Faith and Beauty (12 page)

Instinctively Clara waited until the tailor had melted from view.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ said Steffi. ‘He’s been a godsend. I’ve lost all my customers, but he gives me what work he can. If anyone important arrives at the shop he shouts, “Get on with that jacket, Elsa!” through the curtain. It’s our code. How did you find me?’

‘I went to your old studio. Several times. It was only by chance the Blockwart saw me and said you might be here.’ She looked around the minuscule room. ‘What happened?’

‘What happened?’ There was bitter acid in Steffi’s voice that had not been there before. ‘Kristallnacht happened.’

The night the previous November when synagogues were burned, Jewish homes and shops demolished, and thousands of Jews arrested all over Germany. The carpet of broken glass had spawned its own sinister, poetic coining, known the world over.
Kristallnacht
. The Night of Broken Glass.

‘The authorities demanded that we repay the cost of repairing shop fronts. Then there was the new law – the Exclusion of Jews from German Economic Life – that meant I couldn’t run a business. It was the same for all of us seamstresses. Until a few years ago almost every seamstress in Germany was Jewish. Now, can you believe it, they claim all Jewish influence has been eradicated from the German clothing industry. Who do they think makes the clothes? The Nazis are very demanding; they want the best and that only comes from Jewish tailors.’

‘Is Herr Fromm taking a risk, employing you?’

‘Of course he is. Officially I need a permit to be here. We’re banned from almost everything now. Swimming, going to the cinema, walking in the park. Any sentence with a verb in it, that’s what we’re banned from. They’d probably ban us from breathing if it were possible.’

Steffi hesitated, as if she was still, after all these years, calculating how far Clara could be trusted.

‘You asked if Herr Fromm is taking a risk employing me. He is. But he’s taking an even bigger risk than that. My dressmaking business may not be flourishing, but my other business is.’

Clara understood at once what she meant.

After she lost her job at the Ufa studios, Steffi had found another, more urgent line of work, assisting a network of underground resistance workers who helped Jews disappear. Steffi’s network provided clothes, food and disguises for those who needed to vanish fast, helping them to move from safe house to safe house as they kept one jump ahead of the Gestapo’s net.

‘In fact, there’s something you should see. Come with me.’

Steffi led the way up two flights of worn wooden stairs and into an upper room divided in two by a floral curtain.

It was a stark contrast to the polished leather and gleaming mahogany cabinets below. The window shutters were three quarters closed, casting a dim shadow across the battered sofa and cheap chest of drawers. There was a pungent smell of compressed humanity, stuffy and fetid. In the midst of the room a young girl sat at a Singer sewing machine, bent over a pile of blue gauze.

‘This is Esther Goldblatt.’

The girl raised a pair of inscrutable almond eyes in brief acknowledgement. She had a haunting gaze, level and unblinking. She could be no more than fifteen, with jet-black hair bundled up in a bun and a slight, resentful twist to her mouth.

‘Everyone’s learning something now; infant care, mending, glove-making, millinery,’ said Steffi brightly. ‘So I suggested Esther train as a seamstress. She’s a very promising pupil.’

‘Frau Schaeffer is exaggerating,’ said Esther, tersely.

‘Not at all. You’ll pick it up in no time. You’re artistic, after all.’

Steffi turned away, and as she did, subtly but distinctly, the girl rolled her eyes. It was the gesture of teenagers the world over, the one that expressed an utter disconnect between the world of adults and adolescents, and Clara was instantly reminded of Erich.

‘How long have you been here?’

Clearly the girl’s presence in the stuffy attic had nothing to do with dressmaking lessons.

‘A whole week.’

It showed. Her skin was pale from lack of sunlight and her hair was lank.

‘She sleeps on the sofa bed and if anyone comes,’ Steffi tilted at the cushions, ‘she can hide in the bedframe. It lifts up and I’ve fixed the catchment so it looks as if it’s broken. I’ve tacked material on the underside and drilled holes for air. A friend who runs a restaurant on the Ku’damm brings us food.’

‘But . . .’ Clara hesitated. ‘Why?’

Steffi lowered her voice, as though hoping in vain that Esther would not hear. ‘The police want to question her about one of her school books.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It was a drawing book, but I made it look like a school book,’ explained Esther, refusing to be excluded from the conversation. ‘I covered all my sketch books with blue waxed paper and stuck labels on them from school, with titles like
Algebra
and
Racial Theory
, and hid my pictures inside.’

‘What did you draw?’

‘People being arrested,’ she said tonelessly. ‘I did some of the day when they lined us all up against the garden wall and forced us to watch while they smashed our possessions. They threw a hammer at the mirror and they tore all the keys out of the grand piano. Then I did drawings of the Gestapo men on the day they took our father away. I draw everything. Here. I did another one today.’ She passed a piece of paper to Clara, who took a quick look.

‘It’s only people’s faces.’ The girl’s voice was deliberately blank, as though challenging Clara to protest. ‘Steffi can’t complain about that.’

Esther was right. It was nothing but a panorama of faces. Ordinary Berliners’ faces. Grinning, interested, indifferent, heartless. Clara had seen those faces a hundred times, when people were being arrested or loaded into trucks. Or an old man was hauled off by a policeman from a station platform while onlookers stood by. Yet still she was stunned by the skill with which Esther had captured them.

‘Father said I should draw what I liked.’

‘Well your father’s not here now, is he?’ snapped Steffi.

‘So what happened?’

‘The police came and said our house had been requisitioned by a high-ranking SS officer and our family would have to move. They started combing through all our rooms. They’d already taken our jewellery, but then they found my books.’

Clara imagined the hulking forms of the policemen crammed into the apartment, guns at their hips, eyes flitting everywhere, rough hands reaching into drawers.

‘Once they looked inside her books they came back for her the same night,’ added Steffi. ‘Fortunately her mother had already brought her to me, and she and the older sister are in hiding too.’

Esther’s eyes dropped, as if acknowledging for the first time the gravity of her predicament.

‘I hate it here,’ she burst out. ‘There’s nothing to do. I can’t even wash because there’s no soap.’

‘Have you seen your mother?’

‘She came yesterday, just for an hour. The worst thing is, I miss my cat. What’s going to happen to him? Who will look after him while we’re gone?’

It might have seemed strange that the girl should expend her anxiety on a cat, rather than her mother and sister, or her father, imprisoned in a camp, but Clara was not so easily fooled. Esther was focusing all her anxieties on one, easily identified treasure. It had been the same for Clara when her mother died. She recalled the obsession she had with her horse Inkerman and his lame leg. She remembered burying her face in his glossy pelt, and inhaling leather and straw and sweat.

‘You mustn’t worry about him,’ she said gently. ‘He’ll be fine.’

‘He’s only a kitten.’

‘Cats are good at looking after themselves.’

‘My mother kept saying nothing would happen. My father won the Iron Cross in the war. He didn’t believe in running away, my uncle came back from Palestine because it was too dirty, and then in the Olympics he said no city on earth could compare with Berlin. Father said Jews always thrive under pressure. He said pressure turns coal dust into diamonds.’

Suddenly the vulnerability of Esther Goldblatt, with her narrow shoulders and solemn, mistrustful eyes, touched something deep within Clara – a protective urge that was both mysterious and utterly familiar.

‘How old are you?’

‘Fifteen in July.’

‘Fourteen!’ She turned to Steffi. ‘She’s a child still. How can they be looking for a child?’

‘She’s a young woman in their eyes and she has disseminated subversive material,’ said Steffi.

‘It’s not material!’ Esther jerked her chin proudly. ‘It’s Art!’

‘If your drawings were passed around they could influence other people,’ Steffi retorted. There was a harshness about her that had not existed in the early days of their friendship. It was born of exhaustion and worry, no doubt, but Clara felt for the girl on the receiving end.

‘Now get on with that hem, Esther, while I have a word with Fräulein Vine.’

Steffi descended one of the flights of stairs and stared out of the window to the street below.

‘Poor kid,’ said Clara.

Steffi shrugged. ‘She doesn’t make it easy. Perhaps it’s harder for her than others because she came from a wealthy background and the family sheltered her from what was going on. They had a large apartment in Charlottenburg and her father owned several factories. Nothing was too good for those girls. But she tries my nerves, Clara. I’m at my wits’ end and she complains about being shut up in an attic and not having enough to eat. What does she think this is? The Hotel Adlon?’

She gripped the banisters with clenched hands.

‘Esther’s situation is not hopeless. The father may be in Sachsenhausen but the mother and sister are safe and they have an uncle in America who has given them an affidavit to move there. But Esther’s quota number is very far down the list and it will take years before it comes up. The only country that gives transit visas to people with American quota numbers is England, so Esther needs someone in England to act as guarantee for her because she’s too young to earn a living there. She would have to be adopted by a British citizen.’

‘Officially adopted?’

‘Only until the age of eighteen. But that’s not all. The person in England must deposit a large sum of money to sponsor a refugee.’

The complexity of the situation dimmed Steffi’s countenance, and her face creased again into a lattice of lines.

‘We can supply most things. We have a doctor who brings medicine and a young man who produces passports and identity papers for us. He turns his hand to anything. Work permits, release papers, travel permits. Tickets for buses and trains. His work is superb, but he can’t magic up an English sponsor. And on top of that, Esther can’t stay here for long. Herr Fromm has been very good but he generally only takes Jews in for one night at a time. The other day Heydrich came in and Herr Fromm said measuring the inside leg of the top man in the SD with Esther two floors above was enough to give him a heart attack. His nerves are in shreds.’

‘What will you do?’

‘If we could just find some way to get her to England . . .’

‘You’re asking me to help.’

‘I’m sorry. You don’t have to get involved in this. You can’t have expected this when you came today. I wouldn’t blame you if . . .’

‘No, of course. I’ll do everything I can.’

A clatter on the street below caused them to turn, but when they looked down they saw only several large rolls of black cloth being unloaded from a van and carried inside.

‘Herr Fromm got his orders in early,’ said Steffi quietly. ‘There’s going to be a boom in black. Black crepe, black cotton. Black serge to cover windows in a blackout. Black felt to conceal the car headlights. Black voile.’

‘Why voile?’

‘War means widows. And there’ll be clothing cards too, so materials will be rationed. Herr Fromm is wise to stockpile early.’

She reached out a hand.

‘I forgot. I have something for you.’

She went over to her bag and brought out a velvet pouch, from which she withdrew a box containing a three-stranded string of pearls. The pearls were old, Clara could see, and of the highest quality, with an intricate gold clasp and a soft gleam that seemed to hover around them as they nestled on their bed of crimson velvet. She looked on in astonishment as Steffi fastened them around her neck.

‘What’s this?’

‘It’s not a gift, I’m afraid. More a loan. I’ve sewed hundreds of necklaces and rings into the linings of women’s dresses, but the Gestapo are getting wise to our scheme now and they routinely rip up people’s clothes, so I thought of a better hiding place. These pearls are valuable. They belonged to my grandmother, and you know the thing about pearls – they come from the sea and they need moisture to keep their lustre. They must be worn and I can think of no one better to wear them for me.’

Clara touched the necklace and smiled.

‘I’d be honoured. But only until you need them again.’

‘I don’t need them. In fact, I want you to sell them.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Next time you go to England, sell them and keep the money there. That way if Esther manages to leave, we can have something to pay her sponsor.’

Steffi stood back and studied the necklace with an approving smile.

‘In the meantime, pearls suit your skin. They have a way of lighting up the face, don’t you think? But my necklace does show up that dress you’re wearing. Look at this rent in the sleeve. Let me darn it while you wait.’

Clara felt ashamed. That had been the original purpose of her visit.

‘For heaven’s sake, Steffi. You have more important things to do than darn dresses.’

A hint of the seamstress’s old self returned as she examined the sleeve critically, assessing its texture and precise shade.

‘Allow me. It’s relaxing. And besides, you are, almost certainly, the only customer I have left.’

Chapter Ten

Albert Speer looked more like a man touring the stations of the cross than someone inspecting his own, recently completed refurbishment of the Foreign Ministry in Wilhelmstrasse. The Führer’s favourite architect was a good decade younger than most of the Nazi élite and it showed; his chestnut hair was lustrous, his muscular frame filled a finely cut suit and Hitler’s fondness for him was said to border on the homoerotic. True, by the standards of the Nazi élite – the obese Goering, mad Hess and crippled Goebbels – Speer was practically an Adonis, but as he toured the room on the queenly arm of Annelies von Ribbentrop, the architect’s handsome face was not a happy one. Indeed behind the bland, professional composure it was possible to detect outright dismay at the sight of the journalists, celebrities and actresses gathered to toast the new décor at 73, Wilhelmstrasse.