Chapter 39
Audrey
BERLIN, GERMANY | MAY 1945
Audrey’s stomach began to flutter as her train neared Berlin, and she feared she might be sick when it pulled into the station. But as she disembarked and made her way through the crowd toward the busy street, she noted the absence of the Nazi insignia, the scores of imposing flags that used to drape throughout the city. It felt like the morning after a storm, when light filters through the grim, grey dawn. But the city had been badly bombed in the Battle of Berlin just weeks ago.
At the field hospital in the Netherlands, Audrey had been glued to the newspapers covering the Allied Soviet invasion of the city, at once elated by the liberation and terrified for Ilse. Her last letter had come in February and she’d still been safe then. Audrey had wanted to write from the hospital, to make sure she was still all right, but her nurse said there was no point. No post would reach Berlin. Not when Germany was falling back, the end of the war finally in sight.
Now, though, Audrey saw just how extensive the Soviet assaults had been, and her anxiety about Ilse’s welfare crested. There were piles of rubble everywhere from countless destroyed buildings. Others were missing their windows and blackened with soot. The streets were filthy, the dust only just beginning to settle. Her feet carried her, with a slight limp, over the old Moltkebrucke bridge, which was still standing, then through the streets that were at once familiar and unrecognizable. She took them in with a reserved, painful nostalgia.
When she rounded the end of the Kaplans’ street, she gasped at the line of row houses. Several doors down, two houses had been nearly destroyed, their roofs all but gone. A few wooden beams and patches of shingles remained, hanging at strange angles. The windows were no longer there; Audrey could see inside the front rooms where most of the walls had been entirely blown away.
She ran now as best she could toward the Kaplans’ and let out a cry of relief to see the front door and windows intact. There was even a light on in the sitting room. She summited the steps, paused for a deep breath, then knocked.
A long moment passed before the door opened. Audrey’s throat tightened at the sight of an unfamiliar woman standing in front of her.
What had happened to Ilse? Her thoughts swirled, each more horrific than the last. She saw the Gestapo shouting, dragging Ilse out into the snow as she screamed her protest. Daniel crying in her arms. An officer threatening them with a gun to the head, shoving them into the back of a van headed for the same place all the Jews had gone. This woman and her Nazi husband moving their furniture in the next day.
“Hello,” the woman said. She was a bit older than Audrey, with light brown hair. “Can I help you?”
Audrey didn’t know what to say. Did she dare ask for Ilse?
“Ma’am, are you quite all right?” The woman was concerned now. Perhaps she thought Audrey a madwoman. A vagrant or a beggar. She was sure she must look the part.
“Er—” Audrey stuttered, swallowing her fear. “Perhaps I have the wrong house.”
There was the sound of small feet running and a boy appeared at the woman’s elbow. Audrey took in his clipped dark hair and pleated trousers, the eyes she’d known she would remember for the rest of her life.
“Daniel?” she breathed.
“Yes?” he said.
“Is Ilse here?” Audrey asked the woman now, heart pounding in desperation. “Friedrich?”
“Oh!” she replied. “Are you a friend?”
Audrey nodded warily. “Yes. My name is Audrey. Audrey James.”
Recognition flooded the woman’s face. “Hello, Audrey. I am Gisela Müller, Friedrich’s sister. He said you would come. I prayed you would. And soon.”
The fog lifted. Gisela. The sister who had dragged Friedrich out of the forest when he was a child… But her being here—what did that mean?
Before she could ask, Gisela ushered her in.
Daniel shut the door behind Audrey, and they stared at one another. She recalled the distinct memory of feeling his body lifeless against hers. He was a miracle.
“You’re so big now,” she said, then to Gisela, “I knew Daniel when he was just a baby. I used to live here.”
“I know,” Gisela said. “You’d better sit down. I’ll make some tea. I believe we have a great deal to discuss, Fräulein James.”
“I’d like to see Ilse first. Where is she?” Audrey asked, heading toward the stairs.
“She’s sleeping right now.”
“I’m sure she won’t mind me waking her, I—”
“I don’t think Ilse ought to be disturbed at the moment.”
“Where is Friedrich, then?” Audrey asked, struggling to keep the frustration from her voice.
But Gisela ignored her, turning to Daniel. “Go play quietly in your room please, Daniel. I must speak to this lady.”
Daniel obliged. When he was gone, Gisela led Audrey into the sitting room.
“What’s going on?” Audrey pressed, heat rising in her face. “Where is Friedrich?”
“He was arrested two weeks ago,” Gisela said. “After Germany surrendered, the Allies came for the officials. I assume he is in prison. I do not know where.”
Audrey lowered herself to the couch. She shouldn’t be surprised. Technically, Friedrich was SS. Of course he’d be arrested, but she’d hoped… She looked at Gisela. “I’m sorry. Did he tell you… Do you know what he was doing before the war? What he was really doing?”
Gisela nodded. Audrey saw the light from the window reflecting on the tears in her eyes, like a glimmer on glass. “I do. I am proud of him.”
“You are?”
“Yes. And he told me about you. You resisted with him. He said you went to prison for it, but you never gave him away.”
