Thirty-Three
Thirty-Three
C ome to the BDM fund raiser this afternoon, Hetty,” Erna urges at the end of school. “You need a change of scene,” she adds, looking carefully into my eyes. “A... break. Besides, I miss him, too, you know. I haven’t seen you, properly, since...”
“I know. But Mutti is home. I must take care of her. Soon, I promise.”
She gives me a sad smile and I hurry home.
Mutti returned yesterday. Impossibly thin and angular, she looks like she could be snapped in two.
More streaks of gray are visible in her glossy, dark chignon.
Like her dress, her eyes are dull. She smiles and hugs me.
Tells me it’s good to be home. She’s here, but she isn’t here.
The mutti she used to be is buried alongside Karl in the graveyard.
After lunch Mutti and I walk arm in arm to the florist’s on the corner of Hallische Strasse, Kuschi padding quietly at our side.
Mutti looks and looks at the selection of colorful blooms but is unable to decide.
“How about these?” I point to some blue cornflowers. Her favorite color. Her favorite flowers.
“Too cheerful.” She shakes her head.
I look over the selection. Is there such a thing as a flower without cheer?
“Can I help you, dear ladies?” The shop owner sidles toward Mutti, a dazzling smile beneath his stiff-looking mustache.
Mutti gives him a withering glance.
“I’m looking for something suitable for my son’s grave,” she says.
I wince at her words.
The man extinguishes his smile and adopts a suitably respectful demeanor, head bowed, face downcast.
“I’m so very sorry,” he says. “Let me help you. Please.”
He swiftly gathers blooms from various buckets: tiny gypsophila; cream roses; white willow sprays; and pale lilies, lightly brushed with pink. He bundles them together with brown paper and presents them to Mutti.
“Yes,” she comments. “Just right.”
We walk arm in arm again to the graveyard and place them on Karl’s grave.
“There,” she says, looking down at the perfect pale flowers against the fresh, dark earth.
Such a waste that they should lie here to wither and die.
We sit on the bench beneath the spreading branches of a big fir tree and look out over the graveyard toward the church. Faint strains of organ music reach us, but mostly it’s just the wind sighing in the trees.
“I miss Karl, too,” I say.
She grips my hand tightly and sobs, her whole body trembling with the loss she has suffered.
“Mutti,” I say at last, when her tears are all spent. “I’m due at a fund-raising meeting at the BDM this afternoon.”
She looks at me vaguely. “Yes, yes, you must go. I’ll stay just a little longer.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’ll be fine. Go. I’ll see you at supper.” She gives me a thin smile, then turns back to watch over Karl’s grave.
I walk softly away.
Once I leave the graveyard, I quicken my pace and make for the woods near the river.
I can hardly breathe. Is he safe? Will he be there, like he promised?
My legs feel jellylike as I push them to go faster.
Or could there be a trap when I get there?
A vision of the woods crawling with Gestapo, ready to arrest me for my sullied, filthy blood, flashes in my mind.
I grasp the iron railing beside the pavement, which swoops and rolls, then rights itself.
A woman passes and gives me a strange look.
I release the railing and continue on my way, slower now, less steady on my feet.
Can she know that I’ve been with a Jew? Not just once, but three nights in a row.
I glance over my shoulder, but the woman is walking swiftly away, head bowed against the wind.
In my pocket is the note Walter left for me with Lena at the café after his stay in the treehouse a week ago. I clasp it as though my life depends on it.
My darling,
How I have missed you! Not a second passes without a thought of you, and our three nights together.
I feel tremendous guilt that in among all the anguish, I should have shared such bliss with you.
I’m desperate to tell you what has happened.
It isn’t safe for us to meet in the open.
The woods are best. I’ll wait for you at 3:30 p.m., tomorrow, just off the path by our favorite picnic spot. I hope you remember.
W xxx
He’s already sheltering beneath the trees, hat pulled low, when I reach the curve in the river where we once sat beneath the hot summer sun. It might have been another lifetime.
“Thank God you’re here.” He steps forward to greet me.
“And you. I was so scared they would arrest you when you got home.”
“Not yet,” he says. “I’m doing everything I possibly can to avoid it.”
He takes my hand and leads me deeper into the woods. The undergrowth is tangled and it’s difficult to pick our way through. He stamps on brambles and holds back branches to stop them whipping my face.
A light drizzle is falling, but that’s a good thing. Fewer people will be out for an afternoon stroll.
We stop in a small clearing. At last I’m able to look into his pale, tired face.
“Please tell me—what’s happened to your father and your uncle?”
“The Gestapo let them go. They kept them for two days—”
“But that’s wonderful!”
Walter shakes his head. “Of course it’s good they’re home.
But at an enormous price. Hetty, it’s awful.
They were beaten and interrogated nonstop for two days and nights.
They were starved and weren’t allowed to sleep.
They broke them. In the end they were so weak they agreed to sign papers to transfer the business to the National Socialist Party in order to be released.
They also have a hefty fine to pay and only have until the end of the year to pay it. ”
“Oh God no. I’m so sorry.” His news is sickening. Shame, unbidden, floods me. To think I’m part of it. “On what basis can they do this?”
“Tax fraud! Utter lies. They invented the worth of the business, which is in reality almost bankrupt, and taxed us on fictitious profits. Then they accused us of not paying tax bills, worth more than the stock and net worth put together. It’s preposterous.
Josef and my father can’t fight it anymore.
The bastards have got what they want. Perhaps now they’ll leave us alone.
My father still writes letters hopelessly, all over Europe for a place to go, but since the conference at Evian in the summer, no country will take any more refugees.
Even Palestine. He fears the Nazis will soon take my grandmother’s house, too, and then the whole family will be homeless. ”
I see a change in his face. A collapse. An acceptance that the worst is to happen.
The lump is back in my throat.
“And what about you? Did they come for you?” My voice drops to a whisper. Something about the way he shifts his body and drops his gaze stirs the fear in my belly. He sidles a little closer to me and reaches for my hand.
“It was a good job you hid me.” I can tell he’s struggling to keep his voice light. “They did come looking. But, well, for now at least, they’re having to leave me alone.”
“But why? Looking for you for what?” I grip his hand tight and press my body against his.
“It’s very bad, Hetty.” He hesitates. “There’s been an allegation of Rassenschande—”
“No!”
“So it seems someone really is watching us.”
“It’s Ingrid, it must be. Bertha warned me—”
“What do you mean?”
“She... She told me that Ingrid suspected I had a young man, and that she had seen proof of something sensational .”
“I know you thought she saw us together that time, but you said she wouldn’t remember who I was...”
“I don’t know if she did, and just seeing us in the shop, in itself, isn’t a crime. So I think it must have been something more... Oh, Walter, I think she found my diary.”
“Hetty, don’t tell me you wrote any of this down...” He looks at me. “Did you actually mention my name?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
Walter sinks his head into his hands and groans.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Of all the stupid—”
“I’ll destroy it. As soon as I get home. I promise.”
“So she doesn’t have it?”
“No! I used to keep it under my mattress. But I found a much better hiding place. She couldn’t possibly have found it there—”
“She can’t have; that’s why they couldn’t arrest me.
” Walter chews his nail while he thinks.
“They’ve no proof. The person who made the allegation has so far refused to name you.
To bring me to trial for Racial Defilement , the other party—you—cannot be prosecuted, because you would have to give evidence of the defilement, thereby implicating yourself.
And you can’t give evidence against yourself.
I think that’s why this person , whoever they are, has withdrawn the accusation, for now.
They’ve no evidence to back up their claim.
Perhaps they hope to catch us together. Or maybe they’re afraid of the consequences of dragging your family name into the whole thing.
But, if they had hold of your diary , and it confirmed everything.
..” Walter stares at me, his eyes stretched wide.
“Hetty, you must burn that thing. They could prosecute you, too, you know that? Please promise me!”
“I promise...”
Fighting the grip of panic, I peer through the trees at the water-blackened branches and sodden leaves, whose earthy hint of decay rises, musty and sweet. Like some menacing omen, the threat closes in, slipping silently between the trees, ever closer to Walter.
I cling to him.
“Walter, you must go now . Leave for England, please.”
He nods, holding me tight. “Anna’s father has gotten me a visa at last, by providing financial guarantees and assurances about my ability to support myself and my future wife.
” The word makes me flinch. “He’s really been very good to me.
He’s even arranged the wedding date, as firm proof of the intention, for March next year. ”