MARTHA

1990

Martha Wiesberg was a woman of strict routine: Sunday, church; Monday, lunch with her neighbor; Tuesday, book club; Wednesday, laundry press; Thursday, aerobics — all at exactly the same time each week. Even a slight deviation was destructive to people like Martha. She needed routine like air to breathe. Only those who knew her very well — and they were far and few — knew why: it was her way of numbing her mind, of silencing the past and calming the voices that would remind her that life could have been so different, if only ...

It was four thirty in the afternoon. The sunlight was fading slowly, the way it does when the cold of early autumn starts to creep in. Martha had just fixed herself her daily afternoon cup of coffee (decaf), sat down with her daily crossword puzzle, and put on the television to watch her daily show. But her show wasn't on. Instead, a special program in honor of Germany's recently created Tag der Deutschen Einheit, "German Unity Day," was airing. Martha immediately switched off the TV.

The silence in the room engulfed her like a dark blanket, allowing the voices in her head to become louder. This time it wasn't simply the interruption of routine that got to her; it was the most recent milestone in Germany's history: the reunification. Most of the population seemed happy about it, chatting about it in interviews on the TV, about what had caused the separation in the first place: the war, a dark chapter. For her part, Martha had moved on, or so she liked to think. But of course, there were the memories. Her mind was just about to dive deeper into that muddy lake of painful remembrances when the doorbell rang and jolted her from her thoughts.

Martha opened the door and stared into the face of her postman, who had been delivering the mail to her for over ten years. The setting sun was breaking through the heavy clouds one last time, providing a backlight that gave him an almost ethereal appearance.

"GrüßGott, Frau Wiesberg," he said with a nervous smile. Martha had never liked that salutation. Greet God? Okay! She sang to herself, I will when I see him! She had always felt a bit out of place in Munich. She was a Zugereiste, after all, an "outsider" not born there.

"This is for you," the postman said with outstretched arms. Martha had never been too fond of him, partly because she suspected that he was reading her mail, as letters would often arrive torn open on the side. His curiosity, too, had become a staple in her diet of routine.

Martha took the letter, wondering why the man had bothered to ring the doorbell rather than simply leave the letter in her mailbox. She was about to close the door when he gently tugged her back.

"Yes?"

"Well, in the name of the German Federal Postal Services, we would like to apologize very much for the delay."

Confused, Martha studied the envelope, which had been — or appeared to have been — ripped open by the transport, the letter sticking out one side. Adolf's face in the upper right corner looked out at her sternly. She brought the envelope closer to her eyes. The postmark read December 27, 1944.

"Are you joking?" she asked, and looked up at him.

"No, Frau Wiesberg, believe me, you are not the only one. There are a couple of others who have also been affected."

She gazed down again at the envelope, chills running up her arms. "Affected by what?"

"The wall?" he said, surprised. "This letter was held up, and," he started to explain, "now that the wall has come down, it finally found its way to you."

Martha was still staring at the letter when it slowly began to dawn on her.

"The German Post will of course not charge you any delivery fee."

He giggled, and Martha glared at him.

"I mean the German Post stopped charging so little postage a long time ago," he went on.

"I understood that the first time. I just don't find it at all funny," she told him.

The grin on his face died suddenly, and he shuffled his feet nervously.

"Is there anything else I can do for you?" Martha asked impatiently.

"No, no. Have a great day."

He was about to turn around when Martha heard him mumble something else.

"What now?" she barked.

"Who is Wolfgang Wiesberg?"

Martha slammed the door.

Leaning against the inside of the door, she shut her eyes. She felt like a huge wave was breaking over her. Memories were flowing back into her mind, making her dizzy.

She stared at the handwriting on the envelope. Wolfgang Wiesberg. Her twin brother. How she had suffered when she and Mother had been informed of his death, when the war had ended. Yet she and Wolfgang hadn't been close at the end. In fact, she had probably wished his death at some point. What was there to say, forty-six years later? Whatever was in that letter couldn't turn back time, couldn't bring back the love that life had held in store for her only to have cruelly snatched it away.

I don't want to remember, I don't want to remember, I don't want to remember, she told herself over and over again, like a mantra. Martha started to tremble uncontrollably. She had always known that the secrets were only sleeping. Now they had finally woken up and come back to haunt her.

1938

Up and down, open and close, they were moving in unison in the summer heat.

"Martha, you are always a little too fast." The rebuke came from the beautiful long-legged Else, her blond hair done into two thick braids. She was sitting next to Martha on the floor, performing the same leg movements. From above, the circle of young women was supposed to resemble a flower that opened and closed as it reacted to sunlight. A gymnastic practice.

"Sorry," Martha mumbled, her skin itchy under the shorts that barely covered her upper thighs, and the white shirt of her uniform.

Else shook her head. "What are you always thinking about?"

Before Martha could respond, Else got up and stopped the music, then waited for the other girls to gather around her. "We still have the chance to be selected to perform for our Führer at the Party Day in Nuremberg in September! Clementine zu Castell herself will soon come and assess us!" Else's words were met with great enthusiasm. Clementine zu Castell was the new Führerin of the organization Faith and Beauty, which Hitler had initiated in January for women between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one. Martha was the only one in the group who didn't join in on the cheers. Else's eyes lingered on hers, just long enough. But by the time Martha had forced herself to bring the palms of her hands together, it was too late, and her clapping got lost in the midst of the departing girls.

As she walked over to her bike, Else caught up with her. "I ask myself every time why you keep coming to these meetings," she hissed at Martha. "You know you don't have to."

"I know," Martha said to Else as she mounted her bike. "I'll see you at Traudl's."

She sensed Else's eyes following her as she drove out of the park.

* * *

Else was right: participation in Faith and Beauty was optional, unlike membership in the BDM, the League of German Girls. But unlike when she was in the BDM, which was for girls between the ages of ten and seventeen, Martha no longer had to attend events where girls were indoctrinated with twisted historical facts and endless stories about martyrs in the Hitler Youth, and had to sing the anthem of the Nazi Party, the "Horst Wessel Song." She still knew the lyrics by heart, that and the prayer for the Führer they had to recite at the beginning of each BDM session.

Faith and Beauty was ostensibly apolitical, and the uniform did not contain swastikas. Yet still she despised the seemingly never-ending Faith and Beauty sessions in which she learned about pottery, weaving, and interior decorating. These sessions, like the so-called "home evenings" she had attended in the BDM, were meant to prepare the working woman for her future role as wife, mother, and homemaker, while at the same time help her identify and shape her unique skills and individuality.

"Individuality" — a word that was as misplaced in Fascism as Martha was misplaced in this world.

Martha had perfected the skill of letting her mind wander in unpleasant situations. During the incessant chatter about the duties of the German woman, she traveled to the faraway places she had read about in her novels. She loved Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and Fontane. But what most fascinated her were some of those novels that had appeared on the schwarzen Listen, the blacklists, in 1933, many of them written by Jewish authors, titles that were considered "un-German," novels by Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann, all of Erich Kästner's books, which she had grown up with, Hemingway's "In Another Country," London's Martin Eden. She had read them all over and over, until the pages had begun to fall out. This was her way of getting to know the world outside of her own. With Brecht's The Threepenny Opera, she had visited London; with Hesse's Siddhartha, India. Hesse had not been on the blacklist, but evil tongues claimed that he was no different and that he helped Mann and Brecht escape the Reich and betray their country. Reading also brought Martha closer to her own world. Mann's Buddenbrooks taught her that all families in some way share the same dysfunctional dynamics, regardless of social class or history. She sometimes would find her own hunger for a world beyond her deadening reality mirrored in the protagonist's ongoing struggle in Hesse's Steppenwolf.

Daydreaming was the only way for her to endure Faith and Beauty. She, unlike the other girls in her group, had been forced, yes, even threatened, to join by her twin brother, Wolfgang. And saying no to her brother was not a possibility. Not anymore.

Even the slightest form of resistance was no longer an option.

* * *

Mother had asked Martha to get some groceries on her way back from the meeting, and Martha was in no hurry to get home. It would be the same sight that awaited her every evening: Mother sitting in the kitchen, staring out of the window, waiting for her and Wolfgang to return. Martha's older sister, Irene, had died of an appendix rupture the year before. Irene had been the fourth child Mother had lost over the years, and Father had died of a heart attack five years before Irene. Martha and Wolfgang were all she had left.

The family lived in a suburb of Munich called Perlach. Their house sat right at the border of the city line, at the edge of a forest as dark as the mood in the house. But tonight, when Martha entered the main hallway, she sensed something was different. It was palpable, the presence of another person. They never had visitors. Mother didn't like to host strangers in the house.

The unfamiliar laughter from the kitchen confirmed her suspicion. From the hallway, she could see Mother, Wolfgang, and a strange man sitting around the table. The bottles at the center betrayed that they were likely not sober.

From the doorway, Martha studied Wolfgang. He was always a nice-looking boy, but today he looked especially handsome, his face glowing.

Martha entered the room, and the stranger immediately rose from his seat. He easily measured over six feet. The short sleeves of his white shirt revealed strong arms, and his shorts showed equally strong legs, with knee-length socks bulging over the calves. His athletic body and height made him appear a couple of years older than the twins.

"This is my other child, Martha," Mother explained to the man.

"Heil Hitler, gnädiges Fräulein," he said.

Martha had to look up at him to see his face, as she returned the greeting. He was very blond, and his eyes were blue, piercing.

Martha couldn't help but think that he must pass as Hitler's model for the Aryan race.

The man promptly sat back down and turned to Wolfgang, resuming their lively conversation. Mother silently motioned to Martha to take the groceries to the storage room at the back of the kitchen. Normally, Wolfgang would have gotten up and helped her carry the heavy bags, but he appeared too engrossed in his conversation to even notice her.

While unpacking, she listened in on their conversation. As usual these days, the conversation revolved around the Führer's plans to annex the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia, and its German-speaking population.

"Hänschel keeps me informed about our Führer's recent armament actions," she heard Wolfgang say, referring to the Führer's reactions to the "Czech terror against the Sudeten Germans," as Goebbels kept referring to it on the radio. Hänschel was Wolfgang's boss at the Gestapo.

"The army?" the stranger asked.

"And the air force. He also executed his plans to expand on the fortifications in the west. The Führer wants it to be the biggest of all time!" Wolfgang paused theatrically before continuing. "He had spoken about it for a while, Hänschel says, but we had to execute those strengthening plans immediately after all the lies the Czech regiment spread about us! All the acts of violence against our helpless Volksgenossen over there!" Martha, however, had her doubts that all of those 3.5 million Sudeten Germans wanted to become a part of the Third Reich.

"Yes, a great power like ours shouldn't be fooled twice!" the stranger replied, his voice rising in absolute agreement.

After unpacking, Martha joined them at the table. The two men were still in deep discussion, and Mother was hanging on every word coming from Wolfgang's lips. Martha wondered how she could be so supportive of the idea of another war when she had lost most of her family in the first war. But Martha chose not to comment on it. In general, she had stopped saying too much at home. As in the Faith and Beauty meetings, here, too, her mind usually started to drift whenever Wolfgang would drone on and on about the amazing transformation the German Reich was undergoing thanks to Hitler.

"What do you think? Should we go to the pub around the corner, Siegfried?" Wolfgang asked his friend.

The man got up from the table. Again, Martha couldn't help but notice his height. Wolfgang grinned at him, the way that he had once smiled at her when they were about to do something mischievous together, to embark on a new adventure.

She had grown curious about Wolfgang's new friend, whom she noticed didn't speak the regional dialect. "Are you from Munich?"

Wolfgang and Mother seemed surprised to hear words escaping her lips. Siegfried turned around, seemingly annoyed that she'd held them up with her question.

"No, I'm from Hanover. I came here to study."

"What are you studying?"

"Sister, nothing that the blow-dried brains of your gray-haired clients will ever understand," her brother chimed in, accompanied by a nasty cackle.

Martha stared at Wolfgang, her mouth wide open. Mother had not permitted Martha to continue with her education. When she had finished school two years ago, at the age of fifteen, she had completed an apprenticeship at the local hair salon, where she had constantly daydreamed of studying literature instead of doing a decent job. Meanwhile, Wolfgang had been allowed to attend the Gymnasium, where he had even skipped a grade, and received a prestigious grant to study mathematics and engineering at Ludwig- Maximilians University, while undergoing training at the Gestapo. He was well aware that she'd hated the job, but now he suddenly had no problem using it as a cheap joke in front of his new friend, who laughed heartily. She despised Wolfgang's friend instantly.

As they put on their jackets, Mother jumped up from the table. "Wolfgang, no more pub for you tonight."

Wolfgang blushed a deep red before throwing Mother an almost menacing look. "Don't you think I'm old enough to decide this for myself?"

"I always wake up when you come home late. You know how squeaky the mattress is in our room."

If at all possible, Wolfgang blushed even more. "Mother, I am not asking for your permission." Then, he turned and walked out.

"Heil Hitler," Siegfried said as he followed Wolfgang outside.

* * *

Mother and Martha cleaned the dishes in silence. Martha was shocked. This was the first time since Irene's death that Mother raised her voice against Wolfgang's.

"I have good news," Mother finally said. "The Schinkenhubers accepted you. Your brother put in a good word for you at the Gestapo!" Poor Mother obviously felt the need to say something nice after the unpleasant incident. "Herr Dr. Schinkenhuber is a highly respected party member."

In less than two months, Martha would start the obligatory year that the Führer had recently introduced for all unmarried and unemployed women under the age of twenty-five. Many girls were sent to farms outside the city for hard labor. But Martha, she would be in Munich, in Schwabing, Father's favorite part of the city! "The heart of Munich's artistic and bohemian life," he had always called it. And she would be living right in the center of it!

"Does that mean I don't have to go to Else's meetings anymore?" Martha asked, hopeful.