The German Woman

by Paul Griner

  “So,” she said, as if they hadn’t been interrupted, and as if the interruption weren’t possibly fatal, an enforced calm in the face of danger he was finding increasingly hard to maintain. “What landed you in jail?”

  “A movie.”

  “It must have been quite a film.” She sat, demurely flipping the robe closed over her crossed knees. “Would I have seen it?”

  He sat next to her. “No one did. It was suppressed.”

  “Ah. A blue movie.”

  “Far worse. Political. Or so they said. And anti-English.”

  It was a story he hadn’t told for a while. In the late twenties and early thirties, over his shame but still nursing his anger, he’d told it often, usually to appropriately outraged listeners at socialist meetings in Birmingham and Leeds and Dublin, and once to a smaller but angrier crowd in Hamburg, told it so often that it had become rote. But over the past several years, because of his cover, he hadn’t been able to tell it at all, and now it was difficult to remember exactly what he’d felt versus what he’d come to think he was supposed to have felt. Where to start?

  “I was working with D. W. Griffith, on Intolerance.”

  “You must have been just a boy.”

  “Nineteen. Film was a young man’s game then, which helped. Griffith was close to forty and he was ancient. Intolerance was a financial disaster, but it convinced me I could make a movie myself, and I wrote a script about the Revolutionary War.”

  “Ah, the Colonial troubles, you mean.”

  “Yes. Well, by the time I finished it, in 1917, it was called treason in the United States.”

  “Was it any good?”

  No one had ever asked him that. “Yes,” he said. “I think it was.”

  “Good for you, no false modesty. Your time here hasn’t completely ruined you.”

  “The judge in my case felt differently. The Americans and the British were fighting together against the Germans then, and it wasn’t sufficiently pro-English to suit him. There’s a scene in the film in which the British, defeated at Saratoga and afraid of losing New York City, set fire to prison ships docked on the Hudson. It’s based on a real atrocity, but it especially incensed the judge. And my name didn’t help. ‘Murphy?’ The judge’s contempt was obvious, worse when he found out I was half German. How could I have received a fair trial?”

  “You’re German?”

  “My mother’s side.”

  “Sprechen sie Deutsch?” she asked.

  “Ja.” He hesitated, then took the plunge. “Mein richtiger Name ist Claus.”

  She surprised him by laughing. “You’ve changed your name! So many secrets. It must be terrible.” She leaned forward and put her hands on his knees. “What else are you hiding from me? Have you been there? Do you have relatives there?”

  “Yes and yes. Between the wars, a few times. German industrial films.”

  “And your relatives?”

  “Oh, distant cousins.” He had to be careful. A discussion of Robert might lead to Bertram. “I’ll tell you about them later.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You must. But first, prison. Claus.” She smiled and sat back to listen.

  “I hadn’t seen the anti-German hatred rising to the surface in the run-up to the war, too immersed in the movie, and nearly everything I did for it came back to haunt me. Worst of all was a publicity stunt, spreading rumors that our female lead had been killed in a St. Louis auto accident, and then, just before shooting began, buying newspaper ads around the country announcing that she was alive and well and working for me. The film was already notorious at release, and among the crowds were government agents. Since we’d declared war against the Germans just weeks before, I was immediately charged with treason.

  “It took the jury an hour to convict me. The whole thing was preposterous. During the trial, the papers said I refused to eat anything but German food, and at one point some teenage boys bombarded me with rotten cabbages. The judge admonished them but didn’t make them leave. At my sentencing, he held up one of the movie posters. ‘To accuse the British of something like this, at a time when they need all our help.’ He gave me an extra five years because of it.”

  “And how did you end up here?”

  “Exile. When I got out, the naturalization laws had changed. England and Germany were my choices.”

  “You’re not American?”

  “Legally, no. My parents met in London, working for the same family. When my mother announced she was married and pregnant, she lost her job. As soon as I was born, they emigrated.”

  “So, born in London, raised in America, then tried for treason because of an anti-British film?”

  “Yes. The courts have little sense of irony.”

  “And your parents? Were they forced to leave America too?”

  “They might as well have been. Pennsylvania had a huge German population, which grew very skittish as the war went on. They had a store that went bankrupt, and with me in jail, they both aged very quickly. They died before I was released.”

  “Oh, Claus. I’m so sorry. And that you should end up in England after that.”

  “So I’ve often thought.”

  “And here you are, sleeping with an Englishwoman.”

  He laughed. “Yes, well. It’s a bit better than my first fifteen years here.”

  “Perhaps it was for the good,” she said, and stood. “Jail, I mean. Not for your parents, obviously, but it kept you out of the service and you’re better off that way. Joining would have been unnecessary. The war will come to an end without you. Or me, for that matter.” She bent to kiss him and cradled his warm forehead against her chest.

  Back in bed he picked up a heavy leather book from the stack on the bedside table. It fell open to a page marked by a slightly charred German cigarette card, a picture of Bobby Box fleeing his own drawing.

  “Oh, I’m glad you found that!” she said with evident pleasure, and turned it in her hands. “Marie’s. She was going to fill up a Stefan Mart book with them. Do you know them?”

  He hadn’t heard of them.

  “Great fun. Marie had most of them. The book was ruined much later.”

  She took the card and went to sit by the window, where she lit a cigarette. “When I left, I gathered everything I could. I don’t know why I took what I did.” She gestured at the room. “Most of this is from my mother’s house. My brothers died in the last war, my father too. And she died before I came back. The last of the line, I’m afraid. But some of this I’d shipped far earlier, from Germany.” She flipped the card. “I wish I had the entire book this came from. It was the only picture book we could afford, after the war. We bought it with vouchers from cigarette packs.”

  “And these?” he said, pulling out a journal, its pomegranate-colored leather spine dry and cracked. “Did these get shipped early on too?”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “But they’re private.”

  “Sure they are,” Claus said, and opened a page and began to read aloud: “‘In 1915, outside Danzig. A house with a hundred and twenty clocks.’”

  When he looked over at her, expecting a smile, her anger surprised him.

  “Kate,” he said, and snapped the journal closed. “I’m sorry. I only want to find out about an earlier you.”

  “I can tell you all you need to know,” she said, taking the journal and slipping it under a pile of books.

  He ran a thumb down the book spines, thinking that his social skills had grown dull; he should have known not to presume. “Trollope,” he said. “Quite a collection.” She didn’t respond, and when her face turned scarlet, he said, “I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong?”

  “Time for full confessions, I guess. It seems to be a day for them.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “They’re stolen.”

  “Stolen stolen?”

  “Not pinched, if that’s what you mean. I found most of them blown into the streets after raids; picking them up didn’t seem like stealing. Especially since they were about t
o get ruined by the firemen’s hoses. Do you think me horrid?”

  He laughed, unsurprised; civilization’s thin veneer. He’d been guilty of peeling it back too, and that she told him at all meant she forgave him the misstep with her journal. His turn. “I have a collection of pipes. My two favorites are real Turkish meerschaum, which I discovered beneath an uprooted tree, the site of some former alehouse, probably. Those aren’t stolen at all. But the others I’ve found in the streets.” He’d gathered them throughout the city, labeling where he’d found each one: Bethnal Green, the Guards’ chapel, Madame Tussaud’s. “I’m almost done collecting them. I have nearly a boxful. Once it’s full, I think I’ll stop.”

  “Do you smoke a pipe?”

  “Never. And I doubt I’ll start.” Bertram did, and he couldn’t imagine wanting to be like him. “But the first two just seemed to lead to the rest. A slippery slope, I guess.”

  “Yes. At the time I started with the books, I felt I was doing a service, performing a rescue. It’s only in retrospect that it seems otherwise.”

  The state of his life, though of course he couldn’t say so.

  “You see this,” she said, holding open a copy of Trollope’s The Warden. The name Mildred Jones was inscribed on the inside cover. “She might be dead, for all I know, which makes me something of a grave robber.”

  “No,” he said. “It’s a bit more complex than that.”

  “Yes, everything is. At the club last week, when I got so angry at you, about collaborating? A bit of guilt, I suppose. Something along the same lines. I left Hamburg in the late thirties and moved to Strasbourg, then Paris. It was fairly easy to find work, even without papers; the French were convinced war was coming and that it would last for years again, that they’d have a shortage of nurses. And once France fell, the Germans at first seemed not to mind my presence.

  “But my comments about helping a German general weren’t hypothetical. The commander of the Île-de-France region was ambushed as he sat admiring tame swans on the Seine. He needed two surgeons; one was French, the other German. I served as the interpreter. Luckily, they saved him. Two French hostages were shot because he’d been wounded, but dozens more would have been killed had he died. Still, the anger in certain quarters was immense. He’d been involved in reprisals and was a notorious womanizer, and many French would have preferred him to die.

  “The following day, the German surgeon stopped by, bringing some chocolate, as relieved as I that the massacre had been averted. I gave the chocolate bar to a neighbor who’d been kind to me. The next I saw her, her head had been shaved and she’d been doused with Mercurochrome.”

  Claus stopped her. “Wait,” he said. “Why?” The scene sprang full-blown into his mind. “And where were you when you saw her?”

  “I’d just come out of my apartment, and she was sitting on the curb, sobbing. Evidently someone had seen the officer enter our building, and the chocolate had been found in her apartment. The assumption was that she’d traded sexual favors for the candy. Collaboration horizontale. A true scarlet woman.

  “I knew it wouldn’t be long before my turn came. I was with the Germans often, after all, and the Germans were growing suspicious of me too. Unlike the French, they cared that I was of English birth. My service in the last war only carried me so far. With the invasion in the offing, they began questioning me ever more closely about my loyalties, and since others with similar backgrounds were being interned, once the contretemps with the dyed dog flared, I decided to flee.

  “I had contacts in the resistance, had passed on secrets learned from German patients and from loose talk in the hospital cafeterias, since all in it were assumed to be German. It was surprisingly easy, in the end.”

  She fell quiet and he reached to turn the radio on, but she stopped him.

  “No,” she said. “Let’s leave it off.”

  “You don’t like music?”

  “It’s not that. This is extraordinary, to be in the same room with you and not feel alone.”

  Confused, he said, “Why would you?”

  “My last years with Horst, he became a recluse. Sometimes for days he refused to talk to anyone—his mother, me—and sometimes he’d rant against doctors or retell the same stories, usually after a few beers. Romantic recitations of his youthful triumphs, or fond memories of his father. Touching at first, but they became pitiful when he repeated them so often that I could anticipate his inflections near the climax. In the end I was loneliest when in the same room with him, least lonely when alone. I’d turn on the radio with him so as not to feel it. So.”

  He settled for quietly holding her hand until his stomach growled.

  Then, as if to pull back from the emotional door she’d opened, she said, “Hungry? I can burn you some toast.”

  “Not much of a cook?”

  She shrugged. “After the first war, my mother-in-law and I used to pass hours describing imaginary meals, down to what spices we’d use, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been in the habit of cooking for more than one.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s a bit hard to be inspired when it’s just you you’re cooking for, isn’t it?”

  Her breasts bounced as she stood and slipped her robe on. “How about those pancakes you were begging for earlier? I can make you those.”

  “Begging?” He playfully tapped her bottom. “I did nothing of the sort.”

  “Begging,” she said, walking away from him. “It was most craven.”

  She returned carrying a white enamel tray, the pancakes, lemon juice.

  He tasted one and made a sour face. “I have to say, this is one of those English customs I’ve never grown used to, lemon juice and pancakes. Do you have any syrup?”

  “Sunday,” she said, lifting his arm to slide in next to him. She kissed his throat. “The complaint department is closed.”

  They dozed for a while in the afternoon heat and now in the cooler dark Claus felt better rested than he had in weeks. They left the lights off, the windows open, and for the moment London seemed far removed from war: the clop of horse hooves as the strawberry vendor hitched up his wagon and left, the steady burr of traffic, a honking bus, a stray ambulance bell, the air-raid sirens mercifully silent.

  Jack Payne’s orchestra finished off one of Sousa’s lighter pieces on a neighbor’s radio that was playing ridiculously loud, and after a few ads came a series of exhortations from the MOI, one of its ponderous campaigns urging people to save money and metal.

  “My God,” Kate said, her eyes still closed. “You work for an organization that pumps out that? How can you stand it?”

  “Another department, luckily.”

  “How did you ever end up in there?”

  “The MOI? Simple. I was making industrial films. The switch was natural.”

  “They weren’t suspicious of your background? A dangerous felon and all that.”

  “Once the war started, and they decided I wasn’t a danger, they needed people too much to be suspicious.”

  He stroked her hair in the ensuing quiet and before long she was snoring again, which was just as well; his MOI history was too tortured to go into.

  In September of 1939, five days after England declared war on Germany, he’d been arrested, along with every other nominal German in England, and at first held with a group in Brixton prison. Though the German internees were segregated from the regular prison population in their cells, during the limited free time they mixed together, and since most of the interned Germans were Jewish communists, dozens were beaten up by jailed British fascists or by the few real Nazis. During one fight, three of the Jews were stabbed to death.

  Eventually the internees were transferred to the muddy mess of Kempton Park Racecourse, cheap canvas tents in the sodden infield with neither mattresses nor blankets, so that they slept—all six thousand of them—in three inches of cold brown water. Once a day they were fed outside, rain or shine, and twice a day they stood in line for water that tasted powerfully of
chlorine. The bathroom was an unsheltered slit trench at one end, as far away from the tents as possible, where men and women squatted side by side on the muddy, crumbling rim, trying desperately not to slip backward and fall in. To keep himself busy, to move, to stay warm, he’d volunteered to spread chloride of lime on it every half-hour, and like all the other volunteers was easily spotted in the crowd because the front of his clothes was stained white.

  Safe in the racecourse from a wider prison population, the internees were still depressed—all had been separated from their spouses and children and were driven nearly mad by the total news blackout. They couldn’t get mail or read newspapers and no one had a radio, so everything was rumor: they were to be interned for the duration, to be shipped to Canada or Australia, to be sent to Sweden and shoved across the border into occupied Denmark, and a feeling of general despair soon erupted, amid which several internees committed suicide, hanging themselves beneath the grandstands.

  At the hearing on his status the board classified him as B, a bit disappointing because he’d thought he’d be a natural C—released with complete freedom—but, worried that if he complained they’d reclassify him an A—permanent internment—he hadn’t argued. The few restrictions he could live with: no trips within three miles of the coast, no visits to military installations, no travel outside the country. Where would he go? A week later, thirty of them were released early on a hot Tuesday morning; alone of the group, he was steered aside by a guard and shoved into the back of a bakery van and taken to meet Bertram. The mild friendly tone of Bertram’s “Do sit down” didn’t disguise the peremptory nature of the command, or that he wanted something and expected to get it. That Claus smelled of freshly baked bread put him, he felt, at a further disadvantage.