The Darkest Hour

by Roberta Kagan

  “They torched another building. With people inside, women and children. Sabine, some of them were jumping from the windows in their desperation, and the SS men trampled on those who survived the fall. God, it seems wrong to even call those thugs men. What I saw today was devoid of any humanity or compassion…” He paused for a moment and she saw a depth of bleakness in his eyes she’d not seen before.

  She reached across the table and gripped his hand. “You saw this?”

  Werner hid his face between his palms. “Yes. A neighbor called us, but the SS wouldn’t let us extinguish the fire, not until everyone inside was burned alive and the building in ruins.” He looked at her, dampness shimmering in his eyes. “Slaughtered. Everyone. Even babies. For allegedly housing traitors.”

  “This is so awful.” Sabine squeezed her husband’s hand in sympathy.

  “I wanted to do something, anything …but what could I do?” He buried his head between his hands.

  “Don’t blame yourself. You couldn’t have done a thing. You did right by staying out of it, or they might have killed you too.”

  Werner looked at her and his gaze turned to steel. “I’ve been staying out of it for such a long time and look what’s happening. The SS has more power now than ever before. Maybe it’s time we stopped minding our own business and stood up against injustice.”

  Sabine released his hand, her eyes going wide at his statement. “Werner, that’s crazy talk. You don’t mean that.”

  “I do mean it. Germany, the Germany I love, isn’t a country of insane lunatics who bully others and kill anyone who has a different opinion…” He jumped up and paced the kitchen.

  “Shush! Or the neighbors might hear!” Sabine pushed up from her chair and stepped into his path.

  “See where this has got us?” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I can’t even tell my wife how sick and tired I am of these thugs. And thugs they are, make no mistake.”

  Sabine agreed with her husband on the thug part, but getting involved would put their safety at risk. Those people must have done something illegal. Why else would the SS go after them? “Don’t talk like that. Promise me you won’t do anything stupid. Simply do your job and ignore what’s happening around you. Please!”

  Werner took hold of her hips and moved her out of his way to take up his pacing again. “Ignore it? How can I ignore German women and children being slaughtered like this? My job is to protect…”

  “And you’re doing just that, but the Nazis have changed the ways things are done. You should be grateful that your job as fireman exempts you from serving at the front.”

  Werner turned around and stepped in front of her, his handsome face mere inches away. He glanced down at her for a long moment and then sighed loudly. “I know, and I’m grateful, but…this is not right…we should…put out fires, not watch toddlers and their mothers perish…”

  “You have to distance yourself from what happened today. You can’t draw attention to yourself or let anyone suspect that you object to their methods. That would be painting a target on your back – and mine.” She wrapped her arms around his chest, hoping her pleading words would ring true with him. They had endured so much together.

  “I know. I just needed to vent my emotions for a few moments.” He hugged her, resting his chin on the top of her head.

  Sabine pushed back a bit and looked him in the eyes. “Promise me you won’t do anything stupid? I love you so much; I couldn’t live without you.”

  “I promise.” Finally, his usual smile returned as he gathered her into his arms and carried her to their bed. “I love you too, Sabine. I’d do anything for you.”

  Chapter 2

  Sabine stared across the expanse of the factory, trying to convince herself that this job wasn’t so bad. Unfortunately, her mind didn’t buy it and dissatisfaction seeped into her soul like bitter medicine. In fact, she hated working at the factory, but then again, she recognized the futility of any form of protest.

  The Arbeitsamt had assigned her to work there and like any good citizen, she’d obeyed. While her current station was monotonous, the work was easy and not physically demanding. As far as jobs went, there were much worse positions out there and she had no desire to experience any of them personally. Like cleaning the rubble from the streets after the air raids. Although, to tell the truth, she suspected such hard labor served as some kind of penal assignment. The people doing it looked awfully like prisoners in their striped uniforms.

  She side-glanced at the empty station right next to her. The woman working that station hadn’t shown up for work two days ago and no one seemed to know her whereabouts. Sabine wondered whether she’d been killed during a bombing or maybe taken away by the Gestapo. Those things happened, although they obviously were seldom confirmed.

  Her hands busy assembling rifle parts, she noticed one of the supervisors heading in her direction and ducked her head, keeping her eyes focused on the task. She’d made it a habit to make herself as invisible as possible, and rarely socialized with her coworkers.

  Women who irritated the supervisors never fared well. They usually got moved to stations with a higher risk of injury or physically hard work.

  “Frau Mahler,” her superior’s voice interrupted her musings.

  “Yes?” She looked up at the old and well-fed man.

  “This is your new coworker, Frau Klausen. I want you to show her the ropes.” He stepped aside to give way to an older woman standing behind him. Frau Klausen had graying hair, and the wrinkles lining her face testified as much to her age as to the privations every Berlin woman had to suffer on a daily basis. The somber black dress that peeked out from under the ugly grey-blue protective apron spoke of the hardships of more than five years of war and clothing rationing.

  “Of course, Herr Meier.” Sabine groaned inwardly. Teaching Frau Klausen the ropes would set her back in reaching her own quota, which was never a good thing.

  Herr Meier disappeared, leaving a shell-shocked-looking Frau Klausen standing next to Sabine. Sabine couldn’t help but feel sympathy for the older woman.

  “Thank you for teaching me, Frau Mahler,” Frau Klausen said. “This is the first time in my life I’m required to work outside the house, but I promise I’m a quick study.”

  Sabine nodded, but then thought better of it and gave her a smile. “You’ll get the hang of it pretty soon. Here, I’ll show you.” She proceeded to show her new coworker the motions needed to assemble the standard-issue Karabiner 98k.

  Frau Klausen looked even more shell-shocked when she noticed what emerged from under Sabine’s hands. As promised, Frau Klausen was a quick study and didn’t need much handholding. Sabine especially appreciated her quietude. The older woman didn’t chat on incessantly about fashion, gossip or men like some of her younger coworkers did.

  Throughout the morning Sabine kept an eye on her coworker, giving her tips on how to work faster or with more accuracy. But apart from this, she kept her distance, as there was no reason to become friendly with anyone.

  As the gong sounded to indicate lunch break, Sabine rubbed her hands across the rough material of the protective apron. She set the rifle parts down to walk to the small rest area, where she’d earlier stored her lunch. She’d already taken a few steps away from her workstation when she looked back to see a completely out-of-her-depth Frau Klausen.

  “Did they give you a tour of the factory yet?” she asked.

  “Not yet. I suppose I’ll have to figure things out on my own,” Frau Klausen said with a tired smile, rubbing her back and stretching her shoulders.

  Sabine sighed. “Come with me. I’ll show you where everything is.”

  “Thank you. That is very kind of you. Have you worked here for long?” Frau Klausen asked, falling into step beside her.

  Sabine shrugged her shoulders. “Long enough to know this is not my dream job, but it helps the war effort so…here I am.” They arrived at the break room where the women had the opportunity to heat up their
lunch or buy something with their ration cards. Most of them, though, just ate some lukewarm soup brought in a thermos, or a hearty sandwich.

  Another coworker, Elise, approached them. Sabine involuntarily ducked her head, because she feared the inevitable.

  “Hi, I’m Elise. What’s your name?”

  “Frau Klausen.” The older woman seemed as unwilling to engage in random chit-chat as Sabine herself.

  “How come an old lady like you works here?” Elise asked, and Sabine inwardly cringed.

  But Frau Klausen took it in stride and answered with a pleasant voice, “My husband is a prisoner of war in Russia and our four kids are all grown and don’t need me anymore, so the Arbeitsamt decided I could best serve the Fatherland working here.”

  “Oh yes, isn’t it exciting?” Elise jumped up and down, clapping her hands. “We’re helping the Führer to win the war. Assembling rifles. That’s such an important job to do for a young girl like me, don’t you think?”

  “Your enthusiasm is admirable,” Frau Klausen said with a voice entirely devoid of the enthusiasm she’d just praised.

  “Yes. Obviously, I would have loved to work for the Propaganda Ministry, typing up all those wonderful speeches Goebbels and his employees are giving. But my typing speed was too slow…and you know, I never was really keen on school. I always thought I’d marry by eighteen and have a handful of children…but my sweetheart left for war, and so here I am doing my bit. It’s such important work. Can you even imagine, that one of the rifles I assembled may be given to a brave German soldier to kill those depraved Russians?” Elise’s face brightened the room like anti-aircraft searchlights at night.

  Frau Klausen’s lips pursed at the gush of words from the young woman and she bit into a piece of bread with heavenly-smelling cheese.

  “So, what are your children doing?” Elise asked.

  “My only son is a Wehrmacht soldier, currently somewhere in occupied Poland. He might be carrying one of your rifles—”

  “Oh yes, isn’t that exciting?” Elise blurted out and started another monologue about the greatness of war in general, and Hitler in particular. Sabine had long ago decided to tune out the exuberance from Elise and some of the other girls. She might have been like them five years ago, but ever since she’d had two miscarriages she valued life a lot more. And war meant taking lives. Her stomach clenched. Two years had passed since the last miscarriage, and she still threatened to break out in tears every time she saw a pregnant woman.

  Thankfully, the bell announcing the end of lunch break tore her from her morose thoughts.

  “Lunchtime is over,” Sabine said, standing up and smoothing her hands over her hair, to make sure the rolls and curls were still in place. At work they weren’t allowed to wear their hair down due to the risk of injury, so she’d ingeniously invented a special hairdo that had all the elegance of the hair down, combined with the required work safety rules. She secretly called it the Sabine Roll.

  “Thank you for showing me around and eating lunch with me,” Frau Klausen said on the way back to their workstations.

  “You’re very welcome.” Sabine increased her work pace to make up for the time lost demonstrating Frau Klausen the tasks, and spent the remainder of her shift thinking about her new coworker.

  It was obvious that the woman missed her husband and son very much. Although she hadn’t exactly said so, the longing on her face had given her away. Sabine knew she herself was privileged, because Werner’s work made him exempt from service, and she could only wonder how she would cope should he be sent away.

  She loved him so much that just imagining something happening to him tore at her heart. Even after five years of marriage she felt the same butterflies and wobbly knees as on the day he first kissed her. A smile escaped her expression of concentration. Tragedies like the loss of their unborn babies could tear a couple apart or bond them tighter together. In her case the latter was true.

  Chapter 3

  “Sabine,” a voice called to her as she stepped out of the small row house where she and Werner lived.

  She turned toward the voice to see Lily Kerber, her neighbor and former classmate, waving to her from the door of her own home. Lily had lived alone since her mother died a couple of years ago. Sabine always wondered how Lily managed to keep the house for herself, when so many others were assigned bombed-out victims to live with them.

  “Good morning, Lily. How are you?”

  “Fine, thanks. I saw Werner come home a while ago. Is he working nights again?”

  “Yes. He’ll sleep most of the day now and will be leaving again when I return from work.” Sabine and Lily exchanged small talk every now and then, the way neighbors did, but they had never been close friends, despite the fact that they’d grown up on the same street and attended the same class at school.

  Lily had been the popular girl at school, the one all the boys courted: the first one to show female curves, and the only one to have the audacity to smoke in public.

  “That must be so hard for you.” Lily pouted her carefully painted lips. “Would you like to join me in going out to dinner this week?”

  Sabine raised a brow. After knowing Lily for almost twenty years, this was the first time she’d ever invited her out. “Uhm, well…Werner’s schedule is all over the place and I have to work…”

  “You said he’s working night shifts, so what would stop two lonely women from keeping each other company? How about tomorrow night?”

  Sabine almost fell backwards. Lily had never been lonely in her life. Even in middle school Sabine had lost count of the many admirers in Lily’s life, and that number hadn’t changed since. Sabine didn’t want to assume anything improper, since Lily never invited any of the men inside, but she sure knew how to turn heads.

  For lack of a valid reason to deny the request, Sabine said, “Thank you. I’d love to meet up and chat about old times.”

  “Good, I’ll ring at seven p.m. My treat.” Lily said with a broad smile and waved a gloved hand, before she stepped back inside her house, and shut the door.

  Sabine looked after her for a long moment, muttering beneath her breath, “Strange. That was just strange.”

  Shaking off her concern, she walked to the bus stop and waited for the line taking her to work. In the evening, she arrived home just as Werner pulled on his uniform for the upcoming night shift.

  Lily and her invitation had been uppermost in Sabine’s mind most of the day. Now that she thought about it, her neighbor seemed to be untouched by the hardships of war everyone else had to cope with. Today, she’d worn a flashy red woolen coat that must have cost a year’s supply of ration cards. And in contrast to Sabine’s own shabby coat, it didn’t hang loose on her curvy frame.

  Sabine had lost at least ten pounds over the years and sometimes Werner joked that her protruding ribs would give him bruises. What wouldn’t she give for a dozen pounds more on her scrawny bones? But then, nobody in Berlin had fat on their hips anymore.

  “Darling, I’m home.” She walked over to wrap her arms around Werner and stood on her tiptoes to receive his kiss.

  “I wish I could stay,” he said. “But on the weekend, I’ll be off duty and I thought we could go to the Wannsee lake. See whether it’s still frozen? Take a walk across the ice?”

  “That would be nice.” Sabine grabbed his neck to press another kiss on his lips. There were so few fun things to do these days, a trip to the lake – even in wintertime – seemed like paradise. Then she remembered the dinner invitation and said, “Lily invited me to join her for dinner tomorrow.”

  Werner looked up, confusion on his face. “Lily Kerber? Our neighbor?”

  “Yes, her. She asked me this morning and even offered to pay. I don’t quite know what to make of her invitation.”

  “Maybe she’s just trying to be your friend?” he said, moving out of Sabine’s embrace to finish dressing.

  “After ignoring me for twenty years? I don’t know.” Sabine paused, unsu
re whether she should voice her suspicions. She usually didn’t spread gossip, but if she were to have dinner with Lily, Werner needed to know. It wouldn’t be appropriate if the wife of a fireman were seen with a woman of dubious reputation. “Have you noticed that she doesn’t seem to be…hard-pressed… like everyone else?”

  “In what way?” Werner put the cap on his short brown hair, and the breath caught in her breast at his dashing looks.

  “Well, she’s always wearing new clothes. Things the rest of us stopped even dreaming about long ago. And eating out and offering to pay for me as well…that just seems odd.”

  Werner gave a rueful laugh. “You worry too much, Schätzchen. Lily probably has fetched herself a lover high up. An influential Party member would be able to afford giving her all those clothes you seem to yearn for…although I do like you a lot without clothes.”

  Sabine’s face heated up to the roots of her hair. “That’s not very moral…”

  “I can’t find anything immoral about enjoying my wife,” Werner teased her, and she felt the heated blush intensifying. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy her marital obligations, but why did he have to speak about it?

  “I didn’t mean us…I meant Lily, if that’s even what she’s doing…” Sabine covered her mouth with her hand, averting her eyes from her husband.

  “Times have changed. Those things happen.” Werner laughed at her. “People don’t necessarily marry anymore to share a bed, you know?”

  “I know that,” Sabine said, giving him another hug and lingering long enough to let herself be reminded how safe she always felt in his arms. He was her protector, the strong man who always looked out for her. And if they hadn’t been so unfortunate as to lose two babies, she’d be happily at home tending to her small family instead of having to work in that awful factory producing weapons.