Anne Blankman: Prisoner of Night and Fog

The science classroom’s familiar smells of chalk dust and formaldehyde assailed her nose. If only she could stay here, where everything made sense, with the predictable sequence of mathematics and the beautiful logic of science. Without the muddy mess of politics and religion and the questions that tormented her.

As she walked down the narrow hallway, she wished life could be simple and straightforward. She wanted to be so many different puzzle pieces—Uncle Dolf’s sunshine, the martyr’s daughter, the serious student, the future physician. The last was almost within her grasp. The new school term had started at Easter, so she was already halfway through her final year of Gymnasium , the university preparatory school. The university entrance exam was scheduled in a few months’ time. If she did well, soon she would begin studying medicine. Outside, the narrow Tengstrasse thronged with students spilling out of school: classmates from the Gymnasium , laughing and chattering to one another as they milled about on the pavement, and small boys from the primary school, roughhousing and teasing as they streamed down the avenue.

Gretchen joined her circle of friends. The girls were groaning about Frau Huber’s announcement—a Latin exam this week, simply cruel after the weekend’s assignment on the Aeneid , with all those horrible declensions—and Gretchen’s gaze moved to the next group of girls, meeting the eyes of Erika Goldberg.

Erika smiled and Gretchen started to smile back, then shame pushed heat into her cheeks and she looked away. She was supposed to despise Erika Goldberg. Erika with the wild corkscrew curls and even wilder laugh. Erika who told funny jokes and could recite the first five stanzas of the Aeneid from memory. She was the enemy, Gretchen had to remind herself when they passed each other in the hallway.

But she couldn’t. She laughed at Erika’s jokes, even though she shouldn’t. She admired Erika’s grasp of Latin, even though she should sneer. And sometimes, when her classmates gathered at the front steps after school, she wished she could stand with Erika, talking about Frau Huber’s ridiculous clothes, or the impossible English exam, or the handsome boys from the Gymnasium the next street over, but she didn’t. Whenever she turned in Erika’s direction, an invisible string jerked her back.

She looked away from Erika’s tentative smile, muttering an excuse about getting back to the boardinghouse to help her mother.

As she walked on alone, hot, dirty air pressed against her face. Up ahead, a low-slung black automobile belched exhaust, and a street vendor scooped scorched-smelling roasted chestnuts into paper bags for schoolboys. Mothers pushed babies in prams, and a woman with a mop tossed a bucket of water onto a flight of front steps. A trio of young men, wearing the SA’s plain brown uniform with the swastika brassard on the arm, ambled along, laughing and smoking. The street looked the same as it did every afternoon when she walked home from school. Everything seemed endlessly the same.

The future unrolled before her like a ribbon: sleeping with a chair hooked under the doorknob every night, beating carpets on the back steps, cooking the boarders’ breakfast, scrubbing the toilets, changing the linens, pouring fresh water in the basins, haggling with vendors at the Viktualienmarkt, fighting the nightmares about Papa, imagining his bloody body in the street and herself unable to help as his chest stilled and his eyes grew blank.

Tears locked her throat. She hadn’t been able to save her father, but she could save other people, someday. She walked faster. Nobody understood her ambitions except Uncle Dolf. He battled his life, as she did, searching for something bigger, something meaningful.

A small boy darted in front of her. “Wait,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.”

The child couldn’t have been older than seven or eight. She recognized his cheerful, dirty face; he had been one of the schoolboys clustered around the chestnut cart.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know, do I?” He sounded indignant. “I don’t go reading other folks’ love letters. Here.” He pulled a white envelope from his leather bag.

“Love letter.” She had to laugh. “You must have the wrong girl.”

“Nope.” He thrust the envelope into her hand. “The gentleman said a pretty girl with a blond braid and a white blouse and a Hakenkreuz necklace. You’re the only one, so it must be you.”

“Wait a minute.” She grabbed his spindly arm. “What gentleman?”

“I don’t know.” He tied to pull his arm back. “Some tall fellow in a dark suit. Must have been rich, though, because he gave me two marks.”

Marks, when the boy would have completed the errand for groschen. Not rich, perhaps, but determined.

Unease whispered up her spine. She whipped around. Boys playing jacks, girls walking home, housewives carrying string shopping bags. Nobody suspicious.

The boy scampered off. At the corner, a streetcar trundled to a stop, blue sparks flying from its electric cable, and she climbed up its steps.

No one looked at her as she threaded her way to the back. Leaning against a pole for balance, she ripped open the envelope.

Monday, 17 August 1931

Dear Fräulein Müller ,

Although you hide it well, it is clear you are nothing like the others, which is why I presume to send you this letter. Last week, I was approached by one of the Nazi Party’s original members. He is old now, and his health frail, but his memory is clear. He told me a troubling story that I believe you, as Klaus Müller’s daughter, deserve to hear. Your father did not die a martyr to the Nazi cause, and your family’s precarious position within Hitler’s party is predicated on a lie .

I beg you give me a chance to explain, and I shall meet you directly outside your home this evening at half past six o’clock .

A Friend

The paper rustled in her shaking hand. How dare anyone make up such lies? She knew Papa had been shot to death trying to protect Uncle Dolf, just as she knew the ocean’s waves would endlessly roll on the shore, each slap of water eroding the sand a little more. It was one of life’s truths.

And no one—certainly not an anonymous stranger who signed his despicable lies with the appellation A Friend —could be allowed to question her father’s sacrifice. He had died so Hitler might live. No one must be permitted to forget his final, heroic act. Or question it.

She glanced out the window at the long city streets winding past. The summer sun hung like a bright coin in the sky. Hours left before this mysterious friend showed up at the boardinghouse. She would meet with him, of course—Uncle Dolf always said the only way to deal with a perceived threat was to attack first—but she must have a means of protecting herself, in case the stranger was dangerous.

The streetcar jerked around a corner. She grabbed a canvas ceiling strap to steady herself. And she thought of the knives in the kitchen drawer—long and shining and sharp.

THE HARD BLUE LIGHT OF EARLY EVENING SPREAD across the Königinstrasse. Gretchen waited in a narrow passage between the stone houses. Nerves tightened her grip on the knife’s hilt. Motionless, she let the alley’s shadows wrap around her like a cloak. Only the glint of her eyes and the knife in her hand, she knew, might betray her.

But he wouldn’t be looking for her. He would be scanning the houses, searching for hers.

Across the avenue, the massive Englischer Garten stretched its manicured lawns in both directions. Along the pavement, working-class men in rough jackets trudged to their rented rooms, grumbling about low wages, and she was reminded of Uncle Dolf’s laugh when he said the crippling depression was the best thing that could have happened to him or the Party. People were desperate for saviors, for change that put food in their bellies and coins in their pockets. For any kind of stability. And that was precisely what Hitler promised to provide.