Stones From the River (35 page)

“We have to change this. Immediately. You should be at least on my waiting list. I’ll take care of it for you right now so there won’t be any trouble for not having done it before. This is what you’ll do. You pay five
Mark
for each of you, and once you’re members, you’ll get the papers in the mail.”

“But then I won’t have enough money for the medicine.”

“What’s more important? Your husband will be grateful to you.”

But her husband was not grateful when she told him, and he swore he would tear up the papers once they arrived. In the meantime, the two of them waited, a silence between them which grew colder with each day that Herr Stosick had to face a classroom filled with children whose arms snapped upward from their bodies with an enthusiastic
Heil Hitler
, with each day he had to forfeit the words of warning that he yearned to howl at them.

Though Ingrid was at the university now, she still lived at home and took the streetcar to Düsseldorf. She was studying to be a teacher. Lately, several of her professors had either been fired, retired, or pushed into insignificant positions. Their replacements seemed eager to serve without critique of the new regime.

“None of them wants to call attention to himself,” Ingrid told Trudi on Sunday afternoon when they were taking a walk. “I pray for them every day.”

“Even with all your other prayers?”

“I had to add one more rosary.”

“That means you’ll have even less time for your friends.” It sounded petty and jealous and slipped out before Trudi could stop herself.

Ingrid frowned. But then she smiled as though it had just occurred to her that martyrs had been in that position all along—defending their devotion to God. Not that she was in an arena about to face the lions.… Still, Trudi was good practice in case she ever had to face a real adversary. “It’s what God wants me to do,” she said firmly.

“I’m sorry.”

Ingrid looked disappointed, as if she’d been denied the opportunity to sacrifice herself for her belief.

They were passing the Weinharts’ meadow where, behind the fence, all the cows stood crowded in one clump as always, while the sheep were scattered all over the meadow, their black heads bobbing from pale woolly bodies as they grazed on the last blades of grass.

“It’s not that I decided by myself to do one more rosary,” Ingrid tried to explain. It’s—I know I have to do it, but it doesn’t come from me.”

“Like hearing a voice?””

“It’s not like hearing or seeing anything … more like knowing it.”

Trudi nodded.

“I have no idea how it gets inside me. It’s just there. And then I have to obey.”

“What if you don’t?

Ingrid looked startled.

“You’ve never tried?”

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“But what if you don’t think it is right?”

Ingrid’s face turned scarlet as if Trudi had reminded her of something she wanted to forget. “It’s not mine to decide.”

Trudi stared at her, hard, trying to pull from her what it was she had done that wasn’t right. “You can tell me,” she whispered and reached for her friend’s hand. But the instant she felt Ingrid’s skin against hers, she no longer wanted to know, because what she sensed had to do with Ingrid’s father, with that discomfort she felt whenever she saw his eyes settle on his daughter with a look that no father should give his daughter. She heard him chuckle, heard him tell Ingrid to wear decent clothes. Swiftly, she dropped Ingrid’s hand, but it was too late: she saw the shadow of Ingrid’s father against the slanted ceiling of Ingrid’s room, saw him lay one finger across Ingrid’s lips as she sat up with a start in her bed.

“Sometimes I think I dream things.…” Ingrid’s voice was far away.

Trudi felt ill. “You don’t have to …”

Ingrid’s expression was as blank and pious as that of saints about to be tortured.

“Nothing you don’t want to—”

“But you don’t understand.”

“You’ll come to America with me,” Trudi said quickly.

“When I visit Aunt Helene and Uncle Stefan.”

“When are you going?”

“Oh—I don’t know yet. Whenever I want. Their house, it’s more like a palace, really, six stories high, with marble fireplaces and tapestries. Other people live there too, in apartments, but Uncle Stefan built the house.” Words tumbled from her with details of her aunt’s stories about America: the clear lake in which her cousins swam; the soft toilet paper—not harsh and gray like in Germany, her aunt had said; the elevator in the apartment house.… Already she could see herself with Ingrid on a ship bound for America, the land of tall buildings and cowboys, looking back at the receding shoreline of Germany and at this day, this conversation that had persuaded Ingrid to accompany her.

But it was Ingrid who went on a trip—and not with Trudi but with her family, to visit her uncle in München over Christmas. Trudi saw them off at the train station. While Ingrid’s parents and brother got settled in the compartment, Ingrid leaned from the open window of the train.

“Here.” Trudi gave her the present she had wrapped for her.

Ingrid looked embarrassed. “I don’t have anything for you.”

Trudi smiled hard to hide her disappointment. “I don’t mind.” She’d bought Ingrid’s present four weeks earlier, taking pleasure in imagining her friend’s surprise when she’d open it, as well as her own delight when Ingrid would hand her a beautifully wrapped gift.

“I’ll buy your present in München,” Ingrid called over the whistle of the train. “Can I open this now?”

“It’s bad luck to celebrate anything early.”

“Let the girl open it,” Herr Baum called out from inside the train.

Trudi flinched.

“I won’t celebrate Christmas until it’s here,” Ingrid promised. “I just want to look at your present.” Carefully, she unwrapped the gold paper and ran one finger across the red leather of the jewelry box. “It’s so pretty. Thank you, Trudi.”

“You like it then?”

“Oh yes.” She tried to wrap it again, but her father’s hand reached out and took it from her.

“Let me see.”

Don’t go with him
, Trudi wanted to say.
Stay here with me.

“Fancy, fancy,” he said.

“Your papers, please.” A uniformed official opened the door to their compartment.

Ingrid’s father tossed the jewelry box onto the shelf above his seat. The beads of Ingrid’s rosary clicked inside her handbag as she dug for her
Personalausweis
and a small green folder.

A stout woman came running from the red phone booth near the entrance of the station, two heavy baskets swinging in her hands. She nearly stepped on her skirt as she climbed into the train. In the open window of the next compartment appeared a gray-haired man, and a young soldier handed him a shabby suitcase, tied with string.

“Remember to take your pills, Father,” he shouted.

Two women with gray
coats
and flowered scarves knotted beneath their chins sat on a bench near the ticket office as if they’d been waiting a long time. The whistle blew again, and Ingrid waved through a cloud of steam as the train pulled forward and a late passenger leapt on.

Trudi stood waving until the train had left the station, swaying in its tracks before it gathered speed. Only then did she feel the cold of the winter air. She turned up her collar, tightened the wool scarf around her hair. When she was about to step out of the station, she saw—as if framed forever by the wide brick arch of the entrance—four boys playing ball. In the pure, cold light of the sun, they chased one another, laughing, shouting. Their cheeks were red, and if it hadn’t been for their identical brown shirts, they could have been any group of boys, engaged in an ageless game. Trudi’s heart ached as their carefree voices drifted toward her, and she wondered how long anything could possibly remain a game.

T
RUDI AND HER FATHER WERE TROUBLED BY THE RECRUITING SESSIONS
in the schools that resulted in new members for the Hitler-Jugend. Their customers who still had children in school came into the pay-library with stories of how they’d been told by teachers it was a duty of honor for all families to guide their sons toward the Hitler-Jugend and their daughters toward the BDM—
Bund Deutscher Mädchen—
Alliance of German Girls.

Trudi’s interpretation of the letters BDM made Frau Abramowitz worry for her safety. “Bund Deutscher Milchkühe—Alliance of German Milk Cows.”

“Hush now, hush,” Frau Abramowitz said, her hands flying about her as if attempting to push the dangerous words down.

“But they are like cattle,” Trudi insisted.

Already most of the other youth organizations had been absorbed into the Hitler-Jugend according to Adolf Hitler’s request, ending the skirmishes between children from the HJ and other groups, while creating even more of a rift between the HJ and Jewish children. Emil Hesping knew quite a few group members who originally had objected to the merger but attended the new meetings to preserve the
friendships they’d formed in their original groups. Some of the older boys, who still came to the gymnasts’ club, complained to Emil that, where their previous group leaders had taught them to be true to their individuality, they now were ordered to be true to the Führer.

Teachers had to meet regularly with the new group leaders to ensure that their students registered, and employers were pressed to hire only apprentices who were members of the HJ or BDM. As a result, children were forced to think about their future much sooner than they used to: whatever work they wanted to do once they grew up, it was to their advantage to belong to the HJ or BDM now.

And how could the children not love the roaring bonfires and the magnificent folk songs—dark and melancholy and strangely victorious—as their voices united and soared toward the night sky beyond the blades of red-yellow flames, intoxicating them with the promise of equality, those children of shopkeepers and teachers, of farmers and lawyers and tailors? All around them, they felt a dwindling of the rigid class differences.

When Helmut Eberhardt had heard the Führer’s promise that each worker would have bread, and that he would lead the
Vaterland
to greatness, happiness, and wealth, he’d felt consumed by the same holy feeling he’d first known as an altar boy. That feeling stayed with him and grew stronger with each month in the Hitler-Jugend, until he felt powerful in a way he’d never experienced with the priests. He trusted the Führer when he proclaimed that he would not rest until each and every German was an independent, free, and happy person in the
Vaterland.

At home, that new power changed Helmut’s days with his mother. No longer did he mind her words, and if she reproached him, he fixed his eyes on her until her words withered. Soon, he stopped asking for things and simply took them. While he felt the accumulation of his power in the lengthening of his body and his impact on the much older Hilde Sommer—who was far more enticing than girls his own age—he felt his mother growing weaker, paler.

Eva Rosen and Alexander Sturm married the month before the Nürnberg laws would deprive Jews of their German citizenship and forbid marriage, as well as
Geschlechtsverkehr
—copulation—between Jews and Germans. The day of their wedding, an August Sunday in 1935, Trudi felt her heart swell with love when she saw Eva, her rich dark
hair in a braided crown, the white strands at her temples swept back from her young face like the wingtips of a tamed bird.

“I’m so glad you are here,” Eva said and bent to embrace Trudi. She wore a fitted wedding gown with a short open jacket that was decorated with a pearl-embroidered collar and matching cuffs.

I am sorry
, Trudi wanted to say to her, but she didn’t because Eva would have only asked what she was sorry about, and Trudi didn’t know herself, except that it had something to do with having failed her friend.

Though Eva had resisted Alexander’s appeal to convert to Catholicism, she’d agreed to five sessions of marriage guidance with Herr Pastor Beier, despite his attempts to talk Alexander out of marrying her. She had even promised to have their children raised within the Catholic church, something that deeply hurt her mother, who tried to justify her daughter’s decision to her Jewish friends.

“It’s the only way Alexander can marry Eva and stay in the Catholic church.”

“Theirs is not the most generous church,” Frau Simon reminded her.

Fräulein Birnsteig said that nothing was irreversible.

“They might not even have children,” Frau Abramowitz offered.

The Frau Doktor touched the ivory scar above her upper lip. “Is that supposed to console me, Ilse?”

It was a small ceremony, celebrated in the white chapel near the Sternburg. The reception was held in the garden behind the Rosens’ house. Eva’s brothers had arrived from Switzerland, where they’d both been studying for the past years. Her father had risen from his invalid’s bed for the occasion of his daughter’s wedding; dressed in a huge black tuxedo, a glass of champagne in his hand, he chatted with the guests as though he’d only seen them the day before. His large face was tanned as always, and had it not been for his lounge chair on the balcony, the plaid blanket folded across the armrest as if awaiting his return, you might have forgotten that this was the same man who’d been resting up for decades. His appearance would only feed the gossip that he was not really sick—even though by the following day he would be reclining again in the sunshine, at most raising one slack hand if you called out a greeting to him.