Chapter 16 No More Privilege
NO MORE PRIVILEGE
I wore the Chanel suit and the pearls to the board meeting. It seemed appropriate. Alix, of course, wore what she calls “performance” clothing and I call “clothes you wear to the gym and nowhere else,” but never mind. I was the one who needed to be convincing.
We weren’t required to wait today, but were ushered back to the same resolutely plain conference room, where three men and one woman, as well as Dr. Bauer, rose courteously to shake hands.
I’d describe their expressions as “guarded,” but then, royal imposters are common even nowadays, when one wouldn’t imagine anybody would care about long-lost crowns and thrones.
I was introduced as Frau Stark, but that was, after all, my name.
I wasn’t Princess Marguerite anymore, and that had been my own choice.
Tea was provided this time. The mugs were probably from Ikea—I suspected the table and chairs were, too, which was practically sacrilegious in this building—but somebody had taken the trouble to slice a lemon. I was halfway to special, it appeared.
“We appreciate you coming in at short notice,” the chairman of the board told me. A dry, gray, and distinguished fellow of about sixty, he possessed a polite but definite air of command. “And I trust you won’t be offended if we ask you some questions.”
“Not at all,” I said. “And I hope you won’t be offended if my videographer, Ashleigh Finnegan, records my answers. She’s making a record, you see, for, ah, her, ah …”
“History channel,” Ashleigh said brightly. “This is just for background, though.”
“I don’t know,” the chairman, Dr. Eltschig, said. “We haven’t discussed this.”
I folded my hands in front of me on the table and looked impassively back at him.
I’m very good at appearing impassive. Alix used to call it my “cobra stare.” I said, “Perhaps you’d like to take a few minutes to discuss it,” and tried to make it evident that I was quite happy to sit here until they were done, and also that I was going to insist. I seemed to have decided to want my story to be heard.
“I don’t suppose it can do much harm, after all,” Dr. Eltschig said. “Now, about your claim—"
We went through it all again: my family, the war, the palace, the photos, the identity cards, the earrings. This time, though, we went beyond where I’d left things with Dr. Bauer. When I described Father’s summons by the Gestapo, every head turned.
“I hadn’t heard this,” Dr. Eltschig said, “and I know something about this period.”
“Because my father was never actually questioned, presumably,” I said.
“And soon after you discussed this,” Dr. Eltschig said, clearly not convinced yet, “the air-raid sirens sounded and you went to the cellar.”
Here we were again: the first raid, the fire, rescuing what belongings we could, and finally, my journey down to the ancient depths of the palace with my father. I was glad I’d spoken of it to the others already; it would have felt too raw otherwise.
Dr. Eltschig said, “A Jewish family?” And looked extremely skeptical.
“I know,” I said. “Afterwards, as a refugee, especially once the Americans came—the stories one heard! Every German had saved a Jewish family, even though they had no idea of what was actually happening to the Jews, and they had all secretly loathed Hitler. And nobody, of course, would have dreamed of joining the Party, though they could point to others who had. It’s a wonder so many Jews were lost, with all those charitable Aryans looking out for them. ”
“Precisely,” Dr. Eltschig said. “This family …”
“Dr. Becker was our family doctor,” I explained. “We had medical needs enough for a dozen among us, as my mother and I were hemophilia carriers and my father had been so terribly burned, so we knew him well.”
I told the story. Another “bite” for Ashleigh’s program, if nothing else.
I turned at last at the top of the winding stair and descended into the dark again.
There was nothing else to do. Even as I longed to open the door and dash after my father, the habit of obedience was too strong.
And three helpless people waited down there.
Father had trusted me with the knowledge of them, and they were my responsibility now.
The thunder of the explosions, the dull roar that was the planes, or the fire, or both, were even worse this time, weren’t they?
I couldn’t tell—the base of the stairs was much lower than the other cellar, which would mean we were farther from the bombs, but how to measure the amount of shaking and smoke and heat, and the fear they bring, against one’s memory?
When my flashlight picked out the three figures sitting against the wall of the antechamber, I was glad.
I knelt before them to be at their level, as it seemed polite, and Dr. Becker gave a sound of distress and said, “No. Children, stand and greet Princess Marguerite. My daughter, Andrea, who is twelve, and my son, Gerhardt, eight.” Aryan names, but that may have seemed wiser when these children were born.
Andrea made a Knicks—the bobbing curtsey every German girl learned—as we shook hands, and Gerhardt gave the usual polite half-bow.
I wanted to laugh, it seemed so inappropriate in these circumstances, but of course, that would be rude, so I merely murmured words of greeting and said, “Shall we sit down?” as if we were in the drawing-room and about to be served coffee and cakes.
How ridiculous manners can seem at times, and yet how necessary they are.
When we were all sitting with our backs against the wall and Dr. Becker and I had turned off our flashlights to save the precious batteries, I said, “Forgive me, but I don’t know how long you’ve been here.
I haven’t known anything about my father’s …
activities until tonight, and I still know very little.
He said it was safer for me not to know, but as I’m here now, the option of safety is no longer available.
Would you tell me, if you don’t mind, what has brought you here? ”
He didn’t go tense, or I didn’t feel it.
I couldn’t see him, of course—we sat in a darkness too complete to pierce, for there was no light source at all in this underground cavern.
He merely said, “Let’s move to the other side of the room,” and told his children, “Lie down and go to sleep now.” He shone the flashlight, and I realized that he’d brought some kind of rough pallets out from the other room; at least, I hadn’t seen them when Father and I had come through before.
When the children had settled themselves, he spoke. His voice was quiet enough still that I had to strain to hear it over the sound of muffled explosions. “I was in a privileged marriage until four weeks ago,” he said, “as my wife Eva was Aryan.”
“A privileged marriage,” I said, feeling my ignorance. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said, “that although I haven’t been allowed to practice medicine openly for years—how foolish the Nazis are, prosecuting such a brutal war while barring a full fifteen percent of their doctors from practicing!
—we haven’t been sent east, because Eva was Aryan.
I’m being frank with you, maybe too frank, young as you are, but I haven’t had much chance at conversation during these past weeks. ”
“Please,” I said, “I want to know. I’m young, but I hope I’m not thoughtless or stupid.”
“Then I’ll tell you,” he said. “It will serve to take our minds off what’s happening out there, anyway.
I was put to work in a munitions factory, our apartment and most of our possessions confiscated, and the children, of course, were barred from school, but we were allowed to stay, and to survive.
We were sent to live in a Judenhaus—two rooms in a mean little apartment building, surrounded by other Jews, some in privileged marriages and some not.
The house was subject to inspection at any time by the Gestapo, during which our possessions were scattered or destroyed, our food taken, and we ourselves subject to blows and abuse, but we survived.
I received half the normal ration coupons as a Jew, but I did receive those, and again—we survived.
Eva and the children received coupons for more, for a bit of meat and butter, even some milk, and we got by with gifts of food and coal from some of my former patients, especially your parents, which we shared with our neighbors.
We made new friends and had a life of sorts, despite being moved twice as the Jewish population shrank and less housing was needed. ”
“Shrank,” I repeated.
He said, “Let me check on the children.” A matter of thirty seconds, and he was beside me again.
“Asleep, thank God. We must be well into the small hours by now, though it’s hard to keep track of time down here.
So. Where were we? Oh, yes. The Jews have gradually been evacuated, as they call it, over the past years.
To Theresienstadt, the authorities said, where there are work camps.
They took the old and sick first, though, and what work could they have done?
That ruse was seen through quickly enough.
At first, too, we’d receive the sad notification that the person had died of a heart attack—it was always a heart attack, unless it was ‘shot while trying to escape’—but after a time, they dropped even that pretense.
I don’t know, though, whether those taken were kept at Theresienstadt or sent farther east. Many Jews have been shipped to Poland, one hears, and none have ever come back.
But here we stayed as others were taken, and Eva taught the children at home—she had been a Frau Doktor in her own right, a professor of psychology, until she was forced to leave the University due to our marriage.
She told me that we had only to be patient and wait out Hitler, that the end was bound to come soon.
Unfortunately, it hasn’t come soon enough, because a month ago, she died. ”
“Oh, no,” I said. “I’m sorry.”