And through all that and more, Otto Stengel had held Dagmar Fischer close in his heart. And now once more he held her in his arms. Time had indeed stood still.
And he had been so
certain
that she was dead.
Further English Conversation
Berlin, 1940
ALL DAY LONG Frieda had been seeing patients in the little ‘surgery’ she now conducted from a desk she had set up in her own bedroom. The tiny guest room she had previously used for this purpose was now occupied by Herr and Frau Katz the chemists and their grown-up daughter. The twins’ old room had become home to her parents. There was a middle-aged spinster lady named Bissinger sleeping on the couch in the living room, and a widower called Minkovsky on cushions on the floor.
The problem of accommodation for Jews was becoming more acute each day, the government having introduced an ordinance as cruel as it was vague. It was to be left up to local residents themselves to decide how long they were prepared to ‘tolerate’ Jews in their midst. This meant that Jews could be turfed out of their homes on a whim, either through sheer cruelty or more often simply because a party official wanted to steal their home.
Frieda was even worried for her own apartment. The fact that it was now so full, coupled with the constant stream of patients coming to her door, had begun to cause tension with her neighbours. Up until now, relations had been good; the Stengels had, after all, lived there for twenty years and at some point Frieda had done almost everybody in the building a favour. Wolfgang used to play music at their children’s birthday parties.
Now, however, tension was growing. There were whisperings that the Stengel place had turned into a Jewish ghetto. There were also complaints about the risk of infection caused by the flow of sick people making their way up the building. Most of all people resented the lift being used by so many outsiders. For months there had been angry mutterings about how the tiny lift always seemed to be on its way up to the sixth floor, and that when one did manage to summon it, it was unpleasant to share with sick, scared and pitiable Jews.
Eventually some people on a floor below Frieda’s had put up a sign saying that the lift was for the use of residents only. This, however, was an unsatisfactory solution, since of course other tenants had guests whom they wished to be able to visit them without using the stairs. The next sign put up said simply ‘No Jews’, but again this did not work because Frieda was a legal tenant and continued to contribute her share of the communal running costs. Eventually it was decided that the sign should say that no Jews excepting
current
tenants were to use the lift.
Frieda found the use of the word ‘current’ ominous.
So far the situation had been left at that but nobody was satisfied with it. The sight of the elderly, the infirm and in particular of sick, undernourished children struggling up six flights of stairs was upsetting to the other tenants and Frieda knew that the next stage would be that she would be told her patients could no longer attend her surgery. She was currently trying to stave off this eventuality by making house calls wherever possible. This necessitated her running all over Friedrichshain, which was of course absolutely exhausting.
Frieda had arrived home after completing another gruelling day, hoping perhaps to have a moment when she could forget her troubles. A quiet bath even. Unfortunately she had forgotten that her English conversation group was meeting that evening and despite all the group rules to the contrary, trouble was all any of them seemed able to discuss.
The problem of food was becoming as serious as shelter. With the coming of war, rationing had begun in real earnest.
‘And of course we get so many fewer coupons than anybody else,’ Frau Leibovitz almost wailed. ‘It’s so
dastardly
to issue us with scarcely enough food to live and yet just enough not to die. We are all withering and wasting away.’
‘Some people are saying that they intend to shoot us in the end,’ Herr Tauber said. ‘Ha! Shoot what? We’re too thin to make a decent target.’
Frieda’s father made his comment in German but Frieda let it go. Her parents were only a part of the group anyway because it took place in what was now their home, and besides which the incentive to improve people’s English was now much diminished. With Germany having conquered most of Europe there was no longer any chance of emigrating anyway.
‘Can you believe they won’t let us in the air-raid shelters?’ Frau Leibovitz complained. ‘Hoping the English will do their dirty work for them, I suppose.’
‘The English are finished,’ her husband said. ‘They’ll get their necks wrung like a chicken, just like the French said.’
Frieda sipped at her acorn coffee, struck as ever by the strangeness of it all.
England. Otto was there! Calling himself Paulus.
And Paulus was in France, calling himself Otto.
In the Waffen SS.
‘The Nazis will be across the Channel in a month,’ Herr Leibovitz went on. ‘The British will be swatted just like the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Belgians and the French.’
‘All right. All right!’ Herr Tauber snapped. ‘We know who he’s damn well conquered, we don’t need chapter and verse.’
‘He’s Satan,’ Herr Katz said. ‘He is, I tell you. He’s the devil himself, or his henchman. How else can you credit it? Four years, Herr Tauber, that’s how long you, me and the whole of the Kaiser’s army were stuck in the middle of France. Stuck, I tell you! Couldn’t move. Up to our backsides in mud. This man sweeps through in a fortnight. It’s uncanny, that’s what it is. He’s supernatural.’
Herr Tauber didn’t reply.
Perhaps Katz was right. The stunning success of Hitler’s armies was without parallel in all history. Nobody had ever conquered Europe so quickly, or controlled so much of it. Not Hannibal, nor Caesar, nor Napoleon. The whole of the western continent was either occupied or allied to the Third Reich.
‘That bastard Mussolini certainly made sure he was on the winning side,’ Katz said. ‘So now the Jews of Italy are going to get what we’ve been getting. And the newspapers have Hitler in the Pyrenees talking to Franco. Once he crushes the Brits his fortress will be complete.’
‘Can we
please
all just
shut the hell up
about Hitler!’ Frieda almost shouted.
She felt like screaming. After the day she had had and all the things on her mind. Hitler crushing the Brits? That would be Paulus. Silke kept her informed. Paulus was in France. He had been in the army that surrounded Dunkirk. He was part of the force being assembled in France for what the newspapers said would be the invasion of Britain. He had been issued with a cork life-jacket for the crossing. The papers were saying it remained only for the Luftwaffe to gain control of the skies over the Channel and that would be it for Churchill and his gang.
Paulus might be in Britain in a month.
Not as a refugee student as she had planned these last two years, but as a
German soldier
.
And Otto? Where was he? Was he in khaki? A British Tommy? Those same soldiers of whom her father had spoken with such grudging respect when she was in her teens. It seemed likely. Otto had been in the United Kingdom for nearly a year and a half now and there could be no doubt that the island nation was preparing to fight it out.
All these thoughts had been in her mind as she made her out-burst. Now she looked around at the surprised faces. Frieda never lost her temper. She could see that they were shocked, upset, in fact. They relied on her strength.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘that was rude. It’s just that sometimes I get a little tired.’
She glanced across the room towards the piano.
To the piano stool.
It was involuntary. She still found herself doing it. Even now, three years on.
He wasn’t there, of course. The Schmulewitzes were squeezed on to his little seat.
God, how she missed Wolfgang. The apartment was more crowded than it had ever been but she was so wretchedly alone. Most of the time she was too busy to think about it, but at home, surrounded by tired, terrified old Jews, it hit her hard. Her whole family was gone. Paulus. Otto.
And Wolfgang.
Her beloved partner and soulmate, lost beneath the cold dark waters of the Spree.
‘We must try to be practical,’ Frieda continued, as always taking refuge in her doctor’s persona. Calm, efficient. Above all active. ‘I’ve been thinking about this for some time. These restrictions are making life very hard but if we organize ourselves they can be tolerated. The evening curfew and the restricted shopping hours certainly present an organizational challenge—’
‘Only between four and five p.m.’ Herr Katz spluttered. ‘Why? Why are we only to be allowed in shops for an hour each day? What possible purpose can it serve?’
‘So that
decent Germans
may know when to avoid our infection, of course,’ Herr Tauber growled.
‘Well, with the few coupons they allow us and the little money they’ve left us,’ Frau Katz chipped in, ‘an hour is about fifty-nine minutes more than we need to shop anyway!’
‘Please!’ Frieda snapped once again, struggling to remain placid. ‘We’ve moaned enough! I was trying to suggest that we start to organize ourselves better.’
‘Organize, Frau Stengel?’ Frau Katz enquired. ‘What is there to organize?’
‘What is there to organize, Frau Katz?’ Frieda was angry. ‘There is
everything
to organize. Most of our young people are gone now but we’re all still able-bodied and can help those who aren’t. The old, the sick, the little children and the mothers with young babies. How is a mother with small children and a husband stolen to the camps to get to the bread shop between four and five if the kids are sick? She can’t but
we
can.
You
can. The curfew is causing some old people never to leave their homes; we need to find them and take them out. If only for a little walk – the streets are still free to us.’
‘Not all of them,’ Herr Leibovitz interjected.
‘How many do you need for a stroll? You’ve only got two feet, haven’t you! We need to make a list of every vulnerable person we know. And who
they
know. We need to set up some kind of telephone tree whereby everybody has a number they can call if they need help, even just for the shopping or a bit of company or …’
Then they heard the lift.
The creaking and the clanking as it settled to a halt on their floor.
All froze. It was probably only a late caller. A sick mother looking for Doctor Stengel, too tired to obey the sign in the lift. Or perhaps the gentleman friend of Fräulein Belzfreund.
But a knock at the door was always a cause for fear these days.
Later Frieda wondered at the coincidence that they came just then. Just as she had mentioned a telephone tree. It was almost as if they’d been listening.
Perhaps they really were the devil.
‘It must be a late patient,’ Frieda said. ‘I’ve
told
them not to use the lift.’
But the sound of stamping boots quickly made it clear that this was no patient. It was a visit from
them
.
The whole room froze in fear. Even old Herr Tauber looked scared, until he realized this himself and settled his features in a mask of defiance.
There was a loud banging on the door. The usual thunderous clenched-fist assault.
Frieda took a deep breath and went to answer it. Before she had been able to reach the door the banging began again. When the Nazi authorities knocked on a Jew’s door they expected instant access. Another moment and they would have kicked it down.
There were just two of them. A policeman and an SS trooper.
‘Frau Stengel, formerly
Frau Doktor
Stengel?’ the policeman demanded.
‘Yes,’ Frieda replied. ‘How can we help you?’
‘Your telephone,’ he said.
‘My telephone?’ Frieda asked. ‘What about it?’
‘Hand it over,’ the policeman said. ‘As of this month, July 1940, by order of the Reich Government, Jews are no longer to be allowed to own telephones. All telephones owned by Jews are to be surrendered immediately!’
Frieda wondered if she had turned pale. It certainly felt as if she had. She thought of all the calls she made each day. Working old contacts, begging for drugs, bandages, needles from wherever she could scrounge them. The hours she spent trying to find accommodation for distressed families who had been arbitrarily thrown out on to the streets. Even that day she had put out a dozen feelers and was waiting on return calls that might mean life or death for patients in her care.
Now those calls would never come.
Frieda had only that very moment been explaining how survival could only lie in cooperation. In organization.
Clearly the Nazis understood that too.