The Traitor's Emblem (34 page)

That night, while we were all asleep, Brunhilda let herself into your father’s bedroom. The room was completely dark, and Brunhilda was naked under her dressing gown, wearing only the perfume your father had given me. Without a sound she got into bed and made love to him. I still find it difficult to write these words, Paul, even now that twenty years have passed.

Your father, believing I had wanted to give him an advance on our wedding night, didn’t resist. At least, that was what he told me the following day as I looked him in the eye.

He swore to me, and swore again, that he hadn’t noticed anything until it was all over and Brunhilda spoke for the first time. She told him she loved him and asked him to run away with her. Your father threw her out of the room and the next morning he took me aside and told me what had happened.

“We can cancel the wedding if you want to,” he said.

“No,” I replied. “I love you, and I’ll marry you if you swear to me that you truly had no idea it was my sister.”

Your father swore again, and I believed him. After all these years I’m not sure what to think, but there is too much bitterness in my heart now.

The engagement went ahead, as did the wedding in Munich three months later. By then it was easy to make out your aunt’s swollen belly under the red lace dress she wore, and everyone was happy except for me, because I knew all too well whose child it was.

Finally the baron found out too. Not from me. I never confronted my sister or reproached her for what she had done, because I am a coward. Nor did I tell anyone what I knew. But it had to come out sooner or later: Brunhilda probably threw it in the baron’s face during an argument about one of his affairs. I don’t know for certain, but the fact is he found out, and this was partly to blame for what happened later.

I, too, became pregnant soon afterward, and you came into the world while your father was on what would be his final mission to Africa. The letters he wrote to me were increasingly dark, and for some reason—I don’t know why exactly—he felt less and less proud of the job he was doing.

One day he stopped writing altogether. The next letter I received was from the Imperial Navy, informing me that my husband had deserted and that I had a duty to notify the authorities if I heard from him.

I cried bitterly. I still don’t know what prompted him to desert, nor do I want to know. I learned too many things about Hans Reiner after his death, things that do not fit at all with the portrait I’d made of him. That was why I never spoke to you about your father, because he was not a role model or someone to be proud of.

Toward the end of 1904 your father returned to Munich without my knowledge. He came back secretly, with his first lieutenant, a man by the name of Nagel who had accompanied him everywhere. Instead of coming home, he went to seek refuge at the baron’s mansion. From there he sent me a brief note, and this is exactly what it said:

“Dear Ilse: I’ve made a terrible mistake, and I’m trying to fix it. I’ve asked your brother-in-law for help, and another good friend. They might be able to save me. Sometimes the greatest treasure is hidden in the same place as the greatest destruction, or at least I’ve always thought so. With love, Hans.”

I’ve never understood what your father meant by those words. I read the note over and over again, though I burned it a few hours after it arrived, for fear it might fall into the wrong hands.

As for your father’s death, all I know is that he was staying at the Schroeders’ mansion and one night there was a fierce argument after which he was dead. His body was thrown off a bridge into the Isar under the cover of darkness.

I don’t know who killed your father. Your aunt told me what I’m telling you here, almost to the word, though she was not present when it happened. She told me with tears in her eyes, and I knew that she was still in love with him.

The boy Brunhilda gave birth to, Jürgen, was the spitting image of your father. The love and unhealthy devotion his mother always showed him was hardly surprising. His wasn’t the only life to be thrown off course that dreadful night.

Defenseless and scared, I accepted Otto’s proposal that I should go and live with them. For him it was at once an expiation for what had been done to Hans and a way of punishing Brunhilda, reminding her who it was that Hans had preferred. For Brunhilda it became her own way of punishing me for having stolen the man she’d taken a fancy to, even though this man had never belonged to her.

And for me it was a way of surviving. Your father had left me nothing but his debts, when the government deigned to pronounce him dead some years later, although his body never turned up. So you and I lived in that mansion, which contained nothing but hatred.

There is one other thing. To me, Jürgen has never been anything less than your brother, because although he was conceived in Brunhilda’s womb I have considered him my son. I have never been able to show him affection, but he is a part of your father, a man I loved with all my soul. Seeing him every day, even for a few moments, has been like having my Hans back with me again.

My cowardice and selfishness have shaped your life, Paul. I never wanted your father’s death to affect you too. I tried to lie to you and hide the facts so that when you were older you wouldn’t go out in search of some ridiculous vengeance. Do not do that—please.

If this is the letter that ends up in your hands, which I doubt, I want you to know that I love you very much, and all I have tried to do through my actions is to protect you. Forgive me.

Your mother who loves you,

Ilse Reiner                              

58

When he had finished reading his mother’s words, Paul cried for a long time.

He shed tears for Ilse, who had suffered her entire life because of love and who, out of love, had made mistakes. He shed tears for Jürgen, who had been born into the worst possible situation. He shed tears for himself, for the boy who had cried for a father who hadn’t deserved it.

As he fell asleep he was overcome by a strange sense of peace, a feeling he didn’t recall ever having experienced before. Whatever the outcome of the madness they were about to attempt in a few hours’ time, he had achieved his goal.

Manfred woke him, tapping him gently on the back. Julian was a few meters away, eating a sausage sandwich.

“It’s seven p.m.”

“Why did you let me sleep for so long?”

“You needed the rest. In the meantime I went shopping. I’ve brought everything you said. The towels, a steel spoon, the shovel, everything.”

“So let’s begin.”

Manfred made Paul take the sulfonamide to stop his wounds from becoming infected, then the two of them sent Julian to the car.

“Can I start it?” the boy asked.

“Don’t even think about it!” shouted Manfred.

He and Paul then stripped the dead man of his trousers and boots and dressed him in Paul’s clothes. They tucked Paul’s documents into the jacket pocket. Then they dug a deep hole in the floor and buried him.

“This’ll confuse them for a while, I hope. I don’t think they’ll find him for a few weeks, and by then there won’t be much of him left,” said Paul.

Jürgen’s uniform was hanging from a nail in the stalls. Paul was more or less the same height as his brother, though Jürgen had been stockier. With the bulky bandages Paul was wearing around his arms and chest, the uniform sat reasonably well. The boots were tight, but the rest fitted.

“That uniform fits you like a glove. The thing that’s never going to pass is this.”

Manfred showed him Jürgen’s identity card. It was in a little leather wallet, together with his Nazi party card and an SS card. The resemblance between Jürgen and Paul had increased over the years. Both had a strong jaw, blue eyes, and similar features. Jürgen’s hair was darker, but they could solve that with the hair grease Manfred had bought. Paul could easily pass for Jürgen, except for one small detail, which Manfred was pointing to on the card. In the section about “distinguishing features” were clearly written the words “Right eye missing.”

“A patch isn’t going to be enough, Paul. If they ask you to lift it . . .”

“I know, Manfred. That’s why I need your help.”

Manfred looked at him in complete amazement.

“You’re not thinking of—”

“I’ve got to do it.”

“But it’s madness!”

“Just like the rest of the plan. And this is its weakest point.”

Finally Manfred agreed. Paul sat on the driver’s seat of the cart, towels covering his chest as though he were at the barber’s.

“Ready?”

“Wait,” said Manfred, who seemed terrified. “Let’s go over it again one more time to be sure there are no mistakes.”

“I’m going to put the spoon at the edge of my right eyelid, and pull my eye out by its roots. While I’m taking it out, you have to put the antiseptics and then the gauze on me. All right?”

Manfred nodded. He was so scared he could barely speak.

“Ready?” he asked again.

“Ready.”

Ten seconds later, there was nothing but screaming.

By eleven that night, Paul had taken almost an entire packet of aspirin, leaving himself two more. The wound had stopped bleeding, and Manfred disinfected it every fifteen minutes, putting on fresh gauze each time.

Julian, who had come back in a few hours earlier, alarmed by the shouts, found his father holding his head in his hands and howling at the top of his lungs, while his uncle screamed hysterically for him to get out. He’d gone back and shut himself away in the Mercedes, then burst into tears.

When everything had calmed down, Manfred went out to fetch his nephew and explain the plan. On seeing Paul, Julian asked: “Are you doing all this just for my mother?” He had reverence in his voice.

“And for you, Julian. Because I want us to be together.”

The boy didn’t answer, but he clung tightly to Paul’s arm, and still hadn’t let go when Paul decided it was time for them to leave. He climbed into the backseat of the car with Julian, and Manfred drove the sixteen kilometers that separated them from the camp with a tense expression on his face. It took them almost an hour to reach their destination, as Manfred barely knew how to drive and the car kept stalling.

“When we get there, the car mustn’t stall under any circumstances, Manfred,” said Paul, concerned.

“I’ll do what I can.”

As they approached the city of Dachau, Paul noticed a dramatic change compared to Munich. Even in the darkness, the poverty in this city was evident. The pavement was badly maintained and dirty, the traffic signs pockmarked, the façades of the buildings old and peeling.

“What a sad place,” said Paul.

“Of all the places they could have taken Alys, this is definitely the worst.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Our father owned the gunpowder factory that used to be situated in this city.”

Paul was about to tell Manfred that his own mother had worked in that munitions factory and that she’d been dismissed, but found he was too tired to start the conversation.

“The really ironic thing is that my father sold the land to the Nazis. And they built the camp on it.”

Finally they saw a yellow sign with black letters informing them that the camp was 1.2 miles away.

“Stop, Manfred. Turn around slowly and go back a bit.”

Manfred did as he was told, and they backtracked as far as a small building that looked like an empty barn, though it seemed to have been deserted for some time.

“Julian, listen very carefully,” said Paul, holding the boy by his shoulders and forcing him to look him in the eye. “Your uncle and I are going to go into the concentration camp to try to get your mother out. But you can’t come with us. I want you to get out of the car now with my suitcase and wait in the back of this building. Hide yourself away as best as you can, don’t talk to anyone, and don’t come out unless you hear me or your uncle calling you, understand?”

Julian nodded, his lips quivering.

“Brave boy,” said Paul, giving him a hug.

“And what if you don’t come back?”

“Don’t even think about that, Julian. We will.”

With Julian installed in his hiding place, Paul and Manfred got back in the car.

“Why didn’t you tell him what to do if we don’t come back?” asked Manfred.

“Because he’s an intelligent child. He’ll look in the suitcase; he’ll take the money and leave the rest. Anyway, I don’t have anyone to send him to. How does the wound look?” he said, turning on the reading light and pulling away the gauze from his eye.

“It’s swollen, but not too badly. The lid isn’t too red. Does it hurt?”

“Like hell.”

Paul looked at himself in the rearview mirror. Where previously there had been an eyeball, there was now a patch of wrinkled skin. A little thread of blood trickled from the corner of his eye like a scarlet tear.

“It’s got to look old, for fuck’s sake.”

“They might not ask you to take the patch off.”

“Thanks.”

He took the patch from his pocket and put it on, throwing the pieces of gauze out of the window into a ditch. When he looked at himself in the mirror again, a shiver went down his spine.

The person looking back at him was Jürgen.

He glanced at the Nazi armband on his left arm.

I once thought I’d rather die than wear this symbol, thought Paul. Today Paul Reiner is dead. I am now Jürgen von Schroeder.

He got out of the passenger seat and moved into the back, trying to remember what his brother was like, his contemptuous air, his arrogant manner. The way he projected his voice as though it were an extension of himself, trying to make everyone else feel inferior.

I can do it, said Paul to himself. We shall see . . .

“Start her up, Manfred. We mustn’t waste any more time.”

59

Arbeit Macht Frei

Those were the words written in iron letters above the gate of the camp. The words, however, were no more than bars in another form. None of the people in there would earn their freedom through work.

When the Mercedes stopped at the entrance, a sleepy guard in a black uniform came out of a sentry box, briefly shone his flashlight into the car, and gestured for them to pass. The gates opened at once.