Frieda knocked on the door to the servants’ entrance to the Hess house in Grunewald, a leafy, wealthy suburb of Berlin. Joseph Goebbels’s family lived in a large house nearby.
Unlike her Jewish husband, Frieda was allowed to be out after curfew. Even so, and even with her Aryan features and identity card, it terrified her to be in such close proximity to high-ranking Nazi families.
Elise, who’d been waiting for her friend, opened the door within moments. “Good to see you,” she said, giving her friend a hug the best she could, considering the other woman was carrying a covered birdcage and a brown paper bag filed with seed.
“And you, too,” Frieda said, wiping her feet on a coconut mat and then walking into the kitchen, which smelled of baking bread. “And here is the lovely Marthe.” She set the cage down on the long wooden table and pulled back the protective covering. Marthe, a white-feathered dove, stared back at the two young women with shiny black eyes and cocked her head.
Elise bent down to the cage to address the bird. “Hello, little Marthe. I hope you’ll be happy here. That is, until you can get back to your real home.”
Frieda snorted. “As if that’s going to happen anytime soon.”
“Come, sit down,” Elise urged, pulling out a chair for her friend. “I’ll get us something to eat.”
Frieda sat as Elise made ham sandwiches with dark, grainy mustard and poured two glasses of milk.
Although many foods in Germany were rationed, for the well-placed Hess family nothing was in short supply. Along the shelves, Frieda could see the tribute from the conquered: long, slim bottles of apricot schnapps from Austria, stout bottles of horseradish vodka from Poland, boxes of chocolates from Belgium, and magnums of champagne from France.
As Elise sat down, Frieda took a huge bite, cramming as much as she could of the sandwich into her mouth. With a pang, Elise realized how hungry her friend must be. “I’ll give you some to take home, for you and Ernst.”
“Thank you,” Frieda said through her mouthful, reaching for the milk.
“Marthe and I are going to have a lovely time, aren’t we?” Elise said to the bird, who looked at her quizzically, and then began pecking an errant seed on the bottom of the cage. She turned back to her friend. “And Ernst, how is he?”
“Not well,” Frieda managed between mouthfuls. “Since he’s married to a blond shiksa, he’s safe, for now, but they’re making him …” She swallowed. “He has to deliver letters to Jews, telling them to report for deportation to the camps. It’s the letter everyone dreads. After a day of delivering, all he can do is sleep. It’s all he does anymore—sleep. Sleeping is preferable to this new reality, I think.”
“I can imagine.” Elise pictured Ernst, once a pediatric surgeon, so full of vitality and energy. She wondered how he looked now, not a surgeon anymore, banned from the hospital.
“But enough about me.” Frieda took another sip of milk. “How are you? How’s your piano playing?”
“Fair,” Elise said. “I’d rather be studying for the boards, even if we can’t take them until the war’s over. But Mother has this party coming up and wants me to accompany her, so …” Whatever her mother wanted, Elise usually did. Although not without a fair amount of resentment.
Frieda gave a grim smile. She knew exactly who Elise’s mother was in the Reich, and her reputation at the Abwehr. She was terrified of her. But keeping her husband alive and in Berlin was her biggest and most overwhelming challenge now. “And … how is she?” Frieda managed, trying to sound normal.
Elise did her best to distance herself from her mother’s Nazi affiliations, saying that medicine and science had no politics, and thus she had no politics—certainly not her mother’s.… But she and Frieda both knew the truth. They did their best, for the sake of their friendship, to avoid talking about it.
“I haven’t seen her yet today, Frieda. But I promise you—I’ll speak to her about Ernst tonight.”
“I know the Abwehr’s not in charge of deportations, but I saw a picture of her in the newspaper, at a concert with Himmler.… She must have some sort of influence?”
“I promise you, Frieda, I will do everything in my power to help you and Ernst.” Elise made the sign of a cross over her chest. “Hand aufs Herz,” she vowed. Her stomach lurched as she said the words, for she remembered how her mother had screamed and shouted the last time she’d brought up protection for Ernst.
Frieda also made the sign. “Cross my heart.”