‘Did anyone say when or where you’re going?’
‘We know it is tomorrow. They were precise about that. As to the place, Litzmannstadt is all we were told. It might be a city in Poland; no one was sure.’
Paul’s voice was so drained, his shoulders so slumped, Liese wanted to fling her arms round him. As she moved to do it, Margarethe began to cry. Not in the showy, accusatory way Liese was used to, but lifelessly, with fat silent tears that poured like raindrops down an empty building. Paul pulled her up, covered her hair in kisses and led her back to the bedroom. Liese followed, although neither of them had asked her to.
‘Don’t, my darling, please.’
Paul settled Margarethe on the bed and wrapped his arms round her.
‘Perhaps this move will be a happier one. No more slaving. A proper apartment. And we will be together; we got our letters at the same time, so we can be sure of that. What can possibly be so bad if we two are together? What more do we need?’
Margarethe burrowed into him. Paul held her so tight there wasn’t a space between their slumped bodies. Neither heard the knock that pulled Liese, blinking, away.
‘The notices have gone out to all Jews still working in the clothing factories in Mitte. The news only just got through to us.’
Michael hugged her briefly and reached down for Lottie, who had wrapped his legs in a vice-like grip.
‘Here you go, Trouble.’
He produced a square of chocolate from his pocket that danced Lottie, squealing with delight, back to Dolly and the bed. Liese stayed where she was, in the shelter of his arm. He smelled of clean rain and fresh paint; she could have breathed him in for hours.
‘Where are they?’
Liese nodded to the bedroom door. Paul had closed it as soon as she left. She wondered how quickly they had forgotten her. She was glad when Michael squeezed her hand and pulled her wandering thoughts back.
‘I can’t do anything to stop this, Liese. I’m sorry. Once the names go on a list, trying to make anyone disappear is too dangerous.’
Liese sat back down. The scant drops of soup her parents had been too tired to scavenge had congealed and grown sharp-smelling. Her stomach heaved.
‘You’ve done your best; I’m grateful for it. But you know as well as I do that they could never have disappeared, list or no list. All the moving, the changing names, the attention to detail a life below the radar needs: they don’t have the patience, or the capacity. They are helpless; they always have been. Without me, God knows what would have happened to them by now; not that they care what I’ve sacrificed for them. Not that they care about anything beyond themselves.’ She tried not to sound bitter but her father’s dismissal – what can possibly be so bad if we two are together? what more do we need? – stung.
‘And now they no longer need you. You can go into hiding and be safe.’
Liese stared at Lottie, who had fallen into a chocolate-smeared sleep. She wanted to believe him, but what had really changed?
‘I don’t know if that’s true, Michael, no matter how much you want it to be. How can I hide with her? It’s different for you. You can run around Berlin like a shadow. If I was on my own, I’d come with you gladly, but I’m not. You can’t take a child into that level of danger. Or, at least, I can’t.’
He grabbed her hand so tightly, she couldn’t twist away.
‘Can’t doesn’t work anymore; I shouldn’t have let it before. Listen to me. Paul and Margarethe have no choice: they have to do what the letters tell them and go. When they do, the Gestapo will send their squads round. They will empty the apartment and reallocate it. If you’re here when the soldiers arrive, they will take you and they will take Lottie. You won’t be able to bargain with them. They will have no interest in anything beyond the fact that you are Jewish and taking up a living space they now count as theirs. And if you aren’t here, they’ll keep looking. You registered; they know you exist.’
Liese’s head swam at the thought of uniformed or leather-coated thugs anywhere near her daughter. But to run? To slip under the surface and join the ‘submarine people’, as Michael called them, and live like a fugitive? To expose Lottie to God knows what kind of an existence that would entail? It was as unimaginable as jumping into a bottomless pit. There was only one alternative she could think of, although it wasn’t one she wanted to choose.
‘Maybe I should do what they want and go with my parents? Would it be so bad, Michael, really? To start somewhere else? Surely resettlement anywhere would be better, easier to bear, than trying to manage hand-to-mouth like this?’
His face looked twice as old as his years.
‘You say resettlement like they’re offering you a villa in the country. You know that’s not the case. What’s happening tomorrow is a deportation; use that word and it sounds far less friendly. The one leaving tomorrow is the third from Berlin in a month. No one has heard from anyone who was sent out on the previous two. The destination they give is always the same, Litzmannstadt, but no one knows exactly where, or what, that is. Except that it’s in Poland, where all our reports say the Jews have been corralled into ghettoes, where—’
He stopped.
Liese glanced at the closed bedroom door and knew she didn’t want him to continue, and couldn’t let him stop.
‘Tell me. If you want me to hide out in Berlin and put my daughter in the kind of danger an illegal life would involve, you have to tell me it all. I have to make the best choice.’
When he began again, he spoke too quickly for Liese to interrupt.
‘There are rumours coming out of the East about massacres. Of trains that leave Germany packed full and arrive empty, and no one knows where the passengers are, except other rumours report thousands of Jews shot and their bodies burned or buried in pits. We’re hearing about ghettoes in Poland, in Warsaw and Krakow, which are thick with starvation and disease. Where people are walled off with no medical care, even for the children and the old. Of so-called labour camps where the inmates are worked to death. The Nazis are sending us where no one can follow, or see what they do. They are killing us, Liese. What we suspected was always their plan is happening.’
There wasn’t a sound from the adjoining room, or from the bed where Lottie lay spreadeagled like a starfish. There wasn’t a sound from the streets outside. The world was as silent as if it had stopped turning.
‘You can’t save them, Liese. You can save her.’
It hadn’t stopped turning, it was unravelling and Liese couldn’t see which thread to follow. If she stayed and the Gestapo came, there would be no second chance. If she ran, chance would be all she had. Whatever she did, her parents were lost. Whatever she did, there was no guarantee she could keep Lottie safe, which was surely her only job. But she could try. And her parents had each other, which, as her father had made clear, was all they had ever wanted.
Lottie stirred in her sleep and pulled her doll closer. She was so small, she looked like she could fold into Liese’s pocket. Liese moved to the bed and wrapped her arms round her daughter. Lottie curled round her in return like a vine. Their completeness took Liese’s breath away.
‘Not tonight.’
She shook her head as Michael started to argue.
‘They’re going into heaven only knows what tomorrow and they’re still my parents. I need to be here in the morning – to say my goodbyes. Whatever we’ve been to each other, whether they need me to do it or not, the family we once called ourselves deserves that much.’