An Honorable German (21 page)

He began to pace the room, sweating again. Sixteen hundred hours by his watch. No German naval officer had ever been shot
by his own government over such a trivial and understandable mistake, he told himself. What would the Reich be coming to if
such a thing were possible? All he had to do was explain himself, cite his record, clarify the situation. The thugs who brought
him in had scoffed at that, but who were they? Max continued pacing for an hour, for two hours, the time seeming to stand
still in the hermetic space of the room. By 1900 hours he knew it would be dark outside, but the bulb above him burned brightly
as ever, sizzling faintly in the silence. He laid his head on the desk. It was past 2000 hours when the door finally swung
open.

Max lifted his head and went cold in the gut. Before him stood a young man dressed in the dazzling black-and-silver uniform
of the Security Service of the S.S.—der Schwarz Engel, the black angel. With a loud click of his heels, the S.S. man came
to quivering attention and thrust out his right arm. “Heil Hitler!”

Max came quickly out of the chair and even more quickly to attention. “Heil Hitler,” he responded, right arm thrust out.

“I am Standartenführer Auerbach.” A Standartenführer was a colonel of the S.S., which used its own table of ranks to heighten
its distinction from the Wehrmacht. Auerbach cut the perfect Aryan figure—blond, blue-eyed, lean and strong, wearing the S.S.
medal for fitness among others.

“When I heard of what you had done,” Auerbach said, “I simply decided to have you shot.” He stared at Max to let this sink
in. “That French whore you rescued was an enemy of the Reich! A member of the Resistance! A traitor to her country!” He slapped
his thigh and paused again, anger in his face. “Then I received a call from a very old and loyal party member. He vouched
for you unconditionally and told me of your outstanding war record. So I said to myself that obviously you’re just a simple
sailor who knows nothing of how dangerous the home front has become.”

“Ja, ja, Herr Standartenführer. Everything is so different…”

“These French mutts, they seem docile on the surface, but turn your back on them and they’ll bite you like mad dogs.” He walked
closer and poked Max in the chest as he talked. “Bite, bite, bite. Kill our soldiers. Officers just like you, assassinated.
Genitals cut off and stuffed in their mouths. Acid poured in their eyes. These people are barbaric pigs!”

Max nodded.

“You front-line officers have it easy,” Auerbach said, smiling now. “You’re surprised to hear that, yes? But it is true. Yes,
you have it easy because you know who the enemy is. Here, we have to search them out everywhere, in every face on every street.
And just when you finally relax, a glass of brandy, a cigar, then it comes—the knife in your back. Three officers killed that
way just this week.”

Now Max shook his head. “I had no idea.”

“Of course not. Of course, you have no idea. The war seems like a simple thing to you, and why not? Drive your boat around
the ocean till the enemy appears, waving their flag. Fire a torpedo at them and be on your way. Here things are more difficult.”

“Yes, I see that now.”

Auerbach took Max by the arm and led him out of the room and down the hallway. “In the end, we’re just two men in the service
trying to do our duty to the Führer, are we not?”

“We are, Herr Standartenführer.”

In the lobby he gripped Max more tightly and pulled him close. “Stay out of police business, Oberleutnant.”

“Jawohl, Herr Standartenführer.”

Auerbach dropped Max’s arm and stepped back, tall, lean as a whippet, immaculate in his pressed tunic and riding boots, the
silver runes of the S.S. stark against the black of his uniform. He came to rigid attention and gave the Nazi salute. “Heil
Hitler!”

Max clicked his heels together and thrust his own arm out in response. “Heil Hitler,” he said. He turned and left the building,
descending its front steps to the sidewalk on trembling legs. His underarms were soaked with sweat; the moisture had seeped
through his shirt and through his uniform coat. He walked to the corner, breathing in the clean night air. Then he began to
run—across the street, up onto the sidewalk again, scattering people in front of him. A uniformed German officer running through
occupied Paris meant trouble to them, but Max didn’t care. To hell with the Parisians. In his cadet days at the Academy they
had run everywhere, for endless kilometers through the forests around Flensburg, and he was always one of the fastest, a champion
sprinter from his time at gymnasium. Now he ran till his legs ached, till his body was blown, then stopped and stood gasping
in a street near the Eiffel Tower. He could see the long lines of German soldiers waiting for the elevator that would take
them to the top to look over the lights of Paris. His whole body was damp now, hair plastered to his forehead by sweat. In
the melee with the Gestapo men he had lost his cap. A new one would cost him twenty marks. When his wind returned, he hailed
one of the bicycle-drawn carts. “Hotel George the Fifth,” he told the driver.

“Oui, monsieur.”

_________

He found Mareth waiting anxiously for him in the lobby. She didn’t run to him—not in public with the French staring. But when
he put his arms around her she kissed him hard on the mouth, clutching his shoulders. “Let’s go to the room,” she said.

In the elevator she leaned against him, put her blond head on his chest. Max stroked her hair and felt himself stiffening
against her. His heartbeat was so loud, he wondered if the elevator operator could hear it. The old man jerked the car to
a stop on their floor and opened the metal gate to let them out. “Bon soir, made-moiselle, monsieur.”

“Merci, bon soir,” Mareth said.

Inside the room she immediately began to cry as much in anger as relief. “How could you do something so foolish?” she said.
“You could have been shot. Damn you, Max—you would have been if my father hadn’t saved you.”

Max sat on the bed and looked down. It had been foolish. “I wondered if it was him.”

“Of course it was him,” Mareth said. “I had to call him in Berlin and interrupt his meeting with the foreign minister, then
threaten to never speak to him again unless he called the Gestapo. He loves me, Max. He’s my father and he loves me. But even
he hesitated to interfere with the Gestapo. Don’t you know how dangerous the S.S. has become? Everyone is terrified of them,
Max. They can do whatever they want. They are the real criminals. Worse than the Communists, almost.”

“Mareth, I don’t even know what to say.” He paused. How was this possible? “Mareth, my God, I had no idea… I just can’t even…
Has it truly come to that? Surely the navy would have…”

“Would have what, Max? Would have what? Do you think the navy is more powerful than the Nazis? Admiral Raeder himself could
have come to your defense—do you think anyone would have paid attention? Whatever power he had left went down with
Bismarck
. He just sits in his office and wrings his hands like a helpless old woman. The Führer won’t even see him anymore.”

“Helpless?” Max stammered. “The commander in chief of the Kriegsmarine is helpless? How can that be?”

“That’s what my father says. Damn it, Max, you can be such a fool. Only Dönitz has any power.”

“How was it that your father, that he could, he could, make such a call? Is he that high up in the party?”

“He’s a golden pheasant,” Mareth said. Nazi slang for the oldest party members, a reference to their large Nazi Party badges
circled in gold. “He joined in the twenties.”

“I didn’t think… I just never thought that your father… I know he is a powerful man but I didn’t think many in the nobility
supported the Nazis early on. How was it… ?”

“Max, you don’t understand. You don’t know what it was like then. Papa did what he felt he had to do for Germany. In the beginning,
Hitler didn’t speak like he did later. He only denounced the treaty and spoke about making us respected again in the world.
And he promised to crush the Red Bolsheviks who wanted to seize power and kill us all. And they did want to do that, Max,
they did. So Papa joined the party because he is a German patriot. He doesn’t believe in the rest of it—burning books and
banning cabarets or treating the Jews in such a beastly way. But Father puts up with these things because he’s a German patriot.”

“Aren’t we all, Mareth? Aren’t we all German patriots? I didn’t realize that one had to join the party and wear a swastika
to be a patriot.”

“You have a swastika on your uniform!”

True enough: on the right breast of his uniform jacket, an eagle clutched a swastika. “That’s just part of the uniform. I
stay out of politics. I’m a military officer. I have to follow orders.”

“And so does my father, Max, and so do I, and so does everyone in Germany because there’s nothing else we can do—nothing at
all or we’ll be shot or, worse, guillotined, because that’s what the Nazis do now. So what should I do? Tell Reich Minister
Lammers that he is a dangerous fool? Interfere with the S.S. and get arrested by the Gestapo, like you?”

“And that was my fault? I’ve been away two years fighting for my country. How was I to know that I was in more danger from
the Gestapo than the Royal Navy? How was I to know that I would be in less danger as a prisoner of the British because the
Geneva Convention would protect me while I have no protection from the German police except, by the grace of God, from your
father, who is one of the few Nazis powerful enough to keep me from being shot.”

Max picked up the carafe of wine and a glass from the bedside table, walked across the room, and sat in one of the two large
chairs by the window. He poured himself a glass of wine, then turned and looked at Mareth, who watched him silently. “So your
mother and father will entertain Nazis but won’t deign to meet me—a decorated navy officer—because my father is a shopkeeper
instead of a storm trooper? Because I wear a blue uniform and not a brown one? Is that it? Is that why your mother won’t even
allow me into her drawing room?”

“How dare you say that, Max. How dare you,” Mareth said, her voice rising. “You don’t even know my mother! She hates the Nazis
and she hates my father for staying with them. They’ve barely spoken for years.”

Max upended his glass of wine. “You’re right, Mareth, as always. I don’t know your mother. I wonder if I even know you anymore.”

Mareth sat on the bed, looked down, pressing her hands to her temples. “You don’t know what it is like here now. You don’t.
Even my mother had trouble with the Gestapo. And it was very embarrassing to my father and it made everything between them
even worse.”

“What? What happened to your mother?”

“She was collecting ration coupons from friends and we gave them to Jews. Someone reported her—the chauffeur, she thinks—and
the Gestapo arrested her.”

“They actually arrested her?”

“Yes. I was in Berlin when she was arrested. Someone called my father and he had to call one of Himmler’s adjutants and say
something, make something up, an excuse, I’m not sure what. They let my mother go and said it was a misunderstanding.”

“Why did she do it? Are the Jews starving? I can give you some of my ration coupons.”

“Starving? Of course they’re starving. They only get half the rations we do, and often not even that. Don’t you know this?”

No, he didn’t. Mareth continued. “My mother used to go to a jewelry shop in Kiel. It was owned by a Jew, Herr Wertheim. She
shopped there even after they published her name in the Kiel newspaper as someone who patronized Jewish businesses. People
hissed at her on the street, hissed at her—the lower-class people especially.

“I once went to Herr Wertheim’s with her. A bully-boy storm trooper was standing in front of the shop and he heckled any Germans
who thought about going inside. When we went to enter he blocked our way and asked why Aryans like us were going into a shop
owned by a dirty perverted Jew. ‘Because we choose to,’ my mother said. ‘Now out of the way, you oaf.’ And the storm trooper
stood aside. But do you know what he did, Max? Do you know what he did?”

Max shook his nead no.

“He called us whores who fucked Jews. Dirty Jew whores! He actually said that to us, to her. My mother is a Countess! She
was a lady-in-waiting to the Empress! Her great-great-grandfather was court chamberlain to Frederick the Great, and that vulgar
boy said that to me, to her, there on the street. Language like that. My mother pushed him aside with her umbrella and we
went in, while he continued to call us Jew-fucking whores. And then one day we went back, and the shop was closed and Herr
Wertheim was gone.”

“Where?”

Mareth looked away from him. “To a resettlement camp in the East, I think. I don’t know. That’s what someone told us.”

Max looked away from her—silence between them now. He didn’t want to know more. He had his own problems. Everyone had to take
care of themselves in this war. He poured another glass of wine and looked out over Paris, the City of Light, mostly dark
now from power cuts—except for buildings commandeered by the Germans.

The water ran in the bathroom sink, then he heard Mareth walk across the room to him. She put a hand on his shoulder but he
didn’t look up, just continued to stare out the window, so she sat in the other chair, reached across the space between them,
and took his hand. After a moment he looked at her. Neither spoke. She gripped his hand very tightly. Max stared silently
at her, then flicked his eyes toward the bed. Afterward, they slept the night en-twined together.

_________

In the morning he showered and while toweling off he watched her sleeping body moving rhythmically as she breathed. His future,
their future, had once been his solace, but he felt less certain of it now. Germany would still win, just not quickly. The
stubbornness of the British, along with their vast naval power, allowed a river of food and arms to flow from America, keeping
England alive even as the Luftwaffe pounded London. And in the midst of the struggle with England, the Führer had been forced
to launch a surprise attack on the Soviet Union in order to forestall their imminent attack on Germany. In the first four
months they killed or captured over four million Soviet soldiers, about as many as the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht said they
had in their army. Since all of their fighting men had been annihilated, the Soviets had to surrender. Except they didn’t
surrender because they had more than four million soldiers—many more. OKW had been completely wrong in their estimate. Every
time the Wehrmacht shattered a Soviet army, another appeared as if Stalin needed but to sow dragon’s teeth after each defeat
and another million Russian soldiers appeared. The Führer said they were winning, that the Red Bolsheviks were about to collapse,
that brave men of the Wehrmacht had preserved the Reich against the Asiatic hordes of Russia for a thousand years to come.
And the Germans were winning. Guderian was one hundred kilometers from Moscow. Two weeks ago the head of the Reich Press Service
had even said the war with the Soviets was over and Germany had won. So even though the war against the Soviets was over and
they had won, it wasn’t and they hadn’t. Each day he saw long columns of gray-clad troops moving toward the Gare du Nord to
entrain for the East. And as Max watched those columns march by, he could see the life he’d imagined with Mareth receding
farther into the distance with each passing battalion.