The Other Side of Love (22 page)

During the Czech crises the young assistant had been mobilized, and Kathe, needing to bridge the sea of time until she would again be with Wyatt, had pleaded for the job. Alfred had pronounced in his most stuffy tone that well-bred girls didn’t belong in the workplace. Porteous, however, had supported her. The child has a good mind, he had written in his odd yet legible scrawl. And hopefully an interest will cure her of the other. Alfred had given in, comforting himself with the truism that, as more German men put on uniforms, more women were helping out. Having his daughter at the shop proved an unexpected pleasure. Despite that fey dreaminess of hers, she did indeed have a good mind - an excellent mind. Soon she was balancing the books and learning the merchandise. He would hold his magnifying glass, squinting with Kingsmith short-sightedness as he taught her to decipher the symbols on old silver and china. Her lovely smile disarmed customers: Fraulein Kingsmitfi’s sales-book began to fill.

This particular afternoon, business was slow. The half-dozen elderly staff put on grey felt gloves, dusting or rubbing fingerprints from the silver while they exchanged baleful whispers about this week’s cause celebre. Ernst vom Rath, the Reich’s Third Secretary in the Paris embassy, had been shot in that city: it was an act of protest against the anti-Semitic persecution. Herschel Grynzpan, a seventeen-year-old German Jewish refugee, had fired the shot. Echoing the diatribes shouted over the radio, the members of staff agreed here was a prime example of Jew bestiality and cunning. Kathe was grateful when closing-time came.

After Alfred had locked the door behind his employees, he followed his custom of going through the shop for an eyeball inventory. Kathe was putting away a misplaced boubonniere when loud crashes rang on the Unter den Linden.

Father and daughter hurried to the already-barred shop-window. The street-lamps were on. Peering through the silhouetted trees on the broad shadowy boulevard, Kathe saw a green-uniformed Schupo

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_ a policeman - holding back a group of pedestrians while a trio of burly young men swung iron jacks at Gottlieb’s Haberdashery. Despite the stars centred with the wordjuden that had been scrawled on the now-shattered windows and the dwindling-away of trade, Herr Gottlieb had remained, one of the last non-Aryan shops in this elegant part of town.

“We must stop them!”

Kathe said.

“No!”

Alfred warned sharply.

“Remember what happened to Herr Weber.”

A year earlier, Herr Weber, their landlord, had attempted to stop the hooligans from defacing Gottlieb’s shop and for his pains had been sentenced to three months on charges connected to the Nuremberg racial laws.

As if to prove Alfred’s point, a tall man began waving his arms in obvious remonstrance. One of the vandals shoved him in the gutter. The policeman did nothing. The three ruffians jumped into the shop. There was a long-drawn-out cry, then shirts began flying out. As the crowd scrabbled for the loot, a truck swerved out of Friedrichstrasse, screeching to a halt outside Kingsmith’s. Kathe watched the half-dozen young men, all in civilian clothes but wearing military boots, jump out and charge across the broad boulevard to join the plundering.

With a shaking hand, Alfred lifted his pincenez to rub at the bridge of his nose.

“The paper said there might be a spontaneous uprising because of that poor devil Grynzpan.”

“Spontaneous my foot! Come on, Father, we must help Herr Gottlieb; he’s still”

She stopped with a gasp.

Alfred, wht had never used physical force on her, was gripping her arm.

“You’ll not be anywhere near thJ| bunch of bullies! A pretty thing like you who knows what migHr happen?”

He yanked her towards the rear of the shop.

“We’re going home.”

The sky had a reddish glow. By this illumination, Kathe glimpsed a quick furtive movement along the rear of the courtyard.

“Who is it?”

she called.

There was no answer. Shaking off Alfred’s restraining hand, she moved forward.

A child of maybe twelve edged into the darkest corner. She was hatless and coatless.

“It’s all right; we’re your friends,”

Kathe said gently, and when the child continued to shrink backwards as if to melt into the bricks Kathe asked:

“Where do you live? We’ll drive you home.”

The child gasped several times, then said:

“They threw him out the window.”

“Who?”

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‘Vati - my father. We were having supper in the kitchen.”

The words raced.

“They broke down the front door and began smashing everything. Vati went into the sitting-room and begged them to stop. The big one knocked him down. The others laughed and grabbed his hands and feet, swinging him and shouting

“Heave ho”.”

The child broke into a sob.

“They threw him out the window. They were coming for Mother and me, but she pushed me out the back door.”

“You’ll have to spend the night with us, then.”

With an effort Kathe kept her voice calm. She glanced at her father, prepared to do battle.

“You’ll be safe, child,”

Alfred said in his heavily accented German.

“Here, take my coat.”

IV

Several times on the way to the Grunewald, they saw civilians and

blackshirts standing around a burning house. Looters dashed in and

out of stores where the plate glass was shattered. In Charlottenburg,

| three SS forced a line of shivering men into a police wagon. In

1 Bismarckstrasse, two neatly dressed old women were scurrying away

j from a small boarding-house whose windows were systematically

I being smashed. Kathe halted for the pair.

As they neared their home, Alfred said in English:

“Kate, how can we take them inside? The servants.”

Kathe’s hands gripped the steering-wheel.

“What about Gunther’s place?”

Since his departure, the chauffeur’s two tiny rooms had stood empty.

“I should have thought of that myself. Yes, the garage’s a good bit from the house, and the windows face the lake.”

Kathe let him off at the porte-cochere as usual, curving down the slope to the garage. The chauffeur’s quarters had none of the carved excesses of the house, and in the barren cubicle with the yellowed corner washbowl the dust-covered cast-off table and chairs seemed like the baroque relics of a giant. Pulling the blinds and drawing the faded curtains, Kathe summoned the trio from the car. Apologizing for the dirt, she said: Til be back.”

At ten-thirty, when the house was silent, she tiptoed down to the immaculate pantry. She gathered three-quarters of a loaf of bread, some jam, a jug of milk. As she picked up the tray, the door to the diningroom swung open. Clothilde, grey plait hanging over her tartan wool bathrobe, folded her arms. Kathe lifted her chin defiantly, but dishes slid across the tilting tray in her hands.

“Take care,”

Clothilde warned.

“Is that all you’re taking them?”

“Father told you?”

“Naturally.”

“Cook might miss anything more.”

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‘Cook!”

Clothilda’s tone dismissed any such kowtowing.

“Make some tea, bring the rum and kompott with pldtzchen. Oh, and use the good cups. I’ll go down to our guests.”

When Kathe arrived with her burden, her mother was sitting in one of the battered chairs talking to the old ladies about Baden-Baden. Kathe served the stewed fruit and passed the biscuits; Clothilde poured the tea, carefully measuring a stream of rum from the tiny long-necked crystal pitcher - the same ritual that prevailed when Clothilde summoned her daughter to the Damenzimmer to help entertain some titled woman visitor. The little girl forgot her grief and fear at being included in this adult rite: the neat, elderly sisters - the Frauleins Brandsteiner - sipping and nibbling, regained their dignity.

“My daughter will bring you covers and take you home in the morning,”

Clothilde said.

“We are most grateful,”

retorted the stouter Fraulein Brandsteiner, pausing delicately.

“However, our place might not be possible.”

Kathe darted an assessing glance at her mother, then said rapidly:

“I have a friend. Let me find out if we can find a temporary place for you.”

For once she risked calling Herr Schultze from the house.

Before dawn, Kathe drove the trio to a safe house, a white cottage in the suburb of Siemensstadt, where Schultze was waiting.

Returning home, she found Clothilde bundled in heavy clothes her ironbound schedule included a brisk three-mile walk before breakfast. Imbued with the camaraderie of the previous night, Kathe suggested she come along. Mother and dfcighter swung along, arms bent at the elbows, matching their rapid w-ides on the mulchy paths. The odour of the previous night’s fires had penetrated even this refuge of quiet woods. When they reached the Jagdschloss, the sixteenth-century stone royal shooting lodge, they turned back.

Kathe tugged her woollen muffler tighter.

“Mother,”

she said,

“have you given any more thought to the engagement?”

“That again? Kathe, nothing’s changed since last week. You’re barely nineteen. Wyatt’s still at university.”

“What about next year, then, when he’s finished law school?”

“The way you keep on like this just proves that you’re still a little girl,”

Clothilde said, smiling fondly.

Til be twenty then.”

A straightbacked old man strode by them. Slowing, Clothilde said:

“Kathe, about last night. Your behaviour made me proud. These Nazis are such evil peasants.”

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V

When Aubrey arrived on 20 November for a

“holiday’, Kathe drove him around the destroyed buildings, her voice low as she told of the pillage. According to the Volkische Beobachter the

“spontaneous uprisings”

across the Reich, born of a righteous anger against the murder of vom Rath, had destroyed two hundred synagogues, seventy-five hundred Jewish shops and thousands upon thousands of homes. Because of the rivers of broken glass, people were calling the night Kristallnacht.

“Crystal Night?”

Aubrey asked.

“Such a lovely name.”

“Yes, for the return of the Dark Ages.”

“I’ve heard the gaols are crammed with Jewish people.”

Kathe nodded but didn’t tell him of the two women in danger of arrest whom she had driven to Schultze’s safe house. Instead, she described her mother, wearing her ancient tartan dressinggown, entertaining the sisters Brandsteiner and the little girl as if at a reception.

Aubrey chuckled.

“Good for Aunt Clothilde.”

“She was marvellous! I was tiptoeing around the house, but not Mother. Never Mother. She’s always so sure of herself. What I wouldn’t give for that inner compass!”

“You have something far more rare. A pure soul.”

Kathe flushed, dismissing Aubrey’s remarks as a flowery holdover from his writing days.

“I’m so ashamed for Germany. Aubrey, will you tell Mr Churchill that until Wyatt and I are married he has another pair of eyes?”

“I should send up cheers, but I wish you wouldn’t.”

“It’s little enough,”

she said.

Aubrey stared at a burned wall, all that remained of a Jewish bakery.

“If Thursday’s all right with you, then,”

he said, Til arrange for dinner at Pupi’s and opera tickets. Somebody I’d like you to meet will be arriving in Berlin.”

Aubrey’s friend was Major Downes, one-armed, with a neat greying moustache. Kathe liked him immediately because his Canadian accent sounded American and therefore reminded her of Wyatt.

“Aubrey tells me good news,”

the major said.

Kathe glanced around. The stout waiter with his long apron was nowhere in sight, and the surrounding tables were involved in Tower of Babel arguments Pupi’s was a popular meeting-place for foreign journalists.

“It’s nothing,”

she murmured.

“We already send each other letters.”

“What do you write about?”

“Oh, books, the shop, music. Nothing exciting. I don’t go anywhere much. I’m … well

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‘Kathe’s engaged to our American cousin,”

Aubrey said.

The opera was Der Freischutz. Behind them sat a plump blonde and a young Luftwaffe lieutenant. Before the curtain went up, the lieutenant boasted to his companion about recent manoeuvres. From her voluble questions and his answering descriptions, it was obvious that the exercise had taken place near the new unfortified Czech border.

Major Downes turned to Kathe.

“How I envy you living in Berlin,”

he said.

“So much going on, such a centre, so much to hear about. I hope we have another chance to talk about it.”

Til be meeting my fiance in England next summer,”

she replied.

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1939

Mr and Mrs Humphrey Kingsmith request the pleasure of your company

at a buffet supper to celebrate the graduation from Columbia Law School of their son

Wyatt Kingsmith on Saturday the twenty-third of June

at half after seveA Thirty-Five East Seventy-SM)nd Street