A Night of Long Knives (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  The only person I knew in Munich, Ulrich Herzog, used to live near the university. He claimed that the apartments were cheaper, but I think he liked to ogle the young girls. Ulli worked as a journalist for the Munich Post before the storm troopers shut it down in 1933. I had read that, finally taking revenge for the Munich Post’s fierce anti-Nazi stance, Röhm’s men had pillaged the place, destroying files and beating anyone foolish enough to be at work that day. Hopefully Ulli had stayed home.

  Trying to remember his house number, I crept down the street. I had been to his apartment only once before, many years ago and while not entirely sober. I hoped he still lived there. We had been part of a closely knit pack of political and crime reporters who met more and more often as the political and crime beats began to overlap during the Weimar Republic. We were anti-Nazi, mostly left wing, and not as frightened as we should have been. I shuddered to think of the fates of my old friends. But perhaps Ulli had been spared.

  When the Nazis ransacked the newspaper offices, he would have been high on their list of most-hated reporters; he had succeeded where I had failed. In 1932 he published explicit letters a street hustler stole from Röhm. Although not as explicit as the letters Röhm wrote my brother, the letters Ulli published were later used as the basis for a charge of offenses against Paragraph 175: homosexual activity; charges were eventually dismissed, but not before humiliating Röhm and the Nazi leadership.

  If I had published my letters, he never would have had to publish his. I hoped I did not have Ulli on my conscience.

  The black monster and I cruised down a wide avenue shaded by chestnut trees, leaves singed brown by heat and dryness. Still, a cooler breeze drifted in my windows than when I had sat behind the bare parking lot at Stadelheim.

  I passed Ulli’s apartment building, unwilling to park directly in front in case someone noticed the staff car and alerted the Nazis. I did not wish to call down their wrath anywhere near Ulli. Farther down the street the parking places were occupied. I parked half on the sidewalk and half in the street. What policeman would challenge the driver of a Nazi staff car? Especially today.

  I moved the Luger, passports, and portfolio from the glove box to my suitcase. I could leave nothing valuable, in case someone recognized the automobile. If the Nazis, or the police, arrived, I would have to abandon it. But I left the wedding dress on the backseat so I would not have to explain it to Ulli. I had enough to explain.

  A male chaffinch flew by, trilling his high-pitched song. I followed his slate-blue cap as his tiny figure flitted and ducked between chestnut leaves. As a child, my brother kept a pet chaffinch for a week. Ernst set it free because he loved its song too much to keep it imprisoned. Our father beat him black and blue for releasing the bird, but Ernst stoutly maintained that it was worth it. I had not heard a chaffinch in years. They do not live in South America.

  Cheered to have seen the bird, I turned back to the apartment building. At least I was in my home country. I spoke the language. I knew the customs. But over the last hours I had come to realize that I did not know the people anymore.

  I lugged my suitcase up the steps. The house-proud landlady had been at her work early. The front steps shone from a morning washing, the newly polished buttons and silver nameplates unsullied by a single fingerprint. I shuddered, reminded of the silver plaques beneath the animal trophies at the Hanselbauer, and pressed my thumb on the button under the nameplate for Herzog.

  No answer. I rang it again and stepped back off the stoop so that Ulli could see me from his front window. If he had heard about the events of today, he would be cautious, especially if he saw the staff car drive by.

  His window, if I remembered correctly, protruded from the second floor. I edged into the empty cobblestone street and looked up, to show him my face. I waved. His lace curtain twitched, almost imperceptibly. No one in the other five floors showed interest in my presence, which was just as well. I returned to the stoop.

  The door opened, and a hand pulled me into a dark foyer that smelled of disinfectant and brass polish.

  In front of me stood a once-dapper, now harried-looking man. He was about 1.8 meters tall. His wavy blond hair, once the envy of the girls in the newsroom, stood up in all directions as if a chaffinch nested there. Dark circles smudged under his violet-blue eyes.

  “Hannah!” He enveloped me in a bear hug.

  “Careful, Ulli,” I gasped. “I have a cracked rib.”

  He held me at arm’s length. His gaze lingered on my pale face and tired eyes. “You look terrible. What are you doing here?”

  “I came for the flattery.” I hoisted my suitcase and grimaced. “Can we get upstairs?”

  He lifted my suitcase and led the way to the second floor without a word, slippered feet silent on the stairs. I followed, clinging to the polished metal railing, dizzy. When had I eaten? The stolen roll in the kitchen of the Hanselbauer, hours before. And I had thrown that up after the executions.

  Ulli’s front door stood open, and we hurried inside. He dumped my bag next to a coat stand so covered in coats, hats, and umbrellas that it looked ready to collapse. I stepped past a pile of boxes in his entryway. He pushed the door closed with his boot, then turned to lock it.

  Only after he finished did I speak. “Things are bad, Ulli.”

  “Let me get you coffee. And bread with liverwurst. We can talk while you eat. You look dead on your feet.”

  I let myself be led back into his apartment. Dust coated the old-fashioned living room furniture. Only one chair was clear enough to sit on. But the brass clock on the mantel was clean and had the correct time. At least he remembered to wind it.

  In the kitchen, books and papers covered the round wooden table. Here too the chairs were full. A stack of clean but dusty yellow plates balanced next to the sink. Sheer lace curtains with daisies loomed into the design rippled in front of the open double-hung window. My mother would have liked them, as I suspected his mother had. I imagined him picking out curtains and smiled. He would do it only if the woman shopping with him was very attractive.

  He dropped a stack of books onto the tile floor with a thump and dusted off a chair for me. He pushed papers aside on the table. I put my elbows in the scrap of cleared oak while he bustled around pulling bread and a small cutting board out of his cupboards. He wiped a knife on his pants and used it to cut a thick slice of rye bread. Even as I wondered what had been on that knife or how many days he had worn the trousers, my mouth watered.

  “Hitler’s men are taking revenge today,” I said.

  “I’ve heard rumors.” He set dark rye bread spread thick with liverwurst in front of me. “But till I feed you, right and wrong can wait.”

  I smiled, recognizing the quote from Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. A group of us had attended the opening in Berlin in 1928, during a brief period when we all had money, or expense accounts, and time. The golden years after the brutal inflation and before the worldwide depression when it looked like we might be able to play and dance and forget the war, the flu, and our own near starvation. Those lovely brief years of denial. I bit into the bread and nodded with my mouth full. After I swallowed the bread, I said, “They are purging the SA. Röhm is in Stadelheim.”

  He turned back to his stove and poured a cup of coffee. “Are you certain?”

  I drank the coffee. Lukewarm, but strong. “Dead certain.”

  “What a story.” His lovely blue eyes shone, earlier tiredness gone. I could tell he thought of the piece he would have written. I had missed other reporters more than I realized. “Makes me wish the Post were still running real news.”

  “The Nazis might come for you too. Have you anywhere to go?”

  “I should be their best friend. I published the Röhm letters in 1932, attacked their boy before they could do it themselves.” He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat next to me.

  “I heard.” I ate more. The salty liverwurst tasted smooth on my tongue and I enjoyed it silently. I did not know when I might ea
t again.

  “Hannah?” Ulli said. “Stop eating and talk to me.”

  “What happened to right and wrong can wait until you feed me?” I smiled, but quickly turned serious again. “You must leave at once. They have a list, and they are killing everyone on it. Who knows how far back their memories reach?”

  He crossed his legs, revealing an ink stain on his dark trousers. As hard as it was to believe after seeing his apartment, he had once been a meticulous dresser. For the first time, I wondered what he had been doing in the year since the paper had been closed.

  “How have you been holding up since the Post?”

  “Better than you by the looks of it.” He flashed his trademark charming smile, the one he used to melt the resistance of his sources.

  I smiled back, charmed in spite of myself. “Flatterer.”

  “My ribs are intact and I had a good breakfast. I can’t complain.”

  I washed down my bread with the coffee. “Do you have Röhm’s mother’s address?”

  “Do you think she’s in danger?” His fingers twitched as if he longed to write this down. “Are they killing family members?”

  I winced. I hoped not. “You cannot cover this story. At least not here.”

  “Perhaps I could get it published in Switzerland.” His fingers reached for his pen and ratty notebook. “How do you know Röhm’s in Stadelheim?”

  “I spoke to him. And to Minister Hans Frank.”

  “He’s in jail too?” His eyebrows shot up.

  I shook my head. “Visiting Röhm.”

  “How big is it?”

  “They are doing mass executions. Eight every twenty minutes.” My voice shook as I thought of the young boys I had seen moments before their death. “Without trials.”

  He stopped writing and dropped his hand over mine. We sat silently.

  “What were you doing in the prison?”

  “I have no time to explain, and you must leave here before they come for you.” I brought the plate to the sink.

  “I’m not that important.” He scribbled notes without looking up.

  “You hope not.” I rinsed the plate and cup, knowing that he might not get back to clean them for a long time. “Once I have that address I am on my way too. It is not safe here.”

  “I saved most of my files before the savages started burning them.” He hurried into his cluttered front room and rooted through boxes of papers. Dust filled the air and I coughed, once, painfully.

  “How’d you get the rib?”

  Instead of answering that question, I filled him in on Hitler’s arrest of Röhm at the Hanselbauer and the convoy he met on the way back. Ulli deserved to know that, after what he had endured at the hands of the Nazis.

  “Were you there?” He pulled out an old folder and blew dust off it. He flipped it open and thumbed through the papers. “On the road?”

  “Leave out my name. But I followed them.”

  He pulled out a slip of paper with an address written on it in his speedy scrawl. “You were in that Nazi Mercedes that cruised by before you knocked?”

  “Röhm’s. But he is not using it.”

  He copied the address into his notebook, tore out the page, and handed it to me. “You stole the staff car of the chief of staff of the SA?”

  “He owes me a favor. More than one.”

  He whistled softly. “Remind me not to owe you favors.”

  Pain from my rib stopped my laugh. “I owe you one.” I folded the scrap of paper and stuffed it into my satchel.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “I don’t know if that address is still accurate. She’s an old bird, in her late seventies. She might be dead.”

  “Her son thinks she is still alive. His information might be more up to date than yours.”

  He ran his fingers through his thick hair, and it fell into place as perfectly it had in the old days, although a few gray strands lurked there now. “Perhaps you should have asked him for the address.”

  “I did, but the Minister of Justice for Bavaria interrupted us.”

  “Like any man would turn down a chance to talk to you for a conversation with Hans Frank.”

  I laughed in spite of the twinge of pain. “Röhm’s tastes run differently than yours.”

  “More for me, I always say.”

  “As if you do not have enough already.”

  He blushed, and it took years off his face. He looked once again like the dashing but determined reporter so many had once admired.

  “You will leave right away?” I put my hand on his arm. “You have somewhere to go?”

  “I could go to—”

  I put up a hand to silence him. “I do not want to know.”

  He stopped, face grave.

  “It is that bad, Ulli. Trust me.”

  He nodded, finally seeming to feel the weight of my fear for him.

  “I must go,” I said.

  He helped me carry my suitcase back to the front door, pressing a wrapped liverwurst sandwich and an apple into my hands. “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing, Hannah, but be careful.”

  “I have no time to be careful,” I said. “Perhaps not even time to be reckless.”

  7

  Dust rose off the front seat when I dropped my suitcase on it. The chauffeur certainly would not have driven around with it in such condition. I imagined how mortified he would be if he had heard the attendant suggest washing it.

  I climbed in and closed the door. Chestnut leaves rustled. Another chaffinch called, farther away, but the bright notes of his song carried perfectly. Life went on, for almost everyone.

  Poring over the street listings on the map, I found the address Ulli had written. Frau Röhm lived in the northern part of Munich, in a more posh neighborhood than Ulli’s. I sped to what I hoped was her house. Though Röhm said that she was still alive, he had not disclosed her whereabouts.

  The wattle-and-daub-style house was smaller than I expected. Dark timbers framed its whitewashed spaces. Red geraniums grew in window boxes, blossoms wilting in the heat. I parked in front. A Nazi staff car here would not be unexpected.

  Satchel in hand, I walked up the stone path. I left the suitcase and wedding dress. I did not want Röhm’s mother to see the dress. I did not want to remind her of the wedding her son might have had on a day when he might be executed instead. Was she responsible for turning him into the brawling thug he became, or had that happened in defiance of her best efforts? My parents had little control over Ernst’s personality, in the end.

  When I knocked on the massive front door, deep barking resounded inside the house. A large dog, or two, by the sound of it. Someone heard me.

  My chest ached with each breath. The blazing sun licked at my eyes. I’d had no real sleep the night before, only short chloroform dreams, and I dozed standing there listening to the bees and the muffled barking.

  “Quiet!” shouted a female voice. The dogs stopped instantly, as if she had flipped a switch. The dogs knew their place.

  A burly maid answered the door, looking worried but composed. She looked more suited to field work than serving in a house. Her cobblestone-gray eyes flicked past me to Röhm’s Mercedes, and her powerful shoulders drooped to see it empty. Perhaps she hoped that he would be sitting there, come to pick his mother up for the wedding.

  “I am here to see Frau Röhm,” I said. “I carry a message from her son.”

  “Your name?” Her large hands gripped the doorframe.

  “Hannah Vogel.”

  Surprise flickered across her eyes. She knew something about me. She ushered me inside, past a pair of Rottweilers sitting motionless on either side of the door. Muscles bunched under their coats. They growled menacingly, displaying strong teeth, making certain I knew how dangerous they were.

  “Good dogs.” I did not believe it. Nor did they.

  Both muzzles swiveled to the maid, waiting for a signal. She shook her head, and the dogs stopped growling. They did not soften their vigilant stances and regarde
d me with distrustful chestnut-brown stares.

  Her meaty hand took my satchel and set it next to an old-fashioned umbrella stand that looked as if it were made from the leg of an elephant. For the sake of the elephant, I hoped not. Two pairs of women’s shoes were lined up neatly next to the door. No children’s shoes. I glanced around for signs of Anton. Nothing.

  The maid showed me to the parlor and brought a cup of tea. It was nearly teatime. The parlor was done up in traditional style, heavy furniture filling the space. Chocolate-brown curtains covered the windows. They were probably rarely opened, to keep sunlight from fading the furniture.

  Atop the carved mantelpiece rested a silver-framed picture of Frau Röhm on her wedding day, wearing the dress her son had expected me to wear, the dress that lay spread across the dusty backseat. She looked young but stern. Her grip on her new husband’s arm was firm, her chin set, her smile forced. Everyone leaned toward her, as if anxious to please. I sipped my strong hot tea. I needed the energy.

  Next to the picture stood a humidor. Did she smoke cigars? Although tempted to peek inside, I wanted to be on my best behavior so I remained sitting upright, like a proper lady, in a round-backed chair that creaked when I moved.

  The piano in the corner shone from vigilant dusting. I imagined a young Ernst Röhm playing there, pudgy legs dangling above the floor, a stern teacher cracking the boy on his knuckles with a ruler. I was about to tell this woman that the son who sat there long ago was soon to be executed, if not already dead. I drained my cup and wished for something stronger.

  Atop the polished piano sat a picture of Röhm as a young soldier. I crossed the thick red rug to look at it. He had been handsome then, slim and elegant in a gray tunic, holding his rapier rigid. In the picture he sported an oversized nose. The boy before the Great War stole his face. Next to it rested a picture of a baby in lace sitting on a serious woman’s lap. He had her deep-set eyes. He had siblings, but I saw no pictures of them. Was he the favored son? That would make the blow worse.