Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke

by Anne Blankman

  Quickly, Gretchen dropped Daniel’s hand and stepped back so she wouldn’t be in the way. She smiled as Daniel hugged the woman.

  “My boy!” she cried. She pulled back, framing Daniel’s face with her hands. “You’ve grown too thin! And your arm!” She ran her fingers from his shoulder to his wrist, the color draining from her face. “Your arm feels so skinny. I had no idea the injury was so bad.” Tears glistened in her eyes.

  “I’m all right.” A dull red crept up Daniel’s neck. “We’d better get inside, Mama, just in case.”

  “Of course.” Frau Cohen held the door open for them. As Gretchen passed, Frau Cohen’s smile froze for an instant, then slipped away. Unease raced up Gretchen’s spine. She had imagined they would be glad to meet her at last—after all, Daniel was always saying how open and welcoming his parents were.

  They walked into a parlor cozy with jammed bookcases, red velvet sofas, dark wooden tables, and brass lamps. They set their suitcases on the floor. Frau Cohen hung up their coats on hooks by the door, then led them into the kitchen, where a middle-aged man in a navy suit was setting his dirty dishes next to the sink. His long, muscular build and dark hair proclaimed he was Daniel’s father as clearly as any introduction. He glanced at them as they came in, then stilled, his bowl falling from his hand to land with a clink on the counter.

  “Daniel,” he choked out, and grabbed his son in a tight embrace. Gretchen heard a strange gasping sound and saw that Daniel’s shoulders were shaking. It was the first time she’d seen him break down and cry. She looked away, her eyes stinging.

  “I didn’t do it,” Daniel was saying. “I didn’t kill that woman—”

  “We know that!” His father drew back. Tears glittered in his eyes, but he was smiling. “What are you doing here? You always said it was too dangerous for you to come back.”

  “I had to warn you.” Daniel looked his father straight in the face. “You and Mama and the girls need to get out of Berlin. I’m in Hitler’s sights, and that means the rest of you are, too. Go somewhere else, start over where he can’t find you.”

  “Son, you’re being melodramatic.” His father smiled, probably to take the sting out of the words. “We’re safe enough, provided we follow the law and don’t get mixed up in things that don’t concern us—”

  “This discussion can wait,” Frau Cohen interrupted. “He looks ready to drop, dear. Sit down and I’ll fix you something to eat.” She hesitated, her gaze sliding to Gretchen. “You too.”

  Gretchen’s heart sank. She hadn’t expected this coldness, but she understood it: To Daniel’s parents, she must be the Nazi princess who had taken him away from them. Quickly, she sat down at the wooden table, folding her hands in her lap, as though she could draw into herself and disappear. Daniel sat beside her, beaming. For his sake, she must pretend she hadn’t noticed his parents’ snubs. She managed to smile at him.

  Herr Cohen sank into a chair across from them while Frau Cohen bustled around the kitchen. His eyes didn’t leave Daniel’s face. “I can’t believe it. Daniel, you look so grown. The last time we saw you, you were still just a boy.”

  “He turned nineteen without us.” Frau Cohen set their plates on the table. She had fixed them enormous sandwiches, with pickles and potato salad on the side. The bitter aroma of coffee percolating drifted from the stove. Gretchen’s stomach contracted with hunger. She murmured, “Thank you,” and ate with her head down, so she didn’t have to look at the disapproval on Daniel’s parents’ faces.

  “I hated missing everyone’s birthdays,” Daniel said. His voice was warm; thank goodness he hadn’t noticed his parents’ reaction to her yet. She knew that would hurt him. “Are any of the girls here?”

  “Inge and Edda are at the library, studying for an exam, and Mathilde’s already left for a friend’s house.” Frau Cohen poured everyone a cup of coffee. Gretchen wrapped her cold hands around her mug, grateful for its warmth. She studied the kitchen while Daniel and his parents talked about his sisters. It was so strange to see Daniel’s childhood home for the first time, as though she were glimpsing a part of him that he had kept hidden until now.

  The kitchen was small and plain, with a black cast-iron stove and a white metal icebox. Mint-green curtains framed the window overlooking the backyard. There were framed photographs on the wall, and Gretchen smiled at the black-and-white images of Daniel as a child, all legs and arms and ears. Then she thought of Mama’s dilapidated farmhouse, and her cheeks warmed. Part of her couldn’t help wondering if Daniel sometimes looked down on her—after all, his father was an electrician, his mother a seamstress, and they had a lovely, middle-class home, so unlike the shabby two-room apartment she’d lived in when her father was alive and a struggling, uneducated cobbler.

  Then she looked at Daniel’s easy grin and her fears slid away. She knew him inside and out, and he didn’t care a pin about class differences.

  “Gretchen, excuse my poor manners,” he said. “I’m so excited to see my parents again, I completely forgot to introduce you. Mama, Papa, this is—”

  “We know who she is,” Frau Cohen interrupted in a voice like ice. “And she’s not welcome under this roof. A meal is fine, but she can’t stay.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Daniel said hastily, his grin fading. “Gretchen isn’t a National Socialist anymore—”

  “You don’t even say Nazi now.” His father shook his head. “Perhaps it’s you who has changed, Daniel.”

  “I won’t use derogatory terms anymore. Not for anything,” Daniel said quietly. Gretchen’s hands tightened on her cup until she thought the coffee-warmed porcelain would burn them. She’d taught Daniel that Nazi was Bavarian slang for country bumpkin, and he hadn’t used the word since, out of respect for her. Just as she no longer uttered the vicious terms she’d once used for Jews. They’d agreed there must be no more cruel words between them.

  “Now you’re defending Nazis!” His father threw up his hands and paced the room. “Hasn’t this girl caused us enough grief, without you adding to it? She took you from us! If it hadn’t been for her, you would have returned to Berlin long ago and found a respectable newspaper job or gone to a university. We wouldn’t have to live in such agony. Every night we wonder if you’re still alive or if you’ve been arrested.” He shot Gretchen an accusing look. “Or hurt again.”

  “Stop.” Daniel looked shaken. “None of this is Gretchen’s fault.”

  “Of course it is!” Frau Cohen burst out. “She brought you to Chancellor Hitler’s attention! We cannot condone your relationship when it may cost you your life.”

  Guilt was a vise around Gretchen’s chest. They were right. She was to blame for Daniel’s precarious position. If they hadn’t fallen in love, Hitler would have considered Daniel merely one opposition reporter among many. Unknowingly, she had signed his death warrant.

  “I understand,” she said. “And I’m sorry.” She wiped at her brimming eyes with the back of her hand. There was nothing else she could think of to say. Quickly, before she could change her mind, she got to her feet and walked out of the room. She would sit on the porch and give the Cohens some privacy.

  “Gretchen, wait!” Daniel called. She heard his chair scraping on the floor as he rose.

  “You’re better off without her,” his mother said. Gretchen stepped into the parlor and grabbed her coat. Frau Cohen’s voice drifted after her. “Haven’t you written us that you hate England and your job and feel alone? That you long to return to Germany and a real life, even under a false name, but you daren’t leave her because she needs you too much? Haven’t you said all of those things?” Her voice had gotten higher and higher until she was practically screaming.

  Gretchen recoiled as though she had been punched. Was that how he truly felt?

  She had to get out of there. Blindly, she grabbed her coat and suitcase and rushed out the front door, into a lightly falling snow. Her movements felt jerky, as though she were a puppet on a string. She was a burden to D
aniel. He had stayed with her in Oxford out of a sense of obligation, not love. Some part of her mind registered the snowflakes hitting the back of her neck and sliding under her blouse, trailing long lines of dampness down her spine, but she didn’t feel cold, only numb.

  She shrugged into her coat and hurried down the front walk. A memory raced through her head: stumbling with Daniel through the darkened Munich streets, his injured arm crumpled against his chest, his eyes meeting hers as he said that he would give up everything to be with her.

  He had. But he had regretted it.

  She reached the street and began to run.

  12

  SHE HAD GONE HALFWAY DOWN THE BLOCK before Daniel caught up to her. His hand fastened around her wrist, forcing her to stop. “Gretchen, please,” he said. He must have been running hard; he was out of breath.

  “Please,” he said again. “You don’t understand.”

  She stared at the pavement, which was slowly turning white under a carpet of snowflakes. “Did you really write those things to your parents?”

  He sighed. “Not exactly. Give me a few minutes to say good-bye to them, and then I’ll explain everything.”

  “You’re not going to stay with them?”

  “No.” His breath made miniature clouds in the air. “If the only problem was their disapproval, we could room with them, at least for a few days. I stayed at your mother’s house, after all, and that turned out fine. But I don’t want to put them in danger and . . .” His voice caught. “I choose you, Gretchen. Every time, I’ll choose you.”

  Her dry eyes burned. She nodded, but the motion felt disconnected, as though someone else had stepped inside her body. As Daniel rushed back to his parents’ house, she watched him go, a navy blur in his suit. He must have been so eager to reach her that he’d forgotten his overcoat. For some reason, the thought made her throat thicken with tears.

  The street was empty except for a black automobile driving past, its tires crunching in the snow. Across the road, a woman emerged from her home with two tiny children, bundled up so tightly in their coats, hats, and scarves that Gretchen couldn’t guess at their gender. This was where Daniel had grown up, this ordinary suburb where fathers went to work in the morning and mothers stayed home with little ones and children attended school. Sweet and simple and so unlike her own childhood that they might as well have been from different planets.

  As she watched, Daniel left his house and walked toward her, carrying his suitcase. Beneath his fedora, his face was pinched and pale.

  “Let’s go,” he said shortly, and started walking.

  “I hate the thought of you leaving your family,” she replied, falling into step beside him. She didn’t want to ask the next question, but she had to know. “Why stay with me? When you hate living in England so much?”

  The line of his slumped shoulders looked dejected. “It’s true I’ve been miserable in Oxford,” he said quietly. A sudden wind kicked up, sending little swirls of snow dancing across the street. “My job is a joke. Without real news to report, I feel empty, as though I’m merely marking time. I have no friends to light the Sabbath candles with. No relatives to celebrate holidays with, no one I dare talk to about my past.” He hesitated. “I’m lonely.”

  “I can do those things with you,” she protested. “You already celebrate holidays with the Whitestones, but I’ll have Sabbath dinner with you every Friday night. You can teach me the Jewish customs. I’m sure it won’t be long before you can find a proper newspaper job, and you can talk to me about your memories whenever you want.”

  His smile looked sad. “We can’t fill all the holes in each other’s lives. That’s too much to expect from one person. Love isn’t enough. There needs to be more—friends, a satisfying job, school, family. In England, all I have is you.”

  For the first time, she realized how alone he must have felt. He had always seemed cheerful, so she had assumed he had been happy, too. He had been protecting her, even then. Suddenly she could feel the cold from the snowflakes landing on her cheeks.

  They kept walking, their footsteps muffled by the snow. She couldn’t say anything. Was he breaking things off with her?

  “I’m expressing myself badly,” Daniel said. “I love you, Gretchen, please don’t doubt that. But we need more in our lives than each other.”

  They had reached the S-Bahn station. She stood on the corner, the wind whipping her coat. She knew she loved him with every piece of her heart, with every breath she took, just as he loved her. What if it wasn’t enough to tie them together?

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said at last. “I want you to be happy more than I want you to be with me.”

  His hands brushed hers. His were freezing, and she realized they had both forgotten to put on their gloves.

  “We’ll figure things out,” he said. “I promise. But we’d better get out of here before one of the neighbors recognizes me.”

  Together they hurried into the station. Neither of them said a word as the train roared along the track, carrying them back into Berlin’s dark heart and whatever step they would take next. But every time she looked at him, his injured hand was twitching, a definite indication that he was in pain, and she wished she magically knew how to make everything in their lives right again, wounded bodies and hearts alike.

  When they reached downtown, Daniel used a public telephone exchange in a café to ring a journalist friend, to find out where the murder victim had lived so they could rent a room close to her old home. Gretchen stood with her back to the street, pretending to study the loaves of bread in the next-door bakery’s display window.

  In the glass, she glimpsed a bloodred flicker. An enormous swastika banner fluttered from a building’s facade. She couldn’t look away from the reflection of the black hooked cross. She was so close to Hitler again. For all she knew, in another minute she might see his automobile drive past: a black Mercedes now instead of the red one they’d ridden in together in Munich. These days, he probably sat in the back, a more dignified position, which befitted Germany’s newest chancellor, not up front with the chauffeur as he’d liked to do when he was still a rising politician.

  Or they might see each other in the street, Hitler striding out of the Hotel Kaiserhof, where he had tea every afternoon, as she’d read in the English papers. He’d be distracted, arguing with one of his men when he noticed her, his electric blue eyes widening, his mouth opening in a startled shout. No disguise would fool him. If they saw each other, she wouldn’t be able to escape from him a second time.

  Daniel appeared at her elbow. “My friend can’t meet with us until luncheon, so we have two more hours.” His tone was clipped and impersonal. She knew they needed to speak as strangers in the street, in case someone was listening, but she couldn’t help thinking that he sounded just as he had when they had first met—as though they meant nothing to each other. “If anyone can ferret out the address, it’s Tom Delmer. He’s a correspondent for Britain’s Daily Express and accompanied Hitler on his campaign trips last year.”

  “Is he trustworthy?”

  “Absolutely. My editor at the Post—” Daniel faltered, and she knew he must be thinking of his imprisoned colleagues. “My editor liked him. That’s an infallible endorsement, in my opinion. For now, it’s best if we keep on the move until we see him.”

  Together, they walked the long, curving streets, passing time until they could meet Herr Delmer. When they reached a crowd on a corner, Daniel didn’t put his hand on the small of her back, as he usually did when they were in a cramped place, and he didn’t talk. Gretchen was accustomed to his stream of conversation, the words tumbling out as though his thoughts ran so fast that his mouth had to struggle to keep pace.

  His silence made her so uncomfortable that she studied the surroundings, desperate for a distraction. Everywhere she looked, she saw a fractured city: art galleries with modern paintings hanging in the windows alongside butcher shops and bakeries plastered with posters of Hitler; fa
ncy French restaurants across the street from soup kitchens; a group of people chatting on a street corner, the ladies sporting the short hair and pale face powder of flappers, the men in artists’ berets, while a few feet away, a handful of young fellows in SS black glared at them. On nearly every lamppost, white placards with Hitler’s face painted in red had been pasted. Someone had scribbled in black ink across one of the pictures, giving Hitler buck teeth and crossed eyes.

  Beside her, Daniel muttered, “It looks so different. I . . .” He trailed off, and Gretchen followed his gaze. Across the avenue, a police officer in a blue greatcoat and a helmet with a metal insignia walked with a man in SA brown. They were talking companionably, and the storm trooper held a muzzled dog’s leash. Each wore a shiny silver whistle hung from a cord around his neck. They looked as though they were on foot patrol.

  “Are they working together?” Gretchen asked, but Daniel only shook his head, looking bewildered. Down the street, church bells chimed twelve. It was time to meet Delmer.

  They crossed the street to the Romanisches Café. The large building was an ugly stone block, and its revolving door moved ceaselessly, swallowing and disgorging customers. Gretchen and Daniel stepped inside.

  For an instant, they were enclosed in a triangle of glass and darkness. Warmth emanated from Daniel’s body, and she half wished she could rest her head on his shoulder, breathing in his scents of soap and oranges. But she couldn’t. Not with this new awkwardness between them.

  The café’s harshly lit interior was divided into sections: a glassed-in terrace, a small room on the left, and a larger room on the right. A circular staircase wound up to a gallery where men leaned over chessboards, arguing good-naturedly with one another.