‘Just like Dagmar’s dad. At the station,’ Otto said finally. ‘One minute you see him, a second later he’s gone.’
Paulus glared at Otto. ‘It’s not going to be like Dagmar’s dad,’ he said, and then repeated it, quietly, almost to himself. ‘It’s just not.’
Frieda put down the phone.
‘I’ll wait fifteen minutes and then call again. Have either of you boys ever heard your father mention anyone called Helmut?’
But the boys had not.
Frieda tried to pass the time by making herself some tea and hot chocolate for the boys.
Then they heard the noise of the lift approaching their floor once more and dared for one moment to hope.
But it was Silke.
She had come around intent on rehearsing her own grievances. Her relationship with her mother’s Nazi boyfriend had gone from bad to worse. Right from the start Silke had refused to accept his authority in the house and for that reason he had taken to slapping and spanking her. She was fourteen years old and was of course deeply outraged at this and so became all the more defiant, which in turn outraged the SA man. And also astonished him. He had clearly imagined that by living with Silke’s mother he had acquired for himself two servants for the price of one. He expected his clothes laundered, his food cooked and his cigarettes and beer brought to him while he sat hogging the gas heater. Edeltraud herself was completely cowed and terrified of losing him. As the fiancée of an SA man she was a ‘somebody’ in her block for the first time in her life. The SA were all powerful, they did what they liked, and if anybody objected there were three million more of them around the corner spoiling for an uneven fight. Edeltraud simply adored going about knowing that all the old bitches who used to sneer at her and call her a whore must now be pleasant to her, and so she always sided with Jürgen against her daughter. Silke had therefore taken to keeping out of the way as much as she could, and often took refuge at the Stengels’ apartment, where she was always welcome.
She had come there now, nursing a swelling ear and a sore backside courtesy of the newly awoken German man, but she soon realized her troubles were as nothing compared to those that had befallen her old friends. And befallen her also, for Wolfgang and Frieda were as much family as she’d ever known.
‘Is there anything your Brownshirt stepdad could do, do you think?’ Otto asked but without any hope at all.
‘Are you kidding? He has no idea I still come here,’ Silke replied, ‘and if he did he’d probably actually kill me. Besides, those guys were SS, that’s different. Jürgen’s only a stupid little prick of a corporal in a street gang really. He’s a big man in our block or when he’s hitting me but out in the real world he’s just a scared little rat. The only Nazis that listen to him are the other apes on our street corner.’
Frieda brought some hot chocolate for Silke and together they tried to think. Frieda noticed that there was still broken glass on the floor from the destruction of Wolfgang’s Georg Grosz print and began to clear it up. Paulus went and got some parcel tape and carefully repaired the torn picture. Despite the SS man having put his fist through it, no pieces had actually come away and so it was possible to make it look almost new, from the front at least.
Paulus hung the now glassless print back up where it had been. A small act of defiance.
Then once more they heard the lift creaking and clanking outside in the well of the building, followed by a heavy footfall outside, and again for a tiny moment they dared to hope.
But the figure who a moment later was standing there in the shadows was not their father. The boys did not know who it was at all, but Frieda did. Even if she had not seen him for eleven years. Not since that day at the market during the Great Inflation when he had been selling his works for a pittance.
‘Good evening, Frau Stengel,’ the man said, remaining in the dark. ‘I hope I do not intrude.’
‘Well, no,’ Frieda stammered, ‘no, of course not … Herr Karlsruhen … what a very unexpected surprise. Boys, go to your room please and shut the door, take Silke.’
The surge of hope that Frieda had felt on hearing footsteps had been replaced by complete astonishment at the utterly unexpected appearance of this figure from her distant past. Now, however, as the youngsters retreated with many a wary glance at the shadowy figure in the doorway, hope rose within her once more. This man had once been infatuated with her but he had wronged her. Could it be that his conscience was troubling him? Had he come finally to make amends?
Could it be that somehow his sudden reappearance could be of assistance to Wolfgang?
From what detail she could make out, Karlsruhen certainly looked like a man of influence. A very different figure to the lean and angry stallholder who had been peddling his work for peanuts during the inflation. Clearly he was once more a person of substance. More so even than when Frieda had first known him. More portly and more expensively dressed in his big cashmere coat and holding his silver-topped cane.
Frieda did notice that the collar of his coat was turned up high and his wide-brimmed hat had been pulled low. As if he had not wished to be recognized when he entered the building.
After all, he knew what she was. She had once spat the fact in his face.
‘Goodness, Herr Karlsruhen,’ Frieda said, ‘this is a surprise. Won’t you have some tea?’
He stood looking at her for a moment, his eyes flicking from her feet to her head and back down again. She was standing in the middle of the room on the big blue rug. He still hovered close to the door.
‘Or coffee perhaps? Or I have some chocolate I made for the children – it’s a chilly night. Please, come in. Sit down?’
But he just kept staring. Or at least Frieda presumed he was staring, his eyes were hidden in the shadow cast by the broad brim of his hat.
‘Turn around,’ he said finally.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Ten years is a long time, thirteen in fact,’ Karlsruhen went on. ‘You were twenty or twenty-one as I recall when you modelled in my studio. Now of course you are in your thirties. Most women lose their bloom and their shape during those years. I knew you wouldn’t, though. Yours is a beauty that will take many more years to fade. Won’t you turn around?’
Frieda swallowed once or twice but then did as she was asked, rotating a single turn on the carpet where she stood and ending with a desperate, selfconscious little flourish.
She had decided she must humour him. At least until she knew more. Any hope, no matter how tenuous, was worth grasping at. This man wore the party badge. If he wanted her to turn around and to pay her ridiculous compliments as he had done when she was young, then of course he could.
Karlsruhen breathed deeply, sucking in air in a kind of reverse sigh. Frieda felt almost as if he was trying to
smell
her.
‘You are still beautiful, my dear,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘That’s very sweet.’
‘You haven’t changed so much you know,’ Karlsruhen said. ‘Your figure is still beautiful, at least, I think it is. One cannot tell for
sure
of course until …’
He left the unfinished sentence hanging in the air. Frieda knew that she was going red and hot and flustered and fought against it. It was obvious that for whatever reason he still desired her. Perhaps somehow she could play that to her advantage.
He was a party member after all.
‘I have come,’ Karlsruhen said majestically, ‘to ask you to take up modelling for me again.’
‘Modelling? But why? Can’t you find younger girls than me?’
‘I have never forgotten you, Frieda, my dear. Despite the – difficulty – of our parting I have never forgotten how you – inspired – me and often since then I have longed to be inspired again … I see you have one of our pieces still,’ he said, turning to the little statuette that stood on top of the piano. ‘Your father acquired it. For a fraction of its worth, as I recall. But then he is a Jew and so one shouldn’t be surprised at that. It is the way of your people.’
Despite still being prepared to try to ingratiate herself, Frieda found herself protesting the slur.
‘He paid what you and your wife were asking,’ she said. ‘You were offering the same prices to anyone in the market.’
Karlsruhen studied the end of his cane for a moment. He clearly did not wish to discuss the statuette. He flicked some invisible speck from the moulded silver knob while clearly considering what best to say next.
‘Let us not fall out, my dear,’ he said finally.
‘Have you come here after dark to offer me employment, Herr Karlsruhen?’ Frieda asked. ‘Wouldn’t a note have been a better beginning to our reacquaintance?’
‘I will speak plainly. I have never forgotten our last, ahem … encounter. Not at the market … I mean at my studio.’
‘No, Herr Karlsruhen, nor have I,’ Frieda replied, ‘but let’s not dwell on the past, you had been drinking and—’
‘By rights I should be angry with you, and in many ways I am.’
Frieda had been trying to appear forgiving but now her mouth gaped wide in astonishment. ‘
You
, angry with me!’
‘You deceived me,’ Karlsruhen whined piously. ‘I thought you were a German girl.’
‘I was a German girl! Herr Karlsruhen. I am a German girl. It’s only this last year or so that anyone has presumed to say I’m not and they have no right.’
‘You are
not
German, Frau Stengel, and you know it. You are a Jew. Shortly there will be new laws at Nuremberg and you will lose your citizenship as all Jews will …’
‘Herr Karlsruhen, have you come here to tell me what I can read every day in the
Völkischer Beobachter
?’
‘I have come here to tell you that I still desire you, Frau Stengel! I wish to finish the business I began in 1920. It has stayed with me all these years like no other need. You denied me then but I hope you will not deny me now. There, I have said it. I know that it is wrong but—’
‘Of course it’s wrong—’
‘You are a Jew, so such things are rightly forbidden. Your blood is not my blood, your race inferior. And yet you bewitch me. You always did and I have never forgotten the feel of your body when I laid my hands upon it.’
Frieda knew that she would have to decide.
It was a dreadful, impossible prospect, one which would have been unimaginable, even an hour before. But Wolfgang was in the hands of the SA. She knew that she would do anything to save him.
Anything
.
‘Well … that’s very … flattering, Herr Karlsruhen,’ Frieda said, trying to keep her voice steady, ‘and perhaps I was a little
brusque
with you all those years ago. But now, well, the thing is, my husband—’
‘Ah yes, your husband,’ Karlsruhen said with triumphant malice. ‘Once there was a time when you told me your husband would kill me for what I would like to do to you. But he can’t help you now, can he, Frau Stengel? He can’t even help himself. For where is he? Do you know, Frau Stengel? I don’t think so.’
And the dreadful truth dawned on her. Incredible that it took so long for the devilish penny to drop. It was so obvious. Him turning up that very night. Scarcely an hour after …
‘What do you know about my husband? Tell me!’
‘I know that he is a decadent and a purveyor of corrupt Jew filth and he has been rightly taken into custody and—’
‘It was you! You reported him!’ Frieda hissed. ‘You evil bastard, you had them get him out of the way so you could force yourself on me!’
‘Your husband has been arrested, Frau Stengel, that is all we know. Meanwhile, there is the matter of you and your children to consider. I have influence. I am highly regarded in official circles. You may in fact have read that I have recently been elected to the Prussian Academy of Arts … I am perhaps not quite an Arno Breker but nonetheless I have been told even the Führer has—’
‘Can you help my husband? If I do what you want, can you help him?’
She had decided. She would let his plan work out the way he wanted if only he would bring back Wolfgang.
But of course he couldn’t.
‘Your husband is gone, Frau Stengel. Into the abyss,’ Karlsruhen said. ‘His fate is now beyond you or me to influence. It is now for you to consider your own position and that of your children. If you will agree to meet me in secret from time to time I can help you. I can protect you and gain you privileges. Believe me, your kind will be in need of such things quite soon now. I can make sure that your sons are allowed to complete their studies. I can see that the local SA are warned off.’
‘Herr Karlsruhen, can you help my husband? He has only just been taken! Surely it is not too late!’
‘That Jew is gone!’ Karlsruhen said angrily. ‘Forget him. Think only of yourself. Do as I say and I will help you. Deny me and I swear I will do the opposite. How old are your boys now? Fourteen? Old enough to go to Dachau I can assure you … You
must
succumb to me. You have no choice. You must finally allow me to do to you what you deserve, you little Jewish slut! You whore! Do you think you can deny me? You are
Untermensch
. You must crawl or die. I’ll break your Jew pride. I’ll show you how a beast should be tamed. You will let me use you as I wish or your boys will follow your husband to Dachau!’