He felt her put a note in his hand. “Tomorrow afternoon,” she whispered. “This will tell you where.”
Paul kissed her again, this time making the first move. He was a little ashamed that he had not acted first when they entered the trees, that Rima had been obliged to do it. He was still too young to know that a man can almost never be quick enough to make the first move when a woman has made up her mind to make love to him.
In a normal tone of voice, Rima said, “Go first.”
When he walked back into the light he realized that he was leading the wrong dog. He turned around and walked back. He and Rima met in the path, switched leashes and dogs as smoothly as veteran secret agents, and walked on in opposite directions. In the instant that this maneuver took, Paul saw that Rima’s face was different—softer, with a different light in the eyes.
Balzac had been right about pretty girls. When they were happy, they were beautiful.
2
The next morning at five o’clock, even before Hubbard had started to write, two of Stutzer’s men came for him and Paul. They were young fellows, fresh-faced and correct. They were dressed alike in versions of Stutzer’s civilian wardrobe—brown fedoras, black leather trench coats, highly polished shoes. Hubbard called them the apprentices.
Standing calmly in the doorway in his dressing gown, Hubbard said, “What is it you gentlemen want?”
“Papers.”
Hubbard handed American passports and German identity documents to the apprentice who was doing the talking. He put them into his coat pocket without looking at them.
Hubbard said, “I ask you again. What is this all about?”
“Get dressed, you and your son,” the other apprentice said. “You have five minutes.”
“We are under arrest?”
“You now have three minutes,” said the first apprentice. Apparently it was part of their technique to take turns as spokesman of the arrest. Paul saw that his father loved this detail. Hubbard said, “Paul, get dressed. Bring a sweater. Use the bathroom.” As the Christophers knew from earlier arrests, the refusal of toilet privileges for hours on end was one of the features of secret police interrogation. It was an effective technique. Who knew what the punishment might be for wetting on Major Stutzer’s floor?
Lori, who somehow had managed to appear with her hair combed and fully dressed in a gray frock, stockings, and low-heeled black shoes, said, “Why are you doing this?”
One of the apprentices said, “That is not your concern.”
“My husband and son are not my concern?”
“Today they are our concern. You are expected to go riding in the Tiergarten this morning at seven-thirty exactly. No later.”
The apprentice was perfectly proper, his face expressionless. So was his companion. But Lori saw in their eyes that they wanted her to understand that they knew what they knew. They seemed to be suppressing lascivious smiles. Paul emerged from his bedroom, fully clothed. He overheard the conversation. As he listened, he looked into his mother’s frozen face. There was nothing there for the apprentices, or for him.
In rapid English Lori said to him, “Be polite, Liebchen. Keep your head. Be calm, always calm. Answer only the questions they ask, not the ones they don’t ask.”
“German only!” an apprentice said.
“Jawohl, Mama,” Paul said. He took a step toward his mother, as if to kiss her.
“No touching allowed!” said the other apprentice.
At No. 8 Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, Hubbard and Paul, standing up in a locked room with no chairs, waited until noon, when two men in uniform, not the same ones who had arrested them, came for Paul. Hubbard cried, “Just a moment!” They took Paul, slammed the door in Hubbard’s face, and locked it.
The guards marched Paul to another room where Stutzer was seated at a desk. There were no chairs for visitors in this room, either. Stutzer was reading a file, his pink lips pursed. He went on reading it for many minutes more, ignoring Paul. All German bureaucrats did this. They had done it under the Weimar Republic. No doubt they had done it under the Holy Roman Emperor and Barbarossa and Bismarck. The purpose was to show that the bureaucrat could ignore you, but you could not ignore him.
At last Stutzer made a note on the file he was reading, blotted the ink, then closed the file and placed it in a drawer. He took a key from his pocket and locked the drawer. He put the key back into his pocket. In one corner of the room stood a small sink. Stutzer got up, turned on the faucet and washed his hands. He left the water running when he sat down again at his desk. Paul had never in his short life had to urinate so badly.
Stutzer retrieved his key, unlocked the drawer, withdrew another file, and studied it for several minutes. Without looking up from the file he said, “Section leader Schulz of the Thirty-eighth Hitler Youth whom you viciously attacked in the Tiergarten on 16 June, 1939, suffered a broken nose, a cracked jawbone, two broken teeth, cuts on his face, and injuries to his testicles, which were driven out of the scrotum and into his body by a vicious and treacherous kick. At the time of the attack, he was on official duty. Therefore the assault is considered an assault on an official of the Reich. The penalty for assaulting an officer of the Reich while on official duty is death.”
Paul did not speak. He did not need his mother to remind him that it was a mistake to say more to these people than was absolutely necessary.
Stutzer said, “Do you agree that you inflicted the injuries I have just described?”
“No, Major.”
“‘No?’”
“I hit him only once, on the nose. The injuries you describe could only have been inflicted by several blows.”
“So you admit that you struck this boy who was wearing the uniform of the Reich and was on official duty.”
“I didn’t strike him because he was wearing a uniform and I had no way of knowing he was on official duty. I struck him because he cut the string on my kite for no reason.”
“How did you know that he had no reason?”
“What reason could anyone possibly have for walking up to a total stranger, drawing a knife, and cutting the string of his kite?”
Stutzer tapped the file. “You provoked him.”
“I was minding my own business, flying a kite.”
“Then why did you punch him without warning?”
“As I said, he cut my kite string. He still had the knife in his hand. I didn’t know what he might do next.”
“Why should he do anything else, supposing that what you say about the kite string is true?”
Paul had had conversations like this with his headmaster, who did not like to see French boys lose a fight to an American any better than this man liked seeing a member of the Youth have his nose broken by one.
Paul said, “He was behaving in an unpredictable way. I thought it prudent to protect myself.”
“From what?”
“I thought he was going to attack me.”
“Why would you think such a thing?”
“Because he was not the first bully I had ever encountered, and the others were his friends. In fact they did attack me a moment later, six against one. They beat me until I was unconscious.”
“I remind you that after you attacked their leader, who was wearing the uniform of the Youth, a young man who had sworn an oath to protect the Leader with his life. In your mind you were actually attacking the Leader, is that not so?”
“No.”
“What do you have against the Leader?”
“Nothing whatsoever, Major.”
Stutzer knew perfectly well that this was a lie. “Then why are you not a member of the Youth? You have repeatedly refused to join.”
“That has been explained to you, sir. It is impossible for me to join. Only Germans of pure Aryan blood can belong. I am an American citizen.”
“You are the son of a German mother. You were born in Germany. Under American law, the child of an American father born abroad takes the nationality of the mother. Ther
efore you are a citizen of the Reich.”
Paul was silent. He knew he had already said too much. This was how the secret police were going to proceed against him and his family; this would be their argument. Whether or not it was true was irrelevant. This was the pretence on which they proposed to act. There was no escape from their pretences. Nearly everything men like Stutzer held dear was a pretence, a substitute for a known fact—that they were Aryans, that the Jews were their secret enemies, that Germany had deserved to win the World War, that they were the party of peace, that Adolf Hitler was their savior. Even at sixteen, Paul knew that there was no exit from this wilderness of pretence, that Stutzer could draw his pistol and shoot him dead right now and then go on with his day and his life as if he had crushed a fly. They would tell the Christophers that their son had been shot while trying to escape. Or that they had let him go with a stern warning (he was only a boy, after all) and he had vanished—sailed away to Denmark, perhaps, or gone to France—and not even the secret police could find him.
3
O. G. knew quite a lot about Stutzer.
“Franz Stutzer, son of a Munich policeman, an early member of the party,” he said. “Recently promoted to major and awarded the Iron Cross first class for work he did in the Sudetenland, where he commanded a special SS unit of some sort. As you know, he was formerly the head of the secret police office in Rügen. He works in secret police Department A, which deals with enemies of the Reich.”
“Then he’s not small fry,” Hubbard said.
“Not at all. Stutzer is a high muckamuck, no question about that. He’s good at the work. Trusted by his superiors, admired by his men. One of Heydrich’s boys.”
They were seated in O. G.’s large office in the American Embassy in Parisierplatz. Tall windows filled two walls of the room. In June in another country, or even a more southerly part of this one, it would have been a sunny office, but it was raining in Berlin and the light was feeble. Tea was served by O. G.’s secretary—sugar cookies, cucumber sandwiches, Uneeda saltines spread with deviled ham, a delicacy to Hubbard and O. G., inedible for anyone who did not grow up on it and even for some who did. At his father’s request, Paul had just told O. G. about his conversation with Stutzer. He and Hubbard had been released at three in the afternoon. They had stopped at the apartment to collect Lori, then came straight to the embassy.
O. G. said, “Let me ask you something. Does this man Stutzer have some personal reason for pursuing you?”
Hubbard and Lori exchanged a look. She said, “You tell him, Hubbard.”
“Well,” Hubbard said, “Lori did slap him in the face in front of twenty witnesses in the Kursaal Café in Putbus, on Rügen.”
All expression drained from O. G.’s face. “He was a member of the Gestapo at the time?”
“Oh, yes. This was in the summer of 1936, shortly after he arrived on Rügen as chief of the local secret police.”
“May I ask why you did this, Lori?”
“A drunk was crawling from table to table, stealing cream from the little pitchers in which it was served. This was a habit with him. He meant to amuse. He was shell-shocked from the war, everybody knew that. When he stole Stutzer’s cream, Stutzer kicked him in the face and broke his jaw.”
O. G. nodded. “So you slapped him.”
“Socked him, actually,” Hubbard said. “Backhand. Hit him hard enough to knock his hat off and give him a shiner.”
“You were among the witnesses, Hubbard?”
“No, but Paul was.”
“I see,” O. G. said. “Stutzer didn’t arrest you on the spot, Lori?”
“No. But I don’t imagine he has forgotten.”
O. G. said, “No, probably not.”
“So what do you suggest about Paul?” Lori said to O. G.
“What I’ve been suggesting for a year even without knowing what you just told me,” O. G. said. “Leave the country. Now I would add, In the name of God. That may be all they want.”
“I don’t think so,” Lori said.
“Ah,” said O. G. He did not ask why she said what she had just said.
Hubbard was less discreet. “Why? Because you socked Stutzer?”
“That may be Stutzer’s motive, but it isn’t the reason,” Lori said. “They’re more serious than that. They’ll never let me go.”
“Why you, in particular?” Hubbard said.
“Because I am a German citizen who has helped Jews and what they call communists. Therefore I am a traitor. Who knows what they imagine you are.”
“They don’t have to do much imagining,” Hubbard said.
Lori said, “Paul is also involved. They may be lunatics, gentlemen, but I say it again, they’re serious.”
“Please don’t think I’m being facetious,” O. G. said. “But if they get any more serious you’ll all be in Dachau, Paul included. They don’t give a hang about age or nationality or anything else when they think they’re dealing with the enemies of the Reich.”
“Well, that’s what we are, aren’t we?” Lori said.
“Ssshhh,” O. G. said. There were things he did not wish to know, even if he already knew them.
Paul knew what was coming next—the plan to get him out of Germany. In his opinion no one, not even O. G., had the power or the guile to manage this. Besides that, he, Paul, would not agree to go. How could he leave his mother, how could he leave Rima? How could he save himself and leave them to their fate? He knew what that fate would be. The secret police would do to them what the Hitler Youth in the Tiergarten had done to him, but they would do it to the death. He had begun to see that these matters were very simple. Everyone talked about how serious the National Socialists were but as he walked along the corridors at No. 8 Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, he had heard them laughing uproariously behind closed doors. They were like policemen everywhere. They enjoyed each other’s company. They were good fellows doing what had to be done. They liked talking over the day’s work. They thought that the people they arrested were funny, that their fates were comical, that their hopes of outwitting the secret police were laughable.
O. G. said, “As I’ve already suggested, I really do think, now more than ever, that Paul should go home with me. The Bremen sails for New York on the sixth of July.”
“That’s very soon,” Lori said.
“Let’s hope it’s soon enough,” O. G. replied. “They have enough on Paul right now to arrest him. They might do it just for the effect it would have on the two of you. Today might have been a rehearsal. It certainly was a message. Your son, alone in their hands—imagine. They’d really be in the driver’s seat.”
Paul said, “Excuse me, but do I have anything to say about this?”
“Of course you do, Paul,” O. G. said.
“I won’t go anywhere without my mother and father.”
“Then you should discuss the matter with them,” O. G. said. “You have until the fourth of July to talk it over, assuming the secret police don’t move sooner. Nobody’s going to abandon your parents. I couldn’t let that happen. I’ve made promises to the gods that I’d never let it happen. The idea is to get each of you out by the best available means. Then you can all get together at the Harbor and let the rest of the world go by.”
“How will you get them out after I’m gone if you’re in America, too?”
“The embassy won’t be closed while I’m away,” O. G. said. “Others can execute the plan. The plan is, first you, then them. Those fellows on Prinz-Albrechtstrasse will be looking for a party of three, so with any luck they’ll be looking the other way at the vital moment.”
“We hope,” said Hubbard.
“Can’t travel far in this world without hope,” O. G. said.
Or with it, Paul thought. He looked into his mother’s eyes and saw that she agreed.
4
Lori went riding in the Tiergarten almost every day. She came back, most days, in time for lunch. Rima saw their opportunity when Paul told her about his family’s mor
ning routine—Lori absent, Hubbard present in physical form but so completely elsewhere mentally that he might as well have been underwater. After their moments in the darkness of the park they were desperate to be together. But they had no privacy and none seemed possible. They met as if by accident in shops and museums, but never in a place where they could touch.
Finally they tried the obvious—a cinema. But when they kissed, a watchful customer reported them to the management. They were ejected. The head usher—he wore a badge of office on his uniform—demanded their names and addresses so that their misconduct could be reported to the authorities. They told him nothing, but learned a lesson. Even if the secret police had not been watching Paul, even if Rima had not been the daughter of a Jew who had no rights, it would have been next to impossible for them to be together. The entire adult world was a vast secret police force charged with keeping an eye on young people. They met sometimes at night when walking the dogs, but this was furtive. It made them feel guilty. It was dangerous for Rima to be alone in a park, alone on darkened streets.
On the streetcar, Rima said, “Then you’re alone in the morning?”
“My father is home.”
“But oblivious. Do you have a back door?”
Paul said, “Yes. In the kitchen.”
“This door locks with a key?”
“With a bolt on the inside.”
“There’s a back stairway? You take the dog for its walks by the stairway?”
Paul nodded.
“So if someone forgot to bolt this bolt, on a typical morning a burglar could come up the stairs, sneak inside and tiptoe through the house and no one would be the wiser?”
Rima explained the plan. She too was free and unobserved in the early morning. Her father slept until noon—in fact he slept beyond noon. He slept whenever he was alone. This would have been an unimaginable weakness had he still been a German. But he was not. The theft of her father’s identity and property and career, the shock of suddenly ceasing to be the man he had striven all his life to be, had driven him into a stupor.
Christopher's Ghosts Page 5