Page 21 of The Banned Books of Berlin
Berlin, May 1933
On her way back to the Zaubergarten, Freya made a detour via Wolfgang’s apartment. She should have been back at work but was desperate to find Gerda’s story before the police did. Her name was on the title page and it wouldn’t take long for the Gestapo to track her down. Running into the building and up the stairs, she discovered the apartment was locked, but the caretaker knew her from past visits and was prepared to let her in for a modest bribe.
‘Herr Berger has an essay of mine, you see,’ she gabbled. ‘About the glorious Prussian wars against Denmark, which I have to submit for examination.’ The man had always seemed friendly enough but you could never tell; he was perfectly placed to be an informer.
Once inside, it was easy enough to imagine what must have happened the day before: the overturned chairs, ransacked shelves and smashed crockery told their own sad story.
‘Poor Wolfi,’ Freya murmured, and the caretaker sighed sympathetically.
‘Ach, it’s a bad business,’ he said, which could have been taken to mean anything.
Stepping carefully over the debris in Wolfgang’s study, Freya made her way to the large desk by the window and looked quickly through the open drawers. There was no sign of the envelope containing her typescript and nor was it on the bookcase or among the papers scattered over the floor, or on Wolfi’s bedside table or in any of his cupboards. Eventually she had to concede that unless she was going to take the place apart even more thoroughly than the Gestapo, she would have to give up the search. If they had found her story already, she was done for, and a curious fatalism came over her. She stood looking at the devastation: Wolfi’s precious books, their spines split and pages torn, lying on the rug like so much discarded rubbish. She could see him now, turning around in his chair to pick a title from the shelf, turn to a well-thumbed page and read out a passage in his husky voice, his face alight with appreciation.
‘My library is my greatest treasure,’ he’d once told her. ‘Through good times and bad, I turn to these books for consolation, inspiration and delight. They never fail me.’
She picked up a copy of All Quiet on the Western Front , that extraordinary novel about a young, na?ve soldier living through the horrors of the Great War. Naturally, this book had been banned. It was a story of humiliation, practically an advertisement for pacifism, when Germany could only be seen as a strong, victorious nation.
Smoothing its pages, Freya turned to the caretaker and said, ‘Herr Berger could get into trouble if the police come again and find this book. I’ll hand it in for him. And some others, too.’
She fetched a suitcase from under the bed and hurriedly filled it with more gems from Wolfgang’s collection: all forbidden now, of course. The most powerful stories were subversive and nuanced, testing boundaries while asking uncomfortable questions, and the Nazis could never allow that.
She had no idea whether the caretaker believed her story but he didn’t try to stop her.
‘Someone else came this morning,’ he said, as she was closing the latches of the case. ‘An Englishman. He took a couple of books too.’
Rupert must have had the same idea, which seemed uncharacteristically considerate, or maybe he just wanted to add to his own library while Wolfgang was out of the way. Dismissing such an unworthy thought, Freya lugged the case down into the street and stumbled straight into a squad of brownshirts marching past. She flattened herself against the wall, dropped the case and saluted with a feeble ‘Sieg Heil!’ which they ignored. Her stomach fluttering with nerves, she kept her head down all the way back to the Zaubergarten.
Of course she wasn’t going to surrender these treasured books to be destroyed, but where could she hide them? Step by laborious step, she formulated a plan that took her breath away with its audacity and filled her with a savage joy. She was probably doomed anyway; might as well go out with a bang. Arriving at the club, she bumped the suitcase down to the dressing room and through to the large store cupboard adjoining what was now her bedroom. Pulling out a couple of boxes filled with ostrich-feather fans, Venetian masks and grass skirts, she stowed the suitcase behind them and stood back, breathing heavily as she rubbed her aching palm. She felt sure Wolfgang would have approved.
That evening’s performance was lacklustre, as usual. Violet danced half-heartedly nowadays, scarcely bothering to hide her contempt for the baying audience, Sophie had disappeared and Perle’s drinking was out of control now that Frau Brodsky wasn’t there to look after her. The Zaubergarten girls were no longer a polished troupe, perfectly in tune with one another. How much longer could they carry on? Herr Goldstein hadn’t been near the club for days. Freya stayed awake for hours that night, listening to every creak of the floorboards above her head, every passing vehicle or loitering drunk outside in the street. Her mind was too busy for sleep.
She rose early the next morning, despite her fatigue, and walked through Tiergarten park towards the place she had once called home. It was a Friday; after breakfast, Hedwig would be going to the market on the other side of the bridge. Wearing a hat pulled low over her face, Freya lurked in the doorway of an antique shop a little further down the road that never opened before eleven. With a basket over her arm, she attracted little attention. At a quarter to eight, she saw her father set off for work in his paint-stained overalls, a haversack slung over one shoulder. It was strange, watching him from a distance and realising how little he meant to her; she had no desire to run up and greet him. Herr Grube left promptly at eight, marching along in his shiny suit with the swastika armband proudly displayed, and at eight-thirty, Hedwig appeared, proceeding down the street in her dirndl and shawl like a ship in full sail. As Ernst became scrawnier, so she seemed to be expanding, as though she were sucking the meat off his bones. Finally, Otto wheeled out his bicycle, swung a leg over the crossbar and pushed off. Freya waited until the sound of his jaunty whistle had faded into silence, then crossed the road and slipped into the building, reaching for the keys in her pocket which she had never bothered to return.
The apartment was dark and quiet, with only narrow shafts of sunlight piercing the heavy curtains that now shrouded every window. Hedwig kept the place clean but it seemed joyless, the air smelling of cabbage and boiled fish. Freya went straight to the sitting room, her heart in her mouth. What if she were too late? But there they were: the books her mother had cherished, untouched in the glass-fronted cabinet. Quickly, she ran her fingers along the row of spines, selecting Ingrid’s favourites on the banned list and piling them in her basket. The poems of Heinrich Heine and Rudyard Kipling, of course, and the novels of Herman Hesse, Aldous Huxley, Stefan Zweig and Thomas Mann.
Soon there was only room in the basket for a couple more copies and she was deliberating between translations of Proust and Mark Twain when she heard a voice ask, ‘Fr?ulein Amsel? Can it be you?’ and whirled around to find Walther Grube standing alarmingly close behind her.
‘Herr Grube!’ she exclaimed, her hand to her throat. ‘My goodness, you gave me a shock.’ She had no idea how long he’d been there.
‘And vice versa,’ he replied, in his soft, sly voice.
With a flash of inspiration, Freya dropped the basket, raised her arm and cried, ‘ Heil Hitler! ’
He returned her salute, a little nonplussed. ‘And what is this? A change of heart?’
‘Absolutely,’ she replied fervently. ‘I’ve been such a fool, Herr Grube. Seeing the Chancellor that day at the Kaiserhof, I realised how right you were. He is the man we’ve been waiting for: strong, principled and honest. Hearing him speak was a revelation.’
‘But he didn’t say anything at the Kaiserhof.’ Grube regarded her quizzically. ‘He walked through the lobby and into a side room without a word.’
‘Of course,’ Freya said. ‘Hearing him talk later on the radio, I mean. That speech he gave after he was elected! So wise and compassionate. He is truly a hero for our times.’
‘Well, this is welcome news, Fr?ulein Amsel,’ Grube replied. Was he convinced? She had no idea. ‘I always hoped you might come around to the right way of thinking, a clever girl like you.’
‘My eyes have been opened,’ Freya went on. ‘I don’t know why it took me so long to see the truth of what he says. That’s why I’m here: to remove these corrupt books from our collection. My father and brother aren’t great readers and have probably forgotten they’re here, but I know my mother would have wanted us to abide by the rules.’
‘But why come now, when everyone is out?’ Grube asked. ‘Why not wait until the evening and join us for supper?’
Freya dropped her gaze. ‘To be frank, I’m embarrassed by my father’s relationship with our maid. I find it painful to see her in my mother’s place.’
After a short pause, he said, ‘I understand. That must be very hard.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, seizing the basket with her eyes still downcast. ‘Well, I’m sorry to have alarmed you, Herr Grube. I’d better hand in these books and get back to work.’
‘Wait a moment and I’ll come with you,’ he told her. ‘Let me just collect the ledger I’d left in my room and I can carry that heavy basket. There’s a collection point for banned books at the Technische Hochschule library, I believe. We might even run into your brother there.’
There was no use Freya protesting that she didn’t want to delay him and could manage perfectly well by herself; in the end, she had to give in. She walked beside Herr Grube for the next half hour, listening to him hold forth about their dear leader’s glorious vision of Germany, freed at last from the corruption and decadence of the Weimar Republic and the evil influence of Jews. The forbidden authors contaminated their country’s purity; burning these works would show the world that the old order had gone for good.
‘And it’s the students who’ve come up with this inspired idea,’ he said, his eyes gleaming. ‘Our young people! That gives me the greatest hope for our future. Herr Goebbels approves, of course. I believe he’s agreed to deliver a speech when the bonfire is lit.’ He shifted the basket from one arm to the other. ‘But keep that to yourself. It might not be common knowledge.’
‘Of course,’ Freya said. ‘I should very much like to hear him. Where is the book burning to take place? The one here in Berlin, I mean.’
‘The Opernplatz,’ Grube replied. ‘It will be a tremendous occasion. Perhaps one day you will tell your children you were there.’ He bared his teeth in the approximation of a smile.
Freya did her best to smile back, digesting the information. The Opernplatz was a public square off the wide Unter den Linden boulevard, bordered by several imposing buildings: the State Opera, the Old Library, which had been taken over by Friedrich Wilhelm University, and its law school, where Leon was enrolled. She wondered whether he knew about these plans.
At last they arrived at the library of the Technische Hochschule. No longer a place of studious silence, it now thrummed with purposeful activity. The barriers had been thrown open and students in brown shirts, their sleeves rolled up, tramped through with armfuls of books which they threw into waiting wheelbarrows. They looked a little doubtfully at Herr Grube advancing with his oddly feminine basket but warmed up after a few Heil Hitlers and were happy to accept its contents. Freya had to watch as the volumes her mother had cherished were tossed carelessly among the rest and then wheeled away to be stored elsewhere until the great day came. At least she didn’t have to see them being burned, but it was heartbreaking nonetheless.
‘A good job done,’ Herr Grube said, handing back her empty basket. ‘I’m glad to have bumped into you today, Fr?ulein Amsel. As a matter of fact, we may be seeing more of each other soon.’
‘That sounds intriguing,’ she said, trying to conceal her alarm. ‘Tell me more.’
‘I can’t go into detail, but your place of work has been of interest to the party for some time,’ he went on. ‘Let’s just say our plans should come to fruition in the near future.’
‘Then I’ll look forward to finding out about them,’ she told him. ‘Goodbye, and thank you for your help.’
Her legs were weak as she walked away. Grube was no fool: she suspected he knew exactly what she’d been up to, and his parting words were ominous. Only once she was safely back at the Zaubergarten did she retrieve the volume of Heinrich Heine’s poetry that she’d tucked into the waistband of her skirt while Grube was fetching his forgotten ledger, and add it to the collection in Wolfgang’s suitcase.
Violet was in a strange mood that evening, jumpy and distracted. Freya was looking for a chance to draw her to one side but Violet seemed to be avoiding everyone. She wouldn’t wander among the tables or drink champagne with anyone in the audience, hurrying downstairs as soon as her number was over. After the performance had ended, however, Freya got her chance. Violet lingered in the dressing room and once the other girls had gone, she took Freya’s arm and said quietly, ‘Can you let me out the back way?’
‘What back way?’ Freya asked, instantly wary.
‘Through the storeroom,’ Violet replied. ‘I tried the door but it’s locked. Come on, don’t pretend not to know what I mean. Frau Brodsky showed me those stairs the last time I needed to leave discreetly.’
‘Of course,’ Freya said. ‘I’d forgotten about them for a moment.’
‘So this basement is your personal kingdom now?’ Violet asked wryly. ‘You control the comings and goings?’
Freya snorted, reaching into her pocket for the keys. ‘Hardly. Listen, have you heard any rumours about the Zaubergarten? I bumped into Walther Grube this morning and he told me the Nazis are interested in the place. Do you know what’s going on?’
‘Not exactly,’ Violet said, ‘but I have a hunch. Let me make some enquiries and see if I’m right.’
Freya unlocked the storeroom door and switched on the light, her eyes flickering immediately to the stack of boxes behind which Wolfgang’s suitcase was hidden. Inadequately hidden, as it turned out. Violet followed her gaze and immediately spotted one leather corner. ‘What’s that?’
‘Nothing,’ Freya said. ‘Just something I’m keeping for a friend. Clothes, that’s all.’
She forced herself to look Violet in the face. ‘They’re Wolfi’s, actually.’
Violet gave her an appraising stare. ‘Be careful, kleine Freya. By the way, I’ve found out where he is. They’ve taken him to a concentration camp near Munich. Apparently one of his neighbours turned him in; he had a copy of The Communist Manifesto on his bookshelf.’
‘And how long will they keep him?’ Freya asked as they went upstairs. ‘Can I visit, do you think?’
Violet laughed. ‘Fat chance of that. They might let him out after a while, though. Wolfi’s never been a member of the Communist party and there might be people who can vouch for him.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Freya asked.
Violet shrugged. ‘Friends in high places.’ She stood for a moment at the back door, looking out into the night and gathering her coat around her, although it wasn’t cold. Abruptly, she turned to Freya and said, ‘Do you fancy a nightcap?’
‘Why not?’ Freya replied after a moment. She still didn’t trust Violet, or even particularly like her, but she wanted to keep on her right side and they were allies of a sort – or at least, she hoped they were.
‘Just go ahead and make sure the coast is clear, would you?’ Violet asked lightly. ‘Whistle if you spot anyone lurking.’
With some misgivings, Freya crossed the small yard where dustbins were kept and entered the street that ran parallel to the Zaubergarten’s front entrance. Nobody seemed to be about, apart from a stray dog and a boy walking past with his hands in his pockets. She waited until he’d turned the corner, then waved for Violet to join her. Violet led the way through a zigzag of streets to a small, unobtrusive bar, where she chose a table near the back and ordered cherry brandies.
‘Is everything all right?’ Freya asked. ‘You seem a little nervous.’
Violet took a swig of brandy. ‘Nothing I can’t handle. It’s wise for me to keep a low profile at the moment, that’s all.’ She had one eye trained on the door, Freya noticed. ‘In fact, I might not be around for much longer.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Freya said.
Violet raised her eyebrows. ‘Really? I’d have thought you’d be delighted.’
‘Not at all,’ Freya protested, as convincingly as she could manage. ‘I’d never have met Wolfi if it wasn’t for you and it feels like all his friends are disappearing, one by one.’
Violet nodded. ‘And now Rupert’s off to America.’
‘Is he? Strange, he never mentioned that yesterday.’ The doubt that had been niggling away at the back of Freya’s mind pushed its way to the front. ‘Do you happen to know where he lives?’
‘I do, as a matter of fact,’ Violet replied. ‘He has rooms in a house near Savignyplatz. Why do you ask?’
‘Only because there’s a chance he might have borrowed something of mine,’ Freya said. ‘I’d like to ask him about it before he goes.’
Violet laughed. ‘Rupert’s a magpie: he steals shiny things. Well, I wouldn’t hang about if I were you.’
‘Actually, I might go there now,’ Freya said. It was late but she knew Rupert stayed up half the night and slept until midday. ‘What’s the address?’
Violet drained her glass. ‘Wait, I’ll show you the way. Sounds like this could be entertaining.’
She set a brisk pace through the streets, seemingly invigorated. Savignyplatz lay about half an hour to the west, with Rupert’s house five minutes’ walk beyond.
Violet nodded towards a glowing upstairs window. ‘Looks like he’s still up.’
Freya had been prepared to wake him but she didn’t want to disturb the whole house. ‘Should we throw some pebbles against the window?’ she asked.
Violet shook her head. Walking up to the front door, she took what looked like a nail file out of her pocket and spent a few minutes fiddling with the lock before quietly pushing the door open with impressive ease and turning to Freya, a finger on her lips. Together they crept up the stairs. Violet led the way along a wide landing, stopping by a door on the left through which faint strains of music drifted. She put her ear to the wood, then stood back, smiling with anticipation, and let Freya knock.
Freya pounded on the door. Rupert’s plan seemed obvious to her now and she would have rumbled him at the time if she hadn’t been so worried about Wolfi. The thought that he could be so deceitful made her blood boil. They heard footsteps approaching before the man himself appeared at the door in a paisley silk dressing-gown, looking understandably wary. He wore a hair net and his face gleamed with some sort of skin cream.
‘Evening, Rupert,’ she said, insinuating herself through the narrow gap. ‘You should have told me you were leaving. I wanted to come around straight away to wish you luck.’
‘I’m not off yet,’ he said, standing back reluctantly to let her pass. ‘But this isn’t particularly convenient. I was about to go to bed. Hello, Violet.’
‘Don’t think you can slope away without a proper sendoff,’ Violet said, following Freya into the room.
‘I shall be in Berlin for at least another week,’ he replied. ‘I’ll be throwing a party, no need to worry about that, and of course you’re both invited.’
Freya looked around the sitting room, comfortably furnished with a sofa, two armchairs, several lamps and layers of soft drapery: rugs, fringed tablecloths, velvet cushions and curtains. Preparations for Rupert’s departure had already begun; books were heaped in piles on the floor and a desk in the window was covered with files and folders. She approached for a closer look and quickly rifled through the papers, her back turned to the others, while Violet chatted to Rupert about America. And there it was: the brown envelope containing her typescript, hidden under a newspaper.
‘What are you doing with this?’ she asked, pulling out the envelope and showing it to Rupert.
‘I saved it for you,’ he replied, without a second’s hesitation. ‘There was no time to waste, so after you left for Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse yesterday, I went to Wolfi’s apartment and found your manuscript before anyone else could. From what he’d told me, no doubt the Gestapo wouldn’t have approved of your storyline. I just wanted to have a quick read before I gave it back.’
‘That’s kind of you,’ Freya said. ‘But I’ll take it now, if you don’t mind.’
‘Suit yourself.’ Rupert looked at her coldly, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his dressing-gown. ‘You might be missing a trick, though. I can show your script to my agent if I think it has potential.’
‘That’s a risk I’ll have to take,’ Freya replied, not bothering to be polite. What a fool she’d been! Rupert had always been so kind to her, if a little patronising: asking after her progress, recommending authors she should read, telling her about English culture. She’d admired him and thought they were friends, yet he hadn’t had the slightest scruples about pinching her work. He was probably planning to pass it off as his own.
‘We’ll let you get to your bed then, Rupert.’ Violet took Freya’s arm. ‘Sweet dreams. And remember not to slip away like a thief in the night.’
‘As if I would,’ he said, guiding them to the door.
‘Well, well,’ Violet said, when she and Freya were out in the street again. ‘Your story must be worth something if Rupert wants to steal it. He has taste, if not morals. Nor talent either, come to that.’
It might have been grudging praise but Freya accepted it happily nonetheless, hugging the envelope to her chest as though it were a precious child. She would look out for herself from now on; no one else was going to. That night, she levered up the loose floorboard beneath her bed and took out the locked cash box containing her savings. (Hardly anyone in Germany trusted the banks anymore.) She’d been working long hours since Frau Brodsky had left, and managed to put aside at least a quarter of her salary each month. Counting her money gave her a sense of security. If she lost her job tomorrow, she could manage for a few weeks, surely long enough to find work and a new home elsewhere. Rupert’s appreciation of her manuscript and her courage in confronting him had made her feel she could take on the world. She was not going to give up without a fight, no matter how high the cost.