For Services Rendered

He wanted to interrupt her. “Genug,” he wanted to say. Enough.

But he couldn’t say anything. So he simply left the room.

Klara had been right: Frau Emmy Göring was, indeed, brought to trial, charged with “profiteering” from her Nazi connections. The New York Times reporter called her appearance in a packed courtroom at Garmisch “the greatest performance of her career,” reminding everyone of the actress she’d been before she’d married the Reichsmarschall. Her health was in decline, the reporter said. She sat wrapped in blankets in the steaming courtroom. She wept. She gasped as she recounted the days, at the end, when Hitler had turned on her husband and ordered the death of the entire Göring family. Dr. Weldmann read that report and the ones that followed and so he knew, he read, he understood what had happened to her.

And yet he was still astonished—stunned—when the acknowledgment arrived. When he thought about it later he realized that it had arrived, in fact, almost exactly ten years after he’d been summoned to Karinhall to meet with the then-Reichsmarschall.

The letter came to his office. He waited until all the day’s patients had been seen, all the staff had departed, and then he settled behind his desk and removed the opener from its place in the drawer that held, here in New York as it had in the corresponding furniture in Berlin, the old letters from former interns and grateful parents.

My dear Dr. Weldmann, the letter began. I do not know how much of my story your American papers have continued to report. I am well, or reasonably so. The most important thing, of course, is that after a long separation I am once again with Edda. For that I believe it can be argued that I have you—and so many others—to thank.

I was, I confess, very surprised and utterly moved by the many statements made in my behalf at my trial in Garmisch. Among these your letter, and other testimonies from Jewish circles, have meant the most to me. So unexpected, and so very much appreciated.

Dr. Weldmann set the letter down. A slight queasiness bubbled within him. This woman’s husband had been sentenced to death at Nuremberg and avoided the punishment by killing himself. Now Frau Emmy Göring had survived the denazification and was living an apparently quiet life with her daughter. But where? Where could they live a “normal” life, in Germany? Had they returned to Berlin?

He inspected the envelope’s postmark.

MÜNCHEN.

His heartbeat raced. His head pounded. Before him he saw not the letter on his desk, not the envelope with its postmark, but that final image of his sister, in the dark traveling suit that had served as a mourning outfit, too. She had come so far. But at the cemetery, when she might have said something he could now recall—even if they had been hurtful words—he’d attended instead to the already-dead.

Of course it isn’t easy, Frau Göring continued in her letter. You may have heard that I was sentenced to a year in a labor camp, but in consideration of the time already served in detention, the judge released me.

Still, a large amount of my property has been confiscated and I cannot return to the stage for five years. And with my conviction and sentence there remains a mark against my name, which I still hope to remove.

But she was alive.

And she was free.

And she was with her child.

He stuffed the letter back into its envelope. He didn’t need to read the rest. Whether he’d show the letter to Klara one day; whether he’d destroy it; whether he’d leave it for one of his daughters to find that unnamed moment in the future when the girls would be left with all that remained—that was a decision for another time. For now, his job was done.

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