Juan Gomez-Jurado - The Traitor's emblem

Josef found himself obliged to go to the Schroeder mansion and confess the truth to the baron. With an expression of poorly feigned sorrow, the baron informed him that obviously, under such conditions, the agreement would have to be annulled.

Alys never spoke to Josef again after the fateful afternoon when he returned, seething with fury and humiliation, from his meeting with the in-law who wasn’t to be. An hour after his return, Doris, the housekeeper, came to inform her that she was to leave immediately.

“The master will allow you to take a suitcase of clothes with you if you need them.” The harsh tone of her voice left no doubt as to her feelings on the matter.

“Tell the master thank you very much but I don’t need anything from him,” said Alys.

She walked toward the door, but before leaving she turned back.

“By the way, Doris… try not to steal the suitcase and say I’ve taken it with me, like you did with the money my father left on the sink.”

Her words punctured the housekeeper’s supercilious attitude. She turned red and began to gasp.

“Now, you listen here, I can assure you I-”

The young woman left, cutting off the end of the sentence with the slamming of the door.***

Despite being on her own, despite everything that had happened to her-despite the vast responsibility that was growing inside her-the look of outrage on Doris’s face had made Alys smile. The first smile since Paul had left her.

Or was I the one who forced him to leave me?

She spent the next eleven years trying to work out the answer to that question.

When Paul showed up on the tree-lined path in the cemetery, the question answered itself. Alys saw him approach and move to one side, waiting as the priest said the prayer for the dead.

Alys completely forgot about the twenty people surrounding the coffin, a wooden box empty but for an urn containing Josef’s ashes. She forgot that she had received the ashes by post, along with a note from the Gestapo saying her father had been arrested for sedition and had died “trying to escape.” She forgot that he was being buried under a cross and not a star, as he had died a Catholic in a country of Catholics who cast their votes for Hitler. She forgot her own confusion and fear, for in the middle of all this, one certainty appeared now before her eyes like a lighthouse in a storm.

It was my fault. I was the one who pushed you away, Paul. Who hid our son from you and didn’t allow you to make your own choice. And, damn you, I’m still as in love with you as I was the first time I saw you fifteen years ago, when you were wearing that ridiculous waiter’s apron.

She wanted to run to him, but thought that if she did she might lose him forever. And even though she had matured a great deal since becoming a mother, her feet were still shackled by pride.

I have to approach him slowly. Find out where he’s been, what he’s done. If he still feels anything…

The funeral ended. She and Manfred received the guests’ condolences. Paul was the last in the line and approached them with a cautious look.

“Good morning. Thank you for coming,” said Manfred, holding out his hand, not recognizing him.

“I share your sorrow,” replied Paul.

“Did you know my father?”

“A little. My name is Paul Reiner.”

Manfred dropped Paul’s hand as though it had burned him.

“What are you doing here? You think you can appear back in her life just like that? After eleven years without a word?”

“I wrote dozens of letters and never received a reply to any of them,” Paul said, flustered.

“That doesn’t change what you did.”

“It’s all right, Manfred,” Alys said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You go home.”

“Are you sure?” he asked, looking at Paul.

“Yes.”

“All right. I’ll go home and see if-”

“Fine,” she interrupted him before he could say the name. “I’ll be along soon.”

With a final spiteful glance at Paul, Manfred pulled on his hat and left. Alys turned along the central pathway of the cemetery, walking in silence with Paul at her side. Their eye contact had been brief but intense and painful, so she preferred not to have to look at him just yet.

“So you’ve come back.”

“I came back last week, pursuing a lead, but it turned out badly. Yesterday I met an acquaintance of your father’s who told me about his death. I hope you were able to grow closer over the years.”

“Sometimes distance is the best thing.”

“I understand.”

Why would I say a thing like that? He may think I was talking about him.

“And what about your travels, Paul? Did you find what you were looking for?”

“No.”

Say you were wrong to leave. Say you were wrong and I’ll admit my mistake and you’ll admit yours, and then I’ll fall into your arms again. Say it!

“Actually, I’ve decided to give up,” Paul went on. “I’ve reached a dead end. I have no family, I have no money, I have no profession, I don’t even have a country to return to, because this place is not Germany.”

She stopped and turned to look at him closely for the first time. She was surprised to see that his face hadn’t changed much. His features had hardened, there were deep circles under his eyes, and he had put on some weight, but he was still Paul. Her Paul.

“You really wrote to me?”

“Many times. I sent letters to your address at the boardinghouse, and also to your father’s house.”

“And so… what are you going to do?” she said. Her lips and her voice were trembling but she couldn’t stop them. Perhaps her body was sending a message she didn’t dare articulate. When Paul replied, there was also emotion in his voice.

“I’d considered going back to Africa, Alys. But when I heard about what had happened to your father, I thought…”

“What?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’d like to talk to you in different surroundings, with more time… tell you about what’s happened over the years.”

“That’s not a good idea,” she forced herself to say.

“Alys, I know I have no right to come back into your life whenever I feel like it. I… Leaving that time was a big mistake-it was a huge mistake-and I’m ashamed of it. It’s taken a while for me to realize that, and all I ask is that we can sit down and have coffee together one day.”

And if I were to tell you that you have a son, Paul? A gorgeous boy with sky-blue eyes just like yours, blond and stubborn like his father? What would you do, Paul? And if I were to let you into our lives and then it didn’t work out? However much I want you, however much my body and my soul want to be with you, I can’t allow you to hurt him.

“I need a little time to think about it.”

He smiled, and small wrinkles Alys had never seen before clustered around his eyes.

“I’ll be waiting,” said Paul, holding out a little piece of paper with his address. “As long as you need me.”

Alys took the note and their fingers brushed against one another.

“All right, Paul. But I can’t promise anything. Go now.”

Slightly hurt at the brusque dismissal, Paul left without another word.

As he disappeared down the path, Alys prayed he wouldn’t turn around and see how much she was shaking.

“Well, well. It looks like the rat has taken the bait,” said Jurgen, gripping his binoculars tightly. From his vantage point on a hillock eighty meters from Josef’s grave, he could see Paul making his way up the queue to offer condolences to the Tannenbaums. He recognized him instantly. “Was I right, Adolf?”

“You were right, sir,” said Eichmann, a little uncomfortable at this deviation from the program. In the six months he had been working with Jurgen, the newly minted baron had managed to penetrate a number of lodges, thanks to his title, his superficial charm, and a number of fake credentials supplied by the Lodge of the Prussian Sword. The Grand Master of that lodge, a recalcitrant nationalist and acquaintance of Heydrich’s, supported the Nazis with every inch of his being. He had unscrupulously granted Jurgen the degree of Master and given him an intensive course on how to pass as an experienced Mason. Then he had written letters of recommendation to the Grand Masters of the humanitarian lodges, urging their collaboration “to weather the current political storm.”