Vienna Prelude (51 page)

Elisa could speak a halting form of the Czech dialect. She did not know how to answer. “My parents were both from Berlin. They would not permit me to speak Czech, except to the housekeeper.”

Yes, this was an appropriate answer. A good Aryan answer. Keep even the language pure. “Then you can help me, Fraülein,” he said with a smirk. “There is an elderly gentleman from Prague. A Slav. He speaks no German, and I cannot make myself understood. Would you—”

Elisa’s smile froze on her face. If she refused to help, the officer would sense that something was wrong. If she accepted, then the elderly Czech would undoubtedly know that she was not from Prague. He would instantly take her for the foreigner she was. It was a dangerous game to play. “
Ja.
Herr Oberleutnant
.
” She addressed him in a title far above the rank indicated by the insignia on his uniform. This seemingly unintentional flattery pleased him.

“Good! Come with me.”

The smile still fixed on her face, she followed him down the corridor to where a little man sat, surrounded by three other Reich officials who questioned him in broken Czech.

“Stand aside,” barked the officer who had questioned Elisa. “The Fraülein is from Prague. She can help us.”

The little man looked at Elisa. The officer showed him her passport.
Czechoslovakian. The emblem of his nation on the front.
The man looked from the passport photo of Elisa back into her eyes again. She silently prayed that he would not give her away.

“From Praha,” said the officer, laying his hand on Elisa’s shoulder.

The man looked at the passport again and nodded grimly. Elisa managed a smile. She sat down beside him. Could he see her eyes pleading with him?
Of course you will know. You will know I am not a native of your country. But please! Understand what this means.

The Czech adjusted his pince-nez and greeted her cautiously.

She replied in broken Czech. The corner of his mouth twitched. He did not let his eyes look at her passport again. From the instant she opened her mouth, he knew it was false. The knowledge flickered in his eyes for the barest instant; then he broke into a wide grin and greeted her in enthusiastic Czech, as though she were indeed from Prague.

“I am so glad to have a fellow countryman to talk to!” he exclaimed.

She felt the eyes of the German officers on her. “Thank you. And how can I now help?” The word order was mixed up. The little man paid no attention to her fractured use of his native tongue. He had grasped the situation and took firm control.

“Tell the Germans I have come to visit my brother in Munich who is ill.” He repeated the message twice, slowly and in different intonations so that Elisa would understand.

Dutifully, she repeated his words in German, which she hoped contained a trace of a Prague accent.

“You sound almost like a native Berliner,” said one of the officers.

“Her parents were from Berlin,” explained the officer who had brought her. “They had the good sense to shelter her from such a harsh and lowborn language as these Czechs speak.”

The officers nodded in unison. It was easy to see that this lovely young woman was of the highest Aryan heritage. They watched her admiringly, and their attention was suddenly turned from the old man to the beautiful translator. A few more questions were directed toward him; then they began to question her.

The old Czech looked at her quizzically. “Thank you, madam. We help each other in these times.”

She left the compartment, still feeling cornered as the officer escorted her back to her own seat. “Now tell me why you have come to Germany at this time?” He smiled and rocked up on his toes again.

“My family is from Germany,” she replied. “So much is happening here for the sake of the German people. I simply wanted to see—”

“You are alone in Munich?” He tugged his earlobe thoughtfully.

Jesu,
juva! she silently prayed. She could see the spark of interest in the officer’s eyes. “Yes. Just sightseeing.”

“I know Munich well. I am free tonight when we arrive in the Bahnhof. Would you allow an officer of the Reich to show you some of the sights?” He moved nearer to her.

“Herr Oberleutnant,” she said demurely, “I am quite weary.”

“Just an hour or two,” he insisted. “Have you had your evening meal?”

Could he see the stab of fear that coursed through her? “I am . . . I . . .” She stumbled over the words as though she had forgotten how to speak German as well.

“A favor.” He raised an eyebrow. “For the good relations between the Fatherland and the displaced Germans of the Sudeten,
ja
?”

He was Gestapo. His very nearness made Elisa feel ill. And yet there was no way to escape him, it seemed. As the train lurched onward toward Munich, he sat down beside her in the empty place where the dark-skinned German girl had sat.
What became of her?
Elisa wondered. These men could do as they liked.

She cleared her throat. “I do not know you,” she said firmly.

“I am an officer in the Reich. That is sufficient introduction,” he retorted.

“Is that a guarantee that you are a gentleman?” she asked haughtily. She did not like the look in his eyes.

“The Reich would not have it any other way.”

Elisa knew that these new German supermen were paid a bonus for marriages to a woman of pure Aryan lineage. Blond-haired women with fair skin and light eyes were pursued and adored. Love was not a question in Germany. Only purity of race. “What can you show me of Munich in an hour?” she asked doubtfully.

“Whatever you would like to see,” he answered, slapping his hand against his knee. “It is the New Year tonight! Heil 1938! There are dances, costume balls—” His eyes danced with excitement. “Would you like to see the beer hall where the Führer was arrested as a young man? I can show you where it all began, if you like, and then you may go back to Czechoslovakia and tell the Germans there that it will not be long before they can truly call themselves Germans again! Would you like that, Elisa?” He put his hand on hers. “I insist; as an officer of the Reich, I insist that you be my guest.” His voice was pleasant as he spoke, but there was no missing the fact that he had made a decision, and she would have to obey.

“How can I refuse?” She played the role of a flattered woman.

“You cannot,” he said with satisfaction. “You must be my guest for this evening in Munich, but I will be your slave,
ja
? I have an automobile at my disposal, wherever you wish to go. And if you decide you would like to stay longer than an hour or two, I am off duty until four o’clock tomorrow morning, when my train leaves for Berlin.”

Elisa could not believe what was happening to her. As she stepped into the official staff car of the Gestapo agent outside the Munich train depot, she wondered if she might meet her father sooner than she had expected—in Dachau! She held tightly to the violin case and prayed that the officer would not see her hands shaking.

“Herr Oberleutnant,” she began as the car pulled away from the curb.

“Please Elisa!” he insisted, slipping his arm around her shoulders. “You must call me Alfred! Beneath this uniform I am only a man.”

Elisa could not help but wonder if this same man had not been one of those who had interrogated her father with the aid of rubber truncheons. “Yes. All right. Alfred, then. I would love to see the beer hall where the Hitler movement began.” She would flatter his insane pride, let him glory in all the things he had helped to create in Germany. Red banners draped every building. Uniforms were everywhere. Munich was an armed military encampment. When they arrived at the beer hall, a costume ball was going on. Steins of beer overflowed. Tables and long benches were packed with noisy revelers. A polka band played loudly as young soldiers and women dressed in native costume whirled about the dance floor beneath the swastika flags.

In the noise and dim light of the vast hall where the Nazis had tried and failed in their first attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic, Elisa felt like a cat locked into a cage with a pack of hounds. Songs of Germany’s victorious future were sung again and again. Lusty voices boomed out the Nazi hymns with fervent passion while she listened and tried to look entertained.

Alfred gulped his third beer and leaned across the table to shout above the din, “You will have to learn our songs, Elisa! Soon you will be singing them in Prague also! Glorious! We will soon all be one people! One Reich! One Führer!”

She had heard the slogan before as Hitler had screamed his speeches over the radio. The masses had become infected with the disease, and now the slogans and chants tumbled from their mouths with the ease of breathing!

“And where are those who opposed Hitler?” she shouted back. “Where are they, Alfred?” She could not help asking the question. Was there anyone still free in Germany who did not sing the songs and shout
“
Sieg Heil!”
on command?

He thumped his chest proudly, somewhat drunkenly. “That is my job!” He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her up. “You want to see?
Ja
? You want to see what we have done with them?” He was grinning wildly as he shoved his way out of the celebrating mass into the narrow Munich street again. “Come on, then! You can tell them how we clean the streets in Germany! You can tell the Germans back in Prague that we won’t stand for the Bolsheviks or the Jews when we get there.”

He raced the engine of the car and careened through the streets of the city. He had drunk too much; he smelled of stale beer, and his eyes were red-rimmed in the soft light of the dashboard.

“Where are we going?” Elisa asked. “It is longer than two hours now.” Her fear was close to the surface. “You promised you would be a gentleman,” she said as he drove out of the lights of the city and headed into the dark countryside.

He simply laughed in reply, then turned sharply onto an unmarked dirt road. “You’re afraid of me?”

“Please!” Her breath came faster. Where was he taking her? “You promised me if I would only escort you—Herr Oberleutnant! You promised me . . .”

“And I am a man of my word. A German and a gentleman.” His words were slurred. The road was muddy and deeply rutted; the wheels spun as he drove up a small slope. “You see!” he shouted triumphantly. He stopped the car, and there before them was a brightly lit compound. White floodlights. Barbed wire. Huge stone walls. Guard towers and machine guns.

Elisa did not have to ask the name of the place. She suppressed a groan, controlling the desire to scream the name of her father.
Dachau!
She swallowed hard and asked softly, “Why are we here?”

Alfred laughed and pounded the steering wheel. “You asked the question! I told you I was your slave tonight! Am I a man of honor? You asked me where all the people had gone that had opposed the Führer!” He gestured out the windshield at the colorless compound. “And here they are!” He frowned. “You are not pleased?”

Elisa simply stared. She wondered if he could see that the color had also left her face at the sight of the impenetrable fortress.
Papa!
her heart cried out. “It is . . . big,” she managed to say.

“Yes. And we are constructing others just as big. It needs to be big. Jews. Bolsheviks. Gypsies—we need a place to put them. Clean up Germany.” His words had taken on an almost holy awe of the wonder of such efficiency. “And I am part of it all. I do my duty.” He droned on, but Elisa could not hear him any longer.

Row upon row of buildings sizzled beneath the light. She could make out the silhouettes of the sentinels in the towers.
Papa lives beneath their gaze. And yet they do not see him. They see only bodies.

“This is our answer to the human debris.”

Papa, I am here. Look up. Past the walls. Can you hear me call you? Please live for us!

“They die quite easily here. The process of natural selection. Survival of the fittest. The Aryan will survive. We were meant to rule and the others . . .”

The savage barking of dogs echoed through the night. A shot rang out, then a cluster of popping sounds as a machine gun flashed fire in the distance.

She jumped. “What was that?”

He laughed again. “Nothing. Sometimes they kill themselves. There is a forbidden zone, and those who are weak-willed go there. It is an invitation to be killed. At night, if you watch, there are always several. It is like watching for falling stars,
ja
?” He held up his wrist and grimaced at the time. “Alas, fair Elisa, I must get back. It is a thirty-minute drive back to Munich, and I have a train to catch.” He leaned close to her. His breath reeked of beer, and she felt sick at the smell of it. “Haven’t I been a good boy?”

“Yes,” she answered hollowly, still unable to take her eyes from the tower where the fire had burst from the gun.

“Then will you give me one kiss?” He was smiling.

She turned her head to stare at him. What kind of man could ask for a kiss within view of such a horrible place? “Not here,” she said, feeling her stomach turn. “I am not used to thinking about people dying so easily.”

He shrugged and started the car. “You will get used to it. You will see. We will make the world safe for those of German blood. You will not have to worry about your children. One day we will all live in a great state. The thousand-year Reich.”

She sat silent and rigid as he talked on and drove back toward Munich. “Take me back to the beer hall,” she said at last as they entered the city. She was sure she would be able to disappear into the crowd there.

He hurried around to open the car door for her, then pulled her up and kissed her hard on the mouth. The violin case was between them. Elisa gripped it tightly as though it were a shield.

“Perhaps I will see you in Prague?” Alfred stepped back, then took her hand and kissed it.

She felt her throat constrict. “Perhaps. Thank you for showing me what we might expect.”

He waved his hand toward the beer hall, where the polka music boomed and the thump of feet kept time to the melody. “We are all good-natured people! We will bring such enthusiasm with us when we come.” He bowed, kissed her hand again and then, with a final wave, drove away.