The Women in His Life. Barbara Taylor Bradford
Willy had parked his motorbike earlier. They were thankful and relieved to see that it was perfectly secure and had not been touched, but they knew they had reached it just in time. The two of them clambered on, their breathing laboured as they settled themselves on the saddle.
‘Hold tight!’ Willy ordered, and she wrapped her arms around his waist as the bike leapt forward and headed down the Kurfürstendamm at breakneck speed.
Vans and trucks were now pulling up all along this wide avenue lined with shops and cafés and apartment buildings. Stormtroopers, rowdies and thugs were spilling out, brandishing hatchets, guns, clubs and truncheons. Like fevered maniacs they were rushing in every direction, smashing the windows of Jewish-owned stores, throwing goods out into the street, destroying the fronts of cafés and hacking at the doors of apartment buildings. Combined with the ear-splitting noise of shattering glass were the sounds of splintering wood and the blood-curdling cries of triumph from the frenzied mob led by stormtroopers.
Theodora was shaking. Holding onto Willy tighter than ever, she shouted in his ear, ‘Faster! Faster! Get us out of here!’
He did not bother to respond, simply gunned the bike forward with a screeching of tyres, and within minutes they were leaving the Kurfürstendamm behind them. Willy was making for the Stülerstrasse, which flowed into the Tiergartenstrasse where the Westheim mansion stood. It was there that Theodora lived and worked as the nanny to young Maxim.
They were on the Fasanenstrasse now.
Just ahead of them was the lovely old Central Synagogue, and as they approached it they were horror-struck. The building was being completely demolished by thugs and stormtroopers, who were breaking all the windows and setting it alight with flaming torches.
Willy accelerated his speed considerably, dangerous though this was, and shot ahead, racing through the mêlée and away from this scene of violent wholesale destruction. But not before they had seen the scrolls of the Torah and the ark of the covenant lying amongst the debris in the street. And alongside were torn prayer books and shawls, and all were being trampled underfoot by the wild mob who were shrieking with hysterical laughter, and shouting obscenities about Jews to each other.
‘I can’t believe they’re burning down the synagogue,’ Theodora wailed in Willy’s ear, and she began to sob and pressed her face into his back.
Willy desperately wanted to stop in order to comfort her, but he did not dare, not until they were out of this area and in a safer part of Berlin. With a terrible relentlessness he pushed the motorcycle harder, as hard as he could, and eventually he was cutting across the Kantstrasse and speeding down the Budapesterstrasse. This was a long and curving avenue which led directly into the Stülerstrasse. With enormous relief he saw that the latter was quiet, entirely deserted as he entered it; in fact, it might well have been on another planet, so peaceful was it. And so he slowed his speed at last, finally came to a stop. After braking, he parked by the side of the road in the shadow of some trees and jumped off the bike.
Theodora was still weeping, now shaking her head from side to side, her hands pressed to her streaming eyes. ‘God forgive me! God forgive me for denying my heritage, for denying my religion, for denying myself and all that I am!’
Willy took her to him, and she sobbed uncontrollably in his arms, cleaving to him. He stroked her back, trying to calm her.
Eventually, he said with great gentleness, ‘God does forgive you. I know He does. You saved us, didn’t you? With your quick thinking and your cheek. You’ve got a good Jewish kop on your shoulders, Teddy. And chutzpah. A lot of chutzpah. That’s what saved us.’
‘I shouldn’t have denied we are Jews,’ she whimpered. ‘It was wrong, Willy.’
‘It saved us. And that’s all that counts.’
She drew away from him slightly, looked up into his grave face, asked tearfully, ‘Why, Willy? Why? Why are they doing this? And why are they burning down the synagogue?’
He was briefly silent, and then he said in a voice that was anguished, ‘The Nazis have turned prejudice into hatred, and tonight we are witnessing a Nazi rampage against us and our homes, our businesses and our places of worship. They are torching, vandalising and desecrating everything that belongs to Jews, because they hate us with a terrible, terrible vengeance.’
‘Oh Willy.’
He held her close to him again so that she would not see the sudden tears misting his eyes.
Theodora was trying to stem her sobs, heaving and catching her breath in little spasms, and after a short while she was quieter, in control. ‘Willy?’
‘Yes, Teddy?’
‘They want to murder us all,’ she whispered against his shoulder.
He did not respond. He knew she was right. And he was afraid.
Theodora felt considerably safer once she was inside the Westheim mansion on the Tiergartenstrasse.
She locked and bolted the door behind her, and then leaned against it, trying to compose herself. She was no longer wracked by sobs, the tears had dried on her face, but, nonetheless, she was still disturbed and upset. The violence she had just seen on the streets, the ferocity of the attack on the synagogue, were indelibly imprinted on her mind forever. And, like Willy, she was frightened.
After taking several deep breaths and steadying herself, she walked quickly across the black-and-white marble foyer, the metallic click of her heels against the marble floor the only sound in the huge and silent house. Obviously everyone was sleeping soundly, unaware of the riots outside. The mobs had stayed away from this exclusive residential district, occupied mostly by wealthy Gentile families, and had apparently concentrated their attacks around the area of the Kurfürstendamm, at least as far as she knew.
An antique porcelain lamp on a chest to one side of the Gobelin tapestry had been left burning for her, by Frau Westheim, upon her return from the dinner at the British Embassy, she had no doubt about that. It illuminated her way up the grand staircase.
When she reached the landing at the top of the stairs, she turned on the lights and made her way along the main corridor. She stopped at Maxim’s door, stood listening, then opened it gently and peeped inside.
The tiny night-light on the bedside table made a faint glow, and it comforted her to see that the child was sleeping so peacefully. Closing the door carefully, so as not to awaken him, she swung around, and, rather than going to her own room which was next to Maxim’s, she stepped over to his parents’ bedroom instead. Lightly, she rapped on the door.
She waited several moments, and was about to knock again, when the door was opened by Sigmund dressed in his pyjamas and a dark silk robe.
Taken by surprise that it was she, and not one of the servants, he stared at her, frowning. ‘Theodora! What is it? What’s wrong? You’re as white as chalk.’ He squinted at her worriedly in the dimly-lit corridor.
He was about to say something else, when Theodora put her finger to her lips, shook her head, and glanced over at the child’s room. ‘Shhhh,’ she whispered, ‘we don’t want to awaken Maxim.’
Sigmund nodded his understanding, opened the door wider, and ushered her into the bedroom.
Ursula was out of bed and slipping on her peignoir, worry clouding her smoky-blue eyes.
When she saw Theodora’s white face and the shock in her eyes, the girl’s distress instantly communicated itself to her. ‘Teddy, whatever is it? Why, you’ve been crying. What has upset you so?’
Theodora stood in the centre of the extraordinarily beautiful bedroom with its green watered-silk walls and many exquisite objects and great works of art, and wondered where to begin, how to tell this refined and aristocratic couple about the hideous violence and destruction she had just witnessed out there in the centre of the city.