The German Wife(59)

Undeserving of her love though I knew myself to be, I was certain I was every bit as important to Mayim as she was to me. That was part of the wonder of her—that she loved me dearly, despite my flaws.

“Sofie,” Jürgen said. He had taken her bags to the car and was waiting to drive her to her parents’ apartment. He gave me a helpless look. “Mayim and I need to go.”

I threw my arms around her one last time and I whispered fiercely in her ear, “Go to Moshe. Go to Poland.” She stiffened, and I choked on a sob. I dropped my voice further, until I knew she had to strain to hear me. “Please. Please. Adele was right. Germany is not safe for you anymore. It hasn’t been safe for a long time.”

Adele came across that night and cooked dinner for us. I knew that the sausages and mashed potatoes would have been salty and buttery and delicious, but I pushed the food around my plate, too distraught to eat. Georg and Laura were unsettled too, each protesting at feigned outrages I was too depressed to acknowledge. When Laura threw a piece of sausage at Jürgen, seemingly without provocation, he pushed his chair back and said sternly, “Upstairs. Now. Both of you.”

The children were visibly startled by their mild-mannered father, and they marched obediently upstairs with Jürgen close behind. The minute Adele and I were alone, I burst into tears. She came around the table to sit beside me and rested her hand over mine.

“You get tonight to sulk, Sofie von Meyer Rhodes. But tomorrow, you get up, you get out of bed, and you carry on. It’s not always the strongest trees that survive the storm. Sometimes it’s the trees that bend with the wind. And you, my treasure, find yourself right in a hurricane.” She dropped her voice to the barest of whispers, so faint I had to strain to hear her even though her lips were against my ear as she added, “They insist you become a Nazi, so you pretend to be the best damned Nazi you can be. You will always know deep down inside what is true and what is right and they cannot touch your heart. But you have no choice now about the facade you present. Your husband and your children are counting on you to play the game.” She pushed back her chair and said firmly, “You just need a strong cup of tea and some sugar. Everything is going to be just fine. You’ll see.”

It didn’t feel like everything was going to be fine, not that night, and not the next morning, when Jürgen and I went through every room of the house, purging mementos of Mayim, erasing her from our lives as we had been instructed to do. I couldn’t bring myself to dispose of the photos and the letters and the birthday cards, so Jürgen did it for me, burning them in the fireplace in the living room, right beside the spot where she liked to sit and read. I kept the knit blanket. It would be my comfort item now, to bring me a different kind of warmth when the world had turned so cold.

Georg said he was happy that Mayim was gone, but I could feel his grief, even if he didn’t know how to make sense of it. He’d wake in the night calling for her, and I’d rush in to find him crying in his sleep. I promised myself that when all of it was over, I’d take him away to the country and I’d undo all of the damage those years were doing to his soul. In truth, I had no idea if that kind of healing was even possible. Isn’t an adult just a child, shaped by experience? How does a person learn not to hate, when that hate has been imprinted upon them from such a young age?

Laura’s grief was as uncompromising as mine at first. “I only want to eat Mayim’s food,” she told me stubbornly, and then it was “I only want Mayim to bathe me” and “I only want Mayim to dress me.” Worst of all was “No, Mama! I only want Mayim’s cuddles,” after she’d scraped her knee one day. But she was five years old, and five-year-olds are, if nothing else, adaptable.

In time, Laura stopped asking for Mayim, and Georg stopped calling out for her at night, and as relieved as I was, it was like losing her all over again.



25


Sofie

Huntsville, Alabama
1950

Jürgen was sitting in the living room, trying to get Felix to accept a little wooden toy truck. Felix was sitting behind the sofa, peeking out at the truck longingly, but refusing to come out to get it.

There was a knock at the door, and Jürgen sighed and rose to answer it, leaving the truck on the floor. I stayed in the living room with Felix, hiding a laugh as he came out from behind the sofa, scooped the truck up, and immediately took it back into his hiding place.

“He’s your papa,” I said quietly.

“He’s a stranger,” Felix muttered, as he started rolling the truck up and down the back of the sofa.

“Felix, go sit with Gisela, please,” Jürgen murmured from the door, as he returned with another man in tow. I quickly shepherded my son down the hallway to Gisela’s room, then returned to find the guest was sitting opposite Jürgen, his expression solemn. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, but something about his stiff posture spoke of authority—maybe even anger or aggression. I felt my heart rate kick up a notch as I carefully took a seat beside Jürgen.

“Can you tell me where you were last night at 2:00 a.m., Mr. Rhodes?” the man said. Jürgen and I shared a bewildered look.

“I was here, of course,” Jürgen said blankly. “Asleep.”

“Does she speak English?” the man asked Jürgen, looking at me.

“I do,” I said abruptly. I cleared my throat, then said, “I’m Sofie Rhodes. I didn’t catch your name.”