Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright

by Justine Saracen

  Chapter Twenty-six

  February 2, 1943

  For almost two years the Adlon drops continued, as Katja and Frederica had lunches at monthly intervals, sometimes in each other’s company, sometimes inviting a friend or colleague so as not to draw attention to themselves as regulars. A few times, Peter joined them as escort, though the lack of formal clothing and correct papers always made him nervous. Always a Steinhäger bottle found its way into the trash and unknown hands collected its contents.

  On this day, Katja enjoyed a cheerful lunch with one of the more easy-going nurses she had invited from the Charité. Since drinking a bottle of schnapps was beyond the capabilities of two women, they amended the Steinhäger exchange to a simple drop of a bottle concealed in Katja’s purse. At the conclusion of the meal, Katja made the usual powder-room excuse. She rose from the table with purse in hand and made her way through the tables. The ladies’ room was fortunately just beyond the door to the kitchen and the wide window through which trays of dirty dishes were slid. Everything seemed to go according to plan, as things had the last twenty times. She could do it in her sleep.

  Something wasn’t right. The two foreign workers who usually collected the dishes were not at their post. She peered as inconspicuously as possible through the slot into the kitchen. At the far end a cluster of kitchen workers blocked her view, but then the circle opened and she saw two men in dark suits shoving a man through the outside door. An arrest by the Gestapo.

  She hurried on to the ladies’ room. Inside the stall, she carefully extracted the four pages of text from the Steinhäger bottle and slid them inside her shirt against her skin. Then, breathing slowly to calm her panic, she left the bathroom and deposited the empty bottle in the trash.

  *

  A week later, Katja unlocked her front door and entered her father’s living room. She had reported the failed drop to Frederica immediately and, as with the loss of the kiosk, they could do nothing until Handel sent new instructions.

  Sliding her shoulder bag off her shoulder onto the living-room floor, Katja let herself collapse onto the sofa. There on the corner table, she spotted the Kriegspost envelope from Dietrich. Letters were rare from him now since he was so deep into Russia, and while they were never very interesting, each one at least meant he was still alive. She removed her shoes and settled back, tearing open the letter. She saw immediately that it was different. His handwriting was erratic, as if he couldn’t control his pencil, and the paper was water-stained. The message was ominous.

  Dearest Katja,

  I can tell you this now; it is no longer a secret. I am at Stalingrad. This letter will go out with the hospital plane. I just want you to know that I’m well. I wish I could say the same about my feet. These boots are fine for parade, but they’re not up to snow and ice and minus-forty-degrees temperature. The Russians don’t even wear them, but have some sort of thick felt things. The fighting is hard, from street to street, and truly, the Russians seem to be mad. They run at us, sometimes without rifles, and just pick one up from their fallen comrades. We’re sure they attack for fear of being shot from behind by their own officers. Whatever the reason, we keep killing them, but they keep coming back, like demons, inexhaustible.

  But at night it stops. You can look up at the sky and the winter air is so clear that you can see millions of stars. It breaks my heart sometimes. They’re so clean, so peaceful, it doesn’t seem right they should be shining down on what’s happening here. The Russians can see them over on their side too, and maybe they think the same thing. I wish it were all over. Pray for me, darling. That I come back from purgatory to the homeland and to you. I’ll open my kitbag and give you a handful of stars.

  Katja felt a pang of conscience. Though she had long ago ceased to want intimacy with him, at moments like this she loved him deeply for his innocence. Now he was in Russia, in snow, no doubt, fighting for his life. And all the while, his wife was helping his enemies defeat him. The coded notes she had recently carried told of the uprising in Warsaw and the collapse of the siege of Leningrad, both disastrous events for Germany.

  The phone rang and Katja lurched for it. “Sommer,” she said.

  On the other end of the line, Frederica was brief. They doubted that the Gestapo would even be interested in tapping either of their phones, but the stakes were so high, they had to guard against it by keeping everything banal.

  “The opera? That sounds lovely,” Katja said, taking up a pencil and scribbling down the information. “Thursday in a week? That’s fine. Do you have the tickets? Oh, good.”

  Katja understood that the SOE had provided another drop location. Apparently another dead drop, though she could not ask about it, of course.

  “What opera, if I may ask? Götterdämmerung? Oh, that’s wonderful. I like Wagner.”

  She hung up the phone thinking that someone in the opera management had a diabolical sense of humor.

  *

  February 18, 1943

  The night before the opera drop, Frederica spent long hours summarizing and coding the new pages of Joseph Goebbels’ ramblings. The minister of propaganda exuded a constant flow of self-congratulation mixed with self-pity, like mucous seeping from an ulcer, but a portion of it was of vital interest to the Allies, and that was now in Frederica’s pocket.

  Katja had been able to read most of the summary before Frederica coded it, of the American bombing of the naval base in Wilhelmshaven, of the new conscription law for both men and women, and of the ominous loss of the airfield at Stalingrad.

  And always it was a wrenching of both heart and mind. Every military failure was another blow to the Nazi state, yet it was her own country that was battered, her own people who were dying.

  Most portentous of all was the news of the airfield lost to the Red Army. If Goering’s Luftwaffe could not land with supplies for the battle-ravaged city, the Wehrmacht could not continue fighting. And it was winter. Katja tried to force away the thought of Dietrich in his marching boots.

  Katja took Frederica’s arm and they walked together up the stairs to the opera house on Unter den Linden. Setting aside her anxieties for a moment, Katja had to admire the splendor of the old building. Though it had been bombed and set ablaze in April of 1941, it had been so important to Berlin life that it was rebuilt within a year. In a world in tumult, the classical colonnade and Greek-Revival sculpted pediment acted as a sort of reassurance of cultural permanence, no matter what happened to the state.

  But inside the ornate atrium, the war was real again. The women wore gowns, as always, but the majority of men streaming into the auditorium were in uniform. Intent upon the task at hand, Frederica seemed unaffected, by the elegance or by the danger, as the stream of people drew them up the carpeted stairs.

  They halted at the cloakroom on the upper floor that held the loges and the seats where the officers sat. Frederica threaded her green silk scarf through a buttonhole of her treasonously laden winter coat, then surrendered it with an indifferent smile to the attendant. Was the cloakroom assistant Handel’s agent? Or was it the person handing out wooden chips with numbers? Or neither one? Would some third person enter the cloakroom during the opera? Katja handed over her own coat, barely hearing the noise of the crowd for all the questions buzzing in her head.

  Finally they were settled in their seats and Katja glanced toward the orchestra pit. She could not see her father from where they sat, but knew from experience that he was in the string section and waited for the conductor’s arrival.

  Finally the opera began, and the first ominous chords of Götterdämmerung sounded, the rich interweaving of leitmotivs that harkened back to a tragic-heroic history and at the same time foreshadowed the coming apocalypse.

  Katja had grown up with Wagner. Grainy recordings had familiarized her in early childhood with the melodies. Though she knew the complex and slightly absurd tale, it was the music that washed over her, the oceanic ebb and flow that rose to stormy crescendos that allowed her to forget
why they had come. But the powerful chords of the Death of Siegfried and the sight of him carried on the shoulders of his men brought a sharp reminder of Dietrich, and as her eyes filled, she wondered if he was still alive in Stalingrad.

  The whole opera hit painfully close to home, for it was clear what had brought the downfall of Valhalla. Arrogance, greed, and a soul-killing will to power. During the final chords, as the great fortress of the gods thundered to collapse, she was numb with sorrow.

  Frederica, apparently, was not. Even while the applause continued, she tugged on Katja’s arm. “Come on, let’s go. Either it’s done or not. I can’t bear to stay another minute.”

  Katja followed her up the aisle of the arena into the atrium and up the stairs against the flow of traffic. Dozens of people stood ahead of them, and the coat-check women were already handing over fur wraps and leather greatcoats.

  Frederica dropped both of their chips into an attendant’s hand, and Katja’s coat appeared immediately on the counter. She pulled it toward her and slid her arms into the sleeves, anxious to be done.

  But Frederica waited. The attendant disappeared again among the coat racks and it seemed an eternity before she returned. Without a coat. “I’m sorry, Fräulein. There’s no coat on hook A26. There must be a mistake.”

  Katja felt panic rising and sensed Frederica stiffen next to her.

  “That can’t be,” Frederica said calmly, though her darting eyes hinted at an urge to flee. Had the Gestapo confiscated it? Katja looked around for the hand that might fall at any moment on her shoulder.

  In fact, a bulky man in a pinstriped suit strode toward them, Frederica’s criminal coat draped over his arm. Katja tensed, ready to bolt. The buzz of the concert crowd faded behind the painful pounding of her heart. They were caught.

  The man passed them and held out the coat to the attendant. “Excuse me, Fräulein,” he said. “This is not my wife’s coat. I’m sorry. I was distracted by the news from the front, and I picked up the wrong one.”

  Frederica reached for it before the attendant could react. “Actually, it’s mine. Thank you for bringing it back.” She drew it on quickly, and her barely perceptible nod of satisfaction told Katja that the package was gone from the pocket.

  The gentleman identified the correct coat for his wife and then started away, mumbling, “Terrible, terrible news.”

  On an impulse, Katja caught up with him. “Excuse me, sir. The ‘news from the front’ you’re talking about, what is it?”

  “You haven’t heard? Oh, I suppose not, if you were in the concert hall. My son just heard on the radio before coming to meet me here. Stalingrad has fallen.”

  *

  Fallen. That terrible ambiguous word that really meant killed. But surely an entire army would not be slaughtered before surrendering. Some men must have been taken prisoner. Some men, surely, had been carried out.

  Each day she waited for another letter, saying Dietrich had come out in the last transport of wounded, or that his regiment had broken out before the others fell. But no letter came, and after two weeks, she learned to live with near-certainty. He was gone from her life, and she slowly absorbed the new reality as she worked, both for and against Germany.

  The late-winter snow falling gave a yellowish tint to the evening light while Katja crossed the street to the familiar building. She stomped loose snow from her shoes and let herself in. The hall and stairs were still ice-cold, but when Frederica opened the apartment door, a fragrant warmth enveloped her.

  “Come in.” She slid her arm under Katja’s and guided her to the sofa. “The Reichsminister is just about to talk.”

  The little Volksradio on the table by the sofa was tuned to the national broadcast. Katja listened to the announcer describing the packed Sportspalast while Frederica went to make some ersatz coffee. In a few moments she was back with two cups of a drink that, with enough sugar, reminded vaguely of real coffee.

  Frederica sat down close to her and, as always, spoke in a voice lower in volume than the broadcast, so that Katja had to look at her to catch every word. They had fallen into the habit in the years they had talked about dangerous things, and now it was particularly soothing. “He’s going to talk about Stalingrad, of course. He has to, and so do I. I want you to know I’m sorry, I’m so very sorry about Dietrich. He was a good, kind man, and he loved you. I liked him for that, that he loved you, and I respected your marriage.”

  Katja drew up her knees. “I think, at the end, you respected it more than I did. I found it harder and harder to be a wife. If he had come back, I would have told him it was over. It was a mistake from the beginning.”

  Frederica took her hand. “Why did you marry so suddenly anyhow? I remember you saying you were not in a hurry, but then one day you just did it.”

  Katja winced at the realization. “It was because of you.”

  “Me? I was the last person who would have wanted you to marry. I was half in love with you myself, even back then.”

  “I didn’t know that. I only know that you were strangely close with Goebbels, and one day I saw him put his hands on you in a way that made me assume you were his newest lover. I had no claim on you anyhow. How could I possibly? The limping goat had won, and to spare myself humiliation, I ran away.”

  Frederica pressed Katja’s palm against her own cheek. “Oh, my dear. That was the beginning of my assignment for the SOE, and it was critical that I become one of his favorites. That’s what you saw, I suppose. But I loathe his touch. I feel soiled by him every time he lays a hand on me.”

  “So then you did…?” Katja could not bring herself to finish the question.

  “Sleep with him? Would you care for me less if I did? Or wouldn’t it be the same as all the times you slept with Dietrich?”

  Katja grappled with both questions. “No, of course I wouldn’t love you less, but it wouldn’t be the same as Dietrich. Goebbels is a monster.”

  Frederica’s silence was damning. “So you did sleep with him,” Katja said quietly.

  “Did you think I would have been able to sustain his interest for so many years without doing that? That he would have trusted me with his personal diaries if he had not thought I belonged to him?”

  Another long silence, while Katja absorbed the sobering truth. “Does he still…?”

  “No. Fortunately, at the moment, he has a new paramour and I’m just another passing fancy at the office. But he trusts me now, and that was always the important thing. That was my sacrifice, to allow that revolting little man to pollute me so I could help defeat him and his whole program.”

  Just then, massive applause crackled through the tiny radio speaker, and Frederica fell silent. The minister began.

  I speak with holy seriousness, as the hour demands. The German Volk knows the gravity of the situation, but the heroic sacrifices of our soldiers in Stalingrad have not been in vain. The storm raging against our venerable continent from the steppes this winter overshadows all previous human and historical experience. The German army and its allies are the only defense.

  “‘Holy seriousness.’ ‘Heroic sacrifices.’ ‘Raging storms from the steppes.’ He’s really chewing up the scenery, isn’t he?” Katja muttered.

  “He’d better be. This will probably be the most important speech of his career. Germany has lost an entire army to an enemy that never attacked us. He’s got to come up with a story that will make it all sound reasonable, even virtuous. Don’t put it past him.”

  More applause hissed from the radio and Goebbels continued.

  We underestimated the scale of the Soviet Union’s war potential. This is a threat to the Reich and to the European continent that casts all previous dangers into the shadows. Two thousand years of Western civilization are in danger. If the Wehrmacht does not break the danger from the East, the Reich and then all of Europe will fall to Bolshevism. And the goal of Bolshevism is Jewish world revolution, an international, Bolshevist-concealed capitalist tyranny. This would mean the liquidat
ion of our entire intelligentsia and the descent of our workers into slavery. The storm from the East that breaks against our battle lines threatens the existence of all of Europe. Behind the oncoming Soviet divisions we see the Jewish liquidation commandos, and behind them terror.

  Katja sneered. “There you have it. Threat to civilization. Jewish world revolution against Europe, descent into slavery and terror. Listen to the audience cheering him on. They’ve swallowed the whole story.”

  “I told you he’s good. A gram of truth and a kilo of lies. The revolution did bring chaos to Russia, and Stalin does seem to be indifferent to the starvation of even his own people. But the International Jewry stuff is where he’s spinning pure fantasy. His darkest dreams.”

  Katja grimaced. “Do we have to listen to it? It’s making me sick.”

  Frederica nodded woefully. “I’m sorry. He’ll ask me about it tomorrow, and expect me to tell him where he was most eloquent. I have to prepare my answers.”

  The shrill voice in the radio buzzed on, and Katja stood up to separate herself from the noise. But even as she stared out the window into the falling snow, she could not block his words.

  The tragic battle of Stalingrad is a symbol of heroic, manly resistance to the revolt of the steppes. The German nation is fighting for their holiest possessions: families, women and children, the beautiful and untouched countryside, their cities and villages, their two-thousand-year-old culture. Terrorist Jewry had 200 million people to serve it in Russia. Women and children in armaments factories and in the war itself. We have to respond with similar measures and use all our resources. Total war is the demand of the hour. The German people are shedding their precious national blood in this battle, but the future of Europe hangs on our success in the East.