriment of its other citizens.”

  The silence felt even heavier, unbearably so. Birgit bit her lip. He didn’t mean anything by it, she told herself. He couldn’t. And yet his words fell like hammer blows.

  “Like Birgit said, we should not talk of politics,” her father finally said, his tone light, and Johanna, who had said little throughout the whole meal, made a sudden noise of aggravated impatience.

  “But you love to talk of politics, Father,” she said, her voice rising in strident determination. “At least once or twice a month you have all your old friends here to discuss politics the whole night long!” She glared at Werner, who looked surprised by her sudden, savage tone.

  “Johanna,” Hedwig said severely, hating any rudeness, and her sister shrugged defiantly.

  “What of it? It’s true. They talk of how Austria must remain independent and resist the Nazi threat. They all agree on that. They hate Hitler and all he stands for—”

  “Austria might not be able to resist the Nazi threat,” Werner interjected quietly, and Johanna turned on him, her expression fierce.

  “But it should, we all should, and that is the difference. As for that exhibition?” Her lip curled in a sneer. “I would never attend such a thing, never, not even out of the merest idle curiosity. I would not spend a single groschen to view the Nazis’ horrible propaganda—because that is all it is. Propaganda and lies, to make people like you hate the Jews when you have absolutely no reason to. No reason at all.” Out of breath, she sat back in her seat while a stunned silence descended on the table.

  Birgit glanced at Werner, and saw he looked shaken but also a bit angry; then she saw Franz, his eyes blazing with both love and pride as he looked at Johanna. He was positively shining with it; a sudden, horrible envy seized her insides. Why should Johanna have the love of a man, and she shouldn’t? Why did everything have to be ruined, all because of some foolish, careless talk about an exhibition only Werner had seen? It was so stupid. It wasn’t as if he’d said anything truly terrible.

  And yet the hollowness she felt inside her, as if a cold wind were whistling right through her, told her otherwise.

  “Please,” she pleaded. “This is all a palaver
over nothing.”

  “Nothing—” Johanna exclaimed, determined to be angry, and Birgit itched to shake her.

  “An art exhibition, that is all! Why must you be so… so indignant?”

  “I fear this is all my fault,” Werner interjected, his palms flat on the table. “I apologize for any offense I may have caused without meaning to. I certainly wish no disrespect to such benevolent hosts.”

  “There is no need to apologize,” Manfred replied as amiably as he could, although he looked a bit shaken by the heated conversation. “You are our guest, after all. It is we who should apologize, for not making you feel welcome.”

  “Papa—” Johanna began, her voice full of outrage, but her father silenced her with a single look.

  “Let us adjourn to the sitting room,” he said. “Werner, have you ever heard Birgit sing?”

  Birgit did not want to sing in the least, but she was desperate to move on from this disaster, and so she duly stood beside the piano as Franz played “The Carriage Horseman,” a traditional folk song that could surely offend no one. Johanna sang along somewhat ungraciously, although Birgit thought she seemed at least a little repentant for her outburst.

  Still, without Lotte’s soaring soprano, it was a poor show indeed, and Birgit didn’t think anyone felt anything but relief when it finally ended. Werner took his leave a short while later, and that too seemed to bring relief.

  She accompanied him downstairs, battling a wretched misery at how it had all gone, as well as a deepening unease. As much as she longed to, she knew she could not ignore all that Werner had said.

  “I don’t think I came off as well I had hoped,” he remarked with an uneven laugh as they made their way through the darkened shop. “You should have told me your family were Jew-lovers!” He spoke jokingly, but Birgit froze, blinking at him in the darkness.