“People like to frame them,” he replies with a shrug. “They’re worth more because they’re used.”
I sit up straight on the lounge and pat the cushion beside me. “Let’s read through them together.” I pass him a handful of cards. “Whatever postcard strikes our fancy, that’s where we’ll go.” Justin thinks it’s a great idea.
After a while I stop reading the messages, all of them tedious litanies of routes traveled and souvenirs purchased. Big Ben, Great Wall, Eiffel Tower. Athens, Knossos, Giza. A few naughty burlesques thrown in for variety’s sake. And—aha!—here are a few old-fashioned etchings of fairy-tale castles, medieval alleyways, Gothic cathedrals born of the sweat of a thousand men. But most of these quaint ones hail from Germany, which is the one place to which I’ve no interest in returning.
Then, naturally: “How do you feel about Germany? Found a very nice one from Bad Wimpfen.” He rattles off a list of places and I nix every one. Nuremberg? Can’t go back to Nuremberg without feeling like I’ve got to look over my shoulder at every turn. And then there was that time in Oberammergau when I came upon a public auction of porcelain and silverware; the self-appointed auctioneer had looted the house of a Jewish family who’d just been dragged off to the death camps. I made myself a vulture, roosted on a lamppost, and went on shrieking until there wasn’t a soul left in the Marktplatz.
I need to go someplace new, someplace untainted by morbid recollection. “I don’t want to go to Germany,” I say as I shuffle through another stack of cards. “If you don’t mind.”
Something in my tone gives him pause. Out of the corner of my eye I see him open his mouth to ask, then think better of it.
As I flip through the postcards I find myself thinking of that ride back to London on the Caledonian Express, Jonah’s melancholy and my wish for a honeymoon of our own. In a way, it isn’t too late.
But we can’t go to Scotland—too many memories there, though they aren’t unhappy ones. He had been to Connemara with Patricia, and yes, it would have made sense for us to go someplace else, someplace new to both of us. But that longing in his eyes hadn’t been for Patricia or the honeymoon itself; it was for the landscape, the stark and heathen beauty of it.
As I’m mulling this over, I come upon another Irish postcard in the stack—not another quaint thatched cottage or sheep-crowded road captioned rush hour in Ireland, but a simple shot of a bar-front with a shaggy dog dozing in the open doorway. MURTY COYNE’S, says the sign above the window.
“You haven’t been to Ireland yet, have you?” I ask him.
“No. Always wanted to though. Have you?”
I shake my head. I flip the postcard and at the bottom left is printed Coyne’s pub, Tully Cross, Connemara. The postmark is smudged, but judging by the quality of the photo on the front I’d say it’s thirty-five, forty years old. It is addressed to a Miss Eugenie Pryce of 622 Greenwich Street, New York, and though the message is not signed, the scrawl is obviously a man’s.
This is the best pub in all the world, it reads. There’s only one thing missing.
I hand the postcard to Justin and as he reads it a broad smile spreads over his face. “When can you leave?”
The Goblin Ball
25.
December 31, 1944
“I will tell you everything you have forgotten. We loved each other—ah! no, you have not forgotten that—and when you came back from the wars, we were to be married. Our pictures were painted before you went away. You know I was more learned than women of that day. Dear one, when you were gone, they said I was a witch. They tried me. They said I should be burned. Just because I had looked at the stars and gained more knowledge than other women, they must needs bind me to a stake and let me be eaten by the fire. And you far away!” …
“The night before,” she went on, “the devil did come to me. I was innocent before—you know it, don’t you? And even then my sin was for you—for you—because of the exceeding love I bore you. The devil came, and I sold my soul to eternal flame. But I got a good price.”
—E. Nesbit, “The Ebony Frame”
IT’S WELL past sixty years since I’ve seen it, but I often dream of that castle with its spires and crooked turrets on a mountain wreathed in evergreens, ominous clouds gathering overhead; it was just like a picture in a storybook. In the dream I’m riding through the forest in a posh car, an armored Mercedes, and when I meet the pale cold eyes of the driver in the rearview mirror the recognition sends a tingle of horror down my neck.
The road zigzags up the mountain. I look out the window and see figures, skeletal figures, coming out of the gloom of the forest, and they line up along the road and stare at me as the car passes. I press my palm to the glass, but what can I do for them?
The armored Mercedes pulls up to the archway and I glide noiselessly up the stairs in a black velvet gown. I pass through the chapel gallery on my way to the party and when I look down at the altar I see a corpse there in a mahogany coffin. It’s Jonah’s. Terrified at the sight, I run across the gallery and through the doorway into the banquet hall. The crowd of dancers parts so I can see him there at the far side of the room in his brown dress uniform, now striding toward me, smiling like he’s lived to see the end.
SO WE came out of the station waiting room at half past three on New Year’s Eve, having spent the last quarter of an hour checking that our visages and uniforms were all in order. We didn’t have to have every detail perfect; after all, no one in Wernigerode had met these two before, and I didn’t want to waste any oomph making sure Jonah’s new nose was just so. We only had to resemble the pictures on their identity cards.
We did ride in an armored Mercedes (sent by the Oberst, the colonel in charge of SS headquarters in Wernigerode, to meet us at the train station), but the ascent wasn’t as smooth as I later dreamed it. Seated in front, the colonel’s secretary told us we would be staying at the castle, but only for the night.
The wind set the trees to whispering, and I began to feel rather anxious. Every time I glanced at Jonah he looked back at me through the face of Dr. Schafer, and I had to fight to reassure myself that he was my Jonah, same as ever. He gave my hand a furtive squeeze, and I realized he must have found my face just as disconcerting. It began to rain.
The road led through a gate and skirted the castle mount as it climbed. On the left we saw a stretch of half-timbered houses and provincial shops, several of which offered more of those heinous little witch figures. To our right the castle loomed.
Soon we passed through a second gate, and the Mercedes slowed to a stop on a wide stone terrace with a pepper-pot tower and a panoramic view over the mountains. Jonah and I weren’t even out of the car when a couple of porters disappeared with our suitcases. We looked up at the castle, the turrets and spires and tiny dormer windows poking out at odd places along the roof. Rough medieval masonry was set against towers of tidy brick and mullioned windows; this and other charming quirks indicated that the castle complex had undergone a spell of “improvement” every century or so.
We were ushered through a doorway and up a spiral staircase, and a knight glared at us from a niche halfway up. We reached a landing and passed through a door into an inner courtyard. Here all the architectural periods in the castle’s history converged—medieval, faux-medieval, and quaint half-timbering—so that if I hadn’t known better I’d have thought I’d stumbled into a warren unawares. Vines of ghost ivy snaked across the stone and wood façades, and griffin-headed gutter spouts high above our heads unleashed the rainwater in roaring cataracts onto the cobblestones. The whole place would have been very charming in summertime, but that night, the last night of the year, the narrow windows reflected nothing but the storm clouds.
I looked down at my thumb in my coat pocket and was greatly relieved when the crescent didn’t glow. I’d never before met a beldame in the service of the Führer, and I hoped I never would.
A small staircase flanked by stone grotesques led to a doorway in a round tower, and I
counted nine steps as we followed the colonel’s secretary inside. Nine steps, that was a good sign; we’d carry it off tonight, I knew we would. I reached down to pet the dragon on the banister and felt it purr ever so slightly beneath my hand.
Our wet coats were whisked away and we were given a brief tour of the public rooms. There were gargoyles and demons everywhere we looked—on the banisters, the wainscoting, the mantelpieces. It was as if this castle had been custom-built for the men who’d taken it over.
Swastika banners were hung on either side of the heraldic stag rearing above a side doorway in the banquet hall. The walls were paneled with tableaux from local history, processional pomp and men in tights and bloomers, but these scenes were obscured by great oval mirrors taken from elsewhere in the castle, no doubt hung there to make the room seem larger than it already was. I met my reflection in each mirror I passed and felt a burst of confidence in the security of my disguise.
Beyond the banquet hall was a series of reception rooms paneled in faded red and green damask, furnished with chaise lounges, ottomans decorated with intricate needlepoint, and chess tables with pearl inlay. In the first reception room beyond the hall a great evergreen tree stood, glass icicles and silver bells glittering on every bough. The party wouldn’t begin for another three hours, and there was a hush as we passed through all these rooms, an air of expectancy.
We went through another maze of corridors before we reached the guest wing, and there the secretary left us to our rooms. I’d hardly opened my suitcase when a maid arrived with a light supper tray. This Schafer chap must’ve been quite the big fish.
I hung up my uniform and climbed into bed in the twilit gloom. There was a great horned chandelier poised directly above my head, and if I looked out the tall windows on the opposite wall I could see the evergreens vanishing into the fog on the horizon. The rain had given way to snow.
Within a few minutes Jonah had slipped in beside me. There wasn’t much need for caution; half the SS were sleeping with their secretaries anyway. There was no telling when we might be interrupted, though, so we had to keep to our disguises. Mindful of this, he buried his face in my neck.
Afterward he slept. I put my hand to the locket round my neck and whispered, “Happy New Year, sis.”
“Good news,” Morven replied. That disembodied whisper in the darkness never failed to spook me a little. “I just talked to Helena. The Gingerbread Man says there’ll be peace in the spring.”
“Spring is centuries away,” I sighed. I glanced over at Jonah and found him sleeping with his eyes open.
I WORE A simple black gown, and Jonah was back in SS uniform. We had to pass through the chapel gallery to reach the banquet hall, and for a moment I paused at the handrail to look down on the altar, bereft of all sacred trimmings. Looted or hidden for safekeeping, who could say? There were voices and laughter coming through an open doorway on the chapel’s north wall, and a brief silence before the clicking of billiard balls and the thump of ball in pocket. Putting the Billiardzimmer right next door to the chapel seemed gauche even to me.
We passed into the banquet hall, where men in and out of uniform were milling about. The chandelier was blazing, and it was reflected in the long windows and all the mirrors hung about the room to marvelous effect.
The great mantelpiece in the corner was flanked by yet two more bronze dragons and festooned with fragrant boughs. Jonah presented himself, and then me, to the Oberst, and as the men took turns asking him about our trip from Berlin and grilling him for news, I wandered into the reception room. There were children kneeling at the foot of the great Christmas tree, picking up packages and shaking them for clues. Others were staring at the lavish spread of meats and sweets, held back out of politeness by their mothers, who were eyeing the food with just as much desire.
I stared at the plates piled high with frosted Lebkuchen, and my first thought was of the covention I was currently missing. The Gingerbread Man says there’ll be peace in the spring. I looked again, and the sight of so much food made me nauseous. The German people had little but last year’s potatoes, and the death camp inmates, slave laborers, and prisoners of war got nothing but soup made of the peelings. This party food was all part of the illusion that the Germans’ victory was close at hand.
The cook appeared, looking jolly in a clean apron, and for a second I fancied her the German counterpart of my dear Mrs. Dowel. Would that she were! She bid us all eat and started the children singing “O Tannenbaum.” I didn’t touch a morsel.
When I returned to Jonah’s side a light was shining in the musicians’ gallery up above, and three officers had struck up a rather desultory waltz. Someone took me by the elbow. “Why, Fraulein Gross,” said the colonel, “you are a very fortunate young lady.”
“Oh?”
“Aren’t you aware that had you taken the train yesterday as originally planned, you would most likely be dead now?”
I glanced from the face of the Oberst to Jonah and to the faces of the other men in their circle, as if I hadn’t the faintest notion what he was talking about.
“The train we were meant to take yesterday.” Jonah spoke as if to clarify some simple point to a small child. “It was bombed by the British.” He turned to the SS colonel, and for one terrifying moment I lost all sense of him behind that bland mask of self-satisfaction. “At first I thought it best not to tell her,” he said. “She rattles so easily—as you see.” Then he laughed. “No use fretting, my dear. Let’s have a dance.”
As we whirled about the room I kept catching glimpses of myself in the mirrors, and this time I was surprised despite myself to see the face of the dead secretary gazing back at me. As I say, mirrors are mere objects, easily deceived, and I was the only beldame in the room—yet I half expected these mirrors might betray me.
I looked up at Jonah and he pressed the small of my back. I cocked my head as if to say, Now, which of these Nazis knows what we need to?
At that moment the colonel tapped Jonah on the shoulder, and Jonah gave me a wry look. There’s your answer. It was up to me now.
“May I cut in?” he was asking, and Jonah gave a gallant half bow as he retreated.
The next time I glanced in the mirror I was struck with horror at what I saw: every person in the room, save Jonah, was wearing my father’s face. I saw that same proud, remote visage on women in evening gowns as well as men in SS uniform. It was as if his image had been fractured by a kaleidoscope turned over and over again in the light. Even the children lingering in the doorway gazed up at me with his cold hard eyes. Up to now I had only ever seen his face on one snake at a time, and the effect of seeing it gazing back at me on all the hundred people in the room sent me almost to the brink of madness.
The waltz went on and on, though it now sounded as if the musicians were playing underwater. I turned back to the Oberst, who had my hand and waist in a viselike grip, and he glared at me as if to say my birth had been a mistake he was ready to correct.
Frantically I looked over the bobbing shoulders for Jonah and spotted him in the middle of the floor. He was gazing back at me behind the bland features of Doctor Schafer, heedless of the evil that surrounded him. When I glanced in the mirror I saw—or thought I saw—my own frightened face, and I turned back to the SS colonel with a stab of certainty that it was all over. They had found us out.
But my father was gone, and beyond his shoulder I perceived that the room had been restored, festive and ordinary. “Are you unwell?” he was asking me, and it occurred to me that his grip had tightened merely to keep me from falling. He led me out of the hall and into the chapel gallery, where he sat me in a pew and petted my hair as Jonah handed me a mug of Glühwein.
“It is all too much for her,” Jonah was saying. “The poor lamb.”
I took a sip of the hot sweet wine, and the memory of that horrible hallucination dissipated as quickly as it had come.
I met Jonah’s eyes—Are you ready? they seemed to say. He thought this was all a pret
ense! Jonah handed the colonel a second mug and ventured back into the banquet hall.
“That’s better,” I said with a cheerful sigh. “A nice hot mug of mulled wine never fails to lift my spirits.” The wine had restored me to my wits, but on the colonel it was having the opposite effect; Jonah had slipped a packet of the truth drug into the steaming cup. The door leading to the banquet hall slowly creaked shut, as if by a draft.
“We have no reason to celebrate,” he said, staring with dull eyes at the steam rising from his mug. “I only tell you this because I know—instinctively—that I can trust you, Fraulein Gross.”
And over the next twenty minutes he would entrust me with descriptions of the landmarks that indicated entrances to the Mittelwerk factory. He babbled that he had resolved to make contact with the Allies, that doing so was the best thing for both his family and the fatherland.
Finally he moaned that he’d had too much to drink and begged me to accompany him back to the guest wing. Jonah reappeared, and we led the colonel down the corridor and into bed. He shrugged out of his uniform jacket and promptly fell asleep.
JUST PAST two o’clock, an unmarked Volkswagen pulled up to the castle gate, headlights switched off. It was still snowing, but the driver dared not use the windscreen wipers. I caught our reflections in the backseat window; the masks were fading from our faces, but feature by feature, so that my hair was black and my eyes were my own again but my nose and mouth were still the dead secretary’s. I shuddered as Jonah opened the back door and ushered me inside. We knelt on the floor, sandwiched between the seats with a wool blanket thrown over our heads in case we were stopped, but we weren’t.
“You did well tonight,” he whispered. In the darkness I raised my hands to his face and drew my fingers along his brow, his cheekbones, his nose and jawline—he was fully Jonah again. “Happy 1945,” I said. Silently he kissed me.
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