"I've been meaning to ask why you go to Baden-Baden for your dresses. Are there no seamstresses here, in Berlin?"
"Of course there are. But I like Madame Pérrault. I've known her since I was a young girl." She stopped. She must be careful to say just enough and not too much. When Konnie drove her to Baden-Baden, they spent only minutes with the seamstress; the rest of the time was devoted to meeting with various members of the underground, for whom she acted as liaison here in Berlin.
"Remember Nabokov, my tennis instructor?" she asked him.
He nodded, his expression telling her that he had not forgotten his childish jealousy of what he took to be the man's obvious desire for young Miss Rathenau.
"This woman was his mistress," Miriam went on. "He deserted her when his first book came out, and she came to me for help. As you see, she is good at what she does."
She got up and showed off the full effect of the dress.
"You'll be the belle of the ball."
"The belly of the ball's more like it! I'm getting fat. I'm getting fat without my dancing. Maybe I should have had her make the dress in some simple fabric and fashion--something more suitable for a matron of the Reich."
Erich laughed. "You'll never look matronly, Prinzessin. Not even if you were...pregnant."
Miriam met his gaze in the mirror. Such an event was unlikely. They had not had intercourse for a couple of months, and it had been a fortnight since he had even slept with her, preferring his own bedroom for reasons she could not fathom. Whatever the cause, she was thankful.
Unable to pass up the opportunity for sarcasm, however, she added, "And if I were? How would you feel about that, Erich? After all, my blood is tainted no matter how many times I renounce my faith. Could you dare love a child that would be a Mischling--half-breed?"
The color rose in his cheeks, and she thought she had gone too far, but he simply shrugged and said quietly, "If you were carrying my child, I'd strut around like a Pfaueninsel peacock, and the hell with anyone worried about genealogy."
Miriam chuckled. "Peacock strutting is conduct unbecoming of an officer of the Reich." She wished there were more moments like this. He generally took himself and his damn Party so seriously, it was hard for her to recall if he had the capacity for anything else.
"It's good to hear you laugh," he said.
He reached for his cigarette case, clicked it open, and automatically offered her a smoke. When she shook her head, he took out one of the fashionable flat cigarettes he smoked on formal occasions, and lit it with the engraved lighter his parents had given him when they reopened the shop. He inhaled and blew several smoke rings. She watched them drift toward the ceiling.
"Time to go." He removed his formal jacket from the wardrobe.
Miriam stared at the armband, as if its white circle and red and black emblem were an adder about to strike.
"Our dear Gauleiter has already grown impatient and gone on without us," he said.
"Don't worry. As long as he had his schnapps, he won't care. Why on earth did you ask him to come here before the party anyway?"
"He keeps making such a point of telling me how much he misses living here at the estate. " He paused and glanced down at his arm. "I have to wear it," he said coldly.
She had not realized that she was still staring at the armband. "You like to wear it."
"Let's not start that again."
She turned back to the mirror and removed Oma's necklace. Fiddling with the row of minute pearl buttons that ran from her lace-edged décolletage to her waistline, she said, "I'm sorry, Erich. The necklace holds too many memories." She picked up the double pearl choker he had given her for her birthday and struggled with the clasp.
"Women! I give up." Erich sighed and helped her with the necklace. "Now we really do have to go."
CHAPTER TWO
Less than half an hour later, Konrad pulled up outside Schloss Gehrhus. Two cars were ahead of them. Miriam watched as men in evening dress and women in gowns and furs stepped out. They wore the somber colors that were reputedly the Führer's preference, all but one, an ambassador's wife who had--or so Erich had told her--graced his bed upon more than one occasion. She was tall and angular, quite beautiful. A silver mink dangled from her arm. Her gown was midnight blue, beaded across the right shoulder in silver bugle beads and black sequins.
A little dressmaker in Baden-Baden, no doubt, Miriam thought cynically. Turning her head, she looked at the castle's façade. No sequins there. The architecture was severe, if not dull--more like Jagdschloss Grünewald, the famous hunting lodge, than a castle.
Inside, as she recalled from the visits of her youth, opulence gave lie to the exterior. The castle, built by one Dr. Pannwitz, personal attorney to his Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II, had long been a gathering place for important people. Politicians, artists, scientists and diplomats from all over the world had met there, striding across its oriental carpets, exchanging confidences under its crystal chandeliers, dancing across the parquet floor of its two-storied mirrored ballroom. The Kaiser himself had been the first guest to enter the house, shortly before the outbreak of the Great War.
Konrad opened the car door.
"How long do we have to stay?" Miriam asked.
"As long as seems expedient," Erich said curtly. Apparently immediately regretting the brusqueness of his answer, he reached for her gloved hand. She pulled it away. "I'm sorry, Prinzessin," he said. "I have much on my mind. And this is, after all, the Führer's birthday celebration."
On his actual birthday, on the twentieth of April, Hitler was at Berchtesgaden with Eva and his cronies. By his order, the streets of Berlin had been filled with open crates of oranges; the crates would be replenished all week.
Tonight, three days later, the leaders of his "master race" were gathering at Schloss Gehrhus to eat caviar and pheasant and drink champagne to his continued good health.
"How many celebrations does that madman need!" she asked.
Hoping that someone from the underground would be here with a message for her to pass along so she could rationalize her presence to herself, she allowed Konnie to help her from the car. She pulled her cape around her shoulders and followed Erich up the stone steps and into the entry hall. It was filled with people. Champagne flowed freely and flowers streamed over the balustrades, fresh roses and carnations from the estate which ranged across more than twelve thousand square meters.
"Doesn't such extravagance make you at all uncomfortable?" She tugged at her gloves.
"I can never walk in here without wanting to touch everything." He looked as excited as a sailor confronted by the infinite variety of Amsterdam's red-light district.
He lusts after the oriental carpets and mahogany balustrades, she thought. She took in the gilt-edged chairs and matching tapestry-covered walls, the vaulted ceilings carved with inlaid wood, the giant arrangements of agapanthus and gladioli in the entryway. From the dining hall she could hear "Für Elise," one of Hitler's favorites, and the buzz of conversation.
"So you two lovebirds finally decided to grace us with your presence," Goebbels called out from across the foyer. Short and spare, he leaned toward them as he hoisted the inevitable glass of schnapps in a mock toast. "Perhaps now we can eat."
As he moved toward them, the chandelier caught the movement of the silver-haired man who had been standing against the wall in the shadows, behind the Gauleiter. Heart pounding, she thought she recognized the man responsible for giving orders outside the cigar shop, on the day of Jacob's death.
"We shall talk more later, Otto," Goebbels said, over his shoulder.
The tall man clicked his heels. "Certainly, Gauleiter. It will be my pleasure."
Hearing the voice, Miriam was certain that she was right. "Erich, that's--?" she began.
Goebbels was already at her side and she could say no more. She gave him the closest approximation she could manage of a smile, and instantly wished she had not when he offered her his arm. Erich was forced to escort M
agda. Miriam could feel him watching her, feel his ridiculous jealousy. Apparently he could not help himself, no matter who the man was. He had even flinched when she so much as mentioned Nabokov with the least bit of affection in her voice.
The four of them wandered into the dining hall. According to Erich, there were fifty invited couples--one for each year of the Führer's life. They seemed all to be here, examining place cards at eight small tables set for ten people apiece. The rest, including the Goebbels, who quickly excused themselves, floated toward the head table, where one seat remained conspicuously empty, waiting for a host who seldom arrived until the meal was well underway.
As drums rolled, a group of boys from the Adolf Hitler school, apprentices for the Hitler Elite Guard, entered the dining hall. Seven years in training, culminating in the honor of service to their Führer, Miriam thought, first as waiters at his birthday party, later in the SS or at some foreign Front.
The youths were assisted by pigtailed girls from the RAD--the new human beings, they were called--wearing white pinafores, orange kerchiefs and the royal blue shirts that marked them as new members. They were supervised by graduate black-uniformed Elite Guard members while the female graduates, distinguishable by their white shirts and ties, navy skirts and aprons, were relegated to the kitchen and the reception area.
The orchestra switched to Strauss.
"Prosit!" Erich lifted his glass and addressed the officer across from him, but his gaze was on Miriam.
Lift your glass, she told herself. Respond to the music. Smile. Eat. Look as if you want to be here. But though the meal was exquisitely prepared, she barely picked at her food. Even the dessert of raspberries and crème fraiche held no appeal.
"Champagne?"
"Thank you. Pour it for me. I'll be right back."
"Feeling all right, my dear? Like me to accompany you?" The officer's wife gave her an emphatic You must be in the family way glance.
Miriam dabbed at her lips with the linen serviette. "No thank you. Most kind of you, but I'm fine."
She left the room and was headed to the garden when she spotted a narrow staircase barred with a chain and a sign that warned her not to go beyond it. Picking up the candle-lantern that stood on the bottom step, she unhooked the chain and made her way up the stairs to the grand ballroom.
This was not her first visit to Schloss Gehrhus. She had been here before with her uncle at a diplomatic function honoring a group of visitors from South America. What a fuss they had made of her--the exquisite Miriam Rathenau! She had danced all night, up here, mostly with a handsome young diplomat-in-training, a South American attached to the Italian Embassy. Of course he was too old for her, but for a few days she had walked around with the glassy-eyed look of young love while her uncle teased her unmercifully, especially when roses arrived for her the following morning.
A week later, her uncle had informed her with mock-sadness that Juan Perón had left for Rome. In the throes of her first "desertion," she had sworn never to come back to the Schloss--especially not up here.
She placed the lantern on the floor and gave herself up to a harmless memory of a time long gone, and then to a time more recent. A time of hope for a safe future, when for a moment she had believed Erich's assurances, believed that he would be able to provide Sol with safe transit to Amsterdam.
Surrounded by mirrors and haunted by a harmonica, she closed her eyes and slowly waltzed, remembering the last bittersweet hours she had spent with Sol in the dust-covered remains of what had once been the Kaverne.
Sol had put his finger to her lips and picked up a candle. Taking her hand, he had led her up the stairs and into the cabaret. On the dusty dance floor, amid the pallor of greenish light beaming down through one of the few small, stained-glass windows that remained unbroken, he lifted her knuckles to his lips and closed his eyes.
"There is a season for all things, Miri," she remembered him saying. "They have turned this into a season of endings. Let us defy them and make it one of beginnings. Marry me."
"Here? Tonight? And who will be the rabbi?"
"God."
They had stood among dusty muslin sheets, thrown carelessly over once-new tables and chairs surrounding an abandoned dance floor in a closed cabaret in a world seemingly without hope, and uttered words that denied Berlin, the Reich, Erich, and hopelessness. They spoke of ultimately finding freedom and a life together in South America.
They spoke of marriage, and of enduring love.
She squeezed his hands, and smiled. "Make two stacks of three tables each. I'll be right back." By the time Sol had the tables piled up in the center of the dance floor, Miriam had returned, the rose-colored shawl that she had worn that first night in the cabaret retrieved from the costume trunk.
"We have to have a canopy, don't we? It wouldn't be a wedding without one."
Before he could say anything else she had left again, this time to retrieve a hidden bottle of burgundy and three dusty glasses.
Wriggling out of her slip, she wrapped it around one of the glasses, placed it under the canopy, and twirled around to show him the spray of lavender silk lilac she had twisted into her hair.
Now, standing in the Grand Ballroom of Schloss Gehrhus, she touched the fresh sprig of lilac in her hair. Her eyes misted with tears. In her mind's eye, she watched Solomon pull a harmonica from his pocket and blow into it to clear it of dust. She saw him cup the instrument lovingly in his hands, and felt him watch her sway as he softly played one of her favorite Schubert melodies.
When he had finished, he fished in his pocket, pulled out two cigars, and removed their gold bands--the ones she now kept hidden in her music box, among the gaudy jewelry she wore to impress Erich's fellow officers.
That night, as dusk faded and shadows lengthened, she and Solomon had held fast to each other and to their dream of a tomorrow. When night came, so did Konrad.
"The train for Amsterdam leaves in just over half an hour, and you are expected at the flat," Konnie had told her, glancing at the wristwatch she had brought him from America.
"One dance, my love."
She whispered the words to the walls of the empty ballroom, as she had to Solomon then.
Back then, warmed by wine and passion, she and Sol had danced to imaginary violins playing Schubert and Strauss and Brahms. Now she danced alone, not for want of a partner, but because the only partner she wanted was lost to her, perhaps forever, except in memory.
"May I have this dance?"
She looked up at Erich and graced him with one of her rare, open smiles. "You caught me," she said.
He bowed and took her in his arms. "Do you have any idea how beautiful you are, Miriam?"
"It's this room," she said softly. With a graceful sweep of her arm, she guided his gaze to the ballroom ceiling, two stories high, to the twenty floor-to-ceiling mirrors, each reflecting the soft glow of the lantern, to the moon, shining through the beveled French doors and adding its shadows to the fairy-tale glow.
"It's not simply the room, Fräulein," another voice said.
Miriam's sweeping gesture faltered and froze in mid-air as Erich whirled around to face the Führer, who stood at the top of the forbidden stairway, arms crossed in the familiar pose.
"Forgive me. You must be Frau Alois. Herr Rittmeister, where have you been hiding this extraordinary creature? May I have the pleasure?" He stepped toward them. "You don't mind, do you, Alois? After all, it is my birthday. It is only fair that I be allowed to dance with the most beautiful woman at my celebration."
Erich nodded and let go of Miriam's waist. He watched as Hitler pushed her stiffly around the floor to the strains of Strauss.
Somehow, she thought, I will get through this moment.
"I saw the light from outside and came up here first." The Führer wiped her sweat from his palms as the notes faded. "How fortunate that I did. You are a wonderful dancer. Now, however, we should join my other guests."
Asking forgiveness of Sol, Miriam held onto H
itler's arm and allowed herself to be ushered downstairs and into the dining hall. The band switched to "Deutschland über Alles," and Erich saluted with the others.
"Hoch soll sie leben!" They toasted their Führer. "May he live well."
Smiling a pinched smile, Hitler acknowledged the repeated good wishes as he made his way to the main table. When he was seated, the orchestra renewed its evening of Strauss with "The Blue Danube."
"Why didn't anybody ever tell Strauss that the Danube is grey and dirty, not blue?" Miriam said irritably.
Erich was too busy watching Hitler to respond. The Führer was going through his ritual of consuming a quantity of tablets, probably Dr. Koster's strychnine and atropine anti-gas pills, which he took constantly to reduce the flatulence that reputedly plagued him.
Wishing he would choke on them, Miriam also watched the ritual. When it was over, Hitler leaned across the table and spoke to his Gauleiter who, face red with fury, whispered something to his wife and stood up.
After making his way to Erich's table, Goebbels said in an icy tone, "The Führer wishes to have you and your wife dine with him."
"No, Erich," Miriam whispered. She had done enough for him tonight, dancing with Hitler, smiling at the rest of his sick ménage, and not even a message from the underground to make her feel useful. "I--" She looked at his face and gave up.
This was not going to be one of the times to expect indulgences.
CHAPTER THREE
"Please...be seated." Hitler waved at the chairs vacated by Dr. and Frau Goebbels. "Tell me more about this beautiful woman." His tone was genial. Expansive. "Can she really be the niece of that traitor Rathenau?"
"Walther Rathenau was--"
"Her adopted uncle," Erich said, finishing Miriam's sentence. "She was adopted by his sister and brother-in-law, mein Führer."
Child of the Journey Page 2
