30
Sofie
Berlin,Germany
1938
Jürgen missed the birth of the baby. Whatever milestone he was working toward was more important even than the birth of our daughter, at least according to Otto, who wouldn’t grant him leave. I left the older children with Adele and went to the hospital alone.
I called him after she arrived. Exhausted but elated, I told him about her delicate features, her barely there eyebrows, her wispy hair. The frustration in his tone was palpable as he promised he’d be home to meet her in a few days.
But the very next morning, Hitler annexed Austria. From my hospital bed I read a newspaper that showed photos of wildly enthusiastic crowds on the streets of Vienna, welcoming Hitler and celebrating the annexation. I stared at those photos for hours, trying to figure out if I could trust the images. Whowould welcome Hitler to their nation? Surely this was some artifice invented by the Department of Propaganda.
Jürgen called the hospital to tell me his visit had been delayed again but he was sending a photographer to the hospital as a consolation prize.
“I’ll have to name her myself, won’t I?” I snapped.
“A good German name. AstrongGerman name,” he said cautiously. I huffed impatiently. It wasn’t as though I was about to name the child Mayim, although I might have entertained that thought under different circumstances.
I stared at the baby. She was sleeping in my arms, innocent and pure, but just like Georg and Laura, this baby would soon be the Reich’s hostage, ultimately powerless to choose her own destiny, or even to make her own mind up about the worth of other human beings.
“Sofie? Are you still there?”
Hostage.Geisel, in German.
“Gisela,” I blurted. Despite its linguistic roots, Gisela was a common name and I knew that no one would even question it. But I’d know. Every time I spoke her name, I’d be committing a quiet rebellion in my heart.
“I love it,” Jürgen agreed, sounding relieved.
Eventually, Gisela von Meyer Rhodes would start school, and whatever purity and goodness had existed in her nature would be washed away by hate. Maybe one day I could tell her that from the moment of her birth, I loathed that she was hostage to her country’s ideology. There was just nothing I could do about it, other than to leave a clue in her name to prove my regret.
Georg and Laura were now old enough to walk to school alone, and often after I saw them off, Gisela and I would go next door to visit Adele. Something was changing with Jürgen’s aunt. By the summer, she felt faint when she stood in the heat for too long. I feigned a sudden interest in horticulture so I could take over her courtyard garden.
“I’m worried about her,” Adele’s friend Martha admitted to me one day. Adele was inside making us tea, and Martha and I were picking tomatoes. “She says the new pills the doctor gave her are helping, but she seems frailer.”
“What more can we do for her?” I asked Martha. “How can we make her slow down and rest?”
“Adele isn’t the kind of woman who slows down with age. She’s the kind of fierce warrior who reaches a certain point and realizes she has nothing left to lose. You won’t slow her down, Sofie, and even if you did, you’d be taking something away from her, not buying her more time.”
“What does that mean?” I said, confused. Martha smiled quietly.
“This money trouble she’s having seems to be spiraling, doesn’t it? Poor old dear.”
Adele was constantly borrowing money now—almost every week she asked for some small amount, and from time to time, she asked for larger sums. Sometimes she’d call to ask over the phone, even though I never let a day pass when I didn’t check in on her.
“Why do you ring me to ask me for money?” I asked her one day. She was supervising me as I clumsily deadheaded her small collection of roses. Despite my best efforts, it seemed I was doing a terrible job, because Adele was visibly struggling to bite her tongue.
She came to my side, then whispered, “Even if there are no listening devices in my house, they’re almost certainly listening to your phone. I thought it would be prudent for prying ears to hear me spinning a sob story to you, so hopefully they will believe you had no idea I was supporting the Nussbaums if we ever find ourselves in hot water.”
“It wouldn’t be smart for Jürgen and me to give them money directly, but that’s only because of his job. You’re not breaking any laws. It’s not illegal to support a struggling Jewish family.”
“Not yet,” she whispered grimly. “And I don’t care if they come for me. I’m trying to do two things here, Sofie—I’m trying to help them, and to protect you.”
“After the history Jürgen and I have, I’m not sure a few phone calls are going to convince them I had no idea where that money was going.”
“People see what they want to see. And you two have done an admirable job of falling into line over these past few years and Jürgen is the star of the rocket program. Hopefully if the time ever comes when I fall under suspicion, you will have earned the benefit of the doubt.” She tilted her face toward the sun beneath that wide-brimmed hat and breathed in slowly.Then she looked at me. “Sofie, in these difficult years we’ve lived through together, you’ve become very dear to me. I hope you know that.”
My eyes prickled. I cleared my throat.