The Living and the Lost

by Ellen Feldman

  “Guess what happened,” Anna said.

  “He kissed you.”

  “Of course, he kissed me.” She flopped back on the bed and stretched her body as if she were basking in the memory of the kiss. “And when he did, he put his tongue in my mouth.”

  Meike was shocked, and repulsed, but she didn’t say anything. She was waiting for Anna to instruct her in the proper response.

  “It was wonderful,” Anna sighed.

  Millie went on staring at her, still gripping the desk from the dizziness, but persuaded now by her own memories. This woman was no impostor.

  She was around the desk in seconds, embracing the emaciated body. She didn’t even try to breathe through her mouth. That was a trick for strangers.

  Anna didn’t resist the embrace, but she didn’t return it. Beneath the threadbare coat, no protection against the Berlin winter, her bones felt as if they might break from the slightest pressure. Still, Millie could not let go. She wasn’t sure how long they stood that way, her clinging to a hope fulfilled, Anna enduring. Finally, Millie released her and led her to one of the chairs.

  “Tell me. Tell me everything.”

  Anna told her, not everything, not what she’d been through certainly, but enough. It was an inventory of family names and an itinerary through hell. Aunt Ida at Bergen-Belsen, Uncle Josef at Dachau, Anna’s parents at Auschwitz. And Sigmund…, she started, then stopped.

  Millie waited. Had Anna saved her husband for last, or almost last, out of guilt for her good fortune of still having a husband or the need to put off the pain?

  “He came so close, Meike. So close. Two days before liberation.” She stopped again. “On the forced march from Buchenwald. His friend who made it told me.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, the week-long prescribed period of mourning compressed into an instant, observed in a government building where uniformed officers and enlisted men came and went, and Frauleins Schmidt and Weber typed and filed, and Germans sat on benches waiting their turn to be absolved.

  Finally, Millie worked up the courage to ask the next question, the most important question. “And Elke?” She could barely get out the name.

  “She’s safe.”

  Millie let out the breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.

  “I’m sure of it,” Anna went on.

  “What do you mean, you’re sure of it? Isn’t she with you?”

  Anna shook her head.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you remember Frau Kneff? She lived downstairs.”

  Millie shook her head. Too many names and faces, closer than a passing neighbor, were swimming in her mind.

  “She was crazy about Elke. Always picking her up and petting her. Always offering to help me on the stairs with the carriage. She knitted her first pair of booties. I was never any good at that sort of thing. You know that. And hats and mittens and sweaters. Frau Kneff just couldn’t stop. She didn’t have any children of her own. One day she tried to tell me why. Something about a damaged uterus. I admit I didn’t want to listen. I was head-over-heels in love with my new baby. Why would I want to listen to the sad story of a woman who couldn’t have one of her own? Now this is the punishment I get for my heartlessness.”

  “What punishment? I don’t understand.”

  “As things got worse, Frau Kneff kept offering to take Elke. ‘I can keep her safe,’ she kept saying. ‘People will think she’s mine. I’m a good Catholic. They’ll never suspect her of being Jewish. I can do it. I’m not afraid.’ I knew she meant well. And she was right that it could have been dangerous for her. Harboring a Jewish child was forbidden. You know that. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Sigmund agreed. We stay together, he insisted. But as things got worse, I began to have second thoughts. Sigmund was trying to make plans to go into hiding. But people were afraid to take in a baby. You can secrete a family in an attic or basement or storage closet, but you can’t secrete a crying baby. I was terrified, but I understood. Maybe the stories were apocryphal, but everyone had heard about people who were given away by a crying child, or even worse, mothers who had accidentally smothered their babies while trying to keep them quiet.” The gaunt body shivered. “But what would happen if we were rounded up? I was going crazy trying to think what to do. Sigmund was too, but it’s worse for a mother. I’d be giving her a bath or putting her to bed and thinking how could I give away this child. Then the next day I’d watch her taking in the world—I remember one afternoon when she was trying to grab a stream of sunlight coming through the window—and think she’s so young. I’d had my life. Maybe not all I’d expected, but I’d had a happy childhood and married Sigmund and had Elke. How could I deprive her of the same joys? And all the time Frau Kneff kept after me.

  “One day a man turned up at the apartment. He had official papers saying the flat belonged to him. This was after your father got the visas. We thought you were all on the ship by that time. Anyway, Sigmund said the papers were legal according to the new anti-Jewish laws and we had no choice but to move into a Judenhaus. There were eight or ten of us to a room. People can get ugly in circumstances like that. They aren’t so nice to a fretting baby. But Frau Kneff still was. She’d linger outside the Judenhaus for me to bring Elke out. She took Elke to the park where I wasn’t allowed anymore. Elke would come home laughing. She never laughed in the filthy overcrowded room in the Judenhaus where people begrudged any morsel of food I could find for her. Frau Kneff had no trouble finding food. Her husband was an officer on the Russian front. When Elke came home from outings with Frau Kneff, her sweet baby breath smelled of chocolate.

  “Little by little it wasn’t so crowded in the Judenhaus. Every day they took more people away. Sigmund said it was only a matter of days, hours maybe. By this time he’d made up his mind, and he kept at me. Just like Frau Kneff. ‘What chance will a child that young have in a camp? At least this way one of us will survive.’ Finally, I gave in. As it turned out, I was just in time. Frau Kneff came to take Elke away at two-twenty-five in the afternoon. I know because, and you probably won’t believe me, my watch stopped. Do you think, Meike, the force of a heart breaking can stop a watch? They came for us that evening.”

  Now a different silence hung over the room, not of grieving but of suspense. Millie had a feeling she knew what was coming. That was why Anna was here, to see her, of course, but also for help.

  “Where is Frau Kneff now?”

  “That’s the problem. I can’t find her. The first thing I did when I got back was go to her flat. The building had been bombed, but a neighbor was still living in one of the rooms. A wall gone, rain and cold coming in everywhere. You’ve seen what it’s like. The neighbor said Frau Kneff and Elke had both survived the bombing. I almost fainted from the relief. Where are they, I asked. I was ready to run all the way. The neighbor didn’t know. I was disappointed, but I thought, all right, others are bound to know where they went. Neighbors. And Frau Kneff had a sister I’d met once or twice. I even remembered her name. Frau Klempner. There was her church too. I used to see her going to mass every Sunday and confession every Saturday. When her husband was sent to Russia, she began going to mass during the week too. So I started to make the rounds. No one knew where they’d gone. I went to offices and authorities. There was no record of a Teresa Kneff. I thought maybe she’d be listed under her husband’s name, but there was no Frau Axel Kneff either. I went to her church. The priest hadn’t seen her since last April. She’d stopped going to mass and confession a few weeks before the surrender. Everyone knew Germany was defeated. She must have known that if I were alive, I’d be back. The point is no one had any idea where she was. Frau Kneff had disappeared. No, that’s not entirely true. I did run into one woman from the old building. She said she’d seen Frau Kneff in the Soviet sector. I asked if she had Elke with her. The woman said she didn’t know the child’s name but Frau Kneff’s daughter was a beautiful little girl. ‘I don’t know where she got that lovely red hair,
’ she said, ‘but she’s an angel. And so well behaved.’ I should have been proud. I was sick with the news. I knew then she had kidnapped her. Frau Kneff has kidnapped my baby.”

  “We don’t know that,” Millie said, though they did. “Is there still a Herr Kneff?”

  “He was killed in Russia.”

  They both knew, though neither of them said it, that Frau Kneff’s widowhood made the situation worse. Now Elke was all she had in the world. She’d never give her up of her own volition.

  “She can’t have disappeared into thin air,” Millie said, though she was afraid she had. Frau Kneff could have left Berlin, gone to another sector, changed her name. Everyone was on the move. No one had papers. “I’m sure we can find her,” she lied.

  Anna reached across the desk and took Meike’s hand. “Yes, please, Meike, please to God, you can help. I thought you were in America, but when I found out you were working here—”

  “How did you find out?”

  “I saw David. He was just a boy when you left, but I still recognized him.”

  “Where? He didn’t tell me.”

  Anna hesitated. “I forget where.”

  “Anna!”

  “Potsdamer Platz.”

  “The black market?”

  “I go to all of them. Pariser Platz. Alexanderplatz. Platz der Republik. I’m not trading. I have nothing to trade. I’m looking. A woman who’d kidnap a child would know her way around the black market.”

  “I wouldn’t care if you were trading. You must be hungry.” She didn’t add that David had no such excuse, but she refused to think about that. He spent his days trying to save people. Perhaps the stacks of cigarette cartons had something to do with that.

  “He told me you were working here,” Anna went on. “That’s when I said to myself Meike will know how to find her. She has access to records. She knows people. She will help me find Elke.”

  “If I can’t,” Millie said, because she wasn’t as certain of her abilities and connections as Anna was, “I’m sure others here can. Let me see if Major Sutton is free now.”

  She started out of the office, then stopped in the door and turned.

  “Anna?”

  “Yes.”

  “You haven’t had word of my parents or Sarah?”

  Anna shook her head. “I would have told you. I would have told you right off. You know that.”

  Millie started out of her office again and went down the hall to Harry Sutton’s. Fortunately he was alone. She started to tell him about Anna and Elke and the missing Frau Kneff.

  “Slow down, Millie. Remember what I told you about flaming out.”

  “Damn it, this is serious.”

  “I know you’re not actually in the military, Captain, but it’s generally considered bad form to swear at the commanding officer.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s been quite an afternoon. First she walked into my office, and I had no idea who she was. Then all the other relatives dead.” She stopped for a moment. Not all the other relatives. “And now this awful story about the woman disappearing with her child.”

  “The woman can’t just have disappeared. Old Nazis disappear, and I’d put money on their turning up in Argentina or Uruguay or God knows where one of these days. Spies disappear and surface in Moscow. But German hausfraus with little girls do not disappear into thin air.”

  “Then you have some ideas?”

  “We have records. So do the Brits. Neither as good as the Nazis’, but useful.”

  “Would you talk to her?”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I take care of the Russkies. It seems they’re up in arms because a scientist chap they had their eye on is already on a plane to American headquarters in Frankfurt.”

  She was on her way back to her office when she thought of it. There was plenty of room in the flat. Not in the child’s room painted with pink and blue flowers. That would be too cruel. Everywhere Anna looked, Elke would be lurking. Millie would give Anna her room and move into the child’s room.

  “Where are you living?” she asked Anna when she returned to her office.

  “Near the Tiergarten. Not far from where you lived before. A room in a cellar. It’s fairly safe, or as safe as you can be in Berlin these days, and it has the furnace, so if there’s any heat at all, I get it.”

  “I have a better idea. There’s an extra room in our flat. You can stay with us.”

  Anna shook her head. “That’s generous, and I’m grateful, but I can’t.”

  “Why not? You’ll be a lot more comfortable there than in a cellar.”

  “I must stay where I am.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “To find Elke. Everywhere I have gone, everyone I have spoken to, I have told them where I live. If anyone sees her, if anyone hears a word, they’ll come to me there.”

  “Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t think. But there must be something else I can do. Food. You must need food.” She thought of the closet at the end of the hall. That was where they kept the care packages that mothers and wives and girlfriends were still sending, despite the fact that sons and husbands and boyfriends no longer needed them. Most of the packages ended up in displaced persons centers, but some were stored here.

  She took the key from her desk drawer, hurried down the hall, and returned with several boxes. Anna wouldn’t be able to carry them all, but if Millie took out the shaving cream and chewing gum and magazines, she could fit plenty of food in one of them.

  She put the boxes on her desk and began opening them. “I’ll get more from the PX, but this should tide you over in the meantime.”

  As she took the unnecessary items out of one box and moved the tins of tuna fish and fruit cup and vegetables into the spaces, she avoided Anna’s eyes. She didn’t want to see the eagerness. She’d be even more embarrassed to see the shame.

  She was about to close the box when she thought of it. She’d found the cake of soap the day before in a store that had almost nothing else to sell. It was Naumann Caressa. Her mother had sworn by Naumann Caressa. There had always been a stockpile of cakes in the bathroom closet. Millie had forgotten to take this particular cake she’d bought out of the pocket of her coat when she’d gotten home last night. She crossed to the coat tree in the corner, took the bar of soap from the pocket, and put it in the box with the tins of food. Anna’s eyes grew wider as she watched, but she didn’t say anything. Millie only hoped she hadn’t offended her. Did people sense their own smell?

  She was just closing the box when Major Sutton came striding into the office and introduced himself to Anna before Millie could.

  “Should we call in one of the Frauleins, Millie, or do you want to take down the information?”

  Millie said she’d do it. She didn’t want to let Schmidt or Weber near Anna.

  He began firing questions. Where exactly in the Soviet sector were Frau Kneff and Elke spotted? What about the woman who spotted them? How long ago was that? He went on that way for a while, asking for lists of names from before the war, places she’d searched now, fragments of anything else Anna might remember about Frau Kneff. Where had she been born? Where had her husband been born? What was her maiden name? And what about the churches? She said she’d asked the priest, but had she thought of lurking in other churches during confession? “This Frau Kneff doesn’t sound like the kind of woman who could go for too long without confession, especially with this particular sin blackening her soul.”

  It was after five by the time they finished. Millie said she’d walk Anna out of the building. She didn’t want to take the chance of having the guards stop her because of the package.

  Harry Sutton was still in her office when she returned. The cake of Naumann Caressa soap she’d put in the care package was on her desk.

  “She forgot the soap,” she said when she saw it. She picked it up and started for the door. “I bet I can catch her.”

  He put a hand on her arm. “Don’t.”

  “But i
t’s so hard to get.”

  “She doesn’t want it.”

  “What do you mean she doesn’t want it? People are paying packs of cigarettes for a cake of soap like this.”

  “Maybe, but she doesn’t want that particular cake of soap. Give her Ivory or Camay or something from the PX, but not that.”

  “This is better. My mother swore by this soap.” She stopped. She hadn’t intended to bring her mother into it. The less he knew about her past, the better.

  “Frau Altschul was in a camp, right?”

  “More than one.”

  “Some, not all, but some of the survivors from the camps refuse to use German soap.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He stood staring at her. “Think about it.”

  She did think about it. That was when it happened. She was sweating and shivering at the same time, as if she was coming down with a sudden flu. The room lurched around her. Her body jackknifed over the metal wastebasket. Her lunch went spewing into it.

  Then the strangest thing happened, stranger even than her violent reaction, which when you came to think of it wasn’t strange at all. Everyone had heard the stories about the Germans making soap from the fat of dead Jews. As she bent over the wastebasket, vomiting up the repulsion, Harry Sutton came around the desk to where she was standing, reached out, and put his hand on her forehead, the way one does with a child, to support her head during the violent spasms, to ameliorate the horror.

  Nine

  They were silent on the train. At first they were unable to speak. The race down the platform, David sprinting ahead to find a compartment with two seats—they had to stay together—turning every few steps to make sure Meike was behind him, Meike’s suitcase banging against her leg as she ran to keep up, left them breathless. He spotted a compartment with two empty seats, skidded to a stop, yanked open the door, flung his suitcase inside, pushed Meike up the steps, and followed her in. The three men and one woman already inside glanced at them, then away. Perhaps they were being polite. The two young people looked distraught. Or perhaps they simply had no interest in them. These days minding your own business was the safest course of action, unless you wanted to make trouble for someone. David heaved Meike’s suitcase, then his own, into the overhead rack. Still panting from the run, they sat, Meike in the middle, David beside the door to the corridor. The window seats were already taken by the woman and one of the men.