His face rested against her naked stomach, his hot dry mouth playing on her skin as it moved lower and lower; and from a fold in the coverlet she drew out the surgeon’s scalpel, moving by slow degrees so as not to alert him, until her hand was level with his neck and she turned the blade upward and pushed it beneath his throat and slashed it back with all her strength, feeling the sudden dead weight of his head pressing down as his tongue ceased its licking and the blood began flowing, flowing in waves across her naked thighs.

  “You have used perfume, Fräulein,” he murmured softly. “I prefer you not to use perfume. I like to smell your body.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I forgot. I won’t do it again.”

  His tongue went on exploring her, but some of her nausea had disappeared, eased by the terrible, delight of her make-believe. She did it every time he came now, taking her revenge on him for what he’d made of her since Franz had been arrested.

  It wouldn’t be difficult, once she made up her mind. She could bring home a scalpel easily enough from the hospital, exquisitely sharp from its protective package; she was perfectly familiar with the sight of blood and the most hideous wounds; and with a weapon so deadly it would be over before he knew what was happening.

  • But there would be no means of getting rid of the body, from the third floor of a house in a crowded neighborhood; even the blood—and there would be a lot of it, from the carotid artery—would be impossible to deal with: Frau Hartnagel was so often in here for her sisterly chats. And with this creature dead, Franz would have no protector.

  Vogel began moaning again, like an animal in pain, moaning and snuffling over her body, until her skin crept with disgust. They weren’t moans of passion or ecstasy, but of the most intense frustration, she believed. He still wore his trousers and boots, as always.

  “Fräulein . . . Fräulein . . .” he murmured, absurd in his bourgeois formality as he plundered her.

  Swine . . . she murmured back to him in her mind, filthy impotent swine . . .

  Through her half-closed eyes she caught the wink of the little gold angel, over there on the table under the lamp. It no longer repulsed her; she was obliged to wear it every time she received this creature, because he’d asked where it was, on his next visit—“You don’t care for my gifts, Fräulein?”—his black eyes turning to stones and his mouth drawing tight. Now she was used to the little gold brooch, and thought of it as a shrine to the man who’d created it, holding back the nightmare dark while his hands fashioned beauty in the midst of despair. Had he known her brother, or spoken to him? Had Franz seen him at work on the brooch? Had Franz . . . seen him beaten to death? There was a frightening significance in previously commonplace things, these days, and if you weren’t careful it could turn your mind; for instance a routine visit to Dr.

  Fischer, her dentist, could be linked with unthinkable horrors. What a beautiful brooch, Fräulein! Yes, isn’t it, Dr. Fischer? It might be made partly from some gold fillings you provided for some of your Jewish patients; aren’t the little wings exquisitely worked? It could send you mad.

  He was moaning again, and she quickly thought about something else—Martin, that bewildering moment in the S-bahn train when she’d realized he was beside her, an enemy alien, his face in shadow but his voice characteristically Martin Benedict’s, gentle, reassuring. . . . It’s just possible that I can help Franz, or at least get news of him for you. . . . And then he had vanished in the blackout, leaving her only half-believing that he’d ever been there at all.

  He’d telephoned her at the hospital twice since then, for a few snatched moments to ask if she had heard from her brother, and if the Gestapo was worrying her or her parents again. His voice was unmistakably Martin’s, speaking in German as he’d always spoken to her; but now it had changed, noticeably: the zest for life had gone out of it and he spoke almost curtly, suppressing an undertone of bitterness. We’ll meet again as soon as we can, he’d told her the last time he’d phoned. Keep faith. . . .

  But that would be dangerous, she knew now.

  This creature was jealous.

  “You have no fiance, Fräulein? No attachments?” That had been last week.

  “No, Superintendent Vogel. I had a friend, but I broke it off with him.”

  “I see. I prefer you not to have men friends, do you understand?”

  “Of course. In any case, my work at the hospital keeps me so busy that—”

  “That has nothing to do with it, Fräulein.” His eyes were hardening, his mouth thin. “I prefer you not to have men friends. That is sufficient.”

  She must tell Martin, if he telephoned again, that they must never meet. Last week, when this brute had left her, she’d put on her coat and gone out into the winter streets, to take deep breaths of cold cleansing air; and she was sure there was someone following her, a man in a trench coat and a soft wide-brimmed hat, the uniform of the plainclothes Gestapo. She’d glimpsed him three times between her flat and Hundekehlen See, and he’d made no attempt to conceal himself.

  Vogel was snuffling noisily now, like a dog, and for a moment she felt sick. She was aware also that something else was happening, something strange; his animal snuffling sounded different, rhythmic. His half-clothed body was shaking now, and across her thighs where his face was resting she could feel, in astonishment, the wet droplets of what could only be his tears.

  14

  LEIPZIG, 10 FEBRUARY 1940

  “Mama, there’s a car!”

  “What?”

  “A car, pulling up outside!”

  Lilli swung around from the curtains, her eyes wide.

  “Don’t move the curtains, Lilli—I’ve told you.” But Gertrud Dresel’s voice was not raised; she had expected this for eighteen months, and was ready. “Come away. How many cars have pulled up outside this house every year? Hundreds!” But she turned quietly to the man sitting with her at the table. “Johann—upstairs, just in case.”

  He left the room at once, making no sound in the felt-soled shoes Gertrud had made specially for him.

  “Sit down, Lilli. Finish your meal.”

  As the girl obeyed, her mother took the man’s plate, knife, fork, napkin and glass and pushed them into the narrow cupboard below the sink, swinging the hinged shelf of cleaning materials across and closing the door on it.

  “Mama!”

  “Shh!” Gertrud saw the fright in her daughter’s eyes. Lilli was almost fourteen and very intelligent, doing

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  well at school; but this situation called for more than intelligence. “We have nothing to fear. Nothing. He is safe now', upstairs. We answer the questions politely, the way we’ve learned it all by heart. Now, be calm.”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  They heard the doors of the car slamming, and the tramping of boots across the icy pavement. Gertrud sat down opposite her daughter and broke a piece of bread, listening with her face composed. A hundred such cars, it was true, had pulled up outside this house last year; and each time she had bundled Johann upstairs, just in case. But each time, she’d known the day was coming closer when it wouldn’t be “just in case” anymore.

  “Is the soup good, Lilli?”

  “Yes.” She tried to smile, but felt sick, dreadfully sick.

  Gertrud had prayed that when they came to find Johann, Lilli would be out of the house, so that her face would give nothing away. For the first few months they had made elaborate plans: if the SS or the Gestapo came, Lilli was to run out of the back door and climb the wall into the alley, so that she wouldn’t be here to give anything away; her dinner things were to be pushed into the secret cupboard and she was never to leave her outdoor shoes about, or play the piano, or pass across the curtains in case there was the smallest gap at night. But it had become too onerous, and—they began to think—unnecessary. It wasn’t fair to demand of Lilli that she live here in her own home like a hunted animal. Life had to go on, and they’d found what they thought was a better plan: to rehearse Lilli in the proper way to answer questions, calmly and convincingly, doing it every day until she knew it all by heart. But now Gertrud could see there’d been 'a flaw in their plan. Lilli had always known it was only a rehearsal, until tonight.

  “Mama?”

  “Why should this car be any different from all those others, child?”

  Lilli had put down her fork, unable to pretend anymore, and her small hands lay loosely on the table. “Because I know it is,” she said very low; and then the knocking began.

  Johann Glauss could hear it from his room upstairs. A section of the attic had been screened off with a false wall and a sliding panel. They had been built by Emil, Gertrud’s son; he was away at the French frontier now, a corporal in the Army. Whenever he came home on leave he always tinkered with his handiwork, discovering imaginary cracks or a stiffness in the sliding runners; it was a labor of love, as Johann knew. Johann was like a father to him, after eighteen months, helping him get over the death of his real father, from tuberculosis.

  A search warrant . . . something about a warrant. . . The visitors were noisy, their voices carrying through the house. Johann, standing in the freezing dark with his hands by his sides, lifted his head as far as the low slope of the ceiling would allow, and waited.

  The sounds continued: the voices questioning; the scrape of a chair; Gertrud’s voice now, calm and reasonable; the measured thudding of their boots as they moved into the morning room, and now the garden room as it was called, because of all the plants (Gertrud had green fingers); and now Lilli’s voice, quicker and rather shrill, a note of fright in it . . . poor Lilli, growing up in days like these and learning their terror ... it was hardest of all for the children.

  The men came up the stairs, three of them, perhaps four, and the voices were clearer now.

  “This room?”

  “My daughter’s bedroom.”

  “Open the door.”

  Johann heard the slight creaking in the sliding panel; it always did that when people moved on the landing.

  He had never told Emil; the boy would have stripped it all down and rebuilt it.

  “This room, Frau Dresel?”

  “My son’s. He’s away at the front. A corporal—a signaler.” It was said with pride.

  “Open it, please. Hauff —search that cupboard. Fleig-mann, check the fire escape. Hurry!”

  Someone came into the room next to the attic and began rapping the walls, and Johann Glauss lifted his head again and began silently to pray.

  “What are you frightened of, Fräulein?”

  The voices were loud now.

  “I’m not frightened. I—”

  “She’s still a child, mein Herr. She doesn’t understand—”

  “I am questioning her, Frau Dresel, not you.”

  The rapping went on, reaching the sliding panel. One of them was using his knuckles and, from inside the attic, Johann could hear the sudden difference in the tone. The panel was behind a dressing table and had a picture on it, a forest scene, with a deer drinking from a pool; the wallpaper was the same pattern and the wainscoting was of exactly the same molding. But all of this meant nothing now, because of the sound the man’s knuckles were making.

  “Fleigmann—check that wardrobe!”

  The rapping stopped. Perhaps it had sounded different in the other room. Johann still stood with his hands hanging by his sides, the sweat beginning to drip from his fingertips, though it was freezing in the attic. His head was still lifted in prayer, but he was praying for them, not for himself. He was an old man, almost sixty, with the weight of the last eighteen months added to that; but Gertrud was still a handsome woman, and of great worth, a prize for any man seeking her in marriage; and Lilli . . . Lilli had not begun to live yet, before it was time to die. There’d be no mercy on them; they were harboring a man on the wanted list, an enemy of the state.

  Johann prayed for them.

  ‘‘And fourteen candles!” laughed Lilli in delight. “Where did you find them?” Candles were scarce; everything was scarce. As for a birthday cake, with icing ... “Uncle Johann, you’re not eating any!”

  He sat smiling, shaking his head. They were in Emil’s room, next to the secret part of the attic; the SS men had been gone more than an hour but Gertrud wouldn’t let Johann go downstairs. Lilli’s birthday was in two days’ time, and Gertrud had asked her if they could have the party now, to celebrate the miracle. The poor child was laughing at everything they said, in her relief from the shock they’d all been through.

  Gertrud and Johann looked at each other with steady eyes; Lilli hadn’t known it would have meant death for all of them. Only last week a young man was hanged for nothing more than stealing a neighbor’s rations.

  “Lilli darling, that’s your third big slice!” said her mother, laughing.

  “And I’m going to have a fourth! It’s so delicious!” Johann’s head swung as the knocking came from below, and Gertrud stared at him, a warning in her eyes.

  “Quick, Johann.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mama! Who do you think—”

  “Hush, darling. I’ll go and see.”

  “But they—”

  “Be calm. We are having your birthday party, just the two of us, you understand? There’s nothing to hide.” She went downstairs as the knocking came again.

  It was the SS officer, this time alone.

  “You forgot something, Herr Offizier?”

  “Yes.” He came past her quickly, shutting the door.

  “I must talk to Professor Glauss, the man you have upstairs.”

  “Professor who—?” Her face was blank, but her heart was dying inside her.

  “Frau Dresel, we’ll sit here at the
  “I don’t understand,” said the woman evenly. “We don’t know any Professor Glauss. There’s some mistake.”

  “I could have arrested him an hour ago.” His light blue eyes rested steadily on hers. “It was an official search and I had to report on it. I reported there was no one concealed here. Now I’ve come back for my own unofficial purposes, which are to take Professor Glauss to permanent safety. Surely you can see now that you can trust me.”

  “There is no one here,” she said.

  He pressed her hands. “I can go upstairs and fetch him myself, if you insist. He’s behind the wall where the picture is, of the deer in the forest—” He broke off as he heard the girl snatch her breath. “It’s all right, Lilli, don’t be afraid.” To the woman he said, “The paper on that wall is less faded, and the carpet is slightly worn below the picture; the wall is hollow, and when I noticed it I stopped rapping at it at once—do you remember? You wondered why—I saw it in your eyes.” He gave her time to think. “I’d rather you fetched him yourself, Frau Dresel, and reassured him.”

  He waited. If he went up there and spoke through the wall, Glauss wouldn’t come out; he’d have to smash his way in and make a lot of noise for the neighbors to hear—including the block warden if he lived close— and it would waste precious time.

  “Please hurry,” he said. “There are friends waiting for him.”

  Gertrud watched the young officer, wondering at the strain in his thin face and the urgency in his eyes, feeling the sincerity in the firm hands that enclosed her own. She was close, she knew, to trusting him, but that didn’t make any difference: he knew where Johann was hiding, and their lives were in his hands.

  “Lilli,” she said at last, without looking away from the officer, “go and fetch Uncle Johann. Tell him it’s all right.”

  NEAR SCHWARZHEIDE, 27 FEBRUARY 1940

  The train had stopped an hour ago in the middle of nowhere, somewhere between Berlin and Dresden, in flat terrain under a sky bright with winter stars. It was well below zero but there was no wind.

  “It’ll be there for a couple of hours,” Dorfman had told Martin, “maybe longer, but you don’t want to waste any time. They’re linking another five cattle trucks to the rear before moving on to Grossenhain.”

  “How do I identify the man we want?”

  “You’ve got his name and description. The rest’s up to you.”

  Three hundred prisoners packed in cattle trucks in the dark, some of them dead, some of them mad, one of them Schroeder. He would have to be found.

  Martin had told his driver to halt the Mercedes in the frozen ruts a hundred yards from the track, this side of the level crossing where the road ran to Hoyaswerda and the Polish frontier. His driver was Corporal Kitzel, forty-one years old, a confirmed bachelor with an eye for the girls, a man of enterprise and discretion. Martin had taken more than five weeks to get him, wanting to make sure of the evidence—thirty-four gallons of army petrol in a makeshift tank under the floor of the man’s billet, for use in his Adler sports car; two coffee tins of human teeth with the gold fillings still in them, bartered for cigarettes in the camps—so Kitzel had admitted, white to the gills; and a block of blank leave passes stolen from the Orderly Room at the SS 49th (Friedrichsfelde) Battalion satellite unit, for selling discreetly to the troops. God knew what other exotic perfidies the man was engaged in, but any one of those three would have got him stripped of his uniform and thrown into a concentration camp and he knew it.

  Martin had been specific. “We’re going to make a little arrangement, Kitzel, and it’s going to save your neck. I have certain unofficial business of my own to look after from time to time. Start being inquisitive and I’ll have you behind the wire.”

 

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