Page 43 of The Berlin Sisters
They both straightened as his father called out that everyone should make an orderly line; people she knew who were fervent supporters of Hitler’s regime stood merely feet from her. It sent an initial shiver of panic through her, before she remembered they couldn’t see her, her confidence returning at being able to stand before them, unseen.
‘I have,’ he murmured. ‘And I don’t believe they’ll ever be coming home.’
Hours later, and with barely a grain of food left in the store, Eliana watched as Ethan closed the door and locked it, turning the sign to ‘Closed’. His father and uncle were in the main storeroom,receiving a delivery and getting everything prepared for the next day, which meant that it was just the two of them again.
Which meant it was also time to find out if any messages had been passed to Ethan during the day.
Eliana stretched and then found her way to the smaller storeroom that was hidden behind the others, waving to Ethan’s father as she passed him and receiving a nod in reply. It was barely bigger than a broom closet, but hidden beneath a pile of old food sacks was a typewriter and reels of paper. Her job was to type up any information that needed to be shared with other members of the network that the Müller family were involved with, but most often she was simply to receive any messages and take them home with her for Karl. To begin with, from what she understood, they’d wanted to take over what the White Rose had begun – spreading information far and wide by leaflet drops, in an effort to tell everyone throughout Berlin the truth of what was happening. But the risk of being discovered had been too great, especially when the SS were so ruthless at unearthing those who weren’t loyal.
‘I thought you might like this,’ Ethan said, appearing in the doorway with two slices of bread covered in jam. Her stomach rumbled at the sight of it. ‘There is something to be typed tonight.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, carefully taking the food from him. The last thing she needed was to get sticky, jammy fingers on the paper, especially when it was the first day there’d been something for her to do. ‘I thought jam was almost impossible to get these days?’
‘It is,’ he replied, ‘unless you own a grocer’s and keep enough hidden to last for years.’
They both laughed, and Eliana was reminded again how easy she found it to be around him.
‘Apparently there are stocks of all sorts of luxury items for the high-ranked officers and their families,’ he said. ‘Coffee, jam, chocolate... everything you can think of.’
Eliana finished chewing her mouthful and looked up at him. ‘It’s true, what you’ve heard,’ she said. ‘I’ve been hidden somewhere, so life has been very bleak, but we had the best food we could wish for. The family helping me seemed to have access to everything they needed.’
‘And you trusted them?’ Ethan asked. ‘If they were eating like kings, I can only guess what their involvement in the party is.’
‘We had no choice but to trust them. But honestly, I think they’re different.’
‘Or they’re trying to ease their conscience by helping one family and pretending they’re not monsters like everyone else?’
Eliana looked up at him, suddenly losing her appetite as she digested his words.
‘I’m sorry, I should never have said that. Please forgive me.’
‘No,’ she said, setting the slice of bread down on the plate. ‘You should have said it. You don’t have to hold your tongue around me, I appreciate your honesty.’Even if that honesty is hard to swallow.
Ethan leaned against the doorframe, his eyes darting away before coming back to meet hers. ‘Well, I should have at least waited until you’d finished eating, so I didn’t put you off your food.’
Eliana grinned back at him, shaking her head. He was impossible not to laugh at, or laugh with in this case, and she appreciated his efforts to make light of what was an awful situation.
‘So, other than jam, tell me what you miss the most, from your life before,’ Ethan said.
She loved that he’d swiftly changed the topic away from the Müllers. ‘I don’t even know where to start. My mother’s roast chicken, or her latkes, or her matzo ball soup.’ She sighed. ‘And sweets. I keep dreaming of ice creams or chocolate, but mostly just ice cream.’
Ethan groaned. ‘I keep thinking about my mother’s pork cutlets. I think I could eat them every night for the rest of my life.’
‘Do you ever think about what we’d be doing, if the war hadn’t happened?’ she asked.
‘You mean do I think about all the dances, all the long summer days swimming in the lake, all the films we’d be watching?’
Eliana watched him, seeing that he missed it all just as much as she did, even though he’d been afforded a freedom throughout the war that she hadn’t. She hadn’t thought about dancing in a long time, but now that he’d mentioned it, dancing was something she missed deeply, too.
‘Yes,’ she finally said. ‘All those things. Even just lying in the sun, reading a book and laughing with friends.’
‘Eating ice cream?’ he teased.
She laughed. ‘Yes, eating ice cream. Of course.’
Ethan slid to the floor, his back against the doorframe, as they spoke. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to believe how quickly things changed.’
They sat in silence for a moment, until he spoke again.
