Audrey gestures to the armchair across from her. “Come and sit.”
“Ian said you were in the war,” Kate says, sitting down. “Is that where your nightmares come from? Things you saw?” She wonders for a moment if she’s being too bold, too intrusive. But Audrey nods.
“Yes.”
“And the mark on the piano was left by a Nazi?”
“It was. In Berlin.”
Audrey’s hand grips the arm of her chair, the misshapen knuckles protruding. A log pops in the fireplace.
“I’d love to hear it,” Kate says, “if you’re willing.”
“I haven’t been willing. Not really. But now…” She trails off, staring into the depths of the fire as though trying to retrieve something long lost to the ashes of time.
Nearly a full minute passes, and Kate starts to wonder whether she’s going to say anything more at all. Finally, Audrey shakes her head.
“Truth be told, I’m unsure where to start. Or what good it will do, really.”
Kate considers her response. “I felt a lot better after I talked to you last night,” she says. “What you said about being the survivor. What that does to you.” She clears her throat to dislodge the stuck memories. “If you’ve never really talked about it, how do you know it won’t do any good?”
Audrey pierces her with a look that’s both vulnerable and resentful. “No one other than you has ever asked me to talk about it.”
Kate frowns. “What about Ian’s grandfather? Or Ian?”
“Ian told you about that?”
“Yes.”
“I think…” Audrey turns to the fire again. “When everyone came back from the war—when the survivors came back, I mean—no one wanted to talk about it. And no one wanted to ask. There was this gaping chasm between the people who had seen the war and those who hadn’t. The horrors aren’t articulable, Kate. They’ve made films and things, of course, depicting it. But being there is—was—something very different. Ian’s grandfather didn’t want to talk about it, and neither did I. We made a go of it, tried to find comfort in one another’s company. But it was a very”—she casts around for the words—“isolating experience. It was enough to drive a person mad. And it did for many. I think my auntie thought me mad at times. And I couldn’t tell her any of it. I wanted to move on, have a fresh start here.”
Kate picks at a ragged cuticle. “Like me.”
Audrey nods. “I assure you I’m as surprised as you will be to hear this, but I hadn’t really recognized myself in anyone until now. Until you.”
She glances over at the library, the piano, and a sad smile pulls at her lips. “It all started with Ilse,” she says. “She was everything to me. Absolutely everything.”
Chapter 9
Audrey
BERLIN, GERMANY | DECEMBER 1938
Audrey was elbow-deep in suds from the washing-up when Vogt entered the kitchen. She glanced over her shoulder, swallowed, then turned back to the dishes. She hated having her back to him, or being alone with him. She always felt like cornered prey.
“Guten Abend, Audrey.”
He opened the icebox and helped himself to some of the leftover chicken that Audrey was hoping to give Ilse for breakfast tomorrow. She cursed him inwardly.
“Guten Abend, Herr Vogt. I could have brought that out to you.”
He ripped a piece of the chicken with his teeth. “I am aware,” he said, licking the grease on his lips.
It was the men’s weekly poker night. She had learned in the first few days that Müller and Vogt would be hosting these gatherings every Friday. When Vogt informed her that she would be expected to cook beforehand and clean up after, she had been ironing his shirts. She smiled graciously but her gut swirled with apprehension that there would now be several more Nazis hanging about the house.
“But I’m sure you’re up to the task, Audrey,” Vogt had said, taking in her appearance from her feet all the way up to her chest. “You look like the sort of woman who knows how to take care of men.”
Audrey hated herself for blushing. She had never been spoken to like that by a man. She felt naked in front of him. She tried to believe that his hand had only accidentally grazed her bottom when he’d left, but, a month later, she knew better. Even now, he passed by her unnecessarily close on his way out.
Once he’d left, her shoulders relaxed, and she set the last of the dishes in the wooden drying rack beside the sink. There would be many more glasses to clean when the evening was over. All she wanted was to take a bath and crawl into bed. But she had work to do. She began to prepare a small plate of biscuits to go with the men’s after-dinner cocktails.
She wished they could have kept Matya on to help with the food preparation, which was not in Audrey’s bailiwick. Her first couple of meals weren’t outstanding successes, but she did her best with the box of kosher recipes Matya had kept on the kitchen counter, added some pork every so often and hoped it was good enough. She and Ilse felt awful about letting her go. Matya was valued by the family and relied on her income to support both herself and her aging parents. Audrey wondered from time to time what would become of them. They weren’t targeted on the night of the pogrom, but she wouldn’t be surprised if they were trying to flee somehow.
Audrey felt that the key to survival was making herself useful, keeping the men as happy and well fed as possible, and ingratiating herself so that she could pick up on any information Müller and Vogt might have. It required all her skills as a performer, but she was up to the task. Now, plate in hand, she pasted a smile on her face and swept through the door to the dining room.
A cloud of cigarette and cigar smoke hung over the brightly lit room. The men were seated around the Kaplans’ lace-covered dinner table, Müller and Vogt at either end, heads at a table they had no business eating at. She couldn’t stand seeing them sit where Ira and Ruth should have been, and was grateful that Ilse would never witness it.
There were three other men in the poker club, to whom Audrey had been cursorily introduced at their first visit: Claus Von Holten, a stocky fellow in his midtwenties who was shaped rather like a gorilla. Based on snippets of conversation she’d overheard, she surmised he worked in weaponry of some kind. There was also Ludwig Thurman, upper-middle-aged, the oldest of the group by about a decade. He seemed to hate sitting still, and did so reluctantly for each hand of poker. Whenever there was a break in the game, he would stand and pace the room, an overflowing rocks glass and a cigar clutched in the same hand, the other stuffed deep into his trouser pocket. The other men often dressed in more civilian wear for the festivities, but Ludwig wore his uniform as though it were a second skin. Aldous Stoltz was the third guest, a weedy young man with small glasses who didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the group. He walked with a slight limp and used a cane on occasion. She’d never seen him in uniform, though she figured he must be a Party member.
“Ah, Fräulein James,” Müller greeted her now as she offered each man the biscuits in turn. “Thank you for these, but you needn’t fuss over us any longer. We can manage by ourselves for the rest of the evening, and if you bring round any more delights, we may burst. Good night.”
She bobbed a curtsey. “Yes, Herr Müller.”
Despite Müller’s gruffness when they first met, and his hesitancy to hire Audrey, he was reasonable enough to work for. He attempted to make conversation with her, inquiring about her family and experience. She’d embroidered her own history and developed a character to play, which helped her to separate her true self from the persona of a loyal German that she despised, but that was necessary to portray if she wanted Ilse to remain undetected.
In the kitchen, Audrey pressed her ear up against the door to listen in on the conversation. In the days after the pogrom, she’d learned that Jewish children had been banned from attending school, and that the Nazis had fined the Jewish community to pay for the damage done to the city during the riots. That had made international news. Sometimes their boisterous voices dropped to whispers, and Audrey often wondered why. Even now, there was silence beyond the door. Then she heard one of them—Claus, maybe—mutter.
