Juan Gomez-Jurado - The Traitor's emblem

Paul’s heart gave a somersault.

“Alys!”

Until the shooting started, Alys had thought the night belonged to her.

The argument with Paul had left a bitter taste in her mouth. She understood that she was madly in love with him, she could see that clearly now. Which was precisely why she was more scared than ever.

She had decided, therefore, to focus on the task at hand. She entered the main room of the beer hall, which was more than three-quarters full. More than a thousand people were crowding around the tables, and soon there’d be at least another five hundred. German flags hung from the wall, barely visible through the tobacco smoke. The room was humid and stifling, which was why the attendees kept harassing the waitresses, who jostled through the crowds carrying trays with half a dozen beer glasses above their heads, never spilling a drop.

Now, that’s tough work, thought Alys, grateful again for all that today’s opportunity put within her reach.

Elbowing her way through, she managed to find a place at the foot of the speakers’ podium. Three or four other photographers had already taken up their position. One looked at Alys in surprise and nudged his companions.

“Be careful, gorgeous. Don’t forget to take your finger away from the lens.”

“And you remember to take yours out of your ass. Your nails are filthy.”

The photographer inspected his fingertips and turned red. The others cheered.

“Serves you right, Fritz!”

Smiling to herself, Alys found a position where she would have a good view. She tested the light and did a few quick calculations. With a bit of luck she could get a good shot. She began to get excited. Putting that idiot in his place had done her good. Besides, from that day on, things were going to change for the better. She’d talk to Paul; they’d face their problems together. And with a new, stable job, she would truly feel fulfilled.

She was still immersed in her daydream when Gustav Ritter von Kahr, state commissioner of Bavaria, climbed onto the stage. She took a number of photos, including one she thought might be rather interesting, in which Kahr was gesticulating widely.

All of a sudden a commotion broke out at the back of the room. Alys craned her neck to see what was going on, but between the bright lights that surrounded the podium and the wall of people behind her, she couldn’t see a thing. The roar of the crowd, together with the thunder of falling tables and chairs and the smashing of dozens of glasses, was deafening.

Someone emerged from the crowd close to Alys, a sweaty little man wearing a creased raincoat. He pushed aside a man sitting at the table closest to the podium, then climbed onto his chair and from there onto the table.

Alys turned her camera toward him, in a single instant capturing the wild stare, the slight trembling of his left hand, the cheap clothes, the pimp’s haircut plastered across his forehead, the cruel little moustache, the raised arm, and the gun aimed at the ceiling.

She wasn’t afraid, and she didn’t hesitate. All that went through her head were the words August Muntz had told her years before:

There are moments in the life of a photographer when a photograph passes in front of you, just a single photograph, that could change your life and the lives of those around you. That’s the decisive moment, Alys. You’ll see it before it happens. And when it happens, shoot. Don’t think, shoot.

She pressed the button just as the man pulled the trigger.

“The national revolution has begun!” the little man shouted in a powerful, grating voice. “This place is surrounded by six hundred armed men! No one leaves. And if there isn’t immediate silence, I’ll order my men to stick a machine gun up in the gallery.”

The crowd fell silent, but Alys didn’t notice, nor was she alarmed by the storm troopers who had appeared from all sides.

“I declare the Bavarian government deposed! The police and the army have joined our flag, the swastika: May they hang from every barracks and police station!”

Another feverish cry erupted in the room. There was applause punctuated with boos and shouts of “Mexico! Mexico!” and “South America!” Alys was oblivious. The shot was still ringing in her ears, the image of the little man firing was still engraved on her retina, and her mind was stuck on three words.

The decisive moment.

I’ve done it, she thought.

Squeezing the camera to her chest, Alys dove into the crowd. Right now her only priority was to make it out of there and get to a darkroom. She couldn’t exactly remember the name of the man who’d fired the gun, though his face was very familiar; he was one of the many fanatical anti-Semites who shouted their opinions in the town’s taverns.

Ziegler. No… Hitler. That’s it-Hitler. The mad Austrian.

Alys didn’t believe this coup stood any chance at all. Who would follow a madman who had declared that he would wipe the Jews from the face of the earth? In the synagogues people were joking about idiots like Hitler. And the image she’d captured with sweat dripping down his forehead and the wild expression in his eyes would put that man in his place.

By which she meant a lunatic asylum.

Alys could barely make any headway through the sea of bodies. People had started shouting again, and some of them were fighting. One man smashed a beer glass on another’s head, and the dregs soaked Alys’s jacket. It took her almost twenty minutes to reach the other end of the hall, but there she found a wall of brownshirts armed with rifles and pistols blocking the exit. She tried to talk to them, but the storm troopers refused to let her through.

Hitler and the dignitaries he’d interrupted had disappeared through a side door. A new speaker had taken his place, and the temperature in the room continued to rise.

With a grim expression, Alys found a spot where she’d be as protected as possible and tried to think of a way to escape.

Three hours later her mood was bordering on desperation. Hitler and his acolytes had given a number of speeches, and the band in the gallery had played Deutschlandlied more than a dozen times. Alys had tried to move discreetly back into the main hall, in search of a window through which she could climb, but the storm troopers blocked her path there too. They weren’t even allowing people to go to the bathroom, which in such a crowded place, and with the waitresses still serving beer after beer, would soon be a problem. She’d already seen more than one person relieving himself against the back wall.

But wait a moment: the waitresses…

Struck by a sudden flash of inspiration, Alys approached a service table. She picked up an empty tray, took off her jacket, wrapped it around her camera, and held it under the tray. Then she collected a couple of empty beer glasses and headed for the kitchen.

Perhaps they won’t see. I’m wearing a white blouse and black skirt just like the waitresses. Perhaps they won’t notice I’m not wearing an apron. Just as long as they don’t notice the jacket under the tray.. .

Alys passed through the crowd, holding the tray aloft, and had to bite her tongue when a couple of patrons touched her bottom. She didn’t want to attract attention to herself. As she approached the swinging doors, she got behind another waitress and passed by the SA guards, fortunately without any of them giving her a second glance.

The kitchen was long and very large. The same tense atmosphere reigned in there, though without the tobacco smoke and flags. A couple of waiters were filling glasses with beer while the kitchen boys and cooks talked to one another by the stoves under the stern gaze of a couple of storm troopers who were again blocking the exit. Both were carrying rifles and pistols.