‘Where have they got to, poppet? It’s almost curfew time.’
Lottie looked up from the bed, where she was putting the rag doll Liese had sewn from scraps through a complicated set of jumps and twirls. She grinned.
‘Dinner time?’
Liese scooped her daughter up, trying not to dwell on how easy that task was: two years living on steadily depleting resources had left Lottie with no more substance to her than a pocket full of feathers.
‘Mama sad?’
Liese smiled her frown away and tickled Lottie back into laughter. Too much time cooped up, forbidden access to parks or play spaces, or pinned to Liese’s side for lack of anyone else to mind her, had made Lottie far more conscious of her mother’s moods than any child ought to be.
‘Not sad, monkey, hungry like you. Dinner time then. But you’ll have to come with me to the kitchen, and you’ll have to be good. No getting under people’s feet or pinching food that doesn’t belong to us. Do you promise?’
‘Promise.’
The little girl’s face was solemn, but Liese knew how fast the child’s fingers could flash if she thought no one was looking. She also knew she should tell Lottie that thieving was wrong, that everyone else in the building was just as hungry as they were. But it was her child she heard sobbing in the night when her empty stomach hurt, and her child whose tear-stained hollow cheeks she had to wipe clean every morning, so the guilt came but not the words.
The kitchen was only one turn of the corridor away, but it was a cumbersome operation to get there. Collecting up the food bag and the cooking pot and spoon; balancing that load with Lottie’s insistence on helping; making sure everything was locked tight behind her. Liese couldn’t leave anything in the communal space for fear of fingers as quick as Lottie’s, and she couldn’t leave their flat open. By some miracle, or some oversight, the Elfmanns had held on to their two rooms while the rest of the building was carved smaller and smaller. No one had said anything against the Elfmanns yet. That didn’t mean that no one – broken by the terrible conditions they were all forced to endure and desperate for some space and dignity for their own family – would.
Her parents’ overdue arrival meant Liese was later cooking than usual and the kitchen was empty. The fug of cabbage and turnips from the other residents’ meals clung to it like a farmyard. She set to work quickly, dicing carrots and onions and the sparse shreds of meat into water to make a thin soup. She had hoped the meal would last two days. Now the day’s harvest was in the pan, she doubted it would stretch between tonight’s four waiting bowls.
‘Hungry, Mama. Dolly too.’
Lottie’s eyes were wide, her attention focused on the bubbling pan.
Liese passed her a sliver of carrot with instructions to nibble it slowly and tried not to snap as the little girl swallowed it whole.
Their rations had shrunk to unworkable levels while the pettiness of the restrictions grew. Jews were no longer allowed fish or eggs or fruit, or anything baked beyond sawdust bread. Liese had worked round the rules for as long as she could, then the Party unleashed its newest weapon and defeated her. A yellow star to be worn where it could be seen at all times by all Jews older than six. Overnight, Liese became as visible as a blackout marking. The grocer’s wife, with a wary eye for the neighbours, no longer knew her. The black-market men tripled their prices. No one she sewed for had a mouthful to spare.
‘Stinky. Stop it.’
The pan had caught while she was fretting. Liese whipped it off the stove, ignoring the heat stinging through her hand.
‘Back we go, poppet. Help Mummy push the doors.’
The flat was still locked, Paul and Margarethe were late enough to make her throat clench. People disappeared now. New families bustled into the block’s suddenly vacated spaces; no one said anything about the old. There were rumours about trains leaving the city for unknown destinations, of whole areas emptied. Michael was permanently on edge. Liese had to stop listening when he began ranting, too preoccupied with the day-to-day business of survival to fret over matters outside her control.
When the door finally opened, she was ladling out the meal, scraping the blackened bits into her own bowl.
Another few minutes and we could have had their share.
She managed a greeting and wished she felt guiltier. Then she saw the tears mottling Margarethe’s cheeks and her appetite fell away.
‘Please God you haven’t lost your jobs. Is that why you’re so late back? Because you couldn’t face me?’
Her voice cracked over their cowering bodies. She could see their distress. She wanted to be kinder, but the thought of managing without even their meagre pay lodged a stone in her stomach. Paul opened his mouth, but whatever he was struggling to say wouldn’t leave it. Liese’s neck prickled.
‘Eat up the soup carefully, Lottie. Let it cool.’
The child ignored her and continued to work through her portion with her usual efficiency.
Keeping the door ajar, Liese waved her parents into the apartment’s one bedroom. It was cramped with three of them inside and noticeably colder than the main room, which held the only working fireplace. Liese could see her breath forming patterns in the air.
‘What is it? What’s happened?’
Paul held out an envelope. Liese realised Margarethe was holding its twin.
‘No. Not these. That can’t be.’
Every Jew knew what these letters meant: resettlement. A word everyone whispered and no one understood.
‘Why would you be singled out? Your jobs are important. Soldiers haven’t stopped needing uniforms.’
‘They don’t need ones made by Jews. They are letting us all go. They have brought in foreign workers, from Poland and Austria, as skilled at sewing as any of us.’
Paul finally sat down on the sagging double bed, settling Margarethe beside him. He unbuttoned her coat and eased off her too-tight gloves as gently as if she was a child.
Liese looked down – the intimacy between them had grown no easier to watch – and opened the letters. They were identical, neatly typed, politely worded. Both carried the heading she knew she would find, Notice of Resettlement, and tomorrow’s date. Liese didn’t know what her parents had been told about when they would leave; she couldn’t begin to imagine asking.
‘Go to the table. Eat.’
They didn’t need telling twice.
Liese waited until they were devouring the now cold soup before unfolding the rest of the envelopes’ contents. They were instructions, they covered two sheets and they were a model of clarity. The exact time the Elfmanns were due to present themselves at the Levetzowstraβe collection point was noted at the top of the first page. That was followed by the items they were allowed to take, listed alphabetically, as if anyone still had a detailed list of possessions left to them. Last of all was the number of bags permitted and how these were to be labelled, including the one for cash and jewellery which was to be surrendered on arrival. The second page was an inventory with space to itemise and value every item in the apartment, an amount that would be ‘set against the cost of your journey, with any discrepancies owing’. It was the Kristallnacht reparations system rolled out on an industrial scale.
Liese folded the papers back up, trying to stay calm as she returned to the main room. Lottie had gone back to her doll and wasn’t listening to the adults. She sat down at the table and realised she had immediately started picking at its splinters, something she was always telling Lottie not to do.