A Trace of Smoke (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  14

  “Indian good morning,” Anton said when I walked into the kitchen the next day. Oily crumbs from the last of Bettina’s cookies dropped from his fingers onto the bare table.

  “Good morning. I am happy you found your own breakfast today.”

  “A brave learns a lesson with one showing.”

  “We should all be that wise.” I cut Bettina’s apples into wedges and gave one set to Anton. The other I ate myself, along with a fat slice of fragrant bread.

  After breakfast, I dressed in a simple dark green dress and moved Ernst’s jewelry to my satchel. I did not have to turn in a story today, so I could retrieve my paycheck and run errands, like finding out more about the jewelry and perhaps buying Anton a set of used clothing from a street vendor. For now, I dressed him in the clothes Bettina had given him yesterday.

  On the way to Bettina’s, Anton regaled me with tales of Indian derring-do. He talked of riding fast horses over the prairie, yet the only horses in sight pulled carts and wore blinders. We rode a bus in the shadows of tall stone buildings as he told me about teepees and the harsh sun in the land of the Apache.

  He chattered away until we reached Bettina’s house and knocked.

  “Good morning,” said Bettina when she answered the door. “You missed Fritz.”

  “Give him my regards.”

  She raised one eyebrow. “Come in, Anton. I have fresh oatmeal with apples.”

  “He had breakfast already,” I said, as we entered Bettina’s cinnamon-scented front hall.

  Anton squeezed past us and streaked toward the kitchen.

  “He’s a growing boy,” she said, laughing. “He can eat two breakfasts. Maybe three. Don’t worry, I’ll keep him fed.”

  How would I ever pay for his food? It was wrong for me to depend on Bettina’s charity. If he was like Ernst, he would eat more than an adult. Before I left home, I’d often slipped Ernst bits of my dinner, breaking Father’s strict rules about portion control. “Thank you, Bettina,” I said. “I won’t need to bring him this weekend so you can have a break.”

  “I don’t need a break from him, Hannah.” She reached over and straightened the collar of my dress with one efficient gesture. “But I think it’s good if you spend the weekend with him.”

  “I can give you something for his food—”

  “Nonsense.” She raised her finger warningly. “One more foolish comment like that and I’ll turn you over to Fritz.”

  “Turn me over to Fritz?” I kept my voice carefully neutral.

  “He is very interested in Anton and how he came to be here.” Her eyes twinkled. “He wonders why you didn’t mention it when you went to the station yesterday.”

  “I forgot.”

  “I told him you did not want to explain it in a police station, which I think is closer to the truth.” Bettina shook her head. “So early in the day, and you’re already lying to your old friend.”

  “When is he coming home tonight?”

  “So you can avoid him?” Bettina tilted her head to one side and flashed her impish smile. “Around six.”

  When I arrived at the paper for my paycheck, Rudolf stood in the lobby looking at his watch. People parted around him like water around a stone in a stream. Too late, I turned to leave.

  “Hannah.” He strode across the room. “We have something to discuss.”

  “We have nothing to discuss.” I hurried toward the elevators.

  He grabbed my upper arm; his fingers pinched me cruelly. In the five years of our acquaintance, it was the first time he’d ever touched me. “Listen to me now, or you will deeply regret it later.”

  I stopped. “Release my arm,” I said in a loud voice. Xavier, the elevator operator, looked curiously in our direction. Rudolf let go, but stayed too close for my comfort. I resisted the temptation to rub where his fingers had been. I would not let him see that he had hurt me.

  “Tell your brother that he must deliver the package we talked about the other day.” His voice was low and urgent.

  People hurried past us, crossing the elegant lobby on their way to the elevator, but I saw no familiar faces. It was as if we were standing outside Rudolf’s office and not mine.

  “I have no idea what you mean.” Was it the ring? If Rudolf knew about it, Ernst would not have hidden it from him in the secret compartment.

  “I think you do, but even if you do not, Ernst does. He knows the stakes for withholding it.” Rudolf leaned into me. He smelled like stale sweat. Whatever startled Rudolf out of his careful grooming could not be good.

  I stood my ground. I would not be intimidated. “Does he?”

  Rudolf gripped my elbow and marched me to the corner of the lobby, away from the crowds by the elevator. I was afraid to go too far from other people, but I wanted to know why Rudolf sought me out. I kept quiet.

  Rudolf lowered his voice. “They will kill first him, then me. Finally, probably, even you. He knows they are skilled in torture, and they will find what they need. Tell him to take the easy way.”

  My hands shook. I clasped them together so that Rudolf would not see. Could he smell my fear, like a dog? “What should he return? And where?”

  “He knows. And he knows the place. Sunday at his apartment. In three days.”

  “Return it to whom?” When the elevator bell dinged I turned toward it, ready to get away.

  “If he hasn’t told you whom he is dealing with, Hannah, I will not either,” Rudolf said, leaning down to whisper in my ear. “Ask him.”

  I said nothing. Rudolf straightened again. “You are good at asking questions, aren’t you? And reporting the answers to others,” he said in his normal voice. “I read that story in the paper last night. The one written by your friend, Peter Weill.”

  Rudolf did not know I wrote as Peter Weill. He thought I made a living selling poems and sketches. His previous indifference to my existence was useful after all. I struggled to keep my expression neutral. “Indeed.”

  He sniffed and ran his hand over through his thick hair. “I had a pertinent conversation with the editor of the paper. He will take care of Herr Weill.”

  “How nice for him.”

  “He is fired, Hannah.” Rudolf clucked his tongue. “Poor man. Maybe you can find him and tell him before your editor does. The editor wouldn’t tell me his name, but he promised that Peter Weill will be written by a new hand.”

  “Peter’s a big boy,” I said, although a cold chill settled in my stomach. “He can take care of himself.”

  “Would you like to tell him more?” Rudolf asked. “Would you like to tell him how Sweetie Pie died? How I paid her to procure something for me? How instead of delivering it she spent the money on drugs?”

  “What did you need her to procure?”

  “My messenger paid her too much, I see that now. She spent it all in one place, against the old caution. She bought enough cocaine to kill a cow.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Rudolf would not give me information without a goal.

  “So you can tell your Weill friend where he got it wrong.”

  “If he got it wrong.”

  Rudolf waved his hand. “She is no good to me dead. Alive, she had one function to perform. One I can’t get from the boys.”

  “How lucky for her.”

  “Tell Ernst he can’t trust his Nazi boy to bail him out of this.”

  He turned and strode out of the building, his soft leather shoes silent on the marble floor.

  I rode the elevator to the newsroom in a daze. Peter Weill had been my identity for so long. Herr Neumann would keep his word to Rudolf and fire me. I was amazed that he had not given Rudolf my name. He had a shred more integrity than I’d expected.

  Peter Weill had provided me with food when I was hungry. The fan mail that I received for him made me feel like a real writer. Now I was just one of five million other unemployed workers in Germany. And I had no identity papers to show when I applied for jobs. At least I had jewelry to sell. Even
without the ring, the jewelry would feed us for a time.

  Plus, there were other newspapers. Peter Weill was not the only crime reporter in Berlin. And I would get my papers back soon enough. I hoped.

  “Your floor, Fraulein Vogel,” said Xavier. “Is that where you’re going . . . today?”

  “Yes, thank you, Xavier.” I stepped out of the elevator and took a deep breath to steady myself. From force of long years of habit, I walked through the newsroom and opened the window. Smoke drifted out into the sunny morning.

  “Hannah,” called Maria from across the room. “I need to talk to you.” Her happy tone told me that she knew I was fired.

  “Good day, Maria.” I turned to face her. I left one hand on the wet windowsill.

  “Herr Neumann will tell you officially, but I wanted to break it to you sooner.” She placed her hand next to mine on the windowsill, not quite touching. “So that you wouldn’t cry in front of him.”

  “I can think of nothing you or Herr Neumann can say to make me cry,” I said in an icy voice. I wiped my damp hand on my skirt and crossed my arms across my chest, glad that Rudolf had warned me.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry, “but you are fired from the paper.”

  “So I gathered.”

  Her perfectly plucked eyebrows shot up in surprise. I’d stolen her scoop. “Someone is threatening to sue about your prostitute piece, someone with power.”

  “Rudolf von Reiche, the lawyer.”

  “Really?” She looked ready to pull out a notebook and interview me. “Is he the rich man from the article?”

  “What good would it do you to know?” I asked. “Really?”

  A shadow crossed her face. “None at all.”

  “I can see by your barely disguised glee that you are the new Peter Weill.” I reached out and closed the window with a clunk. Let them suffocate in their own smoke, after all. “Congratulations.”

  “I didn’t want it this way,” she said, sounding almost genuine. “But I’d be a fool not to take it.”

  “And you, Maria, are no fool,” I said. “Ask Paul to pick up my mail for me.”

  Herr Neumann’s bony finger tapped my shoulder. When I turned to face him he smiled.

  “You’re lucky I don’t sue you,” he said. “For exposing the paper.”

  “To what? The truth?”

  “To a lawsuit.” Herr Neumann puffed himself up like a toad. “Why—”

  “So firing me is as bad as it gets?” I interrupted.

  Herr Neumann looked surprised by my tone. “Well. Yes.”

  “Thank God for that.” I left the newspaper office for the last time, stopping in accounting to pick up my final paycheck. For the first time in my adult life, I had no job. I wondered how I would feed myself, and Anton. Then I laughed. The way things were going, I would be lucky to stay alive long enough to go hungry.

  15

  I took the bus to Alexanderplatz, then walked past the police station to the heart of the Jewish quarter. Sarah used to live here, as did our jeweler friend, Mordecai Klein. Like Sarah, he had dark suspicions of what would become of the Jews if the Nazi party gained power.

  An old woman, her body bent double with age and the weight of her display case, tried to sell me shoelaces. I shook my head as she first entreated me in guttural Polish, which I did not understand, and then in Yiddish, which I did because it’s close to German. But I had no use for shoelaces in any language and could ill afford to buy something I did not need. Eventually she walked away, her black head scarf fluttering in the breeze.

  A young Orthodox Jew stood on the sidewalk, dark forelocks bouncing as he chatted with a man in modern business clothes. Ignoring automobiles and the occasional horse, a man pushed a handcart full of green apples down the street. I smelled the apples’ wholesome scent through the poisonous automobile exhaust. Haggling agreeably before handing over a few of my last remaining pfennigs, I bought an apple for Anton. It might be a long time before Anton got apples again. I tucked it into my satchel.

  In the Jewish quarter I blended in. I’d been coming for years with Sarah, and people trusted me. Nowadays, that was a huge gift. Many of them had been through much, losing homes and families in Russia and Poland. Now they waited for a chance to leave Berlin and settle somewhere permanent, somewhere safe. I feared for them. Sarah was right to leave. If the Nazis came into power there was no telling what they would do.

  I stopped at Herr Klein’s shop. Wrought-iron bars clad the gleaming windows. I knocked on the thick wooden door and waited while someone opened a hinged peephole and studied my face. Heavy bolts rasped as they were drawn back.

  “Hannah!” Herr Klein pulled me in and closed the door in one swift movement. “I haven’t seen you in weeks.” He pushed the bolts into place before turning to me. “Are you well?”

  It was such a delight to see him whole and healthy that I almost forgot my own troubles. “I am, thank you,” I answered, smiling into his wrinkled old face, pleased that he had not yet emigrated. “How is that cough?”

  “Coming along,” he said. “I expect it will be strong enough to break windows soon.”

  I glanced around the tiny room. Two pine stools stood next to an old pine table. The table held a single black velvet display board and a powerful lamp. He had removed the cases of jewels the previous September, after the election made the Nazis the second largest party in the Reichstag.

  A thick oak door almost disappeared into the back wall. Behind it lay the room where Herr Klein cut precious stones. Although I’d been visiting him for over ten years, I had never seen behind the door.

  “I have something for you,” I said, glad the shop was empty. “Questions.”

  “Maybe I have answers, although it’s hard to say.” He gestured to the simple stools and perched on one himself, like a friendly black crow. “How are Sarah and Tobias?”

  “I expect they are very busy,” I said, not meeting his eyes. With their lives, I did not trust even Herr Klein. I had refused to let Sarah tell me her final destination. If anything went wrong, I had nothing to reveal to the police.

  “I expect they are.” Herr Klein looked at me over the tops of his round, rimless spectacles and cleared his throat. “What are your questions?”

  “I have many,” I said and took the jewelry, except the ruby ring, out of my satchel and set it on the table. The onyx looked dull in the light, but the diamonds and rubies flashed. “Can you tell me what these are worth?”

  Herr Klein picked up each piece and examined it with his loupe, his hands swift and confident, tilting each piece to and fro to watch the light glint on them. He quickly made two piles. “This pile.” He pointed to the pile that had been in the top of the jewelry case, the ones I assumed came from Rudolf: the onyx-and-diamond choker, the onyx-and-diamond bracelet, and the diamond bracelets. “Is all fake, as I told your brother the first time he brought them in.”

  “Ernst came here with them?” So Rudolf thought he was stealing back his worthless jewelry. Perhaps he was more sentimental than I’d thought.

  “Many times.” Herr Klein laughed. “He wants me to bring glamour into this room.” He gestured at the bare wooden walls. “He says it looks like a poor old peddler’s house. Tells me I need to buy a leather club chair, an antique table, and a silver tea service.”

  “But then everyone walking by outside would know that you have items of value in here. Your tea service if nothing else.”

  Herr Klein nodded his grizzled head. “That is what I told him, and he said, ‘A brave understands the value of camouflage’ like someone out of a Karl May book.”

  I smiled. That sounded like something Anton would say. I was glad to know that he and Ernst had spent time together. “So he asked you to authenticate the pieces?”

  “Your brother learned to spot fakes himself, my dear,” he said. “We spent time with these pieces, and real ones too, learning how to establish authenticity. They are quite good fakes. And worth some amount of mone
y.”

  I smiled, surprised and proud of Ernst. He’d known that Rudolf’s pieces were fake, and he’d known to identify and hide the real ones.

  “These.” He pointed to the other pile, the pile Ernst hid. It included pieces from Mother and the pieces with diamonds and rubies. “All real. We can go over the value of each of them, separately.”

  He pulled out a pad of paper and wrote a brief description of each piece. I fingered the red handkerchief wrapped around the ruby ring.

  “Here we are,” he said. “Now we can talk about the value of the pieces.”

  “Before we do that, I have one more thing.” I pulled Ernst’s ruby ring out of my satchel and placed it on the spotless table with a clunk. “What can you tell me about this ring?”

  “Oh, a mystery!” He held the ring where the tails intertwined on the back and examined it with his jeweler’s loupe. “I love the unexplained.”

  “Always glad to be of service.” I glanced around the room while he studied the ring. The room was dark, but immaculately clean. Even Ursula would be unable to find dust.

  Herr Klein coughed, spitting into a fine linen handkerchief. He took a moment to catch his breath.

  “Is this from one of your stories?” he wheezed.

  “Perhaps,” I answered. “You know I cannot tell you that.”

  He gazed at the ring in silence for several minutes. Did he know I still stood there? It must be a clever fake, and he wondered at its artifice.

  “Hannah,” he said. “This ring is priceless.”

  “It is?” I searched his face for a sign that he jested, but I found only openness and a hint of fear.

  “It is Ernst’s?”