The Other Side of Love (50 page)

desperate to find somebody. So many of them are. But she’s different

from the others. Most of them either crawl or act like they’re still the

“master race. She’s quiet and sort of sweet basically a fine person.

It’s hard to believe she had any connection with the Nazis.”

“That’s why she’s in Ober Tappenburg.”

A muscle worked at Wyatt’s jawline.

“So we can figure out her loyalties?”

The WAC’s face grew yet redder.

“Yes, sir.”

“Does she know she has a visitor?”

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‘Negative, sir.”

“Let’s keep it that way, then.”

Saluting crisply, she opened a new-painted door with black lettering: Interrogation Officer.

The Ober Tappenburg facility had been built as an SS barracks. Either the contractor for the SS had done shoddy work or the earth below the building had subsided. The floorboards of the small room slanted downwards so that the two straight chairs that faced each other across a pine table were at different levels. Instead of sitting down, he went to the window, putting a cigarette between his lips but not using his lighter.

He was standing there when the door opened quietly behind him.

No blowing off steam, he commanded himself. No judgements, no accusations. Don’t let her talk about the old days. The important thing is to keep it impersonal.

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I

He ground the unlit cigarette to shreds in the ashtray before he permitted himself to turn. For several heartbeats he gazed across a dozen feet of badly joined floorboard and six years of warfare.

The neckline of her grey pullover was discoloured to an ugly brown, the elbows patched in black wool. It hung loosely over a baggy ersatz monstrosity that passed as a skirt. Even this bulk of unseasonal winter clothing could not disguise how thin she was. Waif thin. The delicate bones of her jaw showed; her eyes were shadowed and huge. With her pale hair parted on the right and drawn neatly to the left, she looked younger than when he’d met her at Hitler’s big extravaganza, the Olympics.

The red-scrubbed WAC corporal had obeyed his orders.

Kathe had no inkling of who awaited her. As she stared at him, she raised her hand to the blue throbbing vein at her throat, her pallor increased, her eyes seemed to grow yet more immense. Worried that she might faint, he took a step forward.

Then she smiled.

Nobody past infancy should smile like this. Her joy was completely undisguised. She couldn’t have been more naked than if she had abruptly stripped off those hideous clothes. He felt a stirring that hovered between the erotic romanticism of the past and a blunt urge towards rape.

“Yes, it’s me,”

he said sharply.

“Come in.”

The smile faded a little, and she crossed the threshold.

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Til be out here, sir,”

said the WAG.

The door closed, and they were alone in the shoddily constructed

office.

Not trusting himself to speak again, he nodded at the chair which faced the window, the lower chair. She sat folding her hands awkwardly. Since he didn’t know himself why he was here, in lieu of an explanation he held out a crumpled pack of cigarettes.

She shook her head.

“I don’t smoke,”

she said.

He had forgotten her voice. The low soft timbre was a reminder of endearments whispered in twilit beds.

“Nowadays they’re the medium of exchange in your country,”

he said. Take one. Take a couple.”

Colouring, she stared down at her clenched thin hands. The men’s voices rose outside, an indecipherable command was shouted, and then there was a rustling quiet.

“Are you going to write down what I say?”

she asked.

“What kind of question is that?”

“I thought … Haven’t you come to question me?”

Tm here on a visitor’s pass.”

“You are?”

She pushed up her sleeve, and it dropped below her wrist again.

“Please, is there some way you could get me paroled?”

She spoke so rapidly and quietly that at first he didn’t understand.

“Paroled?”

“Leave the camp for a little while.”

“Why?”

“I need to … find somebody.”

Her voice wavered on the somebody.

“Come to think of it, the corporal mentioned you were hot to get out.”

6

“Just for a couple of days. Would it be possible for you to arrange it?”

She pressed down on the table, disturbing the precarious balance of the legs. The ashtray slid several inches. The old dreaminess, the tender vulnerability were peeled from her, and her gaze was direct and fierce. All at once he was positive that the somebody she needed to find was a man. Her lover. Her Nazi lover.

“Sorry,”

he said in a tone that indicated the opposite.

“Against regulations.”

“Wyatt, please, couldn’t you try? Just one day. I swear I’d come back. There’s somebody I need to find.”

A fact ot life here in the American zone. You Germans’re looking for each other. We’re looking for Nazis. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t dare suggest you were in the party. We’ve already discovered there weren’t any more than a dozen Nazis. The rest of you were only following orders.”

She raised her chin for a moment, then she bent her head and reached in her sleeve for a tattered, unironed scrap of cloth to blow

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her nose.

“How is Grandpa? Is he still … is he all right?”

“Fine and dandy,”

Wyatt snapped. The situation, him the victor facing the thin, defeated yet still beautiful woman whom he had once loved to desperation, was as corrosive as battery acid. Despite his resolve, he could not control his rage.

“And Aubrey?”

“He served out the war in Scotland.”

Her fingers tightened on the handkerchief.

“Could I write to him?”

“Do you have mail privileges?”

She shook her head.

“Araminta’s dead.”

At this she looked up.

“

‘Minta?”

Tears clung to her lower lashes.

“We were married,”

he said.

“Married?”

Her lips were parted, trembling.

“How did she die?”

The anguish came as sharply as it had in that Belgian farmhouse.

“She didn’t die. She was murdered. In London. On her way home from working at the Red Cross. One of your V2 rockets pulverized a couple of blocks.”

“Oh, poor

“Minta …

“

“We have a little boy.”

Kathe’s eyes widened, and again he had the feeling she might pass out.

“A baby,”

she whispered.

“A boy?”

“Geoff is his name. Geoffrey. Spelled the English way. Uncle Euan and Aunt Elizabeth have him at Quarles.”

How could this information ring so vindictively?

“Wyatt, once we meant something to each other,”

she said rapidly.

“Can’t you at least try to get them to release me for a few hours”

“Jesus Christ, is that all you have to say? Don’t you give a damn that she’s dead?”

The clump of many feet wearing wooden-soled clogs filled the hall. The women internees were on the way to their exercise hour. After a few beats, he said:

“I was at Buchenwald right after it was liberated.”

Even taking the clatter into consideration, he spoke too loudly.

“Ah.”

“When you’re questioned, I suppose, you’ll give the usual answer. You had no idea what was going on.”

“No, I’ll tell the truth,”

she said.

“I knew about everything.”

“Tell

“em in that same fine cheery tone and you’ll go before a military tribunal and get the death sentence.”

“We both knew about the camps from the beginning. Aubrey told us.”

Rising, she started for the door.

He darted around the table, blocking her way.

“How could you have stood being with me?”

“What do you mean?”

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‘Exactly what I said. How could you have gone to bed with me?”

“I loved you.”

Her lips were very white.

“Knowing what you knew about Myron Leventhal?”

“What do you want to hear? That I’m guilty? Of course I am. Everybody in Germany is guilty. And there’s nothing worse that you can say to me than I’ve already said myself. There is no absolution.”

Moving around him, she tapped on the door.

After the WAC corporal led her away, he sat down, burying his face in his hands. He kept seeing that first nakedly joyous smile, seeing the unrepentant pride of those thin, erectly held shoulders as she had left the room.

Damn all Germans to hell. Damn her.

Kathe had the upper bunk at the far end of the dormitory. She walked between the rows of neatly folded khaki US Army blankets, grateful in a dulled way that she was alone.

Climbing on to her bunk, she sat with her legs dangling.

That first sight of him had filled her with such joy - no, call it by its rightful name, ecstasy that there was no room for breath in her lungs, no place for rational impressions. He was taller than she remembered. It had taken her several minutes to realize that his quizzical half-smile was gone, and that the years had left a certain hardness along his jawline. There were deep lines scored at the corners of the eyes gazing at her with undisguised hostility and repugnance. A few white hairs sprinkled his tawny crewcut. He was hopelessly handsome, this well-fed American officer in his pinks, but hdfcvasn’t the Wyatt she had known. 9

Of course not; he’s Araminta’s widower.

She wanted to mourn for Araminta, playmate of her girlhood whom she had loved, but she couldn’t. It was even impossible to feel the normal jealousy. Her relief that Aubrey and the rest of the Kingsmiths had survived was benumbed. Stretching on the bunk, she stared at the whitewashed wall.

Why didn’t I explain that I needed to find our child, his and mine?

What a waste of time! Fat chance he would have believed Erich, born in

a Lebensborn home, was his. Besides, he has his own son. All right, what if

I had broken the Official Secrets Act? Told him I had worked with British

intelligence, and seen Aubrey twice during the war. I couldn’t break my

s°rn oath. All right, I should have told him what he’d always believed.

I hat I idolized Hitler. Yes, why didn’t I lie about being a Nazi, then fallen

o the floor and licked his shoes, begging forgiveness? Anything, I should

ave done or said anything so he would have helped me to leave here for

a Jew days to find Erich.

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I’d already begged him, and I couldn’t beg more. Oh God, it’s the same old story. Kathe Kingsmith has her pride.

“Pride!”

she murmured aloud, a humourless laugh escaping her.

“What do I have left to be proud about?”

She closed her eyes.

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I

The women detainees would be allowed out in the air for another hour. Kathe lay on her bunk with her arms wrapped around herself, eyes closed. The few minutes with Wyatt in the interrogation officer’s room had hurt too deeply for tears. After a few minutes she forced herself to stop thinking about it. Rolling on to her side, she stared through the window at the sky and attempted to make some sort of

logic from the chaotic disconnected eveŤp of the past months.

She had bolted from the burning SS farmhouse during the air raid

- an unplanned breakout - and been felled by a blow in the back: by some quirk of malignant fate, she had come to in the same cell from which she had escaped. The reek of smoke still clung heavily in the air. The windows had been boarded over. She knew it must be hours later, though, because daylight streaked between the boards. She tried to sit. Dizzy, she sank back on to the hard cot. Lifting an exploratory hand to her forehead, she felt a hard egg-size bruise. Concussion”? she questioned woozily. She was bruised everywhere. Each involuntary movement made her whimper, but remaining in the same position on the hard bed was equally painful. She drowsed and woke with a violent thirst. There was no water in the cell. After a while she drowsed again.

she wasn’t sure if it were that same day or the next that she was taken t° the SS-Untersturmfiihrer. He sat behind the desk silently stroking

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his bony jaw as he stared at her. It was difficult to look away from him. His eyes glittered, the eyes of an invalid or a fanatic.

“Luckily you were hit by a police car,”

he said.

“They searched you for your papers, and when they found nothing you were brought back here for questioning.”

The giddiness had returned.

“May I have some water?”

“If your answers satisfy me.”

“Can I contact my mother?”

The lieutenant stopped caressing his chin and leaned towards her.

“I ask the questions.”

“She must be worried sick.”

“As far as Frau Kingsmith - and everybody else - is concerned, you’ve vanished.”