Woman in the Shadows (26 page)

“The way you speak about them, it's like they're not human.”

He glanced at her and shrugged. “Bolsheviks, Jews. They're different from us. It's not that I think they're dull-witted animals. Quite the contrary. I think they're dangerous. They stand for the destruction of everything we believe in. Have you heard what's going on in Moscow right now? Stalin's purges?”

Clara said nothing. It was astonishing to hear Strauss talking about the terror being perpetrated by Stalin when illegal executions, show trials, and arbitrary arrests at dawn were facts of daily life in Hitler's Germany.

“But what about you, Arno? What did you do in Spain?”

“Are you asking me what goes on in a war?”

“Just generally.”

“I flew with the Legion Condor. My commander was Lieutenant Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen. A relation of the Red Baron, you know? The overall commander was a man named Hugo Sperrle. Perhaps you've heard of him?”

Clara had seen the pictures of General Major Sperrle in the newspapers. A human bulldog, with a monocle and a savage, downturned mouth.

“I think so.”

“We flew on missions against the Communists.”

“So all the people you bombed, then, were Communists?”

Strauss's voice turned to ice. “What's this about, Clara?”

“It's not about anything. I'm interested in the war. In you.”

“You're interested, are you? That's why you're asking all these questions? Are you going to ask me what I've seen? What I've done? Do you expect me to recount it here, over a pleasant meal, for your entertainment? Are you one of those women who like to hear how many we killed and what they looked like when we bombed them? Do you want to know whether they were burned or buried alive in rubble?”

He finished his drink, slammed down the glass, and rose to pay the bill. Bitterly, Clara chided herself. God knows why, but she had introduced politics, which was the last subject she should have risked, and ruined the confidential mood between them. She had probably aroused Strauss's suspicions about her own motives, but even if she hadn't, it was almost certainly too late to retrieve the situation.
Great work, Clara. Mission unaccomplished.

They walked in silence back through the village. A slanting, late-afternoon sun burnished the red roofs and lit up orange and gold chrysanthemums leaning over the garden walls. Above them, a flock of migrating geese formed a hooting black arrow across the sky, and beneath, on the grass, a scatter of hens pecked. Gradually the beauty of the countryside must have had its effect on Strauss, because the lowering frown left his face.

They entered the cool, verdant light of the wood, where there was no sound but the shift of branches and the rush of a distant stream. After a while Strauss stopped, obliging her to come to a halt beside him, and pressed her against the trunk of a tree that was peeling with lichen like an ancient plaster statue. The light filtered down through the leaves above them, sifting sun and shadow.

“Why did you come here today?”

“I told you. It's useful for my research. It helps me understand the character I'm playing, Gretchen. I'm supposed to know how she would be without having to think about it. So I can inhabit her.”

“What does this Gretchen do?”

“She flies into enemy territory to rescue her husband.”

“And the husband is Ernst?”

“Yes.”

“He's a lucky man.”

His anger had dissipated. She realized the drink had had its effect. She laughed lightly.

“I'm seeing him next week. We're doing the publicity shots for the film.”

“Is that so? I would like to have one of those pictures. My walls are pretty bare.”

“I'll get them to send you one.”

“And what about me? Am I part of your research?”

His hand reached down to hers and grasped her fingers. She tried hard to prevent herself from withdrawing her hand.

“You know, Clara, I find you fascinating.”

He ran his fingers lightly over her face, as though he were a blind man, or a lover. Feeling it out, his fingers gliding over her skin, as though searching for something her features might reveal, across the temples, then down the cheekbones, stroking the planes of her face.

“We have something in common, you and I. I don't show my feelings because I can't. This thing on my face prevents me. You conceal your thoughts behind a façade. Which is why I wonder at your interest in me. Not a lot of pretty actresses throw themselves at me. Why are you? What are you hiding?”

“Who says I have anything to hide?”

“Sunlight and cloud. That's what I see in your eyes.”

The arch of trees above threw shifting patterns on his face as he smiled down at her. For a moment she thought, If Strauss were not a National Socialist, if he didn't believe what he believed, could she possibly become involved with him? In some ways he was not so different from Ralph. Ralph's easy charm was a deterrent just as effective as Strauss's damaged face. But then she reminded herself. Strauss was a senior officer of the Luftwaffe. He kept company with thugs like Goering and Himmler, ruthless, violent men who regarded anyone who disagreed with them as degenerate or Bolshevik or in some other way undeserving of walking in German woods or breathing the fresh, pure German air. Strauss might lack the sadism of his masters and their more vicious beliefs, yet he had chosen, hadn't he, to serve the regime? Like them, he despised Jews. He had elected to work in Goering's ministry and fly his bomber under the Nazi flag.

Strauss reached his crumpled face down to kiss her. Instinctively she ducked away. His mouth hardened into a thin line.

“You find me repulsive. Well, it's not a surprise. I should be used to it by now.” His face was stiff with anger and annoyance. “Women always avoid me. They don't want to get too close to this monstrosity. They give the boys in the Arbeitsdienst a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda every day for that problem. Perhaps I should take their advice.”

“Your face has nothing to do with it.”

She saw a flash of his bitter, gray eyes. “You don't need to say any more, Fräulein. Thank you for your candor.”

“I mean it.”

“I spent years training in the boxing ring, so that men would hesitate before they said anything they would regret, but it doesn't work with women. I disgust them. They can't see beyond this thing, and who can blame them? What girl wants to be seen out with a freak show? When I march in parades and the BDM girls come to give flowers, they always shy away from me.”

“Oh, for pity's sake!”

How could Clara make him understand? His face might be scarred, but the scars in his mind were so much deeper. Those scars had silvered over and lay flat until someone touched them, and then they rose savage and scarlet, as painful as the day they were first made. How could she tell Strauss she didn't recoil from him because of his face, but because she didn't want to deceive him any more than strictly necessary? Rapidly she cast around for a credible explanation.

“It's not what you think.”

“Is that so?” His expression was disgusted.

“My response had nothing to do with your face.”

“And what else could it be?”

“You said I had a secret, and you're right. I do. You see, Arno, you have been consorting with a Jew.”

He stared at her for a moment, then she felt the stiffening of his recoil. He took a step backwards, his voice flat with shock. “You should visit the anthropologist. I can't believe there is any Jewish blood in you.”

She had regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. Her heart was hammering against her ribs. What had possessed her to tell a Nazi officer that kind of secret? The secret she hid every day. That had been so carefully covered by Leo's false documents, made and printed by men who ran enormous personal risks. What right did she have, in an unforgivable moment of emotion, to risk all that? Not just to risk herself, but to risk the lives of all those brave men, throughout Berlin, who would undoubtedly be traced and rounded up if her false identity came to light? Just because she wanted to keep Strauss from kissing her. She would have to pretend it was a joke.

“Not that kind of Jew. I meant, because I'm half English. That SS newspaper,
Das Schwarze Korps,
says we are white Jews.”

He gave a bark of laughter. “You should have said. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all.”

Nonetheless, he did not repeat his attempt to kiss her. As they walked on through the wood, he appeared entirely detached, almost as if she were not there at all. When they came to a tangle of ferns and mossy stones, he held out an arm momentarily to support her, then removed it again. Clara's comments about the beauty of their surroundings went unanswered. His face had frozen over again, the currents of emotion beneath it icily suppressed. At one point he reached into a pocket and withdrew a silver hip flask, which he tipped, swiftly, to his mouth. It wasn't until they reached the airfield and made their way to the plane that he looked at her and said, briefly, “Perhaps we could meet on Thursday. If you're free.”

“I'm so sorry, Arno. I have to be at the studio that day.”

He slid open the cockpit door and reached for the jackets. “Well then. There's a lunch at Horcher's in a few days' time to celebrate the retirement of Sperrle from the Legion Condor. He's been promoted to General der Flieger. I'll send you the details. I think you should come. It would be interesting for you to see Sperrle at close quarters. Consider it part of your research.”

“Thank you. I will.”

The answer seemed to satisfy him.

I
t was dark by the time they had landed at Tempelhof and she made her way back to Winterfeldtstrasse. A thin rain had polished the tarmac and emptied the street. Albert's red Opel was still parked where she'd left it outside the apartment, and as she passed she caught a flash of something pale on the windshield. It was probably a flyer distributed by a National Socialist organization exhorting her to save crusts or mend socks, she thought. Picking it up, she saw it was a plain envelope, with no address. That was unusual. Propaganda leaflets were generally garishly decorated. Opening it, she peered in and saw a photograph. It was a picture of a little boy, aged about six, smiling, in uniform. Her hand trembled as she took it out. Erich. The photograph that used to sit on her mantelpiece. She had never even noticed it was gone.

She glanced rapidly up and down the street, but there was no one. The envelope was slightly damp, which suggested that its sender had been caught in the rain. The person who left it could only recently have gone. If they had gone at all.

Clara felt her breath coming in fast, jagged gasps. The photograph was a threat, a direct threat by whoever it was who was stalking her. Without the need for words, the threat said that Erich would come to harm. Erich, whom she had last seen storming off from his ill-fated birthday outing. Panicky images crowded her mind. Erich's body lying in the road, his thin chest barely fluttering with life, or falling out of a window, like his mother. The young boy whose life had become intertwined so unexpectedly with her own was now at risk. Erich, whom she had grown to love, who at times was the only thing keeping her here in Berlin. Instead of keeping him safe she had put him in grave danger.

At that moment Clara felt as though she was only a bit player in a story she couldn't understand. A story devised by someone who was directing the action, pulling the strings, and moving events towards an end only he could see. Who was he, this person behind the scenes? What did he want? And what did he have in store for her?

Back in her apartment, she forced herself to think calmly. Where and when might she have been followed? She had been told, by Archie Dyson, that the Gestapo had its eye on her. For weeks she had sensed there was someone on her tail, even in Munich. She had been burgled; that must have been when the photograph was stolen. She cursed herself for having failed to notice that it was missing. Whoever took the picture knew enough about her to understand how much she cared for Erich. And now, that same person must have known she was away from the apartment. They knew where she lived. They knew the car she drove. The message was pretty clear. They had threatened something that Clara held dear because she knew about something that they held dear. She just didn't know what it was.

The apartment in Neukölln did not have a telephone, and she resisted the temptation to jump on the U-Bahn immediately. Instead, she called Erich's Gymnasium. There the gruff headmaster, who was working late, answered the telephone himself and assured her that Erich Schmidt had been in as usual that day. Then she sat in her silent apartment, a cup of black coffee in her hands. She had gone to Munich to find the sister of Anna Hansen. Somehow, though she could not see why, Anna Hansen's life had become linked to her own. The unexplained death of a fast-living model turned Reich bride was now casting a shadow over her own life. She needed to discover what had happened to Anna Hansen. And soon.

That night Clara had to will herself to sleep. At last, as her breathing slowed and sleep approached, she saw a figure beckoning to her. In the dark spaces of her thoughts, where images swam before dreams descended, she felt something on the edge of her perception. It was trying to force its way out from the images in her head, to separate itself and come to the fore, but it had no face or voice and it moved like a memory might, shifting in and out of the shadows in her mind.

T
he Heim Kurmark was in Klosterheide, a small village five kilometers north of Lindow and an hour and a half's drive north of Berlin. It was a stately, high-gabled building of rose-colored stone that sat on the ridge of a hill, its slate roof topped by a cupola with a bell inside, which was sounding the hour with a gloomy, metallic toll. The austere façade hinted at its origins. It had been a monastery originally, and there remained an odor of piety about it, competing with the strong scent of ammonia and cleaning polish. Earlier that year the place had been taken over by the officials of the SS, given a deep clean, and rechristened as a Lebensborn home—part of a string of institutions throughout the Reich funded by the Well of Life Foundation and devoted to the care of unmarried pregnant women who wanted to escape the moralizing of priests and family members. Here, in a program devised by Heinrich Himmler, they could bear children with the choice of keeping them or donating them to an SS family eager to meet the official target of four children. Above the heavy oak door, a black SS flag twitched in the brisk autumnal breeze.

Clara climbed out of the car and waited at the door. So Katia Hansen was unmarried and pregnant. That might explain the contempt of the landlady back in Munich. But it did not explain why she had chosen to travel halfway across the country, trusting to the tender mercies of the SS when she was at her most vulnerable. Unless that had to do with the fact, as the landlady had also mentioned, that other people were looking for her, too. Clara had no idea whether her journey here would be any more fruitful than the one to Munich, but this time she was spurred by more urgent considerations. Someone wanted to find Katia Hansen and, it appeared, Katia Hansen didn't want to be found.

There was no bell, so after a while Clara pushed the door and ventured inside. It seemed strangely quiet for a place devoted to babies and young children. She saw linoleum faded by repeated scrubbing, drab mustard walls, and a scuffed wooden floor. Even the light slanting through the cloudy windows was wan and drained of radiance, as though promising the babies that the world outside would be no less drear than the place in which they were born.

Before she had taken more than a couple of steps, a nurse, wearing a white headdress, bustled out to meet her.

“Katia Hansen, you say? Was this visit arranged?”

“I'm a friend of the family. I have some sad news for her,” said Clara, sidestepping the inquiry and summoning a tone of grave solemnity. “Her sister has died.”

The nurse flinched, as though Clara had uttered an obscenity. Perhaps, in a way, death was an obscenity in this place of birth.

“Her sister, you say. She has died?” Clara watched the nurse analyzing this information, pondering whether Katia Hansen had illegally concealed some familial flaw, some genetic tendency to early death.

“She was murdered,” Clara clarified. Surely being murdered couldn't run in families.

“Murdered! Really? How shocking! Then I shall have to go and find Katia. I think she's in the lecture room. But I would ask, please, be gentle. A girl in her condition should not have to take a shock.”

Clara was shown into a waiting room, featuring a battered array of cane furniture and a poster promoting porridge and brown bread as a wholesome diet for pregnant women. A window at the side looked out on the garden, where more nurses swathed in white, their caps bearing red crosses, were sitting in a circle with a baby on each lap. There was something peculiar about those babies, Clara thought, and it was not just that they were uniformly blond and dressed in identically knitted suits and bootees. Then she realized the peculiarity was that they looked so much better-fed than the babies one saw in Berlin. They had round, apple cheeks beneath their bonnets and chubby little arms, braceleted with fat. On the terrace immediately below the window stood a line of cribs, made up with lace covers and flowery blankets, and a little farther down the lawn was a round table where ten children were eating a meal from steel bowls.

Katia Hansen was a slight girl of around twenty whose voluminous smock suggested a pregnancy of at least seven months. Her hair was dark brown, probably the same as Anna's before it was bleached, and her delicate features, too, reminded Clara instantly of her older sister. She shrugged off the nurse's arm and looked at Clara in amazement.

“Is it true? What Krankenschwester Flick told me about Anna? What happened?”

“Sit down, dear,” said the nurse, with a glimmer of kindliness. “This lady has come to explain everything.”

“It is true, I'm afraid,” answered Clara. “I'm sure the Reich Bride School has been trying to trace you. And the rest of your family.”

“There is no rest of my family,” said Katia, sitting down. “It's just me. And they can't have tried very hard. Who are you, anyway?”

“I knew Anna in Berlin.” Clara took a deep breath and explained. About meeting Anna through Bruno Weiss. About the Bride School and the shooting. She tried to keep the details of the murder vague, but she thought she should add that the police had already released the gardener who had first been arrested.

“So who do they suspect now?”

“I don't know.”

“Poor Anna.” A tear fattened on Katia's cheek; she swiped it away with a forefinger. “Whatever else, she didn't deserve that.”

Whatever else?

Out of the corner of her eye, Clara noticed a car draw up in the drive and a group of SS officers slamming the doors and stamping on the gravel. One of them carried a bouquet.

“They've come for the ceremony,” explained Katia, matter-of-factly.

“What ceremony?”

“There's a baby being dedicated to the Fatherland today. The mother doesn't want to do it, but she can't see much alternative. She knows it'll have a good future as a child of the Reich. There are always plenty of takers.”

“Why's that?” When times were hard, it seemed strange that anyone should want more mouths to feed.

Katia shrugged. “SS families need a minimum of four children. Himmler says they have to be ‘kinderreich.' If you get a child from the Lebensborn, it's guaranteed to be racially pure. Oh, here's Eva now.”

A large girl with a frizz of red hair entered the room and settled nervously in a chair. She was formally dressed in a hat and coat and clutching an infant draped in a white shawl. The child began to wail, and the girl hushed it urgently, rocking it in her arms. The crying only grew louder, and eventually, looking hastily around, the mother undid her blouse to breast-feed. Clara watched as the baby's navy, unfocused eyes swiveled towards the distended, blue-veined breast and seized the nipple, causing the mother to flinch. Eva sat and stared directly ahead of her as the child suckled. There was a look of desolation on the girl's face.

“Eva had her little girl a month ago.” Katia smiled across at her, then lowered her voice. “It's being adopted by a childless couple. We're all supposed to attend the dedication ceremonies, only I can't stand them…” She glanced outside. “Is that your car? Do you think we could go for a drive? We'd have to be quick, but I'm dying for a cigarette.”

They walked swiftly down the corridor. As they passed, Clara glanced into the dining room, where the SS officers had congregated. It was set with a couple of rows of chairs, and a table made up like an altar at the front, covered with a white linen cloth and decorated with a vase of flowers and a portrait of the Führer. A crimson banner was hung behind on the wall and next to it the black banner of the SS, with its jagged lightning strokes. Beside the table, a couple stood, a grizzled Sturmbahnführer and a woman in a flowered hat with a grim expression that suggested she would cope with whatever life threw at her. Even if it was a baby.

Katia walked resolutely towards the car and lowered herself into the front seat. She had the same bold, no-nonsense manner Clara remembered from Anna. Though she had only just heard about her sister's death, she had barely shed a tear. Catching Clara's eyes on her, Katia said, “In case you're wondering, it was an accident, so what was I supposed to do? The doctors can't give contraceptive advice. If they do, it's off to a camp for them, and the contraceptives you
can
find are all duds. Deliberately so. More kids for the Fatherland. And as for an abortion, forget it.”

“Of course,” said Clara. Abortions were banned in the Third Reich. The punishment for assisting an abortion was death. Except for Jews, for whom terminations were actively encouraged.

“Not that I'd have considered that,” Katia continued as they headed up the drive. “Anyway, it's supposed to be an honor to be here. You have to apply, and they only accept half the applications. They prefer the father to be SS, and you have to prove you're hereditarily healthy. Fortunately my boyfriend wasn't racially inferior. Just inferior in every other way.”

“Who was he?”

“A chauffeur. He was in the SA and he drove the SS, back home in Munich. Drove off into the sunset in the end. Still, it turns out I'm well rid of him.”

“The home seems like a very restful place.”

“Restful? You're joking! They run us ragged. There's no end of lessons on diet, and baby care, obviously, and lectures and films. This morning we had a talk on a foolproof way to ensure our next child was a boy. Information straight from Herr Himmler, apparently. Make sure the man drinks no alcohol for a week and exercises a lot.” She laughed sourly. “So not much chance of that then. Himmler had better think of another way of creating more soldiers for the Führer.”

“What happens after the baby's born?”

“Oh, they're very good with them. They take this scientific approach. The nurses weigh all the food and give them two baths a day, and everything is sterilized. They feed us mothers up, too. Whole milk, fresh vegetables, and second helpings. That's one of the few advantages of a place like this.”

“I meant, what happens to the child afterwards?”

“If you are not in a position to look after it, it's given to an SS family. No matter how many children they already have. They're always telling you large families are good. We've had lectures on great Germans who have come from large families, you know; if there hadn't been such a large family, certain geniuses would not exist. Mozart and people.”

“Is that what will happen to your baby?” asked Clara gently. “Will you give it up for adoption?”

Katia's face clouded. “I don't know. The others don't mind it. Some of them have older kids already. I've got a friend here who says, ‘I'm proud to give the Führer a baby. I hope it will be a boy who can die for him.' But I hope mine's a girl, and I don't want some old SS hag taking my kid.”

Clara noticed that tears were once again sloping down Katia's cheeks.

“This isn't how I imagined having a baby, you know. I wanted to do everything properly, nice husband, nice house, nice wedding, and then
this
happens.” She sniffed. “Didn't you say you had cigarettes?”

The road passed into a copse of trees. They got out of the car and lit up. Katia inhaled greedily, then leaned back against the car door. In the dappled light of the leaves, she looked exhausted. Lines of bitterness were already carved on her face.

“I'm sorry you had to come and tell me about Anna. You probably think I'm very unfeeling, seeing as she was my only sister and everything. It's probably that I can't take it in quite yet. The joke is, I was always the good girl in the family. Anna was the black sheep. She was always the one who had arguments with our parents, getting drunk, staying out late. Not wanting to join the Bund Deutscher Mädel. Having unsuitable boyfriends. Deciding she wanted to be a dancer, which our father said was no better than being a prostitute. And I was the clever one, top of the class at school, never put a foot wrong. Yet here I am now, pregnant without a man, while Anna was attending a Bride School and about to get married to an SS officer.”

She shook her head, as though still amazed at the turn of events.

“Why did Anna leave Munich?” asked Clara.

“She wanted to escape, probably. She'd gotten in with a pretty bad crowd at home. Not that we expected her to meet a better class of person in Berlin.” Katia corrected herself, “Nothing personal, of course, Fräulein, but Anna wasn't the sort who enjoyed drinking tea and knitting. Once I heard she'd joined the chorus at the Wintergarten, I guessed she'd be hanging around with the same types she knew at home. At least our parents weren't around anymore to be embarrassed.”

She crossed her arms protectively over her bump. “Probably good that they weren't around to be embarrassed by me either. You know, I almost choked when she wrote and told me she'd met a handsome blond SS officer named Johann. Anna being an SS wife! And good little Katia getting herself into trouble and then being dumped by a rat of an SA chauffeur.”

“Do you know why anyone would want to kill your sister?”

A car passed them, and Katia jerked like a startled deer. The girl was on edge, Clara thought. Terrified.

“How should I know? I don't know why anyone should kill anyone!” She burst into a fit of sobbing, and to distract her, Clara hauled out the case.

“Anna left this at the Bride School. There's a letter for you inside. I'm sorry, but I opened it. I didn't think I was ever going to find you.”

Katia blew her nose. “Don't worry. I can guess what it says.”

She opened the letter and read it, taking far longer than anyone might need to scan its short, pleading message. Eventually she folded it away.

“Well, it doesn't matter now, anyway,” she said dully.

“What had you argued about?”

“Money, among other things. She was always scrounging.” She glanced away with filmy eyes. “Whatever I've said, she was still my big sister. I did love her, and now she'll never know.”