Page 44 of The Berlin Sisters
‘When there were still Jews in the city, we had to turn them away, even though they were starving. The women would stand there with their little children, begging us for food, and all we could give them was whatever was left at the end of the day. A bit of stale bread was often the best of what we had. But then we weren’t even allowed to give them that.’
‘If you hadn’t followed the rules, you’d have been arrested,’ Eliana said, seeing the anguish on his face, the memories that clearly still haunted him. ‘You’d have filled their stomachs for one meal, and then you and your parents would have disappeared in the night.’
‘Sometimes even knowing that doesn’t help, though. It doesn’t make what we did any easier to accept.’
‘No, but it’s the life we’ve been forced to live. And there is no black and white, good and evil. There are many people who are having to exist in the grey, just to preserve their own lives.’
They were silent for a time, with Ethan keeping watch as she finished her bread and then dusted her hands together to rid them of any breadcrumbs. Then she set up her workstation, using an apple box as her makeshift desk, positioning her typewriter and sitting cross-legged on the floor. She had a sack beneath her, but the cold still managed to leach through to her bones, making her shiver almost instantly.
‘I almost forgot to give you this,’ Ethan said, standing up and slipping a piece of paper from his pocket.
The note had been passed to Ethan at some stage during the day, tucked inside a ration book, which meant that there was something important to share with the network. She’d been told she could go weeks without having to type anything, so this meant something was happening.
‘I think they’re planning something that could end it all,’ he said, when she looked up.
‘What sort of something?’ she asked.
He shrugged and went back to his position by the door, to keep a lookout. ‘I don’t know. But there seems to be a lot more activity than usual, and someone said that Noah was back.’
‘Who’s Noah?’
‘He’s been instrumental in our entire network from the very beginning, but I don’t know him personally.’
She nodded and placed the piece of paper to her left so she could begin typing. But before she did, she looked up and smiled at Ethan, who was still watching her.
‘One day we’ll be dancing again, Eliana. One day you’ll be able to eat ice cream every day if you so desire.’
She imagined meeting him at a different time, wondered whether perhaps he might have invited her to one of those dances. ‘I certainly hope you’re right.’
Ethan held her gaze for a moment before looking away, staring out of the door to make certain that no one was coming. They had a plan whereby she would hide the typewriter and put any paper into a sack if someone came, before the two of them would lie down on top of it and pretend to be two young lovers, caught kissing. The theory was that no one searching would think to ask them to stand up, but she wasn’t so sure it was a fail-safe plan.
Eliana smiled to herself as she began typing.It might not be fail-safe, but I wouldn’t mind an excuse to cuddle up to Ethan.
Two hours later, when Eliana had finished typing, she stretched and indicated to Ethan that she was done. Because they didn’t have a printing press, she had to type multiple copies of each page, and by the end of it her fingers were aching and her back was sore.
She left the stack on the apple crate, thankful when Ethan came to lift the heavy typewriter for her. They both hid it, and when they went to stand, she could see that his back was as stiff as hers from sitting in the doorway.
‘I think we deserve a cup of tea and something hot to eat,’ he announced, taking out a sack and filling it with the papers for his father to come and collect later. ‘Would you like to come back to the house with me?’
Eliana hesitated. If she’d had her own parents to go home to, she knew she would have declined, knowing she needed their approval first. And that very fact stopped her now, thinking of them still locked away in the stuffy attic. She wanted to behave in a way that they would approve of.
‘I would love to, but I’m so tired,’ she said. ‘Would you mind walking me home though?’
He nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘I’m so scared of the bombs,’ she admitted, as she put her coat on and they walked through the dark store. Ethan checked the doors and collected his own coat, and she took his arm as they walked to the front, where he let them out on to the street. It wasn’t far to walk to the Müllers’ apartment, but she was grateful to have him accompanying her, especially when so many buildings had been reduced to rubble around them.
‘Ethan, earlier today, you mentioned you’d lost someone,’ she said, hoping she wasn’t being too nosy. She realised then that her arm was still looped through his, but she decided to leave it there, feeling safer with him close, especially in the dark. It was almost impossible not to be scared of the SS, even with papers in her pocket to prove her identity – or of bombs lighting up the sky or falling around them.
‘I lost many someones,’ he said. ‘First, our teacher disappeared, and that was my first real understanding of what was going on, that people in our lives could be there one day and disappear the next. And then my uncle’s wife was taken, our doctor, and then...’ He took a deep breath, and for a moment she wondered if he was even going to tell her who else had gone. ‘And then my best friend.’
‘He was arrested?’
‘Rounded up with other families in our neighbourhood and loaded on to a train. I hid and watched. I knew it was dangerous but I needed to see what they were doing with him, where they were taking him. I watched him and his brothers until they disappeared from sight, and I just knew that it was the last time I’d see them.’
‘You were a member of Hitlerjugend?’ she asked.
‘I was.’
