39. Emilie

THIRTY-NINE

Dachau, Germany

I should have known what usually follows a threat or bribe. Once a person knows they can claim another as a puppet, boundaries cease to exist. Dietrich has approached me monthly for the last year and a half since showing up at my doorstep the morning Otto was sent to his new place of employment—when we made our dangerous deal to write up his report on the hypothermia testing. Then he came to me with new studies he was conducting, ones I hadn’t witnessed. He wanted me to write up the reports in the same format I wrote the original. It was the only way to keep our deal of ensuring Danner remains safe. I ask for proof that Danner is still alive, so he doesn’t become suspicious of the other ways I’m helping him and others, and he shows me a list of numbers still living in his assigned barrack.

I didn’t know how many research studies there could be, but they seem to be never-ending. My only benefit to him was my ability to transcribe data better than the few who remain on his team. While it isn’t something I’ve strived for, it’s a form of control whereby I can muddle data and paint a perfect portrait for the results being sought. The strategy of tweaking data is nerve-wracking, dangerous, and the only thing keeping many of the subjects in Dachau alive. That part, Dietrich isn’t aware of. If I can save some of those innocent people, I’ll continue acting loyal with the hope I’m gaining more from this than he is.

My objective in life has moved on from completing my nursing classes to making every attempt possible to protect the innocent and check on Danner whenever possible. Otto’s questions have tapered off. We’ve settled into our routine of coming and going, ships passing in the night. Every time we pass one another, I wonder if he questions what I’m truly doing. Though I’ve become proficient at sneaking around, I don’t feel any less deceitful when I come home each night. Of course, I’m not being unfaithful, and I still conduct all my wifely duties, but that fa?ade isn’t for me, it’s for him—and for Danner.

Another night, the same time, same location, one of four guards I’ve come to know greets me at the window of my car. “Good evening, Frau Berger.” My door opens and I step out, a newspaper pinned beneath my arm and my purse dangling from my right hand.

“It was a good evening, wasn’t it?”

My eyes widen as I turn toward the second voice, and I can’t manage to take in a breath when I find Otto standing behind our car, his bicycle by his side.

Eight months have passed since his last obvious suspicion that I was doing something other than studying at the library. I didn’t expect so much time to pass before it would happen again. Even knowing this great possibility, I continued doing what I was asked to in return for the promised favor from Dietrich. The thought of what I would say to Otto in this moment has kept me awake many nights, leaving me restless in the morning without a clear thought as to what I would say, here, now. I was living one day at a time because that’s what we’re all doing in this war—surviving, minute by minute.

I can see him clearly, beneath the bright watchtower light. Each new age line earned over the last couple of years rests in the shadows of the sharp edges above his cheekbones and forehead. He doesn’t blink, just stares.

“You’re here to see him, aren’t you?” Otto asks.

“To see who?” I ask, doing my best to play the part of an ignorant woman, even if only for the sake of the guard who doesn’t need to know any of our personal business.

“What the hell are you doing here, Emilie?” Otto grunts.

“Perhaps I should be asking you the same question,” I reply, arching my brows despite crumbling into a million pieces beneath my skin.

“Frau Berger,” the guard interrupts, “we can reconvene at another time.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Otto snaps at the man. “What do you know that I don’t? Huh?”

“I know nothing, Herr Berger. I’m not privy to information that goes beyond these gates.”

“But you are,” Otto says, staring me straight in the eyes.

“Let’s go home and finish our discussion there,” I suggest, hopefully buying myself a few minutes to formulate a reason for being here at this hour.

“I would much rather follow you into Dachau to see what it is you do every night when you claim to be at the library.” This guard has already heard far too much.

“Yes, thank you. I’ll follow up at another time,” I tell the man, and reach for the car door.

My heart shudders between each breath, leaving me weak in the driver’s seat as I wait to see what Otto does next. I close my eyes and grip my gloved hands around the wheel as the guard closes my door. The passenger side door opens, and I peek out through squinting eyes, to find Otto dropping into the seat and slamming the car door shut. The scent of whiskey fills the car, the liquor that makes him angry. He knows as well as I do what happens to him after only two glasses. He can’t control anything that comes out of his mouth, and whatever he has been thinking for however long he’s kept it inside, will be spoken, loud and clear.

The car ride home is unsurprisingly quiet as he refuels his anger. It isn’t until the front door closes us inside our house that I see he’s managed to take the Der Stürmer newspaper from my possession while I was driving.

“You’ve been going to see Danner, haven’t you?” he asks, his voice oddly calm considering the raging glint in his eyes. He rolls up the newspaper and shoves the tube into his back pocket.

“I haven’t seen Danner,” I say, lying through my teeth. “I’m not even sure he’s still alive.” The thought burns through me, thankful I don’t have to truthfully feel that way.

Otto tears his coat off and throws it to the ground, the buttons clapping all at once against the wooden floor.

“God dammit, Emilie. I’m not playing this game with you. Tell me why the hell you were at the gates of Dachau.”

“I’ve been sworn to secrecy,” I reply. There’s no way of getting out of Otto’s way tonight. My only hope is honesty and to make him see life from my eyes, which may be impossible after living and working on the same side as the world’s enemy.

“Sworn?” he asks, his voice a hair softer.

“Does the word ‘threatened’ make you feel better?”

Otto grits his teeth and pinches his hands around his neck. “Who threatened you?”

I tug at the fingertips of my leather gloves, sliding each one off my hand before placing them down neatly on the small entryway table. “Someone you made a part of our lives,” I say, moving to the buttons on my coat. I refuse to react the way he’d like me to because I wouldn’t be in this situation right now if it weren’t for the decisions he’d made, and the secrets he’d kept.

Otto releases his hands from his neck as I hang up my coat and slip off my shoes. He tilts his head to the side as an idea or realization seems to strike him. “Dietrich?”

“Of course. Who else would do such a thing to me?”

Otto picks at his bottom lip, squinting past my shoulder, but the question isn’t something he should be too surprised about.

I take a few steps toward Otto, forcing him to look at me instead of past me. “When did your uncle join the SS? Was it before or after we got married?”

I know the answer to this question now, having access to Dietrich’s biography inserted at the bottom of his memorandums. Otto must be aware of such a significant year in this timeline.

“I—I don’t know…It was after…I only knew he was forming a team of medical professionals to assist him in his research to cure cancer. His connection with the Luftwaffe had nothing to do with the regime,” Otto says. It’s easy to say stuff like that when everything in this country is so carefully swept under the rug, but it’s easy to see our military forces have been taken over. There’s nothing left of us now. There’s no hope.

I unclasp my earrings one by one and clutch them in my hand, allowing one of the posts to pierce into the flesh of my palm. “Did you ever question how easily Dietrich let you off the hook?”

“No because we agreed to remain members of his team but not take part in what he was conducting. That was to protect you. And all this time, you’ve been jeopardizing yourself and me. Our families. And for what?”

He pulls the rolled newspaper out of his back pocket and holds it up. “Der Stürmer? You’re reading Nazi propaganda now? We’ve been married two years. Two years, this week, in fact, and stupidly, I thought we were going to make it through all this together. I’m wrong, though, aren’t I?”

“No,” I say. “That isn’t what it seems, which you of all people in this world should understand quite well.” As hard as I’m trying to keep myself together so I don’t shatter and fall to my knees for forgiveness after going against my morals and lying to my husband, all I can do is pray that he doesn’t unravel that newspaper.

“What has Dietrich threatened you with?” he asks, slapping his free hand against the newspaper. “What?”

I stare at the newspaper, wondering if there will come a time when I’m the newspaper, rolled up, swung around, and slapped. Would Otto become that person? After all this time, I still don’t know what makes a human become a monster like so many have become here. I still feel every bit of pain for the suffering, especially when I step through those gates, greeted with cries, moans, and bodies hitting the inside of walls. The putrid scents that fill the sick bay, so strong they can’t be concealed with ammonia. I’ve walked past dead bodies strewn like pieces of rubbish against the exterior of a block, presumably left there until they are carted away in the daylight hours. I’ve risked everything in my life because I know what is at stake.

“Danner’s life.”

Otto huffs through exasperation and drops the newspaper to the ground. He was holding it so tightly, he didn’t stretch the rubber band, and I’m thankful for that. “I should have known Dietrich would use him as a weapon.”

I want to lunge for the paper and remove it from his sight, but I know better than to raise another question right now, except one. There’s one question I must ask him…

“Well, what’s Danner’s life worth to you?”

He chuckles against a grimace of discomfort. “Jesus, Emi, how am I supposed to answer that?”

I look up at Otto as tears burn behind my eyes. “You just did.”