The silence was suddenly broken by a piping child’s voice ringing out clearly across the rubble. ‘Here, Grandfather! Here’s another one!’
Teddy stopped, looking around, listening.
There was no one in sight.
Then there was a burst of harsh incessant coughing, and after a moment an old man’s raspy voice said, ‘We have a good pile of tiles, Wilhelm. We have done very well today.’
‘Ja, ja!’ the child responded, and he sounded excited.
Teddy had no way of knowing where these disembodied voices were coming from, but they had sounded quite close. She hesitated, wondering exactly where to begin looking for the old man and the boy in this rubble, when she heard the old man’s coughing again. It came from a small mountain of debris a little way ahead of her, to the right. She guessed the old man and the boy were working behind it.
Leaving the path, Teddy ventured into the rubble-strewn wasteland, and picked her way across the messy ground until she arrived at the mound. She walked around it to the other side, and stepped forward. ‘Excuse me,’ she said.
The old man and the boy were startled by her sudden appearance as if from nowhere; it was obvious from their faces that they had not heard her approaching.
They gaped at her, and the old man said quickly, in an aggressive, hostile voice, ‘Who are you? What do you want?’
Teddy detected a certain amount of fear behind the hostility, and wanting to put him at ease she said mildly, ‘I am a stranger from another city. I am looking for one of the rubble women who works here on the Lützowufer.’
‘Why?’ the old man asked.
‘The Trümmerfrauen on the Tiergartenstrasse said she might be able to help me.’
The old man laughed with some coldness. ‘How could a poor rubble woman help you?’ he asked scathingly, his eyes running over her, swiftly assessing her, taking in her well-fed appearance, her cleanliness, and her good clothes.
‘She might be able to give me information about certain people who once lived here,’ Teddy explained in the same soft tone. ‘I am looking for these people. The woman I seek… well, I understand that she knew everyone there was to know in this district before the war.’
‘Maybe she did,’ the old man snapped. ‘I don’t know. Nor do I know which rubble woman you mean. Many work this street, you can see what a mess it is. And they are not here today. You can also see that for yourself, you’re not blind. Go away!’
‘Will the women be here tomorrow?’ Teddy asked patiently, with her usual persistence.
‘How do I know! I am not their keeper!’ the old man angrily muttered, and dropped his eyes, began to fiddle with the stack of chipped white tiles in front of him, which he and the boy had obviously been diligently collecting.
The boy had been listening attentively and closely watching Teddy during this conversation. He said plaintively, ‘Bitte… do you have something to eat? I’m hungry.’ He put his hand out to her in a begging gesture, his expression pleading, and said again, ‘Please, do you have anything?’
Teddy looked back at him. His dark eyes were sunken hollows in his little white face, and she could not help thinking of Maxim. But this boy was not as healthy a specimen; he was small and thin and undernourished. Starving most probably, she thought. She put his age at about seven or eight, but his eyes were much older and knowing and very weary.
She opened her bag, took out a bar of chocolate and handed it to the boy without saying a word.
‘Danke!’ he cried excitedly, ripped off the silver paper and pushed the chocolate into his mouth wolfishly with both hands.
Only then did Teddy truly understand how ravenous he was.
But after only a mouthful the boy called Wilhelm suddenly stopped eating, and looked at his grandfather. He took the chocolate bar out of his mouth, broke it in two and gave half to the old man. ‘Here, Grandfather, you are also hungry,’ the boy said.
‘Danke, Wilhelm.’ The old man smiled at his grandson, took the chocolate and began to munch on it.
Teddy stood watching them devouring the chocolate. She had mixed feelings about the Germans these days. Her eyes came to rest on the old man and she thought: Where were you on Kristallnacht, I wonder? Where were you when they were shoving my people into the gas ovens and the torture chambers and onto the deportation trains? And what would you say now if I asked you these questions? Would you deny having been a Nazi? Would you protest that you had not known about the terrible things they did to the Jews? But you all knew. You and every other German were aware the camps existed. Not a single German alive today can deny that. And what would you do if you knew I was a Jew? Would you continue to eat my chocolate? Eat the chocolate of a dirty Jew?
Teddy curbed these thoughts immediately, before they ran on and on and got out of hand and made her angry, as they generally did once they were ignited. After all, not every German had been a Nazi, and the average person had been powerless, unequipped to do anything against Hitler and his band of gangsters. Nor had anyone understood or guessed how far these criminals would go in their persecution of the Jews. No one had anticipated the massacre of millions. To everyone, Jew and Gentile alike, the systematic killing of an entire people had been unthinkable, had seemed downright impossible.
Shifting her gaze to the little boy, Teddy also reminded herself that one should not punish the children for the sins of the fathers. Opening her handbag, she brought out the other two bars of chocolate and gave one to the boy, one to the grandfather. They both seemed startled and surprised by her generosity, although happily so, and they smiled at her and thanked her profusely.
And then the old man suddenly bowed to her in the most elaborate way, and said in a gruff voice, ‘The Trümmerfrauen take their bricks to the storage place every Saturday afternoon. That is why they are not here, they get paid today. But they should be back again tomorrow.’ There was a little pause and he finished with a thin smile, ‘You see, they have nowhere else to go.’
‘Come tomorrow,’ the boy Wilhelm said with a huge grin, showing her his chocolate-covered teeth.
Teddy smiled at him. ‘Yes, I will,’ she answered, and then turning to the old man, she added, ‘Danke.’
‘And we thank you, gnadige Frau,’ the old man said with great politeness, and bowed again.
***
There was only one rubble woman working on the Lützowufer when Teddy returned the following morning. Deciding not to procrastinate, Teddy walked over to her purposefully and said, ‘Guten Morgen.’
The woman was standing near an old pram, piling bricks into it. She glanced up and looked at her, and then she smiled, much to Teddy’s amazement, and considerable relief.
‘Guten Morgen,’ the rubble woman said, returning her greeting graciously.
Encouraged by the woman’s pleasantness and approachability, Teddy went on, ‘I am hoping you might be able to help me.’
‘I will be happy to if I can,’ the woman replied with the same courtesy as before.
Teddy said, ‘Yesterday I was talking to the Trummerfrauen on the Tiergartenstrasse, asking them for information about people who used to live on that street. They told me to look for a woman who worked the Lützowufer, who may well have been acquainted with them, and who might know where they are now.’
‘I certainly know all of the women who clear the rubble in this vicinity. What is her name, the one for whom you are looking?’
Teddy shrugged and said, ‘That’s just the problem, I don’t know her name…’ Her voice trailed off lamely as she realised how ridiculous she sounded.
The woman was again bending over the decrepit pram, covering the bricks with a piece of torn linoleum. She straightened up, threw her shoulders back and tossed her head slightly, and gazed at Teddy, focusing vivid blue eyes on her. ‘Then I’m afraid I cannot be of help,’ the woman murmured.
To Teddy there was something strangely familiar about the voice, the sudden gesture of the head, and she gave the rubble woman a penetrating stare,
swiftly noting everything about her as a distant memory stirred.
Like the other Trummerfrauen, this woman had covered her hair with a scarf, had wrapped it turban-style around her head, and she wore an assortment of odd clothes. And yet despite her worn, patched coat and the man’s boots on her feet, she had a distinct air of breeding about her, a certain dignity that commanded attention, and then again there were the good manners, the pleasant demeanour.
It came together in a flash all of a sudden, clicked into place in Teddy’s mind, and she had to stifle a small cry of recognition. Her heart tightened and she held herself perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe, as she said slowly, ‘Actually, gnadige Frau, I think you are the person I am looking for.’
The rubble woman frowned and arched a brow. ‘I?’ she said. ‘Oh no, I don’t think so. I’m sure not, in fact.’
Teddy was now absolutely certain who she was and said. ‘Yes, I do know you. And you know me. I am Theodora Stein, Maxim’s nanny!’
The rubble woman was flabbergasted and for a moment she could not speak, and then she gasped, ‘Is it you, Teddy? Is it really you?’
‘Yes, it’s me!’ Teddy cried, and she stepped forward and took hold of the chapped, work-worn hands of Princess Irina Troubetzkoy.
THIRTY-FOUR
Teddy and the Russian princess stood clasping hands and staring at each other incredulously. They were hardly able to contain their excitement, and their delight and amazement at finding each other in the devastated and war-torn city was reflected on their faces.
After a moment the princess took a sudden step forward, put her arms around Teddy and embraced her warmly, and the two women clung together in the midst of the debris on the ruined Lützowufer.
When at last they drew apart the princess exclaimed, ‘Maxim. How is he? Is he all right? He must be quite grown up by now.’
‘Yes, he is,’ Teddy answered. ‘He’s the most wonderful boy, a brilliant student. He’s at a good school in England.’ Teddy stared hard at the princess, and clearing her throat she said in a voice that sounded suddenly strained, ‘I came to Berlin as soon as I could, to look for his parents. Do you know what happened to them?’
The smile on Princess Irina’s face faded and she shook her head rapidly.
‘When was the last time you saw them, Princess Irina?’
‘In September of 1941, when they were staying with the Graf and Grafin von Tiegal at the Schloss near Brandenburg; Irina replied. ‘This was just prior to my falling ill with bronchitis, Teddy. When I recovered, and was finally able to leave my bed, I discovered they had disappeared.’
‘Had they gone into hiding somewhere? Or had they simply left the Schloss?’
‘I honestly don’t know. It was… well, it was a mystery.’
‘Didn’t the Count and Countess von Tiegal know anything, Prinzessin?
Again Irina Troubetzkoy shook her head, and her face filled with overwhelming sadness. ‘They had also vanished—as if into thin air.’
Teddy met Irina’s steady gaze with alert and questioning eyes. ‘Did they vanish at the same time as the Westheims? Or later?’ she probed.
‘Actually, I am not certain. All I know is that the four of them were not at the Schloss in November of 1941, which was when I went there hoping to see them again.’
‘But surely the von Tiegals’ servants knew something. There were quite a few servants, I remember, and Gretchen had a nanny, Irmgard was her name.’
‘Yes, I know,’ Princess Irina replied, leaning closer, giving Teddy a very direct look. ‘But by 1941 all of the male servants who had been employed at the Schloss had gone off to fight the war, and the maids were in the munitions factories, or doing other war work. There was only an old housekeeper left when I went to the Schloss that day in November. She told me the Graf and Grafin had returned to Berlin some days before, that I would find them at their flat… the flat here on the Lützowufer where we are standing now, but I didn’t find them, no one was there, not even servants.’
‘And the von Tiegals never showed up? You never heard from them?’ Teddy asked quietly, her eyes not leaving the other woman’s face.
‘No. Nor did I hear from Sigmund and Ursula. Not ever again. The house on the Tiergartenstrasse had been badly bombed earlier that summer, and so obviously they had not returned there. I went next to the villa in the Wannsee to look for them, but it was deserted. Locked and shuttered.’
Teddy said, ‘I visited the villa at the lake last week. My friend Mrs Anne Reynolds, who is with the International Red Cross, drove me out. I didn’t expect to find the Westheims, but I felt I had to check the villa, just for my own satisfaction. Mrs Reynolds and I both spoke to the “woman who is living at the villa now. We didn’t get anything out of her, and she denies any knowledge of the Westheims.’
The princess nodded, and gave Teddy a pointed look. ‘The villa was taken over later by a high-ranking Nazi,’ she told her. ‘Things like that happened all the time in those days. Bigwigs in the Third Reich stole so much from so many.’
‘And especially from Jews,’ Teddy said, and hesitated for a moment before murmuring more softly, ‘But Princess, didn’t you try to investigate the disappearance of the Westheims and the von Tiegals? Check things out through… through the underground, the resistance?’
‘I was a member of one of the resistance movements, Teddy, and naturally I tried to find out if my friends had managed to leave Germany. Or if they had been arrested by the Gestapo. But I wasn’t able to turn anything up, no one was. We all drew a blank. But it was not unusual for people to simply disappear without leaving a trace. Millions did, millions, Teddy. And millions are still missing, their fates unknown.’
‘What about the rest of the Westheim family? Do you have any idea what happened to them?’
‘Mrs Westheim, Sigmund’s mother, died in the spring of 1940. Of natural causes… heart failure. She had been ill for a long time, as you know. That same year, Sigrid and her husband Thomas Mayer were killed in a bombing raid, when they were in Hamburg, and poor Hedy was in the house in the Tiergartenstrasse when it was hit in the summer of 1941. I’m afraid she died with the servants who were in the house at the time.’
On hearing this news Teddy became very quiet. She stood staring at the princess, incapable of making any sort of response. Sadness filled her and tears came into her eyes when she thought of Maxim’s aunts and his Uncle Thomas. They had been so young, all of them in their twenties.
A deep sigh escaped Teddy’s lips, and she said in a sorrowful voice, ‘How tragic that they’re all dead. I was fairly certain Grandmother Westheim would be gone by now—she was old and frail. But the others… I had hoped that one of them would still be alive… Oh God, it’s so hard to accept!’
‘I know it is,’ the princess agreed and shook her head. Her expression was as mournful as Teddy’s. ‘Nobody wanted this war,’ she exclaimed, anger surfacing. ‘It was started by a madman, and it was so futile, so unnecessary, need never have happened. And look how it’s taken its toll on the whole world. Millions are dead, or maimed for life, we are all suffering terribly because of it in countless different ways. Great cities throughout Europe have been destroyed, so much has been lost… so much is gone… forever.’
Teddy nodded, shifted on her feet slightly and looked off into the distance, caught up in her worried thoughts. Then she swung to face the Russian aristocrat again, and confided, ‘I don’t know what to do anymore, Prinzessin—’ She broke off, lifted her shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I’ve been to all the appropriate agencies, the International Red Cross, Jewish and Zionist organisations, and the Quakers, to no avail. I’ve studied their many lists, gone over list after list of names, in fact, and neither the Westheims nor the von Tiegals are on any of them. It’s so strange, it doesn’t make any sense, how can they have just… vanished?’
‘So many did, Teddy, I’ve tried to explain that.’ The princess touched her arm lightly, and continued, ‘Let us not stand here
like this. It would be much better if we went to my little abode to talk.’ She swung around, put her red, chafed hands on the old pram and began to push it ahead of her, saying, as she trundled it along, ‘We will go to my house. It is not a grand place, but it is reasonably comfortable and it will certainly be much warmer than standing out here.’
‘Yes, it’s colder this morning than it has been since I arrived in Berlin,’ Teddy remarked, and followed the princess through the rubble, glancing around, looking for any sort of dwelling, however humble. But there were no houses standing, nor any other kind of structures visible for that matter.
As she drew alongside her, Teddy could not help saying, ‘And where do you live, Princess Irina? Where is your house?’
‘Oh you can’t see it from here,’ Irina Troubetzkoy answered with a curious little laugh. ‘I call it my house, but my little abode is actually a hole in the ground.’
‘Oh.’ Teddy was so startled to hear this she was completely at a loss for words.
They had not gone much farther when the princess suddenly drew to a halt, and pointed to a crater a few steps in front of them.
‘That is my hole! I live down there… like a troglodyte.’ Irina looked at Teddy through the corner of her eye and went on, ‘Don’t be alarmed, it’s not quite as dreadful as it sounds. Now… I shall leave my bricks here for the moment, and deal with them later.’
The princess pushed the pram over to a heap of debris near the crater, knelt down, and began carefully to wedge stones around the front wheels.
Teddy also knelt, helped to put the stones in place, and stole a glance at Irina as she did. ‘Prinzessin?’
‘Yes?’
‘Why are you a rubble woman?’
Irina Troubetzkoy lifted her head, rather proudly, and rested her bright blue eyes on Teddy. She said, very simply, ‘Because I have nothing else to do.’ She gave a little sigh, then explained, ‘Besides, I get paid for the bricks, and I also get extra food rations.’ With a small smile, she went on, ‘And there is another reason, another consideration. I feel as though I am doing something useful and worthwhile, something for the future, by reclaiming the bricks with which Berlin can eventually be rebuilt. It gives me, and the other rubble women too, a sense of purpose. And a stake in the future.’