Petty Magic

by Camille DeAngelis

  Jonah had left me the crystals but there hadn’t been time to hide the radio, and naturally the Nazis had retrieved it out of the smoldering ruin. I decided to find a loo and get back to London to deliver the intelligence in person, though the real reason for doing so was the good long cry I could have in Morven’s arms. The thought of seeing my sister again was the only thing that would keep me going over the next ten hours.

  I spent that time covering our tracks. I would finally have to find out what happened to Hans; I had to face the likelihood that he had talked, and also the possibility that I mightn’t find a trace of him. They could have shot him weeks ago.

  I flew back to Quedlinburg, to the roof of the town jail, and set about searching for our hapless radio operator. I didn’t really expect to find him there, but perhaps I could locate his name in one of their bloody ledger books. Then I could say I had tried.

  I poked my little bird head into each cell in the basement prison block, feeling sorry that I could do very little for the sleeping, broken men inside them. I could free them, I thought, but what would become of them after that?

  But I did find Hans, in the last cell on the basement corridor. He was lying on a filthy pallet on the floor, staring sightlessly at the cracks in the ceiling. I hopped between the bars, resumed my womanly form, and he sprang up in horror. “Please, Uta,” he gasped. “Please don’t kill me!”

  I stared at him. “I’m not the one you need to beg for your life.” I paused. “You talked to them, didn’t you?”

  He looked up at me in abject misery. “I couldn’t stand it.”

  “What they’ve done to you here is nothing compared to what would have happened to you in Berlin,” I said. “But I suppose they’ll be sending you there eventually.”

  He clasped his hands together as if I were some terrible angel of judgment. “I did it for my children,” he said. “I said to myself, better a traitor who provides for them.”

  I snorted. “Like you’re providing for them now? Like you’ll provide for them after they’ve shot you and thrown you in a hole?”

  He didn’t speak for several moments. “What are you going to do to me?”

  I was thinking of a sort of corollary to the beldames’ oath, one that said punishment for the genuinely penitent is a cruelty. And yet to leave him here was cruelty when his execution was a foregone conclusion.

  In the end I freed every last prisoner that night, in the hope that they might find safe places to wait out the last few months of the war.

  JONAH WAS one of the lucky ones. They hadn’t worked and starved him to death. He hadn’t had to live with the shame of talking—not that he ever would have, I know that much for certain—and unlike the rest of his fallen colleagues, he would be given a proper burial.

  Snow fell softly on the charred remains of the old farmhouse. Earlier in the day I had spotted an old yew tree not far from it, and I carried him over the fields toward it with a strength I didn’t know I had—a hideous inversion of a honeymoon night, but I could not bring myself to fold him into a wheelbarrow. There were two inches of snow by then and the ground was frozen solid, so I was obliged to spend a little more oomph making the hole.

  For the second time in my life I wished I could find a holy man, but as it was, I had to see him off in my own way. First I stood above him for a good long while, until I could no longer feel my fingers or my face. I cried for all the missions he’d never fulfill, the lives that would be lost because of the broken link—and for the children he’d never sire, the future perfect family who would never give him joy or comfort—and I cried in the face of my own selfishness.

  Then I prayed to the only god I knew. It didn’t take long; our burial rites are generally brief and to the point. I asked that Jonah’s spirit be allowed to return to its maker and be at peace there. “And please,” I said, “if it’s not too much to ask—send him back to me someday.”

  The grave filled itself in as I took out Jonah’s carving knife to mark the trunk of the yew tree with a Star of David and the letters JAR.

  It hit me then that I would see and touch and kiss him no more, and I wept with renewed bitterness. I knew now that nothing was ever “for keeps.”

  OF COURSE, I had to use the Hoppes’ water closet to get back to London. I looked for signs of life in the house, but all was still. I hesitated outside for a minute or two—I did so want to see Adelaide one last time—and suddenly she was standing in front of me, stealthy as a fox though she was wearing heavy rubber boots under her woolen nightgown.

  “Addie!” I reached out a hand to stroke her silky hair, wet with melted snow. “What are you doing here? You ought to be in bed!”

  “I snuck out the window.” She looked at my soiled hands. “Oma says I can’t talk to you anymore.”

  “Your Oma is right. I’ve got to go away now.”

  “But why?”

  “Because if I don’t, the bad men will catch me.”

  “Like they caught Herr Robbins?”

  “No, Addie. They didn’t catch him. He … he didn’t let them.”

  “I heard guns,” she said. “But me and Oma hid in the cellar and it was all right.” Addie paused. “Frau Braun?”

  “Yes?”

  “Will I ever see you again?”

  “I don’t know, Addie. But either way, always remember me as your friend. Will you do that?”

  She nodded, smiled, and threw her arms about my waist in a brief but snug embrace. “Tell Herr Robbins good-bye for me, and good luck.” She ran off into the snowy darkness, toward the house and her warm bed, and I pinched my nose as I opened the privy door.

  THE REST hardly seems worth telling. I stayed in London for a few weeks, had my good long cry, and gave Morven Jonah’s pocket watch for safekeeping. OSS London had received Jonah’s transmission in its entirety, but the Allies had decided not to use the soap bomb to destroy the factory. The war in Europe would soon end by other means. But that night at the Schloss hadn’t all been for nothing: another shipment of V-2S had been destroyed en route from Nordhausen on the fourth of January.

  One night, while I was staying with Morven in Little London, I opened his pocket watch and my heart thrilled when I saw a folded-up bit of paper tucked between the gears and the brass casing, but when I unfolded it with trembling fingers, all I found was an old cipher.

  And then I went back to Germany for one last mission. At that point, the end was in sight and the Allies wanted us to gather evidence for the trials. It was as dangerous as any other mission and yet the easiest by far. Now there was nothing to lose.

  I met my sister in London after V-day and we took the flue back to Cat’s Hollow, though my homecoming turned out to be temporary. I must have been insufferable those first few months—poor dear Morven! In Germany there hadn’t been time for despair, but now I threw myself into it, hankies, booze, and all. Wasn’t I perfectly entitled to breakfast with amaretto and praline chocolates every morning, and to sit around in my dressing gown all afternoon with piles of records all over the floor and coffee table, listening to the most depressing music I could get my hands on?

  Other days I was restless and irritable and paced the city until sunrise. When we went out to eat I would inevitably drink much too much wine and start speaking of Jonah again. “And I don’t even have a picture of him,” I’d sob as we walked home through the warren, with me leaning heavily on my sister to keep me upright.

  My sisters and aunties were sympathetic, yet there was a distant quality to their words of comfort; they didn’t want to know any more about him than they had my other lovers. They’d seen it happen a hundred times already: the war transformed what should have lasted a couple of dates into something that felt like kismet. I could talk myself blue trying to explain that what I’d had with Jonah was different, it was kismet, but they only would have said Yes, dear, of course it was special, dear. Morven had declared long ago that all I really wanted out of life was one great love. Now that I’d finally had it, I didn’
t know what to do with myself.

  Early that fall Neverino stopped to visit for a couple of days on his way to Argentina, where he planned to spend the next several years hunting for Nazis. He lifted my spirits and delighted my nieces with his own brand of magic, though Helena hardly knew what to make of him. We stayed up all night eating ambrosia cake and telling each other everything that had happened since we’d last met.

  But as soon as he was gone I felt even lonelier than before. I’d had a portent, a dead pigeon on my windowsill. I would never see Neverino again either.

  EVENTUALLY MORVEN suggested that perhaps I shouldn’t retire just yet. I wasn’t doing anybody any good sitting around singing my Liebestod over and over, now, was I?

  So I asked the War Department to renew my commission and returned to Germany for the last time. I helped in the effort to compile and sort all the evidence against those who were to be tried at Nuremberg, and it was then that I came into possession of the ledgers from the prison at Fresnes, what my colleagues grimly referred to as the “book of lost souls.” It wasn’t one book, of course—there’d been many thousands of prisoners at Fresnes, and the records filled a room.

  The book hadn’t come into my hands by chance. I had tracked it down over a period of weeks, weaseled my way onto the team that was working through every last ledger trying to figure out precisely what had befallen all who were lost. I opened one of the books from early 1942 and flipped hurriedly through the pages looking for Jonah’s alias. And when I found it—Jean Renard, then the details of his capture and his intended destination—there at the end of the line were two characters in neat red ink:

  NN.

  Nacht und Nebel: night and fog. He knew full well he would have been executed had he stayed on that train, but he couldn’t have known this: there would have been no trace of him, no closure for his family and friends.

  My next step was to find out who’d been in command at Fresnes in late 1941, early 1942. There were several candidates, not all of whom had been apprehended. I wasn’t fazed at the prospect of tracking him down, whoever he was, but in the event I didn’t have to. I caught my first glimpse of SS-Sturmbannführer Heinrich Engel from a back-row seat in courtroom 600, and I need hardly tell you he was wearing my father’s face. I closed my eyes, saw Jonah’s naked body in the darkness, his bare flesh mottled with round red scars.

  The next morning the tribunal acquitted Heinrich Engel of three out of four counts of crimes against humanity. While grisly photographs of the executed Nazi ringleaders were released to the international press, Engel was being sentenced to ten years’ hard labor in a Soviet prison camp.

  I WAS EVEN more disgusted when I saw Heinrich Engel as he truly was. He was fat. Why did they have to feed these criminals so bloody well?

  He was dozing when I let myself into his cell, and he sprang up and stared at me. “Who are you?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” I conjured a card table and chair, bade him sit on the edge of his bed. “Cigarette?”

  He nodded, no doubt believing himself still in the middle of a dream. I lit the fag, made as if to hand it to him, then snatched it away again with a cold laugh. I took a long drag. Then I leaned across the table and brought the burning end very near his hand; he tried to recoil and discovered he was unable to. He looked at me first with the panicked eyes of a caged animal, then with a sort of horrified recognition. We now understood each other perfectly.

  “Now take off your boots.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  He obeyed. Not such a bully now, was he?

  “Socks too!”

  He doffed his socks.

  “Now lie back on the bed.”

  I gave him no choice but to obey me. I rose from the table, still smoking and eyeing him thoughtfully.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked. I knew he was dying to cry out a string of expletives, Fotze! and Schlampe! and worse I’m sure, but he was much too afraid to.

  “Tell you what,” I said, as if I had changed my mind and decided to be merciful. “Sit up. Put your socks and boots back on.”

  As he did so he looked longingly at my cigarette, wincing as I stubbed it out on the card table with a taunting flourish.

  “I’d love to watch you suffer as he did,” I said. “But I haven’t the patience.”

  So I did it in the space of a blink: the dagger came out of its sheath without any conscious effort, and I lunged forward and drew the blade across his neck in a neat red line. He clutched at his gaping throat, eyes goggling, blood spilling out from between his meaty fingers. I wiped the dagger on the leg of his prison-issue trousers.

  You can’t use magic to rob a man of his life, but nobody ever said I couldn’t use my hands. He was still dying when I flew out the window.

  Madness, Put to Good Use

  29.

  There were once upon a time three sisters, quite transparent, and very beautiful. The robe of the one was red, that of the second blue, and that of the third white. They danced hand in hand beside the calm lake in the clear moonshine. They were not elfin maidens, but mortal children. A sweet fragrance was smelt, and the maidens vanished in the wood; the fragrance grew stronger—three coffins, and in them three lovely maidens, glided out of the forest and across the lake: the shining glow-worms flew around like little floating lights. Do the dancing maidens sleep, or are they dead? The odour of the flowers says they are corpses; the evening bell tolls for the dead!

  —Hans Christian Andersen, “The Snow Queen”

  I WAKE UP in my bedroom at Harbinger House inside a warm patch of afternoon light. I lay the back of my hand—my crinkly liver-spotted hand—over my eyes and let out a groan. For a second or two I can’t remember a thing; then it hits me and I scramble up on my elbows, struggling with the tangled bedsheets. “What’s happened?”

  Vega hands me a glass of a murky green liquid—tastes of rancid lemons and dirty feet—and though I feel better as soon as I’ve downed it, the stuff brings my panic into focus.

  “Where’s Morven? Where’s Justin? He doesn’t remember, does he?”

  “He doesn’t remember a thing,” Vega replies. “He’s back at Harry’s house now.” She sighs. “That was a cruel stunt Lucretia pulled. Who would’ve thought she had it in her?”

  I give my niece an evil little smile. “She’s in for it now, the old crow.”

  Vega shakes her head. “I’m sorry to tell you she only got a slap on the wrist. Dymphna’s already called that meeting.”

  “What’s this? How long have I been out?”

  “Nearly a week.”

  I fall back onto the pillow with another groan. “How did you know?”

  “Before she conked out, Auntie Morven told us you might run into a spot of trouble at the toy shop. Said she saw you in the View-Master.” She pauses. “Incidentally, Granny’s made her promise not to indulge you ever again.”

  “No need,” I say crossly. “I already told her it would be the last time.”

  Vega suppresses a smile. “But in all fairness, Auntie, hadn’t you said so before?”

  “Why needle me? I’m never going to see him again. Mind you, I’d promised as much to Morven before I left. She’ll tell you that. I meant to keep my word, and I will, without anybody else’s intervention, thank you very much.”

  “Well, I hope you had a nice holiday.” I hope it was worth all the fuss you kicked up is what she means.

  “Best night of my life,” I reply a little haughtily.

  Vega stands up to go, and I only just notice she’s looking far too weary for a girl of forty-six. “You’d better come downstairs, as soon as you feel up to it,” she says. “Granny says she’s got something to tell us.”

  * * *

  I COME DOWN to find all the Peacocks and the Jesters assembled in the drawing room. When I greet them I try for my old brio, but I can’t quite keep the quaver out. “Dymphna! How lovely to see you.”

  “Evelyn,” she says, nodding somewha
t stiffly. “I hope you’ve regained your strength.”

  “I am feeling better, thank you.” I spot Lucretia seated at the far end of the room, but she avoids my eye.

  Dymphna leans closer so she can murmur in my ear. “They’re waiting for you in the kitchen.” Glancing round confusedly at the room full of expectant faces, I back through the doorway and close the drawing room door behind me.

  I find all the Harbingers round the table. Hieronymus is back in human form for the occasion, fully dressed for the first time in Lord only knows how long, and even Heck’s come home. He’s taken off his boots and the whole room smells of stale cheese. Nobody greets me. There’s a terrible whiff of momentousness here, and with this second frosty reception in a row I’m fairly certain my comeuppance is at hand.

  I stand on the threshold, hesitating. “Have I bought it?”

  “Sit down, you goose,” Helena snaps. “I have something to tell all of you.”

  Marguerite lays her hand gently over Helena’s. “Mother?”

  My sister takes a deep breath. “I am ready to confess.”

  Somehow we’ve all been expecting this, but I can’t help sputtering out, “What?! But you—but you said—”

  “Oh, I’m not denying I’ve lied to you,” she sighs. “It was a lie of omission.” She pauses. “I suppose it never occurred to any of you to ask me if I’d done it.”

  I believe the English have a word for the lot of us right about now, and that word is “gobsmacked.”

  “I wasn’t very concerned at first. I thought she’d be easy to deal with. Then one night he told me he’d … strayed … and I knew it was too late. Hag knots or no, she hadn’t needed any hocus-pocus to beguile him. She was young and obsequious. Told him he was a genius, made him feel virile. That was enough.”

  “Did he—did he tell you he was going to leave you?”

  “Good heavens, no! He only wanted my forgiveness. After a period I told him he had it—but a wife can never actually forgive, can she?”