The Cigarette Girl Read online

  “Must leave,” she told him abruptly. “I must go.”

  At first, Remy had found her rude. And when he heard the accent, the one they’d mocked and cursed on the battlefield, he’d almost left her alone. But then he noticed how her long-boned hands—the nails painted red, but shredded, chipped—shook on the Formica, her cup rattling against its white saucer. “Just let me finish my coffee,” he said. “We don’t have to talk.”

  At this, she seemed to relax. After a while she cleared her throat. “From where I came . . .” she began, and he flinched again at the accent, “people have cup of coffee and cake in afternoon, then, walk. You will walk with me, in the park?” She smiled, her teeth crooked and gapped, and he realized then how lonely she was.

  That first day, she taught him a word in German: Waldeinsamkeit, the sensation of being alone and content in the woods. “But you aren’t alone,” he protested as they strolled through Piedmont Park, a few blocks from traffic. “I’m spoiling it.” And she smiled at him and told him it was sometimes possible to be alone together.

  As a young child, Janeen would request this bit of family lore at bedtime, brushing aside Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty in favor of her parents’ romance. But as she grew, questions surfaced. Why had her mother been so sad? Why did she work in a factory? Where did she go before Atlanta?

  Her father’s answers were short: because she missed the people she had to leave in Germany; because she wanted to help America win the war; New York City. Ask your mother, he’d say when Janeen pressed for details. But her mother never told the story.

  Lying on the floor of the spare room, Janeen tried reading a dime-store mystery for a while to take her mind off her parents. The words blurred on the page. Finally, at two, she plunged into the heat to get the mail. The envelopes scorched her hands a little, like cookies from the oven. She leafed through catalogs and bills; at the back of the stack was a letter addressed to Anita Moore. There was no return address, but the stamp had been canceled in Manhattan.

  Something about it sent a shiver down her arms. She took the envelope up to the music room, where her record still droned, two male voices harmonizing sweetly. She sat on the round rug, staring at the envelope.

  It was the handwriting, she realized after a minute, and the goose bumps spread to her scalp. It looked exactly like her mother’s. It was as if she’d sent a letter to herself.

  She hesitated for another second, then turned it over and ripped open the flap. The letter was written in German. She nearly folded it and put it back into the envelope, but she could make out the first line, and the second—what else were all her years of German class for?—and before she knew it, she’d read the whole thing.

  Dear Anita,

  It is only fair that I begin with an introduction. Though I go by Margaret now and use my ex-husband’s last name—Forsyth—I am the girl you knew as Grete Metzger. Berni’s sister. I will understand if you stop here and throw this letter away.

  By now you will have heard the news about Henry Klein, the one they are saying is Klaus Eisler. His resurfacing will no doubt have taken you back to the past. In remembering the Eislers, you perhaps have remembered me. This is why I felt I must write. For far too long I have let Klaus and his actions speak for me. It is time I speak for myself.

  I write to beg forgiveness. It’s too little, too late, I know, but since I cannot tell Berni—and many others—that I am sorry for what I’ve done, I will tell you.

  Every day I’m consumed with regret. I consider small decisions, small mistakes. When I stayed at St. Luisa’s instead of climbing into Sonje’s car. When I shouted you out of the Eislers’ courtyard instead of accepting your apology. When I found your address I faced another decision. Would I write to Anita and explain, burden her with my apology, or remain silent? Would I ask what happened to Berni or stay forever in the dark? I know it is no good to open old wounds, but I choose to ask.

  All these years I’ve been able to think of nothing but Berni. I wonder if you feel the same. You knew her better than I did. You were her true sister. There is so much I would tell her if she were alive. I’d tell her I loved her, first, and I would do my best to explain what happened between Klaus and myself.

  Please accept my gratitude, Anita, for all you did for Berni that I couldn’t. If you are willing to correspond, I’ll write again. If not, I will disappear.

  Should we never speak again, I wish you the very, very best.

  Grete

  The record player whirred and whirred; it had reached the end of Side A.

  Janeen’s entire body tingled. There it was, in black ink: Klaus Eisler, also known as Henry Klein. The man in the newspaper. The man Anita had pretended not to know.

  Janeen felt sick. Why would her mother have lied about knowing him—an officer in the SS? Had he been her mother’s boyfriend? Or worse, had he been her—Janeen’s stomach lurched—colleague? She’d heard her mother say before, in passing, that the Nazis had been able to seize the minds of all kinds of people. What if she’d been talking about herself?

  Janeen sat up shakily. She unwrapped a root beer barrel from a cut-glass bowl on the bookshelf and sucked it to think. She read the note again, then a third time. Anita had stood in the Eislers’ courtyard. She’d been a “true sister” to someone named Berni. Janeen found herself feeling oddly jealous. Her mother had lived an entire life without her, one she knew absolutely nothing about.

  She bit the candy in half, grinding it smooth against her molars, and tore a page from her notebook. She wrote very little, so that she would not reveal her limited German:

  Dear Grete,

  I will listen. That is all I can promise. I’ll look for your letter.

  Anita

  Janeen read it over and nodded. It was the only way to find out the truth—she couldn’t ask her mother. This woman would respond and confirm that Anita had been no Nazi. Of that Janeen felt certain. Almost certain.

  This was how she justified sealing the envelope. Before she could change her mind, she ran the reply down to the mailbox. She waited, breathing heavily, until she saw the mailman loop back around, drawn by the raised red flag.

  Part II

  Berlin, 1932–1933

  We take them [the youth] immediately into the SA, SS, et cetera, and they will not be free again for the rest of their lives.

  Adolf Hitler

  Grete, 1932

  For over a year Grete lived at St. Luisa’s without Berni, and in that time she allowed the other girls to stream around her as a river wears down a stone. It was easier not to talk, not to risk entering conversations she might not be able to hear. By the summer of 1932, she knew the other girls had forgotten she existed. They thought of her as inanimate, a bench or forgotten hymnal.

  The plan had been for Berni to find an apartment for them to live in together, and that would have happened long ago, according to Berni, if it weren’t for the Depression. “I can barely make enough money selling cigarettes to support myself,” Berni said on her most recent visit, avoiding Grete’s eyes. “In St. Luisa’s, at least you know you will be fed every day.”

  Sister Josephine helped facilitate their meetings. Every month or two she sent Grete on an errand, to get soap flakes or cherry juice for her gout. Like clockwork, Berni would appear outside the store. How she and Sister Josephine communicated was a mystery.

  “If you have so little money, why are you smoking?” Grete snapped. Her sister’s excuses were growing tiresome. Sometimes she wondered if Berni was having too much fun to burden herself with a deaf little sister.

  The changes in Berni disturbed Grete. First her hair had been chopped to chin length. Then she began wearing ties. She used suspenders to hold up trousers made for men. Her hair became shorter and shorter, combed wet like a boy’s, and her laugh changed; it became deep, hoarse, a smoker’s laugh. Whatever had caused this metamorphosis, it had nothing to do with Grete, and she both hated and feared it. The same une
ase she had felt with Sonje Schmidt, she felt around Berni now.

  Until Berni did something like this: as soon as Grete mentioned the cigarette, she ground it under the worn toe of her brogue, then tossed it into the street. “There. That was my last one!”

  Grete could not help but smile. It was raining, and the paper bag she held was beginning to soak through. “I have to go. This afternoon we’re cleaning the Gymnasium.”

  Berni’s face darkened. “Soon, little bird. I promise. Soon . . .”

  A passing car swallowed the end of Berni’s sentence, but Grete could have filled it in: Soon I’ll come for you, or soon we’ll be together. Another empty promise.

  • • •

  One morning in June 1932, two things happened that had never occurred before. Rain fell through sunlight, and a man came to see her.

  “The devil is having a parish fair,” Sister Josephine said when she passed Grete’s table, gesturing toward the window. When Grete looked up, she saw long droplets streaking the glass. The sun cast blurred rainbows on the floor. In the doorway, Sister Odi and Sister Maria Eberhardt conferred with a man in his late thirties or early forties. He wore shabby clothes but carried his thin frame erect, and he twisted his hat in his hands as he spoke to the sisters. All three of them turned and looked straight at Grete, and her throat constricted.

  A hush fell over the room as Sister Maria led the man, who dragged his left leg slightly, to Grete’s table. Neither of them sat. “Margarete, this is Herr Eisler. He would like to have a word with you.”

  Even if Grete wanted to say anything, she couldn’t have; from the moment she’d seen the man she’d known he was here for her, to take her away to an asylum or sanatorium for the deaf, or worse. He looked down at her with gentle eyes. His hair had receded on the sides, but there was plenty in the center and the back, wiry auburn hair that needed a trim. “Let me see you, Margarete. Don’t be shy.” He spoke good, unaccented German that belied the tattered clothing.

  Sister Maria shook her head. “No, mein Herr. This is how you have to talk to her.” She leaned close enough for Grete to count capillaries on her nose and shouted, “Herr Eisler wants you to work for him!”

  Grete blushed. Work for him? There must have been some mistake. She cleared her throat, and then she cleared it again, and finally, out came a little croak: “Par—pardon?”

  Sister Maria righted herself and patted Grete’s shoulder hard. “You see, mein Herr? This is what you and your wife would have to endure.”

  Grete fixed her eyes on a knot in the wooden tabletop, her face burning.

  “. . . too much of a hassle, I think, for Frau Eisler, with two children and a household to run. Can I introduce you to one of our older girls? There’s Ingrid, and Gertrude—”

  Herr Eisler shook his head and knelt close to Grete so that she could see the field of faint scars where shrapnel had implanted along his neck and jaw. “You do have experience cleaning? Doing what a maid does, Grete?” There seemed a bit of a wink in his expression, as though he invited her into his confidence. She looked down at his hands, broad, rough hands; she resisted the urge to place hers into one of them.

  He would think her dumb if she didn’t answer, but Sister Maria was gripping the soft saddle between Grete’s shoulder and neck. Did she have a maid’s experience? St. Luisa’s was ostensibly a school, for lost girls; everyone knew without being told to downplay the scrubbing, cooking, sweeping. By now it had been six months since Grete had seen the inside of a classroom, except to clean it. As the economy worsened—4 million unemployed, Berni said repeatedly, as though Grete hadn’t heard this herself—Sister Maria began hiring the girls out as domestic workers, to a Gymnasium for upper-class young men.

  “I do not do this to punish you, girls,” Sister Maria claimed. “You must work because I know of no other way to feed you. And you are building character and humility.”

  At the Gymnasium, Grete wasn’t sure she’d built character, but she’d gotten to know the smell of boy quite well, detectable under the bleach she spread over the floors: grass and rubber balls, sweat, ham and potatoes, and something else, especially in the showers, something she could not name. She also learned the feeling of large-soled shoes on her back, the shoes of students who teased and tortured the little working girls.

  With Sister Maria’s fingers against her collarbone, Grete whispered, “I haven’t done any work as a maid, mein Herr. Just a bit of cleaning.”

  He laughed. “A bit of cleaning is probably more than Frau Eisler had done, before she became my wife. Come work for us.” He looked up at Sister Maria and shrugged, sheepish, as though he’d disobeyed her. “Grete can start in two weeks.”

  She could only nod. Sister had to answer for her. “Thank you for providing this young lady with a place to go. We’re quite disturbed when our girls depart without attaching themselves to a proper chaperone.”

  Herr Eisler shook Grete’s hand and put his hat on. She wished everyone would stop watching her so that she could shut her eyes and try to remember everything, to convince herself it had really happened.

  • • •

  A few weeks later, she walked over the wet streets of Charlottenburg in a new coat—new to her—holding the little carpetbag Sister Josephine had given her. The old nun had promised, tears in her eyes, to get word to Berni about Grete’s new position.

  Bells sang, dismissing parishioners to enjoy the Sunday afternoon. A rare sun shone hot and yellow on the puddles in the gutters. This did not resemble the Berlin that Sister Maria had described, not at all.

  “You know nothing of what’s out there,” she began unceremoniously, when she called Grete into her office the day before. “Civil war.” Her lipless mouth pressed itself white in her ruddy face. “Tell me the chancellor’s name,” she demanded.

  “Brü—Brüning, Reverend Mother. The Chancellor is Herr Brüning.”

  “Wrong. He was sacked. Now it’s von Papen. A Catholic, but not a good one.”

  Grete blinked. She’d been unaware there was such a thing.

  “He’s Herr Hitler’s puppet, and he has destroyed the Republic. He lets the SA—the Sturmabteilung, paramilitaries—run wild. That’s what you’ll see out there, men dressed up like soldiers, batting one another on the heads.” Sister Maria went to the window and looked out. “Do you know what the Nazis think of nuns? They say we aren’t doing our duty to the Vaterland. Never mind I’ve raised hundreds of babies. If the Nazis force their way in, they’ll rape us and call it good for the Reich.”

  Grete put her hand over her mouth, her ear buzzing. What a word, and from a sister’s mouth! Sister Maria turned to watch her. Her fat neck shortened as she puffed up her shoulders in satisfaction. “You see, Grete. This ugly world will eat a girl like you alive.”

  “The Eislers will look after me,” Grete said. Of course Sister Maria would try to throw water on her happiness. “I will be safe.”

  The old nun stared for a while, sitting back in her chair, her eyes narrow and glassy. “For all our sake, I hope you are right.”

  Grete saw no signs of civil war as she wandered Charlottenburg. She passed a fountain and felt its spray, then a BMW store with dormant neon lights. Eventually, she found Seelingstraße, a street where the trees’ branches touched in the middle, and then number 36, where a thin woman held open the door. The woman beckoned to Grete from across the street, then whisked her into the vestibule, where they stood and stared at each other for a moment.

  “I am Frau Eisler. You’re Grete? You’re here to work, nicht?”

  Grete felt guilty for having imagined Herr Eisler with a prettier wife. Frau Eisler had a long chin that curved upward like the toe of an elf’s shoe. Her skinny body seemed concave; her breasts sloped toward her belt. Her arms were all bone but somehow held a fat child.

  “Say hello to our new maid, Gudrun.” Gudrun had her face buried in her mother’s limp blond hair. When she turned around to pout, Grete saw that she was
beautiful: a ten-year-old angel with golden ringlets, pudgy flesh, and a rosebud mouth.

  “Guten tag, Gudrun,” Grete said. Gudrun answered with a harrumph, and blew a raspberry at Grete when her mother turned to climb the stairs. Grete set her jaw.

  At apartment 301, Herr Eisler opened the door before his wife could knock. “Grete. Welcome.” When he smiled or spoke, Grete noticed he showed more bottom teeth than top, and she fell in love all over again. “I see you’ve met Frau Eisler.”

  “Yes, Herr Eisler.” Grete blushed to speak his name.

  “Not Eidler,” said his wife. “You’re saying it wrong. Eisler.”

  “Gisela,” Herr Eisler whispered, looking at the floor.

  Frau Eisler opened her lips and hissed, “Eissssler.” Spittle flew from between her teeth.

  “I’m sorry.” Grete tried harder. “Eisssler.”

  Herr Eisler gave his wife a look and told all of them he had to go to work in the factory. “Night shift,” he said. “It was all I could pick up.” His wife deflated, letting Gudrun slip to the floor. Before she reached up to kiss him, she turned to Grete. “You can wander through there, past the pocket doors, and put any belongings on the lofted bed in the children’s room.”

  “But that’s my room,” Gudrun cried, and her father hoisted her into his arms.

  A window was open in the bedchamber, through which a breeze gave life to the transparent curtain. Grete watched it float up and down a few times and timed her breathing to its waves. She would try harder. She would listen closely. She would gain the love of this family.

  There were three beds, two of them bunked, and she threw the carpetbag up onto what she presumed was the loft. Quickly she climbed the wooden ladder to peer at the mattress. The ceiling would be a few inches from her face as she slept, but it did not occur to her to complain.

  She wandered back out into the little hallway. The apartment’s furniture did not manage to fill the space. There were only three chairs around the dining table, where Frau Eisler now sat with Gudrun. Before Grete could think of something to say, Frau Eisler handed her a hammer.