The kapo shooed her into a small office occupied by two soldiers at attention and an officer, scribbling behind a metal desk. Not a calendar or clock on the wall. Not a colorful world map. Not a photo on the desk.
Her lusty spirit cringed at the bland, barren room. A strip of lavender paint bordering where the wall met the ceiling would be nice. Mayhap some pale pink fluffy clouds on the ceiling or a rainbow arcing two of the walls . . .
Well, it was show time.
The presence of a high-ranking officer most likely meant that Irina’s athletic achievements commanded respectful attention. Wrong. When the officer looked up from the papers he studied, Romy instantly knew the Tower Card had been a warning for her, not the smooth-talking Gunter.
Blinding, intense fear electrified her.
Five years had not changed Colonel Klauffen. Hauptmann – captain – he had been then. If Dr. Pfister was the Angel of Death, Colonel Klauffen was the Angel of the Apocalypse. He still had the same lean ascetic look of a Spanish Inquisitioner. Narrow face, narrow nose, narrow eyes. Or rather narrow eye. The other was covered by a black eyepatch.
“Have a seat, Fraulein Klockner. I have just a few questions for you.”
Then he did not remember her – remember setting loose his dogs to chase down her and Luca at the street fair. From somewhere behind the desk, came a low, canine growl. Did that mean one of his favored dogs recognized her scent – even after all this time?
With every scrap of will power she could summon against cowering, she sat prim and proper, as she would imagine Irina would and with a slightly haughty tilt to her chin. Her hands with their unkempt nails she kept clutched around Irina’s immaculately white suede purse, out of Klauffen’s scrutinizing sight.
She mimicked the language of her betters. Well, at least, they thought so. “Ya, Herr Colonel – and I have a few questions, as well, myself. Most importantly, how could your goons possibly have mistaken me for one of those filthy gypsies? I was merely in their camp having my fortune – ”
“Fraulein Klockner!” Klauffen leaned forward, his skeletal hands locked, that cycloptic eye fixed on her. “I am more interested, not in what you were doing in the gypsy relocation camp, but what you were doing at the German Embassy in Warsaw the same day that our legation councilor was assassinated? And, more importantly, as you put it – and as a Jewess – just how deeply are you involved in the Resistance attack?”
Scheiss!
“I might warn you, Fraulein Klockner, that your fiancé – ”
“My fiancé?”
“Do not try to pretend ignorance or innocence with us. The lawyer, Gunter Wagner. He has also been apprehended. He may have quite brilliantly represented certain members of the Reich’s military and ministry in court, but he is still suspect as far as I am concerned. Your versions of your Warsaw itinerary had better match minute by minute.”
Irina Klockner, a Jewess? By Aryan standards, the only thing worse than a Gypsy was a Jew. Romy gulped. The Tarot’s Fool card had gone from the frying pan into the fire.
Lucky Irina.
§ § §
The situation was not only bleak but, also, Kafkaesque. Strongly surreal was Gideon Goldman’s predicament, with the cigarette smoke floating ethereally between him and the evil power sitting across the desk from him.
Nevertheless, Gideon presented the unflappable image of Gunter Wagner, Esquire, as he lounged on the hard, wooden-back chair, one arm hooked over the top railing. His cigarette dangled from between elegant fingers that swept the air in a negligible gesture. Still, his dueling scar tingled with the rush of adrenaline. How in the hell had he let Irina finagle him into helping the Resistance?
“True, Herr Colonel, I was in Warsaw at the time of the shooting, but my fiancée and I – ”
“Irina Klockner?”
“Ya. We were enjoying a little romantic getaway.” He winked with a smile of bonhomie. “Spent mostly in bed.”
Almost certainly Irina had been caught in the SS roundup of the Gypsies. He knew he could count on her to keep a zippered lip when she was interrogated. And interrogated she assuredly would be.
“Gunter Wagner,” the eye-patched officer murmured as he perused the papers before him. “It would seem you are well known in Berlin’s social and political circles for your linguistic brilliance in your defense strategies.”
He struck a modest pose. “All in the course of an attorney’s day.”
“What is not well known,” the Colonel went on in his monotone, “in fact, what is little known, is that you are a Jew.”
Gideon never missed a beat. “Correction, Colonel Klauffen. A Mischling of 2nd degree, personally reviewed and reclassified as Aryanized by Chancellor Hitler himself.”
Actually, Gideon had been re-classified as "Aryan" after paying an undisclosed fortune to the Nazi party, but he banked on the use of the Führer’s name to spring him out of Sachsenhausen before the Colonel could investigate any further. The moment Gideon had spotted the Gestapo going through his luggage in his train compartment, he had known he was going to need the skills of his silver tongue more than ever.
“So, I would suggest, Herr Colonel, that you arrange for my immediate release – or else you arrange for your transfer to the SS’s work detail. Because you’ll be either heaving a shovel or heaving your last breath.”
The officer flexed his knuckles, as if to keep from slamming flat Gideon’s aristocratic nose. But the Colonel spoke in a quietly controlled manner. “Of course, Herr Wagner. Yours and Fraulein Klockner’s release will be arranged at once. Our mistake.”
No mistake. What’s more, the Gestapo would be dogging like a pack of wolves his and Irina’s every step until the exact moment it had enough documented information to assure they either never saw daylight again or their ashes rained down from incinerator chimneys on Germany’s good Aryan citizens.
The game was ended. Gideon had only one thought as he made his way toward the Main Gate Tower, with its 8 mm machine gun – and that was to dodge the SS tails by ditching the train back to Marzahn at the Berlin stop, midway between, and from there sprinting posthaste for temporary asylum at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Center.
Well, that wasn’t the only thought. Another thought, that of strangulation, flexed his own knuckles at what he spotted just beyond the guard house – the emaciated Gypsy girl. She was wearing Irina’s white woolen coat, beret, and lace-up heels.
What in God’s good name had the Gypsy and her thieving cutthroats done with Irina?
Coming abreast of the girl, he gripped her elbow. “Don’t tell me,” he snarled, out of earshot of the guards. “You are my dearly beloved Irina.”
“Oh, ye are psychic, too?”
An Irish brogue as thick as butter replacing her German speech – what was this? Tugging his hat brim low, he hustled her along the pavement that paralleled the side track to the waiting train. Its steam hissed like his every gritted word. “I want a straight answer, or you will find yourself back inside Sachsenhausen. Now, where is Irina?”
A pearl drop earring wagged with her shaking head. “I have no idea.”
He stopped and spun her to face him. “I mean it. There is nothing I find redeeming about you – you, whoever you are – and I would be most delighted to turn you over to the SS as an imposter.”
“Romy’s me name. Romy Sonnenschein.”
Her smirk infuriated him. “Well, aren’t you a little ray of sunshine.” He was losing precious time. Without appearing to be in a hurry, he propelled the execrable piece of humanity toward the nearest coach.
At the flash of the prison passes, the conductor waved them aboard. The Nazis, Gideon ruminated ruefully, could have been courteous enough to have returned his fine leather valise. That ostentation of affluence, like his Meisterstück, had cost him more meals than he could afford to go without.
He shoved the girl onto a bench seat and slid in next to her. Grabbing her hand, he gripped its short fingers hard enough to snap them. �
�Do you need a memory refresher? Where is Irina?”
“Owww!” She tugged loose her hand. “I told ye. I dunna know where she is. The last time I saw yuir Irina, she was sprawled in a dead faint on the floor of our vardo.”
“Oh, yes, that ghastly painted wagon.”
She started to sputter, but his focus was diverted just beyond her shoulder. Out the window on the steam-fogged platform, two men were sprinting toward the train. Their suit jacket’s flapped back to reveal their suspenders and their holstered handguns. Oy vey!
He directed his attention back to the gypsy. “How opportunistic of you to swipe the very clothes Irina wore – and her identity.”
“Opportunistic?!”
“You know, cunning. The kind that takes advantage of other people. The kind that prey on their weaknesses. Thieves.” The coach lurched into motion as the train chugged away from the platform.
“Cunning?!” the harpy screeched.
All right, maybe not a harpy, exactly. Her features were fairly pleasant. In fact, she reminded him of Toulouse-Lautrec’s, The Gypsy. It captured this bohemian girl’s capriciousness and vibrancy. But a thief, most assuredly.
“Thieves?!” she demanded, her eyes a livid green. “Ye, a shyster lawyer, who defends those scum of the earth Nazis sympathizers, dare to call me cunning and a thief – ye, ye piss stain!”
He raised an imperious brow. “My obligation as a representative of the accused is to defend them impartially and unbiasedly. And while we are tossing around accusations, I might remind you that you are an imposter, posing as my – ”
“Imposter?” Her nose wrinkled the freckles sprinkled across it. “I would wager yuir name isn’t even Gunter, ye slimebucket.”
He winced as if she had actually struck a blow. Perhaps she was psychic. Not that he lent credit to gypsies’ nefarious schemes to part the gullible from their money.
Granted, as a rag merchant’s son, he was ambitious. He had worked alongside his father, plus a second job, to put himself through Humboldt University’s law school, had mastered French and English to perfect his delivery, and had studied the mannerisms and dress of the wealthy.
But when the Nazis required on ID cards, which all Germans carried, the special identifying mark of those who were Jewish – the stamped red “J” – Gideon deduced the time was not far off before the rest of his rights would gradually be stripped away.
When the Minister of the Interior decreed the prohibition on sexual relations or marriage between people who could produce "racially suspect" offspring – meaning Germans with Jews, Germans with Gypsies, or Germans with the deformed – Gideon started making back up plans.
And when the right to practice law was denied Jews, he knew it was time to go underground as Gunter Wagner. After he had done so, his Nazi clientele escalated in astounding proportion to the legal cases his analyzing powers continued to win.
The Nazi vision of a new Germany placed Aryans at the top of the hierarchy of races and ranked Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and Negroes as racial inferiors. Well, inferior was a relegation for which he would never settle.
The train would not reach the Berlin stop for another nineteen minutes, but he meant to transfer long before then. Like now. Before the German Reich’s hired thugs could install themselves in his coach.
He stood and executed a swift bow. “Your acquaintance has been an exceedingly diverting one, Romy Sonnenschein – and, praises to Yahweh, a short one.”
Her sloe eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. “Where are ye going?”
He ignored her and steadied his gait toward the back of their vibrating passenger car. The train had picked up speed. Outside, on the vestibule’s coupling platform, he balanced his weight, and with his fingers forcibly pried open the doors. The wind roared around him.
The forest flashing past was not reassuring. Many an Alpine skier had lost their lives when careening into an embankment of trees. Was an instant death better than prolonged torture?
He swallowed hard. Which was the greater risk? With life, there was always hope, marginal though it seemed at times.
The train’s amplified rattling muted the approach of the person behind him. At the yank on his tweed jacket sleeve, he whirled.
That wrath of a woman with a Cheshire grin demanded his attention. “Circus tumblers!” she yelled above the train’s deafening, clacking noise.
“What?”
“Duck yuir chin. Roll. Feet and knees together.”
“You are aware,” he shouted, “that one shouldn’t change horses in mid– ”
“ – change horses until they stop running,” she yelled back. “But what the hell!”
She nudged him aside, and his jaw dropped as, without another wasted second, she tumbled her elfin body into eternal space.
§ CHAPTER THREE §
Berlin’s Jewish quarter, Grosser Judenhof, was one of those areas any self-respecting citizen would not want to be wandering through at night.
But then Gypsies had never been accused of being self-respecting. And it was not yet night, although the setting sun cast the narrow, building-lined street in depressing, drab shadows.
However, the Irish Traveler part of Romy considered wandering in the grimy and sooty ghetto’s shadows ádh mór -- very good luck – given that she looked much the worse for wear, after rolling on gravel, crashing into underbrush, and hiking five torturous miles on Irina Klockner’s stilts before a lorry loaded with asparagus gave a lift to Romy and her maggot of a companion.
Once again, her ankle twisted, this time on a cobblestone. “Scheiss!” Keeping up with Gunter’s killing pace was killing her.
“Your voluminous lexicon of curses indicates a brain sadly deficient in neurolinguistic ability.”
She wasn’t sure what he just said, but she knew it wasn’t complimentary. “Dingleberry!”
The electric tram churning overhead drowned out whatever his retort might have been. Not that she cared.
As if seeking to make himself disappear, he slunk his shoulders beneath his expensive but scruffed and turf-dirtied tweed jacket, turned up at its collar, and jammed his scratched hands in his jacket pockets. With his last-minute leap from the moving train, his fedora was long gone. Gone, too, was the snow white of Irina’s coat, smudged as it was here and there with dirt and grass stains.
Trying to keep abreast of Gunter, Romy trudged past a kosher market, a synagogue, and a jeweler’s shop. The familiar aroma of boiled cabbage, baked bagels, and roasted chicken tantalized her starved-hungry, rumbling stomach.
After zigzagging into a cleft between buildings, Gunter emerged from the alley to stop abruptly before a four-story-high, baroque building that might have once been stately. “This is it.”
“What is it?”
He swung open the heavy door. “My one hope for escape.”
Dodging an exiting, portly businessman, she dogged him inside. The dim vestibule smelled of dust and mustiness and apathy. “What about meself?”
Gunter shot her a look of intense displeasure and emitted a huff. “What about your poor, ailing grandfather?” Without waiting for her answer, he headed for the lift that looked like a wrought-iron birdcage.
She cringed with remorse but shot back, “If the SS troopers had anything to say about it, me grandfather is toes up by now.” She wedged inside the confining lift beside Gunter. It jerked upwards, and she gulped.
When camped with the Gypsies near Paris, she had experienced her first and only elevator ride at nine. On a cuttingly cold winter day, her grandfather had smuggled her into the Louvre – also, a first of many European museums she would explore those winters, when the need to keep warm became imperative. She had viewed a world of diverse beauty she had not known existed, until the Louvre’s museum guards had kicked them out.
After that exposure to Enlightenment, she had snuck into cinema houses across Europe, as well. Those had afforded fanciful escapes from everyday drudgery to watch newsreels and cartoons – and Westerns. She was
enthralled with them. Her first Western had been Tom Mix’s romantic “Riders of the Purple Sage.”
Her lips curling in disdain, she shot Gunter a blistering look. “Forget me grandfather. What about yuir fiancée?”
“As far as the SS knows, you are Irina. Meanwhile, thanks to your moral turpitude, she is now safe. And she is not my fiancée.”
Crikey, what was ‘turpitude’? “Well, then what is Irina to ye?”
His eyes were bleak. “My half-sister.”
On the third floor, he paused before a door’s frosted pane. She nodded at its etched words. “Where are we?”
“You cannot read?” he asked, dismay evident in his refined elocution. “American Jewish Joint Distribution Center. A volunteer organization.”
He knocked on the pane and, at the “Ya?”, opened the door to a view of a mountain of cardboard boxes stamped with the Red Cross and stacked against the back wall. An assembly table and file cabinet occupied one side wall.
Behind a hand-me-down desk fronting the other wall, presided a dwarf. The desk plaque read, “Moishe Klein,” although below the name, whatever his title was, she could not decipher.
But she recognized him. She just could not remember from where. From one of the circuses that crisscrossed Europe’s map? Montmartre? Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm?
He hopped down from the chair and waddled to meet them. With large brown eyes and tufty brown hair, he had a jovial smile that made him as huggable as a carnival teddy bear. “Welcome to the Joint. How can I help?”
Gunter returned the smile. “Gunter Wagner. We are seeking the Holy Grail, of course.”
Her head snapped up towards his. Holy Grail?
“Ahhh, the Holy Grail, it is?” The dwarf nodded, as if he had the secret to a rigged carnival game. “So is the Führer,” he said genially. “If his SS Ancestral Heritage unit of archeologists and scientists doesn’t find proof of it first, we at the Center are here to lend a hand.
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