The Prosperous Thief (13 page)

Willi offered to act as guide. Since being forced to leave his state school two years earlier, he had attended a Jewish boys’ school in the east of the city. ‘I’ve become quite familiar with the area,’ he said.

‘Not too familiar I hope.’ All smiles were now gone and there was a warning in his mother’s voice.

‘You sound just like a German.’

‘Not at all, I’m just not the sort of Jew who lives over there.’

And again the vague wave of Dora’s hand.

And so the old argument threatened, with the son sounding quite different from the parent, an argument easily stumbled upon in so many German-Jewish homes.

‘We’re all Jews together, no matter what our origins,’Willi now said. ‘You made much the same point a moment ago: even a bit of a Jew is a Jew.’ He spoke slowly and deliberately with more than a drop of adolescent venom. Then he turned to Renate.‘I’d be happy to show you around the Jewish district,’ he said. And with a stubborn glance at his mother,‘I like it over there. It’s like entering a different world, and such a strong world too. Not even Hitler can make them change their ways.’

Renate had never visited the area and, given her self-consciousness among the most secular of Jews, had no desire to. There were Jews and Jews, and while Hitler might not differentiate, Jews themselves did. Renate had seen a few of these
Ostjuden
in the various foreign office waiting rooms in which she now passed her days. They stood out like beggars at a banquet, and not just their appearance, although that was bad enough, their German was a mangled mess to cultured ears, as if it had been subjected to a firing squad. Most of them seemed to be manual workers – tailors, leather workers, dyers and the like, with even less chance of obtaining visas than the Lewins. And poor too, far too poor to pay their way anywhere but back east to the countries of their forebears. Secretly Renate was glad, less competition at the foreign offices meant improved chances for the Lewins, but she would have been gladder still and more at ease if these
Ostjuden
stayed away completely.

Although money was a problem for her too. Within a few of days of arriving in Berlin, hard decisions had to be made. Her small stash of cash was needed for visas and bribes and exit penalties. The only items of value Renate possessed were her mother’s jewels. She was merely delaying the inevitable and she knew it. A week after arriving in Berlin, Amalie Friedman’s watch, her rings and brooches, and the pearls which were so much a part of her that Renate used to joke her mother wasn’t dressed until she had put them on, were given away for a song and a sausage.

Along with her mother’s jewellery went so much that had comprised their life in Germany. Change after change and every one requiring just a little more effort. And such a sense of futility as Renate pushed and pushed like Sisyphus with his rock, but in her case the mountain itself kept shifting. Waiting at the foreign offices and embassies day in and day out, she would look at the other women, some so shrivelled and fading, others with the strength and determination of a general, and wonder how it was that people coped so differently. She would see the same women over and over, would see that a week, even a couple of days could make a person weaker or stronger or more desperate, sometimes violently so.

Alice squashed into the flat along with Willi and the adults, and while nearly everything was different from life in Krefeld, she learned to grasp on to those few aspects which had not changed. She had her legends book and her Käthe Kruse doll. And each morning Mutti still brushed her long curls, so different from the short bobs of other girls, and the stroking felt so good and not just on her head but down her back as well. And on Saturday her hair was washed as usual, and even though the water heater was a monster that fizzed and sparked and threatened to blow so that even Mutti wasn’t allowed to light it, the Saturday routine and the clean hair to twirl in bed made her feel safer.

Most days she stayed at the flat while her mother and Aunt Dora scoured Berlin for visas. She preferred it this way. She couldn’t keep pace with her mother’s dashing, and she hated seeing her and all the other mothers so worried. And during the hours of waiting in the foreign offices she didn’t want to make new friends, not here in Berlin. Secretly she wanted to be home in Krefeld, and during the long days alone it was easier to pretend she was.

Renate was relieved, not only was it safer for Alice to stay at the flat, there were times when her own nerves were so barbed and her frustration so bullish that if Alice were a witness, it would only distress. As the days ground on, Renate felt as if she were working against a highly integrated machine forever trying to find a way of breaking into the cycle. If she had more money it would be easier to obtain visas and exit papers; if she had the visas it would be easier to secure Martin’s release.

As for visa approvals, people were leaving all the time. Some people left with nothing more than a suitcase of clothes from Jewish welfare, having cashed in everything to pay the huge amounts required to leave the country. Others were more fortunate. Renate and Dora had seen the entire contents of a flat being loaded onto a cart or lorry, once even a huge shipping container. Everything from sofas to saucepans, beds to washing blue, even nonperishable food was packed, not simply because good German food would not be available in America or Argentina or Australia, but being unable to take money out of Germany, any cash left over after taxes and permits was converted to material goods.

‘There’ll be small communities of German Jews all over the world,’ Dora said one day, having just farewelled some old friends. ‘I can see them now nestling among the kangaroos in Australia, raccoons and red Indians in America and God knows what in Argentina.’

Dora joked, but with silence on their own visas she was worried. Her sister, Hannah, was married to an Oxford don. Dora knew she would sponsor the family, but she and Erich and most adamantly Willi had believed their future lay with Palestine. They had also thought, perhaps naïvely, their chances for Palestine would be strong. So they hadn’t sought Hannah’s help. But now Dora was wondering whether she should.

‘All this German red tape,’ Renate said one evening.‘Why are they making it so difficult? It’s clear Germany doesn’t want us.’

‘And neither it seems does the rest of the world,’ said Willi, his face pressed into a wry smile.

For all her efforts Renate had little reason to hope. Yet day after day she persisted, channelling her energies into an exile which continued to terrify her. And through it all she tried to be a step ahead of the dangers that pockmarked her days. One afternoon when walking home from the Palestine Office with Dora, she saw approaching on the same side of the road three SS men just like those who came the morning her mother died. Closer they came, young men with the same blond features and the same clenched-fist demeanour as those responsible for her mother’s death. And closer still, and it was the same three, she was sure of it, the very ones who killed her mother, just twenty metres away, now fifteen metres, now ten. The rest of the world fell away. Renate saw only the killers. She’d fight them, she’d fight with her bare fists, all rage and muscle she’d kick the life out of them, her mother’s killers now nine metres away, now eight, now seven. She stopped in their path, Dora was pulling at her, Dora didn’t realise who these men were. Renate shook her off. Five metres, four metres, and she’s ready, oh yes she’s ready. Come on, killers, come on. Two metres, one metre and now passing. And they’re not the ones. They’re someone else’s brutes not hers.

Dora was frantic. ‘What are you doing?’ she said. ‘What on earth are you thinking of?’

Renate couldn’t speak. Only later when they were safe at home and preparing the supper did she tell Dora about the three SS men who were not the ones who killed her mother.

Hunted and hunting all at the same time, concocting a set of convincing lies for this official, a slightly different set for another, and hoping she was on the right track but never quite sure. And although Dora’s involvement with the Jewish community meant she was among the first to know where next to direct their efforts when the last avenue had fizzled out, three weeks after Renate’s arrival in Berlin, the two women acknowledged they were no closer to obtaining their husbands’ release or of leaving Germany.

It was late in the evening of another long day, and all too easy in the dark and cold to succumb to a longing for times past.

‘I’d love a glass of muscat,’ Renate said.‘And a foot bath.’

‘How about a cup of hot water and a cushion instead?’

Renate smiled as Dora pulled out one of the couch cushions and propped it under her feet, then headed for the kitchen.

While Dora was busy with the kettle, Renate settled back into the armchair and closed her eyes. It had been a hellish day. She must have walked close on ten kilometres, much of it through sleet and bitter wind. She had been home for more than an hour but still she was cold and all of her hurting, legs, back, arms, head, even her jaw, and not a scrap of energy remaining even if her life depended on it. Although of course that wasn’t true, not with Martin still incarcerated. Her kind, amenable husband and not of a nature to rise to the extreme challenges of these times, how she feared for him. And now the familiar fist at her throat, and tears riding on the fear, and just as quickly she squeezed the tears dry and swallowed hard. Terror, desperation, anguish like you were being disembowelled, and you have to keep it down, keep it quiet. Can’t afford to feel a little because the little inflates and soon it swamps and you can’t look after your daughter, you can’t look after yourself, can’t remain strong enough to engineer your family to safety. And it is up to you, up to all the wives and mothers to deal with the officials, handing out bribes like cakes at a party. Up to you to obtain the visas that will save your husband and your family.

Up to you, she now told herself, and by the time Dora returned with two cups of steaming water, was composed again. The urge to survive is bottomless, she was thinking, and despite how bad you feel, there’s always a grain of energy left to excavate. She sat with Dora sipping her water while they planned their schedules for the next day. More letters to write, more phone calls to make, more embassies to visit, more functionaries to plead with, more Germans to fear.

It was Willi who first learned of the
Kindertransport
scheme. Apparently British Jews were providing the necessary finance to transport German and Austrian children at risk to safety in England. And Willi was at risk. His father was political and so was he, and soon his age would put him beyond the scheme and directly in the sights of Germans wanting to do their best for the Reich.

But Willi didn’t want to go to England, not under any circumstances.‘It’s clear what the English think of us,’ he said, slamming his fists against the table.‘If not for the English we’d be in Palestine now.’

Dora had just that morning been to the Palestine Office on Meineckestrasse, her fifth futile visit in the past two weeks. She was quiet but firm.‘There’s no time left for waiting.’

Willi was now on his feet, a stringy youth all jitters in the cramped flat.As he spoke the sun caught the pale fuzz on his face. ‘The visas will come through any day now, I know they will.’

His mother was brusque.‘You know nothing of the sort. None of us do.’

Palestine, Willi kept saying, they’d worked so hard for Palestine, it was the only place for Jews. But Dora had already made up her mind. She put through a long-distance call to her sister and brother-in-law in Oxford, while Willi kept repeating that he wouldn’t go and no one could make him. Dora put an arm around her son’s shoulders.

‘England now,’ she said quietly,‘doesn’t mean England forever. And given Palestine is British territory, you might well find England provides a quicker route than does Germany.’

Willi was still arguing when the call to England came through. He stood stiff and glaring while his mother explained the situation to her sister. It was no longer a matter of taking the whole family, she said, rather there was a scheme to get children out, children who would need to be sponsored and provided with a home once they arrived in Britain. Hannah relayed the information to her husband, and in less than a minute Hannah and Jonathon Moser of Oxford, England, had agreed to sponsor Willi and take him into their home for as long as required.

‘And Alice too?’ Dora said.

Renate was immediately out of her chair and protesting, but Dora, already engaged in a robust accounting of Alice’s qualities, ignored her. Such a mature child, she was saying to Hannah, and no trouble at all. Wise beyond her years, quiet, academically inclined, blessed with the Friedman flare for art, and would slip into Oxford life as if she had been born to it. Besides, she had nowhere else to go and no future if she stayed.

‘We simply can’t predict what will happen here,’ Dora said to her sister.‘But Hitler is adamant his Germany will have no Jews.’

A little more persuasion and she must have convinced, for suddenly she was detailing the
Kindertransport
sponsorship procedure: who the Mosers would need to contact at the London end, the documentation required, the importance of speed given the worsening situation in Germany. She wound up the phone call in a profusion of gratitude, replaced the receiver on the hook and turned to face the music.

‘How could you?’ Renate was holding tight to Alice.‘She’s my daughter.You had no right.’

And Willi:‘How could you? It’s my life.’

Dora rehearsed the impossible answers before speaking. She started with her son.‘Unless you leave Germany you’ll have no life.

It’s as simple as that. Of course you want Palestine, but Palestine is taking fewer and fewer of us. And while you’re waiting, you could well find yourself in Buchenwald like your father.’ She put her arm around him but he shrugged her off. ‘You’re going, Willi, and the sooner you accept it the better.’

Then she turned to Renate. She was brief. When you hear a wavering on the end of the phone, when you know that if given time your sister may decide a six year old is too much for two fifty year olds who know nothing about children, and your English brother-in-law may conclude he’s already encumbered with quite enough of things German, you press on, desperate not to lose the opportunity.