Prisoner of Night and Fog

by Anne Blankman

  Then Daniel grabbed her shoulders, grinning widely. “You were amazing! I’ve never met anyone as brave as you.”

  She opened her mouth to say he was more courageous than any boy she had known, but he leaned down, pressing his lips on hers, capturing her half-gasped-out breath of surprise at his abruptness.

  She had been kissed before: flat pecks on the backs of her hands, quick caresses against her cheek, an awkward series of fumbles last summer when one of the SA boys walked her home from the cinema, the soft pressure of Daniel’s lips two nights ago.

  But she had never been kissed like this. His mouth, warm and insistent, and his arms, wrapping around her so tightly she could feel his heartbeat pounding through his clothes, and his body shaking as though he stood in a windstorm, and the blood roaring through her veins, and the sudden desire to feel his bare skin on hers. The world narrowed to a single point, his lips on hers, and she wound her arms around his neck, letting the soft strands of his hair brush her fingers, sharing a breath she wanted never to end.

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  HarperCollins Publishers

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  28

  THE STREETCAR CARRIED GRETCHEN AND DANIEL to the Englischer Garten, where they moved quickly along the winding pathways. Ahead, the Chinese Tower rose into the night sky, a giant, hulking shadow spearing up from the grassy clearing. A massive pagoda-shaped structure, it looked more like a foreign temple than like one of the city’s most popular beer gardens.

  Daniel drew her down to a park bench. The scent of summer flowers had faded long ago, and now all she smelled was rich, damp earth, tinged with the bite of decay. Overhead, the moon hung low in the sky, and up ahead, Müncheners laughed and drank at tables clustered around the Chinese Tower. None turned to peer at them.

  w

  Sadness, heavy as a rock, lay on her chest. Maybe the father she had loved and worshipped hadn’t existed at all.

  Silently, Daniel slipped the packet of envelopes from his suit coat pocket. The first five letters Gretchen skimmed quickly before handing them over to Daniel, glad for a distraction from her depressing thoughts, passing over the descriptions of bad food, long marches, and streaming rain. The sixth, though, she read twice. It dated from November 1914, when the war was still new enough to be exciting, and Private Klaus Müller still naive enough to believe that Germany would emerge victorious before the new year.

  My dearest Liesel, she read,

  You complained in your letter that I scarcely tell you anything about my comrades and my new daily life in the 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, so I shall satisfy your curiosity. Most of the men are dependable, steady fellows from Munich, but there’s one man in our midst who is a definite oddity—a funny little Austrian called Adi Hitler who had been living in Munich before war broke out.

  He’s a courier, so, as you can imagine, he takes tremendous risks to deliver messages when our company lines to command and battalion posts are knocked out by artillery fire. He’s a peculiar fellow—skinny, sloppy, bombastically pro-German and patriotic, but generally well liked. He never abandons a wounded comrade and frequently sketches amusing caricatures of the other soldiers.

  He is quite alone in the world, I gather, for he never speaks of his family or, indeed, his background at all, and he receives no care packages from home. You know how hungry I would be if I could not count on the food you send me!

  I write these words sitting beneath some trees in the countryside outside Messines. I keep hearing the scream of the exploding shells, although now there is comfortable quiet all around me. It makes me wonder if my mind is beginning to fail me. . . .

  The letter went on, but there was no further mention of Hitler, so Gretchen pressed it into Daniel’s waiting hand. She hurried through three more months of letters: rain-soaked trenches, decreasing food rations, forests thick with smoke. Occasionally, her father mentioned Hitler: He had adopted a white terrier that had leapt into their trench; he drew cartoons of the other soldiers; he survived dangerous messenger runs while other couriers died all around them, which made some of the soldiers say he must lead a charmed life or a higher power was protecting him.

  The wartime years rushed past: skirmishes in the French countryside, days hunched in the muddy trenches, shells and smoke and screams.

  And then she came to the last letter, written in a shaky hand she could scarcely read, let alone recognize as her father’s.

  9 November 1918

  Pasewalk, Pomerania

  My dearest Liesel,

  An elderly pastor came to our hospital today to break the news. Germany has become a republic, and our surrender is imminent. Corporal Hitler—the Austrian soldier I have written you about—cried that everything had gone black again before his eyes and staggered back to the dormitory, where he flung himself onto his bunk and begged me to leave him alone. But I couldn’t, for we are the only soldiers from our regiment who have been sent here and are quite alone otherwise, so I tried to make him listen to reason.

  Gretchen looked at Daniel, who was reading over her shoulder. He sat so close she could smell the mint of his shaving cream. “This is odd. Why were my father and Uncle Dolf the only ones from their regiment at this hospital?”

  “Were they the only ones injured?”

  She shook her head. Papa had rarely talked about the war, but he had told her bits and pieces about his last battle. “Their regiment suffered a gas attack in France in mid-October. Some men died instantly, but the rest were blinded—all but one, who could still see faintly and led them to a first-aid station. Why go to the expense of separating my father and Uncle Dolf from the others and sending them all the way to Pomerania when there must have been several closer hospitals in Belgium?”

  “Perhaps he explains later on,” Daniel suggested, and they returned to the letter.

  Adi sobbed that his eyes burned like coals and all was black. He became hysterical, and finally, in desperation, I searched for Herr Doktor Forster, a consulting specialist from Berlin, who has been most helpful in my recovery. I found the doctor in a nearby corridor, and when I mentioned Adi’s name, he quickened his step toward our dormitories.

  “Herr Müller, wait a moment,” he said when we came across another doctor in the hallway, and I moved back several paces as the two medical men consulted. Their low murmurs reached me, but only a few words were intelligible.

  And yet, they weren’t. I am not an educated man, and perhaps I flatter myself by thinking I am as clever as most, but the two words I caught have perplexed me. I can guess at their meaning, and yet I cannot believe they refer to Adi, this small, intense, peculiar, and yet kindly fellow whom I have fought alongside for four long years.

  I shall not write them down; to do so is a disservice to a comrade.

  Herr Doktor Forster went to the dormitories and calmed Adi and is, I believe, planning some sort of new treatment for him. Once we have returned to Munich, I shall take Adi under my wing, and I shall ask you to do the same, Liesel. Time and again, I have seen him risk his life to deliver a message along the front lines. He does not lack courage, and now he shall not lack a friend.

  I shall return to you as soon as I am able, dearest Liesel. Kiss the children for me.

  Your loving Klaus

  Gretchen set the paper down. Confusion had turned her mind a blank, empty white. She had expected something monumental, not an overheard conversation in a corridor.

  “I don’t understand,” Daniel said. “What could Herr Doktor Forster have said that was so awful?”

  “I don’t know. None of it makes sense.” Nearby, a sudden shout of laughter sounded from the Chinese Tower. A few men wove drunkenly down the steps toward the trestle tables, their beer steins held aloft so they wouldn’t spill a drop. “There’s only one person we can ask.”

  Daniel nodded. “The doctor. He could be anywhere after all this time, perhaps even dead. But we must do all w
e can to find him.”

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  HarperCollins Publishers

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  29

  THE NEXT EVENING, GRETCHEN WAS WALKING back from work along the Königinstrasse and had almost reached the boardinghouse when a car slid to a stop beside her and Reinhard’s voice called, “Gretchen!”

  He sat in the passenger seat of Kurt’s Daimler-Benz, beside his friend. Both wore brownshirt uniforms. Reinhard’s arm rested on the open window frame, the swastika armband wrinkling as he tapped his fingers.

  What could they possibly want with her? She bent down to the car window. “What is it, Reinhard?”

  “A special invitation to dinner at the Führer’s apartment. Get in.” When she hesitated, he added, “Mama already knows, so she isn’t expecting us back anytime soon.”

  The thought of going anywhere with Reinhard made her flesh crawl. But they both knew she couldn’t say no; nobody refused the rare honor of dinner at Uncle Dolf’s home. She climbed into the back seat. As the car pulled away into traffic, she watched the boardinghouse grow smaller and smaller until they turned a corner and it was lost from view.

  They drove for a few minutes in silence. Fatigue had settled into each of Gretchen’s bones, and she watched without interest as the buildings trundled past. The hour had been midnight when Daniel had finally escorted her back to the boardinghouse last night, and she had risen at six to help with breakfast.

  During the workday in Hanfstaengl’s office, she had started every time an adjutant knocked on the door or the telephone rang. Each interruption might mean Uncle Dolf or Rudolf Hess had discovered someone had gone through his desk. But the day had passed without incident.

  The automobile rumbled over the Isar River and past the Prinzregentenstrasse. She finally spoke. “You missed Herr Hitler’s home.”

  The two boys exchanged a glance. “We didn’t miss it,” Reinhard said. “We have an errand to complete on the way.”

  She shrugged and looked out the window, watching the houses wind by. Quickly, the buildings changed from old apartment buildings to family homes fronted by tidy gardens. Why had the boys driven here, to a suburb? Kurt lived in the central part of the city, and the only person she knew here was Hitler’s favorite photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann. But they never went to his villa, unless she had been invited for a photography session. . . .

  Finally, the car ground to a halt before an apricot-colored stone house on a tree-lined street.

  “Wait here.” Reinhard and Kurt left the car and hurried up the front walk. Rather than ringing the bell, as she had expected, they walked right inside. Whoever lived there must be expecting them.

  The minutes stretched on. Twilight stretched bluish-black fingers across the street. Somewhere, a dog barked over and over, and a Horch auto glided past. A pair of little girls in matching pink frocks skipped by. What could the boys be doing inside that house? She slipped out of the car. Reinhard would beat her if he discovered her, but she would take the chance. She had to know what they were doing.

  She crept across the garden. A bow window bulged from the front of the house. A gap showed between the curtains, just wide enough for her to see through. She stepped over the rhododendron bushes and pressed her face against the glass.

  Reinhard and Kurt stood in a large parlor. Sitting on the sofa was an elderly, white-haired man. The small fellow wore only dark trousers, suspenders, and a white shirt, as though he had been interrupted at home when he wasn’t expecting visitors.

  “Please,” he was saying, his words muffled by the window, “don’t hurt my wife. Kill me if you must, but don’t harm my family.”

  Gretchen recoiled. Kill?

  “You should have thought of them before you entered politics.” Reinhard reached into his jacket. With one smooth movement, he whipped out a gun, aimed it at the gasping man’s head, and cocked the trigger. “Consider this a courtesy of Cell G.”

  He fired and the old man fell back against the cushions, then slithered to the floor, leaving a trail of blood on the sofa. He didn’t move again. Somewhere, someone started screaming, horrible, high-pitched screams that seemed to go on and on.

  Gretchen staggered back from the window. No. Trapped air burned in her chest. She couldn’t push the oxygen out, could only gasp for breath as she moved away, and then she tripped over the rhododendron bushes and fell on the grass.

  Somehow, she scrambled up and sprinted across the lawn. She thought she heard the squeak of a doorknob turning—another second and Reinhard would see her—and she jerked open the car door and flung herself inside.

  Breathe, breathe. She sat bolt upright so she wouldn’t curl into a ball. She tried to force air into her straining lungs and coughed hard, her throat turning to fire, tears wetting her eyes. Reinhard and Kurt ran across the lawn. They yanked open the car doors and got in.

  “Go,” Reinhard said, and Kurt sped away from the sidewalk with a grinding of gears just as a woman burst out of the house screaming, “Murder! Murder!”

  Her brother glanced at her in the back seat. “Don’t pay any mind, Gretl. She’s a crazy old woman,” he said, and she nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Hastily, she wiped at her eyes. Her throat still burned, but she resisted the urge to cough. She must make no sound. She must not give Reinhard a reason to look at her.

  The ride through the quiet streets was silent. Gretchen watched the houses roll past. Everything looked too sharp, too clear, as though she wore spectacles she didn’t need. Dimly, in a back corner of her mind, she remembered Whitestone’s teachings about trauma. She was in shock.

  Kurt dropped them off at the Prinzregentenplatz, by the statue of Wagner surrounded by thick trees and cooing doves. Reinhard took her arm as they walked toward number 16. His hand felt warm and rough on her elbow. The hand that only minutes ago had pulled a trigger. Every nerve in her body screamed to pull herself free and run from him. Somehow, she lifted her feet, pushed them forward, across the sidewalk, into the cool front lobby.

  “Mama said that Fräulein Raubal has invited you to the Führer’s mountain home.” Reinhard’s eyes were flat and pale.

  She had to swallow twice before she could speak. “Yes. I leave in the morning.”

  They started up the tiled staircase. “Being invited there is an honor. Make a good impression.”

  They had reached the second story, and Reinhard raised his hand to knock on Hitler’s front door.

  “Yes, Reinhard,” she whispered. “I promise.”

  Supper at Hitler’s apartment was the same as always: one of his favorite dishes, spaghetti this time, with beer for the guests and mineral water for him, followed by the Austrian desserts he liked so much.

  Tonight there were no other guests, and Gretchen sat between Reinhard and Geli, listening to Uncle Dolf drone on about music. He was in a bad mood because he had seen an opera in which he didn’t like the soprano, and he spent nearly an hour dissecting the singer’s performance and humming entire sections to them. Probably note for note, as he was a gifted mimic.

  Unbidden, what she had seen through the gap between the curtains of the apricot-colored stone house rushed back to her, over and over: Reinhard raising the pistol, his face emotionless, his voice matter-of-fact. Reinhard running across the lawn, no trace of fear or regret, only a relentless determination to get away. Untouched, as always.

  With a fork, she pushed around the strands of spaghetti on her plate. The sauce looked red as blood. Bile rose in her throat. Murmuring her excuses, she hurried to the washroom and rested her burning forehead against the glass, begging the images to vanish.

  Psychopaths. She washed her face in cold water. Unaffected by ordinary human emotions, Herr Doktor Whitestone had said. Unable to feel remorse or sadness. Or love. Locked within themselves, untouched by anyone or anything.

  She stared at herself in the glass, pale-faced, eyes haunted. How could Hitler adapt himself
so skillfully to every situation, disappearing into the shouting, rabble-rousing public speaker in the Circus Krone, into the hard-faced leader inspecting his SA men before a street demonstration, into the tuxedo-clad honored guest at high-society dinners? He altered himself so perfectly to fit each role, she wondered if he was real at all. Perhaps he was one long, continuous facade. An illusion. He had been the kindly uncle because that was what she had wanted from him, and he knew it.

  He had manipulated her as deliberately as he had everyone else.

  Tears streamed into her eyes, but she blinked them back. He wasn’t worth them.

  Back in the dining room, the dishes were being cleared, and she followed voices into the parlor. Reinhard was putting on his hat, saying something about going to a cabaret, and Uncle Dolf was chuckling, calling him a skirt-chasing scoundrel. Hitler’s housekeeper hovered nearby, clearly waiting to speak. On the sofa, Geli slumped on the overstuffed cushions, fingers fiddling with a ring, head down.

  Uncle Dolf turned to Frau Reichert. “Yes, what is it?”

  “Herr Amann is on the the telephone and wishes to speak to you,” she said. “Something about going over the account books.”

  Gretchen started. Max Amann. The dwarfish man from the photograph taken outside the beer hall, who had recently lost his arm in a hunting accident. The same man who might know what had happened to disturb her father during that long-ago automobile ride.

  Uncle Dolf looked startled. “What the devil is Amann thinking, calling from his sickbed? Only a fool doesn’t care about his health. Tell him the accounts can wait. If he protests, remind him how completely I trust him.” He smiled at Reinhard, adding, “No one has such a clever head for business as Amann.”

  Gretchen knew Amann managed the NSDAP publishing business, the Eher Verlag. And he was Hitler’s personal banker, Daniel had said. What a powerful position for a man so lacking in the Party’s physical ideals, who looked nothing like the Aryan type Uncle Dolf preferred. She thought again of her father’s final car ride. What might Amann know?