Saving Amelie (6 page)

But Lea didn’t go home. When she found her Lutheran church door locked, she’d crept to the Church of Saints Peter and Paul. Now that she’d cracked open the dam to her heart, there was no stopping the outpouring. She desperately needed comfort. Comfort and mercy—no matter that she could not tell a soul.

She slid through the back door of the ornate sanctuary. Not knowing if she’d be welcomed, uncertain about the procedures of genuflecting and crossing herself, and intimidated by the gold and the carvings, she stole up the aisle—nearly halfway. Slipping into a pew, she sank to her knees, to weep, to pray, to beg forgiveness for she didn’t know what. There had always been some secret shame, something dirty and vile within her that others saw—at least that the doctors in Frankfurt had seen and condemned in her since birth. Something that kept her from deserving, from living, a normal life. She’d never told Oma, had never hinted at the horrible things they’d said to her each visit—not until today. If Oma knew what they knew, saw what they saw, might she not stop loving her too? Lea couldn’t bear it.

Lea didn’t hear the curate enter the pew beside her. She simply realized that the light in the church had changed.

The horror of finding herself alone in the darkening building with this man of the Catholic church, and in the state she was, undid her. Shamefaced and broken, she tried to stand. But her feet and knees had gone numb, and she sat back upon the bench.

“Frau Hartman.” The curate spoke softly. “Take your time,
bitte
. You have been drinking?”

“
Nein,
Curate Bauer!” she nearly cried. “I am so very sorry. Excuse me. Please excuse me. My feet went numb while I prayed; that is all.”

“There is nothing to excuse, my child. You are welcome to pray here—always.”

His kindness broke her defenses, and her lip trembled. She tried to hold it in, but her grief and shame erupted, and she wept again.

He handed her his handkerchief. “How can I help you?”

“You must think me mad.” She wiped her eyes, trying to regain her breath.

“You are not the first woman to seek comfort in the church—thank God. Especially in these times.”

Lea breathed deeply, doing her best to compose herself.

“Herr Hartman is serving his military time,” the curate observed. “That must be very difficult.”

Lea shook her head. “I would not have my husband see me like this for all the world.”

“How can I help you, Frau Hartman?” he repeated.

“There is nothing to be done.”

“There is always something.”

Lea laughed, choking on her laughter. “No, not this time.”

“You must have faith, Frau Hart—”

“Faith,” she snorted, “will not help us.”

“Frau Hartman,” he admonished.

“We can have no children!” she blurted. Then, horrified by her outburst, by the humiliation of her confession, she slapped her hand to her mouth and stood to leave.

“But you can’t know that. You’ve been married but a year.” He shrugged. “Perhaps it’s not God’s time.”

“Eighteen months!”

“Even so, God can work miracles. Think of Sarah—in her nineties! And the womb God opened for Hannah!”

In her heartbreak, in her brokenness and anger, Lea told him exactly why miracles were not meant for her. She told him all that Dr. Mengele had told her in Frankfurt, taking a perverse pleasure in the shock that widened his eyes. She told him that the sterilization had been done as a pronouncement on her wickedness—wickedness so vile that even she couldn’t see it, inscribed as it was in her soul. And when she’d spewed her worst venom—for herself and for the doctors who’d played and continued to play God—she dared him to report her ravings to the Gestapo. She gasped and heaved. The church grew dark before she breathed normally, before there was silence. And still Curate Bauer did not speak.

Lea stood at last, relieved, ashamed only that she’d told a man not her husband. She knew he must be embarrassed, too horrified by her outburst and so conscious of her indecency that he could not speak. She didn’t care. Something had snapped, and she would not be cowed.

When the curate reached, trembling, to lay his hand on her head, she fled the pew and stormed up the aisle. She pushed wide the outer door, letting the Alpine wind suck her breath and lead her home.

5

R
ACHEL
WAS
RELIEVED
—
glad for the reprieve and freedom—when, midmorning, three days after the gala, Drs. Verschuer and Mengele joined her father and Gerhardt Schlick en route to the seventh International Congress of Genetics in Edinburgh, Scotland. They’d be gone two weeks—a week in Scotland and another in meetings with the doctors in Frankfurt.

Two days later, Rachel, against her better judgment but consumed by curiosity, followed Kristine’s directions, minutely penned onto the paper hidden in the lining of her purse. It was not far to the small café, a quaint but secluded open-air affair edging the Tiergarten.

The woman she found waiting at the two-seat table along the walkway was not the schoolgirl she’d grown up with, nor was she the intoxicated, intimidated woman in blue satin from the gala. She was—Rachel frowned—something she could not quite pin down.

Kristine looked up. Rachel would have appreciated more time to study her longtime, if former, friend.

But Kristine smiled as if no time had passed since their sleepovers in high school. “You came—I knew you’d come!” And she nearly squeezed the life out of Rachel, just as she’d done in those long-ago school days.

Rachel was more than a little confused. “Kristine.” She hugged her back, but limply.

Kristine pulled her to the chair opposite her. “It’s been so long.”

“Five years,” Rachel accused.

Kristine blinked, her cheeks brightening in color, but quickly added, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you.”

Much against her will, Rachel’s eyes welled.
But you did hurt me. You hurt me badly. And now . . .
“What do you want, Kristine? And why the cloak-and-dagger routine?”

Kristine sat back, pulled off her gloves, moistened her lips. “I want you to take Amelie. I want you to take her to America.”

Whatever Rachel expected—and she’d not known what to expect—it was not this.

“Amelie? Don’t you think she’s a little young for the grand tour in reverse?”

“Take her, and raise her as if she is yours.” Now Kristine’s eyes welled, and she did not blink the tears away.

Rachel’s mind ran through Kristine’s cryptic letter, through her scribbled hidden note, through Gerhardt’s accusations. She tallied them, inserted her father’s criticism of their marriage and child, but still they didn’t add up. “Are you leaving Gerhardt?” It was all she could think—the only thing that made even a little sense.

But Kristine laughed hoarsely. “I would go in a heartbeat!” She sobered. “Amelie is deaf.”

“What?”

“Do you know what it means to be deaf in Germany now?”

Rachel shook her head, as much to shake off the fog settling there as to say that she did not—did not know that Amelie was deaf, did not know what it meant to be deaf in Germany, could not comprehend what Kristine was asking her.

“Did you hear the speeches at the gala? Did you listen?” Kristine leaned toward her, lowering her voice. “They are going to rid Germany of every genetically imperfect man, woman, and child. Handicapped physically, mentally, emotionally—it doesn’t matter. They will all be gone for the greater good of the Fatherland. That means Amelie.”

“What do you mean ‘rid’?”

Kristine grasped Rachel’s fingers, her grip stronger than Rachel would have expected. “They’re going to kill them—murder them.”

Gerhardt’s words came back to Rachel.
“She is not emotionally . . . I would use the English word
stable
.”
Rachel tried to focus, tried to understand what Kristine was saying—what she could possibly mean. Simply because she detested Gerhardt, she wanted to give Kristine the benefit of the doubt. But she shook her head. “That can’t be what they meant, Kristine. That’s absurd.”

Kristine’s blue-gray eyes flashed, and she gripped Rachel’s fingers more tightly. “That’s what they’d have the world think.”

The waiter came then, and Kristine pulled back, sat straighter. Rachel rubbed life back into her fingers beneath the table.

“Shall I order for you?” Kristine offered brightly, her demeanor changing in an instant before the waiter. “Two coffees and a sweet?”

“Nein.”
Rachel rattled off her own order in the native tongue, determined to remain independent, separate from Kristine.

When the waiter had gone, Kristine apologized in English. “I’d forgotten your excellent German.”

“You’ve learned well,” Rachel acknowledged.

“It was the first of many things Gerhardt insisted upon—perfect German, Berlin accent.” Kristine pulled a cigarette from her purse and lit it. “Little good that’s done me.” She puffed, inhaled. “I know this must sound insane to you.”

“Impossible. It sounds impossible and improbable. I’m sorry Amelie is deaf. That’s surely hard—and a disappointment for both of you. But Gerhardt wouldn’t allow his own child to be killed. And when did you start smoking?”

Kristine inhaled long. She did it again. It seemed to steady her nerves as she stared out over the Tiergarten. “I’ve seen the plans. In Gerhardt’s briefcase, though he doesn’t know. T4.”

She gave a short, rueful laugh. “Do you know why they call it T4? Because they were having lunch one day, just across the way—”
she pointed behind Rachel, a general direction—“and conceived the plan. This plan to eliminate thousands upon thousands was conceived between courses. What do you think? Between consommé and beef tongue? Or over dessert? The address of their luncheon was Tiergarten 4.” She dropped her barely smoked cigarette onto the flagstone and ground it with her shoe.

“You must have misunderstood.”

“Misunderstood?” Kristine’s voice rose. Heads turned their way, and she reined in her posture, the decibels of her voice. She waited until their neighbors had returned to their coffees, their newspapers, and whispered, “Have you read
Mein Kampf
? The Führer calls these ‘unfit’ and ‘life unworthy of life.’ Those who will be a drain on German society and resources when the nation goes to war—when the German army fulfills its ‘destiny’ to gain more living space for the
Volk
.”

“He can’t be serious about going to war. There will be a last-minute armistice or something like they did in Austria.”

“Do you think Poland will allow an
Anschluss
? Open the border and happily allow Hitler to march through their breadbasket?” She leaned forward again. “Rachel, this is not like you. Open your eyes!”

But it wasn’t like mild-mannered, go-along-to-get-along Kristine, either. Rachel couldn’t get her bearings.

“Every doctor and midwife is ordered to report children with genetic defects on their records, retroactive to 1936. I’ve seen the order. I don’t know if the mandate’s gone out, but it will.”

“That’s not unlike the eugenics work being done in America or England or Scotland. They keep all kinds of lists and details about families—for generations. Sometimes they recommend sterilization in severe cases. But for the most part, they’re just observing.”

Kristine kept on. “They’ll encourage at first. Invite parents to bring their children to centers for special training and treatment—training and medical attention they can’t receive at home.”

“Well, perhaps that’s true. Caring for a handicapped child must be—”

“And then when a little time has passed—very little—they’ll kill them.”

“Kristine!”

“They’ll put them in vans and drive them round, gassing them as they go. Or they’ll use injections. For the infants, they’ll starve them—it’s cheaper and they can starve whole rooms at a time. They’ve thought of everything, and in typical Germanic precision and orderliness, they’ve written up every contingency.”

Rachel pushed away from the table and grabbed her purse. “I won’t listen to any more, Kristine. You’re married to a man you don’t love—who apparently doesn’t love you. And I’m sorry for you. Gerhardt is a cad and doesn’t deserve you. But you’ve got it wrong. He’s not a monster.”

Kristine pulled Rachel back to her seat as the waiter, eyebrows raised, delivered their order.
“Danke.”
Kristine slipped him two Reichsmarks.

The waiter nodded, his eyes lighting appreciatively, and backed away. Both women sipped their ersatz coffee—black and strong.

Rachel winced. “I don’t know how you drink this stuff.”

Kristine ignored the gibe. “Once Amelie is gone, Gerhardt will find a way to eliminate me.”

“Oh, Kristine . . .” Rachel could take no more, though her heart broke for her friend. Truly, she was unbalanced.

“Gerhardt is rising within the ranks of the SS. It is incumbent upon every SS officer to bear children for the Reich—genetically perfect Aryan children. And to do that they must have genetically perfect Aryan wives.”

“But there’s no absolute proof that deafness is hereditary. There’s no reason to think—”

“They are not certain of that. They believe that such things
would not occur if there was not a weakness in the bloodline, or a predisposition to that weakness. And those weaknesses must be eliminated.”

Rachel paused. That was true. She knew from her father that was precisely the rhetoric common among eugenicists. And she’d heard as much touted at the gala. “They recommend sterilization—not elimination! And even then, it’s not a law to sterilize parents of handicapped children.”

“Not in America. Not yet.”

“But here? You’re saying that it’s a law here?”

“Hitler changes the laws to suit his grand design.” She leaned close, looked down to whisper, as if studying Rachel’s pastry. “And if he doesn’t order it directly, he has it done through his emissaries—all made to appear as if it’s done for the greater good of the Fatherland.”

Rachel sat back.
What if the rhetoric about creating a master Nordic race is not just talk, not just the hope and fantasy of dreamers? What might they do to increase the segment of the population with those features and characteristics and decrease the population without? What if . . . ?