The Ambassador's Daughter (29 page)

“Where will you go?”

“Home. For the first time in my life there’s a country called Poland again and I’m eager to see it.” I search her voice for the real reason for her finally assenting to leaving Emilie and going home as Marcin wanted. Could it possibly have to do with my departure? More likely, with the conference winding down and Elsa Maxwell and her kind setting sail for the next great city, the work for musicians here would be less plentiful and exciting by far.

“But your flat here in Paris. Marcin’s touring...”

“Travel is a younger person’s game,” Krysia replies wearily. “Now I just want to go home.” She pauses, sipping her coffee. “Marcin has a family home in the countryside outside Krakow where we can live. We can teach music at the university.” She smiles and I can tell that she is finally going to give herself a chance to be happy.

“What about Emilie?” It is the real question that I wanted to ask in the first place.

“You were right, about letting her go. It’s time for me to move on. Here,” Krysia says, clearing her throat. She sets down her cup and opens her bag. “I knitted this for you.” It is a scarf, flecks of something gold interwoven with deep purple wool. She must have been working on it for weeks. “To remember me by.”

I take the gift from her, touched. “Thank you.”

“We have beautiful mountains near Krakow,” she says. “Come visit and we’ll go hiking.”

I do not answer. Once I am back in Germany with Stefan, ensconced in family and wedding plans, traveling will be difficult. Neighboring Poland, a long train ride from Berlin over rail lines largely decimated by the war, might as well be another planet.

We look out at the sea of travelers crossing the station in all directions, not speaking. “You wanted to leave Paris,” she reminds me.

Once I did. If only I had known what that meant, how it would feel. “But what now?”

“You’ll find your way,” she says, so firmly that for a second I almost believe her. “Each does, in her own time. One door closes, another opens.” What will I do without her wisdom?

“At least now I’ll be done with Ignatz and the spying,” I say.

Before she can respond, an announcement crackles over the speakers, calling our train. “We should go.”

We walk to the platform where Papa is helping Stefan into one of the carriages. I turn to Krysia. “You should tell her,” I say abruptly, meaning Emilie. She looks at me helplessly as if to ask,
How can you say that when I have just made my peace?
“She should have the chance to know you.” Before it’s too late, I add silently, thinking of my own mother.

“Margot...” Papa calls from inside the carriage.

I hesitate, the moment I have been forestalling inevitably here. I glance over my shoulder, making sure Stefan is out of earshot. “Krysia, there’s one other thing. About Georg...” It nags at me that I did not get to say goodbye, that his last memory of me would be a moment of betrayal. “If you see him...” Then I falter. What can I tell her that would begin to convey my feelings in a way that is not wholly improper with my wounded husband just steps from us?

But Krysia nods, seeming to understand exactly what I mean without my having to say. “I will tell him.” For all her dislike of Georg, she will find a way to deliver my message of farewell and regret, finding the words that I cannot.

“Come see me,” I plead as I hug her goodbye.

She does not answer, unwilling to make promises she may not keep. Instead, she places her cheek against mine. “Godspeed.” I am unable to answer. There was no expectation of permanency to our friendship, two ships flagged by different nations, briefly stopping at the same port of call. Still, I shall miss her.

I climb the steps to the train and enter the carriage where Stefan waits. I turn to say goodbye to Krysia once more through the window. Behind her, I glimpse a tall, familiar figure behind one of the stone balustrades. My breath catches.
Georg
. He is wearing civilian clothes publicly for the first time I’ve seen, an attempt perhaps to remain unrecognized, though I could pick him out of a mass of thousands. Our eyes meet and I hold my breath, waiting for him to run up and declare his love and beg me to stay. But he remains in place, hidden from sight and a second later he is gone, swallowed by the crowd.

Stefan is by my side then, his arm tugging me downward, urging me to take my seat. “Come, darling,” he says, and I fight the urge to scream, knowing that the nightmare I’ve lived a thousand times in my sleep has at last come true.

Part Three
Berlin, August 1919

Chapter 16

“More coffee?” A footman hovers expectantly to my right.

“Bitte.”
A hint of pomade from his trim blond hair mixes with the aroma of the coffee as he bends to pour. I gaze beyond the head of the table, where Papa and Uncle Walter are debating something in low voices, through the French doors. The terrace behind the villa leads down to the lake, the late-summer water still as glass. A swarm of gnats hovers above it.

It has been over three months since we returned from the peace conference. We had no other choice but to come home. Papa’s visit at Oxford had “concluded without possibility of renewal,” according to the letter he’d received while we were in Paris, and other universities were similarly unaccommodating. Living abroad had become prohibitively expensive, anyway, and Uncle Walter had informed Papa that he could no longer afford to support “our lifestyle.” I had boiled with anger when Papa had shared that conversation with me, thinking of the long hours Papa kept at the conference, taxing his health and energy to the brink. We had not been on holiday, but in Paris at Uncle Walter’s request.

So we had returned to Berlin, or more accurately to the villa at Grunewald. Our own house was in disrepair, Papa told me. Though the bombings had left our neighborhood intact, the gangs that had taken to the street after news of Germany’s
defeat had broken the windows and looted everything. Papa had been evasive when I’d asked about the extent of the damage, or a possible date by which we might expect to return. Instead, he talked about the difficulty in getting the roof replaced, given the lack of young men able to do that sort of work, as well as the scarcity of lumber needed to repair the rotten floorboards.

I’ve not been into Berlin proper since our return and after more than four years, I’m eager to see it. But Papa forbade my going, even arranging a separate car to take Stefan home from the station the day we arrived so that we could proceed directly to Grunewald. “It’s dangerous,” he replied with uncharacteristic bluntness, refusing one of my repeated requests to go into the city. “There are riots and strikes.” The country, angry at a government that betrayed its own people, is tearing itself apart, like a dog gnawing off its own leg to get free from a trap.

Not that one would know it from Uncle Walter’s house, I reflect, as the smaller china dishes are set for the sweets course. The sprawling lakeside mansion on the water is worlds away from the chaos of Berlin, a perpetual holiday. The newspapers depict lines at the markets for food that would never come, buckets of deutschmarks that will not buy a loaf of bread, ration cards that might as well be burned for fuel. But here the food approaches a prewar bounty, as evidenced by the fruit stacked high in a bowl at the center of the table, the soups thick with meat.

My gaze drops from the terrace to the far end of the table, where Papa and Uncle Walter are speaking loudly now, debating something political. As Papa takes off his glasses and rubs at his eyes, my concern grows. Papa returned from the conference a broken man. He once believed in a brotherhood, that his common interests with other scholars would prevail over militarism and national identities. But that belief was shattered by the betrayal at Versailles. We are still—and presumably always would be—the enemy.

Our return to Berlin has been equally unsettling. There is disillusionment about the people here—they understand now that it was not a war of self-defense, but one of aggression. But instead of blaming the government that had lied to them, people have improbably reserved their bile for those who negotiated its end. Papa’s position at the university was filled, he was told, a rare exception to the life tenure that should have rightfully been his. So he potters about the house at Grunewald, organizing his notes and talking about writing a book.

“The Jews are giving them ample fodder by allying with the communists,” Uncle Walter declares, straightening the pince-nez that balances precariously on his wide nose. It is an argument I have heard him make a dozen times. “We need to be part of the system in order to reform it.”

In sharp contrast to Papa, Uncle Walter is looking better than ever, a new ruddiness to his cheeks and girth to his waist beneath the white linen suit. Uncle Walter had been one of the engineers of the war effort—his great skill in maintaining supply and production lines kept the German army going longer than anyone thought possible. Without him Germany might have surrendered two years earlier and thousands of young men might still be alive. Yet he had come out without blame, more powerful and successful than ever, a key player in the Weimar regime. Some talked that he might attain a cabinet post.

“Walter, I’m not sure that even if we completely assimilated they would be ever...” Papa corrects gently. “If you read...”

Uncle Walter raises his hand. “Nonsense. Of course, as an academic, you would take that theoretical view.” The two men eye each other icily. My mother’s older brother had made it clear from the day she married Papa that the professor from the Jewish quarter was never going to be good enough for his sister and that the situation could not end well—a prediction which he now viewed as having come true. He blames Papa for the unhappiness that had caused her to leave, and now that he does not need to maintain a charade for my benefit, his disdain of Papa is less veiled than ever.

“What a lovely bracelet,” Tante Celia observes from my left side, trying to break the tension. She touches my wrist. I cringe at the attention she has drawn to Georg’s gift. I have worn the bracelet constantly since our return to Berlin, taking comfort from my one last link to him. Neither Papa nor Stefan, who is seated passively beside me, would have noticed on his own.

Now all eyes are upon me. “Just a trinket I picked up at the market,” I lie. Celia’s brow furrows. She, above anyone else, knows jewelry and does not believe my explanation. I hold my breath, waiting for her to challenge me, but she does not.

Celia followed us back from Paris just days after we left and has been around nonstop since our return, occupying her own suite of rooms at the villa where she had grown up. It is not just her desire to be close to Papa, but also my wedding preparations that draw her like a moth to flame. I had wanted the wedding to be small, a ceremony down by the lake if the weather permitted, or perhaps in the gazebo if it did not, with a modest reception on the terrace. Just close family and friends. To do more felt garish in light of all the suffering that remained from the war—and I wanted to spare Stefan the embarrassment of trying to limp his way down the aisle and navigate a crowded reception.

But Uncle Walter had insisted that a real wedding was needed. “We owe it to the people to show that Germany remains strong and keep the spirits high.” It feels like a farce, Marie Antoinette telling the starving proletariat to eat cake. The elaborate wedding is not about German morale, but Uncle Walter, announcing he has reached a certain political station. With Celia behind him, though, and Papa too distracted to weigh in, I had not been able to fight. The wedding has ballooned to three hundred people, including the prime minister. Celia has taken on the role that my mother might have had, planning the shower tea and ordering the invitations and registry—the things that make me want to scream and crawl out of my skin. It is the wedding and the daughter she’s never had all at once.

I should be happy that Celia does not choose to press about the bracelet and retreat gracefully. But Uncle Walter’s last jab at my father still stings. “Papa’s work at the conference was hardly theoretical,” I say, unwilling to be dissuaded from his defense.

“Liebchen...”
Papa says, his voice carrying silent warning. Though this is my ancestral home as well as Uncle Walter’s, we are still very much his guests here.

I am too far gone to stop, though. Now released, the words pour forth unabated. “The war was a disgrace,” I say. “I have seen the destruction at Reims, the debilitated young men on the Parisian street corners.” Only one such as Uncle Walter, who has not seen the devastation up close, could still think there had been a purpose to it. “So many lives lost.”

“It is pacifist views like yours that cause the German people to distrust the Jews,” he retorts.

“Would having no views make our position somehow more tenable?” I demand. Uncle Walter’s eyebrows rise. He has never approved of a woman’s forthright speech. But this is more than my former childish impertinence. There is a quiet confidence to my argument now, as if I am channeling Krysia’s style in debating with the artists at the café in Montparnasse.

“I’m only saying...” He pauses, thrown back on his heels. “Until things settle down, neutrality may be the wisest policy.”

I meet his eyes levelly. “A great pity, then, that you didn’t discover that four years ago. Hindsight must be lovely,” I add. “Especially for those who stayed in Berlin.” I can hardly believe my own nerve. I stand up. “Excuse me.”

“That is the problem with how you have raised her,” I hear Uncle Walter say as I walk from the room. “And now with women’s suffrage passed...”

“Indeed,” Papa replies. “To have my daughter vote will be the proudest day of my life.”

I flee down the corridor, shaking. Why hadn’t these things bothered me so before? Or perhaps they had and I just hadn’t noticed. Just like Georg’s experiences on the ship had reshaped him, I was also changed by my time abroad, unable to fit back into the old forms and strictures.