Otto ignored the young man at his heels and led the procession into the meeting room. Peter stood and grabbed his beer. “Let’s go,” he said, jerking his head in the same direction.
Eva wanted to go to the ladies’ room, and Lena felt obliged to accompany her. By the time they emerged, the meeting had already been called to order and it was difficult to find a seat. Lena could see Peter and Lotti up front, but she and Eva had to squeeze in behind the piano at the back. The first order of business was the strike at the brick factory, now in its second week, and the need for support on the picket lines, but Lena found it difficult to focus. She wanted to get another look at that Otto fellow, but she could not distinguish the back of his head from the dozens of others.
Soon the fighter from the International Brigade was introduced, to thunderous applause. He was tall and dark-haired, with one arm in a sling and an eye distorted from a swollen red scar across his eyebrow. He spoke in harrowing details of the intense fighting at Teruel; the sight of young mothers weeping over the bodies of children killed in a direct hit on a school; and a terrible scene in a village overrun by Franco’s forces: the school teachers, the librarian, and the mayor singled out for execution and buried in a mass grave. Lena covered her mouth to stifle a moan.
But then he spoke of the courage and determination of the Spanish comrades. Their cause was just. The industrial and agricultural collectives continued to thrive. They remained defiant, true to their slogan: “No pasaran. They shall not pass.” He raised his fist in salute.
“No pasaran,” the crowd responded. “No pasaran.” It gave Lena chills every time.
And then Otto rose and was introduced. She saw now that he had been seated up front. He gave a one-sided bear hug to the previous speaker, taking care to avoid his wounded arm, and launched into a fiery speech.
“Hitler is giving material aid to Franco while the Soviets are halfhearted in their support for the Republican side,” he said in the clipped syntax of Hochdeutsch, High German.
His audience had no difficulty understanding him. Mostly self-identified hybrids like Lena, mostly Jewish, they had been raised bilingual. All of Lena’s schooling had been conducted in German, while Czech was the vernacular at home.
“This is the forefront of the fight against fascism,” Otto continued. “Only the Popular Front can succeed. Communists, socialists, Trotskyists, anarchists—we have to put aside our differences and remain united.”
“He’s not handsome at all,” Eva whispered. “Quite funny-looking, in fact.”
“Shh.” Lena smiled. His face was gaunt, his ears huge, and his hair stuck up at a peculiar angle. He paced back and forth as he spoke and pounded his fist against his other palm, as if forcing the words out.
“Hitler will overrun Austria any day now. He will then be snapping at the heels of Prague. The unions and the Popular Front have to show the Beneš government here that we have the strength and determination to stand firm and resist.”
He must be hurting his hand, Lena thought. She joined the rest of the room in clapping and cheering and giving him a standing ovation. It was stirring rhetoric. But very scary. Could it really be true that Hitler would invade Austria? Czechoslovakia would be surrounded, with Austria to the south, Germany in the north.
She lingered after the meeting, finding a seat at Otto’s table. Peter’s friend Josef said, “Surely Britain and France would not tolerate such aggression.”
“They’ve done little to stop Franco,” Lena heard herself say.
Otto turned his gaze directly on her and she felt her face flush. “Exactly,” he said. “We have to mobilize the masses to defeat fascism.” She forced herself to maintain eye contact. His dark eyebrows and square jaw gave his face a distinguished demeanor. She saw he was older, maybe ten years older than Lena and most of her friends. “The Czech people must not repeat the mistakes made in Germany.”
More people approached the table; someone had bought Otto a beer, and he reached across Lena to accept it, his arm brushing her shoulder. She caught a whiff of tobacco on the sleeve of his tweed jacket, sweet and pungent.
He was pressed for details about life in Berlin and his escape from the lion’s den. He had hidden on a rooftop while the Gestapo hauled off two of his comrades; they had not been heard from since, presumed to have been deported to Dachau. He gave a tiny shudder, most likely imperceptible to anyone not seated close, but then changed the subject back to the next steps in political organizing.
“It will be essential to enlist the support of the unions and other progressive factions throughout Czechoslovakia,” he said. “If Hitler grabs Austria, he will surely turn next to the Sudetenland.” He tipped his glass and gulped down half the beer, leaving a thin line of froth on his upper lip. “Tell me about your organizing efforts. Have you been able to reach any of the German-speaking workers there? Are they unionized?”
Josef and Peter spoke of the difficulties, the anti-Czech sentiment in the region, the rise of the fascist elements, the small success they’d had the previous month in Vejprty. Otto listened intently, probed with more questions. He produced a pipe from his pocket and stuffed it with tobacco as he talked. More people pressed behind Lena to get closer, like children at the teacher’s knee, she thought. She found herself wanting to listen to him all night, too.
Indeed, it was after midnight before she thought to check the time. The crowds were thinning out; only a few remained at the table. She plucked up the courage to ask Otto directly, “What exactly has brought you to Prague?”
He lowered his voice a notch and replied, as if speaking only to her, “I’m here working for the Spanish government, to establish an Economic Information Bureau. To enlist more support and investment from European nations.”
She could not imagine anything more admirable: working for Spain by day, and at night offering his wisdom and leadership to the Popular Front in Prague.
But she had to drag herself away. She could only hope that her father would be asleep when she got home.
But Father was waiting up.
“What time do you call this?” he roared.
She tried to skirt down the hall to her room, but he blocked her passage, looming tall in front of her. He grabbed her coat lapels and drew her toward him, his eyes filled with fury. Lena tried to pull away, but he tightened his grip and for a moment she was afraid he might choke her.
“Stop!” she screamed. “Let me go!” Waking up the household was her only hope.
She pushed against his chest and jerked free. But he snatched her arm and slapped her hard across the face, knocking the breath from her. Lena was stunned. He stopped; he looked shocked, too. He’d not hit her like this since . . . when? Surely not since her primary-school days. There were constant restrictions and curfews, but not this.
“Jakob!” Máma ran from her room. “What are you doing?” She tugged at Father’s arm.
“I told her to be home by eleven.”
“Stop! She’s not a baby,” Máma pleaded. “She’s nineteen.”
“While she lives under my roof, she will abide by my rules,” Father said.
Lena heard Sasha, woken by the commotion, crying. Lena brushed past Máma and ran to comfort her. Father would not follow her to Sasha’s room. She threw herself on the floor next to the bed, stroking her sister’s forehead.
“It’s all right,” she said. “Go back to sleep.”
“Why was Father shouting?” Sasha asked.
“He’s . . .” Lena stifled her own urge to weep. “He’s just not himself these days,” she said. “It’s not your fault. Go back to sleep.”
She sat until Sasha settled. Ernst must have heard the noise, too, but not a peep out of him, although Lena saw his light on when she returned to her room. She collapsed on her bed, furious and exhausted, her face throbbing. Yet she also felt an odd tingling of excitement from the evening’s events that she couldn’t quite explain to herself.
The following evening, Máma brought out the Shabb
at candles, for the first time in years. But they did little to dispel the tension around the table. No one felt inclined to say prayers.
And on Saturday, Hitler marched into Austria, preempting the referendum vote. Prague’s Wenceslas Square was filled with a huge demonstration in protest. But Lena was confined to the apartment all weekend, as punishment for having violated her curfew.
CHAPTER 3
PRAGUE, MAY 1938
Lena arranged to meet Eva for lunch on Střelecký Island now that the weather was finally warmer. She was free to take as long as she wished; Otto was off again, to an undisclosed destination, and would not be returning until the day after tomorrow. She was often on her own in the office but very content. It felt perfect: located on a narrow street, on the second floor above a used bookshop, close to a friendly café frequented by artists and radicals. The morning light filtered through the trees to brighten her desk as she worked. She typed up reports and answered the telephone and now had a thirty-page document Otto wanted translated from French into German. She felt competent in her tasks.
When Otto had first offered her the job in his Economic Information Bureau, she wasn’t sure. She felt intimidated by him and nervous that she would not live up to his expectations. He needed a typist and a “general dog’s-body,” as he put it. The pay was less than she was earning at the textile office. And there was her father to deal with; of course he would not approve.
But Father was preoccupied with the news from Vienna. The day she prepared to tell him about her decision to change jobs, Frau Grünbaum burst into the room in a panic, quite incapable of focusing on Sasha’s piano lesson. Her sister and brother-in-law were trapped in Austria.
“It’s impossible, Mr. Kulka,” she cried. “You would not believe what those Nazi brutes are doing. My poor brother-in-law, he is not in good health; he has the diabetes. But he was pulled like this, by the beard.” She tugged at her own chin, jerking her head to the side. “He was forced to clean the pavement, on hands and knees, while the soldiers stood over him and laughed. They smashed the windows of all the Jewish businesses. My nephew, he is afraid he will be forced out of the university. They are trying to leave the country, but it is very difficult. You have to help them. Please, Mr. Kulka, you have always been so good to me.”
Lena was unclear about what her father could do to assist, but he disappeared into his study to make telephone calls. When he emerged an hour later, she told him, “I am going to start a new job on Monday.” He dismissed her with an impatient wave and left the apartment. She chose to interpret this as a nod of approval.
“Does he need to give his permission?” Otto asked the following day. His tone was not unkind. He smiled as he lit his pipe.
Lena blushed. They sat in a cafe in Malá Strana, three doors down from the small office space he had just secured. “No, I suppose not,” she said, with a light laugh, and stared into her coffee cup.
“I’m very glad we’ll be working together,” he said. “But remember what I told you: the nature of the work is highly confidential.” He reached across the table and took her chin gently in two fingers to bring her gaze up to meet his. His thick black hair, untamed by any oil, tumbled over his forehead, accentuating his bushy eyebrows. His jaw was cleanly shaven. “If anyone asks, you say we are working on economic aid for Spain. Nothing more.”
Lena nodded. She understood that she had to be discreet. She did not understand exactly what he was doing. But she was helping Spain—that was good enough for her.
She had now been in the job six weeks. She sensed he was testing her. At first, she had not been permitted to touch the teleprinter that whirled in the back room, spewing out mounds of tape. The back room was where Otto retreated whenever Señor M. from the Spanish embassy visited.
She listened to the rumble of their voices behind the closed door, and then the señor would leave without glancing at her; she never knew his full name. There were others who came and went, mumbling their names incoherently, scuttling off without leaving a message if Otto was not there.
“What do you do all day?” Eva had asked more than once.
“Just type and answer the phone.”
“Type what?”
“Reports. Economic reports.”
She didn’t say that the Condor Legion didn’t sound economic. Nor did Heinkel He 51 fighters or Messerschmitt Bf 109s or Ju 52 bombers. Or that now that she was allowed to work directly from the teleprinter, she was processing reports from garrison towns and Luftwaffe bases inside Germany, information about squadrons fueling up and heading to Spain, communications penned by A-54 or D-14. When Eva came to pick her up one day at lunchtime, she quickly scooped up her work and locked it in her desk drawer. Now she made excuses and arranged to meet Eva elsewhere; it was safer that way.
Eva was already ensconced on a bench near a splendid display of chestnut trees; overladen with their white blooms, they draped over the river as if in a choreographed curtsy.
“How is Mr. Eisenberg today?” Eva asked, nibbling on a sweet bun.
“He is away on business, if you must know, ma’am.” They had settled into a playful, teasing way of discussing Lena’s work and her boss.
“Aren’t you afraid he has another woman on the side?”
“Eva, stop. You know it’s not like that.”
“Come on—the two of you cooped up in that tiny office all day? You can’t tell me there’s nothing going on.”
“We work together—that’s all,” Lena said, and then rummaged through her lunch bag because she was afraid she might blush. “Here, do you want one of these sandwiches? Adele always gives me far too much.”
The truth was, Lena appreciated that Otto did not try to take advantage of her. It made him even nobler in her eyes. There had been some awkward moments. Sometimes she looked up from her desk and caught him staring at her, and she flushed and looked away. Sometimes she caught herself watching him as he focused intently on his reports, drawing on his pipe. And two days ago, she spun around from the filing cabinet just as he was rising from his desk, and they were suddenly face-to-face in the cramped quarters, only centimeters apart. She mumbled an apology and stepped to the right, but he stepped the same way, and then they both moved left, as if locked in a dance, and she could see dark tufts of hair on his chest where he had opened the top buttons of his shirt in the afternoon sunlight, and she could smell the warmth of him mingled with the familiar scent of his tobacco—and then she really did become flustered and she stepped backward and bumped into the filing cabinet while Otto laughed softly.
But Eva was saying something about her parents. “I can’t believe it. They suddenly want to go to services. They’ve only ever attended on High Holidays before.”
“As if that’s going to stop Hitler,” Lena said. “My mother’s been trying to get us to observe Shabbat, but no one has much enthusiasm for it.”
When Lena returned to the office, she was astonished to see Otto at his desk.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I went out for lunch. I thought you were gone until tomorrow.”
He waved his hand in an odd flutter. “Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. But now, this is urgent. There are some new developments.” He looked toward the back room. The door was ajar, and Lena caught a glimpse of two men she didn’t recognize. “I may need you to stay late tonight to finish this up. I hope that’s all right.”
“The translation?” Lena said, pointing to the report she had started working on.
“No, no, that can wait.”
The telephone rang, and Otto leaped to answer it.
“Yes, we have it,” he said into the mouthpiece. “It’s coming through now.”
Lena stayed until after six o’clock, typing. Señor M. bustled in with another man from the Spanish embassy, and they huddled over the teleprinter in the back room. Otto made more telephone calls, turning his back to her and covering his mouth as he whispered clipped responses, and then darted back to the men. At one point, she heard a sho
ut, an exclamation, followed by the door slamming shut. They emerged at intervals to hand her tape or handwritten notes for her to transcribe. Her job was just to type, not ask questions, but she recognized that this was different from anything she had been assigned before. Reports from Saxony described German troop movements around Olbernhau and Prina. Ten divisions, by one estimate, closing in on the Czech border. Lena gasped. She looked up and caught Otto’s eye. He gave a stern nod.
“Is this true?” she said.
“Now you see, you really have to keep quiet,” he said, tracing a line across her mouth with his fingertip, as if sealing her lips in silence.
She returned to her work, the sensation of his touch lingering like a footprint.
They closed up the office after seven. Señor M. scooped up the pages Lena had typed, sealed them in a large manila envelope and took off running.
“Let’s get a drink,” Otto said.
She assumed they would go, as usual, to the Café Slavia, but he steered her in the opposite direction, toward the castle, his hand on her waist. “We cannot talk about this with anyone,” he said.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
“Hitler is pushing toward the Sudetenland and simultaneously stirring up resentment among the German-speaking population there. It is a very dangerous situation. As I predicted, he wants to march into the Sudetenland, just like he took over Austria.”
“Surely he can’t do that,” Lena protested. “My father always talks about how important the region is; all our heavy industry is there.”
“Of course. That’s why Hitler wants it. And he knows the German population has been hard-hit with unemployment and is ripe for his propaganda.”
“I know I shouldn’t ask . . .” Lena hesitated. It had been an unspoken rule that she not probe for details, but now she could not help herself. “Where did this information come from today? How do you know that it’s reliable?”
He took her hand. “You did important work today. But the less you know, the safer you are.” His eyes burned into hers. “Let me just say this: there are comrades, brave comrades, who stay in Germany, and this is how they resist. They work on the railways, they live in small towns, they see things.”
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