The Ambassador's Daughter (31 page)

We stand staring at each other, too surprised for formal greetings. “I didn’t know you were in Berlin,” I offer, suddenly angry. Why hadn’t he told me he was going to be in the city? It would not have been proper for him to contact me; still, the idea that he has been so close by, and that he might have come here and gone again without seeing me, as my mother had in Paris, cuts through me like a knife.

“I returned only a few weeks ago.” His voice is hollow. “I had hoped I might hear some news of you. But seeing you here...” He clears his throat. “It is so much more than I imagined.”

“Oh, Georg!” I want to run to him and fling my arms around him, breathe him in as though this is Paris and nothing has changed. But everything has changed, I remind myself. “We’re staying with Uncle Walter while our house is repaired.” I struggle to keep my voice even.

“You had not mentioned that Walter Rappaport was your uncle.”

“You didn’t ask.” Of course, our last name is Rosenthal so there’s no reason he would have guessed. “We are the lesser Rappaports,” I joke. He does not rise to the humor, but searches my face hungrily.

“I never dreamed...” I watch his face expectantly as he struggles to find the words. He doesn’t hate me. For everything that happened before I left Paris, it is all still there in his eyes, as real as the last night we were together. Something swells up in me, threatening to burst. “That is, to see you again...”

“Margot!” Uncle Walter booms behind us, having seen out his other guests. He claps Georg on the back as though he is a boy and not a foot taller. “You’ve met my niece.” He uses a voice more affable than the one he usually reserves for me, giving no indication of either our earlier disagreement or the acrimony that is our default state. But behind his smile, his eyes are filled with trepidation. Ever since I was a girl and disrupted one of his dinner parties with a potful of frogs I’d caught in the lake, Uncle Walter has given me wide berth, wary of the havoc I might wreak on his guests.

“Margot and I came to be acquainted in Paris, actually. But I hadn’t realized the relation, or that she was staying here.”

“My brother-in-law’s house is being renovated. I’m afraid the thugs left it uninhabitable.” Georg nods with understanding. Our situation was not unique—wide swaths of Berlin neighborhoods had been destroyed by the war and subsequent rioting. “And since the wedding is to be here in less than a week, it is most convenient that they are staying with me.” I watch Georg’s face. Will the news that Stefan and I are proceeding to get married so soon be a shock? But his face is impassive, no longer vulnerable to such blows.

Papa appears at the terrace door then. “Walter, I...” Seeing Georg standing beside me, he stops. “Captain Richwalder?”

“You also know my brother from Paris,” Uncle Walter says.

Georg nods. “
Natürlich
. A pleasure, Herr Ambassador.”

“It’s back to professor now,” Uncle Walter corrects, eager to strip Papa of his once-prestigious title.

“No matter,” Papa says mildly, struggling not to convey his displeasure that Georg has once again entered our lives. “So you are working for the government now?”

Georg nods. “In munitions.”

“Really? With the terms of the treaty, I wouldn’t have thought there would be a need.”

“There will be a German military again,” Georg says, a hardness to his voice I have not heard before. “And it will need to be stronger than ever so we can resolidify our interests abroad.”

“That sounds quite different from the role you envisioned when we were in Paris,” Papa observes. “Has your point of view changed?”

“Everything,” Georg says slowly, “has changed.”

Uncle Walter, though, is oblivious to the subtext. “A fine young man,” he says, speaking as if Georg isn’t there. “Smart, hardworking. There’s likely a real future for him in government. Some have even suggested politics.” Georg, a strong and handsome war hero, would make the ideal candidate.

But Georg demurs. “I don’t have the words for politics.” He’s more comfortable with charts and diagrams than speeches.

“It will be a short while until the report we discussed is ready,” Uncle Walter says to Georg, his voice businesslike once more. “Margot, would you mind entertaining the captain while I attend to some other matters?” Not waiting for an answer, he disappears back into the house. Papa hesitates before retreating inside once more.

When we are alone again on the terrace, Georg turns to me. He does not speak, but swallows me in his gaze.

I clasp my hands to resist reaching for him. “You are well?” I manage. The lines in Georg’s face are more deeply etched, giving him a depth that only makes him more handsome.

“As I told your father, I’m working for the government in munitions now.” The answer, focused on his job, is not the one I was seeking. And it surprises me. Georg had said that he hated Berlin and had no time for politics. But something had changed in him since the treaty was signed. “The government is in more dire straits than ever. We need strong leadership if we are to avoid anarchy.” I wait for him to launch into one of his speeches about making a difference in the new world. But that dream died at Versailles. He wears his saber again, I notice. Is it ceremonial or a precaution against the violence and chaos that has swept the city?

“Munitions? But I thought...” My surprise echoes Papa’s. The peace treaty demilitarized Germany, left any notion of a standing army or equipment for one inconceivable. Then I remember the Russian voice in Walter’s study. New allies, allowing us to do on their soil what we cannot do on our own, because there will always be armies and weapons and war. “So you’re staying in Berlin, then?” My stomach tightens, an odd combination of excitement and dread.

“Just for a time. I’ve taken a place at the Grand until I decide what to do next.”

I nod, recognizing the famed boardinghouse with its handful of rooms and stately gardens. Even if Georg intended to stay, permanent housing in the city is in notoriously short supply. But I had not been asking about his job. I want to know if he is all right, how he is managing now that the conference is over and his dreams for cooperation as equals in tatters. “Will you go back to sea?”

He shakes his head. “That’s a younger man’s dream.” There is something different about him. The honor and principles are there, but they have been worn down by political realities, grooves in a piece of driftwood. We are all older now.

“And how was the rest of your time in Paris? I heard the weather became most stifling.” I am babbling now.

He shrugs. “I hadn’t noticed. But I was ready to leave. Nothing was the same after you...that is, after the conference was over.” I blink against the burning in my eyes. He clears his throat. “It’s beautiful here. You must hate it.”

I laugh aloud then, wiping away a lone tear that spills from my right eye. Only Georg, who shares my distaste for formality and pretense, would understand my visceral dislike of our Grunewald villa. “It’s good to see you, Margot.” It is good to see him, too, more so than I might have imagined. “You cut your hair,” he says abruptly.

“Yes.” I pat the sleek bob, bits framing my face. The dampness has drawn my curls tight, making it seem shorter than ever. It is a sharp contrast to the long locks I’d worn in Paris. Georg reaches toward my temple, as if he’s forgotten all that has happened between the last time he had done that and now.

Then his hand stops midair and flounders before retreating to his side. “I like it. It looks more sophisticated.” Neither of us speak for several seconds. “Margot...” Despite his hardness, I can sense the intensity of his feelings for me.

“I’m so sorry, Georg,” I blurt, the words spilling forth. “I never meant to lie to you.” Then I falter.
Sorry that I could not tell you about my marriage, because I did not want it to be true, for reality to stand between you and I and all that I wanted for us
.

“I should have known,” he laments. “And maybe on some level I did. I assumed that you were standoffish because of the difference in our ages and positions. Still, I never thought...” He never thought that I would have lied to him so. Even now he cannot believe the worst in me and struggles with the truth. “Your friend Krysia came to tell me that you had gone,” he adds.

So she had honored her promise. Of course he had already known, I think, remembering the glimpse of him at the station as our train pulled from Paris. “I wanted to come myself. But I thought you must hate me.”

“Hate you? I could never.” Unconsciously, I reach up and touch his arm. He smiles then, all tension dissipating, and for a moment it is just the two of us, as we always were. “The bracelet.” His eyes grow wide. “You’re wearing it.”

“Always,” I say solemnly. “But you should have it back.” I reach down and undo the clasp.

He shakes his head, refusing to take it. “It gives me great comfort, knowing that some part of me is with you.”

Uncle Walter steps onto the terrace once more and hands Georg a file. “It is good to have you working with us. Would you like to stay for tea?”

Georg’s eyes dart involuntarily in my direction and I can see the conflict that pulls him two ways at once, the inches between us suddenly an ocean. Nothing has changed. Our feelings are as real and strong as in Paris. But with Uncle Walter here and my wedding looming over us, there is simply nowhere for them to go. “That’s very kind of you, but my driver is waiting. I really should return to the city.”

Uncle Walter nods. “I’ll see you out.”

“Good day, Margot.”

I watch with disbelief as Georg turns and starts for the door.
Don’t go!
my mind screams, willing time to stand still so I can hold on to this moment for just a few seconds longer. I want to run after him. But I stand motionless as the terrace door closes. A moment later, I hear the roar of a car engine, the whisking of tires against gravel and dirt.

As the sound fades into the distance, I sink to one of the wrought-iron garden chairs, racked with disappointment. How could he simply go, to walk away so quickly after we had just found each other again? He could have stayed, but he had chosen to leave at the earliest possible moment. Despite his feelings, there was some part of him that had not forgiven me for Paris. And now the moment that I had dreamed of a thousand times but had never thought possible actually had happened. But it was over just as quickly.

I fling open the front door and walk into the house. The driveway is empty, a lingering cloud of dust the only proof anyone had been there at all. Unable to stand the containment of the villa any longer, I walk down the driveway. Picturing Georg’s face in my mind, my cheeks burn beneath hot tears. It is not just the unexpectedness of seeing him again here of all places. No, my feelings for him are all still there, as real as ever. They aren’t going away with time lessening or fading. Desire and pain tear through me.

At the end of the driveway, I retrieve my bike and start to ride, not down the lake path as I customarily do, but toward the main road. I pedal faster now, trying to outrun my thoughts and feelings. But the image of Georg standing on the terrace presses into my mind. I thought my prayers had been answered. I thought he had come for me.

It is not until I reach the station that I realize where I am going. I chain the bike and purchase a ticket and board the train, which soon arrives, largely empty at midday. The worn wooden seating is unchanged from my last ride years ago. A handful of other travelers, spread at respectful distances throughout the car, look straightforward. The conductor comes down the aisle and eyes my ticket but does not ask for it.

As we near the city, I peer out the window, eager to glimpse the familiar skyline. Through the dirt-clouded windows, though, I can tell that everything is different. Berlin has become a behemoth on the scale of Paris but with none of the grace of its older sister, like an awkward adolescent growing too quickly for its own body. Construction projects sprawl across fields and streets, cranes hovering over gaping holes in the ground.

We cross over the wide expanse of the Spree where the barges have begun to flow again, the much-needed goods trickling into the city, an intravenous drip. The train slows, weaving between the apartment buildings like a clattering snake. On either side, people in their flats eat lunch and read papers and iron clothes, as indifferent to being on display as the animals at the Tiergarten.

The train screeches into Alexanderplatz and I step off into the swarm of travelers moving haphazardly in all directions. Outside the station, I stop uncertainly, overwhelmed by the bright lights and noise after the months in bucolic Grunewald. The square is choked with motorcars and hackney cabs and omnibuses that have worn the cobblestones flat.

Struggling to breathe in the exhaust-filled air, I begin to walk, past the beer halls and Aschinger’s restaurant belching forth sausage fumes and cigar smoke from its open windows. At the corner, a young Romani boy sits on the ground playing an accordion, its open case turned hopefully upward like an outstretched hand. I wind right and then left, feeling my way toward the Jewish quarter as if propelled by a force outside myself. Away from the square, the streets are narrow, tall four- and five-story row houses lean upon one another, giving off a claustrophobic feel. New wooden poles climb high, wires lashing the sky overhead.

As I near our old neighborhood, the streets grow narrower still and the smell of onions and cabbage overtake those of petrol and exhaust. I turn onto Hirtenstrasse and stop. It is as if I have been transported back a century. The pavement is thick with bodies, women and children clustered by the vegetable carts, men queuing outside the Jewish community building for work or assistance. Foreign languages, Russian and others similarly eastern, fill the air. Refugees, I realize. The pogroms had always sent small groups of immigrants to Berlin, tiny ripples in our pond. But now with the war and the borders redrawn hundreds of thousands have been displaced, the ripple becoming a giant wave that threatens to engulf the entire quarter.

I am suddenly mindful of the eyes watching me, my pressed skirt and blouse so clearly out of place. I do not belong here anymore. Quickly I press onward. Our house sits in the middle of the next block, the overgrown garden beside the front steps like something out of a forgotten dream. My eyes travel to the upper floors. Though the broken glass has been cleared little is left but the shell. There is no sign of the work Papa had told me was taking place in anticipation of our return. He had lied to me, kept the dream alive, but in truth even if the house could be restored, the neighborhood is changed forever.