The Girl I Left Behind

by Andie Newton

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘What does it look like I’m doing? I’m going home,’ I said, breathless. ‘To Nuremberg.’ I went back to the window, looking for Max. The Marienplatz was so full of people it was hard to distinguish one fancy-dressed person from another. Then I saw him, leaving our building and walking across the square. I started to pant, barely able to control myself, thinking it was all over.

  I was going to give Max a big kiss right in the middle of the square where everyone could see us. I ran for the door, flinging my rucksack over my shoulder and clutching a train schedule in my hand.

  Christophe yanked me back by the elbow. ‘You’re not leaving.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said, jeering.

  ‘You have to ask why?’ He looked like he was going to laugh, but then got very serious when he realized I had no idea what he was talking about. ‘Because if you quit someone else will audit your files and you’ll get caught. They’ll find you in Nuremberg.’

  ‘I’ll cover it up,’ I said. ‘I can fix the files.’

  Christophe shook his head, and I shrank from his grip and his wretched gaze. ‘Face it, Sascha. You’re in too deep. Now you can’t get out.’

  I felt nauseous and faint. My rucksack slipped off my shoulder and fell to the ground along with the train schedule in my hand. I didn’t want to believe him, but he was right and I hated him for it; I had spent months doctoring files and altering reports.

  ‘Pray your country loses this war,’ he said. ‘Keep passing information to me like you have, and it just might happen.’

  I looked back out the window, my heart still pounding. Max was gone.

  So was my dream of going home and seeing Claudia.

  1943

  20

  February

  Hoffmann sent me to Stadelheim Prison on the outskirts of Munich with a stack of files the Gestapo had ordered from the tunnel. The request: everything and everyone associated with the White Rose resistance group. We didn’t have much since the Gestapo’s files didn’t normally mingle with the ones we had from the Reich Main Security Office, but I went anyway, and with what files I’d been ordered to bring.

  I learned that morning that members of the White Rose had been caught distributing anti-Nazi leaflets in the corridors near university lecture rooms. They had already left the building but went back to toss the papers that had got stuck at the bottom of their bags. A janitor who’d been cleaning the men’s toilets turned them in. One was a girl named Sophie Scholl—not Max’s sister, but initially I thought it was her and my heart sank when I heard her name.

  Stadelheim was one of the largest prisons in Germany and known for its use of the guillotine. Made of stone, it reminded me of Traitor’s Alley in Nuremberg and just walking the corridors with the files in my arms sent an eerie chill up the back of my neck.

  I was escorted into a small room that smelled as sterile as a hospital. It had a large, tinted glass window that looked into another room. Five Gestapo stood around a small table, talking casually as if they had been waiting for me to arrive. Initially they didn’t seem pleased to see a woman, rolling their eyes up and down my body, judging my significance. But when I told them who I was, and what I had in my arms, they let up.

  ‘Sit down,’ one of the officers said, pointing to a plush, red office chair.

  ‘I’m not staying long,’ I said, taking the seat.

  He pulled a thick file folder from a bag he had slung over the back of his chair and set it on the table. He looked close to my age, early twenties, and had a square jaw and fascinating, almost tormented steely-grey eyes. ‘Let me see what you have there.’ He compared the folder I’d brought side-by-side with his own. The Gestapo had always believed their interrogations were more superior than any other department’s, and I was sure he was laughing inside over my file’s difference in size.

  The other officers left us and went into the interrogation room on the other side of the glass, dragging in a metal chair and a young man who looked strikingly similar to the one I saw running down the stairs with Max’s sister. One of his eyes had swollen shut and was purple and blue from what looked like many punches to the face. The other eye, only half-open, appeared to have been slathered with some sort of jellied cream. They threw him into the chair, slamming his shoulders back. ‘You did it! We have proof!’ the guard yelled, and the man’s head whipped back and stayed in an arched position as if he hadn’t the strength to right it. They barraged him with questions, shouting at him, yet never taking a breath to let him answer.

  I leaned toward the glass to get a closer look without even realizing what I was doing.

  ‘They can’t see you,’ the officer said.

  I nodded as if he wasn’t telling me something I didn’t already know and pulled a release card from my skirt pocket for the files I had brought. ‘For our records.’

  He looked surprised at the card, but then signed it with a wavy line as if it was his signature. ‘How long can we have these here?’

  ‘Two days,’ I said. ‘But if you need them longer I can extend the loan period. If you make duplicates, you’ll need to send a request to Director Hoffmann.’

  He took a long look at me with his steely eyes. ‘Hmm.’

  Another Gestapo officer came into the room and motioned for him to walk into the corridor. ‘Wait here,’ he said, and I found myself alone, the man being beaten on the other side of the glass screaming out for help, when I noticed what appeared to be the corner of a photo affixed to a piece of paper sticking out of the guard’s folder. Sophie could be in that folder, I thought, and I reached for it, just to take a look, but then found myself bending over the table, separating one person’s dossier from another, thumbing through the stack.

  ‘You need this room?’ the guard shouted from the other side of the closed door. Then I saw her, Sophie—definitely Sophie—staring at me from a black-and-white photo. The doorknob twisted, and I slipped the page from the stack. ‘She’s leaving,’ the guard said, cracking the door open as he talked. I hastily folded the paper up and shoved it under my skirt and into my underwear just as the door opened up wide.

  I fell back into my chair, a thin smile on my face.

  ‘Give me a moment and the room’s yours,’ he said to someone as the door slammed shut behind him.

  ‘Well,’ I said, my heart hammering in my chest, ‘if that’s everything…’ I wondered if he could hear the paper rustling under my skirt as I stood up.

  He sat down with a thump and grumbled before going back to comparing the files, not pausing for a moment to notice I’d had my hands in them. He waved me out of the room. ‘Appears so. You have your release card,’ he said, and I left.

  I walked briskly back down the corridor, through the security checkpoint, and into the chauffeured car I had arrived in. As my car reached the prison gates, a lorry pulled up and a guard kicked out ten students from the back hatch. Each had their arms tied behind their backs while the Gestapo beat them on the ground with billy clubs.

  ‘Do hurry, driver,’ I said, trying to sound calm. ‘I have lunch plans.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he replied.

  Only after we drove through the electric gate did I feel myself breathing.

  *

  I hadn’t seen Sophie since I caught her throwing leaflets from my building just after Christmas. So, she was surprised when I showed up at her flat with a wad of reichsmarks and a train schedule for all routes out of Munich.

  ‘You need to leave,’ I said. ‘Now.’ Even though I had stolen the sheet the Gestapo had on her, it was still too risky for her to stay in Munich.

  I grabbed an empty canvas bag near the foot of her bed and started stuffing clothes from her closet into it. ‘Why?’ she said as I threw her a coat. ‘What’s going on?’

  I stopped packing. She doesn’t know.

  I remembered the night Max told me about what had happened to the Falcons, and worse, when he told me Claudia was missing. Sophie’s face tensed.
>
  I looked around for her radio, but she didn’t have one. ‘I need noise.’

  She pointed to a tiny wall shower. There was no curtain or barrier to keep the water from spraying onto her floor, just a rusty showerhead and a drain. ‘Turn it on,’ she said, flicking her finger at it.

  I turned the lever all the way to the opposite side. The pipes behind the wall growled like the engine from a military lorry as the water blasted out of the showerhead and into the drain.

  ‘The White Rose—’ I peered out the window. I was taking a huge risk showing up at her flat. The Gestapo could be on their way for all I knew. ‘They caught them,’ I said, and she completely folded to the ground.

  ‘Who?’ she said. ‘Which ones?’

  Something in her voice struck me. It had wavered, and I could tell she was asking a question she didn’t want to know the answer to—Sophie was worried about someone in particular, someone she cared about. I closed the curtains so that just a sliver of light shone into the room and then looked directly at her.

  ‘Sophie Scholl?’ she asked, and I nodded.

  She threw a hand to her mouth, clamping her lips.

  It wasn’t until that moment I noticed three eggs sitting near the hotplate. She was expecting company, perhaps it was Sophie Scholl and her brother.

  ‘Put your coat on,’ I said, and her whole body shook; she could barely shove her arm into her coat. ‘But… but… I have nowhere to go.’ I gave her the bag I’d packed, but it slipped through her fingers.

  ‘Sophie… Sophie,’ I said, but she’d started to weep. ‘Sophie!’

  Her cry trailed into a whimper, and she looked at me, suddenly listening. ‘You have a chance.’ There was only one place I knew she could get help. ‘Go back to Nuremberg. My aunt owns an antiques shop on Obere Schmiedgasse called Alten und Neuen. She’ll know what to do. Tell her Sascha sent you. But be discreet, you’ll have to pretend to be a customer, buy something.’

  I picked the bag up off the ground and gave it to her again, but this time she grabbed onto it. ‘Are you going to tell Max I left?’

  ‘Do you want me to?’

  ‘He’ll worry if you don’t.’ She started to cry again. ‘Oh, I don’t want to leave!’

  ‘Be glad you’re going home.’ I could hear the resentment in my own voice. ‘Some of us want to and can’t.’

  I gave her the reichsmarks I had brought along with the train schedule. Then I turned off the showerhead and the rumble behind the wall gave way to the sound of trickling water. I saw both the sadness and uncertainty in her eyes. I wanted to say something encouraging, but the words never came.

  Then we left, both going in opposite directions.

  *

  Late that night, I stopped at Max’s door to tell him Sophie had left town. I picked up some common mail left in the foyer and was going to pretend to drop it off in case anyone saw me.

  I knocked on his apartment door. Several seconds passed before the door cracked open. Max stuck his foot into the jam, poking his head out, and stared at me almost as if he was unsure what to say.

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ I said. ‘It’s about…’

  I was just about to tell him about Sophie when I heard the voice of a woman from inside his apartment. It wasn’t the voice of someone my age, but deeper, older, more mature in a sultry sort of way, and she was calling his name.

  My tongue got in the way of my words and I stuttered. ‘Sorry—I didn’t mean to…’

  I turned to walk down to my flat, but his hand caught mine and he tried to pull me back. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell her to go.’ I wiggled from his grip and scurried down the corridor to my flat. I felt him watching me as I nervously struggled to open my door, and after I’d closed it, I still felt him watching me.

  *

  I was sitting alone at the Ratskeller, picking through a basket of tough-skinned bread, sipping a stein of beer, when a crowd of NSDAP dressed in their brown uniforms poured through the doors. The barmaids fell over themselves trying to accommodate such a large group in such a short amount of time. They were louder than normal; laughing, chatting, recounting something I couldn’t quite understand. It was as if they had all just got back from a football match and were still very excited about what they’d seen.

  ‘Did you see her limp?’ someone said. ‘I saw her limping.’

  ‘What about the brother?’ another one said. ‘The balls of that one.’

  The crowd got thicker, and the air warmed with a sweaty odour coming from their unwashed shirts. I was thinking about leaving, even though I hadn’t eaten any of my dinner, when I saw my cousin, Alex. His face was full and his eyes were as wide as I had ever seen them.

  ‘I just saw the most amazing thing,’ he said, helping himself to the seat opposite me.

  ‘Amazing is a strong word.’ I looked up. ‘What this time?’

  The barmaid ordered everyone to be quiet as she turned the radio up. The announcement: the leaders of the White Rose were dead. There was a strange murmur of voices as the announcer continued to talk. Then the noise of the crowd returned to where it had been.

  ‘I got to see them die,’ Alex said. ‘The girl, her brother and another one named Probst. Can you believe I was lucky enough to be invited to their execution? Hell, we all were,’ he said, pointing his finger at the NSDAP members he’d walked in with.

  I felt ill. I wasn’t sure what upset me the most, his excitement about watching someone die, or hearing what had happened to poor Sophie Scholl and the other White Rose leaders. I searched Alex’s face, trying to find a hint of compassion—these were people, after all.

  ‘Ah, it was great!’ Alex said, reaching into my basket of bread. ‘You should have seen it.’ Alex used his teeth to tear a roll in half. Then he talked while his jaw worked its way through the leathery skin of the bread. ‘I’d never seen a real guillotine before.’

  One of the men Alex came in with slid into the seat next to him. His hair was blond and short just like Alex’s but he smelled worse, and needed more cologne than he had on. ‘That’s what happens when you’re a resister,’ the friend said. ‘You die.’

  ‘Indeed!’ Alex said as he swallowed a hunk of bread. ‘It was like cutting heads off snakes.’

  ‘If only they had quit that White Rose nonsense earlier,’ his friend said. ‘Can you imagine getting your head chopped off?’

  He looked right at me, and the image of being dragged to the guillotine by the Gestapo pushed its way into my thoughts. I swallowed, hard, and felt every bit of my throat.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He turned to Alex. ‘There’s an apartment that’s opened up in my building. Yeah, some businessman who was hiding Jews got caught. They sent him east with his parasites. You know…’ He sliced his throat with his finger, and then laughed. All I saw was his gums.

  I stood to button my coat, my chair screeching against the floor, mumbling to myself only things I could understand.

  Alex watched me. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he said. ‘You’re not like you used to be.’

  ‘Wrong with me?’

  ‘There’s talk at the Braunes Haus that you’re as dried up as some men’s grandmas.’

  Alex’s friend laughed.

  I gasped. ‘Who says this?’ I was barely nineteen.

  ‘People.’ Alex’s eyes shifted to his friend and then to me, as if he had just realized he should have kept that information to himself. ‘Well, it’s true,’ he said. ‘A little bit, anyway. You used to goad me every chance you got. Now you’re all business, different.’

  I stared at them both as they stared at me. ‘I’m too busy working.’

  Alex nodded once, but I could tell he thought there was something more.

  ‘Good day, gentlemen.’

  *

  Spring had come, but not without a good round of showers which made the grass grow green and the flowers bloom in droves. On this day, the sudden rise in temperature made everyone hot and sweaty. To make it worse, our
windows had been painted shut, which made it impossible to catch a cool breath. Hoffmann shuffled in from the corridor, and I swiftly straightened up my desk, hiding the note I’d been drafting to Christophe under my desk mat. ‘Why don’t you go to the park, Ella.’ He wiped his brow with a soiled hanky. ‘It’s too hot to be in here all day without some fresh air.’ He looked at me while he folded up his hanky and then stuck it back into his pocket. ‘I’m telling you to go. I’d be a cruel supervisor if I didn’t insist.’

  ‘You’re dismissing me for the day?’ My hand rested on my desk mat, thinking of the note that lay beneath for Christophe that was only half done. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Take a break. Write a letter outside to a friend. Isn’t that what young ladies do?’ He looked around my office, its bare walls, and the mound of paperwork on the edge of my desk. ‘The walls must feel like they’re closing in on you. Take advantage of the air outside.’

  Louise passed by my office, talking to a young woman. I thought she might be giving her a tour, but by the sound of their voices I guessed they knew each other and it was a personal visit. I watched them pass, leaning back in my chair to get around Hoffmann’s body, which blocked a good portion of the door.

  ‘Ella?’ Hoffmann looked annoyed. He got out the hanky he had just stuffed in his pocket to wipe his neck. ‘Just do something. Go… take twenty minutes.’

  I took my hand off my desk pad. ‘All right.’

  Outside, the blue chamomiles had taken over a large spot on the open green where League girls dressed in their athletic uniforms ran drills up and down the Königsplatz. These were the older girls, the Belief and Beauty members who liked to attend the NSDAP dances. It hadn’t escaped my attention that the Braunes Haus was within shouting distance and several men had come outside to watch them twirl batons in their thigh-high jumpers.

  I sat down at one of two tables in the common area of the Königsplatz with my pad, thinking about who to write a letter to, but I had nobody. Hoffmann didn’t know, he thought he was doing me a favour. I had been alone for a long time, and I was good at suppressing my feelings, but nothing made me feel more alone than sitting down to write that letter. Out of nowhere Christophe slid into the seat opposite me. We stared at each other.