Child of the Journey (3 page)

As he moved toward them, the chandelier caught the movement of the silver-haired man who had been standing against the wall in the shadows, behind the Gauleiter. Heart pounding, she thought she recognized the man responsible for giving orders outside the cigar shop, on the day of Jacob's death.

"We shall talk more later, Otto," Goebbels said, over his shoulder.

The tall man clicked his heels. "Certainly, Gauleiter. It will be my pleasure."

Hearing the voice, Miriam was certain that she was right. "Erich, that's--?" she began.

Goebbels was already at her side and she could say no more. She gave him the closest approximation she could manage of a smile, and instantly wished she had not when he offered her his arm. Erich was forced to escort Magda. Miriam could feel him watching her, feel his ridiculous jealousy. Apparently he could not help himself, no matter who the man was. He had even flinched when she so much as mentioned Nabokov with the least bit of affection in her voice.

The four of them wandered into the dining hall. According to Erich, there were fifty invited couples--one for each year of the Führer's life. They seemed all to be here, examining place cards at eight small tables set for ten people apiece. The rest, including the Goebbels, who quickly excused themselves, floated toward the head table, where one seat remained conspicuously empty, waiting for a host who seldom arrived until the meal was well underway.
  

As drums rolled, a group of boys from the Adolf Hitler school, apprentices for the Hitler Elite Guard, entered the dining hall. Seven years in training, culminating in the honor of service to their Führer, Miriam thought, first as waiters at his birthday party, later in the SS or at some foreign Front.

The youths were assisted by pigtailed girls from the RAD--
the new human beings,
they were called--wearing white pinafores, orange kerchiefs and the royal blue shirts that marked them as new members. They were supervised by graduate black-uniformed Elite Guard members while the female graduates, distinguishable by their white shirts and ties, navy skirts and aprons, were relegated to the kitchen and the reception area.

The orchestra switched to Strauss.

"Prosit!"
Erich lifted his glass and addressed the officer across from him, but his gaze was on Miriam.

Lift your glass, she told herself. Respond to the music. Smile. Eat. Look as if you want to be here. But though the meal was exquisitely prepared, she barely picked at her food. Even the dessert of raspberries and crème fraiche held no appeal.

"Champagne?"

"Thank you. Pour it for me. I'll be right back."
 

"Feeling all right, my dear? Like me to accompany you?" The officer's wife gave her an emphatic
You must be in the family way
glance.

Miriam dabbed at her lips with the linen serviette. "No thank you. Most kind of you, but I'm fine."

She left the room and was headed to the garden when she spotted a narrow staircase barred with a chain and a sign that warned her not to go beyond it. Picking up the candle-lantern that stood on the bottom step, she unhooked the chain and made her way up the stairs to the grand ballroom.

This was not her first visit to Schloss Gehrhus. She had been here before with her uncle at a diplomatic function honoring a group of visitors from South America. What a fuss they had made of her--the exquisite Miriam Rathenau! She had danced all night, up here, mostly with a handsome young diplomat-in-training, a South American attached to the Italian Embassy. Of course he was too old for her, but for a few days she had walked around with the glassy-eyed look of young love while her uncle teased her unmercifully, especially when roses arrived for her the following morning.

A week later, her uncle had informed her with mock-sadness that Juan Perón had left for Rome. In the throes of her first "desertion," she had sworn never to come back to the Schloss--especially not up here.

She placed the lantern on the floor and gave herself up to a harmless memory of a time long gone, and then to a time more recent. A time of hope for a safe future, when for a moment she had believed Erich's assurances, believed that he would be able to provide Sol with safe transit to Amsterdam.

Surrounded by mirrors and haunted by a harmonica, she closed her eyes and slowly waltzed, remembering the last bittersweet hours she had spent with Sol in the dust-covered remains of what had once been the Kaverne.

Sol had put his finger to her lips and picked up a candle. Taking her hand, he had led her up the stairs and into the cabaret. On the dusty dance floor, amid the pallor of greenish light beaming down through one of the few small, stained-glass windows that remained unbroken, he lifted her knuckles to his lips and closed his eyes.

"There is a season for all things, Miri," she remembered him saying. "They have turned this into a season of endings. Let us defy them and make it one of beginnings. Marry me."

"Here? Tonight? And who will be the rabbi?"

"God."

They had stood among dusty muslin sheets, thrown carelessly over once-new tables and chairs surrounding an abandoned dance floor in a closed cabaret in a world seemingly without hope, and uttered words that denied Berlin, the Reich, Erich, and hopelessness. They spoke of ultimately finding freedom and a life together in South America.

They spoke of marriage, and of enduring love.

She squeezed his hands, and smiled. "Make two stacks of three tables each. I'll be right back." By the time Sol had the tables piled up in the center of the dance floor, Miriam had returned, the rose-colored shawl that she had worn that first night in the cabaret retrieved from the costume trunk.

"We have to have a canopy, don't we? It wouldn't be a wedding without one."

Before he could say anything else she had left again, this time to retrieve a hidden bottle of burgundy and three dusty glasses.

Wriggling out of her slip, she wrapped it around one of the glasses, placed it under the canopy, and twirled around to show him the spray of lavender silk lilac she had twisted into her hair.

Now, standing in the Grand Ballroom of Schloss Gehrhus, she touched the fresh sprig of lilac in her hair. Her eyes misted with tears. In her mind's eye, she watched Solomon pull a harmonica from his pocket and blow into it to clear it of dust. She saw him cup the instrument lovingly in his hands, and felt him watch her sway as he softly played one of her favorite Schubert melodies.

When he had finished, he fished in his pocket, pulled out two cigars, and removed their gold bands--the ones she now kept hidden in her music box, among the gaudy jewelry she wore to impress Erich's fellow officers.

That night, as dusk faded and shadows lengthened, she and Solomon had held fast to each other and to their dream of a tomorrow. When night came, so did Konrad.

"The train for Amsterdam leaves in just over half an hour, and you are expected at the flat," Konnie had told her, glancing at the wristwatch she had brought him from America.

"One dance, my love."

She whispered the words to the walls of the empty ballroom, as she had to Solomon then.

Back then, warmed by wine and passion, she and Sol had danced to imaginary violins playing Schubert and Strauss and Brahms. Now she danced alone, not for want of a partner, but because the only partner she wanted was lost to her, perhaps forever, except in memory.

"May I have this dance?"

She looked up at Erich and graced him with one of her rare, open smiles. "You caught me," she said.

He bowed and took her in his arms. "Do you have any idea how beautiful you are, Miriam?"

"It's this room," she said softly. With a graceful sweep of her arm, she guided his gaze to the ballroom ceiling, two stories high, to the twenty floor-to-ceiling mirrors, each reflecting the soft glow of the lantern, to the moon, shining through the beveled French doors and adding its shadows to the fairy-tale glow.

"It's not simply the room, Fräulein," another voice said.

Miriam's sweeping gesture faltered and froze in mid-air as Erich whirled around to face the Führer, who stood at the top of the forbidden stairway, arms crossed in the familiar pose.

"Forgive me. You must be Frau Alois. Herr Rittmeister, where have you been hiding this extraordinary creature? May I have the pleasure?" He stepped toward them. "You don't mind, do you, Alois? After all, it is my birthday. It is only fair that I be allowed to dance with the most beautiful woman at my celebration."

Erich nodded and let go of Miriam's waist. He watched as Hitler pushed her stiffly around the floor to the strains of Strauss.

Somehow, she thought, I will get through this moment.

"I saw the light from outside and came up here first." The Führer wiped her sweat from his palms as the notes faded. "How fortunate that I did. You are a wonderful dancer. Now, however,
 
we should join my other guests."

Asking forgiveness of Sol, Miriam held onto Hitler's arm and allowed herself to be ushered downstairs and into the dining hall. The band switched to
"Deutschland über Alles,"
and Erich saluted with the others.

"Hoch soll sie leben!"
They toasted their Führer. "May he live well."

Smiling a pinched smile, Hitler acknowledged the repeated good wishes as he made his way to the main table. When he was seated, the orchestra renewed its evening of Strauss with "The Blue Danube."

"Why didn't anybody ever tell Strauss that the Danube is grey and dirty, not blue?" Miriam said irritably.

Erich was too busy watching Hitler to respond. The Führer was going through his ritual of consuming a quantity of tablets, probably Dr. Koster's strychnine and atropine anti-gas pills, which he took constantly to reduce the flatulence that reputedly plagued him.

Wishing he would choke on them, Miriam also watched the ritual. When it was over, Hitler leaned across the table and spoke to his Gauleiter who, face red with fury, whispered something to his wife and stood up.

After making his way to Erich's table, Goebbels said in an icy tone, "The Führer wishes to have you and your wife dine with him."

"No, Erich," Miriam whispered. She had done enough for him tonight, dancing with Hitler, smiling at the rest of his sick ménage, and not even a message from the underground to make her feel useful. "I--" She looked at his face and gave up.

This was not going to be one of the times to expect indulgences.

"P
lease...be seated." Hitler waved at the chairs vacated by Dr. and Frau Goebbels. "Tell me more about this beautiful woman." His tone was genial. Expansive. "Can she really be the niece of that traitor Rathenau?"

"Walther Rathenau was--"
 

"Her adopted uncle," Erich said, finishing Miriam's sentence. "She was adopted by his sister and brother-in-law, mein Führer."

"Where are they, these people?"

"Dead, mein Führer."

"Just as well." Hitler scrutinized Miriam as if she were a piece of fruit and he a prospective customer making sure there were no bruises. "With your grace and beauty, you could be a wonderful tool for the Reich. I have been assured that you believe in our cause and reject that Jew's philosophies."

He turned to Erich. "Pity she is so dark, although they tell me that can be easily remedied these days--"

A drum roll announced the presentation of Hitler's birthday gift, a globe whose uneven surface outlined the world's topography. Erich was grateful for the interruption; he could feel the heat of Miriam's wrath rising from her like steam from a radiator. He held onto the hope that the distraction would remove the Führer's attention from her, but no sooner had the orchestra resumed playing than Hitler returned to the same topic.

"We must let the newspeople ascertain that she was adopted. Exposed to Jewish blood, but not possessed of any. I will make the necessary arrangements."

"Thank you, mein Führer, but we have already applied to the Reichs Department for Genealogical Research to invoke the 1934 edict you yourself wrote," Erich said.

"Good!" Hitler turned to Miriam. "I will contact Leni Riefenstahl and make sure she puts you in her next propaganda film."

There was only one way he was going to get Miriam to do this, Erich knew. Again he would have to use Solomon's safety as a bargaining tool. He would even offer to try again to "find" Sol. Good thing he had mailed that letter to Amsterdam, effectively stopping the flood of correspondence to Miriam. It had been tiresome intercepting everything, and even more tiresome having to change the telephone number at the old place. It was better now that they had moved to the estate; even if Sol forgave her, he would not attempt to contact Miriam there.

"What a pity she is not expecting a child." Hitler's voice had become shrill. Excited. People around them looked up and listened. "You are a Nazirite, the true Biblical figurehead of commitment."

The man was beginning to ramble, something he did frequently. His five-minute audiences were notorious for lasting hours; people left them exhausted and confused.

"Even the Christian God, you know, though spineless, ordained our triumphs." Hitler laughed, pleased with himself. "Ordained," he repeated. "Like my departure from art into politics. Have I ever told you, Alois, how that came to pass?"