Tempting Fate (68 page)

“This is most—” Gudrun started to object, and again Helmut interrupted her.

“It is not entirely correct of me to be so blunt in my speech, but I wish to convey to you the importance of what is taking place here, to show you how much a part you can play. It is not simply your femininity that marks you—your husband was a man of great respect and your family has long been looked up to as foremost of the hochgebornen. You do not stand alone, Frau Ostneige, but you represent all that is finest in our beloved country.” He stopped in front of the fireplace and smiled down at her. “You can make quite a unique contribution, for your support, not only financial, but social, would open doors to us that could change our position. It is true that we have many who sympathize with us in both the army and the old nobility. Many of them are members of the Gesellschaft and Bruderschaft. But there are others who have been reserved with us and—”

Gudrun stood up. “Herr Rauch, is all this an attempt to coax me into giving your NSDAP money and provide invitations to a few parties?” The air of command of which Helmut had so recently complained was quite visible.

“Naturally, that is a part of—”

“Because, Herr Rauch, I think you should know a few things. From what you say, I gather you have been speaking to my brother. Maximillian is under the impression that I have a great deal of money left in my inheritance and am keeping it from him because I fear he will squander it. There is some justification in that fear. Maximillian went through his share of the money some time ago and lives here now at my sufferance. But that is not because I am a wealthy woman, Herr Rauch. Quite the contrary. Between the losses to my family during the Great War, my husband’s long illness, and the depredations of the inflation of two years ago, there is very little left here. We used to have horses, but those have been sold. We had a coach and a sleigh, but they are gone too. I did not part with them on a whim, Mein Herr, but out of direst necessity. My staff now consists of my housekeeper, who is also my cook, the handyman, and Otto. Ideally there should be ten servants to run this house, another two for the grounds, and three for the stable, assuming there were horses to care for and coaches to be maintained. Maximillian does not concern himself with this part of my life. I’m sorry if he has given you a … romantic picture of our situation, but he does it to keep from being distressed. You must forgive him.” She started toward the door. “I have work I must attend to, Herr Rauch. You will excuse me?”

“Frau Ostneige,” Helmut said sharply, detaining her. “I confess that what you have said is not entirely in agreement with what your brother has told me. I have been a banker, and it is not difficult for me to verify what you have said—”

“Please do. And then, if you will be good enough to explain it all to Maximillian, I would be most appreciative.” Her hand was on the door latch and she had to resist the urge to bolt from the room.

“Don’t leave quite yet, Meine Frau. I must ask you a few more questions.” He had taken up his stance before the fire, the flames appearing to crackle at his feet and climb his legs.

Gudrun took a deep breath. “Herr Rauch, you force me to remind you that none of these things are your concern. What my monetary situation is has no bearing whatsoever on you. I doubt you have anything more to say to me.”

“Let me have a few more minutes of your time. It will be worth your while.” He lowered his voice with the intention of calming her; it had the reverse effect.

“What is it, Herr Rauch?” Gudrun leaned against the door, her hands behind her back clutching the latch.

“I may have underestimated you. I tried to appeal to your love of country, but there is more to patriotism than mere slogans. You are wise to be prudent with your resources, for we are still at the mercy of the foreign powers who trespass on our homeland. You have seen what their meddling can do to us. But you are not aware of the insidious traitors who infest every part of our lives, who are working relentlessly to destroy us and the whole of Western civilization.”

“Oh, come, Herr Rauch. Are you trying to convince me that there is a conspiracy directed at Europe?” She thought that Rauch might be mad, and decided that she had best humor him a bit longer.

“But there is! You have become so used to the situation that you are no longer aware of the danger. You are like a farmer who grows his crops on the side of a volcano, forgetting that one day it will erupt again and bury him and his crops in burning lava. That is what our enemies depend upon, that we will be lulled into assuming that our antagonists are those we have met on the battlefield. It is not so!” He took several impulsive steps toward her. “I saw for myself how these devils work, when I was at the Front I was expected to hold a position with an officer who was a Jew, one of the very people who brought us to such ruin. The man was killed, Gott sei Dank! He was not able to work his malice with me. We lost good men on that day. The officer was one of the pernicious von Rathenau—”

“Walther von Rathenau was a fine man, my father told me, and never has any man, gentile or Jew, served Deutschland better. His death was a disgrace to all of us,” Gudrun said firmly. The whiteness around Helmut’s eyes and mouth grew more marked, but she went on. “If you were one of those who consented in his killing, you are the foe of this country, not the Jews you vilify.”

Rauch blinked twice. “They have bewitched you, Frau Ostneige.”

“If that is the case, they also bewitched my father and his father as well.” Her tone was politely dry, but Rauch did not notice her sarcasm.

“Jawohl,” he said heavily. “It is an old, old plot they have. They are patient, Frau Ostneige. That is what no one understands. It means nothing to them if generations pass so long as their ends are served.” He went back to the fireplace. “You are probably not aware that you have been surrounded by Jews all your life, and they have manipulated your thoughts so that you are no longer able to see what is so clearly apparent to us. Your music teacher, for example, was a Jew, and filled your hours with such men as Mendelssohn. There are better composers to study.”

“Herr Rauch, you grow absurd.” She had the door half-open behind her now. “I am sure you believe what you are saying. Doubtless there are many who agree with you.”

“Without your help, Frau Ostneige, your brother will not be able to advance any further in the Thule Gesellschaft. He seeks to belong to the Bruderschaft and all that it implies. He has been given provisional Initiation, but without your encouragement, he will not be allowed to learn the innermost secrets, which is what he most deeply wants to do. If you have feeling for him, you will reconsider your attitudes.” He smiled, intending to be ingratiating, but to Gudrun he appeared sinister. “It is characteristic of the Teutonic people that they demonstrate great loyalty in the face of the perfidy of other races, and your willingness to defend the Jews who seduced you with their nonsense about international liberalism shows more clearly than anything else how much you have retained of the true nature of our people.”

“Herr Rauch…” She pulled the door completely open.

“Say you will think about this. I will leave a book for you, which will clarify more than anything I say the nature of the struggle at hand. Read it, Frau Ostneige, and see what has become of us all, so you will know at last that I have not been talking to no purpose. You will find a great deal of wisdom in these pages.” He pointed to a volume that lay on one of the small reading tables. “One of our number wrote it while in prison, Frau Ostneige. He was not afraid to defend his beliefs, you see. The officials know that he is right, for his sentence was lessened. There is more in
Mein Kampf
than in any other ten books written in the last fifty years.”

“I … I will look at it, Herr Rauch. Now I must go. I have my household tasks to attend to…” She was into the hall and walking away from the obsessed man in her library. Her hands were shaking and she pressed them together as she walked, trying to quell the fear she could not conceal from herself. If these were the sorts of men who were the Thule Gesellschaft, she could do Maximillian no greater harm than assisting him to become more entangled in their affairs. What sorts of men had such hate-filled thoughts guiding them? She had not realized that she had gone to the kitchen, but as she opened the door, she saw Frau Bürste look up from the pastry dough she was rolling.

“Frau Ostneige,” she said, startled. “Is there something wrong?”

Gudrun tried to laugh but her voice shook and she ended on a sob. “Oh, that dreadful man Rauch has been here. I … I don’t know what it is about him. The more I see of him, the more I feel I have been … contaminated.”

Frau Bürste snorted. “That one. I’ve seen them before. They’re the kind who come as guests and end up terrorizing the chambermaids. They justify their actions by claiming it is their right to do so. Oh, yes. I know the sort.” She applied herself to rolling the dough again, and the muscles in her large arms stood out with the force of what she did.

“I’m so glad to hear that,” Gudrun sighed as she came into the room. “Not that I approve of such men,” she added hastily. “I didn’t mean that. I thought no one else disliked him as much as I do. Maximillian approves of him wholeheartedly.”

“If you will permit me to say it, Frau Ostneige, your brother has convinced himself that he is one of a group of superior men. They’re using him. That Herr Rauch does not admire your brother, and has little use for him.”

“Oh, he has a use, all right, that was made very clear to me,” Gudrun corrected her with undisguised bitterness. “Maximillian told Herr Rauch, and heaven knows who else, that we have money. Rauch wanted a donation of some sort from me. I doubt he believed my denial. What am I to do about him?” Gudrun burst out.

“If you took my advice,” Frau Bürste said as she paused in her labors, “you would tell that ingrate that you will no longer support him. If he had any gainful employment, it might be different. But who is it who brings unexpected guests here and eats up our food and drinks our beer and wine without so much as a little consideration, or asking if it might be inconvenient? There’s less of it than it was, and your brother always declares himself contrite when you remind him of what difficulties you have, but he’s a wastrel, Frau Ostneige, and there’s no getting around it, or excusing it. Those men, Rauch and that lot, they know it too.” She had gone far beyond what was usually permitted of a servant to say, and stood waiting for the reprimand she deserved.

Gudrun put her hands to her face. “He is my brother. I have no one else near to me.”

Frau Bürste blinked in surprise, then came across the kitchen, her heavy, waddling tread as stolid and dependable as the woman herself. “Frau Ostneige, Frau Ostneige, you’re overwrought.” She put her hand awkwardly on Gudrun’s shoulder, leaving a faintly floury print on her shoulder. “There, my lady. What did I say? There’s no reason to pay any attention to me. You tell me to keep my place next time.”

Gudrun looked up at her housekeeper. “It’s ridiculous for you to say that, Frau Bürste. Who has a better right to speak to me? We would not run Wolkighügel without you. No one here has done more. You have every right to say what you think about how this household goes on.”

“If your grandfather or your father heard you speak this way, Frau Ostneige,” Frau Bürste said severely, “you would have a sore rump for days. It isn’t at all fitting that I should tell you these things.”

Frau Bürste was right about her father and grandfather, Gudrun thought. Neither of those stiff-spined men would have admitted to any servant that they had a voice in the conduct of household affairs. But neither her father nor her grandfather had been through the privations that she had undergone. “I am grateful for your advice, Frau Bürste,” she said, feeling strangely saddened. “I’ll consider everything you’ve told me. You must not hesitate to discuss such matters with me in the future. Otherwise, it will be impossible for us to keep our spending within our means.” And, she added to herself, it would not be necessary for this demeaning letter. If her uncle did not aid her, she would have to approach others with the same request, and they would not be as understanding or as discreet as her uncle would be, no matter what his answer.

“That’s an excellent thought, Frau Ostneige,” Frau Bürste declared. “Now, you go back to your work and leave me alone until I get this meal to cooking. You don’t need to be worried about how I go on here. For this month we’re saving a little money.”

“Because Maximillian’s friends don’t care to try driving out in the snow,” Gudrun said shrewdly.

“That’s part of it. Off you go,” Frau Bürste said as she bustled Gudrun out of the kitchen.

Gudrun remained in the hallway, undecided. She dared not return to the library for fear Herr Rauch had not yet left. The thought of another encounter with the man chilled her more than the cold of her home. There were servants’ stairs to the upper floors, and although she called herself craven for using them, she made her way to her rooms that way, thinking that she needed a bath.

When at last she came down to dinner, she had changed to a fine black dress, more suitable for an evening at the theatre than a meal at home without guests. She took a glass of sherry by herself, and had already finished half a bowl of Westfälische Bohnensuppe when Maximillian came into the dining room. His face was flushed, and from the unsteadiness of his walk, this was not entirely due to the weather.

“I’ve talked to Rauch,” he said without preamble.

“Would you like some soup?” Gudrun offered him, reaching for the ladle.

“I said, I’ve talked to Rauch.” He was sulking and he refused to look directly at her; he directed his gaze toward the curtained windows.

“Yes, I heard you.” Without waiting for him to say anything more, she began to measure out soup into the second bowl beside the tureen.

“Is that all you have to say?” He pounded a closed fist on the table for emphasis.

“That’s all.” She handed the bowl to him.

With a sweep of his arm, he knocked the bowl away from her, sending stock, beans, and smoked-sausage slices spraying over the table, the carpet, and his sister. “I won’t have it!”