“They’ll notice the smoke,” Elisabeth said, “and know someone’s here.”
“Yes,” said Dietrich. “But to be honest, we keep mostly to ourselves here, and people in the village have never paid much attention to us. Except for the families who run the guesthouses, they’re rather insular.”
As are you Bonhoeffers, Elisabeth thought. She went downstairs to search for food. In the cellar she found a bin of potatoes and onions, butts of crusty ham and salt beef suspended from rafters, and a rack of dusty wine bottles. The pantry held a round white cheese, tins of herring, and bottles of brandy and schnapps. Back upstairs, where Dietrich had changed Falk’s dressing and put him to bed, she said, “I was afraid there’d be no food. But it looks as though we could survive here all winter.”
Falk, groggy again, mumbled, “Something hot to drink?”
Elisabeth patted his blanket. “You’ll have a toddy very soon, and something to eat. And your brother will come as well.” She looked at Dietrich. “Won’t he?”
“I hope. If Suse has got hold of him.”
Arvid Harnack arrived sooner than expected. Suse had quickly reached him, and he had driven through the night with his American wife, Mildred. Mildred possessed the blunt optimism and aura of self-sufficiency Dietrich had noted before—and been disconcerted by—in American women. When she saw the haggard-looking Falk, she said quite cheerfully, “Oh dear, our boy will need some rest, won’t he.”
Falk blinked up at her. “Mildred,” he croaked, “where will you take me?”
She sat on the edge of the bed and patted his hand. “You’ll come home with us to Munich, of course. We’ll fatten you up, and then you can get back to your work in the theater. How does that sound?”
He nodded and shut his eyes. “It’s not so bad then?”
Arvid, a taller, thinner, and bespectacled version of Falk, said, “It’s still Germany, of course, no matter who’s chancellor.”
“Of course,” Mildred said briskly. “All this will blow over soon enough. The German people won’t be ruled by such idiots.”
They ate sandwiches, huddled around the hearth in Falk’s room for warmth, then carried Falk to the Harnacks’ waiting car. Arvid and Dietrich shook hands, Mildred kissed Elisabeth on the cheek, and the Harnacks were gone. Dietrich and Elisabeth stood arm in arm in front of the house.
“Are Americans always so cheerful?” she asked.
Dietrich laughed. “They’re in love with happy endings. And the women can be a bit pushy.”
“Oh?” Elisabeth looked up at him. “I didn’t think so. I quite liked her, actually.”
They walked through the garden to the back of the house. A clear midwinter sun lit the pasture with a brown glow, and the dark looming woods were shot through at the edges with threads of light. In the distance the carpet of forest ran up the haphazard folds of the Harz.
“I’m beginning to understand the attraction of Friedrichsbrunn,” Elisabeth said.
“They’re wonderful woods to walk in,” said Dietrich. “All rises and ravines. One expects at any moment to encounter a goblin or a Walpurgis Night witch.”
“Are there lonely cottages?”
“Oh, yes, and abandoned pilgrims’ crosses and bears who once were princes. Shall we stay a day or two? Or do you want to go back to Berlin tonight?”
“I’m so tired,” Elisabeth said. “Let’s stay.”
Dietrich had daydreamed of bringing a new wife to Friedrichsbrunn on honeymoon. Most women he knew (of the few women he knew) would have wanted to go to Paris or Rome. But Elisabeth was the Friedrichsbrunn type. She liked the outdoors and had a vigorous way of walking, head up and footsteps loud as she plowed along paths crusty with old snow. The cold air quickened her face behind the white veil of her own frozen breath. Elisabeth should fit very well in the Friedrichsbrunn daydream.
Except Dietrich was not happy. He put it down to guilt. He was deeply old-fashioned where marriage was concerned. The teachings of the Roman church on divorce seemed admirable to him, much to the dismay and amusement of his brothers and sisters. Marriage was a sacrament, he argued, a sign of grace, and once undertaken with vows to one’s partner and to God, it must last forever. How then, Suse once asked, would anyone dare to marry? Perhaps, he’d answered, few should marry. And he’d thought what a frightening responsibility it was, to commit to a single person for the rest of one’s life. Suppose one’s chosen mate failed in some terribly important way? Suppose she, for example, proved shallow, had only pretended to love Bach so as to impress the other, or read only trivial romantic fiction, or became a hypochondriac, or secretly admired Hitler? Or, or, or? There were a thousand ways to disappoint Dietrich.
And if marriage was sacred, how dare he sleep with his future wife without the benefit of the sacrament, especially at Friedrichsbrunn, his family’s home?
When they came in from their late walk in the Friedrichsbrunn woods, he said, “Since we’re both so tired, perhaps we should sleep in separate rooms. It would be more restful.”
She looked surprised. “Why? Is something wrong?”
“No. Of course not.”
She would not be put off. “What is it? One of your depressions? If you’re wanting time alone I can entertain myself. But we’d be warmer sleeping together. You’d have to build another fire otherwise, and we may not have enough wood.”
He was suddenly angry that she would reduce the situation to a practical level, and saying nothing, went across the hall to the doorway of the room he slept in when the family was in residence. It was a long, narrow alcove that lay in shadow, and the windows were laced with hard frost.
She came to stand behind him. “It looks as though it misses the sun,” she said.
He reluctantly admitted that the room was one of the coolest in the house because it sheltered beneath the close-standing oak and lacked direct sun, making it much prized in the summer months. And as he spoke she reached beneath his jacket and ran her hand up his spine and let it rest beneath his shoulder blades. He pulled her close and rested his cheek on the top of her head, knew he would give in to desire once again.
Back in Berlin they visited the service at Elisabeth’s home parish of Annenkirche in Dahlem. They sat in the last pew. During the lessons, Dietrich’s attention wandered. He studied the walls, tried to imagine the former glory of the faded medieval paintings which hovered ghostlike just beneath the thin surface of whitewash. Elisabeth interrupted his reverie to point out this or that distinguished parishioner. “General von Hammerstein-Equord,” she said in his ear. “Friedrich Dietlof Graf von der Schulenburg. Major Hans Oster.”
Dietrich studied Hans Oster with mild interest, because he had heard Hans von Dohnanyi mention him recently. Oster, Dohnanyi thought, might be One of Us. But Oster was also in disgrace for conducting an affair with the wife of a senior officer. He sat now beside his own wife (no farther away from her than Dietrich sat from Elisabeth), eyes on the pulpit, with an iron-straight posture that can only be achieved by a military man or a fanatic.
Pastor Martin Niemöller was preaching. His sermon, which Dietrich carefully evaluated, was noncommittal (taking its text, as required, from one of the many verses in the Gospel of John which meditated on Jesus as the bread of life). The ending was more to the point—there is only one God, and He is already known to us. After the service, as Niemöller shook the hands of departing parishioners, he grabbed Dietrich by the arm—“Ah, yes, Pastor Bonhoeffer, I know why you are here”—and motioned him aside. Dietrich and Elisabeth waited outside, at the edge of the crowded cemetery with its maze of snow-capped headstones and shrubbery. When the crowd had cleared, Niemöller, a thin man with a wizened face that made him look older than his years, came to them and said, “I would take you home with me”—a large comfortable-looking brick house with a bay window that overlooked the church—“but my wife has influenza and I don’t like to disturb the quiet. However, the Café Luise is just down the street.”
So they ended in the fr
ont room of the Luise, overlooking the frozen beer garden, which in summer would be filled with shirtsleeved men and women in cotton frocks talking over round iron tables. They ate plates of schnitzel and buttery noodles washed down with red wine.
“Now,” Niemöller said, chewing his words as vigorously as his meat, “we must deal with this Hitler fellow. He must be made to understand he can’t dictate to the church as he does to those brownshirts of his.”
Dietrich nodded.
“On the other hand,” Niemöller continued, “I look for some good in him. Do you know what I hear from my parishioners?—and many of them are highly placed in government, as I’m sure you know. Hitler will soon take us out of the League of Nations.” He hefted the bottle of burgundy. “More wine?” And smiled. “That will be something, anyway.”
Elisabeth drove back to the Grunewald while Dietrich stared moodily out the window.
“He was a hero in the Great War,” Elisabeth pointed out. “A U-boat commander. Not that that excuses him. But you have complained about the Versailles Treaty yourself.”
“When was the last time you attended one of his services?” Dietrich asked abruptly.
“It’s been a while,” she said. “Over a year. We’ve been all over the place on weekends, you and I—”
“That’s not the only reason,” he said.
“No,” she said, “not the only reason. I’m not comfortable in church. I only go with you for the company, and because I believe in our work. But I’m not so sure, Dietrich, what I believe anymore. Or who I am.”
“Who you are?”
She drove for a time, careful to avoid the rims of hard snow on the shoulders of the roadway.
“Every day,” she said, “I feel more like a Jew. I’m not sure about the rest.”
That night they went to bed in her apartment and lay without touching, their faces turned toward the window, watching clumps of snow flutter against the pane.
At last she said, “We don’t have to go on, you know. Not if you don’t want to.”
“You’re moving away from me,” he said. “You’re becoming a different person.”
She sat up and pulled the quilt tight around her. “Don’t dare blame me.”
“I don’t mean—” he stammered, trying to think how to continue. “Elisabeth, I do care about you.”
“I know you care about me,” she said. “I’m not sure how much.”
“You know how I feel about marriage.”
“God knows we’ve argued enough about that,” she said. “You’re the most old-fashioned man I know.”
He raised up on one elbow and said almost eagerly, “Then doesn’t it seem strange for me to be here in bed with you?”
She shut her eyes.
“That first night—” he searched for words—“it was as though the world had turned upside down. As though normal ways of behaving had gone out the window. At least normal for me. But I’m getting my bearings again.”
He waited for her to answer. When she was silent he continued, “I can’t sleep with you again. At least, not until we’re married. And I’m not ready to marry.”
She turned her face away and nodded.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She put her hand to her face and sobbed. He stroked her arm, feeling miserable, and said, “I still want to see you. I want everything else to be exactly the same. Except, a step back please, from this. At least, for now. And I need your help because God knows I find you attractive and it is easy for me to give in to that. So I must ask you not to initiate any physical—”
“Then you should go,” she managed to say.
He dressed quickly, after stepping away from the snow-lit window into shadow, as though modesty would erase past intimacy.
When he went to the door she said, “We may not be able to go on as before. Men who feel bad usually blame the woman.”
“I won’t,” he said. He came back then and sat on the edge of the bed, pushed the hair from her forehead with one large hand. “There is no blame, only gratitude.” He bent and kissed her forehead. “And there is a future. I just need some time.”
She touched his cheek and shook her head. “We’ll see,” she said. And used the rest of her tears when he had gone.
IN HIS ROOM HIGH UP in Wangenheimstraße 14, in the privileged quiet of the Grunewald, Dietrich listens to the radio. It is not what he should be doing. He should be writing. Instead he sits at his desk, sips a glass of wine.
He turns the dial ever so slowly. The radio crackles and squawks—interrupted now and then by a low, soothing voice, a wisp of violin music or quiet French horn—
Except for the clearest frequency, the RRG, which erupts with Adolf Hitler in full cry, answered by the clamor of a cheering throng—a broadcast from the Sportpalast. It is the first political rally to be carried live on radio.
Dietrich listens, chin resting in hand. He is alone and yet he is not, for the Nazis have provided radio receivers at nominal cost to anyone who can scrape together a few marks. This is the idea of Goebbels, who dreams of millions of Germans, even the poorest Germans, sitting with hands on chins before their new receivers. Next Goebbels will imagine everyone listening to the same thing.
Unlike Dietrich, who quickly tires of Hitler’s tirade despite a desire to learn more about what the Nazis are up to. He shakes his head and decides this new tactic will fail, for how will anyone be able to bear the stale jokes and forced humor, the historical inaccuracies, spiritual vapidity, and upside-down logic that characterize Hitler’s speech?
He concentrates again on the dial and at last picks up a distant thump and wail. He turns up the volume. Swing music from the BBC. Chick Webb and his orchestra.
Dietrich shuts his eyes tight, and the wine and the music bring him to tears.
Doppelgänger
EVEN AS DIETRICH LISTENS to Hitler live from the Sportpalast, the Nobel laureate Thomas Mann addresses a gathering of Social Democrats amid the baroque splendors of the Schauspielhaus. The author cuts an appropriately melancholy figure, dwarfed as he is by the massive podium imported into this musical theater for the occasion, and backed by a massive red banner of the Social Democratic Party embossed with SPD in bold blackgothic letters. He surveys the gathering from his wooden battlement, then speaks in a voice so low the front rows lean forward to hear him and the others shake their heads and look questioningly at one another: What can I say to you. I only write books. You are the political leaders. And you don’t know what to do.
Outside the Schauspielhaus the black-uniformed SS gather around their beloved leader, Obersturmführer Alois Bauer, who is soon to be promoted to Hauptsturmführer. They clutch truncheons in their hands and carry their pistols loosely in their belts. Their orders do not allow them to kill or harm in any way the famous Thomas Mann. No one reads him anyway, they have been told, except intellectuals with shriveled balls, and good German students forced to read him at university are only too glad to pitch his work on the bonfires. They want something practical, something that will get them a job when they leave school. Send Thomas Mann away and no one will die for missing him.
Only Social Democrats should have their heads broken. Their abiding sin is muddled thinking, so their brains must be cleared of nonsense once and for all. This is how Alois Bauer views his work, as the promotion of clear thinking. He is himself an intellectual. He is a student of history, after all, and a defender of true German art and music. Bauer has no uncertainties about what to do. He has a firm grip on his truncheon.
Betrayals
IF BERLIN WERE A CITY OF HILLS, like London or Paris, people would have gathered on Hampstead or Montmartre to watch the Reichstag burn. As it was, those at some distance only knew the pulsing red glow on the horizon and the wail of fire trucks. Then came the explosion beneath the dome of the Sessions Chamber which broke glass in nearby buildings and rattled windows for miles around. In the music room of Wangenheimstraße 14, where Dietrich Bonhoeffer had just finished a piece by Mendel
ssohn for his parents, the crystal chandelier quivered and the strings of the grand piano hummed.
“Dear God,” Paula Bonhoeffer said.
Dietrich said, “A bomb, do you think?”
“Perhaps an airplane has crashed at Tempelhof,” said his father. “We’ll find out soon enough from the morning paper. Now, shall I begin the Dostoevsky? If there is some type of alarm, it should ruin the effect of Dietrich’s playing anyway.” And he began the literary reading, this time from The Idiot, which always followed the evening’s music. The clamor of distant sirens lent an eerie atmosphere to Prince Myshkin’s monologue.
The telephone rang. Dr. Bonhoeffer removed his reading glasses, laid his book aside, and picked up the receiver. He listened for a time without speaking, then said, “I see. Of course. Goodbye,” and replaced the phone on its cradle. He looked at Dietrich. “Where is Suse this evening?”
“I believe she’s at her flat. What is it?”
“That was Hans. The Reichstag is burning. He thinks we should lock the doors and stay inside, and that it might be best for Suse to join us here for a few days, if she can come quickly. And he said we mustn’t involve Keppel this time.”
Dietrich stood up. “I’ll go for her myself,” he said, and then, “What is Hans afraid will happen?”
“He thinks,” said Dr. Bonhoeffer, “that the Nazis will be out and about tonight. Will be quite busy. So take care and come home at once.”
Paula Bonhoeffer sat with her eyes shut and one hand covering her mouth. Dietrich kissed her on the cheek and left. In twenty minutes he was ringing the bell of Suse’s flat in the Magdeburger Platz. She opened the door at once.
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