29
Tomorrow I would sneak into Röhm’s party and reassure Anton that I was alive. After that, I did not know, but I was ready to do whatever was needed.
I opened Boris’s iron gate and walked to his front door. If he was not home, I’d sit on his expensive front steps until his neighbors noticed and called the police to arrest me. I knocked.
“Fraulein?” A thin woman with a pinched nose opened the door, drying her hands on an immaculate white apron. It looked like the apron Boris had worn yesterday.
“Hannah,” I said, not mentioning my last name. “I am here to see Herr Krause.”
“I know.” She looked me over with stern gray eyes set close together. “He left word that you were expected. I am his housekeeper, Frau Inge.”
She showed me in and deposited me in the living room. She insisted on carrying my suitcase upstairs for me and bringing me a cup of coffee and a piece of apple cake.
“Herr Krause also asked me to buy you an afternoon paper.” She looked me up and down, suddenly noticing that I wore one of Boris’s jackets. She did not look pleased.
I thanked her and accepted the paper. As I savored the excellent coffee and delicious cake, I read. A formal picture of a young Rudolf von Reiche covered a quarter of the front page. He’d been handsome once, with a long elegant face and high forehead. His dark eyes looked intelligent and searching.
I tore myself away from the picture and read the article by Peter Weill, noticing with satisfaction that Maria had not captured my style. But I sobered as I read what had happened to Rudolf. He’d been brutally beaten, perhaps whipped, and thrown alive into the Spree. Unlike Ernst, he’d been alive enough to drown there. Röhm’s justice. Rudolf had been whipped by someone, as Sweetie Pie had been whipped by her clients, then cast into a watery grave, as had Ernst. I noted that he had not been shot, as I had.
I felt sorrow I had not expected. I had never liked Rudolf. He had tried to kill me, would have killed me if Röhm had not intervened. But he was still a human being. Ernst had loved him, even if I would never fathom why.
I sat on Boris’s sumptuous leather sofa and read until dinnertime, when a key rattled in the front door.
A twinge of pain ran down my side as I stood awkwardly and walked to the front hall.
Boris stood inside the door, taking off his gloves. When he noticed me, his eyes lit up. “Hannah,” he said. “I am glad to see you here.”
“I am grateful to be here.”
Frau Inge appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. “Let me take those for you.”
He handed her his hat and gloves. “We will need only two places at dinner, Frau Inge,” he said. “Trudi is staying with her grandmother for a few days.”
Frau Inge whisked away, clinking dishes against each other as she put them in the cupboards.
“Your china won’t hold up to my staying here.” I glanced at the wall that separated the hall from the kitchen.
“I can buy more china.” He crossed the hallway and took me in his arms. It was the first time in many years it had felt right to be held by a man, and I relaxed against him. He smelled of limes, cedar and, unexpectedly, cigars.
“Do you smoke cigars?” I asked, inhaling his scent.
He laughed. “One of my clerks smokes cigars, my little detective.”
I stepped back and looked up at him. For a few seconds he gazed into my eyes. His voice was thick when he said, “I did not know if I would see you again. I felt you might vanish. Like a wisp of smoke.”
“Even smoke leaves a trace.” I turned my head away, unable to look into his eyes. I was frightened to feel anything for him, afraid that he was correct and one of us would vanish.
He tilted my chin so that he could look into my eyes again. “That’s not much of a guarantee.”
“Dinner is ready,” Frau Inge said in a frosty tone from the doorway.
Boris stepped back and took me by the hand. He led me to a formal dining room. The mahogany table shone like glass from frequent polishing. Made for large formal gatherings, it was much too big for the two antique plates sitting on it.
Frau Inge lit the candles with brisk movements.
“I will clear, Frau Inge,” said Boris. “You may leave early.”
“Thank you, Herr Krause. Good night.” She nodded in my direction. “Frau Hannah.”
Boris and I ate truly marvelous sauerbraten and red cabbage with potato dumplings. Frau Inge slammed the back door midway through the meal.
“Frau Inge is not used to women in her home?”
Boris smiled. “I haven’t given her opportunity. Until now.”
“Ever the staid banker.”
“And the busy father. I’ve been busy with Trudi and work for many years.” Boris looked off into the distance, his eyes bitter. “Too busy.”
“I know how that can be.”
“I believe you do, Hannah.” He took a sip of wine, his lips moist. “What is next for you?”
“I do not know.” I cut a dumpling into tiny pieces. “I read today that Rudolf is dead.”
“Does that make you feel safe?” Boris looked at me with serious eyes.
“Does it make you feel safe?” I asked, smiling. “Or do you think I crept out last night and murdered him?”
“I will take my chances,” Boris said. “I’m a brave man, after all.”
I took another bite of sauerbraten. Frau Inge was a marvelous cook, far better than I. I swallowed the meat. “I think Röhm has nothing against me. I will soon be out of your way.”
“You don’t have to leave.” Boris reached across the table and took my hand. I watched his lips form the words. “Even when you are well.”
“I could stay here, in this castle with a servant and eat delicious meals and be waited on, forever?” I laughed. The idea was ridiculous.
“Yes.” He looked offended and pulled his hand back. “Perhaps.”
“Boris.” I stretched my arm across the polished table and stroked his arm, his muscles hard under the fine linen. “I don’t know.”
“No one knows anything, Hannah.” Boris still sounded upset.
I stared down at my plate.
“Tell me of your other doings today.” I could tell that he strained for a normal tone. “Did you go home?”
I nodded. “The police removed Mitzi’s body.” I took a deep breath. “The rest is smashed and filthy, but I did gather a few photographs and clothes. I also went to see Wilhelm.”
“The boy whose father killed your brother?”
“Yes.”
“And?” Boris pushed his plate back and took another long sip of wine.
“He is grieving for his father and for my brother.”
“Does he have other family?”
“Not that I saw.”
I pushed back my plate as well, and we drank expensive wine in silence. Money could buy many things, after all. Peace, a grand house, good food.
After the wine, we cleared the table together. It felt comfortable, and right. Not counting Ernst, I had not helped a man clean up since Walter, over a decade ago. This was the life I could have had, if Walter had lived, except without the housekeeper and in a much smaller house.
I began to wash a plate, but Boris caught one side of it. “Frau Inge would be mortified if we washed up. She’d take the dishes back out and rewash them.”
I laughed. “You are not serious.”
He stood right next to me, holding the other side of the plate, and I turned to him. “She’s done it before.”
Before I could answer, he leaned down and kissed me. The plate crashed on the checkerboard tile floor. I tried to pull away to gather the pieces, but Boris would not let me. I did not want to move anyway.
Like everything else about him, his kiss was deep and rich and sensual.
When he stopped I clung to him, dizzy. My lips tingled, and my heart beat out of rhythm.
“I am sorry about the plate,” I whispered.
“I can always buy more china
,” he said in a husky voice.
He carried me to his bedroom, careful of my wounded ribs. Even Walter had not carried me. I felt like a teenage princess in a fairy tale, not a thirty-two-year-old reporter with a gunshot wound.
The bedroom was spotless, as always, and Boris set me on top of the quilt. His eyes were dark, and he inhaled sharply when I ran my fingers through his wonderful, thick hair. I slid my hands down the smooth linen of his shirt. His heart pounded under my palms.
I pulled him down onto the bed, leaving just enough room between us to unbutton his shirt. I smelled starch as I pulled it off his back and felt the warm smoothness of his skin. Boris groaned. He lifted me gently and unbuttoned the back of my dress, pulling it off me with one quick motion.
Then I felt his naked skin against my body for the first time. I longed to cut off my bandages so that there was nothing between us, but I soon forgot that anything was between us at all.
Boris was a wonderful lover, tender and careful around my wounded side and my bruised head. Never once did he hurt me. In this, as with wine, he was the connoisseur, taking his time, slow and thorough. If all men were like him, I could understand why Ernst took so many.
Afterward, I lay curled in his arms, content for the first time in years.
Boris breathed slow and even next to me. I closed my eyes and pretended that I could stay like this forever. How intoxicating it would be to give in and let this take its course. I could live in the castle, with the king. As if he read my thoughts, Boris pulled me closer to him. Frau Inge would cook and clean for me. I could find another job, without worrying about the pay. Food would never be a problem. And there would be someone there to rely on, and more. I sighed and shifted next to him. Much was at stake tomorrow.
“I’ve never made love to a woman with no breasts before.” Boris stroked his hand over the bandage that covered my chest.
“They’re there, just buried.”
“Like so much else about you.”
I said nothing.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” he asked. “Will you be here again when I come home from work?”
“Wilhelm said that Anton will be having a birthday party tomorrow, at noon. At the El Dorado.”
“The bar?” Boris ran his fingers through my bobbed hair.
“The bar will be closed.” I leaned into his hand like a cat being stroked.
“And?”
“And I intend to go.”
Boris slid both his arms around me. “What will you do?”
“Tell Anton that I am alive.” I shivered. “The last time he saw me I was lying in a pool of blood.”
Boris tightened his arms. “He deserves to see you alive.”
I lay next to him, enjoying the soft warmth of his body and his bed. I had dozed off when Boris spoke again.
“After the party, what then?”
“Bankers have to know everything, don’t they?”
“Only the important things.”
I pulled myself onto my right elbow and winced. I wanted to see his face.
He seemed sleepy and relaxed, but his eyes were watchful.
“I may need to leave in a hurry.”
“I can take the afternoon off and wait for you. As Anton said, my automobile is as fast as the wind.”
“Boris.” I brushed his thick hair off his forehead. “You do not want to be involved.”
“How do you know what I want?” He bent down and kissed me again, long and lingering.
It was many long moments before I spoke again. “Did you want that?”
He smiled. “I think I’ll always want that.”
Blood rushed to my ears, but still I wanted to warn him away. “You are no law breaker, Boris.”
He sat up. “You intend to snatch the boy?”
“Perhaps.”
“Kidnap the son of a top Nazi official?”
I sat up next to him and pulled the quilt to my chest. “I might.”
Boris’s look told me how insane my thoughts and plans were. I lay down beside him without another word. Whatever happened, we still had tonight.
The next morning, Boris’s side of the bed was empty and cold. It had been the most wonderful night in my memory, and I ran over it in my mind while I washed and dressed in one of my own dresses from my suitcase. I repacked my belongings, including my green scarf and Winnetou the bear.
Frau Inge was downstairs when I came down with my suitcase.
“Good day,” she said. “Herr Krause left orders that I prepare you breakfast.”
The way she said orders left little doubt about how she felt about it.
I ate a quick breakfast and called a taxi. The million-dollar ruby was turning me into a profligate.
Frau Inge helped me carry my suitcase out through the yard. “Leaving so soon?”
“One never knows, Frau Inge,” I said, suppressing a smile. “I might be back before you know it.”
30
I took the taxi to Herr Klein’s and picked up the ruby buttons. I borrowed a needle and thread to sew them on Winnetou’s eyes. Herr Klein shook his head, as if not convinced that this was a safe way to transport jewels.
When I got to Wilhelm’s, he looked pale and drawn, but better than the day before.
“You’re glowing,” he said. “There’s a man.” A mischievous smile crossed his haunted face.
“Is that the only reason a woman can look happy?”
“It’s the only reason I could look that happy,” Wilhelm said. “But keep your secrets. We have work to do.”
He led me to his bathroom and made me sit on his toilet. “I’ll have to cut your hair, but I think I can use some for a mustache.”
“Whatever it takes.” I wondered how Boris would react to me with a man’s haircut. Bad enough that my breasts were bound flat.
As Wilhelm cut my hair, he groaned at my sparse eyebrows. “Mascara will help,” he said. “But they’re so delicate.”
“I don’t pluck them,” I said.
“How unwomanly.” He ran his hand expertly through my hair and clipped. Tufts of hair fell onto my shoulders and the floor. I tried not to think about it.
“The hair is done.” He walked out the bathroom door. “Don’t move and especially don’t look in the mirror.”
I did not want to see myself as a man, so followed his advice. This reminded me of the days when Ernst would insist on helping me with makeup before I went on dates, after Walter died. My many first dates. There were few second dates.
Wilhelm returned with a small blue pot. “Spirit gum.” He dipped his hand in the paste and ran it above my upper lip. It smelled like rubber cement. He took a pinch of hair and applied it, strand by strand, sticking it into the spirit gum. When finished, he trimmed it delicately.
“Now the mirror!”
Ernst stared back at me from the mirror. Ernst as he might have looked with a more masculine haircut and a mustache. I was shorter and my features more delicate, but I could easily pass for a boy in my early twenties, except for my dress. When my eyes met Wilhelm’s in the mirror, his too were full of tears.
“You look so much like him.” Wilhelm straightened my hair. “I never saw it until now.”
I forced a smile on my face. “Nor did I. You are a miracle worker, Wilhelm.”
He coughed, and we both pulled ourselves together.
“I helped out during school productions,” he said. “And Ernst taught me much about makeup, although mostly he went from boy to girl, not the other way around.”
I stared at myself in disbelief. I was a man. I straightened my shoulders and grimaced at the mirror.
Wilhelm held up a black sock.
I raised my eyebrows.
“Your equipment, monsieur.” He stuffed the sock with other socks and helped me tape it to the inside of my right thigh, on top of my underwear.
“I feel well endowed.” I looked down at the sock. “And that sock looks happy.”
“It’s not all about size, you naugh
ty boy.”
He helped me tie the bandage tighter across my breasts. It hurt my wounded side, and I hoped it wouldn’t bleed.
Wilhelm helped me into a thin undershirt and a too-large Nazi uniform. Even Mother would not have recognized me. It was disquieting, but also liberating.
I tucked the forged letter into my breast pocket.
We rode to the party in silence. We parked behind a familiar form in a black Mercedes watching the door to the El Dorado. Boris! My heart leaped and my eyes filled with tears as I hurried across the street to the club.
“Helmut,” Wilhelm said. “Don’t cry like a woman.”
“Jawohl.” I pushed open the club door for him.
I handed my suitcase to the coat-check boy. He did not recognize me from the other night. “Thank you, Fraulein,” I said, in a deep voice.
“You are most welcome.” The coat-check boy fluttered his eyelashes at me.
“Try not to talk,” Wilhelm whispered out of the side of his mouth as we passed through the red curtains and into the club.
The room was full of black and brown uniforms of the Sturm Abteilung, the Schutz Staffel, and regular Nazis. I had never been in a place with so many men before. The lone woman serving drinks was probably in drag.
When Wilhelm shepherded me to the bar and ordered two whiskeys Oliver’s eyes widened, but he said nothing. Did he recognize me? I turned my back to him.
“Are all these men attracted to other men?” I whispered to Wilhelm.
“I wish.” He laughed. “Many of the SA men are, especially the ones clustered around Röhm. Most of the SS are not. You never know about the regular Nazis.”
I took a manly gulp of whiskey and glanced around to find Anton. He sat at a small round table next to Ernst Röhm. He clutched a white El Dorado balloon and looked thoroughly lost. I longed to sweep him up in my arms and carry him away. He sat with the military bearing drilled into the children of officers, but his eyes were far away. I did not see another child anywhere.
A Trace of Smoke (Hannah Vogel) Page 24