Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(79)
“From my studio, I watched the SS carting people away. A friend of a friend asked me if I wanted to use my talents to help get people out,” Egon explains one afternoon as thick gray clouds sit over the town, refusing to let go and give them relief. The air is sticky. Sophie’s hand cramps from use. She rubs the sore spot between her index finger and thumb.
“The first papers I made were my own. I buried Erich Weinberg and became Egon Wagner.”
“Were you frightened?” Sophie asks. She thinks Egon is very brave.
“I knew they would come for me, for my family, eventually. I decided it was better to risk execution than to wait for death.”
“Tell them about the first time, on the train,” Hanna prompts, giving him the slightest smile. It’s so small. No one but Sophie notices.
“The next day, the police are moving through the cars checking everyone’s papers. I offer mine. I have to will my hands not to shake. Pretend you are painting, I say to myself to steady them. The officer looks very closely at my card, then at my face, and back at the card. I thought, This is it. I am done.”
Egon pours tobacco into a fresh paper and rolls the cigarette with paint-stained fingers.
“What happened?” Leon finally asks.
Egon strikes a match against the sole of his shoe. He lights his cigarette and waves the match until the flame dies. “The officer looks at me, hard, and I am sure I am a dead man. ‘Wagner,’ he says. ‘Like the great composer?’ ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘He is my favorite composer!’ he says. I say, ‘We are related! We even named our dog Valkyrie!’ Well, the guard is so impressed! He hands back my papers with a ‘Heil Hitler!’ and a big grin.”
“The dog!” Leon cackles and Egon shrugs, allows a half smirk.
“What about your family?” Sophie asks.
Egon’s smile disappears.
“You don’t have to…,” Hanna says with a softness Sophie has never heard from her before.
Egon pulls hard on his cigarette. “It took me three days to finish the new identity papers for my mother, father, and two sisters. But the train back home was delayed. A tree on the tracks. By the time I made it to our apartment, it was empty. A neighbor told me they’d already been relocated.” Egon’s smoke hangs in the air. They all know what “relocated” actually means now. He rolls the cigarette against the inside of a tin cup; ash floats to the bottom. “So. I took the papers to the underground and peeled up the pictures of my mother. My father. My older sister, Edith, and my younger sister, Malka. Then I pasted in new pictures. For people who could still be saved.” Two halting white streams escape Egon’s nostrils and dissipate. “Okay. Back to work.”
Had it still been summer of a year ago, Sophie might have called Egon tragically romantic. But she is coming to realize that there is nothing romantic about the tragedy spinning out around them. It was a well-oiled machine of nearly incomprehensible cruelty. And the only answer is to keep working, to save as many as they can.
These are their days and nights now: The pungent tang of chemicals and oil paints. The stop-and-start growl of the sewing machine. The mustiness of the moldy garret. The daylight moving from bright to a faint watermark of itself, then to night. Their eyes itch and burn from the fumes, from the pencil shavings and dust used to age the documents, from the cigarette smoke puffed out the window to disguise the chemical smell, from the late hours and dim light. They take turns with naps. Hanna nods at her sewing machine. Sophie has to prod her awake. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”
“No. I can finish a few more,” Hanna insists.
“You’re no good to anyone if you’re sick with exhaustion. You’ll end up making holes where there shouldn’t be any.”
“I’ll just take a quick nap,” Hanna says. She’s asleep the minute she stretches out on the floor. Sophie curls up next to her and they sleep together, too exhausted to dream.
Every few weeks, Egon takes the train to Berlin to meet with their contacts in the underground. It’s these men and women, known only by code names—Eagle. Hawk. Cicero. Zephyr—who pass along the information and photographs. Egon carries the completed documents stashed inside a false back of one of his canvases. At any point, the SS can board and insist on inspecting every belonging. During these trips, Hanna and Sophie are a wreck until they receive the message from Egon they are waiting for: Love from Berlin. Will see you soon. Only then can they rest.
These clandestine activities, the thought that at any moment they might be discovered, make the days strangely alive for Hanna and Sophie. They are awake. And they question whether they have ever really been awake before.
Hanna no longer wants to attend BDM meetings, but Sophie insists. “We mustn’t arouse suspicion. We must keep up appearances. They will be looking for anything out of the ordinary. So we must appear as ordinary as possible.”
“Dull, you mean.”
“Be the actress,” Sophie says. “Be Marlene Dietrich playing a role.”
When the BDM lines the main street accepting donations for the war effort, Hanna and Sophie dutifully show up in full uniform and shake their collection cans at passersby. “Won’t you please think of our brave men?” Hanna pleads, working up real tears. It’s remarkable to Sophie that Hanna can slip out of herself like slipping out of a coat and disappear into someone else so easily. She’s an illusionist, distracting and deflecting, charming. The audience none the wiser.