Page 49 of The Girl with a Secret
And yet… in a sudden rush of self-perception, Rosa realized she’dalwaysfelt she was in a prison. With the smallness of her life in London, on theSt Louis, back in Berlin. She’d always felt trapped in some way and yearning for more. Maybe the problem wasn’t her circumstances, she acknowledged, but herself. She could never escape the prison of her memories.
Her steps slowed as she wrapped her arms around herself and stared out at the darkening sea. For the first time in a long while, she let herself think of Ernst—not at the beginning of their doomed relationship, when he’d been charming and handsome and seemingly in love with her, but the last, when they’d beenabout to lose the villa on the Wannsee, when her father had no more work, and Jews weren’t allowed anywhere.
Rosa, be sensible. You knew all along this could never go anywhere. Of course it couldn’t! I like you, but…That little light laugh, touched with a scorn she’d forced herself to ignore.You’re a Jew.
He’d stated it as if it were obvious, which it had been—painfully, glaringly obvious from the beginning—and yet she’d still fooled herself. She’d fooled herself, and worse, she’d compromised herself, utterly, and when he’d come back from Kristallnacht with bloody knuckles and a wild look in his eyes, she’d pretended not to see. Not to know.
How could she have betrayed her own people like that, her own self? How could she have been so callously indifferent to the absolutes of the situation, the stark right and wrong? She thought of her father’s mocking words—you think like a child. First, he was angelically good, then he was demonically bad.
But Ernst hadneverbeen good, Rosa acknowledged wretchedly. He’d joined the SS at just twenty, thanks to his father’s connections. He was friends with Heydrich and he’d dined with Hitler, and he’d boasted about both—if not directly to her. He’d spoken of getting rid of all the Jews the way you would rats, although he’d tried not to say such things in her presence. It turned her stomach now, just to think of it. To think ofher, listening to him speak like that and still loving him, or believing she did.
It didn’t mean anything, Rosa. It was just words.
Except it hadn’t been.
Rosa didn’t know how long she stood out on the promenade as the sky darkened and the sea turned black. The wind grew chilly, blowing her hair into tangles about her face, and still, she didn’t move. Memories from the past whirled around her, swept through her. Hugging Ernst. Hating her father. Even thebeach at Binz, building sandcastles as a child, feeling so happy and innocent and free. Did she even remember that, or was she making it up? Did it matter?
And then, more poignantly, on theSt Louiswith her friends—having their Spanish lessons, toasting each other with champagne. Making promises she no longer knew if she wanted to keep. How would she face them, at Henri’s, if she had to explain that she’d spent the war in prison, tarred as a Nazi? How could she explain it to Peter, when he already judged her father for his connections?
How could she explain thewhyto any of them, that she’d fallen in love with a man with theSS-Runen, that hateful symbol of two lightning bolts, pin on his lapel? A man who had espoused everything Hitler ranted and raved about… even if he’d done so quietly, and insisted to her he didn’t really mean it. To admit that she’d known all that, and yet she’d willfully chosen to ignore it…?
She couldn’t, Rosa thought hollowly. She never could.
She’d been trying to escape her own sense of guilt for so long, choosing to be angry with her father instead, and yet… she was to blame, as well. She hated the thought, but she knew that if she wanted her father to accept responsibility for his choices, then she needed to for hers… no matter how much it hurt. The pain of it felt like a blade slicing her clean through.
Rosa closed her eyes.
“Rosa…Rosa!”
At first, she thought she was imagining the voice, high and shrill, that was snatched away by the wind. Was it Sophie, calling to her all the way from America, lambasting her for lying in her letters, or was it Hannah or Rachel, begging her to help them,savethem, when she knew there was nothing—absolutely nothing—she could do?
She slipped her hand into her pocket, withdrew the emerald she still carried with her everywhere. For a single, wild second, she considered throwing it into the sea. She wasn’t worthy of it, of their promises to each other…
“Rosa!”
Rosa let out a startled gasp as her mother hurtled toward her, grabbing her by the shoulders. The sliver of emerald slipped out of her grasp, clattering to the pavement, and rolling away. With another gasp, this one of alarm, Rosa lunged for it. No, she realized, she didn’t want to give it up. She would keep her promises, no matter what it cost her.
“Mutti, what is it?” she asked as she slipped the emerald into her pocket. “What has happened? Why aren’t you with Father?” Belatedly, Rosa registered the look of anguish and anxiety crumpling her mother’s face, one hand clutched to her chest as her breaths came out in ragged gasps.
“He didn’t come,” her mother told her, and began to weep. “On the way to the castle, he wasattacked. He’s in the hospital, Rosa, and they say they don’t know if he’ll survive.”
CHAPTER 20
Her father had been taken to the island’s hospital for internees, in the Falcon Cliff Hotel in Douglas, and then transferred to the island’s main hospital, Noble’s, on Westmoreland Road, due to the extent of his injuries. Rosa learned all this in stages, as she’d appealed to Dame Joanna for information, as well as the opportunity for her and her mother to visit her father in hospital.
“I understand your distress, child,” Dame Joanna had said in her firm yet kind way, “and we will arrange for your transport as soon as we can. But there are three thousand women at Rushen, and many of them want to travel to Douglas, just as you do, to see their husbands or fathers. We simply haven’t enough constables to accompany everyone. You will have to wait, and in the meantime, we will give you what news we can.”
How many of those women, Rosa had thought in frustration, had fathers or husbands who were hovering near death’s door? And why should she need a constable anyway, simply to visit her own father, considering how impossible it was to leave this forsaken island? Her helplessness infuriated her, and perversely, it made her feel even angrier at her father, for his part in why they were here in the first place. And yet he was injured, badly so, and she feared for his life.
The details of the attack were sparse, and given with seeming reluctance. Those in charge of the camps prided themselves on the order they instilled, and Rosa suspected they did not want to admit when it failed. What she did know was that three men, fellow internees, had set upon her father while he’d been walking to Derby Castle, and beaten him into a bloody unconsciousness. The doctors did not know the extent of any internal damage, but three days on, at least, her father was alive and seeming, slowly, to recover, although, according to Dame Joanna, doctors had warned that he might have lasting effects from the attack.
Then, finally, five days after it had happened, Rosa and her mother were allowed to be taken to Douglas in the company of a constable to see her father in hospital. Her mother clung to Rosa’s arm as they entered the ward, while the female constable remained outside by the door.
Her mother had been beside herself ever since she’d had word of the attack, lamenting how she hadn’t been there, as if, somehow, she could have stopped the men setting upon her husband, when, surely, she would have only been hurt herself, as well.
“Oh, Fritz!Fritz.” Her mother began to weep freely as she flew to her husband’s side.
Rosa hung back by the foot of the bed as she gazed down at her father, shaken by how injured he truly was. His right arm was in a sling, and his chest and stomach were heavily bandaged. He had another bandage wrapped around his head, and one eye was swollen completely shut, his face covered in cuts and bruises. Despite all these injuries, his left arm was chained to the bed, the handcuff heavy on his wrist. How on earth, Rosa wondered, did they think he might be able to escape?
