The Children's War (35 page)

37

“H
OW
WOULD YOU LIKE
to take a little vacation, darling?” Adam asked as he kissed Zosia hello.

Joanna came toddling across the room to him squealing, “Da da da da!” and he hefted her up and began nuzzling her tummy. She giggled uproariously in reply.

“Oh, yes! What’s up? Where to?” Zosia asked, poking Adam in the ribs to get his attention away from his daughter.

“What? Oh. Berlin.”

“Berlin? That’s not a break, it’s business! What are you doing there?”

“Got to hang around and wait for a knock at the door. Wanda’s told me your brother’s getting vetted for another security clearance, and I’m supposed to be an old school roommate, or something like that.”

“What about the age differences?”

“Okay, not a school roommate—maybe I fagged for him. Better?”

“Um.”

“If you and Joanna are there with me, it will make it all the more believable that we’re a reliable, German family vouching for an old family friend.”

“Hmm. What do we get, a house?”

“Yeah. We’ll have just moved in, so the neighbors won’t be expected to know us—if they check that far, which I doubt.”

“This is quite some production.”

“They’re pulling out all the stops, getting everybody out and about to try and make his story stick, placing relatives, friends, old schoolmates, all sorts of history all over the bloody Reich. This is big. If we can get Ryszard past this hurdle, then he’ll really be well placed.”

“It’s a lot of expense,” Zosia commented.

“But worth it,” Adam countered. “Once Ryszard is in high enough, he can pull in all sorts of people, access all sorts of files, arrange things for us. It’ll be worth every penny. Besides, a few bank heists will cover the costs.”

“Bank heists!” Zosia laughed. “That dates you!”

“I’m sorry, my dear. I know you and your magic fingers can pull in the readies straight out of Reich accounts, but it’s just hard for an old-timer like me to accept these newfangled thingies.”

“You mean computer fraud, O wizened old man?”

“Yeah. Somehow it just doesn’t seem right doing it that way. Too easy.”

“You old fart!”

“Hey, I’m exactly your age!”

“You’d never guess it. But I’ll have you know, I work my fingers to the bone pulling in the pfennigs.”

“I know, sweetie. I wasn’t denigrating your work. Honest,” Adam soothed. “I know it takes a lot of skill.”

“And work.”

“And work,” Adam agreed. “But know your money is well spent. Look, we’ll have a beautiful place in Berlin for a month or so, we’ll wheedle invitations to parties and spread Ryszard’s good name about, we can meet fine people, and—”

“Fine people?”

“All right, Nazi shits, but powerful ones. A few good words here and there, a few dinner parties, let Joanna practice her
Deutsch
in situ—”

Zosia sucked her breath in through her teeth. “I don’t know about that.”

“All right. We’ll not drag her out. We’ll take a nanny. How about Ludwik’s girl, Barbara?”

“Fine. Hey, if Ryszard gets this promotion, what about my mom and dad?” Zosia asked, glancing toward Joanna, who had wandered off toward the kitchen area of their flat.

Adam followed Zosia’s glance and strode after Joanna, picking her up before she reached the oven. “Hey, it’s on!” he exclaimed. “Are you cooking?”

“No, Marysia’s borrowing it. Hers isn’t working, and I could hardly say no since she always offers us some of her cooking.”

“Just as well, or we’d all starve.”

“You’re quite welcome to cook anytime you want to,” Zosia offered huffily.

“Me? What do I know about cooking?”

Zosia shrugged. “What do I? Anyway, what about Mom and Dad?”

“They’re still going to play Ryszard’s parents. Unless, of course, your dad gets elected to the government in exile. Then it’s off to America!”

“That’s what Julia should have done.”

“What?”

“Run for office. Then she could have gone to America with Olek.”

“She would have never made it in politics. Not her style.”

“No, I guess not,” Zosia agreed sadly. “Hey, why don’t we include Olek in the family? It would be a good experience for him to get out and about, and maybe he and Barbara—”

“No way! He’s hooked on your brother’s daughter.”

“It would be funny if Julia’s son and Ryszard’s daughter ended up together.”

“How come?”

“Don’t you remember? Ryszard used to be keen on Julia.”

Adam shook his head.

“Ah, you were probably too young to notice,” Zosia said condescendingly.

Adam grinned broadly.

“Or too busy with your own lusty teenage thoughts,” Zosia amended.

“Only about you.”

“Um-hmm. Anyway, first she was too young, then their work separated them, and then Ryszard got married, Julia got knocked up, and that was it.”

“That might explain why he made the effort to come to her funeral. I thought he looked rather hurt,” Adam remarked.

“Yes, well, did you notice he came alone?” Zosia pointed out.

“I thought that was because it’s too hard for them all to get away.”

“I think it was because he never told his little wifey that he carried a torch for Julia.”

“Why do you call her that? She’s all right.”

“She’s a doormat. My brother will use anybody who lets him, and she lets him!”

“Maybe,” Adam agreed reluctantly. “It’s hard to tell the difference between usury and love sometimes.”

“So, what about Olek?” Zosia asked, bored with the subject of domesticated wives.

“I think it’s a good idea. He could use the practice, but I don’t think he should be family. He should come as our servant. After all, we’ll have an entire house and he can keep our nanny company.”

“Oh, he won’t like that.”

“Zwangsarbeiter,”
Adam suggested, chuckling at his vision of Olek’s reaction.

“No, seriously, Adam.”

“I am serious! You know these people spend most of their money on keeping their jobs—you know, gifts, bribes, parties,
Zwangsarbeiter.
They have to prove their position in society! And the only people who bother with waged labor are those who are unsure of their position. For people as high in the hierarchy as we’re supposed to be, hiring waged labor is like renting furniture: you would only do it if you felt you weren’t going to be around for long!”

“I know, I know,” Zosia agreed. “But think of poor Olek! He’s been through so much. You don’t want to ask that of him!”

“All right. Live-in, waged labor. It’ll lower our prestige, you know.”

“I know, but he’ll appreciate it.”

Zosia shuffled through the invitations, laying them out on the fine wooden table of their beautiful dining room so that she could sort them by importance and date. “How in the world did you manage to get invited to so many parties? I mean, you don’t work anywhere, you don’t belong to any clubs, you don’t have relatives, you don’t even exist!”

Adam smiled. “All my native charm, darling!”

“No, really.”

“Ryszard introduced me at the officers’ club as a visitor. He was taken in there by some friend he’s managed to acquire here in Berlin. Some official he visited
earlier. Anyway, I spent some money, let on my importance, handed out my card, and voil‡! Suddenly everyone knows us!” Adam gestured magnificently toward the stack of envelopes. “Besides, it’s
Winterfest,
everyone is looking for someone to impress with their fine houses and their overstuffed larders.”

“Yeah, even I managed to acquire a few personal invitations,” Zosia agreed. “The neighbor saw me out and about with Barbara and Joanna and she invited us—you and me—to her house for a party. Wanted to welcome us as a new neighbor, she said.”

“How very polite.”

Zosia grunted. “Pillage our country, murder millions of people, but heaven forbid, can’t be rude to a new neighbor.”

“Probably kind to her dog, as well.”

“Doesn’t have one. We talked about that. What she does have is a
Zwangsarbeiter.
Proud of that, she is.”

“That proves my point—we lost prestige not forcing Olek to play that part.”

“Yeah. She talked about him as if he wasn’t even there. And he just stood there, a few feet behind her, staring at the ground. I couldn’t see his face, but I thought he looked a bit like you!” Zosia teased.

“Pff! You’re obviously suffering from stress-induced hallucinations, my dear.”

“Maybe. So, here’s the game plan.” She gestured toward the carefully organized invitations. “I’m afraid we have a lot of smiling ahead of us.”

“All part of the job, dear. All part of the job.”

38

“Y
OU’RE
BOOKED FOR
the Meissners’ on Wednesday,” Elspeth explained.

“I don’t know where that is,” Peter said.

“Yes, you do. You’ve driven me there.”

“I don’t know how to get there on foot,” he amended, hoping she’d take the hint.

“I’ll tell you when I write your pass. It’ll take about an hour to walk.”

“Will I come back that night?”

“Of course, I’ll need you in the morning.” Elspeth shuffled through some invitations trying to find a specific one. “Then on Thursday, you’ll be working an official gig in the Reichstag Annex.”

“How will I get there?”

“We’re going, so you’ll be driving us in. We’ll take the car when we leave, but I guess there’ll be some sort of bus for the workers.”

He nodded. Two more late nights. Yet another cancellation for his students.

“You’ll have to handle the children in the morning. I’m sure my husband and I will want to sleep in.”

“So would I,” he muttered.

“Huh?” Elspeth looked up.

“And Friday,
gnädige Frau?”

“Here, of course. Ach!” Elspeth spat, slapping her forehead in exasperation. “I forgot you’re supposed to work at the Schindlers’ that night. What am I supposed to do!”

“I guess you’ll have to reschedule your party,
gnädige Frau,”
he suggested, pleased that she had hit her own face and not his.

“Nonsense! The invitations have been sent! People I don’t even know. These parties are getting out of hand. . . . Oh, well, I’ll just have to rearrange your schedule. I guess we’ll need extra help as well. How was that girl who worked here last week, the Meissners’ girl?”

“The twelve-year-old?” he asked, remembering the solemn, silent young thing who had shown up at their door and worked obediently throughout the night. “She was fine. A good worker.” Late in the evening when everyone was drunk, he had tried to ask her where she had come from, but even then she had refused to say or do anything that might be considered insubordinate. Even answering his questions.

“I’ll get her then. Or maybe the Hoffman girl. They owe me a favor.”

Peter nodded. He had been used as the payback for a favor often enough already that he did not even mentally protest the idea of trading people around like so many poker chips.

The Hoffmans’ girl arrived on the appointed evening. She looked to be around eighteen and wore the gray and yellow of an indentured servant. She had walked the eight kilometers or so from her residence and stood now at the back door, her mousy brown hair hanging loosely about her face, looking somewhat bedraggled and confused. Peter welcomed her, generously offered her some of his tea and bread, then went to inform Elspeth of her arrival.

They worked together through the evening serving the canapós, offering drinks, and tending the kitchen. She had pulled her hair back and straightened her clothing, and Peter watched in fascination as he saw a miraculous transformation come over her as she stepped among the guests. She smiled demurely, her eyes sparkled with implied flattery, and she evinced an air of genuine respect and almost awe as she carried out her duties. In the kitchen, though, her demeanor was sullen and she treated him with a disdain bordering on contempt. He assumed her arrogance was born of their different uniforms, for although the conditions of her life were essentially identical to his, she had been given a higher social rank, which, though arbitrary and imaginary, was taken quite seriously by those whom it benefited.

Despite her exalted position, she was, however, not above indulging in the favorite sport of domestic staff during this season. Because of all the parties and the attendant confusion, the established tradition among domestic staff was to stuff themselves silly on food from the kitchen, and the Hoffmans’ girl not only
grabbed at the spare food, she seemed to assume her superior status gave her precedence. As Peter was already feeling rather sated, he let her have her little victories over him and amused himself instead with grabbing food directly from the party. It was certainly riskier, but a lot more entertaining as well.

As the evening wore on and the guests became more inebriated, the risks diminished considerably, and it was almost without a thought that he swiped a bit of leberwurst on a corner of bread that someone had bit into and then left on a side table. He popped it whole into his mouth and was endeavoring to chew it discreetly when Elspeth summoned him. He made his way to her side of the room, struggling to dissolve the food so that he could swallow it without being seen to chew. He nearly choked as he forced half of it down his throat. The other half got shoved into a corner of his mouth so he could murmur,
“Gnädige Frau?”

“See, you can see it if you look at him.” Elspeth did not deign to address him, rather she was pointing out something to her guests.

They hovered around him, scrutinizing his face in particular. Eventually one confused onlooker said, “But he does have blue eyes.”

“Yes, and his hair isn’t really dark.”

“In fact, he looks just like one of us,” a woman opined impishly. Peter looked at her; she was achingly beautiful. Her hair was a dark blond, darker than the other women’s but only because it was not bleached. Her eyes darted quickly around, and then, when she decided she was unobserved, she winked at him.

He was taken aback. He looked for a hint of explanation in her expression, but there was none, as if it had not even happened.

“That doesn’t matter,” Elspeth assured them knowledgeably. “You can see it in their faces: they’re just not as intelligent, they lack honesty, and they don’t have our good German character.”

He scanned the faces surrounding him. For whom was this performance? Did Elspeth really believe what she was saying? The women around him looked dutifully impressed by her words, but then they would, it was only polite.

“They really aren’t the same as us, are they?” someone ventured.

“Not at all!” the dark blond woman agreed heartily. None of the surrounding women heard the sarcasm in her voice, but Peter was sure it was there. Again he could not stop himself from looking at her face. He thought he saw a glimmer of camaraderie in her eyes, but there was no way he could react to it.

“It’s not hard to see their innate inferiority,” someone else was saying.

“They’re like children.”

“Except they lack the innocence.”

“You’re right, of course.”

“Can you imagine that some people hold we are all created equal!”

“Utter nonsense.”

He noticed that Elspeth’s eyes left him and strayed to the servant girl as she nodded her agreement.

“The Americans even put it in one of their documents. It’s so obviously untrue!”

“Goes against history.”

“And common sense.”

“They’re idiots! It’s so obvious there are classes of people! Only race-mixing ever makes it unclear.”

“Yes, and look what mixing does. Such a shame to pollute the pure blood.” This was followed by a moan, as if the thought caused genuine pain.

“Like the English,” Elspeth agreed.
“Gemischt,
like him.”

There was a general murmur of agreement. As if also agreeing, the woman with the dark blond hair reached out to touch him. She stroked his cheek and he felt the skin tingle at her touch. He felt his heart would break from longing, and he determinedly pulled his gaze away from her and in so doing caught Elspeth’s eye; she scowled in return, clearly indicating that he should not be so brazen as to look directly at any of them.

He focused his eyes on her midriff, and that seemed to placate her. As the ladies’ conversation swam around him, he studied the intricate pattern of multicolored swastikas worked into her dress; here and there, where the seams gathered the material together, the four arms of the
Hakenkreuz
collapsed into three, or sprouted a fifth. Why exactly were other races so different? he heard someone ask. The little swastika mutants marched dutifully down the length of Elspeth’s dress, disappearing into the pleats, without providing an answer. Another empty glass was set on his tray, and the last full glass of
Sekt
was plucked off it.

With the tray emptied, he was released from the clutch of women to return to the kitchen. Elspeth discreetly extricated herself as well and followed him in. He heard her behind him just as he was reaching for something to eat, and he awkwardly set the bread and cheese back down on the serving board.

“What is your problem?” she demanded angrily.

“Gnädige Frau?”
he responded, genuinely confused.

“You! Out there! You’re so grim. Damn it, you’re spoiling the mood of my party!”

Grim
was hardly the right word, more like
bewitched,
but that hardly seemed a sensible thing to say to her, so he said,“My apologies,
gnä’ Frau.”

“Just get that miserable look off your face. Look at her,” Elspeth said, pointing at the girl who had just returned to the kitchen with a cheerful grin, “she knows how to serve!”

“Yes,
gnä’ Frau.”

“Smile!” Elspeth demanded.

“As you insist,
gnä’ Frau.”
He let his eyes drop down along her tasteless dress. A sardonic smile appeared without effort. It was all he could do to keep from snorting his derision.

She slapped him.“How dare you mock my orders!”

“I beg your forgiveness,
gnädige Frau,”
he heard himself say as he pulled the smile back into a reasonably serious look.

Elspeth snorted. “Just don’t let me see you looking miserable again. You understand?” She did not wait for an answer as she swung out into the hall, her face lightening into a charming and happy expression as she went.

Afterward, when they were cleaning up, Peter and the girl gathered the abandoned food and drink into the kitchen for later disposal. As soon as Elspeth grew tired of watching them and went to bed, they both immediately returned to the kitchen and ate and drank everything that should, technically, have been thrown away. The girl then returned to the sitting room, inspected every ashtray, and secreted any unused cigarette ends in her pockets. Peter decided to let her keep all the little treasures since he already had a reasonable supply, but he was annoyed when the next thing she did was to throw herself down on the couch and promptly fall asleep.

He glared at her for a moment, but then decided to let her sleep and finish the work himself. Hours later, when he was done, he nudged her.

“Get up. You can’t stay there.”

“Why not?” she mumbled sleepily.

“If Frau Vogel finds you, I’ll get the shit kicked out of me.”

“How likely is it that someone will notice?” she responded, unimpressed.

“Likely enough. Come on, you can sleep upstairs.”

She groaned and reluctantly stood up. “Where’s the toilet?”

“In the cellar.”

“Oh, lucky you. Indoor plumbing.” With that, she promptly headed to the guest toilet off the hallway. He grimaced in annoyance but said nothing. He paced the hall, nervously glancing upstairs to be sure no one had observed her breach of discipline. Although it had never explicitly been stated, he was sure he would be held responsible for her actions.