The Gypsy Moon (12 page)

“Rigid!” Gabby exclaimed, eyes flashing. She usually kept her emotions under careful restraint, but now anger scored her face. “It’s not right, Erik, and you know it’s not! The Marxes are not enemies of the State. They’re not political at all, as far as I know.”

He held his hand up, but she would not be quiet. There was a fire in her he hadn’t seen before. She usually presented an appearance of cool reserve, but her anger was evident today. He tried to quiet her, but she wouldn’t stand for it.

“I’m going to do something,” she promised. “I just don’t know what.”

Alarm swept across his face. “Gabby, these are dangerous things you are saying.”

“Dangerous! It’s dangerous to try to keep a family together? If it’s dangerous, then what kind of a leader is this Adolf Hitler?”

Erik looked around the room and saw that her voice had reached others in the café. Several people had turned to stare with frowns toward Gabby.

“You must quiet yourself, Gabby—”

She got up and walked out without another word. She was furious and frightened and at the same time determined that nothing could stop her from doing what she could to right this terrible wrong.

****

Gabrielle tried, but she was powerless. She was a foreigner, not even a citizen. She attended the trial, and her heart was broken as the Marxes’ children were taken from the court-room weeping, their parents having been sentenced to a short time in prison along with a stiff fine.

As she watched them being led away, a sense of fear came over her. She left the courtroom and returned home. When she told her uncle about the trial, he was shocked but said, “These matters are beyond us.”

“I hope decency isn’t beyond us, Uncle Dalton.” This was
the first time Gabby had spoken anything close to sharply to her uncle, and his eyes opened with surprise.

“I’m going to do what I can. I’ve already written letters, but I will write more,” he said, trying to comfort his niece.

Gabby did not answer, but from what she had observed of the rising Third Reich, she knew well what little effect the letters of one man who wasn’t even a German would have on Hitler’s loyal henchmen.

When Erik called her the next day, she put him off. He begged her to meet him for coffee, but she simply said, “I have to work today.”

“You mustn’t turn away from me,” he pleaded.

Gabby’s only thought was,
It’s probably the first time in his life that he has ever begged anyone for anything.

“I’m sorry, Erik. I need a little time. I’m very disturbed about this whole situation.”

But as the days passed, things did not get better. She did not see Erik again, and she had the suspicion that his parents had heard of her activities and had pressured him to stop seeing her. It hurt her deeply, for she had been falling in love with Erik. She knew it was happening, yet at the same time, she knew it would only bring misery to both of them. Their love was strong, but it was becoming apparent it might not survive their political differences. As to what she would do, she had no idea. Then her mind was made up when she received a call from an American newspaperman who had been acquainted with her stepmother. His name was Frank Templeton, and he called on a Thursday morning in November asking urgently to see her. She agreed, and at noon she met with him in a small café near her home. He was waiting for her at the door.

“Hello, Dr. Winslow.”

“Mr. Templeton.”

“Just call me Frank.” He was a short man, not young. He had thinning gray hair, and his face was red from drinking too much the night before. “Here, I’ve got a table,” he said. “Sit down, please.”

He ordered something to eat, and to be agreeable, Gabrielle ordered some soup. While they were waiting for the food, Templeton spoke of her stepmother. “She was the best newspaperwoman I ever knew. Better than any man. I still miss her.”

“It’s kind of you to say that, Frank.” She leaned forward and asked, “Why did you want to see me? It wasn’t just to talk about my stepmother.”

“No, not exactly, but in a way it is.” He hesitated and then grinned. “You’ll never believe this, but I wasn’t always a fat old slob. I was lean and mean back in the early days and very much in love with your stepmother.”

She stared at him. “She spoke of you often, but I didn’t know you two—”

“Oh, she never knew it. I wasn’t the marrying kind, and even if I had been, she did much better with your father. I met him several times. He was a great man.”

“Thank you,” she said. She listened as Templeton continued to speak of how much he admired her parents, and then he said, “Look, you’ll say it’s none of my business, and it probably isn’t, but I came for the sake of your stepmother. I think you’d best get out of Germany.”

Gabrielle grew absolutely still. “What have you heard?”

“Rumors about your taking up for the Marx family. It’s made waves, especially since you’re tight with Erik Raeder. What about that? Are you two engaged?”

“No!” Her retort was terse. “What is it that you want to say? Please just say it, Frank.”

He put his elbows on the table and clasped his stubby hands together. “Things are going to get bad, I’m afraid. I got a tip from an inside source that something’s going to happen tonight.”

“What’s going to happen? What are you talking about?”

“It’s no secret how Hitler feels about the Jews. Your friends the Marxes are just the beginning. The crackdown’s going to begin tonight.”

“I can’t believe it, and yet from what I’ve seen, I suppose I ought to.”

“If you want to come with me tonight, what you see may convince you more than anything I could say.”

Gabby lifted her head. “All right, Frank, I’ll go.”

“It might be dangerous, Miss Winslow.”

“I’ll go. What time shall we meet?”

“Meet me here at six o’clock.”

****

It was already dark by six o’clock when Gabby met Frank Templeton in front of the café. It was cold, and she was wearing a warm wool overcoat and gloves. Templeton got out of his car, muffled up to his ears also. “Can’t stand this cold weather,” he said. “I’d like to be back in Georgia, where I grew up. Believe me. They know how to have hot weather there.”

“Where are we going?”

“To the Jewish quarter. Come on.”

Templeton apparently knew Berlin well. They drove in silence until he indicated they had arrived at their destination. When they got out of the car, he led her through the silent streets until he finally pulled her to a halt. “Wait a minute! You hear that?”

Gabby had heard shouting and screams in the distance. “What is it?” she whispered.

“I think it’s the beginning of Adolf Hitler’s war against the Jews. Come on.”

They had not gone more than a hundred yards when suddenly Frank grabbed her arm. “Hold on.” He pulled her over into a shadow, and as Gabby looked down the street, she saw brown-shirted storm troopers breaking the windows of shops.

“What are they doing?” she whispered in horror.

“Those are Jewish shops,” he said tersely. They continued down the street, staying in the dark shadows as much as they could.

That night Gabby and Templeton saw hundreds of homes
and places of worship set on fire and ransacked. The men who looted and killed were mostly dressed in civilian clothes, but as Frank Templeton pointed out, many of them wore the boots normally worn with Nazi uniforms, and they drove Party cars.

When they had seen more than Gabby could have ever imagined in her worst nightmares, Templeton said, “Let’s get you out of here. I’ve gotta try to get this story out of Germany. It won’t be easy.”

Gabby sat in the car silently as Templeton drove her home. She was stunned by the brutality she had witnessed. She could not blot out the terrible scenes of the Jews, young and old, being beaten with truncheons, some of them killed.

When Templeton stopped in front of her house, he said, “You need to get out of here. I’m afraid the violence is only going to get worse.”

“What about you?”

“It’s my job to tell America what I see. They’ll throw me out of Germany sooner or later, but it’s no place for a woman. Let me know if I can do anything for you.”

“Thank you, Frank.”

“I think about your stepmother a lot.”

“I appreciate that,” she said. Gabby went into the house and found her uncle in the library. “I’ve got to talk to you, Uncle Dalton.”

“Why, of course, dear.”

“Where is Aunt Liza?”

“Here I am, dear.” Liza came in and noticed Gabby’s pale face. “What is it?”

Without sparing any of the gruesome details, Gabby told them of the horrors she had just seen. She gave them a moment to take it all in and then said, “I’m leaving Germany.”

“Leaving Germany!” Dalton gasped. “Wherever will you go?”

“Back to the Netherlands. There’s nothing for me in England. I don’t know anyone there, but I think I’ll be able to
get my position back in Holland. I’m sorry to leave you two. I wish you would go with me.”

“Perhaps we should, Dalton,” Liza said tentatively, looking toward her husband with fear in her eyes.

“No, we must stay here. I can’t leave my work. And you don’t have to go either, Gabrielle. Germany needs good doctors.”

“I’m leaving Germany,” she insisted, her voice steady, though her face was pale. “I can’t stay and watch what’s happening here.”

****

The announcement for final boarding was made, and Gabrielle said a last good-bye to her uncle and aunt. As she started toward the door that led out to the airfield, Erik suddenly appeared.

“Gabby, you can’t go away!” he pleaded, his face tense with strain.

“It’s useless to argue, Erik. Our worlds are too far apart. I can’t agree with what’s happening in your country. I’ve seen terrible things, and it’s only going to get worse.”

“I can’t argue politics.” He took her by the shoulders. “All I know is that I love you, and we can work it out.”

Gabby had somehow known this moment would come. She looked up into the face of the tall man and saw the strange melding together of compassion and love and pity, but it was tempered with something hard, which she knew would only grow harder. “Good-bye, Erik,” she said, pulling away from him and turning around. He called her name, but she walked steadfastly out of the building and toward the plane that was warming up on the field. An attendant took her hand and helped her up the stairs, and when she reached the top, she turned and looked back at Erik. He was standing as still as a statue, and she could see the despair in his face. She saw his lips frame her name, and then desperately she turned and
entered the plane. As the door shut behind her, she knew that this part of her life was over forever.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“The Lights Are Going Out”

An ominous specter hung over Europe like a dark cloud—the creation, it seemed, of a single determined man. Adolf Hitler had mobilized the German people, and like a juggernaut, his troops swarmed over Germany’s neighbors. In the fall of 1938, the German army took over western Czechoslovakia almost unopposed. In March of 1939, all of Czechoslovakia was overrun by German troops. In August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact, which stunned the rest of the world, and all of Europe began mobilizing for the inevitable.

On September first, a mighty German force of over a million men swept across the Polish border. Britain and France immediately declared war on Germany, and the world knew that the war to end all wars had not worked. Another more threatening dark shadow was falling over the earth. Later that month, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east. The poor country didn’t stand a chance against its invaders, and by the end of the month, the eastern third of the country was occupied by the Soviet Union, and Germany controlled the rest.

In November, tiny Finland was swallowed up by the Soviets, and in April of 1940, the Nazis entered Denmark and Norway.

As she walked briskly down the street, Betje thought about how dramatically her world had changed over the last couple of years. With Hitler and his massive military machine aggressively sweeping destruction throughout Europe, the entire
world watched nervously, wondering which nation the dictator would conquer next.

She glanced up and saw a bullfinch fly swiftly past and then drop down into a feeding box. Always captured by beauty of any kind, Betje paused and admired the bird’s amazing colors. For a time the bird pecked at the seed with sharp, quick motions, then turned a bright eye on Betje and froze.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Betje whispered. Her artist’s eye took in the blue-gray back and the rosy breast of the small bird and she mused out loud, “I wonder why we appreciate the colors on birds more than in other parts of nature. Right overhead the entire sky is blue and beautiful. It must be that we admire beauty more in small things than in large ones.”

The small bird cocked its head, uttered a short muted cry, then rose in the air with a flutter of wings. Betje stood still, turning to watch until the bird disappeared into a grove of trees across the road. “All you have to worry about is a few seeds to eat and a place to stay when night falls.” She shrugged her shoulders impatiently. “I wish it were as easy for me—and for everyone.”