by Jane Thynne
Now she was here again, standing right in front of him.
Naturally she didn’t recognize him. Why would she? She was wearing a faded pink dress, with an apron over it, and she seemed flustered, her color heightened, and hair mussed, as though she had been in bed with a lover.
“I’m sorry, Sturmbannführer. I was tending the garden.”
It was early evening and snowing, entirely inappropriate conditions for gardening, one might have thought, but nothing was normal now.
“I was planting honeysuckle. I love the fragrance, but it’s a difficult decision between honeysuckle and jasmine. What do you think?”
A long day of loading frightened people onto trucks. The suicide couple. A woman screaming in his face about her child. Dogs barking, officers shouting. And now this. Gardening.
“I have no opinion, meine Frau. I’m here to make an inspection.”
“Of course, Sturmbannführer.” She waved him inside with a wry smile. “Do make yourself at home.”
Her voice was low and fluting, like some exotic instrument.
“May I offer you some coffee?”
“Thank you.”
When she left the room he took the opportunity to look around him. It was entrancing; everything about the house was rich and tasteful, the kind of place you might dream of. It was filled with art, antique furniture, Chinese vases, and a grand piano. A Bechstein. Beneath his jackboots lay the rich, intricate brindle of a Persian carpet. The sorts of things people like him would never have. At the end of the drawing room, visible through an open door, he could even see a paneled library, with clubby chairs and leather-bound volumes on the shelves, silver and gold tooling glimmering in the light of the fire.
He picked up a silk scarf that was lying on a chest of drawers and inhaled the perfume. He caught a bouquet of rose, violet, orange blossom, and other unrecognizable scents. The scent was like an exquisite melody he could neither name nor identify. He set it down and ran his fingertips along the keys of the Bechstein, fighting the physical ache to sit and play.
Collecting himself, he cast a more professional eye around. The house bore all the standard accoutrements of loyal National Socialism. On the mantelpiece was the Bakelite Volksempfänger with its swastika below the dial, and he checked that it was not tuned to a foreign station. Beside it stood a silver-framed photograph of Ernst Weissmuller glad-handing Hermann Goering. Stepping inside the library, he saw the Führer’s photograph hung appropriately on the wall. All German homes had a picture of the Führer on the wall—Hoffman’s apartment was one of the few without, though there was no one around to question his loyalty—and here, as expected, the regulation portrait glowered in pride of place. Though not quite pride of place, because right above the fireplace, where the Führer might have been, another portrait hung.
She was standing with one arm on a chair, the scalloped edges of her neckline running just above the swell of her cleavage, hinting at a sensuality that was not disclosed, though everything else about her was infinitely seductive: the translucence of her neck, with the violet suggestion of a vein, the white curve of her arm, the lift of a smile. Eyes the blue of Meissen porcelain. The lucid sweetness of a Vermeer mixed with the luxurious sensuality of Klimt.
How could the painter have resisted her?
* * *
—
IRENE REMOVED A SPOON of coffee from her stash in the kitchen. It was real coffee, a small grainy remnant she had hoarded for years, allowing herself only to sniff it now and again. The only coffee in the shops was a concoction referred to as Blümenkaffee—so called because its weakness meant one could see the flowers at the bottom of a china cup—but this occasion demanded something more. Offering real coffee was a strategic plan. Surely the type of person who was able to obtain real coffee would not be the type to shelter Jews.
The spoon trembled violently in her hand, and she took a deep breath to calm herself and avoid spilling the precious grounds. Someone had reported on her. Now she faced an inspection. How thorough would it be? On the one hand, the officer was alone…But what was the chance that Oskar’s hiding place could hold up beneath the scrutiny of a professional SS man?
Especially if that officer was Sturmbannführer Axel Hoffman.
His name had sounded in her brain the instant she saw his face, with its crow’s wing of dark hair gleaming with pomade and eyes the color of flint arrows. The pallor of his skin reminded her of a carved knight in some ancient Teutonic cathedral, and she suddenly recalled the echoing courtliness with which he had bent over her hand and kissed it, all that time ago. The way he had looked into her eyes, as though to the depths of a lake.
She shivered like she had seen a ghost.
* * *
—
IRENE BROUGHT THE COFFEE on a silver platter. She had removed her apron and run a comb through her hair.
“Milk’s powdered, I’m afraid.”
“Many thanks.”
He took it from her and sipped gingerly from a cup marked with a gilded W, registering with astonishment his first taste of real coffee in years. Hoffman did not quite know what to make of Irene Weissmuller. Her display of hospitality was just a little too obvious. He had seen that before. People who were hiding something were always overeager to please. Might there in fact be some substance to the rumors? He passionately hoped not.
“Forgive my intrusion, meine Frau. There have been reports of unusual sounds coming from your house. Hammering, banging, the sawing of wood. Do you have any explanation?”
For a sliver of a second she looked stricken. Then a smile lit up her face and she moved to the other end of the drawing room, returning with a piece of crippled furniture.
“Guilty!”
She was brandishing half a chair. Two of its legs were snapped off.
“I’ve been burning the furniture, I’m afraid. I use the hammer to break it up. I was saving the Biedermeier for last, but in the end I decided I prefer warmth to elegance. The rest of this poor chair is over there in the grate. As long as you don’t tell my husband’s family, who would make no end of a fuss, there’s no harm done, is there?”
Another brilliant smile.
“I would offer you something else”—she gave a stagy glance around—“but I’m afraid there’s not much.”
He looked over to where the stump of charred wood was flickering liverishly in the fireplace. It was the obvious explanation. No matter that she lived in a luxury villa, the woman had to keep warm and there was no coal to be had. He could continue with a more thorough investigation, but what would be the point? He should leave, but everything within him militated against it. Although there was no more reason for him to be there, he lingered as though his feet were moored in stone. He could not bear to go. Not so soon.
“We have met before, meine Frau.”
She nodded. “At Pfaueninsel. Then at the opera house.”
A rush of pure delight went through him that she had remembered.
“May I inquire after your husband?”
“He died. In the Ukraine.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. Was she suggesting she wasn’t? “It happens in war.”
“And are you…” He could not think what else to inquire.
“I have no children. I live alone. I work as a nurse.”
His gaze darted around the room, seeking out further prompts for conversation. It lit on an antique chess set.
“Do you play?” he asked, without any expectation whatsoever.
“I do actually. Would you like a game?”
Chapter Thirty
Everyone knew the war was lost. The Russians were less than an hour’s drive from Berlin, and the mood at headquarters grew grimmer each day. Records and classified files were ripped from cabinets and destroyed, top-secret papers burned in the office incinerators. Yet st
ill reports continued to come in of people suspected of hiding Jews, and they all had to be checked out, even though most came from neighbors bearing grudges, hoping to warm their encroaching fears with a little flame of spite.
The worthlessness of Hoffman’s own life was so daily apparent to him that several times he came close to taking out his Mauser and administering the bullet he had reserved for his own temple when his old dog finally died. He would have done it sooner, but for the thought of aging Effie, back in the apartment, her gray muzzle tilted faithfully toward the door for his return. Almost all dogs and cats had disappeared now, either starved to death or eaten, so he kept her inside and walked her very early, picking carefully through still-burning rubble after each night’s bombing.
Irene Weissmuller’s company was like a drift of blossom over a gaping crack of earth. She was a match struck in the darkness to which he turned. He had heard that moths headed for light because it made the darkness beyond it seem deeper and they were designed to seek that darkness out. Hoffman was certain that the deepest darkness was not far off for him too.
* * *
—
SWIFTLY THEIR EVENINGS TOOK on a pattern. There was no pretense of official business, or any business other than chess. When he arrived Irene would offer him food and ersatz coffee, and he would proffer anything he had found himself: beer, sometimes, and once a bottle of Steinhäger gin that he had managed to procure from work as officers consumed their stores of brandy and wine, rather than save it all for the Russians.
Hoffman was far better than Irene at chess, but he found himself being deliberately lenient, making allowances, overlooking the obvious move that would penetrate her all too weak defenses and topple her king. He had no desire to end the game too soon. As they sat over the board, knees almost touching, their talk ranged across culture and philosophy, music and opera, his early ambitions and her childhood. They talked of Irene’s paintings, some of which hung on the walls around them. Of his mother, who had been a gifted musician herself, and her sacrifices to make her only son a concert pianist. Then, when she became ill, Hoffman’s decision to sell the piano and undertake legal training, so her fierce ambition for him was never realized. He and Irene never mentioned Ernst, or Hoffman’s present occupation. They discussed what they might do after the war and the cities they would visit: Venice, Rome, Paris. The mountains they would climb, the seas they would swim in, and the meals they would consume.
Her eyes lit up when she talked about her sister. Cordelia.
“You’ll see her again. After the war.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever see her again. She wouldn’t want to. And even if she did, she’ll never see me in the same way. As I really am.”
“Why? Does she have no imagination?”
“Oh, plenty. She plans to write novels. But Cordelia wants the world to be exactly how she sees it.”
“You can’t blame her for that. Isn’t that all anyone wants?”
Hoffman himself felt enclosed in a world of their own creation, a world with walls as tremulous as a raindrop, poised before smashing to the ground.
The only awkward aspect of these otherwise idyllic evenings was that sometimes, in the midst of a game, Irene would jump up without warning and put a record on the gramophone. She was just like someone who feared being overheard by the authorities, which was crazy because the authorities sat right there in front of her. At moments like this Hoffman sensed something was not right, but he couldn’t discern what it could be. His eyes swept the room, trying to work out why he was unsettled, until he realized it was obvious.
All that was unsettling him were his growing feelings for Irene Weissmuller.
* * *
—
ONE EVENING, IRENE SAID, “I don’t suppose you’d like to play the Bechstein?”
“Are you sure?”
“I could find some sheet music.”
“No need.”
He settled himself at the piano. Pausing like a pilot at the instruments of an unfamiliar plane, he closed his eyes, flexing his long, delicate fingers. Giving himself up to it, he revisited pieces he had learned by heart under the critical scrutiny of his mother. Schubert first, then Chopin and Beethoven, his fingers flying over the keys and the notes rising and falling like birdsong, as he entered the beauty and became part of it.
When he finished she said, “I could listen to you forever. But it’s getting late.”
She rose to rake the fire. Hoffman’s gift that evening had been three precious logs of firewood, but they were ashy now. She split them apart with a poker to reveal the red-hot embers at their hearts.
Hoffman came to stand behind her. He heard himself ask, “Do you miss your husband?”
“Not in the way I would have expected. I suppose if we’d had a child it would have been different.”
“You’re young. You might still have a child.”
“Anything might happen. I don’t suppose it will. I feel like that.” She nodded across at a paperweight on the side table. It was a chunk of amber containing the perfectly preserved body of an insect. Ernst’s souvenir from the amber works at Königsberg.
“You feel trapped? Aren’t we all?”
“Yes. But for me it’s been a long time.”
Shaking herself, she summoned a bright smile and added, “Never mind about that. You know, there is one thing I miss about Ernst. It’s frightfully trivial, you’ll never guess. It’s dancing! We used to spend our life in nightclubs, but now I’ve got no one to dance with.”
“Would you dance with me?”
“Here? Now?”
“Why not?”
He selected a record, Strauss’s “Blue Danube,” put it on the gramophone, and bowed formally, as though they were at the Vienna State Opera, before taking her in his arms, his right hand cupping her shoulder blade and his left holding her right hand aloft. To begin with she laughed, yet as they started to move together in synchronicity, she surrendered to the rhapsody of the rhythm and they found themselves waltzing—one two three, one two three—out of the library and across the drawing room parquet, carried as light as leaves on a current. Their bodies fitted so perfectly they became one being, fused by the music’s centrifuge and furled in its invisible net of notes. Around the chairs they whirled, narrowly avoiding collisions, Hoffman scooping her out of the way of a side table and steering her right and left until the waltz ended with them back in the library, and Irene laughing and gasping for breath.
“Thank you! It’s been ages since I did that!”
“Me too.”
His arm was still around her, but now he lifted a hand to her face and murmured, “Du.”
The familiar you. The easy, informal pronoun. One never realizes how much emotion can be contained in a single word. His gaze blurred as he studied her face minutely, as if seeking to memorize its geology, its lines and hollows. Notes of lavender rose from her flushed skin as he traced the voluptuous curve of her cheek. He had no idea what perfume it could be, but it was enough to bring desire shuddering through him.
He kissed her. It was the longest kiss of his life, in a life that had not been full of long kisses. He felt her slender body stir against his, and told himself she was not recoiling but quickening, the flesh under her cotton blouse soft beneath his grasp, her head tipped back to meet his lips.
“Irene.”
He was staring at her with a kind of rapture.
“Shhh.”
She placed a palm over his mouth, then led him by the hand from the library and up the stairs.
* * *
—
IN THE DAYS THAT followed, Irene abandoned any effort to travel to the hospital. Buses and trains were at a standstill, and barricades erected in the streets to stave off the coming Russian assault. Upturned trams and train carriages were filled with paving stones, and the arches of the Bra
ndenburg Gate blockaded. All police and firemen had been ordered to report to their nearest military unit. Small boys were called up to the Volkssturm, the People’s Army, and issued with rifles as tall as themselves. And as a savage warning to those who did not comply, the bodies of teenagers dangled from the lampposts all along the Tiergarten.
Every evening, Hoffman appeared on her doorstep.
Their lovemaking was wordless and urgent. Hoffman had always avoided intimacy, so he knew no different. There was no pretense between them. Once he had discarded his shirt, she would slip into his arms and be subsumed beneath him, desire coursing like fire through her veins, or she would rise above him, her hair falling down into his face, her back arched, and her thighs gripping his.
Afterward he would lie, hands clasped behind his head, a sheen of perspiration across his chest, staring up at the cracked plaster cornicing, and she would remain silent, resting her cheek against his shoulder, inhaling his scent of oil and smoke and sweat as though it was something sweet.
Then they would rise and dress again, without speaking.
* * *
—
ONE EVENING, WEEKS AFTER his first visit, Hoffman came in, wrenched off his cap and jacket, and sank with a groan into one of the library chairs. He closed his eyes and massaged the lids with his forefingers.
“Forgive me. It’s been a difficult day.”
Irene frowned slightly, as if to question how the days could be anything else, doing what he did.
“My dog died last night.”
“I’m sorry!”
“Don’t be. I knew it was coming. She was old, and I don’t consider myself remotely sentimental.”