At the Wolf's Table

by Rosella Postorino

  Elfriede was already outside.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

  “What do you want me to say, Berliner? It’s risky to mix with people who aren’t like you. Sometimes, though, you have no choice.”

  * * *

  SAYING HELLO TO the baroness was the sole objective I managed to set myself for that evening, but I didn’t know how to accomplish it. As soon as I walked into the reception hall, I accepted a glass of wine offered by a waiter—it seemed like a good way to familiarize myself with my surroundings. I took tiny sips of it as I wandered among the guests, who were all busy chatting. They were split up into such tight-knit groups that it was impossible for me to squeeze in anywhere, so I sat down on a divan beside a cluster of elderly ladies. Perhaps they were more tired or more bored than the others, because they found conversing with me to be an acceptable distraction. They complimented my satin gown, The low-cut back looks good on you, said one, I love that embroidery on the shoulder, said another, I haven’t seen many of that style before, said a third. A dressmaker in Berlin made it, I replied. Just then other people arrived and when the ladies stood up to greet them they forgot about me. I walked away from the divan and leaned my bare back against the wallpaper, finishing my wine.

  Studying the frescoes on the ceiling, I imagined I was tracing the figures’ anatomies on a sheet of paper. I drew them with the nail of my first finger on the pad of my thumb. When I realized I was doing it, I stopped. I walked over to one of the picture windows, then checked yet again to see whether the baroness was finally free. She was still surrounded by people anxious to say hello to her. I should have gone over and included myself in the ongoing conversation but couldn’t bring myself to do it. You’re always chatting away, my mother would tell me. In East Prussia I had become laconic.

  In the end, it was she who noticed me. I was standing there, partially hidden behind a long curtain. She walked over, looking happy to see me.

  “Thank you for the invitation, Baroness von Mildernhagen. It’s an honor to be here.”

  “You’re quite welcome, Rosa. May I call you Rosa?”

  “Of course, Baroness.”

  “Come, I’ll introduce you to my husband.”

  * * *

  CLEMENS FREIHERR VON Mildernhagen was smoking a cigar and entertaining two men. Seeing them from behind, if not for their uniforms I would never have recognized them as officers. Their relaxed posture—weight shifted onto one foot—wasn’t proper military demeanor. One of the two was gesticulating adamantly, clearly trying to persuade the others of something.

  “Gentlemen, may I present my friend from Berlin, Frau Sauer?”

  The officers turned around.

  I found myself facing Lieutenant Ziegler.

  He furrowed his brow, staring at me as if trying to calculate the square root of a very long number. Perhaps he could see the surprise, the fear in me that appeared with a slight delay, like when you smash your knee against a sharp edge and for a moment it doesn’t hurt, but then an intense pain shoots through it and grows stronger.

  “My husband, Baron Clemens von Mildernhagen; Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg; and Lieutenant Albert Ziegler,” the baroness said, introducing us.

  Albert, that was his first name.

  “Good evening,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

  “It’s a pleasure to have you here,” the baron replied, kissing my hand. “I do hope the soirée is to your liking.”

  “Thank you, it’s delightful.”

  Stauffenberg bowed. I didn’t notice right away that he was missing a hand because my attention was drawn to the patch over his left eye. It gave him the air of a pirate that was far from threatening—quite the opposite, in fact. I was also distracted because I was expecting Ziegler to bow in turn, but he only acknowledged me with a little nod.

  “I’ve noticed your conversation has been rather animated this evening. What are you talking about?” Maria asked with the impertinence that, as I would learn after we had spent time together, characterized her.

  Ziegler narrowed his eyes and planted them on me. Someone else replied for him, perhaps the baron, or the colonel, but I didn’t hear anything, I just saw a mist that clouded my vision and settled on my bare back. I shouldn’t have worn this gown. I should never have come.

  So the baroness doesn’t know? Ziegler is going to pretend he doesn’t know me? Am I supposed to tell the truth or play along? Is it a secret that I’m a food taster? Or is hiding the fact going to cause problems?

  Ziegler’s—no, Albert, that was his name—Albert’s eyes were too closely set. He inhaled, dilating his feline nostrils, and pouted slightly, like a little boy who’s upset because he just lost a football match—or, better, like a little boy who’s eager to play football but has lost his ball and can’t come to terms with it.

  “You do nothing but discuss military strategies.”

  Was it possible that in the middle of a war that was claiming waves of victims every day, she was suggesting they speak of more frivolous topics, something more suitable for a social affair? Who was this woman? They said she was depressed. She didn’t seem to be at all.

  “Let’s go, Rosa.” Maria took my hand.

  Ziegler noticed the gesture as though it were dangerous.

  “Something the matter, Lieutenant? You’ve fallen silent. I must truly have been a disturbance.”

  “Don’t even think it, Baroness,” Ziegler replied. His voice was soft, calm, a voice I had never heard from him before. I must tell Elfriede about it, I thought.

  I wouldn’t.

  “With your leave…” Maria pulled me from one guest to the next, introducing me as her friend from Berlin. She wasn’t the kind of hostess who stops to chat with her guests only to move on a moment later, her sole purpose being to strike up conversations so that things run smoothly in every corner of the hall. Instead, she asked question after question, wanted to talk about anything at all, about the last time she had been to the opera and had seen Cavalleria rusticana, about our soldiers’ still-high morale despite adversity, about the bias cut of my gown, which she praised in front of everyone, declaring that she would have an identical one made for her, but peach-colored, and not so low-cut, and in organza.

  “It wouldn’t be identical, then,” I said, and she laughed.

  All at once she sat down at the piano and, pressing her fingers onto the keys, sang “Vor der Kasern, vor dem großen Torstand eine Lanterne, und steht sie noch davor.” From time to time she turned toward me, and with such insistence that I couldn’t disappoint her: I began to sing softly, mechanically, but my throat was dry. Little by little the others joined us, and all together we longed for the time when Lili Marleen burned with love. But then again, the soldier knew—we, ourselves, knew—that soon she would forget him.

  Where was Ziegler? Was he also singing? Who’s going to be there now? we asked Lili Marleen in chorus, Who’s going to be by the corner light with you? I thought of the woman who had distanced herself from the National Socialist Party, the woman who had left Germany, that white, sensual woman—did the lieutenant like Marlene Dietrich? Why should I possibly care?

  Maria stopped, pulled on my arm, and made me sit down beside her on the bench. “Let’s see if you know this one,” she said, playing the unmistakable notes of “Veronika, der Lenz ist da.” The first time I had gone to a Comedian Harmonists concert I was still a girl. I hadn’t even met Gregor yet. The Großes Schauspielhaus was packed, and it seemed the audience’s applause for the six young men in tuxedos would never end. That had been before the racial laws. Soon it would be discovered that the group had three Jews too many, and they would be prohibited from performing.

  “Now it’s your turn, Rosa,” Maria said. “You have a lovely voice.”

  She didn’t even give me the chance to reply. After the first two verses she stopped, forcing me to continue alone. I heard my voice echo off the tall ceilings, filling the hall, and it was as though that voice
didn’t belong to me.

  This had been happening for months—I became detached from my actions; I couldn’t perceive my own presence.

  But Maria was satisfied, I could tell, and was also satisfied that she had chosen me as her friend. In the castle, in the large hall, with my eyes closed, I sang to the wavering accompaniment of a young baroness who had just met me and already she too was making me do as she wished.

  You sing all day long, Rosa, it’s becoming intolerable, Gregor said. To me, I replied, singing is like diving underwater, Gregor. Imagine having a large rock weighing on your chest. Singing is when someone comes and pushes that rock off of you. How long it had been since I had breathed so deeply?

  All on my own I sang that love comes and love goes, until applause snapped me out of my daze. I opened my eyes, saw Albert Ziegler. He was at the far side of the hall, standing apart from the others, the end of a straight line leading directly to me. He still stared at me with that little pout of the boy left without a ball to play with. The boy had lost his power. He went home, having surrendered.

  17

  In May 1933, they lit the bonfire. I feared the streets of Berlin would melt and engulf us like lava. But Berlin was focused on celebrating and it didn’t burn, it stomped its feet to the beat of the band, and even the rain stopped, making way for the oxcarts and the people rushing to the Opernplatz.

  Once past the cordons, throats are parched by the smell of smoke, chests are scorched by the heat of the flames. Page after page curls up and falls to ash, and though Goebbels is a skinny man with a feeble voice he can bring that voice out to its fullest to exult, to look the ruthlessness of life straight in the eye, to repudiate the fear of death. Twenty-five thousand books taken from libraries and a league of celebrating students, youths who aspire to be men of character, not spineless men of letters. The age of Jewish intellectualism is over, Goebbels says, it’s time to regain respect for death, and as hard as I try I can’t figure out what he means.

  * * *

  A YEAR LATER, during math class, I was looking out the window and staring at the tiny leaves of trees whose names I didn’t know, watching the flapping wings of unknown birds, as Mr. Wortmann lectured. With his bald head, hunched shoulders, and thick mustache that compensated for his slightly protruding jaw, Wortmann certainly didn’t have the looks of a movie star, yet all the girls in class adored him. He had piercing eyes and a matchless wit, which took all the strain out of learning.

  When the door opened I was still lost in thought. Then, the click of handcuffs around wrists snapped me back to the classroom. The wrists in question were Wortmann’s—SA officers were dragging him away. The formula on the blackboard remained incomplete. The chalk had fallen to the floor and shattered. It was May.

  I leapt out of my chair and toward the door, but it was too late. Wortmann was already in the hallway, being escorted away by the SA officers. Adam, I cried out. That was his name. The professor tried to stop, to turn around, but the officers prevented him by speeding up. I shouted his name again and again, the other teachers trying every which way to hush me, with both threats and consolations.

  Wortmann was made to do forced labor in a factory. He was a Jew or a dissident or simply a man of letters. We Germans, however, needed men of character, fearless men who respected death. Men, that is, who could let death be inflicted on them without uttering a word of complaint.

  * * *

  WHEN THE CELEBRATIONS on May 10, 1933, came to an end, Goebbels announced he was satisfied. The crowd was tired, had run out of songs. The radio had concluded its transmission. The firemen had parked their trucks nearby and extinguished the blaze, but the fire had continued to creep beneath the ashes, had spread kilometers, had come all the way here. To Gross-Partsch, 1944. May was a merciless month.

  18

  I had no idea how long he had been standing there.

  The frogs seemed to have gone crazy that night. In my sleep, their incessant croaking had become the bustle of tenants racing down the stairs, clutching rosaries on which to count, the old women not knowing what saint to pray to, my mother not knowing how to persuade my father to seek shelter in the cellar. The siren was blaring and he rolled away from her, fluffed his pillow, and thrust his cheek into it. It was a false alarm. We climbed the stairs half asleep. My father said, It’s not worth it, if I have to die then I’ll do so in my bed, I’m not going down to that cellar, I don’t want to die like a mouse. I dreamed of Berlin, the building where I was raised, the bomb shelter and the tenants squeezed together, and the clamor grew louder because of the frogs in Gross-Partsch, which had lamented all night before entering my dream. Who knew if he was there by then?

  I dreamed of the old women’s laments, one rosary bead after the other, while the children slept, one man snored, and upon the millionth Pray for us he pulled himself to his feet and spat out a curse, Let me sleep! the old women turning pale. I dreamed of a gramophone, the boys had brought it with them to the cellar and were inviting the girls to dance, playing “Das wird ein Frühling ohne Ende,” and I sat off to the side, my mother saying, Sing for me, one hand encouraging me to get up, she whirled me around, and I sang at the top of my lungs, A spring without end when you return, I sang over the music, spinning around, and couldn’t see my mother anymore. Then a wind lifted me up, pushing me fiercely, The Abduction! I thought. It had returned, and my mother wasn’t there, my father was upstairs sleeping or pretending to, the gramophone had been silenced, as had my voice, I couldn’t speak, couldn’t wake up, and suddenly a massive boom as the bomb exploded.

  My eyes shot open and I lay there in bed, sweating, until the numbness in my limbs subsided. Only afterward was I able to move. The darkness was stifling, so I lit the oil lamp and, as the frogs croaked away unperturbed, got up and went to the window.

  And there he was, in the pale moonlight, had been there for who knew how long. He was a dark silhouette, a nightmare, a ghost. It could have been Gregor returning from the war but instead it was Ziegler standing on the road.

  I was frightened. As soon as he saw me he took a step forward: immediate fear, without delay. He took another step: hundreds of sharp edges on which to smash my knee. I backed up and he stopped. I extinguished the lamp, hid behind the curtain.

  It was an act of intimidation. What did you say to the baroness, young lady, did you confess everything to her? No, Lieutenant, I swear, didn’t you see for yourself? When she introduced us I pretended not to know you!

  Fists clenched, I expected to hear him knock on the door. I should run and warn Joseph and Herta. There was an Obersturmführer from the SS outside their house, in the middle of the night, and it was all my fault because I had gone to a party. Elfriede was right—for those like us, certain people only meant trouble.

  Ziegler would enter, would drag us all into the kitchen, pillow-marks still on our cheeks, Herta’s hair free of hairpins, a net covering her head. My mother-in-law would touch her temples with distress, my father-in-law would touch her hand, Ziegler would ram his elbow into the man’s rib cage, Joseph would fall to the floor, and he would order him, To your feet! as he had done with Beate. He would force us to stay there lined up in front of the hearth, standing in silence. Then, stroking his holster, he would make me swear to keep quiet, to stay in my place. He would scream at Herta and Joseph even though they had nothing to do with it, because that was what the SS did.

  * * *

  THE MINUTES PASSED. Ziegler didn’t knock.

  He didn’t burst into the house, didn’t give us orders—he stood there, stock-still, waiting for who knew who, waiting for me. Inexplicably I too stood there and didn’t call for help, because though my heart was pounding I had already realized it was something between him and me. No one else was involved. I was ashamed before Herta and Joseph, as if I had invited him. I knew at once that it would be a secret. Another one to add to my inventory.

  I pushed the curtain aside and looked out the window.

  He was still there. He wasn
’t an officer of the SS—he was a child demanding his ball back. Another step toward me. I didn’t move. I watched him from the darkness. Ziegler came even closer. I darted back behind the curtain. Holding my breath, there was nothing but silence. They were all asleep. When I returned to the window, the road was empty.

  * * *

  IN THE MORNING, as I had breakfast Herta pressed me for details about the soirée. I was dazed, distracted. “Is something the matter?” Joseph asked.

  “I didn’t sleep well.”

  “It’s springtime,” he said. “Happens to me too. I was so tired last night I didn’t even hear you come home.”

  “The baron had a servant accompany me.”

  “Well?” Herta asked, wiping her mouth with her napkin. “What was the baroness’s gown like?”

  * * *

  IN THE LUNCHROOM I ate in a state of high alert. At each click of a boot against the floor I whipped my head around to look at the door to the lunchroom. It was never him. Should I ask to see him, show up at his office—the former principal’s office—and warn him not to let me catch him like that again outside my window at night, or else … or else what? My father-in-law would grab his hunting rifle and persuade you to stop? My mother-in-law would inform the police? The police. Right. Ziegler wielded power over everyone in town, including me.

  Besides, what would the other women think if I went to speak to him? I wasn’t even able to tell them about the party at the castle, despite Leni’s nagging—What about the chandeliers, the floors, the fireplace, the drapes?—and despite Ulla’s insistence—Was there anyone famous, what shoes did the baroness wear, did you at least put on lipstick? I had forgotten to bring any lipstick. If I had gone to speak with Ziegler, Elfriede would have said, You’re always looking for trouble, Berliner, and Augustine, First you rub elbows with the rich and then you do the same with the enemy. But Ziegler wasn’t the enemy—he was German, like us.