A City of Broken Glass (Hannah Vogel)

by Cantrell, Rebecca

  I pushed the thoughts down and busied my hands. I teased the gauze bandage from my hair. The wound was so small that it did not warrant a new bandage. I threw away the gauze, wondering how much damage had been done to my head where I could not see it.

  I donned the green dress. Buttoning the front took time because I had only one hand. But when I was finished, I was satisfied with the results. The long sleeves hid most of the cast on my right arm and the bandages on my left wrist. I peeled back the bandages and checked. Lacerations and bruising, but nothing serious. I must have been handcuffed.

  How had the Gestapo known to find me at the inn? They had called me Hannah Vogel. That left out Fräulein Ivona and the Polish soldiers, since they knew me as Adelheid Zinsli. So my message to Bella had tipped them off.

  Unless someone had linked my Hannah Vogel identity with my Adelheid Zinsli one. Last time I left Germany, no one had known that I was both women, except Lars’s old chief, Sturmbannführer Hahn. But it could not have been him. When last I saw him, he lay dead on a warehouse floor. By my hand.

  I had since checked my sources to see if Hahn had left notes, and they had turned up nothing to link Hannah Vogel to Adelheid Zinsli. Much could change in two years. Perhaps new evidence had been unearthed.

  I found my satchel near the bed and walked more or less steadily to the front room. Anton and Lars stretched out on the floor playing backgammon.

  “You’re up!” Anton cried. “You look wonderful!”

  He leaped to his feet and hugged me. When I kissed his forehead, he gave me an aggrieved look, but he did not step back.

  Lars put away the game before standing. “Indeed you do.”

  “When can we leave?”

  “Now,” Lars said. “I could take you to a restaurant to wait and eat while I fetch the lorry and my passport.”

  “That sounds like a fine plan,” I said.

  “Are you certain that the trip won’t overtax you?” He studied my face.

  “Staying here would also be taxing.” My legs wobbled as I walked toward the door.

  Lars helped me into a woman’s coat, his hands lingering longer than they should have. As much as I did not want to, I stepped away. I stroked my palm down the dark blue wool. The coat did not belong to me, and I did not wish to know its provenance. Another of his conquests, no doubt.

  What had happened to my own coat? It hung in my hotel room in Zbąszyń. I felt proud that I had found the memory in my battered head. I now remembered arriving at the hotel. A little less time remained lost to me.

  I drew on a pair of black leather gloves I found in the coat pocket.

  Lars shrugged into a dark brown overcoat. He pulled his fedora low over his eyes, like a police detective hiding his expression from a suspect. An old habit from the days when it was true. Anton put on his own coat and took my satchel.

  Anton bounced next to me down the hall and into the street. He studied shops and people with interest. He had not been back in the country of his birth in four years, an eternity in, now Nazi, Berlin.

  The neighborhood felt decidedly working class, very different from Lars’s previous apartment. Soot streaked dark brick buildings thrown together decades ago to house workers. Bare trees cowered in hard dirt squares in the sidewalk. The branches did not look as if they would leaf out even in summer. Holes left by missing cobblestones gaped in a street with more horse-drawn wagons than cars. I was not certain where we were, but it looked like a bad patch of the district of Moabit.

  “Mind your step.” Lars led me around a broken beer bottle. I tried to avoid a squashy white object that I hoped was a sodden newspaper.

  Anton stopped next to a battered wooden door. “What about this restaurant?”

  It did not look promising. Grime caked dark windows, and dirty ocher paint outside did not speak to clean conditions indoors. Its battered sign read HAUS HUBERTUS.

  Lars shook his head quickly. “That one is no good.”

  Although I agreed with him, something in his tone gave me pause. “Why not?”

  He glanced at the windows. “The quality of the food is—”

  A chubby blond woman in her early thirties bustled out the restaurant’s door. She wore a waitress uniform, a black dress with a white apron and cap.

  “Lars!” she screeched, grasping his arm. “It’s been more than a week!”

  He peeled her hand off his arm. I clenched my good hand in my pocket, but kept my face impassive and waited to see what would happen next.

  Lars turned a pleading gaze on me. I gave him a stiff smile. I had no intention of helping him to resolve this. It was painful enough for me already.

  His scowled. “Adelheid, may I present Fräulein Gretl? She works here. Gretl, this is my wife, Frau Lang.”

  Gretl’s face fell. Anton’s mouth dropped open. My headache returned full force.

  “How do you do, Fräulein Gretl?” I thought of denying that I was Lars’s wife, but that might lead to more complications. “Is this a favorite restaurant, Lars?”

  Anton started. He knew that tone meant trouble. I took a deep breath.

  “I have dined here from time to time.” Lars’s gaze fixed somewhere beyond my left ear.

  “I see that,” I said.

  “Should we ask Gretl to find us a table?” Lars asked me.

  Gretl looked at me with sympathy. She would certainly be correct to pity Lars’s wife. However, I was not.

  “I think not,” I said. “Although I enjoyed meeting you, Fräulein Gretl.”

  She blushed and curtseyed.

  Lars reached for my arm, but I set off down the street without him, my hand on Anton’s shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Lars bow to Gretl and follow.

  My head ached so much, I wanted to curl up in a ball in a dark room, but I would not give Lars the satisfaction of knowing how upset I was. To think that I had believed this situation could not become more intolerable. I cursed my paucity of imagination. Why did I care? Once I knew he had lied to me and betrayed me while I mourned in Switzerland, why should I care if he slept with one woman or one hundred? Yet, I cared.

  I had to stop letting my emotions distract me. What did all this mean? It meant that Lars had relationships and loyalties I knew nothing about. Still, he had kept Anton away from the Gestapo in Poland, and risked his life to help rescue me.

  “Lars,” I said when he caught up. “Perhaps we could skip lunch and go straight to the lorry?”

  “Spatz,” he said. “I—”

  “Please,” I said. “Just get us to the lorry.”

  Lars turned on his heel and led us in the opposite direction. “As you wish.”

  Anton spoke up. “Are you really married?”

  “No.” I wished my head did not hurt so much. I might have been able to think of a way to explain it to him. “When I was in Berlin last—” I stopped when I saw the expression on Anton’s face.

  “1936?” Anton asked in a small voice.

  “Yes,” Lars said. “And—”

  Anton drew back his fist and punched Lars full force in the groin. Lars folded to the ground. Anton ran.

  I followed him, trying to suppress my feeling of immense satisfaction at Lars writhing on the cobblestones.

  “Anton!” I ran out of breath. “Stop!”

  I stumbled to a streetcar stop and held on to the streetlamp. Black paint peeled off the stem in curls. “Anton! Please!”

  What if he kept running and disappeared in the streets of Berlin? He could get stuck in an orphanage or worse. Panic rose in my throat. Red and white lights blinked at the edges of my vision. I sagged against the lamppost.

  I would not faint in the street in front of Lars. I would pull myself together and catch Anton.

  Anton hurried back to me, shaking with rage.

  “Need to catch—breath.” I owed him an explanation, but I could not give it here, with Lars hobbling toward us, only meters away.

  Anton waited, blue eyes turned from angry to anxious. I tr
ied to think what to do. If I had a few hours’ rest and a good meal, I would think of something.

  Lars’s limp was more pronounced than usual. Not surprisingly, he looked furious. He brushed off his coat. The ground rippled as if made of water. I knew the ground stood still, and that my perception was faulty, but the knowledge did me no good. Not for the first time.

  Lars approached us both cautiously. “What was that for?”

  Anton set his jaw and glared at Lars.

  “Anton. Please apologize to Lars for your behavior,” I said.

  Anton looked at me hanging on to the streetlamp. He unclenched his jaw. “I apologize for what I did.”

  I recognized that he apologized only out of sympathy to me, and I doubted that any of us thought he meant it, but I suspected that it was the best we would get.

  “I did not start a fight with you,” Lars said to him. “And I do not want one.”

  I met Lars’s dark eyes. “Our fight started two years ago. Anton is not to become part of it.”

  Lars held up both palms in a placating gesture. “Apologies all around.”

  I pushed off the lamppost.

  “Are you all right?” Lars asked me.

  “Are you?” I asked.

  Lars grimaced. “I’ve taken worse.” He looked over my shoulder. His eyes went cold.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Lars took my arm and pulled me in the opposite direction. Under his breath, he said, “The lorry is gone.”

  “Stolen?” I whispered. Without the lorry, we were trapped.

  “Or the Gestapo has a good idea what I was up to in the woods last night.” Lars’s face was expressionless, which meant real trouble.

  The ground kept moving, but I tried not to stumble. “Should we separate?”

  “Can you get yourself to safety?”

  “Of course,” I said, irritated. “I am not an invalid.”

  “For all that you have been conscious for less than an hour,” he reminded.

  “I will take care of her,” Anton said.

  “We will be fine,” I said.

  “I will check my apartment, and my sources,” Lars said. “Where can we meet tomorrow?”

  “Anhalter Bahnhof, track three. At noon,” I said. The train station would be packed with people then. With luck, no one would notice us. “I have my own resources. If I am not there, you can assume that we are safely in Switzerland and you can get yourself out as well.”

  Lars smiled. “You cannot imagine how much I have missed you, Spatz.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, “I can.”

  Lars looked surprised again, and I wondered what else he was not telling me.

  Just then, a streetcar rattled up. Lars pushed a handful of German marks in my palm. I had only Swiss francs and Polish zloty. “Safe journeys,” he said.

  “Likewise,” I answered. He leaned forward as if to kiss me good-bye. I stepped back and herded Anton onto the streetcar.

  9

  The streetcar pulled off. Lars had already walked away.

  We were now on our own, in Nazi Germany.

  I sank onto the nearest empty bench. My legs shook. Doctor’s orders: no stress. I stifled a bitter laugh.

  Anton sat next to me on the wooden bench. His eyes were wide and frightened.

  “Anton,” I said, trying to tease him to lighten the mood. “Would Winnetou have hit his opponent there?”

  His hero as a young boy had been Winnetou, the honorable Apache brave from the Karl May series. He relaxed a little. “If his opponent was that much bigger, he might have.”

  “Might have?” I had read every book aloud to him. Winnetou had never hit anyone in the groin.

  “Winnetou’s honor didn’t help to save the Apache from the white man. Did it?” He stuck out his pointy chin.

  As usual, his logic was irrefutable. “You know that it was inappropriate to hit Lars.”

  But I knew why he had. He had seen my grief when Lars did not return from Russia, as much as I had tried to hide it from him. And he blamed Lars. Well, so did I.

  I gave him a stern lecture about being respectful to adults, but I knew he did not regret his action.

  The streetcar jolted. I gritted my teeth and struggled to convince myself that my head did not hurt.

  We traveled south. Eventually we would end up at a major station. I would find my way from there. It looked as if I was correct, and we traveled through Moabit. I felt better. This streetcar should end up at Alexanderplatz. We could walk from there.

  I watched out the back window until reasonably certain that no one followed, then relaxed against the hard oak seat. The streetcar’s rocking reassured me, and I closed my eyes.

  “Were you two really married?” Anton asked.

  I sat back up and examined the other passengers. A tired woman rested a string shopping bag between her shoes. A mother balanced a dirty two-year-old on her lap, a three-year-old fidgeted next to her. Two young girls chattered on the seat behind. No one seemed a threat, but caution was my watchword.

  “This is not the place,” I said.

  “Where, then?”

  Stung by his tone, I lowered my voice. “We will be going to the Jewish quarter. It is not a safe place, but I know of an empty apartment there.”

  “Miriam’s?” He was a step ahead.

  “Yes. I have her key. We can stay there until I sort things out.”

  “How?”

  “I know someone who might help us.” Herr Silbert could procure papers for Anton. “Then, we take a train home.”

  “What about our things in Poznań?”

  “I will see if I can have them shipped to the newspaper,” I said. “If not, we will do without them.”

  At the next stop, an SS man in full black and silver uniform boarded. We had no papers. If his suspicion should fall on us, I hated to think of the consequences. I hoped that our blue eyes and blond hair would shield us from notice.

  Tension blew through the car like a cold wind. The chattering girls fell silent. As everyone else did, I watched the man in the black uniform until he chose a seat. He faced forward, seemingly unconcerned about those of us in the car with him. The girls resumed their conversation in subdued tones.

  Anton said not another word until we arrived at our destination, and neither did I. My headache lessened. The rest did me good.

  At Alexanderplatz, I steeled myself against glancing at the imposing police headquarters. In the late 1920s, I visited weekly to gather information for stories I wrote as crime reporter Peter Weill. In fact, I had met Lars in that building when he was still a police kommissar. I had not liked him on first meeting. I thought of Gretl. Clearly, I should have trusted my instincts.

  Once, I had valuable sources in the building, but now it held only danger. Anyone who recognized me knew that I was wanted by the Gestapo for kidnapping and, perhaps now, murder.

  The SS man from our streetcar approached the main entrance. He probably had offices there. Since the police and the Gestapo had merged, the only justice was Nazi justice.

  Walkers jostled us as we crossed the busy intersection. I hurried into the deserted streets of the Jewish quarter. Thousands lived here, but they stayed indoors, probably to avoid attacks. Ada Warski had walked down these Berlin streets carrying her baby while German friends screamed slurs. We, too, had best get inside—and soon.

  Although I had expected it, the anti-Semitic graffiti shocked me. Der Stürmer vented anti-Semitic hate from specially built display boxes. Black paint outlined a cartoon figure with a huge nose and yarmulke. JEWS OUT! was scrawled on one wall. I looked around. Every building had been defiled.

  Anton stared at large white letters on a brick wall that read DEATH OF THE JEWS, WOULD BE THE BEST NEWS. I had seen anti-Semitic graffiti before, but it felt worse to read it on every wall in my home city. Once these buildings were covered with honest soot.

  “Control your expression,” I said. “If you truly lived in Berlin, you would be inured to this.
”

  He looked down at the dirty sidewalk. “Let’s get inside.”

  We walked down the once bustling street to the apartment that had belonged to my Jewish friend Sarah. After she and her son fled in 1931, she lent it to Paul and Miriam. The door to the apartment building had been freshly painted black. I shuddered to think of the foul graffiti the paint concealed.

  I took Miriam’s key out of my satchel and fitted it clumsily in the lock with my left hand. It took three tries, but I managed. When I tried to turn the key, it caught, and I wondered if she had given me a key to something else entirely. I rattled the key, and the door opened.

  We stepped into the lobby. A single bare bulb illuminated the well-cared-for room. I spotted the mailbox where I had hidden Röhm’s incriminating letters in 1931. Would revealing them have changed the course of Germany’s catastrophe?

  “Mother?” Anton was already halfway up the first flight of stairs. I walked quickly up to him. We had no time for thinking about things that might have been. We lived in what was.

  The stairwell itself was clean, but the paint was dingy. It looked as if it had not been repainted in years. Presumably they used their available paint on the building’s outside, covering insults.

  “We came here when I was little,” he said. “Once when you were looking for something and once after your apartment was destroyed. They were beating a man in the street.”

  He forgot nothing, poor child. “Yes. A good friend lived here, but she left before I met you.”

  “Is this where Miriam lived, too?” he asked.

  “Until they deported her.” And killed her, I added silently.

  Someone had wrenched the mezuzah from Sarah’s doorframe. It had taken with it several layers of paint. Before unlocking the door, I touched the splintered wood where the mezuzah had been.

  Inside the hall smelled of stale cabbage, as it had on my last visit. I closed the door and turned on the light.

  As Miriam had said, in the hall near the front door was a cupboard. It had two doors. Both had been torn from their hinges and thrown to the floor. The little girl was gone.