Saints and Villains

by Denise Giardina

  Dietrich holds the torch over the blank face and flips the switch. The pupils, caught suddenly in a halo of light, shrink to tiny black points. So, Dietrich thinks. Something there after all.

  He turns the man’s face toward the two boys and moves the torch back and forth. “See how the pupils dilate and contract? That means there’s no serious damage. A concussion, most likely. I’d guess he’ll gain consciousness before long, and be none the worse for it except for a bump on the head.”

  The youngest boy rocks back on his heels, sighs, and smiles.

  “You’re certain?” the other asks.

  “Yes. But he should be seen by a doctor.”

  “Shit! Where are the others? They’ve been gone long enough.”

  “Probably passed out in an alley,” the youngest moans.

  Dietrich stands. “Why wait for your companions? Surely a building such as this will have a telephone. You stay with your officer and I’ll find it for you.”

  Thank you, they say, thank you thank you.

  Once out of their sight he moves quickly up the stairway to the second-floor office. He glances out the window into the street. No sign of more Nazis. He turns on a light and dials his parents’ number. Paula Bonhoeffer answers, and he tells her Keppel must bring the car at once to the corner of Zillestraße and Fritschestraße.

  “Something’s wrong,” she says.

  “Yes, but it involves someone else. Suse and I are fine. If Keppel comes, everything will be all right. And Mother? Once you send for Keppel, phone Elisabeth’s father and have him go at once to Hans and Christel’s in Sacrow with his medical bag. Tell him he’ll be treating a shoulder wound.”

  “Good heavens, Dietrich. Who’s injured?”

  “Falk Harnack. Now hurry, Mother.”

  After hanging up, he rifles the top desk drawer, finds the building lease signed by himself, the receipts for expenditures in Elisabeth’s name, the blackbound ledger. He stuffs the papers in his oversized pockets and slips the ledger into his underwear against his backside. He goes downstairs.

  The younger boy is still tending the Obersturmführer, but the other greets him at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Herr—?”

  “Schmidt,” Dietrich says.

  “Herr Schmidt! He’s coming around! He opened his eyes and tried to speak.”

  Dietrich pats the young man on the shoulder. “Good, good. Now go up to the second floor. There’s a telephone in the front room. I’ve left the light on for you. And when someone comes for you, go to the Charité. That’s the best hospital, and the closest.”

  “Yes! The Charité!” The young man pumps his hand and bolts up the steps two at a time.

  “I’ve made my own call,” Dietrich says to the boy who has remained behind. “I’ll be going now.”

  “Yes, of course,” the boy says. Then he calls after Dietrich, “The Obersturmführer will be most grateful. If you need anything, anything at all, you must let him know. SS-Obersturmführer Alois Bauer.”

  Dietrich waves farewell and heads toward the alley behind Zillestraße as fast as his trembling legs will allow.

  HANS VON DOHNANYI WOKE from a restless sleep to the jangling of the front doorbell. When he slid out of bed and pulled on a dressing gown, Christel sat up and asked blearily, “Is it the children?”

  “No,” he said, and added, “Something I forgot to do for work. Go back to sleep.”

  Most likely nothing at all, he thought as he felt his way down the dark stairs. Someone’s automobile has broken down.

  When he turned on the hall lamp the hands of the grandfather clock stood at midnight. Perhaps a ghost, then. He hurried to open the door.

  He did not know the man who stood before him, black leather surgeon’s bag held in front of his chest as though for protection.

  “Herr von Dohnanyi?”

  “Yes?”

  “Dr. Leo Hildebrandt, a surgeon at the Charité. I am a colleague of your father-in-law, and my daughter is a friend of Dietrich and Suse Bonhoeffer.”

  Dohnanyi stood aside and gestured for the doctor to enter. “But no one here is ill.” In the hall light he took note of the man’s dark curly hair and beard and wondered if he might be a Jew. “Or are you yourself in some sort of trouble?”

  “There is trouble, but it is not yet mine.”

  Leo Hildebrandt was describing the telephone call he’d received from the Wangenheimstraße when the Mercedes pulled into the drive. At the sound of the engine, Dohnanyi opened the front door to see the door of the motorcar burst open and Suse jump out crying, “Hans! Christel!”

  Hans gestured for quiet even as Dietrich and Elisabeth dragged a blood-spattered Falk Harnack from the car. Falk was yelling, “Call my brother! A telephone, damn you! Warn my brother!” as though the only energy left him lay in his lungs. An upstairs window bulged suddenly with light.

  “Quiet, for God’s sake!” Dohnanyi was shouting as well even as he herded them inside.

  In the house Dr. Hildebrandt took over, helping carry Falk, dripping blood through the hall, into the kitchen, where the cook’s board would do the office of an examining table. While Leo Hildebrandt spread his instruments on a cupboard shelf, Suse and Christel, come from upstairs in her dressing gown, set pots of water on the stove to boil. Elisabeth cut away Falk’s bloodcrusted shirt with a butcher knife.

  Dietrich hovered in the doorway, trying to decide how to help, but Dohnanyi grabbed his arm.

  “You’ll only be in the way. Come with me.”

  In the hall, Dohnanyi stooped to examine the bloodstains on the beige carpet, then opened the front door and listened for a time.

  “Hear anything?” he said to Dietrich beside him.

  Dietrich listened. “A dog somewhere around the lake,” he said. “A breeze rustling tree branches.”

  Dohnanyi closed the door and led Dietrich to the study, chilly since the hearth fire had long since died out. Instead of turning on a light, Hans went to the French doors that looked out on the garden. A skein of moonlight sliced across his face.

  “How did this happen?”

  Dietrich explained, pausing now and then in expectation of a question, a comment, but Hans only stared into the darkness.

  When Dietrich fell silent, Dohnanyi said without looking at him, “Don’t ever, ever involve me in something like this again. Do you understand?”

  “What—what are you saying?”

  “I believe I spoke plainly.”

  “We didn’t know where else to turn,” Dietrich said. “Sacrow is quiet and the house is isolated—”

  “I,” Dohnanyi said as he turned to face Dietrich, “am not isolated. I am personal assistant to the justice minister, and shall continue to be so in this new regime.”

  “But you can’t—”

  “And you,” Hans continued, “are an amateur. Do you understand?”

  “Saving a man’s life has become amateurish? God save us then. And you speak as if you mean to go along with these thugs.”

  Hans shook his head impatiently and pointed to a safe set in the wall beside the fireplace. “In there,” he said, “is a journal. I began it on the night of January thirtieth. In it I write down the crimes of this regime, names and dates, victims and perpetrators. Some have been reported in the papers, but most haven’t, especially as the press is feeling threatened by the Nazis. I write in a very small hand, but I already have filled pages. Supposedly random and unsolved killings. Jews, Socialists and Communists, trade union leaders, journalists, artists. Beatings and maimings likewise. Jailings. There’s a camp going up near Munich, at Dachau, did you know that? Of course you didn’t. It’s a place into which people may disappear. A record of all this is vital, because in a few years this government will fall, and when it does it will be faced with an outcry such as never has been seen in Europe. In the meantime, you bring into my house a known Communist who has been wounded in a street brawl with the Nazis—”

  “They attacked us!” Dietrich interrupted.r />
  Hans threw up his hands. “Do you hear a word I say?”

  “You think they watch this house?”

  “I don’t know what they do,” Hans said. “Or will do. I only know they trust no one. And neither must I.”

  “Not even family?”

  “Of course I trust your integrity, Dietrich, your character. But not your judgment. I don’t mean that as an insult. Few decent men will comprehend what’s happening. But look what you’ve done. You bring this man into the house—”

  “A family friend—”

  “His blood stains my carpet. You’ve involved a family servant who may or may not report what he has seen. You may or may not have been observed or followed. And you haven’t any idea what to do with this wounded man.”

  “I thought you might,” Dietrich said gamely.

  Dohnanyi sighed and rubbed his face, then went to his desk and fumbled in the drawer for his pipe. He thrust a pouch of tobacco across the desk toward Dietrich.

  “My pipe is at home,” Dietrich said. “I’m in costume, you know.”

  “Ah. I thought perhaps you had another fugitive hidden inside your trousers.”

  “I could use a cigarette.”

  They shared a match and sat quietly for a time, filling the darkness with milky smoke. Then Dietrich said, “It’s dangerous, what you’re doing.”

  “Any act of integrity will be dangerous the next few years.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” Dietrich said. “I meant morally dangerous. Can you really fight this from within?”

  “The only way to stop a runaway train,” Hans said, “is to be on board and try to pull the brake.”

  “And if a failed brake is the problem?”

  Hans blew smoke at the ceiling. “God knows.”

  Elisabeth joined them, sank wearily onto Dietrich’s lap, and rested her cheek against the top of his head.

  “How’s the patient?” Dohnanyi asked as if he and Dietrich had been discussing nothing more serious than the weather.

  “Resting at last. Father’s just finishing. He says the collarbone is broken but the bleeding’s stopped and there’s no other damage except a few torn tendons.”

  “Does your father think him fit to travel?” Dohnanyi still spoke casually.

  “He didn’t say. But before Falk fell asleep he said he wanted to go to his brother in Munich. And Father said, ‘We’ll see about that.’”

  “Then I think,” Hans said, “that we should. Do you know how to reach the brother?”

  “Suse does,” Dietrich said.

  “Then she should call him as soon as possible. But not from this house. Find a public telephone. Then cover him with blankets in the back of the Mercedes and drive Harnack yourself, Dietrich, to Friedrichsbrunn.”

  Elisabeth sat up and asked, “Why can’t he stay here until—”

  Dietrich squeezed her arm and interrupted, “Friedrichsbrunn will be fine. You’ll like it, Elisabeth, it’s our family’s house in the Harz Mountains. Arvid Harnack can meet us there.”

  She started to speak again and he continued, “You and I can take turns, drive straight through, and be there before dawn.”

  She was watching Dohnanyi. “All right,” she said, and stood up, smoothing the front of her skirt. “I’ll tell the others.” She went to the door, then hesitated. “Dietrich and I rented the hall,” she said to Dohnanyi. “They’ll find the records.”

  “No,” Dietrich said. “I managed to take everything.” He patted the packet of papers at his backside.

  Dohnanyi shook his head. “That’s not much good. It will be easy enough for the SS to trace you. Give everything to me.” He held out his hand. “I know someone who can take care of this.”

  Dietrich handed over the papers, feeling a bit sheepish. And when he and Elisabeth had left, Dohnanyi sorted through the papers, then picked up the telephone and called the minister of justice.

  HE LONGED TO BE a scholar hidden away in a dormered attic room lined on all sides with books, so that no matter which way he swiveled in his chair—and of course the chair must swivel—he would see thick volumes of theology. He wanted to emerge from this room groggy from his studies and wander to Berlin University, where he would deliver lectures of such density his students would not be able to look up from their note-taking. They would whisper about him afterward, shake their heads and wonder what sort of life he must lead. He would enjoy the speculation. He wanted to be wildly, luxuriously eccentric, instead of what he was becoming—practical, organized, and a writer only of pamphlets.

  He began to think of the students as his enemies. When he posted notices of meetings on the Christian response to the new government, they were ripped down. More and more university scholars sported shiny gold-and-enamel swastika pins on their lapels. They stood in the middle of Dietrich’s lectures with a great show of slamming notebooks, and walked out. He tried to ignore the interruptions, though his face reddened as he bent over his notes and sought to control his voice. But the most disconcerting challenge came in the customary way. A young man with the face of an angel and bearing on that face the look of aggrieved youth smitten with divine knowledge raised his hand at the end of a lecture.

  Dietrich paused as he straightened his notes. “Yes, Herr ah—?”

  “Bielenberg.”

  “Herr Bielenberg. Your question?”

  “In fact, a complaint, Herr Professor.”

  Dietrich noted the swastika pin on Bielenberg’s lapel and held his breath.

  “You speak of theology as an intellectual pursuit, Herr Professor, which implies openness to ideas. Yet you consistently trample upon the sensibilities of your students.”

  “In what way?”

  “You have no respect for our opinions. And no openness toward the new thinking in Germany.”

  “Hear, hear,” someone called from the back of the lecture hall.

  “You wish to force everyone to think as you do,” said Bielenberg. “You are narrow-minded. In addition you are unnecessarily negative when you speak of the Fatherland. We students want open-mindedness, not a simplistic parroting of liberal nonsense. Is that too much to expect from the lecturers of this university?”

  These remarks were greeted by thunderous applause. Dietrich searched for a response, but his mind seemed to have turned to glue. He, narrow-minded? An enforcer of prescribed opinion because he appealed to reason and tolerance and Christian charity? As he groped for an answer the students were leaving the lecture hall, filing out with loud guffaws and much back-slapping, or moving in small packs toward Bielenberg to pump his hand.

  Dietrich navigated the marble staircase to Unter den Linden and crossed to the garden beside the State Opera House. There he slumped on a stone bench in the growing darkness, gulping the winter air like a thirsty man at a cold stream, and knew he would not stay much longer at the university.

  Although his pamphlets were not at all what he would have liked to spend his time writing, he tried to think of them as theology of a practical sort. This was something of a comfort. He neglected his other work, for always he was attending meetings, organizing meetings, speaking at meetings, in an effort to prod the Church into some response. Day after day he sat in drab parish halls, dragging on one cigarette after another and blowing smoke toward ceilings mottled with brown watermarks while this one fretted, “Hitler may be a bit hard on the Jews,” and that one responded, “Of course he’s only huffing and puffing, it plays well to the crowd and makes for a colorful speech,” and another said, “Doesn’t hurt to have a bit of a shaking all round, wake everyone up.”

  Sometimes resolutions were passed. Most of the time nothing was done and more meetings were called.

  One saving grace was that Elisabeth often accompanied him. He enjoyed her company most when they traveled together, driving from town to town in Brandenburg and Saxony and Thuringia with bundles of pamphlets stuffed in the boot of the family Mercedes. At the end of a meeting they escaped whatever stuffy parish hall they’
d been in and headed to a café for strudel dredged with cream, and coffee. As though the Political Situation, as they called it, had taken on the role of organizer of their social calendar. Dietrich liked to be seen with her, especially when she laughed at him, covering her mouth with one hand and opening her eyes wide, or leaned back in her chair so that her short dark hair fell away from her face. They held hands beneath the table. He imagined other men might be envious, that elderly women sitting across the room watched them with pleasure and recalled their own first love.

  Their time alone was different. Dietrich enjoyed holding her close, liked to kiss her and run his fingers through her hair, around her neck, and down the curve of her back before undressing her and taking her into his bed. But when all was done he felt a nagging emptiness in the pit of his stomach, even as he held her close. For he wasn’t certain he loved her enough to marry her, and in such circumstances he thought it wrong, very wrong, to be sleeping with her.

  He admitted this to himself at Friedrichsbrunn, though he hadn’t the courage to tell Elisabeth then. The drive to the Harz Mountains with the wounded Falk Harnack, hidden beneath a bearskin rug so not even the top of his head showed, had been quiet and tense. Exhausted even before setting out, they were forced to take turns resting and driving, so that whoever was awake had no company but the sounds of the road and the sleep-heavy breathing of the other. Dawn broke well before they arrived. Outside Quedlinburg they ran low on petrol, but Dietrich was afraid to pull up to a pump. Instead he stopped a quarter of a mile past a station and hiked back, purchased petrol in a can, and returned to the Mercedes.

  Friedrichsbrunn was not what Elisabeth had expected. When Dietrich had talked of the Bonhoeffer vacation home in the Harz Mountains, she had imagined a half-timbered lodge nestled in an isolated hollow. But the Friedrichsbrunn house was ugly, a squat structure of brick studded with gables, one of several houses in an open field between the village and the woods. Dietrich drove the Mercedes across the frozen garden and pulled up beside the back door. Falk was awake and summoned enough strength to stumble into the house supported on either side by Dietrich and Elisabeth. It was broad daylight, impossible to hide their arrival, but no one in the village seemed about, and no one stopped by, even after Dietrich built a fire in the bedroom grate.