Secrets She Kept (23 page)

HANNAH STERLING

FEBRUARY 1973

Through Carl’s official status as a Berlin driver, we obtained permission to enter the Eastern Sector the same day. Still, there were questionnaires regarding the purpose and length of our visit and a detailed itinerary to complete. We were required to exchange money at an exorbitant rate after we and our car were thoroughly searched. Carl’s magazine and my paperback book were confiscated, as if Jayne Eyre might corrupt the residents of East Berlin. By the time we crossed Checkpoint Charlie, I felt almost violated. Only my need for answers bolstered my courage.

Carl wasted no time in finding the Kirchmanns’ old street. We searched up and down the street, but there was no number 143. We knocked repeatedly on doors in the vicinity. At last a woman cracked her door
 
—perhaps four inches.

“There’s been no number 143 as long as we have lived here
 
—ten years at least.” She closed the door in our faces.

We knocked on three other doors, but there was no answer.

“Look.” Carl pointed to an old woman carrying her shopping bags from the bus corner.

“She’s old enough; she might have lived here then.” I could barely restrain my hope and barely contain my anticipated disappointment. It took us five minutes to convince her we meant no ill will, that we just wanted to locate Marta Kirchmann for my mother’s sake.

Carl translated her German. “
Yes,
I remember the Kirchmanns very well. A good family
 
—good neighbors. But it turned out the mother was a Jewess and that they’d been helping Jews
 
—hiding them in their own attic! Of course, in those days, they disappeared. So many people here one day and gone the next. We never knew where . . . Marta?
Nein
, I do not know where Marta went. I saw her and her brother after the war. Nothing but a vapor, he was. They moved away after a time . . . too many bad memories, I suppose. The new owners pulled down the old house; the kitchen had been bombed near the end of the war and the building was never sound again. They built this apartment house. All the numbers are mixed up
 
—such a mess.”

We thanked her and returned to Carl’s car. He opened the door for me, resting his hand on my back. “I’m sorry, Hannah.”

But I was too spent to respond, too near tears from hopes built high and dashed to the ground.

On the drive back to Grandfather’s Carl promised, “I’ll check the address you found in Herr Sommer’s ledger. It will be easier, quicker for me to get through checkpoints again than for you. I’ll let you know what I learn. Who knows
 
—perhaps someone there will remember the Kirchmanns.”

I nodded and pressed his shoulder in gratitude. We drove in silence until we reached the house.

The kitchen was cold. It didn’t look as if Grandfather had stepped inside it. He must be hungry. I didn’t know if I could look at him after all
I’d learned at the Schmidts’.
I could live with you as a miserable, selfish old man . . . but a conniving murderer?
A mercenary that dealt in blood money? That’s how you made your wealth
 
—the wealth you intend to pass on to me . . . or to buy my allegiance with. The realization made me want to vomit.

My head throbbed and my joints ached. I threw my coat and gloves over the chair and set the kettle to boil.

He must be hungry
 
—unless he ate the breakfast I left for him. But that was hours ago. No matter what I think about him, I can’t let him starve. I wouldn’t let a prisoner starve.
I stood at the foot of the stairs, listening. No sounds came from Grandfather’s room.

I cut sandwich bread, slathered it with mustard, and draped it with cheese. There was cold roast beef in the icebox and some soup left from the day before. By the time the tea was made and his tray prepared, I’d eaten half my sandwich. I drew a deep breath and headed for Grandfather’s room. I had no idea how I’d look him in the eye.

I knocked softly. No answer. I knocked again and called, “Grandfather?” I pushed open the door. “Grossvater?” His bed was empty, the eiderdown still rumpled, as though he’d just risen. But his dressing gown and slippers were thrown across it. He’d apparently eaten the bun and coffee I’d left for him this morning. I listened at the stairs, but there were no sounds from the third floor.

Could he be in the dining room or library? I balanced the tray on my hip to try the library door, expecting it to be locked. But it easily gave way.

The curtains had been drawn closed and the brass lamp on the desk was lit, papers scattered across the desktop. The ledger I’d seen for only a moment lay facedown on the floor
 
—as if thrown. One end of the bookcase had swung away from the wall, a dark and narrow opening behind it.

It was a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. I set the tray on the small table by the door and looked again, half expecting it all to have disappeared. And that’s when I saw Grandfather’s hand stretched out on the floor.

“Grandfather!” Behind the desk his body lay crumpled, his face contorted, his leg bent at an odd angle. I was sure he was dead.

A soft, barely perceptible moan escaped his lips
 
—lips nearly blue.

“What happened? Grandfather, what happened?” He couldn’t answer, didn’t open his eyes.
Think! Think! Who should I call? Dr. Peterson.
But I didn’t know his number or how to reach him. So I pummeled the telephone cradle for the operator.

“Please, my grandfather has collapsed! I think it might be his heart, and I don’t know how to reach his doctor.”

Between my lack of German and the operator’s feeble English, it took five minutes to communicate the address and need. But help would soon be on the way.

I pulled a pillow from the wingback chair and, lifting his head, tucked it beneath. “Someone will be here soon, Grandfather. They’ll get hold of Dr. Peterson. I’m sure he’ll come. Hang on.”

I sat back on my heels, trying to think what to do next. The room was a shambles
 
—at least compared to its normal state.

If someone sees this, they’ll suspect a burglary. They’ll take an inventory of all they see. And if they see that ledger, won’t they draw the same conclusions Carl has? If they take the ledger, I’ll never see it again. I’ll never learn the truth.
Before I thought it through, I picked up the ledger and squeezed it between two volumes on the bookshelf. I pushed the desk drawer closed. Everything looked normal, except for the bookshelf and the narrow hole in the wall.
A walk-in safe? A secret room?

Running my hand round the edge of the hole, I searched for a light switch, finding nothing but a lock on the outer edge. I pushed the bookcase a little wider, hoping the lamplight would reveal more. Shapes
 
—large rectangles and small boxes
 
—sat on shelves or leaned against the one blank wall in a room no more than three feet by nine, cleverly situated between the dining room and library walls. A hidden space no one could detect.

The far-off wail of an ambulance broke the spell.

If I close this door, how will I open it again? It looks as if it needs
a key.
The wail screamed closer, intensified, then stopped abruptly. I pushed the bookcase, watching it swing easily toward the wall. At the last moment I stopped it. A pounding came on the front door. Slipping a slim book between the wall and the back of the bookcase, I shoved the bookcase as far as it would go. A latch on the back all but caught. The pounding came again, and a voice called out, demanding entrance.

Casting a last quick glance over the room, at Grandfather still askew on the floor, I ran to the door.

The ambulance medics swept in. All I did was point toward the library.

“He has heart trouble. I was out all day, and when I brought in his tray, I found him like this.” I babbled in English, not knowing if they understood.

Both medics glanced at the tray and back at me, as if questioning my story. I could only guess how it must appear.

In three minutes they had lifted Grandfather, moaning softly and deathly pale, onto a gurney. I spotted a ring with two brass keys
 
—one small and one heavier
 
—where his body had been. I picked it up with his handkerchief that had fallen and slipped it into my pocket.

“His doctor?” one of the medics demanded. “Have you telephoned his doctor?”

“Oh, thank heaven you speak English!” Flustered, I could barely focus.

“His doctor?”

“Dr. Peterson, but I don’t know how to reach him. I have no number. I told the operator.”

“You are?”

“Hannah Sterling
 
—he’s my grandfather, Wolfgang Sommer. I’m visiting from America.”

The other medic grinned. “I believe.”

“Your grandfather has prescriptions?” the first medic asked.

“I
 
—I don’t know. Probably. Do you want me to check his room?”

“
Ja
. It is best. Where?”

“Up the stairs, first door on the left.” I raced after him.

“Medications within the last hour?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” We searched Grandfather’s bedside table, the top dresser drawer of his walnut bureau, the bookcase by the window, his bathroom medicine cabinet
 
—nothing. If hand wringing were an occupation, I’d have been well paid.

“Not to worry, Fräulein. The hospital should have his file. His doctor will be telephoned.”

“Can I go with you to the hospital? I have no car.”

“
Nein
, it is verboten. Here is the number of the hospital where we take him. Phone them after one hour.” He whipped out a card. In less than another minute they were out the door and the house fell completely silent, except for the pounding of my heart.

LIESELOTTE SOMMER

SEPTEMBER 1944

I came home to find Lukas and Herr Kirchmann leaving my father’s study. The pain and resignation in Herr Kirchmann’s eyes was palatable. The pain and panic in Lukas’s eyes frightened me. But as long as we could go together, that was all that mattered.

“My little Lieselotte.” Herr Kirchmann spoke first, drawing me into his arms. “I am so sorry, so very sorry for this trouble we have brought to your door.”

My head moved from side to side, but it felt no more attached to my neck than my feet. “It can’t be true. Can it?”

He touched my face. “There is so little time. I will leave Lukas to explain. But I swear to you, neither he nor Marta knew
 
—until today. We’d hoped it would never matter so long that we nearly believed it was
not so.” He shook his head, disbelieving the moment. “Know, dear girl, that we love you
 
—that you are our family forever.”

My father cleared his throat. Herr Kirchmann closed his eyes and regained his composure. “There is much to do. I’ll go now.” He placed my hand in Lukas’s. Without turning to speak again to Vater, he left by the back door.

“Lieselotte,” my father called. “You saw Fräulein Hilde? You were not gone long.”

“She suspects nothing. I told her I had a terrible headache
 
—not enough sleep last night. It was just as well. She had scheduled a dress fitting and forgotten until this morning.”

“This is good.”

Lukas squeezed my hand. “We must talk.”

We’d walked halfway to Lukas’s house before he found the words. “It’s true
 
—what my father said, that I did not know until today.”

“Vater said your grandmother died giving birth to your mother. But how he would know this, I can’t
 
—”

“
Ja
, this is true, and she was Jewish
 
—not my grandfather. Grandfather married again within a few months.” Lukas shrugged, “He had a baby, and no one to care for her. So he married their housekeeper
 
—a Gentile
 
—who raised my mother as her own. Mutter always thought of her as her mother
 
—the only mother she ever knew.”

“And so she claimed her lineage as her own.”

“
Ja
. It was not hard to do at the time
 
—not hard to write her name on the birth certificate. But it was a difficult birth and a doctor was called in. Perhaps it was his record that told the name of her true mother, or the record of the church where she was baptized. I don’t know.”

“Dr. Peterson dug it up. It’s his fault. None of this would
 
—”

“God sees everything, knows everything. There must
 
—”

“Lukas, you speak of ideas, ideals
 
—this is our
life
. All our lives. I can’t think what made him go looking
 
—what made him suspect.”

Lukas snorted. “He has the memory of an elephant, the slyness of a fox.” He tucked my hand in his pocket as we walked. “It was something Marta said, years ago. Do you remember the Christmas party
 
—the last Christmas party your mother . . .”

I waited.

“Dr. Peterson brought in those candlesticks
 
—silver, ornate, worth a fortune.”

“
Ja
, I suppose. So, what about them?”

“Marta was excited to see them. She said Mutti had a pair like them
 
—with the fruits and flowers engraved just so. She said her grandmother had given them to Mutti, and that one day they would be hers.”

“Why does that
 
—”

“It is tradition in a Jewish household for the mother to pass the Shabbat candleholders to her daughter, from generation to generation. Dr. Peterson suspected they were from a Jewish household because he’d ‘bought,’ or more likely confiscated, the pair he displayed that day from a Jewish house that had just been Aryanized.”

“You mean, all these years, he’s
 
—”

“Bided his time . . . or forgotten until recently
 
—I don’t know. I knew he suspected my lack of enthusiasm from the time I delayed joining the Hitler Youth, that he’s tried to prove me part of the assassination conspiracy, that he’s despised Father because of his connection with the Confessing Church. But I underestimated the depths of his hatred, not to mention his connections. I can’t be certain he is the cause, but my parents’ house was searched last year when Canaris was arrested and the plot to assassinate the Fuhrer revealed.”

“But they found no connection
 
—everyone said this, even Dr. Peterson.”

Lukas sighed. “They found and took the candlesticks. On their own that might mean nothing. They could have been taken by overzealous underlings simply for their value. But with Peterson’s memory of them . . . I must wonder.”

“He says he’s concerned about Vater’s reputation, but there’s something more
 
—I don’t know what.”

“He’s closely aligned with your father in his work and financial dealings. If your father is ruined through connections to my family, Dr. Peterson, too, will perhaps be ruined. Whatever they’re doing, they’ve become extremely wealthy. War creates strange opportunities for the shrewd
 
—ones they will do anything to protect.”

He lifted my hand and kissed my fingers. “To think we’ve been hiding Jews, moving Jews all this time, and we ourselves are Jews!”

“The apple of God’s eye.” I squeezed his hand in return. “I’m proud our children will carry Jewish blood.”

Lukas froze. “Lieselotte. We must go alone
 
—my parents and Marta and I. That is the only deal they would make.”

The cavern that had loomed before me earlier in the day opened at my feet.
“Nein,”
I whispered. “I talked with them. I told
mein Vater
I must go with you
 
—married or not. He understood; he agreed for Dr. Peterson to find five passports
 
—five good passports.”

“Just now he told Father and me he could not do it. Four is all he could get
 
—all he would get. Dr. Peterson said that if you do not stay behind, it will seem that your father knew about us all along, that he hid Jews from the Reich, that he allowed his Aryan daughter to marry a Jew. He will be ruined.”

I shook my head. “I will not live without you; I will not. We can’t trust Dr. Peterson.”

“But I trust your father. It’s costing him as much as my father and I can pay. He’s helping in every way he can.”

I shook my head, disbelieving.

“Lieselotte, your father is a hard but honest man
 
—I must believe this. We have no choice. If he was simply going to turn us in, he could have done that by now. We must trust him. And, after the war, when this is all over, we’ll find each other. We’ll marry and
 
—”

I could not stop the shaking of my head. I wouldn’t believe there was no other way. I’d plead, I’d beg and grovel
 
—whatever would persuade
Vater and Dr. Peterson. There must be something they’d not thought of yet
 
—something we’d not thought of.

What was Lukas saying about valuables?

“I’d hoped to put the stones in a ring for you one day.”

“Stones?”

“The rubies and diamonds my mother had taken from Grandmother’s tiara
 
—three she had not yet sold to buy food. She gave them to me to have made into a ring for you. There’s been no time yet, but I wanted to surprise you with them on our first anniversary. I’m so sorry, my Lieselotte. They must go now for the passports.”

“Of course they must! Your life
 
—our lives
 
—are worth more than anything, as long as we are together.”

“I know what you’re thinking. I begged him too, offered everything
 
—but he refused.”

“And you would go without me?” I stopped walking.

“If I don’t, you will be arrested. I won’t have that, Liesleotte. You don’t know what the camps are like. You would not survive. It would be different if we were married already, if there was no other way, but we’re not. You can’t legally marry me knowing I’m one-quarter
 
—”

“You know that doesn’t matter!”

“But it is the law, and if we break this law, we’ll both be arrested. It will do us no good to be thrown into separate prisons
 
—separate concentration camps. This way, at least you will be safe. I must know you’re safe.”

It was impossible
 
—all of it impossible.

He took me in his arms. “Keep faith, my darling. You must keep faith and, when you can, help those still in hiding. At least we’re getting out alive, thanks to your father. He stood against Dr. Peterson
 
—he’s risking a great deal to help us.”

I was outnumbered.

“Come with me now. It will be best if you carry the payment to your father.”

Frau Kirchmann emptied her savings from all the places a good Hausfrau might hide them
 
—the cookie jar, the foot of a twisted stocking in her drawer, a cloth bag beneath the mattress of her bed, and a tiny pouch of three precious stones hidden in her sewing basket.

“In plain view,” she whispered, dropping the stones one by one into my palm. “These were my mother’s. They were to go to Lukas, for your ring.”

I refused to cry. Their lives were more valuable than any wish I might make, whether or not I went with them. Though I was far from reconciled to my fate.

“I am so sorry, my daughter. So very, very sorry. If I could turn back time
 
—”

“Shh, Mutti,” Lukas whispered. “Lieselotte knows. We’ll find each other when this is over. This is not the end.”

“When the war is over.” I repeated what I’d heard him say, though how could I believe it?

“Ja, ja.”
Frau Kirchmann nodded, wiping her tears.

Herr Kirchmann had gone to the bank to withdraw all he could without arousing suspicion and to get someone else from the church to deliver forged papers. Others would have to fill in their portion of relief routes for refugees. Marta had gone to see if Pastor Braun knew who might help.

Lukas paced the floor, praying for a miracle, an inspiration. But an hour passed, and neither Marta nor Herr Kirchmann returned. Lukas said we dared wait no longer lest they think we would not pay.

“Tell Dr. Peterson my Helmeuth will bring the rest as soon as he returns,” Frau Kirchmann ordered. “At least this much will show him our good faith.”

We’d tied handkerchiefs around separate small mounds of precious stones and coins, rings and broaches. Everything small, valuable
 
—what our Jews in hiding called “portable wealth.” Lukas helped me into my
coat just as Marta burst through the door, coat half buttoned, panting, and terror in her eyes.

“They’ve been arrested! The Eisners were arrested!”

“No!”

“They shot Kurt in the street
 
—” she reached for her mother’s arms
 
—“and dragged Frederich from the house, then Miriam and their baby!”

“Did they see you?”

“Mutti! How can you ask
 
—”

“Did they see you?” Lukas shook his sister.

“Nein,”
Marta sobbed. “I stayed hidden. But I saw that man
 
—that Dr. Peterson
 
—with the Gestapo.”

“Dr. Peterson!”

Marta looked at me, accusing. “
Ja
, he stood in the street, and showed them where to go
 
—the very house! He waited until the raid, then drove away.”

I sat down. “In a black car.”

“Ja,”
Marta confirmed.

“How do you know this?” Frau Kirchmann asked.

I moistened my lips.
Could I have been the cause?

“Lieselotte?”

I looked at Lukas. “Last week . . . after I made a delivery . . .”

“
Ja?
What then?” Frau Kirchmann prompted.

“There was a car
 
—a black car. I don’t know if I was followed, but it slowed.”

“It could have been anybody.” Lukas wrapped his arms around me.

I pulled away. “I don’t know. How would
 
—”

“He waited until the Eisners were taken away; then the remaining Gestapo agent paid him,” Marta said.

“Sudden wealth,” Lukas murmured. “Blood money.”

“Blood money,” I repeated, and the bile rose in my throat.