Warsaw Requiem

by Bodie Thoene

  The sparrow had not returned for many days. Karl Ibsen sat on the floor of his cell and waited with perfect faith that it would come again.

  ***

  There were certain places a woman like Lucy Strasburg would most likely patronize. Regardless of her low beginnings, Agent Hess had no doubt that her long association with Wolfgang von Fritschauer had honed her appreciation of her finer things in life. If Wolf had spoken truthfully and had indeed thrown her out, then no doubt she would still be frequenting the more elite of the Danzig clubs and restaurants in search of another male companion of Wolf’s financial status. Such a woman could not survive long alone.

  This afternoon Hess had chosen Café Passage as the location of his meeting with Gustav Ahlman, his assistant investigator in the matter of the Ibsen case. Situated along Dominiks Wall, in an old but elegant district of Danzig, the café served excellent wine and had tables on a patio overlooking a busy shopping area.

  The sky was clear and blue above the red-and-white-striped umbrellas of the café. Every table was crowded with women shoppers. Hess recognized the accents of nearly every country in the League of Nations. These were the wives of those diplomats who even now counseled together and worried helplessly about the future of the free port governed by their organization. Their women seemed oblivious to it all, unconcerned about anything but the rise in shoe prices since the fall of Czechoslovakia.

  Hess did not look at the flowers of the Danzig parks. He did not gaze at the charming facades of the medieval buildings along Dominiks Wall. He sipped his schnapps, and from behind his dark glasses, he scrutinized the elegant ladies of Danzig. There was only one among them all whom he wanted to see. Tall. Shapely. Creamy smooth skin. Golden hair and the bearing of a princess with the heart of a backstreet whore. That was Lucy Strasburg. Even amid the elegance of Dominiks Wall shopping arcade, few could come close to such a description. Hess would find her. He was certain of that. After that he would devote his full attention to the matter of the Ibsen case.

  Gustav Ahlman stepped from the tram across the square. Dodging traffic, he did not wait for the crossing signal but headed straight to where Hess had been waiting for a quarter of an hour. The young man’s thin face was pinched and harried. He was late. Hess did not like his junior officers to keep him waiting. Better to be hit by a bus while crossing against the signal than to be late.

  He was panting as he took a seat. His fine brown hair fell across his high forehead. His eyes blinked rapidly as he saw his own reflection in Hess’s dark glasses. He smoothed back his hair, cleared his throat, and glanced nervously over his shoulder. “Sorry I am late.”

  Hess inclined his head to acknowledge the apology. He did not forgive the transgression, but he wanted Gustav to know that he had noticed.

  “Well?” Hess sipped his schnapps and resumed his visual search of the ladies beyond the patio of Café Passage.

  Gustav cleared his throat again. He was smiling as he wiped away sweat from his neck. “I have followed him as you instructed.” The young voice was too excited.

  Hess squelched the enthusiasm with a withering look. “And?”

  Gustav Ahlman pulled out a small loose-leaf notebook and flipped it open. “I have it all here.”

  The waiter came, interrupting the report before it had begun. Gustav ordered tea and pastries. “Identical to those on the opposite table,” he instructed like a schoolboy.

  Hess eyed him briefly with disdain. Was this the best the Gestapo could come up with for his legman? Hess thought he could have hired an errand boy and accomplished the same thing. Ah well, everyone had to start somewhere. Gustav Ahlman had won the assignment of trailing Wolfgang von Fritschauer. He did not know why he was following Wolf, but he had dutifully recorded every move in this little book.

  “What have you got for us?” Hess sounded bored already.

  Again the intense brown eyes of the young man scanned the page. “Well, he has been to the doctor.”

  Not exactly earth-shattering news, Hess thought. “Is that all?”

  “Actually, he has been to see a dozen different doctors around the city. As far away as the maternity clinic in Sopot.”

  Maternity? Hess turned his gaze on the eager young fellow. “You said—”

  “Maternity.” Gustav was triumphant. “I followed him into the waiting room of the last. Heard him talking to the doctor, and then the doctor talking to his receptionist. This Wolfgang von Fritschauer is also on the trail of someone. A woman. And she is . . . she is expecting a child. I heard him say.”

  This was unexpected news. Hess watched a shapely blond emerge from Neider’s clothing store. Displays of the latest fashions and silk stockings mocked him from the showcase windows.

  “So she is pregnant,” he muttered. “The little slut is carrying a child for the Fatherland. And Wolf is the father, no doubt.”

  Suddenly it all made sense. The woman had not been thrown out by Wolf; she had left him. She had, like hundreds of willing unmarried SS mothers, suddenly become unwilling to give up her child.

  “Good news, Agent Hess?” The young man was extremely proud of himself.

  “Incomplete.” Hess would not reward him with his favor. Not yet. “Find this woman for me. And then we will discuss good news. Stay with von Fritschauer. Report back to me any further developments.”

  Gustav leaned in close. “Is it a spy ring?” he asked in a whisper.

  The tea and pastries came. Hess replied with a laconic shrug. He stared at the heaps of small cakes and eclairs and tried to imagine Lucy Strasburg slow and pregnant. An interesting thought, one that had completely evaded him over the long months of his recovery. Of course that did not alter his plans in any way. The woman would be silenced permanently regardless of her condition. Hopefully this would be accomplished before Wolf managed to find her and she had opportunity to talk about her escape.

  ***

  In his pursuit of Lucy Strasburg, Agent Hess had not neglected his first duty to the Führer. He carried photographs of Jamie and Lori Ibsen in his briefcase. Sections of the city of Danzig had been marked out on the large detailed map on the wall of his hotel room. The search for Lucy had been combined with the hunt for the children until block by block he had checked all the cheap hotels and rooming houses and then crossed them off the list.

  Like the loop of a snare, the broad circle of search was being drawn tighter. The outlying districts had been ruled out as possible places of refuge. Now only the central market districts remained. Each remaining rooming house and block of cheap flats was identified with a red pin.

  Hess was not only patient, he was thorough and exacting in the tedious work of tracking fugitives. One by one the red pins were plucked out and replaced by black pins, which now filled the map of Danzig like an ever-darkening shadow.

  ***

  Lori insisted that it was not warm enough yet to lie on the beach at Sopot, but Jacob disagreed.

  “It is now or never.” He bowed with a flourish as Mark and Jamie and Alfie clustered around him to shout their agreement.

  “This is a democracy,” Jamie instructed his sister.

  “Majority rules!” Mark added.

  “Ja,” Alfie said, a slow smile brightening his broad face. He held up the paw of Werner the cat to vote. “See? Werner also wants to go to the beach, Lori.”

  She shrugged in mock resignation. “You would think that once in a while Werner would vote with me on something. But we will take coats as well as swimming clothes.”

  Now the all-male majority of the Danzig Gang cheered little-mother Lori and danced an Indian dance around her as they had seen done in an American movie starring Rex the Wonder Horse last week.

  “You’re a good sport.” Jacob thumped her on the arm as the others tumbled into the boys’ quarter to gather their newly purchased swim gear and their heavy coats in case the Baltic breeze was cold at the beach.

  “Another week and we will all be in foggy London,” Lori said lightly. “And then whe
n we tell people we spent almost five months on the Baltic, they will ask if we ever looked into the casino at Sopot or if the weather was as wonderful at the resort as everybody said. Terrible to admit we had not gone once to the beach.” She blushed under Jacob’s amused gaze, wondering if he would like the way she looked in her swimsuit. He had not seen her in a bathing suit since last summer, and she had grown up a lot since then. She pretended to busy herself gathering her own things, but he did not leave her room. “Well?” she asked at last. “Are you going? You’d better get your things.”

  In their excitement, the boys sounded like a growling, yelping pack of weaned puppies. Their squeals and protests penetrated Jacob’s silence. He looked away from Lori. “They are killing each other in there,” he said and left the room.

  She closed the door and leaned against it, grateful for a moment to be alone, a moment without feeling the thoughtful gaze of Jacob Kalner warming her blood like a kettle on a slow fire. Maybe next week they would be in London! She and Jamie would be with Mama. And where would Jacob and Mark and Alfie stay/ Maybe one of the children’s camps? Lori frowned at the thought. She did not like the idea of such a separation. Maybe she could ask Uncle Theo . . . maybe there was some way, someplace where they could still live together in London! The Danzig Gang had been through too much together to be separated. Surely someone would see that. All the way from Berlin to here. They had lived by selling off the jewels Alfie had carried out in his pocket. Jacob had worked at the wharf. Lori took a job at the drugstore, and Alfie had even found work as a janitor at Sprinter’s ice cream parlor until the Hitler boys had roughed him up. Except for that reminder, life here had not been an ordeal at all, even though the adults in London had all sounded sympathetic and shocked that five children had been forced to survive on their own for six months. Lori had told her mother over the telephone that it was not all bad. What she should have said was that except for missing her parents, it was not bad at all!

  She was the mama and Jacob was the papa. They had kept it all perfectly proper, however. He shared the big room with the boys. Lori slept in the tiny corner room alone, although there were times when she could almost feel his nearness through the door. On those nights she never slept well. On those nights she lay awake and stared into the darkness, grateful that she had never felt this way when they had shared sleeping quarters in the bellows room at New Church!

  There were other times when he brushed her hand by accident or looked at her when she had not expected it, and in those moments Lori felt as if she could hardly breathe. She had to make herself exhale and act as though everything were not spinning inside her.

  Beyond the threats of Berlin, in the clean air of Danzig, something had happened to Lori. She wanted to talk to Mama about it. She would talk to her about it for hours—maybe next week.

  “And we were standing in church together, sharing the hymnbook, and his hand touched mine, and I thought I would faint. I did not hear the sermon. But he did not notice. He does not seem to be aware. We just . . . you know . . . take care of the boys like you and Papa would have. A regular little family, except. . .”

  She slipped on her swimsuit and remembered how last year she had wished she filled out the top a little better. Now she filled it out nicely. The boys on the banks of the Spree back home would have looked at her. And looked again. Indeed, Lori thought, something very nice has happened between last summer and now. She had become a woman. She wondered if Jacob had noticed the change.

  And she was also in love. At least she was practically certain that she was. She thought that probably Jacob would not notice that. And if he did, he would not care because she had been such a complete pain the entire time they had been locked up in New Church together.

  He had teased her about being older and more mature when they celebrated their seventeenth birthdays in April. She was three days older than he was, and he said that he figured that was why she was always trying to tell him what to do. He had meant the comment as a joke, but still it stung. That meant he had not forgotten the Lori-of-New Church! Lori who cried often. Lori who complained. Lori who argued about everything! She did so want him to forget about all that!

  She wanted him to see Lori-of-the-Danzig-Gang. Good sport. Capable. Happy. Willing to lose in a democratic vote! And now, she wanted him to see Lori-in-the-swimsuit. All grown up. Pretty. She wanted him to feel the same warmth that she felt when he looked at her. There was only one week left here if all went well! They could stand the agony of mutual attraction for one more week. After all, she had stood the agony of unspoken love for months!

  She brushed her shoulder-length blond hair and tried it down, then piled up on her head. She looked older with it up so she pinned it up, leaving her shoulders bare. A touch of lipstick added to the effect. Satisfied, she pulled on her blouse and skirt, finishing just as the thumping of impatient fists on her door demanded her to hurry or be left behind!

  “Come on! Hurry up! We’ll miss the tram, Lori!”

  And then the chuckle of Alfie and his thick, happy voice. “Meow! Werner says hurry up!”

  ***

  It was only seven and a half miles from Kohlen Market in Danzig to the crisp white beaches of Sopot. Twenty-six minutes by tramway, including stops in the suburbs of Langfahr and Olivia.

  The tram, powered by electricity, could have run very well on the excess energy being generated by the boys of the Danzig Gang. Lori sat at the far end of the bright yellow and green tram and tried to pretend she did not know who these noisy, rowdy, gawking travelers were.

  All to no avail, of course. They whooped and pointed out the window and yelled down to her over the heads of other prim and disapproving passengers. “Hey, Lori! Lori! Lori! Look at that! Do you see that?”

  When the crescent curve of Danzig Bay appeared, there was a sudden roar, the tumult of explorers seeing a new land for the first time and claiming that they really did see it first! Lori casually looked at the bright waters of the Baltic as though she had seen the bay a thousand times. She glanced away at the wooded hill sloping up from Sopot as if the new green of leaves was far more interesting.

  Jamie, Mark, Alfie, and Jacob pressed their faces against the tram windows like a group of caged orangutans reaching for a banana.

  “There it is! Look at it! I won because I saw it first!”

  “No! I saw it first!”

  Just when it seemed there might be violence over who actually laid eyes on Danzig Bay first, Lori stood regally and pronounced, “I saw it first.”

  Silence descended, and then Alfie shook his head slowly. “No, you don’t count . . . because you was not in on it.” He seemed indignant over her intrusion in so great a matter. The other passengers stared at her curiously, wondering what she could say to satisfy this big fellow who was obviously not quite all there in the head.

  She clutched at the leather strap and swayed as the tram rattled over the tracks. And then she spotted Werner-cat on Alfie’s broad shoulder.

  “Werner saw it first,” she said. “Werner wins the ice cream then.”

  Alfie liked the answer and congratulated his cat for seeing the bay first. The other boys groaned all together and told her to sit down and stay out of it. Then a new bet was born and the old one disregarded.

  “First one into the water, then!”

  “Not just touching it, but in!”

  “Over the head! First one in over the head!”

  Werner-cat would not be in this competition, they told Alfie. Cats did not like to swim even when the water was warm, so Werner would have to sit this one out.

  “And you too, Lori,” Jamie Ibsen warned his sister.

  “Ah, you know girls,” Mark added. “She won’t get her hair wet anyway.”

  So went the conversation on the Danzig tram to Sopot. The line scooted along the seashore—iridescent blue sea on the right and the famous hotel and casino named Kurhaus right across from the pier. There was Northpark and Southpark, where less brave bathers could play
under the yew trees or ride a donkey cart. For those who preferred warm water to the real feel of the Baltic, there was the Wambad, a heated pool complete with cabana and a brass oompah band on weekends.

  Lori would have been quite happy with that luxury, but as the tram slipped by the wide awning of the building, the orangutans began to chant their cry about “the old lady pool, the pool for infants and convalescing arthritis patients.”

  At that instant Lori spotted a jabbering tribe of flabby-thighed mothers being pulled into the entrance by their young children. Ah well, perhaps warm water was not everything.

  Directly between Northpark and Southpark, where the courtyard of the Kurhaus Casino faced the Seesteg Pier, the tram grumbled and changed and stopped.

  Lori peered into the glittering entrance of the Kurhaus Casino and then back toward the Baltic. At this moment she remembered her father. This was the place Karl Ibsen had spoken of! Here it was! Why had she not remembered before this moment? The Tram Ride to Temptation! The casino on one side and the ocean on the other! And there you are, caught between the devil and the deep blue sea!

  Papa had been here as a young man. To this exact place! He had told the story often of how he walked through the casino with its baccarat tables and roulette wheels. He had been the only one of his university friends who had not bet and had not gambled away all his funds for vacation.

  “So this was the place,” Lori whispered as the boys crammed through the tram doors all at the same moment and ran full bore toward the sparkling waters!

  Lori simply savored the moment. She felt the nearness of the old story and wished that Papa were here to tell her over again. She had not been heartsick for him for a long time, but the memory of his laughter and his warning about this very spot made her miss him fiercely!