The German Wife(56)

“Can I change?” Jürgen asked the men, motioning down at his nightclothes.

“This isn’t a social visit!” the man snapped. Jürgen didn’t resist, not even as the men led him out the front door and into the night. I took a step forward into the empty doorway.

The streetlight glowed outside, bringing just enough light that I saw my husband pushed into the back seat of a black car. I watched until the car drove away, and the street was suddenly quiet again. I might have dreamed the whole thing, except that I was shaking from head to toe, and Dietger was still standing right outside the low stone wall between my front garden and the sidewalk.

Through my tears, I met his eyes. We had been neighbors for years, and we were at least friendly. He gave me a sad look, then slowly shook his head, as if he were personally disappointed in me.

“Where are they taking him?” I asked him hoarsely.

Instead of answering, he turned and walked slowly across the road, back to his house.

I paced in the foyer for a while, frantic and sobbing.

“I don’t know what to do,” I blurted, after a while.

“Could you call Lydia and Karl?” Mayim suggested. She was also crying, but lingering on the stairwell landing, as if the front door represented a threat to her physical safety.

I felt bad for waking Lydia and Karl, but to my surprise, there was no answer. I called again with the same result.

“Maybe they went away?” Mayim suggested, but I stared at her, then back to the phone, frowning.

“But I phoned Lydia after I picked Georg up from school yesterday, remember?” I slumped, shaking my head. “We were supposed to have morning tea at her house tomorrow—today. They must be home.”

“What else can we do?”

“We have to wait,” I choked out, and that was what we did. But every time I looked at the clock, I was surprised to find how little time had passed.

Eventually, Mayim and I shifted to the sitting room, and the sun began to breach the horizon, golden rays of light slowly filtering through the drapes. Mayim rose and made us some strong coffee in preparation for the children waking up. We sat together on the sofa and sipped the bitter brew.

“You thought they were here for me,” she said after a while.

“It seemed the only obvious reason for their visit.”

“You need Jürgen’s job more than you need me,” she said stiffly. “I’d rather stay at my parents’ apartment than to watch Jürgen dragged from your house by the Gestapo on my account.”

“Last night, Jürgen and I talked about leaving.”

“Leaving...his job?” she said, eyebrows lifting.

“Leaving Germany. All of us. Him, me, you...maybe even Adele.”

“Adele would never leave. She was born in that house—she wants to die in that house.”

“I know,” I laughed weakly, through my tears. Adele had trained us all so well—we each understood exactly what she wanted for the end of her life. “We were going to ask her anyway.”

But then I paused, considering the sequence of these events. Jürgen was so convinced they’d never let him leave. That was exactly why we intended to go quickly and quietly.

“It was after you went to bed,” I told Mayim, trying to join the pieces of the puzzle. “We were in the study. The door was locked. No one could have heard us.”

“Maybe Dietger was sitting outside?” she said. “Near the window?”

“We were in the corner, in the armchairs. The window was closed.”

I rose and walked back across the hall to the study. I had no idea what a listening device might look like—but if there was a microphone in his room, surely I’d be able to find it? Mayim came to help, but after we searched every nook and cranny, we found nothing.

“Isn’t it starting to feel like they have eyes and ears everywhere?” Mayim whispered when we finally gave up and dropped our exhausted bodies back into chairs in the living room. “Nowhere is safe now. Not even our own home. And when we can’t understand how they are surveilling us, we can’t do a thing to avoid it.”

We sat in silence for a long while after that. The sun rose all the way over the horizon. The coffee left in the pot had long gone cold.

“Mama,” Georg said. I turned to find him standing in the doorway, eyeing Mayim warily. She and I shared a sad glance, and I rose from the sofa.

“I’ll help you dress for school, Georg,” I said, my throat tight. I hated to take him back to that place, but there was no alternative.

Not yet, and maybe not ever.

Lydia’s nanny was at the school gate dropping off Hans.

“Has Mrs. zu Schiller been called away?” I asked her lightly. She shook her head.

“No, she’s at home.”

“There was a family emergency and I tried to call last night,” I said hesitantly. The nanny looked at me uncertainly.

“There’s a handset near my rooms. I’d have heard the phone if it rang.”

“Would you mind asking her to call me when you get home?”

“Of course.”

I sat by the phone in Jürgen’s study, waiting for Lydia to ring. Mayim brought me more coffee, then took Laura outside to play in the courtyard. I stared at the window at the front of the room, trying to figure out how Dietger might have heard us.