The End of the Day

The End of the Day





September, 1938





As Martha stood on the middle rung of the ladder, struggling to untie one of the knots holding the swing to the tree, her thoughts drifted to her marriage.  Theodore had put up that swing twenty years before.  Cursed with the manual dexterity of a giraffe, with no spatial perception, and a fear of heights, it was one of the hardest things he had ever done.  He didn't even know how to tie a knot.  Martha could have done it herself, but she had begged him to do this one thing, something surely all fathers did for their boys.  He accepted her request with his usual good humor, and then enlisted the help of a neighbor, who taught him how to tie knots in a swing that would hold.  He climbed the ladder, his knuckles white, his fingers rigid from the tension of holding on.  She remembered how the ladder had wobbled, but he made it to the top, stayed there, and tied the knots, which were still holding tight, twenty years later.  Now he would never do such a thing, which was why it was Martha who finally decided to take it down herself.





When had he stopped caring for his family?  For her?  The change seemed as gradual and imperceptible, yet inexorable as day turning to night.  She looked up at the afternoon sky, an endless, dreary gray.  Out on the street, she could hear some Nazi soldier, presumably, yelling at someone passing by.  Who did he think he was?  As a child she used to be exhilarated, staring up at the clouds.  She was alone, but not lonely.  The clouds were her companions, wild, ever changing, and endless as the Cornish sea.  Clouds and sea in constant motion, in tandem with the winds that made her face ruddy and blew her hair into a tangled, salty wilderness.  She hadn't known it then, but those childhood years were the only really fresh time of her life.  If she had known that her choices would lead her to life in an alien, hostile land, trying to navigate around treacherous Nazi bullies, never sure if anyone was a friend, she would never had chosen to come to Germany.  How had her sunny days turned into this endless anguished, dreary night?





As she tugged at the knot, she recalled the events that had led, one by one, to choices that brought her to Cologne.  Life had seemed so bright, so full of promise then.  But her choices were like clouds that were building, one by one, into a terrible, destructive storm.  Storms in Cornwall cleared, leaving the air fresher and cleaner than before.  Life in Cologne wasn't like that.  Here, life was like the Kner Bucht people talked about, the unfortunate oddity of where Cologne was placed.  Cologne was trapped, lying low between the hills of what they called Bergisches Land and the Eifel.  Here the clouds collected and remained, bringing endless days and nights of dreary rain.  Winters and summers felt the same, and the sky was the same gray at sunrise as at sunset.  And yet, the sun rose and set, even if she couldn't see it.





Life with Teddy now was like the declining light of a day that had begun in brilliance.  Once, he had brought dazzling light into her life.  He was a good man then.  Now, he still had some sparks of goodness in him, but they seemed to be dying.  At least he was no Nazi, thank God for that, but who, what was he?  Where had that wonderful man disappeared to?  And what of her feelings for him now?  Had her love for him died?  No, she felt hot passion for him.  But was that hot feeling love?  Or its absence?  If heat were the criterion for love, her feelings for Theodor would have been like the blazing desert sun, hot enough to kill them both.  Perhaps these hot feelings were hatred.  But hatred was cold and love hot, she had always thought.  For years now, she'd been shivering in this cold, god-forsaken city, surrounded by treacherous Nazis and cowards too intimidated to resist them.  Theodor was no coward, but he had stopped warming her body and heart long even before they had come to power.





If Martha were to count the hours she spent in bed at night, shivering under her heavy feather duvet, thinking her obsessive thoughts and feeling her anguished feelings, trying to will sleep to come so she could face a new day rested and refreshed, they would have added up to years.  The irony of it was that Theodor, though in close physical proximity, seated at his desk in the study next to the bedroom, was mentally and emotionally far away, ensconced in a world she had no access to.  And he seemed not to have the slightest awareness of the agony his wife was enduring as she tossed in their bed, sometimes weeping from loneliness.





The horror would start before dinner, when it was time to shovel coal into the oven.  Theodor usually forgot to do it, and Martha didn't want to nag, so she would do it herself, sneezing from the coal dust, her hands blackened from the coal.  She resented this.  He never forgot to open the wine bottle, though.  As she washed her hands in the kitchen, she could hear the pop of the cork in the dining room.





"Darling, we've got a great pinot noir tonight.  "Have a sip," he would say, pouring a swig of wine into two glasses, as Martha walked into the dining room.  "Don't be such a spoilsport," he would add, responding to her sigh.  "Just wait until you taste this - it's got so much body, and no tannin at all.  Marvelous combination."  He would sniff, take a sip and emit a long, deep sigh of satisfaction as Martha cringed.  This part of the evening was still comparatively good.  Teddy was at least talking to her, even if a bit tipsy.





After dinner he would retreat into his study and sit with a book or the newspaper, pouring himself glass after glass of wine.  Occasionally he would call out to her from the study as she tried to console herself, curled up with a book and a blanket in an easy chair in the living room.





"Martha!  Hear this!"  Why didn't he ever come to her?  She knew the answer.  He was already in his own world.  She had to drop the blanket, climb out of her chair and go to him in the study, listening to whatever he tried to communicate.  Then she would return to sit alone with her blanket and book.  As the evening progressed, Teddy's calls to Martha were less and less frequent.





Eventually, she would move from the easy chair to their bed, but her ears were tuned to the study.  Even from the bedroom she could hear the scrape of metal against glass as he unscrewed a liquor bottle for another swig.  Who did he think he was fooling, trying to open that bottle so quietly?  She was onto his game.





A terrifying game for Martha.  Alcohol was bad enough, but she knew it wasn't only wine and spirits he was consuming.  There was the laudanum she had discovered years before in a drawer of her husband's bedside table.  When it was finally declared illegal back in 1928, he had simply switched to codeine tablets - and morphine.  He swallowed codeine tablets every night to get to sleep.  She didn't know how often he was using the morphine, but now and then she found a hypodermic needle and a little bottle hidden away in his leather satchel.  Sometimes she found a bottle of heroin stashed away somewhere.  To think that it was Herr Bayer who had developed this horrible drug.  His company, providing the livelihood of so many of their neighbors, now manufacturing God only knows what horrifying chemicals.  She'd heard he had synthesized heroin to help people come off morphine.  Some help that was.  Her husband was using both.  Teddy's doctor had encouraged him to take heroin now and then to help with his insomnia.  The nows and thens seemed to have merged into a steady "now".





He was mixing heroin, morphine and codeine with brandy and other hard liquors.  Didn't he know how dangerous that was?  She regularly found brandy or schnapps bottles in a desk drawer, or sometimes hidden behind a stack of books.  It didn't matter where he hid his bottle or his needles, she would be sure to find them.  Not knowing for sure whether or what she would find left her restless.  She would never cease to thank God for sparing her from the temptation to use drugs herself.  It could just as easily have been her.  She couldn't blame Teddy for that.  She could understand his need to enter into oblivion after that dreadful day.





It had happened so quickly - a bright summer day, and they were out together for a family picnic on a meadow along the Rhine, just a few steps outside their door.  Clara was only an infant then.  They had finished eating chicken and potato salad.  Martha was sitting on a blanket on the shore, nursing Clara, while Thomas and his papa were wading in the water.  Thomas had let go of his papa's hand for only a second to chase a dog.  Theodor had called out, "Nein!  Come back here!" Thomas lost his footing while trying to return to his father, and was swept away in a current too swift for either of his parents to catch him.  Martha had left Clara on the blanket and dashed into the water, trying to catch Thomas, but it was too late.  Soon after that, Theodor had started drinking laudanum mixed with bitters to get to sleep.  If she hadn't been nursing Laura, she might have started using it as well.





Thank God she was not a user, but she knew the shapes of all the bottles.  Knowing the shapes of the bottles was a familiar comfort, a fragile form of control, but each discovery cut her heart anew, like a fresh stab wound.  It was really like dying each time, seeing him destroying himself, leaving their world, until whatever he was using ushered him into the night-world he chose, one which disgusted and horrified her to contemplate.  Didn't he see that he was slowly killing himself?  Was this the life he wanted?  She wasn't sure which was more horrifying, life outside on the streets of Cologne or her anguished nights with Theodor.





Sometimes she would get up to check on him.  Each time she was startled anew to discover him still seated at his desk, his shirt unbuttoned, belly exposed, snoring loudly, head skewed to the side, book on the floor with the pages crumpled, his body almost falling off his chair.  Each time the same sickening wave of disgust and fear would course through her as though for the first time.

*

Theodor had been her German tutor.  He taught her to speak his language and almost everything she knew about his land.  She had loved learning from him.  He told their class that he lived in Mheim, a town across the river from Cologne, where she lived.  "Mheim is just right for me," Theodor had said.  "Free thinkers like me have never been welcome on the other, Roman and Catholic side of the Rhine.  Here we fit right in with the rest of the detritus."  He always said "Roman and Catholic," to demonstrate that the left side - ancient, original Cologne - was originally inhabited by the Romans, and later by their Catholic descendants, who closed the city gates to Jews, Protestants, and free thinkers - to everyone who wasn't Catholic.  His father had been killed in 1871, while fighting in the Franco-Prussian war.  His wife learned of his death even before she knew she was pregnant.  Her husband had come home for a weekend of consolation and peace and was shot dead by the following Friday.  She came from a Protestant family, but became much more fervent in her faith after her husband's death, retreating to a world of contemplation and hymns.  Theodor, under the influence of his professors, became a free-thinker at Cologne University.





Martha had experienced the freedom of the clouds, the wind and salty air of Cornwall, but confinement from her strict Methodist parents.  She could almost smell freedom in the dank salt air as soon as the boat landed in Ostend in the summer of 1913.  She was only seventeen then, ripe for the sophistication of Europe.  She thrilled to see the spires of the Cologne cathedral, reaching higher than any she had ever seen.  Even though she was still in service, she felt much freer with her new family than she had ever felt in England.  She had met a German professor family while they were on holiday in Cornwall.  They then invited her to come and live and work  for them in Cologne.  They were kind, not like her previous employers.  She loved the Cohens, and their children adored her, snuggling up, one on each side of her when she read them stories.  Reading to them this way, she finally felt secure.  Once when the professor overheard her, he smiled and told her she was a wonderful reader.  She'd never heard such praise from anyone.





Frau Cohen often invited Martha to sit with them at the dinner table.  Martha's head was sometimes almost dizzy, trying to decipher the German words as she listened to the intellectual discussions she was sometimes privileged to hear.  One day Theodor, a colleague and friend of Herr Cohen, was visiting them, and offered to give Martha German lessons.





Theodor was an excellent teacher, and she thrived under his tutelage.  He invited her to attend some of his lectures at the university, when the Cohen children were in school.





Theodor was much older than she, but in some ways she felt herself to be, despite her ignorance, the one with more life experience.  There was something innocent and shy about him.  He was like an automobile engine that took a while to crank into action.  His innocence was endearing. He was obviously intelligent, but he would enter the classroom with his head bent down a little, looking a little sheepish.  Then, when people started asking him questions, he would gradually warm up.  It was fun to see him entertain the class.  He was really clever with words, yet without a speck of haughtiness.  Once he had struck a pose like she had seen in a daguerreotype of Chancellor Bismarck and said, "Potatoes.  Potatoes are the answer to the decline of the German population,"  in a ponderous, gravelly voice, just like she imagined Bismarck's to have been.  He imitated other professors, his eyes twinkling as the students laughed.  It felt good to laugh.





Many Friday evenings Theodor would continue his lessons informally at Malzmle, a brewery near Heumarkt, where they would drink Ksch beer and eat Cologne specialties like Halven Hahn, a thick slice of gouda cheese on a rye roll.  Martha was often allowed to join him.  As soon as Theodor had downed a couple of beers, he was the life of the party.  He told stories about Cologne history - from tales of hangings, which also took place at Heumarkt, to witch hunts, to how Jacques Offenbach had left Cologne to seek his fortune in Paris.  Teddy was the best teacher of German and Cologne history Martha could imagine.  He would tell his stories in German, adapting the vocabulary to just above the level of his hearers, thus naturally expanding their knowledge.  What a gifted man he was.





He was tall and blond, with chiseled Nordic features, but he dressed in saggy clothes that didn't match.  He was truly handsome, but with his head down, looking toward the ground, and his sloped shoulders, he looked vulnerable and shy until, transformed by beer, he began to sparkle.





Martha admired his enormous intellect, which he never used to demean others.  She was intrigued by how this huge intelligence and good looks could be combined with such childish, bashful innocence.  Theodor seemed to be drawn to Martha, too, but for other reasons.  "You make me teach better," he had told her once.  "You really like my stories."





"Of course I do," Martha had replied.  "I've learned almost everything I know from you."  Martha always listened intently and laughed sincerely at his jokes and stories.





"I love your curiosity," Theodor would later tell Martha.  "I can't believe you could really be interested in the things I read and think about.  Other people just walk away."





They moved into one level of the four-story house Teddy's mother owned.  After she died, just a few months after the wedding, they took over her apartment on the floor below as well, and Martha transformed their home.  Theodor entrusted all the decoration and furnishing of the house to Martha.  She hired carpenters to connect the two stories by an internal stairway.  In less than a year, Martha had turned their home into an elegant, comfortable haven.  Theodor never ceased to compliment her for her practicality.





She also took over in her husband's appearance.  "You can always choose my clothes," he said the first time she came home with stylish clothes for him.  "You do it so much better than I."  He did look more polished and handsome under her care.  She enjoyed shopping for him and choosing his clothes.  She also enjoyed cooking for him and hearing his ecstatic comments.  "You can make even beans taste good!" he exclaimed each time she cooked green beans with bacon.  His mother had never paid much attention to cooking.





Theodor also appreciated her warm, yet disciplined approach to childrearing, even after Thomas had died and Clara was left.  "Without you, Clara could set the house on fire and I wouldn't even notice," he said.  He was right.  Martha kept Teddy's feet on the ground, as much as it was possible to keep him from bobbing into space, he appreciated that, and she loved fussing over him.  Until he gradually left her.





She sat alone on her armchair in the living room during all the evenings of the Great War.  When she complained about the snubs she received from shop owners who knew she was English, his only response was to praise her for her strength.  Luckily, Theodor was spared the horror of fighting against his wife's homeland.  It was too risky for the German army to conscript someone whose wife was the enemy.  They lost many friends on both sides.  Theodor faced new tragedy by drinking and escaping into drugs even more often.  He had long ceased to be the teddy bear she had married, the man who made her feel secure.



"I wish you'd stop that wretched laudanum and your drinking," she would sometimes say in the early days after Thomas died.



"Life has made me this way," was always Theodor's answer, followed by a heavy sigh.





She had suffered the death of one of their children and one devastating war.  It looked as if another was about to start.  The country she had chosen to live in was degenerating daily, and so was life at home.  Each day she felt buried alive in a tomb of loneliness.  If only they could leave!  Their friends, the Cohens, even more beloved to Martha than her own parents, were trying to leave Germany.  For their sake, she hoped they would be able to find a home somewhere.  But what about her?  Clara was in England, studying.  Thank God she was safe, but she had no job to offer Theodor.  Martha felt trapped, moving around inside a country that was looking more frightening each day, managing the household of a man who was ruining his life in drugs and alcohol.  Trapped in the swing of an endless pendulum, unable to change its course.





She continued to work at the knots.  How could she ever loosen them?  They would not budge.  Martha climbed back down the ladder, went into the kitchen and brought back a knife to stab at them.  At last the swing, by now faded, roughened and bloated by weathering, crashed to the ground, and the rotten wooden seat broke into two pieces.





She climbed down the ladder, picked up the pieces of the swing and the rough hemp rope carefully, so as not to get any splinters in her hands, and carried them to the rubbish pile, where she would later burn them.





Her thoughts turned to the Cohens, particularly to their daughter Miriam.  Once she had been little and sweet, the flower girl at their wedding.  Now, Miriam was a grown woman with children of her own.  She'd been a professor, just like her father, both of them working alongside Teddy.





Martha didn't see much of Miriam these days, but she had seen her recently one day while shopping in Cologne.  Miriam was sitting with Teddy outdoors at a caf  Martha was about to greet them when she noticed that Miriam had Teddy's hands in hers.  Martha turned immediately and walked back to the tram as her eyes filled with tears.  She hadn't slept at all that night.





Teddy, lost in his own world, hadn't noticed this.





She looked up at the darkening sky as the swing burned.  He should be home by now, she thought.  Where is he? 





The only answer she could imagine was that he was with Miriam.  Little Miriam, standing next to her in the Cohen's bathroom so many years before, as Martha sprayed perfume onto herself, preparing for an evening out with Teddy.  "You smell good.  Can I try some too?"  And now the little girl was grown up and had stolen Teddy away from her.





How can she do this?  Martha thought.  She's a married woman, and a mother now herself!  How could she possibly be attracted to him? Teddy's almost an old man by now.  Can't she see that he's disgusting? He was ten years older than Martha, fifty-two now, but he walked like someone much older.  He was skinny and wrinkled, like a withered old man.





The way he's living, he'll die soon, she thought, and that will be the day I can start living again.  That thought shook her out of her reverie.  She didn't really wish him dead, did she?  If only she could leave him!  But how could she?  Where could she go?  Her parents were dead.  She had no relatives who could take her in, and no income.  In fact, she and Teddy had less money than ever.





If only she could talk to someone about Miriam.  It couldn't be Esther.  She loved Esther like a mother, but she was Miriam's mother, however close Martha felt to her.  And Teddy was one of Esther and Hermann's oldest, dearest friends.  Martha hadn't had the heart to tell Esther about Teddy's drinking and drug problems.  She couldn't bear to tell her he was not all that he seemed.  And now the Cohens had enough troubles of their own.



Perhaps Teddy wasn't with Miriam after all.  Maybe he was late because of something at the university.  But that would be bad, too.  The university had already reduced his teaching load.  She knew it was because he had refused to join the Nazi party.  He had also mocked certain professors associated with the Nazis once or twice too many times.  Now they were letting him go.  With honors, they said.





She knew she should feel pity and sadness for her poor husband's situation, and a part of her did feel sadness.  Overwhelming sadness, mixed with fear for their future.  But Martha was a fighter.  Why couldn't Theodor join her in this battle?  Sadness alternated with fury.  Her husband had less responsibility than ever, but all he seemed to want was his alcohol and drug-induced cocoon..  There was less and less to hold him down to earth.





Now and then, Teddy would say or do something to give her hope.  Sometimes, when she nagged at him to stop drinking, he would really stop.  It was wonderful being with her husband when the Teddy she had once known reappeared.  Then they would sit together in the living room, reading, talking, discussing the events of the day.  Once he had been sober for an entire year.  Then, she had thought she could never be this happy with any other man.  No, it wasn't always as gloomy as now.  Hope kept arising, like a beautiful sunny morning after weeks of dreary rain.





But there were new, more disconcerting problems.  Minor, compared to her husband losing his job, minor, compared to some of the stories Esther was telling her about the things her family was suffering under the Nazis, but upsetting, just the same.  Sometimes Teddy was so drunk he couldn't find his way to bed and would stumble and fall.  He had tried to help her set the table the one day and dropped one of their crystal wine goblets on the floor, where it tinkled before it splintered into a thousand pieces.  He insisted on cleaning it up himself, but almost fell over the dustpan, so Martha finished the job herself.  The next morning his mind was like a blank sheet of paper, the entire incident erased from his memory.  Things like this were happening more and more frequently.





And then this other thing.  She could scarcely bring herself to even think the word.  "Incontinent."  There, she'd said it, at least in her head.  How embarrassing to know, let alone tell anyone that your husband was becoming incontinent, searching for the toilet at all hours of the night, several times a night, and then peeing all over the floor.  Every morning the same thing - a trail of urine from the bedroom to the bathroom, only Teddy never saw it.  By morning it was sticky.  Putrid, sticky glue.  She felt hot hatred for him as she washed the floor, day after day.





She turned and walked through the back door into the house.  How bitter I am becoming, she thought.  My feelings are so confused.  When did my love turn to disgust?  And jealousy.  Who would have ever believed that my Teddy could do anything to make me feel so jealous? The pressure of  jealousy she felt about Miriam felt as though it would rip her heart apart.





Sometimes he came home late.  Was he with Miriam?  Martha stopped asking him where he'd been after the first time he'd lied about that.  She knew he wasn't at a faculty meeting.  She'd talked to one of his colleagues.  The man she had once trusted lied these days about everything she challenged him about.  That also cut deeply.





Theodor finally walked through the door while Martha was thinking about this, frying meat balls.





"Sit down," he said.  His voice sounded sad, yet insistent.  She acquiesced.  Theodor handed her an envelope.





"Open it," he said.





Inside was an invitation to a festive dinner in honor of all the professors who would be leaving.  All those who weren't Jewish, that is.





"Is Hermann invited?" she asked.  He shook his head silently.





"Of course not," she replied.  Hermann Cohen had been released from all his teaching and writing at the university six months before.





"I don't want to go.  I feel like I'm attending my own hanging," said Theodor.





Martha's thoughts flit like a swallow.  They must survive!  And the only way to survive would be to attend this mock "festive" dinner.  It would be one of the saddest evenings of their lives.  But they had to go.





"But we must go," Martha said.  "This is something you cannot escape from.  Besides, you never know, it might be a lovely evening."





Martha's face brightened.  Did she really believe this?  "Maybe the evening will do us some good," she added.  "Maybe something will change."  If only it could.





But sometimes life held surprises when least expected.  What if something happened during that evening, partly in his honor, after all, to encourage Teddy?  Perhaps if he saw her in an evening gown, her hair beautifully coiffed on top of her head, her face tastefully made up, he would be attracted to her again.  That would encourage him, surely.  And maybe if he liked her looks, she could win him back from Miriam.  She still didn't look bad, even if she was forty-four.  She had the same medium-length wavy brown hair that Teddy had once played with, only a few gray hairs sprinkled among the brown, and the same large, if serious gray eyes.





The next day at Michel's, on Schildergasse, she found a pale pink satin evening gown on sale, with  matching shoes and a shawl.  She also found a new suit for Theodor.  It was shameful, how cheap they were selling things for now.  They wanted to eliminate all traces of Jewish ownership.  All over Cologne they were "Aryanizing" the stores, but there was nothing she or anyone could do to stop it.  She could only watch and fear for the decline of her adopted city.  But she left the shop with a lighter heart than she had entered with.  Despite all, she had some lovely new clothes.





The evening of the dinner arrived.  Martha felt shy, like an actor unaccustomed to her role, as she minced her way downstairs in her evening gown, carrying the worn brown leather suitcase she had just packed for Teddy and herself.





Teddy stood at the bottom of the stairs as she descended.  "Schzchen!" he exclaimed, his voice catching.  He set his beer glass down on the end table nearest the banister. "You look - stunning!  Like at our wedding!"





Martha walked up to him and kissed his cheek, checking his breath quickly.  Maybe he hadn't drunk that much yet.





They sat alongside each other as the tram clattered and clanged its way towards the Rhine into Cologne.





"I need a toilet!" said Teddy, who stood up quickly as they were approaching the bridge.  But there was no getting off now.  He sat down again.  Martha looked down and saw that her husband's trousers were soaked in urine. He had just peed all over his new suit.





"How much beer did you have?" Martha demanded.





"Only the one you saw," answered Teddy.





"Now what do we do?" she cried, her voice wobbling in a mixture of fear, horror and helplessness.





"We could go home."





Yes, they could.  But Teddy was one of the honored guests.  Besides, she had booked a room for the two of them for one night at the Dom Hotel, the same hotel where the dinner was to take place.  They couldn't go home now.  There must be something she could do.





"Wouldn't you love that," she replied.  "But I've paid for the tickets, and our hotel room is already reserved for us.  Did you bring any other trousers along?"





Yes, Teddy had.  But he refused to consider changing into them.





"You're always harping at me, Martha.  I'll be fine," he said.





"With urine-soaked trousers?  No, you won't."





But she couldn't get him to change his mind.





As they sat down at their places in the ballroom, the stench of their urine-stained clothes was overpowering to Martha.





Teddy seemed oblivious to the smell, the dor, and everything about the hotel except for the wine and the other guests at the table.  He poured the other guests and then himself a glass of Ahrweiler red wine and began to charm their table companions, as he always had.  Martha fumed in her chair, toying with her food, half-listening to the conversation between her husband and the other guests at the table.  Teddy was beginning to speak more slowly and distinctly than usual.  He always did that when he was really drunk.  Soon he would pass out, if he wasn't careful.  But he was never careful.  She should never have brought him here, but then how could she have escaped this evening?  She was trapped, stuck in pre-ordained motion, just like the swing she had so recently removed.





Theodor got up to go to the men's room.  He walked slowly, ponderously, looking confused.  Ah, there!  A waiter pointed the way to a rest room downstairs.  Would he ever make it?  She'd better leave with him, or he'd never get there without falling.





The dancing had begun anyway, so hopefully nobody would notice his condition.  How embarrassing it was to be out in public with Teddy!  Thank God, they didn't go out much any more, but that just added to the loneliness.  Well, they'd just go up to their hotel room after the toilet.  So much for romance.





Martha waited for Teddy to come out of the men's room.  When he emerged, she saw that his trousers were half clinging to his skin, the fabric drooping over itself where it wasn't clinging to him.





I can't believe it - he urinated with his trousers on! Martha realized, horrified.





By the time she had dragged him up to the room, Teddy had nearly passed out.  He flopped onto the bed, spoiling the beautiful white embossed bedspread with his urine-soaked trousers.  How could Martha sleep in that bed now?  Pat-a-pat-a-pat went her heart, like the drum rolls she heard as the soldiers marched down the street.  She noticed that her hands were trembling.  And her shoulders.  Her entire body was trembling.  What was she to do with this man?  How could she go on living with him?  How to even get through this night?





"Schzchen, Teddy slurred, too far gone now to care about enunciating his words.  "Could you get me my tablets?  I'll never get to sleep without them."





She sat on the chair beside the bed, hesitating.  Teddy was already half asleep.





"Please, Martha," he said.  "I need my medication.  Could you find it in the suitcase for me?"





Martha dutifully went to his suitcase, unfastened it and fumbled through his belongings until she found his bottle of codeine tablets.  She also found a bottle of aspirin tablets, a syringe and a small bottle of morphine.  There was also a small bottle of German brandy he had also managed to smuggle into their suitcase.  Suddenly Martha's mind snapped.  Seeing the brandy bottle in the suitcase she had packed, a plan dropped into her mind.





Her heart was pounding like a cannonball machine, and her hands, usually calmly competent, were trembling violently as she carried the tablets, morphine and liquor over to her husband's bedside table.  She managed to pour the brandy into a glass without spilling it.  She counted the codeine tablets.  There were only three left.  Were they enough?  Perhaps.  As her husband watched, his head drooping, his eyes half-shut, she filled the needle with morphine and injected it into the brandy.





She glanced over at her husband.  He was only about a meter away from her, but mentally in another world, having entered that alcoholic haze so horrifying to her.  He had been in this state of oblivion so often she could almost call it familiar, and yet each time he left her, she felt his foreignness and the horror of being left alone with this man, as fresh as though it for the first time.  How she hated to see her husband in this state!





This is the last time you will leave me, she whispered silently as she dropped the first tablet drop into the glass.  He would never leave her alone again.  Better to be alone, without him.





And this is for all the sleepless nights.  In plopped a second one.  This is for ignoring me, year after year, when I lived only for you.





She dropped a third one into the amber liquid.  This is for Miriam.  Didn't you ever realize that I left everything, family, friends and country for you?





With the fourth, she whispered almost audibly, And this is for all the lies.  You will never know what I have suffered, not being able to trust you.  Prison, even death itself will be a haven compared to the life I lived with you! 





He watched her wordlessly during this entire process. "Here's your medicine," she said, putting the glass and the last codeine tablet into his hands.    She noticed that her voice was unsteady.  No matter. She would go through with this, all the way.





"Thank you, Schzchen," he mumbled.  "Nice of you to pour it into a glass.  You never pour my liquor for me," Theodor put the codeine tablet into his mouth, lifted the glass and drank.  He seemed to notice nothing unusual about the taste of his brandy





Martha watched him drink.  When he had finished drinking, Teddy's head fell back onto his pillow and he fell into a stupor, or sleep, she didn't care what it was.





Martha grabbed her unpacked suitcase, hurriedly threw her shawl over her shoulders, snatched her handbag, and left the room.  She walked, almost running, to catch the tram.  The pounding of her heart slowed somewhat as she waited.  She could feel her hands steadying, slowly calming.  Her mind replayed the events of the past twenty minutes, like scenes in a movie.  I did that!  The thought of such resolve was grimly satisfying to her, who had spent every minute previous to this attending to Teddy`s needs.  I am finally rid of Teddy.





The last tram of the night arrived.  Back home in their bedroom, Martha was sitting on the edge of the bed hours later, still dressed in her soiled evening gown, as though frozen, unable to move.  The events of that evening played and replayed themselves a thousand times in her mind.  Was she sorry for what she had just done?  Yes, but there were other feelings mixed in with her sorrow.  She would miss the good times with Teddy.  There had been many of these too, especially in the early years.  She felt horror, this time at herself.  She looked down at her hands, incredulous that these hands could be so brutal as to murder her husband.  She, Martha, who had given her entire life to Teddy - she, moral, upstanding, practical Martha.  Was her act surely not much worse than anything Teddy had done to her?  How could she be so bold as to usurp power over his very life?  But she had done it, and despite herself, she breathed a sign of relief that spread down to and filled even her toes.  She would have to turn herself in to the police.  Her conscience demanded that of her.  It was wrong, what she had done.  Very wrong.  But she could not deny the sense of exhilaration she also felt.  To be free of this wretched life!  Prison would feel much freer than the prison she had endured for over twenty years.  Oh, my poor Teddy!  She sighed.  Yes, Teddy had lived a sorry life.  May he rest in peace.  May I live in peace.





In the morning, she would turn herself in to the Nazi thugs.  She had always been a woman of honor, and she would continue to be, no matter who she had to deal with.  She would pay the price.  Of course she would.  All of it, no matter what it cost her.  Besides, where else could she go?  She had no one to go to, even if she were able to leave Germany.





As the sun began to lighten the sky, Martha felt strength return to her limbs.  Slowly, her fingers still tingling as she thought about what was to about to befall her, she dressed into a gray dress, socks and shoes.





She was sitting at a bench, looking at the ground, waiting for the tram when her old friend Esther suddenly called out.





"Martha!" she cried.  "I was just on my way to your house."





She seemed to notice Martha's surprise.  "I know, I know it's early," she said.  "But I wanted to find you both there, before Theodor might leave for his office at the university.  I came to thank you and Theodor!"





"For what?"  Her thoughts were so deep into contemplation about her future life in prison, she didn't even think to greet her friend.  She stood up and Esther ran over to her, threw her arms around Martha and kissed her cheek.  As she looked up, she saw that the tram was coming.





"We can finally leave Germany!  Your husband has found a position for Miriam in the university in Bristol!  Didn't he tell you?"





No, Teddy hadn't mentioned a word.  If only he had.  Now it was too late for her to do anything.





"We leave tomorrow.  Theodor bought train tickets for us all.  Isn't that wonderful!  I want to thank him.  I wanted to thank both of you.  Where are you off to at this hour?"





The tram arrived.





"It's too late," was all Martha could manage to say, shaking her head.  She opened her mouth to say more, but could find nothing more to say to Esther.  She entered the tram, turned around and nodded at her friend and former employer, who stared at Martha, frowning in puzzlement.  The tram bell tinkled, and the tram left.





"I've killed my husband!"  Martha was gasping for air as she confessed her crime to the receptionist at the hotel.





"Slow down, gnige Frau," he answered.  "What on earth are you trying to tell me?"





Martha took a deep breath.  "I've just killed my husband.  Could you please call the police?"





"What is your husband's name?  Do you know his room number?"





"Theodor Schneider - room 522."





"Oh, yes, Frau Schneider.  You are both booked for that room.  I have no idea what you're talking about.  I've just seen Herr Schneider, and he is very much alive.  Ten minutes ago he was complaining to the chambermaid of drowsiness and a headache.  He was also asking about you.  I've just brought him some coffee and some aspirin.  Would you like to go up to your room now?  I'm sure he'll be very relieved to see you."