The Nazi's Wife

by Peter Watson

  “Off she went to LA at the appointed time and from that day it was all over between us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s simple really; Nancy and Brooke became obsessed with each other.”

  Konstanze stopped and turned around.

  “I looked into it,” I said. “I asked psychologists and doctors who specialize in these kinds of matters. Apparently it is not uncommon for twins who have been separated, then reunited, to become obsessed with each other for a while. They are inseparable, talk constantly, and compare notes, as it were. This period is very distressing for their families but it passes, and everyone settles down again. Unfortunately, for me, I went into the Army and had to leave California at this time. Nancy hardly had time to adjust to married life, and so, after I came to Europe, she moved out of the house and went to LA to live with Brooke.”

  “Live with?” said Konstanze, noticing where I was fudging things.

  “It’s quite natural for two sisters to decide to share expenses and keep one another company during a husband’s prolonged absence.”

  “Go on. You are still in touch, of course?”

  “Yes. But not long letters. I began by telling her what London was like, then my impressions of France. Brooke had a job as a casting director at Galaxy Studios and Nancy worked there for a while. So she told me some Hollywood stories. She sent me photographs—but always with Brooke. Would you like to see?”

  We had reached a fairly flat part of the path, as good a place as any to rest. I took out a folded photograph showing two women on a beach.

  “That’s the Pacific behind them,” I said as I handed the photograph to her.

  She stared at it for a while. “What does it feel like, seeing your wife’s double?”

  I took back the picture. “Eerie. You ask yourself questions like … does she whisper in the same way? Does she slam the door like Nancy? What presents does she like? Does she insist on putting the cream in her cup before the coffee, just like Nancy?”

  “What presents does Nancy like?”

  I laughed, crossing my fingers behind me. “Nancy loves pens. Every new pen she saw she had to have. It was almost a fetishism. And earrings, she adored earrings, the long dangling types especially. The more gipsy-like the better.”

  “But you are getting divorced?” Sharp, snappy questions now. A frank interrogation.

  “Oh yes. At her request, but I had been half expecting it, I must say. We just didn’t have time to develop a solid relationship. She met a sailboat manufacturer at a Hollywood party. He was an adviser on one of Galaxy Studio’s films. She says he’s there for her when she needs him. Unlike me. Apparently he believes the United States should never have become mixed up in this war.” Konstanze, who had been admiring the view, looked sharply at me. I went on. “Many people in America want to become isolationists. I find it very depressing. Nancy and her new man are starting up a business together. He will make the boats and she will sell them.”

  We moved off again as she spoke. “And are you sad? That it’s over, I mean.”

  “Difficult to answer. Sometimes, of course, when I think about our courtship, our honeymoon on the Mississippi. She was truly a lovely woman. I remember what she was like before Brooke’s letter turned up. Nancy changed. Had I not come away to the war, maybe we would have found one another again. Who can tell? Our marriage was a mistake.”

  Just then we reached the top of the Löser, to find Dieter crying. His mother was with him in no time, our discussions forgotten for the time being. But it wasn’t serious. Dieter had dropped his binoculars and cracked them. Konstanze wiped the boy’s eyes while I examined the glasses. They were beyond repair. One lens had been shattered completely and the chamber cracked along its entire length. It would be cheaper to get new ones, except that such things were not easy to come by in Europe at that time.

  “I can’t see fourteen lakes,” Dieter coughed, emerging from the folds of his mother’s handkerchief. It was the only time I saw evidence of his TB. “Only twelve.”

  I counted them. He was right. I looked around. “Ah! But maybe you’re not supposed to be able to see all fourteen at once. Only that you can see fourteen from the top of the Löser.” I pointed south. “There’s a grassy ledge over there. Maybe there are a couple of lakes in that direction which we can’t see from here.”

  We moved over and, sure enough, two small black lakes, like patches of oil on a garage floor, became visible far below.

  “But that’s cheating!” complained Dieter, unimpressed and still hurting from his clumsiness with the binoculars.

  “Don’t grumble, Dieter,” said his mother firmly. “Professor Wolff has gone to a lot of trouble to bring you up here and the view is marvelous. Not many boys have had the chance to see this, binoculars or no binoculars.”

  Dieter was silent but moved closer to his mother and held her hand. Not being a parent, it always amazed me how independent children could be at one minute and how childlike the next.

  “Is that a restaurant down there?” Konstanze asked.

  Indeed it was. About four hundred feet below us, in what looked like a hanging valley, was a brand-new, raw concrete building with rather too many windows and a terrace. It looked beckoning; in the thin mountain air we could hear the waiters chatting as they laid the tables for lunch. Konstanze and Dieter led the way, still holding hands, and I followed, carrying the broken binoculars.

  Because it was very early in the season, the restaurant was almost empty. But that didn’t prevent it from being very good. I forget what we ate, but I do remember asking for an omelet. Eggs in restaurants were nonexistent just then and the waiter smiled sympathetically at my request—he, too, wanted eggs, but he shook his head, an omelet was out of the question. Of course, I just wanted to make Konstanze feel special about the omelet she had cooked for me, to show her that I had not taken it for granted. I was being manipulative, then settled willingly for whatever they had.

  We sat outside in the sunshine while Dieter counted the lakes from the table. He could see five. He counted them again in the hope of finding more, but five there were. The concrete walls of the terrace were a perfect sun-trap and in front of us the hanging valley stretched out for perhaps three hundred yards and then just stopped, giving way to an enormous deep valley, hazy and blue far below us. Sounds carried long distances on such a clear day and the mixed noises of cars, cowbells, the excited shouts of children and the very far-off trundle of trains reached us in steady progression as they rose from the valleys to the blue heavens.

  Konstanze’s questions seemed to be over, and for the first time in her company I began to feel quiet inside. The climb and the fresh air had made us all hungry. The food wiped away Dieter’s disappointment and he soon rushed off again out of sight. Around us the lakes began to change color as the sun moved.

  “I could stay here forever,” I said, leaning back in my chair and closing my eyes.

  “Is it more beautiful than America, Walter? Than the Mississippi?”

  “At this moment, yes. With you.”

  I wasn’t sure whether I had meant to say that. The phrase “with you” had just formed in my mouth of its own accord. I felt embarrassed but not wildly so. I was glad I had my eyes closed anyway—I would not have said it otherwise, but that meant I couldn’t see her reaction.

  For a while there was silence between us. A waiter came to take our empty plates and glasses. I opened my eyes and, without looking at Konstanze, asked him to bring me a brandy. I asked her if she wanted one.

  “No, thank you, Walter. But I’ll taste some of yours.”

  Her willingness to share my glass, to put her mouth where mine had been, seemed to be a kind of promise. Unless, of course, it was all calculation on her part. What was I thinking? The day was too perfect and I tried to put the thought from my mind.

  She was as good as her word. When the cognac came she took the glass and swirled the liquid around in a way that showed she had done it before
. When she threw her head back to sip the drink, I was able to study the rhythmic contractions of the muscles in her throat as she swallowed. My God, she was beautiful.

  The first to arrive, we were the last to leave the restaurant. The plan that day was to visit Gosau and Steeg and see the churches there on our way back. We returned to the car by a different route and, when we arrived, Dieter was curled up asleep in the backseat.

  Something changed between Konstanze and me that day. Some invisible line was crossed. The business about the letter, which she had insisted on mailing herself, had started it. Her new dress, her decision to move on to first-name terms, the incident with the brandy all contributed, but it was also Dieter’s total acceptance of me. Everything else about us might look calculated, might be calculated, but not that. It was as if, in spite of ourselves, we had grown closer.

  Konstanze felt the same, I am sure, for as we descended the mountain road she began to talk about herself, something she had never done before. She spoke about her parents and her childhood. She said she felt her early life had been boring, that she had been a spectator until she grew up. It had left her with the feeling, she said, that childhood was safe but dull. She found children difficult to be with, she said, including her own son. Children had a false sense of time, when even tomorrow or next week seemed an age away. That gave them a false sense of drama. Whenever she read a biography, she said, she would skip the early pages until the person in question was at least into adolescence. It was because of Dieter that she had first agreed to come out with me. Since the war had ended she had been bored. That was, of course, when Rudolf disappeared. She loved Dieter, but she couldn’t say yet whether she liked him—he was too young. Of her own childhood she could remember only incidents when she had tried to behave as an adult. Once she had stolen a couple of dozen of her father’s favorite cigarettes (the brand I had left on her table the first day we met) and given one each to all of the children in her gang. The children had met one afternoon for an illicit, communal smoking spree. Fortunately, an observant neighbor spotted the smoke that was beginning to billow from the basement and alerted the fire department. The children were discovered—it was anyone’s guess as to who was more surprised, they or the fire department—and Konstanze identified as the ringleader. As a consequence her father had given her a sound spanking. On another occasion, when she was nearing adolescence, a friend and she had sneaked into an “adult-only” horror movie in Munich. The escapade was designed for retelling to other girlfriends since it was a mark of great daring, conferring much prestige on a thirteen-year-old, to have slipped past the cinema cashier, who was supposed to prevent anyone under sixteen from entering the cinema. Unfortunately for Konstanze and her friend, it was one thing to make up like a sixteen-year-old but quite another to behave like one. They had been exposed and forced to leave when the movie had reached the really horrifying scenes and both girls had started to cry.

  She laughed now, retelling this story. In general, she said, her school days had not been hugely successful or happy. Her French had always been bad but she was at the top of her class in music. That was how she had come to take up music publishing in Munich; her headmistress had introduced her to the firm.

  Apparently she was quite a good publisher. She had seen the potential of the guitar in modern music as an instrument which, though not as versatile as the piano, was as self-sufficient and much, much cheaper. So, as well as publishing music for piano and voice, she developed her ideas for the guitar long before records, TV and, in some cases, radio became the household items of the future. The publishers had been very pleased with her.

  Suddenly the conversation changed direction and switched back to Dieter. His arrival, she said, had caused some anxious moments. Not the birth—that itself had gone well enough—but he had had a squint and needed an operation. It was successful, but it might not have been and they had all been very worried.

  It was the choppiness and changed direction in her conversation that suddenly made me realize what was happening, what she was doing. Until then I had been sitting back happily, as we swished downhill into the valley, listening to what she had to say and congratulating myself on at last getting through her reserve. I now realized that everything she was telling me was distinguished by the fact that it had not been referred to in the letters. She was gently but insistently rubbing in the fact that she was aware of what I knew about her but also, in telling me some new stories, what I didn’t know. Unlike me, she hadn’t switched off; she was still working. If I needed a reason to respect her more, here it was.

  The churches that day were disappointing. They must have been, for I remember nothing of them. I was too preoccupied with Konstanze. The balance had shifted firmly into her favor now—I was sure it had. I was lost, torn between the feeling that I was getting somewhere with her, softening her up, so to speak, and the feeling that I was drowning. She could just as easily have been playing with me, tormenting me. I had never been as uncertain of a woman as I was of Konstanze. It was a new sensation for me, half painful, half exquisite and wholly addictive.

  4

  The next excursion, on Monday, to the glacier at Dachstein, was to be Dieter’s last. The following day he would return to his school at Stockerau, near Vienna. On Monday, therefore, I arrived late at Mondsee. I had shopping to do and I had to stop off at the office to see whether there was any news from Saul Wolfert. There was. He had called the previous day. When I got him on the phone his voice had a subdued excitement in it.

  “We haven’t seen your man yet, but something’s going on in Krumau and we don’t think it’s wine-making.”

  My stomach tightened and I realized I didn’t want Saul to find von Zell. Not just yet anyway.

  “Oh yes?” I said into the phone. “Why is that?”

  “You don’t sound very thrilled,” said Saul, not missing a thing. “Don’t forget we’re going to all this trouble just for you. You do still think he’s here, don’t you? You haven’t changed your mind?”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “I’m just preoccupied, that’s all. What have your men found?”

  “Well, don’t forget, they’re undercover, posing as tourists. They can’t ask too many direct questions or spend too long in one place. So nothing is certain yet.” He paused for effect. “But it begins to look as though one of the vineyards is far busier at night than during the day.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that. My men have been watching the vineyards one by one. Naturally they took a particular interest in anything disused. And, taking a stroll around Krumau one night after dinner, they spotted a truck drawn up outside a warehouse that was boarded up during the day. Several men got out of the truck.”

  “What time of night was this?”

  “Ten forty-five.”

  “Could mean anything.”

  “Of course it could. But it could be interesting. The truck was not there last night but they will try to watch tonight. It could be that your man, von Zell, has a cover job in one of the vineyards that leaves him free to organize this conduit, hiding ex-Nazis in the warehouse, where he equips them with money, documents and all the rest.”

  “We shouldn’t read too much into one late-night truck.”

  Saul sounded exasperated. “God, you’re a skeptic, Walter. I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “I’m sorry, Saul. It’s just that Hobel here doesn’t like theories. He wants results. I’ve had so many theories on this case, I’m a bit frightened of another. But press on, of course. If that vineyard should turn out to be the start of the conduit, it will be a feather in all our caps. Yours most of all. So I’m sorry—good luck. Call me tomorrow if you’ve made any progress.”

  Sammy came into the room just then.

  “You look relaxed.”

  “That’s not how I feel, Sammy. I’ve been thinking.”

  “Want to pull out?”

  “No, not yet. But I think we should sell Atlantic Insurance and buy som
ething else. Maybe even get back into Metropolitan Motors.”

  He sat down. “You shouldn’t chop and change too much, you know. Otherwise you keep missing the boat.”

  “Perhaps. But Maurice is two hundred and four dollars ahead of me. I’ve got to try and catch him.”

  Sammy put his feet up, just as I was doing, and rocked back in his chair. “What’s your first priority, Walter? To make a little money or to catch your pal?”

  “Does it matter? Don’t they add up to the same thing in this case?”

  “Not necessarily. Some stock grows steadily, so you go on getting modestly richer as you grow older. Other stocks, as you have found to your cost, fall. But there are some that are much riskier than anything else but which, if the idea behind them turns out to be the right one, take off like a shot.”

  “Yes. Go on. I’m listening.”

  “I’ve got my eye on such a stock right now. I haven’t put any of my own money into it yet, but I just might. It could work … it could work spectacularly. On the other hand …” He drew his hand across his throat, making a clicking sound.

  “What’s the stock?” I said.

  “You’ll laugh.”

  “Maybe I will. But what is it?”

  He hesitated. “Gramophones.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with the radio?”

  “Simple.” Things always were for Sammy. “People are tired of war; it’s time for leisure. The radio is fine but gramophone records give you the music you want when you want it. The quality will go on improving and the machines will get cheaper and cheaper. Best of all, the war stimulated the synthetics industry. We’ll have better and better forms of plastic from which to make records.”

  “What company do you suggest?”