The Girl from Krakow (40 page)

Some distance away, waiting on the same line, Urs Guildenstern noticed Tadeusz Sommermann get his travel orders.

Gil was sitting in the station officer’s canteen, waiting for his train, nursing a small tumbler of vodka, when he saw Urs enter. Urs was looking straight at him. Retreat and escape was impossible, as was any pretense that they did not know each other. Urs came over, pulled out the chair opposite, and said, “May I?” while peremptorily taking a seat. He looked at Gil visibly tensing before him. “Don’t worry. I bear you no malice any longer. The personal problems of three people aren’t very important after six years of this war. What came between us happened a long time ago. I am not going to turn you in to the NKVD just because you are impersonating a Spanish doctor.” He lit a cigarette.

Why not?
Gil thought.
Mainly because you want nothing to do with the secret police yourself. Doesn’t matter how innocent you are, once you put your boot on that tar slick, you can’t get unstuck.
“How did you find out?”

“Rank. I’m a colonel; the transport officer is a captain.” He didn’t need to say more. “So, you survived the war.”

“It’s not over yet, Urs. We both still have a chance to become heroes.”

“How did you do it, Tadeusz?”

Answering this question might be difficult. He was tempted to tell the story, to show how cleverly he had done it. But if he was going to cover his tracks, he couldn’t afford to tell anyone. The story he would fabricate had to be hard to check, and it had to be plausible. “Same way you did.” He looked at Urs’s rank and service pin. “Medical Corps.”

“Then you learned a lot of medicine they never taught us in medical school.” Urs looked down at his hands, obviously contemplating the surgeries he’d done, over and over. “Where did you serve?”

Tadeusz had to improvise. “Don Army, Stalingrad Front.” If he was going to cover his tracks, why not do it impressively? “It was tough. For six weeks we lived on vodka and American powdered eggs.” At least that part was true. He had lived on vodka and eggs. But the six weeks in question had been passed in Moscow. “Then I helped move a lot of fascist sympathizers out of the Crimea in ’44.”

“We heard about that in the Medical Service. Forty thousand died of exposure and malnutrition out of about 200,000 during the move.”

“Hard to work up sympathy for people who fought alongside the Nazis. There was a whole
Tartar Legion
fighting with the
Waffen-SS
.”

“I don’t know. They never got anything from Soviet power before the war. The way they thought about it, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, I suppose. It was the women and children, mainly, who suffered in the relocation.”

This kind of talk is not going to preserve Urs’s life very long in Stalin’s Russia,
Gil thought. “Fascists need to learn a lesson.” He waited for a rejoinder. There was none. “How about your war?”

“I was on the Leningrad Front. They would have killed for powered eggs in Leningrad.” He changed the subject. “I was still in Karpatyn when the Soviets took your mother and father away in ’40. Were you able to trace them?” Tadeusz shook his head. It would have been dangerous and pointless too. In fact, this was the first hard news he’d ever heard about their fates.

“How about your family, Urs?” He wanted badly to ask about Rita, but wasn’t going to risk provoking the cuckold.

“Everyone is gone. Murdered by the Germans. I passed through Karpatyn last month. They’ve set up a local information bureau. My mother was killed, and my father was sent to Belzec extermination camp pretty early. The whole ghetto was liquidated and burned. No one survived. That’s what I was told, anyway.” Urs wasn’t going to mention Rita. “All killed. Including my boy.”

“You had a child
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
with Rita?” Gil blurted out. Urs nodded. “I am very sorry about all of your loss, Urs—your parents, your son
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
Rita.”

“Actually I have remarried—a Russian girl I met in Moscow—and we have a boy.”

“Congratulations. So, you had confirmation that Rita died, then?”

“Nothing specific. But a woman alone, with a small child. There was no chance.” Urs seemed little affected by this, though.

“You’re right.”

“Look, Tadeusz, we both started out from the same place, and five years later, we’re both still alive and not even scratched, when everyone else from back there is dead. Do you ever wonder why? Doesn’t it bother you? I can’t sleep nights thinking about it.”

Surviving didn’t really bother Gil. And he knew perfectly well why he had survived. It hadn’t been luck. It was foresight, being smart enough to always see which way the tide was running, being unconflicted enough always to seize the main chance, not scrupling the means when the end was worth it. He had deserved to survive. It would be nice to crow about it, but it also seemed the best way to tempt fate. Gil said nothing.

Urs rose. He looked down at Gil from his great height. “Oh well, I should have known better than to ask you what it all adds up to.”

Gil rose, trying to lessen the distance he needed to look up. “What do you mean by that?” Every fiber of his being was straining to stop himself from saying what he really thought:
Urs, you fool, you didn’t deserve to survive. If only you’d succeeded in your suicide back in ’38, I would have had Rita, and she might have survived with me. Instead, she’s dead, and you’ve come out of the great patriotic war a colonel.

But Urs replied, “All I meant is that there’s no point asking questions like these of someone who never thinks how he affects other people’s lives.” He looked at his watch. “My unit is headed for Katowice. I better get back to it.” He turned and walked away without offering a hand or making a farewell.

Did Gil have to worry their paths might cross again? There was little he could do about the matter, so he turned his mind to other things.

Gil wasn’t the only one attracted by the geography of Gleiwitz. The town had swollen with refugees—Germans, Poles, many from the former Polish provinces now permanently annexed to the Ukraine. He had found lodgings quickly enough by wearing his uniform. The trick was how and when to stop wearing it. Pulling Tadeusz Sommermann from the bottom of a valise, where he had been for seven years, Gil registered him with the local refugee information office and gave the names of his family members when they asked whom he wanted to be reunited with. This would build up a record. If Urs was right about the extirpation of their families and acquaintances in Karpatyn, there wouldn’t be anyone left to challenge a story, no matter how improbable, about survival in hiding, fighting with partisans—communist, not Home Army. Documents in hand he went to the Municipal Police to register himself, and to the local authorities to renew his Polish identity cards.

Then he—Tadeusz—set about looking for work as a doctor. This was a little more difficult, as the only documents he had from Marseille bore the forged name Gil Romero. He would have to send to Marseille for new copies with the real name. Nonetheless, the need for medical staff was too great for hospitals to stand on ceremony, and Tadeusz obviously knew what he was doing. Within days he had become a locum at two different clinics.

Almost from the first, nothing felt right to Tadeusz Sommermann. Daily he felt the need to be Guillermo Romero—for the nurses, for his patients, for their families. He needed to be the debonair, exotic romantic with the Catalan name and flair. Instead, he was Tadeusz Sommermann, a perfectly competent physician, but a Jew in
Judenrein
Poland. After six years of Nazi occupation, people were no longer proud of their feelings against Jews, but they still carried them. No matter their surprise at meeting a Jew who had survived, his Jewishness produced a chill, then disquiet about his diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment, none of which could be hidden. Orderlies brought the casual anti-Semitism of the streets into the wards. Nurses did not respond to his informality or his willingness to listen, to consult them, in the ways they had warmed to Gil Romero. Doctors would not go beyond the exchange of pertinent patient information. Tadeusz wasn’t really their colleague. He was a wraith, a throwback, an oddity, a reminder of indifference, of complicity, and worse. He was someone they had to work with—because of the war, because of the Soviets, because of their guilt—but not because they wanted to. Life with Tadeusz Sommermann was not going to be easy for anyone, including Tadeusz himself.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

T
he morning of March 30, 1945, Rita came down the Schlangenweg onto the Neuenheimer Landstrasse, which ran along the north side of the Necker. She was on her way to find some milk for the children. Looking up toward the bridge, she saw two loose lines of men in green uniforms, some with short khaki jackets and all with green helmets nothing like the German ones. Their walk was gangling, and they did not have the smartness or the relentless pace she associated with German soldiers. They were carrying weapons in a variety of ways—some across their shoulders, slung behind them, some even in their hands parallel to the ground. Across their waists there were a variety of pouches, pockets, and tools that seemed to move up and down as they walked. Nothing was tied down neatly, as with German infantry. She stood there and waited. Between them a small open vehicle with a flat bonnet, looking nothing like a Kubelwagen, came into view, approached her, and stopped. It had a white star in a dashed circle on its hood. At last Rita knew what she was looking at: Americans—“
Amis,
” the Germans called them, as if they were distant cousins.
Amis
, who would treat Germans better than the vengeful Brits.

She would learn to call the vehicle a jeep—it was almost her first word of English. An officer jumped out and asked, in halting German, “How far along to the next bridge?” He was her age, but grimy, unshaven, with hooded eyes, a single white bar on the front of his helmet. He held a clear celluloid map case, but no weapon besides a pistol.

“I don’t know. I have never been past this point on the river. I am not a native.” Suddenly she realized she was being forthcoming. Telling someone something true about herself, instead of hiding the truth.

“Can we find someone who does know?” His German was basic, without the declensions, she found herself noticing.

“Yes. Please follow me.” Rita led the officer up the Schlangenweg.

“Where are you from, if not here?” he asked as they mounted the step path. The officer had not taken out a weapon.

It was then, as they trudged upward, that the realization of deliverance reached her. She turned back. Tears welled into her eyes. She threw herself on this strange American one step behind her on the steep pathway. “At last! I am free, I am released, alive. I love you.” She gulped. The German words had come out unbidden.

He pulled her hands from around his neck, but he smiled. “Free, released? And already in love with me?” He had understood every word. “Were you a prisoner?” His German wasn’t as limited as she thought.

“I love you because you have come. And yes, I am—I was—a prisoner.” Would he understand the past tense? She turned back up the path, but now walking beside the officer. “I’m a Pole, a Jew, in Germany on false identity, working for a Nazi family.”

“Is that where you are taking me? To some Nazis up this path? Should I call my platoon? Do I need a weapon?”

“I don’t think so. Only watch out for the nine-year-old girl and her mother. The rest are harmless, and the husband’s a tax collector, not a zealot for Hitler.” They reached the back gate. Rita held it open.

As they walked into the kitchen, Rita called down to the cellar. “Dani, come up quickly.” A moment later Dani was there. Instantly she understood how suddenly everything had changed.

“You are an American?” Dani said it in English. She spoke English! How could Rita have known her for so long without knowing this?

The officer addressed her. “Yes, ma’am. I’m Lieutenant Shaw.” He looked to Rita inquiringly. “Her?”

“She’s Jewish, like me, Lieutenant. False identity. Like me, from Poland, hiding in plain sight.”

He nodded. “Maybe you can help me. Come along.” Then he walked through the kitchen and into the dining room, followed by the two women.

The family was assembled and eating breakfast. All stood as they stared at the intruder. He began in German, “I am Lieutenant Shaw, 44th Division, US Army. Consider yourselves under military authority in a war zone. I will ask some questions. Any failure to provide accurate answers will be considered a violation of the regulations of the occupation authority.” It sounded like a memorized script. Lieutenant Shaw turned to Dani and spoke English. “My German may not be up to this. If the answers sound wrong, you’ll tell me?” She nodded. Meanwhile, Lempke had begun to study Dani’s face. After a moment, a flash of recognition crossed his eyes.

Shaw began to fire questions at the Germans: about the locations of nearby bridges, German facilities. But between questions and answers, an exchange began between Lempke and his wife in rapid colloquial German. Lieutenant Shaw looked at Dani. “What was that about?”

“Sir, the wife told him not to answer, and he told her to shut up, they were at your mercy now.” She smiled. Lempke now began to answer Shaw’s questions in a German he could understand. After a few moments, Lieutenant Shaw turned to leave. Dani followed him out the door, and Rita rushed after them both.

Dani was speaking in English. When she saw Rita was behind her, she began to translate what she had said. “Are you just going to leave us with this Nazi family, sir? What should we do?”

“Ah, yes. Good question.” He thought for a moment, then took out a piece of paper and a pencil. He switched to German. “Here is my name and unit. We are going to bivouac down the Necker about two kilometers, between here and the bridge they told us about. There’s a military police unit there too. If they give you any
flak
—
that’s a German word, do you know it?—just come down to my unit and ask for me. As for them”—he pointed toward the room where the family was still gathered—“I wouldn’t feel any need to take orders anymore. You might even want to give some.” Lieutenant Shaw turned and walked out of the house.

A moment later Herr Lempke made his way into the kitchen. “Ah, Dani. What a pleasant surprise. I am so glad to see you. I was worried from the moment you left us in Krakow.”

Dani was venomous. “In Krakow you didn’t know I existed. Now the war is over, and you have lost; it’s too late to be solicitous.”

“My dear, I knew you and Rita were Jewish girls in hiding from the start. That’s why I took you in, to protect you.” He turned to Rita. “Well, Rita, now the war is over, at least for us. Where will you go; what will you do? You may, of course, stay here, under the same terms, if you wish.” He smiled slightly, whether at his cleverness or his generosity she couldn’t say.

Rita had been waiting for this little address and now she spoke. “Thank you, Herr Lempke. I will stay, and so will Dani. But not as your servants. We are moving into one of the rooms upstairs. You and Frau Lempke will have to move two of the children out of their room and into yours. I won’t be working for you any further. I will be your guest, as will be Dani. If we are not treated properly, Lieutenant Shaw of the 44th US Division will learn of it.”

Frau Lempke had been listening. She was growing redder and redder, and finally burst out to her husband, “This little Jewess cannot talk to you like that, Heinrich. Call the labor office immediately. Call the Gestapo, or they’ll run away.” She walked over to Rita and demanded, “Go get your papers and give them to me!”

Rita looked Frau Lempke up and down. Then she raised her right hand, slapped the woman across the face, back and forth, and left the room.

As she left, Herr Lempke was remonstrating. “Dear, you don’t understand. The war is lost. If we don’t curry the favor of these young women, they will make life difficult for us with the occupation.”

An hour later the two women were lying across the slightly too small children’s beds in a bright room on the second floor of the villa overlooking the Neckar, smoking cigarettes from one of Herr Lempke’s silver cigarette boxes. Their few possessions had already displaced the children’s toys and clothes.

From the bed Rita was staring out the window at the Heidelberg castle across the Necker, a sight she had almost never had time to contemplate from a second-story window of the villa. She turned to Dani. “You know, when I met that
Ami
officer, I said to him, ‘I am free, I am released, I am alive. I love you.’ What must he have thought?”

Dani smiled. “But what are we free to do? Now that we have been released, what do we do? Where do we go? What do we want now that we have our lives back?”

“The first thing you are going to do now that you’re free is teach me English, Dani. I am going to need it. And you, with your English—the
Amis
are going to need you.”

Dani wasn’t listening. There was an overwhelming lassitude in her, a feeling of total emptiness, as if all the air had rushed out of her, leaving a complete vacuum. She barely had a will to speak. Quietly she began, “Why was I allowed to survive? There is no reason at all.” She stubbed the cigarette out in an ashtray. “Rita, I can’t accept that. I feel like dying, along with everyone else. Starting over, walking away from what has happened
 
.
 
.
 
.
 
I’m too tired, I don’t have the will for it. What can I do?” Rita came over to her bed and held Dani for a long time.

That night as they climbed into the soft warm beds, Dani asked the question she already knew the answer to: “Will you really go back to look for Stefan? Is that for sure?” Her friend nodded. “I’ll go back too, with you.” At least it was something to do.

Two days later, in the late afternoon, Flossie came up to the women’s bedroom. “The
Ami
officer wants to speak to the woman who knows English.” Dani followed her down the stairs. Lieutenant Shaw had turned up at the Lempkes’ villa.

A few minutes later, Dani returned. “There was another officer with Shaw. He only spoke English. He asked me to come and work for the
Amis
. He said they will pay US dollars and give me American rations, including real coffee. I told him I’d do it if they took you too. I told him you were learning English.”

“What do they want us to do?” Rita was suspicious. They both knew the use to which Wehrmacht units put local women in occupied territories.

Dani understood. “No, no. Nothing like that. It’s all right. The other officer was a Christian chaplain. He said they have a facility, a club for soldiers, and they need hostesses who can give information, serve snacks—not drink, Rita!—and maybe help them not feel lonely.” Another grimace from Rita. “No, he promised, it’s not like that.”

“Real coffee?” Rita had already accepted in her mind. “When does he want us to start?”

Dani switched to English, and Rita tried to follow, “Tomorrow, at the train station café in town.”

Fitted with rather snug but clean khaki officers’ jackets and forage caps, both sporting the insignia USO, Dani and Rita began working at the counter of an enlisted men’s club across from the Heidelberg railway station the next day. A Negro cook, the very first black man either had ever seen, taught them how to deep-fry doughnuts and how to make coffee the way American soldiers liked it—definitely an acquired taste for two women who had not had a cup of espresso for five years.

American soldiers were completely unlike German ones. Not nearly as formal or polite, far friendlier, and much more willing to share candy bars, cigarettes, chewing gum, cans of Spam, rolls of toilet paper, bags of cotton balls, without any expectation of a
quid pro quo
. They didn’t always stand when an officer entered, or even always salute. One told Rita it was completely unnecessary when not wearing a hat. Their uniforms differed from one to another, and they sometimes didn’t stay in uniform. Shoes were unshined, ties askew when worn at all. These soldiers treated the USO club as a refuge from the war and from their officers, who rarely ventured in. They wanted to dance when the radio played a big-band tune. But it was not the sort of dancing Dani and Rita had ever learned or even seen in films. The women tried to jitterbug, but at first it made them dizzy, and the steps were too complex and too athletic. The soldiers tried to teach the steps slowly, even demonstrating with one another. It might have worked if the chaplain—the only officer Dani and Rita ever saw much of—had not discouraged the practice.