Prisoner of Night and Fog (3 page)

She sighed and sat up. Sometimes, she wasn’t certain which was worse—falling for one of Reinhard’s sadistic tricks, or waiting for him to spring one. Days, perhaps weeks, might pass before he punished her for opposing him in the alley. No one possessed as much patience as her brother.

At her feet, a small cat lay curled like a soft gray pincushion, and despite her unease, she smiled. Darling little Striped Peterl, her father’s final gift, given hours before his death. Eight years old and still petite as a kitten.

She nuzzled his fur before getting up. Nerves prickled her skin as she washed in the basin’s cold water. Stupid. Hadn’t she already checked the room? No one was standing behind her. And she would move carefully once she reached the corridor. She would be fine.

She dressed quickly, pulled the bedclothes back into place, and twisted the lock. Closed doors lined the empty corridor. No dead mouse on the floor, no glue on the knob. But Reinhard wouldn’t pull the same old tricks he had pulled before. He preferred surprises.

The windowless stairwell was dark, since Mama didn’t permit the wall sconces to be switched on until night, to save on the electric bill. Gripping the banister, Gretchen moved slowly, sliding a foot along each step until she was certain it was secure. She was three-quarters of the way down before her shoe hit something besides the stair.

A string stretched above the step, its ends fastened to the walls with thumb tacks. Only a few stairs from the bottom, so she wouldn’t have had a long fall. Not enough to get badly hurt, but enough for a twisted ankle.

Gritting her teeth, she pried the tacks loose and stuffed the string into a skirt pocket. What if one of the older boarders had decided to come down early? A tumble down four steps could break elderly bones. It was a risk Reinhard would have taken, knowing the chances of someone other than Gretchen coming downstairs first were extremely small. She shook her head as she strode into the front parlor, dumped the tacks into a tin inside the desk—waste not, want not, her mother always said—and tossed the string into the basket where the old ladies kept their knitting.

In the kitchen, she opened the stove hatch and raked the coals before lighting them. Once they started burning, she set the coffeepot on the range to percolate and peered into the icebox. No meat, which was hardly a surprise; she couldn’t remember the last time she had eaten sausages for breakfast. Maybe at her grandparents’ farm in Dachau, but that had to be at least two summers ago.

These days, her stomach was so empty from hunger that only Hitler’s words could fill it again:
Work and bread for all. Someday our great Fatherland shall rise again. Carried on the shoulders of her young people
. He had smiled and tugged on her braid.
Because of young people like me, Uncle Dolf?
she had asked, and he had nodded, saying the words she had always wished her own parents would say to her.
You are special
.

And she was recognizable. Perhaps that was why the stranger outside the alley had known her name. Within National Socialist circles she was called “the martyr’s daughter,” the title granted after her father had jumped in front of Hitler during a long-ago street battle, his body taking the bullets meant for their leader. But what had the stranger meant, she had
surprised
him? The comment made no sense.

Heels clacked on the floorboards. Mama pushed the swinging door open. “You’re up early. Have you started the coffee yet?”

“Yes, Mama. There isn’t much in the icebox, and the bread has mold on it.”

Mama shrugged as she tied her apron strings. “Cut off the green part. And set the table. The nice cutlery, mind, since it’s Sunday.”

As Gretchen assembled silverware and napkins on a tray, she watched Mama from the corner of her eye. Although her mother wore a plain striped housedress and hadn’t painted any color on her face, she was still pretty, with the delicate features of a ballerina and the swelling bust of a cabaret dancer. Long ago, Gretchen had accepted that while she had inherited her mother’s fair coloring, she had gotten her father’s figure—tall and arrow straight.

Today, Mama’s forehead looked smooth, without any worries to wrinkle the soft skin. Maybe she would listen. Words bubbled up Gretchen’s throat.
Mama, I saved a Jew last night
.
And I don’t know if it was the right or wrong thing to do
.

Mama shot her a sharp look. “Daydreaming again, Gretl? Cut the bread, and quickly, too! The boarders ought to be down any minute.”

Without replying, Gretchen scraped mold off the stale loaf. She should have known better than to want to talk to her mother. Mama never listened anymore. She was too busy running the boardinghouse: fixing meals, shopping at the market, washing linens, scrubbing toilets, smoothing away petty annoyances among the old ladies. Mama believed only creeping subservience prevented the Müllers from living on the street. In the eight years since Papa had died, she had worked so hard for the family who owned the boardinghouse that she had whittled herself down into someone Gretchen no longer recognized.

They moved about the kitchen in a routine practiced so many times, they didn’t need to speak. Coffee was poured into a carafe; cups and cutlery and napkins were carried into the dining room and set on the ancient tablecloth; a poor man’s breakfast of rice pudding with sugar and cinnamon was ladled into bowls and brought out to the waiting ladies.

Back in the kitchen, Reinhard lounged at the round table. His pale eyes flicked over Gretchen’s legs; he was probably hoping to see her limping. “How are you feeling today?”

“Fine,” she said quickly, hoping he would drop the subject.

Muscles tightened along his jaw, only for an instant, before he forced a smile. “Mama, did Gretchen tell you about last night? Your daughter is quite fond of Yids, it seems.”

She should have expected this reaction. Fail to punish her one way, make her pay in another. Might as well get it over with. The longer she tried to outwit him, the longer he would toy with her. She sank into a chair. The rice pudding already looked cold, but she wasn’t hungry now anyway.

“No, Gretl hasn’t told me a thing.” Mama nudged Gretchen’s plate closer. “Eat up. We haven’t much time before Mass.”

“Quite a Jew lover, this one.” Smiling, Reinhard jerked his chin toward Gretchen. “Wouldn’t let me teach a subhuman a lesson he needed to learn.”

Gretchen stared at the floor, memorizing the grain in the wooden boards. Something had lodged itself in her chest like a stone, hard and heavy, pressing down. Sometimes, she thought she could stand anything but her mother’s quiet disapproval. Which was all she seemed to get.

“What happened?” Mama’s voice sounded as clear as a mountain stream. And as cold.

Curse Reinhard and his smug smile! “Mama, you know how Uncle Dolf says the Party needs to be a respectable organization, if he’s to be taken seriously as a politician. Street beatings hurt his reputation. I—I was trying to help,” she faltered under her mother’s quiet, measuring gaze.

For a moment, Mama turned her gold wedding band round and round on her finger, studying it. At last she said, “You must do as Herr Hitler wishes, Reinhard.” She gathered the breakfast dishes with shaking hands. “He knows what is best. No more fights, if that is what he says. After what happened to your papa, I’m sure Herr Hitler wishes to be very careful with his supporters.”

Gretchen swallowed her disappointment. How like Mama, saying something without any meaning. Both she and Reinhard had memorized the story of Papa’s great sacrifice, they had heard it so many times. How the National Socialists had attempted to seize control of Munich back in 1923. How they had marched directly into a waiting cordon of state police troopers, and Papa had flung himself in front of Hitler when the bullets started. How Uncle Dolf had been imprisoned for high treason. How the Party had nearly ripped itself apart, and only Uncle Dolf’s leadership had pulled it back together.

As she got up, Reinhard brushed past her. “Are you certain that was the
only
reason, little sister?”

She said nothing. But she heard the laugh in his whisper—he guessed the truth. Her original intention had been to prevent an illegal street beating that might reflect poorly on the Party. Once she had seen the Jew lying on the ground, helpless . . . She had seen a person. Not a monster.

She gathered the dirty dishes in the dining room and went to the back steps, where she scraped the leftovers into the slop bucket. Summer sunlight sprinkled across the courtyard. Somewhere, someone had opened a window, letting classical music from the wireless spill across the warm breeze.

In the backs of the buildings opposite, flags hung from a handful of windows: the yellow hammer and sickle against the red background of the Communists, the dark green of the Social Democrats, the black eagle against the blazing yellow of the Bavarian People’s Party, the bloodred rectangle and white circle surrounding the black swastika of the National Socialists. Politics was everywhere these days, it seemed. Automatically, she touched the gold charm on her necklace; the
Hakenkreuz
, the hooked cross, had been last year’s birthday present from Uncle Dolf.

Would he think she had betrayed him, and everything the Party represented, when she had protected the Jew? How could she go on, if the one adult whom she trusted without reservation, the man who had grown into her second father, no longer thought her worthy?

Flies buzzed around the bucket, attracted by the nasty mix of day-old horse meat and rice pudding going bad in the heat. She felt sick.

She knew the answer. Without Hitler’s friendship, she could go on. But she might not want to.

3

GRETCHEN STEPPED INTO THE KITCHEN’S
welcome coolness. After church, she had spent the afternoon hanging wet sheets on laundry lines strung across the courtyard and beating carpets on the back steps. As she poured herself a glass of water, she caught a low murmur that she instantly recognized. Uncle Dolf. No one else had such a lovely voice, dark and warm and rich, like melted chocolate. The sound pulled her into the front hall.

“I don’t want children,” he was saying, “and I think it would be irresponsible to marry when I can’t devote enough time to a wife.”

“The right woman would understand. Your dedication to the Party must supersede all else.” Mama sounded giggly and girlish.

Gretchen put a hand to her overheated face. She must look a fright.

“Is that little Gretl’s footsteps I hear?” Hitler asked. “Come in, my sunshine!”

He had called her by that pet name since she was a small child. Just hearing the phrase lifted her heart.

Hitler rose and kissed the backs of her hands. Beaming, he stepped back and surveyed her. Somehow, he always remained reassuringly the same.

In the twelve years she had known him, his appearance hadn’t altered: his lank brown hair still flopped over his forehead, even though he faithfully combed it flat every morning; his pale blue eyes were still clear and direct above his sharp cheekbones, his mustache still a dark smudge above his thin lips, and his face still angular and half-starved, as though he were continually hungry but didn’t care enough for his personal comfort to eat. Today he wore a brown pinstripe suit. The bulges beneath his jacket came from the items he always carried—a pistol and a cartridge belt. His whip lay on the table.

“Helping your mother like a good girl, I see,” he said.

Flushing, she slipped the kerchief off her head. “I was cleaning the carpets. Dust gets in my hair if I don’t cover it.”

“Never be ashamed of an industrious look,” Uncle Dolf said. “The true German woman works hard in her home.”

The elderly ladies perched on the flowered sofa nodded. Even Frau Bruckner, the human chimney. All of them were knitting, more scarves for Hitler, probably; Gretchen saw the beginnings of a swastika motif in one of them.

“Won’t you stay for tea, Herr Hitler?” Mama asked.

“No, no. An unexpected guest is an unwelcome addition at table.” As Hitler glanced at Gretchen, she realized they were face to face. Without even noticing, she had grown to match his five feet eight inches. Although she saw him at least once a week, they were usually sitting, chatting at his regular’s table in a restaurant or lounging in his parlor. How odd it felt, to see eye to eye with this man who always seemed so large that his presence filled a room as soon as he opened his mouth.

“It’s no trouble,” Mama said. “Feeding a man who appreciates his food is a true pleasure for me. What you need, Herr Hitler, is a wife to look after you. I declare, you are wasting away!”

“I can’t have a wife when Germany is my greatest love.” Hitler bowed. “As charming as you ladies are, I must excuse myself. I came to invite Gretl to join me at the Alte Pinakothek.” He extended his arm for her to take, and Gretchen smiled. Uncle Dolf always used such courtly gestures.

“I should love to go to the museum, Uncle Dolf.” She didn’t even need to look at her mother for permission. No matter how many chores remained, Mama always allowed her to go with Uncle Dolf, wherever and whenever he wished.

In the front hall, he waited patiently while she fetched her pocketbook and hat. As they stepped out into the slanting sunshine, he smiled and said, “Few things are as pleasant as a young lady’s company.”

He had often said those words to her, when he talked about music and painting, explaining how a girl’s mind was made of wax and needed to be molded into its proper shape. How soft and malleable she felt, sometimes, when his electric-blue eyes pinned her in place and his thundering voice stormed out endless words.

Just as a father would, he had told her. His mind touching hers, forming it into the right sort of brain for her, the National Socialist girl he always said would someday become a golden, shining example of womanhood for the other German ladies to emulate. She was so proud that he had chosen her to mold into that perfect girl.

As they headed down the front steps, Uncle Dolf tugged on her long braid. “Now, what is this nonsense I heard about you coming to a Jew’s aid?” he asked.