A War of Flowers (2014) (8 page)

Berlin

‘He fixes the horoscopes, you know.’

Steffi Schaeffer nodded towards Clara’s copy of the
Berliner Tageblatt
and gave a sniff more robust than seemed possible for a woman of such refined appearance, in her pale grey
linen skirt and jacket, with a silk flower in her lapel.

‘Who does?’ asked Clara.

‘Goebbels,’ said Steffi, scornfully. ‘He tailors them. He likes people to think that everything’s going well. He orders them to print lines like
A successful and happy
day. Germany is a land of smiles!
Ha! Has he looked at the faces in the streets recently? You don’t notice many smiles there.’

Clara glanced out of the window at the street below. She was back in Berlin all right, and just as Steffi said, a single glance at the citizens was better than any horoscope at predicting the
general mood. The sultry heat had not broken and worry whipped the streets like a dry summer wind. Most people darted along in a hurried way, as if on urgent business, heads down, trying not to
attract attention. Most likely the people in the street below were heading home because they were Jews served with a curfew and must perform all necessary tasks within daylight hours or risk
arrest.

The two women were in a small studio with a scruffy, pockmarked façade, north of the Hackescher Markt in the Scheunenviertel. This quarter had been the centre of Jewish life in Berlin for
centuries. Its narrow streets were the first port of call for Ostjuden refugees fleeing from the east and it was now the hub of Berlin’s textile trade. Shafts of light from the high windows
illuminated a room dominated by a large wooden table, crowded with rolled bolts of vivid cloth, scissors, pins and kaleidoscopic spools of cotton. Tailors’ dummies stood around like ghostly
guests in half-finished finery, and hat stands bore toques, turbans, pillboxes and tip-brimmed hats in felt, flowers, feathers and pastel braided straw. It was a place of disguise and concealment,
which was fitting considering that Steffi Schaeffer’s other role was as part of a resistance network helping Jews to leave Germany. Clara had never discussed this aspect of Steffi’s
secret life with her, but her friend Bruno Weiss, the painter, had secured a false passport and travel documents to Switzerland courtesy of this elegant and popular woman.

Outside, a passage led off from the street to a dingy courtyard containing a patchwork of workspaces and storage areas occupied by tailors and cloth sellers. Stalls on the pavement sold ribbons
and buttons and the shops were largely selling clothing, stockings and shoes. On the street side many of the shop fronts were painted with a white J, as well as obscene cartoons, six-pointed stars
and pictures of Jews being hanged, a decoration for which they had roving bands of stormtroopers to thank, or sometimes brigades of Hitler Youth sent out on Saturday mornings with paint pots and
brushes.

Clara turned back to Steffi, who was at that moment darting around her dress with a mouthful of pins, adjusting the hem.

‘I thought Goebbels took horoscopes really seriously,’ she said. ‘He and Hitler often consult the horoscope of the Third Reich when they’re planning policy.’

‘He does,’ said Steffi. ‘He even loves Nostradamus. He says that Nostradamus predicted German troops would march to the Rhine and occupy Vienna and now he’s saying that
Nostradamus predicts Hitler will triumph in the Sudetenland too. The destiny of the Third Reich is written in the stars, though that doesn’t stop Goebbels from giving it a helping
hand.’

She pursed her mouth and jabbed the pins into the cushion on the table. ‘But then I suppose none of us knows what’s coming so it may as well be Goebbels as anyone else.’

A tough life and the loss of her husband five years ago, not to mention nights of sleepless anxiety since, had etched hard lines on Steffi’s face, yet she was still a beautiful woman in
her mid-thirties, petite, with dark blonde hair, sharp, elegant cheekbones and eyes of violet blue. Her talents as a dressmaker had won her steady work from the costume department of the Ufa
studios, until the Aryanization measures introduced by Goebbels outlawed Jews from working there. As a Jew on her mother’s side, Steffi was barred from working in any part of the Reich
Chamber of Culture and now the commissions she had from society women were drying up too.

She stretched the cornflower-blue cotton for Clara’s dress between thumb and forefinger.

‘It’s hard enough to get the material with this textile shortage, so I can’t think why you want to spoil it by making it look like a dirndl,’ she said, curling her lip at
the square, low-cut neckline. ‘It’s not your style at all. You always prefer something elegant.’

‘It’s not a dirndl. It’s just a little lace at the neck. Besides, I’m going to be working in Munich. They like things a little more traditional down there.’

‘Well, I’ve done my best to give this dress a Marlene Dietrich twist.’

Steffi made the final stitch on the hem and began to fold the dress up.

‘Thank you, Steffi. And for the lovely green silk dress. You’ll never guess – I meant to tell you – I wore it to the salon of Coco Chanel.’

Steffi Schaeffer widened her eyes and laughed, displaying even, white teeth. ‘Coco Chanel saw my work! I can’t believe it! I would have loved to have been there. Perhaps she could
give me some commissions!’

‘I assume things are getting worse?’

Steffi shrugged. ‘Of course. Most of my regular customers are going elsewhere now. On the other hand, in the past few weeks I’ve found a new income stream.’

Clara tilted an inquisitive head and Steffi hesitated, obeying a deep, instinctive caution, until their eyes met and she confessed, ‘It’s a new type of tailoring I’m doing.
Since the latest announcement.’

‘Which one is that?’

Since the introduction of the Nuremberg laws three years ago, the lives of Jews in Germany had grown ever more circumscribed. They were no longer allowed to marry gentiles, or even call
themselves citizens. In recent months, however, the daily stream of restrictions had gathered pace. Almost every day there would be a fresh encroachment on Jewish freedom announced in the upper
right-hand side of the newspaper front pages. Jews could no longer practise medicine or law. They could not hold bank accounts. Their cars were issued with Jewish licence plates and all too often
Jews with cars were called to report to the police station and when they were released, their cars remained in custody. Just that week Jews had been told they would all be photographed and
fingerprinted and issued with new ID cards.

The escalation in tension was visible everywhere. In June shops with Jewish owners had been freshly plastered with smears of ‘Jew’ all over the walls and doors, shop fronts smashed
and shopkeepers forced to pick up the glass of their smashed windows with their own bleeding hands. Restaurants known to admit Jews were raided and their customers taken away in Gestapo trucks.

‘This month all non-Aryans had letters ordering them to give up their jewellery to the state. They have to take everything to the nearest police station and hand it over. Can you believe
it? The thieves! My friend asked for a receipt and the cop said, “What do you want a receipt for? You won’t be seeing these again in your lifetime”.’

‘So what’s this new tailoring you’re doing?’

‘Simple.’ Steffi walked across to a tailor’s dummy on which hung a coat of checked tweed and drew it back to reveal the lining.

‘You know how we sometimes put pfennigs in the lining? So it hangs properly? Well, this time it’s not pfennigs. It’s a little more valuable.’

She ran her neat, painted fingernails down the navy satin and found an edge which had been left unsewn. Tucking her fingers inside, she withdrew a pearl necklace and from the lined flaps of the
pockets, she picked out a pair of ruby and diamond earrings.

‘If you need to leave the country, you’re going to need to take your coat. Or your jacket, or your suit. This way, you can take your jewellery too.’

Clara shook her head in admiration.

‘But it has to be done by a professional so the seams lie flat. See? It’s no good botching the job, the Gestapo aren’t stupid. I do hats too.’ Steffi gestured at a hat
stand on the table. ‘They’re even better because, look—’ She ran her fingers along the intricate folds, where the raffia was stitched into rivulets. ‘They’re
stiffer. They have more detail. They’re harder to unpick.’

She pulled over a creation of plum velvet, with a scrap of veiling, and removed a rosette from the crown. In the cavity beneath glistened a gold ring.

‘Everyone who leaves gets searched. The guards on the trains take the soles out of shoes and they even squeeze tubes of toothpaste looking for valuables, so it pays to be very careful if
you’re going to conceal something.’

‘It’s so cleverly done.’

Steffi shrugged.

‘Women don’t mind leaving everything else, but they won’t leave their jewellery. It’s not just the value. It makes them feel beautiful. We all need that now.’

‘I’m glad you’ve found some business.’

Steffi crossed her arms and frowned. ‘Business? I’m not sure I’d call it that. Sometimes they pay me with a bit of butter or a few eggs. Sometimes, I do it for nothing.
What’s the point of money if it’s going to be taken away from you?’

‘I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me. I didn’t mean . . .’

‘Don’t worry.’ She smiled. ‘Besides, I’m not the only one with extra work. A friend of mine, Herr Feinmann, is a paper manufacturer and he says the demand for
blackout cardboard has soared. He can’t keep up with it. You know what that means.’

Clara did. Bomb shelters and blackout materials were on everyone’s mind. Troops were visible on the street in ever greater numbers. Public buildings were being transformed into
barracks.

Steffi looked at Clara intently. Though she knew no detail of Clara’s real life, their four-year friendship meant they trusted each other implicitly.

‘Last month they told us we have to change our names. Did you hear that? All Jewish passports will be stamped with a J and Jewish people who have names of “non-Jewish” origin
have to add Israel or Sara to their given names. Gentiles will be banned from giving their children Jewish names.’

‘What? Like Joseph, you mean?’

They laughed, despite themselves, at the monstrous absurdity of Goebbels.

‘Joseph is exempted. It’s been declared an honorary Aryan name.’

Steffi’s brave smile died and her voice hushed, even though there was no chance of them being overheard.

‘It’s dreadful, Clara. Every day people are being fetched from their homes and taken to Oranienburg or Buchenwald. They take away their belts and ties and shoelaces, and when they
get there, they make them stand in the square all night with spotlights on them. A lot of the men round here spend the day dodging the Gestapo. They stay with friends and their wives pretend that
they’re travelling. Everyone’s leaving. Why wouldn’t they? It’s that or stay here and take poison. A woman I know killed herself just the other day, up in the West End.
Everyone I know is trying to get to Palestine, or South Africa, or Italy. We’re being forced to creep away from our homes like criminals.’

Clara had the impression that Steffi was only just holding herself together. That every day the knocks and the fear carved the lines a little deeper in her face.

‘First the Nazis want you to leave, then they make it impossible for you to get out. People spend all day going to different embassies and all they do is learn the word “no” in
twenty different languages. People turn up at the embassies with hundred-mark notes folded into their passports. They send baskets of fruit and flowers. But it never does any good. That’s why
I’m trying to help.’

‘What can you do?’

Though Clara’s voice was hushed, it still sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet of the workshop.

‘I do what I can. There are several of us.’ She bit her lip, and frowned at Clara. ‘You must know.’

Clara did. They were called U-boats, the escapees, because of the sudden descent they made into the vast Berlin underground.

‘There are houses all over Berlin, and further out. Some people are going into hiding, you know, sleeping in friends’ basements, or moving from house to house. We all contribute what
we can. Look here.’

She walked across to a wardrobe built into the wall and pushed at the back. The wooden panel gave way to reveal a further, narrow space, in which a series of uniforms hung.

‘I have a friend – not a Jew – who owns a clothing company that is now obliged to work for the Wehrmacht. He knows how the uniforms are made, and how to make them up. They
check everything, you know. The way the cloth is cut, the precise location of the buttonholes. They leave nothing to chance.’

‘What about you, Steffi? Are you trying to leave?’

‘I can’t.’ Steffi folded her arms and looked at Clara resolutely. ‘There’s my mother to think of. I couldn’t leave her.’

Clara had met Steffi’s mother once, a smiley woman with snow-white hair and eyes clouded by cataracts, confined to a chair by a bout of polio.

‘Even if I could go, what would happen to Mutti? There’s no one to look after her. Except my brother of course and he’s hopeless. He says, “We Jews made it through the
Red Sea. We’ll make it through the Brown shit.” Mutti can’t even feed herself so I’m staying put. But it’s Nina I’m worried about.’

‘How old is she now?’ Clara recalled Steffi’s only child, an anaemic-looking girl with narrow shoulders whom she had met when collecting a dress from Steffi’s home. Like
her mother, Nina was dressed beautifully in neatly pressed, hand-stitched blouse and handmade skirt, but unlike her blonde mother, Nina was dark, with her father’s sallow skin and golden
brown eyes. It was those eyes Clara remembered most, taking in every detail of her face and clothes, hesitating before eating the cake that Clara had brought. Nina reminded Clara of herself at that
age, observing the world without intruding on it, creating an elaborate interior universe behind a self-effacing façade.