A Trace of Smoke (Hannah Vogel) Page 4

  “I am not blinking now,” I said. “I am fine.”

  “Your last piece was great,” she said. “But it was not Peter Weill. It was a softer, kinder writer. Someone who won’t be keeping her job if she writes more like it.”

  “Neumann ran it on the front page.”

  “Because it was news, not because he liked it.” She inhaled, probably sucking in a lungful of smoke from her cigarette.

  “Then why didn’t he change it?”

  Maria sneezed. “People like to see a soft stance sometimes, but mostly they want gory details.”

  “There is a balance,” I said. I suddenly felt very hungry and missed the lunch I might have had with Boris, if things had been different. He was the first man in a long time to whom I’d felt a connection. And, like Ernst, he was gone.

  “Well, lean back to the other side,” Maria said.

  “But people should be outraged that this rapist is going free.”

  “You’re a reporter,” she said. “Not an executioner.”

  “But does anyone care that he’s going free? Besides the victims? And who cares about them?” The memory of Boris’s hurt and angry eyes swam across my vision.

  “Hannah,” she said, speaking slowly. “You might feel that way, but people don’t want Peter Weill to be a pansy. He’s supposed to be streetwise and tough.”

  “You seem to have been studying his persona carefully,” I said. “Should I be worried?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” She hung up the telephone.

  I slumped against the side of the booth like a puppet whose strings had been cut. I had made it through the day, and my time belonged to me again.

  A reporter I did not recognize knocked on the glass, and I slid out, apologizing without meeting his eyes. He was under deadline too.

  I rounded a corner, wanting only to get home. A couple that looked so much alike they must have been brother and sister walked toward me. He said something and smiled devilishly. Her merry laugh cut across me. That. That was what I would never have again. In my mind’s eye I saw the photograph of Ernst, spread out on a riverbank, alone.

  Some time later I found myself in front of my door, staring at its shiny black surface as if I’d never seen it before. My body had brought me here when my brain had failed.

  I unlocked the door, but froze on the threshold, afraid to enter. What should have been familiar now looked foreign. A strong morning light poured between blue-checked curtains into the kitchen. The worn but clean furniture was placed just so. My eyes rested on the white tile stove beside two square-backed chairs and a tiny well-used table. I could not believe there was a time when I had calmly wiped crumbs from the smooth oak, pushed the chairs in straight. And yet I must have done it this very morning before I left for the police station.

  A door slammed upstairs, and I started. I stepped into my kitchen and pulled the door closed behind me. The door lock clicked into place. I was alone. Hot tears wet my cheeks. I set Rudolf’s box on the kitchen table, dropped my damp umbrella into the hall tree, and peeled off my overcoat.

  I turned into my bedroom and collapsed face-first on my narrow childhood bed. When we were children, Ernst used to run to me in this bed, afraid of monsters and Father’s drunken rages. This bed was the only piece of furniture our sister Ursula left unclaimed when our parents died.

  She took Mother’s bed. “I was born in it,” Ursula said, conveniently forgetting that I had been born there as well, as had Ernst. In fact, our mother had been born there too. The family bed now stood proudly in our sister’s small bedroom in Schöneberg, crowding the other furniture, waiting in vain for another child to be born in it.

  Our family name will die with this generation. We are all childless: I unmarried at thirty-two, Ursula married but childless at thirty-eight, and Ernst dead at twenty. Father’s name was all but gone, and for that I was grateful. Father did not deserve a legacy, not after all he’d done to me, and to Ernst.

  I ran my hand over the threadbare linen duvet. Fourteen years ago, these linens were part of my trousseau. Ernst and I had embroidered red roses along the edges of the cream-colored pillows and the top of the duvet. Over time the roses had faded to pale pink.

  I’d had a whole trunkful of such frippery when I dutifully became engaged to Walter, an officer in the German army. I knew I’d need these things in my married life, that I would be measured by the other soldiers’ wives on the fabric of my sheets and the skill of my needlework. I had cared about such things then, as had Walter, and we talked often of the house we would set up together when the Great War ended.

  After Walter died in the trenches, I felt discharged of my duty to Father and never married. Instead I moved out of my parents’ house and took up a life as a journalist. None of my work colleagues knew that I could beat meringues to perfect stiffness, tighten my sheets so that you could bounce a one mark piece off them, or shine a soldier’s boots until they looked like glass. I did not do these things anymore.

  I traced the pale roses of the duvet with my index finger. The duvet fit a double bed and so drooped to the floor on both sides. Mother would have shaken her head in disapproval. She had worked hard to prepare me for life as a housewife, a life that I had never led. Father had worked even harder to prepare Ernst for a soldier’s life, a life that he could never have led; would never lead now. My finger stopped on the uneven stitches of the one rose I had let Ernst embroider. He longed to add one, but I did not want it to stand out against my own careful stitching, so I made him work it into the corner. I stroked each precious uneven stitch.

  I sold the rest of my trousseau in 1923, the worst year of the inflation. I made millions, billions, and then trillions of Papiermarks each week writing poetry and occasionally filling in for the original Peter Weill at the newspaper, but it was no longer enough to buy food. It cost fifty-six billion marks to take the subway.

  Ernst and I lived on eggs and boiled fish soup. I collected fish heads and entrails at the fish market and boiled them and strained out the pieces through Mother’s old silk stockings. The stench was terrible. On lucky days we also had turnips and bread. Ernst carved elaborate boats out of stale bread, and we sailed them on our fish broth to England and America and places where they had fine things to eat. Even as a twelve-year-old boy, Ernst made every meal a party, somehow. He was so funny and dear.

  Luckily, I soon got a job writing love letters for an American businessman named Jim O’Donnell who was in love with Greta Hansi, the stage actress. Ernst and I quoted Goethe and Rilke like mad, and he paid us in American dollars. Each letter bought two good meals: meat, potatoes, chocolates, and dry goods like split peas and flour. We wrote Greta every other week, when Jim O’Donnell traveled to Hamburg for business.

  We needed food because Ernst ate and ate. He grew a half meter those first few years and became tall and gangly. He worked hard at his studies at the gymnasium. He was on his way to his Abitur and then university when he met Rudolf von Reiche.

  I clenched the rose inside my fist. I had sources through my experiences with the paper. I was no helpless woman, fit only for motherhood, the kitchen, or prayer. I would find who had done this. If Rudolf had murdered Ernst, he would pay.

  5

  I rubbed my sticky eyelids. It was Tuesday morning.

  An old woman stared back at me from the bathroom mirror. My face was swollen and pale, my bloodshot eyes squinted in the light. I shuddered. I looked like Father when he was hungover. I washed my face, smoothed my blond bob with wet hands, and hoped for the best. I could not face that woman in the mirror again.

  Move on with the day. Breakfast was next. I straightened my spine and marched into the kitchen. What did I have? A few rolls, a hunk of cheese, a pair of eggs, an onion, and a liter of milk, the most food I’d had in the kitchen in ages. I grabbed a stale roll from the corner of the breadbox. I cut it in half and scooped the crumbs into a teacup. They could be added to soups.

  I scraped butter across the roll with a sil
ver knife Ernst had pilfered from Ursula. Her favorite lecture rang in my ears. “Let Father beat it out of him,” she always said, with a deep sigh. “If he carries on this way, he will end up dead in a gutter someday. They all do. You will see.” Still I had tried to protect him. And failed.

  My appetite lost, I wrapped the buttered roll for lunch. My stomach did not want it, but I added it to my satchel with my sketchpad, notebook, and pens. I gathered a few coins from the sugar bowl. Little enough, but it would have to do for the day’s expenses.

  Pausing on the stoop, I glanced around at the sooty buildings that surrounded my home. My neighborhood was not the kind of place where I felt safe walking after dark. The kindest description for it was working class, and I remembered how Ursula shuddered at the mere mention of my address. Middle-class ladies did not visit Hallesches Tor, let alone live there. I had lived in my apartment for more than a decade and my sister had never visited.

  During the day I felt quite safe as I strolled down to the newsstand. Schmidt sat in his tiny stand, balanced on a stool, stumps of his legs pointing to the side.

  “Morning, Fraulein Vogel.” He touched his workman’s cap respectfully. I’d seen him almost every day since he opened the stand after returning from the Great War without his legs.

  “Good morning, Schmidt.” I pulled four different newspapers from his selection and handed him a few pfennigs.

  “It’ll be a fine day.” He dropped my coins into a metal can with a clink. “Just see if it isn’t.”

  I nodded in return and hurried to my bus. Schmidt was convinced that every day not in a trench was a fine day. I imagined Walter and the ten million other men who died in the trenches would have agreed with him. So many young lives wasted. Just like Ernst, with no trace left of what they might have become. Were there traces of Ernst left in the world? Were there traces left of my life? Who would mourn me if I died tomorrow? Certainly not Boris. Not my sister Ursula. Sarah was far away. Fritz and Bettina Waldheim would mourn. And Paul, a trusted friend who worked at the paper.

  I listened to the rough Berlin accents of workmen in caps and coarse cotton clothes, off to factory work they were grateful to get. How many of them would be mourned?

  I pulled my thoughts away from such a morbid track, trying to think of something practical. What if Maria was correct about Herr Neumann’s opinion of the new Peter Weill stories? He might fire me. Then it would be back to eating fish-entrail soup.

  I had to come up with a story for today, but first I had to return to the police station to see Ernst’s file and find out what I could about the last minutes of his life.

  Bright June sun mocked me as I walked to the police station, head down, studying the sidewalk. I dreaded it, but I needed to see him again, to make my head convince my heart that he was dead. I plodded through the Hall of the Unnamed Dead. The day was starting for many of the workers; a flock of typists, colorful as parrots, chattered around me. They were young, most not more than twenty. I felt old and dowdy.

  I reached the spot where I had seen the photograph. I could not raise my head. I stared at the golden oak floor as the hall emptied out.

  When I finally looked at the photograph, even my heart could not deny it. The picture recorded cold fact. Tears ran down my cheeks. It was a waste. A terrible waste of life, love, laughter. His beautiful voice stilled. Hundreds of songs unsung. Hours of conversation unspoken. I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against Ernst’s photograph. He was gone. Forever.

  I straightened and wiped away my tears. I would find the man who did this. He could not kill my brother with impunity. Perhaps I would turn him over to justice, as Boris had done, or perhaps I would settle it myself. But even as I pictured myself shooting a shadowy man, I drew back. Ernst would not want me to become a killer.

  “Fraulein Vogel,” said a familiar high-pitched voice. “Are you well?”

  I turned. Kommissar Lang’s diminutive form stood in front of me, concern in his boot-black eyes. At a loss for words, I stood between him and the picture of Ernst. It was plain that I was crying. How long had he been watching me?

  He handed me his spotless handkerchief and took my elbow, his eyes looking past my head at the photographs. “Did you recognize someone on these walls? A friend, perhaps?”

  “No.” I cursed myself for not being able to respond cleverly. I needed a story. An answer that he would believe. “I just heard terrible news.”

  “Come to my office.” He steered me through the empty hallway as if we were dancing. With each step away from the photograph, I relaxed a little.

  “You do not need to go to so much trouble on my account,” I said, after he closed his office door. “It is only weakness on my part. I’d hoped to take a shortcut through the building and get home sooner, before I made a fool of myself and started to cry. Obviously I am a bigger fool than I thought.”

  “What news have you heard?” he asked, in a gentle voice, pulling back his guest chair for me to sit. I sat, and he knelt next to me, once again too close for my comfort. I did not move away, to avoid arousing his suspicions.

  “I—” Before I knew what I would say I saw the double lightning bolt symbol of the SS, the Schutz Staffel, Hitler’s elite army, pinned to his lapel. I must be very careful. I swallowed. “Ran into one of Becker’s victims and—”

  “You knew the victims?”

  “One,” I lied, my story gaining strength. “A wonderful young girl. I just saw her, and I tried to be strong for her, but . . .” I bowed my head, unable to meet his eyes, and cried in earnest. I felt like a complete ass, crying in front of a member of the SS, but I could not stop.

  “You are a kind soul.” He took my hand in his cold one. “To care so for your friends.”

  I managed a weak smile. “I don’t know what is wrong with me, to take it so hard. I am a grown woman.”

  “Grown women are emotional too.” He patted my hand. “Which one was your friend?”

  “I cannot give you her name.” I longed to pull my hand back from his.

  “But I have a list of all the names,” he said. “I probably spoke to her.”

  Was this a test? Did he suspect my story? “She has been violated enough,” I said, trying to sound determined without provoking him. “Do not make me violate her trust further.”

  “It wasn’t the Jewish one, was it?” he asked. “I never trusted her statement. You know how they are.”

  I pulled my hand back. “I must go, Kommissar Lang. Thank you for your kindness.”

  “Let me walk you to the front door,” he said, rising.

  “You are too kind.” I rose too, glancing around his orderly office.

  As we walked down the hall, I steeled myself to neither look nor slow as we passed Ernst’s photograph. But Kommissar Lang slowed, and his eyes darted to that set of pictures.

  I put my hand on his arm, hating what I was about to do, but needing to distract him. “Thank you for your thoughtfulness.” I looked into his dark eyes. “It was kind of you to indulge my foolish outburst.”

  Kommissar Lang’s eyes left the photographs to meet mine. We walked to the doors together.

  “Fraulein Vogel.” He moved closer to me, and I kept my hand on his arm, although I wanted to snatch it away and strike him. Why was I so angry at him? He had made a simple anti-Semitic comment. I heard worse all the time. “It is wonderful to see a reporter who cares so for her subjects.”

  “Good writing must come from the heart.”

  He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Then you must have an extraordinary heart.”

  I looked down demurely to hide my disgust. I wanted to run through the front door and wash my hair. I did not want the touch of an SS man on me. “Kommissar Lang, I—”

  “Perhaps you might be free for dinner?”

  “I must hurry to the paper,” I said. “Another time, perhaps.”

  “Thank you.” He inclined his head forward and opened the front door. I escaped into the sunlight.
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  I had received only anger from Boris, a man I thought I could have opened up to. Yet the one who had tried to comfort me was Kommissar Lang, a member of the SS, an organization that was not supposed to have feelings. And my brother was buried in an unmarked grave. Nothing made sense.

  At the paper, I poured a cup of coffee, then pushed my way through the smoke-filled room to a window and opened it. It never helped much, but I did it every day.

  “Our air not fresh enough for you?” Maria asked, a cigarette between her fingers. She tossed her head so that her brunette bob swayed around her severe face.

  I plastered on a polite smile. Maria never forgave me for getting the Peter Weill writing job, and I loathed the way she treated my friend Paul. Still, she was good at writing up breaking stories when I phoned them in, so I tried to get along with her. “Are you certain there is any air left in here?”

  “Not air for those who do not smoke,” said Paul, the peacemaker, coming up behind Maria. “Your tender lungs are not as tough as ours.”

  Paul helped me get my first job at the paper and was more than just a shoulder to cry on after Walter died, at least for a time. Currently, he was dating Maria, and it was ending badly.

  “Excuse me.” I walked toward an empty desk. “Under deadline.”

  A shape blocked the light from the window. “Hello,” I said. I turned. There stood Herr Neumann, my editor. He was tall and thin, with fingers like a skeleton.

  “Good piece Sunday, about the trial.” He shook his brown cigarette at me with nicotine-stained fingers.

  This kind of flattery from Herr Neumann was extraordinary. I waited for the other shoe to drop.

  “Thank you.” I took a sip of coffee and tried not to make a face. Herr Neumann was the only one in the office who liked the coffee.

  “But you missed the deadline.” He blew a cloud of smoke at my face, smiling when I coughed.

  “I’m sorry, Herr Neumann.” Usually he wanted an abject apology, but I could not seem to get the tone today.