Pegasus: A Novel (5 page)

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Nick said honestly. “What if there is no solution?”

“There will be,” Alex said quietly. “There has to be, although this never should have
happened. Never. Not in a civilized country like Germany. Who cares if your mother
was half Jewish?”

“I want to see her,” Nick admitted sheepishly. “I’d be angry at my father for not
telling me the truth for all these years, if the rest of this weren’t happening. But
I can’t be mad at him now. The poor man is terrified for us, and heartbroken that
we have to leave. But I’d like to see who she is. Even if we have nothing in common,
she’s still my mother, and I’ve always wondered about her.” Alex nodded.
He could understand that, although it seemed so much less important than his other
problems now.

“Does it really matter?” Alex asked.

“It does to me,” Nick said solemnly. “Although I have to find a sponsor and a job
in the States or Britain first. I need someone who can employ me so I can support
the boys.”

“I’ll think about it tonight,” Alex promised.

Nick reached out to touch his arm through the open car window. “Thank you,” he said,
“for everything … for being my friend for all these years.” Alex nodded, unable to
speak for a moment, and moved to tears himself. There was nothing he could say to
express what he was feeling or how much Nick and his children meant to him. He hated
the Nazis more than ever now, for what they were doing. The country had gone mad if
they were following this little monster who wanted to chase respectable people from
their homes and send them away with their children. Nick von Bingen and his family
were the backbone of Germany, its heritage, and the essence of what mattered. And
treating people like him and his family as if they were criminals was going to leave
a gaping wound in the soul of the country Alex had been proud to call his homeland.
And all he could think of was how much he was going to miss Nick and the boys. He
couldn’t bear to think about it yet. He was still reverberating from what Nick had
told him, and as he walked into the schloss, he wiped his eyes. He was crying for
his friend, his sons, his father who would be heartbroken to be separated from them,
for himself, and for the country he had loved and could grow to hate now, for banishing
his friend. What was about to happen was an immeasurable loss to all of them, and
a frightening sign of the times. Their safe, peaceful life had been shattered, and
Alex was certain that nothing in his life would ever be the same again.

The days after Paul told Nick that he had to leave ran into each other with endless
stress and a constant undercurrent of shock and fear. Nick still couldn’t believe
what was happening, Paul spent his days writing letters to people he barely knew in
America, hoping to find a sponsor and a job for his son, and explaining their plight
to anyone who would listen.

Lucas was oblivious to the tension surrounding them, but Tobias picked up on it quickly
and asked his father what was wrong. It was one of the most painful moments in Nick’s
life to explain to his son what was happening, and why they had to leave their home.
It made no sense to any of them.

After bursting into tears and saying he wouldn’t go, Tobias took off on his bike to
tell Marianne. She was just leaving the stables when he found her. She had been watching
her father train Pluto, and was over her flu by then, although she still had a bad
cough, and she had a red scarf wrapped around her neck. And the moment she saw Toby,
she knew he’d been crying, and she was afraid that something terrible had happened.
Her father had said nothing to her
about what the von Bingens were facing. He didn’t want to tell her until the boys
knew and they knew where they were going, which would be something concrete, rather
than the raw terror that was seizing Nick and his father at the moment. Their worst
fear was that no one would help them, and that Nick and the boys would wind up in
a labor camp after all. Their days of freedom were numbered, and time was racing.
If they were going to get out of Germany, they had to find something soon.

“We’re leaving!” Tobias shouted, as he threw down his bicycle, untangled his long
adolescent legs, and ran toward her.

“Leaving for where?” She looked startled and uneasy, and the devastation on his face
frightened her immediately. His eyes were filled with tears.

“We don’t know yet. But it’s going to be soon. America maybe, or England. Papa and
Opa are working on it. Papa’s mother was half Jewish, and she isn’t dead after all.
She went away somewhere, and they got
divorced
,” he said in a conspiratorial tone. “And now we have to leave because they think
we’re Jewish too.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Marianne tried to dismiss what he was saying as she stared at
him. He was as tall as she was, and she could see that he was shaking, from fear and
shock at what he’d been told, as much as from the cold wind that swept her white blond
hair across her face. “You’re not Jewish. Who said you have to go, and go where?”

“The
Reich
says we’re Jewish, even if only a little bit. Because of Papa’s mother, and he’s
never even seen her. She left when he was born and gave him to Opa. Papa just told
me. I won’t go,” Tobias said, frightened. “I want to stay here. This is our home.”
He burst into tears, and she reached out and put her arms around him and held him
close as she began to cry too. “Papa said if we don’t go,
they’ll take us away somewhere. Maybe a labor camp. I don’t want that to happen either.”

“Does Lucas know?” she asked, instantly worried. They were like her brothers. She
knew that Tobias had a crush on her, but she paid no attention to it. He was just
a child to her, even though he was only two years younger. But at seventeen and fifteen,
it made a difference. A big one.

“He’s too little. We can’t tell him.” He echoed what his father had said. “Papa has
to find a sponsor and a job.”

“What kind of job?” She was shocked at the idea, as well as everything else Tobias
had just told her.

“I don’t know.” He was confused.

“What can he do?” She looked surprised, as she led Toby to the house to get them both
out of the chill wind.

“I don’t know,” Toby said, as they walked into the drafty main hall, with ancestral
portraits lining the walls. He followed her to the kitchen, where she asked for hot
chocolate for both of them, and then took him upstairs to her father’s study since
he was out. It was a cozy book-lined room, with a fire burning in the grate for when
her father would come back from the stables. It was her favorite room in the vast,
drafty house. The larger rooms were hard to keep heated in the winter, but this one
was always warm and inviting, especially when her father was in it. She loved sitting
and talking with him here. And Tobias liked it too.

“This all sounds crazy,” Marianne said sensibly, unable to believe his story, or the
dire implications of it for them. “Are you sure you have to leave? Why would they
send you away? Your father’s not a common thief.”

“Of course not, but they think he’s a Jew.” Tobias appeared desperate as he said it.

“Are they sending Jews to labor camps?” Marianne looked horrified, as though she didn’t
believe him.

“A general who is a friend of Opa’s came to warn him. He’s the one who said we had
to leave, or they’ll take us away.” Marianne was pale, and her hands were shaking
when Marta brought the tray in, with a cup of hot chocolate for each of them. Marta
could see that they were upset about something and left quietly, sure that it was
an argument of some kind between them and they’d work it out. They always did. They
had been squabbling as children for years. Marianne usually won because she was older,
and Tobias was still a child in many ways. Marianne was growing up, particularly in
the last year, and Marta thought she was as beautiful as her mother had been, perhaps
even more so, and she had her father’s spirit.

“This all sounds like a crazy story to me,” Marianne said with determination, as they
sipped their hot chocolate. She didn’t want to believe what he’d told her, but the
terror in Toby’s eyes told her it might just be true, unless he had misread the seriousness
of the situation and thought it was worse than it really was. She hoped so. “Does
my father know?” she asked him.

“I don’t know. Papa didn’t tell me,” Toby answered, and as though they had conjured
him up, her father walked into the room. Marta had told Alex they were in his study,
and she appeared shortly afterward with a tea tray for him. He helped himself to a
cup of tea, and looked at both children with a serious expression.

“What’s going on here, you two?” He wasn’t sure if they’d had an argument, or if Toby
had told her the news, if Toby even knew it himself yet. Nick had said he wouldn’t
tell his boys until he was sure where they were going, and he wasn’t yet. Nick had
told Alex that himself.

“We’re leaving,” Toby said sadly, and told him the same story he
had told Marianne minutes before. Alex nodded, and they could both see he already
knew.

“Your father told me a few days ago,” he said quietly. “That is very, very bad news,
for all of us,” he said. And the way he said it told Marianne that it was true, and
tears filled her eyes immediately.

“How is that possible, Papa?” she asked him in a choked voice. “Why are they sending
Jews to labor camps? And the von Bingens aren’t Jewish.”

“Nick and the boys are part Jewish, it turns out. And apparently that’s all the Reich
needs to hear. They have been slowly banishing them from our society for the past
five years. They seem to want all Jews isolated from the rest of us, or out of Germany,
or confined in camps if possible. Toby’s right, they have to leave. And very soon
too. His father and grandfather are working very hard on it.” He had sent off several
letters himself, but had no responses yet. “I’m very sorry, Toby. I’m sure your father
will find a solution. It’s just hard not knowing where it will be.”

“Can we go to visit them?” Marianne asked quietly. It was the worst news she’d had
since her father told her that Toby’s mother and sister died five years before. She
remembered it perfectly. She had been very fond of Toby’s mother, and very sad when
she died, and equally so about his little sister.

“It depends where they are,” Alex said honestly, “but we’ll certainly try.” Marianne
and Toby exchanged a look then, which said everything they felt about being separated.
Toby couldn’t bear the thought of yet another important loss in his life, not only
his dearest friends but his home too. And he didn’t want to leave his grandfather
behind, but he and Toby’s father had said that his grandfather had to stay. They didn’t
want to leave their ancestral seat unattended
with all the upheaval going on, even if the schloss was far from any city. It was
hard to say what would happen now.

They talked for a long time, and Marta brought them more hot chocolate and tea, and
some freshly baked biscuits. It made Marianne suddenly realize that her friends might
not be living this way anymore, and she was grateful that she and her father didn’t
have to leave too. And after a while, Alex offered to drive Toby home, but he said
he’d be fine on his bicycle and left a few minutes later, after kissing Marianne on
the cheek. She thought of him more than ever like a little brother when he did it,
and not the man he wanted to be.

“That’s an awful story, Papa,” she said sadly, still unable to believe that it was
true. She was shocked by everything she’d heard that afternoon. It was truly inconceivable.

“Yes, it is. I don’t know what they’re going to do. It’s not so easy to pull a job
out of a hat, and a whole new life, in a matter of weeks. It takes time to organize,
and that’s the one thing they don’t have.”

“And if they get sent to a camp?” she asked, holding her breath.

“They’ll have to be very brave and survive it,” he said matter-of-factly, trying to
convince her that they’d be okay, but he didn’t believe that himself, not by a long
shot. He thought Nick and the boys should leave Germany as soon as they could, but
for now they still had nowhere to go.

He and Marianne talked about it all through dinner, and Marianne thought she could
detect a small smirk of disapproval on Marta’s face when she heard that Nick and the
boys were part Jewish, and then she left the room to tend to her duties in the kitchen.

Marianne thought about them all night, and finally slept fitfully, and in his room,
Alex was still awake when he heard the birds begin singing the next morning, while
it was still dark. But he sat bolt upright
in bed then. He had an idea. He got up, dressed quickly, and hurried downstairs to
grab a coat and his car keys, then rushed to the garage, to drive his Hispano-Suiza
over to the von Bingens. He used the big brass knocker to pound on the door, and their
head housekeeper appeared a moment later. Alex asked to see Nick immediately and was
told he wasn’t up yet, and then she reluctantly agreed to check. Nick appeared a few
minutes later, wearing a silk dressing gown open over his pajamas and slippers. He
was surprised to see Alex pacing in his front hall, as though he had come to make
some kind of announcement, which was the case.

“I have an idea, and I think it will work,” Alex said excitedly. He didn’t want Nick
to leave, but under the circumstances, it was their only hope. And with the risk of
being sent to a labor camp, he didn’t want them to stay either.

“Why are you here so early?” Nick asked with a pained look, as he tied the belt of
the dressing gown. He had been up until two, but no great ideas had come to him.

“I’ll give you two of my Lipizzaners, and some Arabians. All we have to do is contact
a circus, and ask them to give you a job and sponsor you. And with eight horses, two
of them Lipizzaners, I’m sure they would.” Nick looked at him in disbelief and burst
out laughing. He laughed so hard he nearly cried, and then he had to sit down. He
rang for coffee for both of them, and looked at his friend.