A Trace of Smoke (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  I set her back on the floor and crossed to the window. When I peeked through the curtain, the street below seemed deserted. If Röhm’s men lurked outside, they were well hidden. There was no going back now. Anton and I were stuck right in the middle of this until it played out.

  I stared at the letters spread across my simple wooden table. No letter contained a cross word. They had not quarreled. In the most recent letter, Röhm asked to meet Ernst at his apartment the next Sunday. That was the same day that Rudolf had told me to bring the package to Ernst’s apartment. Rudolf and Röhm must be connected. Were these letters the package he wanted?

  These letters could imprison Röhm for breaking Paragraph 175 of the penal code. When Ernst was fifteen, I’d read the law to him to impress upon him the seriousness of his choices. “The law forbids an unnatural sex act committed between persons of male sex and is punishable by imprisonment; the loss of civil rights may also be imposed.”

  Röhm was certainly familiar with the law as well. His war hero background might save him in a trial, but the publicity would be horrendous. Everyone knew he was queer, but flaunting it in such detail! I shuddered. Ernst could have brought down the leader of the storm troopers with these letters.

  I pulled the painted lead soldier out of my satchel and unwrapped her from her red silk. “Why did he send these to me?” I asked the soldier, as if she knew the answer. Ernst must have been afraid that someone would find them, perhaps Rudolf or Röhm himself.

  A rational person would burn them, of course, but Ernst probably loved to read them. Or maybe he planned to use them to blackmail Röhm, perhaps for money or perhaps for his own safety if the Nazis came to power. Despite what Wilhelm had told me, I knew that the Nazis would eventually destroy queer men. Aryan men had to make more Aryans, just like Aryan women. And Aryan men should not submit, certainly not sexually, even to other Aryan men.

  I buried my face in my hands. They smelled like plum tart, from my innocent treat with Anton. What was I to do? If I published the letters, perhaps they could take down Ernst Röhm, perhaps tarnish Hitler. But where should I publish them? Perhaps my friend Ulrich at the Münchener Post would do it. They still stood up to the Nazis. Herr Neumann would not risk it. The letters were too damning. Morally, could I destroy Röhm for the crime of loving my brother? For feelings and actions that weren’t wrong?

  But Röhm was evil. He helped Hitler win elections. His thugs beat Jews and queer men and anyone else they pleased every day. If the paper had allowed it, I could have written a story each week about a Communist or a Jew beaten to death by a group of Nazis. The slim stack of paper in my hands could be the means to expose Röhm. Did the ends justify the means? Bringing down evil before it spread was justified at any price. If the Sturm Abteilung crumbled, could the Nazi party go on? Without them, Hitler was only a shrill, screaming man with a tiny mustache and a fondness for brown. And he knew it. That’s why he brought Röhm back from Bolivia—because he could find no one else who could control the SA.

  I shuffled the letters on the worn tabletop. But the means were horrible: pillory Röhm for something that should not be a crime. It would destroy our family name. Cause a backlash that might hurt all of the queer men in Germany. Röhm’s thugs would kill me when they discovered where the letters came from. Where would that leave Anton? Röhm was not a stupid man. He was a ruthless soldier. When Röhm arrived on Sunday, he would want these letters back.

  I stacked the letters carefully and tied them with the broad red ribbon. I laid them in my satchel next to the notebook containing Ernst’s death photo, and went to bed. How could these letters be related to Sweetie Pie’s death? To Ernst’s? There were no coincidences. Ernst must have had a reason to mail me these letters so soon before he was killed.

  I had to make a decision, and soon: burn them, publish them, or return them to Röhm. I could send them back to him via party headquarters. My head said to publish them, but my heart was not so certain. I tossed and turned so much that Mitzi gave me a baleful look and stomped to the front door. I let her out, glancing nervously back and forth down the hall before closing the door.

  Every creak in the building sounded like jackboots marching up the stairs. I waited for Röhm’s men to come murder me in my bed. I watched Anton sleep so peacefully. What would become of him? Would they kill him too? If not, Ursula might not even take him in. Bettina was correct about the orphanages. Too many children died there. But where could I put him where he would be safe? I slept little that night.

  18

  When the sky turned steel gray with morning, I left Anton asleep in bed and made myself a cup of hot water with honey. I’d gotten used to tea without the tea during the inflation and now preferred it. Or at least that’s what I told myself.

  I poured the leftover water from the kettle into a basin to wash myself and my hair. I combed the wet strands carefully. Today was Friday, the day Boris had invited me to meet him at the yacht club. I’d never planned to go, but why not? Perhaps I could be a different person today. A person who thought only about an attractive man and his attractive invitation. I knew it was foolish and selfish, but if I was truly threatened with death, I wanted a day to live.

  I slid into a light blue cotton dress. Ernst once said that it brought out the washed-out blue color of my eyes. He’d also said that my eyes were the best feature on my face, and I’d do well to highlight them to distract men from my masculine cleft chin. Ernst had often made up his eyes heavily, so that no one would notice his own masculine chin. I buttoned up my dress, wondering what Ernst would think of Boris and what Boris would think of Ernst. Ernst would have been thrilled that I was seeing a man. Any man is better than none, he loved to remind me. How would Boris have reacted to Ernst? He was no Nazi, but he did seem very bourgeois, and Ernst was probably far beyond what he had ever had to deal with in his comfortable banker’s life.

  I shook my head and quickly finished dressing. I had two days to decide what to do with the letters. Two days before I would confront Ernst Röhm in my dead brother’s apartment and make a decision that could change Germany’s future. I hoped to find out who had killed Ernst at that meeting, or before, if I could. A step ahead was better than a step behind.

  Until then, I had to keep the letters safe. I wrapped them in brown paper and tied them shut with twine. Once again, they resembled an innocuous package. I addressed the package to myself and placed it in the center of the table, holding it by the edges, as if it were a hot loaf of bread. I gathered everything else I had to hide: the ring I pinned in the pocket of my dress and the money and coins I left in my satchel. I finally dropped the letters in the satchel too.

  “Indian good morning,” said Anton from the doorway.

  “Good morning to you,” I said. “Ready for breakfast?”

  “The brave does not trouble his chief.”

  I pulled flour and eggs from the cabinets. I chopped the apple I’d bought him yesterday, before I’d visited Herr Klein and found out about the ring. “I am making apple slices. Fried in batter.”

  “A brave likes to earn his keep.”

  I turned over an old iron pot and placed it next to the stove. “Stand on this.”

  Anton climbed on obediently and took the sifter I handed him. “First we sift the flour.”

  While he sifted I heated the stove and dropped a dollop of butter into the skillet. It was profligate to use so much butter. This was how my life would be if Anton were mine, perhaps with a man like Boris to pay the bills and play the father. Of course, nothing could ever be that simple.

  Anton dipped each apple slice in batter, as careful as a banker. He did not spill a drop on the stove. I wondered what the penalty had been for wasting food in Sweetie Pie’s household. Something painful, I thought, and reached over to stroke his downy head.

  He looked up at me in surprise. “Is my hair in order?”

  “It looks very handsome.”

  I dropped each apple slice in the pan, and together we watched the
m sizzle. The kitchen smelled heavenly, almost as good as Bettina’s. She could not take care of him if I died. Fritz would not allow that. Anton would probably end up with my sister Ursula, the child she could not conceive on her own.

  I poured all my sugar and cinnamon onto a plate and let him roll his apple slices in it until there was none left. He ate his fried apple slices quietly, with a look of deep contentment.

  After breakfast, I cleaned the apartment, like every other week for as long as I could remember. Anton helped me scrub the floor and wipe down the table. The last time I’d changed the sheets, Ernst had been alive. The time before that, Sarah had been living in Berlin and my identity papers were safe in my pocket. What would my life be like the next time I changed the sheets?

  After cleaning, I dressed Anton in one of his bright new outfits, and we took the streetcar to Hirten Strasse. We passed Herr Klein’s door and walked farther down the street to Sarah’s apartment. I bought things from every poor street vendor we passed. At first Anton feared buying from the Jews, remembering the Nazi protest, but I told him that we must buy from them, to keep the Nazis from winning.

  I spent my money because, like in 1923, my money might be worthless by tomorrow. Better to share it now than wait for it to disappear. We arrived at Sarah’s apartment with shoelaces and apples and milk and bread. I checked her mail, then let myself in with her spare key, which I’d kept so I could ship her things, if she sent for them.

  Sarah’s apartment smelled of her; a faint scent of roses and milk that took me back to hugging her good-bye at the train station weeks before. Loaning her my papers had seemed a small risk then, before everything had fallen apart.

  “Is this your other teepee?” Anton asked.

  “I have only one house,” I answered. “This belongs to a friend.”

  And Sarah was my friend. She was my best friend. Bettina was also a friend, but I had to keep too many things from her, to protect her.

  The empty rooms felt so lonely. I had not been here since Sarah and Tobias left. I could not believe I might never see them again. She’d helped me through the worst after Walter’s death. Even though marrying him had felt like a duty, I had loved him. He was a gentle man, as unlike Father as another soldier could be. He had offered me kindness and security, and he did not deserve to die in a field of bloody mud, on the bayonet of another man who was perhaps also kind and gentle off the field of battle. Two lives were lost that instant, Walter’s and the life I might have led as a wife and mother.

  Sarah had helped me raise Ernst, always counseling patience and love. That seemed to be her solution to all problems, except the Nazis.

  I looked at the neat table covered with a clean, pressed tablecloth. Sarah could walk in at any moment and hold a dinner party. Each chair was pushed in perfectly straight.

  I took Anton’s hand and led him into the living room. Morning sun, filtered through lace curtains, shone on the horsehair sofa. “Sit there and touch nothing.”

  He sat and pulled his feet up to sit Indian style.

  “No shoes on the sofa.”

  I returned to the kitchen and unpacked my foolish purchases. I had no time to take them home. Why had I bought them?

  I glanced around the kitchen, trying to decide where to hide Röhm’s letters. Surely no one would think to look for them here. But where? I pulled open the drawer to add Sarah’s latest mail and saw a package, slightly larger than the one I needed to hide. I smiled.

  I carefully untied the twine on the package and slid off the brown paper wrapping. I slid it over the package of Röhm’s letters and the envelope of money I’d received for the jewelry. I retied the twine.

  I walked into the living room. Anton sat cross-legged on the sofa in his brown ankle socks with his shoes lined up neatly at the end of the elegant coffee table.

  “Do you search for something?” he asked. “The brave has sharp eyes.”

  I walked to the cupboard in the corner and took out a box. It contained sketches of hats Sarah had been working on, scraps of felt, feathers, bird wings, and a hat form. She would not need it again, but I knew someone who might have a use for it.

  “Shoes back on,” I said. “We’re leaving.”

  Once downstairs, I opened Sarah’s mailbox. The lobby was deserted. I put the package into the mailbox. The mailman would recognize it as a package he had delivered, and leave it alone. I hoped no one would think to look in Sarah’s mailbox for my valuables.

  Free of the letters, we headed over to the Wannsee to meet Boris. I would accept the offer he’d extended to me in his letter. That too, was unexpected. But if I only had a few days left to live, I might as well spend one of them sailing on the lake with a handsome man, whatever his motives.

  I stopped by the Berolina office and found the schedule for the boat that had spotted Ernst’s body in the river. There were no more tours scheduled for that stretch of water today. That was it then. Today I would relax with Boris on his yacht. Tomorrow I would ride the Berolina boat and see where Ernst had been found. Perhaps something there would lead me to his killer before I met Röhm.

  19

  I treated Anton and myself to a hot wurst and roll from a stand, as I did not want him to be too hungry when we met Boris. I wanted Boris to know that I fed Anton well, that I was not responsible for his emaciated condition. Anton happily dipped his wurst into a golden pile of mustard. As Mother taught me, I ate the wurst first and the roll last, so that I could wipe my greasy fingertips on the bread. The wurst was savory and firm. It felt good to be eating all I wanted again.

  Well fed and happy, we walked to the Potsdam Yacht Club, perched on the edge of the lake like a honeymoon cottage. Sparkling glass and well-polished wood shone when we opened the door.

  “Good day.” I crossed to the small counter, where a girl not much older than Trudi filed her nails.

  “And your name is?” The girl behind the counter was unimpressed by my shabby blue dress and Anton’s mustard-smudged shirt.

  “Hannah Vogel,” I said. “Here to meet Boris Krause.”

  “I’ll see if he is here for you.” She looked convinced that he would not be. She exuded health, energy, and money. Her well-muscled tan calves stalked around the corner.

  “She didn’t like us,” Anton said. “Because we’re poor.”

  I bent down and took his hand. “That may be. But what she thinks of us does not matter one drop.”

  “Does it make you angry?”

  “Perhaps yesterday,” I said. “But not today. Today I want us to play.”

  “Hannah,” called Boris, walking toward us with his hand outstretched and a charming smile. His face was open and guileless. “And who is this fellow?”

  “This is Anton,” I said, deciding not to try to describe Anton’s relationship to me.

  “How do you do?” Boris shook Anton’s hand as if he were a grown-up man. Anton beamed. Boris wore a short-sleeved shirt and linen trousers. He looked, if possible, even better than he had in the courtroom. “Trudi’s stowing our lunch on the boat. Come along.”

  Anton and I followed in his wake as he led us to a beautiful wooden sailboat. I knew nothing about boats, but this one looked expensive. The light reflected off brightly polished brass and mahogany. I guessed the boat was over ten meters long.

  Trudi emerged from a hatch in the deck. “Fraulein Vogel,” she called. “I’m so glad you came.”

  “As am I, Trudi,” I said. “This is Anton. Anton, Trudi.”

  Anton dropped to one knee on the dock. “The brave is pleased to meet you.”

  She curtsied with a laugh. “It is I who am honored.” She turned to me. “And you brought someone with such excellent manners.”

  Boris stepped easily onto the boat and held out his hand to help me aboard. His palm felt warm but surprisingly rough, perhaps from sailing. He held my fingers a moment longer than necessary; it was not my imagination. I looked up into those gold-flecked eyes and slowly pulled my hand away.

  “Her
e we go, Anton.” Boris turned and held out a hand to Anton, but he leaped from the dock to the boat like a cat.

  “I brought something for you, Trudi.” I handed her the box. “It’s scraps, but I thought they might be interesting to experiment with.”

  She opened the box and squealed with delight. A purple feather floated toward the deck. Anton caught it and handed it to her.

  “What is it?” Boris asked.

  “Hatmaking supplies,” she said, her eyes shining. “And a form and some drawings of hats.”

  “My friend the hatmaker thought you might make better use of them than she.”

  “Thank you,” Trudi said. “I will.”

  She closed the box and carried it toward the back of the boat. Anton followed like a puppy.

  “Let’s find you something to eat.” Trudi and Anton climbed through the hatch and disappeared.

  “He just ate,” I called down to them.

  “He’s a growing boy.” Boris’s full lips curved into a smile. “He’ll probably eat his second lunch and yours if you’re not careful.”

  “He needs it more than I do. He’s welcome to it.” I looked back at the dock, flustered.

  “Thank you for the thoughtful gift for Trudi. It will keep her and her friends occupied during the evenings.” Boris started the engine.

  “I am glad it can be of use.”

  Boris untied the lines mooring us to the dock. “My behavior at the courthouse was inexcusable,” he said. “I apologize.”

  “I imagine you must have been very upset.” Muscles in his forearm tensed and relaxed as he untied lines and coiled them on the deck. Powerful muscles for a banker.

  “Which is no excuse for lashing out at you.” He straightened and looked into my eyes. He put his warm hand on my bare arm and leaned in close.

  “No apologies are necessary.” I tried not to stutter, too conscious of how near his body was to mine.

  He motored out of the slip and into open water. I caught my breath and watched him out of the corner of my eye. His movements were swift and competent, and he handled the boat with a sure gentleness.