Working for Louise hadn’t been her first job following the war. Expats in the DP camps were expected from the beginning to find employment. When the camp’s job assistance clerk asked Eva what her prior work experience had been, she couldn’t say she’d spent nearly two years in a Kyiv government building typing and interpreting for the Nazis. Eva Kruse from Warsaw could not say that. Eva Kruse from Warsaw had never been to Kyiv. She told the woman she had experience cleaning houses and cooking and mending, as those were all tasks she had performed starting at age twelve when Tante Alice passed.
Her first job placement was as a part-time maid at a hotel that housed occupational forces.
When the Americans at last left, the hotel’s German owners didn’t want camp refugees as employees. While Eva was looking for another job, she heard camp rumors of a congressional bill floating around in America that, if passed, would provide relief for a great many of the six hundred thousand refugees still foundering in the world of the camps. Other nations had already made similar overtures of assistance: Belgium, Australia, and several South Americancountries. But to immigrate to a country whose language she didn’t speak? Eva struggled to understand how a person who did that ever felt like they belonged.
She started working in the laundry room of a hospital, also part-time, the same day in June 1948 that President Truman signed the Displaced Persons Act, which, among other things, made provision for the immigration of two hundred thousand DPs to the United States over the next four years. But the news changed nothing for her. Eva knew no one in America; she didn’t know what else to do but continue to wash the worst kind of soiled laundry.
And then one afternoon she heard of another job opening.
There was a woman, American by birth but married to a German man, who was looking for domestic help for her large Munich home. She wanted someone young. Someone who could cook and clean but carry on an intelligent conversation, too, in German or English. Someone she could trust and someone who still knew how to laugh.
“I can do all those things,” Eva said to the woman who’d read off the job description. “I can cook and clean. I can speak German. I can laugh.”
Two days later, Eva returned to the office to see if there’d been any word regarding her application.
The same woman smiled and handed Eva a card with an address on it and a train schedule.
“Frau Geller would like to meet with you on Monday at ten a.m.”
Eva would address this woman as Frau Geller only once, when she met her. Every day thereafter, until the moment Frau Geller put her on a plane to Los Angeles three years later, Eva called her—by request—by her first name.
Louise, tall and auburn haired, was a forty-two-year-old former Bostonian who’d gone to Oxford University for her last two yearsof college as a literature major. While in England she’d met Ernst Geller, born and raised in Munich, who was also at Oxford, but studying economics. He was from a moneyed Bavarian family, spoke English impeccably, was handsome in a stark way, with ice-blue eyes and sun-blond hair and a near-regal bearing. He was calm, elegant, and methodical, and she’d fallen quickly and deeply in love with him after only three dates. But when he proposed the week of their graduation in May of 1928, her family back home in Massachusetts had been appalled. Her parents had lost an uncle, a cousin, and a neighbor to the kaiser’s armies in the Great War only ten years earlier. They begged her to reconsider wanting to spend the rest of her life with a German man. They would never accept him as their son-in-law, and if she married Ernst, she was turning her back on not only her family but her heritage, her country, and everything she’d been taught was good and right. But Louise was in love. She married Ernst Geller in Munich the summer after her graduation. She’d not heard from her parents in the years since.
After Louise told Eva her story, it occurred to her that Louise hadn’t said Ernst was a man she still loved, only that she had loved him when he’d proposed and when she’d married him.
Eva wondered if Louise was happy in the beautiful house that had survived Allied bombing, with its tapestries and paneled walls and window boxes full of flowers, and whose grounds featured majestic fir trees and a pond and rose garden. It was a grand home to be sure but there were no children living in it nor any evidence that there ever had been. Louise was easy to work for, always had a neat list of tasks for Eva on the Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays that she came. And she insisted on paying for Eva for an extra hour or two every day she worked so that Louise could teach her English to better Eva’s chances of getting chosen to emigrate to theU.K., Canada, or America. She was kindhearted, generous, and maternal.
And because of this, it surprised and saddened her that Louise had no children.
Louise would have made such a good mother.
Herr Geller—for that is what he instructed her to call him—displayed no parallel fatherly instincts. She found Ernst Geller impossibly hard to get to know. He had a prominent position in finance and in the newly formed West German economy. The deutsche mark had replaced the occupation currency, and Herr Geller was somehow integral to the leadership of the banking system and worked long hours in a headquarters office in downtown Munich. Eva wasn’t entirely sure what he did. He was almost never at the house when she was there, which Louise almost seemed intentional about.
When he was at home, he was polite around Louise, but not in the way Eva had seen other husbands be gracious to their wives. It was not so much in a kind way as in a mannerly way. He never put his hand on Louise’s or kissed her in front of Eva, though she knew some men were not prone to public displays of affection. Louise had described him as a quiet, calm man, and that’s what he was. But he was something else, too—something that Eva couldn’t quite name.Aloofwasn’t quite the right word. Nor wasdispassionate. Nor wascalculating. Eva was certain Herr Geller cared about something, was devoted to something, and it was probably his marriage, but only logic told her that. She didn’t see the physical evidence that he cared for Louise, that he loved her, esteemed her.
But neither did she see physical evidence that the opposite was true.
As the months of the first year of working for the Gellers tickedby, Eva made it a point to remind herself that while she was fond of Louise and grateful that Louise was teaching her English, she’d not been asked to fix Louise’s problems or to even identify if she had any.
Her goal instead was to learn English and apply for permanent residency somewhere English was spoken. Louise was certain the United States was Eva’s best option, and not just because that’s where she was from. Louise had college chums and high school friends up and down the East Coast and even a few on the faraway West Coast that she was confident would help Eva identify a sponsor, which was the biggest hurdle to getting a DP immigration application approved. If Eva mastered English and had a sponsor willing to arrange for a job and a place to live, she could easily be one of the four hundred thousand DPs America was willing to take. Louise even offered to teach Eva how to drive.
These were the activities Eva concentrated on, and when stray concerns about Louise’s happiness would pop up, she shooed them away as none of her business, even though Louise did seem interested inherhappiness.
Eva had tried dating a few men—other refugees on the male side of the camp—at Louise’s suggestion that she have a little fun now and then. There were dances and concerts and cultural celebrations hosted by the different nationalities represented in the camp, and Eva was often asked by young men of the camp to attend one as their date. Aside from the momentary distraction of an evening out, Eva didn’t know how to empty Sascha’s place in her heart so that she could happily date other men. It seemed wrong and unkind to his memory. And it didn’t seem fair to the young men who wanted to court her.
Besides, she was priming herself to go somewhere far away fromSascha’s memory. Like America. Or Canada. Or England. Or Australia. What was the point in beginning a relationship in the camp when she wasn’t planning to stay? There wasn’t.
Late in the following year, when immigration protocols had been formalized, Louise helped Eva with filling out two applications, one for Australia and one for the United States, though the process for immigrating to America was rumored to be slower and more selective.
Louise seemed sad as she helped Eva work through the many questions on the initial forms. Eva realized as she tucked the papers away before leaving the Geller house for the day that she was sad, too. She and Louise had formed a bond over the past two years that had transcended their relationship as employer and employee. Louise had marked Eva’s birthdays with sweets and new clothes. She had spoiled her with Christmas gifts and hair appointments and the best present of all—she’d given her the ability to speak English and drive a car. Louise was the first person since her father who’d genuinely cared for her like a parent would.
“You know,” Louise said, “if neither of these applications is accepted, I could help you stay. I could help you apply for a permanent place to live right here.”
Eva had shared with Louise all that had befallen her—leaving nothing out—and also her desire to put as much distance as she could between herself and those losses. Staying in Germany hadn’t been a consideration until just that moment.
“You mean here with you and Herr Geller?”
“Oh, no!” Louise replied quickly. Too quickly, and Louise seemed to sense it. She just as rapidly reframed her reply. “I mean, you would want your own little place in the city center where there are more after-work activities for young people. I could help youget a nice little flat close to a train station so you could still easily get to the house and all the other people you work for. Or I could help you with training for a different job if you wanted.”
