Prisoner of Night and Fog (9 page)

Comprehension blazed through Gretchen’s brain as Reinhard went into the hall. Standing stock-still, Gretchen listened to his feet on the stairs, the wood groaning beneath his weight. In her mind, she traced his route in the twisting stairwell, then down the second floor’s corridor to his bedroom, beside their mother’s.

She hoped she was wrong.

Mama kept her account ledger locked in a kitchen cupboard. The key was hidden in an empty sugar tin in the pantry. It took Gretchen less than a minute to skim the last three pages and realize her mother had lied to her. Next to each Müller family account in her mother’s tidy handwriting were the words
paid in full
.

They could easily afford to continue her schooling. Every single one of their bills was paid, and there was an excess of nearly two hundred marks, which her mother had noted “for emergencies” in her round script. They could have paid the 2.70 marks for her school field trips, too, but Mama had always said the amount was too high, and Gretchen had to stay home instead, feigning illness on those days.

They could afford to send her to university.

The truth was obvious: Reinhard hadn’t wanted her to graduate. He hadn’t wanted her to become a doctor. He hadn’t wanted her to rise above him. He had never finished vocational school, and his job in a butcher’s shop was menial and backbreaking. He spent his days hacking apart meat and came home with his work overalls splattered with guts and blood.

Gretchen shoved the ledger back into the cupboard. Mama had lied to her. Because maintaining an uneasy peace with Reinhard was more important than Gretchen’s happiness and future success. Because Reinhard had always mattered more.

She wanted to yank open her mother’s bedroom door and demand an explanation. She wanted Mama to sob and apologize, arms outstretched for forgiveness.

But it was no use. They wouldn’t speak about it, not tonight or in the morning. The decision had been made. Reinhard had gotten his way, as he always did; they were forced to circle around him like dying planets, and he, the sun whose magnetic pull directed their rotation, was the glowing orb that might blaze into uncontrollable brightness at any instant.

Moving like a sleepwalker, Gretchen headed for the stairs, stopping when she saw a dark shape looming on the landing. The outline was unfamiliar: a bowler hat, slim shoulders, small build. The shape shifted and moonlight from the window slid across it, and she recognized the man she had nearly knocked down in the front hall last night. He must be the new boarder her mother had mentioned while they were washing up after breakfast. An Englishman, Mama had added, and she didn’t know what he was doing in Germany, but as he had paid two months’ lodging in advance, she didn’t care either.

He made an awkward bow. “I beg your pardon, Fräulein,” he said in slow, careful German. “It was not my intention to eavesdrop on the conversation, but I couldn’t help hearing your voices as I climbed the stairs.”

My God, what now?
“That’s all right, Herr . . .”

“Please, permit me to give you my card.” He handed her a square of pasteboard. Although it was in English, she could read enough of it to know he was Alfred Whitestone and the address was somewhere in Oxford. “My name,” he went on in the same halting, stilted German, “is Whitestone. I am a doctor, but perhaps not of the sort you are accustomed to.”

“I’m pleased to meet you, Herr Doktor Whitestone.” Habit forced her to smile politely. “I hope your stay will be pleasant.”

“‘Pleasant’ is immaterial to me,” he said. Behind his spectacles, his eyes were sharp. “What I aim for is an informative visit.”

She was tired of playing verbal games with everyone she spoke to tonight. “I’m sure it will be. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Herr Doktor Whitestone, I must go to bed.”

She climbed the stairs to her room. Once she had locked the door and wedged the chair beneath the handle, she stood for a moment, listening. But it was several long minutes before she heard him move again and walk upstairs and into the room beside hers.

10

THE BRAUNES HAUS WASN’T A BROWN HOUSE AT
all, but a former palace of pale stone. Huge swastika flags dripped down the front of the large building. Gretchen heard the bloodred rectangles snapping in the summer breeze as she locked her father’s decrepit bicycle to an iron railing..

Two black-uniformed SS men guarded the enormous bronze front doors, and they stepped back to let her enter the massive lobby, whose walls were carved with thousands of swastikas. Inside, uniformed men moved quickly, intent on their destinations. A couple of the younger ones eyed her curiously, and she realized what an odd picture she must make—she was the only female in the lobby, and the only person not wearing a uniform.

Although it had been months since she had last visited the Braunes Haus, she remembered the plaque’s location. Even as she told herself not to look for it because she couldn’t afford tears on her first day, her feet turned toward the wall.

The plaque listed the names of the sixteen National Socialists who had died during the failed putsch. Her father’s was etched there, and she resisted the almost overwhelming urge to run her fingers over the smooth grooves forming the letters
KLAUS MÜLLER
.

She glanced over the other names: Max Scheubner-Richter, Lars Dearstyne . . .
Dearstyne
. The same surname as the old man, Stefan, who had been dragged from the Circus Krone. Cohen had said that Stefan had been troubled after reading his late brother’s diary. This could be his brother, who had perished during the putsch. What upsetting discovery had Stefan made? And what did it have to do with her father?

She felt the curious stares of the adjutants passing through the lobby. As if from far off, she heard air rasping in her throat. Quickly, she wiped her face clean of emotion. She couldn’t think about this here.

The grand staircase loomed at the lobby’s far end. As she climbed the steps, she passed more adjutants, some in SA brown, some in SS black and brown. She didn’t recognize any of the men belonging to the new, racially elite Schutzstaffel unit..

The SA men grinned at her, a few saying, “
Heil Hitler
,” but the SS members only nodded at her sharply without breaking stride. The SS men moved quickly, not a movement wasted. All of them dressed identically in brown shirts and black trousers. Lightning zigzags in silver thread shone on their collars. None wore a weapon, which seemed so strange. She didn’t know a single SA man who didn’t carry a knife or a pistol.

From below, she heard the name “Müller,” and she turned, thinking someone was calling to her. Two SA fellows climbed the stairs, talking quietly to one another—Kurt and an older man with graying hair whom she had never seen before. When they saw her standing on the landing, they nudged each other and fell silent, doffing their caps as they passed and continued along the second-floor corridor.

They had been talking about her. She sensed it, from the way their gazes had skittered away from her.

As she watched, they slipped into one of the offices lining the hallway, leaving the door ajar. She glanced at her wristwatch. Ten minutes to nine. She was still early. And the hallway was empty.

She darted down the corridor. She vaguely remembered the rooms’ positions: Hitler and his personal secretary Rudolf Hess’s offices were housed on this floor, and the Senators’ Chamber was the room Kurt and his companion had entered..

Its heavy door was open an inch. Scarcely daring to breathe, she placed her eye against the door’s crack.

Kurt and the older man stood beside a shining wooden table surrounded by dozens of red leather chairs. She remembered Uncle Dolf talking proudly about those chairs, purchased to commemorate the Party’s recent election of additional members to the Reichstag. Marble and mosaic decorated the walls. Deep-pile rugs woven with swastika symbols covered the floor. The older man was pacing, his footsteps whispering against the carpet. “What’s this about?” he demanded. “I haven’t much time, Herr Jaeger.”

“It’s Reinhard Müller,” Kurt said. While the first fellow’s voice had sounded strained and weak, Kurt’s was young and polished, a stone rubbed smooth by a river. “He has been approached and has accepted.”

“Müller? The son of that dead shoemaker?”

Gretchen couldn’t stop a little sound of distress. The SA men stopped speaking. She didn’t dare move away.

But nothing happened. Cautiously, she peered through the sliver of open door.

Apparently satisfied the noise had been nothing, the SA fellows had picked up their conversation.

“The very same,” Kurt said. “But he’s a different sort from his father. Reinhard has ice instead of blood. We shan’t have any problems with him.”

“Good. I’m depending on your judgment, Jaeger.” The man barked out a sudden laugh. “The sainted, dead Müller. He was the sorriest excuse for a street fighter I ever saw.”

Gretchen stared at the carpet. She felt the roughness of Papa’s beard against her face when he kissed her, the warmth of his arms holding her until the last icy grip of a nightmare melted away. He had been more than all the labels he had garnered in death: the martyr, the sainted Müller, the heroic shoemaker. He had been a husband, a father, a soldier who came back from the war with tremors in his hands and an occasional blankness in his eyes, as though the battles had scooped out something inside him.

The swastikas woven into the rug blurred together, and she had to blink several times before they came into focus again. He had been someone she was only beginning to get to know when he died.

“Then it’s agreed,” Kurt said. “Reinhard Müller can receive his first assignment.”

The inevitable
Heil
s and clicking of heels followed. They were turning to leave. Gretchen stepped back, horrified when her high heel clicked on the floor. She couldn’t get away. They would hear her.

A group of SS men poured into the corridor from the grand staircase, their boots tramping loudly.
Thank God
. She hurried toward them, pasting on a smile, waving without stopping. They tipped their caps, greeting her in their quiet, respectful manner as she took to the staircase, heading for the third floor and trying not to break into a run.

Below, she heard the rumble of their voices, but she couldn’t separate out the smooth strand of Kurt’s. Maybe he hadn’t left the Senators’ Chamber yet. It didn’t matter. She was gone, and she doubted any of the SS men would mention her appearance in the corridor.

As she climbed the steps, she ran a hand over her blouse, smoothing out the wrinkles and hoping she looked presentable on her first day. What sort of assignment had Kurt and his companion meant? Reinhard was an SA street tough, the sort that Uncle Dolf depended on to provide protection during speeches and muscle during fights. Hardly the type to get asked to do anything important for the Party.

And insulting her father . . . She had reached the third floor. The corridor was deserted, so she closed her eyes and counted—another of Uncle Dolf’s old calming tricks. They hadn’t known Papa. They could be forgiven for their ugly comments. Steadier, she continued along the corridor.

She rapped on Herr Hanfstaengl’s door. A brusque “Come in!” summoned her into the tiny office.

Hanfstaengl was hanging up a telephone receiver, his massive frame contorted to fit behind the small desk. He looked like an adult forced to use child-sized furniture. Impatience jutted out his jaw in the expression she recognized after seeing it so many times over the years. “You’re a clever girl, Gretchen, and I shan’t waste your time.” He started to pace. “I have nothing for you to do. There’s no end of work in this confounded office, but Herr Hitler won’t let me get anything accomplished!”

He aimed a swift kick at the wastebasket. Unsure whether to laugh or back away, Gretchen decided the wisest thing to do was nothing.

“He sticks me in this small office on the third floor so foreign correspondents must wander about this whole place, searching for me and stumbling across God-knows-what information we’re trying to suppress in the meantime.” Hanfstaengl threw up his ham-sized hands. “It’s all I can do to convince him to be interviewed for a foreign paper, and most of the time he doesn’t show up for the reporter, and I have to search the whole city until I find him looking at used cars or holding court at Café Heck.

“Don’t look so alarmed, child,” he continued, curling into his desk chair. “Sit down, and we shall find something you can do.”

“If this is an inconvenience, Herr Hanfstaengl, I can find a position elsewhere.”

“Of course it’s an inconvenience, and no, you certainly can’t find a job elsewhere. Why,
I
can’t get a full-time position in my own family’s art reproduction business; that’s the sort of desperate straits Germany is in. We all must go begging these days.” He smiled, although there was anger in it. “How’s your mother?” he asked so abruptly it took her a second to answer.

“She’s well, Herr Hanfstaengl. She thanks you very much for the job.”

“Liesel’s a fine woman. I must tell my wife to call on her soon. They got on famously in the old days.”

The old days
 . . . Those three words were enough to pull up the past before Gretchen. Once again she was a little girl, sitting on the parlor floor of their shabby apartment in the Schwabing district while her mother and Hanfstaengl’s elegant American wife sipped tea and chatted about poetry and art, and Reinhard played toy soldiers with the Hanfstaengls’ toddler, Egon. Snow swirled past the window, and somewhere, out in the white-blanketed city, her father and Herr Hanfstaengl sat in a beer hall, stamping their feet to keep warm and cheering as Uncle Dolf took the podium.

A lump lodged in her throat. “It all seems so long ago.”

“Yes.” He spoke softly, and she guessed he was remembering his little daughter Hertha, dead two years now. She thought of her father’s grave, the tiny stone square that said so little:
KLAUS MÜLLER
17
SEPTEMBER
1892—9
NOVEMBER
1923. It said nothing about the fact that he had been a husband, a father, a gifted shoemaker, a soldier.