Wilhelm fetched Helene from the hospital as often as he could. Communist after communist was arrested. Wilhelm went walking with his blonde Alice and took her to the café. He said he liked to watch her eating cake, she always looked as if she hadn’t eaten properly for days. Helene stopped eating in alarm. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to know what Wilhelm thought when he saw her eating. Eating had become a mere nuisance to her, and she often forgot about it until evening. She didn’t like the apple cake, she just swallowed it as quickly as possible to get it over with. Wilhelm asked if he could order her another slice. Helene shook her head and said no, thank you. Her dimples were so pretty, said Wilhelm, beaming as he looked her in the face. To her own annoyance, Helene was embarrassed. Did she like the theatre, the cinema? She nodded. It was a long time since she’d been to the cinema; she didn’t have the money, and she had only once agreed to go with Leontine and Martha when they asked her. During the picture she’d found herself crying, which she didn’t like. She never used to cry in the cinema. So she shook her head.
Yes or no, asked Wilhelm.
No, said Helene.
Wilhelm asked Helene to go dancing with him. One day it seemed like too much trouble to turn him down, so she agreed. They went to a dance, and he took her face in his hands, kissed her forehead and told her he was in love with her.
Helene was not pleased to hear it. She closed her eyes so as to keep him from looking at her. Wilhelm thought that was charming and took it as agreement, an announcement that she would soon be ready to be his. It was a good thing Wilhelm didn’t know about the passion with which Helene had invited and responded to Carl’s kisses. SA troops stormed the ‘Red Block’ of the artists’ colony in Wilmersdorf, where writers and artists were arrested and some of their books were burned. Spring came, and there were more book-burnings. Helene heard from Martha that the Baron was among those who had been arrested. Pina was trying to find out the reasons for his arrest; she was desperate to know; she visited all his acquaintances asking them to help her. One day rumour said that he was in contact with the Communist Party, the next that he had been distributing Social Democrat leaflets. Wilhelm wasn’t waiting to find out whether Helene returned his feelings; his own desire filled him and that was enough. He called her Alice, although he knew now that she was Helene. But Alice was his name for her.
In spring the newly elected National Socialist Party organized a boycott. The idea was to leave certain parasites, useless mouths, to starve to death. No one was to buy from Jewish tradesmen, or get shoes mended by a Jewish cobbler, no one was to visit a Jewish doctor or consult a Jewish lawyer. It was wrong for Germans to be out of work while others lived on the fat of the land, the medical director of the hospital explained to the nurses. They nodded; some of them came up with special instances of this unjust state of affairs. The bubbly nurse, who as everyone knew was Jewish, had been fired suddenly last week. No one wondered where she was, no one missed her. Her family might not be prosperous, but why should she have a job when others didn’t? Once she had gone no one mentioned her any more. Another nurse replaced her. There was much talk about the living space that the German people needed.
Wilhelm fetched Helene from work. As usual, she had been on duty for ten hours, and with the two brief breaks in her shift had been at the hospital for eleven hours in all. He took her arm and led her to the café, and although it was already six in the evening Wilhelm ordered cake and coffee. He drew Helene close to him over the table and told her she must keep a secret. He wasn’t just responsible for building the 4A Berlin to Stettin road, he said, and what was more, some day, as she’d see, it would go all the way to Königsberg! Wilhelm’s eyes were shining. His voice dropped even lower. But the secret was this: he had been chosen as the engineer to take the wireless apparatus developed under his supervision to Stettin airfield and get it installed on the tall mast there, because the airfield was to be converted for use by the Luftwaffe. Wilhelm was beaming, and looked not so much proud as bold and determined. His eyes saw adventure, promised adventure. Wilhelm picked up his cake fork, broke off a piece of cake and put the fork to his mouth. His area of work had shifted so far in the direction of Pomerania, he told her, that it had been suggested he should move there.
Helene nodded. She didn’t really envy Wilhelm his ability to enjoy life and his enthusiasm, his belief that he was able to do something important for the German people, for mankind, and in particular for technical progress. But she liked his frank pleasure, the ease with which he laughed and slapped his thigh. It was pleasantly uncomplicated, like the giggling of the nurses.
Are you glad? Wilhelm asked Helene. He lowered his arm and his fork when he noticed that she was not reacting, and didn’t open her mouth to eat more of her own cake.
Please don’t ask me. Helene looked up from her cup of coffee and out of the window.
But I must ask you, said Wilhelm. I don’t want to be without you in my future life, he said, and bit his lip ruefully, because he had meant to keep such a confession for the moment when he asked a certain question. However, Helene didn’t seem to have heard him.
When Wilhelm came back from Pomerania in spring, after a good month away drawing up plans, he bought two rings from the jeweller’s at the railway station and went to fetch Helene from the hospital. He held one of the rings under her nose and asked if she would be his wife.
Helene couldn’t meet his eyes.
She wondered what to tell him. She knew how to beam and smile, that was easy, you just had to lift the corners of your mouth and widen your eyes at the same time. Perhaps, imitating happiness like that, you could even feel a moment of the real thing?
Surprised, aren’t you?
Something like me isn’t supposed to exist at all. It burst out of her.
What on earth do you mean? Wilhelm was at a loss.
I mean I don’t have any papers, any certificate of my descent, and if I did, said Helene, laughing herself now, well, the word Mosaic would come under the definition of my mother’s faith.
Wilhelm looked keenly at her. Why do you say such things, Alice? Your mother lives somewhere in Lusatia. Didn’t your sister say she was a difficult case? It sounded as if she was ill. Are you fond of her, do the festivals she celebrates mean anything to you? Incredulously, Wilhelm shook his head, and there was confident determination in his face. Come away with me, be my wife and let’s begin a life together.
Helene was silent. A man like Wilhelm knew nothing of danger and obstacles that must be overcome. Helene didn’t look at him; she felt a strange stiffness at the back of her neck. If she shook her head he might call her cowardly, spineless. She would stay here. But where?
Are you telling me you distrust me because I’m German, with a German mother and a German father, and they had German mothers and fathers too? he asked.
I don’t distrust you. Helene shook her head. How could Wilhelm see her hesitation simply as distrust? She didn’t want to annoy him. She rather doubted what other options she had open to her. Her own mother was German, but obviously Wilhelm now understood being German in a different way. In modern opinion, German identity was expressed in racial characteristics and required the right sort of blood.
Your name is Alice, do you hear? If I say so it is so. If you don’t have a certificate of ancestry I’ll get you one, and believe me, it will be unobjectionable, it will leave no doubt as to your healthy descent.