City of Women (22 page)

“You haven’t said.”

He barely glances at her. “What?”

“What you think of the accommodations.”

“It’s a room,” he answers blankly.

“Yes,” she agrees with a breath. “A room with a bed. I suppose that’s all that’s required.”

“You require more than that, Sigrid? More than a bed we can share?”

“Where are you spending your nights?” she asks with unveiled purpose. But he tosses the question on its head.

“That’s a very good question. The place I’m in now isn’t working out so well. I need to find something new.”

“New?”

“For a few weeks.”

“Only that?”

“Maybe a month.”

Sigrid feels the air grow thin. “Why only a month?” she asks carefully.

But if Egon hears the interior question that she is asking, he does not respond to it. “Because a month is all I need,” he says.

“So where are you staying
now
?” she repeats with an edge. “You’re not going to tell me?”

“What difference does it make? I only have a few more nights there. Three. Maybe four.”

Nights
, she thinks, and is instantaneously jealous.
Is it another woman?
she itches to demand, even though she, herself, is
another woman
. A woman other than his wife.

“I can pay. That’s not the problem,” he says. “The problem is that it’s too dangerous for me on the street. I can be too easily recognized.”

“You don’t look Jewish,” Sigrid hears herself say, and then flinches at the sound of her own words.

But Egon only laughs, hoots grimly at the ceiling. “Yes, I have quite the Aryan puss. No cricked
schnobel
on this Yid,” he says with a grin.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Thanks to Juli Streicher, all you good Germans think every Jew looks like a Shylock.” That is Julius Streicher, the publisher of a virulent propaganda rag called
Der Stürmer,
who delights in grotesque caricatures of Semitic faces. “In a way, that old bastard has saved my life more than once.”

“I’m not a Juli Streicher,” Sigrid says, causing Egon to look at her directly. Fully, with assessment.

“No. No, you’re not, Sigrid Schröder. You’re a woman with a very good heart.” He says this and then rolls onto his side, fixing his eyes on hers as the smoke ribbons upward from his cigarette. “So. Will you help me?”

But she is hurt. Wounded by his offhand classification of her, dumping her into the pool of good Germans along with such a notorious Jew baiter. She may answer Egon’s question in her head, but first she must ask him, “Where are your wife and children?”

His expression does not change, but his eyes darken, as if a lamp in the room has been switched off. “I don’t know,” he answers her.

Perhaps she was hoping to hear something else. A reply that would cancel out the scenario she has built in her head. She, lying here in the bed with him in a second-class hotel, while across town she is hiding his wife and daughters from the Gestapo in a frigid attic. Or perhaps she would like to have heard that he had simply split from his wife. Or that his wife had escaped to some neutral destination—Switzerland, Sweden, the North Pole—and had taken any and all children with her, never to return. Perhaps she may have even preferred to hear that they were dead. At least dead, she could pinpoint them. Reduce them to something manageable.

“You don’t know? No idea at
all
?” she presses. And now she can feel him studying her, calculating some inner equation. She does not rearrange the blankness of her face. Finally he looks away, drawing on his cigarette, and tapping an ash into a ceramic tray on the bed stand from Haus Vaterland. He seems to be settling into himself, settling into some version of himself. When he speaks his voice has lost all texture.

“The place I had found. A few rooms above a warehouse in Rixdorf. It worked for a while. I had my contacts for food. There was a roof over their heads. For a time, it all seemed
survivable
. But then I was sitting in a café last summer. I had made arrangements to meet a man about some clothing coupons when I saw someone I recognized. Or rather who recognized me. It was another Jew. A man I had known from the diamond trade, years ago. He stood up and waved his hand at me. I could tell something was wrong, immediately, but I moved too slowly. Before I could make it to the door, there were a pair of Gestapo bulls blocking my path with their cannons out.” He stops. Chews a thought for a moment. “They took me to the Grosse Hamburger Strasse and beat hell out me for a night or two. Just for the fun of it.” He shrugs. “And then it was off to the Levetzowstrasse. There I rotted, waiting for my turn to be packed into the cattle cars. Until one morning, after a bombing raid, they picked ten men for a work detail. Hauling rubble.” He flicks his eyebrows. “When I saw my chance, I took it. Bashed the guard on the skull
with a piece of masonry and ran.” He stops again to measure a breath of smoke. “I went straight back to the warehouse, of course, but the rooms were empty. Not a sign of Anna or the girls.” He stares, as if surveying the emptied rooms in his head, then jams his cigarette into the ashtray. “Not a thread left behind.”

Sigrid does not move as his gaze drifts over to hers.

“So does that answer your questions, Frau Schröder? Is there anything else you require knowing?”

Her eyes go wet.
What are the names of your daughters?
she wants to ask. But the question is suddenly so sharp and dangerous that it threatens to cut her throat if she tries to utter it.

“Good,” he concludes at her silence. “Now it’s your turn to answer
my
question,” he says, sliding his arms around her. “Will you help me?” he asks again.

There is only one answer to this, of course.
Yes
. For a month, for a day, for an hour. If it costs her everything. If it strips her skin down to the bone. Her answer is, as it has always been,
yes
.

FOURTEEN

I
N THE MORNING
, leaving for the patent office, she steps out of the door to the landing and finds Mundt’s husband and one of his cronies muscling the weight of a steamer trunk out of the door and down the stairs. “Mornin’, dolly.” He winks at Sigrid. “Man’s work comin’ through.” Sigrid steps back to allow them to pass with their burden, then looks up at the sound of her name.

“
Frau Schröder.
What a happy coincidence,” the Frau Obersturmführer announces. She is wearing her Volk’s community smile, but her face is bleached and exhausted, and her belly has swollen to the size of a medicine ball.

“It appears you are traveling, Frau Junger.”

“To my mother’s in Breslau. Just until my little soldier arrives.”

“Little soldier” confuses Sigrid for a instant. And then, “Ah, yes. Of course.” She quickly snatches the satchel from the girl’s hand. “Here, I’m so thoughtless, please let me help you with your bag.”

“Oh. Thank you, that’s kind. Would you like to go first? I’m afraid I’m rather slow on steps these days. Going down as well as coming up.”

After Sigrid had miscarried, the women of the house had gotten on their hands and knees and scrubbed the spots of blood from every step.

“Please. You first, I’ll follow.”

The Frau Obersturmführer refreshes her smile, and begins her sluggish procession down the stairs. “Getting on the streetcar can take me a lifetime,” she says. “But everyone is so understanding and helpful.”

“So you think it will be a boy, do you?” Sigrid inquires.

A step, a pause. A step, a pause. “Oh,
yes
. I’m quite sure of it, Frau Schröder. From the strength of his kick, you see.” She grins, and Sigrid feels the simple force of her certainty. It pinches Sigrid with some unidentifiable emotion. Somewhere between dread and joy.

That night she leaves her mother-in-law with the wireless and a glass of potato brandy, and knocks on the door across the landing. Fräulein Kessler greets her wearing her nursing shift and her standard sardonic face. “He’s not here, Frau Schröder.”

“He?”

“My brother, of course. He’s in Belgium or Luxembourg, or some such place for a week. I don’t know. He tells me these things, but I never know if I should believe him. In any case, he’s gone.”

“I’m not here to see your brother.”

“No?”

“I don’t mean to trouble you. Were you on your way to work?”

“Not for a few hours yet. I have the night ward tonight,” she says with curious caution.

“Did you mean what you said?” Sigrid asks her. “That you could be my friend?”

A pause. Sigrid watches an internal reorganization of the woman’s expression.

“If a friend is what you need,” she answers.

“It is.”

And now a double-sided glance. The German glance. “I think you’d better come in,” says Fräulein Kessler.

•   •   •

“Y
OU KNOW THEY OFFERED
her a place in one of the Font of Life homes,” the woman announces from the kitchen.

Removing her scarf, Sigrid glances away from the bronze Führer portrait on the wall. “Font of Life.”

“Brigitte. The local Standarte
was putting through the paperwork. But I think giving birth in an SS brood mare barn was too much, even for her.” She brings the coffee service in from the kitchen. Not the gentrified sterling service that her sister had used, but a sensible, stainless steel press and plain china. “So instead it’s off to Breslau and her Mutti. God help her.”

“She is difficult, her mother?”

“I’ve met the woman only twice, but wished to murder her on both occasions.” She sets down the tray and pours. “I hope you like it strong. I make it strong, because that’s how my father drank it. Cigarette?” she offers, but Sigrid shakes her head tightly. “You seem very anxious. You should relax. You should take off your coat.”

“Thank you, I’m fine,” she says, and takes a perfunctory sip of the coffee. It scalds her tongue.

“Too hot? No cream to be had, I’m afraid. But you don’t take it anyway, do you?”

“No.”

“And no white sugar, either. Though, if you’d like, there’s rock sugar,” she says, offering a small crystal bowl filled with amber-colored rock sugar candy from the table. “You might try it, even if you usually drink it black. Its sweetness kills the bitterness.”

“I need to hide someone,” Sigrid suddenly blurts out.

Fräulein Kessler pauses, then sets down the bowl and picks up her cigarette case. “Yes. I thought it might be something like that.” She ignites her cigarette with a silver-plated table lighter and draws in smoke. “I’ve heard about your young friend’s sudden disappearance. I’m sorry, I can’t recall her name. The police are looking for her, correct?”

“Ericha Kohl is her name. But I’m not here about her. Ericha is gone, and I have no idea where she is. The friend I need you to help is a man.”

A stare, then a quick recalibration of her gaze. “Ah. A man,” she repeats, and spews smoke. “In trouble with the authorities? Black market or maybe tired of army life?”

“He’s a Jew,” Sigrid says plainly.

And suddenly Fräulein Kessler’s tidy cynicism freezes to her face. She gazes at Sigrid as if trying to see inside of her head.

“I’ve shocked you,” Sigrid points out.

“Well,” the woman says, and releases a sigh of smoke, “you do continue to surprise me.”

“Can I assume that is said in a friendly way?”

“You’re taking an awful chance here, aren’t you, Frau Schröder? You think that because I have my . . . ” she says, and frowns, “because I have my
proclivities
that I’m not a good German?”

“I said something similar once, Fräulein Kessler,” Sigrid tells her. “And what I think is that it is up to us to define what makes a good German good. But you’re correct. I
am
taking an awful chance.” She gazes back at the woman. “Have I made a mistake?”

Fräulein Kessler takes another draw from her cigarette and covers a cough. “I’m not sure,” she says finally, “what you think I can do.”

“Let him sleep on your floor.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just for a few days. Maybe a week. Until I can,” she begins, but then falters. Until she can do
what
, exactly? She makes do with, “Until I can figure something out.” As she is speaking, Sigrid is vaguely aware of a wave of tension building in her. Of her throat constricting. Her voice tightening. “I know it’s a great deal to ask. A man, whom you haven’t met. Of whom you know nothing. But I have no place else. No other ideas. And then I think, since your sister is in Breslau. Since your brother is gone. Maybe a few days. A few days or a week on your floor, till I can find some way—”

“Frau Schröder,” the woman interrupts. “You needn’t have an apoplexy. I’m saying yes.”

“What?”

“I’m saying
yes
,” she repeats.

Sigrid looks back at the woman’s face. Then suddenly the tears spring from nowhere. A gush that takes her completely unawares. She does her best to stop it up, trawling her bag for a handkerchief. “I’m sorry,” she says, choking. “I’m sorry.
Thank you.
”

“Drink some coffee. It’ll stiffen you up.”

Sigrid nods and takes a sip, wiping her eyes. “Thank you,” she says again.

Fräulein Kessler has gathered her elbows together and is leaning forward on them, running the back of her thumb over her forehead absently. “This man. If I may ask, he is your lover?”

Sigrid, mopping herself up, nods. “He is.”

“In the same way that my brother is?”

A pause.

“Different.”

“Yes, I can see it in your expression.”

“I’m sorry,” Sigrid tells her. But she shakes her head. “No apologies. Things are as they are. Does anyone else know?”

“No. No one,” Sigrid says. Retrieving her breath. Returning the handkerchief to her bag.

“I think,” the woman tells her, “if you and I truly are to be friends, and that’s the idea, is it not?”

Almost a smile. “It is, Fräulein Kessler.”

“Then I think there is something you should know. I’m a Mischling.”

The word makes no sense to Sigrid for an instant. And then it does. Mischling
.
A half Jew. “Ah, me . . . ” she whispers.

“Officially, a Mischling, first degree. My father was born Jewish, though he was converted. My grandparents both died in a house fire when he was very small, and he went to the Kessler family in Charlottenburg, who had him christened. When he was grown, he married a Christian woman, who bore first me and then Wolfram, before she died in the influenza epidemic. Wolfram claims he remembers her, but I don’t see how.
I
barely do, and I’m four years older.”

“And what about,” Sigrid asks, “what about your sister?”

“Yes, the dear child. She is the product of wife number two.”

“Does she
know
?”

At this, Fräulein Kessler smiles ruefully. “That she is a Mischling, too? Oh, she
knows
, all right. She knows very well. Which is why she goes to so much trouble to portray the perfect Aryan wife. She’s really grown quite creative about it. Those letters she reads aloud in the cellar, for instance? Her husband, the great Herr Obersturmführer, never bothers himself to write. He’s a thoughtless brute. So she writes them herself.”

“But how did . . .?” Sigrid starts to say, then stops.

“Oh, please feel free to ask the question, Frau Schröder. How did a Mischling end up married to a serving officer in the Waffen-SS in the first place? It’s a very good question, and the answer is Wolfram. He’s a very resourceful man, my brother. Did he ever mention the nature of his work to you?”

“The nature? He’s a soldier,” says Sigrid.

“Yes, a soldier, but more than that.”

“He’s said nothing more.”

“No, I suppose not. You had better things to do than talk. Fair enough. Since I’m confessing, I might as well spill it all. Wolfram is a member of the Abwehr. You’ve heard of this?”

A dull look. “I know nothing about the army other than they have guns and heavy boots.”

“Then allow me to educate you. The Abwehr is the clandestine service for the whole of the Wehrmacht,” she adds. “I don’t know how he did it, but somehow he expunged our family secret from the official registries. On the record, we are one hundred percent Aryan stock, confirmed all the way back to 1750. That’s the SS standard for bloodlines, you see. So our little secret of ancestry remains between us and God. As I said,” Fräulein Kessler repeats more pointedly, “he’s
very
resourceful. Foolish, perhaps, the way he sticks his neck out. But very resourceful.”

“Do you have any idea what he might want with my employee identification card from the patent office?”

“What he might
want
with it?”

“I think he may have taken it from my bag.”

“Well, I haven’t the faintest what makes Wolfram’s mind work. Other than to assure you that he does nothing on impulse. Every move on my brother’s part is a step in a plan.”

“A plan? But what sort of plan could involve a piece of yellow cardboard with my photograph attached?”

“Perhaps he wanted a photograph for his wall. Or, if he took your identity card, then perhaps he thinks you need a new identity,” the woman suggests. “Now, drink your coffee, please, I can’t abide letting hot good coffee go cold,” she says, and heats up Sigrid’s cup. “By the way, I do believe you should start calling me Carin now. Considering the topics of our conversation, you and I are far past formalities. Wouldn’t you agree?”

—

In the narrow hotel room, Sigrid lies on her back, gazing up at a large brown water stain on the ceiling plaster. Bits of the plaster have decayed and flaked at the corner, where beads of water condense. But the stain spreads out like a great muddy dry bed above her, scalloped at the edges by the outwash of many leaky afternoons. Rain splatters the windowpane outside. She listens to the damp noise of traffic and smells Egon’s acrid cigarette smoke.

Is it true? His ghost has been made flesh once more?

“Do you need money?” she hears him ask.

“Money?”

“For this woman. Does she expect to be paid to put me up?”

A disapproving glance. “
No
.”

But Egon only shrugs. Rolls onto his side. Drifts his finger down between her breasts to her belly. “Don’t sound so insulted. Most people want to be paid,” he says. “You know I do love your body, Sigrid. How strong it is. How subtle.”

“Yes. My
body
,” she answers.

“You don’t think I love you, too?”

“I’m sure I don’t know anything about
what
or
whom
you love.”

“Still angry,” he says with almost a smile, his touch feathering the swell of her breasts. “After all this time?”

“No.” She frowns, glaring upward at the stain. “No. You did what you thought you must do.”

“No.” He frowns. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t mean you’re still angry about
us
. It means you’re
still angry
. Under all your middle-class civility, you’re still
angry
. It’s one of the things that made me fall in love with you to begin with.”

“Egon,”
she says, suddenly seizing him by the scruff of his neck and pushing her face into his. “Egon, I want you to stop using that word,” she commands. “Do you understand? I want you to
stop
.” She watches his eyes
. “I want you to stop,”
she whispers.

A wash of thunder floats above them. Then a knock at the door grabs her in the belly.

“Porter. Ten minutes.”

Immediately she sits up and starts dressing.

“So. When will you be ready to make the move?” she asks.

Egon is standing now. Pulling on his skivvies. “Well, that depends on the Royal Air Force.”

Fastening the hook of her brassiere. “What?”

“The next time the bombers come. That’s when you should expect me. You have a shelter in your building, yes?”

“The cellar.”

“Then find some way to stay out of it after the alarms sound, and be ready to meet me by the door.” He steps into his trousers.

“You’re going to travel through an air raid?’