David Gillham - City of Women

Her body is tight. Her muscles clenching up. A ball of iron is forming in her belly. Sigrid opens her mouth, because there must be some words she can find to speak, but then she fails to find a single one. She can only attempt to blink away a sodden shock that has trapped her as if it were a net dropped from the ceiling.

Swiveling her gaze, slowly, she takes in three children, pale and hungry in the eyes. A little girl with a liquid gaze from under the sable ring of Sigrid’s hat. Twin boys in clothes far too large for them. They couldn’t be much past the age for kindergarten, huddling with blankets in the unheated attic room. A middle-aged Frau slowly rubbing her hands for warmth, her eyeglasses held together by a twist of wire. The Judenstern has been ripped out from her ragged coat by the stitching, but a shadow remains.

Tricked.

Sigrid feels suddenly tricked. Fooled into passing through a door and being confronted by this illegal world.

“Just as I warned you, Frau Schröder,” Ericha breathes. “Was I wrong?”

“SO! YOU HAVE gone mad, ” is all Sigrid says to the girl, as they reenter the street. A quick march down the sidewalk, following the sickly blue beam of her pocket torch. Trying to walk off her anger and fear. The cold in her belly and the heat under the skin. She allows Ericha to fall in step with her, but does not permit her to breach the barrier of silence she erects.

Sigrid carries her silence with an edge, in the same way she carries the fish knife. The sidewalk pavement glows blue from her pocket torch. “Frau Schröder, you must slow down,” Ericha complains. “You’ll fall off the curb in this darkness, and break your ankle.”

“Shut up,” Sigrid hisses back. “Just shut up . I’m unimpressed by your concern for my welfare, considering the vat of shit you’ve just dropped me into.”

“ I dropped you? Oh, no. I was only following orders, Frau Schröder. You were the one who insisted on knowing who I was hiding . If it’s a vat of shit, it’s one you climbed into on your own.”

Sigrid frowns with anger at the sidewalk. “Are they all Jews?”

“Mostly, but not always,” Ericha tells her. “Sometimes they’re politicals. Or homosexuals. Or religious. Or all three. It makes no difference. The idea is to stop them from falling into the hands of the Gestapo.”

“By sticking them up in the attic of a burned-out building?”

“Auntie’s is only one link in the chain. We keep them moving.”

“And the police are not bright enough to catch on?”

“Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the channels break down. Sometimes a mistake is made, or there’s just bad luck. Or sometimes there’s a betrayal.” She says this in an offhanded tone. “That’s why we don’t trade in names. Names are not safe. They come as strangers and they leave as strangers.”

“Strangers,” Sigrid repeats. “And how do you feed these strangers without ration coupons?”

“It’s difficult. Perhaps the most difficult thing. It helps now that I’m shopping for Frau Granzinger.”

“You mean you’re stealing from your employer’s food coupons?” Sigrid says. But if this is meant as an accusation, Ericha doesn’t appear to notice.

“A few less potatoes. A loaf or two of bread. Some sardines in a tin, maybe? It’s nothing. She gets plenty of coupons, believe me. The NSV is very generous with recipients of the Mother’s Cross. Her children do not go to sleep hungry.”

“So you mean to say that you’ve become an accomplished thief.”

“I mean to say that stealing is sometimes a moral imperative.”

“Ah, such large words. I wonder if the Gestapo will be intimidated by them.”

“If you’re trying to scare me, Frau Schröder, I can assure you that I’m already properly terrified.”

“ No , I don’t believe you are . This is a ‘crusade’ of some sort for you, little one. But have you really thought about the consequences?”

“I know all about consequences, Frau Schröder.”

“I doubt it. But I wasn’t just talking about you. What about the consequences to others? The old woman, for instance, whose flat we were in. You called her Auntie.”

“It’s what she is called.”

“What about her ?”

“What about her? She’s made her choice. Just as I have.”

Sigrid issues her a hard look, then turns away. “Lunacy,” she whispers.

“Yes,” Ericha agrees. “Absolute lunacy.”

“How long have you had them?”

“This group? Only a few days.”

“And you don’t know where they come from?”

“No, I’m not meant to know. That’s the way it works. None of us know more than we absolutely must.”

“And who are ‘none of us’?”

Ericha pauses, but then answers. “Others, Frau Schröder. Others with more courage than you or me. But I do my best. And when I have to, I lie. And when I have to, I steal.”

A light sprinkle begins to fall. Sigrid pulls out her scarf and ties it around her head. “That doesn’t make it right,” she says.

“Maybe,” Ericha replies. “But I think what’s right and what’s wrong is a much larger question now. Larger than a few rationing Marken.”

“And you keep them there, in that awful attic, without respite. Like prisoners?”

Ericha shrugs. What else is she supposed to do?

Sigrid shakes her head. “They have no sunlight.”

“During the day there is light that filters through the holes in the roof. Along with the cold, and sometimes the rain. At night they hang up blankets so they can light their candles.”

“And where do they go to the toilet ?”

“Twice a day, Auntie opens the door for them to use the WC, one at a time. It’s the most dangerous times for everyone. She has a brother, a Party man, who likes to drop by unannounced, and would not be amused to find a Jew in the WC. At night, if they must, they pee in a bucket. We’ve hung a blanket for privacy.”

Sigrid swallows a breath, shaking her head as she runs her hand over her forehead. But the silence between them is a sponge that soaks up the weak spattering of rain.

“So?” Ericha finally asks. “What are you going to do?”

“Do?”

“Is this the point where you ring up the police?”

“No,” Sigrid admits grudgingly. “If it gives you pleasure, you were right about me to that extent. I’m not going to ring up the police.”

“Then what?”

“Then what? Then nothing, Fräulein Kohl.”

“Oh, no. I’m sorry, Frau Schröder, but you don’t get off the hook that easily. You wanted to know all. I warned you, but you insisted. The moment you walked into that room, you committed yourself.”

“Oh? Is that how it works?” Sigrid asks caustically. But Ericha only nods.

“Yes. Morally. That is how it works.”

“I see. Your moral imperative.”

“You told me earlier tonight that you’re a good German,” says Ericha. “Now is your opportunity to prove it. That’s all.”

“I don’t require a lecture on moral principles from a nineteen-year-old.”

“No. No, you who are older and so much wiser, you actually imagine that you can simply close your eyes again and everything you’ve seen will vanish. Go back to your flat, Frau Schröder. Go back to your job, go back to your routine. Convince yourself that there is nothing you can do, as the police drag their victims from their beds.”

“There are criminals in this world, child, not just victims,” Sigrid says. “There are people who commit crimes and deserve arrest.”

Suddenly Ericha’s eyes cool. “Last spring, there were three girls from a Jewish school for the blind, none of them more than ten. A colleague was trying to move them into a safe house we had at the time in Friedrichshain, but something happened. Maybe they were spotted by someone who denounced them. Maybe they simply stood out too much. But when the Sipo grabbed them off the street, it made no difference how it happened. Only that it had. Three little girls never coming back. So tell me, please, Frau Schröder, what crime do you imagine they had committed?” she asks. “Other than the crime of Jewish blood?”