His Majesty's Hope(5)
Elise accepted the cigarette and took a long inhale. “Charité? Berlin? All of Germany?” she asked, blowing out rings of pale blue smoke.
“Everything. All of it.”
They leaned over the railing. The city of Berlin spread out before them: the river Spree glittering in the harsh sunlight, long red Nazi banners snapping in the breeze, the black, burned-out dome of the Reichstag.
The parade was still marching down Unter den Linden, the sounds of cheering and music and hobnailed black boots goose-stepping on the pavement muted now by height and distance. Directly below them in the hospital’s circular driveway, a bus idled. It was dark gray, with white-painted windows.
“Especially since Dr. Brandt and his cronies arrived here.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” Frieda’s slim fingers shook as she took another drag on her cigarette.
“What do you mean?”
“Have you noticed how patient charts now have the attending physician mark a red X or a blue minus sign on them?”
“Yes,” Elise replied. “I had a third red X on a patient’s chart today. I asked Dr. Brandt about it—he said it had something to do with paperwork.”
“Paperwork, right.” Frieda picked a stray fleck of tobacco from her tongue. From below, the noxious bus fumes drifted upward in the heat. The two young nurses watched as a cluster of children was herded inside a bus by orderlies in white coats.
“Maybe it has to do with the compulsory sterilization,” Elise suggested. Under the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring, all Reich doctors were required to report the retarded, mentally ill, epileptic, blind, deaf, physically deformed, and homosexual—and make sure they were unable to procreate. As a Catholic, Elise was adamantly opposed.
“Something like that.”
“How’s Ernst?” Elise asked, deliberately changing the subject.
Frieda’s face, pale as milk, flushed red in anger. “He’s all right—at least as all right as a surgeon who’s not allowed to operate anymore can be.” Ernst Klein, Frieda’s husband, was Jewish, and now prohibited from practicing medicine.
“I’m sorry. I can only imagine how hard it’s been.”
Frieda pressed her lips together. “The Codex Judaicum is a nightmare. They’re taking away our pets, now—can you believe? Pets! No Jew is allowed to own a dog, cat, or bird. And they’re not just given to some nice gentile family—no, they might be ‘racially contaminated’ somehow—God forbid! So, they’re all killed instead.” Frieda kicked some of the gravel with her foot. “Four SA officers came to take Widow Kaufman’s cat last night. Can you imagine—four men for one cat? Widow Kaufman was crying, but little Bärli didn’t go without a fight. We didn’t dare open our door, of course. But from the noise, I think she managed a few good scratches.”
“And Marthe?” Elise asked. Marthe was Frieda and Ernst’s small white dove, named after Marguerite’s guardian in Charles Gounod’s Faust.
“She’s safe—for now.”
“Would you like me to take Marthe in? I’d take good care of her until she can return to you.”
“Of course, you can still have a pet. You can do whatever you want.” Frieda brushed some loose, pale hair out of her eyes and wiped away hot tears. Then her face softened. “Of course, it’s not your fault, Elise.” She added, “Have you heard anything?”
Berlin’s Jews were slowly but surely being called to ghettos and work camps. Letters told them where to report, what to bring with them, and which train to take.
“I’ll ask my mother,” Elise said. “I know she can help.”
Elise’s mother actually had refused to look into it. But Elise, normally cowed by her domineering mother, was determined to bring it up again, and not take no for an answer this time.
“Thank you,” Frieda said with palpable relief.
The two young women smoked in silence, passing the cigarette back and forth, as a long-necked heron flew by in the distance.
Elise ventured, “Do you ever—”
The words hung in the air for long seconds.
“Think about divorcing him?” Frieda finished. “Nein. Never. We love each other. I just wish we’d left Germany when we still had the chance. To think I was afraid to move to Hong Kong.” She gave a bitter laugh.
“Sorry.” Elise crushed the cigarette out under her heel. “I shouldn’t have even asked.” In the glint of the morning sunlight, Elise caught a glimpse of a young girl with blond hair in the line to board the bus below, holding a tattered brown teddy bear.