An Honorable German (26 page)

Everyone stood and drank. “Prost,” Bruno said. Max’s father nodded in approval. And it was good, too, for Max to show everyone
that he bore no ill will toward the von Woller family. Everybody in Bad Wilhelm knew they opposed his marriage to their daughter.

Buhl, the local Nazi Party functionary, came in a few minutes later. In addition to serving as Kreisleiter, he was the mayor
of Bad Wilhelm, a patronage position controlled by the Nazis. Buhl wore a patch over his left eye, which he claimed to have
lost in a clash with the Red Bolsheviks during the struggle for power. More likely in a whorehouse brawl, the locals said.
Buhl’s father had been the village gravedigger, something other children teased him about in school. But Max never teased
him; the two of them were even friends of a sort. Buhl had a red face pitted with acne scars, and big ears that pointed outward.
He could be full of himself at times but he wasn’t a bad man. He smiled as he walked over to Max and gave him a warm handshake.
“Another beer for our hero,” he called to Bruno. “So they still haven’t made you an admiral yet?”

“Well, the war’s not over, Buhl.”

Buhl smiled but, when he dropped into a chair next to Max, his face became serious—the expression of official party business.
“Max, how are things out there? Are we going to stop all those American supplies from getting to the Tommies?”

Max drank, wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. He answered with care. His comments would end up in a
report to the Gauleiter in Kiel. “It’s difficult, but we’re getting stronger in the North Atlantic every day. My crew is young
but they have spirit.”

“Can we drive the Tommies back?”

Max nodded. “Certainly we can drive the Tommies back.”

Buhl slapped him on the back as if that settled it. “I knew it.” He stood, neat in his tan party uniform, the bright red party
armband with the black swastika on his left bicep. “And I know, too, that we’ve sent our best man to defend our Reich and
our Führer.”

“Thank you, Buhl.”

“I mean it.” Buhl glanced around the taproom. “A toast to the KapitänLeutnant.”

No one would argue with the local party man anyway, but it didn’t take any coaxing to get an enthusiastic cheer for Max. After
all, he was one of them—not an aristocrat—and the villagers took great pride in him.

He drove the truck home later, the old Ford sputtering along because of the wood burner, which his father had mounted in front
of the radiator shell a year back when the petrol shortage had become dire. You saw wood burners all over the Reich now, mounted
on cars, trucks, tractors, even buses; it had become impossible for anyone outside the military or the highest levels of the
party to acquire petrol, even for a man with as many connections as Johann. Some of the burners were designed to fit discreetly
beneath the hood, while others took up space in the backseat or the cab, and some were even pulled along behind on a small
trailer. They worked well enough. The burners trapped the wood gas under pressure, and when it was released into the engine,
it propelled the vehicle at a moderate pace. But this method supplied much less power than diesel fuel, and the Ford’s cylinder
heads had to be cleaned every day to prevent the buildup of soot and ash—quite an annoyance, Max’s father complained. Fortunately,
fuel was easy to come by. If you ran out, you could just chop down a tree. But most drivers kept bundles of wood on the tops
of their vehicles since one needed a permit to cut down a tree.

But tonight Johann didn’t worry about the truck or the wood or the cylinder heads. He sat beside Max on the bench seat, belting
out an old marching song from the First War about the Kaiser and his glory. They were silent when the old man had finished,
bouncing through the darkness on the truck’s worn suspension. “We believed it back then,” Max’s father said quietly. “Only
two important things in the world then: God and the Kaiser.”

“And now, Papa?”

“Only God now, Maximilian.”

As Max helped him into the house, straining against his father’s bulk, a young woman appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
Max came up short.

“Katrina,” his father said.

She was thin, a few wisps of dark hair trailing out from under the kerchief she wore around her head. Max could see she was
quite lovely, with a fine sharp nose and gray eyes. She said, “To bed, yes?”

“Katrina,” Max’s father said, “this is my son, Herr Kapitän-Leutnant Brekendorf.”

She smiled at Max. “Mein Herr,” she said, giving a quick bow of her head. Her German carried a heavy Polish accent. “To bed,
yes, Herr Johann?”

“Yes, let’s get him to bed,” Max said.

“My housekeeper,” his father whispered. “Did I not tell you about her in my letters?”

He had not expected to find a Polish forced laborer in his own home. The Reich was overrun with them, but in this house? Katrina
shooed Max aside and slipped under his father’s arm, guiding him gently to the stairs. “I do,” she said. “Is fine, let me.”

Max watched them disappear up the staircase. His father murmured in her ear and let his hand linger on her shapely rear. The
two of them laughed, then turned at the landing and disappeared. Max shrugged. His father got lonely. Katrina was hardly the
first. Max’s mother had been dead more than twenty years and no one, least of all Max, cared if his father carried on with
Katrina. Still, it was against the racial laws of the Third Reich to be sleeping with her.

In his room, Max removed his boots and lay down on his bed, surrounded by the treasures of his childhood: ribbons won in the
Marine Bund, pictures of ships clipped from magazines, a lithograph of Admiral Tirpitz, and his midshipman’s sword, still
polished each week by his father. When he first brought the sword home, Max had tried to show his father how to polish it
properly, but Johann just laughed. He said, “When a naval officer has to instruct a Prussian sergeant major how to polish
a sword, then the world truly will be upside down.”

A watercolor Mareth had done of
Graf Spee
hung above the desk, and on the desk itself, a brass frame held a photograph of his mother. Max favored her with his fair
hair and brilliant blue eyes. She was young in the picture—younger than Max now—not a classic beauty but pretty, with a slender
nose and wary eyes, just like Max. Hannah had been her name. She had a proud look with high cheekbones and a strong jaw. Max
could understand why his father had been drawn to her. “You are so much like her, Maximilian,” Johann often said. “You have
her mind; she was so clever at sums and always had a book in her hand.”

Two days later, his father drove him back to the village rail station to catch the Berlin train. They said little on the way,
or on the platform as they stood waiting for the train. When it finally arrived, his father wrapped him in a hug so fierce
Max thought his ribs might break. “I will be fine, Papa,” he said, hugging his father back.

The old man smiled, pulling away and holding Max at arm’s length. “Ah, you don’t know that, Maximilian.”

“I believe it, though.”

“Do you? I hope so. It does you well to believe it.”

Max looked down at the dirty stone of the platform and didn’t say anything. He could feel his father’s hands trembling slightly
where they held him.

“When you were a little boy at the end of the First War, I said to myself, ‘At least he will not have to go through what I
went through. At least that much is sure.’”

Max looked up again. His father smiled but tears stood in his eyes. “Looks like you were wrong, Papa.”

“Hardly a first, Maximilian. Time makes fools of us all.”

“But you lived through that war and I’ll live through this one.”

“Yes, yes. I thought that when your mother went down so ill. I thought, ‘I didn’t survive Verdun to watch her die of the influenza.’
People were starving all around us, but I made sure we had all the food we needed, and if there had been medicine to cure
her, I would have found a way to get that, too. But there was no medicine for the Spanish flu, no medicine but God Almighty.”

“You’re not making me feel much better, Papa.”

His father laughed. “Ach, what does it matter what we say? It’s just words. You know I love you, Maximilian. I love you more
than anything in the world. I pray for you every morning at mass. I haven’t missed a day since the war began.”

They embraced again, not long this time. Max boarded the train, turned and waved to his father, who stood at attention on
the platform, arm cocked in stiff salute, hand at his forehead, palm out—ramrod straight as only a Prussian sergeant major
could be—as the whistle blew and the train moved slowly from the station.

BERLIN

CAPITAL OF THE GREATER GERMAN REICH

THE NEXT DAY

M
AX DIDN’T REACH
B
ERLIN UNTIL 0200
. E
VEN AT THAT HOUR THE
Stettiner Bahnhof was crowded with soldiers from every branch of the Wehrmacht—changing trains, running for trains, kissing
sweethearts hello or goodbye, Luftwaffe blue standing out against the field gray of the army, the black of the security police,
and the khaki of the Organisation Todt.

Max left the underground platforms and moved into the larger station above, feeling the cold wind blowing into the building
through gaps in the canvas roof. Before the war, the superstructure’s iron arches had supported a magnificent glass roof,
but now it held up nothing more than a few layers of thin canvas tarps. Bomb concussions had blasted all the glass out, and
the tarps did little to stop the wind. Max wondered if there would be a pane of glass left in the Reich when the war was over.

He scanned the crowd for Mareth, but the dim blue light of the station made it impossible to see for any distance. Leaning
against a lamppost, he lit a cigarette and watched the swirling mass of people, all of them involved in the war somehow. It
was everywhere; it was life. Nothing else happened in Germany now. At mass in Bad Wilhelm yesterday, the priest had quoted
Saint Matthew: “And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come
to pass, but the end is not yet.” Max had briefly considered this verse on the train but stopped because he didn’t want to
think about wars or rumors of wars. He was already in a war: if only it were a rumor. And “all these things must come to pass,
but the end is not yet”—would God simply allow this madness to go on and on? Would all the suffering continue till He got
bored with it? Is that how it worked?

A hand reached out and pinched Max on the bum. He spun around and kissed Mareth before she could speak.

“Why, it could have been anyone,” she said when he finally let her go. “Do you automatically kiss any girl who pinches your
rump?”

“Just the blond ones.” They kissed again. “I love you,” he said when they broke.

“I love you, Max.”

An elderly woman interrupted them, tapping Max on the shoulder. “Herr Stationmaster, pardon me. When does the express for
Stuttgart leave?”

Mareth bit her lip to keep from laughing. Max felt the heat rising in his face. “Madam,” he said.

Mareth cut him off. “Madam, unfortunately I have just discovered this young man has only tonight been assigned to this station
and knows nothing. But that gentleman over there”—she pointed to a naval captain a few meters away at the newspaper stand—“is
the senior stationmaster and will be able to help you.”

The old woman flashed a pleasant smile. “Thank you, Fräulein.”

Mareth took Max by the hand and the two of them ran laughing from the station into the blacked-out city, so dark that Max
almost lost his balance as they emerged onto the street. Not a ray of white light could be seen. Were they even in Berlin?
It seemed more like the inside of a coal mine; Max couldn’t make out his hand in front of his face. He hefted his suitcase
onto his shoulder and bumped Mareth in the darkness.

She laughed. “Watch yourself, sailor.”

“It’s black as pitch. I can’t even see you.”

She leaned against him and rubbed a hand across his back. “Welcome to Berlin.”

“We’ll be lucky if no one robs us out here.”

“Oh, no,” Mareth said, “there are never any robberies in the blackout.”

“There must be.”

“No, never. Anyone caught robbing someone in the blackout is shot the next day.”

Max nodded. That must cut down on crime. He said, “Let’s go to the Rio Rita for a drink.”

“It closes at two.”

“Johny’s?”

“Max! No respectable woman would go to Johny’s.”

“When Dieter and I used to go there to hear the Negro jazz band, we always saw many respectable women.”

“Without their clothes on.”

“That’s how we knew they were respectable. They couldn’t hide anything.”

Mareth gave him a light punch on the arm. “Unfortunately for you, Herr KapitänLeutnant, all the cabarets have been closed.”

“The Adlon?”

“They close the bar at midnight.”

“You Berlin girls certainly know your way around.” Max dropped his suitcase and put his arms around her, drawing her close
in a gentle embrace. But then she locked her arms about him so fiercely that she almost squeezed the breath from him.