The German Wife(76)

“Moshe is married?” I asked, startled.

“Last year, apparently.”

“But he’s only—” I did the math and winced. “Oh. He’s nineteen.” Where had those years gone? It had been almost four years since I saw Mayim. I felt a pinch in my chest. “Can Sidonie have her passport endorsed there?”

“Those endorsements are, by design, almost impossible to acquire. She has no choice—she must stay in Krakow.”

Adele was so pale that day. I wanted to get her back inside so that she could rest, but I knew she wouldn’t be standing in the rain pretending to set up frost cloths if there was an alternative.

“But what about Mayim and Levi?”

“Levi’s back has him bedbound these days. He’s still here,” she sighed, shaking her head sadly. “And of course, Mayim could still go to Krakow, but she will not leave without her father.”

“She needs her passport endorsed or she’ll be stateless.”

“Yes. I need whatever money you can easily access without arousing suspicion. Do you have some on hand?”

“I do. In Jürgen’s safe.”

“How much?”

“Maybe a few thousand Reichsmark,” I admitted. For most workers in Berlin, that was many months’ salary. At her look of surprise, I explained, “I started keeping a little extra cash on hand so I didn’t have to make extra trips to the bank when you needed it.”

“Excellent. Good girl,” Adele said, nodding in admiration, and I felt a flush of pleasure. “A thousand will do nicely.”

“What will you do with it?”

“Perhaps Mayim can buy some favor with the consulate staff when she goes to request the endorsement.”

“She and Levi need to leave, don’t they?” I whispered. Adele nodded.

“Mayim will not leave Levi to fend for himself, and I understand that too.”

We waited weeks for news. Every now and again, I’d whisper to Adele for an update, but she would whisper back fiercely, “Don’t you think I’d have told you if I’d heard anything?”

I went to check on Adele one morning and found her waiting at her kitchen table, sipping a cup of tea. We greeted one another as we always would, and then she pointed to a note she’d scrawled on a piece of paper.

Mayim has tried everything without success. There are rumors that those in her position will be deported soon but Poland will not grant them entry. I don’t know what’s going to happen. All we can do is pray.
“There’s really nothing more we can do?” I mouthed. Adele shook her head sadly and motioned toward her fireplace. I tore up the note and dropped it into the fireplace, watching as the flames curled the strips of paper and turned them into ash.

If you’d asked me before that day, I might have said I was accustomed to hopelessness. But knowing that my friend was in such desperate straits and realizing there was no choice I could make to help her, I discovered there were depths of hopelessness I’d never before experienced.

Gisela was especially unsettled that night in early November. I was up and down trying to nurse her back to sleep, becoming more frustrated with every new cry. Eventually, I gave up on sleep and moved with her to the sitting room.

Just as I settled, I was startled by the sound of breaking glass and shouting on the street. I froze in place, telling myself I had nothing to worry about. If there was any sign of trouble, Dietger would have the Gestapo or the SA here in minutes. If I just waited patiently, I’d hear the fuss die down.

But instead came more shouting, many voices now, and then the sound of screaming in the distance—someone pleading for help, the tinkle and crunch of more glass breaking, and then more and more screaming.

I reached for the light switch, my hands shaking so hard by then that I almost knocked the thing over. The light went out, and now the sitting room was almost dark, the dim glow of the streetlights falling in lines across the room through gaps around the drapes. Gisela grizzled and I shushed her, jiggling her in my arms both to expend some of my anxiety and to rock her back to sleep. The sounds of movement were closer—now heavy boots against the sidewalk, many boots, not just a handful of troublemakers as I’d first imagined.

Then came shouts and cheers, and was that a hint of smoke in the air?

I was alone in the house with the children. I’d resented Jürgen’s absence more times than I could count, but that night, I almost hated him for it, even though I knew that he loathed the distance every bit as much as I did.

I slipped from the sitting room, back up the stairs to settle Gisela in her bedroom, but then returned to the ground floor. I tried peeking around the drapes but couldn’t quite figure out what the activity was—not until my eyes adjusted and I recognized the Brownshirts outside my window. This was government-sanctioned chaos.

I hoped Adele was somehow sleeping through the noise—it was possible; she’d been so exhausted lately. The smoke in the air grew stronger as the crowd expanded and their rowdiness expanded with it. Had our national tinderbox finally been set?

Suddenly I realized that just beyond the low hedge at the front of my house, Dietger was in his coat, talking to an SA officer. I walked briskly to the foyer and pulled a coat over my nightclothes, then quietly opened the front door. Dietger looked up at me in alarm.

“Sofie, tonight is not the night to be out,” he said stiffly, glancing along the street, as if he was keeping watch for danger.