Night Angels(27)

Then one afternoon in June, when I arrived at their apartment, Lola pulled me inside. Her usually calm face looked strained and tearstained.

“What’s wrong, Lola?”

“It’s Josef.”

A group of policemen had raided his pharmacy that morning, searching for Josef’s boss’s daughter, whom they accused of engaging in an illegal sexual relationship with an heiress of a jewelry company in the United States—somehow, they had seized the letters sent by the heiress. Josef’s boss and his daughter had left on an overseas trip a few weeks ago, so the police arrested Josef and the rest of the pharmacy staff, accusing them of aiding a homosexual. They were taken to the Hotel Metropole, the Nazi Headquarters.





CHAPTER 12


LOLA


Sara pedaled on the sewing machine in the family room, frantically feeding the needle a long strip of cloth with her good hand. Working was a way for her to relieve fear and stress, but she was sobbing. Little Eva looked frightened, her eyes lowered, winding her music box with the mini ballerina figurine. Mutter locked herself in her room. Now and then, she murmured, “He must have left the house with his left foot first.”

I opened the door and closed it behind me. It was up to me to save my brother.

I asked for advice from Josef’s fiancée, his friends, my musician friends, and the neighbors who still dared to speak to me. They said I needed to gather any valid documents to prove Josef was a good citizen, documents from non-Jews who could vouch for his good character, and that the best case to prove that was a letter of recommendation from a Nazi Party member. As far as I could tell, Josef had few non-Jew friends. But after hours of thinking and querying, I finally thought of one of his clients who was German, a Nazi, working in the Rathaus.

I put on my wide-brimmed straw hat and applied my lipstick in the mirror. The scar on my face looked crimson, hostile, so I smoothed on a thick coat of powder to cover it up. Then I went to the man’s office in the Rathaus, and, swallowing my pride, I begged him to write a letter to confirm Josef’s good character. “Josef is a good brother, a capable employee, and a good fiancé. He is going to get married next year.”

“Miss Schnitzler, if you can wait, I’ll have the letter ready for you in an hour.” The man—thank God—still had a conscience.

I wanted to kiss him when he handed the letter to me, despite his uniform and the swastika armband.

Then I went to the War Ministry to request my father’s war record, which would prove Josef was the son of a war hero, and then I lined up outside the tax office to receive a tax record that would show how diligently my brother had paid taxes. It took me two weeks to finally receive both. With the letter confirming my brother’s good character, the certificate demonstrating his good breeding, and the tax record verifying that he was a dutiful citizen, I went to the dreadful Headquarters where Grace and I had been confined, waited outside for three hours, presented the documents, and was told I should come back the next day.

The next day, when I arrived, I was told my brother couldn’t be released due to insufficient documents.

“Insufficient? What else do you need?”

Apparently, they had lost the letter that indicated Josef’s good character.

I had never run on the street—in Vienna, only desperate people ran—but I was desperate now. I raced back to the Rathaus as fast as I could and pleaded with Josef’s client to write another letter. The man took a sip of his coffee, asked me if it was hot outside, and then picked up his pen. He wrote this out of pity, I could see, but for my brother’s freedom, I didn’t care.

The new letter in hand, I went to the Headquarters again, waiting outside the majestic building in the rising heat of summer, sweat dripping from my forehead and pooling on my neck. I waited from morning to evening. No one bothered to take my documents; every Nazi official was busy in and out of the Headquarters. June went by, and then came July. Then finally a man with a blond goatee took my letter and certificates. After a quick glance, he said these were all rubbish.

“Please, what else do you need?” I felt my eyes moisten, but no. I could beg but must not cry.

“Your brother is an enabler of a homosexual, a traitor to this country, and a Jew. He must vow to leave the country and never come back. Show us proof of his intention to depart; then he’ll be released.” The Blond Goatee threw me back the stack of papers I’d prepared.

The Nazis could have told me weeks ago while I begged and waited outside in the suffocating heat. They were toying with my brother’s life.

A visa, then. A visa for my brother’s freedom. As if we still had the illusion of having a decent life in Vienna!





CHAPTER 13


FENGSHAN


“May I talk to you, my love?” Grace’s voice came.

He folded up the newspaper he was reading. The ?vian Conference had convened yesterday, and an effusive wave of jubilation and relief was printed across the few liberal newspapers that still reported the plight of Jews. It was time for humanitarian intervention from the world, they cheered. But the local weekly newspaper, Der Stürmer, which appeared to be propaganda for the Nazi government, published a scathing article mocking and criticizing the overreach of the United States, Britain, and France.

It had been a long wait for the thirty-two countries to convene. If Mr. Wiley was right and the United States would take the lead, then the ?vian Conference would provide justice and establish a safe future for all the Jewish people in Vienna. Mr. Rosenburg would welcome this news. It had been nearly seven weeks since he last saw his friend. Fengshan had mailed him a note and gone to his in-laws’ apartment but was unable to meet his friend, who had been away. Mr. Rosenburg must have received his visa to Palestine by now.