The Last Innocent Hour

by Margot Abbott

  Oh, yes, she remembered that, and she also remembered his hair, smooth across his forehead—usually he combed it straight back—but then, it had fallen forward. He lay stretched out, fully dressed in his wicked black-and-silver uniform, a glass of something on his chest, his head against the back of the big armchair, not the bed.

  Sally closed her eyes, the piece of broken glass falling unnoticed onto the floor. No. Not the bedroom, but her father’s study in the house in Lichterfeld. The study with the tall cabinet of highly polished wood that reflected Christian’s shiny hair. Not the bed upstairs, but the cabinet. That night. . .

  Sally stayed crouched over the pieces of glass and waited for the feelings to ebb. She covered her face, although she did not cry, and felt fear, anger, hurt, and, strangest of all, regret course through her. And finally a feeling that not only surprised her, but made her ashamed: desire.

  Quickly, she cleared away the mess, changed into her nightgown and red, plaid robe, and sat at her table to write a letter to her friend, Denise Brothers, now back in Texas with her ex-marine husband.

  If the man in the street had been Christian, what then? Did she want to see him? She rolled her pen between her fingers as Colonel Eiger did, thinking about the answer to that question. Back in Washington, in his hot office, Frank Singleton had asked her whether or not she wanted to confront her ghosts, or rather, ghost. Frank thought it would help her, and maybe it would.

  Sally stood up, tossing the pen on the table. She got her big leather bag and sat with it between her legs on her bed. She took out the nightclub picture.

  Many people, including her co-workers, would condemn her for the relationship that picture represented. There were people, including dear friends, who had condemned her for it back then. David Wohl, especially, had been angered by what he saw as her unreasoning obsession with Christian.

  Christian. He had been her first love and her first lover and her husband. Sally laughed at herself. He had been her only lover, ever. Those men in Los Angeles—that hadn’t been love, nothing like it. She knew what love was. What it could be.

  But she and Christian had been so . . . so dramatic about their love. They had tried to ignore the context of it. She had tried to ignore his uniform. But even as she thought that, Sally knew she was lying to herself. The danger his uniform represented attracted her, although she had been attracted to the man underneath long before he put it on.

  That was what was so seductive about the memories of him. Her sensual memories of him were crystal-clear and popped up to haunt her at odd moments. Even now, she could remember the feel of his cheek under her hand, the creases at the side of his mouth when he smiled. Sally laid the photograph on the bed in front of her and wrapped her arms around herself. It hurt to remember him. It hurt to remember how much they wanted each other, the things they did, and how it all went so very, very wrong. Sure, she could blame everything on Heydrich, but truly she knew she and Christian were guilty as well. Yes, they had been young and in love, but they also had been blind, stubbornly so. Youth and love and blindness were no excuse for consorting with evil.

  But Sally felt she had been punished enough for loving Christian. Surely the pain, the scars on her wrists, her solitariness, her inability to love would exonerate her. Why couldn’t she believe that?

  And Christian, what about him? She didn’t ever know if he was still alive, not even his sister knew. And if he was, what then? Sally looked at him in the photograph, remembering him instead in his khaki shorts and well-worn white blouse that last summer at the lake. How had that laughing boy, with the beautiful golden-brown skin, turned into the SS man in the picture? And, assuming he was still alive, what was he now?

  The lake.

  She remembered: Eddie, about thirteen, coming after her in the little rowboat, leaning over the side and yelling at her to climb out before she caught pneumonia and died and he got blamed for it.

  You are beautiful and I will love you forever, she had said to Christian that day, before the boys came tumbling out of their hiding places, laughing and ridiculing her fervent expression of love. He had sat there impassively and she had run straight into the freezing lake, thinking only of escaping him.

  Christian. Golden hair and tanned skin. He was beautiful, even as a kid. Unlike me, she thought, dumpy and plain with all that messy, curly brown hair. Mama despaired of my looks. How proud she would have been to have a child as beautiful as Christian had been.

  Leave it. Thoughts of him hurt, he hurt her. Unlike Eddie, who never did. Who apologized and meant it. Who smuggled her up the back stairs so that no one ever found out. She had caught a horrible cold, but her mother never knew how. Eddie kept his promises, always. He saved her neck a dozen times. He had been dead four years and she still couldn’t believe he wasn’t somewhere off in the world on one of his ships and they would see each other again.

  “Edward Lowell Jackson,” she said into the empty room, as she hugged her loneliness to her. She thought about sitting up or getting ready for bed, but still she just lay there. After a while, she stopped thinking and she slept. Her dreams, when they came, were not about her dead, beloved brother but were full of shiny water and a goldenhaired boy and menace. Somehow, everything always seemed to come back to him.

  CHAPTER 7

  ON A MUGGY August afternoon, Sally returned to the old Mayr apartment to give the children the second payment. Even though Annaliese claimed they hadn’t given her a message, Sally still felt the kids had put them together.

  She borrowed a car, but went alone this time. Apprehensively, she pushed open the door of the building. Inside, the foyer was as dark and quiet as before. She took a few steps into the middle of it.

  “Hello,” she called out quietly. “Children?” she said, in German. “I have the quarters for you.”

  A door opened above her, but no one came down; there were no footsteps.

  “Please, lady,” a man’s voice said behind her. Sally started and turned. “What are you doing?”

  She saw an older man, jowly, dark hair turning gray. He had large pouches under his eyes and thin eyelashes.

  “I was looking for two children,” she stammered.

  He inspected her. “You go away from here,” he said finally, raising his head. “You come in here to take our German children.”

  “No, you don’t understand.”

  “Go, you go. You take everything from us. You go from here.” His voice was intense, although he did not raise it, as if he did not want to disturb the other inhabitants of the building. Whoever they were.

  “They—the children—helped me find some friends who used to live here,” Sally tried to explain.

  “You are ridiculous. All of you. Women in uniforms. Go, go.”

  She went. He watched from the door as she walked down the steps and got into her jeep. Nuts to him. She started the car, knowing her defiance only covered her relief at being out of the building. Especially with the information Annaliese had given her.

  The day before, Annaliese had telephoned Sally with a cryptic message regarding “someone we used to know,” which resulted in Sally’s traveling that very evening to Annaliese’s apartment in the Russian sector. Tim Hastings had at the last moment appeared in Sally’s office, and when she told him of her plans, had refused to allow her to make the trip alone at night.

  The first surprise was Annaliese’s flat, which was well furnished, well-heated, and well-stocked with food and drink. The second surprise was a large Russian colonel, which explained the first surprise. Annaliese seemed to expect Sally’s censure, but Sally found she was inclined to thank the Russian for his protection of Klara and her mother rather than condemn Annaliese for accepting it.

  During the evening, after a generous supper, Annaliese drew Sally into her bedroom, to “freshen up,” she told the men. Instead, in a nervous whisper, Annaliese said that she had heard her brother was alive.

  Annaliese lowered her eyes for a long time, as if to control herself. Th
en she looked up at Sally, and said in a whisper, “It’s just a rumor, you understand.” Annaliese drew deeply on her cigarette.

  “He’s alive,” Sally repeated flatly. “Who told you?”

  “No one in particular. Someone passed on something that he heard someone else say. It’s all very vague.”

  “I see.” The SS, it was rumored, had an organization that helped members escape. Perhaps Annaliese had heard from them. Sally slowly turned her head to study Annaliese, and her expression was so unpleasant that Annaliese took a step away. Sally grabbed her arm. “Where is he?” she whispered.

  “Sally!” Annaliese said, pulling free. “You hurt me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t tell you any more. I do not know any more.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “I haven’t, and really, I know nothing else about him except that he is alive. I told you how I feel about him. I hate all of them. I wonder that you were interested, except perhaps to catch him, to punish him. But”—she shrugged casually—“that’s all I know.”

  Searching Annaliese’s face, Sally saw that it was a lie. She was not surprised. She only wondered what Annaliese hoped to gain. If she didn’t care about her brother, why should she lie; and if she was shielding him, why tell Sally anything at all? The comment about punishing Christian must have been an attempt at information; perhaps Annaliese was. . . Then Sally remembered Klara.

  “Okay,” she said, holding up her hands, “no more questions.”

  “Good,” said Annaliese. “Sally, I like you. I did not before. We could be honest about this, I think. You were never my friend. And at first, I thought you meant—well, I could not imagine why you wanted to see me. But I see that you are a good person. You Americans . . .” She gave a little laugh. “I also see how much you care for my daughter. For this, I will tell that even if I did know more about my brother, I could not tell you.” She looked into Sally’s face, her expression earnest, her blue eyes clear and candid. “Do you understand why?”

  Sally nodded slowly. “I’m still the enemy,” she said, and Annaliese smiled sadly and kissed Sally’s cheek.

  OUT OF NOWHERE, a restaurant had opened up in the basement of the building on the corner down from Sally’s office. The Americans who filled the buildings in the neighborhood gratefully adopted it, naming it the Dive. It was simple and basic: a bar, round tables covered with blue-and-white-checked cloths, a painted brick wall with a sentimental view of the Bay of Naples. The fare was also simple and basic; just beer and wine and whatever food was on hand, although the menu improved with the American patronage.

  That evening, Sally and Tim went to the Dive after work. He had stopped by her office, where she had been sitting for an hour smoking, after her encounter with the old man.

  “You look green.”

  “I had a funny turn with a local this afternoon. An ex-golden pheasant, I should think.”

  “A what?” He came into the office and stood in front of her desk.

  “A party man. They called them that because of the brown uniforms. They’d put a lot of tinsel and gold braid on them.”

  Tim laughed. “That’s great. You never think of Germans as having a sense of humor.”

  “Doesn’t go with death camps, does it? Do you suppose they laughed, anyone laughed there? I wonder if anyone has laughed in the last six years.” Max Tobin had brought films of the camps back from Nuremberg, and that morning they had all watched the silent black-and-white pictures of unbelievable horror. The film had preyed on her mind, as she was sure it had on her colleagues’.

  “Let’s go get that beer,” Tim had said, not letting her talk about the movies.

  “I was there, Tim, and I did nothing. Ever.”

  “What could you have done, one twenty-year-old American girl?” he’d asked. When she turned her face away from him, he’d grabbed her, her bag, her tunic, and literally pulled her out of her office into the hall.

  “C’mon,” he said angrily, “you don’t want to wallow in your misery.” Sally stopped walking, pulling against his hand.

  “Wallow? Wallow?” she exclaimed, her voice rising on the second word.

  “Yes, wallow. Good God, you’ve spent years poring over photographs of this stuff. How can you bear to look at them? Doesn’t it give you the creeps?”

  “No. No, it does not.”

  “Dammit, Sally,” Tim said. “Stop it, just stop it. Don’t take it all so personally.”

  “I do,” she said, “when someone murders several million of my species, I take it very personally. I don’t know how else to take it. And yes, I feel damn guilty for my part in it, regardless of how logical it is to feel that way. Logic has nothing to do with it.” Hearing her voice lose control, she shut her mouth.

  Tim was silent for a moment, then reached out and fixed the collar of her tunic, turning it right side out, patting it down, his hand lingering on her shoulder. “I know,” he said, “I feel pretty much the same way. Those movies gave me bad dreams too.” He smiled. “Let’s go have a beer. After all, since I’m rescuing you, you can pay. Okay? Okay?” he repeated, pulling her into him, hugging her.

  “Okay,” she answered, feeling the pull of him, his humor and easygoing attitude, his attractiveness. She let herself rest for a moment, her face turned into his chest so that she couldn’t see any of the ugly world around them, then, with a deep breath, she stepped away from him.

  “It helps, doesn’t it?” he said softly, his hands on her shoulders. “We can help each other, can’t we?”

  And she nodded, unable to look at him for fear he would see how much she cared.

  Outside, the sun had finally put in an appearance, just in time to set. Sally watched their shadows walk before them. “I guess it’s my guilt,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he replied, touching her arm, “we all feel it.”

  “No,” she said, “not a generalized guilt, but a specific . . . Oh, Tim,” she said, and they stopped at the top of the steps that led down to the bar in the basement. He looked down at her, his face full of concern. Sally glanced at him, then at the ground, letting go of his arm.

  “I’m being awfully dramatic, aren’t I?” she said, and he just smiled. “It’s my past, the one here. There was a man. I knew him all my life. I loved him.” There—she had said it, she had told someone.

  She looked down the street toward their office building. The block was, at that moment, deserted and silent, the last rosy glow of sunset warming the battered gray bricks. It was so quiet, Sally could hear Tim’s breathing,

  “He, this man, was SS.” She held her hand up quickly, to stop him from commenting, although he did not seem inclined to do so. “He was one of Heydrich’s protégés. And I loved him. I married him.” That said, she took a deep breath and expelled it.

  Two young women came around the corner, chattering noisily, and a U.S. Army staff car drove past, pennants snapping.

  “Feel better?” asked Tim.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Good,” he said, taking her arm. “Let’s go get that beer.”

  She didn’t let him lead her down the steps to the restaurant, but stood on the top stair, her eyes almost level with his.

  “No condemnations?” she asked.

  “Nope,” he answered, then grinned his corn-fed grin at her. “I’ve heard worse.” And he continued down the steps. This time she followed, feeling infinitely cheered, not knowing quite why.

  “I DON’T KNOW, Sally,” Hastings said as they seated themselves at a small, rickety table. “It sounds to me as though you are taking on way too much guilt.”

  “But I was there. I knew some of the men responsible. I even liked them.” Embarrassed, she turned her head away from him. “Some of them, anyway. And I did know.” She looked at his kind face. “I heard about the beatings in the cellars of the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and I knew about the anti-Jewish laws and I saw the SA push people off the curbs. Including Americans who were too slow t
o salute when that damned flag went by. But I was safe. Daddy’s position protected me, I thought. I thought it was their problem, a German problem, and they had to fix it themselves. I was just an impartial observer . . . for a while.”

  Tim moved his chair closer to hers. The bar, filled with uniformed Americans, was becoming crowded and noisy. “Sally,” Tim said, putting his hand on her arm, “you are not responsible. Okay . . . all of us, as a civilization, are responsible. But we are all also hurt by it. But you personally did not dream up, build, or use the damned gas chambers. Besides, it’s the height of egotism to take the blame for the deaths of six million people. Why not take responsibility for the full fifty million who died in the war altogether?”

  She smiled. “You’re right. But I can’t help it.”

  “Yeah. I guess I know the feeling. We think we go through life solitary, not hurting anyone. Then we discover that we’ve had an effect on someone, even hurt them. I’ve experienced that a lot in my career. Patients I should have helped, or who I thought I had helped, but didn’t.”

  Sally took a long drink, then, putting her stein back on the table, said softly, “There were three people. A young woman my age named Marlene, her little girl, and her mother. They—”

  She was interrupted by Nelson Armbrewster’s well-bred voice. “Well, look who’s here, and so very serious.” He stood behind Sally and clapped his hands onto her shoulders. He leaned forward, his weight heavy on her, his word slightly slurred. “Telling secrets? Making plans for a rendezvous?”

  “Beat it, Armbrewster,” Tim said evenly, his hand firmly on Sally’s arm.

  “It’s that way, is it? We have wondered who would—”

  “Nelson,” said Tim warningly. “Don’t say something you’ll be sorry for.”