Leeway Cottage (18 page)

T
hroughout August of 1943, unraveling civil order in
Denmark is infuriating to Dr. Best. In Kaj and Nina's world, Best is an archvillain. But they differ about Scavenius, their own prime minister. Kaj thinks Scavenius has saved Denmark the humiliation, the Quisling government, the disaster to their Jews that Norway has suffered. Nina says Scavenius is a Nazi sympathizer. She says she wants to shoot Hitler herself.

“But you're a pacifist,” says Kaj.

“I make an exception in his case,” says Nina.

Both would be surprised to learn how much Werner Best himself wants the present unrest to abate, how little he wants to have to retaliate. This is not because he is a warm and gentle person in spite of his smirk and his Nazi strut; it's for his own political survival. He is now identified with the policy of allowing Denmark relative normalcy (far more normalcy than exists in Germany anymore) in exchange for its workers and its goods. He is jockeying for the approval of the Führer. Best's competition is the dark and meaty General von Hanneken, now commanding the Wehrmacht in Denmark. Von Hanneken believes he was sent to turn Denmark into a German province. He views Werner Best as a fly in his ointment. The Third Reich likes to give contrary orders to its subordinates; it keeps them off balance, out of league with each other, and perpetually striving for preference.

At the beginning of August, as Sydney and Gladdy are putting up as many jars of raspberry jam as their sugar rations allow, Sweden finally cancels the right of transit across its borders for German troops. Lines drawn in sand in 1940 are being kicked apart. In quiet little Odense, a town best known as the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen, Danish strikers have badly beaten at least one German officer and refused to go back to work, no matter who begs them. All over the country the streets are full of SS troops, firing guns and threatening troublemakers. With more German troops in the country, more public and private buildings are taken over for housing and training them, increasing Danish irritation. Copenhagen's largest exhibition hall, the Forum, an extravaganza of steel and glass, is for instance being turned into a German barracks. On August 24 the militant underground delivers beer in wooden cases to the Forum, where it is happily accepted. Each has a layer of Tuborg beer bottles on its top rack and is stuffed with explosive beneath. The Forum blows up in broad daylight, without a shot fired or a Resistance fighter lost. Der Führer is furious.

Best writes to Berlin that a new situation has arisen. Berlin, however, already knows. Von Hanneken is complaining angrily that Best's experiment has failed. Best is called to Berlin to have his ears scorched off, by Himmler, as Hitler is too angry to see him. The Führer does not, as Best has suggested, think that the solution to this situation is to make Werner Best de facto ruler of Denmark. Instead, on August 28, General von Hanneken orders the Danish government to announce the following:

This is the end. The government refuses to announce these ultimata, and the cabinet resigns. The king applauds.

In the small hours of Sunday morning, in dark and rain, Nina wakes, alone in the apartment, to sounds of weapon fire. Hanneken has begun his assault. Danish military installations all over the country are being seized. Officers and soldiers will be interned; weapons and materiel captured. What Nina hears is the attack on the Royal Navy in Copenhagen Harbor. Admiral Vedel, at the opening shot, has ordered the fleet to make for Sweden, or if unable to escape, to scuttle. By full day, twenty-nine Danish Navy ships have gone to the bottom of the harbor. The rest have crossed the Øresund to Swedish waters.

Dawn finds Wehrmacht soldiers posted outside government buildings everywhere, including the palaces. The king declares himself a prisoner of war, and is henceforth under house arrest.

Werner Best calls for the press and gives a manly speech declaring that “this ridiculous little country has inoculated its people with the idea that Germany is weak…”

In spite of Best's bluster, it is now General von Hanneken whose state of emergency regulations are posted on Sunday and broadcast throughout the day. There are tears of grief and rage all over the ridiculous little country.

 

Everyone has felt a crisis coming, felt it must come, thought it should come. But now that it is here, there is a terrible dread. Henrik and Ditte, at their summer cottage in Nyborg, are frightened and anxious and want to be with their children. They spend the day packing, cleaning out the icebox, draining the pipes. There are Wehrmacht soldiers and SS troops seemingly everywhere as they make their way, laden with luggage, onto the ferry and then the train to Copenhagen. It's a somber journey. They arrive at Central Station at nine-thirty in the evening. There are many other travelers at the station, but the streets outside are weirdly quiet. After a long wait, they secure a ride in a Falck ambulance, sharing it with a young mother and two very tired children who are going in their direction.

Three blocks from the station, two German soldiers stand in the middle of the street holding machine guns across their chests. They signal the driver to the curb.

Inside, Henrik, who is in front with the driver, turns around to give his wife a long look. The young mother, sitting with Ditte, seems to have stopped breathing. One of her children, the boy, raises his eyes, frightened. All these eyes, plus the driver's, are fixed on the soldier who signals Henrik to roll down his window.

The soldier leans on his folded arms with his head in the window. He takes in each of the passengers in turn, inhaling their fear. Finally he says, in German, “And what do you think you are doing?”

Henrik answers, his German hesitant but his voice steady, “We are going home.”

“You didn't hear there's a state of emergency?”

“Yes, but—”

“You thought it didn't apply to you?”

“We thought we ought to go home.”

“Papers, please.”

Henrik and Ditte hunt for their identity cards. The young mother looks at Ditte, her eyes glassy with panic. The driver sits immobile, hands on the wheel, looking straight ahead.

The soldier looks at the papers Henrik and Ditte give him. He says, “What about you?” to the young woman, who whispers to Ditte, “Jeg taler ikke tysk…”

“And you.” The driver takes his papers from a breast pocket and holds them out without taking his eyes from the street before him.

“It's after curfew,” says the soldier to Henrik. He has all their papers in his hands.

“We are just trying to get home. We were in Nyborg. You see our address in Copenhagen. Our son and daughter are there alone.”

The soldier has had his fun and it is beginning to repeat itself.

“And you're all together?”

“Yes,” says Henrik. He doesn't know what's going on in the back but his instinct is to keep this simple.

The soldier hands the papers to Henrik. “You need permission to be out after curfew. Don't do this again.”

“Thank you. We won't.”

The soldier steps back from the car and says something to his companion. As the driver pulls away from the curb, the soldiers are laughing.

“Oh, my god,” says the young woman. “Oh, my god.”

“Yes,” says Ditte. Henrik had now turned around to them. “You didn't have your papers?” he asks the young woman.

“She doesn't speak German,” says Ditte.

But she had understood what was wanted. “I have them,” she says, “but we're Jewish. I thought they were going to take us.” Her accent is foreign, perhaps Russian.

“Oh, we're Jewish, too,” said Henrik, although he in fact is not. “We'd have gone together.” Somehow his native amusement has reasserted itself; since danger has passed, maybe there really was none in the first place. It isn't rational, it's his relentlessly optimistic temperament.

“Do you have someone waiting for you at home?” Ditte asks kindly. “A husband?”

“No, he is in the north, in Jutland, with the chalutzim. They are training to be farmers in Palestine. Who is it who calls children hostages to fortune?” She is trying not to cry. She puts her nose to the hair of her sleeping baby daughter and breathes as if praying.

“Shakespeare,” says Ditte.

“Not Shakespeare,” says Henrik. “Someone else. Raleigh? Bacon?”

“I'd go to Sweden tonight if I could…” says the miserable young mother. It's as if she suddenly believes that Ditte and Henrik will tell her how.

All this time, in spite of their fear, they have kept their voices level enough that they haven't alarmed the children. The little girl hasn't even wakened. The driver stops before the young woman's apartment building. Henrik gets out to see her to her door, but she says they must go on; they might be stopped again. Henrik shakes her hand and wishes her Godspeed, and they watch, with the driver, until she is inside the building.

Alone now with the driver, Henrik and Ditte are silent as they drive on through the long summer twilight. They would go to Sweden themselves tonight if they could. But Sweden would send them back. It has been tried. They feel as if they are in the bottom of a deep dark pocket, and the malignant giant from whose belt they swing is about to get to his feet and saunter off with them.

I
n Dundee that Sunday, Gladdy woke up from a long
afternoon nap, thoroughly confused to be in her childhood bedroom at Leeway. She lay under her soft cotton comforter and breathed in the smells of the house, as she gradually adjusted to being not a child, but a wife, and six months pregnant, and alone.

She rolled onto her side and looked at the armchair in the corner as she let go of the last wisps of whatever she had been dreaming. The chair had a blue slipcover showing scenes from
Robinson Crusoe;
she remembered her mother sewing it. The chair had been in Tommy's room, but Gladdy liked it so much that the summer she was ten he gave it to her for her birthday. Tommy was at sea, and hadn't been heard from in weeks. Neville was in the Pacific, too, but she'd had a night letter from him only two days ago.

She felt the baby kick.

The house seemed utterly quiet. It was midafternoon; she'd slept a long time. The August sun was golden, filtered through the leaves of the giant oak tree whose branches stretched almost to her window. Sandra and baby Eleanor were most likely down at the bathing beach. Sydney had said at lunch that she and some friend from the knitting group were going to take their scarves and socks into the village to Dot Sylvester, who was in charge of sorting and packing them and taking them over to Union to the train. Was that what she said? Or had she said she was going to play golf? The house ticked quietly, as it had in her earliest childhood. The safest coziest place in the world, this house, with its musty summer-house smells.

The Robinson Crusoe chair reminded her of a blue lambswool blanket with a satin binding she had loved as a child, trailing around with it, rubbing the binding until it was tattered. Later it hung over the back of her mother's chaise longue in her bedroom. It was a crib blanket but Molly had kept it near her long after Tom and Gladdy had outgrown it, to remember the days of baby powder and midnight feedings, and sweet-smelling toddlers fresh from their baths. She would rub little pink dancing Gladdy dry before the bedroom heater and then wrap her in the blue blanket and tell her to run quick to get her jammies, and then back quick for a story. Where was it now, that blanket?

Gladdy got up and went into the bathroom between her room and Tommy's. It had a pedestal sink, with a rust stain from where the faucet dripped, and a flush with the water tank well above the commode, and a chain, a pull-and-pray. There was a stall shower, rather than a tub, which is why they had bathed in their parents' bathroom when they were small. When she had washed her face and put herself to rights, she went out to the back hall to look in the linen closet.

There were many towels and facecloths, mostly with ragged edges and her mother's monogram, and some blankets she remembered from sleepaway camp. But the blue blanket wasn't there. It must be in the window seat in her mother's room. She would love to have it to wrap her own baby in.

She crossed the silent hallway and opened the door to the big bedroom. Two figures, dark against the bright window, jumped apart as she stepped in, and three people began talking at once.

“Oh, my word, I'm so sorry,” said Gladdy.

“Uh, oh, oh!” said Sydney. “You scared me! You're awake, darling, I was just going to knock on your door to be sure you—”

“I was just showing Sydney—” said Anselma.

Then they all fell silent.

Then Sydney and Gladys spoke again at the same time: “Did you—”

“I should have—”

Finally Sydney said, “Did you have a good nap? We were trying to be so quiet…”

By now Anselma was over by the chaise, studying something out the window.

“Yes, a lovely nap,” said Gladdy with brainless enthusiasm. “Thank you so much. I sleep better here than anywhere in the
world.”

“I'm
so
glad,” said Sydney. “Well, we had a great adventure downtown, we …Would you like some iced tea? I would!”

“Yes, I'd love some!”

“Anselma?”

“Yes, thanks. That sounds fine.” And the three of them went downstairs to the kitchen, talking slightly frantically. By the time Gladdy remembered she wanted to look for the blanket, she was on the train back to Philadelphia.

 

Nine days after the fall of the Danish government, on September 8, Werner Best telegraphs Berlin that he would like ships and troops and Gestapo details as soon as possible; that the convenient state of emergency in Denmark presents an ideal time to solve the Danes' Jewish Problem.