The Second Winter (19 page)

Outside, the wind continued to blow. Downstairs, the fire collapsed into a liquid pool of orange embers. The dark thickened, a chill crept up the stairs. The night surrounded the small cottage, and only their voices escaped.

Munich. December 1969
.

“How did he die?”

Angela Schmidt turned the question over.
How did he die?
The blood drained from his body. His heart fell still. He ceased breathing. At a specific point, his spirit fled. He hadn’t been sick. If he had, then the answer could have been lung cancer, stroke, meningitis. Was this really what her husband wanted to know — how among the million ways to die had her father’s life been extinguished? Ever since she had brought back those photographs from East Berlin, ever since she had uncovered that photograph of the girl —
Polina
— Angela’s thoughts had become increasingly dark. What was happening to her? The fact was that only a single thing had caused his death. A bullet to the head. Still, there was no easy answer. The war had separated her from her father. And then the war had killed him. Over the years, the image of him to which she clung had become increasingly hazy, but in her recollection not only had
he been the sweetest, gentlest man imaginable — the type of husband to her mother whom she herself would never find — he had been a hero. Not anymore. She turned Lutz’s question over. He was sitting on the edge of their bed, using a bone shoehorn to squeeze his foot into a glossy shoe. He had stopped moving. He was waiting for her response, but — though she knew that none of this was his fault — she could barely bring herself to give him one. Her father’s crimes had somehow contaminated her feelings for her husband. For all men, perhaps. If her own father could have harmed Polina — not just
harmed
, worse, he had
raped
her, Angela knew he had, she could sense it from the image of the girl in the photograph — then this man was certainly capable of the same cruelty, too. And as much as she wanted to forgive him, as much as she was desperate to preserve this marriage, she knew that Lutz hadn’t been faithful. His transgressions weren’t simply hypothetical stains. He had destroyed the intimacy of years without a moment’s hesitation. “He was shot,” she said.

Lutz remained doubled over. He finished working his foot into the tight shoe, tied the laces. When he looked up at Angela again, she remained frozen. She was seated on a low chair at her dressing table, in front of a polished mirror. A lamp was switched on next to her, illuminating her face, but she wasn’t examining her reflection. Instead, she was focused on something in her lap. In her fingers was balanced the sapphire and diamond pendant her aunt had fastened around her neck in East Berlin. There was something special about this piece of antique jewelry. It had been abused, shoved into pockets, neglected. Over time, though, it had taken on a patina, and it had only become more beautiful. What secrets did it hold? Angela tilted it, and sharp refractions of light crawled up the side of the dressing table. “In battle?” Lutz asked her. And then,
when she still didn’t respond, “I mean — you never talk about it. I don’t know anything about your father, except that he was a photographer.”

“In Copenhagen,” Angela said.

“There wasn’t any fighting in Copenhagen, was there?”

“He was executed.”

Once again, Lutz stopped moving. They were running late. Angela had to get ready. She was performing tonight in the opening performance of the
Nutcracker
. Afterward there was a reception. He was supposed to attend. It was black tie, and he had dug his evening wear out from storage in the hallway closet. The pungent smell of mothballs overpowered Angela’s perfume. He fastened his wife with a stare. If she didn’t get herself ready, she would be late. The other members of the orchestra were already there, rehearsing. “Darling?”

“Executed,” she repeated. When she twisted the pendant on the tips of her fingers, the refractions cast a geometric pattern on her cheeks.

“Are you all right?”

“By the Danish underground,” Angela continued, still focused on the impossibly valuable piece of jewelry. “That’s what they told my mother anyway. I don’t know what the truth is. I don’t know why the underground would have wanted to kill my father. He wasn’t in the infantry. He was a photographer. I don’t know why a photographer would have been of any interest to anyone. There were other, bigger targets, there must have been —”

Lutz listened, then slipped the shoehorn into the next shoe, squeezed his toes into the opening. It was a cold December, and he was wearing wool socks. He watched Angela gather the chain into a bunch and place the necklace into a drawer in the dressing table. “You’re not going to wear it tonight?”

Angela shook her head.

“It’s a beautiful piece of jewelry, darling —”

“My father hurt a girl — a girl named Polina —” She knew that Lutz wouldn’t understand. How could he? She hadn’t shown him the photographs — she hadn’t shared them with anyone yet.

Lutz stood from the bed. He lifted his wife’s hair from her neck, stooped to give her a soft kiss. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But we are going to be late.”

“Would you — I mean, have you — hurt anyone, Lutz?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” her husband repeated.

“Have you hurt me?”

Lutz’s eyes darkened. “What kind of mood are you in —”

“Do you really have to go tomorrow?”

His fingers touched her shoulders. “Is that what this is about?”

She twisted in her chair, looked up at her husband. There was a plaintive expression on her face that angered him. Why couldn’t they both enjoy a little independence from each other, even if they were married? His fingers found her heartbeat in her neck. “I know about the secretary,” she said.

“What secretary? What are you talking about?”

“In Stuttgart.”

The mention of the city brought an image to Lutz’s mind, of the offices at the factory where he would attend his meeting tomorrow. Zoë would be sitting outside the conference room in front of her typewriter. When people called, she would pick up her phone. Her red-painted lips would brush the receiver. He had met her half a year ago now. He hadn’t tried to hide the affair. His wife’s heart pulsed against his fingertips. It was
a steady rhythm, belying the stress in her face. “This isn’t the time,” he said.

“Zoë,” Angela said.

Lutz’s own heart leaped. “Darling —”

“Her name is Zoë. Isn’t it?”

Lutz didn’t respond. Even if he had never told her about his various infidelities, he had never lied to his wife, either. This had been their explicit agreement, that so long as they were honest and didn’t try to conceal anything from each other, they would each respect the other’s freedom. If Angela wasn’t able to stomach this arrangement, she never should have accepted it. She knew who he was when they were married. No rules had been broken. He inserted the post of a silver cufflink through the tight buttonhole in a stiff cuff and secured it with a snap. “You’re as much to blame as I am.”

Angela continued to look at her husband. She wondered if she would recognize him now — if she saw him on the street, as he was when they first met. Was he more a stranger now or then? She turned away from him, faced the dressing table, caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. Above the formal black dress she had chosen for the performance, her neck looked naked without the sapphire. When Lutz stepped away from her to slip into his jacket, she reached once again for the necklace, once again contemplated the pendant, balanced on her fingers. “Am I?” she asked him.

Lutz wasn’t sure what his wife was asking him. He straightened the jacket on his shoulders. It fit him, he thought, with the snug precision of a military uniform.

“Am I really also to blame?”

Lutz adjusted the starched collar of his shirt, tightened the knot in his tie. He had an intention to respond. The sparkle in
her hand distracted him, however. “Where do you suppose he got that?” he asked instead.

Angela didn’t answer.

“Perhaps his death had something to do with that, don’t you think? It must be worth a small fortune. If we were to sell it —”

Angela lifted the chain over her head, gently dropped the necklace around her neck. “I don’t want you to come tonight,” she said. The inflection in her voice hadn’t changed. In the mirror, she admired the shine of the platinum against her skin, the placement of the glittering piece of jewelry above the swell of her breasts, then finally met her husband’s gaze. Her lips parted to say more, but then she realized that she didn’t have to. She simply continued to look at him until he understood, until he turned and walked away. By the time he reached the other side of the bedroom, as imposing as he was when he stood next to her, he was able to fit through the doorway, which, in the distorted scale of the makeup mirror’s magnified reflection, perspective had reduced to a mouse hole. His footsteps echoed and faded. The front door slammed.

Jutland. December 24, 1941
.

Axel Madsen fell into his bed. The stench of the whorehouse — the smell of sweat and cheap perfume, cigarettes and alcohol — still clung to his clothes. He had shit his pants on his way up the stairs, but just a little. He was too drunk to care. The floor was spinning. Someone in the room next door hit the wall with a fist — Fleming, a farmhand like Axel. Fleming’s wife, Mathilda, also worked on the property. She milked the cows and did the washing for the house. They fucked once a month — but Axel couldn’t sneer at that, he could only afford it once a month as well. Their bed would creak for four, maybe five minutes. The headboard would bang the wall. Mathilda would gasp, Fleming would let out a groan, and that was it. Not that Axel could sneer at that, either. The only pleasure he gave his whores was finishing early. He scratched his balls, pulled his pillow over his head. This wouldn’t be the first night this week that he slept in his coat and trousers and shoes. His blankets stank
like the pigsty. The base of the mattress was green with dried manure. The wind shook the windows. In the room next door, Fleming began to snore.

An hour later, after midnight, the nervous chatter of the pigs broke the stillness that had settled over the farm. The sharp click of the lock being forced on the front door echoed through the house. Careful footsteps climbed the stairs. The noises interrupted Axel’s recurrent dream — a beautiful dream, about riding a galloping horse through a stand of tall white birch trees with bark as thin as paper — but not enough to wake him. At the top of the staircase, the footsteps paused, then continued down the hall. The doorknob turned, metal squeaked against metal, the latch rattled. Axel smacked his lips, tasted his last whore, returned to his dream. He had ridden a horse well when he was younger. If it had worked out, he would have joined the mounted police. But the war had intervened and here he was a day laborer, threshing wheat and planting barley and hops and shoveling slop for pigs. The horse galloped faster, and Axel tightened his grip on the reins.

A pair of polished leather shoes approached the bed. Despite the alcohol, something finally disturbed Axel’s sleep. At the last second, he opened his eyes. Too late, though, because two hands were already clamped around his neck. A knee was planted in the small of his back, his spine was bent backward, about to snap.

“Axel Madsen?” The cool, dry fingers around Axel’s throat reeked of tobacco. The man’s breath was hot and wet in Axel’s ear. He was wearing street clothes. His accent was rough, but he hailed from a city, not the country.

Axel choked. He wasn’t certain how to answer, whether it was better to confirm or to deny his identity. His impulse was
to lie. In the end, though, he was too much of a coward. “Yes,” he managed, in a hoarse whisper.

The hands gave him slack to breathe. The man’s lips touched his ear. The brim of his hat tickled Axel’s scalp. “Gustav sends his greetings. You remember Gustav, don’t you?” The knee found a crack between ribs. “Don’t you? Answer me.” Air rushed from Axel’s lungs in a wheeze. “Quietly,” the man said, and his fingers tightened once again around Axel’s prone throat.

Axel nodded. The motion was truncated. His tongue slid farther down his gullet. “Gustav Keller,” he whispered. “From Schleswig.”

“That’s the one.” The fingers relaxed long enough for Axel to swallow more oxygen, then tightened again. Somehow, the man’s skin remained dry and cool. The greasy sweat belonged to Axel.

“I can’t breathe.”

“Shhh.”

“Let me go. I’ll close my eyes. I won’t look at you.”

“Won’t you?” The man twisted Axel’s head to the side. Facing him, Axel could taste the tobacco on his breath. Expensive tobacco — American cigarettes. He squeezed his eyes shut. If this man allowed him to see him, it could only mean one thing. “Open your eyes.”

Axel tried to shake his head. “Just tell me what you want,” he pleaded.

The man’s knee dug deeper into Axel’s spine. His hands lifted his neck. Axel would snap in two like a wishbone. At last, he opened his eyes. The man’s face was too close to see. He was a mouth, gleaming teeth, a pencil-thin mustache carefully groomed. Thick eyebrows, eye sockets as dark as charcoal, hollow cheeks dusted with black stubble. Axel’s eyes began to tear.

“You stink like shit,” the man said.

“I’m sorry,” Axel said.

“You have something that belongs to Gustav.”

Axel struggled, and the man tightened his grip. Softly, snow flicked the windows.

“Some weeks ago, Gustav was asked to make a delivery.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Axel protested.

“Three Jews.”

“I don’t know anything about any Jews,” Axel said.