The Nazi's Wife

by Peter Watson

  The whorls and flutings of the gate drew your eye upward to something even bigger and blacker: hundreds, perhaps a thousand, black pipes, in three busy clusters, running from wall to wall and almost to the roof. The organ was like an enormous black swan, not evil-looking exactly, but regal in a daunting way, its wings open in flight or to intimidate intruders.

  As she moved her head up and caught sight of the organ, Konstanze gasped slightly. That was the only sound she made. She stepped off the aisle into a pew and knelt. She looked up at me. “Do you never pray, Walter?”

  “I am not religious. You know that. It would be wrong.”

  She made a tired gesture, the way she shrugged at Dieter when he should have worked something out for himself.

  “Your American poet, Auden, said that to pray is to pay attention to something or someone other than yourself. Come and kneel by me. You don’t have to think about God. Just stop thinking about yourself.”

  I knelt. She still had the power to put me in my place in the most delicious way. No one else had ever come close.

  I wanted to ask her what she was praying for, or about, but I didn’t dare. I prayed that Hobel’s plans would, in some unforeseen way, be changed totally, giving me more time. But I knew that prayer wouldn’t be answered.

  For a few moments we knelt silently, side by side. All of a sudden the peace of the church was splintered as the organ exploded in sound. It was as if the volcanic Dieter, grown huge, had burst into the building. The pews trembled and the floor seemed to vibrate as first one, then two, then many more deep cords cannoned around the nave, ricocheting from wall to wall to wall. A complicated mosaic of notes followed the cords as, presumably, the organ scholar warmed to his practice.

  It was much cooler in the church than it was outside and that suited me, since I was often uncomfortable in the sun, especially in my uniform. I was happy to sit listening to the organ until Konstanze slipped from her knees onto the seat. The organ was much too loud for us to talk comfortably and so, after a while, I gestured for her to follow me.

  At the side of the nave, hidden behind some columns, was a set of stone steps leading down to the crypt. As we descended, the sounds of the organ began to fade and we could hear our own footsteps again on the stone.

  “What’s down here, Walter?”

  “Wait. You’ll see.”

  The crypt was large, surprisingly so, and entirely formed out of stone. It was not well lit; there were electric lights but too few of them and, amid such shadows, all sarcophagi are apt to look forbidding. None more so than the large, lugubrious piece of stone that I eventually stopped in front of. (I was thankful I had reconnoitered here; otherwise I might never have found what I was looking for that day.) It was white, seeming to glow in the artificial light, and had deep shadows drawn along it where the stone mason had carved pronounced runnels.

  Konstanze was uneasy, not afraid exactly, but puzzled and impatient to know why we had come down here.

  “Go closer,” I whispered. “Look at the name.”

  She stepped forward and gasped. “Anton Bruckner!” she read aloud. “Oh, Walter!”

  “I wondered if you’d guess. He was organist here—that was his organ we were listening to upstairs. He was a sort of honorary member of the monastery and could come whenever he pleased. He often did, to play the organ and be away from Vienna, to write his symphonies and the organ music you love so much. He never married, as you know, so when he died in October 1896 it was natural for him to be buried here.”

  Elisabetta, the art student I had picked up on my first drive south in the BMW, had told me about Bruckner and St. Florian. She had mentioned all manner of baroque churches that night. Then I had come across the link later, in that book on baroque architecture by the English schoolmaster.

  Konstanze, who had been listening to me, went forward another pace. She reached out and rested her hand on the cool tomb. She stayed like that, motionless for a moment, then turned quickly and led the way out of the crypt. As we started to climb, the sounds of the organ came back to us. She turned to me and smiled.

  “I want to go to confession. Where shall I find you?”

  I considered. It had been much colder in the crypt than the church proper and I felt a desire for the warmth of the fresh air. “I’ll be in the graveyard, with all those black headstones. I think I saw a bench there.”

  “Okay,” she said, with what seemed to be an American twang. I smiled as she disappeared in search of a confessional box.

  I watched her retreat into the nave. She was relaxed, jaunty; suddenly she seemed very young. It had been a success bringing her to St. Florian.

  I went through the black wrought-iron gate and out into the sunshine. The organ faded again but didn’t quite disappear. An old brick wall ran around part of the monastery and the graveyard. Against the wall were a handful of large lean-to glass greenhouses. The vegetables and fruit inside them were being tended by two tall monks in habits that were almost as white as Bruckner’s tomb. They looked up as they heard the church door close behind me but, not recognizing my face, soon went back to their work.

  I walked past them into the graveyard. The graves were well tended, with the sharp green grass cut freshly and the flowers open to the sun. But what was really stunning about the area were the headstones themselves. In the sunlight the black marble glittered and rippled like the well-brushed coats of thoroughbreds in the parade ring. The gold lettering winked in the bright light and the overall effect was far from dismal.

  Nonetheless, as I wandered among the headstones, I was brought down to earth. As an historian I had always had a fascination with graveyards. Being interested in ecclesiastical architecture was one excuse for this, but that wasn’t the whole story. I liked looking at the names and I was obsessed by the ages people were when they died. Presently I came across someone who had died as a child; this was a secret fear of mine, that someday I would have a child and it would die. I didn’t know then how anyone could survive that. Elsewhere I found husbands and wives who had died within a year or so of each other. I was more sentimental than I let on, and I imagined these syncopated deaths were evidence that broken hearts did have the power to kill. A benevolent power, of course.

  And here was a death that had occurred recently. Just a mound of earth, decked in flowers. No name, no age, no inscription from the Bible chosen by relatives.

  The newness of the death reminded me of the killings in Santander. They had been German lives, but an Austrian could have been among them, even this person here.

  I sat down on a bench that faced the monastery and, at this time of day, the sun also. The new grave had sobered me, reminding me of facts that Konstanze’s presence drove from my head. Ironic that it should be German deaths that affected me so.

  I had, until then, avoided thinking of my dilemma. But now there was no choice. There was a sense in which, whatever I did, whichever way I jumped, I was bound to fail. That was the measure of how I had mismanaged this case. For me to succeed now in a military sense, to gain the information I wanted—that my superiors wanted—would kill irrevocably what had grown between Konstanze and me. Whatever she felt for me, it did not include totally betraying Rudolf. Perhaps she would come to America and bring Dieter with her. She had no idea how long Rudolf would have to remain in hiding; technically, it could be forever, and that was hardly good for her and her son. Rudolf had put his military duty before his family life, and if I was to do the same, then I, too, would lose her. To entice her back to America I would have to give up my part in Rudolf’s capture.

  But if I did that, if I let Rudolf go, it was dereliction of duty, treason perhaps. No one would know, except me, but how long would I be able to stand it? I had left Germany and joined the U.S. Army to stop Nazis like Rudolf. I was trapped. I might still lose on both counts, but I couldn’t win both.

  I have always given the impression that I am a forthright, positive person, a man who has no doubts, who always knows his own mind. Th
e same is true today, forty years later. Only I know, sadly, that at crucial moments in my life, like that afternoon in St. Florian, I make up my mind often on the spur of the moment and then live with the consequences. Are other people the same, I wonder? I had always thought, always hoped, that, when it came to the crunch, my instincts would help. No. Konstanze would come out of confession, would join me on the bench here in the graveyard. I had prepared the ground well, psychologically speaking. Though she had been clever and tough, I think I had managed things so that I could have it either way. I had a nugget of information in reserve that would, I believed, induce her to tell me where her husband was, if I used it. On the other hand, if I chose not to, and so contrived things that we embraced, or kissed, I could take her back to California. When she came, what would I do? I couldn’t answer my own question.

  I saw the monks by the greenhouses look up again. Someone else had come out of the church by the front door, which was not visible from where I was sitting. Konstanze?

  Yes. She moved around the edge of the building and when she saw me she waved. As she came toward me, picking her way through the headstones, I could see that her step was still lively; for once confession had not brought her down.

  “You were right, Walter,” she said as she came close. “This place is special, truly wonderful.” She slipped her hands into the pockets of her skirt, turned and slumped onto the bench alongside me. “All the white is so clean, so simple, so pure. That’s what I prayed for—more white in the world.”

  “That’s an odd thing to pray for.”

  “Not at all. There’s not much point in praying in ordinary language for obvious things, is there? If you believe in a God then you must also believe that He can hear your thoughts at all times. You don’t have to pray for something all the time. Nor do you have always to pray to God. You pray with Him. You go to prayer so that you may set aside time to do or think fresh things in a fresh way. You don’t always ask for things in prayer, you know. When you knelt down in the church just now, you asked that things would work out between us. That’s unfair. You have to accept responsibility for what you do. Prayer isn’t a moral bank, though I know lots of people see it that way.”

  I was astounded at what Konstanze had said. I was much less surprised to see, behind her, beyond the headstones, beyond and above the two monks working in the greenhouses, large white clouds in the sky. The weather was beginning to break.

  “How did you know what I was praying for?”

  “Psychology, silly. Nothing to do with religion. There’s a lot less magic in worship than you seem to think, Walter. When I pray it’s like trying to hold a conversation with God. He’s not a guardian or a father or a moral stockbroker. I’m not forever asking things. It may sound silly but you must try—try—to be God’s companion.”

  “And what do you confess? What have you done, or thought, that you need to confess?”

  It was a blunt, tactless question. I am ashamed and embarrassed to think of it now, but that’s how it happened. I was trying to shock Konstanze into telling me her secrets.

  For a long moment I thought it was a serious blunder. For she didn’t reply right away. Behind her, I remember, the clouds got higher, moving above us with silent speed. Eventually, she faced me.

  “You will learn, Walter, never to ask that question. In the first place, I will never tell you, but, more important, you must learn that because I have a private life it does not mean that I am hiding things from you. I don’t; I never would.”

  I think that then, when she said that, was the moment I was more in love than I had ever imagined possible. She had said “I never would.” That was worded for the future, as though she was looking forward to a time when we would be together. And she had said “never.” Had I not read the letters, I would not have known how significant that word was to her. But I had, so I knew she meant it. There were all sorts of meanings, all sorts of emotions, locked into that sentence. I understood, because I had pried into her life. She knew that. She knew what she was saying. She was speaking in code, but she knew. Yet, again, the letters were being used against me, to hook me.

  I noticed that the monks in the greenhouses were packing up their work things. They looked across to where we were seated and then disappeared into the cloisters. We were now quite alone, save for the sound of the organ, which could still be heard from the church, and the clouds, now closing in on the sun.

  The bench was short. Konstanze and I sat close to one another, so close that I could smell her soap. Strange that I had never given her any perfume. It was scarce in Austria, but the Army could get it. Come to think of it, I had never given her any nylons or chocolate.

  She looked up at the clouds and gave a sad nod. For the briefest of moments a look flashed across her face that seemed to find familiar muscles, ones that hadn’t been used for years. The expression had such a familiar look about it that it must, at one time, have been very much a part of the old melancholic Konstanze; a girl who had returned then for a second, the tragic girl who wouldn’t marry Bruno. I could see why men fell for Konstanze in those days: you wanted to help her, make her happy, arrange things so that she was never unhappy again.

  She turned back, the sun on her pale neck. “This is my favorite place, Walter. Of all those you have shown me—the waterfalls at Krimml, that grisly glacier that Dieter loved so much, the fourteen lakes that were only twelve, all the other abbeys and churches—this is the jewel. How right Bruckner was to be buried here.”

  She stopped speaking and looked at me. Then she bit her lower lip, curling it under her top teeth, a gesture I don’t think I had seen before. But that, perhaps, is memory number five: I can never see anyone bite their lip without thinking of that moment. As she did it she also lowered her eyes in an expression of tender self-doubt which, almost immediately, vanished as she looked up again, straight at me. Despite herself, she was saying she was ready. The gesture was so soft, so open, yet so vulnerable, so individual, that I was on the verge of reaching out to touch her, to brush with my thumb the lip she was biting. My mind was nearly made up. I remember thinking, Trust Konstanze to want our first kiss to be on consecrated ground.

  I whispered. There was no one to hear save Konstanze and God, if there was one, but I whispered.

  “Konstanze.”

  “Yes?” No, it wasn’t a question, there should be no interrogative there. It was an affirmation. “Yes!”

  “This is the monastery the gold coins were stolen from. This is where they should be returned to. They belong back here.”

  3

  The organ had stopped. Konstanze had stopped too. She was no longer the bundle of emotions, the center of life that she had been a moment before. A few strands of blond hair wafted across her face. It was the beginning of the breeze that had brought the clouds our way.

  I had acted on the spur of the moment. As I had so often in my life. I sat now, waiting for Konstanze to react. She didn’t. Not for a long while. Not until the first of the clouds had settled between us and the sun. Then she seemed to move but only inside. Invisibly almost, like that day in Schlierbach, by the fountain, she shuddered and a deep dry sob forced its way up her long neck and past her throat.

  I whispered again. “It’s true, Konstanze. The coins were kept in the library. It took the monks here three hundred and fifty years to collect them. They were taken away in 1943.”

  Another sob. I tried to imagine what was going on inside her head. She must have been asking herself how long I had planned this—this confrontation, how long I had had the idea to use Bruckner and St. Florian in this way to break her. Had I been calculating all the way? So calculating that, after a while, I could dissemble and mislead her? Had my happiness been false, my gift of the binoculars to Dieter, my behavior at the concert, all that talk of America merely a sham?

  And, of course, just now, on this very bench, she had nearly betrayed her husband. She had in fact already been unfaithful in her heart. It would have been one thin
g to have followed that through by emigrating to America, but now … At least I had not kissed her, had not allowed her to kiss me. Something was salvaged. But she probably imagined that was part of my calculation too. It made her cooperation more likely.

  The tears had risen now, spiking her eyelashes, glistening against her cheeks.

  “I didn’t know myself what I was going to do until today, until a moment ago. These past days and weeks have been wonderful for me. I am probably more in love with you than you are with me—oh yes!—I originally tried to make you interested in me, to like me and respect me. It was my only chance of finding out about Rudolf, but it soon ceased to be a duty. By the time we visited the glacier at Dachstein, I was in love with you. You think I have been calculating, but it’s not true. The war has been over for a year; my wife has moved on; my close colleagues are moving on. I sometimes think I am the only one left, tidying up after the war. If we had kissed last night, after the concert, after you fell asleep on my shoulder, when we were together in the summerhouse, we wouldn’t be sitting here now. I would be making plans for you to come to America.”

  I paused.

  “But I learned this morning that, two nights ago, a German ship was hijacked in Spain. Four people were killed. Four wives or girlfriends left alone. Who knows how many children, like Dieter, left without fathers, forever? My superiors believe the ship was stolen so that it could smuggle ex-Nazis to South America and that it was all paid for out of the St. Florian gold.

  “Konstanze, I left Germany because of the Nazis. Unfortunately for me, for us, the war is not over yet.

  “I am sorry. Everything you believe that I feel, I do feel. I realized some time ago that you know where Rudolf is but it made no difference to me.”

  She turned to me, sharply. I nodded.