Dan Fesperman - The Arms Maker of Berlin

“He hasn’t even asked her yet.”

“Oh, he will. All the SS men are getting hitched. It’s all the rage before going to the front. You better brace yourself for a lot of stupid background checks. They go back six generations, you know. All very silly.”

Kurt had overheard his parents expressing worries about this very prospect. But before he could muster up any anxiety of his own, he saw the girl. She was across the room, laughing at something a woman next to her had just said. The candlelight lent her face the radiance of a flower that has just opened its petals. Eyes full of promise. Delicate features. He instinctively wanted to provide her with special care and handling and shepherd her away from this bruising hubbub. Yet the more he watched her talk, the more her movements revealed an underlying fierceness. An emphatic passion punctuated every word.

He couldn’t hear a word of what she was saying. It might have been as frivolous as hemlines, or as grim as a casualty list. But did that really matter? She could probably make any topic seem vitally important. He was so riveted that he didn’t notice that his father had tracked him down.

“Ah, there you are, Kurt. There is someone you need to meet, right over here. This way, then. Kurt! Come along!”

Erich offered a sympathetic shrug, and Kurt spent the next several minutes nodding dutifully at the remarks of a crusty old Prussian named Helmut who was supposedly doing great things with aircraft components over at the Argus Works in Reinickendorf. He exclaimed in earnest approval for the next five minutes while wishing he could tear his eyes away for another glance at the girl. Finally both men were spirited away once again by the man from Economics, who was still gushing about rolling stock.

Kurt turned to search the room. She was still there. He made a bee-line back to Erich, hoping for useful intelligence. But Erich spoke first.

“Have you seen that hot little number who just arrived? My God, how perfect.”

Oh, no. Had he, too, been struck by the same bolt of lightning?

“Which one?” Kurt asked apprehensively.

“The one in pink. Over there.”

Erich pointed to a young woman whom Kurt’s mother would have charitably described as a floozy. She had large breasts, amply displayed, and deeply rouged cheeks. She was showing far too much leg-another victim of rationing, perhaps-and was waving a cigarette as if it were a conductor’s baton. Her orchestra was three attentive men in uniform, who by all appearances were just as impressed as Erich.

“Very nice. But who’s that one, over there by the tree?”

Erich grudgingly shifted his gaze.

“Oh, you mean Liesl?” He smiled. “Now there’s an odd one. Pretty. But an odd duck for sure.”

“Odd how?” Kurt’s tone was defensive.

“Give her a chat, you’ll see. Just don’t let your father hear what you’re talking about. Or mine, either. That kind of odd.”

Erich, like his dad, had cultivated the ability of damning by implication without offering any specifics that he might have to account for later.

“The good news is that if you happen to like her, she’s one of our fellow students at the university. A year ahead of us, but still…”

That was all the encouragement Kurt needed to take up the chase. And now there he was, talking to her at last, and finding to his relief that along with her other powers, she also had the ability to put him immediately at ease, which was rarely the case with Kurt and pretty girls.

“Bauer, you said? Is your father the bomb maker?”

He laughed.

“I suppose he wouldn’t mind that description, as long as you don’t call him the bomb thrower , like he was some Bolshevik. But our factories don’t really make bombs. Just the fuses, plus the parts for about a dozen other things. Aircraft, artillery, and, well, a bunch of stuff I’m never supposed to talk about. Not out in public, anyway.”

“Sounds important. Where is he?”

“That man at the buffet table. By the oysters.”

“The one who’s looking around like he lost something?”

“Yes.”

“You?”

“Good guess.”

“Turn around, then, and move behind me. Next to the tree. I’ll block his view.”

So she was playful, too, not exactly common currency among German girls these days, except the silly ones who giggled at everything. A natural-born conspirator as well, which seemed like another mark in her favor despite its obvious risks-or maybe because of them. For too many days now Kurt had been walking the straight and narrow, taking care to say all the right things. It was a relief to engage in a little rebellion, especially with such an appealing comrade in arms.

“How come he’s not wearing a uniform?”

“Well, he is, sort of.” This had just occurred to Kurt.

“The gray suit, you mean. Captain of commerce?”

“Yes.”

“Then what does that make you?”

She reached out and, thrillingly, ran her fingertips down his lapel. He was again glad he hadn’t worn the pin.

“A corporal in training, I suppose.”

“Ah. But groomed for promotion.”

“Exactly. It’s just about all I do anymore, other than school. We spend every weekend going to parties like this. Introductions. Names to remember. Lots of people I’ll probably never see again. Which is why it’s so nice to escape with you for a while.”

“I suppose I’m another of those new names you’ll never remember.”

“Oh, I doubt that very much, Liesl Folkerts.”

What must she have made of this soberly dressed young man who had taken such an intense and immediate interest in her? To look at him-the clipped haircut, the noncommittal face, the correct-to-the-point-of-stiff posture-Kurt Bauer certainly seemed like a very conventional boy, which was hardly her type. But perhaps she also sensed that what he longed for most, even though he never could have articulated it-not yet, anyway-was to be freewheeling and spontaneous, even a little careless.

And as she already knew firsthand, these times were not well suited for the freewheeling, and certainly not for the careless. Unless you had the right sort of patch on your sleeve, or official title to your name, doing as you pleased was almost guaranteed to land you in trouble. Or so her father always told her, every time she spoke her mind.

All that Kurt knew for sure about himself was that in addition to the usual adolescent yearnings of libido, curiosity, and optimism, more-complicated emotions were often straining to be accounted for. Perhaps this was why he reacted so viscerally to Liesl Folkerts. Not only had her looks arrested him, but she had also tuned in right away to his thwarted inner voice, so accurately that she seemed to be humming along with it, perfectly in key.

As he watched her speak, he again thought of her as a newly opened blossom. The brilliance of her beauty, like that of all flowers, would doubtless fade over time. But he decided then and there that in some ways she would never wilt. Not her. And that kind of enduring spirit was worth taking risks for.

“Oh, there’s Ludwig,” she said, breaking his concentration. Liesl nodded toward the foyer, where a resplendent young man in an officer’s dress uniform had just entered. Her expression was now somber-or was it admiring? Kurt’s heart sank.

“I really need to talk to him.”

“Please do,” he said, feeling stung as he stood aside. But she didn’t depart.

“It will keep until later. I want news from him. He’s been at the front, you know, fighting the Russians. I’m desperate to hear how things are really going, but that’s not something you just go up and ask out of the blue, with everyone listening.”

So even Liesl had her limits. But he wondered about the nature of her interest.