Chapter 32
Leonore was sitting on a packed suitcase. All the items apart from the bed, which she had sold to her neighbor along with the mattress and bedding, had been collected.
The Swiss embassy had stamped the visa into her passport, and the travel date had been set for September the twenty-ninth. Two days away.
She picked up her passport again and opened it. Not even the big red J disfiguring the upper left corner dimmed her joy. She turned the pages to the one marked “Visa” and stroked her fingers reverently over the Swiss embassy stamp before closing the booklet and pressing it to her heart.
So this was what a ticket to freedom looked like: a curt black stamp on yellow paper. She carefully stowed the passport, along with her identification card, in the small bag she always wore around her neck. She’d guard this treasure with her life.
Right at that moment, the doorbell rang.
Leonore flinched. The Gestapo’s suitcase inspector had arrived.
She resisted the urge to crawl under the bed and pretend nobody was home.
Instead, she got up, smoothed her skirt, and headed for the front door with a pounding heart.
Nothing could happen to her, but she still felt uncomfortable in the presence of a Gestapo officer. You never knew.
What if he arrested her on a whim? Her mouth was as dry as dust, and she had to force herself to reach out for the latch. As her palm touched the cool metal, she swallowed down her panic. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath, and then pressed the latch firmly.
The door sprang open, to reveal a man in a gray-green uniform coat.
“Are you Leonore Vogel?” His tone was relatively friendly.
“Yes.”
“Senior Customs Officer Weitze. I’ve come to check your luggage.”
A weight fell from Leonore’s shoulders. A customs officer had no authority to arrest her on a whim. “Please come in.”
The man followed her through the shabby hallway into the small room where her suitcase lay on the bed.
“Is that everything?”
“Yes, sir.”
He nodded, opened his briefcase and fished out a list entitled Approved Luggage for Leonore Vogel – Jewess. “Open it up, please.”
Leonore hesitated for a second. She and Birgit had had to sit on the suitcase together to squash it hard before it finally closed.
However, there was no way around it. She released the catches, and the lid burst open.
She wondered anxiously how she’d ever close the thing again without Birgit’s help.
The customs officer pursed his lips in disapproval before setting the list aside. Leonore breathed a sigh of relief, and was about to close the suitcase lid again, when she noticed him taking a pair of white fabric gloves from his briefcase and putting them on.
“Would you step aside, please?” he asked amiably before pulling the suitcase to the edge of the bed. At the top lay her best dress. He unfolded it and laid it out on the bed before checking off the garment on his list. Then came the alarm clock, pictures and postcards – which he studied in detail.
A shiver ran down Leonore’s spine as she wondered what he found so interesting in them. Silently, she thanked Heaven for not packing her diary. Just the thought of this man leafing through it made her cheeks flush.
“There are five postcards on the list – this is six. Which one do you want to leave behind?”
She pointed randomly at one of the cards, unable to look the man in the face. “This one.”
“Alright.” He gazed around the empty room, before he placed the surplus postcard on the windowsill.
The next minute, Leonore felt her face flushing hotter than ever as she watched the customs officer’s white-gloved fingers take first her brassiere, then her underpants, out of the suitcase, unfold them and place them side by side on the bed.
Head bowed, and almost dying of shame, she waited for him to finish inspecting her unmentionables.
Then he spoke again. “You can’t take this with you.”
“Pardon?” Her head shot up and she stared at him in horror. Surely he wasn’t insinuating she had to leave the country without underwear?
The man was holding one of her pairs of passion killers aloft, a monster her grandmother had given her for her dowry. He seemed unaware of how grotesque he looked. He stared at her in accusation. “You have packed eight pairs of underpants.”
“That’s what I wrote on the list.” Leonore swallowed hard. She hadn’t expected the postcards to be counted, and had simply given a number that she couldn’t remember afterward. But she was sure she’d counted her underwear correctly.
“That’s as may be.” The customs officer was positively puffing himself up. “However, only everyday items may be taken with you.”
Leonore was taken aback, what exactly was it about underwear that made it not an everyday item? She bit back a sarcastic remark – since she didn’t want to endanger her emigration at the last minute.
“All items that exceed the usual requirement for a week are to be regarded as luxury goods and for this reason may not be exported.” The customs officer shook his head in disgust. “The week has seven days, so seven sets of underwear are permitted. Under no circumstances may you take eight. Do you understand?”
Leonore bit back another pointed remark. Instead, she gave a small nod of the head, and said with fervent submissiveness, “I’m terribly sorry, sir. I must have missed the paragraph with the rule on a week’s needs. The surplus item will of course stay here and go to the Winterhilfe charity.”
He seemed placated, folding her passion-killers neatly and placing them on the windowsill next to the postcard.
Leonore silently sent an apology to her deceased grandmother, biting her lip tensely, waiting to see whether the customs officer would discover any further offenses against some absurd guidelines.
Fortunately, he found nothing else, and thirty minutes later he signed and stamped the list.
“If you’d pack everything up again,” he instructed her.
“Now?” Leonore’s eyes widened. She’d never be able to close the suitcase on her own, and she certainly didn’t dare ask the customs officer for help.
“Yes, now. I need to seal the luggage so that no unauthorized items can be added after the inspection.”
She set about packing everything up again. Even if she’d wanted to, it would have been impossible to smuggle even a hairpin into the suitcase. Groaning and gasping, she threw herself on top of the case, but it was simply impossible to close the lid.
After watching her struggle for a while, the customs officer snapped, “Step aside, let me do it.”
Fascinated, she watched as he unpacked everything, then painstakingly refolded each garment – including her underwear, but she was far beyond the point of shame – and deftly stowed them in the case. Once he was done, he closed the lid and snapped the locks shut effortlessly.
“That’s how you do it. But you can’t expect neatness from a Jewish Fr?ulein.”
She let the insult wash over her. “Thank you very much for your help.”
He sealed the case with a label, handed her a copy of the list, and said, “Take good care of it. You must show this list at the German border on request.”
“Certainly.”
As soon as he’d left, she folded the list several times and stowed it in the bag around her neck before falling backward onto the bed and laughing out loud. Never in her life had she undergone such an absurd experience.
In her mind, she was already writing an article about it for a foreign magazine.