A Night of Long Knives (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  Behind the picture rested a twig. Heart pounding, I drew it out. A message from Anton. It had four bends in it. He had been here with three people. Frau Röhm, probably the maid, and someone else. Perhaps Mouse?

  I tucked the twig in my pocket and hurried across the parlor. I eased open the parlor door, but before I could step through a growl stopped me. The Rottweilers glared at me. I stepped a foot over the threshold and they stood in unison.

  I eased the door closed, wishing I still had my satchel and the Luger inside. But I did not. I would have to talk my way through this without alerting Frau Röhm. I was no match for the dogs or Mouse unarmed, as the pain in my ribs reminded me.

  I paced back to my chair and sat, taking the saucer and empty teacup into my lap.

  The door opened and I stood, trying to decide how to tell her what I knew of her son, and mine. Much depended on what she already knew of his fate.

  A fragile-looking elderly woman preceded the maid into the parlor. Wispy hair floated around her head like dandelion fluff. Despite her age, she carried herself as erectly as her son. Fortunately, the dogs remained outside.

  “Frau Röhm.” I curtseyed automatically, my mother’s training. I spoke loudly, in case Anton might hear me. “I am sorry to disturb you today.”

  “I’ve received disturbing calls from others as well.” Her voice quavered with age, but her tone was clear and determined, her accent pure Bavaria, just like her son. “And you do not need to raise your voice. I am not yet deaf.”

  After the maid seated her on an uncomfortable-looking horsehair chair, Frau Röhm waved her away. She settled in like a crow into its nest, turning and fidgeting before sitting still. She did not invite me to sit. “You have news of him?”

  “I do.” What could I tell her? “I just left him at Stadelheim.”

  “You are the Vogel girl.” She smoothed her palm across her old-fashioned lace dress. “The one who kidnapped my grandson, Anton.”

  I set my cup and saucer on the table with a quiet clink. The maid poured me more tea. “I am not entirely certain that Anton is—”

  “Yet he was going to marry you today,” she talked over me. “Or so I heard. I’ve never known a woman to have that kind of influence over him.”

  She cocked her head, assessing me as a potential daughter-in-law, perhaps questioning my breeding qualities. I stared straight into her eyes. She was so much like her son that I detested her already. “I would not say that I have influence.”

  “He never brought a girl home before. You must have something, although I cannot quite see it myself.” She sipped her tea.

  I sipped my own tea and waited for her to have something polite to say. The maid stood with her gaze aimed at the floor, waiting too.

  “Was he well when you left him?” Done castigating me, she wanted information.

  I did not dare anger her until I found out Anton’s whereabouts. “Quite well, Frau Röhm. He wished me to convey his love to you.”

  “Did he?” she asked with a little girl smile. “It is kind that he remembers me at such a time.”

  “And he also wished for me to pick up the boy, Anton,” I lied, giving it a try. “He said that you—”

  “He said no such thing, of course.” She shook her gnarled finger at me as her son had done in the hotel room, chastising a naughty child. “Think me not a fool because I am old, Fräulein Vogel.”

  She would have made a terrible mother-in-law. I tried not to imagine how my life would have gone if I had been forced to marry Röhm.

  “Are those ungrateful worms going to murder him?” She leaned forward on the chair, clear blue eyes drilling into mine.

  I bowed my head, unwilling to meet those eyes, so like her son’s. I did not want her to see my anger and the part of me that pitied her. She was still a mother, with a son soon to be killed, even if she had been responsible for raising him to ally himself with monsters. “I believe so.”

  “Do you know how many times he was wounded defending this country?” She picked up an embroidery hoop and stitched a piece of yellow linen. She hardly glanced down as the red thread wove in and out, the needle guided by fingers that quivered, either with age or emotion.

  “Three,” I answered without thinking.

  The needle pierced the fabric again and again. “Once he came back here, barely off crutches. He’d been hit by fourteen pieces of shrapnel. He lost his nose. I nursed him to health and sent him back into the war.”

  Her eyes strayed to the picture of the young Röhm on the piano, and her fingers stopped stitching. “No matter what they did, he always went back. Until now.”

  “I am very sorry—”

  She cut me off again. Just as well, as I did not feel sorry. “He went to prison for them. Stadelheim. That’s where he is?”

  “Cell 474.”

  “And they will shoot him like a dog. Hitler, who ate at my table many times, will have him killed.”

  “We do not know . . .” My voice trailed off. That too was a lie. We did know. I stood like a chastened schoolgirl, sweaty hands clasped in front of me.

  “I gave my son to the Fatherland. He spent his life in its service. They bloodied him, almost killed him.”

  You should never have given him up, I longed to say, but I kept silent. He was her son, and he would be taken from her because of the weight of his decisions. It was not my place to criticize her. I had to appease her until I found Anton. Was he here? How could I get past the dogs to search?

  “When he tried to restore Germany’s greatness in the putsch, they arrested him.” She shook her head in disbelief. “But he stood firm through it all. He will stand firm through this too.”

  I picked up my cup, the china hot against my fingers, unsure what to say. He might stand firm, but I did not think he would live. I sipped bitter tea.

  “They will lie about him too. To conceal their own treachery.” She returned to her embroidery as if alone.

  I listened for other sounds. Nothing. Even the dogs were silent.

  “I want to bury his body in our family plot.” Her voice was as calm as if she ordered meat from the butcher. “I am his mother. That is my right. A mother should be able to bury her son with honor.”

  “A mother should never have to bury her son.”

  “Get his body for me.” She ignored what I had said, as she had for the entire conversation.

  “I am uncertain if I can.”

  “Give me my son, and I will give you yours.”

  My heart leaped. She had Anton, or she knew where he was. If she had him, then he must be safe. She would take good care of her grandson. I hoped.

  “Give me mine first.” I struggled to keep my voice calm. I did not want to reveal how desperate I was to get him back. But she was a mother too—she knew. “Then I will get you yours. I give you my word.”

  She shook her head, white hair flying. “My son trusted you to keep your word three years ago. I won’t make that same mistake.”

  I bit back my anger. Her words held truth, but I did not want to hear it. I wanted Anton. I finished my tea and set down the cup. I must at least pretend to agree to her terms, but I would not capitulate too easily. “They will not release his body to me. I am not next of kin.”

  “I shall write a letter. Saying that you act in my name.” She waved a hand toward the desk. “Fetch paper and pen.”

  The maid hurried to do so, pulling thick writing paper and an elegant black fountain pen out of cubbyholes in the desk. She carried them across the room to Frau Röhm, along with a heavy book on which to rest the paper.

  Frau Röhm put down her embroidery and picked up the glossy pen.

  “Even with such a letter, I have no guarantee of success.”

  “I hope for your sake that you do.” Her veined hand traced spindly letters, the only sound the scratch of nib on paper.

  I thought of Anton, perhaps somewhere in this very house. I pictured him listening at a keyhole and remembered how he had hid in the wardrobe long a
go to eavesdrop on my conversation with his father shortly before we fled Germany. Anton was resourceful; he would do better than most children in such a situation. Still, he was only nine years old.

  Frau Röhm finished and waved the letter to dry it, handing the pen and remaining paper to the maid. The letter she held out to me. “Take this with you.”

  I hesitated, then took it, the paper heavy in my hand. “I must see Anton first.”

  She picked up her embroidery hoop and went back to work. I stood in front of her, holding the letter.

  “Good luck, Fräulein Vogel.” Her tone made it clear that our interview was over.

  “The day that you receive your son, I receive mine.” I tried to sound as tough as she. But I had little to bargain with, and we both knew it.

  “I keep my word,” she said. “Which is more than can be said of you.”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  She gestured to the maid to show me out. “If you see my son alive—” Her voice broke, but she steadied it. “Tell him that his mother is proud of him. He has lived his life by the warrior code. None of those political monsters has a tenth his courage. And they know it.”

  I nodded, but she bent over her embroidery. Her hands shook, and I sensed that she was near tears. She cleared her rheumy throat. “Do you have my wedding dress?” she asked, eyes still on the cloth.

  “I do.”

  “I want it back.”

  At least I had one thing that she wanted. “The moment I have Anton, you may have it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  The maid beckoned. I followed. I had nothing more to say, and she looked quite capable of throwing me out of the house. Her arms were more muscular than Boris’s. I must contact him soon so that he would not go to Switzerland and worry when I did not arrive as scheduled.

  The dogs growled when I walked down the stuffy hall. When the maid chirped at them, they fell silent. Like everyone in that household, they were well trained.

  The maid followed me to the front door, probably to ensure that I left. At the door she handed me my satchel.

  I hurried down the path to the staff car. Was Anton still here? If not, Frau Röhm must know where he was. I folded her letter and tucked it into my satchel. Where was Mouse?

  Light-headed, I took a deep breath. A familiar pain from my rib stabbed into me, and for the first time I smiled at the pain. Perhaps it was Mouse’s calling card. I fingered the bruise. If damaged ribs really were his calling card, then that was a lead to track him down, especially if I was correct about Anton’s hint and he was a pimp. I knew just the person to ask. But for that I needed to go to Berlin, and if she kept to the schedule she had used for all the years I had known her, she would not be available until Tuesday afternoon. Until then I would play along with Frau Röhm.

  I opened the car door, but did not climb in. I wanted to be visible to anyone in the house. I reached my arm in and leaned on the horn, blowing it over and over while watching the house’s windows. Curtains twitched in the parlor, and a veined hand rested on the windowsill. Nothing else moved. If Anton was there, peeping through the curtains without moving them, he would know that I was here. I pointed to the walkway. If he could escape, he would come there. But nothing indicated that anyone was in the house besides Frau Röhm and the maid.

  The heavy door swung open, but I did not stop sounding the horn. The maid stormed down the walkway. Only after she grabbed the car door did I stop blowing the horn. Frenzied barking cut through the air.

  “What do you wish?” she said. “This is not a racetrack.”

  I smiled politely. “I need your telephone number.”

  “You did not need to make such a fuss.”

  I tore a page out of my notebook and handed it to her, along with my pen. Still muttering, she scrawled numbers across the page.

  “I do apologize,” I said, and she snorted, probably well aware of my insincerity.

  I drove around the block and parked next to a stranger’s driveway. Unless they were out of touch or completely blameless, they were in for a shock when they returned home to a Nazi staff car. Still it could not be helped.

  Carrying my satchel, suitcase, and the unused wedding dress, I headed back toward the Röhm house. No point in returning to Stadelheim today. If they had already executed Röhm, it would be a day before they released bodies. And I had more to do here.

  I walked to the house across the street from Frau Röhm’s. It had looked empty when I first drove up and no one came out when I honked the horn moments before. I hurried along the path, hoping no one in the Röhm household noticed me. This house was larger than the Röhms’. Three stories and built of stone. A matching stone wall shielded the walkway from the street.

  Surveying the yard for signs of inhabitants, I knocked on the front door. The golden-brown grass meant that the owners had stopped watering. I stood in the shadows by the front door and rapped again more loudly, listening for footsteps inside. If anyone answered, I would pretend to be selling the wedding dress, a common thing to do in these times of high unemployment.

  No one came to the door. I stood on tiptoe to peek in the front windows. For the first time that day my heart lightened. White sheets draped the furniture. The owners were away, and for an extended time. What a piece of luck! I circled the house.

  In the back, as I had hoped, was a solarium, glass panes glinting in the sun. Inside, an empty table waited for its next breakfast. Faded lithographs of citrus fruit lined the walls, and an old yellow rug covered the tile floor. A wonderful place to sit on a summer morning and read the paper while one lingered over coffee. I pictured Anton and Boris sitting in those chairs, Anton drinking milk, Boris coffee. We could trade sections from the newspaper and decide what to do the next weekend. A wonderful, ordinary, and completely impossible life.

  I stopped imagining and searched the flower bed for a large rock. I brushed its smooth warm surface clean of dirt. Hoping to muffle the sound, I wrapped the wedding dress around the rock. I swung it against the glass pane near the door handle. Glass tinkled to the floor inside. In another yard, a dog barked twice.

  I reached through the broken pane and unlocked the door, careful not to cut my arm on the shards of glass still embedded in the frame. Hefting my suitcase and the wedding dress, I hurried inside and closed the door. I hated to damage the home of a stranger who had never harmed me, but it was the only way to do what I must.

  In the main house, I hurried past a draped harpsichord and the oil-painted faces of stern dead ancestors. My footsteps echoed through the rooms.

  I found stairs and climbed to the attic. Books lined the walls. On another day I would have stopped and looked through them, curious what Röhm’s neighbors read, what they thought about. But today I kept walking.

  The long day’s heat filled the attic. I began to sweat at once. Surprisingly empty, the attic contained only an old table, two mismatched chairs, and dusty steamer trunks. Groaning at the pain in my rib, I dragged a chair and the table to the front window and brought out my field glasses.

  As I had hoped, I had an unobstructed view of Frau Röhm’s house. I rested my elbows on the table to steady the glasses and checked each curtained window. No sign of Anton. But I would watch all day to catch sight of him, alive and well. I loved him. He was as surely my son as if I had carried him in my womb. The men whom I had loved, I loved because of who they were, but Anton, and my brother Ernst, I loved simply because they were. They did not need to have a collection of appealing traits. They simply needed to be.

  I wrestled open the reluctant window to better hear the sounds of the street and let in fresh air. I remembered my days at the newspaper, where I always opened the windows to let out the cigarette smoke. Back when I wrote about murderers but did not have to run from them.

  Soon the broad-shouldered maid left to walk the dogs. The dogs trotted along, obedient. What would I do about them? Perhaps I might find tinned meat and sleeping powder. But the dogs seemed too well-trai
ned to eat food from a stranger. I worried for a full half hour, pacing in front of the window, until she returned without the dogs. Then I worried what she had done with them.

  Through the long thirsty afternoon and evening I watched, sweat running down my body. But I stayed at my post. What if I missed a glimpse of him, if Frau Röhm sent him outside to play in the late afternoon sunshine? He might be only meters away. I dared not take the chance of her moving him without my knowledge. If he was there and safe, I would break him free.

  I read her letter, making certain that it did not contain orders to have me executed when I presented it. I did not trust her.

  After the maid returned, no one came to the house, and no one left. No one opened the curtains or so much as peeked out. If I had not known that people lived there, I would have assumed the Röhm house was as deserted as the one in which I currently sat.

  I pulled my reporter’s notebook and my old jade-green fountain pen out of my satchel. Like Ulli, I needed to write things down to make sense of them. Glancing every few seconds at the house across the street, I passed the time by writing everything I had seen or heard since Röhm’s arrest. The kind of thing my mother always warned me against. Trouble would likely come of it, but someone must bear witness, describe the last moments of those eight boys, and the hundreds of other boys I had not seen. I wrote until my hand cramped, shook out the cramps, and wrote more.

  When night fell, a light appeared in the parlor where we had tea. The light moved upstairs. To a bedroom? Soon after that the light extinguished. Presumably she was in bed. But what about the maid? Did Frau Röhm have other servants? Was Mouse still there?

  The maid opened a small door on the side of the house. I focused the field glasses on her as she hauled out a garbage can, visible in the light from the streetlamp. She wiped her palms on her apron and went back inside.

  Minutes later the maid emerged from the front door. She turned and stood with her back to me, probably locking the door. Her ample figure trotted to the streetcar stop. After she caught her streetcar I closed the attic window and hurried downstairs.