Uncle Dolf’s footfalls sounded in the corridor, the muted padding of slippered feet. If she could speak to him alone, without an audience for whom he had to wear a stern face, she was certain he would help her. She slipped from the bed. With an unsteady hand, she reached for the doorknob.
He stood at the far end of the corridor. In the shadows, he was little more than a dark wall.
“Uncle Dolf?” she whispered.
When he didn’t respond, she walked toward him. With each step, he grew clearer, and she saw he wore striped pajamas and a belted bathrobe. His face was impassive, his hair mussed and hanging over his forehead.
“Gretchen, you should be asleep.” He shook his head, smiling lightly, like a parent exasperated with a favorite child.
“I couldn’t sleep. I needed to speak with you again.” Only hours ago, she would have embraced him as she had as a little girl—throwing herself into his arms and imagining he could shield her from all the world’s wrongs. Now she didn’t touch him. “Please, Uncle Dolf, there is only one person whom Reinhard would possibly listen to and that is you. If you could speak to him about his behavior, he would change—”
“Stop this foolishness.” His voice was so angry, she instinctively took a step back. “Gretchen, I have no wish to become entangled in your family’s petty domestic squabbles. We shan’t speak of this again.”
The fury seemed to pump off his body in waves; she practically felt it, as though his emotion were a physical presence. She opened her mouth to protest, but the iciness of his eyes stopped her. She bowed her head and whispered, “Yes, Uncle Dolf.”
He brushed past her. She heard his door click open and shut; she was alone.
Moving with the dazed gait of a sleepwalker, Gretchen went back into Geli’s room and stood at the window. She twitched aside the curtain and looked down at the slumbering city. Somewhere, on the wall’s other side, a few feet away from her, was Uncle Dolf, perhaps trying to sleep or standing at his window, staring at the houses’ jagged outline against the moonlit sky. Only a few feet away, and yet it might have been miles.
She stood on the edge of night, that sliver of gray between darkness and dawn, that razor-thin line separating the first part of her life and whatever lay ahead.
There were only a few hours left before sunrise. She couldn’t return home; she had no allies, no beloved family friend to help her, no money to leave the city, no means to escape from her brother. She had to figure out how to get away from Reinhard. Forever.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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19
DAWN BROKE, PALE GRAY AND RINGED WITH SOOT. From the bed, Gretchen watched the shadows on the ceiling grow thinner as the sun rose. Around three, she had crawled back onto the mattress and tried to sleep, finally managing to slide into a dreamless dozing. At seven, when Geli rose, Gretchen’s right eye felt gritty from exhaustion, and her blackened left eye beat with a constant throbbing.
All of the aches had swum beneath her skin, settling into her bones, and the effort required to stand and dress seemed substantial. Geli had to help button her blouse. When Gretchen saw the ruined white dress, crumpled in a corner, spotted with rust-colored blood, her stomach lurched. She was glad she had brought extra clothes; the thought of putting the white sundress on again made her bruised skin want to crawl right off her bones.
They ate in the dining room without Uncle Dolf. He wouldn’t rise until ten or eleven, Geli said as she heaped strawberry marmalade onto her toast. So they had hours to fill any way they chose, and perhaps Gretchen would like to join her in shopping along the Maximilianstrasse, Geli’s treat.
After everything Gretchen had been through last night, the notion of strolling Munich’s most fashionable street, ducking into boutiques to try on hats as Geli always insisted on doing, struck her as so foreign that she had to struggle not to burst into hysterical laughter. Somehow, she managed to murmur, no, she couldn’t impose further. Embarrassment heated her cheeks when Geli glanced at her, apologizing and adding quietly that naturally Gretchen wouldn’t wish to be seen until she healed.
Gretchen concentrated on the potato pancakes and sausages. Each bite hurt, but she forced the mouthfuls down. She didn’t know when she would eat so well, or so much, again, for she couldn’t imagine going back to the boardinghouse.
After breakfast, she thanked Geli, gathered her burlap sack, and wheeled her bicycle down the staircase. When she opened the front door and stuck her head out, peering around the square, her heart hammered.
Businessmen left beautiful old buildings for work, sleek automobiles slid away from the curb, and a trio of doves fluttered around the statue of Hitler’s favorite composer, Richard Wagner. No Reinhard. No flash of brown uniforms, no tramp of boots on the pavement. None of his SA comrades. Either they didn’t know where she was, or they didn’t care.
The church bells were chiming eight when she reached the Hohenzollernstrasse. Herr Braun answered the apartment door, dressed in shirtsleeves and trousers and carrying a cup of coffee in one hand. His eyes traveled over her battered face, his mouth slackening in shock.
“Gretchen? Whatever has happened, poor child? Was it an automobile accident?”
“Not exactly.” She couldn’t tell him the truth; most likely he would be horrified and embarrassed, muttering about dirty laundry best kept within the family. She would expect such a reaction from the strict Herr Braun.
But not from her beloved Uncle Dolf. Tears rose in her throat. She had to swallow several times before she could go on. “May I speak to Eva, please?”
He stepped into the hall, pulling the door halfway closed. “I must be frank with you, Gretchen. I know you’ve been gallivanting about with this fellow Hitler, and he’s not a suitable companion for girls your age. He thinks he sucked in wisdom with his mother’s milk. I fear he is a bad influence on you . . . so I really must insist you leave my daughter alone for a time.”
She must have heard wrong. Herr Braun had complained about Hitler for a long time, but had always accepted her and Eva’s friendship. “I beg your pardon?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I know our families have been friends for years, but I don’t like the change in my Eva’s behavior and I am sure it’s the effect of this Austrian upstart. Until you distance yourself from him, I must ask you to stay away from Eva.”
She had hoped for tears and embraces, not this quiet dismissal.
“Papa?” Eva’s voice came from within the apartment. “Who’s at the door?”
Herr Braun’s eyes met Gretchen’s. “No one.”
She couldn’t speak. She didn’t think she could move, but somehow she turned and started walking. Pain radiated up her legs with every step. She was halfway down the hallway when she heard Herr Braun close the door.
Thirteen years of friendship brushed aside in an instant. Thirteen years, and she didn’t matter.
Sadness weighed heavily, like a chain around her neck. She mustn’t think or she wouldn’t be able to keep moving.
The avenue widened. Suddenly, she was surrounded: throngs of Müncheners marching along the pavement, automobiles and pushcarts and bicycles and streetcars choking the street. She was merely part of the scene, an anonymous girl astride a decrepit bicycle.
No, not anonymous. Maybe she didn’t matter enough to the Brauns, certainly not enough to her mother and Uncle Dolf, and definitely not at all to Reinhard. But she mattered to herself. And that was all that needed to be true. She would figure something out.
In that instant, as she pedaled along, she wondered about her father’s expression in his final photograph—the whipped-puppy look as he followed Hitler and the others into the Bürgerbräukeller. In those last hours of his life, had he somehow been hurt and betrayed by his dearest friend, as she had been hurt and betrayed by the same man last night? As she had been hurt and betrayed by everyone she thought mattered?
Again, she imagined her father falling in the snow, his body accidentally shielding Uncle Dolf’s, his blood darkening the cobblestones. She saw her father kneeling with her in the kitchen, smiling as she cuddled Striped Peterl; she felt his lips brush her cheek in a final kiss. And she knew what she had to do.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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20
ALTHEIMER ECK WAS A SHORT, CRESCENT-SHAPED street lined with a jumble of stucco and stone buildings. Gretchen coasted to a stop before number 19, which housed the offices of the Munich Post. A plain structure, with nothing about its unremarkable appearance to announce that the reporters whom Uncle Dolf despised most in the world worked behind those heavy walls.
A warm breeze kicked up. Even its light pressure burned against her scraped skin. Her heart had clambered into her throat, and she could scarcely breathe around it.
What she was about to do should seem wrong. It broke every single rule her parents had taught her. And once she stepped forward—once she asked Herr Cohen to help her, when no one else had been willing—she would cut every rope tying her to her old life.
And she knew it.
She took a deep breath, preparing to count to three. She got to two before she remembered that the calming trick was one of Uncle Dolf’s. She’d rather hyperventilate than owe him anything.
She started to wheel the cycle across the empty street. Number 19’s front door opened and Daniel Cohen stepped out. He was reading a newspaper and eating an apple as he walked down the front steps.
“Herr Cohen!” she called.
She knew the instant he recognized her. He stiffened, his entire body stilling. Then, with deliberate movements, he pitched the apple core into a waste bin, folded the newspaper into a rectangle and slipped it into a back pocket, and waited, watching her.
Her legs felt rubbery as she walked the bicycle toward him.
His gaze flickered over her face. His expression didn’t change, but remained hard and focused. “Who did this to you?”
She wouldn’t lie to him anymore; she wouldn’t lie ever again. “My brother.”
“Why did he do it?”
The old familiar excuses jumped into her mouth—because I made him angry; because he’s troubled and needs our understanding; because he’s the man of the house—but she swallowed them all. “Because he’s cruel.”
His face didn’t soften, as she had hoped, and he didn’t offer soothing platitudes, as she had half-expected. Instead he nodded, as though she had passed an important test. “Why’d you come to me?”
“Because I have no one else to go to.” Admitting such a thing to a Jew should have shamed her. But she had no feelings left. “Herr Cohen, I wouldn’t blame you if you told me to leave you alone and never speak to you again. But I need help. Please.”
For a long moment, his eyes held hers. There was no warmth in his, no sympathy or kindness, just a measuring gaze. “You look ready to collapse,” he said at last. He placed his hands over her bandaged ones. “Let me wheel this to the nearest streetcar stop.”
“Where are we going?” She fell into step beside him.
“The last place any of your National Socialist friends would look for you.”
The northeast section of Munich belonged to the Communists. Small storefronts with wooden shutters and Cyrillic letters painted on the doors lined the streets. The signs of faded blue and red and gold looked so different from the Bavarian banners of blue and white that Gretchen was accustomed to seeing flying from cafés.
A group of Communist students, instantly recognizable in their black shirts and red bow ties, marched along the Kaiserstrasse. She might have been in Russia, and she understood now why Reinhard had forbidden her to visit this part of the city.
Cohen led her inside a shabby, two-story stone building. Unfamiliar Russian letters covered a hand-lettered sign on the nearest door in the lobby. Inside, a few folding chairs sat against the wall of a small room. A woman sitting at a desk, typing laboriously with two fingers, looked up when they came in. She said something in Russian to Cohen, and he nodded, jerking his head at Gretchen. She folded her arms protectively across her chest. What was this place?
“Come,” the woman said in German, rising and motioning for Gretchen to follow.
She dug panicked fingers into Cohen’s arm. “Where are we?”
“A doctor’s office,” he said. “On the streetcar, all you would say was a friend had bandaged you up. Those injuries look serious, Fräulein Müller. You need to have them looked at.”
Out of all the people she had gone to for help, he was the only one who had suggested taking her to a doctor. Tears welled in her good eye. He was the only one who had cared enough. A Jew, caring for her. A travesty or a lie, Uncle Dolf would say.
It was a miracle.
She found her voice. “Thank you.” Suddenly she felt so humbled by Cohen’s decency, she couldn’t look at him. “Please, will you come with me?” The thought of being alone with a strange doctor while he examined her humiliating injuries seemed intolerable.
“I can’t.”
“Please,” she said again. “I trust you.”
Only yesterday, the words would have cut her ears. Today, they felt comfortable and right.
Cohen shot her a glance, looking startled. Then he half-smiled, and said something in Russian to the receptionist. She answered sharply. For a moment, they argued, then the woman gave up with a shrug and beckoned them down a dingy hallway.
“I didn’t know you spoke Russian,” Gretchen said. The comment sounded so inane, she ducked her head.
He grinned. “Just enough to get into bar fights.”
They were ushered into a tiny office. The doctor, a middle-aged man with thinning hair, spoke no German, and as he tried to communicate with Cohen, she realized the boy hadn’t been lying—he knew very little Russian. They resorted to pantomime, and the doctor motioned for her to hop onto the examining table.
“It’s just my face and hands and legs,” she said when the doctor mimed taking off his shirt. Heat pushed into her cheeks. “There’s no need for me to remove my clothes.”
She waved a wrapped hand around her face and knees until the doctor seemed to understand. Cohen shoved his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels, the image of insouciance. Pink colored the tips of his ears.
If Gretchen could have smiled, she would have. He was embarrassed, too. Somehow, knowing he could be embarrassed about nakedness made him seem even more normal, more human.
“The fellow doesn’t speak a word of German,” Cohen said, still studying the brownish water stains on the ceiling. “Do you think you can manage to tell me what happened? He won’t understand what you’re saying.”
She winced as the doctor unwound the bandage covering her knee. The bleeding had stopped long ago, but the skin still looked raw.
Cohen must have taken her silence for uncertainty, for he bent slightly so his dark eyes met her good one. “Fräulein Müller,” he said softly, “why did your brother dare to put his hands on you?”
His gentle voice and quiet face loosened the lump in her chest. As the doctor inspected her injuries, she told Cohen everything that had happened—finding her cat dead, confronting Reinhard, surviving his beating, being turned away by everyone she thought would help. The story came out haltingly. Several times, she had to stop to compose herself.
He didn’t interrupt once. When she finished, the doctor was wrapping fresh gauze around her hands. He spoke quietly to Cohen, who translated.
“The doctor says the worst of your injuries is to your eye. Ice should help. Cocaine or morphine would help with the pain, too, but he doesn’t have any at the moment, so he says headache powders can give you some relief. The eye should clear up within two weeks, one if you’re fortunate. You’ll need to change the dressings on your knees and hands for the next two days, but
after that, they should be fine.” The boy hesitated. “He says you were lucky. Whoever did this to you is very strong.”
The image of Reinhard, looming above her, eyes and teeth gleaming in the darkness, flashed through her head. Revulsion twisted her stomach. Lucky. Yes, in a strange way, she had been. The beating could have been much worse.
And now she knew whom she could trust.
“Thank you,” she said to the doctor. “How much do I owe?” She fumbled with her pocketbook. Only twelve marks—how could she possibly pay this doctor and stretch her money toward the expense of a rooming house?
“I’ll deal with the payment.” Cohen brushed aside her protests. “I’m the one who insisted on your seeing a doctor, so I’ll handle it. Why don’t you go on to the waiting room?”
In the small room, the receptionist pressed a scribbled note into her hand. “Is church address,” she said in stilted German. “For hiding from bad man who hurt you.”
This woman’s willingness to help her, a stranger, humbled Gretchen. She was thanking her when Cohen came in. Together, they went out into the summer sunlight.
Skinny, hollow-cheeked men stood at the corner, smoking, a bucket of water at their feet, rags in their hands, ready to leap forward to wash a stopped car’s windshield for a few pfennigs. Cafés’ red-and-black banners snapped in the breeze.
Alone with Cohen, Gretchen found that shyness silenced her tongue. What must he think of her, with a monster for a brother, and so unloved that all of her friends had abandoned her? How could she have laid herself bare before him, when she still knew almost nothing about his life?
Maybe he was already mentally writing an article about her.
“I—I should go,” she stammered. “Thank you very much for paying the doctor. Once I’ve settled somewhere and saved up a bit, I shall repay you.”
“Where are you planning on going?”
Prisoner of Night and Fog Page 13