The Nazi's Wife

by Peter Watson

  “Oh yes. Remember the night you couldn’t come to the concert? You said someone was coming to visit you. I waited near your house all night. You never went out and no one came to visit you. It was a Sunday; you were listening to the radio, to the concert, just as you used to do when the war was on. It was an old habit, hard to break; Rudolf was listening, too, wasn’t he? Wherever he is.

  “Yes, I know about the concerts on the radio, one of your husband’s secretaries told me. You don’t write letters to each other anymore, that would be too dangerous. But you still have your concerts, so you are still in touch. You know where he is.”

  I reached across and took Konstanze’s hand, only the second time that we had intentionally touched. At the same moment I leaned forward, so that I could more easily reach into my pocket. From there I took a small thick book with black covers, which I pressed into her palm.

  “Konstanze, can you honestly swear on this Bible that you do not know where Rudolf is?”

  I could barely get the words out. Never, not once, in all my time in the Army, had I needed to do anything as dirty, as underhanded, as shameful, as this. I can remember wondering whether, in years to come, I would regret what I was doing. That is the price you pay for being impulsive.

  Konstanze looked down at the Bible in her hand. She turned it over as if it would somehow be a different book held another way. She gave me an empty stare, the abandoned gaze of the prisoner of war. A single tear clung to the bridge of her nose, as silver as the clouds that now covered the sun. Her mouth was open, its corners dotted with wet spittle.

  A monk appeared at the edge of the graveyard. He closed the doors in the brick wall and we heard the clang of the great door to the church being forced shut. He stared hard at us before disappearing. The monastery was closing.

  Konstanze got up first, still clutching the small Bible, as if it was her one contact with reality. I can remember thinking, just then, that she would never see my home, never sail the Mississippi with me, nor would we take Dieter to see the buffalo. Would she let him keep the binoculars? I doubted it.

  Worse, after she had come so close to kissing me, could she ever go back to Rudolf? Would she ever tell him? Was the betrayal that I had forced out of her too damaging for her ever to recover completely? Was I going to feel as guilty as I did now for the rest of my life? Ironically, I thought, Konstanze had been right about one thing: my approach to interrogation was far more cruel, if less brutal, than Lieutenant Bloch’s. At least he had been bluffing; I had meant everything I had said.

  I put up the top of the car and we drove back to Mondsee in silence. Konstanze could not lie with a Bible in her hands so that silence said everything. She sat huddled the whole way, shriveled like someone convicted of a capital offense and on their way to begin a life sentence.

  Around seven we reached the house. The wind was now of such force that, in happier times, Konstanze might have called it cleansing. I asked, “How long will it take you to contact Rudolf?”

  No answer. Then: “Two days.”

  “Very well. I will return the day after tomorrow.”

  She opened the car door and hesitated as I spoke again. I whispered, like I did at first in the churches we visited. “Konstanze … believe me, I am very, very sorry.”

  She let the Bible fall to the ground and walked into the house. Her God had deserted her. In return she had abandoned him.

  4

  Hobel’s raid was a fiasco. The warehouse in Krumau was part of the conduit—or would have been if, as I had advised, he had held off for a while. The warehouse contained a printing press and some false Vatican diplomatic papers. The renegades were to be sent south—or wherever—disguised as Vatican emissaries—clever. But Hobel didn’t catch anybody worth writing home about, just a couple of Austrians who delivered things and knew nothing.

  So that was something I could feel relieved about.

  The next afternoon, as I was sitting in my hotel room, before I knew that Dieter was in no immediate danger, there was a loud, urgent knocking on the door of my hotel room. I opened it to find Konstanze. She was wearing a long gray coat, which I hadn’t seen before, but then the weather had changed for the worse. The coat was set off by a maroon scarf. It was a very different Konstanze that I confronted from the woman who had let the Bible fall outside of her house. This one had flushed cheeks, her whole face shimmering with energy.

  She swept past me into my room without waiting to be asked. She walked almost to the balcony before turning to face me. She took off her hat, shook free her hair and unbuttoned her coat.

  “He never stole those coins, Walter. He never stole them.”

  “What?” This was unexpected and, I hate to admit it, more than a little disappointing. “We know he had them, that day in May last year. More than one witness confirms that. He was the last person to be seen—”

  She cut me short. “Oh, he had them, yes. But he didn’t steal them. He left them with the Prince Archbishop, right here in Salzburg. Rudolf is a Catholic. The coins were taken from a Catholic monastery, as you pointed out. He had to go into hiding but first he took the coins to the Prince Archbishop for safekeeping. They’ve been there ever since, right under your noses.”

  It was true. Hobel and I went to see the Prince Archbishop later that evening and there the coins were, in their original cases, all of them. The Prince Archbishop hadn’t reported them, he said, for the simple fact that, in the press of events, he had forgotten about them. I believed him and so did Hobel.

  But that’s not what’s important. What happened between Konstanze and me is what haunts me still. Konstanze, of course, was transformed. Only a day before she had nearly betrayed her husband, who was then, in her own mind, little more than a common criminal. Now she had discovered that he had acted honorably and she should never have doubted him. And, since she had not actually kissed me and committed the final betrayal, she was fast recovering her self-esteem. At the same time it became obvious that, if the coins had been with the Prince Archbishop all the time, and were still intact, they could not have been used for the political purposes Eisenhower suspected. Which meant that I had ruined what was between Konstanze and me for nothing.

  Before she had left me that day, to go back to Mondsee, I had seen a new look on Konstanze’s face. It was pity.

  5

  Hobel was jubilant as we returned that night from the Prince Archbishop’s. We had the case of coins in the car and he was imagining a lieutenant colonel’s badge on his collar already. He was pretty civil to me, too, as may be imagined.

  “I’m glad we didn’t have to pull in the boy,” he lied. “Much cleaner this way.”

  I said nothing. Maybe Konstanze would let Dieter keep his binoculars now, I hoped.

  “How well do you know Mrs. von Zell?” asked Hobel as we swung across the Market Bridge.

  “Quite well,” I said evenly.

  “What are the chances she will turn in her husband now?”

  “Not good. Look at how protective she has been. She gave us the coins only because of the religious connection and because I specifically said I didn’t want her husband.”

  He ignored this. “It would be quite a feather in our cap to have this thing completely cleared up, you know. There are just too many Nazis on the loose. Eisenhower would remember it. Do what you can, will you?”

  I agreed, because I would have done anything to have a chance to see Konstanze again. So, I found myself driving out to Mondsee next morning. It had turned cold, the wind zipping through the lanes and numbing my fingers. I felt cold inside too. Konstanze would not be happy to see me. However, I had to see her again, even if it meant having to face Martha.

  It did. She opened the door and looked at me with enough hatred to last me until today, forty years later. I still wince when I recall that look. Martha must be dead now for years, but, for me, her scowl lives on, feeding on my regret.

  Still, she showed me inside to the sewing room. This time Konstanze was alread
y there, needle and thread across her knee. She didn’t get up.

  “I was right,” she breathed. “You did find the coins, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Her smile was radiant. “Rudi is not a criminal.”

  “Konstanze, he is still wanted. He is still a fugitive Nazi.” She turned her head away from me, not wanting to hear.

  “Listen to me, Konstanze,” I whispered. “You have endured years of hardly ever seeing him, of writing letters and listening to concerts on the radio. As long as he is on the run, that will never change. The only way you can be together is to live secretly in South America. Do you want that? Is it worth it?”

  She looked at me.

  “But let’s imagine that he gives himself up. What is the worst that can happen to him then? Several months—a year or two—in a camp, maybe, but at least you will know where he is and you will know that, at the end of his sentence, you will have him back. Dieter will have a father again, at last.” I hesitated. “And then you won’t have me around to pry, to read what I shouldn’t read. You can have your privacy back.”

  I sat down and reached across to take the sewing out of her hands. She didn’t look up.

  “Konstanze, I can understand you being—cold with me. What I did—what happened in the graveyard—was awful, terrible. Already I regret it. Please believe me. You think I was calculating: I was not. But I joined the army to fight Nazis … not to fall in love with their wives.

  “You are an extraordinary woman. Bruno knew it; Rudi knows it; and I do too, now. I have mismanaged this case from the very beginning, but I would not have missed it for anything. I am proud of you, Konstanze, and flattered to think that you loved—or nearly loved—me.

  “When you said you would never lie to me, in the graveyard, I loved you more then than I have loved anything. But what you said meant that I couldn’t lie. I have lied too much to you already.

  “I wormed my way into your affections deliberately but it backfired. Christ, how it backfired! From that day Dieter broke his binoculars and we shared a brandy I have—well, you know how I have felt.”

  Still, she didn’t look across to me. But she curled her top lip inside her teeth. “Say it, Walter, say it.”

  I paused. “Don’t be offended, Konstanze. I’m not being blasphemous.” I paused again. I remember noticing she must have washed her hair again that morning. Once more its fine edges caught the light. “I have worshiped you.”

  Her face softened. My insides calmed down, too.

  “If you can love two people at the same time, then I will settle for being number two. Maybe sometime you will agree that you loved me a bit.”

  I stood up. I could smell her, watch the strands of hair play with the light. Though we were standing close, as close as we had been on the bench at St. Florian, she didn’t flinch.

  “Try to convince him, Konstanze, please. I’ll come back in two days.”

  6

  Hobel grunted when I reported back. He wanted to know why Konstanze was not being followed.

  “If she got wind of it, it could throw the whole investigation. Don’t you agree?”

  He had grunted, again. Thankfully his mind was also occupied with the pullout, which was beginning in earnest. Large wooden crates had been delivered for packing our official papers, prior to shipment to Frankfurt on the first leg of their journey home. The office could be divided into those who were ecstatic about our return and those who, though they could not admit it for fear of being thought sick, had actually enjoyed the war. People who realized that they would never again have as much purpose in their lives, or as much self-respect, as the war had given them. Men and women who would never again be so happy.

  So Konstanze wasn’t followed and I returned alone, two days later, to Mondsee. She answered the door herself this time and suggested we go across to the summerhouse. It was still blustery but I could sense she wanted to use the place to create a mood.

  She stood on the balcony of the small hut, looking at the fishermen, in almost exactly the same spot where, with luck on the night of the concert, things might have taken a different turn.

  “Well?” I said.

  She picked up a broken twig that, in the wind, had fallen onto the boards and threw it into the lake. “He’ll do it. He’ll do as you suggest. But there is a condition.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Her voice changed to a softer tone, one that belonged to the days before St. Florian.

  “You once said that … our days together were like a honeymoon. Yes?”

  “Yes,” I said, a lump in my throat. “The happiest days of my life.”

  She bit her lower lip, curling it under her teeth. A look that seemed to say she had been happy too.

  “Now you must grant us a honeymoon.”

  I am sure I looked bewildered. I know I got a sinking feeling inside.

  “You yourself said Rudi and I have been apart for too long. We shall go away tomorrow—together—and you must not follow. You or anyone else. You must promise me that. If you agree, then a week from now Rudi will give himself up, to you. Only to you. And at St. Florian.

  “He knows about … about …” She never did say. “He wants to see the monastery; he wants to meet you. He will only surrender in this way, to you.”

  “And if I do not agree.”

  “Rudi will stay in hiding and you will have to arrest me for noncooperation.”

  We stared across the lake together, to where two boats were silhouetted against the water. The clouds were lower today; it was only a matter of time before the wind dropped and the rain started. Despite what Konstanze had said about the lack of wind hereabouts, it felt gusty to me. The lake was choppy and gray.

  I wasn’t sure what I disliked most, the fact that she was going away with Rudolf, to recapture whatever they had to recapture, before he gave himself up, or the fact that they might simply disappear, never to return. Part of me—the part of me that did love her—thought that not such a bad idea. They could smuggle themselves to South America; Rudolf would have the contacts. Dieter could join them there later. They would be happy. I would be happy for her.

  I closed my eyes as if that would blot out the image in my mind of Konstanze and Rudolf together on honeymoon. Konstanze must have sensed what I was thinking about for she whispered, “Walter, please. I can’t risk losing both of you in the space of just a few days. What you did was cruel. It may have been the right thing to do, but it was cruel all the same.” She hesitated and I opened my eyes to look at her.

  “From that afternoon when you gave me the carving, you replaced Rudi … it is so long since anyone gave me anything, since I was with a man—properly. The night we went to Innsbruck, to the concert, I wanted to make love to you so much. But the music, which was part of it, was also Rudi’s territory. So I couldn’t, not that night. That’s why I wanted to go somewhere special the next day: somewhere that belonged to just us—the two of us. But you—damaged that, in the graveyard”—and she sighed out loud—“and now I must make the repairs. With Rudi.”

  The more I thought about the honeymoon plan, the more I realized how clever it was. The more I thought, the more I realized that I couldn’t say no. I owed her something and I had to grant her this condition.

  “Very well,” I said. “A week from today, in the church of St. Florian. At noon.”

  7

  Hobel thought I was mad, criminally insane, to have agreed to the honeymoon arrangement. However, because we had received a note from Eisenhower congratulating us on the recovery of the coins, and because Hobel had already been given the nod that he would be promoted now, and because the pullout took up so much of his time, and because I had presented him with a fait accompli, he had to accept what I had done. He did insist, however, that we post a guard at Dieter’s school. That way, if Konstanze and Rudolf came for the boy, we could catch them. And, if Dieter was kept safely at his school, it made it more likely that the couple would stick to their bargain
and return. I had to admit that Hobel’s plan made sense.

  There was little for me to do but wait. I had few files or official papers in Salzburg so I could not busy myself with packing. I was entitled to leave, so I took it. I went home for the weekend to Offenbach to have a farewell dinner with Maurice and to meet the new squirrels. We, Maurice and I, not the squirrels, dined at Gottlieb’s in Frankfurt and drove off in the BMW to Hessen and the Thuringer Wald. Maurice loved the car, though the showery weather meant we had the top up all the time.

  I did most of the talking—about Konstanze—but although Maurice played the attentive, sympathetic friend at all times, I could not relax. My mind was elsewhere and, quite often, I would forget the end of a sentence before I got to it. Even in Frankfurt the signs of the grand pullout were everywhere, so that I was reminded of what I was about to lose at every turn.

  Our bet still had some way to run, but it provided great interest, and some amusement, every day. Maurice’s shares were down to $1,058, but RMC had been taken over by, of all things, Galaxy Studios. They had jumped four cents to $994.60. In theory I could still overtake him before the end of the academic year; even so, I awarded him the helmet.

  The weekend came to a close. I wouldn’t see Maurice again, not for some time anyway. We both felt sad as he came down to the car on Monday morning to see me off.

  “Good luck, Maurice,” I said. “I shall miss you.”

  “Dear boy.” He took my hand. “I have something for you.” It was a book, a life of Bruckner. “A memento. With love.”

  I drove back to Salzburg. His was the sort of gesture that made people miss the war. I like mementos too.

  The next day was Tuesday, the day before Rudolf was supposed to turn himself in. It poured. I took the fast road toward Vienna, arriving at Stockerau just after lunch. I didn’t spot Hobel’s man though I stood outside the school in the rain for more than two hours. It was the day Dieter had said was his games afternoon, when he played goalkeeper for the soccer team. I wanted a last look at him, but maybe they didn’t do games in the teeming rain, or maybe his day on the fields had changed with the new term. I was too embarrassed to go into the school and ask for him. Konstanze would not have liked that. So I never saw him.