“In spring, I’m being transferred to our firm’s offices in Zurich. Julia loves Switzerland and we’re both very pleased, but—” He shook his head. “Setting up a new household is daunting, and I’ll be busy with my cases.”
“Of course,” said Greta, curious how she fit in.
“I wondered if you would consider coming along. I have a large private library that will need to be unpacked and organized, and I’d also like the girls to learn English. You’ll have a salary, of course, and a large private suite where you can write undisturbed, and we’ll insist that you consider yourself a member of the family.”
“It’s—that’s very generous, but I—I don’t know.”
“The house is lovely,” he added earnestly, “and my daughters are sweet and good. I know all parents think their children are wonderful, but in our case, it’s true. You’d adore them.”
Greta smiled. “I’m sure I would.”
“Please tell me you’ll think about it. We desperately need the help, and I can’t think of anyone who would be better company than you.”
Flattered, Greta agreed, more hopeful than she had been since the ill-fated Internationaler Theaterkongresse. She loved to travel, she needed steady work, she was tired of her cramped rented room, and she longed for the peace of mind that came from knowing where her next meal was coming from. A change of scene would give her a new perspective, help her choose a new direction for her aimless life. And it would also be a relief to put a few hundred kilometers between herself and Adam.
As the New Year unfolded, cold, grim, and blustery, Greta mulled over Felix’s offer. Her list of the job’s advantages grew as the weeks passed, but she worried that if she went abroad without first establishing herself solidly in the Berlin theater, upon her return she would have to start all over again, making contacts, establishing her credentials, proving herself anew. Perhaps she would not be gone long enough to be forgotten and it would not matter. Perhaps the economy would improve while she was away, and she would return to an abundance of opportunities. She feared it was far more likely that the situation would worsen and she would find herself at the back of the queue for the scarce few jobs that remained. Perhaps she would be wise to stay and hold on to the little she had.
In late January, Greta was walking down Weydingerstrasse, avoiding piles of dirty slush on the sidewalks and shivering in her threadbare wool coat, when she came upon a workers’ protest in front of the Karl-Liebknecht-Haus, home to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. As she tried to pass, a crowd of Nazi Brownshirts swarmed upon the scene, shouting slogans and swinging fists. Instinctively she shrank back against a building, watching with increasing alarm as a terrible confrontation erupted. As the Reds and Browns fought, the police arrived and promptly took the side of the fascists, beating back the protesting workers with rubber truncheons and erecting a cordon around the square, detaining the Communists while allowing the Brownshirts through. Around the perimeter of the police cordon, the protestors—workers and the unemployed, Communists and Social Democrats—strode up and down the street in small groups, watchful and glaring, until Greta could almost feel the bitterly cold air crackle with animosity.
Ducking her head against the relentless wind, burying her chin in her scarf, she continued on her way, only to encounter another protest near the Alexanderplatz. Desperate unemployed workers marched around the square, demanding food and jobs from the government, calling out to skeptical onlookers for support.
“Our families are starving!” one man shouted, shaking his fist in the air.
“Join the Communists, and together we’ll fight for bread and for work!” another man cried out to passersby. Most hardened their expressions and hurried on their way.
“Don’t shoot!” an older man beseeched a pair of police officers on horseback impassively observing the protest. “You should be standing with us, not with the fascists!”
Everything about the scene warned that violence would erupt at any moment, so Greta quickened her pace and did not stop until she crossed the Spree. It was outrageous that the police should take sides in a political struggle instead of reserving their loyalty for the rule of law. They should remain impartial public servants, not lackeys of Hitler’s Sturmabteilung.
She was exhausted, worn out from hunger and worry and the ceaseless conflict that made a simple walk through the city an ordeal. She needed a respite from loneliness and dread. If going abroad meant that she would have to rebuild her fragile career from square one upon her return, so be it. Perhaps she would not come back to Berlin at all.
That evening she called Felix and told him she would take the job. Now that she had made up her mind, her only regret was that they would not depart for Switzerland until spring.
Chapter Six
January–June 1932
Mildred
Mildred had high hopes for the New Year, inspired by her immeasurable happiness that she and Arvid were together again.
In autumn, they had moved into a small home in suburban Zehlendorf near the Grunewald. Their modest flat belonged to a new woodland housing development that mixed three- and four-story apartment buildings with terraced single-family homes, all with flat roofs and angular lines in the Bauhaus style. Mildred adored the bright colors chosen for the exteriors of the buildings, which had earned their neighborhood the nicknamePapageiensiedlung, “parrot estate.” Even after the brilliant autumn leaves had faded and winter’s snow had begun to fall, she and Arvid enjoyed walking in the lovely adjacent woods before breakfast or after supper. They often remarked that their new home felt like a country retreat, a peaceful oasis far from the increasing unrest of the cities.
Mildred’s commute to the University of Berlin was longer from Zehlendorf, but she loved their new home and her work and studies so much that she did not mind. Her students were clever and interesting, and they never used hunger or hardship as an excuse to be unprepared for class. Students enrolled in her courses in steadily rising numbers, a promising development since as a junior faculty member she was paid not by the section or the number of hours she taught, but by the number of students who attended her lectures.
If only Arvid’s search for a faculty position had been as successful. A series of promising interviews in Marburg had abruptly ceased when the university declined to hire him as an assistant professor because, as one distinguished professor had bluntly put it, his research proved that he was not Nazi enough.
“Imagine how more vehemently they would have rejected me if they knew about ARPLAN,” said Arvid wearily, referring to the research organization he had founded for prominent economists to study the Soviet Union’s planned economy and adapt its strategies to improve Germany’s steadily worsening financial situation. Although sometimes Mildred worried that Arvid’s outspokenness on the merits of Marxism might draw the ire of the Brownshirts, she told herself that if ARPLAN developed a plan that saved Germany, all would be forgiven. The trick was to avoid trouble with the Nazis until then.
Unfortunately, trouble seemed more likely by the day.
When spring arrived, thePapageiensiedlungfelt more like a country retreat than ever as pale green leaves unfurled on the trees and birdsong returned to the skies. The conflicts of the city receded to a faint echo as Mildred and Arvid strolled through the awakening forest, but one morning they returned from their daily walk to discover a red, black, and white swastika flag hanging from a neighbor’s window. The next week, two more hung from poles newly installed outside other front doors. A man who lived around the corner, a low-level civil servant in the transportation ministry, began engaging Arvid in conversation on the train platform each morning, praising the National Socialists, condemning the Communists, and promising that soon Herr Hitler would make Germany great again, as it had been before the war.
“It’s as if he’s trying to provoke me into an argument,” Arvid told Mildred one evening over supper. “I refuse to give him the pleasure. When I try to speak with him rationally, he dismisses what I say if it doesn’t confirm what he already believes.”
“I know exactly what you mean. Frau Schmidt does the same.”
“The sweet woman from down the block who brought usApfelkuchenwhen we moved in?”
