Prisoner of Night and Fog (16 page)

Uncle Dolf laughed heartily, then grew serious. “These lessons are not meant to be larks, Geli. Every moment, I must guard against assassination. The danger is real. Always, always”—he slammed a fist into an open palm for emphasis—“we must watch for the enemy.”

Geli rolled her eyes. “Honestly, Uncle Alf, nobody wants to kill me—”

“
Ach
, there you are wrong. I have many opponents, and most would not hesitate to murder me and, by extension, you. You must never forget that. Already I have survived at least ten assassination attempts this year. They shall not succeed, naturally, as the good hand of Providence protects me. But others’ safety is not guaranteed.” He turned to Hanfstaengl. “My nerves are bad tonight.”

“Shall I be the performing monkey this evening?” Hanfstaengl’s smile was mocking, but he crossed to the grand piano and stretched his long fingers over the keys. “My piano playing always soothes you, Herr Hitler. Shall it be Wagner?”

“Always, always Wagner.” Hitler settled back into his chair, closing his eyes in anticipation.

The music seemed to go on and on, a violent cascade of notes. Gretchen sat motionless, trying not to think or feel. Suddenly the utter ridiculousness of the situation struck her: Here she was, sitting in Hitler’s parlor wearing a ripped, bloodied dress and gripping a teacup with battered hands, listening politely while the music swelled and others sipped their drinks. They looked like a painting, and she, the figure who had been sketched in by mistake.

Geli leaned close, sending a wash of lilac perfume wafting across Gretchen’s face.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “You can bunk with me. You shouldn’t go home tonight. As for this”—she glanced at Uncle Dolf, nodding in his armchair, one hand conducting an invisible orchestra—“this could go on for hours.”

Geli was right; it was nearly two in the morning when Hitler rose. Gretchen was so exhausted, she could scarcely sit upright. Hitler thanked Hanfstaengl for his excellent piano playing, then glanced at her.

“And Gretchen . . . ,” he said, clearly at a loss, when Geli spoke up.

“She shall spend the night here, naturally, Uncle Alf. It’s too late for her to travel home.”

“And I’m afraid she won’t fit on my handlebars,” Hanfstaengl added.

“When will you ever get a car, Hanfstaengl?” Uncle Dolf demanded.

“When people start buying art again.” He looked irritated.

“It is this foul Communism!” Uncle Dolf exclaimed. “Its goal is the destruction of all non-Jewish national states. Communism plans to systemically hand the world over to the Jews. Everywhere we see its loathsome effects—”

“Please, Uncle Alf,” Geli cut in, “anything but politics at two in the morning.”

He looked annoyed. But then she smiled and looped her arm through his, and he laughed. “Very well, Geli.” He patted her cheek. “I know this sort of talk is dull for you girls.”

“Good night.” Hanfstaengl ambled toward the corridor. “I’ll see myself out. Gretchen, a word, please.”

She followed him toward the foyer. In the dim light, she noticed the chair in the corner, where Uncle Dolf always deposited the three things he never left his apartment without: his whip, pistol, and cartridge belt. For the first time, she noticed how odd they appeared, resting on a wooden chair in a finely appointed foyer.

Hanfstaengl swung round to face her. All the laughter and merriment had fled from his features. Looming above her in the darkness, he was such a massive figure she took an instinctive step back. But when he spoke, his voice was so gentle she scarcely recognized it.

“You needn’t come into work until your face is healed. I shan’t let anyone know so you can receive your full pay.”

The gesture was so kind and unexpected she only managed a surprised thank-you.

“Good night,” he said, and she echoed the words before walking back into the dark parlor.

Geli slept in a corner bedroom beside Hitler’s, hers the only room in the apartment with any color. Its pale green walls were dotted with watercolors. One was a Belgian landscape her uncle had painted during the Great War, Geli said as they changed into their nightgowns.

“It’s lovely,” Gretchen said mechanically. She felt like a machine that was breaking down, all of her movements automatic but painfully slow. “Your room is the finest I’ve ever seen,” she added.

It was true. Of all her friends’ bedchambers, Geli’s was by far the most beautiful: delicate wooden furniture, embroidered bedsheets, a vanity table crowded with bottles and pots, a bureau where necklaces lay heaped together, a
Hakenkreuz
, the twin of Gretchen’s, gleaming at the top.

“I call it my pastel prison.” Geli smiled crookedly. “Oh, I’m sorry, you mustn’t mind me; it’s
you
that we must concentrate on tonight. You’ve had a beastly time of it, but a good night’s rest will do marvels.” She guided Gretchen into a chair. “You poor dear! Having to sit for hours when you haven’t even had a proper wash. Isn’t that just like Uncle Alf, not to pay attention to anyone else when Herr Hanfstaengl starts with his wretched piano playing! I declare, if I have to hear anything of Wagner’s again, I shall throw a fit.”

As she spoke, she washed Gretchen’s face gently. The cloth was made of such fine cotton, it scarcely scraped Gretchen’s skin at all. Gretchen closed her good eye, feeling tears leak out. Such simple kindness seemed incredible after the night she had had.

Geli made soothing, sympathetic sounds as she spread salve across Gretchen’s burning hands and knees and bandaged them. “There, there,” she murmured. “You’ll take a headache powder, too.”

She took a small, paper-wrapped packet from her vanity table and dissolved its contents in a glass of water. “Drink up, poor thing. This will blunt the worst of the pain.”

The tears came faster now, sliding down in silence. Somehow, she had been able to bear everything except for Geli’s gentle goodness. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You’ve helped me so much.”

“Nonsense. Any half-decent person would do the same. Men can be such monsters.” An emotion Gretchen couldn’t identify tightened Geli’s round face for an instant. “Let’s get you into bed, shall we?”

Geli pulled back the sheets. A big feather bed, soft as a cloud—Gretchen had never slept on one before. It took her two tries to clamber onto the mattress, because her aching legs screamed each time she tried to lift them. Embarrassment burned her already inflamed face, and she was glad when Geli snapped off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.

“Uncle Alf is an insomniac,” Geli said, the mattress sighing as she settled herself on her side. “He wanders the hallway for hours at night, so you mustn’t be frightened if you hear him walking up and down the corridor. Good night,” she added.

They sank into silence. Soon Geli’s breathing deepened into the slow, regular rhythm of the slumbering. The whisper of footsteps in the corridor started. Uncle Dolf, pacing. Gretchen yearned for the oblivion of sleep. How much she longed to fall down its dark well, far from the pains and fears keeping her awake.

For a long time, she stared at the ceiling, listening to Uncle Dolf’s soft footsteps. With her injured eye swollen shut, her sight had sharpened again. The thought relieved her enormously. If she could see, even if it was with only one eye, she could protect herself. She wouldn’t be caught off-guard again. She would attack first.

Uncle Dolf’s footfalls sounded in the corridor, the muted padding of slippered feet. If she could speak to him alone, without an audience for whom he had to wear a stern face, she was certain he would help her. She slipped from the bed. With an unsteady hand, she reached for the doorknob.

He stood at the far end of the corridor. In the shadows, he was little more than a dark wall.

“Uncle Dolf?” she whispered.

When he didn’t respond, she walked toward him. With each step, he grew clearer, and she saw he wore striped pajamas and a belted bathrobe. His face was impassive, his hair mussed and hanging over his forehead.

“Gretchen, you should be asleep.” He shook his head, smiling lightly, like a parent exasperated with a favorite child.

“I couldn’t sleep. I needed to speak with you again.” Only hours ago, she would have embraced him as she had as a little girl—throwing herself into his arms and imagining he could shield her from all the world’s wrongs. Now she didn’t touch him. “Please, Uncle Dolf, there is only one person whom Reinhard would possibly listen to and that is you. If you could speak to him about his behavior, he would change—”

“Stop this foolishness.” His voice was so angry, she instinctively took a step back. “Gretchen, I have no wish to become entangled in your family’s petty domestic squabbles. We shan’t speak of this again.”

The fury seemed to pump off his body in waves; she practically felt it, as though his emotion were a physical presence. She opened her mouth to protest, but the iciness of his eyes stopped her. She bowed her head and whispered, “Yes, Uncle Dolf.”

He brushed past her. She heard his door click open and shut; she was alone.

Moving with the dazed gait of a sleepwalker, Gretchen went back into Geli’s room and stood at the window. She twitched aside the curtain and looked down at the slumbering city. Somewhere, on the wall’s other side, a few feet away from her, was Uncle Dolf, perhaps trying to sleep or standing at his window, staring at the houses’ jagged outline against the moonlit sky. Only a few feet away, and yet it might have been miles.

She stood on the edge of night, that sliver of gray between darkness and dawn, that razor-thin line separating the first part of her life and whatever lay ahead.

There were only a few hours left before sunrise. She couldn’t return home; she had no allies, no beloved family friend to help her, no money to leave the city, no means to escape from her brother. She had to figure out how to get away from Reinhard. Forever.

19

DAWN BROKE, PALE GRAY AND RINGED WITH SOOT.
From the bed, Gretchen watched the shadows on the ceiling grow thinner as the sun rose. Around three, she had crawled back onto the mattress and tried to sleep, finally managing to slide into a dreamless dozing. At seven, when Geli rose, Gretchen’s right eye felt gritty from exhaustion, and her blackened left eye beat with a constant throbbing.

All of the aches had swum beneath her skin, settling into her bones, and the effort required to stand and dress seemed substantial. Geli had to help button her blouse. When Gretchen saw the ruined white dress, crumpled in a corner, spotted with rust-colored blood, her stomach lurched. She was glad she had brought extra clothes; the thought of putting the white sundress on again made her bruised skin want to crawl right off her bones.

They ate in the dining room without Uncle Dolf. He wouldn’t rise until ten or eleven, Geli said as she heaped strawberry marmalade onto her toast. So they had hours to fill any way they chose, and perhaps Gretchen would like to join her in shopping along the Maximilianstrasse, Geli’s treat.

After everything Gretchen had been through last night, the notion of strolling Munich’s most fashionable street, ducking into boutiques to try on hats as Geli always insisted on doing, struck her as so foreign that she had to struggle not to burst into hysterical laughter. Somehow, she managed to murmur, no, she couldn’t impose further. Embarrassment heated her cheeks when Geli glanced at her, apologizing and adding quietly that naturally Gretchen wouldn’t wish to be seen until she healed.

Gretchen concentrated on the potato pancakes and sausages. Each bite hurt, but she forced the mouthfuls down. She didn’t know when she would eat so well, or so much, again, for she couldn’t imagine going back to the boardinghouse.

After breakfast, she thanked Geli, gathered her burlap sack, and wheeled her bicycle down the staircase. When she opened the front door and stuck her head out, peering around the square, her heart hammered.

Businessmen left beautiful old buildings for work, sleek automobiles slid away from the curb, and a trio of doves fluttered around the statue of Hitler’s favorite composer, Richard Wagner. No Reinhard. No flash of brown uniforms, no tramp of boots on the pavement. None of his SA comrades. Either they didn’t know where she was, or they didn’t care.

The church bells were chiming eight when she reached the Hohenzollernstrasse. Herr Braun answered the apartment door, dressed in shirtsleeves and trousers and carrying a cup of coffee in one hand. His eyes traveled over her battered face, his mouth slackening in shock.

“Gretchen? Whatever has happened, poor child? Was it an automobile accident?”

“Not exactly.” She couldn’t tell him the truth; most likely he would be horrified and embarrassed, muttering about dirty laundry best kept within the family. She would expect such a reaction from the strict Herr Braun.

But not from her beloved Uncle Dolf. Tears rose in her throat. She had to swallow several times before she could go on. “May I speak to Eva, please?”

He stepped into the hall, pulling the door halfway closed. “I must be frank with you, Gretchen. I know you’ve been gallivanting about with this fellow Hitler, and he’s not a suitable companion for girls your age. He thinks he sucked in wisdom with his mother’s milk. I fear he is a bad influence on you . . . so I really must insist you leave my daughter alone for a time.”

She must have heard wrong. Herr Braun had complained about Hitler for a long time, but had always accepted her and Eva’s friendship. “I beg your pardon?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “I know our families have been friends for years, but I don’t like the change in my Eva’s behavior and I am sure it’s the effect of this Austrian upstart. Until you distance yourself from him, I must ask you to stay away from Eva.”

She had hoped for tears and embraces, not this quiet dismissal.

“Papa?” Eva’s voice came from within the apartment. “Who’s at the door?”

Herr Braun’s eyes met Gretchen’s. “No one.”

She couldn’t speak. She didn’t think she could move, but somehow she turned and started walking. Pain radiated up her legs with every step. She was halfway down the hallway when she heard Herr Braun close the door.