His Majesty's Hope (13 page)

“You’re a minimalist,” she remarked.

“Before I joined the Abwehr, I was studying to be a priest.”

“Ah.” Maggie picked up the Loyola and paged through it. “Jesuit?”

“Of course.”

“And you’re a boxer?” she said, noting both the postcard and a pair of boxing gloves on the windowsill. “A
Jesuit
boxer? That seems like a contradiction.”

“Not really. Boxing may be brutal, but at least it’s fair. There are rules to follow, honor in fighting the good fight.” He gave a tight smile. “And, despite what Goebbels would have us believe, everyone bleeds the same.”

They stood together in the bedroom, awkward with each other. “You will sleep in here,” Gottlieb ordered. “I will sleep on the couch.” He turned back toward the living area.

“Oh no,” Maggie said, “I couldn’t possibly—”

“I will sleep on the couch,” he called, in a voice that discouraged argument.

Slowly and methodically, Maggie continued to search the apartment for any hidden listening devices.

“It’s clean,” Gottlieb said.

“I just want to make sure.”

“Suit yourself.”

One good thing about Gottlieb’s Spartan existence—it cut down on the places any listening devices could be hiding. She peered into his icebox. There was only yoghurt.

“Yoghurt is still unrationed,” Gottlieb said. “I hope you like it.”

“It’s not as if I’m here for the fine German cuisine,
Schatzi
.” When Maggie was satisfied that the apartment was clean, she moved to the blinds and lowered them. Then she turned on the light, went to her suitcase, and opened it. She took out the crystals, still intact. She returned to the living room and handed them to Gottlieb. “I hear you need these?”

“Wunderbar,”
he said. “I hope they still work after their trip.”

“I do, as well.”

“I’ll get them to our contact,” Gottlieb said. “The SS can track radio transmissions, so we only use the radio in emergencies.” He looked at her. “Stand up straight!”

Maggie, who already had good posture, was startled. “What?”

“You’re supposed to be a German woman of rank—stand up
straight
.” Maggie noticed in private he’d lost the intimate
du
and was addressing her with the more formal
Sie
.

“I
am
standing up straight,” she retorted.

“Straighter!”

Maggie remembered what the man in the ticket window had said:
“Wenn schon, denn schon.” Well
, she thought,
when in Berlin …
She raised her chin, sucked in her stomach, and threw her shoulders back.

“Better,” Gottlieb conceded. “You must be hungry—”

“Starving!”

Gottlieb shook his head. “Not so enthusiastic. Germans are not as … animated. Some restraint, please.”

Maggie tried hard not to roll her eyes. “I would very much enjoy lunch now,” she said with as much decorum as she could muster.

“Good. Let us go.”

Gottlieb wanted to take the S-Bahn to the Tiergarten, but Maggie persuaded him to take the bus. “I’m in Berlin for the first time—I want to see everything,” she said, in character as Margareta, but also as Maggie, ever curious.

“If you wish,” Gottlieb said.

They waited at the stop at the end of his block. When the yellow double-decker bus arrived, they stepped on, and Maggie slipped into a window seat. The bus pulled away from the curb and merged into traffic, making its way through Kreuzberg. It was a glorious day with a bright blue sky, hot breeze, chestnut trees in bloom lining the streets. The air was filled with noise—the clanging bells of streetcars, the steady clip-clop of hooves, sirens wailing in the distance. They passed city streets lined with shops. A horse-drawn ice cart was stopped in front of a greengrocer’s, huge slabs of ice melting in the sun as wiry men with iron tongs unloaded them.

Like the shops of London, the store windows of Berlin showed little food and few goods to buy. Outside were long lines of
Hausfrauen
wearing head scarves and carrying baskets. There was some bomb damage, charred bricks and stones here and there. Sandbagged doorframes. And, of course, the omnipresent inferno-red Nazi flags and banners.

To Maggie’s eye the people she saw seemed resolutely normal,
with blunt features and sturdy frames, like caricatures by Heinrich Zille. There were also men in uniform, storm troopers in brown with swastika armbands, the SS in black, the regular police in dark blue. Everywhere Maggie saw people raising their hands in the
Hitlergruss
salute—comical, almost, in its frequency. Everyone walked with—not a swagger, no, but a strut of the comfortable, the convinced, the confident. And, yes, she had to admit their posture was impeccable.

“Eyes down,” Gottlieb ordered under his breath.

But it was too late. Maggie had already caught a glimpse of the naked man, hanging from a rope around his neck, swinging from a branch of an ancient oak tree. His face was nearly black from blood, his eyes were glassy, and his tongue lolled out of his mouth. He was dead, or nearly so. He was surrounded by SS officers. The painted sign beneath him read:
I am a Jew who fornicated with an Aryan woman. I deserve to die
. In front of the soldiers, a woman was on her knees, weeping, wearing only her underwear. One of the men was cutting off her long golden braids with a straight razor, leaving her almost bald.

“Don’t. Say. A. Word,” Gottlieb whispered between clenched teeth.

Maggie, shocked, did as she was told. She looked around the bus. The few passengers on it were looking at their newspapers, or had their heads turned the other way.

Maggie fought the urge to vomit. She began the deep breathing she’d been taught at SOE training camp.

Finally, they reached the Tiergarten, a huge wooded park in the heart of Berlin. Gottlieb and Maggie stepped off the bus, then entered the park. On shady, graveled paths through oaks, maples, and birch trees, they strolled hand in hand, like the young lovers they were pretending to be. Sunlight could barely pierce through the thick foliage. “Are you ready for lunch?” Gottlieb asked.

“No,” Maggie said curtly. “I’m not hungry—certainly not after witnessing that.”

Gottlieb shook his head. “You must eat something. There’s Café am Neuen See—let’s get something there.” Outside, a hand-painted sign read:
NO DOGS, NO JEWS, NO GYPSIES
.

Overwhelmed, Maggie sat on a bench at a picnic table, while Gottlieb went inside, to the counter. Overhead the sky was a deep blue, the lake sparkled in the sun, and the park air was perfumed. The air rang with the sound of children laughing and playing among the chestnut trees, while their nannies, sitting in deck chairs, chatted and gossiped. A few black-hooded crows pecked at fallen crumbs.
How can it be?
she wondered.
How can these two realities be going on simultaneously? Does no one see? Does no one
want
to see?

Gottlieb returned with a tray. “It looks like Munich, doesn’t it?”

Maggie had never been to Munich, but Margareta would have, so she smiled and nodded.

Gottlieb set down a glass of white wine, a glass of water, a plate of mussels, and a slice of brown bread. There were people nearby, but none close enough to hear their conversation. Still, they knew to be careful.

“Wine and mussels,” Maggie said, surprised.
No pretzels and beer?

“Wine’s plentiful after the invasion of France. And shellfish still isn’t rationed.”

“Aren’t you going to have any?”

“I’m in training,” he replied. “No cigarettes, no alcohol, no bread.”

“Boxing. Right.”
St. Gottlieb the Ascetic
. Maggie pushed the food away. She was still nauseated.

“Hitler and this war have been terrible for our country,” he said in a low voice, “and there are many of us who believe this. We’re
trying to reconcile loyalty to Germany with our opposition to the Nazis.”

“But how did it get so far? Why did no one speak up?”

“It wasn’t that easy.”

“Well, I don’t see why not!” Maggie suddenly sounded very young.

“You,” Gottlieb said, leaning in and whispering in her ear, “are stupid.
Stupid
. At best, you are naïve. You know, I was at university, studying to be a priest, when this all happened. My mother and father were proud of me. All I wanted was to serve God. And then—I had to serve Hitler, instead.”

“You didn’t
have
to, though,” Maggie shot back.

“You think I had a choice? There was no choice. I was lucky I was able to work for the Abwehr, not be a soldier, not kill. At the Abwehr, there are a few other like-minded people. We are doing what we can to help as many Jews escape as possible. To lay the framework for a new Germany, a non-Communist Germany, after Hitler.”

Maggie took a small sip of wine. She couldn’t hold Gottlieb personally responsible for everything, she realized. “So, you were studying to be a priest?” she asked, changing the subject. “Why didn’t you take your vows?”

“Well, the war came along …” He gave her a significant look. “And then I met you, of course,
Schatzi
.”

“Of course.”
How could Gottlieb see what they had just witnessed and maintain his faith?
“I assume you still believe in God?”

“Yes,” he said, taking a gulp of water.

Maggie reached over and stroked his cheek. Anyone looking would assume they were in love. “Well, I’m curious—how can a world, created by an all-powerful and all-knowing God, contain so much evil?”

Gottlieb pulled away from her. “God may have drawn back
from the world, to give us free will. The problem of evil may be helpful, perhaps even necessary, for our spiritual development. Just as Christ’s Crucifixion was necessary for His resurrection.” His face was bleak. “I do think evil and the suffering comes from God—but I think it’s there to challenge us, and test us. How can we carry on believing in God’s love, even when it’s hidden from us? Even when everything we see around us refutes it?”

“If that’s the case, then I can’t see any good reason to believe in God, one who’s left us to battle evil—what we just saw, for example—all alone. Is this helpful for our spiritual development? There was a man
hanged
back there! What about
his
‘moral development’?”

“If I knew that,” Gottlieb conceded with a sad smile, “I’d be God.”

Maggie and Gottlieb strolled the winding paths of the Tiergarten, under enormous trees with their mossy trunks, past banks of ferns, the clopping of horses’ hooves from the riding paths mixing with birdsong and distant traffic. “This is one of the only places that Berliners still feel at ease,” Gottlieb told her. “It used to be a hunting preserve for royalty. Now it’s for the people.” A siren wailed in the distance.

Maggie saw a sign:
JUDISCHER BESUCH VERBOTEN
. Jewish visits forbidden. She thought of
Plessy v. Ferguson
, Jim Crow laws, and the “separate but equal” segregation of Negroes and whites in the American South. The Nazis certainly weren’t the first to segregate and deny basic rights to human beings. “Not for
all
people,” she couldn’t resist pointing out.

Gottlieb nodded. “True.” They walked by the Victory Column, commemorating the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian War, topped by an enormous statue of winged Victory, looking
like an angel. “We Berliners call her Goldelse.” Gottlieb indicated the winged woman. “It translates into something along the lines of Golden Lizzy. A lot of our monuments and buildings have nicknames like that.”

“Ah, the droll Berliner sense of humor,” Maggie said. “And, of course, every city needs its own phallic symbol.”

Gottlieb raised an eyebrow, then offered her his arm. “Come. As long as we are in the Tiergarten, you must see the rhododendrons. They’re legendary.”

They walked and walked through the ancient forest, Maggie’s new pumps rubbing a throbbing blister on the back of her heel. It was hot in the sun; she was starting to feel sweat on her scalp and her neck.

“It’s worth it, I promise,” Gottlieb said.

Finally, they came upon a lake ringed with blooms—fluffy clusters of pink, cerise, and coral. Some were on small bushes, some on towering, overgrown hedges. The cumulative effect was overwhelming. Maggie inhaled sharply. “Gorgeous!” she exclaimed.

“Now,” said Gottlieb, “how can you see this and
not
believe in God?”

“Because I’m a mathematician.”

“I was a top student at university,” Gottlieb said. “But I must confess, I was never all that interested in mathematics.”

“What?” Maggie exclaimed in mock horror.

“I just can’t see how mathematics relates to the real world.”

“But mathematics
is
the real world. It’s everywhere. See how those rhododendron petals spiral? Well, the number of petals in each row is the sum of the preceding two rows. It’s expressed mathematically by the Fibonacci sequence, which can be seen in, well, almost everything—the formation of crystals, the spirals of
galaxies, the pattern of sunflower seeds. Math is nature’s language, its method of communicating directly with us.”

Gottlieb cocked an eyebrow at her passionate response. “It could also be God’s way of communicating with us, no?”

“The rules of mathematics don’t necessarily imply the existence of a deity.”

“Well,” he countered, “they don’t deny them, either. I choose to see the hand of God.”

“And I see science—rather than an invisible old man in the sky who seems overly concerned with my personal life. And sporting events, apparently.”

“Most people of the world, throughout history, have believed in God.”

“Most people of the world, throughout history, also believed the earth was flat and the sun revolved around the earth,” Maggie countered.

Gottlieb smiled. “I believe in God. And in Jesus. And the saints.”

“And the Devil?” The air around them was still and strangely silent. Despite the heat of the day, Maggie shivered.

“The Devil,” Gottlieb said, considering. “Well, I used to think the Devil was purely theoretical. Now …”

“Now?”

“Now, let’s just say that I definitely believe that evil is a palpable force at work in the world.” Gottlieb cleared his throat. “By the way, the big party, the Fire and Ice Ball, is Saturday night.” As an older couple walked past them, he was quick to grab Maggie’s hand to bring it to his lips for a kiss. The couple smiled and walked on. “A birthday party. It’s in Grunewald. That’s where you’ll plant the microphone, in the study. You’ll be going as my girlfriend, of course.”