The German Heiress

by Anika Scott

  She was relieved to see the narrow door to the back entrance was still there, not bricked up or shuttered. The weeds were overgrown and there was no sign anyone had entered this way since she had been here in the war. She pushed the handle, and it gave with a rusty shriek. Papa had never locked this door. Who was going to sneak in and meddle with his machines on the grounds of his own estate?

  Inside, dust coated the workbenches and the tools that had fallen from their hooks or lay rusting in an open box. The smells of gasoline and oil still hung in the air and comforted her as they always had. She reached over her head and touched the model airplane dangling from a cord. This was Friedrich’s, a Kondor E.3 he’d spent weeks if not months building, scaling down from the original blueprint, overseeing the sections stamped at one of the plants, welding it himself here in Papa’s workshop while Papa looked on. She had hated that plane, how much of Friedrich’s time and care it took from her, and Papa’s obvious pride as it came together, this father-son project that excluded her so completely.

  She crossed to the interior door and listened for anyone on the other side, then opened it enough to see into the dim length of the garage. There were army vehicles and crates and barrels. Papa’s cars were gone now, but she remembered how Galina and the other young women had gasped when they first saw the few cars that hadn’t been confiscated in the war. Galina had taken the kerchief from her hair and polished the mirrors in awe. The other women took turns fixing their hair or sadly checking their teeth. That first day, their energy gave out quickly, and they didn’t dare sit inside the cars, but slumped against the garage wall, too weak to stand for any length of time.

  Clara closed herself back into the workshop, feeling safer than she knew she should, being so close to the British. This was her father’s place and she had the unreliable sense that nothing bad could happen to her here. She lifted the tarp on the engine he had been working on when he left, one of the many he’d designed, built, spent years improving little by little. When she was a girl, he’d spent Sundays on a long and loving tour of the insides of whatever contraption he happened to be constructing. Sometimes she was allowed to bring his supper.

  “This one loves the cold,” he told her, the soup spoon in his blackened hand. He sat beside the engine in overalls, a cloth of Falkenberg red around his neck as if he was any other worker. “Dry, moderate cold,” he said between mouthfuls, “makes this machine breathe better, like you and me. Try it, Clärchen. Breathe on a cold, dry day.”

  “It’s just a machine, Papa,” she said, always a little jealous of the engine. “It doesn’t breathe. It can’t feel anything.”

  He scraped the last of his soup, not looking at her. In his workshop, he had eyes only for the things he could assemble. “Some machines are sensitive like people,” he said, “and some people don’t feel much at all, like machines.” She didn’t understand what he meant until the war.

  She ran a finger over the workbench. He would be appalled at the condition of his workshop now, the dirt, the cobwebs, his tools scattered. He used to spend hours sorting them into his particular order. She got to work, hanging the hammers and saws first. Since she didn’t know his old system, she arranged them by size. She scrubbed the counter with a rag moistened with frost, and she attacked the cobwebs with a broomstick. As she worked, an old anxiety crept over her, the same feeling she’d had when Galina and the women were here. To get them to the carriage house without arousing suspicion, Clara had overseen them sweeping the streets—a common sight, foreign workers bent over their brooms—and had led them, little by little, to Falkenhorst’s low wall, the family forest, and the carriage house. At their barracks, they were reported missing, which Clara, back at the Works, duly noted in her files with a thrill of satisfaction and terror. She had stepped over a line she hadn’t known she would ever cross.

  When Max still hadn’t come, Clara inspected the cupboards, setting aside old paint cans and jars of loose bolts and screws so she could free the shelves of droppings and dead spiders. She stood on a stool and reached to the back of the top shelf, wiping her rag blind over the surface. Her hand nudged something soft. She coaxed it down and turned it over in her palm. It was a rolled-up bit of silk, dark with grime and tied with a slender ribbon of faded scarlet. As she unrolled it, she glimpsed the pure white inside, and her heart clenched into a fist pounding at her ribs.

  She dropped onto the stool and draped the silk square over her leg. It was the same fabric, the same shade of white, the same size as the square cut out of Elisa’s wedding dress. It was impossible that it was here, and yet there it was on her knee. She wanted to roll it up again, put it back where she’d found it. She had disturbed something she wasn’t meant to see. That much she knew. The rest—who put it there, and why—she couldn’t fathom.

  Elisa had never been in the carriage house, not even when Galina and the others were hiding here. Clara hadn’t wanted Elisa involved, in case they were found. Years before the war, Elisa had visited Falkenhorst once after nagging Clara to smuggle her in. Clara had been petrified her mother would hear from the servants, and she did. Clara had been put under house arrest for a week, but it was worth the few minutes she spent escorting Elisa and little Willy through the ground-floor rooms. In the library, Elisa had gazed up at the family portrait of the Falkenbergs painted the year they met, the year Willy was born. She spent a long time at the painting, pinching her lip until it looked bruised. Willy was more interested in the golden glow the sun cast upon the family virtues stenciled on the wall in real gold: Honor, Fidelity, Industry, Courage. Clara lifted him in her arms and he rubbed the letters with both hands, gasping with delight. To her knowledge, that was the only time they had set foot in the house. She had definitely never shown them Papa’s workshop.

  Clara rolled up the silk and carefully tied the ribbon back into a bow. The scrap had been a gift. Some kind of memento. A memento for someone Elisa couldn’t marry? When she was a teenager, Elisa used to devour cheap romances, books, films, magazines. This was the kind of idea she’d have found in one of those.

  When she wore the wedding dress, Elisa was eighteen. At that time, Friedrich was nineteen. Finished with school, he was continuing his education with the engineers at the Works. When he wasn’t doing that, he was here, in Papa’s workshop, designing and building his plane. He could have tucked the silk far back in the cupboard where no one but him would ever see it. Least of all their mother. She or the servants controlled every space in Falkenhorst except for here.

  “God, Friedrich.” Clara carried the silk with her, looking at it again and again as she circled the workshop. If Friedrich had been alive, she would have punched him the way he had taught her, a fist in the kidney. She would have demanded an explanation, the whens and hows and, most important, the whys. Why did he never tell her? Why hadn’t he trusted her? And Elisa. Why hadn’t she said something? All those years and not a word.

  Friedrich should have told her, given her some hint. He’d never been secretive; he didn’t have that dark spot in him for deceit. He was golden, Friedrich. It was easy to see Elisa at seventeen dazzled by him. Clara didn’t blame him; she didn’t blame Elisa. She understood the fascination, the power of teenage desire. Hadn’t she given herself to Max at almost the same age, just as reckless and passionate, willing to keep him a secret—hers and only hers—even from her parents?

  And then there was Willy. All of this meant that Willy was her nephew. A Falkenberg. And in a way, Elisa was her sister. If only Mother had allowed Friedrich to marry her. They would’ve been sisters-in-law. Real sisters.

  A soft knock on the door startled her.

  She crushed the silk into her pocket as Max slipped into the workshop, kicked the door closed, and scooped her into his arms. One hug, the familiar feel of him around her, the warmth—one moment of it—she could allow that for both of them, but then she struggled away from him, looking at the door. “Did you bring someone?”

  “Who would I bring?” His voice harde
ned. “You think I’d call in my new British overlords to catch you?”

  “No. I don’t know.” Outside the window, it was turning dark. She found her flashlight in her backpack and shone it in his face. The lines cut deeper around his eyes and mouth, and there was something washed out about him that made her think of tarnished brass. “You look the same.”

  “Liar. I’m practically gray.”

  “I don’t see it.”

  He turned the light on her. “I’m glad your hair’s dark again. I always preferred you that way.”

  “How have you been?”

  “Lost. Dead. I thought you were gone for good. Nobody knew what happened to you. I thought you’d died in that last bombardment.”

  “Did the Americans arrest you?”

  “I turned myself in, and was interned. They broke my nose and my collarbone when they saw I was SS, but I can’t blame them for that. When the British took over, they wanted to talk to me about Falkenberg. So few people left in the city knew it like I did. So we came to an agreement. They’re not a bad bunch. I like pragmatic men.”

  “You work for them?”

  “Oh, I’m still on a kind of probation, pending the result of my denazification proceedings. Don’t worry, treasure, I might yet end up in prison again once I’ve stopped being useful. I suppose you think I deserve that.”

  Her light was trained on the floor, and on the edge of the glow, she saw graffiti scratched low on the wall. Cyrillic letters she couldn’t read. “I don’t know what we deserve, Max. I don’t think anyone is holding a scale with our good and bad deeds on it. I doubt we could separate them out in that way. They’re too entangled.”

  “What happened to your face? Somebody hit you?”

  Clara told him about Captain Fenshaw and the train and the steel locker. By the end of it, Max was pacing the workshop, swearing softly. “What’s he playing at? If he wanted to arrest you, why didn’t he just pick you up in Hamelin?”

  She switched off the flashlight, and the room fell into darkness. “Maybe I’m a very special kind of war criminal.” She felt her father’s engine against her leg, a comforting reminder of a different time. “God, it was a shock, hearing him call me that.”

  “Being born German is enough.” Max paused. “He came to see me, you know.”

  “I was told he wanted you to identify me after my arrest.”

  “He talked to me months ago, but I don’t mean that. You were still solidly missing then. No, he came a couple of days ago again, looking for you. Thought I’d hidden you in the attic or under the bed. He brought me the best news I’d had in years. Imagine it. This officer turning my house upside down, and I didn’t care. I toddled after him asking, ‘Are you sure? She’s alive? She’s really alive? You’ve seen her? How is she?’ Annoyed him no end.”

  She smiled. “Good for you.”

  “Clara, we have a thousand things to sort out, but I have to ask you right now. Why did you leave? Why didn’t you tell me what you planned to do?”

  “You would have tried to stop me.”

  “I would have helped you. You know that. You caused a world of trouble, walking out. Did you think about what would happen to the rest of us?”

  “The less you knew about my plans, the better. It was safer that way.” She fingered the silk in her pocket. “The people in Elisa’s house told me the Gestapo picked her up.”

  “What did you expect? As usual, some of the foreign workers were out scrounging around the city after the bombardments. The police came to headquarters wanting to know what you were going to do about it. We found your office empty and your hair in the basin with your identity papers, half burned. I was the first person they questioned. They wanted to know if you were a deserter and if I had helped you. They knew that you’re half English. They asked me if you’d made a break for the British lines.”

  “Have you seen Elisa since the war?”

  “Do you think I spared a thought for her? You were gone. I thought you were dead.” He was holding her hand tightly. “I’ve had to try and live with that.”

  “I’m sorry, Max.”

  “Are you? Nearly two years and not a word from you. Not a whisper. What in God’s name were you doing in Hamelin?”

  Clara knew he was asking whether she had another man. She felt the heat rolling off him, feeding her old grievances. “How is your wife these days?” she asked. “Hannelore, was it? The perfect SS wife. Young, fertile, and stupid.”

  “Clara—”

  “Oh, I forgot, and obedient. After all those years with me, I’m sure that was most refreshing. How are the children, by the way? How many do you have now?”

  She heard the steady grind of his teeth. “Three.”

  “One came after the war. Congratulations.”

  “Don’t do this, Clara. You left me.”

  “At the end of the war. You left me in 1943 when you married that empty-headed, big-breasted girl.”

  “For you. The SS wanted family men. I had to get promoted. For you. You agreed to it.”

  She drew back, not wanting to be reminded of that, the worst part of the whole sordid story. Max had come to her, outlining his plan—she remembered the coffee they were drinking in her office, as if this was a discussion between colleagues—and she had listened to the reasons he had to marry. It was expected of him. He had found a girl dull and obedient enough to do her duty, as he called it. Nothing would change between them; Clara was still everything and always would be. But alas, the world was as it was. In the SS, family men advanced. And he needed to advance to help her in her work and, maybe one day, to reach a level her family would accept.

  She had viewed it as a temporary situation. She’d thought herself practical enough to see it through, even saw the benefits when it came to quietly helping the foreign workers. Max knew how to argue with the authorities. Improving worker conditions increased productivity. More food meant stronger backs, faster production, a boost for the war effort. This was a fine line he walked for her, a risk. He could have been accused of being soft on those people the SS called subhumans. Clara was immensely glad she didn’t have to hear Max speak of them in this way. She knew it disgusted him as much as it did her.

  But after he married, when she realized he went home to another woman, and especially when she heard the woman was pregnant, she had begun to withdraw from him, to turn her cheek when he tried to kiss her, to make excuses when he wanted to meet her in private. She couldn’t have a relationship with a married man.

  The final break came in late ’44. She had been carrying a bag of rations to the carriage house, and even before she went inside, she sensed the strange stillness from the building. Papa’s cars were there, the bucket in the corner where Galina and the women would urinate, a head scarf one of them had left behind. They had been instructed never to leave the building, but Clara had gone out to look for them anyway, frantically searching the park and the forest. In the undergrowth, she had discovered another scarf. Galina’s. She found no other trace of the women.

  She’d gone back to Falkenberg headquarters anxious, confused, on the edge of looking for the women in their old barracks. Then Max had come into her office, grim, stiff with anger. She had met his gaze and instantly knew what had happened, what he had done. She flew at him, fists up, but he wrestled her to the wall, held her there as she struggled. Did she have any idea how stupid she’d been? How easy it was to follow her to the carriage house? He couldn’t stand by and let her be caught, arrested, imprisoned, or worse, because of half a dozen Ukrainian women.

  “Tell me—what happened to Galina and the others after you betrayed them?” she asked now.

  He was breathing heavily in the dark of her father’s workshop. “I told you at the time. They were sent back.”

  “To where?”

  “Home. To their own people.”

  “And you believe that?”

  “Clara, I don’t know. I honestly don’t. But you’re not safe here, treasure. You’ve got to come h
ome with me.”

  “No—”

  “Fenshaw won’t be coming back to my place. He knew it was over between us a long time ago. It was clear to him I hadn’t even known you were alive. You’ll be safe with me.”

  “What would your wife say?”

  “What does she have to do with it?”

  “A whole bloody lot if she finds me in her house.”

  “She’ll come around.”

  “Max, you have children.”

  “They’re too small to make a fuss. They’ll love you. Clara . . .” He grasped her face, her cheeks in his palms. “We could disappear. Remember what we used to talk about? The dance school in Buenos Aires?”

  Dreams from another life, fantasies they used to discuss curled up together in bed, knowing it would never happen. She pulled his hands from her face. “Max, that wasn’t real. It was just talk.”

  “Before, yes. But now, why not? The world has changed. What we did in the past . . . it doesn’t matter anymore. We could start again. Wine and music the rest of our lives. We’ll be free. We didn’t have a chance before, but now—”

  “You’re a father. A father doesn’t abandon his children. What are you thinking?”

  She heard him sniffling in the dark, bitter laughter he was trying not to show, and she snapped on the flashlight to catch him at it. “I’m not going to break up a family. Not even for you. I know you’d leave everything for me if you could. But I wouldn’t respect you if you did. You know that because you know me. Better than almost anyone.”

  “I see your ironclad principles are alive and well.”

  She gave him a look, but decided not to let him bait her. “Did the British put my mother in the attic at Falkenhorst?”

  “Worse. They evicted her.”

  It was such a horrendous thought, Clara had to fight the urge to laugh. “How did they get her out? With a bulldozer?”

  “More or less. She’s living in a flat in Bredeney.”

  “I need to see her. She’ll know where Elisa is.” She was aware again of the silk square in her pocket. “Do you know the street?”