The Traitor's Emblem

by Juan Gomez-jurado

  Pick up the phone, Manfred. Pick up, for God’s sake.

  Finally he heard Alys’s brother’s voice, filled with anxiety.

  “Paul, is that you?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Where the hell have you been? I—”

  “Listen carefully, Manfred. If you want to see your sister ever again, you must listen. I need you to help me.”

  “Where are you?” asked Manfred, his voice serious.

  Paul gave him the address of the warehouse.

  “Get a cab to bring you here. But don’t come directly. First stop at a chemist’s and pick up gauze, bandages, alcohol, and thread for stitching up wounds. And anti-inflammatories—that’s very important. And bring my suitcase with all my things. Don’t worry about Frau Frink: I’ve already . . .”

  Here he had to pause. The tiredness and loss of blood were making him feel dizzy. He had to rest against the telephone to stop himself from falling.

  “Paul?”

  “I’ve paid her two months in advance.”

  “Okay, Paul.”

  “Hurry, Manfred.”

  He hung up and walked toward the door. As he passed the receptionist he gave a quick, spasmodic version of the Nazi salute. The receptionist responded with an enthusiastic “Heil Hitler!” that rattled the pictures on the walls. Walking toward Paul, he opened the front door for him and was surprised to see the luxury Mercedes parked outside.

  “Nice car.”

  “It’s not bad.”

  “Had it long?”

  “A couple of months. It’s secondhand.”

  For God’s sake, don’t call the police . . . You haven’t seen anything but a respectable worker stopping to make a call.

  He felt the employee’s suspicious gaze on the back of his neck as he got into the car. He had to grit his teeth to stop himself from crying out from the pain as he sat down.

  Everything is normal, he thought, focusing all his senses on starting the engine without fainting. Go back to your paper. Go back to your quiet night. You don’t want to get mixed up with the police.

  The receptionist kept his eyes on the Mercedes until it turned the corner, but Paul couldn’t be sure if he was just admiring the bodywork or making a mental note of the license plate.

  When he arrived at the stables, Paul allowed himself to slump forward onto the steering wheel, his strength gone.

  He was awoken by knocking on the window. Manfred’s face was peering down at him with concern. Beside him was another smaller face.

  Julian.

  My son.

  In his memory, the next few minutes were a jumble of disconnected scenes. Manfred dragging him from the car into the stables. Washing his wounds and sewing them up. Stinging pain. Julian offering him a bottle of water. Him drinking for what seemed like an eternity, unable to quench his thirst. And then silence again.

  When he eventually opened his eyes, Manfred and Julian were sitting on the cart, watching him.

  “What’s he doing here?” said Paul hoarsely.

  “What should I have done with him? I couldn’t leave him alone in the boardinghouse!”

  “What we have to do tonight isn’t work for children.”

  Julian climbed down from the cart and ran over to hug him.

  “We were worried.”

  “Thank you for coming to rescue me,” said Paul, ruffling his hair.

  “Mama does that to me too,” said the boy.

  “We’re going to go get her, Julian. I promise.”

  He rose and went to clean himself up in the small washroom out back. It was little more than a bucket—now covered in spiderwebs—positioned under a tap, and an old mirror covered in scratches.

  Paul studied his reflection carefully. Both his forearms and his whole torso were bandaged. On his left side, blood was straining against the white fabric.

  “Your injuries are nasty. You have no idea how much you screamed when I put on the antiseptic,” said Manfred, who had come to the door.

  “I don’t remember a thing.”

  “Who’s the dead man?”

  “He’s the man who took Alys.”

  “Julian, put that knife back down!” shouted Manfred, who had been glancing over his shoulder every few seconds.

  “I’m sorry he had to see the body.”

  “He’s a brave boy. He held your hand the whole time I was working, and I can assure you it wasn’t pretty. I’m an engineer, not a doctor.”

  Paul shook his head, trying to clear it. “You’ll have to go out and buy some sulfonamide. What time is it?”

  “Seven a.m.”

  “Let’s rest for a bit. Tonight we’ll go and get your sister.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Dachau camp.”

  Manfred opened his eyes wide and swallowed.

  “You know what Dachau is, Paul?”

  “It’s one of those camps the Nazis built to house their political enemies. Basically an open-air prison.”

  “You’ve just returned to these shores, and it shows,” said Manfred, shaking his head. “Officially, these places are wonderful summer camps for unruly or undisciplined children. But if you believe the few decent journalists who are still around, places like Dachau are a living hell.” Manfred went on to describe the horrors going on just a few miles outside the city limits. A few months earlier he’d come across a couple of magazines that described Dachau as a low-level correctional facility where the inmates were well fed, were dressed in crisp white uniforms, and smiled for the cameras. The pictures were staged for the international press. Reality was very different. Dachau was a prison of swift justice for those who opposed the Nazis—parodies of actual trials that rarely lasted more than an hour. It was a hard-labor camp where watchdogs prowled the perimeter of the electric fences, howling into the night under the constant glare of searchlights from above.

  “It’s impossible to get any information on the prisoners jailed there. And nobody ever escapes, you can be sure of that,” Manfred said.

  “Alys won’t have to escape.”

  Paul outlined a rough plan. Just a dozen phrases, but enough so that by the end of the explanation Manfred was even more worried than before.

  “There are a million things that could go wrong.”

  “But it could also work.”

  “And the moon could be green when it rises tonight.”

  “Look, are you going to help me save your sister or not?’”

  Manfred looked at Julian, who had climbed back up onto the cart and was kicking his ball against its sides.

  “I suppose so,” he said with a sigh.

  “Then go and rest for a while. When you wake up, you’re going to help me kill Paul Reiner.”

  When he saw Manfred and Julian sprawled on the ground, trying to rest, Paul realized just how exhausted he was. However, there was still one thing left for him to do before he could get some sleep.

  At the other end of the stables, his mother’s letter was still attached to the nail.

  Again Paul had to step over Jürgen’s body, but this time it was much more of an ordeal. He spent several minutes looking at his brother: his missing eye, the increasing paleness of his skin as the blood accumulated in his lower parts, the symmetry of his body, felled by the knife that had cut into his abdomen. In spite of the fact that this person had caused him nothing but suffering, he couldn’t help feeling a profound sorrow.

  Things should have been different, he thought, finally daring to step through the wall of air that seemed to solidify above the body.

  With the utmost care he pulled the letter from the nail.

  He was tired but, all the same, the emotion he felt when he opened the letter was almost overwhelming.

  57

  My dear son:

  There isn’t a right way to begin this letter. The truth is, this is only one of several attempts I’ve made over the last four or five months. After a while—an interval that gets shorter each time—I have to pick up my pencil
and try to write it all over again. I always hope you aren’t in the boardinghouse when I burn the previous version and scatter the ashes out the window. Then I set to the task, this poor substitute for what I need to do, which is to tell you the truth.

  Your father. When you were small you used to ask me about him. I would brush you off with vague answers, or kept my mouth shut, because I was afraid. In those days our lives depended on the charity of the Schroeders, and I was too weak to look for an alternative. If only I’d . . . But no, ignore me. My life is full of “only’s” and I grew tired of feeling regret a long time ago.

  It’s also been a long time since you stopped asking me about your father. In a way this has worried me even more than your tireless interest in him when you were small, because I know how obsessed with him you still are. I know how hard you find it to sleep at nights, and I know that the thing you want most is to know what happened.

  Which is why I have to remain silent. My mind does not work all that well, and occasionally I lose track of time, or the sense of where I am, and I only hope that in those moments of confusion I don’t give away the location of this letter. The rest of the time, when I’m lucid, all I feel is fear—fear that the day you learn the truth you will rush to confront those responsible for Hans’s death.

  Yes, Paul, your father didn’t die in a shipwreck as we told you, something you guessed not long before we were thrown out of the baron’s home. That would have been an apt death for him, all the same.

  Hans Reiner was born in Hamburg in 1876, though his family moved to Munich when he was still a boy. He ended up loving both cities, but the sea was his only real passion.

  He was an ambitious man. He wanted to be a captain, and he succeeded. He was already a captain when we met at a dance around the turn of this century. I don’t remember the date exactly, I think it was late 1902, but I can’t be sure. He asked me to dance, and I said yes. It was a waltz. By the time the music had finished, I was hopelessly in love with him.

  He courted me between sea voyages and ended up making Munich his permanent home just to please me, however inconvenient this was for him professionally. The day he walked into my parents’ house to ask your grandfather for my hand was the happiest day of my life. My father was a big, genial man, but that day he was very solemn and even shed a tear. It’s sad that you never had the chance to meet him; you would have liked him very much.

  My father said we would have a party to celebrate, a big engagement party in the traditional style. A whole weekend, with dozens of guests and a fine banquet.

  Our little home wasn’t suitable, so my father asked my sister’s permission to hold the event at the baron’s country house in Herrsching am Ammersee. In those days your uncle’s enthusiasm for gambling was still under control, and he had several properties scattered across Bavaria. Brunhilda agreed, more in order to stay on good terms with my mother than for any other reason.

  When we were little, my sister and I were never that close. She was more interested in boys, dances, and fancy outfits than I was. I preferred to stay at home with my parents. I was still playing with dolls when Brunhilda went on her first date.

  She’s not a bad person, Paul. She never was: only selfish and spoiled. When she married the baron, a couple of years before I met your father, she was the happiest woman in the world. What made her change? I don’t know. Boredom, perhaps, or your uncle’s infidelity. He was a self-confessed womanizer, something she had never noticed before, having been dazzled by his money and his title. Later, however, it became too obvious for her not to notice. She had a son with him, which I had never expected. Eduard was a sweet-natured, solitary child who grew up in the care of maids and wet nurses. His mother never paid him much attention because the boy had not served his purpose: to keep the baron on a short leash and away from his tarts.

  Let’s go back to the weekend of the party. At noon on Friday the guests started to arrive. I was ecstatic, walking with my sister in the sun and waiting for your father to arrive to introduce them to each other. At last he appeared, in his military jacket, white gloves, and captain’s cap, and carrying a dress sword. He had dressed as he would for the engagement on Saturday night, and he said he’d done it to impress me. It made me laugh.

  But when I introduced him to Brunhilda, something odd happened. Your father took her hand and held it for a little longer than was proper or appropriate. And she seemed bewildered, as though struck by a bolt of lightning. At the time I thought—fool that I was—that it was just embarrassment, but Brunhilda had never displayed even a hint of that emotion in her life.

  Your father had just returned from a mission to Africa. He had brought me an exotic perfume used by the natives in the colonies, made with sandalwood and molasses, I believe. It had a strong and very distinctive scent but was also delicate and lovely. I clapped like a fool. I was delighted with it, and I promised him I would wear it for the engagement celebrations.

  That night, while we were all asleep, Brunhilda let herself into your father’s bedroom. The room was completely dark, and Brunhilda was naked under her dressing gown, wearing only the perfume your father had given me. Without a sound she got into bed and made love to him. I still find it difficult to write these words, Paul, even now that twenty years have passed.

  Your father, believing I had wanted to give him an advance on our wedding night, didn’t resist. At least, that was what he told me the following day as I looked him in the eye.

  He swore to me, and swore again, that he hadn’t noticed anything until it was all over and Brunhilda spoke for the first time. She told him she loved him and asked him to run away with her. Your father threw her out of the room and the next morning he took me aside and told me what had happened.

  “We can cancel the wedding if you want to,” he said.

  “No,” I replied. “I love you, and I’ll marry you if you swear to me that you truly had no idea it was my sister.”

  Your father swore again, and I believed him. After all these years I’m not sure what to think, but there is too much bitterness in my heart now.

  The engagement went ahead, as did the wedding in Munich three months later. By then it was easy to make out your aunt’s swollen belly under the red lace dress she wore, and everyone was happy except for me, because I knew all too well whose child it was.

  Finally the baron found out too. Not from me. I never confronted my sister or reproached her for what she had done, because I am a coward. Nor did I tell anyone what I knew. But it had to come out sooner or later: Brunhilda probably threw it in the baron’s face during an argument about one of his affairs. I don’t know for certain, but the fact is he found out, and this was partly to blame for what happened later.

  I, too, became pregnant soon afterward, and you came into the world while your father was on what would be his final mission to Africa. The letters he wrote to me were increasingly dark, and for some reason—I don’t know why exactly—he felt less and less proud of the job he was doing.

  One day he stopped writing altogether. The next letter I received was from the Imperial Navy, informing me that my husband had deserted and that I had a duty to notify the authorities if I heard from him.

  I cried bitterly. I still don’t know what prompted him to desert, nor do I want to know. I learned too many things about Hans Reiner after his death, things that do not fit at all with the portrait I’d made of him. That was why I never spoke to you about your father, because he was not a role model or someone to be proud of.

  Toward the end of 1904 your father returned to Munich without my knowledge. He came back secretly, with his first lieutenant, a man by the name of Nagel who had accompanied him everywhere. Instead of coming home, he went to seek refuge at the baron’s mansion. From there he sent me a brief note, and this is exactly what it said:

  “Dear Ilse: I’ve made a terrible mistake, and I’m trying to fix it. I’ve asked your brother-in-law for help, and another good friend. They might be able to save me. Sometimes the gr
eatest treasure is hidden in the same place as the greatest destruction, or at least I’ve always thought so. With love, Hans.”

  I’ve never understood what your father meant by those words. I read the note over and over again, though I burned it a few hours after it arrived, for fear it might fall into the wrong hands.

  As for your father’s death, all I know is that he was staying at the Schroeders’ mansion and one night there was a fierce argument after which he was dead. His body was thrown off a bridge into the Isar under the cover of darkness.

  I don’t know who killed your father. Your aunt told me what I’m telling you here, almost to the word, though she was not present when it happened. She told me with tears in her eyes, and I knew that she was still in love with him.

  The boy Brunhilda gave birth to, Jürgen, was the spitting image of your father. The love and unhealthy devotion his mother always showed him was hardly surprising. His wasn’t the only life to be thrown off course that dreadful night.

  Defenseless and scared, I accepted Otto’s proposal that I should go and live with them. For him it was at once an expiation for what had been done to Hans and a way of punishing Brunhilda, reminding her who it was that Hans had preferred. For Brunhilda it became her own way of punishing me for having stolen the man she’d taken a fancy to, even though this man had never belonged to her.

  And for me it was a way of surviving. Your father had left me nothing but his debts, when the government deigned to pronounce him dead some years later, although his body never turned up. So you and I lived in that mansion, which contained nothing but hatred.

  There is one other thing. To me, Jürgen has never been anything less than your brother, because although he was conceived in Brunhilda’s womb I have considered him my son. I have never been able to show him affection, but he is a part of your father, a man I loved with all my soul. Seeing him every day, even for a few moments, has been like having my Hans back with me again.