City of Women (27 page)

“Yes, a kike by any other name,” Wolfram says. “I was discussing it earlier, with our mutual chum here. By the way, if you’re feeling awkward, don’t,” he instructs her.

“Awkward?”

“That you’re sitting in a room with two men, both of whom you’ve fucked. We’ve discussed that, too. There are no secrets between the children of Abraham, you see.”

She looks to Egon for help, but he only offers her a blank glare and takes a swig of the wine.

“Are you,” she starts to say, but her throat dries up. “Are you going to call the police?”

“The
police
?” Wolfram squawks. “Why on earth would I do
that
? You know, that’s the
trouble
with you Aryan types. Always running to the police to solve your problems.” Thrusting a knight forward, he sits back. “There. My brilliant defense,” he announces, “Maybe I’ll do better than old Nimzo.” Opening his cigarette case, he picks one out and jams it into his mouth. “You know, my sister is very fond of you. Which is unusual, because Carin normally despises the world.”

“Yes, I’m fond—” she says, but her words are starting to choke her. “I’m fond of her, too.”

“Are you
crying
, Frau Schröder?”

Sigrid wipes her eyes. “I
can’t
,” she whispers. “I can’t play this game with you, Wolfram. Please just
do
what you’re going to
do
.”

“Well, I
did
do what I was going to do, Frau Schröder,” he answers. “I defended my queen from a brutal assault by my opponent’s rook.”

She shakes her head. “
Please . . .
”

Wolfram inhales smoke, and frowns archly at the board. “You need papers?” he asks Egon. “Correct?”

Egon looks up at him. She sees a lightning recalculation change his expression by the slightest measurement. “Correct,” he says, in a dead level voice.

Wolfram, nodding to himself as he peers at the pieces. “I can supply them.”

Egon’s gaze tightens. “And the cost?”

“I’m sure there’ll
be
a cost, but it won’t be in Reichsmarks,” Wolfram answers simply. Slouching to one side, he removes a neatly pressed handkerchief from the pocket of his breeches and offers it to Sigrid. “Here. A gift,” he says.

Sigrid accepts the offer. The handkerchief is monogrammed linen. She quickly wipes the remnant of tears from her eyes.

“I really can’t stomach tears,” Wolfram explains, then prods Egon gamely. “So are we playing or are we playing?” But when Egon doesn’t move, Wolfram expels a huff. “Very well, then, if I am to play both sides of this game, so be it.” He reaches over to Egon’s pieces and hooks the queen’s knight to a different square. “There.
That
is the proper response,” he declares.

Egon flicks his eyes at the board, then back up at Wolfram’s face.

“You think I hate the Nazis because of what they’re doing to the Jews?” Wolfram asks him. “I don’t. I hate them because they’re
stupid
. That’s their crime in my opinion. Just so you understand.”

“I understand,” Egon tells him.

“Do you?”

“I understand that you’re the man who can get me the papers I need.”

Wolfram’s assailing gaze recedes a millimeter. “Ah. A pragmatist. I should have guessed, by the way you play. Taking control of the center board from a distance, while fools rush in with their pawns. You have photographs of yourself?”

Egon reaches into an inner pocket. “These will do, I think,” he says, and offers a small paper envelope.

“How efficient you are,” Wolfram observes. “Quite an admirable quality. No wonder you can pass for a German.” He says this, but instead of accepting the offering, he swallows the remainder of his wine, forcing Egon to set the envelope beside the board, among the carnage of pieces. It’s more than Sigrid can take.

“Will you
stop
?” she pleads, her eyes smeared with tears. “
Both of you
, will you quit this, this
warfare
? It’s making me sick to my stomach. Just
stop it
.”

Silence. Egon suddenly stands. “I am going to the toilet. If you like, finish the game without me. I’m sure you’ll hold up my end quite effectively.” He says this and then walks out of the room, without giving Sigrid a glance. She sits in the silence he leaves behind, Wolfram’s handkerchief balled in her hand. Then comes the ring of the telephone. She looks at it. A sleek black Bakelite instrument. She looks at Wolfram, who is lighting another cigarette.

“Are you going to let it ring?” she finally asks.

“Do you think it’s someone important?”

“Shall I answer it for you?”

“Because I am an invalid? Please do.”

She stands, sniffing back the tears, the insistent ring scraping her nerves, and snatches the receiver. “Kessler residence, good day.” Then she places her palm over the receiver. “It is for you. A man asking for you by rank.”

“Which man?”

A blink. “May I ask who is calling?” she inquires into the receiver, then whispers. “Herr Oster.”

He holds out his hand without looking at her, and she hands over the receiver. His conversation is clipped. Suddenly, he sounds quite sober and military. “Kessler here, Colonel. Yes, sir, that’s correct. No, I shouldn’t think that would satisfy the gentlemen in Turkey.” He glares and then nods his head curtly. “Yes, sir, I’ll be there in thirty minutes.” And it’s over, without a single Führer salute, and he is prying himself off the settee with his cane. “I must go.”

Sigrid says nothing. At the door she tries to assist him with his greatcoat, but he resists. “It’s my leg that is missing, Frau Schröder. I still have both arms.”

“Wolfram, there is something I must tell you,” she says, and shoots a glance in the direction of Egon’s departure.

He follows her glance.

“There are more,” she says. “More than simply him.”

“Really? Are you making a business of it, Frau Schröder? Please, I won’t judge you if you are.”

An instant’s confusion, and then she shakes it off. “No.
No
. I mean more
Jews
,” she tells him.

Without expression. “Jews?”

“You are familiar with the term ‘U-boats’? I am part of a group who hides them.”

Still no expression. “For how long?”

A single-word answer. “Months.”

“And
he
knows this?” Wolfram says, nodding toward Egon.

“He doesn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I haven’t told him. No one knows unless they need to. That’s the way it works.”

“How convenient for you. So I am to assume there is a reason why
I
now know.”

“There are problems. The Gestapo have arrested one of our people. The woman in charge of our hiding place.”

“Then you’ve been compromised,” he concludes evenly.

“It’s a possibility,” she admits, but Wolfram shakes his head.

“
No
,” he instructs. “It’s a possibility that it will rain tomorrow, or it’s a possibility that a horse will talk. But if the Gestapo have this woman in custody, then it’s a
certainty
that
they
know what
she
knows. This is not a game for amateurs, Frau Schröder.”

“I’m not aware that it is a
game
at all, Herr Leutnant,” Sigrid replies with a glare. “Or is that all you’re interested in? Playing games? Is all this just another chess puzzle for you?”

“If it is, then you’d better pray that I am a better player than your friend. I would have trapped him in mate in three moves.”

“This isn’t about him. It isn’t about me.” For a moment, she holds the darkness in his eyes.

And then he says, “What is it you need?”

“Documents. We need documents.”

“Ah. The world needs documents.”

“And travel permits, too. Berlin to Lübeck.”

“And what is in Lübeck?”

“Ships.”

“Sweden?” he asks, and takes her silence as his answer. “A popular destination, though rather chilly this time of year. How many?”

She tells him.

“I’ll need photographs for them as well,” he says. “You can arrange that?”

“Photographs? Yes,” she answers tightly.

“No snapshots with the family Leica,” he warns. “Official standard-sized, full-face shots. No left ears showing, do you know what I’m saying?” By decree, Jewish passport photos always show the left ear. According to the common wisdom of the Interior Ministry, the left ear of a Jew betrays a Semitic shape.

“Yes. Yes, I understand. I know a professional.”

“Four different shots in four different outfits is best. They can’t appear as if they were all taken at once. Is it men or women?”

“Both.”

“All adults?”

“Two small children.”

“Small, as in infants?”

“No. Three and five,” she answers.

“And how many men?’

“Only one,” she says, picturing Herr Kozig, with his stringy hair combed over his bald head and his ridiculous postage-stamp mustache.

“Military age?”

“Late forties.”

“Is he the father?”

“No.” Only a fraction of hesitation. “Unrelated.”

“And how Jewish do they look?”

“How
what
?”

“How
Jewish
? I think it’s a simple question.”

“I don’t know. Not very.” Sigrid frowns. But then says, “Except, perhaps, the man.”

“Then try to get him in uniform. Any uniform, it doesn’t matter. The uniform will carry him.”

A flush of the commode rattles the pipes. Wolfram lifts his eyebrows. “As far at
that
one’s concerned,” he says with a shrug toward the inside of the flat, “I’ll get him some exemption papers. He can pass in a decent suit,” he says. “And am I correct in assuming he’ll need a Reisepass?”

“Yes” is all she says.

“So he’ll be traveling to Lübeck as well?”

She keeps her face under tight control. “Traveling, yes. But he has his own plans” is all she says.

“And what about
you
?”

“What
about
me?”

“You have no plans?”

“My plans are to continue day by day,” she answers.

“So you are the noble kriegsfrau, is that it?” he asks. “Sticking with you poor wounded husband back from the front?”

“No. ‘Noble’ is the last word to describe me, I think.”

“Good,” he answers, “because, I can assure you, nobility is nothing more than an invention of the living to eulogize the dead. The dead are not noble. They are simply decaying in their graves. And if you’re not very careful, Sigrid, that is what
you
will be doing,” he warns. “By the way, I should ask: What does you husband know?”

“What does he know? About my . . . my many
escapades
, you mean? He knows nothing.”

“Does that mean he doesn’t know, or doesn’t want to know?”

“It means I have said nothing to him.”

“
Well
. This may sound perverse, but perhaps you
should
.”

“And
why
should I do that?”

“Because, Frau Schröder, if you intend to continue in this line of work, and that seems to be your intent, you’re going to require your husband’s involvement. If not actively, then at least by implication.”

She doesn’t like the sound of that word. “Implication?”

“If he knows you’re hiding Jews,” Wolfram spells it out in a carefully direct tone, “but does nothing about it, he is then, by definition,
implicated
. He can’t change his mind later and decide to denounce you to the nearest Party member.”

“That would be his mother,” she says.

“Even better. If he opens his mouth, if
either
of them do and the Gestapo hauls you away, her standing with the Party will be destroyed. No question about that. In fact, it’s very likely that they’ll haul
her
away as well. And
he
could end up back at the front, but this time in a penal battalion with a red triangle on his sleeve, clearing minefields by the centimeter with a bayonet.”

The picture of this invades her head. She feels herself blanch.

“Now it’s
you
who look wounded.”

“It never occurred to me,” she says.

“That actions have consequences?” he asks.

“The danger in which I’ve placed Kaspar.”

Wolfram gazes at her. “We’re fighting a war, Sigrid. What else can you expect?” he asks. For a moment he simply studies her eyes. When he speaks again, his standard tone of irony has returned. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must suspend further conversation, gnädige Frau. Our Fatherland is calling me.” He puts his hand on the doorknob, but she stops him.

“Should I thank you?”

Returning to her face. “Why bother? As you said, it’s not about you.”

“Do you hate me?” she whispers.

“Because of
him
? No. Hatred is too valuable a quantity to waste. And if I’m disappointed,” he tells her calmly, “it’s only because I find most bedmates dull after the first time or two. But you, Sigrid Schröder, are very inventive in the sack. Quite unburdened by convention. Quite at home in your body.”

She stares at him. Somewhere in her, she knows, is the desire to touch him, but there is too much in the way for her to find it.

“I’ll be in contact,” he says, and slips on his peaked uniform cap. “In the meantime, I suggest you grow a pair of eyes in the back of your head,” he advises, then makes his way toward the stairs. “My sister will be back in an hour,” he announces over his shoulder as he negotiates the first steps downward. “In case you have an interest in her where abouts.”

When she returns to the flat, she finds Egon pouring more bull’s blood into his glass. “What did he say to you?” he asks.

“He said death is waiting for me.”

Egon gazes at her for a moment, unfocused, then lifts the goblet to his lips. “Death is waiting for us
all
,” he tells her. “It’s only a matter of timing and negotiation. I’ve taught myself to live with that in order to survive. You should, too.”

“How have you done it?” she asks starkly.

“Taught myself?”

“Survived.”

His eyes lift and suddenly they are as deep as mine shafts. Without bottom. “Luck,” he answers.