But we nearly did. Lars paid and slipped her an extra bill to give us longer use of the table.
He cleared his throat and sat up straight, suddenly looking like a headmaster. I crossed my hands in my lap and assumed my best attentive pupil posture. Anton followed suit.
“I think we need to talk about the implications of what happened to Paul last night,” Lars said.
Anton sucked in a quick breath. I put a hand on his shoulder. He promptly shook it off, trying to act the part of a man in front of Lars.
Lars looked at me. “How much do we tell Anton?”
Anton crossed his arms.
“All of it,” I said. “He runs the same risks that we do.”
Anton raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“Very well.” Lars drew a worn black notebook out of his inside coat pocket. “Do you have a pen, Spatz?”
I handed him my fountain pen.
“Let’s start with what we know.” Lars quickly wrote down the time and cause of death. Anton and I tried to decipher his handwriting upside down as the pen flew across the paper, filling in details of last night’s events.
“How long were you a policeman?” Anton asked.
Lars smiled briefly. “I was a kommissar in the police for more years than I want to think about. In fact, I was a kommissar when I met your mother. I investigated murders in Berlin.”
“You can find out who killed Paul?”
“I hope so.” Lars tapped the pen’s nib against the paper. “But I don’t have the resources I’m used to. And I didn’t solve every case when I did.”
“Really?” Anton sounded surprised.
“I did have the highest solve rate in Berlin,” Lars said. “So there is hope for me.”
Anton nodded sagely.
“Spatz,” Lars said. “This won’t be easy for you, but…”
“Yes?” I said.
“Do you have a sketch pad, or a notebook?”
I took out my sketch pad, its leaves considerably larger than Lars’s notebook.
“I wish I had a photograph,” he said. “But we will make do. I would like you to draw me two sketches. One of the kitchen as we saw it when we entered last night. Everything but the body.”
“Paul’s body,” I corrected.
“Apologies.” He briefly touched my shoulder. “After you finish that sketch, I would like a sketch of Paul. Add nothing. If you are uncertain, leave it blank.”
I dug in my satchel for a pencil and started work. Drawing the kitchen without Paul in it was easier than I had expected. I sketched in the table, bare except for the note that Lars had taken. I cross-hatched in shadows in the corner. One chair was pushed into the table. Another sat at an angle, the third pushed back against the wall, and the final chair held Paul. He had been eating and drinking with his killer. I drew his chair in quick strokes, then moved down to the floor. Broken dishes, an empty glass, and a rumpled pile of tablecloth.
I sketched in the window. The bullet had passed through Paul and pierced the glass. A round spiderweb of cracks radiated from the hole. Undisturbed curtains hung on each side.
Lars and Anton talked quietly next to me. Lars took a statement from Anton. The building door had been locked; Anton had unlocked it. Paul’s front door had been left open. Anton thought he might have heard footsteps going up the stairs above him. No one passed him on his way up. I shuddered at the thought that Anton might have met the murderer.
I handed Lars my sketch and started drawing Paul’s outline. They pored over the first sketch, discussing its accuracy. I blocked out their voices and concentrated on Paul. He had slumped sideways in the chair, as if he had yanked off the tablecloth but had not had time to raise his arms again. I took a deep breath.
I started with his feet. He wore the old brown slippers he always donned inside. His shoes, I knew, were lined up by the front door. His pants had been darker near the bottom. Wet. He had been out in the rain. Had he walked in the rain with his killer, or let him in later? Whom would he let into his home so late? Not a stranger, surely.
I finished his rumpled shirt, the slump of his shoulder, his empty hands, until all that remained was his face.
I took a long drink of tea.
“If you can’t finish it,” Lars said. “I—”
“If Paul can die there, I can certainly stand to sketch it.” The pencil trembled in my hand when I went back to work. I pretended to be a camera, taking a picture, that I had not loved Paul, that I did not care that he was gone.
I finished the sketch, turned it over, and slid it across the table.
Lars studied the sketch, and I studied him. His eyes darted around the picture, taking in every detail, lingering on some, skipping others.
“What do you think, Herr Kommissar? Give me your report.”
He paused, thinking. “Paul had no defensive wounds on his hands or arms. I didn’t have time to check elsewhere. Based on the door’s condition, I would say that he let his killer in, so it may well have been someone whom he knew.”
“Someone he thought he could trust,” I said bitterly.
“Or at least someone from whom he did not fear harm,” Lars said.
“What will the police think? Will they look for the killer?” Anton looked at my sketch. I turned it over, not wanting him to remember Paul that way.
“I am hopeful that they will write it off as a suicide. That’s why I left my gun. If they do, no one will bother to dust the room for prints and find yours, mine, and your mother’s.”
“But the bullet that killed him will not match your gun,” I said.
“We got lucky there,” Lars said, and I grimaced. “Considering. The bullet went through his head and out the window. A diligent search may find it, but it just as well may not. I don’t expect an investigation. A Jewish man is not one whose death greatly concerns the Nazi police. Even if it did, he had recently lost his wife and child to the deportation. There is evidence that he tried suicide the night before.”
I thought of struggling with Paul yesterday, saving his life only so that someone else could take it. I felt his blood-slick wrist under my fingers and remembered closing his familiar eyes for the last time. Lars took my hand.
“Why would someone want to kill Paul?” Anton asked.
“I think that his killer was after me, not Paul,” I said.
Anton gasped, and I felt a fool for saying it.
“Possibly,” Lars said. “But we cannot be certain of that.”
“The note?”
“What if the note was left in Paul’s mailbox, or pushed under the door and he put it on the table? And what about the note in the desk?”
“What note?” Anton asked. “I don’t remember a note on the table.”
Lars took the folded-up note from his inside notebook and looked at me. After I nodded, he handed it to Anton.
“Whose life did you steal?” he asked.
“No one’s, except in self-defense,” Lars answered for me.
“That is true,” I said. “But that does not change the fact that men have died by my hand.”
“How many?” Anton asked.
I closed my eyes, but the truth did not go away. “Two.”
I opened my eyes. “Put them on the list, Lars.”
“I would prefer to start with Paul and Miriam,” he said. “I have no idea who wrote the note. Neither do you. It is possible that the killer was trying to punish you, but it is also possible that the note arrived before the killer came for Paul.”
I wondered if he believed it, or if he only tried to assuage my guilt.
“Since Paul and Miriam are the ones who are dead.” Lars tapped his pen against the notebook. “Let’s start with their enemies.”
“I have no idea what enemies Paul or Miriam had.” Paul had been living mostly in seclusion since the Nazis came to power, avoiding trouble until I came along. “Miriam’s family? He was betraying her, and was gone when she was deported.”
Lars wrote that down in his pr
ecise, cramped handwriting. “Anyone else?”
“Before this visit, I had not spoken to Paul in two years, and we barely spoke then.” I clenched my hands in my lap. I had not helped him then or later.
“Who might know more about his enemies?” Lars prompted. I wondered if he cared, or if he sought only to distract me.
“Maria at the Tageblatt. Paul’s mistress,” I said promptly. She would know exactly which rocks to turn over to find Paul’s secrets. But would she tell me?
“How does she feel about you?” Lars asked.
I fiddled with a leftover sausage on my plate. “She hates me.”
Anton looked at me in shock. I felt flattered that he had thought no one hated me. I wished I felt the same.
“Did she know that you were Adelheid Zinsli? Did she hate you enough to write the letters in Switzerland?” Lars asked.
“She might have known that I was in Switzerland. Paul might have told her I covered the Games in ’36. If so, she might have guessed that I was Adelheid Zinsli. Not many female reporters from Switzerland covered the Games.”
Lars underlined her name.
“She might have written the letters, but I do not see why. I do not think she would have killed Paul. It seems as if she would have killed me first.”
“Perhaps she intended to kill you, but something went awry,” Lars said.
Anton’s eyes widened.
I pulled a handful of coins out of my pocket and handed them to Anton.
“Could you please fetch us a newspaper?” I pointed to a wizened newspaper seller hunched in a stand outside the restaurant.
Anton knew what I was up to, but he took the coins and tore out the door.
“I think we are frightening Anton,” I said.
“Good,” Lars answered. “He should be frightened. This is a frightening situation. He would be a fool if he were not frightened. A fool in danger.”
Like Paul.
21
“I want to protect him,” I said.
“You can’t protect every single person in the world, Spatz,” Lars said.
“First, Anton,” I said. “Then you.”
He brushed the back of his hand along my cheek. “What about yourself?”
“I am on the list, too,” I said.
Anton dumped the paper on my lap and sat next to me. “Did I miss anything?”
Lars slowly drew his hand back. “No.”
Anton’s pointy chin jutted, and I knew that he was trying to decide what we had been doing. “Are you two pretending to be married?”
“Lars and I are…” What were we?
I could not explain to Anton what we were to each other when I had no idea myself. I began anyway. “It is a complicated situation.”
Lars moved to stand next to my chair. Was he leaving us alone so I could explain the situation to Anton?
Instead, Lars dropped to one knee next to me. “Hannah, would you—?”
“That is not how you do that,” Anton interrupted. “She’s my mother.”
Lars took my hand and slipped off the ring he had placed there two years ago. My ring finger felt cold.
So far, no one in the restaurant had noticed. “Lars, you are making a spectacle of—”
“Do I have your permission to ask her hand in marriage?” Lars asked Anton.
I stared at them both, dumbfounded. The waitress eyed us suspiciously.
“Are your intentions honorable?” Anton’s expression was as serious as Lars’s.
“Nothing but,” Lars said.
“Will you take care of her?” Anton asked. “And not abandon her again? Especially with other women.”
“Anton—,” I began.
“Please, Spatz.” Lars held up his palm. He turned to Anton. “I promise.”
“Will you keep her out of trouble?” Anton asked.
Lars took my hand again. “I would give my life to keep her safe. But I don’t think anyone can keep her out of trouble.”
“At least he’s no liar,” Anton said. “I give my blessing. The rest is up to you, Mother.”
Both turned to look at me, Anton’s blue eyes expectant, Lars’s dark ones frightened. Did he fear that I would say no or that I would say yes?
“It is up to me,” I said. “Anton, you are not—”
“Hannah Vogel,” Lars interrupted, his voice pitched low so that it did not carry beyond our table. “Will you marry me?”
I took a deep breath. Lars looked ready to faint.
Logically, I should wait. In many ways, I barely knew him. In others, I knew him better than I had ever known anyone. There were a very great many reasons to say no or maybe.
“Yes,” I said.
He slid the ring back onto my finger. It felt colder than my skin, but still felt right. He dropped a light kiss on my lips, and I shivered.
“Are you going to eat that?” Anton pointed his fork at my plate.
We laughed. I pushed my plate toward Anton.
He speared my last sausage and ate it in two quick bites.
“From this point on, at least in Germany, we are Hannah and Lars Schmidt,” Lars said. “You are Anton Schmidt. Do you understand?”
Anton set down his fork. “Yes, sir.”
Smiling gazes of the other customers followed us as we walked out together, Lars holding my arm and Anton on my other side. I was happy to have them close.
Workers in caps and short open jackets jostled by on their way to the warehouse district we had left behind earlier. They were different from the office workers in suits I had passed on my way to Herr Silbert’s. They looked more carefree, but also more tired. I wondered how much the Nazis influenced the day-to-day workings in most factories. I imagined that the Nazis were a heavier burden for those in management.
Lars navigated us deftly across the sidewalk to the lorry. Water beaded on its surface from a shower that had passed over while we ate breakfast. Oyster gray clouds promised more of the same before the day was out.
Anton squeezed my hand before he let it go. I looked over at him. “How are you holding up?”
“I want to be a policeman.” He bounced on the balls of his feet, excited at the prospect. “Last night Lars told me about some cases that he’s worked and—”
“Appropriate conversation for a thirteen-year-old?” I asked Lars.
“Appropriate for this thirteen-year-old,” Lars said. Anton smiled.
I swallowed my protest. Considering the alternatives he had recently seen, I could hardly fault Anton’s decision to be an honest policeman.
Lars opened the door for me and helped me in. His hand lingered on my side, and I leaned against it. We both smiled.
“Where do we go next?” Anton slammed the door on his side of lorry. “To solve the case.”
“I can’t work on the lorry until tonight,” Lars said. “Our best plan would be to keep our heads down until we get out of Germany.”
“I agree,” I said. “But I have a few things to do first.”
Lars smiled. “Safe things? Like the zoo? Or a quick trip to the cinema?”
I ignored him and unfolded the newspaper Anton had fetched while we were still in the restaurant. The familiar smell of newsprint filled the air.
But that was the only good thing about the newspaper. The headline screamed: JEWISH SWINE SHOOTS GERMAN DIPLOMAT. With growing dread, I read the article. Leaving out the racial outrage, the facts seemed to be that a Jewish teenager named Herschel Grynszpan had shot a German diplomat named Ernst vom Rath in Paris to protest the treatment of his family at Zbąszyń.
I read excerpts aloud. Lars’s face grew more serious with each word. I felt as if the world had just shifted. More restrictions on Jews in Germany. A ban on Jewish children attending German schools. A ban on Jewish newspapers. The suspension of all Jewish cultural activities.
A turning point.
“If vom Rath dies,” I said, “there will be terrible reprisals against Jews in Germany.”
“We had best get
out before that diplomat dies,” Lars said. “After those reprisals, they’ll surely increase security at the borders.”
I wished that the lorry were already complete.
“It might not be as bad as that,” Lars said. “He might live.”
A few straggling workers passed by the lorry, hurrying to get to work before it rained again.
“Even if that young man’s gunshot does not kill him, someone else’s will.” I refolded the newspaper and dropped it on the lorry’s floor. “It is the perfect opportunity for the Nazis to exact their revenge for the fictitious crimes of the Jews. They will not let a chance like that pass.”
A flash of recognition flitted across Lars’s face. He had just thought of something, and I realized what. “Last night’s note. Let me see it.”
Reluctantly, he handed it to me.
I unfolded it and read it again. It said: The Jews are not done murdering though, are they?
I looked at Lars. “Do you suppose the letter writer meant this attack in Paris?”
“It seems paranoid,” he said. “How could he know of a shooting in Paris? The newspapers did not report the attack on vom Rath until this morning.”
I could tell that he argued only for argument’s sake; he was worried, too. “When did the Nazi leadership know it? Or the Gestapo?”
“I don’t know, Spatz.”
“Let’s find a telephone booth,” I said, “and I will see.”
Lars drove slowly down the wet street. Telephone booths were not so close together as in tonier neighborhoods, but we found one.
I dropped in coins and asked for the newspaper. Lars and Anton stood next to the booth. Anton was deep in some complicated story, pausing only to give Lars a chance to nod to show that he was still listening.
I called the newspaper for a quick rundown of the Grynszpan story. He had shot vom Rath at five thirty yesterday evening, only a few hours before Paul’s murder. If the news had reached Germany by then, it probably reached only the highest levels of the Gestapo. So, either the person who killed Paul was very highly placed, or the note could not possibly refer to vom Rath’s shooting. Someone highly placed would have waited and killed me last night, instead of bothering with letters.
Herr Knecht himself came on the line. “Frau Zinsli.”
A City of Broken Glass (Hannah Vogel) Page 20