move around, take a walk, she said. Gerda came and, with Michal leaning on the girl’s arm, they walked toward the front door, then out into the courtyard.
83.
The sound quality was poor on the next part of the tape. One could hear the cries of children, a faint rumble that might have been passing trucks, but mostly one heard the wind rushing across the microphone.
Albrecht had been my hero, Michal began. My rock, my only true companion. The only person on earth with whom I could express my feelings and my fears. And of course we were bonded by the drama of my “pregnancies,” my supposed desperation to be what a good German woman should be: a mother.
The wind lashed at the microphone. What she said was not clear, until she said the word “sick.” Then:
Pneumonia. In those days it was not like now, where you take some pills, go to bed for a few days, recover. Albrecht’s lungs had never been strong to begin with; he had suffered from asthma as a child, and was always a little wheezy.
Again the wind overcame her words. What one heard next was:
… to the car. Fainted in the street. It was the fever, you see. He was running a high fever, although he told no one. I heard Marta cry out, and I looked out the window to see Albrecht sprawled out on the pavement. Next to him was his briefcase. And I remembered: He was carrying away my bloody underwear and rags! Marta ran out the door, and I had to race behind her, not only because I was afraid for Albrecht, but also to get that briefcase before Marta could put her hands on it.
She paused. The shouts of children rose in the background, the boink of a ball bouncing.
Finally she said, I had to go to the briefcase before I could go to my husband.
Another pause.
Which I did. And then I nursed him, as best I could. He was all to me; I was in terror of losing him. Gerda, bitte …
And the wind took away the rest of the sentence.
The patient stopped the tape.
Gerda helped Michal take a turn around the courtyard, said the patient. When Michal sat down again, I asked her what happened next.
He died, she said. Just like that she said it, very flat: He died.
Then she said nothing for a long while, just sat there, vaguely looking at the children, as if her thoughts were far away.
I asked her to go on.
And she said, On? What else is there to do but to go on?
She laughed.
Here is the part where I am caught.
84.
It was Albrecht’s funeral, said Michal as the tape resumed. There were very few of us at the graveside, just the immediate family, a few cousins, a friend or two of the Gerstners.
I felt lost, desperate, was sobbing, having only Albrecht’s mother, Swanhilde, for support, otherwise I really would have fallen into the grave with him.
Suddenly Swanhilde tightened her arms around me. I followed her gaze to the edge of the graveside circle. Two men—Gestapo. With them was a woman, her arm linked with one of the men, hanging on him like a gang moll. She wore a wide-brimmed hat, but you could see a swirl of gold hair peeking out. And her eyes: just visible below the brim of her hat. The eyes.
I knew at once who she was; we all knew who she was: Stella Goldschlag, “the blond poison,” notorious traitor. A Jew. She was a “catcher”: she hunted down other Jews for the Gestapo. They promised, if she cooperated, that her parents wouldn’t go to Auschwitz. Ha! Later her parents were taken anyway.
And staring at me: those terrible hunter’s eyes.
I nearly fell. I grabbed on more tightly to Albrecht’s startled mother. I watched as Stella pointed me out to one of the men. And he came toward me. Marching. I couldn’t believe it: Were they going to take me away directly from a burial? Were they that callous? Of course they were, I answered myself.
The Gestapo officer grabbed my arm and said, Come with me.
Then Frau Gerstner said, What are you doing?
It was not like her; she was usually so meek; but even she could not believe what was happening. And she said again, What are you doing?
The officer said that I was no longer privilegiert. With Albrecht dead, I was now just a Jew like any other. A Jew by blood. And Swanhilde, suddenly brave, answered him back