Again, Louise seemed eager to do the things a parent would for an adult child who needed help making their way in the big world.
It was obvious—and touching—that Louise cared for Eva and didn’t want her to go.
She might’ve considered staying if her world hadn’t again been turned upside down, this time by her own hand.
Eva was at the Gellers’ later than usual to help clean up after a dinner party. By ten o’clock the last guests had left and Eva was in the kitchen washing the final round of dishes. Louise was going to be driving her back to the camp when she was done, as the last bus had left for the train station an hour earlier. As she rinsed a serving platter, she could hear Ernst speaking to Louise in the hallway on the other side of the wall. When he raised his voice, she turned off the tap.
Herr Geller was scolding Louise for something she’d said to one of his guests.
“It was not your place to say such a thing,” Ernst said. He’d had much to drink that night and his voice sounded different. Slightly unhinged.
Louise said something in response but her words were muffled by the thickness of the wall. Perhaps it was, “I was only trying to help.”
“You belittled me.”
Louise’s next words were indecipherable except for their tone. She was pleading.
Something then crashed to the floor and broke, and Louise cried out.
On impulse, Eva bolted from the kitchen and rounded the corner to the hallway.
Ernst had Louise against the wall next to a table where seconds earlier a large vase of flowers had been standing. Water, lilies, and big chunks of broken lead crystal were splayed at their feet. In his hand Ernst held a fistful of Louise’s hair.
Eva realized at once that Ernst had forgotten she’d been in the kitchen. The look on his face when he turned and saw her was one of utter amazement. The look on Louise’s was one of utter terror.
“Why are you still here?” he shouted at Eva.
“Louise?” Eva said softly, as though unsure her voice still belonged to her.
Louise smiled but it was the grin of a clown, painted on. Completely fake. “Go back in the kitchen, Eva. Go back. I’ll take you home in a minute.” She reached up a hand to gently ease away the fingers wrapped around half the hair on her head. But even as she did so, Ernst tightened his grasp and Louise cried out in pain.
Eva took a step forward. “Stop! You’re hurting her.” The words came out of her mouth like a command.
Ernst wheeled away from the wall and toward Eva, Louise’s hair still in his fist. Louise cried out again. “How dare you speak to me like that?” he said to Eva. “And in my own house.”
This insult was delivered at near calm. If he hadn’t had hold of his crying wife by her hair, his tone would have suggested everything was fine and he’d just told Eva to bring him a brandy.
When Eva said nothing in response, he took another step toward her.
“Ernst, please!” Louise screamed, both in pain and desperation.
The realization that she and Louise were both in danger hit Eva like a lightning bolt. She suddenly knew exactly why Louise had never wanted her to be at the house when Ernst was home. Why Louise hadn’t wanted her to stay with them when they talked about her remaining in Germany. Why Louise hadn’t ever said that shestill loved Ernst. Why sometimes when Eva came to clean the house Louise said she had a migraine and spent the hours Eva was there lying on her bed with a cool compress. Why Louise perhaps never wanted to have children, if this brute of a man would have been their father.
Louise had married a monster who was able to look and act like a gentleman when it suited him. And to be who he really was when it didn’t.
Ernst closed the distance to Eva. It was the nearest to her he’d ever been, and he towered over her. Louise was struggling to free herself and screaming his name, but he held onto her hair as though it was the easiest thing in the world to do.
“I asked you a question,” he said to Eva.
“And I said you’re hurting her.” Eva was unable to recognize from where these brave words came because fear pulsed through her. She was already imagining her own hair in Ernst’s grip when he tossed Louise to the floor and came at her.
Ernst swung the back of his hand like a cudgel. Eva instinctively ducked and his arm swung harmlessly through the air.
He lunged for her and she dodged him again. His face was now contorted in quiet rage, as though no one had dared to challenge his strength and control before. He lunged a second time, but his feet, clad in his expensive leather shoes, slipped on water from the spilled vase, and he went down on his back with a thud.
Eva ran to Louise, who was half sitting, half kneeling on the tile floor, cradling her head.
“Go, Eva! Run! Get out of here!” she wailed.
