The German Wife(74)

“Lizzie seems a lot younger than Calvin.”

“She does.” Jürgen shrugged. “So? You’re four years younger than me.”

“That’s hardly the same. I heard she only married him for his money.”

“Sofie,” Jürgen said, giving a startled laugh. “Since when do you engage in that kind of gossip?”

“I’ve made one friend since we came here and she warned me that Lizzie Miller has been telling the other women that you are a Nazi. That you were in the SS and ran a camp.”

Jürgen dropped the dish towel. He bent to pick it up, his movements slow.

“Lizzie Miller has been telling people that?”

“I avoided the question when Avril asked.” I hesitated, some instinct niggling at me. “It did seem more of a fishing expedition than an accusation, to be honest.”

Jürgen dried the last mug, then hung his towel up on a hook. He exhaled slowly, his expression pinched.

“I know Calvin has only seen the sanitized version of my history—Christopher told me so himself.”

“Maybe you should talk to Calvin anyway?” I suggested carefully.

“And what?” he asked bitterly, shaking his head in frustration. “Tell him his wife might be starting rumors that have a hint of truth?”

I understood the self-loathing on his face, even if I hated to see it.

“So what do we do, then?” I asked quietly.

“We have to ignore it. All of it.” I opened my mouth to protest, but he interrupted before I could. “Sofie, all of these problems started when you and Lizzie Miller got off on the wrong foot. My work situation is far too important to all of us for me to drag your personal conflict into it.”

Jürgen was right. These problems had all started with me and Lizzie at that picnic. One awkward conversation, two women getting off on the wrong foot—Lizzie not seeing our humanity, me getting defensive.

Maybe that was what I needed to fix.



30


Sofie

Berlin, Germany
1938

Jürgen missed the birth of the baby. Whatever milestone he was working toward was more important even than the birth of our daughter, at least according to Otto, who wouldn’t grant him leave. I left the older children with Adele and went to the hospital alone.

I called him after she arrived. Exhausted but elated, I told him about her delicate features, her barely there eyebrows, her wispy hair. The frustration in his tone was palpable as he promised he’d be home to meet her in a few days.

But the very next morning, Hitler annexed Austria. From my hospital bed I read a newspaper that showed photos of wildly enthusiastic crowds on the streets of Vienna, welcoming Hitler and celebrating the annexation. I stared at those photos for hours, trying to figure out if I could trust the images. Who would welcome Hitler to their nation? Surely this was some artifice invented by the Department of Propaganda.

Jürgen called the hospital to tell me his visit had been delayed again but he was sending a photographer to the hospital as a consolation prize.

“I’ll have to name her myself, won’t I?” I snapped.

“A good German name. A strong German name,” he said cautiously. I huffed impatiently. It wasn’t as though I was about to name the child Mayim, although I might have entertained that thought under different circumstances.

I stared at the baby. She was sleeping in my arms, innocent and pure, but just like Georg and Laura, this baby would soon be the Reich’s hostage, ultimately powerless to choose her own destiny, or even to make her own mind up about the worth of other human beings.

“Sofie? Are you still there?”

Hostage. Geisel, in German.

“Gisela,” I blurted. Despite its linguistic roots, Gisela was a common name and I knew that no one would even question it. But I’d know. Every time I spoke her name, I’d be committing a quiet rebellion in my heart.

“I love it,” Jürgen agreed, sounding relieved.

Eventually, Gisela von Meyer Rhodes would start school, and whatever purity and goodness had existed in her nature would be washed away by hate. Maybe one day I could tell her that from the moment of her birth, I loathed that she was hostage to her country’s ideology. There was just nothing I could do about it, other than to leave a clue in her name to prove my regret.

Georg and Laura were now old enough to walk to school alone, and often after I saw them off, Gisela and I would go next door to visit Adele. Something was changing with Jürgen’s aunt. By the summer, she felt faint when she stood in the heat for too long. I feigned a sudden interest in horticulture so I could take over her courtyard garden.

“I’m worried about her,” Adele’s friend Martha admitted to me one day. Adele was inside making us tea, and Martha and I were picking tomatoes. “She says the new pills the doctor gave her are helping, but she seems frailer.”

“What more can we do for her?” I asked Martha. “How can we make her slow down and rest?”

“Adele isn’t the kind of woman who slows down with age. She’s the kind of fierce warrior who reaches a certain point and realizes she has nothing left to lose. You won’t slow her down, Sofie, and even if you did, you’d be taking something away from her, not buying her more time.”

“What does that mean?” I said, confused. Martha smiled quietly.