by Jane Thynne
“Don’t.” She pressed her fingers against his lips. “I know what you’re going to say. You’re working on a major project. And I need to work too. You’ve taken far too much time off already, and I’m grateful…”
For days she had tried to understand the glow he had sparked in her. It was as though he had thrown a match into the deadwood of her existence and life had flared up again. She tried to push away the knowledge that work and life must continue, and they could not carry on like this indefinitely, suspended in time.
“It’s just…”
He sat, waiting for her to continue.
“I don’t know how to say this, but these days have been the most exciting I can remember. It feels so natural to be with you. I suppose what I mean is, spending time with you is having the oddest effect on me.” She laughed. “I know I’m not making sense. I’m probably saying it all wrong, and you’ll think, What is this crazy American talking about?”
Matthias leaned closer and pushed a stray curl from her temple. His skin smelled of everywhere they had been that day—the Tiergarten, the Reichstag roof—the oil and smoke and traffic fumes, and an echo of her own perfume, imprinted on him.
“I think,” he told her, “this feeling is the same in any language.”
* * *
—
IT WASN’T UNTIL MUCH later, when they were back at the villa, that Matthias said, “I wanted to mention something, but you stopped me before I could. Call it architectural curiosity. Recently I noticed an anomaly in this building. Come outside and I’ll show you what I mean.”
She followed him out to the wall where yellow honeysuckle curls richly scented the air, and watched intrigued as he pushed into the greenery to divide the thick fronds.
“It’s a most extraordinary thing. I thought as much when we stood in the library. The proportions of the inside of the room don’t match those on the outside. There’s a discrepancy in the dimensions. It’s almost as if this honeysuckle was grown to conceal it…Come.”
Inside, he led her to the library and stood on the threshold.
“As I said, my mother never allowed me in here. It was Irene’s sanctuary, but I would often peep through the door to watch her at the desk. It’s a glorious little room, isn’t it? That fireplace just makes you want to curl up and read. But it is this end here…”
He approached the shelving at the far end of the room, and ran a light hand along the glimmering spines of the books. Many of them were English, Juno noticed. David Copperfield. The Oxford Book of English Verse. The Complete Works of Shakespeare.
“By rights there should be a window here, but instead…”
He pressed his hand harder against the vertical lines of the bookcase, and it gave.
“I knew it!”
He stood back a moment, then applied more pressure. With a soft, reluctant sigh, the shelving moved backward.
“So that’s what it was!”
“What is it?” Juno came up beside him.
“A hiding place. It’s so expertly constructed.”
It was a narrow cavity, no more than six feet by four, just large enough for a person to stand with arms outspread. One wall was equipped with shelves made of the same wood as the outer bookshelves containing a tin drinking bottle, an enamel mug, a number of novels in German, and what looked like artists’ sketchbooks. Opposite, a hinged seat folded down from the wall. The window itself was nailed up tight with hardboard so not even a glint of daylight penetrated. Peering in, Juno felt a claustrophobic shiver. How desperate must a person be to imprison himself in this makeshift cell? How would it feel to be walled in and separated from the rest of the library by a single, flimsy layer of shelving?
“Could Irene have known about this, do you think?”
Matthias hesitated, as if trying to picture the scenes that had once occupied this confined space. “It is possible. More than possible. As a child, I had the strangest feeling about Irene. It is hard to explain, but I think that was part of her enigma for me. I sometimes felt she was in hiding herself.”
Juno edged into the cavity. Decades of dust rose up and mingled in the stale air.
Matthias was still marveling at the meticulous design; the way the false shelving fitted flush against the wall, its proportions precisely calculated, the edges finely finished. “Whoever built this knew what they were doing.”
“There’s a safe!”
It was a square metal box. Juno tried to twist the dial experimentally, but it refused to budge.
Matthias peered at it. “Looks like the standard eight-number dial. Try Irene’s birthday: June twentieth, 1914.”
Juno tried 06201914. Nothing.
“The European way, with the day before the month,” Matthias suggested.
20061914.
“Nope.”
“Perhaps we can have it opened professionally.”
“Wait.”
Juno paused, racked her brain, then tried again.
The dial shifted, and clicked.
08041916.
April 8, 1916. Cordelia’s birthday.
The safe was only half full. There was a jewelry roll containing a lustrous pearl necklace, a pair of magnificent diamond earrings, a ring of rubies surrounded by diamonds, and an amber brooch. A marriage certificate, and Ernst Weissmuller’s death certificate. A silver-framed picture of a tall man in Wehrmacht uniform, professional smile frozen in monochrome. And a thick bundle of letters, secured by a rubber band. Glancing at the top one, Juno saw,
Darling Dee,
I think the end is near…
“What have you found?”
She stepped out of the narrow cell, frowning. Her heart was thudding.
“I’m not sure. It looks like correspondence between Cordelia and Irene. There are several letters from Cordelia, but there are also letters from Irene to Cordelia. It’s odd. It looks like Irene never sent them…”
Chapter Thirty-five
BERLIN, MAY 1, 1945
She had dropped off to sleep when it sounded. A crash, followed by the drumming of boots and a ragged shout.
“Tag, Russki!”
As she stumbled to the hall, Irene found a broad, filthy face thrust in hers. Yellow, veiny eyeballs and grime tattooed in the pores of the skin.
“Berlin kaput! Gitler kaput!”
The rancid, alcohol-soaked breath was rejoicing that Hitler was over. The Führer was finished. The Third Reich was dead.
There were four of them. Short and stocky with dour faces and soiled, olive green uniforms. One, scarcely more than a boy, carried a huge submachine gun. They split up and roamed the house, gawping at the gleaming parquet and the icing-sugar roses on the ceiling.
Upstairs she could hear a soldier crashing around, ripping open drawers. Another stalked the drawing room, scooping up objects and dropping them in his bag: a photo frame, a silver lighter, a cigarette case with the insignia of the Luftwaffe etched in gold. He squinted at the chess set with its matched rows of pawns, skimmed his hand across it so the assembled pieces scattered and flew off the board, then grinned wolfishly at such effortless devastation. Another began banging indiscriminately on the piano.
“Watch?”
It was the first soldier again. A stocky Mongolian with tufts of hair poking from beneath his cap. He signaled the place on the wrist where her watch should be. As he did she saw that he already had a dozen delicate women’s timepieces strapped on his forearm.
“No. Nyet. No watch. But I do have a small carriage clock…”
Irene drew him toward the far end of the drawing room. It was imperative to keep them out of the library, or at the very least to distract them. As a pair of soldiers thumped toward the library door, she called out, “Would you like a drink?” She struggled to remember any word of Russian she knew. “Alcohol?”
They turned with interest. It was instantly clear that the invitation was a terrible mistake. She had introduced a personal element to their rampage. For the first time, she felt their glittering eyes light on her with unambiguous desire. Before she could turn away, the taller soldier lunged toward her.
“Stoy!”
Their superior, it must be, judging by the star on his cap and the Order of Lenin and the Order of Stalin on his chest, stood at the door. He was a narrow-faced man with slanted eyes like chips of ice, but there was a glint of intelligence in those eyes that marked him out from his underlings. He took off his cap and hung it on the banister, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. The other men fell away at his approach, and he seized Irene, fingers biting into the flesh of her arm.
“Frau, komm.”
Dragging her with him, the officer stalked the room as though the photographs ranged along the top of the piano and the pictures of the lake were exhibits in a museum. Early-twentieth-century German life. Destroyed by the war.
He peered at the Dresden shepherdesses on the mantelpiece and Irene stared too as though seeing them for the first time, as if by sheer willpower she might escape to their fragile porcelain world with its dainty sheep and flowers.
Propelling her into the library, the officer stared at the books and ran his finger along their spines.
“David Copperfield.”
She was startled. Her first impression was correct—he was an educated man. If she replied in English rather than German she would identify herself as an Englishwoman and thus an ally.
“Have you read it?”
If he had, he was not interested in a discussion. Nor did he seem impressed by her change of language. Still dragging her by the arm, he pivoted to survey the space where Hitler’s portrait had hung, then, inevitably, caught sight of Oskar’s portrait of her. He poked at it with the tip of his rifle, tearing a slash in the canvas, then rocked on his heels, switching his glance from the painting to Irene and back again.
“You?”
What a mistake to have left it there. With a sinking heart she saw the portrait through his eyes. The parted lips and seductive tilt of the body revealing the swell of cleavage. The gentle contours of her cheeks and the challenge in her eyes.
No matter the dramatic contrast between the woman on the wall and the emaciated, shabby creature pinned to his side, the portrait was a flattering mirror. It was a rose-tinted perspective, something to hold in his head while the degenerate business was done.
Twisting her around, he flung her across the back of a chair. Her cheek slammed against the leather as he tightened one hand round her throat, making her gasp for air, and with the other reached up and tore at her skirt, wrenching it aside.
Ripping her underwear, he unbuckled his trousers and forced his full weight between her thighs. He was hard already. She felt the rough hair of his legs and the piercing pain of his assault. Educated or not, his odor was rank, mixed with the scent of horses, oil, and hot metal. His breath smelled of sausage and cheap tobacco. His hands reached for a savage squeeze of her breasts, then moved down to grip her tightly around the hips.
She must not make a sound.
The leather of the chair was cool against her cheek. Her neck was agonizingly bent so that she faced the door. From the corner of her eye she could see two of the soldiers standing guard, smirking. One, with the face of a Tartar, had the last bottle of Ernst’s schnapps dangling from his meaty hand. The other was incongruously muffled in her silver fox-fur stole, a guest at a costume party, waiting his turn with Asiatic indifference.
Just yards away another two men were pressed desperately together, listening, their prison lit only by a narrow blade of light from an aperture in the brickwork.
She must not make a sound.
The Russians must not find the hiding place. She must stifle her screams. The blood roared in her ears.
The tender tissues between her legs were being sliced and ripped apart. The Russian officer grunted like a marathon runner, as unflagging as if he was waging his own personal war against female flesh. Yet while the pain was searing and the blood had begun to flow, Irene did not resist or struggle.
She must not make a sound.
It helped to see herself from above. A woman in her home, enduring excruciating violation yards away from two concealed men. It was not only Oskar and Hoffman she needed to protect, but herself. If she resisted, she knew the Russian would kill her with an abrupt shot to the head. She would die pointlessly, right there on the floor without ceremony or reflection or grace. The body she had cared for and clothed all her life, had fed and beautified; the Irene who had been caressed and admired and desired by others, would leak away in a pool of blood.
She did everything she could to accommodate her rapist, praying that his guttural grunts would mask any sound of movement.
She hoped in vain.
With an inchoate howl, a man emerged from the hiding place and flung himself at the Russian captain. Irene toppled to one side, slamming her forehead against the parquet. Seizing the Russian by the collar, the man dragged him bodily away and stood over him, screaming and cursing. The captain’s face twisted first in shock, then anger, yelling out his fury.
At once the other four soldiers were upon the attacker, their guns pressed against his neck.
“Du! SS!”
They wrestled Hoffman to the floor and dragged him from the house into the garden, his jackboots trailing behind him on the grass.
Chapter Thirty-six
BERLIN, OCTOBER 1945
The Kammergericht in Kleistpark was a handsome building for an ugly business. Within its neo-baroque arches and fan-vaulted halls the Volksgerichtshof, the Nazi People’s Court, had staged the show trials of those accused of conspiring against Hitler. A parade of field marshals, generals, officers, and decorated professionals were dragged, tortured and beaten, before the notorious Judge Freisler, and when the members of the July 20 Stauffenberg plot were hauled before him, he had the proceedings filmed so that Hitler could watch from afar. Freisler was a savage ideologue who thought nothing of sending even children to their deaths, then charging families for the cost of their executions.
Yet now, the rooms that had so recently rung with death sentences were playing host to the Allied Control Council, and the voices echoing up the swooping marble staircases belonged to Cole Porter, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker. At that moment, in the honeycomb-tiled hall, military personnel were obeying Johnny Mercer’s appeal to “accentuate the positive” by drinking rum punch and dancing to music from an imported gramophone.
Parties were popular among the occupiers of the starving city. Having divided Berlin among them, the Occupying Powers were attempting to stay on friendly terms for as long as possible, so fraternization was encouraged. While German civilians were boiling bones for soup, the Allies fueled their entertainments with ample quantities of alcohol and food.
That evening’s function was hosted by the American contingent, and Cordelia was lounging against a balustrade getting chatted up by a U.S. army information officer and wondering if she would be able to hitch a lift back to Schlüterstrasse without being misinterpreted.
“Some frock,” he said, casting an appreciative eye over her dress. It was the gossamer black Dior cocktail dress she had obtained years ago from a sample sale in Paris, its waist now nipped in further due to the deprivations of war. “Hope you don’t mind me saying, but I like your style.”
Chuck Kirschbaum himself was dressed in a double-breasted dark suit and polka-dot bow tie, perhaps in emulation of his hero, the new American president, Truman. He had a flaxen buzz cut, yellow as the corn on his family farm, and a pair of two-toned brogues that he was tapping in time to Johnny Mercer. Ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive, ee-liminate the negative.
“I don’t mind at all. Thank you.”
“Pretty ele
gant for a lady interpreter.”
He had a point—most of the women Cordelia had met in the interpreters’ pool taught foreign languages in English schools and wore twinsets, thick stockings, and clumpy shoes.
She touched her hair, rolled off her face with a diamanté clip. “I got this dress in Paris.”
“Seriously?”
This was Chuck’s first time out of Kentucky, and while Germany had come as a shock to him, his mental image of Paris was still untouched by war.
“Yes. I was there before the war. And anyway, this is a pretty elegant place.”
“Suppose so.” He glanced briefly around him. “For a courthouse. Though I’m pleased to say we did our duty by it last year.”
“Really? How?”
“The Eighth Air Force dropped a bomb and killed Judge Freisler right in the middle of a trial. That’s what I call poetic justice.”
He laughed. A big, confident, white-toothed American laugh. “Just wish the justice we’re handing out now was that dramatic.”
“I know what you mean. I had no idea it would take so long.”
The work of de-Nazification was going to take years. Already Cordelia had heard it all. Confessions, explanations, exculpations. Denials of complicity. Everyone had been a secret anti-Nazi. No foreigner could possibly understand the circumstances. Some of the former Nazis now being grilled had acquired a nickname—Persil White—named after the detergent on account of their newly cleansed pasts. The result of the process was that you lost all faith in words. No one, you learned, could be trusted to tell the truth.
“What will happen to them in the end? The ones who are de-Nazified?”
Chuck shrugged, with a conqueror’s nonchalance. “Some will go to prison, but most will escape with a fine. They’ll be classified as fellow travelers.”