K Jeter - The Kingdom of Shadows

He wasn’t Gestapo, she knew that now. A note of fervor had entered his voice, a shrill pitch like a wire tightened to the breaking point. He was SS, disguised in a well-cut double-breasted suit of nubbly brown wool instead of a black uniform shiny with polished leather and steel death’s-heads, but Schutzstaffel nonetheless. One of the true believers, not a simple follower of orders such as the soldier who’d fathered her child, but a disciple of that new dark faith, his visage honed to a knife’s edge by the rendering heat of all that he carried in his heart.

“ Fraulein Helle.” The consulate official watched and judged her. “Do you not think you owe a duty to your own country, the one in which you were born? If there were even a little true German blood in your veins -” He knew, he had to know; everything, all of her secrets. “If there were even a red drop of that blood, you might find it within you to listen to its wisdom. Let the blood decide what you should do.”

She imagined this was how she would be spoken to by a priest, severe and black-clad, a raven with burning eyes. “I… I can’t…” Marte shook her head slowly. “I don’t know…”

“We are well aware of other factors that might influence your decision. To stay here or to return to Germany.” The consulate official’s voice turned harsher and colder. “It is common knowledge that your relationship with Herr David Wise is more than a professional one. It is a tribute to the influence he wields in the motion picture industry, that mention of your affair with him has been kept out of the gossip columns. It is a tribute to the understanding and forbearance of Reichsminister Goebbels, that he is prepared to forgive your involvement with this man. In an industry so unfortunately dominated by Jews, the pressure would be overwhelming for an attractive Nordic woman to allow herself to be pawed and fondled by such a creature, and then paraded through restaurants and night clubs as an ornament to his swaggering pride.” The venom of the consulate official’s loathing, that he had kept hidden at the premiere when he had shaken David’s hand, now tinged his voice. “It is precisely from such disgusting racial predations that the Reichsminister wishes to protect you. From the Jew’s lust for all that is fair and pure, everything that he and his degenerate race can never be. Though of course -” The consulate official’s mirthless smile returned. “I will not pretend to you that Goebbels’ interest in your affairs is purely ideological in nature. This is a matter of some personal importance between you and him, is it not? A resumption of that role you previously played in his life, before the wiles of the American Jew took you away from him.” The smile widened. “Of course, that is why you may be assured of not only your safety upon your return home, but also the exalted position you will be given – the choice of roles, the lavish production budgets, the luxuries befitting your stature. I doubt that you will miss at all the comforts and splendor of your life here.”

“But… I don’t understand,” said Marte. “He sent me away before. He told me I had to leave…”

“A man may change his mind, yes? Especially when the circumstances change. Germany is at war now; it is besieged by both international Jewry and Bolshevism. The Fuhrer has weightier matters with which to concern himself, Fraulein Helle. The movement of armies, a military strategy that takes in half the globe – these are the things that receive his attention. And if I may say so, the Reichsminister has learned something of the art of discretion. He and his wife Magda, the mother of his children – they both have taken it upon themselves to foster the morale of the nation by preserving the appearance of their marriage. So many good, trusting Germans look up to them; it would be cruel to shatter their illusions. And those who tried to, those envious, whispering voices who carried scandal to not only the ear of the Fuhrer, but to the professional gossip-mongers as well…” The consulate official shrugged. “The Reichsminister has succeeded in dealing with such as those. Silence can be purchased, with coin of one kind or another. If the Reichsminister now finds that he has a personal debt to certain forces, certain people… that doesn’t matter. It’s a small price to pay. And he has paid it on your behalf, Fraulein Helle. That is what you must remember.”

She felt herself growing dizzy as she listened to the man, as though the ground itself were being drawn from beneath her feet. The night filled the windows of the house, the darkness wrapping tightly around the brass lamp’s glow. The things the consulate official spoke of, the ways of the land from which she had come so far… just hearing of them made her feel both nauseous and frightened. She seemed once more to be walking down a hallway of apartment doors, walking slowly as she did in dreams and memory, toward the one door that stood open, with the broken, overturned furniture and papers scattered across the floor on the other side, her mother and father gone…

Silence could be bought. With a small red coin, shiny enough for her to look down and see her face reflected in it, in the string of red coins that trailed into the corridor, the last of them soaking dark into the fibers of the worn carpet runner.

Even speaking of Joseph made her feel strange, insubstantial. To know that was still there in that dark world, waiting, thinking of her… She could feel his hands grasping her arms, drawing her close to him, his thin body against her breast. And the fierceness of his hungry gaze, searching her eyes as though the reflection of his own face there could speak and tell him what he wanted to know.

Marte bit her lip, clenching her fists in her lap until they were two trembling white stones. “No -” She looked up from her hands, into the consulate official’s amused regard. “I won’t go. I won’t leave this place.”

“Your hasty decision is not completely unanticipated.” The cigarette had died in the ashtray, leaving the smell of the cold cinder hanging in the air. The consulate official tilted his head back against the armchair’s leather, his eyes hooded. “An involvement with someone so powerful as Herr David Wise is not easy to abandon. This is how the Jew maintains his control over his victims. Nevertheless -” He reached over the side of the armchair. “I have come prepared with further arguments to be made.” He straightened, laying in his lap the thin leather portfolio he had picked up. His manicured hands undid the clasp. “I’m sure that you will find these of interest. And that you will take them into consideration before giving me your final answer.”

She took the group of large glossy photo prints that he handed to her. The top one showed a woman her own age, smiling and pointing the camera out to the little boy whose hand she held. The child scowled suspiciously into the lens.

“Who are they?” Marte looked up from the photograph.

“Ah. It would have been too much to expect, that you recognize the boy. You have never seen him – at least not like this. But the woman? You don’t remember her?”

Marte bent over the photograph, examining it more closely, trying to read its silent depth. Something about the woman troubled her, a memory barely discernible, a shape gliding beneath the dark surface of a night ocean.

“Look at the next picture, Fraulein Helle.” The consulate official’s voice came from far away. “Perhaps that will help.”

She drew out the one beneath and held it up. The photo had been taken outside – beyond a stand of trees could be seen a flat expanse of water, a river with hills mounting from the far bank. The picture had been taken in the springtime, with the shadows of leaves dappling the woman’s bright hair. And it was home, her old home of Germany – she could recognize the countryside even though it was someplace she’d never been to, far from Berlin.