Night Angels by Weina Dai Randel
May 1938, Vienna
The rich and the powerful were arrested, the prominent and the talented were harassed, and the skilled and the hardworking were attacked. Men fled, their shoes thundering in the hallway; men shuddered, their backs jabbed by rifles; men groaned, their skulls cracking on the cobblestones.
In the dead of night, hundreds of thousands of people, the disillusioned, the dehumanized, the despairing, sought passage out of Vienna.
CHAPTER 1
GRACE
When I met Lola for the first time, it wasn’t entirely my choice, for if it had been up to me, I wouldn’t have taken a chance on her. But many things were not up to me, such as the official dinners that lasted for five hours, or the extravagant parties hosted by the royal Hapsburg family, or the dances in the grand ballrooms overflowing with high-ranking officials in gold-trimmed uniforms and duchesses in diamond tiaras, or even Vienna.
It was late May, another long afternoon: the desultory rays of pale sunlight writhed on the vast stretch of the Ringstrasse; a cloud of dust, silent like shadows, descended on the rusty lampposts and islands of Baroque buildings; nearby, a crust of cobwebs clung tightly to the swollen buds of the lindens, branches bending low in a sudden shift of the wind.
In my conservative attire suitable for a diplomat’s wife—a silk jacket over a blouse with a lace jabot, an ankle-length skirt, a pair of blue gloves, and a wide-brimmed hat with a ribbon in the same shade of blue—I came to the entrance to the Stadtpark. Near a bust of a stern composer with an elusive name, I sat on a bench outside the park. Lola arrived a moment later, took her seat, and introduced herself.
I did my best, nodding politely and listening patiently. She sounded all right; her English was gently accented, and she was a Viennese, a student from the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, or something like that. She appeared eager to teach me German and assured me she’d help me with some phrases that would be useful at official dinners where I whiled away the hours by gazing at the crystals.
Lola was twenty years old, five years younger than me, if I remembered correctly, but I never remembered things correctly. Her appearance gave me the impression that she was younger, and maybe it had something to do with her sense of fashion, which was minimal at best—her green dirndl showed some signs of wear, and her double-breasted black jacket was out of style. But she was striking in a raw, energetic, and genuine way, with green eyes, plump cheeks, and smooth skin imbued with a sheen of youth. An enviable young woman, not yet dented by the stress of marriage, parenting, or other worldly shackles and shames.
Anyway, I had little to say to her—it was too windy, too dusty—and I felt dizzy, my thoughts flying like discarded pamphlets, scattering in the wind, and her voice, warm as it was, hazy like fog. I mumbled along, nodding now and then, until a torrent of heat ran through me, and I wrung the strap of my handbag, spinning the twines of uneasiness and regret—those knotty German verbs and complicated consonants with sounds that might as well come from someone with allergies. Learning German would be a daunting task for me and likely fruitless, for if there was one thing I knew well about myself, it was that I had little talent in foreign languages.
“Miss Lee?” she asked.
“Yes?”
“Are you all right?” Those green eyes were like the eyes of a Russian doll in a department store, intimate and inscrutable.
“Oh yes. I’m all right. I was just . . . What were we saying again?”
“You said to meet here next Thursday.”
“Oh, right. Here. Yes . . . Do you mind? Here at the park it’ll be great. You see, I live inside a consulate, and it’s not convenient for me to have German lessons there. It’s just . . . too many people . . . But we can meet somewhere else if . . .”
“The park is fine. I’ll be here, Miss Lee.”
“Great . . . That’s great. See you next time.” Clutching my handbag, I stood up. I had spoken more words in a few minutes than in an entire month.
“May I ask you a question, Miss Lee? How long have you been in Vienna?” She smiled—a friendly smile, easy, golden, like the patch of sunlight pressed against her forehead.
“Hmm . . . about a year . . .” Now came a predicament. Should I stay, or should I leave? The protocol for a diplomat’s wife that I had recently learned did not include interaction with a tutor, but if I bolted, it would reflect poorly on my manners. So I sat back on the bench, set the handbag on my lap, and fixed my gaze on several German words etched on the back of the bench near her arm. Such a strange city, Vienna, words everywhere. On the walls and benches.
“Did you have a German tutor before?”
“No.”
The dreadful silence.
Maybe I should explain. Fengshan had introduced to me at least a dozen tutors over the past few months, but I managed to avoid them. She was the first I’d met, having run out of excuses. But my pulse raced faster, and it was as though I was at a dinner table again, under the scrutiny of those ostentatious diplomats and their sophisticated wives specializing in polite drivel and critical gazes. I would have made an excuse and hidden in the private bathroom if I could, but there was no private bathroom nearby where I could escape.
“I heard you were a diplomat’s wife, Miss Lee.”
Lola’s tone sounded as though she had doubts about that, and so did I. Every day, I woke up hoping this wasn’t true.