Prisoner of Night and Fog

by Anne Blankman

  “I’m going back to the boardinghouse. I must go,” she said when he tried to protest. “It’s the only way, don’t you see? I’ve thought it over and I’m fairly certain I’ll be safe. The only people I told about what Reinhard did to me aren’t likely to repeat it to anyone else. Uncle Dolf certainly won’t mention it, since he prefers to ignore anything unpleasant, and Mama won’t want anyone to know. Reinhard shan’t have any idea I’ve tattled on him. He’ll either be kind to me or ignore me for a few days.”

  “Your brother’s dangerous—”

  “I know.” Fear sharpened her tongue. “But I must risk it. If I ever want to discover the truth about my father, then I have to go back.”

  He looked down. Even though he stood motionless, she sensed a battle warring inside him. Ruth and Aaron stood nearby, silent.

  “Yes,” Daniel said finally. “But I hate the thought of you returning to that place—I refuse to call it your home.”

  He understood. He couldn’t call the boardinghouse her home either. She’d been right about Daniel; he saw through things that other people never even noticed.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “When can I see you again?” His eyes scraped over her face, and she nearly shivered under the penetrating gaze. For the first time in her life, she knew she had met someone from whom she could hide nothing.

  “I don’t know. It isn’t wise for us to meet in public. But I’ll telephone you at the newspaper office as soon as I can.”

  “Gretchen.” He raised his hand, as if he might touch her face, but she saw Ruth’s disapproving expression and stepped back.

  “I’ll telephone you,” she said again and hurried outside, into a street turned orange and gold by the setting sun. Daniel caught up to her before she had wheeled the bicycle off the curb.

  “Be safe,” he said.

  “I will,” she promised, even though she knew she should promise him nothing.

  Now he did touch her face—a feather-light pressure as he laid his hand on her cheek. Everything within her yearned to turn her face into his hand, touch her lips to his palm. But she didn’t dare.

  He stepped back. “Stay alive.”

  A few days ago, she would have laughed at the words, chiding him for sounding so melodramatic. Today, she knew better. “You, too.” Before she could think herself out of it, she hopped astride the bicycle and started pedaling back into the prison of her life.

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  23

  IN THE KITCHEN, MAMA LEANED OVER THE SUDS-filled sink, scrubbing dishes, her unpinned hair curtaining her face. The soft sound of her sobs echoed throughout the small room, and Gretchen paused, her hand on the doorknob, her brain reeling.

  Mama never cried. Not since Papa’s death, and even those had been angry tears, spilled while she cursed him for his foolish incompetence in allowing himself to get shot. She certainly had never wept over Gretchen.

  When she stepped into the room, Mama’s head snapped up. Her blue eyes were rimmed with red. Blotches discolored her fair skin. “Gretl,” she gasped, and rushed forward, flinging her damp arms around Gretchen.

  For a moment, Gretchen stood stiffly in the embrace, unmoving. Tears burned her eyes, but her blackened eyelid couldn’t blink them away. With the heel of her hand, she swiped under her eyes, hoping her mother hadn’t noticed. For so long, she had yearned for an embrace from Mama, or praise for her good school marks, or approval about her future goals—any sort of attention. Now she didn’t even want Mama to touch her.

  Finally, her mother seemed to notice and stepped back, her arms falling awkwardly to her sides.

  “Have you eaten?” Mama asked. “We had chops for supper. I’ve saved you one.”

  She moved toward the icebox, stopping when Gretchen said, “No, I can’t eat anything that requires so much chewing.”

  “Oh. Of course.” Her mother flushed. “Perhaps soup. That should go down easily. Why don’t you sit while I fix it?”

  “No, thank you. I would rather lie down.” She felt almost painfully polite with her mother. “Good night.”

  “I know your accident was very upsetting.” Mama’s eyes were riveted on Gretchen’s battered face. “You’ll see, with time, everything will seem better.” Her voice held a pleading note.

  An accident. Naturally that was the story Mama would tell. Exhaustion weighed so heavily on Gretchen’s aching body, she couldn’t even summon the energy for anger. She headed for the front hall.

  “I’ll bring soup to your room,” Mama called after her. “Get some rest, darling.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  There was a copy of Mein Kampf in the communal bookcase. She had expected to find the usual cluster of ladies knitting in the parlor, but two men sat on the ancient chintz sofa instead, their forms turned to flame by the setting sun streaming through the window. Her heart froze for an instant, then started pounding so hard she could scarcely hear them talking. It was her brother and Ernst Röhm.

  Reinhard didn’t look at her; she might have been a stranger passing on the street. With unsteady steps, she moved into the parlor, keeping to the shadows. The bookcase stood against the wall, directly beside the doorway.

  As she bent down, her knees screamed, and she let out a tiny gasp of pain before she could stop herself. A quick glance at the sofa told her the men hadn’t noticed.

  Her scraped-up hands whined as she forced them to grasp Mein Kampf and pull it from the shelf. Moving gingerly, like an old woman, she rose and started toward the hall.

  “Ah, Fräulein Müller.” Röhm’s rough voice reached after her. “Come back, won’t you?”

  Dread settled like a stone in her stomach. What could he possibly want with her? Slowly, she turned.

  “Grüss Gott,” she said.

  Röhm waggled his finger teasingly. Sunlight from the window glistened off his scalp. “Come now, Fräulein Müller,” he said, “I should have expected a proper salutation from you.” He rose and saluted. “Heil Hitler.”

  “Heil Hitler.” She couldn’t look at either of them. Instead, she stared at her feet, indecently bare in her falling-apart espadrilles.

  “Yes, Gretchen, you ought to know better,” Reinhard said. His mocking tone forced bile into her throat. Her fingers curled into the book’s spine, the aching knuckles protesting.

  From the corner of her eye, she watched Reinhard’s handsome face split into a careless grin. “Herr Röhm, I’d say I’ve caught you up on everything I did for the Party on my trip. I’d best be going, as I have a date in a few minutes.”

  “Far be it from me to stand in the way of young love.” They both laughed, and Reinhard loped from the room, ruffling Gretchen’s hair as he passed.

  Her muscles tensed as she willed herself not to flinch. She heard him whistling as he headed down the front hall, then banged the front door shut. How could he feel nothing at all? He had smiled at her so blankly, as though he didn’t remember what he’d done two days ago.

  “Walk me out, dear child,” Röhm said.

  As they stepped into the brightly illuminated front hall, he started.

  “Fräulein Müller, what the devil has happened to you?” His small, hard eyes focused on her. “I couldn’t see your injuries in the parlor, but now, in this light . . . Were you in an automobile accident?”

  Irritation surged through her. Anyone who had been involved in as many fights as Ernst Röhm had should recognize the telltale marks of fists.

  “It was very painful.” She sidestepped the questions. “I wonder if I could ask you something, Herr Röhm.”

  He inclined his head, waiting.

  “There was an old man taken out of the Circus Krone during Herr Hitler’s speech the other day,” she began, wondering how best to ask without raising any suspicions.

  Röhm was already shaking his head. “Stefan Dearstyne. One of the old h
angers-on from the early days of struggle. He’d been skulking about the Braunes Haus, asking impertinent questions about the putsch—as if anyone cares about such ancient history! Raking up that old disaster is embarrassing for the Führer, so I had him removed from the speech. Then he did us all a favor by dying.”

  He barked out a laugh and she tried to smile, but her sore lips couldn’t manage it. Röhm winced sympathetically, advising her to drink plenty of warm brandy until the pain was past; then he tipped his cap and was gone.

  She headed up the stairs, thinking. Röhm couldn’t be involved in her father’s murder. That much she knew. Every account she had heard of the putsch placed him at the Reichswehr, or National Defense, headquarters. Along with his minions, he had seized control of the same place where he had once worked but by late morning state troopers had surrounded the building.

  Freeing Röhm and his men had been the original reason for the march through Munich, she recalled as she stepped into her bedroom. The men who were still huddled at the Bürgerbräukeller, growing more anxious and despondent by the moment, knowing the revolution had failed, had pounced on a chance to do something.

  Within minutes of the first rallying cry, they were sweeping through the city, intent on rescuing Röhm and his men from the police. A ragged parade that had been stopped in the narrow Residenzstrasse by a shower of bullets.

  Bullets. Gretchen frowned, letting the burlap sack slide off her shoulder onto the floor. Another part of the story no one knew about—who had fired the first shot? Some said an overeager state trooper, but most said the bullet came from the National Socialists’ side and had struck a policeman.

  There were too many questions; she was no nearer to an answer than when she had first begun. Soon she would make a time line of those crucial sixteen hours, but now she yearned only for the sweet darkness of sleep.

  After dragging the chair into its usual position, she fell onto the bed, still in her clothes, and sank into a gray and dreamless slumber.

  It might have been minutes or hours later—at first she wasn’t sure which—when her empty stomach jerked her awake. She discovered that Mama had left a dinner tray for her outside the door, and she was grateful for the soup, even though it had gone cold.

  When she had finished eating, she checked her watch—midnight, she had slept for nearly four hours—and was flipping to the next chapter in Mein Kampf when she recognized a light step on the stair. Herr Doktor Whitestone.

  Carefully she dabbed her still-tender face with a washcloth; then she ran a comb through her disheveled hair and tucked Hitler’s book under her arm. It was time. While she was sleeping, her thoughts had ordered themselves together, and now she knew her next step.

  Whitestone was already in his room by the time she entered the hallway, but he answered the door after only one knock. Fatigue or concern had formed dark shadows beneath his eyes. White strands she hadn’t noticed before wove through his thick, dark hair.

  “Fräulein Müller,” he said, “are you all right? I have been so worried—”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said, feeling for the first time that it was actually true. She held up Mein Kampf. “I’ve been reading this today and I have many questions for you, Herr Doktor Whitestone, if you have the time to speak to me now.”

  “Of course, of course.” He ushered her into the tiny bed-sitting room. Two days ago, she might have hesitated, knowing it wasn’t proper for a young, unaccompanied girl to enter an older man’s private quarters, but she no longer cared.

  There were only two places to sit, so he chose the bed, she the chair. “How can I help you, Fräulein Müller?”

  She took a bracing breath. “You said you came to Munich to study Herr Hitler.”

  “Yes, he’s a most interesting psychological puzzle.” Whitestone’s face lit up the same way her teachers’ did when they were discussing a favorite topic. “Other psychoanalysts have written about him, but I hope to gain a deeper perspective by seeing him at close quarters.”

  “Have you learned much?”

  “More than I expected, actually. Watching him in his favorite cafés, holding court for hours, has been quite informative.”

  “Good,” she said. “Herr Doktor, I’d like you to teach me everything you know about him. From a psychoanalytical standpoint,” she added as he sat back in surprise. She was expressing herself badly, and she tried again. “I’ve been so disturbed by his behavior over the past few days. I’ve begun reading his book, and I believe I’m starting to see a part of him I never noticed before.”

  “I don’t know how much help I can be.” He opened a silver tin and offered her a cigarette. Impatient, she shook her head and watched as he puffed away, the smoke curling in a thin plume around his face. “I don’t understand him,” he said. “I doubt anyone does, not fully. He cloaks his past in secrecy. But there are small clues that give parts of him away.”

  Whitestone looked at her sharply. “I’m not sure this is the wisest course to take, Fräulein Müller. I assume you’ve been beaten by your brother—you needn’t look ashamed, child, it wasn’t your fault—but you must accept you’ve undergone significant trauma. It would be best if you sought out help for yourself.”

  “This is how I’ll help myself.” The mention of Reinhard tightened her stomach into knots. For a second, she wasn’t sure she could continue talking, but somehow she shoved the words out of her battered mouth. “Until my injuries heal, I can’t go anywhere. There’s nothing for me to do but sit in my room. I must do something meaningful with my time, and I want to understand Herr Hitler.”

  Whitestone lifted his eyebrows but refrained from comment. “Very well,” he said, and began.

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  24

  AUGUST SLIPPED INTO SEPTEMBER, A MERE TEN days as the green rains of summer hardened into the red-gold of autumn. In the mornings, Gretchen helped her mother prepare breakfast for the boarders, and in the afternoons she stayed in her room, poring over Mein Kampf and the books on psychoanalysis Herr Doktor Whitestone had lent her. Geli rang to invite her on a trip to Hitler’s mountain home in two weeks’ time, and twice Daniel called her on the common telephone in the downstairs hallway—and twice she whispered he mustn’t contact her at the boardinghouse, in case her brother answered. But she couldn’t stop the burst of warmth she felt when Daniel replied he was worried about her and had needed to know she was all right.

  The second night she was back, Eva had burst into her room, sobbing, her voice wobbly when she declared her father had no right to keep her from the friend she cherished most in the world and what on earth has happened to you, Gretchen, turn on the light and let me see your face!

  When Gretchen clicked on the lamp, Eva stared for a moment, then wrapped her arms about Gretchen and cried. Eva didn’t ask again what had happened; it was obvious from her expression that she knew, and she promised they would always be friends, always, and someday she, Eva, would have some real power and she would send that beast far away from Munich.

  As Eva cried on the bed, Gretchen stared at her reflection. Bruises circled her now-open left eye. Her still-swollen mouth had started to lose its puffy, misshapen appearance, and the cracks in her lips had begun to knit themselves together. The red imprint of Reinhard’s hand on her cheek had faded to pale pink. Bandages still covered her hands and knees. Except for the long blond braid shining down her back, she looked so little like Uncle Dolf’s golden pet.

  She wouldn’t be that girl, not ever again.

  She seized her sewing kit from the armoire’s top shelf. And even as Eva gasped “What are you doing, Gretl?” she grabbed the scissors and cut through the braid with one hard thwack.

  She shook her head, enjoying the sudden lightness. Her hair barely reached her jawline. Freed from the heavy length, the strands had already started to curl. She looked like the flappers she
saw sometimes on the streets, or in the American film magazines she and Eva liked to read: modern and daring and completely different.

  Nothing like a proper National Socialist girl.

  She barely heard as Eva started exclaiming over how sophisticated she looked, and insisting she sit down and let her trim and polish up the haircut. Dazed, she sat while Eva fussed and played with her hair, but she couldn’t rip her gaze from the glass. Different and new and completely herself—for the first time.

  After Gretchen returned to work at the Braunes Haus, the next six days settled into a strange new rhythm. No one seemed to have noticed her absence—or if they had, they knew better than to say anything. When she left the office, she looked for Daniel in the street, but she never saw him. Perhaps he had understood when she had told him on the telephone that she needed to proceed cautiously. She couldn’t risk attracting her brother’s attention again.

  In the evenings, once supper was over and the dishes washed, Gretchen sneaked into Whitestone’s room. She listened quietly while he taught her all he could. First, he said, she must gain a basic understanding of psychoanalytic theory. She learned about hysteria and irrational fears masking real ones and the mysteries locked within dreams.

  Only a year ago, Whitestone told her while they sat in his room, lit by a single candle, their voices low as they listened with one ear for Reinhard’s footstep, Sigmund Freud had published an important work titled Civilization and Its Discontents. In it, he had tried to answer the timeless question “Why are people unhappy?” and he had concluded that one way people try to lessen their unhappiness is by finding a group to hate.

  In her mind’s eye, she saw the passage from Mein Kampf that she had read again and again. The art of leadership . . . consists in consolidating the attention of the people against a single adversary. She recognized the man trying to destroy this world and create another in its place.