by Ariel Lawhon
While Pruss is formulating his answer, the American rises from the table and wipes his mouth with a linen napkin. “If you will excuse me, I need to use the restroom.” Seeds are planted and germinating within the minds of the two most social passengers on board this airship. Joseph and Margaret will spread this message from person to person, meal to meal, over the next three days. And by the time they land, every one of them will look at this ship and its parent company with the appropriate level of misgiving. The American is certain of this, determined even, that it will be so.
The American leaves Commander Pruss behind to deal with his rhetoric. As he weaves his way through the dining room, he can hear Pruss dismissing the accusations offhand, the commander’s accent growing heavier with each word. It is as he passes the lovely young journalist and her husband that he remembers where he has seen them.
Neue Mainzer Strasse 56. The Frankfurt branch of the Ministry of Propaganda. Fourth floor. Three months ago.
Yes, it is all coming back to him now, confirmed in the curious glance Gertrud Adelt—for that is her name, he’s certain of it now—directs at him as he passes. He remembers her bellow of rage as she stood in the fourth-floor hallway before the Kulturstaatssekretär. It was loud enough to draw the American from his desk on the floor below and up the stairs into the hall. She handed over her press card with a shaking hand, but her voice was calm and firm as she uttered such a string of profanities that every man present stood with mouth agape. It had certainly made an impression on the American. He’s quite certain that he had witnessed her inventing a new obscenity on the spot. And then her husband had deftly removed her from the building before she could be arrested. Had Leonhard Adelt not been a man of some import himself, the American is certain things would have gone quite differently for them that day.
The American debates whether to classify Gertrud as a threat or a hindrance as he leaves the dining room. She clearly has no love for the Nazis, but she is too curious for her own good. In the end he decides to label her as unknown. It will have to do until he can make a better assessment.
All of the passengers are either seated at the tables or in the promenade as he slips into the keel corridor. Most of the crew is either serving dinner or in the midst of flight operations, so he goes down the stairs, away from the restrooms, and into the corridor on B-deck without being seen. The American pulls the pilfered salad fork from his pocket and tucks it into his palm, the handle hidden in his sleeve, as he approaches the mailroom door.
The lock is harder to pick than he anticipated, and for one moment he fears the tine will break off, but the tumblers shift at the last moment and the door swings inward. When he pulls the fork out he notices that the sharpest point of the tine has indeed snapped inside the lock and is lodged within. No worry. He won’t need to do this again.
The American shuts the door behind him but does not turn on the light. He is accustomed to the dark. The letter in his suit pocket is standard size, thin, and cased in a thick paper envelope. Stamped express mail. The address typewritten. The single sheet of paper within contains a single line of print, also typewritten: On board. Collect load at Hof Hotel. Room 218. Will proceed as planned. There is no light other than what seeps in beneath the door, and it takes his eyes a couple of moments to adjust. But he quickly finds the bag marked KÖLN hanging by the door and unties it. He tucks his letter inside and knots it again easily. The American is reaching for the door when he hears voices in the corridor outside. The doorknob jiggles. Someone curses. And he dives for the pile of mailbags on the floor.
THE STEWARDESS
By the time Emilie collapses into the banquette in the crew’s mess she is limp from exhaustion and shaking with hunger. A table is tucked into each of the four corners, and padded seats run the length of two walls. The banquettes create distinct nooks where small groups of crew members can eat their meals in peace. Emilie sits at one on the far side with her back to the observation windows, ignoring the darkened scenery below. She’s the only person in the mess, the rest of the crew having long since eaten their dinner. Emilie barely has a chance to settle into the upholstered cushions when Xaver Maier sets a plate of poached salmon in front of her. He arranges the utensils to accommodate her left hand.
“You remembered?” She wiggles her fingers and picks up the fork.
“It’s my job.” He shrugs. “The rolls were hot an hour ago.”
“I wouldn’t care if they were frozen. I’m starving.”
Emilie falls to her food as though it’s her last meal on earth, and Xaver watches like a hovering parent, making sure each item is sampled and appreciated.
“How is it,” Max asks, standing in the doorway once again, “that this chef knows every important detail about you—the fact that you’re left-handed, for instance—while I know so little?”
“She’s not a chart, Dummkopf. Stop trying to read her,” Xaver says, irritated, as he pushes against the swinging door that leads into the kitchen. He stops midstep and turns. “If you’d like coffee I’d be happy to make some.”
Emilie shakes her head and waves him off. She glares at Max. Her mouth is full of roasted potatoes, and she has to chew quickly then swallow before she can speak. “How do you do that?”
Max grins. “Do what?”
“Magically appear in the doorway every time I’m in the middle of a conversation?”
“It’s a gift, I suppose.”
“It’s obnoxious,” Emilie says, but she’s smiling anyway.
He settles into the seat across from her, arms on the table as though he’s got nothing else to do.
“That’s rude, you know, staring at people while they eat,” she says around a mouthful of green beans.
“It’s also rude to talk with your mouth full. Yet here we are.” He waits a moment as though deciding whether to concede, and then adds, “I came to collect you. I thought it would be polite to let you finish dinner.”
She growls softly and attacks her meal with renewed energy. Emilie is neither delicate nor discreet about the way she dispatches the rest of her meal. She’s hungry, damn it, and she doesn’t care if Max is horrified. Perhaps this will run him off. She can feel the taut thread of exhaustion in her spine begin to fray, ready to snap. With a job like this, each day brings a definite and complete end to her coping skills. She stabs at a loose green bean with the tines of her fork and watches it skitter off the edge of the plate and onto the table. She pinches it with two fingers and eats it anyway. Of course someone would need her the moment she finally has a chance to sit down and eat. Emilie catalogues the passengers she is responsible for on this flight, trying to guess which one might have paged her. It’s a game she plays on every trip, and she’s almost always correct. She once had a passenger on board the Columbus who insisted that Emilie clean beneath her toenails with a letter opener every night before bed. Emilie had the woman pegged as trouble the moment she walked up the gangway pinching her nostrils and complaining about the harbor stench.
“Was it good?” Max asks when she finally sets her fork down.
“I don’t know. I didn’t get the chance to taste it.” She’s immediately sorry for snapping at him. She softens her tone. “Haven’t you eaten?”
“I’m still on duty.” He shrugs. “The mail.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
Max waves the apology away and motions her toward the door. They step into the dim, empty corridor. She straightens her uniform, then takes a deep breath to gird herself for whatever distasteful task awaits. “Which one of the passengers paged me?”
“I never said a passenger needed you.”
“You said you came to—”
“Collect you.”
“For what?”
Max extends his hand, palm up, as though pleading. “There’s something I’d like to show you.”
A memory, sudden and Technicolor, rises to the surface: Hamburg, Germany, twenty years ago, a blue door, a red dress, and fingers fumbling at a zipper. Emilie leans against the corri
dor wall to steady herself as a sudden, unexpected burst of laughter erupts. Two minutes ago she wanted to stab Max with her fork, and now she can barely stand because she’s laughing so hard.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t help it. The last time a boy said those words to me, I was fifteen years old, and Frank Becker took me to the back of my father’s shop and tried to show me his Schwanz.”
Max is dark. Black hair. Olive skin. Eyes like flint. But the color still begins to show in his face, and this makes her laugh even harder. She’s doubled over now, arms wrapped around her ribs, leaning hard against the wall so she won’t tip over.
“That’s not what I…I don’t…well, I mean I do, but…Scheiße! I’ll shut up.”
Her breath comes in gasps. “Oh no, do keep going.”
Max clears his throat. Tries to regain his dignity. To match her bawdiness. “Did he succeed, then, Frank Becker?”
“Almost. I left him there, balled up on the floor grabbing his crotch.”
“Duly noted.”
“Oh, I was curious.” Emilie hiccups. “But I felt that I had to kick him on principle.”
“No uninvited Schwanz flashing?”
“It simply won’t do.” She gives a curt shake of her head, making her curls bounce against her shoulders. “Besides, I was a good girl. And my father would have castrated Frank if he’d found out. A bloody mess that would have been, given that he worked with Frank’s father.”
“Pun intended?”
“Most definitely.”
“And what did your father do for a living?”
“He was a butcher.”
Now it’s Max’s turn to laugh. It occurs to Emilie that she likes the sound very much and that she doesn’t hear it often enough.
“I am curious about something, Herr Zabel.”
“Yes?”
“Why is it that I can’t spend ten minutes in your company without laughing?”
There’s something about the look on his face, like he’s pleased with the whole world, like this is a private triumph. She wants to know what’s behind that look, but she is also aware that Max has revealed a lot about his feelings for her, and that she has given him little in the way of reciprocation. So she isn’t surprised when he brushes the question aside.
“If you’re going to make a joke about my face, I’d like the chance to beg your mercy. My Schwanz has already shrunk an inch thanks to your last story. I’m not sure how much more of your honesty I can take.”
Emilie sets a hand against his cheek. His skin is soft below the day’s worth of stubble. “Well,” she says, her voice just a notch above a whisper, “I’ve not been acquainted with the other, but I like your face just fine.”
Max leans into her touch. The softness around his eyes and the curve of his mouth suggests he can’t help himself. “This is where I prove myself to be smarter than young Herr Becker.”
“It’s not hard, but pray tell, how do you plan on doing that?”
“By keeping my trousers zipped.”
There is an easiness in the way she relates to Max that Emilie finds alarming. Easy anger. Easy laughter. Easy companionship. It has been a long time since Emilie has felt these things, and she does not know how to surrender to them. She meets Max’s steady gaze with all the bravery she can muster. “Now, what was it you wanted to show me?”
“Cologne,” he says.
THE JOURNALIST
Damn German men and their cast-iron livers, Gertrud thinks, damn them all. Leonhard included. The more she drinks, the more she talks, and the more she needs to pee. But she’s not the one who needs to talk, it’s Colonel Erdmann, and he’s zipped up tight, laughing at her with his eyes as he eats the last of his pastry.
“I’m going to the bar,” she says abruptly. Gertrud pushes her plate away and stands up. She’s wobbly, but she steadies herself easily enough by holding on to the back of her chair. Leonhard and the colonel jump to their feet out of courtesy, both startled. “And you’re welcome to come with me.”
“Where else would I go, Liebchen?” Leonhard asks. His tone is soft. Indulgent.
She can think of a number of ways to answer that question—all of them impudent—but she says none of them. It’s one thing to be charming and pert and amusing in front of the colonel, but she will not be disrespectful to her husband. She won’t shame him. She’s tipsy, not stupid. Not only would it hurt Leonhard terribly—he is a man, after all, and his ego is nothing to toy with—but she would lose all the advantage she has built with Colonel Erdmann over dinner.
“You will join us, Colonel?” he asks. “I assure you my wife is quite entertaining when she’s good and fully drunk.”
“Entertaining? Or talkative?” The wry one-sided smirk suggests that the colonel is not as irritated by the prospect as he sounds.
“They are often one and the same.”
“In that case I’d be honored.”
Leonhard tucks Gertrud’s hand beneath his arm. She leans into him, unstable, and he gives her a fond smile, but there is a warning glint in his eyes. Do not push the colonel too far, it says. Play nice. Remember who you’re dealing with. Their marriage is young, just two years old, but they’ve learned to read each other remarkably well in that time. To speak with the slightest movements. To communicate with little more than a drumming finger or a long stare. It is a rare gift in marriages, one they capitalize on often.
Leonhard guides them out of the dining room, down the corridor, down the stairs, and onto B-deck. He pauses for a moment outside the toilets when Gertrud squeezes his arm to let him know she needs a moment of privacy.
“Forgive my wife,” she hears Leonhard say as the door swings shut. “She has the bladder of a tiny bird.”
The colonel follows with some rejoinder about his own wife, and she knows that they are fast becoming friends. The toilet is tiny, made of some shiny, lightweight metal, and cold enough to make her gasp. She finishes her business quickly and tidies up in front of the mirror. Another coat of red lipstick. She wipes the mascara smudges from beneath her eyes. Smoothes her hair. Something in the roundness of her eyes, the exhaustion written there, reminds her of Egon, the way he looks when she puts him to bed at night. She is struck with a pang so deep she struggles for breath. Gertrud has not thought of her son in two hours. Not once during dinner. Guilt. Sadness. Anger. All of these things are written on her face, on the brightness of her cheeks. Leonhard sees the emotion clearly when she joins them in the hallway, and he gives her hand a questioning squeeze. He won’t ask her here, but she knows he has marked it mentally.
The corridor takes a sharp left and then an immediate right, depositing them directly in front of a heavy glass door. Leonhard raps on the door sharply with his knuckles and steps aside as a steward pushes it open. There is an immediate hiss of air and Gertrud’s ears pop. The steward holds the door as they enter. It is ingenious the way they have designed this part of the airship. Safety, beauty, and practicality all rolled into one. The cramped antechamber into which they enter is in effect little more than an air lock monitored by the bar steward. To one side is a fully stocked bar, shaped like a banquette with room for one man to stand, but there are no chairs. No tables.
She doesn’t catch the steward’s first name when he shakes Leonhard’s hand, but she hears his last: Schulze. “This room and the one beyond,” he points at the door opposite, “are pressurized, you see. To prevent any trace amounts of hydrogen from entering. Otherwise no one would be allowed to smoke on board.”
Schulze leads them to the opposite door, also glass, and into the smoking lounge. If the rest of the ship is luxurious, this room is opulent. Priorities, Gertrud thinks, the Zeppelin-Reederei knows whom to indulge. Leather benches and armchairs line the perfectly square room, leaving the center open. Hand-painted murals of early hot-air balloons decorate the walls. Small square tables are set with playing cards and poker chips. Carpet, such a dark blue that it looks like spilled ink, covers the floor.
The place smells faintly of sweet pipe tobacco, and also the bitter smoke of cigarettes and cigars, though she can tell they’ve gone to great pains to air the room out. Wall sconces fill the space with warm yellow light. And then, of course, the starboard wall is an entire bank of windows. The same as elsewhere on the airship, slanted outward at waist height so you can lean over them and see the ground below. This is where she gravitates while Leonhard and the colonel choose a table. There is so little to see at this time of night that Gertrud is drawn to every prick of light. There the headlights of a vehicle. There the light in a farmhouse window. And on the horizon a luminous string, like a glowworm, hinting at some looming piece of civilization.
Schulze sets the cocktail menus on the table. “These rooms are open until three a.m.,” he says. “You will find that we have all varieties of wine and alcohol on board. Cigars. And tobacco as well, though we do not provide the pipes. Our menu is generous, and I can make anything to order, though, if I might be so bold, I highly recommend the Maybach 12. It is a drink of my own invention and is excellent, if I may say so.” He glances at Gertrud as if to measure her tolerance for alcohol. She must appear wanting, for he adds, “Though it is of considerable horsepower. I will be in the bar when you’re ready to order.”
They settle into a table near the window, and Leonhard and the colonel begin to discuss the finer points of some obscure brand of Scotch. In the end they both decide to try the LZ 129 Frosted Cocktail, some ridiculous concoction of gin and orange juice, so they can save the straight liquor for the end of the night when they are good and sauced and their taste buds have thrown in the towel for the day. Gertrud orders the Maybach 12 just to spite everyone. Leonhard dutifully delivers their order to the bar, and when her drink arrives several moments later it is completely devoid of spirits. So he’s decided to enable her on this fool’s errand after all? The man does surprise her. The look she gives him lasts no longer than a blink, and his answering shrug could be misconstrued as the shift of an aging man trying to get comfortable in his seat.