A Trace of Smoke (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  I shook my head. “He is not dead. And I did not shoot the man who was dead, as that is probably your next question. He shot himself.”

  For a few seconds we sat in silence. “Do you have any clothes I could borrow?” I asked.

  He left the room. A few moments he came back and handed me a simple cotton nightdress and a woman’s robe. “Here you are. They’re from Trudi, but I think they’ll fit. I hope they will fit.” He smiled his movie-star smile, his eyes twinkling. “I certainly don’t want to anger you, if what the police said is true.”

  I thanked him and locked myself in his luxurious bathroom. The floor was marble, and a footed tub stood in the corner. A large modern mirror with a black border hung over the sink. I looked terrible. My fair skin was paler than usual and drawn tight over my cheekbones. Strangely vacant eyes, a shade too dark, stared at me from the mirror. My fingertips explored a lump on the back of my head. It was the size of a duck egg and had a thin scab running down the middle.

  My breasts were smashed flat under a thick band that held a wad of gauze in place against my left side. I looked like a boy. A dirty, bloody boy. I knew it was stupid and vain, but tears trickled down my cheeks.

  I’d lost a child who had never been mine to begin with. My brother was dead. A handsome man who had rescued me from police custody without a word waited outside the door, and I looked like a morphine addict freshly released from the hospital after an overdose.

  I sat on the toilet seat and cried out my grief and self-pity.

  Finally, I stood and washed my hair in the sink. It made me dizzy, but it also felt good to have clean, wet hair. The shampoo smelled rich and luxuriant. It probably cost more than my weekly food budget. After I washed and dressed, I felt better than I had since the shooting.

  When I came out I smelled beef broth with onions. I inched down the stairs, clutching the brass railing in an effort to keep the stairs from moving.

  “You’re looking much better.” Boris stood on the checkerboard floor of his tiny kitchen. He wore suit trousers, a white shirt, and an apron. “I made beef tea and toast for you. I wasn’t sure what you would be able to keep down.”

  The broth was wonderful, rich and meaty. I forced myself to sip it. I wanted it to stay down.

  While I ate, Boris talked about the weather, his boat, anything but what he most wanted to know.

  “Thank you,” I said, pushing the bowl aside at last.

  “Where’s Anton?” he asked, finally.

  “With his father.” Light from the kitchen window reflected off his thick hair and lit his dark, gold-speckled eyes.

  “Is that good?”

  I sighed. “Oh, Boris.”

  He gathered me into his arms and held me while I told him all I dared. I did not mention the ring or the letters or anything about Sarah. He too, wanted to know why I had not gone to the police when I first saw Ernst’s picture, and he too, did not believe my answers, but he did not press me.

  When I finished, Boris said, “You are a woman of great strength.”

  I shook my head. “I only do what must be done.”

  “There is strength in that.”

  I changed the subject and talked about Anton. How much I missed him. How much he loved Winnetou, the Apache brave in the Karl May stories. How he wanted to be a warrior. When I wound down, Boris said quietly, “He’s not your son, Hannah; more’s the pity.”

  “I know.”

  “He has a father to care for him now. A man of wealth and power.”

  He sounded like Bettina. “A man who left me to die,” I said. “He’s been back in Germany for six months, and he was content to leave his son in the care of a woman he knew was a prostitute until it became politically expedient to claim him. He does not love the boy. He might not even be his father.”

  “Perhaps not. But he has a stronger claim as Anton’s father than you do as his mother.” Boris took my hand as if I were a small child, but he aroused feelings in me that were not childlike. “And he is not all bad. He bound your wound and left before the police could cause him trouble. Maybe he knew that the police would care for you better than he could. He drove your killer away and he protected the boy. That should count for something.”

  I felt weary. Not the blinding exhaustion that I’d felt earlier in the day, but an unbearable weariness.

  “Let it be, Hannah. It’s not your fight.” Boris’s hand felt warm against mine. “Stay here until you are better. Until Rudolf is found. Then go on with your life.”

  “What life?” I said. “I have no job. No family. Nothing. No one.”

  He looked deep into my eyes, and I could tell that he hurt for me. “Not quite no one.”

  The front door opened and Trudi’s voice called out, “Vati, we’re home.”

  Boris took his arms from around me and stood. “Wait here.”

  I nodded.

  Boris walked across the kitchen with quick strides. I heard him talking in a low voice. Trudi’s higher voice answered, sounding indignant. A third voice joined in. The housekeeper?

  I dropped my head on my arms on the table and drifted off to sleep. The slam of the front door woke me, and I started up, disoriented. My heart pounded. Where was I? Where was Anton? I had to retrieve the ring and the letters.

  I stood and stumbled. Boris was suddenly by my side. He caught my arm, as always.

  “I think you need to sleep somewhere a bit more comfortable.”

  “Where’s Trudi?” I asked, remembering where I was.

  “I sent her to her grandmother’s.”

  Boris helped me up the stairs. He drew back the light quilt for me and helped me climb into bed. I could not remember if anyone had ever helped me go to bed before, even when I was a small child. He tucked me in between his fine linen sheets and kissed my eyelids. “Sleep, Hannah. Let me take care of you, at least for a little while.”

  I felt the reassuring pressure of his body sitting on the edge of the bed until I fell asleep. It was the best sleep I’d had in years.

  28

  Shadows of leaves danced across the ceiling in the bright morning light. I lay very still, trying to remember where I was, and why I felt so happy. My head throbbed dully and my side still hurt, but it was manageable. I glanced over at the edge of the bed and remembered Boris sitting there the night before. I ran my hand over the spot where he must have sat.

  Stiffly, I climbed out of bed and smoothed the covers back into place. A simple dress of Trudi’s hung on a chair next to the bed. The house was empty, but Boris had left a note on the kitchen table telling me to help myself to breakfast. A Berliner Tageblatt lay neatly folded in the middle of the table.

  I ate a huge breakfast at the tiny table and read through the paper. Rudolf was still missing, and the police suspected foul play. I was not mentioned. There was a feature on Ernst Röhm’s unification with his long-lost son, whose mother was missing. So, did they not want to admit that a former prostitute was the mother of Röhm’s son, or was the true mother someone else entirely, someone who was truly missing? The picture accompanying the story showed Anton and Röhm dressed in dark-colored suits staring grimly into the camera. Anton Röhm looked like a boy who had lost his mother.

  I paged to the obituaries. Josef Lehmann’s obituary stressed his importance to the Nazi party and mentioned that he was survived only by a son, Wilhelm Lehmann. It did not say how he had died. His funeral was scheduled in three days. It would be a grand Nazi pageant. I imagined Wilhelm at the center of such a spectacle, alone. His father had given his life to protect Wilhelm and do his duty for the party. I wondered how Wilhelm felt about being a Nazi now.

  After I dressed, I used Boris’s telephone to call a taxi. It was extravagant, but I had no strength to find a bus stop or sit on a jerky train. I silently thanked Paul for the money he’d given me in the hospital. Outside it was chilly, and I grabbed Boris’s jacket from the hall closet. It was another thing of his that I had to use. I added it to the list of things that I owed him.
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  I took the taxi to Wilhelm’s house, remembering the address he’d written on the beer coaster that first night at the El Dorado. I rang his bell over and over until he opened the door, his face swollen from crying and deep circles under his eyes.

  “Hannah,” he said. “What more could you possibly want from me?”

  “I came to see if you needed help.”

  He opened the door. “Help me then.” The smell of alcohol on his breath was overpowering.

  He led me down a narrow dark hall. The wall inside his front door had a large signed picture of Hitler. “To my dear friend, Josef, for your service to the Reich. Adolf Hitler.” It was placed so that you would see it every time you entered the apartment.

  I turned my back on the picture and walked to the living room. Without being invited, I sat in an austere leather chair. Wilhelm threw himself like a sack onto the sofa across from me. I glanced around at the spare furniture. Nothing hung on the walls. This was a soldier’s room, spartan and simple.

  “I must apologize for not helping you,” Wilhelm said, after several minutes of silence. “I didn’t know you were up there, bleeding.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but he raised his palm to stop me.

  “I’m not the kind of person who would let someone die without helping,” he continued. “But my father was dying.”

  He bowed his head. Tears fell unheeded into his lap. Although I longed to cross the room and comfort him, I stayed put. He would not welcome my comfort.

  “I didn’t know.” He gulped and wiped his nose on his sleeve. “You were up there, bleeding, I would have gone up to help you, if I’d known.”

  “I know.” I believed him. Wilhelm was a good person, still. I wondered how long his goodness would last as he fought and killed with the Nazis.

  “I found out when they were taking you down on a stretcher. You were soaked in blood, pale as snow. But the police said you would live, and then they took me.”

  “Took you?”

  “They asked me how my father died. What we were doing there.”

  “And what did you tell them?”

  “I said that we were accompanying Röhm to a meeting, but that I did not know more than that. I barely did know more than that.”

  “What did you say about your father?”

  Wilhelm stared at his folded hands. I listened to the ticking of a clock.

  “I said that he shot himself in the chest, when I was only steps away from him.”

  “Oh, Wilhelm.”

  He spoke over me. “That I held his head while he was dying, but he never said a word.”

  I crossed the room and sat next to him. I reached for his hand, but stopped myself.

  “He loved me,” Wilhelm said, his voice a whisper in the quiet room.

  “Yes,” I answered softly.

  “Ernst. My father. Both of them loved me.”

  “They did.”

  Wilhelm sat up straighter, as if my presence reminded him that he needed to act strong. “They both did what they thought was right.”

  “Yes.”

  “And both are dead because of it. Because of me.”

  “You did not make your father take Ernst’s life or his own.” I spoke more sharply than I’d intended.

  “Röhm,” he spat the word out. “Röhm made him take his own life.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Will you defend him?” Wilhelm turned to me, his bloodshot eyes filled with rage. I feared what he might do to me.

  “He left me alone in that room to die,” I said at last. “He’s no friend of mine.”

  “And he took Anton,” Wilhelm said. “They left before the police came.”

  “He is Anton’s father.” I stood up and walked back to my chair. Distance seemed a better policy. “It’s in the newspaper this morning.”

  “I haven’t read it.” He ran his fingers through his brassy hair.

  “Anton will be raised a warrior. Like he always wanted.” I took a deep breath. “As your father raised you.”

  “Like your father raised Ernst.”

  Wilhelm lurched out of the room. I realized that he was quite drunk. I had to be very careful not to anger him. He returned with a tiny object in his hand. The third lead soldier that Ernst had rescued all those years ago.

  “Ernst gave this to me . . . on that last night.” He held it in his outstretched palm.

  “He loved you.” It did not feel like enough to say, but it was all I had.

  “He said it would free me from my father. He said it freed him from caring what his father thought of him.” He turned the soldier over and over in his strong hands. “After my father’s funeral, Röhm and Anton are going back to Munich. Röhm has a man there to take care of him. As soon as he can, he’ll put Anton in boarding school. I asked after him. Even with my father dead, I hear things.”

  “A boarding school might be the best thing for him,” I said, thinking of the life that Röhm led. The less Anton saw of it, the better.

  As if reading my mind, Wilhelm said, “Röhm is having a birthday party for Anton tomorrow. At the El Dorado, at noon, before they open.”

  “He will be six.” My heart turned over in my chest.

  “I am invited,” he said, picking at his cuticles till they bled.

  “Will you go?” I felt a surge of hope.

  Wilhelm shook his head and dropped his bleeding hand. “I don’t want to see that man again.”

  “Won’t he come to your father’s funeral?”

  Wilhelm sighed. “Yes.”

  “Take me with you.” I could not disguise the desperation in my voice.

  “To the party?” Wilhelm sounded surprised.

  “Yes.”

  “No women. Röhm is very strict about such things.” He picked at his cuticles again.

  “No women?”

  “It said so on the invitation. Men only. The storm trooper parties are often like that. They want to keep the weakening . . . err . . . civilizing effect of women away from them.”

  “I want to make certain that Anton is well. I want to tell him that I am alive.”

  Wilhelm looked at me appraisingly, then gave a quick shake of his head. “You will have to be a boy. Come by at ten and I will get you ready.”

  I made him tea and breakfast before calling another taxi. When I went to my apartment, I insisted that we circle the block twice so that I could look for policemen or Rudolf. After I asked the driver to wait for me, I crept up my stairs. I leaned against my door, trembling, for a full minute before I worked up the courage to go inside. Rudolf could be in there. But eventually I tired of standing in the hall like a child afraid of the dark and pushed the door open.

  My beloved apartment was still in shambles from Rudolf’s warning. I packed my only suitcase with my clothes, Anton’s few outfits, and the smallest family pictures. I was grateful that the police had removed Mitzi’s body. Had Kommissar Lang been responsible for that? There was more to him than met the eye.

  When I asked the taxi driver to take me to Ernst’s apartment, my voice trembled. This time I did not dare wait at the front door, because I feared that more courage would never come. I marched into the kitchen and plucked the ring from its hiding place in the stove with a pair of tongs. Our teacups sat on the table, half-empty.

  I steeled myself to walk into the bedroom. My head spun. Blood soaked the mattress. My blood. I had nearly died here. My knees collapsed. A chill ran over me, and I fought down an almost overwhelming urge to flee.

  My hands shook as I reached down through my dried blood and pulled the letters out of the mattress. A splash of blood stained the brown wrapping paper, but none had seeped onto the letters.

  I looked around Ernst’s apartment for the last time, running my fingers along his beautiful dresses. This was the last place that Anton had seen me. I hoped that Röhm had told him I still lived. Back in the kitchen, I cleared the cups and wiped down Mother’s table. Then I stumbled down to the taxi in a haze of tears,
the letters and ring clutched in my hands.

  I had the taxi take me to Herr Klein’s shop. I rapped on the door.

  “Hannah,” said Herr Klein, pulling me and my suitcase into the shop and closing the door. “Paul said that you were in the hospital, guarded by the police.”

  “I left. I do not trust the police to keep me safe,” I said. “A powerful man is after me.”

  “Is it about the ring?”

  “Strangely, no,” I said. “But that is why I am here. I want you to cut it in two. Then set them in two buttons, painted black. Quickly.”

  He peered at me through his round spectacles. “You are asking me to butcher the Mona Lisa.”

  “Yes.”

  He took the ring out of my hand with a sigh. “Desperate times these are.”

  “I want to sell you all the other pieces. I need American dollars. Or gold.”

  He nodded. “I have the receipt. I will bring it out with the money.”

  He disappeared in his back room with the ruby. I leaned against the table. Exhaustion seeped into my bones and my aching head, but at least the ring was now secure in Herr Klein’s safe.

  Herr Klein returned with a cup of strong tea. After I’d had a few sips, he counted out bills into my hand for the jewelry.

  “Thank you,” I said. “But there is more.”

  “Isn’t there always?”

  I handed him the package that contained the letters. “Can you hold this for one week.”

  “And then?”

  “If you have not heard from me, deliver it to Paul.”

  “And why can’t you give it to Paul now?”

  I hesitated before I told him the truth. “I do not trust him not to open it. It is dangerous, more so than the ring. Take special care of it.”

  He shook his head and took the package. “What have you stumbled into?”

  “Something I must stumble out of.”

  Exhausted, I returned to Sarah’s apartment and retrieved the extra letter that Herr Silbert had done the forgery from. I hoped I had enough energy for my last two stops: the ticket office and Tegel prison. I would need every precaution I could think of to survive another day. Even that seemed unlikely to pull me through this. Still, my wits were all I had. And a brave needs to keep his wits and his arrows sharp. I stared at the special paper I had bought, knowing that my future rested on it.