Chapter 39 Limbo
LIMBO
To my surprise, I didn’t have that cry after returning to my room. I was very tired, and, yes, disappointed, too, but not hopeless or depressed.
I’d probably never really believed I’d find the tiara. It had been gone so long, and I’d made my peace with that decades ago. Had it always been a mere pretext to tempt Alix here with me? How little we understand our own motivations.
I knew now, anyway, that the real value of this journey was in the company and the memories.
That last especially, because once I’d removed the Chanel suit and was in an armchair with a cup of tea, I found myself reaching for Joe’s letters and my diary again.
It was hard to remember, now, what exactly had happened over those weeks, but the documents brought it all back.
My diary entries, first:
26 April 1945
Rumor everywhere that the Russians and Americans have met at last, arriving from east and west at the Elbe near Torgau.
Barely 50 miles north of Dresden, so the Red Army may be in Dresden now as well, or will be coming very soon.
It’s hard to think of them trampling through our beautiful palace in their boots, and as for spoiling the furnishings and breaking the mirrors—that doesn’t bear thinking about.
Of course, it may all be broken and spoiled already. It’s difficult to remember that the palace could now be destroyed almost entirely; I didn’t see enough of it, I suppose, for the destruction to live in my memory as the living building does.
The mention of “Torgau” makes things quite specific, so I think the story must be true.
We hear no reports of the Soviets and Americans turning on each other, to the disappointment of some of our customers.
Most are resigned and just want the war to be over.
We’re still blacking out, although we haven’t seen any planes for days—if the air-raids are no longer a danger, nobody’s told us. As far as we know, the war goes on.
Flour stores quite low, and still the supplier doesn’t call. I’m putting more oats and rye into the potato bread and saving the precious wheat flour. I find the challenge interesting; how can I best stretch the wheat flour and still make a delicious loaf?
I do have to rise very early to bake, but the memory of all that footsore wandering is still fresh enough that I find that no trial at all.
Much food is scarce—meat in particular can’t be found, and our ration is only 2 ounces of butter apiece per week, though herring is still available.
If this war ever ends, I shall never want herring again!
We do of course eat bread, though not as much as we’d like, and sometimes take goods in trade, so we’re luckier than most. Quark, recently, which was a real treat, bacon another day—our normal ration is four ounces a week—a cabbage—even eggs!
That was a morning, I’ll tell you: six eggs for breakfast, neat and tidy in their egg cups, like things used to be.
The extra egg, Frau Adelberg split among the children.
She really is a kind person, although a bit fearful for my taste—she’s still worried about what the Americans will do to us.
I told her it could hardly be worse and might be better—at least we won’t be bombed!
She doesn’t appreciate that as much as I do; she’s never experienced it.
Oh. The eggs. With bread and preserves, they made a most satisfying breakfast. Most importantly, Dr. Becker, with his Aryan Kennkarte and ration book, receives the full amount of rations and is losing a bit of his starved look, and Gerhardt looks better too.
What luck that I knew how to bake! I enjoy the baking process itself, too, especially in the quiet hours of the morning when even the sun isn’t up, all by my spotlessly clean self in the spotlessly clean kitchen with my hair tied up in a tea towel.
There’s an orderliness to baking that my soul has longed for, and freedom in having a few hours alone with my thoughts.
A refugee is never alone, you see (and never clean, either).
I believe I must be a quiet person at heart, for I relish those hours.
And my Pumpernickel is a success! “You could make a meal of it,” a customer named Frau Neumann tells me.
She has the air of somebody who used to be stout.
It’s the solid way she stands, feet planted, although of course nobody is stout now.
She has the disposition as well of a woman who enjoys the pleasures of life.
Like many, she’s lost a son and a husband—I’ve met almost nobody free of such losses—but she gets on with things in a most cheerful and resolute way. Heartening, really.
The children still talk about Joe and his orange and chocolate bar and chewing gum.
Dr. Becker still talks about the cigarettes.
For me? It’s the canned meat I miss, and for some reason, Joe remains in my mind as well.
He was in such pain, and still, his eyes were kind, especially when he shared out that food. He seemed so happy to do it.
1 May 1945
Frau Neumann’s nemesis is Frau Lindemann, who is a stringy, sour sort of party—a dark cloud behind every silver lining!
She had enormous news to impart today. Mussolini is dead—captured trying to escape the country along with his mistress, both of them shot and hung by their heels in the town square—imagine the ignominy, and how the preening, strutting Duce would have hated it!
We’d all heard that rumor, but she now swears she heard “reliably”—how reliably?
—that the generals have surrendered in Italy and Austria, and most startlingly, that Hitler is dead.
Frau Neumann scoffed, “Him? Wishful thinking. He thinks too highly of himself to let himself be killed. Would he so cruelly deprive the world of his saintly presence? Still hiding in his hole, I’ll wager.”
Frau Lindemann, of course, flushed deep red and insisted loudly that she was correct.
“See if I’m not! And you should show some respect.
The Führer resisted the enemy to the last. He died for us!
All he ever wanted was to make Germany great, and so he was doing until the Bolshevists and World Jewry combined to defeat him.
” Frau Neumann answered jokingly, which drives Frau Lindemann mad, and Andrea and I thought we should have to jump between them.
Also, how is “World Jewry” meant to be so powerful?
You could as easily say “World Christianity,” for surely most of those in power are Christian, at least in the West. Are there a great many Jewish lords and ladies in England, then, and enough Jews in Parliament to dominate it?
If so, Miss Franklin certainly never told me. I have no idea about America.
Joe, it seemed, had no more certain information.
May 1, 1945
Dear Dad,
Well, we’ve taken Munich, and what a mess it is. Bombed to absolute rubble, and the population living in the cellars like rats.
I’m trying to find some humanity, but I look at these people in all their seeming normality, remember them screaming for Hitler in the newsreels, their right arms stuck out in front of them as he ranted about the Jews, and I can’t.
Maybe I’ll find my footing again. I’ll have to, if I’m to be of any use here—an interpreter has to come across as neutral or even sympathetic, or nobody talks to him.
The soldiers are surrendering in droves now, any arrogance gone—pretty dejected bunch—and the civilians are looting.
Somehow, everybody seems to know where the Nazis kept the good stuff.
They tell me they’re hungry, their children are starving, and I want to say—you haven’t seen starvation, and your children are alive.
I don’t say it, but I want to. My pity is gone.
I also don’t much care about the looting.
Those non-fraternization orders are fully in force again.
“The Germans may seem friendly,” we’re told, “but keep in mind—they were all for Hitler. They might look like us, but they don’t think like us, so stay away.
” I suspect they’re also worried about VD!
“Non-fraternization” is one way of putting it.
For once, I have no trouble keeping my distance.
Back to the landscape—the railroad yards here are masses of twisted iron, and the stations are so many piles of rubble. How did Hitler hold out this long? And why?
We hear that Berlin is taken, but at least right now, it’s only a rumor.
As far as we know, the war goes on. We’re an occupying force now, though, not a fighting one.
People smarter than me will decide how to restore order, how to feed the people, including the German POWs—there doesn’t seem to be a lot of agricultural land still producing here; seems they trucked in all the crops from the conquered countries and let their own land be bombed to bits.
The Army will also have to figure out how to get all those slave laborers back where they came from, and bring wrongdoers to justice—if there can be such a thing. I’m glad I won’t be part of it.
Everyone’s talking now about when we’ll get home. I doubt we’ll come home as the same men.
Love to Mom,
Joe
And me again, in the diary:
4 May 1945
Everyone abuzz today with the news. Berlin is definitely taken; it was announced on the wireless. Admiral Donitz is Chancellor, but the war, as far as we know, continues. Who is fighting it, though, and where, with the Allied forces seemingly triumphant everywhere? All very confusing.
As for Hitler—there are four rumors at the same time, and most people don’t know which to believe.
The official announcement—Frau Lindemann was right about that, and wasn’t she crowing about it!
“It is reported from Der Führer's headquarters that our Führer Adolf Hitler, fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism, fell for Germany this afternoon in his operational headquarters in the Reich Chancellery.” That sounds as if he was shot by the Red Army.