Marta stirred in her arms and then settled back against her chest. The lingering aroma of sausage and sautéed potatoes, sauerkraut and schnitzel crept out from alleyways between buildings that housed apartments and offices, but besides the smells of Vienna, she and Marta were alone.
She couldn’t go to France as Max had asked of her, but she must get Marta to a safe place until she and her parents were able to follow.
A poster was tacked to a newspaper stand—the same poster she’d seen across Vienna in the past weeks. It was the photograph of an adorable baby boy and girl, faces one might see on a box of wheat flakes at the grocer’s, except this piece of Hitler’s propaganda was selling something much different. Underneath the faces of these sweet children were the wordsFuture Criminals.
As if they’d already indicted Marta and the thousands of otherKinderin their city for the crime of being Jewish.
An SS officer stopped her near the Schönbrunn Palace, asking why she was out before dawn. She told him her sister was sick. They needed a doctor.
Marta coughed spectacularly in that moment, as if she were auditioning for a part at the Burgtheater. The officer stepped back, concerned, it seemed, for his own health.
The truth was, Luzi was the one who was sick. Her own breath had been stolen away.
The housekeeper at the Dornbach house answered her knock and invited her into the salon. Luzi asked for Frau Dornbach, hoping that both Max and his father were still asleep.
Marta, with her brown curls and rose-red cheeks and runny nose, fell asleep again in the pleasant warmth. Luzi kissed her forehead and began humming Beethoven’s “7 Ländler,” a songmeant to accompany Austrians across the dance floor. The music, she prayed, would carry Marta wherever she went. And she prayed her sister would go far from here.
Even though it wasn’t yet six, Klara Dornbach was fully dressed in a neat ivory and black traveling suit and matching gloves. When she was a child, Luzi had called her Tante Klara, but she stood beside Klara as an adult this morning. An equal. Klara may be Aryan and an aristocrat in this diverse city, but they had the common bond of music. And of Max.
Klara glanced back at the hallway before looking at Luzi again. “Why are you here?” she whispered.
Luzi stood carefully, holding Marta close to her chest so she wouldn’t wake. “I need your help.”
“I fear that you won’t be able to get a visa to France.”
“We haven’t been able to get a visa anywhere, Klara.”
The woman took off her gloves and pulled them through her hands as if she were wringing out excess water. “How is your mother?”
“Not well, I’m afraid.”
Klara’s gaze stole to the window, to the first rays that lightened the room. “So many are hurting.”
“She can no longer care for Marta, and I—I don’t know what is going to happen to our family.”
“I wish there were something I could do.”
Luzi hugged her sister closer to her chest, not wanting to let go and yet knowing that she must. “You once had a baby girl, long ago.”
Surprise blazed through Klara’s eyes, and her lips opened, but no words came out.
“I was young, but I remember her, Klara. She looked just like Max.”
Klara reached for an armchair to steady herself. Perhaps Luzi was pressing too hard, but Klara must understand that while her daughter was gone, she could still rescue a child.
“I cried at her service and for months after,” Luzi said, rubbing her hand softly across Marta’s back. “Whenever I saw a pram on the street, I would mourn your loss.”
“You should leave—”
“Please take Marta with you.” Each word shot pain through her chest, but she couldn’t turn back. “You will save her life.”
“I can’t—”
“Please, Klara. I fear what will happen to her.”
“They won’t hurt a baby,” she said, but neither of them believed her words.
“It will be on our hands—both of our hands—if we do nothing.”
