Child of the Journey (2 page)

Like Sol.

She wound up the music box. "
Glühwürmchen, Glühwürmchen..."

The barrel-organ man had played the song that night in the street, as if it were her theme song. She had executed a few dancing steps and grabbed Erich's hand. "Listen. He's playing 'Glowworm.' I never get enough of that song."

She had lifted Erich's hand to see it more clearly in the lamplight, kissed the red scars she had noticed earlier, and asked what had happened to cause them.

"M-my badge of courage?" He was blushing, though whether from pleasure at the touch of her lips kiss or out of embarrassment, she could not tell. "L-long time ago. An accident..."

Whatever else he had said was submerged in the sound of her own voice.
"Glühwürmchen, Glühwürmchen, glimm're---"

She had not realized she was singing aloud that night. People stared at her--not that she cared, but it wasn't exactly smart to draw attention to herself like that, in the middle of the street. Still she had danced toward the music.

Someone started to applaud and others joined in.
 

"More!" a man yelled. "More!"

"Play, barrel-organ man!" another shouted. "Bring out the beer. We're going to have a real Saturday night party!"

The barrel-organ man grinned widely and patted the head of his monkey; it seemed to be grinning too. The stiff-necked upper crust could keep their genteel appreciation, she thought as she curtsied and began to sing. This was more like it, she had thought; this was the real thing.

But that night wasn't real. Not anymore. So far in her past that it was like another life. Make-believe.

Tonight...was real.

"I made a deal with Erich, Sol," she whispered, holding her ring finger close to her cheek. "He may share my bed when he pleases, but I decide who shares my heart."

Erich's terms had been clear; he would make sure Solomon stayed alive in the camp if she publicly renounced Judaism and became Frau Erich Alois...in the eyes of the world, his loving wife.

Be alive, Solomon, she prayed. Oh God, be alive. I'm doing my part. Do yours, and we'll make it out of this God-forsaken country.

She replaced the cigar band in the music box and bent over to smell the roses from the Argentinean emissary, Juan Perón.

"He still sends them to you every time he is in Berlin, doesn't he?" Erich came up behind her. He sounded peeved.

"Yes, he does." He had since before Uncle Walther's death. She pictured Perón's face the last time she had seen him, watching her place a wreath under the plaque commemorating her uncle's assassins.
  

They had the courage of their convictions,
the plaque read.

Men and women do what they must to survive,
Perón's card told her, as if he felt the need to rationalize her actions for her. This, all the ugly things, were for Sol. Always for Sol. She was his protector, carrying his spirit, and the three of them--she, Erich, Solomon--were a triumvirate still, as they had been from the start. Only now Sol was in a camp and she was in a different kind of prison, wearing a traitor's hat.

"An Argentinean custom--courting another man's wife?"

Miriam stared at Erich in the mirror as he strolled out onto the balcony. Seeing him out there never failed to remind her of the time, eons ago, when he had climbed the rose trellis and watched her in her peignoir in front of this same mirror. And Solomon somewhere out there in the darkness, Erich's constant friend and support system. There--but too embarrassed to show himself, even when Erich made her the gift of a puppy.

Watching Erich kiss her.

Watching her let him.

She had insisted on having this bedroom before agreeing to move back to the estate. The move, he had said, would prove her sincerity to Hitler and Goebbels. Perhaps he secretly hoped that the move would placate her. The estate, hers by birthright after her uncle's and grandmother's death, had been stolen by the Nazis...and now, ironically, was hers again. To use, but not to own. And for a price.

She had allowed Erich to apply to have her status changed from Jew to Aryan.

To further placate her, he had indulged her trivial request for the bedroom. That was the trick to getting what she wanted: convince him an issue was trivial.

"Do I look beautiful enough for your precious Führer's party?"

"Almost perfect, my darling." Erich came inside.

"Almost perfect?" she said as flippantly as she could.

"Wear this and you'll look absolutely perfect." He put his hand in his pocket and took out a necklace. "Here."

He reached in front of her and centered a large sapphire above her décolletage. "It matches your eyes." He bent to kiss the back of her neck before fastening the delicate gold chain beneath her hair. "My God!" He stood back to look at her reflection. "You just get more lovely."

Heart thumping, she fingered the necklace. "Where did you find this? It belonged to..."

"Your Oma."

She clamped down on her rising rage and fought with the clasp, trying to open it. "I can't wear it!" she said, momentarily losing control. "I can't go tonight. You'll have to say I'm ill--"

"Don't be hysterical," he said coolly. "The necklace looks magnificent, and I've already made excuses for you once too often. It was an honor to be invited. This is important to me. To us."

To me and us, only a different
us,
she thought, knowing she had to pull herself together in case someone at the party had a message for her from the underground.

"I suppose I can't let my dressmaker down." She forced a half-smile. "She would never forgive me if I didn't show off her creation. She tells me it's going to be polka dots for the opera season, if Berlin still has an opera house by then."

"I've been meaning to ask why you go to Baden-Baden for your dresses. Are there no seamstresses here, in Berlin?"

"Of course there are. But I like Madame Pérrault. I've known her since I was a young girl." She stopped. She must be careful to say just enough and not too much. When Konnie drove her to Baden-Baden, they spent only minutes with the seamstress; the rest of the time was devoted to meeting with various members of the underground, for whom she acted as liaison here in Berlin.
 

"Remember Nabokov, my tennis instructor?" she asked him.

 
He nodded, his expression telling her that he had not forgotten his childish jealousy of what he took to be the man's obvious desire for young Miss Rathenau.

"This woman was his mistress," Miriam went on. "He deserted her when his first book came out, and she came to me for help. As you see, she is good at what she does."

She got up and showed off the full effect of the dress.

"You'll be the belle of the ball."

"The belly of the ball's more like it! I'm getting fat. I'm getting fat without my dancing. Maybe I should have had her make the dress in some simple fabric and fashion--something more suitable for a matron of the Reich."

Erich laughed. "You'll never look matronly,
Prinzessin
. Not even if you were...pregnant."

Miriam met his gaze in the mirror. Such an event was unlikely. They had not had intercourse for a couple of months, and it had been a fortnight since he had even slept with her, preferring his own bedroom for reasons she could not fathom. Whatever the cause, she was thankful.

Unable to pass up the opportunity for sarcasm, however, she added, "And if I were? How would you feel about that, Erich? After all, my blood is tainted no matter how many times I renounce my faith. Could you dare love a child that would be a
Mischling
--half-breed?"

The color rose in his cheeks, and she thought she had gone too far, but he simply shrugged and said quietly, "If you were carrying my child, I'd strut around like a Pfaueninsel peacock, and the hell with anyone worried about genealogy."

Miriam chuckled. "Peacock strutting is conduct unbecoming of an officer of the Reich." She wished there were more moments like this. He generally took himself and his damn Party so seriously, it was hard for her to recall if he had the capacity for anything else.

"It's good to hear you laugh," he said.

He reached for his cigarette case, clicked it open, and automatically offered her a smoke. When she shook her head, he took out one of the fashionable flat cigarettes he smoked on formal occasions, and lit it with the engraved lighter his parents had given him when they reopened the shop. He inhaled and blew several smoke rings. She watched them drift toward the ceiling.

"Time to go." He removed his formal jacket from the wardrobe.

Miriam stared at the armband, as if its white circle and red and black emblem were an adder about to strike.

"Our dear Gauleiter has already grown impatient and gone on without us," he said.

"Don't worry. As long as he had his schnapps, he won't care. Why on earth did you ask him to come here before the party anyway?"

"He keeps making such a point of telling me how much he misses living here at the estate. " He paused and glanced down at his arm. "I have to wear it," he said coldly.

She had not realized that she was still staring at the armband. "You like to wear it."

"Let's not start that again."

She turned back to the mirror and removed Oma's necklace. Fiddling with the row of minute pearl buttons that ran from her lace-edged décolletage to her waistline, she said, "I'm sorry, Erich. The necklace holds too many memories." She picked up the double pearl choker he had given her for her birthday and struggled with the clasp.

"Women! I give up." Erich sighed and helped her with the necklace. "Now we really do have to go."

L
ess than half an hour later, Konrad pulled up outside Schloss Gehrhus. Two cars were ahead of them. Miriam watched as men in evening dress and women in gowns and furs stepped out. They wore the somber colors that were reputedly the Führer's preference, all but one, an ambassador's wife who had--or so Erich had told her--graced his bed upon more than one occasion. She was tall and angular, quite beautiful. A silver mink dangled from her arm. Her gown was midnight blue, beaded across the right shoulder in silver bugle beads and black sequins.

A little dressmaker in Baden-Baden, no doubt, Miriam thought cynically. Turning her head, she looked at the castle's façade. No sequins there. The architecture was severe, if not dull--more like Jagdschloss Grünewald, the famous hunting lodge, than a castle.
 

Inside, as she recalled from the visits of her youth, opulence gave lie to the exterior. The castle, built by one Dr. Pannwitz, personal attorney to his Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II, had long been a gathering place for important people. Politicians, artists, scientists and diplomats from all over the world had met there, striding across its oriental carpets, exchanging confidences under its crystal chandeliers, dancing across the parquet floor of its two-storied mirrored ballroom. The Kaiser himself had been the first guest to enter the house, shortly before the outbreak of the Great War.

Konrad opened the car door.

"How long do we have to stay?" Miriam asked.

"As long as seems expedient," Erich said curtly. Apparently immediately regretting the brusqueness of his answer, he reached for her gloved hand. She pulled it away. "I'm sorry,
Prinzessin,"
he said. "I have much on my mind. And this is, after all, the Führer's birthday celebration."

On his actual birthday, on the twentieth of April, Hitler was at Berchtesgaden with Eva and his cronies. By his order, the streets of Berlin had been filled with open crates of oranges; the crates would be replenished all week.

Tonight, three days later, the leaders of his "master race" were gathering at Schloss Gehrhus to eat caviar and pheasant and drink champagne to his continued good health.

"How many celebrations does that madman need!" she asked.

Hoping that someone from the underground would be here with a message for her to pass along so she could rationalize her presence to herself, she allowed Konnie to help her from the car. She pulled her cape around her shoulders and followed Erich up the stone steps and into the entry hall. It was filled with people. Champagne flowed freely and flowers streamed over the balustrades, fresh roses and carnations from the estate which ranged across more than twelve thousand square meters.

"Doesn't such extravagance make you at all uncomfortable?" She tugged at her gloves.

"I can never walk in here without wanting to touch everything." He looked as excited as a sailor confronted by the infinite variety of Amsterdam's red-light district.

He lusts after the oriental carpets and mahogany balustrades, she thought. She took in the gilt-edged chairs and matching tapestry-covered walls, the vaulted ceilings carved with inlaid wood, the giant arrangements of agapanthus and gladioli in the entryway. From the dining hall she could hear
"Für Elise,"
one of Hitler's favorites, and the buzz of conversation.

"So you two lovebirds finally decided to grace us with your presence," Goebbels called out from across the foyer. Short and spare, he leaned toward them as he hoisted the inevitable glass of schnapps in a mock toast. "Perhaps now we can eat."