A Night of Long Knives (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  I smiled and ran my fingers through his hair, then pulled him down to me. We had spent only weeks together in the past three years, but our bodies fell into perfect rhythm.

  Afterward he pulled the sheet over us, and we dozed. I never slept as well anywhere as I did in his arms.

  When I awoke the angle of the sun shining through the window told me that over an hour had passed. I had to start the process for claiming Röhm’s body. I slid my feet sideways across the fine linen sheets, trying to be quiet. His eyes opened lazily.

  “Sneaking off?” He ran one hand along my hip in a way that made me want to stay right there forever. His perfectly barbered hair was disheveled, his eyelids still heavy with sleep.

  “I need to . . .” I could not finish the sentence for staring at his relaxed dark eyes.

  His hand traveled up to the bruise on my ribs and stopped. He leaned forward and kissed it. An electric shock ran down my body, and I arched under his lips, hoping for another kiss. He traced the bruise with his index finger, feather light.

  “How did this happen?” Anger ran across his face. Anger at me, or at what had happened to me?

  “I must obtain official signatures before I can leave with Anton.”

  “Signatures for what?” He glanced at his bedside clock. “Nothing opens for at least an hour.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Come now, Hannah. Tell me the whole truth. Let me help you.”

  I stared into his determined gold-flecked eyes. “You do not want to know.”

  “Let me decide.” He smiled impishly. “I promise to forget whatever you say.”

  I longed to share my burden. Surely the danger was not so great? I had done nothing wrong, or illegal, had I? I looked into his eyes. Nothing but concern. He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head expectantly, fingertips absently gliding along my collarbone.

  I held his hand so that I could concentrate. I could not think with his hands on me.

  I described everything that had happened since Röhm diverted the zeppelin to Friedrichshafen: our kidnapping, his execution, and my agreement with his mother. I did not tell him that I intended to hunt for Mouse in Berlin. He would only try to stop me.

  A muscle twitched in his jaw while I talked, but he did not interrupt.

  “Do you think,” he said in a controlled voice, “after we get Anton back, you can avoid antagonizing the Nazis, even for a little while?”

  “It is not my fault.” I stood and tugged the top sheet away, wrapping it around myself like a toga.

  He lay calm and naked on the bed. His wry smile was adorable, but I tucked the sheet tightly around myself and looked at the floor, the wedding dress on the door, anywhere but at his relaxed body on the bed.

  “You attract trouble.” He sounded playful, but his brown eyes were serious.

  “I don’t try to.” I sounded as old and reasonable as Anton.

  “I know.” His tone was conciliatory, but I was in no mood to agree with him. It did not help that he was correct. Trouble did find me. “But I worry.”

  I gazed at him, head propped against his pillow, a helpless expression on his handsome face. No one had ever worried about me like that. I had always imagined I would like it, but it chafed me, as if I owed him something I was unsure I wanted to pay. “Do not worry about me. I can take care of myself.”

  “And that is why both times we’ve made love in this room you’ve been wounded?” He referred to a gunshot wound I had the first time I visited his house. He was a patient man. But I could try the patience of a saint. “Always on the left side, and always the ribs.”

  “It certainly did not dissuade you.” I knew better than to argue.

  “It doesn’t dissuade you either.” He climbed out of bed and drew me gently into his arms.

  I smiled at his chest. “Mostly not, no.”

  He tilted my face up to his. “I have no right to question you.”

  He was apologizing, but I knew that I was wrong. “I—”

  He leaned down and kissed me. My eyes filled with tears. I pulled my lips from his and buried my face in his chest. I wept, each sob causing a fresh pain to lance from my rib. I could not stop. I cried for myself, for Anton, for those young boys executed at Stadelheim, and even for Röhm. Boris held me and told me that everything would be all right. I appreciated the gesture. But I did not believe him.

  11

  An hour later, I climbed out of Boris’s front seat at the former Lichterfelde Cadet School. According to the Stadelheim guard, men had been executed here too. Now an SS barracks, someone could give me the official signature needed to release Röhm’s body to his mother.

  I waved good-bye, and he touched his hat like a chauffeur before pulling back into traffic. I was well fed and well rested, with Boris’s house key secure in my satchel. I had a home minutes away by streetcar. It felt so domestic, I almost laughed. For a second I let my mind dwell there. We could have had a happy life together, under normal circumstances. He was a good, kind man, and a wonderful father. A blush traveled to my face when I thought of where else he excelled. Even though I knew we had only a few stolen days, I was grateful.

  This morning I would get the forms stamped and sealed. Tomorrow I would follow my lead on Mouse. I would find Anton one way or the other.

  I allowed myself a moment to relax and believe that everything would turn out well. Anton and I would flee to South America and never leave. He would grow fluent in Spanish and brown as a monkey. Perhaps we could even persuade Boris to join us.

  Steeling myself to complete the one task necessary for that to happen, I turned to face the stone sentries. At least three times as tall as I, they stood at attention with rifle butts between massive boots, faces stern under stone helmets. These soldiers, and all that they represented, were at Hitler’s disposal. A frightening thought. My father had attended this school. How had he felt as he walked through these gates—protected or at risk?

  Eyes straight ahead I crossed the long courtyard. Black tiles formed squares against lighter gray stone. I focused on the tall brick building with its three Nazi banners that hung from the third floor to the ground, the red bright in the morning sun, the white circles with their swastikas larger than the windows. A statue of a massive dark eagle perched atop the building. Subtlety was not in the vocabulary of Nazi decorators.

  A long line of women, some with small children, started at the front door. The line stretched along the side of the building. I was not the only one who had come here seeking answers. How many men had disappeared in the past days? I thought of the bodies under the sheets, and of my own brother, who had almost vanished three years ago. Only through chance had I found out about his death, and even now, he was buried in an unmarked grave, a fate I suspected he shared with the men sought by most of the women here.

  I walked down the line. Most women cried, or their faces bore traces of tears. I remembered my own tears, and how it had almost cost my life to find my brother’s killer, but I had succeeded. These women would not even have that satisfaction. Most would never learn who had killed their loved ones, and I feared that many more would die before the Nazis received their reckoning. With a sinking heart, I positioned myself at the end of the line.

  “Sorry to see another woman here, and that’s the truth,” said the woman in front of me. Her hair was pulled back into a braid that hung to her waist.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Same as you, I imagine. Had a no-good husband who fell in love with the SA. He spent a week’s wages on one of those brown uniforms. Was out every weekend marching.” In contrast to her rough tone, her eyes brimmed with tears. “Wanted to belong to something bigger than himself. The Fatherland.” She snorted and stared at the long line of women in light summer dresses between her and the door.

  I shrugged, uncertain what to say. I felt for her, but her husband might have been responsible for the deaths of other men, the grief of other wives. Too much blood had been spilled in Germany, and many h
ad soiled their hands with it. Who could sort out anyone’s personal responsibility? Those who ordered the purge were clearly responsible. But what of those forced to pull the triggers or be killed themselves? What of those who worked to put the Nazi edifice in place? Those who voted for it? Or those, like me, who ran away?

  She held out a work-roughened hand. “Maude.”

  I shook it. “Hannah.” Neither of us gave last names, already cautious of revealing more. “How many men are missing?”

  She shook her head, brown braid swinging. “One for every woman here, I wager.”

  I stared at the line, shocked. At least one hundred women waited outside the door, and who knew how many were inside, how many were yet to come, and how many were too afraid to come at all. I had hoped that the ones I’d heard die at Stadelheim had been enough to placate most of the Nazis’ fury, but these men must have been murdered elsewhere. Not a single woman had visited Stadelheim yesterday, so they would not know to come here to claim the bodies. Where had the men that these women searched for died? Just how many men had been killed along with Röhm?

  Wind as hot as breath blew across the stone. Another woman walked between the sentries and limped across the courtyard, shoulders slumped, eyes downcast.

  The women looked defeated, and I became angry. I would not let the Nazis win. They had killed these men, but they would not kill their stories. I would mark them, even if only in my own memory and my notebook. Unlike most of these women, I would soon be out of Germany and beyond the Nazis’ reach. I would use my impending freedom to carry their stories with me.

  I pulled out my notebook and fountain pen, careful not to let Maude see Röhm’s Luger. I had tucked it into the bottom of my satchel that morning while Boris was in the bathroom, not wanting to start another discussion about the dangers I always found myself in. Besides, today promised to be simple and safe. I would be meeting bureaucrats and filling out forms. I would even be using my own name. Afterward I would return to the safety of Boris’s arms and his luxurious house.

  “May I write down your story? I promise to use only initials.”

  Maude stared at me, probably taking my measure. “Don’t suppose I have much more to lose.”

  Her telling was spare and matter of fact. Her husband had not come home, and she had heard from another SA wife that he had been executed. Fearing that it was true, she had come here to find out. She hoped to recover a body to bury. Although she remained dry eyed, pain tinged every word.

  “What will you do with that?” She gestured to my notes.

  I tucked my bobbed hair behind my ear. “I want someone to know. Where it is safe.”

  “They might kill you for that,” she said, as casually as if we discussed the price of butter.

  I thought of the journalists in Dachau, or worse places, of Ulli in hiding. “Seems as if they might kill me for any number of things.”

  She snorted again. “Guess that’s true for everyone now.”

  It would be dangerous keeping the notebook, but I would be out of Germany with it soon. The Nazis had no reason to suspect me of anything and read it. Or so I told myself.

  The limping woman stopped behind me. She looked no older than I. She leaned her face against the rough brick wall and sobbed, still sobbing when she shuffled forward, dragging her forehead across the wall without seeming to feel it. Tiny smears of blood from her head marked the orange bricks. I thought of the bloody streaks on the wall at Stadelheim.

  “You are bleeding.” I tried to slide my hand between the woman’s forehead and the bloody bricks. “On the wall.”

  She batted my hand away without moving her head. “My son,” was all she said.

  I stood in front of her, helpless. I had lost a fiancé, a father, a brother, and an enemy, but losing a son would be worst of all. The thought of losing Anton paralyzed me. Not a word of comfort came into my mind. There was no comfort for this, not for her and not for me. But my son was alive. He had to be.

  “I am sorry,” I whispered, knowing the inadequacy of the words, but having no others.

  She kept her face to the wall.

  “Leave her alone,” Maude said. “If she wanted help, she’d let you help her.”

  I patted the woman on the shoulder, but she seemed not to notice, locked away in a world of pain no comfort could penetrate. Still I stayed next to her, hoping that knowing another human being stood beside her and cared might alleviate her suffering. In the end, it was all I could do.

  Eventually I left to talk to other women, to smile at bewildered children who would grow up fatherless. They waited to learn the fate of their men: fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons. I wrote what I dared about the missing: first names, an initial for the last name; ages; and the reasons their children, wives, sisters, and mothers stood in hot sun, afraid of the answers they would find inside the walls, but waiting all the same. Knowing was better than not.

  Mass killings had not been limited to Stadelheim. In Lichterfelde Nazi guns had been busy. Rumors were of over a thousand dead. Röhm, his top lieutenants, and various SA members. But also on the list were politicians, such as former Chancellor von Schleicher and his wife, shot down as they answered the door. One almost had to admire Hitler’s audacity. For years he had kept careful lists. He had maneuvered himself into a position where he could finally kill all his enemies at once.

  By lunchtime I was numb from stories, vanished men, and grieving women, but still I wrote even as the line grew behind me. I had brought no food. I had expected to finish within three hours. But Maude was barely halfway to the door. I returned to my place behind her.

  She munched on a sandwich: black bread and butter. Likely she could not afford salami to put between the slices. Still, it smelled wonderful. My mouth watered.

  “Nothing to eat in that satchel?”

  “I thought to be finished before lunch.” I shrugged, pretending that I was not hungry. “I did not grasp the scale of this until I arrived.”

  Maude nodded. She and most other women here had expected long lines and had brought lunch. Or did everyone in Germany today always carry food with them when they left the house, ready for the unexpected?

  Anton always insisted on carrying food stores. If he still had his suitcase, he had jerky, dried fruits, and a handful of Brazil nuts. I remembered watching him roll it into a bundle, telling him that it would attract ants. I should have let him be.

  Maude broke off half her sandwich and handed it to me. “How many you talk to?”

  “Many.” I held up my notebook for her to see, but I did not hand it to her. “Thank you for the bread.”

  “Your story in there?” She brushed crumbs off her faded work dress. She wrapped up the last bits of her sandwich and tucked them away, probably for dinner.

  I shook my head, mouth full.

  “Who are you here for?” Her brown eyes narrowed. “Or are you here only for the stories?”

  I swallowed a mouthful of rich bread. “I came to honor a promise to a soldier’s mother.”

  She shook her head and her braid swung again. “So you’re the only one here not grieving.”

  I had not thought of it that way. “I am not grieving like most.” A pang shot through my heart at the thought of waiting in such a line to learn news of my brother or Anton. I remembered those young men standing shirtless in Stadelheim, trying to be brave while being marked with a target for the firing squad. “But I do grieve for those who died.”

  “Not quite the same, is it? A little far away.”

  I held up my hands, palms out. She was correct, and I certainly did not intend to argue.

  “Still,” she said, “I wouldn’t wish this on anybody, and that’s a fact.”

  Throughout the long afternoon we crept toward the front doors. I had brought my wide-brimmed hat, but most had not, and crying and sunburn reddened their faces. Hot wind blew over us without offering any respite. Not Berlin weather. Where was the rain?

  A woman who lived nearby fetched tw
o milk jugs of lemonade. She passed down the line, filling a warm tin cup and handing it to us, one at a time. When my turn came I drank the lukewarm brew, grateful to have some liquid in me, trying not to think of how unsanitary the cup must be.

  I pulled my sketchbook out of my satchel and sketched the women and the stone sentries guarding the gate. The women’s slumped despair contrasted with the sentries’ erect attention. With hearts of stone, they could not understand the posture of defeat and grief.

  I drew portraits of women on the worst day of their lives, squinting against the light, sweat darkening the sides of their dresses, lips downturned with sorrow or clamped into hard lines. Almost impossible to watch without being overwhelmed by their grief and by my own worry. But I did. Someone had to bear witness.

  Finally my turn came. I packed up my notebook and sketchpad before stepping into an office that I suspected was a converted closet, windowless and small and lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. The stale air was hotter even than outside. Behind a gray metal table a thin middle-aged woman scratched on a form with an old pen.

  “Frau Doppel.” She introduced herself without looking up.

  “Fräulein Vogel.” I remained standing, waiting to be offered a chair as manners dictated. I rested my hands on the back of the chair. It teetered.

  Frau Doppel raised her head and scowled at me. With her long pinched face, she looked uncannily similar to Frau Inge and just as cheerful. I named her Frau Doppelgänger in my head. She gestured to the chair.

  I sat gingerly, expecting to crash onto the painted floor. The chair held.

  “I was told at Stadelheim—” I reached into my satchel for Frau Röhm’s letter.

  “To come here,” she finished for me. She thrust a sheaf of forms into my hand. “Fill these out. Come back tomorrow at the time on the card I gave you. If you are even one minute late, you forfeit your meeting time and must wait in line for another.”

  At least I would not have to stand in line tomorrow. “When can his body be released?”

  “We can release the body in a few weeks,” she answered in her monotone.