“Very good, son,” he praises with laughter. “What more could a father ask for?”
This is what pride looks like to Weyman. A child trumpeting on command. An emotionally gutted boy honoring ignorant discipline. Within the secured boundaries of this SS neighborhood, power is pride. But outside these guarded boundaries—before all of this…pride meant something much different.
Pride was keeping the clocks of Sanok running on time. It was running a family factory, then surrendering the deed to protect loved ones. Pride was teaching children the weight of a promise, the importance of integrity, and how to hold on to the good, even when there wasn’t much of it left.
Weyman doesn’t know how to love his children, let alone teach them how to love. He doesn’t even glance at Greta, who at just eight years old refuses to raise her hand like her brother. She just stares—questions pooling within her sad blue eyes, trying to understand a world that doesn’t make sense. I’ll also venture to guess no one knows where Hilde is now.
“Is Hilde in her bedroom?” I ask from behind them.
“I believe so. I’m sure that’s where she is…” Lotte replies, unsure, as if reasonable not to know where her own three-year-old is.
“How do you not know where our daughter is?” Weyman scolds her.
“I’ve been busy,” she says, turning to seek her reflection in their framed mirror.
“With what?” he presses.
“What type of question is that? What do you think I do all day?”
“I honestly can’t imagine, Lotte.”
I rush up the stairs toward the children’s quarters to check on Hilde, but barely make it halfway before catching Lotte’s stabbing recoil: “Well, I certainly don’t spend my day ogling Rosalie—the servant you brought here to helpme. That’s for you to do, isn’t it?”
Her words steal the wind from my lungs, confirming what I wish I was wrongly imagining. His wife sees it. She knows.
I fling myself away from the stairwell and into the corridor outside of the children’s bedrooms, clutching my chest, forcing air back into my lungs.
I could follow every rule, never complain, never even speak, but it wouldn’t stop what’s happening. What’s completely out of my control here.
The only control I’m allowed is over the children, and even that is conditional.
Hilde.
I grip the skirted fabric of my dress, push their cutting words to the side, and move quicker. I need to make sure she’s all right.
She’s three and curious. She shouldn’t be left alone. The drawers of her walnut bureau are pulled out, clothes toppling out in every direction. She’s perched on the top, in nothing but bloomers, one hand gripping a frayed rag doll in one hand, the other dragging her fingernails down her chest that rises too fast with each breath.
The floor creaks as I lunge to grab her. I scoop her up just before she releases a shallow rusty exhale and hold her against my chest, feeling the flutter of her rapid heartbeat. “You can’t climb like that anymore, sweetheart,” I whisper, but her head has already fallen to my shoulder, limp from exhaustion. “That must have been a lot of work to climb all the way up to the top of your bureau?”
I can’t scold her for not knowing. She doesn’t understand that even childish play can tire a weakened heart. The murmur began months ago following an untreated case of Rheumatic fever. But no one in this household believes or perhaps trusts doctors. Doctors can turn them in to the Reich. Mark them as “unfit” in a different way than I’m forced to do. Though I suspect the outcome is the same for anyone who doesn’t live up to the Aryan standard of perfection.
I slip her dress back over her head and settle her on my hip to carry her downstairs. “Frau Weyman?” My words echo through the corridor just before entering the dimly lit elegant dining room. “What did Hilde have for lunch today?”
“For lunch,” she asks, her red painted nails fiddling with the pearls on her necklace. “Is something wrong?” Her question doesn’t follow with a typical response of jumping up from her seat to check on her child.“We had herring, slaw, and pickles, I believe.” Her words are emotionless and flat.
“I told you she can’t have that much salt.”
“Well, it slipped my mind. You said she would be fine, did you not?”
I suggested limiting her salts and avoiding extraneous activity because I don’t have medical equipment to give her a more finite answer. “IsaidI’m sure she’ll be fine, but she should see a doctor.”
Weyman slams his fists against the table, silverware clattering, chandelier clinking. “Perhaps you’d like to consult thatadmiringdoctor in Auschwitz?” he sneers. “He seems utterly fascinated by you.”
“I don’t understand,” Lotte says with an easy chuckle, setting her fork down, a shiver of a clink to follow.
Yes, she does. She knows how her husband looks at me, like I’m something more than a servant to him. That his words speak of jealousy rather than annoyance.
“Never mind, Lotte,” Weyman grunts, his casual manner gone. “No doctor is going to offer us a desirable solution. Not for Hilde. Not for anyone. All they’ll do is mark her as disabled. I won’t let that happen.”
